What I Did for Love (5 page)

“I live downtown,” Rand said, “on the East Side. We could eat there. Will you have some dinner with me?” He took my hand gently as he asked, producing another surge of chemistry and heat. I could not really speak, afraid I would squeak or sob or I-don’t-know-what, so I just nodded and he was openly pleased, his response making him look very young, the boy he had been flashing once more into the face of the man he was now.

It was so nice to see this reaction, a man’s frank pleasure not hidden by the mask of jaded sophistication that people in our circles so often assumed. In the often crazy social life of the rich and powerful, some people thought that if they took open pleasure in being with you, it would give you a kind of power over them. So boring, so soulless. Rand was so refreshing, not hiding the happiness he felt.

At Rand’s signal, Tom pulled the car to the curb and we settled into the familiar cushioned leather comfort of the back seat. My
body thrilled as he slid in beside me and moved closer to me while the car pulled out into the thick but moving traffic.

Turning to face me, seeing my eyes and seeming to sense my breath, Rand drew me against him and slowly covered my lips with his. I thought I would catch fire and I could feel his own flush of heat. He drew away looking at me speculatively, delightedly, hardly believing it either, it seemed. I thought, such magic. He hesitated just for a few seconds, then drew me to him again, a long kiss that had my blood so throbbing, it was like orgasm, everything a haze of pleasure.

Oh, this was so not me! I who had played indifferently with boys, preferring dancing, studying, swimming, touring, hating the thought of the casual hook-ups so many of my peers seemed to enjoy. I had kept my distance from the frantic games of petting and maneuvering for sex, and the search games online and off, of “where is my boyfriend now,” with all its pointless jealousies. No great loves had been created that way, at least, not that I could see. So many of the boys, and the girls too, were pompous, full of their supposed worldliness and sophistication. It was a total lie. I could not see or feel any richness or specialness in their frantic pairings and partings. I avoided most of that “social life.” My peers and our wider circle of friends and their families, assumed that this was due to my continuing trauma over my parents’ unspeakable deaths. That suited me. It gave me the space I needed from sexual routines and rituals that were, to me, no life at all.

Among all my peers, I was closest to one of my classmates, she and I having found each other the first week of our just-ended freshman year. Each of us was an outlier, different from our classmates despite the great diversity of the women admitted to each college class. We had found in each other someone to confide in and laugh with, the essential other female each of us seems to need or long for, to share our commentary on the world. Her name was Robin, and I told her when we met that she was
named for my favorite bird. She told me drily that she was named for her grandmother, and that was our first great laugh together. She and I shared a mocking despair over the impossibility of most of the young men about us.

The boys I had really liked until now were as shy as I was, and the sexual exploring we had done had not really roused me beyond curiosity and some clumsy experimenting. Still, I had done enough so that I was not exactly a virgin, although there had not yet been any sex that swept me away. Until now. And this wasn’t even sex, I didn’t think, at least, not yet.

But even if this, with Rand, wasn’t sex, I was still ready to collapse into a sensual heap after his two kisses, the last one so long and wonderful that I would not have cared if that were my final moment on earth. I loved it.

The car pulled to the curb in front of a great luxury apartment building, old-fashioned in its brown stonework and broad shoulders, unlike the sleek towers in other parts of the city. I knew this area. Bredon had lived just north of here briefly, before buying the penthouse further uptown where he now lived.

I managed an empty-headed phrase in a voice that did not shake too much. “Your apartment is here?” Of course it was. We surveyed the rich exclamation point of the entrance canopy at one side. A discreet carriage drive circled the other side of the long front of this massive edifice, whose quiet stone calmly hid all the great wealth of its interior.

“My family management corporation owns this building,” he said quietly, as we got out of the car. He was amused that I obviously did not know how rich and important he was. But I did know that his was one of the player families in the great economic scrambling and dueling of the city and its overseas connections. It all seemed so unimportant as long as he might give me another of those kisses, though my knees would probably buckle if he tried it right now.

Tom made sure we were well clear of the car before he drove
it away, probably to the judiciously hidden garage at the side of the building, entrance by special radio code. The rich often hide their opulence under bland or unseen entrances, a way to avoid the envious, the stalkers, the protesters, the criminals who would rob or even kidnap. My brother had shown me all the secret ways to seem to disappear in a car into the side of a building like this, and enter the interior with its great inner courtyard open to the sky, a mini-city of affluence guarded by the concierge, doormen, porters, and quiet but stern security men in plain suits. To newcomers, the security men looked like visitors waiting for someone to come join them.

“Would you like to come in?” he asked. And then, unexpectedly shy, he said, “Or would you rather we just went to dinner?”

I did not know if he had some strange moral code about women – you never knew what played in men’s minds, especially rich men who could have women at will, or who could have their fantasies played out for a fee. I was not naïve about such things. Rand seemed to have escaped that Freudian morass, or at least he
seemed
to be free of it. But I had not yet even asked him
the
critical question. “Are you married?” I blurted.

“No!” He almost boomed the answer, laughing now. “And I haven’t been.”

More relief. No baggage – I hoped – of ex-wives and step-kids, re-wiring each other’s psyches into knots of love, deprivation, hurt, cruelty, or depression. Lately the rich were more likely than even middle class people to marry, to marry later, to stay married and have a couple of kids who then became their obsession. This is what I saw among the longtime richer people; it might be the future even for Bredon and his fiancée. Maybe it was different for the newer rich people, as it was for the celebrities, new to luxury, tempted by all the things that destroy, especially alcohol, especially drugs.

Rand went back to my question. “Were you burned by dating
a married man?” he asked.

“No. Married guys are bad karma,” I replied. I had seen enough girls believing a married man was actually going to leave his wife for them. Some of my classmates had fallen for predatory professors. One was especially notorious. I told Rand about him, how every new graduating class had its “Professor Burns Alumnae,” women who had been “this year’s” mistresses. Every one of them thought she was, at last, “the one,” who would have him for herself. He preyed on beautiful, needy young women; the grifter and the predator know their targets. I had called his lovers “Burned Women,” angrily, for he had made a try for me, to my immediately obvious horror, and he withdrew as though
he
had been burned by the way I looked at him. The remembrance made me shiver and Rand looked at me with a sad smile, but said nothing. I wondered how many times he had heard similar stories. Every woman has at least one story.

We had resumed our southward walking, this time for a short distance and had almost reached the end of the block. A small narrow building sat there, incongruously, with old-fashioned steps and a neat canopy of its own, showing a dimly lit vestibule.

“Here we are,” Rand said, taking my arm and guiding me up the three brownstone-type steps. As we passed through the door into what I thought would be darkness, we were at the entrance of an elegant little jewel of a restaurant, all glistening linen and the glint of silverware. “This is our corner pub and fast food eatery,” he teased me as the impeccable maître d’ approached us.

“Monsieur Rand,” he said, giving me the swiftest, briefest glance, seeing everything. I was filled with admiration at his smooth, quiet authority. “Will there be any more guests?” he asked in a very low voice.

“Just the two of us,” Rand told him, and he immediately turned to lead us to a table. There were two other couples already dining, their conversation soft, sound hardly carrying.

I let Rand order for us, a quick, delicious, efficiently served
dinner, and I ate between surges of between-the-legs heat as he rested two fingers on the back of my hand. He could not touch me enough. I was making disconnected small talk about college, so glad the term was over. He said little except an encouraging “did your exams go well?” to my nodding “yes,” and I was mining my scarce experience with boys and sex to figure out how I could make love to him, wondering if he would see me as a slut, not caring, desire driving me. I ate enough to quell the hunger pangs that had risen up when the plate was set before me, but my appetite was for him, and I was madly controlling my impatience.

I looked at the diners around us, being seated, eating, leaving. No one seemed to pay a check; another couple had left by simply putting down their forks, rising from the table and exiting.

“All private accounts,” I commented, trying to find something that would distract me from wanting to be done with dinner and melt into him.

“Yes.” He nodded. “It’s like a private dining room for the building. Did you enjoy it?”

“It’s fabulous.” It was. Fusion cooking, simple, elegant, and a glass of wine that was perfect. The alcohol was illegal for me in New York, where the drinking age is twenty-one. But no one ever questioned me about my age in the restaurants I had been to with my parents and then with Bredon. After I was sixteen, my parents allowed me to have wine at dinner, just as it was allowed in public in Europe. When I was not with family, I drank mineral water or plain water or iced tea, it made no difference to me.

I saw that Bredon was done and waiting for me. I quickly put my fork and knife down on the plate, rising as he did. The maître d’ gave him a discreet nod as we left.

I was so happy to be walking with him again, going toward the end of the long block. His arm was now fully around me, and he carefully placed a small kiss above my ear. I was controlling a moan from that little kiss for it was like a miniature fire-dart
making me even warmer. His breath was a bit ragged, so I knew, finally, that he was feeling what I felt, only he was so much better at control. Well, he was older. I could not get my thoughts straight to figure how much older. Not as old as my brother. Maybe thirty. My body did not care.

“I’ll show you where I really live,” he whispered as he planted little kisses down my hairline, and I feared that if we did not get there soon, he was going to have to hold me up. We turned the corner, and there extending behind the buildings was a tiny gated park. He pulled a small remote from his pocket and the gate unlocked with a soft click. He guided me through and let it close and lock behind us as he moved me down a flat stone path. Above us were great blank back walls of the apartment buildings. We turned behind a small line of trees, and there was an exquisite brownstone, a survivor perhaps from an earlier era in New York, hidden by the tall buildings behind it, and hidden from the street by the trees and bushes that blocked any real view beyond the gate.

It was not the typical brownstone with the long stone flight of stairs and basement stairwell. The first floor was at ground level, with a direct entrance off the path, small lights cleverly placed and shaded to guide us without being visible from anywhere else. Another remote command and the front door unlocked. With our quick entry the door closed behind us, another barely audible click, and low lights discreetly set in the corners came on with a soft glow. It was a sitting room, filled with charm and smelling fresh, frankincense and flowers perfuming the air, the actual flowers in two vases, gorgeous, fragrant. There was a fireplace against the far wall, a shining brass screen between the andirons. He led me directly to the great enveloping sofa, removing his jacket as he lowered me onto the wonderful cushions. He was running his hands over my body.

“My God,” he breathed, the words hardly audible, “what breasts,” and then his hand slipping under my skirt, quickly
finding me, hot, wet, and the movement of his fingers and hand brought me a rushing climax that startled me as it happened. He could feel it, and I would swear that he chortled at his triumph, his ability to have this limp and melted young woman beneath his body, then one hand unbuttoning his shirt, then both his hands pulling my panties downward, and I ran my hand over his formidable erection.

I decided to try the ancient technique that Robin and I had learned by accident, from a wonderful woman, a classmate’s mother, who was a sex therapist. We called her “Mrs. Sanjay” because the couple’s last name had been difficult for Sara’s teachers. (Sara’s full name was Saraswati, whom I considered a super-goddess, but that name too was a non-starter for English-bound teachers and classmates.) Sara had forgotten that we were coming to her apartment to get her for a day of galleries and bookstore browsing, but Mrs. Sanjay was so gracious, she had had the maid bring tea and cakes, as though we were visiting
her
on an afternoon in India. The print on the wall facing us was both exotic and erotic, and in answer to our eager questions about it, she teasingly, gently, explained some of the ways of pleasure that the print illustrated. We listened in excited fascination, and afterwards promised each other that we
had
to try these things as soon as possible. Alas, thus far, no boy had suited me, and when Robin had tried it, the boy was so shocked he practically ran away from her. We laughed and screamed over that, and it was a warning to both of us that the double standard still dwelt in the minds of men, no way to know which of them held onto it.