She was tall, about 5'8” in her bare feet. And she was dark, swarthy the way an Arab is dark. Her skin had the tawny permanent tan of Semitic peoples, whose heritage lay in the desert sun where she came from: Israel. She was a sabra Israeli, born and raised there, with a family heritage traceable to biblical times, to the Promised Land. It was part of what made Slaight nervous. She had this … presence, this … confidence Slaight wasn’t used to finding in women, not the college girls he’d gone out with, not the East Side foxes he’d met over the last few years. Irit Dov had class. You could see it in her face. Her cheekbones were wide-set like an American Indian’s. Her nose was narrow, aquiline, her nostrils thin elegant slits. It was pronounced, a sturdy angular structure around which the rest of her face settled naturally. Her wide dark face was the most prominent feature of Irit Dov’s body, which was equally bony and angular. She had the shoulders of a swimmer, the flat tummy of an athlete, and a real honest-to-God bosoms, full and round, not like the flat chests of stewardesses and models. She had wide padded hips, long legs, tiny feet.
But what was striking about her, striking in a strange foreign way, were her fingers. Her hands were narrow, the width of her wrists, and her fingers were long and skinny, interrupted by knuckles protruding noticeably, like burls. Her fingers were patrician; they said inbreeding somewhere in the distant past. They reminded Slaight of his grandmother’s hands and fingers … those of an old Virginia gentlewoman, Irit Dov knew about her hands. She kept long elegant fingernails. She painted them in tones of dark red. Burgundy. Her nails drew attention to her eyes, for she was always glancing down at them, and one’s eyes naturally followed hers to the nails, then back up to her eyes. Her eyes were black, like her hair, and unflinching. She was an extraordinarily good-looking woman. Even in New York City, she stood out in a crowd. Up at West Point, on Ry Slaight’s arm, she was just plain famous.
“Ry, let’s make love,” said Irit Dov as Slaight took his last sip of coffee. He looked at her face. It was dark, hawkish, shrouded in her long black hair.
“Now?” he asked. “I thought you wanted to get me out of here.”
“Shut up, you silly boy,” she said, taking the breakfast tray and placing it on the floor next to the bed. She was three years older than Slaight, a world-wise twenty-four, and for this reason she often called him “boy.” It was a term of endearment, but it made Slaight nervous. His father used to call him “boy” all the time. Now he didn’t call him much of anything any more; Ry, when he had to get his attention at home, but most of the time his father was quiet around him. It was like his son wasn’t “boy” any more, symbolizing the estrangement of father and son which comes when a boy leaves home and returns a de facto man, though down deep inside, each knew the parameters of “man,” and Slaight was still a boy. But Slaight could never bring himself to just walk up and say, hey, Dad, you can go ahead and keep calling me boy if you want … it’s been like my nickname for years, you know? Just as he couldn’t bring himself to ask Irit to stop calling him “boy,” it made him nervous and reminded him of this thing with his dad and all.
“Come, you lazy boy. Make love to me.” Irit lay back on the bed and pulled him toward her. With her left hand, she reached down and tugged her robe. It fell open. Her body was the color of cedar shakes a couple of years old, a weatherbeaten light brown, special, unique … and it was that color all over, from her face to her toes … her breasts were that lovely cedar-shake brown, like she’d been sunbathing, in the nude, but she hadn’t; it was just her color, it was like something in the air you could breathe, an odor that got you high. She moved nearer to him and waited, coming on, her feet creeping over his, digging at him with her toes, tightening a grip around one of his calves with her ankles under the covers, Slaight still leaning on one elbow watching her … amazing fuckin’ woman, goddamn amazing woman, tall and raunchy and gutsy and brown and foreign and so fuckin’ beautiful, so goddamn sexy.
“You want me to do your breathing and your shoulders?” he asked, leaning over her and staring down at her eyes.
“Yes, Ry. Please. Do my breathing, you do it so nicely….”
She may as well forget about getting out of here before noon. “Doing breathing” was something they did to one another; it had just come along naturally, like kissing, a part of making love necessary because both of them were so goddamn tense all the time, Irit because of her boutique, a little place on Madison specializing in Israeli fashion, most of it her designs, and Slaight … well, he was tense pretty much 100 per cent of the time. It was part of being West Point, part of being gray.
Slaight sat up, reached under her arms, and yanked her upright, angling her body across the bed diagonally, feet in one corner, head and shoulders up near the other. He crossed his legs and sat at her head, looking down. She was watching him, her big black eyes staring straight up, a quiet, satisfied smile on her face. It occurred to Slaight that she’d had this in mind all morning, puttering away out there in the kitchen, humming and planning and working up her juices….
He placed his left hand flat in the middle of her bare chest, palm on her breastbone, fingers touching her diaphragm, then he placed his right hand on top of it, interlocking his fingers.
“Breathe,” he said. Irit took a deep breath and exhaled. Slaight pressed down with the exhalation of air, letting up when he felt her taking another breath.
“Let me hear you. Breathe,” he said again. This time the exhalation came in a rush of air, an audible sigh, and it was deeper, more air was coming out. Slaight pressed down. Let up. Breathe. Press down. Let up. Breathe. Press down. Aaaaahhhhhh. Let up. Breathe. Press down. Aaaaahhhh.
“Let me hear you. It’s fading,” he said as Irit inhaled. She nodded. Aaaaaahhhh! This time the exhalation came … looser … Slaight felt his hands go down deeper into her chest, and he knew she’d released some of the diaphragmatic musculature with which the body actually takes in and holds air inside the lungs. Breathe. Press down. Aaaaaahhhhhh! Deeper again, her chest was caving now, curving inward, feeling like a sponge beneath his hands, a wet pliant sponge soaking up air and squeezing it out. Breathe. Press down. Aaaaaaahhhhh! Jesus. There it went. That terminal sigh, a distinctive sound which signaled she’d finally let go, relaxed, crumbled under the pressing and the breathing and the pressing and the breathing … a hypnotic wave-like rhythm … pressing and breathing and pressing and breathing and finally letting go, limp, noodley, soggy with total release. Her eyes were closed and she was still breathing deeply, regularly, a steady rush of air in and out, in and out … her long fingers curled slightly with each breath, an involuntary reaction of the central nervous system Slaight had noticed some time back. Christ, he couldn’t even remember when they’d started doing this weird shit. He glanced over at the clock radio. It had been thirty minutes since they started the pressing and breathing, pressing and breathing … time just flew, there wasn’t any time, really, just this strange hypnotic flow, as trancelike for Slaight as it was for Irit….
He stopped pressing and massaged the muscles of her chest above her breasts, the pectorals. They were tight, knotted. She breathed. Slaight massaged … in a moment they relaxed, soggy. He let his hands slide sideways over her arms, under her arms, and lifting slightly, he slipped them beneath her back, placing the forefinger and middle finger of each hand on either side of her backbone. Now he lifted when she exhaled, shoving the air out of her lungs from below. With each breath, he slipped his fingers up her backbone toward her neck, inch by inch. He let his hands come up around the sides of her neck, leaving his fingertips on her backbone, disappearing now into her skull. With his thumbs he massaged the sides of her neck, digging around in the tendons gently, rubbing, rubbing, rubbing until he felt the neck muscles begin to go. Then he slid his hands up to her chin, gripping her head with fingers at the base of her neck, thumbs under her chin, running down along these two strong muscles on either side … and he pulled, gripping the head tightly, he pulled and pulled, keeping the tension
between her head, which he held in his hands, and her body, which resisted the pulling with friction against the sheets … he pulled and pulled gently but surely until he saw the neck release and actually elongate slightly, neck muscles letting go, her shoulders slumping as he released her neck and ran his hands down across her clavicle, his fingers up under her back again, pulling up on the shoulders this time, pulling and massaging at once, keeping at it, kneading and pulling and lifting and moving his hands ever so slowly toward her neck again, slipping them under the neck, fingers kneading the edges of her backbone, then holding with the thumbs and the fingers and pulling again, pulling the head away from the shoulders, and this time the neck let go immediately, a quick extension, like a turtle easing out of his shell for a look-see … and he kept it up, kneading and lifting and pulling, pausing every once in a while when he noticed her breathing begin to fade, pressing down on the chest again to restart the breathing, pressing down, aaaaahhhhh! easing up and pressing down, aaaaaahhhh! and pressing down … that rhythm again, just going on forever and ever, the gentle give and take of hands and skin and muscles and bone and tendon and fingers in her hair and the sound of her breath aaaaaahhhhh! coming up at him like a fountain, a fountain of pleasure and release. Jesus.
He was trying to think how this business got started, but the tendency was not to think, the tendency was to breathe and listen and breathe and listen and breathe and listen, listen to her, watch her, until finally his own eyes were closed and everything was happening involuntarily and he was listening to his own breath going in and out, in and out.
“Hey. Ry.” He opened his eyes. She was staring up at him, naked except for the robe loose at her sides. “Hey. You. I love you. Did you know that?”
“Yeah.” He reached under her neck and pulled her to him, kissing. He rolled forward on his right shoulder in a sideways somersault and came up next to her. He threw his right arm across her shoulders and pulled her to him again, pressing his chest against her breasts. They flattened. He kissed her on the neck. It was damp and smelled of soap. He took her lips in his and chewed gently. Her tongue darted in and out of his mouth. It was sharply pointed and rough, like a cat’s. He nibbled her tongue, nibbled her lips, thrust his tongue into her mouth. She drank it in like it was fluid, sucking, pulling on his tongue and rubbing that catlike tongue of hers against it. One thing you could say about Irit Dov. Here was a woman who liked to kiss. Jesus, she’d lie here and kiss for goddamn hours, chewing and tonguing and dribbling all over her cheeks and the pillows….
He eased himself up on the bed, rubbing against her body, feeling her breasts hit the hollows beneath his ribs. His stomach tightened, sucking air sharply. She burrowed her head in his chest, licking that soft spot on his throat, below his Adam’s apple, licking and sucking on the skin and wetting down his neck from throat to breastbone. He wrapped his arms around her head and buried his face in her hair.
“Irit. You fox. You smell so goddamn good.”
She sucked, he felt her breath rushing across his wet throat, cold … chilling the place she’d kissed. The sound … phffffffft … the sensation of her breath on his neck sent little jolts of pleasure across his stomach and down his thighs, through nerves just beneath the surface of his skin, his feet stiffening, toes pointing, feeling like some kind of wind was going to come blasting out of the bottoms of both feet, blowing away the quilt, rustling the curtains across the room, he felt … Jesus … so goddamn … Christ … fine … She gasped, threw back her head, and kissed him on the mouth.
“Ry,” she whispered.
“Yeah.”
“Take off my robe.” He pulled it over one shoulder, she rocked to the side, pulled it from the other, and the robe was off. She spread-eagled atop the satin quilt, naked. Sunlight from the living room came down the hall, diffused through the open bedroom door, broke shadows across her bosoms, bathing them in a strange white glow. Slaight rose up on his hands and knees, sank his tongue into her belly button, circling it, jabbing, slurping liquid gulps of air. She jerked, pulling up her knees, holding on to her ankles with both hands, giggling in a hoarse whisper. Slaight tongued away at her belly button, one hand on each breast.
“Stop that, you devil!” she yelled aloud when she couldn’t take it any more. “You’re tickling me!”
“I know it,” he said, leaning back on his haunches grinning.
“Come here,” she beckoned. Her nipples were erect with passion.
“Look at those little troopers,” said Slaight, pointing. “Standing at attention, hey.” He laughed.
“You come here, my American boyfriend,” said Irit Dov, feigning seriousness. That was another thing she called him, my American boyfriend, like she had them on three continents, which she probably did. Pissed him off. He felt like he filled only part of her life, and he wanted it all. Made him defensive. The grin dropped from his mouth and he crossed his arms, rocking silently from side to side, gazing across the room.
They’d been together a little over a year, as together as West Point would allow, anyway, and he guessed they were in love. Whatever “love” was by June 1968, after the “summer of love” and the “love generation” and all that shit. It seemed to Slaight their life together was fragile, a balloon they batted in the air between them, hoping it would not burst. They had never ventured inside the balloon, for that would have meant a commitment. Ry Slaight and Irit Dov were each other’s best fans. An invisible distance separated them, over which neither of them seemed to have control.
Like performer and audience, the two were separated by youthful obsessions: words and sex. By 1968, talking and fucking were supposed to be easy. Events had conspired to create an illusion of freedom. Where once had loomed a pile of time-consuming groping and clumsiness, there was now a convenient social short cut, symbolized by the first night they met. They just went home to Irit’s bedroom and climbed in bed and fucked. Everything had to happen quickly. It seemed like neither one of them had a thing to lose.
What a bunch of crap! Here was Slaight, threatened by the notion Irit was just toying with him, keeping him as her New York lover as she moved between Tel Aviv, Paris, and the United States. And there she was, this girl who’d been so stung by the fast-paced scene within which she had to move in the fashion business. By the time Slaight met her she was like steel twice tempered. As a kid, he had ruined the blade of a hunting knife one night by heating it in a campfire and plunging it into a canteen cup of water, watching the fast boil and the disappearing red glow of the steel, over and over. The blade never again held an edge. Twice tempered, the steel had lost its hardness. That was the way Irit Dov had been when Slaight met her. She’d been clobbered by somebody. He knew he would have to treat her gently, because nobody else had.
Irit moved, wrapped her arms around his waist, rested her head in his lap, and looked up at him. He looked down, into her eyes, mad because the spell had been broken between them, but glad because he’d made up his mind. He took her head in his hands and pulled her tightly against his stomach.
“Hey, Irit,” he said.
“Yes, Ry?” She looked at him, perplexed.
“I love you, you know that?”
“Yes, I know, you silly boy.”
“Come on. Knock off the silly boy crap. I love you, goddammit. You understand what I’m telling you?”
“Of course. You love me. I understand that. You’ve told me before. This is not the first time we’ve made love.” She smiled. “I love you, too. What is bothering you, Ry?”
“Nothing’s bothering me. I just want to get something straight, you know what I mean? I want to tell you … for some reason, I just feel this incredible urge to tell you how much … how much I fuckin’ love you, Irit. It’s like this thing I’ve been bottling up inside me, like something I’ve been holding back. I love you. I mean, I love you. I want to be your guy, you know? I want you to feel like you can count on me, you know … depend on me if you need to. Jesus. I feel like some kind of schmuck, gushing like
this. I don’t want to embarrass you.”
“You don’t embarrass me, Ry. It’s wonderful, what you’re saying …”
“I don’t know, Irit. I guess I’m just scared.”
“Scared? Scared of what?”
“Like scared something’s going to happen, and you won’t … know. You won’t know how I felt. You won’t know I really love you. We’ve been real tight, you and me, Irit. But I don’t know … right now I just feel extra close to you, like there’s some invisible connection between us. Listening to your breathing this morning, watching your chest rise and fall … Jesus, it’s weird, you know.”
“Yes, Ry. I think I know.”
“I wrote this poem once. I ever tell you about it? Wrote it when I was a plebe, for my roommate. It was his girl friend’s birthday, and he wanted something special to send her, he wanted to send her a poem, but he just couldn’t write one that said what he wanted it to say. So I told him I’d write one, and I did. So there I was, sitting in my room at West Point, writing a love poem to this imaginary girl I didn’t know. It was strange … three years ago … but I still remember one of the lines. It said, about love I mean, it said, ‘I want to … give in to its ceaseless attack.’ I didn’t know the girl, of course. Didn’t know what in hell love was either. But that image of it attacking, I guess it stuck with me. I’ve always thought of love as some kind of warfare, something you’re always trying to win. Know what I mean?” Irit tightened her grip around Slaight’s waist, and he could feel her nails dig into his flesh.
Dress Gray Page 12
