Ten Days in the Hills

by Jane Smiley

  “Oh. Let’s see. Marya, I guess. When you squeeze my nipple, it reminds me how much I love to massage her breasts and suck her tits. She has beautiful tits.” She said this in a normal, conversational tone of voice. But it was exciting. “She likes mine, too, but not as much as I like hers. Sometimes we just stop whatever we are doing in the office, and I suck her tits and think how if I had a cock I would fuck her.”

  “You’re lesbians, then?”

  “Oh, God, no. I can’t say we are. I just love her tits. Ahhh. Thinking about them is turning me on, I must say.”

  It was turning Charlie on, too. Under the covers, his own cock was beginning to swell and stir. With his left hand, he was squeezing her nipple, one-two, one-two. When he put his right hand under the covers to palpate his stirring and swelling cock (thank goodness he had freed it all up before), his posture was a little awkward, but, still, it was nice to watch her, and listen to her, too. No one had ever talked like that in his actual presence, he thought. He said, “What about cocks? Are you thinking about that, too?”

  “A little, but not really. I don’t have a special cock lately that I can really focus on. And these days I’ve spent more masturbation time sucking Marya’s tits. Just today, while you in the dining room were eating your main course, we went into the pantry while Raphael wasn’t looking, and I opened her shirt, which has snaps, you see, and then her bra, which has a front hook, and I sucked her tits like mad and also squatted down and brought myself. That’s why we were a little late picking up the plates. I didn’t even have time to wash my hands, but I did wash my hands before we brought in the coffee and dessert.”

  Charlie was so excited by now that he could hardly get out his next observation—“It sounds like you love her.”

  “Oh, maybe. We’re good friends. But sex is more just something we do up here. There isn’t much else to do, and we all like lots of sex.”

  “Does this fellow Mike know that?”

  But she didn’t answer this question. Instead, she pressed her fingers against her cunt, closed her legs, and also pushed the vibrator, now making a somewhat deeper hum, farther between the cheeks of her ass, then she cried out—Ah, ah—then she went limp. Charlie was hard as a rock now, and threw off the covers. She was so limp that it was easy to turn her on her back, push her legs apart, and go inside her. And it was wonderful in there—from her own orgasm, she was hot and wet. Her knees spread a little farther, then her legs went around him, and he came in a sudden rush, as if his prostate were twenty years old again. As he was coming, it seemed to him that maybe she was coming again—she pushed against him and cried out. Then they both subsided in a heap, and he didn’t know what to say. The ideas that came to him—“That was pretty exciting after all,” or “Thanks”—seemed lame. So he said “Off.” The lights went off, and the bathroom light dimmed exactly in time with his slowing heartbeat.

  She said, “Well, I didn’t realize you were going to fuck me.”

  Charlie said, “What does that mean?”

  “I think penetration is going a little far.”

  “You’re angry?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know. I wasn’t foreseeing penetration, and I haven’t made up my mind.”

  Irritated, Charlie said, “There’s nothing you can do about it now.”

  “Your attitude seems quite strange to me. Perhaps it is a result of your advanced age. American men of your generation are often confused about sex, as I understand.”

  Charlie got up and made his way to the bathroom. When he got there, he turned the light on by means of the switch. The bathroom was unusual in that it had no tile or stone. Like the bedroom, it was brass and wood, with a vaguely oceangoing air. The floor, which he rubbed his toes over, was smooth, though it looked as if it would be rough. It was made of bamboo parquet, like the floor of the room, and was in fact continuous with the floor of his room. The towels were two or three shades of muted green in a jungly leaf print. He took one and sat down on the bidet, facing the wall. His trip to California, which he had thought would somehow ratify his separation and launch him into a more official single life, was turning out to be very strange. He remembered thinking, waiting for two hours in Security at Newark so early last Monday, that he shouldn’t bother to go, and maybe he had been right.

  On a shelf next to the bidet, six or eight small containers of beauty products were arrayed. He picked them up and peered at them one by one—artemisia, lavender, anise, grapefruit, sandalwood, orange blossom, ylang-ylang. He turned on the water, which was instantly warm, and squeezed a bead of the grapefruit body wash into his palm and began washing and massaging his genitals. The body wash was nice, smooth and slippery. His cock was still plump. In the warm water, his balls hung low and fat. He could still feel the pimple there, but really it didn’t feel like much. He washed himself everywhere, front and back, then turned off the water, stood up with his feet still planted to either side of the bidet, and dried himself off with a medium-sized towel. The towel was soft and absorbent. He hung the towel neatly over what looked like a heated drying rack and went out of the bathroom, turning out the light by means of the switch. When he got back to the bed, groping because he refused to call out to the lights, he found that she was no longer in it. Where she was, he had no idea. For all he knew, she was in the anteroom, or stretched out on the floor, but unless he tripped over her, he didn’t consider that to be his business. When he came to the bed, he crawled across it to his side and got under the covers. His job was to focus on the main task, which was to go to sleep, get up and sort through his pills, and keep as best he could to his schedule. He stretched himself out flat, then bent his knees, thrusting a pillow underneath him. Fortunately, the exercise had loosened up his trapezius. He turned his head to the right and then to the left. He was pretty comfortable, after all. He closed his eyes.

  DAY EIGHT • Monday, March 31, 2003

  “I decided,” said Cassie, “that they must have put me in the Comedy Room. When I opened the closet to look for the bathrobe, all I found was an overcoat. And then, right in the middle of the room, on a tall pedestal, there is a large plaster nose. And behind my bed is a big painting by a Russian painter I never heard of, depicting four drunk peasants sleeping up against a haystack, and pigs flying through the sky above them. On either side of the door are two Magrittes I’ve never seen, one of the back of a man’s head—he’s wearing a bowler hat shaped like a woman’s buttocks—and the other one is of the back of a man in a black suit that shades into a horse’s tail.” She laughed. “But that’s nothing compared to the bathroom.”

  Elena was sitting with Cassie and Delphine under the pergola in the garden next to the aviary. They were on the west side of the house, so they didn’t have sun, but the upper reaches of the aviary did, and the birds were awake and singing, calling, whistling, trilling. “That’s a whipbird,” said Delphine. “I was reading about it in the book in my room. Its call is supposed to sound like the cracking of a whip. Tell her about the bathroom. Elena, I saw this bathroom.” Elena looked at Cassie, directing her thoughts away from the fact that she missed the newspaper and had been awake for at least two hours, worrying about the war in a personal way that surprised even her.

  “It’s upside down,” said Cassie. “The ceiling is brilliant green, and detailed to look like grass with the shadows of clouds passing over it, and the floor is blue, like the sky, with the clouds. The sun is off to the side, right where you walk in the door, and the angles are perfect—just where that sun would cast a shadow on the grass from that angle, there’s a shadow on the ceiling. But that’s not the funny part. It’s a pretty big bathroom, and of course it has a sink and a tub and a bidet and a toilet and a cabinet, but right across the room from each fixture is a painting on the wall of that fixture, an exact replica, with a line above it in script, ‘Ceci n’est pas un bidet,’ for example, or ‘Ceci n’est pas une baignoire.’ Above the painted bath, there are two painted towels and just the word non. I was just
laughing. Every time I open a drawer or a cabinet, there’s something funny in it. I opened one of the drawers in the chest, and there was a sweater glued to the bottom of the drawer, and on the nightstand there’s a book glued facedown. It’s a copy of a novel called The Master and Margarita.”

  “I read that in college,” said Elena.

  “Appearances are deceiving,” said Delphine.

  “Well, they are in my room,” said Cassie.

  “I knocked on Simon’s door on the way down, because he said his room was quite unusual,” said Elena, “but he isn’t up yet.”

  “And there’s a gym,” said Delphine. “We worked out this morning already. But you know, there’s no clock in it. And I forgot my watch. What time do you think it is?”

  “I have no idea,” said Cassie. “Our friend the colonel would be right in his element here. I wish we’d brought him along.”

  Elena knew what time it was, as always, but didn’t say anything. It was possible that if she didn’t acknowledge the exact ticktock of history as it evolved, or devolved, she would succeed in ignoring it. She said, “Max and I thought we’d go for a swim later in the morning, and I think Paul’s been in already.”

  “No doubt,” said Delphine. She looked up and then around. “Eight, do you think? Not that late?”

  “Delphine doesn’t like Paul,” said Cassie.

  “I didn’t say that,” said Delphine. “I said I don’t see what Zoe sees in him. That’s not saying that I don’t like him personally.”

  “He’s not very sparkly,” said Cassie. “She’s more sparkly than he is.”

  “Don’t you think she’s more sparkly than just about everyone?” said Elena, picking up a scone and splitting it. Its bottom was hot, savory, perfect. Obviously, Raphael had thoroughly greased the baking sheet with a heavy coat of butter, which had melted in the oven and infused upward. The interior of the scone was scented with lemon peel and dotted with dried cranberries. She broke off a piece and put it in her mouth.

  “Well,” said Delphine, “it is her profession and vocation to sparkle, when, that is, she is not being asked to smolder—”

  “She’s really good at that,” said Cassie. “Did you see Wanda Rossini? People didn’t realize it, but it was a very distant remake of La Bohème, and she had to sing and smolder for about two hours. I thought she was great in that, but they put Tom Cruise in the lead, and he could not sing, and there was about as much chemistry between them as there is in a green salad.”

  “I didn’t see that,” said Elena.

  “No one did,” said Delphine.

  “Fortunately, they blamed him and the director and said that if anything could have saved it, it would have been her. When was that?” said Cassie.

  “In ’95,” said Delphine. “It came out in ’95. I think they made it in ’93. The Democrats still controlled Congress when they were making it. She sparkles for a living, but at least it’s her own sparkle. I wish she would sing more. Did you ever hear her sing ‘Just One of Those Things’? Or, for that matter, ‘Banks of the Ohio’? That one makes your hair stand on end.”

  “I never did,” said Elena. “Except for the movies, I’ve only heard her sing one time when I was passing the big bathroom in Max’s house. She came out and said what great acoustics it had.”

  “When we first moved in there, she’d be in that bathroom all morning, doing scales and trying things out. She even made her singing coach go in there with her. He would sit on the stool, and she would prop herself against the sink. I stood outside the door myself a time or two.”

  “You must be proud of her,” said Elena.

  Delphine regarded her, and Elena wondered if she had said the wrong thing. Finally, Delphine nodded. “Of course I am. But I don’t know that I ever expected anything different. She was the cutest child ever. Once I read an article about it, about the big eyes and the round cheeks and some sort of mathematical relationship between the chin and the width of the forehead. She was made to look at, and when she opened her mouth she was made to listen to. And she wasn’t spoiled. I can say that for her, she’s never acted spoiled. She has a temper, but that’s inborn, as far as I can see. She always had a temper, no matter what I did. Anyway, to make a long story short, I never, ever thought I was going to be her only audience.”

  “It’s just a hair-trigger,” said Cassie. “She can’t hold a grudge. But the fur flies if the bomb goes off, I’ll say that. She’s not at all like you, Delphine.” Cassie turned to Elena. “If it weren’t for the smile, and hands, and skin tone, you would have to wonder whether Delphine had any genetic input at all into the legendary Zoe Cunningham.”

  Elena felt this was a mildly shocking thing to say, but clearly Delphine had heard it before, because she continued to eat her pineapple with an equable air. “Are you saying that I myself was not destined for stardom?” said Delphine, with a smile.

  “Of course you were not,” said Cassie. “Fact is, she’s a miracle of hybridization.” She grinned. A degree disconcerted by this teasing, Elena helped herself to half a grapefruit.

  “Ahem,” said Cassie. Elena looked up. Zoe was nearly upon them. Delphine didn’t flicker. She said, “Morning, Zoe.”

  “Morning, Mom. Cassie, Elena.” She pulled out a chair and sat down. Indeed, she was made to look at. The morning was cool, and she was comfortably dressed. Her long, curly hair was pinned on top of her head. She had on neatly fitting jeans and a yellow shirt nipped at the waist, with an orange collar and turned-up orange cuffs. She wore no jewelry other than a narrow bracelet of lapis-lazuli beads. Both the yellow and the blue were subtly repeated in her brocade flats. She smiled at Elena, then made a wry face at Cassie and Delphine across the table and leaned forward. She said, “I slept for nine straight hours, flat-out, without changing position. I did not get up and go outside and assume the Surya Namaskar Pose to greet the sun, nor did I begin my day by snorting water up my nose and spitting it out through my mouth.”

  “How did you—” began Cassie.

  “I took a long shower with the multi-citrus bath gel and sang a selection of hits by Gary Moore, and I wasn’t too bad on those low notes, even if I do say so myself.” She cocked her head backward and opened her mouth. “So-o-o long, it was so long ago! But I still got the blues for you!” Above them, the aviary fell silent for a moment, and then roared forth in ever more abundant song. Delphine smiled, and Cassie continued to eat her omelet, but Elena felt herself shoot upward and outward into a state of unexpected visceral pleasure, and even delirium. Just above them, wisteria blooms dangled through the beams of the pergola; before them, the grass was green as it could only be in March in California. “Though the days come and go.” In the doorway, the girl Monique was standing with her mouth open at the sound. A peacock on the lawn paused in its foraging, lifted its head, and opened his tail, and Elena thought, I am here. Zoe stopped singing and said, “Paul doesn’t actually like me to sing very much. He values silence.” She said this idly, while spreading lemon-lime marmalade on her toast, but Elena saw Delphine and Cassie exchange a glance, in which, after a moment, they included her. And she felt her eyebrow lifting without actually wishing to express any opinion at all. “But I’m ready to go on the road again. Do some club dates, at least in New York and London. Just me and Sonny on the piano, and see who shows up to sing along.” She bit two chunks out of the toast and swallowed meditatively.

  Delphine said, “Last time didn’t Sir Paul show up to sing along?”

  “Yes. That was fun. We sang ‘Brown Sugar’ and ‘Honky Tonk Woman,’ which everyone thought was a daring thing for Sir Paul to do. Once, Dolly Parton showed up to sing along when she and I were both in Atlanta. We sang a duet on ‘The Sweet Bye and Bye’ and ‘Cry Me a River.’ She was good. You know who my voice blends with, is that Canadian girl Sarah McLachlan. We’ve sung together twice—impromptu, of course. We did that old Joni Mitchell song ‘Urge for Going,’ and ‘Highway 61’—‘God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son,” Abe says
, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on”’—great song.” She took a sip of her coffee. “There are so many great songs. Lots more great songs than great scripts.”

  “What’s your room like?” said Cassie.

  “It’s gold,” said Zoe.

  Elena laughed

  “No. I mean, I sat on the bed for maybe fifteen minutes yesterday, trying to talk myself into touching things. Finally, I went over to the wall near one of the windows and actually put my nose right up next to it and peered at the paint, and there were gold flecks in it that Joe Blow says are real. I asked him. And I thought I had seen wretched excess. I gather it’s intended to be Mike’s own room eventually, but I guess Mike and his family haven’t lived here yet.”

  “You don’t like it?” said Cassie.

  “I feel I’ve been misjudged. They thought I was that real-gold-flecks sort of person. I liked your room, Elena.”

  “Yes, it’s overwhelmingly floral. I like it, too.”

  “Well, I guess I’m the designated Marie-Antoinette. But it’s only for a few days. The bed is comfortable.”

  “What about Paul?”

  “Japanese,” said Zoe. “Perfect for him, except that there’s a pool in the middle of the floor that he could fall into in the dark. I told him he was going to have to come to me rather than me going to him.”

  “Simon’s room has different levels, too,” said Elena. “I never think bedrooms or bathrooms should have different levels, especially when there might be guests.”

  “You know,” said Cassie, “years ago, when I was in my forties, I would guess, I went to visit an old friend who had moved into a brownstone in Brooklyn, and she put me in her guest room, which was also the study. The bathroom was just outside the pocket doors, between the bedroom and the kitchen. Anyway, I got up in the middle of the night and opened a door in the dark, and took a step and realized that there was nothing there, so I just grabbed the door frame and arched myself backward. It turned out that what I had thought was a closet was the basement. When I opened that door and looked down in the morning, I saw that falling down those stairs would have killed me, because it was about six steep steps down to a small landing, and then a long flight to the cement.”