“I wish I could pay off all your mortgages,” Nikolai said.
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Can you?”
“No.”
“Don’t fret. I’d just mortgage them again,” she said, not having to do any inner appraising to know that was exactly what would happen. “But it’s comforting to know your nice thought.” She laced her fingers with Nikolai’s for the first time.
Suspended from a long, delicate chain around her neck was a platinum-framed monocle about an inch and a half in diameter. Nikolai had noticed it the day before, and here she was wearing it again. He asked about it.
“It’s a magnifier, not a monocle, but I call it a monocle,” she said. “It magnifies ten times.”
Like a loupe, Nikolai surmised. “For looking at jewelry?”
“Eyes,” she said, just the one word to see how that would strike him.
He was appropriately puzzled.
“Iridology is something I became interested in years ago, and now I’m really good at it,” she said.
“Iridology,” he repeated with a knowing nod. He’d never heard of it.
She assumed he hadn’t. “By looking closely at the irises of a person’s eyes I can determine his well-being, or, if you will, his ill-being. I can tell the state of his liver as well as his libido. Are you open-minded?”
“I’d say yes.”
“Because with me you’re going to have to be.”
Nikolai liked the future that promised.
“Let me have a look at you,” she said, bringing the monocle up to her right eye. She moved in with it to his left eye. She was so close he could feel her breath against his cheek and distinguish the personal fragrance of her skin from that of her perfume. She examined the irises of his eyes a full minute before telling him: “You’re bothered by one of your knees—the right one.”
That was true. When he was fifteen he’d seriously injured the ligaments of his right knee while cross-country skiing with Lev. He would never have made it back to the dacha if Lev hadn’t practically carried him. Even now if he happened to step off a curb wrong that knee gave way.
“Keep looking straight ahead,” Vivian instructed. “Focus on one spot.” After another long moment she told him: “You’ve got the beginnings of a sodium ring. Too much salt intake. You’ll have to watch the salt.” She continued examining. “You’re also a bit of a kink sexually.” She sat back and allowed the monocle to dangle.
Nikolai admitted to having a salt habit and a problem right knee. He told her she was uncanny.
“I could have told you much more about you, and perhaps I shall another time. People can’t take too much of themselves in one dose. You know, I’m always leery when irises have dark browns. It’s a sure sign of madness or inner destruction of some sort. However, your iris pigment is genetic brown, isn’t it?”
“You’re questioning my sanity?”
“What color were Grigori Yefimovich Novykh’s irises, I wonder?”
Nikolai was astounded. Not one out of a million non-Russians would know Rasputin’s real name. As for Rasputin’s eyes, Nikolai had no idea what color they had been.
“I’ll wager they were brown,” Vivian said. “Many brown-eyed people, particularly those who aren’t swarthy, aren’t brown eyed at all but are suffering internally from the accumulated sins of their forefathers.”
“You believe that?”
“No. I think it’s just rot.” Then, without a beat: “Are you kinky?”
Nikolai thought it best not to reply, certainly not to deny. He let a sidelong gaze, which he hoped came across as enigmatic, speak for him. (Later on in their relationship Vivian mentioned to him that during his gaze she was not only trying to read his mind but also sorting through a myriad of marvelous possibilities, and some that were a bit scary.)
Nikolai, being Russian, didn’t consider the idea of iridology all that farfetched. It was his nature to put a certain amount of stock in anything mystical, or at least not to close his mind so tight that it couldn’t admit possibility. Neither he nor anyone else knew anything absolute, he reasoned. Hadn’t they once burned people at the stake for believing the earth went around the sun? So what if Vivian claimed she could tell about a person by looking at his eyes? That didn’t make her crazy. If anything, it made her more interesting.
She explained, as though fed up with having to explain it, the fundamental premise of iridology. “Certain areas of the iris correlate with certain parts and organs of a person’s body, as well as to his psychological condition. Discolorations are the clues.” She wasn’t in the mood for more iridology, so before Nikolai could get out a question about it she changed the subject, letting him know how much of a mystical maze he was getting himself into. Divining, magic mirrors, the casting of spells, numerology, phrenology, the throwing of rune stones, and Reiki healing were but a few of the practices in her repertoire. She believed in astral excursions, walk-in souls, specialized angels. She believed in all sorts of life: life after death, life before conception, and something she called life scheduling, which, as Nikolai understood it, was a kind of timetable that everything went by. Their meeting, for example, had been pre-intended, she said.
“Karmic,” he put in.
She was brightly surprised that he knew the term. It was reassuring, it inspired her to open another level. She was on her own, she told him, had no family other than a father somewhere in France whom she didn’t think of as family. She’d never seen her father, not even a photograph, although she had composed a mental picture of him from the few comments her mother had made. She had been a wanted child in the truest sense, wanted without having to endure all the intolerances, personal invasions, and other drawbacks of marriage. Vivian had never thought of that as cynical; rather, the way she saw it her mother had just been way ahead of her time. Her mother had selected, according to certain criteria, a man to have a child by. She’d entered into an arrangement with him. As soon as that had been accomplished, adieu—no tout à l’heure or à bientôt.
“What kind of arrangement?”
“Not a venal one,” Vivian was quick to say. “I can’t be sure, but I don’t want to think it was for mere money. More likely it was done purely for the pleasure of it. Must have been,” she said, grinning, sitting up and presenting herself, “considering the product.”
“Where is your mother now?”
“On the other side,” Vivian replied matter-of-factly, as though she meant nothing more than the other side of town. She went on to tell him that come September it would be five years since her mother had drowned. While swimming in a lake in Scotland. Far out in the lake. Wide, deep lake. It was September. The water cold. One moment Mother’s bright green bathing cap was out there bobbing like a child’s playball, the next it was gone. “Drowning isn’t supposed to be a painful experience. They say it’s one of the better ways to pass over.” Vivian smiled, but it was not her completely genuine smile, and Nikolai knew the recollection had come from a private, hurt place in her, and he felt privileged. “Mother and I have chats,” she said. “We discuss everything from poker to peignoirs. You think I’m daft?”
“No.”
“That’s good, because last night you were our topic.”
“What did she have to say?”
“Not to tell you what she said.” Vivian playfully overworked her eyelashes. “But of course that was only to make sure I would.”
“Well?”
“Mother’s word was that you’re one of the last of the credible romantics and that if I placed any value on my independence I should take the nearest escape route. Now, is that just spiritual gossip, mother worry, or God’s truth?”
“Probably all three.”
They didn’t make love that night. From the restaurant they walked up to Kensington High Street and Kensington Gardens and on across Hyde Park. Slow, lovers-type walking. They didn’t mind it was somewhat chilly. That only pressed them together, allied them all the more
. At Stanhope Gate they stopped as though the spot were marked and had their first kiss. A good long discovering one. They kissed again several times along the way, were both adequately stirred but talked themselves sleepy.
The next night, however, for four of their hours together in her bed they hardly said a word.
“Oh, by the way,” Vivian mumbled while under the influence of thorough contentment. “I sold the mouse today. For forty-five thousand.”
Vivian and Nikolai.
That was the start of them.
Now here they were on the M4 with London ninety-two miles behind them. And Archer too. Archer’s driver had closed the gap so the Rolls was almost touching their bumper. Vivian held the Bentley steady at fifty. She was in no hurry. She raised her hand and acknowledged Archer by wiggling her fingers, which must have pleased him, because the lights of the Rolls clicked on bright three times in rapid succession.
Ninja was now in Vivian’s lap, his place of honor. Dead weight, head tucked down, he was purring loudly in case anyone doubted his comfort. Nikolai appreciated Vivian’s profile in the low light coming from the instrument panel. The upward, greenish cast of it made her look like a lovely witch, he thought. He’d been having a “Russian conversation,” that is, silently talking to himself. He randomly selected another compact disk and inserted it into the player. Then he resumed his gentle fondling of the back of Vivian’s neck and kneading of that area her neck and shoulders shared. Such attention could be his full-time responsibility, as she never got enough.
“You can touch me,” she said, shooing Ninja to the rear seat.
Nikolai understood. To eliminate any suggestion of service rendered on demand he continued on her neck. He hoped she would get impatient, and perhaps she did, because she shook her head, two brisk snaps that caused her straight heavy hair to swing and whip the back of his hand. Obediently, his hand went to her left ear, fingered lightly the little crescent-shaped alcove where it was attached. The skin on the back of her ear was sensitive when correctly touched, so he gave ample attention to it, and to the lobe. The lobe was warm, engorged, and became warmer when he rolled it between his thumb and first finger and surprised it with one sharp pinch. He gave, altogether, five of their miles to her ear, tracing the distinctive convolutions of it, threatening at any moment to invade its tiny cave wherein her thoughts would lie, treasures.
The next five miles he gave to her throat, stroking it ever so slowly, lightly, from her chin down to the indent between her collarbones, then up to her chin again. When she thought he would stop, he continued. His fingers felt her swallow, and as they followed a swallow down, Nikolai’s imagination took it as a promise, and he, the stirrer, was himself stirred.
Her arm. With the sleeve of her dress pushed up to her elbow, only her forearm was exposed. She helped. She unbuttoned the front of her dress four down, which allowed her to pull her arm out of the sleeve so her shoulder and entire arm was bare and one breast accessible. She continued to drive with both hands on the steering wheel while he loved her arm. Ran the length of it from shoulder to wrist with his touch. He knew her, had learned her, knew the exceptional sensitivity of the flesh over her pulse and inner forearm. Those places were pleased most by delicate touchings. The fold of her arm also called for that, as did the underside of her upper arm. He did not slight an inch.
His touch. The quality of it astounded her, had from the first, still did. His hands seemed to know instinctively the requirements of her various parts, even when her parts changed their desires. There was never any fumbling or hesitancy. When, for instance, she wanted feathery, he, without being asked, provided feathery. More pressure wanted, more pressure given. It seemed that she merely had to think the rhythm of a stroke slower to have him do slower.
Where, Vivian wondered, was the usual guesswork of it—in fact, both the guessing and the work? Shouldn’t she suspect his experience? How many were the many girls and women who must have preceded her? Had they taught him? It was a bit much to accept that it was just his nature or the way he affected her.
One possible explanation that came to Vivian was that Nikolai had been she in a past life. That would account for his knowing her body and sexual psyche as though it were his own, his ability to anticipate her wants. It would also explain why often when they were making love she felt as though it were she who was doing the penetrating, their roles reversed by sensation. Whatever, be it chemistry, the spiritual residue of past lives, or what, her Nickie was a more accomplished, veritable all-round lover than she’d ever imagined would come her way. She was surely indebted to the angels responsible for that.
Nikolai gave seven miles of attention to her arm and at least four to her hand, its ticklish palm skin and crotches. Seven more to her breast, which his fingertips ran circles around, causing the areola to swell, the nipple to come out and beg.
By then the multilaned monotony of the M4 had brought them to its exit outside Bristol. Vivian executed the minor complications of the roundabout and put the Bentley on the M5 headed south.
Archer’s Rolls had fallen back some at the roundabout but immediately made up. Nikolai thought how glad he was that Vivian had declined Archer’s offer to have a phone installed in the Bentley. What if she hadn’t? Would she be in transmission with Archer every mile of the way, chatting on about anything, indulging the distraction? She wouldn’t, Nikolai told himself.
The compact disk that was now playing was the group Berlin’s rendition of “Take My Breath Away.” Not new but still one of Vivian’s favorites. There had been other playings of it when it had been just as apropos as now with Nikolai’s touch on the underside of Vivian’s knee. His touch defined her tendons and the tension of them caused by her foot’s pressure on the accelerator pedal. His touch became a fluttering which became light scratching along the top of her thigh, traveling up her thigh so slowly its progress was nearly imperceptible. He gave fifteen of their miles to her thigh, and again she helped. Her other foot took over the accelerator pedal, so the first foot was free to be placed up on the carpeted hump that housed the driveshaft. That leg was arched now and relaxed to the side, and she was that much spread.
The tips of his fingers ran down her inner thigh like some tiny, soft-pawed creature reveling, advancing just a fraction short of the elasticized hem of her cotton panties, pausing as though indecisive about direction, then retreating up and over her knee and on down to the curve of her calf. Again and again. Every so often he removed his touch. Every so often he firmly stroked the finer flesh of her inner thigh. And every so often he burrowed a finger in under the elasticized hem to hide it, perfectly still, in her dark floss.
Take my breath away.
Take my breath away.
From behind Ninja gave them each an indifferent stare, blinked as though to dematerialize them, and turned away.
Vivian lowered the raised leg on the pretense of stretching it but really to express her prerogative. She soon arched it up again and Nikolai resumed with little finger nips, which were lovingly chastizing and what she had expected. Helping again, her hand captured his and led it to the mound of her, forced his hand to cup. Her hand pressed upon the back of his, her fingers matched and pressed his instructively. The cotton fabric at her crotch was moist, slicked through. She left his hand on its own to perform its touching tricks, its nibblings, rotations, strokings, and perfectly placed tattooings. She had to force her eyes to remain open. When she glanced at the speedometer she was surprised to see the indicator at eighty.
Exit 27 was the Tiverton turnoff.
Thirteen miles to go.
The arousal point of irreality had been reached, and it was not because the road under them now was much less of a road that Vivian now felt the wheels of the Bentley were gliding along rather than turning and the nighttime Devon countryside seemed to be being pulled past in the opposite direction. Urgency was in her now. And in Nikolai. They sped through the town of Tiverton and seven miles farther on turned with a skid onto a lesser ro
ad for the village of Pennymoor. There, at a fork, Archer’s Rolls double-honked a good night and went its lonely way. A few minutes later Vivian turned in at her drive, where a familiar forsythia hedge welcomed them with the brush of its branch tips.
A light was on in the attached caretaker’s quarters. Tigley, the caretaker, had heard the crunch of the gravel on the drive and was already on his way out. “Evening, miss. Will there be any baggage?”
“No, Tigley, thank you, no baggage.”
“Anything you’ll be wanting?” Tigley asked.
Vivian’s no came out feeling like a lie. “Good night, Tigley,” she dismissed him politely and entered the house with Nikolai following. No need to turn on a light. They both knew the house well enough. In the entrance hall she told Nikolai, “You go on up.” She went through to the kitchen. Her mouth was extremely dry from so many caught and held breaths. The little light of the stove showed her a bowl of oranges on the kitchen table. She grabbed one up and bit a chunk from the stem end of it. She disposed of that and held the orange to her mouth, squeezed it and sucked juice from it on her way up to the second-floor landing and on to her bedroom. Nikolai had known better than to turn on a light there. She held the orange clamped between her teeth while she undressed, removed her clothes as though they were despicable impairments, toed her shoes off and sent them flying anywhere, dropped her dress into a rumple that circled her bare feet, peeled off and kicked away her panties.
Nikolai, meanwhile, had only removed his sweater. His delay served her, gave her time to convey to him what her preference was this night. She remained standing, waiting beside the bed, and he believed he knew.
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