A Company of Three

by Varley O'Connor

  She stepped back, took my hands and said, “Good, excellent haircut.”

  “You look great,” I said, “where’d you get the robe?” She pivoted to show me the dragon embroidered on her back, “It’s not mine,” she said, “it belongs to the apartment.” That’s when I saw it: the fauxmarble columns, the Venetian mirror, the pale silk-papered walls; I registered that we were standing in an entryway twice the size of my living room, and that the floor was, yes, real marble and the staircase, freestanding and leading up to another floor, passed a celestial blue ceiling adrift with fleecy clouds.

  “What’d you do,” I asked, “dump Andre for one of the Rockefellers?”

  “Not quite.” She took my hand and led me to a gilt claw-footed table, where she’d put the champagne and two glasses.

  “Look at that,” she said, pouring the champagne. She nodded at a small fountain with glycerine drops simulating water, a gilded Pegasus rearing up in the center. I caught sight of a grouping of sheep-sized bronze deer, pretend-grazing under the stairs.

  “They stopped short of paintings on velvet,” she told me. “Here, let’s toast and I’ll give you a tour.” We clicked glasses: “To our return.”

  “Our return,” I said.

  It was decorated everywhere to the teeth. But amid the lushly cushioned sofas, endless antiques, Tiffany clocks, and the sheer number of rooms were reminders that whatever pains the owners had taken to impress, they were closer in spirit to Liberace.

  “I have be-e-en vedy, vedy comfortable here,” Irene said, coming back downstairs after viewing the bedrooms. We returned to the claw-footed table and polished off what was left of the champagne.

  “What’s in there?” I asked, indicating a set of double doors.

  She whispered, “That’s the outrageous thing I told you I wanted to show you on the phone.”

  “The whole place is outrageous.”

  “Here, wait,” and she went and brought back a fresh bottle of champagne, and I popped the cork and we watched it bounce the length of the white marble floor and carom off one of the columns, spray bursting around us in a fan.

  We went through the opening, which was dark, to the doors. “Okay,” she whispered, “are you ready?”

  “How come you’re whispering?”

  “I keep feeling like we broke in.”

  “Yeah, me too,” I said, low.

  “Here, cheers,” she whispered. We clicked glasses and drank, and she opened the doors, laughing convulsively.

  My eyes adjusted to the dim low-ceilinged space. It was a swimming pool, with a larger-than-life Romanesque torso at its far end, smoky mirrors at the sides, and a glowing cerulean-blue-painted ceiling. I walked closer and looked up to see that the ceiling was lit, from behind. It was painted with golden planets and stars and the symbols of the zodiac.

  “Come here,” Irene said, setting down the champagne and our glasses by the Jacuzzi—she pulled me over to a couple of doors reading GUYS and GALS beside cowboy-boot decals.

  “Don’t tell me,” I said. “Your father struck oil.”

  “Not my father, but somebody’s did.” She raised her eyebrows mysteriously, opened the “Guys” door and said, “Find a suit and we’ll get in the Jacuzzi.”

  The suits ranged from boxy trunks to skimpy Speedos. I found one midway between the two styles that fit and put it on and went back out to her. She was in the water, filling our glasses. She had on a black string bikini.

  “Glad you came over?”

  “Uh-huh.” We sat opposite each other.

  “So I’m waiting,” I said.

  She sipped her champagne. “His name’s Floyd. Don’t look like that, Floyd’s a perfectly common name.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “You were thinking it.”

  “No, I wasn’t.” Her legs brushed mine under the water.

  “He’s very sweet. This isn’t his, it’s his father’s.”

  “Oh, just a boy?”

  “Thirty-eight.”

  “Well, for you—”

  “Ha-ha.” She grinned. “Irma’s his mother. His father’s named Dude.” She giggled. (“Dude?” I could hear Patrick saying. “As in ranch?”)

  “You met him in North Carolina?”

  “But really they’re Texans. Old friends of Cal’s, our star. Cal got Floyd a job at the theater, managing the house, because Floyd—well, he’s sweet, as I said, but confused. He’s never quite decided what he wants to do with his life.”

  “So he’s trying show business,” I said.

  “Yes. Dude has bought him a play. Oh, it’s fabulous, Robert, and they’re doing it in New York and I can audition, there’s a part that’s just perfect for me.” Oh Irene, I thought, but didn’t say anything.

  She rested her head on the tile behind her, then looked back at me and said, “I’m hiding.” What was it about her tonight? All these levels, quick switches, layers of emotion.

  “Hiding from what?” I asked.

  “Andre. That’s why I’m here. When the show closed, I told Floyd I was afraid to come back and he said I could stay here. They’re almost never here. They won’t be here for weeks, when they shop around the play.”

  “Are you sleeping with him?”

  “Floyd?” She opened her eyes wide, as if to say, Are you mad?

  “How are you feeling?” she asked, changing the tone.

  “Just fine,” I said quietly.

  “If Andre calls me in North Carolina then I won’t be there,” her eyes fevered, wet lips slightly parted. It was still about Andre. “He won’t know where I am,” she said, “and I like that. Andre doesn’t respect me.” There were tiny beads of sweat on her upper lip and forehead. I had only half heard what she said; I felt the hot jets of water, soothing, stimulating.

  She drained her glass. “Let’s throw our glasses at the wall. They have boxes and boxes of glasses.”

  She pitched her glass at the wall by the table where the telephone was plugged in. It shattered and I got up—God, I didn’t really feel how I felt until I got up, light-headed, floating. I turned and tossed the glass backhanded over my shoulder.

  She laughed and said, “Race,” and dove into the pool. I jumped and my skin contracted and opened to coolness, and my entire being flowed with the water around me as I swam to the far end behind her. She did a flip turn and I nearly caught her, my hand grazing her slick smooth calf, but she slipped away; I swam faster, using my strength, and beat her by half a lap.

  “How the hell did you win?” she said, coming up from the water, panting, her hands on the ledge.

  “I’m faster than you are. Why are you such a bad loser?”

  “Can you grab the champagne? Have a victory drink.”

  With our backs to the ledge we took turns drinking from the bottle, looking off at the torso at the far end of the pool.

  “If we got very drunk and stayed in the water,” she said, “we could drown.” She brought her hand down from her chest and ran it, with the fingers spread, through the water.

  “But we won’t,” I said. Our voices were very clear, reverberant in the moist hollow chamber. The bottle was empty. I turned to put it up on the ledge; I faced her, my arms enclosing her. I kissed the side of her face and her neck.

  “What are you doing?” she said.

  I looked at her, “Do you mind?” Her eyes were a very dark blue in this light; with my finger I traced the line of her lips, kissed her softly, the side of her brow, and touched her hair, which was soft and wet, slick against her head.

  She leaned back, looking up at the ceiling. “There’s you. Aquarius. There’s me. Leo the lion.” She was being coy. She pulled away and I turned her around so that our positions were reversed, my back against the ledge, and pulled her in close.

  “Robert, no—”

  “Yes,” I said. It didn’t matter what she said, I didn’t care about Andre or Floyd or whether she had meant it to happen, or whether I had just finally chosen to push it. She press
ed her pelvis against me, but then she drew back a little, and I let her.

  “I—” she stopped.

  “You want me to,” I said.

  “But I don’t.”

  “Yes, you do.” I untied her top, and it fell in the water. “Irene,” I said. She didn’t move. She just looked at me, and I ran my hand along her breast, pulled her into me again with my other hand on her waist, pulling her up higher, against me. We kissed, softly, but then she put her hands behind my neck and really kissed me—I felt her tongue in my mouth and was shocked at the sensation, together with the thought that this was Irene I was kissing. I kissed her back. Again she pulled away, just her head and her shoulders, and I saw and couldn’t believe how excited she was, her breath shallow, mouth open, her eyes half closed, and I thought: Oh God, don’t let me be too drunk to do it. Then we were thrashing around in the water, slamming against the ledge and the wall, the water sloshing around us, and I got off the bottom of her suit, and my own, and then we were trying to get out of the water but we were both crazy with it, with lust, and didn’t have any control, so we didn’t make it out of the pool but did it on the steps. And I only really know this because of the scrapes I saw on her back and my knees the next day. I didn’t remember it, only flashes really—the smell of the chlorine, my face in her hair, getting out of the pool and somehow back out to the entryway and up the stairs, where again we were overtaken and did it at the top of the stairs on a rug. I stood then and told myself to calm down, thinking as we walked down the hall to the bedroom of the things I would do with her when I got her in bed—what those things were I don’t know. Whether we did them or not or did anything in the bed I don’t know.

  Maybe it was the Jacuzzi. But I woke up in a vast bed, in a room that combined the decor of a Victorian parlor with an opium den: ominous pieces of furniture, blood reds and golds, ubiquitous fabric, and fringe-dripping lamps. Somebody was driving a spike through my brain. Irene was lying beside me, I realized, and remembered enough to know where I was and why. We were under a canopy, thick red brocade. Irene was sleeping; she was a good sleeper, capable of sleeping through cataclysms. She didn’t respond to my calling her name and so I got up.

  I had this extreme urge to get out of the room. I found aspirin in a bathroom down the hall, and then urinated for ages. Then I remembered I was supposed to go to work, found a clock and saw that it was after eleven. How could I do that? I’d never done that. I should’ve been in at 9:30. Through Alix, my friend from Crispins, I had a more lucrative waitering job at a swank Midtown place that I couldn’t afford to lose. I phoned the restaurant from a room with a moose head on the wall. The apartment was like a carnival fun house in which I was trapped. Fortunately Alix was working and told me she’d say I was sick. I went downstairs to find my clothes, traipsing stark naked down that immense staircase onto that gleaming floor, a huge frozen pond. Our suits lay in the pool like abandoned casings. The shattered glass glinted dangerously on the tile. I went to the dressing room and took a shower, and then sat down on a bench to rest, feeling grim.

  I’d really pushed it this time, and for what? I had never in my life convinced a woman to want me, love me. When you did that, what did you have? Nothing.

  I felt like a walking cliché and a sucker. When she had invited me over I had resolved I’d get her in bed. Because I wanted to get laid. Because I hadn’t seen her in a while, which seemed to change things that hadn’t changed. Because in Boston I had obsessed on that day I had first kissed her when she had said, “We can sleep together if you want,” and back in New York I had thought, okay, I want to, give me a turn, huh?

  What was wrong with me? This wasn’t just any girl, this was Irene, Irene, and as I said her name to myself, all she was to me bloomed in my mind. She was brushed with a sort of magic. She was the hub of the wheel of our threesome. She had come to us at a time when I had started to feel the first burn, the first chill, of the knowledge that life might not work out as planned. But then she was there, and it seemed that our road was the right one, that we three were destined for great, fulfilled lives that others could only imagine. We would vault over the rest, confreres in a special society that no one else could understand. Exactly how she had reignited my hopes, I didn’t know. She was just so incredibly warm, vibrant, gifted, and real—and there at the right time. She was the real thing, I thought. It had all felt so certain. I had felt that nothing could stop us, unless we made terrible, terrible mistakes.

  I have to get out, I thought again. I took the keys I’d seen on the claw-footed table, found they worked in the front door, and left. I walked to Third Avenue and bought a bunch of yellow carnations, bagels, cream cheese, and a bag of coffee. Then went into a coffee shop and got a cup to go, but instead of going back to the apartment I sat down, and drank it while looking out at the busy gray street. Who are you? I thought, and why are you in my life? I could list her flaws to myself all day long and she wasn’t diminished. Nothing she did altered anything finally. She was just always there, a force, a power, like a beautiful dream that lingers, coloring everything.

  SHE WAS STILL ASLEEP. I put the flowers on the table beside her and went down to the kitchen and started brewing the coffee. There would be no more sex with Irene. I wouldn’t watch while she relapsed with Andre, or some other old guy with money or fame, or the son of one.

  I stomped up the stairs, hoping I’d awaken her. How dare she grab onto me, use me, as she did Floyd, a middle-aged cowboy living off his parents, as a replacement for Andre, because Andre didn’t respect her—why should he? Oh, we were a fellowship; me, Andre, and Floyd. I felt closer to them in my anger than I’d ever felt to Irene. But then I saw her still sleeping, looking so innocent and young—it was remarkable to me that she was still asleep, so trusting, while I had been thinking horrible thoughts about her.

  She opened her eyes, and I would rather have walked through fire than ever, ever hurt her again. I kissed her on the mouth, but it was a chaste brotherly kiss.

  “You smell like outside,” she said.

  I pushed her hair from her face. She saw the flowers and sat up and the covers dropped down and I picked them up and draped them chastely around her. She gave me an odd look, but didn’t say anything; smelled the flowers.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “I got breakfast too.” I took her hand and held it lightly. “You know what? When I met you, you smelled like cinnamon.”

  “Cinnamon?”

  “Yeah.” I stared at her hand.

  “Bad perfume,” she said. “What do I smell like now?”

  “Chlorine.”

  She laughed.

  “Irene, let’s not do that again.”

  “Okay.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “I agree with you.”

  “You do?”

  “But don’t go anywhere.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “I’m lonely. Stay with me today.” She put her forehead down on my shoulder, resting it there. “Do you still love me?”

  “Of course. Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “I love you too.”

  “Okay, then.”

  She touched my face with the tips of her fingers. “I’m gonna take a shower.”

  She got up and walked across the room naked and that’s when I saw the scrapes on her back, from her tailbone up past the center of her back.

  “Irene—”

  She turned around, “What? Oh c’mon, you know what I look like.”

  “No, your back.” We went to the bathroom together and she examined it in the mirror.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Does it hurt?”

  “Not really.” She blushed and reached for a towel, and I left the room nearly faint with desire, confusion, and a salty taste at the back of my throat. Never before had anyone so affected me. She was treacherous, like an addiction.

  WE HAD THE COFFEE and bagels downstairs. I teased her about the twang that had come back in her speech since
North Carolina.

  “You know me,” she said. “In a week I’ll be talking like I was born to third-generation New Yorkers.”

  We went for a walk down Fifth Avenue and over to Rockefeller Center, where they had put up the Christmas tree and a few skaters twirled to the piped-in music. Then we went back north again toward Central Park, crossed by the Plaza and the line of carriages parked near the fountain.

  “Poor horse,” she said to a mangy creature, its head hanging low, its tail switching lightly at the pavement.

  In the park we went to the lake, then walked along the paths by the shore. Irene talked about Andre, about how he had locked her in a small room one night and did not let her out until morning, had sometimes given her money for a hotel. He hadn’t wanted her to move out, however, that wasn’t the point.

  “There’s something missing in Andre,” she said. “I don’t know why, whether he’s lived too long for nothing but work, had a miserable childhood, he never told me. He could be terribly kind … I could tell he wanted to love me, but he had to keep making me into something, like he didn’t know how to stop being a teacher. He said with me it was different. That it was serious and he wanted to marry me.”

  “Did you want to marry him?” I asked.

  “No.”

  I could see she was flattered by the idea, may have flirted with it. What a catch for a girl from Kansas. Somebody so patently out of her league. The trouble was she had not reckoned on his seeing through her, which he obviously did. Why else would a young, beautiful woman go for Andre if not for his pull? She had outright admitted the move was careerist. Sometimes I couldn’t help feeling when he’d treated her badly that she’d gotten exactly what she deserved. I still didn’t believe that she was finished with him, though, and that made me feel slightly sick.

  “Are we lost?” she asked.

  We had emerged from a twisting pathway and the lake was nowhere in sight; a stream trickled by in a narrow ravine, and the trees here were dense, even stripped of their leaves, the sky crisscrossed by branches. “Oh God, we’re lost,” she said hopelessly.