Daniel Blank and Celia Montfort were specifically invited to this feast and asked to return to the Mortons’ apartment later for food and drink of a more substantial nature. They accepted.
The air was overheated—and scented. Two antique Byzantine censers hung suspended in corners; from their pierced shells drifted fumes of musky incense called “Orgasm,” one of Erotica’s best sellers. Customers checked their coats and hats with a dark, exquisite, sullen Japanese girl clad in diaphanous Arabian Nights pajamas beneath which she wore no brassiere—only sheer panties imprinted with small reproductions of Mickey Mouse. Incredibly, her pubic hair was blond.
Celia and Daniel stood to one side, observing the hectic scene, sipping small cups of spiced, steaming glug. The store was crowded with loud-voiced, flush-faced customers, most of them young, all wearing the kinky, trendy fashions of the day. They weren’t clothed; they were costumed. Their laughter was shrill, their movements jerky as they pushed through the store, examining phallic candles, volumes of Aubrey Beardsley prints, leather brassieres, jockstraps fashioned in the shape of a clutching hand.
“They’re so excited,” Daniel Blank said. “The whole world’s excited.”
Celia looked up at him and smiled faintly. Her long black hair, parted in the middle, framed her witch’s face. As usual, she was wearing no makeup, though her eyes seemed shadowed with a bone-deep weariness.
“What are you thinking?” she asked him, and he realized once again how ideas, abstract ideas, aroused her.
“About the world,” he said, looking around the frantic room. “The ruttish world. About people today. How stimulated they all are.”
“Sexually stimulated?”
“That, of course. But in other ways. Politically. Spiritually, I guess. Violence. The new. The terrible hunger for the new, the different, the ‘in thing.’ And what’s in is out in weeks, days. In sex, art, politics, everything. It all seems to be going faster and faster. It wasn’t always like this, was it?”
“No,” she said, “it wasn’t.”
“The in thing,” he repeated. “Why do they call it ‘in’? Penetration?”
Now she looked at him curiously. “Are you drunk?” she asked.
He was surprised. “On two paper cups of Swedish glug?
No,” he laughed, “I am not drunk.”
He touched her cheek with warm fingers. She grabbed his hand, turned her head to kiss his fingertips, then slid his thumb into her wet mouth, tongued it, drew it softly out. He looked swiftly about the room; no one was staring.
“I wish you were my sister,” he said in a low voice.
She was silent a moment, then asked, “Why did you say that?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t think about it. I just said it.”
“Are you tired of sex?” she asked shrewdly.
“What? Oh no. No. Not exactly. It’s just…” He waved at the crowded room. “It’s just that they’re not going to find it this way.”
“Find what?”
“Oh…you know. The answer.”
The evening had that chopped, chaotic tempo that now infected all his hours: life speeding in disconnected scenes, a sharply cut film, images and distortions in an accelerating frenzy: faces, places, bodies, speech and ideas swimming up to the lens, enlarging, then dwindling away, fading. It was difficult to concentrate on any one experience; it was best simply to open himself to sensation, to let it all engulf him.
“Something’s happening to me,” he told her. “I see these people here, and on the street, and at work, and I can’t believe I belong with them. The same race, I mean. They seem to me dogs, or animals in a zoo. Or perhaps I am. But I can’t relate. But if they are human, I am not. And if I am, they are not. I just don’t recognize them. I’m apart from them.”
“You are apart from them,” she said softly. “You’ve done something so meaningful that it sets you apart.”
“Oh yes,” he said, laughing happily. “I have, haven’t I? If they only knew…”
“How does it feel?” she asked him. “I mean…knowing? Satisfaction? Pleasure?”
“That, of course,” he nodded, feeling an itch of joy at talking of these things in a crowded, noisy room (he was naked but no one could see). “But mostly a feeling of—of gratification that I’ve been able to accomplish so much.”
“Oh yes, Dan,” she breathed, putting a hand on his arm.
“Am I mad?” he asked. “I’ve been wondering.”
“Is it important?”
“No. Not really.”
“Look at these people,” she gestured. “Are they sane?”
“No,” he said. “Well…maybe. But whether they’re sane or mad, I’m different from them.”
“Of course you are.”
“And different from you,” he added, smiling.
She shivered, a bit, and moved closer to him.
“Do we have to go to the Mortons?” she murmured.
“We don’t have to. I think we should.”
“We could go to your place. Or my place. Our place.”
“Let’s go to the Mortons,” he said, smiling again and feeling it on his face.
They waited until Flo and Sam were ready to leave. Then they all shared a big cab back to the Mortons’ apartment. Flo and Sam gabbled away in loud voices. Daniel Blank sat on the monkey seat, smiled and smiled.
Blanche had prepared a roast duckling garnished with peach halves. And there were small roasted potatoes and a tossed salad of romaine and Italian water cress. She brought the duckling in on a carving board to show it around for their approval before returning it to the kitchen to quarter it.
It looked delicious, they agreed, with its black, crusty skin and gleaming peach juice. And yet, when Daniel Blank’s full plate was put before him, he sat a moment and stared; the food offended him.
He could not say why, but it happened frequently of late. He would go into a familiar restaurant, alone or with Celia, order a dish that he had had before, that he knew he liked, and then, when the food was put before him, he had no appetite and could scarcely toy with it.
It was just so—so physical. That steaming mixture to be cut into manageable forkfuls and shoved through the small hole that was his mouth, to emerge, changed and compounded, a day later via another small hole. Perhaps it was the vulgarity of the process that offended him. Or its animality. Whatever, the sight of food, however well prepared, now made him queasy. It was all he could do, for politeness’ sake, to eat a bit of his duckling quarter, two small potatoes, dabble in the salad. He wasn’t comfortable until, finally, they were seated on sofas and in soft chairs, having black coffee and vodka stingers.
“Hey, Dan,” Samuel Morton said abruptly, “you got any money to invest?”
“Sure,” Blank said amiably. “Not a lot, but some. In what?”
“First of all, this health club you belong to—what does it cost you?”
“Five hundred a year. That doesn’t include massage or food, if you want it. They have sandwiches and salads. Nothing fancy.”
“Liquor?”
“You can keep a bottle in your locker if you like. They sell set-ups.”
“A swimming pool?”
“A small one. And a small sundeck. Gymnasium, of course. A sauna. What’s this all about?”
“Can you swim naked in the pool?”
“Naked? I don’t know. I suppose you could if you wanted to. It’s for men only. I’ve never seen anyone do it. Why do you ask?”
“Sam and I had this marvy idea,” Florence Morton said. “A natural,” Sam said. “Can’t miss.”
“There’s this health club on East Fifty-seventh Street,” Flo said. “It started as a reducing salon, but it’s not making it. It’s up for grabs now.”
“Good asking price.” Sam nodded. “And they’ll shave.”
“It’s got a big pool,” Flo nodded. “A gym with all the machines, two saunas, locker room, showers. The works.”
“And a completely equipped kitc
hen,” Sam added. “A nice indoor-outdoor lounge with tables and chairs.”
“The decor is hideous,” Flo added. “Hideous. But all the basic stuff is there.”
“You’re thinking of opening a health club?” Celia Montfort asked.
“But different,” Flo laughed.
“Totally different,” Sam laughed.
“For men and women,” Flo grinned.
“Using the same locker room and showers,” Sam grinned. “With nude sunbathing on the roof,” Sam noted.
Blank looked from one to the other. “You’re kidding?” They shook their heads.
“You’d take only married couples and families for members?”
“Oh no,” Flo said. “Swinging singles only.”
“That’s just the point,” Sam said. “That’s where the money comes from. Lonely singles. And it won’t be cheap. We figure five hundred members at a thousand a year each. We’ll try to keep the membership about sixty-forty.”
“Sixty percent men and forty percent women,” Flo explained.
Blank stared at them, shook his head. “You’ll go to jail,” he told them. “And so will your members.”
“Not necessarily,” Flo said. “We’ve had our lawyers looking into it.”
“There are some encouraging precedents,” Sam said. “There are beaches out in California set aside for swimming in the nude. All four sexes. The courts have upheld the legality. The law is very hazy in New York. No one’s ever challenged the right to have mixed nude bathing in a private club. We think we can get away with it.”
“It all hinges on whether or not you’re ‘maintaining a public nuisance,”’ Flo explained.
“If it’s private and well-run and no nudity in public, we think we can do it,” Sam explained.
“No nudity in public?” Daniel Blank asked. “You mean fornication in the sauna or in a mop closet or underwater groping is okay?”
“It’s all private,” Flo shrugged.
“Who’s hurting whom?” Sam shrugged. “Consenting adults.” Daniel looked at Celia Montfort. She sat still, her face expressionless. She seemed waiting for his reaction.
“We’re forming a corporation,” Flo said.
“We figure we’ll need a hundred thousand tops,” Sam said, “for lease, mortgage, conversion, insurance, etcetera.”
“We’re selling shares,” Flo said.
“Interested?” Sam asked.
Daniel Blank patted his Via Veneto wig gently.
“Oh,” he said. “No,” he said. “I don’t think so. Not my cup of tea. But I think, if you can get around the legal angle, it’s a good idea.”
“You think it’ll catch on?” Sam asked.
“Profitable?” Flo asked.
“No doubt about it,” Blank assured them. “If the law doesn’t close you down, you’ll make a mint. Just walk down Eighth Avenue, which I do almost every day. Places where you can get a woman to give you a rub-down, or you can paint her body, or watch films, or get tickled with feathers. And ordinary prostitution too, of course. Mixed nude bathing in a private pool? Why not? Yes, I think it’s a profitable idea.”
“Then why don’t you want to invest?” Celia asked him.
“What? Oh…I don’t know. I told you—not my style. I’m tired of it all. Maybe just bored. Anyway, it puts me off. I don’t like it.”
They stared at him, the three of them, and waited. But when he said nothing more, Celia spurred him on.
“What don’t you like?” she asked quietly. “The idea of men and women swimming naked together? You think it’s immoral?”
“Oh God no!” he laughed loudly. “I’m no deacon. It’s just that…”
“It’s just what?”
“Well,” he said, showing his teeth, “sex is so—so inconsequential, isn’t it? I mean, compared to death and—well, virginity. I mean, they’re so absolute, aren’t they? And sex never is. Always something more. But with death and virginity you’re dealing with absolutes. Celia, that word you used? Finitudes. Was that it? Or finalities. Something like that. It’s so nice to—it’s so warm to—I know life is trouble, but still…What you’re planning is wrong. Not in the moral sense. Oh no. But you’re skirting the issue. You know? You’re wandering around and around, and you don’t see the goal, don’t even glimpse it. Oh yes. Profitable? It will surely be profitable. For a year or two. Different. New. The in-thing. But then it will fall away. Just die. Because you’re not giving them the answer, don’t you see? Fucking underwater or in a sauna. And then. No, no! It’s all so—so superficial. I told you. Those people tonight. Well, there you are. What have they learned or won? Maybe masturbation is the answer. Have you ever considered that? I know it’s ridiculous. I apologize for mentioning it. But still…Because, you see, in your permissive world they say porn, perv and S-M. That’s how much it means, that you can abbreviate it. So there you are. And it offends me. The vulgarity. Because it might have been a way, a path, but is no longer. Sex? Oh no. Shall we have another martini or shall we fuck? That important. I knew a girl once…Well. So you’ve got to go beyond. I tell you, it’s just not enough. So, putting aside sex, you decide what comes next. What number bus to the absolute. And so you—”
Celia Montfort interrupted swiftly.
“What Daniel is trying to say,” she told the astounded Mortons, “is that in a totally permissive society, virginity becomes the ultimate perversion. Isn’t that what you wanted to say, dear?”
He nodded dumbly. Finally, they got out of there. She was trembling but he was not.
6
HE PROPPED HIMSELF on his left elbow, let his right palm slide lightly down that silky back.
“Are you awake?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about this woman, Celia Montfort.”
Soft laughter.
“What do you want to know about ‘this woman, Celia Montfort’?”
“Who is she? What is she?”
“I thought you knew all about her.”
“I know she is beautiful and passionate. But so mysterious and withdrawn. She’s so locked up within herself.”
“Yes, she is, luv. Very deep, is our Celia.”
“When she goes away, unexpectedly, where does she go?”
“Oh…places.”
“To other men?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes to other women.”
“Oh.”
“Are you shocked, darling?”
“Not really. I guess I suspected it. But she comes back so weary. Sometimes she’s been hurt. Does she want to be? I mean, does she deliberately seek it?”
“I thought you knew. You saw those bandages on her wrists. I saw you staring at them. She tried to slash her veins.”
“My God.”
“She tried it before and will probably try it again. Pills or driving too fast or a razor.”
“Oh sweetheart, why does she do it?”
“Why? She really doesn’t know. Except life has no value for her. No real value. She said that once.”
He kissed those soft lips and with his fingertips touched the closed eyes gently. The limpid body moved to him, pressed sweetly; he smelled again that precious flesh, skin as thin, as smooth as watered silk.
“I thought I made her happy.”
“Oh you did, Dan. As much as any man can. But it’s not enough for her. She’s seen everything, done everything, and still nothing has meaning for her. She’s run through a dozen religions and faiths, tried alcohol and all kinds of drugs, done things with men and women and children you wouldn’t believe. She’s burned out now. Isn’t it obvious? Celia Montfort. Poor twit.”
“I love her.”
“Do you? I think it’s too late for her, Dan. She’s—she’s beyond love. All she wants now is release.”
“Release from what?”
“From living, I suppose. Since she’s trying so hard to kill herself. Perhaps her problem is that she’s too intelligent. She’s painted and written poetry. She was very good but couldn’t e
ndure the thought of being just ‘very good.’ If she didn’t have the talent of a genius, she couldn’t settle for second-best. Always, she wants the best, the most, the final. I think her problem is that she wants to be sure. Of something, anything. She wants final answers. I think that’s why she was attracted to you, darling. She felt you were searching for the same thing.”
“You’re so old for your age.”
“Am I? I’m ancient. I was born ancient.”
They laughed gently, together, and moved together, holding each other. Then kissing, kissing, with love but without passion, wet lips clinging. Blank stroked webbed hair and with a fingertip traced convolution of delicate ear, slender throat, thrust of rib beneath satin skin.
Finally they drew apart, lay on their backs, side by side, inside hands clasped loosely.
“What about Valenter?”
“What about him?”
“What is his role in your home?”
“His role? He’s a servant, a houseman.”
“He seems so—so sinister.”
Mocking: “Do you think he’s sleeping with brother or sister? Or both?”
“I don’t know. It’s a strange house.”
“It may be a strange house, but I assure you Valenter is only a servant. It’s your imagination, Dan.”
“I suppose so. That room upstairs. Are there peepholes where other people can watch? Or is the place wired to pick up conversation?”
“Now you’re being ridiculous.”
“I suppose so. Perhaps I was believing what I wanted to believe. But why that room?”
“Why did I take you there? Because it’s at the top of the house. No one ever goes there. It’s private, and I knew we wouldn’t be interrupted. It’s shabby, I know, but it was fun, wasn’t it? Didn’t you think it was fun? Why are you laughing?”
“I don’t know. Because I read so much into it that doesn’t exist. Perhaps.”
“Like what?”
“Well, this woman—”
“I know, ‘this Celia Montfort.’”
“Yes. Well, I thought this Celia Montfort might be manipulating me, using me.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know. But I feel she wants something from me. She’s waiting for something. From me. Is she?”
The 1st Deadly Sin Page 38
