Mourning Glory

by Warren Adler

  "Would you like to see me in another?"

  "Yes, please."

  She moved toward him, but only to pick up her glass and drain it. Proffering her empty glass, he poured champagne to the brim and she carried it with her to the closet. Heated and flushed by the champagne, she felt a growing sexual excitement. She removed the silk dress, re-hung it on the rack and walked along the huge closet in suspenders and high heels, bare-breasted. She looked for something ... she groped for the words ... dashing, sexy and dangerous.

  She found a slinky, long black gown with a low bodice and a high cut to the thigh. Givenchy, she noted, putting it on. Moving again to the dressing room, she studied herself in the large three-way mirror.

  She was astonished at her transformation, marveling at how the gown molded to her body. It's low cut and bra infrastructure pushed up her breasts and made them seem larger. She felt wonderful, exciting. She removed her previous makeup and redid herself in more severe tones, without lipstick but with more eye shadow, parting her hair in the middle, hoping the outfit made her look like a woman of mystery, a seductress, which was exactly what she wanted to be. She giggled at her image in the mirror. She was drunk, deliciously drunk, devil-may-care drunk.

  When she came out she saw him sitting in the chair, legs crossed. He had replaced the empty bottle of Dom Perignon with another and was starting to pour again. But when she came out and slinked across the room he stopped pouring and stared at her, mesmerized.

  "Fantastic," he said.

  "Thank you, dahling," she whispered throatily as she moved around the room, loving the feeling and his attention.

  She stopped suddenly and posed, draping herself against the wall.

  His face, like hers, was flushed, and his eyes glistened. She sensed that she was giving him pleasure and enjoyed the idea of it. It struck her suddenly that they could spend days like this, weeks and months. Her modeling Anne's endless wardrobe.

  She wasn't much of a drinker and knew that the champagne had made her feel high and uninhibited. Although she loved the sensation, she worried that she might cross over some imaginary line and dampen his interest by appearing whorish and undignified. Was she moving too fast, becoming too brazen? This scene, her actions, was so far from anything she had ever experienced or fantasized before.

  She was hot, turned on.

  Still, despite her uncommon surge of lust, she held back from making that first crucial move, fearing the aftermath, revealing herself as wanton and without modesty. What came next was up to him, she decided, wishing it. Come and get it, she cried within herself, yearning for him to act.

  Despite her body's hunger, her mind would not let her be careless. This was all part of the orchestration, she told herself. She had to be, most of all, indispensable to his every need. A complete replacement for Anne. Help me, Anne, she pleaded within herself. Make him want me.

  What she lacked in intellect or style she would compensate for in other ways, she vowed. She was open to learning Anne's ways. Above all, she did not want to suffer in comparison. She would be all things to this man, as Anne had been, a lively companion, a good friend, a passionate, uninhibited lover and a wife. Give me that chance, she begged Sam in her heart.

  "More?" he asked, lifting the champagne bottle as she swaggered past him. He poured the amber liquid into her glass and handed it to her. Bending low to receive it, she felt the weight of her breasts against the material of the dress. She saw his eyes watching them and felt her nipples harden and react to his inspection.

  Still he did not make any untoward move. Perhaps he was not giving himself permission, as if Anne really would care that he would be fornicating with another woman so soon after her death. She sensed he was holding back, wanting but waiting. For what?

  It struck her that what was happening might be a re-creation of sex games he had played with Anne. Am I doing it the way she would? Grace wondered. Setting the spark, the way she did? Was there such a thing as a clothes fetish? She had heard of men being turned on by high-heel shoes or cross-dressing or kinky things like that. She hoped she had found the path to his libido. She was prepared to play whatever role was necessary.

  They exchanged glances as she drank off the champagne in one gulp. She felt oddly empowered, as if it was necessary for her to seduce him now, before the moment passed, knowing it was her need as well. This was one bridge that had to be crossed and crossed now. An idea popped into her head.

  "Just a sec," she said, ducking into the closet again. She removed the gown and searched through the closet, where she had seen the fur coats. Pulling a white ermine off the rack, she put it on. Underneath she wore only the suspenders, stockings and high heels. The feel of the coat on her body tingled her skin and covered her with goose bumps.

  She went into the dressing room, found a lipstick and painted her aureoles. She had never done such a thing in her life. In fact, she had never experienced anything like what was happening to her now. It was like an internal earthquake, unstoppable.

  "Did Anne do this?" she wondered as she pulled the collar of her coat up and walked out into the bedroom. She walked directly in front of him.

  "Do you like this, Sam?" she asked. "Am I like her?"

  He had been holding his champagne glass. Watching her, he slowly put it down on the table beside him. She noted that his hand shook and he spilled some of the champagne on the table's surface.

  "Did she look like this?"

  She opened the coat. Her body, she knew, simmered with lustful sensations. So he's leaving the first move to me, she thought.

  "May I?" she asked.

  He nodded his head, and she knelt before him and unzippered him, pulling his pants and shorts down to below his knees. He let her. Then she straddled him, letting herself gently down on his erect penis, then kissed him deeply on the mouth, her tongue caressing his.

  "Was it like this with Anne?" she whispered, feeling her heartbeat accelerate as she swiveled her hips in a rotating motion. He did not answer.

  "And this?" she said, increasing the tempo of her rotations, feeling her orgasm gathering strength deep inside her. Waves of pleasure exploded inside her.

  "Oh, yes," he said repeatedly, indicating his own pleasure. Then his lips found hers.

  She straddled limply over him for a long moment as they calmed. Slowly, her mind found its reason again and she was able to reflect on her actions.

  She had never done anything with such compulsion in her life. It worried her that somehow she might have crossed the line, destroyed her credibility, blown any chance of a permanent relationship. Had she acted too soon, gone too far? And more to the point, did he believe that her pleasure was real?

  They stayed together in a tight embrace until she lifted herself off him. He held her for a moment, then edged her forward so that he could kiss her again on the lips.

  "Back in a minute," she said, going to the dressing room.

  She looked at herself in the mirror, hardly recognizing her face, blotchy and flushed, the obvious result of excitement and passion. Then she washed and came back into the bedroom. He had drawn the blinds in such a way that the light in the room was muted, but not dark. He was lying in the big bed, obviously waiting for her return. When she came into the room, he lifted the thin coverlet and beckoned her to join him.

  She hesitated briefly, unsure, but knowing that there could be no turning back. Besides, she wanted to be in his embrace.

  "I'm not Anne," she whispered as his arms folded around her.

  "I know," he whispered.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  He sat in the chair of the bedroom patio, watching the rising sun spangle the water. She had left sometime in the night, probably just after he dozed off. They had made love repeatedly and he had reveled in it. He felt more charged with erotic lust and sexual endurance than he had ever felt before, even with those others he had coupled with. It made him doubt the ravages of age. Perhaps aging was a state of mind, he thought, knowing it was a fool's wish
.

  It was as if he had come to an oasis after a long journey in the desert. Never had this bed, this room, seen such passion. He felt transformed, renewed, and his sexual acrobatics apparently came as a surprise to Grace as well.

  "You're like a man of twenty, Sam," Grace told him.

  "You've inspired me," he had replied, but he was thinking beyond the sex, believing that this attraction was more than that, something mystical. Or was he romanticizing a perfectly natural event? He had, after all, emerged from months of physical deprivation and years of psychic hunger.

  "Am I as good as Anne?" she had asked.

  "I've told you. Different."

  At that moment he knew that he must bring himself to offer the full truth of himself, that he could not go forward with Grace without her hearing his full confession, the complete revelation of his stunted life, the final reckoning of his endless chain of lies. His marriage, he knew, had been a compromise, however he had rationalized it. With death closing in, he had determined that he could not, would not, go through such a gauntlet again. It was too late for lies.

  Such had been his silent vow as he sat beside Anne in her final moments. His regret had been too painful and profound. Never could he be less than scrupulously honest, less than forthright. No more lies, white or black. Only truth, pure, pristine, unblemished truth. The soul must be purged.

  Nor did he dare believe that he had had the blind luck to find in Grace the whole woman he had looked for all his life. It was, of course, still too early to tell. He was mystified by his powerful attraction to her, especially coming so close on the heels of Anne's death, and when she was away from him, like now, he longed for her, craved her. Was it his vanity talking, his apparent rediscovery of his youthful libido, a kind of last hurrah? The boys in the locker room would call it pussy fever. Surely it was more than that.

  To the structured world of accepted standards of propriety in which he lived, such an event as this so soon after Anne's death would be looked upon by his peers and certainly his children as a betrayal, a callous and disrespectful act, an insult to her memory.

  It was too complex to understand, no less unravel. He had betrayed Anne years ago, had continued to betray her. Their marriage, if one dwelled on the sexual component, was one long betrayal, and yet he had adored and respected her as a friend, a companion and, in all aspects but one, a wife. He missed her and grieved for her. He had silently vowed at her deathbed that, in the future, there would be no more lies, no more dissimulation, whatever the circumstances there would be truth, only truth. He needed to believe that her death would have some meaning, some impact on his future. His vow had been his gesture of repentance.

  "What you see is what you get," he had told Grace as they lay in the afterglow of their lovemaking, knowing she would be confused by the assertion. "What I say is the truth as I conceive and believe it. No more sham. No more lies. No more manipulation. No more play-acting. These are the conditions."

  He observed her puzzled look.

  "The conditions of what?" Grace had asked. By then, in just a few short hours, their intimacy, at least in his mind, had accelerated to another dimension. She had lain crosswise, her head resting on his upper thighs.

  "Of us," Sam said, stroking her hair. "If we're going to continue to be ... lovers." He had difficulty expelling the word, fearful that it would signal a note of possession for which neither of them was quite prepared and, as yet, were unwilling to accept.

  "Lovers?"

  "It's my line in the sand," he emphasized, remembering all the years he had held back the truth of himself from Anne.

  "Who can argue with that?" Grace said.

  "Truth validates everything," he said, his fingers caressing her. "Nothing is complete without that."

  She had nodded but remained silent.

  "You must think I'm paranoid about this. Grace, it's a terrible thing, living with secrets. Believe me, I know."

  He wasn't sure that she was getting the whole import of what he was telling her, but he was certain he was conveying what was most important to him. He had the sense that she was giving him breathing room, letting him dig deep down into himself.

  "My life with Anne..." he began, pausing, feeling some psychic dike inside of him begin to give way.

  "Yes," she said. He felt her stiffen, poised to listen.

  "All in all, my life with Anne was a good life," he said, but did not go further. She waited. He continued to explore the tunnel inside of him. "But the truth of it was that we did not live as man and wife."

  "You can't be serious," she said, raising herself on her elbow and looking into his eyes.

  "I am," he replied.

  "Then I was wrong about..."

  "About that part, yes."

  "I thought I was doing what Anne did," Grace said. "I thought that maybe I was imitating her."

  "No," he said. "We were totally estranged in that way."

  His hand moved over the nipple of her breast, which he caressed briefly, then dropped his hand to her genitals.

  "She refused you?"

  "Not exactly. She ceased and I desisted."

  In the semidarkness, he saw her eyelids flutter. Then she stared upward at the ceiling, frowning.

  "Was she ill in any way?"

  "Not in a physical sense."

  "You mean she was frigid."

  "I assumed so."

  "You never went to, you know, psychologists, professional people?"

  "No. In fact we never discussed it. That part of our life simply disappeared."

  "But how could it? For how long?"

  "From the beginning. Almost."

  "How did you live with it?"

  "I ... I found other women. Many other women."

  Grace was stunned.

  "And she never knew?"

  "Never."

  "Not even suspected?"

  "I can't be sure of that. It simply was not part of our lives. It was a subject never discussed between us. I suppose you might say we lived like brother and sister."

  "Did she think you couldn't do it, that you were impotent?"

  As if to emphasize the point she kissed his penis briefly, then caressed him until he was hard again.

  "You wouldn't know it from this angle," Grace said.

  "She never explored the possibility. She just wasn't interested."

  "Do you think she masturbated?"

  "I doubt it. I certainly never saw her at it."

  "And you?"

  "Considering the frequency, I should be blind. That's what they used to tell young boys. Masturbation could make you blind."

  She giggled at the explanation.

  "You poor man," Grace said.

  "I never allowed the deprivation to get in the way of our marriage."

  "I always thought it was part of it."

  "You never refused your husband?"

  "Never. Not that he was exactly an athlete in that respect. I did what a married woman was supposed to do."

  After this remark Grace fell into a long silence, while he reflected on his life with Anne. Never had he shared this revelation with anyone.

  "I guess Anne didn't see it that way." Sam shrugged. He had long ago made peace with this part of her nature. At first, he remembered, he had been angry, disappointed, self-pitying. Didn't she know what it meant to be a man, to have this compelling biological need for sexual satisfaction? It tortured him, forced him into unnatural repression. He was not a priest, had not made a vow of chastity to some imagined God, who, if He did exist, would be revolted by the penance of distorting his creation. In the end, following the old adage that necessity was the mother of invention, he had concluded that his only choice was to seek satisfaction elsewhere.

  But the burden of keeping Anne from the truth of himself, his real feelings, his sensual nature, his searching need for sexual experience, had been almost too great to bear. In the end he had accepted her frigidity as a kind of genetic fault. Hell, he had his fun outside the house, li
ke eating out from time to time.

  All his married life he was tortured with the possibility that this lack in Anne was really his fault, something in his aura or persona, some mysterious force that could not light the spark of her sexuality. Perhaps it was his own cowardice, his fear of confrontation that prevented a resolution of what might have been simply a physical or psychological problem of sexual dysfunction.

  Or he might have backed away deliberately from any further exploration of this phenomenon for his own subconsciously nefarious reasons. Under his facade of respectability, his real agenda might be that of a satyr, a voluptuary, a sex addict who needed a varied menu of such activity.

  Quite often in his life, he considered that he might be using Anne's indifference toward him sexually as an excuse for his own secret excess. He had even fantasized what it might be like if his secret life was exposed, if Anne knew he had betrayed her, was betraying her. He feared that the most, not only the embarrassment of discovery, not only the humiliation and acknowledgment of his own failure, but the devastation she would have felt about her inability to function as a complete wife, and how that would affect the good things between them.

  But it meant living forever with a missing link, because he loved everything else about Anne, loved her surety and confidence and social skills, loved her good taste and the life she had made for him.

  Suddenly it seemed necessary to, once and for all, let it out of himself, as if he needed the comfort of confession and he had discovered just the right moment and a willing ear. Even as he spoke, he wondered if he could ever fully explain or ever understand the complexity of his relationship with Anne. Indeed, his characterization of Anne and her attitude was filtered through his own perception. Her perceptions lay locked in her dead consciousness. Nevertheless, he felt it suddenly tremendously important that Grace hear his side of it.

  Grace had remained silent until he had emptied himself. Then she sucked in a deep breath and shook her head.

  "I don't know what to say," she said.

  "I suppose I've taken you by surprise."

  "You're right about that, Sam. It's a little scary."