The Pigeon Project

by Irving Wallace

  Last night he had been filled with confidence that once with her alone, he could seduce her. True, he was a nobody, and she was an international celebrity with the world at her beck and call. Still, Oreste knew that he had a way with women, a way of talking to them that was irresistible, and that more women were seduced by ear, by words, than by any other means. If she would agree to see him alone, he was certain he would have a success. Before the evening at the contessa’s had ended, Oreste had his commitment. Teresa Fantoni had agreed to have a drink with him on the outdoor terrace of the Gritti Palace hotel at eight o’clock the next evening. Oreste had been overjoyed. Once she heard the role he had written for her in his play, once she heard his frank passion for her, his ardor, it would be a short distance from the terrace of the Gritti to the bedroom of her suite upstairs.

  This evening, finishing his violin stint at seven o’clock and turning his chair over to his substitute, he had not bothered to go back to his apartment. Instead, he had gone into Quadri’s indoor restaurant, made his way upstairs to groom himself, come down and fortified himself with a double Scotch, and then started to the Gritti Palace.

  As he entered the lobby, he saw her emerging from the elevator. For a moment, he held back to revel in what would soon be his. She was wearing a thin white silk cocktail dress that adhered to every contour of her figure. As she turned away from the elevator, her buttocks were clearly defined and he thought he could make out the line of her panties. He hurried to intercept her, taking her hand, bending to kiss the back of it.

  “I have a table on the terrace,” she said regally. “It is the most pleasant part of Venice, having a drink on the Grand Canal.”

  This was promising, this and the way she had dressed for him, and his confidence soared.

  He followed her through the bar and outdoors, enjoying every step of the way as the maitre d’ and the waiters bowed and scraped before her, before this woman who was receiving him alone. They had a table on the rail overlooking the water, and except for another couple some distance away, they had this dream spot to themselves.

  She ordered a martini and he a Scotch. Then she placed a cigarette in her long gold holder and he rumbled to light her cigarette. He searched for some conversational opener, something winning, a good note, but he could think of nothing because his attention was entirely absorbed by her breasts. She was either braless or wearing a half bra, because he could make out her nipples faintly, very large, very brown.

  He tore his gaze away from her breasts and looked out at the canal. “You’re right,” he said, “it is soothing here.”

  “One of the few soothing sights left in Venice,” she said, patting the barrette that held her sleek reddish hair. “Frankly, by now, I’ve had Venice up to my ears. I’m utterly bored by it. I came up here for two or three days on the Lido beach, to see some friends, but I never expected to be forced to stay here this long, to be a prisoner, held against my wishes. I should be back in Rome. I have a film starting soon, and so much to do before.”

  He was disappointed, because he adored Venice and he fervently wanted his adored one to love it too. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Perhaps, if you have the time, I could show you some parts of Venice you’ve never seen.”

  “You are kind, but I am not the least bit interested.”

  “How did you like the contessa’s party last night? I thought—”

  “It was tiresome. I couldn’t wait to get away. I like the contessa well enough. I’ve known her forever, and respect her. But she is a terrible hostess. Her parties are always a strain. She tries too hard. There is no ease, no comfort, no naturalness. Last night was a perfect case—the way she tried to liven up the party after dinner with that ridiculous story about the longevity scientist.”

  “Didn’t you believe her? I was sure it was true.”

  “An absurd fairy tale. If someone found a way to keep people young, the whole world would know about it in an instant. I’ve read a good deal about these things. There have been breakthroughs in genetics, it’s true. But science is still far, far away from giving us the gift of prolonged youth.” She sipped her martini. “Too bad.”

  It was time, he saw, to start Operation Bedroom. “You are fortunate,” he said, “to already possess the gift of eternal youth.”

  She looked at him with disgust. “Mr. Memo,” she said, “save that for your plays.”

  “I mean it,” he persisted. “You are young and you will always be young.”

  “Biologically untrue,” she said. “But have it your way. I think I’ll have another martini.”

  She ordered for herself and for him, then said a trifle testily, “About that play you are writing. The contessa told me you were doing a play that has a perfect role for me. Is that true?”

  “I believe it is true. I had an image of you before me as I wrote it.”

  “Tell me about it.” Then she hastened to add, “Not the whole thing. Just give me an idea of what it is about.”

  Oreste Memo cleared his throat. “It is about Eleonora Duse.”

  “Really?”

  “I think it befits Italy’s greatest actress of the past to be played by Italy’s greatest actress of the present.”

  “You are most flattering.”

  “I’m sincere.”

  “All right. What about Eleonora Duse?”

  “It begins in the last weeks of her love affair with Gabriele D’Annunzio. That is the beginning. Then it dramatizes the remainder of her story, a woman alone, brave, defiant, independent, against the world. Her American tour, when she would appear only in D’Annunzio’s works. Her illness, which forced her retirement. Then, after twelve years in retirement, her financial difficulties that forced her into a comeback effort. Her return, overcoming the competition of Sarah Bernhardt, freeing herself from the ghost of D’Annunzio, winning the public again, a triumphal return, culminating with her death in the American city of Pittsburgh. There are moving scenes. There’s—”

  Teresa Fantoni held up her hand. Oreste Memo stopped in mid sentence, puzzled.

  “Mr. Memo,” she said, “I’m sure you know something about playwriting, but you know nothing whatsoever about women.”

  His confusion deepened. “I don’t understand.”

  “You will. Hear me. When was Eleonora Duse born? She was born in 1859. You would begin her story when she breaks with D’Annunzio. That was 1899. So your play begins with Duse at the age of forty. Is that right?”

  “Why, yes.”

  “Very well. So then her American tour. In 1902, when she was forty-three. Her retirement in 1909, at fifty. Her emerging from retirement at sixty-two. Her death in 1924, at sixty-five.” She paused and stared at him. “Mr. Memo, are you asking Teresa Fantoni to play an actress from the age of forty to the age of sixty-five?”

  “But you can do it.”

  “Of course, I can do it. The point is I don’t want to do it. No actress in my years would play a role portraying a woman growing old from forty to sixty-five. Do you think that’s what I want at this time in my life? To be up there on the stage, wrinkling and doddering, with no youth whatsoever? Impossible. I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “The public knows you are young and will only be acting.”

  “The public knows only that I am growing older, and it makes no sense to play a role that will assure them it is true.”

  “But you are young.”

  “Am I? How young?”

  Dangerous territory. “I’d say thirty-five.”

  She made a face. “Thank you, but that has not been for some time. No, Mr. Memo, your play is not for me. It could hasten my ruin. I appreciate your thinking of me, but we had best forget it. Let’s talk of happier things.”

  One of the happier things she was prepared to talk about was her new film now in preparation in Rome. In it she would enact the role of a twenty-eight-year-old nun who leaves her convent and has a love affair with an ex-priest. She went on and on, for twenty minutes, discussing her problems with the
screenplay writer, the director, the producer.

  Oreste Memo sat dismayed.

  Her total rejection of the Duse part, her fixation with age, had shaken him. His design, Grand Design, for the evening had been nearly obliterated. There still must be something of it to save. He must be the Oreste Memo of old—fearless, bold, overwhelming.

  He listened and waited, hypnotized by her breasts shaking gently beneath the white silk dress. She had finished an anecdote and was drinking from her second martini.

  “Fascinating,” he said to her. “Miss Fantoni, I’d be honored if I could take you to dinner from here.”

  “Thank you, but no. I’m tired.” She set down her empty glass. “I think I’ll just go up to my suite, order lightly from room service, and get to sleep early. Maybe I’ll be free to leave this wretched city tomorrow.”

  “Could I see you up to your room?”

  She eyed him. “Whatever for? That’s not necessary.”

  He saw that she might slip away. Boldness, boldness. “It is necessary for me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that every added moment I’m with you enriches my life. I’ve carried you in my head so long, enjoyed the pleasure of your presence in my head so long, loved you in my secret heart so endlessly, that now in person I cannot let you go.”

  She stared at him with disbelief. “That dialogue,” she said. “You sound like a fugitive from a Pirandello play.” She was on her feet. “I’m sorry, young man. Take your play and your amorous heart elsewhere. I wish you luck. Good evening.”

  She was gone.

  And he, finished reliving the humiliation of her arrogant rejection, was trudging through the Piazza San Marco toward his lonely apartment, still lusting for the gorgeous bitch. But it was hopeless. There was no way he might ever seduce her.

  Five minutes later, he had reached his place, climbed the stairs to his first-floor apartment, mournfully inserted the key, and gone into his long hallway. As he began to remove his suit jacket, he noticed to his surprise that he had left the lights on in his living room. Stepping to the archway, he saw his open bedroom door and was surprised again that the lights were on there too. It was unlike him to have left the lights on when he had gone to work late this morning.

  Then he heard a voice from the bedroom. Startled, a little frightened, not knowing where to turn, he heard the same voice a second time, and he recognized it. Timothy Jordan’s voice. At once, he remembered. So obsessed had he been with the conquest of Teresa Fantoni, his effort, his failure, that he had altogether forgotten his brief meeting with Jordan early in the afternoon. It came back to him now. Jordan had wanted to borrow his apartment for the night, to spend the night here in privacy with a friend, and he had said he would not need his apartment tonight and had given Jordan his extra key.

  He realized he could not hang around any longer. Jordan was probably in bed with a woman, and his own presence would embarrass them both. He looked at the bedroom entrance wistfully. At least, Jordan was being luckier than he had been.

  About to turn away, Oreste Memo heard a second voice, a deeper, older voice, and it was male.

  Next he heard both voices. Both male.

  How strange. Tim Jordan was no queer. Memo knew of his continuing affair with his assistant, Marisa Girardi. Then what was this all about?

  Automatically, Oreste Memo had moved into his living room, and the voices from the bedroom were clear and distinct.

  They were discussing something about traveling.

  Memo realized that this was none of his business. He had no right to invade their privacy. Even though this was his apartment, he had lent it in good faith to a friend. He had turned to leave quietly when a snatch of conversation held him in his tracks.

  “… and then you will be safely in Paris,” Jordan was saying. “What will you do next? Wait for the Gerontology Congress to convene? Or immediately announce to the world that you’ve discovered the formula?”

  “I will convene a press conference immediately,” the older voice was saying. “I’ll make my announcement of the discovery of C-98, read to the world the paper I had intended to read to the Congress—in fact, pass out copies of it—and I’ll clarify it all by answering questions. But we’re skipping too far ahead, Tim. First, I’ve got to get out of here before the police and the Russians have me.”

  “All right, Professor MacDonald,” said Jordan, rustling some kind of paper. “Assuming Bruno comes through, let’s go over this map again and show you how to get to Paris.”

  Oreste Memo, wavering with disbelief in the middle of his living room, continued to listen. If there had been any confusion in his mind at the start, it was soon dispelled. For after they had methodically gone over the professor’s escape route, they began to discuss in a relaxed way the potentials of the professor’s discovery.

  Memo felt the goose pimples growing on his arms and chest, and understood the implications of what he had been hearing.

  Filled with purpose, he turned away and tiptoed out of the room.

  He knew what he would do at once.

  At last, he had his Open Sesame.

  * * *

  She had unlocked the door of her Gritti Palace suite, and she was wearing a pale blue dressing gown over some kind of short shift of a nightgown, and to Oreste Memo she looked like a sexy Roman goddess.

  Teresa Fantoni stared at him, as if to discern whether he was drunk, and then, assured that he was not, she said curtly, “Don’t just stand there. Come in. I can’t have the whole hotel see me this way.”

  He came into her darkened suite, only one dim lamp on in her sitting room. His eyes held on her, penetrated the transparency of her garments. His eyes lovingly raped her as she closed the door and came before him.

  “This is utter madness,” she said, unamused. “I can’t believe it. Is this one of your jokes, a ruse to get up here?”

  “It is true. Every word I told you on the phone is true,” he said.

  He had called her, after leaving his apartment. He had rushed to the nearest public telephone and called her at the Gritti, and caught her in bed just as she was trying to fall asleep. He had burst out to her, almost uncontrolled, the news that what they had heard from the Contessa De Marchi last night was all true, exactly as she had told it. Minutes ago, he had met the scientist who had discovered the Fountain of Youth. He couldn’t tell her more now—he was on a public phone, there were others around him—but he would tell her all about it if he could see her privately, come up to her suite. With some hesitation, she had finally told him to come right over.

  They stood facing each other in the sitting room of her suite. She was studying him, her cat’s eyes probing. “I still find it hard to take seriously,” she said. “You’re making this up.”

  “I tell you it is true,” he persisted. “By accident, after leaving you before, I ran into him, heard him speak of his youth formula. The scientist, his name is Professor MacDonald. His formula is called C-98.”

  “I don’t think you’re inventive enough to make that up.”

  “Believe me!”

  “This MacDonald, he’s here in Venice?”

  “Right here. He’s a fugitive. Let me explain as much as I heard. I gather—I’m not sure—he must have made his discovery while visiting the Soviet Union, got out to Venice, and the Soviets asked our Communist government, our police, to get hold of him and return him. MacDonald is trapped, seeking a means to escape.”

  “So he’s here,” she said slowly. “He could give anyone the formula to keep that person young.”

  “No question.”

  She moved closer to Memo. “Where is he?” He swallowed. “I-I can’t tell you. I’ve sworn to a friend of his not to tell anyone. But listen, I can speak to him, to my friend, and have him intercede for you. I can perhaps arrange for you to be one of the first to be given youth.”

  She appeared overcome with emotion. “Oh, Oreste, you are so kind, so good to me.” She was against him, her a
rms around his neck. She pressed her warm lips on his. “Thank you,” she murmured.

  For Oreste Memo, the moment he had dreamed of, the incredibility of it, was overwhelming. He felt the stirring between his legs, the immediate expanding and growing of it pressed against her.

  She clung to him tightly. Her lips touched his ear. He felt her warm breath as she whispered, “Not only are you kind to me, darling, but you are passionate.”

  “Teresa,” he exhaled, “I want you.” She hugged him tighter. “Do you, darling? Do you really want me?”

  The fragrance of her body, the softness of her limbs was almost too much to bear. “More than anything in the world,” he gasped.

  She released him, stepped back, untied her dressing gown, pulled it off, and let it drop to the carpet. She was wearing an entirely transparent nightgown that hung loosely to her knees. He could see the roundness of the firm protruding breasts and the brown circles of nipples, and he could see the broad patch of her vaginal mound, and he began to quiver.

  “Oh, God, you’re beautiful,” he breathed. “I love you…”

  He reached for her, but she stepped back. “Take off your jacket. There. Now let me help you off with your shirt.”

  As she unbuttoned his shirt, he kicked off his shoes, loosened his belt, and stepped out of his trousers. He stood in his distended bikini briefs, breathing heavily.

  She touched his shoulder. “Come, Oreste, dear, let’s go to bed.”

  To bed with Teresa Fantoni! To bed with the female every male on earth worshiped! It was difficult walking as he went into the bedroom after her. Like the sitting room, the bedroom was darkened except for one dim lamp, on the stand beside the bed. She flung back the quilted cover all the way, pulled up her nightgown and was out of it, and threw herself on the bed, on her back.

  “What’s holding you, my baby?” she called out.

  From the rim of darkness, he had been watching her with awe. Venus de Milo summoning him to her bed. He jerked down his briefs and staggered toward her. He knew he was a sight. His penis was standing straight out.

  “My, my,” she said, observing it, as he crawled toward her from the foot of the bed. Her legs, knees bent, were high and slightly apart.