The Casanova Embrace

by Warren Adler

  "Not really," he said and she saw now that she had broken the ice. He put the book beside him near the arm rest, a sign of his engagement. She felt herself flush and knew that the pores had begun to open in her armpits, as if her body had begun to thaw.

  "I really don't know a damned thing about Chilean politics," she said. Nor do I care, she wanted to add, but she liked the sound of his voice, the way he inflected his speech with that preposterous precision.

  "Few Americans do," he responded. There was an air of pedantry about him. Despite that, she wanted to hear more.

  "So you were in prison?" She knew she had taken a lucky shot, had inspired his interest. He nodded.

  "I was in jail once," she said. "Overnight. We all sang songs until our throats burned out."

  "Where I was, there were no songs." He was dipping deep into himself. She imagined his tongue was touching some exposed nerve in his mouth.

  "That bad?"

  "It builds character." There was a brief sarcasm. He was bottled up, she decided, on the verge of uncorking. She wondered how it was to feel such anger and envied him for it.

  "I'm sorry," she said. Was she genuinely compassionate?

  "It is far from over," he whispered. He glanced behind him furtively. "The game has not been fully played."

  She felt the sense of danger, suddenly excited, waiting for more.

  "I don't understand." She did, of course, and knew she was goading him.

  "I am a voice. They will not be happy until all the voices of opposition are stilled. I am their gadfly and that is the only way they can stop me."

  "I had no idea." She had not calculated her reaction; she was genuinely startled by his outburst.

  "They are beasts. They are there merely to protect the status quo, the wealth of the few who own most of the land. And the investments of American business, while they let them rape our land. Our copper. The Chilean people are in chains."

  "Jeez, I didn't expect a speech." She was immediately sorry for the sarcasm.

  "I apologize. I hadn't expected to give one."

  "No. Don't apologize. It's me. Not you."

  He talked quietly, calmly, even when he had made his little speech. His words were not unlike words she had heard before. Once she had responded to them by raising a clenched fist, marching in protest. There had been causes then. Inspiration. It had all happened in the time when she was alive. Once she had thrown a firebomb into the branch of the Bank of America in San Luis Obispo. She had actually taken instruction in methods of violence and had on occasion helped make bombs, later used in their combat when they were "the army of the revolution." He remained silent. She wondered if her flirtiness put him off.

  "I'm not much into causes these days," she said. "I've had it with them."

  "It is necessary to believe in something," he said.

  "It is the same bullshit. Same types. Different faces. All in it to manipulate other people." She paused. "Am I offending you?"

  "Of course," he said, showing a flash of incredibly white teeth.

  "I'm a burnt out case," she mocked, stretching. She closed her eyes, remembering again the life of the other Frederika. "You don't really believe your group will be back in power?"

  "I not only believe it. It's all I live for."

  "Well, that's something."

  "What do you live for?"

  "Omelets," she said, then explained the remark.

  "Are you a Marxist?" she asked. It had been so long since that label had any meaning for her, when the sound of the word was a call to arms. She had been politicized once, had seen the world through the telescope of the political lens, and although she had somehow resisted the uniformity of thought, she had participated in all of the discipline, all of the feeling.

  His voice drifted back into her consciousness. "I am a Chilean and our party was under a Marxist oriented philosophy. But we were unique to Chile. Our movement was for Chile."

  She had seen that look before, a gaze turned inward, seeing nothing up close, only the dream inside. A single-mindedness. She felt oddly moved, faintly rekindled. Without realizing it, she gripped his forearm and held it tightly. He made no move to disengage her.

  The train had slid into Union Station and they stood up. He removed a large leather foreign-looking valise from the baggage rack. Opening it, to repack the book, she noted soiled clothing and piles of files among its contents. He saw her watching and quickly shut the case.

  "I meet in New York with friends from time to time," he said, as if some explanation was required. They walked together to the front of the station. It was cold and she found herself shivering in her light clothes.

  "Can I drop you somewhere?" he asked.

  "I live on Wisconsin Avenue, above Georgetown."

  The truth was that she didn't want him to leave her now, to lose him. "Tell you what. You come to my place. I'll whip up a real snack."

  He stood facing her in the street. She had to look up to see his eyes, the silver lost in the shadows. He was a well groomed man, she noted, not like the men she had been with in those relevant days. Before he consented she knew that he would. Perhaps he, too, had found something, she wondered hopefully, feeling sensations in her body that she thought had disappeared.

  While she laid out the bacon strips on her frying pan, she watched him sitting in the single overstuffed easy chair of her small efficiency apartment. His feet were propped up on the ottoman and he had lit a cigarette from which the smoke curled upward through the shade of the reading lamp. The bacon crackled and curled, releasing its lovely aroma, and she called to him.

  "How do you like your eggs?"

  "Scrambled."

  She scrambled the eggs and put in some toast as the bacon soaked out its grease on a brown paper bag. There was something odd about his sitting there quietly in the easy chair, something foreign, a kind of formality. An American might have stood over her as she worked, making small talk. Again the idea of courtliness popped into her mind, an image gathered somewhere about Latin men of the upper classes who put a high premium on politeness and courtesy. Was that it? Or was she simply rationalizing? There goes Frederika again, she thought joyously. The old Frederika. The one with the analytical nose.

  He still wore his jacket and tie, another oddity for her, and when she came into the room with the steaming platters he seemed lost in thought, his long fingers touching each other in the delicate attitude of prayer.

  "Coffee's coming," she said, placing the platters on a cocktail table near the couch, then patting the seat pillows. "Come here. You'll be more comfortable." She felt her aggressiveness and when he stirred in obedience she felt again her old strength. "And, for crying out loud, take your jacket off. Make yourself at home."

  He took off his jacket.

  "And the tie." He removed his tie and sat down beside her, placing his napkin on his legs.

  "In my next life I'm going to be a chicken," he said. "My whole presence on earth revolves around eggs. My veins must be choked with cholesterol."

  She got up, poured the coffee and came back. She sensed that he was loosening up, becoming less of a walking polemic, which pleased her.

  "Can I call you Eddie?" she said suddenly. She had been watching him, noting how long and dark his lashes were, the strength of his chin, his lips' sensuality. She was being stirred, she knew.

  "Of course." She wondered if there was any interest in her on his part.

  Perhaps I am taking too much for granted, she told herself. "You mean that?"

  He turned toward her. "Do I sound insincere?"

  Raw nerves, she thought. He is touchy. "You see my friends always called me Freddie. I assume that friends make up names, or shorten them. There's a kind of intimacy about that, don't you think?"

  "Of course."

  He seemed to be slipping away. She decided to be silent and they sipped their coffee quietly. She could hear the faulty faucet dripping water rhythmically into the sink. Watching him, she saw his eyelids droop mome
ntarily.

  "Tired?"

  "Tired. Yes." He straightened. It had been an unguarded comment, she realized.

  "No. Lean back," she said. "I know what tired means."

  "I think I had better be going," he said, but without conviction.

  "Where do you live?"

  "Not far."

  "Alone?"

  "Yes."

  There seemed a secret comfort in that. Alone! She certainly knew what that meant. She wanted to touch him, but she held back.

  "Just stretch out," she said, getting up, clearing the plates from the cocktail table and clicking off the reading lamp. Without looking back, she went into the kitchen and began to wash the dishes. After a while she stole a glance into the room, noting that he had, indeed, stretched out the length of the couch. Shutting the water tap, she went into the room, tiptoeing to the closet, removing a blanket from the top shelf. She covered him gently, hoping that the weight of the cover would not wake him. He didn't stir.

  Dumb Freddie, she told herself. You've given a strange man the only bed in the joint. But she was happy. She had been afraid that the suggestion of opening the couch to its studio bed would put him off. From the closet, she brought out her coat, wrapped it around her and slumped in the easy chair, her legs on the ottoman, cuddling her chin into the wool collar.

  She didn't sleep, waiting instead for her eyes to become accustomed to the dark. She wanted to see him, to watch the movement of his breathing. To imagine things about him. He was an "exile," he had told her. She could understand what that meant. Wasn't she, too, an exile? Only he was still in the battle, while she was a fallen soldier. Dear brave Eduardo, Eddie. Perhaps she simply hadn't had the courage to continue. But now. Now she could continue the fight through him, with him. She remembered what it was like to fling that firebomb into the plate glass window of that bank in San Luis Obispo.

  "Let me do it," she had insisted. They had met in a wooded area of a state campground and had talked for hours about symbolic acts, the necessity to keep alive the battle with little symbolic acts. There were about ten of them and on the table of the camper which they could see through the open door was the carefully constructed Molotov cocktail, incongruous. They had used an empty bottle of Pouilly Fuissé wine which they had fished out of a garbage can with the label still intact. They were sitting around Indian style, legs crossed beneath them, passing around a joint which barely lasted one time around the group and, even now, she could remember how happy she felt, the kind of high that seemed never to come again.

  She had been perched on the back of Lenny's bike, her thighs wrapped around his tight hips, her crotch jammed up against his buttocks, stirring her, for her hand clutched his penis, feeling its hardness as Lenny gunned the bike in the direction of the bank. Nothing before or since had ever come up to that moment, when the bike sped toward its destination and the high wind created by its speed whipped against her cheeks and hair.

  He had decelerated when they moved up the quiet street, and turned onto the sidewalk, idling in front of the plate glass window. Calmly Lenny had taken a pickaxe and broken the glass while she lit the firebomb and threw it through the opening, watching it explode as it hit the floor. Then she jumped onto the back of the bike again and they moved into the night, winding along the quiet streets, into the woods, following the trail they had mapped out in advance, to the place where he had parked the pickup truck.

  She had helped him put the bike in the back of the truck, covering it with tarpaulin. Lenny had driven the truck to high ground and they could see the fire that they had created lighting up the sky. It was beautiful, she remembered, even now, without a shred of remorse. Lights off, Lenny drove the truck through the hills, heading west along secondary roads to the prearranged rendezvous with others in an abandoned barn about one hundred miles away. They stopped only once along a dark stretch after about an hour's drive and made love along the side of the road. The ground was soft under her bare skin and she imagined that she was tuned into the natural rhythm of life as she felt him inside her, another symbolic act, she had decided, which embellished the meaning of what they had done.

  Was that the high point of it all, she wondered. Now, as she sat in the chair watching Eddie, the memory came back, bringing with it all the old wonder. Even the later image of Lenny tending bar in the St. Francis Hotel couldn't dull what she now felt.

  But then the scream crowded into her thoughts, which must have become dreams, as she quickly found her sense of place. Awake, now, she saw him screaming on her couch. He was apparently still asleep, although he moved restlessly, as if writhing in pain. It was genuine pain, she knew, despite its happening only in his mind. She watched him suffer until it became unbearable to her and slipped beside him, holding him in her arms. He stirred, mumbled something, then breathed a long deep sigh and was still. She continued to hold him, feeling in him the sense of her comfort.

  She observed time passing by the growing whiteness behind the slats of the blinds. In the gray light she watched his face, the breathing quiet, and she felt an overwhelming urge to kiss his lips, slightly puffed and open to expel his breath, which seemed sweet and clear. Resisting, she continued to watch, and finally he was responding to her gaze through gradually opening eyes.

  "You were having a nightmare," she whispered.

  "I don't remember."

  "You seemed to be suffering and you screamed as if you were being tortured."

  He was silent a long time, but his eyes were open.

  "It stays in your soul." he said.

  "What?"

  "The pain of it. Actually, they did it to me only once in the first days, but it was enough to make me fear it forever."

  "What?"

  "You don't want to hear about it."

  "Yes. You must."

  "They put these wires and pinched them on to my genitals. I told myself that I would have courage through it all. And I did. I had planned to tell them something, to give them raw meat. But until I had been through the pain, they would not have believed me, so I told them a tiny bit of what they wanted to know. It was that ... or--" He coughed to cover his inability to continue. "It wasn't much really," he said after a while.

  "It's inhuman," she said with disgust.

  "On the contrary. Very human."

  "You're crazy."

  "There is a relationship between the torturer and the tortured."

  "And that's human?"

  "Yes."

  "Here is something also very human."

  "What?"

  "Me. Feel me."

  She cradled his head in her arms, against her breasts. His hands reached for them, squeezing and fondling. Opening her blouse, she let him touch them with his lips, stroking the back of his head. She felt an uncommon stirring inside of her. The old Freddie is coming back, she told herself.

  He kissed and suckled her breasts for a long time, like a child gaining sustenance. And she felt as if milk were actually flowing from them. After a while, she reached down and opened his pants, caressing his hardness, her fingers gentle, seeking, it seemed, the hurt place. The need to kiss the hurt place was overwhelming and finally it became an irresistible longing and she moved downward and did it, feeling the soft moving flesh, as if it were not attached to him, a hurt animal.

  She heard him moan and knew that she had succeeded in making him forget the pain and she felt the pleasure of giving pleasure, a sensation barely remembered, but now returning to her in full strength. Through her lips, she felt the tightening, the throbbing, and then the release as he felt the moment of his greatest joy, this magic gift that she had proffered. I am me again, she told herself. Giving again. And, for the first time, sharing, taking.

  For a moment there had been a confused sensation, as if her body had burst into flames, a pleasure-pain exploding somewhere inside her. Again the image of the fire-bomb flashed in her mind, the heat a targeted flume, aimed at her essence. It had never happened that way, ever.

  "Why you?
" she whispered. "Why now?"

  He looked at her, saying nothing.

  "Chemical or psychic?" she asked. When he did not respond, she said, "There are only questions. Right?"

  Again, he said nothing, studying her.

  They had coffee together, watching the gray Washington morning. It had begun to rain, a steady downpour that put a sheen on the streets and the cars, making her apartment seem like a refuge. She had opened the studio couch and they had repeatedly made love there and then he had begun to dress.

  "I wish you could stay." she said. "I don't have to go to work until later in the day."

  "Unfortunately, I must go."

  "Where?" She waited, but there was no answer. Questions again.

  "Are you going to be one of these mystery men?"

  "No."

  "Who are you really? What do you do, really? Did it mean anything to you, really?"

  "Really," he whispered, smiling.

  When she had first moved into her apartment and invited men to stay with her she couldn't wait for them to leave. Some she had actually chased out the door without regard to their feelings. Now she felt a sense of impending loss, but hesitated to make it known. She wanted to ask, "When will I see you again? When will we love again?" Instead she said, "You will always be welcome, Eddie. Anytime. Really. Anytime. There are no other men in my life."

  "I'm being watched." he said, buttoning his shirt. "It may not be very healthy to be around me."

  "You think I'm afraid of them."

  He explored her face. "No. I don't think you're afraid. But you should know that I'm being watched. Perhaps hunted."

  "I've been there myself. And I don't give a damn."

  He put on his jacket and stood over her as she sat now on the hassock near the easy chair, her terrycloth robe drawn tightly around her body. Unlike the passionate younger men of those other days, with long hair and little glasses, straggly beards, blue jeans and scuffed boots, he looked thoroughly conventional, an establishment figure. Except for the gray, silver-flecked eyes. There was something beyond them that she could not fathom. They seemed to operate on their own energy, with a power to command.