Paradise (The Erotic Adventures of Sophia Durant)

by O. L. Casper

  P A R A D I S E

  by O. L. C A S P E R

  Chapter 1

  Sophia Durant’s Diary

  July 7, St. Augustine, Florida

  Arrived at 26 Cinnamon Beach Road at 12:45 p.m., fifteen minutes before the interview. I was scheduled to meet Isabella Gardner about a nanny position, which entailed looking after one baby, a six-month-old, whom I was later to find out is called Savannah, and, also somewhat mysteriously, required foreign travel as the newspaper ad noted, “job involves travel, passport required.” Fortunately, I had spent six months in Paris as an exchange student in college, for which of course I was required to obtain a passport.

  With the top lowered on the Mercedes SLK my father had given me on graduating college, I surveyed the magnificent surrounding view of the majestic Atlantic Ocean. Parked by the beach, I watched the throng of people in their swim shorts and bikinis and the many sail boats perched under a clear sky on the great blue sea.

  My impression was that I was leaving behind a life of hardship and struggle and entering a new life of great luxury, comfort, and ease. Passing from the dark into the light. You might say, Her life can’t be that rough, she drives an SLK—but the gift marked the end of my parents’ kind generosity and support. After that, I was on my own. The economy was then—as now—not in the best shape, to say the least, and, even with a Masters in International Finance, I was unable to find a suitable position in the field and had to resort to becoming a nanny instead. Presently, I carried only a part time job as such and slept on my best friend’s couch in Gainesville.

  Looking back, this impression of moving to a better station in life was really wildly optimistic and had no basis in reality, yet it was what I felt emanating from the core of my being. Thinking in this way about my present state of affairs, I noticed it was a couple minutes to the hour. In the rearview mirror, I straightened shoulder-length hair that had become entangled on the ride to Augustine. I removed my shades to see that my eyeliner and mascara were not smudged and viewed, with an unpleasant sensation down the spine, what my father had once lovingly referred to (and has stuck with me ever since) as my insect-eyes. They were large and at times, I thought, menacing.

  I instinctively brushed off my halter top—though there was nothing to brush off—and glanced at my tight-fitting jeans. Relatively tall with an athletic physique, my mother said I had been “blessed” with the body of my great grandmother, the hotel cleaner who had made the greater part of her living performing “private favors” for male guests. “Hopefully, you take after her in figure alone,” she reminded me throughout my adolescent years. Embarrassed by a family I saw as descended primarily from paupers and a whore, I kept to myself growing up, often daydreaming and fantasizing with a strong taste for literature of the once forbidden variety. I had a penchant for Henry Miller and Anais Nin. Books I generally secreted from my mother.

  “Hello,” cracked a voice from the intercom at the gate.

  “Sophia Durant to see Isabella Gardner,” I said.

  After what felt like an eternity, a buzzer sounded and the gate rolled back. My heart rate increased at the sudden movement. Driving for a few hundred yards through crisp, elaborate gardens lined with palms, I came to the villa. The Victorian mansions were green and looming and somehow bizarrely dilapidated like rundown hotels in a third world country, in great contrast to the care given the gardens leading up to them. The houses resembled the Russian dachas I’d seen in European history books. I imagined Peter the Great stepping out of one of the doors with a smile or Joseph Stalin hiding out in one, suffering the worst of his paranoid delusions during the war. Towering white pillars complemented what were quite possibly the ugliest buildings I had ever seen.

  A young woman emerged from one of the centermost buildings and waved for me to come to her. I asked if she was Mrs. Gardner.

  “I’m Anna. Mrs. Gardner is inside. Come,” she said, and, with another wave of the hand, I was following her through the opulent interior of the central house. The inside was like a museum, filled with what I at first took for copies of paintings by the masters: Van Eycks, Velasquezs, Vermeers. And there were sculptures that appeared to be Rodins. Later I found out they were all originals. But it was so cluttered and in such disarray it made me see it for what it really was to its owners, substitutes for gold and hard cash. Why is it that so many of the super rich have so little taste?

  The room Isabella Gardner waited for me in was a vast, second story sitting room, with bay windows overlooking the sea. A strong wind had crept up, rattling the palms without, and storm clouds moved in from over the horizon. Sitting in the semidarkness, Isabella reminded me of a seventeenth-century Italian painting of the chiaroscuro tradition. Isabella sat in a comfortable leather chair near the window with a small coffee table next to it, and a wooden chair across from that.

  She motioned for me to sit. At first, I found her presence intimidating. But she had a soft-spoken, soothing voice which I found welcoming, and she soon lightened up.

  “I see from your résumé that you are very well educated. A Bachelors in Computer Science and a Masters in International Finance. You seem over qualified for the position. But I know what hard times the whole world is now facing. I am…sympathetic.”

  Isabella is a woman who seems much older than her years. She’s thirty-four. Her nature is reserved and she’s what you might call subtly beautiful. It’s a beauty that is not at first among of her outstanding qualities but over time becomes more tangible, then increases. She has a pleasant figure, thin and attractive with doe eyes, tawny skin, and dirty blond hair.

  But when she looked down at me from her lofty leather perch, I felt contempt for everything about her, her two-dimensional cardboard cutout of an existence, her puffy condescension when she spoke, her hackneyed ideas about the way the world worked—conceived of only vaguely in the impossible dream cloud in which she lived. Then, as her expression changed almost imperceptibly in the light, as if in reaction to my thoughts, I was consumed by a sudden wave of guilt, and felt compassion for her.

  “Do you take coffee or tea or anything else?” she asked.

  “I’d love some coffee.”

  “Cream and sugar?”

  “In ample amounts.”

  “You don’t look like you do,” she said without a smile.

  She summoned Anna and placed the order as if we were in a restaurant.

  “So, where are you from? Did you grow up in Gainesville?”

  I answered her questions kindly and patiently as our coffee was delivered in two immaculate porcelain cups. She offered little about herself and was evasive in answering direct questions.

  “I’m from San Francisco, I came here when I married Mark.”

  “That’s lovely. What does he do?” I put on a chipper tone that I’m sure sounded as false to her as it did to me.

  “He’s in finance. Do you have anyone?”

  The confusion must have come across in my looks. Certainly I was confused by her words, not by their meaning, but rather as to how anyone could talk like that.

  “Are you with anyone?”

  “No, I’m not. Not now,” I said.

  “You have many lovers?” She smiled.

  I shifted uncomfortably in my chair, squinting, trying to think of something to say to a question that was as out of place as I was. “What a lovely house you have here,” I said.

  “The villa is in an appalling state. Truth is, we just acquired it and are presently renovating it from the ground up—or from the outer garden in, to be more precise.”

  She seemed as uncomfortable at this as I was at the question of lovers. A
fly buzzed to the ring around the top of my cup and landed. In the panoramic reflection on the fly’s back I saw the sudden appearance of a starlike light accompanied by the sound of a creaking door behind me.

  I heard the electric grumble of a very masculine voice.

  “I—I just need to grab a tie,” he said.

  I turned to see a strikingly handsome man with a crew cut and the body of a boxer which made his clothes seem just a tad too tight. As he looked at me for the first time, he held my gaze in his and I noticed the eyes that were pure and translucent like the tropical sea. He leaned slightly forward like one of those hulking young men feigning humility to impress a new woman.

  “Mark, this is Sophia. She’s interviewing for the nanny position.” Isabella’s voice seemed caught in the distance behind me. I felt he needed no introduction, like I’d always known him. I felt that I was no longer Sophia but someone else, standing outside of Sophia and watching the scene unfold in the third person like a ghost or an omnipresent being. All these thoughts passed in a split-second while he effortlessly sucked the eyes out of my head.

  “Did she get the job?” Mark asked.

  “It’s looking promising so far.” I could feel her smile in the tone of her voice. My senses, which had gone hyper-alert since Mark’s entry, registered everything for miles. I later found out, in further prying conversation with Isabella, that he was a hedge fund manager and derivatives trader but I could not get very much information to indicate the size of his wealth. Through much later conversation with various parties I was able to place his wealth at a conservative estimate of 700 million to 1.2 billion U.S. dollars. In that astronomical range there wasn’t much difference between the two numbers in my eyes. And since at that point in time I saw my only possible future with Mr. Stafford as nanny to his six-month-old baby, his wealth mattered little more than whether or not he could pay my fee if I got the job. In that particular moment, I was merely concerned with taking in his mesmeric presence with all my senses. Oddly, I couldn’t tell whether he was attracted to me or not. His manner was purely professional. At any rate, I convinced myself I was acting like a school girl and must drop the matter at once—and, for the time being, I did.

  “On your way out, would you see if Anna could bring in little Savannah to see how she is with Sophia, darling?”

  “Yes, of course. Nice to meet you, Sophia.”

  “The pleasure is all mine,” I said.

  With a small bow he left, and the room was once again cloaked in darkness.

  “Any questions?”

  “How old is he?” It just popped out, I immediately felt embarrassed.

  “How old do you think he is?”

  “Thirty-two.”

  “Thirty-eight. And I am thirty-four in case you wondered.” Isabella smiled with her mouth but not her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, wondering at once why I said it.

  “Whatever for, my dear?” she said. Her tone suggested she was not thirty-four but sixty-four.

  “My curiosity, I suppose.”

  “You are very proper. I like it. How old are you?”

  “Twenty-six.”

  “Do you have your passport?”

  I took my passport from my purse and handed it to her. She eyed it for some time, leafing through the pages.

  “You were in Paris.”

  “Studying for a semester.”

  “How nice. So our exotic travels will not be entirely strange to you.”

  Isabella talked like she was in a Victorian era period film, and I wanted to slap her for it, to snap her out of it. I didn’t like my surprisingly violent feelings toward her. I’ve never had feelings like that before and don’t know where they came from. I took a deep breath and stepped away from her. She handed me my passport with a sniff, and looked toward the door.

  Savannah entered in the arms of Anna. I swear I have never seen a more beautiful baby than little Savannah. She’s the Gerber baby times ten. She has the diaphanous eyes of her father, the tawny skin and full lips of her mother and a smile, when she first set eyes on me, that melted my heart. Forget Mark Stafford and his millions, I was in love with his baby. She lit up the room like a white flame.

  “Would you like to hold her, Sophia?”

  “Yes, of course. You don’t have to ask!”

  Anna handed me that nineteen pounds of pure joy, and my heart fell from my chest and splashed out across the floor, seeping into the carpet like water. Savannah studied me with her gemlike eyes, the corners creased, and she began to laugh hysterically. I do not recall ever having heard baby laughter before, and, to me, it sounded like the music of angels in heaven. I felt as if God had opened up the heavens and let me take a peak to see what was inside. I never had anything remotely like religious faith before that moment. Then I became a believer in the divine and the supernatural. And it’s because of that very special moment with Savannah that I decided to begin this diary.

  I remember feeling a certain lightness of being as I hopped into my SLK. (I had never hopped in before.) I remember the green blur of the North Florida forests and fields passing by on FL-20 at eighty m.p.h. Everything, all the disparate energies of my life, had a single direction now, a direction I was not even fully aware of at the time. And in my mind’s eye all these energies merged with the passing blur of trees all pointing in one direction, straight ahead, which became a star of white light before me. Seeing Cinnamon Beach, the villa, Isabella Gardner, Mark Stafford (why the different last names?), and that extraordinarily beautiful little baby, Savannah, had culminated in a transcendental experience, a glimpse of a state of perfection in life (or so I thought) that I had never imagined. In my memory they appeared in highly saturated images like cinematic pictures flickering around me in the dark. Archetypal in their forms: the baby was the quintessence of baby, the first, the primordial, the prototype on which all other babies were patterned; Stafford was the original hero, the greatest of heroes, the Ulysses or Achilles—Gilgamesh. I wondered what that made Isabella when a bell sound on my HTC smartphone.

  It was a text message from Julie, my best friend whose couch I slept on.

  JULIE: Hey Soph, so how’d it go? Is celebration in order?

  I tapped out a quick reply and clicked send.

  SOPHIA: Not yet, I think I got it, but won’t know for sure for a few days.

  JULIE: Thunder & lightning here. Thought we could stay in, cuddle up under the covers & watch a horror film.

  We had cuddled under covers and watched horror films before. It’s one of our favorite things to do and we’ve done it since we were kids. Our relationship is sexually ambiguous in other ways too. Julie was always a very popular and social girl at school, and she has been promiscuous from her early teens, if not earlier. I’m the opposite. I’ve had one serious boyfriend from my undergraduate days and a one-night stand, and that’s the sum total of my experience. And both of them were searing, wounding experiences, leaving negative impressions. Julie has been with over sixty partners. She can do this because she has no emotional memory to speak of. That’s how I term it. She can cry and be down about a thing one minute, and, the next, completely forget it happened. On the other hand, I have a profound emotional memory. It’s eidetic. I remember every slight committed against me since I was conscious of the concept of individuality.

  I say our relationship is sexually ambiguous not only because Julie often says she wishes I was a man so she could marry me, and I share a similar affection for her, but because on one night cuddling before a horror film we kissed. It was one of those old British horror films produced by Hammer Studios in the sixties about a werewolf who’s in love with a local village woman. The man, played by Oliver Reid, whom on occasion transformed into a werewolf, was kissing his love interest when Julie turned to me in the firelight.

  I saw her large eyes grow larger with a mixture curiosity and excitement dancing in them. Our knees were already touching. She had one hand on my arm. Julie looked very attractive to me
in that light, and in that moment. Her lips parted. My heart skipped a beat. I closed my eyes and felt the fullness of her moist lips touch mine once, then press against them. My skin tingled and broke out in goosebumps. Our tongues were drawn together like magnets. The whole experience hit me like a bolt of lightning.

  Julie ran her fingers down my chest, over my breasts, along my stomach, and into my pants. At that point, I was overcome by exhaustion, and probably shock. I fell into a deep, languorous sleep. We hadn’t spoken of the occurrence since it happened, over a year ago. The unexpected result had been that our relationship deepened considerably, and we felt much more protective over one another than before. But it would be hard to say whether there were any possessive feelings involved. In fact, I would say there weren’t because she’d had lovers since, and it had no effect on me.

  The rain came in a torrential downpour when I pulled up on the cobblestone of 117 Evergreen Drive. It was a two-story, country home built in the late 1940s for veterans returning from the war that reminded me of an English country manor with the high arches over the windows that protruded from the attic, and the rounded chimney tops. It nestled among the trees on eleven acres of forested property. On entry, I noticed a bright blaze in the fireplace, and, as I took my shoes off, my smartphone sounded.

  “Hello, Sophia.” It was a faint voice I did not at first recognize.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Isabella—Isabella Gardner. I’m calling regarding the position you interviewed for today.” She stopped, perhaps waiting for some reaction she wouldn’t get. I was quiet. My excitement had cooled, and I told myself I didn’t care whether I got the job or not. Still, my breath slowed as I awaited the following words: “The job is yours, if you will take it.” Again with the strange wording, I thought. “Are you there?”

  “I most definitely will take it. When do I start?”

  “You will move what items you require for your convenience at the nearest possible time.” Her speech was as studied as it was absurd.