Her blood was on fire, and there was no argument in her, only this out-of-control trembling. Arm around her waist, he half-dragged her, half-pulled her into the greenhouse, where they sprawled on the tanbark, neither of them aware of the roughness, both groping to push aside the separating cloth. He lowered himself between her legs, and gasping, she looked up into that broad Slavic face which was transformed by passion yet blurred with tenderness; then she abandoned rational thought entirely, closing her eyes as she was caught up in ecstasy. This loss of control was not frightening or humiliating, but a kind of hitherto unrealized miracle. Almost immediately she gave a series of birdlike, involuntary coital cries, and he began his swift thrusting.
They lay joined on the tanbark smiling at each other.
She touched the hard scar on his chest, saying, “Gerry . . .”
He shook his head slightly. “No sticky speeches, there’s no point, we don’t need words, not when we’re the same goddamn animal. Just lie there looking like a beautiful, satisfied empress.”
26
After that first time, they went to Gerry’s place, a cubicle off the institute’s detached garage. A pair of thin olive-drab GI blankets covered the swaybacked iron bedstead, termite dust sifted perpetually onto the linoleum, plywood replaced a missing windowpane, and there was a constant drip of the shower into the yellowing tub. Gerry was indifferent to the flophouse surroundings. Althea found them relentlessly aphrodisiac. No sooner had she stepped through the warped door than she was embracing him. They would eat dinner at Belvedere, returning through the quiet dark streets of Beverly Hills to the institute, parking the station wagon in one of the empty spaces next door behind the silver shop, a nod toward discretion, though by night there was no traffic in the black shadowed alley and Henry Lissauer still obeyed the enemy-alien curfew to the point of never leaving the house proper after eight.
Gerry made love the way he painted. He would undress her leisurely, caressing and adoring her, an immense amount of joyful, sweet foreplay that inevitably plunged her into orgasm. Once he was inside her, though, his tender concern evaporated, and he drove swiftly and selfishly to his own climax while she responded with upheavals deep within her womb.
Mr. and Mrs. Cunningham went directly from Washington to San Francisco, where delegates from all over the globe were gathered. Althea scarcely read their long letters about the international furor—and neither did she pay attention to the news about the United Nations in papers or on the radio.
That month Gerry completed a half-dozen significant portraits of her. Then he determined to do something outsize, an eight-by-ten-foot canvas. He made studies in Belvedere’s greenhouse, then nailed up his canvas on the institute’s deep back porch. Lissauer and his students watched the progress. The narrow, tenderly curved girl’s body in a chaste white summer dress transcended its surface, assuming a sensuality that was made explicit by Althea’s intimate, anticipatory smile. Though Althea and Gerry’s outward manner toward each other remained unromantic in the extreme, the vibrant eroticism of the portrait proclaimed their intimacy as surely as if they had fallen in the carnal embrace on the dusty floors of the institute.
Althea knew the others were talking. In her new security she would think: so what, so what?
One morning in July she parked on Rodeo, entering the front door, going through the kitchen to get a fresh look at her portrait.
It was not there.
Althea had never dared lose the proprieties: she could not go openly to Gerry’s room. But when he failed to show up in the studio for the morning’s model—a derelict sourly redolent of cheap wine—her alarm swelled like an abscess. Lissauer, circling the easels with his preliminary critiques, reached her.
“Mr. Lissauer,” she asked, “did Gerry Horak mention he was going someplace?”
Lissauer turned away. The Assyrian profile was impassive, but his scraggy neck flushed. Since Gerry had arrived the elderly teacher had behaved toward Althea with hurt dignity, as though she had jilted him, a quietly expressive jealousy that endeared him to her. “Mr. Horak will not be with the institute any longer, Miss Cunningham.” The halting voice was solemn with a trace of fear. “He is leaving this morning.”
“Leaving?”
“It is possible he might already be gone.”
With a little smile, she wiped her brush absolutely free of paint on the rag before placing it in the can of turps. So, she thought. He’s taken off without one word to me. In a few breaths her recent confidence had melted like sugar in water, and she was again an outsider, an unworthy creature who could not even command the lasting affections of a common laborer. Oh, how could she have forgotten this sense of frustrated despair? Gerry’s been laughing at me all along, she thought, and so has Henry Lissauer—everybody at the institute is rolling in the aisles about me.
Lissauer was pointing to the canvas. “Hnn, hnn. The figure . . . if you place the figure here on the left, Miss Cunningham, there will be a triangular composition . . .”
“Yes, Mr. Lissauer, that’s what we all want, isn’t it? A nice obvious little painting.”
He stepped clumsily to the next easel.
Althea could scarcely breathe. I have to see if he’s still there, she thought. Leaving squiggles of paint to harden on her palette, she raced down the empty stairs. Midmorning heat had softened the blacktop, and she felt the give as she darted around the students’ cars to bang on the warped door.
Althea let out a sigh of partial relief when Gerry called, “It’s open.”
Naked except for his GI khaki shorts, he was cramming olive-drab clothing into a duffel bag. His bare chest, no longer bandaged, showed the scar tissue an angrier maroon than usual, and he moved stiffly, as if the not-yet-healed wound pained him, which she knew it often did. He had not shaved, and the thick, dark stubble gave him a dangerous look.
“Ahh, so the rumor is true,” she said with potent vindictiveness. “Our fine-feathered Hunkie is fleeing the luxury of Beverly Hills.”
“I was coming up to the studio to explain.”
“One of God’s chosen people already did.”
“What a shitty way for you to find out,” Gerry said, apologetic.
Althea looked uncertainly at him. “You really were going to tell me?”
“What do you think, I was running away?”
“You didn’t mention a word last night.”
“Lissauer came out here about an hour after you left. The poor chickenshit Hebe, he had to slug down brandy to get up the nerve to tell me I couldn’t use the premises anymore.”
“He knows we’ve been coming here?” Her voice rose. “He’s been spying?”
“It seems one of the students went to him. Said she doesn’t like what’s going on, a young girl being seduced.”
“It’s that damn de Liso cripple!” Althea burst out. She had formed a near-hatred for Roxanne de Liso, who praised Gerry’s work resoundingly, vivaciously, knowledgeably.
“I’m pretty sure she’s not the one.”
“That jabbering bitch!” Below the surface of her vehemence, Althea was exulting: Gerry didn’t betray me, she thought. “So Herr Professor finally summoned up the nerve to tippie-toe out of his house in the dark?”
Gerry, who had finished packing his few possessions, straightened with difficulty. “Althea, Lissauer was doing me a favor, letting me stay. The plain damn truth is, I should never have brought you here. It was a shitty way to repay him. I’ve gotten to know him pretty well. He’s red-hot to become an American. If there were any problem with morals, his chances at citizenship would be compromised.”
How dare Gerry defend their enemies? “That’s a long word for you, ‘compromised.’”
He sighed. “You’re seventeen. The law says what we do here is rape. Statutory rape. Lissauer could be blamed too—the Beverly Hills cops are very tight assed. The poor bastard’s a man without a country, a resident alien. You’ve read about what they found in the concentration camps, the hell it’s been
for Jews over there.”
She hadn’t read about Hitler’s death factories. The grisly revelations, the war still blazing in the Pacific, the formation of the United Nations had escaped her notice because of this stocky, near naked man.
“Will Mrs. de Liso wheel herself into City Hall to tell the police?”
“Christ, Althea, quit laying it on her. More likely the blabbermouth was that prissy broad, Mrs.—”
“Gerry!” Althea interrupted in alarm. “If Mr. Lissauer gets in trouble, you could go to jail!”
“Me?”
“Rape, you just said rape!”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me,” he said, gripping her shoulders, conducting a modicum of physical reassurance. “I’m going to move in with a buddy—he can use the rent money.”
“And what about us?”
“Business as usual. Afternoons and weekends I’ll come over to Belvedere to work on the portrait.”
“If we make love, you’ll be in danger!”
“What the hell gives, Althea? This isn’t like you—you don’t run scared.”
Until you came along I always ran scared, she thought. And did not even consider her next words. “It’d be legal if we were married,” she said. Then her narrow hands clenched into fists, and she looked away. Girls didn’t propose. The girl waited, forever if necessary, for the man to avow that he wanted her to have and to hold. How disastrously wide she had laid herself open!
The springs of the cot creaked as Gerry sat down. “We belong together,” he said slowly. “We’re simple and right together in a way I never believed possible. For some reason, we’re lousy bastards apart, but together we’re decent.”
She nodded at this truth she had not heretofore recognized.
“But there’s the little matter of your family.”
“Them!” she said contemptuously.
“Face it, I’m a low-life slob who eats peas on a knife. Steelworkers’ sons don’t marry Coynes.”
“Gerry . . .” Her voice went very low. “Are you putting me off?”
He shook his head. “No. I’m a foot-loose guy involved in my work. I’ve never figured on the permanent thing. But you’re not like the others. I meant it—we’re good for each other . . . and I don’t just mean in the sack. I want to be with you the rest of my life.”
“Then don’t worry about my parents. I can handle that end.”
“I haven’t met them, but take my word, when it comes to this sort of thing, the rich bastards have their own set of rules, rules that would’ve made the Gestapo blush. They’ll see me in hell before they let me marry you.”
“You sound like you’ve been involved with some other nubile heiress.”
“I have,” he said tersely.
“Well, in the case of my parents, there’s another little matter. I have a little something on them. A pretty horrendous skeleton to rattle.” As she spoke, she was overcome by aching, nostalgic grief for those days of innocence when noises in her room dredged up only old ghost stories. Hunching on the unpainted stool, she began to cry.
She had never wept in Gerry’s presence, and as far as she was concerned, this gasping, hiccuping breakdown proved a greater intimacy between them than sex. He held her wet face to his scarred chest, stroking her gleaming hair, not speaking.
After her tears had ended, he cupped her wet face. “I love you,” he said.
A few minutes later they were loading the duffel bag and canvases and the enormous, unwieldy wet portrait in back of the station wagon. She drove him a few miles south and west to Sawtelle, an older section of Los Angeles that drowsed like a passed-over hamlet in its shabbiness. The paint had long ago peeled from his friend’s run-down shack, and the weathered boards and shingle roof were quilted with Algerian ivy.
Althea was back at the institute for the last hour of the modeling session, her face arrogant and cold as she washed in the outlines of the derelict.
* * *
The following day was very hot, but it had cooled off slightly by five. She and Gerry were in the poolhouse, Gerry—shirtless—frowning as he swiftly plastered paint on a corner of the enormous canvas, she standing in her pose. She heard the purr of an engine coming up from the gate. The sound of the car continued to the front of the house.
“That’s weird,” she said. “Only my parents use the front door.”
Gerry frowned—he despised chitchat when he worked.
“I’m taking a break,” Althea said, clicking in her high-heeled white sandals along the pool deck to the diving board. From here she had a clear view of the house and front courtyard: raising a hand, she squinted into the long, hard rays of the lowering sun.
O’Rourke held the car door open and her mother stood waiting while her father, holding his briefcase, emerged from the custom Swallow limousine.
Althea clasped her arms across the bodice of the white batiste frock she wore for the portrait, her mind darting in alarm. Why were they home? They hadn’t let her know. Had that terrified refugee telephoned them? The servants had mentioned nothing about their arrival.
Gerry, unaware of the catastrophe, continued to work.
“Well, what do you know,” she said in a loud, jocular voice. “Surprise of surprises.”
He turned, blinking. “What gives?”
“The Belvedere delegation to the UN has returned.”
“Your parents?” Still holding his paint-smeared palette knife, he walked over to the diving board.
“Rich bastards.” She used his term. “See the horns and hoofs.”
“I’ll put on my shirt.”
“That’s right, play the ardent suitor.”
“Althea, they have to know about me sooner or later, so what’s wrong with sooner? Besides, aren’t you the girl who said she could handle them?” He was grinning, but he reached a comforting arm around her waist.
At that moment her father glanced down the terrace. She was too far away to read his expression, but she saw him pull his shoulders back as he continued to gaze down at them.
“You’re getting paint on my dress,” she said, moving from Gerry.
Her father waved.
Why am I so afraid? Althea wondered as she waved back.
27
In the cool, austere hall, Luther eased forward, murmuring to Althea that the Cunninghams were awaiting them in the library. Althea’s dread increased, and she drew apart from Gerry.
The mansion, while lacking the Belle Epoque excesses of earlier Coyne homesteads and in Mrs. Cunningham’s eyes a simple home, was hardly a cozy place, being furnished with excellent early-nineteenth-century English antiques of a decidedly formal nature. Nowhere was this formality more obtrusive than in the library. Occupying the entire downstairs portion of the east wing, the carved butternut paneling, the exceptionally high ceiling, and the shelves filled with thousands of books that ranked up to it emphasized the room’s massive proportions. Next to the mammoth fireplace, the concert Steinway appeared a small ebony toy.
The late-afternoon light filtered through thick silk curtains onto a pair of Hepplewhite armchairs where Mr. and Mrs. Cunningham sat so still that they appeared to be sculptured red granite effigies. Then Mr. Cunningham rose, holding out his arms.
“Toots,” he said.
“Althea, dear,” her mother said.
“Daddy, Mother, what a surprise.” Althea crossed the enormous carpet that had been woven for this room. Parental kisses did nothing to assuage the banging of her frightened heart. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”
“We didn’t decide until this morning. We took the train down,” said Mrs. Cunningham.
Althea said, “But what about the conference?”
Gerry had halted at the door.
Mr. Cunningham, staring at him, said in a louder tone, “Come on in. You must be Mr. Horak.”
Althea said, “Yes. I wrote to you about my friend.”
Mrs. Cunningham, who had somehow transmuted her bovine shyness into a regal chill, r
emained seated while Mr. Cunningham, who wore clothes easily and well, stood stiff in his summer-gray suit as if it were a general’s full-dress regalia. Gerry came toward them in his paint-smeared, unironed fatigues, a peasant. Althea had a sudden vision of her lover touching his curly brown forelock.
She introduced him formally.
Gerry, of course, showed no subservience. He behaved with his usual surly ease, as if he belonged wherever he happened to find himself, as if he were innately equal to kings—and Coynes. “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Cunningham,” he said.
“Ahhh, yes. Mr. Horak,” Mrs. Cunningham said.
“Sit down, Mr. Horak, Althea.” Mr. Cunningham waited until they took places at either end of a ten-foot black leather sofa. “I won’t beat around the bush,” he said. “We left San Francisco for one reason. We’ve been having some disturbing reports—”
“Reports?” Althea interrupted sharply. “What do you mean, reports?”
“Every week M’liss telephones me,” said Mrs. Cunningham breathily.
“She spies on me?” Althea whispered.
Mr. Cunningham replied, “She telephones your mother to tell her about Belvedere. You know how close they are.” M’liss had been nurse to Gertrude Coyne as well as Althea. “Of course the main topic of their conversations is you. We want to hear all about you.” Mr. Cunningham’s weak, handsomely amiable face retained its unaccustomed lines of sternness. “We’ve been very disturbed to learn about the increasing intensity of your, uh, friendship. You seem to spend all your free time with Mr. Horak. Afternoons, evenings, weekends.”
“Gerry’s been painting me—”
“Althea,” Gerry interrupted, looking at her. “Your father’s right. They haven’t left the United Nations to play word games.” He raised one thick eyebrow expressively.
Althea, furious and wretched that M’liss, her nurse, her friend, had been spying and tattling, told herself that Gerry was right, the betrayal made no difference. Sooner or later her parents would have to learn where her affections lay. She nodded at Gerry.
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