“Dry sherry, please.” Madison always drank that, Maggie thought. It must be proper. She pulled her arms out of her coat and placed it beside her in the booth. The lack of bright lights in the bar didn’t prevent every man within sight from observing her with close attention. Maggie in her unadorned black sweater, Andy thought, was almost unbearably juicy, a girl with big breasts who didn’t flaunt them, and wasn’t coy about them, just let them stand at attention and speak eloquently for themselves.
“Joe, the lady will have Tío Pepe and I’ll have Absolut on the rocks. Maggie,” he said invitingly, “this is the kind of place in which people tell each other the high points of their lives, so I’ll let you go first.”
“I have no intention of telling an almost perfect stranger my life story. I’d have to know you much better,” Maggie said, trying for a tone of composed, worldly aloofness. Damn! Why hadn’t she thought of something to make up about herself when she’d had half the day to do it, instead of stealing precious minutes between jobs in anticipation and speculation and primping in front of the ladies’-room mirror?
“Quite right of you. Reveal nothing until you know to whom you’re speaking. So, about me. You already know my education and what I do. Born and bred right here on the East Side of Manhattan, the usual two parents, one older sibling, female, several cousins, all female, usual youthful traumas, dancing school et cetera, two engagements, five unhappy romances, currently completely unattached.”
Maggie giggled. “You used more words describing your job as a floater than you did in telling me your life story.”
“I was stalling for time, trying to figure out how to ask you for dinner without seeming too abrupt, but I couldn’t quite figure out how to do it.”
“You managed quite well. Now, what about those two engagements?”
“Broken by mutual consent.”
“Why?”
“General immaturity.”
“On whose part?”
“Everyone’s, no harm, no foul.”
“Ah, I see.” She sipped her sherry carefully. “And all those romances?”
“I tend to fall for the wrong girl, the neurotic, essentially unobtainable girl, the girl who falls for the obvious wrong guy instead of really loving me. I’m the Episcopalian Woody Allen, but without his talent.”
“That’s one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard,” she said, trying to sound sympathetic. Either he was a gifted liar or he wasn’t gay. Her fingers itched to take off his glasses and get a better look at his golden-brown eyes. Did he have long lashes? … Impossible to tell. She wondered if his hair felt as soft as it looked and if his beard felt as scruffy as it looked.
“Well, I’m still young,” Andy said. “There’s time to find the right girl. I’m just twenty-seven.”
“Twenty-seven and only a floater!” She sounded as scandalized as she was.
“You have to start somewhere.”
“What do you want to be when you finally grow up?”
“An expert, of course.”
“In ceramics and porcelain?”
“That would be the basic idea,” Andy McCloud replied, repressing a smile, thinking of his many intense years of specialized education. Maggie had great natural dignity, but he’d bet she wasn’t much more than twenty-one, and she certainly was unschooled in the great universe of precious and rare objects. Very few men in the world could hope to be experts in the vast fields of both ceramics and porcelain, but he was deeply ambitious.
“A business executive can always be replaced,” he informed her, “but an expert can count on being needed all his life, into his dotage, and, alas, often beyond. Now, may I hear a little about you, Miss Horvath, or do you have more questions?”
“Parents dead,” Maggie answered promptly. “No siblings, brought up by distant connections, no money for higher education, no engagements, currently unattached.” She copied his telegraphic style; it was ideal for leaving out things she didn’t intend to talk about.
“Elementary school?” he probed, finding her unnecessarily mysterious. From her account she could be an alien. Yet everything about her, her body language, her accent, her gestures, her attitudes, her entire being, revealed a girl of a class he recognized, the class he belonged to.
“Just a little country school.” She smiled nostalgically, as if she’d studied in a one-room schoolhouse in rural Nebraska.
“And how long have you been a temp?”
“Oh, quite a while.” Maggie’s tone indicated a long, interesting and varied career, something a soldier of fortune might look back on with pride.
“What did you do before that?” he asked, determined to get some concrete detail out of this girl who was growing more maddening and more alluring by the minute.
“I was a journalist, but I didn’t think I had a future in it.” Considering that it was a high school paper, that was certainly true, Maggie thought.
“What about love affairs?”
“None of your business,” she answered. Barney didn’t count as a romance, he was her oldest friend, an impossible partner in lust and confusion, but there was nothing at all romantic between them, not as she defined romance. Eighteen and only fond memories, certainly not romantic ones, of a few favorite horses. Was that all she had to show for her life? “Is the inquisition over?” she asked.
“My God, I have been giving you the third degree, haven’t I? It was rude of me, I apologize, but you’re so—how about another sherry? Or are you starving?”
“Oddly enough, no,” Maggie said, coming to a decision. “What I’d really enjoy, what I’d most like to have right now is … is … a cup of coffee.”
“Joe, check please, right away.”
They took a taxi to a building in the upper sixties off Madison Avenue. Could Andy possibly still live at home with his parents? Maggie wondered as they strode quickly through the handsomely appointed lobby to the elevator.
“It’s rent stabilized,” he told her, reading her thoughts as he unlocked the door. Inside she just had time to gain an impression of wood paneling and walls of bookcases before he turned her around and took her in his arms.
“May I?” Andy McCloud asked, bending his head to try and look into her eyes.
“Only if you take off those glasses,” Maggie answered, doing it for him as she spoke, trembling with eagerness. “I remembered what you said about withholding pleasure. Life’s too short and dinner takes too long.”
“Oh, Maggie, are you real?”
“Try me,” she whispered, reaching up and twining her arms around his neck so that she could easily reach his lips. Yes, she thought, as he kissed her over and over again, as firm on his feet as a tree, oh, yes. She half-closed her eyes as she let him lead her into another room and sit her down on the edge of a bed. She pulled off her boots and her panty hose, and lay back of her own accord, squeezing her eyes tightly shut. Who would have guessed that he had such demanding lips? she wondered. Who would have expected him to be lying naked next to her so quickly? Who would have imagined that he could strip off her clothes so adroitly, a man who couldn’t even assemble a coffeemaker?
“Maggie, aren’t you ever going to look at me?”
“No, not yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because I want to be surprised,” she whispered, pulling his head down to her breasts. The contrast between the silky hair she twisted between her fingers and the rogue scrape of his beard as he concentrated all his attention on her breasts with a controlled but unmistakably violent hunger, a hunger that announced that he was in no hurry to satisfy it, told her that she had to do with a man, not a boy.
His mouth was deliberate and crafty, brushing her nipples only long enough to promise further attention, while he knelt on either side of her body and raptly marveled at the whiteness of her breasts and the perfection of their form. Each time he imprinted his hard mouth on them he left a mark that receded slowly, so that soon both her breasts wore a rare and rosy flush, while her nipples,
all but untouched, filled and stood erect in circles of deepest pink, their tender surfaces stretched upward in a way that begged for the easement of his tongue.
Too soon, he thought, too soon. She had run the show so far, but now the power was in his hands and he chose to grasp her hips even more tightly between his knees and let his mouth drift, slow kiss by slow kiss, away from her breasts and down the fragrant skin of her torso, almost at random, ignoring her attempts to stretch upward toward his mouth. She wanted to be surprised, she’d said, and he vowed to himself to do his best.
Now that Andy’s head was too far away for her to grasp his hair, Maggie stretched out her arms and caressed his shoulders, reveling in the solid forms of his tense muscles and the vigorous tufts of hair under his arms. Her mouth was dry with desire, her lips open with an unuttered plea, when suddenly she felt him elude her touch as he moved downward on the bed, holding her thighs apart with his elbows, his hands stern and commanding as he opened her wide, parting her dark pubic curls far enough to bury his tongue between her legs.
She held back a scream, panting, almost holding her breath. She’d read about this, dreamed of this, but the reality and the dream had nothing in common. The warm roughness of his artfully pointed tongue meeting the delicate concavities of her body was far wilder and more arousing than anything her imagination could have created. She listened with all of her senses as his lips and teeth joined his tongue, fastening themselves on the distended, hard, secret arrow only her own fingers, and Barney once, had ever touched. Maggie was utterly silent. Only the muffled sound of his sucking existed until, soon, with a shriek, she came with a series of acute, frenzied spasms that arched her body high off the bed.
Not until she lay almost quietly, but still quivering, did he push himself into her with exquisite carnal precision, seeking his own sure pleasure without hurry. Abruptly he stopped, startled at the resistance he met. “Maggie? Maggie?” He pulled away.
“Yes,” she sighed, smiling to herself.
“Jesus, Maggie! You’re a virgin!”
“I told you … none of your business …” she breathed languidly.
“But …”
“Please,” she murmured, sliding down on the bed, tilting her pelvis upward, urging him back toward her, and rubbing one finger shamelessly on the base of his spine, “don’t stop now, I couldn’t bear it.”
“Do you think I could?” As gently as possible but relentless with severely awakened and unrelieved need, Andy took her entirely, and afterward, as if in penance for his ignorance, he attended to her neglected nipples with all his skill until she was maddened by fresh desire, ready for him to take her again.
25
Polly Guildenstern’s own life offered such possibilities for gossip and intrigue that she had little curiosity left over for her star boarder’s comings and goings. However, she couldn’t fail to notice that over the family holidays of 1988, Thanksgiving and Christmas, there was apparently no place on earth where Maggie Horvath was expected, nor did she ever mention any normal, conventional regret at not being able to join her family for one reason or another. Maggie, looking not at all depressed, spent the long weekends sleeping late, puttering in her tiny kitchen, reading a pile of books, going alone to movies, and devouring with gratitude the leftovers Polly brought back from the big Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners to which she’d been invited.
Was she an orphan? Polly wondered. She knew Maggie had a lover or possibly several lovers, because there were many nights when she didn’t return to the apartment. Now wouldn’t he, or one of them, as the case might be, invite her for a holiday dinner? Polly wondered. And what had happened to cousin Barney? If, as Maggie had said, they’d been brought up together, what had happened to that family? It was all most mysterious and worrying, for someone of Polly’s warm nature.
There was a deep essential aloneness to Maggie that made Polly feel irrationally guilty, almost maternal, but it was against her principles to delve into anyone’s personal background unless invited to do so. All she could do was triple her casual dinner invitations, so that Maggie would know that there was one place in the world where a plate was always set for her whenever a pot was simmering on the stove.
Gradually, throughout the winter of 1988 and the early weeks of 1989, Polly and Maggie became excellent friends. Maggie was still working as a temp at S & S and she fascinated Polly with the growing body of knowledge she was accumulating about the workings of an auction house. Eventually Maggie told her about Andy McCloud, but from what she heard, Polly shrewdly deduced that Andy was as close-mouthed about his parents as Maggie was about hers. The only solid detail Maggie could give her about his background was that his older sister was a ballerina in an English ballet company. How warm and important was their relationship, she wondered, if they chose not to talk to each other about their families? Wasn’t that one of the classic ways in which lovers became friends?
Polly kept her own counsel, however, even when the registered letters began arriving for Maggie. The overweight postman who normally left her mail downstairs in her mailbox complained bitterly each time he had to climb the stairs and get Polly to sign for the letters that began to arrive for Mary Margaret Horvath on a weekly basis in January 1989. As Polly placed each one on the floor in front of Maggie’s door, she noticed that they all came from the same place, a law firm named Butler, O’Neill and Jones. As she checked her own mail she couldn’t avoid seeing the same registered letters in her box, unopened, with “return to sender” written in block letters across them. Was Maggie being sued, she wondered? It wasn’t anything she could ask about, it would make it seem as if she were spying on her, but Polly’s curiosity was aroused.
One early afternoon her buzzer sounded and a pleasant woman’s voice announced that a Miss Robinson of Butler, O’Neill and Jones would like to see Miss Mary Margaret Horvath.
“She’s at work,” Polly answered.
“Oh, no! I’ve been ordered not to dare come back to the office if I can’t see her in person. Absolutely all I need is her signature. And it’s snowing worse than ever. I have to wait for her until she gets back, even if I freeze in a snowbank. Unless—could you possibly tell me where she works? I could try to find her there.”
Polly weighed the question. She didn’t intend to tell a stranger where to find Maggie, but she couldn’t let a person with such a charming voice stand outside in one of the worst storms of the winter.
“Why don’t you come up? Perhaps I can help.”
“Oh, thank you!”
Polly Guildenstern, you’re just agog, you know you’re just dying to find out what’s going on, she scolded herself severely, as she put the kettle on to boil, her adorably pointed nose was fairly quivering with inquisitiveness, her very hair ribbon alert with unasked questions.
Attractive, young Jane Robinson left her wet boots outside on the landing, and after she’d removed her heavy coat and made friends with Toto, she thawed out, gulping the restorative tea with pleasure. “It’s my first job,” she explained to Polly. “I’m just out of law school and if I don’t bring back a signature to Mr. Butler, he’ll probably fire me … and it’s such a prize job too, they’re a major Wall Street firm. Oh dear, oh dear, what shall I do? Miss Horvath has sent back the document unopened three weeks in a row, so they sent me. This tea is saving my life, I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Here, have a cookie, I made them myself.”
“Oh, bless you! I didn’t have a chance to grab lunch today. Mr. Butler threw an absolute tantrum when he saw the returned letter, and practically chased me out into the storm. Oh, chocolate chip, my favorite! Could I … possibly have another?”
“Oh, eat them all, you’re doing me a favor, I made too many. And call me Polly.”
“You’re an angel! What a heavenly studio! And you look just like Alice in Wonderland. I wish I’d had artistic talent, but no, not a drop, so my destiny was law school and Mr. Butler. Oh, Polly, terrible, mean Mr. Butler! This document may
be my downfall, and then it’ll be difficult to get another job with such a good firm.”
“Document?”
“As far as I can tell, it’s a major document. They have to have Miss Horvath’s signature before they can settle the estate, that’s the gossip around the office, but the partners are in a terrible state about the delay. It couldn’t be more important to them, the deceased was their biggest client.”
“Why didn’t one of them come in person if it’s so vital?”
“Estate,” Polly thought, and a “deceased”; how lucky she’d taken a chance and invited Jane Robinson up.
“Oh no, Polly,” Jane said, shocked. “They’re all too important to run around chasing signatures. That’s for underlings like me.”
“And of course they don’t care about my fat old postman who has to walk up all these flights,” Polly said indignantly, “or about my being disturbed having to sign for all the letters.”
“Things like that simply wouldn’t occur to Mr. Butler. Poor Mrs. Butler. Imagine the life she leads! Well, I’d better not interrupt your work any longer. I wonder, if I leave this letter with you, could you possibly just give it physically to Miss Horvath and tell her that she shouldn’t send it back without opening it and signing it? Then I can explain that she was at work but you agreed to hand deliver it. Mr. Butler might accept the fact that I did my best, even though I don’t come back with the signature.”
“I guess I can, Jane, although it sounds a little like serving a subpoena. But what if she refuses? What if she won’t even take the letter?”
“Well, I guess the next step would be, oh, dear, I could be wrong but I think Mr. Butler will track her down at work. Himself. And that would be unpleasant for her, and hard to explain—he’s not an inconspicuous man. And he wouldn’t be discreet. Or quiet.”
“How would he know where to find her?”
The Jewels of Tessa Kent Page 28
