accosted him after dessert. The shining skin exposed by her low-cut Herrera gown of watered silk flashed like a breastplate; she pressed him into a conversational corner. He wanted, under the stimulus of the three colors of wine served with the meal, to reach down and fish up one of her tits, to see if her frecklesextended to the nipple. Did she go topless, that is, in her and Izzy’s privacy beside their East Hampton pool? As a girl she had surely sunbathed with minimum coverage on the salty, rainbow-ridden foredeck of her father’s yachts as they ploughed the Sound and the turquoise Caribbean. She read these thoughts, or sensed their heat, and pressed her freckled décolletage two inches closer to his already rumpled shirtfront. “Henry, what’s happening between you and Martina? She seems so distracted and sour.”
“She does?” He searched out where in the little crowd of penthouse visitants Martina and her dull charcoal dress had lodged. She was, his secret garden fragrant of spices and overripe, leaf-embowered fruits, in close conversation with the blue-collar poet; without doubt Jim was the hero of the evening. “Well, maybe she doesn’t like the way the Communist countries have adopted capitalism,” Bech suggested. “They’ve taken the gangsters and the exploitation of the masses and left out all the rest.”
“Henry, darling”—the “darling” meant that she knew he wanted to fish up her tits; she too had imbibed a tricolor of wine—“only you think of Martina as a Communist. She left Czechoslovakia when she was a toddler.”
“As the twig is bent,” Bech said.
“Isaiah and I thought you two were perfect for each other. Lately she has dropped to him one or two hints that we were wrong.”
“Being perfect for each other is itself an imperfection, don’t you think, in the murky sexual arena? I mean, sadomasochism has to have some room for exercise. How do you and Izzy handle perfection, may I ask?”
Pamela tapped him on the sternum, deftly mirroring his desire to touch her in the corresponding, but naked, spot.Perky shiksa tits, without that sallow Jewish heaviness, that nagging memory of one’s mother’s. Pam’s apple cheeks glowed; her teeth, small and round and tilted inwards like a baby’s, were exposed by a flirtatious laugh back to the molars, which lacked a single metal filling. Had they been crowned? What is natural and what is not? With rich women one never knows. Were Pamela’s eyes so wide-open because he was fascinatingly provocative, or because she had had lid surgery? He peered at the delicate skin beneath her arched brows, looking for tiny scars. “We share interests,” she told him. “And we adore the children we’ve had by other marriages.”
“Ah, children,” Bech said, numbed by his memory of the three children of Bea Latchett’s with whom he had for a time shared a Westchester County domicile—three little quick stabs, followed by a throb of loss. Ann and Judy, the twins, had married away from the East Coast, but Donald, their little brother, lived in New York, as a fashion photographer’s assistant. Once a year he and his former stepfather had lunch. Donald was—to judge by his tight but tinted haircut and right-eared earring and failure ever to mention a girlfriend—gay, but Bech never inquired. If the boy had been warped, Bech blamed himself; when he and Bea had split up, Donald had been ten, and heartbreakingly willing to love them both.
“And on the rare occasions when we don’t agree,” Pamela was explaining, “we know how to fight healthily.”
“Yes, I can see health written all over you. But sedentary old Izzy? Pamela, tell me”—he touched her bare arm, just under the freckled ball of her shoulder, a compromise—“don’t you find him sometimes terribly, how can I say this, oppressive?”
Her face stiffened, intensifying Bech’s suspicions of plastic surgery. She said, “Isaiah is the most sensitive and quick-witted man I have
“She does?” He searched out where in the little crowd of penthouse visitants Martina and her dull charcoal dress had lodged. She was, his secret garden fragrant of spices and overripe, leaf-embowered fruits, in close conversation with the blue-collar poet; without doubt Jim was the hero of the evening. “Well, maybe she doesn’t like the way the Communist countries have adopted capitalism,” Bech suggested. “They’ve taken the gangsters and the exploitation of the masses and left out all the rest.”
“Henry, darling”—the “darling” meant that she knew he wanted to fish up her tits; she too had imbibed a tricolor of wine—“only you think of Martina as a Communist. She left Czechoslovakia when she was a toddler.”
“As the twig is bent,” Bech said.
“Isaiah and I thought you two were perfect for each other. Lately she has dropped to him one or two hints that we were wrong.”
“Being perfect for each other is itself an imperfection, don’t you think, in the murky sexual arena? I mean, sadomasochism has to have some room for exercise. How do you and Izzy handle perfection, may I ask?”
Pamela tapped him on the sternum, deftly mirroring his desire to touch her in the corresponding, but naked, spot.Perky shiksa tits, without that sallow Jewish heaviness, that nagging memory of one’s mother’s. Pam’s apple cheeks glowed; her teeth, small and round and tilted inwards like a baby’s, were exposed by a flirtatious laugh back to the molars, which lacked a single metal filling. Had they been crowned? What is natural and what is not? With rich women one never knows. Were Pamela’s eyes so wide-open because he was fascinatingly provocative, or because she had had lid surgery? He peered at the delicate skin beneath her arched brows, looking for tiny scars. “We share interests,” she told him. “And we adore the children we’ve had by other marriages.”
“Ah, children,” Bech said, numbed by his memory of the three children of Bea Latchett’s with whom he had for a time shared a Westchester County domicile—three little quick stabs, followed by a throb of loss. Ann and Judy, the twins, had married away from the East Coast, but Donald, their little brother, lived in New York, as a fashion photographer’s assistant. Once a year he and his former stepfather had lunch. Donald was—to judge by his tight but tinted haircut and right-eared earring and failure ever to mention a girlfriend—gay, but Bech never inquired. If the boy had been warped, Bech blamed himself; when he and Bea had split up, Donald had been ten, and heartbreakingly willing to love them both.
“And on the rare occasions when we don’t agree,” Pamela was explaining, “we know how to fight healthily.”
“Yes, I can see health written all over you. But sedentary old Izzy? Pamela, tell me”—he touched her bare arm, just under the freckled ball of her shoulder, a compromise—“don’t you find him sometimes terribly, how can I say this, oppressive?”
Her face stiffened, intensifying Bech’s suspicions of plastic surgery. She said, “Isaiah is the most sensitive and quick-witted man I have
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