Chapter 20

“Just the beginning, darling.” Watching the limousine driver stack their luggage in the trunk of the long blue car, he regretted that he had not thought to request traditional black. And he wished that Val Hunter lived in the front house instead of the back one, so that she might see him taking Carolyn away.

“First class all the way, Princess. Nothing but the best from here on.” Waving the driver away, he held the limousine door open for her.

Late into the night in Miami Beach, in still, balmy air, they strolled barefoot along the ocean edge. Since their early days together he had seldom mentioned his boyhood, and he related again stories whose pain and harshness had so faded out of her memory that they acquired fresh poignance as he spoke. Later, she wore the nightgown, and in moonlight that cut a swath in the ocean below their balcony she welcomed him with a responsiveness that brought his lovemaking to swift and passionate heights. The next morning she woke to his hands again on her body.

They flew in a nine-passenger Cessna to the Bahamian island of Eleuthera, holding hands as the dark blue sea under the tiny plane turned translucent green. That evening, in the bar of the Winding Bay Club, feeling like expatriates, they shared the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games with several dozen raucous, cheering strangers, all of them Americans. As a smiling Bahamian waiter replenished her rum drink, Carolyn watched dramatic aerial shots of glistening Los Angeles with tearful pride in her newly adopted city, and when at last the American athletes marched joyously into the Coliseum behind their flag to the buoyant strains of “The Stars and Stripes Forever” she wished with all her soul she were home.

Blue-green seas of crystal purity, blinding white sand, swiftly changing cloud formations in hurtfully blue skies—everything evoked memories of the vivid color in Val’s paintings. Carolyn strolled perfect, unpeopled beaches with Paul, waded in the transparent water gazing at tiny, luminous, swiftly fleeing fish, collected seashells at low tide, lay with Paul in the sun.

Eager to explore, they rented a car and with it a quietly courteous guide who took them over unpredictably surfaced roads and through villages of brilliantly hued, neat houses built next to delapidated shacks and ancient buildings dating back two centuries or more. They stopped at other island resorts where Carolyn explored the modest gift shops. They rode along unmarked roads through a profusion of flowering foliage to emerge on the white or rose-tinted sand of an immaculate Caribbean-facing beach, or, on the other side of the island, on windswept cliffs overlooking the crashing Atlantic.

She went on their excursions with enthusiasm, hoping to exhaust him, or, failing that, to exhaust herself so that she could truthfully plead tiredness when she could not bring herself to another crescendo of response to his lovemaking. Time alone with him in their beach-front cottage—whatever the hour of day or evening—meant lovemaking; her tissues were becoming more and more tender, her insides recoiling as from an invasion.

In the evenings they had dinner in the club dining room, to the sound of murmuring conversations and taped music of the Caribbean, with an occasional pop tune she remembered issuing from the radio in Neal’s room after he went to bed. After dinner they would stroll back to their cottage, the coconut palm fronds dancing in the breezy, balmy air, his arm around her, his hand possessively stroking her hip. And soon she would lay listening to the ocean and the wind in the palm trees as she caressed him, as his fingers insistently stroked, seeking wetness for his poised penis. Then the groaning question: “Do you feel me?” “Yes…yes, Paul darling…” “Better than on our honeymoon…Never this good…” Kissing her throat, her ears, her face; the final piston thrusts, his descent into sleep.

Washing herself then, patting cool water on her tissues, a soothing welcome comfort between her legs.

Five days into their vacation, early in the morning they were to take a Bahamasair flight to stay overnight in Nassau, she awakened with fierce itching and burning. She examined herself; her vaginal lips were bright angry red.

“I’ll check at the desk about getting a doctor,” Paul said, his tone uneasy, his forehead creased in concern.

“I don’t think it’s necessary.” She laughed in her embarrassment. “It’s not like that infection I had four years ago, remember? There’s no discharge. It’s just that—” She laughed again. “We’ve been…well, let’s wait a day or two, please? I’d be mortified to have a doctor tell me—”

“Okay,” Paul said immediately. “But we’d better stay here. You’ll be too uncomfortable to—”

“Yes,” she said. “Maybe we could get a cab to the nearest pharmacy. I’ll pick up some ointment. I’ll be fine.”

Later that morning, relaxed on the patio of their cottage, she savored the beautiful clarity of the water, the salt smell of the soft air. There would be no invasion that night, perhaps for two or three more nights.

That afternoon they strolled down to the club’s tiny gift shop, located in a frame building near the beach. She bought Neal a white Winding Bay T-shirt and several decks of cards with scenes of the islands, the bright blues and bleached whites of the Caribbean. She had already bought him, in other gift shops, a brilliant blue T-shirt emblazoned with a great white shark, and an assortment of shells.

“You’re really crazy about that kid,” Paul observed dryly. He pointed at a tall black woman strolling gracefully on the walkway beside the gift shop, a basket of fruit balanced on her head. “Can’t you just see his mother doing something like that?”

“Honey?” The eyes she turned to him were neutral, her voice seemed detached. “Would you have loved me if I’d been six feet tall?”

“Sure.” There had been only the barest hesitation. “I would,” he added.

“What?” Her thoughts had withdrawn from him; she examined a tray of gold chain bracelets.

“Love you if you were six feet tall.”

“Oh. That’s good.” Did Val ever wear bracelets? Probably not…

That night, feeling guilty at her sense of relief, she suggested to Paul, “If you want to make love, honey, I could—”

“No.” His tone softened. “It seems too much like masturbation after the real thing.”

As she turned over to sleep, she reflected that perhaps he was as weary as she of their bouts of sexuality. Her body her own for the night, she fell deeply, pleasurably asleep.

For the next two days, no longer feeling a compulsion to initiate activity, she luxuriated in the beach sun, sitting on their patio reading novels she had picked up from a bookshelf in the front office. With Paul off playing golf at the Cotton Bay Club, she would stroll the grounds of Winding Bay and talk with the Bahamian known as the dive master, the club’s resident expert on the island’s waters. Soft spoken but gregarious, he showed her perfect specimens of the myriad shells taken from the hundreds of miles of island beaches and talked about the history of Eleuthera from the days of Columbus.

As she began to relate this new knowledge enthusiastically to Paul, he commented, “Do be careful who you talk to when you’re here alone.”

“Oh Paul,” she said reproachfully, “this place, these people aren’t anything like where we come from. We have yet to see a policeman on this entire island!” He did not argue further, but she stopped telling him about her conversations with the dive master; she did not want him disturbed. Soon the vacation would be over. She was happy.

In the morning two days before they were to return home, as they lay in bed, Paul slid down and lifted her gown and with great solicitude examined her.

“It looks pink and pretty again.” He patted very gently with a fingertip. “How does that feel?”

“Much better. Fine,” she insisted, feeling ridiculous with him peering between her legs. “I’m just fine, honey.”

He came to her then and she took him in her arms. Soon he unfastened his pajamas.

She moved away from him. She murmured, “Instead, why don’t we kiss each other…here.” She stroked his firm penis.

When he stared at her without speaking she said awkwardly, with embarrassed defensiveness, “You told me once you wished I’d initiate things once in a while. I’m initiating. I think we could be a little more venturesome, don’t you?”

“I don’t want you doing that to me.” He smiled then, and propped himself on an elbow and caressed down over her stomach. “But I’d do anything in the world you think you might like…”

He felt, she decided a few minutes later, like he was poking at her with a stick. She stole a glance down at him. He lay rigid, his eyes squeezed shut, his face a rictus of distaste, his tongue a poker-stiff extension to her.

Frozen with shame, she grasped his hair to pull him away. “That was lovely,” she whispered.

He climbed out of bed pawing at his mouth. “A hair,” he rasped, and went into the bathroom. Over the running water she heard him brushing his teeth, gargling.

Getting back into bed he asked, “Try it again?”

Shamed, pierced by his willingness to please her, she said, “No honey, you were sweet and nice.”

He took her into his arms. She tasted toothpaste on his lips. Emptying her mind of thought, she concentrated on pleasing him.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 534