The Lover From An Icy Sea Page 10

  “Would you happen to know at what time she stepped out?” he asked after an appropriate length of time had elapsed.

  “I didn’t say she stepped out,” the doorman replied, but without so much as a glance in Kit’s direction to acknowledge his continued presence.

  “Would you then happen to know at what time she’s due back?” Kit next tried.

  “Did I say she was due back?” This time, the question to his question came back to him like some unannounced—and necessarily unwelcome—offering from a pigeon perched overhead. Kit decided to let it slide.

  “No, I don’t suppose you did.” Kit opted once again for silence and resolved to keep it, painfully if necessary, for as long as it might take to make this doorman uneasy with the awkwardness of it. He didn’t have long to wait.

  “Look, Mister. I don’t know what your business is with Miss Sorensen. Never mind the hour. Most people—at least those who work for a living—are in bed right about this time,” he said with a distinct sneer.

  “I see,” Kit said. “Well, now, since I know for a fact that Ms. Sorensen has a job, that fact would suggest to me that she is indeed in bed.” Then, however, and quite out of character: “And since you’re obviously still up at this hour, I guess you don’t. Have a real job, that is.”

  It was cheap. and Kit knew it, but the man in the doorman fell for it.

  “I make it my business to know who’s in bed and who isn’t in bed. I make it my business to know who comes and who goes after a certain hour. I can usually tell, if they come back before I clock out, whether they’ve been out to walk the dog, or—” and here the doorman’s sneer put on its best Sunday smile “—whether they’ve been out to walk the dog. Miss Sorensen has a dog. He’s a very old dog. Old dogs don’t move as fast as young dogs. Sometimes, he just takes a little longer. And so does she. Am I making myself clear?”

  “Crystal,” Kit answered. “In that case, I’m sure you and she won’t mind if I just wait here until her old dog finishes his business.”

  “Not in the least. We do everything we can to make our guests feel comfortable. Are you feeling comfortable, Mr.—?”

  “Addison. Very.”

  They had arrived at an impasse, and Kit knew better than to try to improve upon his position. The only option left to him was to wait it out. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Before he could extract one and light it up, however, the doorman checked him.

  “Smoking’s not allowed in the building. Ms. Sorenson’s—, uh, management’s orders.” Kit put the pack back in his pocket and responded with an uncharacteristically forced smile.

  “In that case, I believe I’ll go for a walk. You wouldn’t have a problem with my walking and smoking in the park, would you?”

  “Park’s public space. So far as I know, you’re free to do what you like in the park.”

  Kit stood up and walked out the front door without a further word. He headed a block and a half west to Fifth Avenue, crossed, and walked up past a children’s playground. At that hour, there wasn’t so much as a squirrel in sight, though Kit knew it would all shortly change. Dawn was about to break—and with it, the solitary and occasional threads of nighttime stirrings would begin to weave themselves into a solid carpet of noise.

  * * *

  This was quiet time—the time of day when the city was not a block as hard as the granite on which it had been built, but was—to a receptive ear, at least—soft, vulnerable, given over to cats on the prowl, a stubborn hack or cough, an isolated siren, the sound of a cab door slamming, a couple grinding, a woman moaning alone. Uptown or downtown, East Side or West Side, it made no difference. This was the weeping hour—the hour at which one might listen and take in the entirety of the human condition in the only way one could reasonably expect to observe and understand it: in small bits and pieces and in the agonies or ecstasies thought to be most private—but which, by the mere fact of an absence of competition for one’s attention—were most public.

  * * *

  Between the faint promise of dawn’s rose and the consistent Con-Ed glow of lamps that lit his walkway at regular intervals, Kit decided he would wander into the park. To him, at this hour, the opportunity to walk and think in near silence was worth the risk others might judge incautious, even foolhardy. He smiled to himself as he recalled, out of nowhere, what Aldous Huxley had once written: “The problem of the twentieth century will be the problem of silence.” How sadly true, he thought—at least for those who “chose” to live in cities. He knew the same could be said of most peoples’ “choices.” His livelihood depended upon it; and so he accepted the necessity of living in a place that occasionally thrilled him, but too often found him indifferent, frustrated, or angry. His escape was photography—sometimes no noisier than the click of a shutter. But too often, at least in the background, it was filled with the noise of people. Of nervous people. Of nervous, obsessive, chattering people who felt compelled to fill the void with talk—or, at the very least, with horns.

  Whenever human noise became unbearable, Kit would take his camera and flee to the country. If professional obligations kept him city-bound for any length of time, he’d merely escape to one of its parks. It wasn’t so much the beauty of rocks, trees and flowers that captivated him as their willingness to model in silence. He was human—and a man—and so hardly indifferent to the beauty of humans, particularly that of women. But he adored the silence of landscapes. What’s more, the older he got, the more he preferred landscapes and seascapes and anything that could relieve him of the chatter, the senseless noise, the burdensome monotony of human social intercourse.

  Now, however, there was this woman. Nothing she said even remotely resembled chatter. Her speech to his ears was like nothing he’d ever heard. Indeed, her silences were more precious than any silence he’d found in the country, or even in the park. What did it mean to find a “soul mate”? Was it merely an accident that he’d found her—and she, him—as it had occurred, or was there really something called “destiny” or “fate”? Their physical compatibility certainly had something to do with it. But Kit was not so naïve as to think that the sexual desire he felt for her would maintain, over the long term, anything like its present intensity. Sooner or later, it would wane—as those things were wont to do. What, then, were the other components of his obsession? Kit stopped dead in his tracks, took out a second cigarette, then chuckled to himself as he finally acknowledged the thing for what it was.

  “Yes,” he said—completely unaware that he was talking to himself: he was obsessed.

  He continued to walk, though more slowly, as he pondered the singular state in which he now found himself and to which he’d just given a mental acknowledgement. He came upon a stone park bench. In the thin light of dawn, he could just barely make out the message of a Latin inscription: Alteri vivas oportet si vis tibi vivere. “Live for another if you want to live for yourself,” he translated to himself, though no longer quite in command of either his Virgil or his Ovid. An omen? he wondered.

  * * *

  The sun was just clearing the horizon as Daneka looked east out her rear car window. “‘Looks as if we’re going to have a lovely day, wouldn’t you say, Ron?” she asked her driver.

  Ron glanced back through the rearview mirror. “Yes, ma’am. It would appear that way.”

  They continued in silence as Ron drove up the West Side Highway towards home. When they reached the Ninety-sixth Street exit, he took the off-ramp and headed east across Riverside Drive, West End, Broadway, Amsterdam, Columbus and Central Park West—then through Central Park. Just short of Park Avenue on the other side of the park, he made a U-turn and pulled up in front of The Fitzgerald. The doorman had spotted her car even before Ron made his U-turn, and had timed his arrival curbside to coincide with the car’s arrival. As soon as the car stopped, he opened Daneka’s door. She stepped out and nodded. He noted she was wearing an evening dress that had lost some of its crease. He noted, too, that she
looked tired, worn down in some almost imperceptible way, older than when he’d last seen her only a few nights earlier. He knew that she often came home at this hour looking far from rested, but that she could emerge forty-five minutes later dressed in a business suit and looking as sharp and fit as any woman half her age.

  He kept his thoughts to himself as he preceded her to the front door and opened it so that she might not have to be inconvenienced by a pause. As she stepped out of the car, but before shutting her door, she leaned in towards her driver.

  “Have a wonderful weekend, Ron. Hugs to your wife and kids.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ll do just that. And thank you.”

  Daneka walked to the front door and passed through, once again nodding her thanks to the doorman. As she rose the few steps to the lobby area, he informed her that she’d had an early-morning visitor—a familiar-looking young man—who’d come to see her at about four o’clock, and who’d then gone off for a walk in the park while he awaited her return. Daneka grimaced—an indiscretion she wouldn’t normally have displayed to her doorman. However, she said nothing to indicate either pique or pleasure, walked onto the elevator and pushed the button to ascend.

  Once inside her apartment, she went directly to her answering machine. The message light was blinking, and she depressed the playback button. She listened to Kit’s message from several hours earlier and hurriedly disrobed, dropping her clothes in a pile on the floor. She then took a quick but very thorough shower.

  She emerged from the bathroom, put on a robe, and began to towel-dry her hair. Daneka looked at herself in the bathroom mirror, her face then entirely without make-up and her skin slightly shriveled from the hot water. She was not happy with the image staring back at her as her house intercom suddenly began to buzz.

  “Yes, I understand. Please send him up.” She gathered her evening clothes and threw them into an empty bottom drawer, then returned to the bathroom to hang up her towel and retrieve a comb. As the doorbell rang, she started out of her bedroom towards the front door. Only then did she notice that her panties still lay on the floor where she’d originally thrown them. She scooped them up quickly, opened the same bottom drawer to her dresser, pushed them in under her evening clothes—and was careful to close the drawer tightly.

  Chapter 18

  No sooner had Daneka shut the drawer on her evening clothes than Kit pushed the buzzer at the front door. It was Saturday morning, and Estrella was not at home to answer. With weekends off, she was in the habit of taking the bus to New Jersey the evening before to stay with her family until Sunday evening. And so, in bathrobe, without make-up, and with hair uncombed, Daneka went, herself, to answer.

  She threw the bolt and opened the door. Kit stepped through, trying hard—if with little success—to conceal his annoyance. He knew he was still in no position to interrogate her, much less make demands. But the quiet rage he felt was no less real for the absence of that privilege or possession. As if nothing had taken place between them the night before, Daneka stood before him stone-faced. Kit felt he might as well have been an appliance repairman who’d arrived long before the appointed hour.

  “Well, now, Kit. Who knew you were such an early bird and accustomed to making unsolicited house calls?”

  That was it. No smile, no friendly word, no acknowledgement whatsoever of his right to be in her apartment at an hour that she, for a change, had not expressly appointed. Daneka turned and walked back to her bedroom, half closing the door behind her as she entered. Kit stood on the same spot where she’d just left him. He felt out of place, as if he’d rung the wrong buzzer. He wondered whether he should simply turn around and walk back out; return to his apartment; take down the photos of Daneka that had haunted him for the better part of two weeks; try to regain some sense of who he was and of who he’d been before this woman had become such an overwhelming force in his life.

  His reverie was interrupted by the distant sound of fingers typing on a computer keyboard. Whatever pique he might’ve felt just moments earlier suddenly turned into fury. He no longer needed instructions or an invitation from her to sit, to stay, to leave—to do anything at all but follow his own gut. And his gut was now on fire. He stalked back to Daneka’s bedroom, threw the door open, and found Daneka seated in front of her computer. She’d apparently already forgotten his presence—or was at the very least choosing to ignore it. He walked up to her computer, reached down in back and ripped the power cord out of the outlet. Daneka continued to stare at a blank screen, her hands poised in mid-air above the keyboard as if she were waiting out some momentary glitch.

  With more strength than even he knew he possessed, Kit lifted Daneka out of her chair and threw her down on the bed. She landed on her back and settled in easily. Slowly—very slowly—she undid the terry cloth knot of her bathrobe, then pulled the bathrobe open.

  Daneka’s intent was clear. As he took off and threw his clothes on the floor, Kit kept his eyes trained on hers. The transformation would have amused him had he been in any mood for amusement. But in fact it disturbed him—then horrified him. Though still fixed on his eyes, her own appeared to be receding to somewhere deep within their sockets. They looked, but didn’t see. They were open and informed, but their own internal light was growing more muted by the second. She had simply switched off—or was looking for an alternative power source—and he was now that.

  Still angry, Kit climbed on top of her—looking not to wage war, however, but to re-establish the peace. At the same time, he wanted desperately to find that moment of ecstatic communion they’d found the evening before. Daneka apparently wanted something quite different.

  “Fuck me,” she said. The first time she said it, he was again amused—though with mixed feelings—at her choice of expletive. That amusement rapidly changed into an odd combination of excitement and pain as she began to command over and over again, each time louder: “Fuck me! Fuck me! Fuck me!” Her command drew out—like a syringe drawing blood—his very male adrenaline. He did exactly as she ordered. At the same time, he was overwhelmed by sadness. He didn’t want to fuck her; he wanted to make love to her. She was not a sport fuck—but the woman he wanted for the rest of his life.

  His ears, however, heard something different. His ears heard over and over again: “Fuck me! Fuck me! Fuck me!” He held her immobile. He held her hard, legs back against her chest and, from the knees down, wrapped over his shoulders. He was a mechanical cock, and she was an equally mechanical cunt. Euphemisms now had no more place in Daneka’s bed than terry cloth aprons in a slaughterhouse. The more emphatically she repeated her command, the more emphatically he responded.

  However much he might have been carried away by lust, Kit was still emotionally engaged enough to want her to come first. He’d been willing to follow her commands in the act itself, but he now wanted her surrender. It was not the male in him that demanded her surrender; it was the partner. He would, ideally, have wished it to be simultaneous. But he knew, too, that simultaneity couldn’t be programmed. He wanted her to stand at that bridge and say ‘yes,’ she would jump—to risk “the little death.” He wanted the clear demonstration of a willingness to jump, if only for a couple of seconds, without knowing at the precise moment of commitment whether she’d jump alone or with a partner. The point of launch was high up; from that altitude, the water would be unforgivably hard; “the little death,” certain. To suffer it alone would be horrid; to suffer it together, bliss.

  * * *

  Daneka sensed that Kit was just seconds away from coming himself. One little inducement and she knew she’d have him. “Fuck me harder!” she whispered into his ear.

  * * *

  He came.

  He came ecstatically, but also with silent tears. She’d won; he’d lost. He would not find a partner this morning. Her response an instant or two later was appropriate, but Kit suspected it was also artificial. There was release in it, but no surrender.

  After a few moments, he rolled off. His only de
sire was to hold her. Daneka lay on her side with her knees drawn up tight against her stomach, Kit behind her. He slid his knees up under hers from the rear and wrapped his arms around her. They were as close as they’d just been, less penetration. Her hair, however, still covered her neck. He blew it gently aside, exposing the nape, which he kissed, increasingly softly, over and over again as Daneka purred.

  Kit looked up for an instant and saw, for the first time, his framed picture on the night stand next to her bed, then put his lips one last time to the nape of her neck and smiled.

  They both fell asleep.

  Chapter 19

  Was it an hour later, two hours, three hours even when they both awoke in the same position in which they’d drifted off to sleep? Kit didn’t know, but it didn’t concern him. This was Saturday—and an opportunity to do what came naturally on Saturdays.

  Kit kissed the nape of Daneka’s neck once again and she—as if on cue—purred once again in response. She then turned around to face him squarely; put her arms around his neck; pried his mouth open with her own; let the tip of her tongue dance gently over his teeth and gums. As his breathing became shorter, her tongue stopped dancing. She pried his mouth wide open and pushed her tongue in deep and hard as if she wanted to consume him. She then very slowly turned him on his back and slid a leg over him. Not releasing his mouth from hers, she pulled herself on top and straddled his hips, then transferred her weight to her elbows and knees and carefully placed herself at the tip of his erection.

  As she pushed her tongue once again into his mouth, she eased her pelvis down. Kit slid easily into her as he pushed her tongue back with his own. She promptly released his mouth and propped herself up on her hands, rearranging the angle of her pelvis once again so that Kit’s penetration was complete, then closed her eyes and began to move her hips slowly back and forth.