3

Charley spent five days sweating out his passion. Business and social attitudes within his milieu insisted that he be seen as a menacing figure, but that appearance was mainly a professional necessity. Charley had an extremely tender side because he had begun to read magazine fiction in his preteens. A helplessness about beautiful women had grown steadily within him because, like money to the Prizzis, beauty—within the tight definition of beauty which Charley guarded deep in his heart—was the grail for Charley. He wasn’t hooked on paintings in museums, big sceneries, the finest examples of courage and fidelity, or the immutable ecstasy of great poetry—his profound feelings for beauty began and ended with beautiful women. This made him one of the more susceptible men in the republic; perhaps on the planet. In others the characteristic might have been called “romantic” or “girl-simple,” but Charley’s addiction to beauty was bottomless; long before, as he had tumbled out of puberty, the worship of female beauty had become a true aesthetic experience to be repeated over and over again.

From the moment he left Mardell, he couldn’t think about anything but that enormous hulk of beauty and grace who didn’t even know that she worked for him. He took a lot of cold showers and, when he woke up in the night and the mindless erotic pictures began to slither and entwine inside his head, he got out of bed and stood on the terrace in the darkness, breathing deeply and doing knee-bends and pushups. At last the day came when he would see her again in the flesh; a mountain of flesh carved into the shape of one of those gorgeous women made of marble who stood in the middle of fountains in Rome.

He dressed carefully on that day. He gargled with stuff guaranteed to eliminate bad breath, even though he had read in a magazine that it was the liver that sent up the noxious fumes if it happened to get out of whack. He wondered if there was a way to have his teeth painted to add pleasure points to his smile, but he had left it too late; there was no time to call the dentist. He put on one tie, then another, until with the third one he caught the effortless knot he was looking for. As he went out the door he began to figure out the best way he could ask her for her picture without sounding like a dope.

He parked the van and went into Mardell’s apartment building. It was twelve forty-five on Monday afternoon. When she opened the door she was ready to go; she didn’t ask him to come in. His legs could hardly hold him up. He had never seen anything so gigantically beautiful. She was wearing a golden yellow turtleneck sweater, no jewelry. Her hair fell to her shoulders like a bright-gold Cleopatra wig, and her porthole golden eyes let him look back, back, deeply into the willfulness hiding inside, but he shook that off to stay pinned down under the visual squashing that the sight of her in daylight, without makeup and away from the Casino Latino, was doing to his willpower—his ebbing willpower—that was supposed to be keeping him from grabbing her.

“You are sensational,” he said.

“We had better go.” She started out, pulling the door behind her.

He put his hands on her waist and stared into her eyes as if his optic nerves had been frozen, as if he were Scott in the Antarctic in the last few seconds of life. His eyes stayed fixed and glazed, but he was able to bring his arms up behind her back, holding her and pulling her to him as Mohamet may have pulled the mountain in during the last stages of the classical overtake. She came in to him like a ferry easing into a slip. He stood on tiptoe. She bent her knees and sank a few inches, but kept her back straight. They kissed; softly; religiously. The kiss held them for some time. As they broke away, reluctantly, Charley perhaps more reluctant than Mardell, she closed the door behind her and they went down to the street.

They had lunch at an Italian restaurant called Italian Restaurant on Twenty-first Street. “Lemme order,” Charley said. Then, as he read the menu, he saw to his dismay that it was some kind of Florentine food, so he ordered steaks.

“I adore steak,” Mardell said. “Is that typical Italian food?”

“Whatta you gonna do?” Charley said. “This is a Tuscan restaurant.”

“It says Italian Restaurant on the window.”

“Tuscany is a little place way in the north of Italy. They don’t know about food. Next time I’ll get you some real food, in a Sicilian place.” He wiped his forehead with his napkin. “Listen, Mardell, what I believe is that where you start out is how everything is always gonna be. Do you believe that?”

“I—well—I suppose so—”

“So I have to tell you one thing. It’s no use trying to hide nothing from you.” He inhaled deeply. “I love you, Mardell. That’s what it is. Nobody can change that.”

“You love me?” She spoke of an utter impossibility.

“You’re shocked I said that? You don’t want that?”

“No. That is, I didn’t say that.”

“Then whatta you mean?”

“I mean—how can you love me? In total accumulated time you’ve known me about fifty-five minutes.”

“How can I love you?” he said wildly, brushing the drinks waiter away. “How can’t I love you? You are the most lovable thing I ever seen. You are the most important thing that ever come into my life.”

“Charley, I just can’t keep up with this.”

“Are you a virgin?”

“A virgin?”

“You want to know how deep I feel, that’s why I asked you that. It doesn’t matter if you ain’t a virgin. The past is the past. I love you, Mardell.”

“We have to talk. You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know what I see. I know what I feel. On some things I’m wrong, things I decide with my head, but I never felt anything like this in my life, so I know I can’t be wrong. You belong to me, Mardell.”

The waiter staggered to the table with two orders of bistecca alla fiorentina surrounded by strozzapreti, dumplings made with ricotta cheese, Parmesan cheese, beets, spinach, and egg, served in gravy with more Parmesan cheese. The steaks were as big as suitcases.

“Oh, Charley,” she said ecstatically. “Doesn’t that look delicious! I’m so hungry!”