“OH, DARLING. I KNEW you’d come through. Papa will be so pleased.” Anna held Blair’s hand between her hands and stroked his manicured nails with her thumb. “And Africa,” she said. “We never dreamed it would be anywhere but—” She remembered where they were, lowered her voice and leaned closer. “Where is Dakar exactly?”
They sat on a bench by a narrow path in the southwest corner of Central Park. It was late afternoon and the sunlight through the trees fell in tatters on the smooth trunks and untrimmed grass. The quiet of the woods was underlined by a distant rumble and honk of city traffic and, up in the bushes on the hill behind them, the thin, whistley music of a portable phonograph. Blair assumed there was a couple back there, kissing and petting to the cheap songs.
After last night, everything suggested sex to Blair. His mind had been poisoned. Even the Brahms concert at Town Hall that afternoon, marred anyway by so many jabbering Jews, degenerated into background music to the images Blair could not shake from his head. He kept seeing the sailor flopping on the bed like a landed trout, and wished those writhings had been the man’s death throes. He could not notice anyone, male or female, without wondering what they did in private and with whom. It was disgusting. But now, compensating Blair for his plague of dirty thoughts, was Anna’s admiration of him.
“You are so clever. A man who works in the chartroom? This will convince Papa how wrong he was about you.”
“I’m only too happy to be able to help out,” Blair said gallantly.
“I love you for being so clever.”
Footsteps crunched gravel as another couple came around the bend in the path, a soldier and an older woman who embraced and kissed as they walked. It was a miracle they could see where they were going.
Anna took hold of Blair’s arm as the couple came closer. The front of her white blouse was all ruffles, pushed out like the petals of a flower by her breasts. She watched the couple and moistened her lower lip, leaving a gleam of light there.
Blair began to see Anna writhing on a bed.
She laid her head on his shoulder and waited for the couple to pass before she whispered, “And where’s this social club?”
Blair frowned. “Greenwich Village. Near the waterfront.” He had not told her everything, of course. He was too ashamed of where he had been, especially now, when he was with someone as virtuous as Anna. Remembering who she was, he was ashamed of the way he had been thinking of her, but he felt better picturing Anna than he had picturing the sailor.
“You weren’t too arrogant with them, I hope.”
“I can control my feelings when I have to.” He pressed his legs together to hold himself down, but the warmth of his own thighs only made it worse. Her breast lay against his arm like a cool pillow.
“Can women go to this place?”
“No. Only men. Sailors. It’s very quiet. A place where they can read, relax, write letters home. That sort of thing.”
“This sailor. He never said anything about when it was going to be?”
“No.”
“Hmmm. I’ll tell Papa about where and all. Right away. But it’d be even better if we could find out when.” She drew away and looked into Blair’s eyes. “Could you go back there and feel this man out on that?”
“No!” He had not intended to answer with such feeling.
Anna looked puzzled. “But why? You said you made good friends with the man.”
He pictured the sailor again, obscenely gripping himself and leering at Blair. The stiffness in his own trousers sickened him. Blair shook his head. “I don’t know if he’ll still be there. And it’s not a nice place. Full of riffraff and…cheap cigars.”
Anna laughed. “But it’d be worth another visit, wouldn’t it? Maybe you’d make some more friends there. Oh, darling. We’ve come this far. Can’t we go a little—” Her eyes focused on something beyond Blair.
He glanced over his shoulder and saw a policeman strolling down the path. The cop was busy with the billyclub he held by its leather strap, flipping the club like a baton, twirling it like a yo-yo.
Anna swung herself in front of Blair so they would be only another amorous couple. She placed her hands on his back and laid her chin on his shoulder.
Blair lightly put his arms around her. The weight of a woman always surprised him, like the surprise he experienced the few times he rode a horse and found the animals were not as airy as they looked. He breathed her perfume and hair.
The policeman crunched past without a word. There was a repeated click each time he caught his club, when it knocked against his wedding ring.
Anna began to pull back. Blair grabbed her head with both hands, turned her face toward him and kissed her mouth.
All of her eyes—up this close, his eyes could not bring the double images together—were open and surprised. Then she closed her eyes and gripped his shoulders.
Her lipstick tasted like raisins. Her hair felt crisp and lacquered. He moved his hands down so he would not spoil her hair. Her blouse slid against the skin of her back and the seams of her bra. His hand followed the seam around, under her arm, to the breast squashed against his chest. She had nothing in common with what he had witnessed last night.
Remembering that, he kissed her harder, wedged his thumb between his chest and her breast and felt the spot where the squared seams met.
She moaned through her nose, reached down and pulled his hand away, but continued kissing. Her moan faintly echoed the sailor’s groaning.
He placed the hand on her hip, then abruptly brought it over her lap, as if to assure himself for good that this was different.
She stopped kissing. “No, don’t, please…Blair.”
His hand was pushed away, but not before he felt a comforting absence beneath her skirt.
“But I love you,” he said gratefully. He could enjoy being sprung up like a broken toy now that he trusted its purpose.
“And I love you. Only—” She looked around. There wasn’t a soul in sight. Even the phonograph in the bushes played nothing, suggesting its owners were too occupied to turn the record over.
“We could go to my apartment,” he suggested. “You’ve never seen where I live.”
“Oh, Blair.” She drew a deep breath and attempted to smile. The penciled skin of her eyebrows was crimped in worry. “I don’t want to do anything I’ll feel bad about afterwards. I’m not that kind of girl.”
“I know. And I’m not that kind of man. But I love you. It’s only right we should want to…”
“Part of me wants to,” she whispered. “But…It feels wrong wanting to now, what with the war and Papa and all.” Her hands slowly wrestled with each other in her lap. “It feels selfish.”
He did not know what to say to that. She was right, of course.
A few birds had begun singing in the first coolness of the evening. The yellow scraps of sunlight faded in the trees. They sat together in silence, waiting, as if desire were something that would pass by, like a policeman.
“Getting back to what we were talking about,” Anna announced. “This club. I know it’s asking a lot of you, darling, but won’t you please be brave and go back there? One more time?”
The idea of the house still repelled Blair, although he felt safer with his dirty thoughts now that they had a suitable object. If he and Anna were lovers, in the fullest sense of the word, then he could face the men there. But he didn’t know how to explain that to Anna without abusing her innocence, or making her wonder about him. He leaped over the explanations and said only, “I can be brave if you can, darling.”
She looked blank, until he lightly laid his hand on her arm.
“You mean, you won’t go back unless I give myself to you?” she said calmly.
It sounded awfully caddish phrased that way. Blair swallowed his guilt. “We should give each other little rewards for doing the things we don’t want to do.”
But Anna didn’t appear insulted or threatened. The suggestion seemed to tempt her. “Then I wouldn’t be doing it for myself. I’d be doing it for Papa, wouldn’t I?”
“And the cause,” Blair added. “Only I don’t want you to think I won’t do that unless you do this. It would just make it easier for me to face such riffraff, knowing I had your love, Anna. Completely.”
“No. I don’t think that.” But she sat there thinking something. “If I do this to help you, then it isn’t selfish, is it?”
“It’s selfless. Admirable.” That approach made it seem like a horrible sacrifice, but Blair didn’t care so long as the woman he loved went home with him.
“No,” said Anna. “There’s selfishness there. But it’s being put to good use.” She lowered her eyes and smiled. “Okay then. I will.”
“Oh, Anna.” He held her shoulders and kissed her smooth, moist forehead. “Yes. We should. We love each other. The cook and maid are off tonight and we can—”
She stopped his mouth with hers, kissed him with her arms around his neck. This time she parted her teeth a little and let his tongue touch hers. Then she drew away, looked down and smoothed out his necktie over his chest and stomach. “Yes. We will,” she whispered excitedly. “When you get back from that place.”
“What? Not tonight?”
“Don’t you see, dear? It’ll be even better when we won’t have anything else on our minds. Our reward to each other for a job well done.”
“Maybe.” But Anna didn’t talk like a tease. She seemed as confused and eager as he was. “You promise?”
“Of course. Because I want to, Blair, I love you.”
They were lovers, and yet they bargained with each other like shopkeepers.
But Blair believed her. He could pass again through that den of perversion, knowing he had this waiting for him afterwards. “All right, then. I will.”
“Oh, goody.” And she embraced him again and kissed him deeper than before.
The bushes rustled behind her and, his mouth joined to Anna’s, Blair saw a fat woman stumble onto the path, followed by a stocky, strutting sailor carrying a portable phonograph. The sailor’s back and seat were covered with dirt and leaf mold.