13

On a Skid

the boys i mean are not refined they go with girls who buck and bite they do not give a fuck for luck they hump them thirteen times a night one hangs a hat upon her tit one carves a cross in her behind they do not give a shit for wit the boys I mean are not refined they come with girls who bite and buck who cannot read and cannot write who laugh like they would fall apart and masturbate with dynamite the boys I mean are not refined they cannot chat of that and this they do not give a fart for art they kill like you would take a piss they speak whatever’s on their mind they do whatever’s in their pants the boys i mean are not refined they shake the mountains when they dance

—E. E. CUMMINGS

 

 

 

 

 

The Road of excess leads to the Palace of Wisdom.

—WILLIAM BLAKE

HE came into her life on a skid, she always said after that night, and it was true. If Mel hadn’t invested her money in Lotus Ltd. and then dropped dead, if Alva Libbey hadn’t gone the way of all nannies, if it hadn’t snowed again, if she hadn’t been exhausted, drained, bleeding, and yet also oddly exhilarated at the prospect of starting life afresh totally broke—would she have ever let as disruptive a force as Berkeley Sproul into her life? Probably not.

He arrived in a motley van, painted, like his own temperament, in red, purple, yellow, and Day-Glo orange—one fender of each color and a mélange of spray painting on the side panels, like a bad LSD trip. He had, anyway, the air of a merry prankster, or a court jester—twinkling blue eyes, dirty-blond hair that flew in every direction, a smile to make you melt. His socks were two different colors—one red, one gray. His clothes were disheveled and smelled slightly of mothballs. He wore a big white fisherman’s sweater that was unraveling under the armpits (from all the life-force bursting out?), a long woolen scarf (red), and no overcoat, so much the air of a vagabond did he have. And he carried a white orchid in a silver bud vase, which he presented to Isadora.

“Orchids—at this time of the year. Where do you get them?” she asked.

“My mother grows them in her greenhouse in Darien,” he said, “Da-rien: yes in Russian and nothing in French. Yes, nothing! That about describes the place. It’s the land of the wasted WASP, home of the sore winner.”

Isadora laughed. She had the sense that she had written him in a book and then witnessed an astounding metamorphosis as he came to life. He might have been Marietta Robusti’s suitor, not hers. No—not even Marietta Robusti‘s, but a character out of an even earlier age—the age of Arthurian legend, perhaps, the mists of prehistory. Sir Lancelot—or Gawain.

“What were you doing in the neighborhood?” Isadora asked.

Bean looked at her blankly.

“I wasn’t in the neighborhood,” he said. “I was at my parents’ in Darien. I just thought I’d never see you again if I didn’t act fast. First of all, when you gave me that piece of paper with your name on it, I freaked out. Here I merely thought you were an outrageously beautiful woman, and you turn out to be my favorite author, too.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere.”

“I mean it. Your pictures don’t do you justice. I never would have guessed you were that Isadora.”

“Are there very many other Isadoras?”

“There’s Isadora Donkey ... as the joke goes ...”

“Oh god—possessed by the bad-joke demon ... You’re the man of my dreams. One bad pun and I’m yours forever ... Would you like a drink?”

“And dinner,” said Bean, “if you’re still offering ... What you don’t know is that I have called your secretary about a dozen times in the past twenty-four hours—and she keeps telling me you’re out or you’re in the shower, or in the sauna. Either you’re the cleanest woman in Connecticut or you give out your phone number and then change your mind a lot. I didn’t leave too many messages because I didn’t want to seem pushy, but I had to see you again.” He smiled that dazzling smile.

“Let me get you a drink,” Isadora said, and she bounced off into the kitchen to get the wineglasses and the chilled wine. She was exhausted; she had cramps—but she was also exhilarated.

“Would you like to make a fire in the living-room fireplace?” she called to Bean.

“Sure,” he called back. “I’m an old Connecticut boy. Grew up here and in New York,” he said. “That was before the crash.”

“What crash?” she called out.

“Well—I’ll tell you if you promise to come back.”

“I’m coming!” Isadora called from the kitchen.

“I should hope so,” called Bean.

She came back into the living room with wine and cheese to find him on his knees expertly laying the fire.

“That’s a well-laid fire,” she said.

“I won’t even dignify that with a response,” he countered.

“You make me merry,” she said, “and I’ve had one hell of a day. Anyway—tell me about the crash.”

“Well—there were two,” he said. “The crash where my family lost most of their money to the IRS ...”

“What an astounding coincidence ...” said Isadora.

“And then the car crash ... Which would you like to hear about first?”

“I don’t really know,” Isadora said. “Have some wine. It’s a lovely Trefethen chardonnay which I may not be able to afford for long ...” She handed him wine in a crystal goblet, and then, as an afterthought, she asked:

“How old are you, Bean?”

“Twenty-five,” he said. “Does that disqualify me?”

“For what?” Isadora asked.

“To be your friend,” he said gravely. Suddenly, she looked in his eyes and she knew he meant it. His eyes could be merry, but they also had a very vulnerable look. Was he possibly scared under all his banter?

“I want to be your friend,” he said. “I feel, from reading your books, that I already am ... Do people say that to you a lot?”

“Not the way you said it,” she said. “What they usually say is that I’ve been their sexual fantasy for seven years—and then we get into bed—and pffff ...” She made a gesture with her right index finger which indicated a penis going into profoundest detumescence.

Bean laughed. “Actually, I thought your supposedly scandalous first novel not nearly so good as your second or third, or Tintoretto’s Daugher ... There was so much self-hatred in that first book. Don’t you ever stop beating up on yourself? You should. You’ve got more balls than most of the men around. You’re a real hero—in the classical sense.”

“ ‘What is a hero?’ ” Isadora quoted. “ ‘Primarily one who has conquered his fears.’ ”

“That’s it,” said Bean.

“That’s Henry Miller’s definition, not mine,” said Isadora, “and by that definition I’m not a hero because I feel fear all the time.”

“Ah—you may feel it—don’t let the fear control you,” said Bean. “I’ll bet Odysseus felt fear, too. In fact we know he did. It isn’t the presence or absence of fear that makes a hero—it’s the action completed in spite of the fear. And you never stop the action. You go on right into the teeth of the storm. That’s why you’re my hero.”

“Thanks,” said Isadora. “It’s nice to hear in the midst of the worst year of my life. I nearly died this year. I never thought I was suicidal, but after my husband walked out, I was ready to throw myself in front of a car. In fact I did. I threw myself in front of his car.”

Bean looked at her intently, as if he knew exactly what she was saying.

“I’m an accident looking for a place to happen,” he said. “I have more scars up and down the length of my body than anyone you’ll ever meet.”

“I’ll match you scar for scar,” she said.

“Done,” said Bean. “Let’s get naked.”

“Have I been your sexual fantasy for seven years?” Isadora joked.

“No. Only for the last seven minutes.”

“You’re looking at a wreck of a woman,” Isadora said. “I’ve almost given up my profession—and not by choice either. I, who have never been blocked in my life, find myself suddenly unable to write at all.”

“You’re merely shifting gears,” Bean said, “or lying fallow for some great, new flowering. I don’t for a minute believe that you’re really blocked. Art is not mechanical—it’s organic. You can’t produce it the way a factory produces nuts and bolts.”

“Thank you for reminding me of that,” Isadora said. “I’ve never felt so used up, so finished.”

“You must be doing something right,” said Bean, “to be so alive and so beautiful.”

She looked at him with gratitude, if not with total trust, and said:

“So tell me about the two crashes.”

“I will,” said Bean, “if you give me dinner.”

“Spoken like a true vagabond,” said Isadora. “Next you’ll want a bed for the night.”

“The floor will do,” said Bean, and laughed.

 

At dinner (which Danae had made and which was consequently delicious), Bean spilled out the story of his family mishegoss. Oh boy—Jews love to delude themselves that they have cornered the market on mishegoss, but they don’t hold a candle to the WASPs in the realm of the meshugge. Bean’s family history was rife with shootings (accidental and purposeful), squandered inheritances, family manses and antiques fought over (as in some Cheever story), alcoholism, incest, greed, embezzlement, lawsuits, prison terms, heroics, and mock-heroics. His ancestors had fought in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War. His immediate family’s fortunes had fallen from five houses (New York, Paris, Palm Beach, Martha’s Vineyard, Darien) to one—a crumbling manse in Connecticut crammed with crumbling furniture and crumbling collections of books and paintings that were all, anyway, in immediate danger of seizure by the IRS for back taxes. As far as Bean’s own hope of personal booty, he had long since quashed it by his insistence on pursuing a career as an actor.

“There are no actors in the Social Register, my mother is fond of saying,” he said.

“Not true—there must be one. How about Dina Merrill?”

“Well, I guess,” said Bean. “One actress. It’s anyway the profession of whores and vagabonds. I’ve never known a woman who could tolerate an actor’s life. Not even actresses can stand it. We work all night, sleep all day, cavort with beautiful young women who are usually half naked, have no fixed addresses, don’t wear suits, seldom shave, have ambiguous sexual habits—or voracious ones—and usually have no money at all—but love to spend other people’s. Also, we eat like slobs.”

He dangled a chicken leg from his teeth for emphasis while making a mustache out of a lemon rind (it was Danae’s fabulous lemon chicken with sesame seeds).

Isadora laughed.

“So tell me about the crashes,” she said.

“Well, the first is the conventional tale of the fall of the family fortunes, told by the would-be seducer to the astonished young maid.”

“Young? I’m more like an old maid—”

“Not after three marriages, you’re not.”

“How do you know?”

“I? I only know what the world knows. Your life is an open book.”

“Do you have any idea how old I am?”

“I figure you’ve got to be older than me or you wouldn’t have written all those books—but I can’t imagine how you did it without it aging you.”

“Hah,” said Isadora. “More flattery. I reached puberty the year you were born.”

“Yes—and now I’m going to make it all worth your while.”

“You’re really potential trouble,” Isadora said, laughing. “Tell me about the second crash.”

“Oh yes—that. Well, quickly passing over the tale of fortunes lost and great houses fallen in ruins—”

“The one you tell the potential seducee.”

Bean nodded and continued. “—I go on to the tale of my attempted self-slaughter, as they said in Elizabethan times ... You see, I’ve been trying unofficially to kill myself ever since I reached puberty. Maybe it’s because I have too much energy—and no place to put it—or maybe it’s because I realized then that my father had been trying to off me since I was born and I had somehow—according to my shrink—internalized his wish to do it. But anyhow, I seem to have these very nearly fatal accidents all the time. The last one was two years ago when my head flew through the windshield of my car, my chest flew into the steering wheel, my spleen flew all over the inside of my body, and I hovered between life and death for two weeks, having out-of-body experiences, while my parents went bananas, and one young nurse tried to suck my cock while I was conversing with God and the angels ...”

“And what did you learn while you were conversing with God and the angels?”

Here Bean became very serious, almost solemn.

“That God and the angels do not care who sucks your cock—but that a life without love is not worth living—even if you have fame, fortune, and lemon chicken to eat. So when I saw you at that health club and you looked so beautiful, so succulent, but something in your eyes looked destroyed, betrayed, haunted—I knew I had to see you again ...”

“Sir Galahad to the rescue. Are you one of those men who only falls in love with damsels in distress?”

“No,” said Bean. “I usually do not fall in love with anyone. I usually fuck my brains out and go home emptyhearted—but with you, I have a feeling that even if I never get to fuck you, you will fill my heart each time I see you.”

This brought tears to Isadora’s eyes. She blinked them back. She was not sure whether she was hearing honesty or blarney. It was her curse to be moved by a man who could turn a phrase, however flowery, and it was either curse or blessing (she was never sure which) that she was so vulnerable. She girded her loins. She would not sleep with Bean, she decided—however he might appeal—or however appealing he might be. His openness, his emotional vulnerability was either very close to her own—or else he was really a good actor, and a bit of a con man (as all performing artists must be—and perhaps even writers?).

“Lately, I have also been doing a lot of fucking my brains out and going home emptyhearted,” Isadora said. “It gets boring really fast. I never did enough of it before to know that—whatever my reputation. But I’ve decided to give up promiscuity.”

Bean snapped his fingers. “Damn—just my luck to meet you now, on the round heels, as it were, of that decision.”

Isadora laughed again. She was trying to figure out how much sincerity was here, and how much humbug. Without a doubt, Bean was one of the most charming people she had ever met. He could charm birds out of trees, candy from babes, money from misers. But she was determined not to let him charm his way into her bed.

They had left the fire to smolder in the living-room fireplace, and were now putting one log after another on the blazing fire in the dining room. Outside, it kept snowing lightly and the sky had that wonderful pink-as-a-baby‘s-bottom look it gets during a snowfall. Usually, snow in Connecticut panicked Isadora, but this snowfall was warm and friendly because Bean was here. Perched in the big wooden house on the cliff, at the end of the treacherous, snaky driveway, at the end of Serpentine Hill Road, Bean and Isadora talked on.

“Why do you think you’re so self-destructive?” Isadora asked. “I mean, really? Is it only your relationship with your father? Don’t get me wrong—I believe in that sort of thing. I think that a man who never slays his father, never grows up—as witness my last ex-husband, Josh—but why are you slaying yourself ... ?

“Because I want to kill him, so I turn the aggression inward?”

“Too glib,” said Isadora. “Listen, I spent the first twenty-five years of my life accumulating scars, too. Scars, broken bones, broken marriages. I nearly crippled myself being thrown from a too-spirited horse in Texas. I broke my tibia in twelve places following my inscrutable Oriental second husband down an icy slope in the Austrian Alps—which I knew I shouldn’t be caught dead on. But I think I was always punishing myself because I felt so guilty, guilty for being more talented than my sisters, guilty for using my talent the way my mother didn’t use hers, guilty for being so blessed.”

“So you admit it—you are blessed.”

“I guess.”

“Like being born with a little extra spin on the ball—as the WASPs say.” (Here Bean imitated a tight-lipped WASP accent—the sort of accent Isadora thought of as “Locust Valley Lockjaw.”) It was so uncharacteristic of him, it made her laugh.

“Or an extra shot of adrenaline—as my mother said of me when I was a child,” Isadora said.

“Precisely,” said Bean, still mimicking a real WASP. “Hey—you like that? You like when I don’t open my mouth to talk?”

“I love it,” said Isadora. “It’s so unlike you. You’re the most openmouthed man I’ve ever met. But still, you’re going to have to go home.”

Bean looked utterly crestfallen. His shaggy eyebrows drooped. His blue eyes suddenly lost their sparkle. Even his perfectly pointed WASP nose (the sort that Romance novelists call retroussé) seemed to retreat toward his upper lip as if in pursuit of sudden Semitism.

“But there’s so much more to say,” he said. “We have to discuss Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and sex.”

“We’ve already discussed sex. Nietzsche and Schopenhauer will have to wait.”

“But don’t you need sex to power your creativity?” Bean asked.

“Not tonight,” said Isadora. “My business manager just dropped dead, leaving me with horrendous tax problems. I have my period and I’m utterly exhausted. I’m going to stand up now—if I still can after all this wine—and ask you to go home.”

“What can I do to dissuade you?”

“Nothing,” she said, standing up and reeling slightly from the wine. “I swear it. Nothing.”

Bean looked suddenly like a very tall Holden Caulfield. He seemed fifteen, not twenty-five. His upper lip trembled as if he were about to cry. His enormous blue eyes grew watery. Suddenly, Isadora could imagine him killing himself. He had already told her that he owned a revolver and knew how to use it. He had also told her that he used cars as lethal weapons—and the roads were certainly treacherous. Ought she ask him to sleep in the guest room?

No. Impossible. Impossible to have so sexual a presence in the house and not fuck him. Well—if he was so self-destructive—it was his problem, she thought. She was tired of taking care of the whole world. She was tired of taking care of young men. Josh, Roland, Bean—they would all have to fend for themselves. But were old men much better? Apparently she had taken better care of Mel Botkin than he had taken of her.

“I think you should go home,” Isadora said. She held onto her chairback for support. She could feel the cramps in her belly dragging her downward and she was wondering whether the last Tampax was beginning to seep. In about a minute, trickles of menstrual blood would begin inching down her thighs.

“I loved tonight,” Isadora said, “but I really think you should go home.”

Why she was so determined not to sleep with him she didn’t really know. After all, she had slept with plenty of men she liked less. Maybe she sensed the hold he might come to have over her; maybe she really knew what a formidable presence he might become in her life. When a woman is powerfully attracted to a new man, sometimes that is just the moment she chooses to flee. But when a man is just so much chopped liver—she can bed him and go her way unhooked.

“Let me at least give you some autographed books,” Isadora said to the misty-eyed Bean. It was the old ploy: books not bed. Or books as a prelude to bed—she wasn’t sure which. At fifteen, she had written poems to men instead of bedding them. At twenty-five, she had done the same. At twenty-eight, she had written a whole novel just because of a man she could not have (for he was impotent with her out of spite)—and when, in her thirty-first year, the novel was published, the world became hers for the asking, but still not that man. At thirty-nine, she had substituted bed for books, and always come home dry-eyed and emptyhearted. What was the final solution to the book-bed dilemma? Was there one? Did she only love the unattainable man, the man under the bed, the impossible object—finally Daddy?

“Come upstairs,” she said, leading Bean to her tree-house study. She walked carefully, rubbing her thighs together in her jeans, to keep the blood at bay.

They mounted the spiral staircase that led to her studio. Up there, in her gray-carpeted sanctuary, lined with her books, she could see his astonishment at the quantity of volumes she had produced. He saw her as a woman, not a book machine—but clearly she was also a book machine. She had laid waste forests on sundry continents to proliferate her words in a multitude of languages.

“French, Spanish, German, Italian, and what else?” he asked, amazed.

“Japanese, Hebrew, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian—and even Serbo-Croat and Macedonian—but not Swahili,” she said drunkenly. Why was she so proud of her foreign editions? She had no way of knowing if their texts even remotely resembled anything she had written. Well, in the French and Italian and German, she had some way of knowing, but the other languages were all Greek to her. And yet, there was such a gap between intention and effect anyway, that her books were never quite what she intended, even in her own native tongue. It was as if she meant to draw a unicorn, but produced somehow a goat with a pasted-on horn. The result was always so far from what she intended that she could derive little pleasure from it. The best part was the writing itself—the flow of words on the page, the joy she found in covering her yellow legal pads with multicolored inks. Let other authors stare at video screens. She needed the visceral feel of paper and ink; she needed the sheer physicality of writing.

But the end product? That was not for her to enjoy or even to judge. It was artifact to her: the process was all. Surely all authors must feel this way; surely they must feel the painful gap between intention and effect, and even when the readers raved, one wanted to say: No, no—life is much more interesting, complex, and rich than prose can ever be.

“Here,” she said, grabbing a hard-cover copy of Tintoretto’s Daughter. She began to inscribe it for Bean.

“To Berkeley Sproul III. May you live to see the IVth and Vth and (even) VIth. And may you fall in love in Venice someday—as Marietta Robusti did—but not have to die for it. With much affection, Isadora Wing.”

She handed him the book. He read the inscription, and looked even more misty-eyed. Then he grabbed her suddenly and hugged her very tight. She could feel his hard-on under his jeans, and she could feel his very large, very gentle hands cupping her ass and then moving up along her back, fondling her as if he wanted to press her body into his. But it was the way he touched the back of her neck and her hair that astounded her. His fingers found the very place on her neck that always caused her the most pain when she had her terrible tension headaches and they began to massage it with infinite tenderness. How did his fingers know just where to go? It was uncanny. One hand remained on her neck, and the other moved up to her head and rubbed it with such gentleness and love that she might have been a child again, having her head rubbed by her grandfather as she fell asleep.

Now she was really panic-stricken. No man (except her grandfather) had ever found those parts of her body before; no man had ever known to rub her neck and head that way. If he knew that—what other, more volatile knowledge of her body might he have? She was afraid to find out.

“You have to go home,” she said to Bean, breaking away. “You really do.”

He nodded sadly. She took his hand and led him down the spiral stairs, wondering, Was she mad to let him go, or was she sane? No more love, she had promised herself, no more beguiling young men whose hearts are “wax to receive and marble to retain” (as Byron says).

“That’s right—throw me back in the gutter, where vagabonds belong,” Bean said histrionically.

Downstairs in the foyer Isadora handed him his long red scarf and his fisherman’s sweater. She even found an old ski cap of Josh’s to offer him, but he refused.

“No thanks,” he said, “I’d rather freeze to death if I can’t have you. I’d rather die in the gutter.”

“‘We are all in the gutter,”’ Isadora said. “‘But some of us are looking at the stars.”’ She opened the heavy front door and snow swirled in.

“That’s from Lady Windermere’s Fan,” said Bean. “Now let me quote you something even more relevant from The Importance of Being Earnest.” He walked out onto the snowy flagstone path, flung the red scarf dramatically around his neck and declaimed: “ ‘I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and really being good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.’ ”

“Touché,” said Isadora. “Now go!”

Though she was wearing only a sweater over her jeans, she walked out to the van with him, reveling in the pinky, snowy night, which was really not very cold after all.

“Careful,” he said, “don’t slip.” He held her arm with great tenderness.

When they reached his flamboyant van (which was lightly dusted with snow), he opened the door and looked at her again sadly.

“Go home,” she said, hugging him briefly. He leaned down, took her in his arms again, and kissed her on the mouth with a tongue that knew the inside of her soul. He might have been kissing her cunt not her mouth for the excitement that it generated in her. His tongue knew everything about her mouth, as his fingers had found the sensitive place on her neck. She felt she could come just kissing him.

“Go home,” she said again, breaking away. She was wondering why she was so determined to get rid of him. What we all want most is to be known, and Bean certainly knew her. Was that why he had to go? She stood on tiptoes and playfully stuck her tongue in his ear. “Go home,” she reiterated.

Without a word, he got into the van, revved the motor, and began to back up. She waved, and walked back to the house, feeling that she had just narrowly escaped with her life, her freedom, her soul.

Thank Goddess, she said to herself, deeply relieved to hear his engine roaring up the driveway.

Inside, she stripped off her clothes, changed her Tampax (just in time to avert a bloody disaster), and put on an old flannel granny gown. She lathered up her face with black soap, enriching the estate of Dr. Lazlo—wherever he might be—in heaven, perhaps, doing deals with Mel Botkin?

Bean’s arrival in her life had cheered her immeasurably. What the hell if I’m broke, she thought. I’ll make it again as I made it the first time. She felt reckless, enterprising, fearless, exuberant. She felt that her life was beginning again—all the more so perhaps because she had to start from scratch. She would declare bankruptcy, sell her possessions, simplify her life. The classic car would go—maybe both cars would go—and so would the diamond earrings Josh had bought her. She would be perfectly happy with a smaller house and smaller car—even no house or car at all. Writing was what mattered, not money, not fame—writing and Amanda. And what about love? No. It wasn’t time for love yet. Good thing she had sent Bean home. He was a real threat to her resolve to stay free, a real threat.

Isadora finished her Lazlo regime, turned on the light in the bedroom, and prepared to curl up in bed with a book—preferably a classic rather than the masses of importunate galleys that crowded her bedstand, seeking blurbs. “Read not the times, read the eternities,” Thoreau says, and on the eve of bankruptcy, one needed the classics more than ever. Well then, she would read Thoreau. She would reread Walden, as a prelude to selling the house and cars and moving even deeper into the wilderness. She could certainly face life without black soap!

American literature was upstairs in the attic, the room where she had written Tintoretto’s Daughter, now Mandy’s playroom. The adult books had not yet been moved out. Isadora put on her funny old red Eddie Bauer goosedown slippers (the ones that made her look like she had clown feet) and she padded to the main stairs and thence to the attic in search of Thoreau. Just as she passed the front door, she heard a most persistent knock.

“Isadora!” came Bean’s voice. “Isadora!”

“Shit,” she muttered to herself. “I must look like holy hell.”

She threw open the front door.

Bean stood outside, teeth chattering. His hair was covered with large snowflakes. His nose dripped slightly and was very red.

“What happened?” Isadora asked.

“I slipped off the driveway and the van got stuck in a snowbank,” Bean explained. “I can’t push the damned thing back onto the road.”

“A likely story,” she said.

“It’s true,” said Bean. “I drove off the road and just missed plowing into a tree.”

Isadora looked at him cynically. “You drove off the road on purpose,” she said, immensely relieved that he was not dead, and that he had come back.

“I swear it—I did not,” Bean said. “I skidded backwards off the icy curve.”

“Sure,” said Isadora laughing. “Anyone who wants to get laid that badly must be absolutely incredible in bed.”

And she took him by the hand and led him into her bedroom.

They threw off their clothes—sweater, scarf, granny gown, goosedown slippers, jeans—and fell into each other’s arms as if their whole lives had been a preparation for this moment.

Talk about the Zipless Fuck! Talk about the impossible fantasy come true! Bean took to bed as a duck to water, a polar bear to snow, a starving man to a hunk of mutton. You’d have thought—from the way he went at Isadora’s body—that he’d been starved for female bodies his whole life, though clearly that was not the case. He was so hungry, so horny (yet so oddly pure in his hunger and horniness that she wanted to say, “There, there—nobody’s going to take it away from you,” but she refrained, out of fear of being flippant about his prodigious sexuality). Nor did he have any kind of hang-ups about taste or smell. It was clear that he relished smells, juices, sweat, blood. He dove into her muff with great exuberance, parted it, found the white string that dangled chastely there and pulled her Tampax triumphantly out with his teeth.

“Aha! A string!” he said between clenched teeth. He chewed on the Tampax lightly, savoring its taste, then tossed it to the floor and dove in again, tongue-first. He played lusty tunes on her clitoris, plunged a practiced finger into her snatch, and reached all the way in until he found, on the anterior wall, the sweetest spot. By rubbing her expertly there, while his tongue trilled on her clit and the other hand pressed down on her belly, he brought her swiftly to the most palpitating climax she’d ever known.

She tried to close her legs to rest a while, but he forced them apart (ignoring her protestations) and rammed his cock inside her. He rocked her from side to side, touching parts of her insides she could have sworn were untouched before; then he pulled back suddenly, and rammed it in again. Now he began to pound her mercilessly. Raising himself on his arms, he went at her cunt with his ferociously hard cock as if he meant to annihilate all trace of any previous lovers. “For Josh,” he said, ramming it in, “for Bennett, for Brian, for all of them.” He pounded her so hard that she was about to come again, but just at that moment, he pulled back saying, “Not yet, baby, not yet,” forcibly turned her over, smacked her hard on her bottom, and plunged into her from behind. He drew her up on her knees, and fucked the daylights out of her while his fingers found her clit and she came and came and came, screaming and covering his cock, the sheets, the quilt, the pillows, with blackly red menstrual blood.

He was triumphant. The sheets were mad with blood. His face, his cock, his belly ringed with it. He wore a mustache of blood, a beard of blood, war stripes of blood on his cheekbones; and she wore blood all over her belly.

She tried to eat him, to lick off her own blood, but he pushed her back, threw both her legs over one of his shoulders, and began to fuck her again with outrageous determination and spirit. She had never known anyone—except herself, perhaps—to give himself so wholly. Usually in sex, there is a part of the other that tries to hold back, seeking detachment, cynicism, judgment—anything rather than a complete fusion with the lover. But Bean had no such need of detachment; he was wholly unafraid of sex, wholly confident of his own manhood in a way that Isadora supposed must have vanished with the Vikings. His face bore the most intent expression: he would have killed himself by skidding into a tree if he couldn’t fuck her, and now he fucked her as if fucking her were a matter of life and death.

Holding her legs aloft, pinning her ankles behind his ear, he fucked her wildly. She could not choose the position, nor control it. She could not lead with this dancing partner—but curiously enough this excited her more than ever and she came repeatedly in positions which she had previously thought were not propitious for her.

He chortled and laughed whenever she came. He could feel her orgasm squeezing his cock—so perfect was their fit.

“You’re my fit, my mate,” he said, eyes wild with delight. “Have another one on me.”

He kneeled above her, brandishing his cock like a lethal weapon. It was very red, covered with her blood, and it had a tantalizing curve to it, almost a bend at midpoint.

“I want to fuck the daylights out of you,” Bean said, plunging in again. “I want to obliterate all the other lovers, all the other husbands,” he said, “I want to be your man,” he said on the next plunge, “your man, your man, your man.”

Isadora gasped as he plunged into her. She gasped with pleasure and astonishment. Bean’s eyes were wild.

“You madman,” she said. “You maniac.”

“I haven’t even begun to fuck you,” he said, pulling out, rolling her over, and starting to smack her bottom again.

“What a beautiful ass you have—but not red enough. I’m going to make it red.”

He smacked her until the whole room resounded with smacks, until her buttocks smarted and tingled and the fiery feeling seemed to pass to her cunt. Then he rolled her over again and whipped her pussy with his hard cock. Again he thrust his cock into her and then pulled it out. Again he whipped her clit. He kept this up until she was begging for him to plunge in again.

“Not yet, baby, not yet,” he said.

He lowered himself between her legs and started to eat her again, revolving his tongue on her clit, filling both cunt and ass with fingers.

“I’m going to stick one finger deep inside until I can feel all the dark of you,” he said; then he went back to eating her.

She was wild with desire, fatigue, desire. She wanted to fight it, not to favor him with another orgasm. She had lost count of how many she’d had—but she was somehow sure that it was the next one which would bond her to him forever, which would finish her, finish her freedom. She was determined to hold back. She tried to think of Josh, of Kevin; she even tried to conjure up a headache —but it was in vain. She felt herself going over the shuddering edge into another orgasm, an orgasm which seemed to raise the kundalini, and which made her legs go into convulsions and her hands grip the back of his neck until he cried out in pain.

Then he mounted her again and fucked her with an intensity even greater than before. He turned his head to one side and his face became contorted as if in pain. He raised himself on his arms again and slid, glided, flew in and out of her body as if he were blasting off into space.

“Fly, darling, fly!” she said.

“Baby, baby, baby, baby,” he screamed, as he thrust into her, coming like mad, his pelvis and thighs convulsing as he came and one artery pulsed hotly in his thigh. He collapsed on top of her.

“My darling,” he said, rubbing her head and neck again. “My darling, darling, darling, darling, darling.”

They lay for a while in each other’s arms, astounded by the intensity of their own coupling, astounded by the third creature they had made with their two bodies.

“I knew you were trouble,” Isadora said, “but I didn’t know you were so much trouble.” She felt like Venus with Adonis in her arms, like Ishtar with her young consort, like Cleopatra with Mark Antony. This was the primal erotic experience, she knew—a woman in all her ripeness, and a young man who had not yet begun to lose the juice of life. Men forfeited so much for their worldly power that their life-force, sex-force, began to leave them sooner than it left women. Women were powered by their years, by their babies, by their passage on the planet; men grew oddly depleted. So a woman of thirty-nine and a man of twenty-five met at an equal point sexually. This was the great truth the French novelists knew—but we Americans resisted. Colette had known this when she bedded Maurice, who was thirty-five to her fifty-one. She had known it when she married him at sixty-one, calling him her best friend. It was the secret of wise women that they knew they held the life-fuse longer than men.

Just as Isadora was having these thoughts, the telephone rang.

“It’s my business manager—in heaven,” she quipped, giggling.

“Hello?”

It was Kevin.

“Oh hi,” she said, feeling embarrassed, as if he could see her with the dried blood all over her belly, “how are you?”

Bean giggled.

“Shhhh,” she cautioned, putting her hand over the phone.

Bean picked up the discarded bloody Tampax from the floor and began to suck on it again.

“Mmmmmm,” he said.

“Shhh,” Isadora went again, hand cupped over the phone.

“Listen, Kevin?” she said. “I was just drifting off to sleep—can I call you in the morning? Okay?”

“Is something the matter?” Kevin was asking. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Perfectly fine,” Isadora said.

“You sound very weak, very faint,” said Kevin.

“Just falling asleep, that’s all ...” She feigned a sleepy, rather than fucked-out, voice.

“Sure you’re all right?”

“Absolutely,” she purred, looking at Bean, who was still cutting up with the Tampax. Was he mad—or only merry? It was a definite possibility that he was crazy. Who but a crazy man could abandon himself so totally to the dark gods? But then, that made her crazy, too. Kevin, on the other hand, was not crazy: Kevin—the master of nice, little after-dinner shtups. Kevin would never take away her soul, but neither would he bring out the bacchante in her, the madness in her, the sheer animal insanity.

“Call you in the morning,” she said to Kevin, looking at Bean. “Hugs and kisses.” She hung up.

“Who was that?” Bean asked.

“My main man,” said Isadora.

“Your what?”

“My main man. Want to make something of it?”

“I wish I were your main man,” Bean said.

“You’re too young for me,” said Isadora, knowing in her soul it was not true.

“I have a feeling you’ll age me fast,” said Bean. “Which reminds me—I have something for you.”

He was hard again and raring to go.

“Here,” he said, taking her by the hand and helping her out of the waterbed, “lean over the bed.”

He heaped the pillows in front of her for her to lean on, and cupping her breasts, he took her from behind, ramming her harder than before. Her cunt throbbed, ached, tingled. She screamed for him to ram her even harder, to smack her, to pound her. When Bean entered her, it was as if she were possessed by a dybbuk. When he rammed her, she found herself urging him on in a voice that didn’t even seem to belong to her—as if she had truly become a bacchante, as if the boundaries between pain and pleasure had totally dissolved and he were her master, her priapic god, pounding her soul as well as her body.

Ah—she claimed to worship the Great Mother, but she was in thrall to the penis, cock-bound, cock-mastered, cock-unsure. Always she had known that men had this potential power over her, but never had she so surely met her sexual mate—a man who never tired of fucking, who liked to fuck until the point of soreness and exhaustion, a man who had as few hang-ups about sweat and smell and blood as she had, an earthy man, who knew that only through earth can we become divine.

“I want to be your man,” he growled, fucking her wildly from behind, filling her ass with his middle finger, her cunt with his hard, hooked cock, her soul with his passionate need, his intensity, his certainty, his desire.

She had never come before in this position—but when she did, it was as if thirty-nine years of comes were released and she howled and growled like an animal—whereupon he was aroused beyond containment and he began to come with a pelvis and cock gone wild, pounding her fiercely, filling her with come, until they both collapsed over the bed, panting with exhaustion.

“Come, let me hold you,” he said, climbing up on the bed and leading her to do the same. He put his arm around her and she nestled in the hollow of his body while he rubbed her head. Even lying together, they had the perfect fit. Though she was five foot three to his six foot two they lay in each other’s arms as if they both belonged, had always belonged there. It was amazing how rarely that happened in life—a good fit between bodies. The only positive thing to be said for promiscuity was that it taught you that —with a vengeance.

“You’re my fit, my mate,” he said. “Now that I’ve found you, I’m never going to let you go.”

“My darling,” Isadora said, fighting back the feeling that there might be any truth whatever in his words.

After tonight, I’m never going to see him again, she thought. He’s a mirage, a dream, a demon out of an I. B. Singer story, the devil himself impersonating an angel. Passion like this cannot be clung to, cannot last, cannot keep. A man as charming as this could romance his way right into your heart, then leave you flat. She was not ready for that after the recent heartbreak with Josh. She might never be ready for it again.

“What are you thinking?” he asked. “What?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“You’re a woman who’s never thought nothing in her whole, entire life,” Bean said. “Of that I am certain.”

“I’m only thinking that you’re trouble,” she said, “big trouble.”

“Just a very wild young man,” he said. “Your standard, garden-variety rake.”

“The garden of earthly delights,” she said. “Besides—a reformed rake makes the best husband—or so they used to believe in the eighteenth century vide Tom Jones.”

“Gadzooks, wench, are you proposing?”

“Hardly likely,” she said. “I’ve been married more than enough already.”

“I’d marry you in a minute,” he said, “and I don’t even believe in marriage.” He stroked her head with a very gentle hand. He was as tender with her now as he had been rough before. Which was real—the tenderness or the roughness? Or were they both real? Unstoppered sex brings out all the extremes within us—angel and animal, angel and ape. She felt that unmistakable sign of a cosmic connection, a diminutive sun glowing inside her pelvis, a radiant spot of warmth two inches below her navel, at precisely that point upon which Zen masters meditate, the Chakra between navel and pubis.

“What am I going to do with you, Bean?” Isadora asked. “Am I going to have to adopt you?”

“Shhh—darling,” he said, “let’s drift ...” and they fell asleep sweetly in each other’s arms, sleeping entwined without the slightest strain, wrapped in each other’s sweat and come and blood, utterly blissed, utterly peaceful.

Isadora slept as she had not since Josh’s departure. She slept without Valium, without booze, without dope. She dreamt herself back in the old West Side apartment where she grew up, climbing the stairs to Papa’s studio, looking over the balcony into the double-height living room, trying to balance there (although the railing was mysteriously missing), and not to fall into the abyss where her parents were entertaining their friends. They were toasting with French champagne in trumpet-shaped, hollow-stemmed glasses. The bubbles rose in the stems to the strains of tinkling cocktail-piano music. They were merry and gay and tittering about things kids could not understand. But now, out of the blue, they were talking about her, not knowing she was there. “She will have to learn it the hard way,” they were saying, “the hard way.”

Suddenly, those vague parental words struck terror into her heart. She wanted to say, “I’m here, I’m listening,” but she was eavesdropping and it was long past her bedtime, so she couldn’t disclose her presence. She lost her toehold on the balcony and began to fall. She floated through the air, borne on air currents, like a winged seed pod, lazily circling down. She knew that eventually she would crash into the floor of that parental living room —and her terrible secret, her terrible guilt, would be exposed. Just before she hit bottom, she woke up with a start.

She awakened in a panic to feel the blood gushing between her legs and a strange face on the pillow beside her. The beginnings of a ruddy sunrise gleamed at the edges of the roman blinds which shrouded her bedroom windows. The digital clock said 5:59. Her daughter sometimes rose at six.

She bounded out of the waterbed and into the bathroom, where (like Lowell Strathmore impersonating a Keystone Kop before running home to his wife), she began to wash up. She found a Tampax, inserted it, washed her legs and belly with a cloth, splashed cold water on her face, sprayed Opium all over her, brushed her hair, dabbed on some makeup, and ran back to the waterbed to shake the sleeping stranger who had somehow landed there.

“Darling,” he muttered, “darling.”

“You have to go,” she said. “My kid may wake up at any minute.” She was in a sweat, a panic—whether from the dream or from the bacchic exertions of the night before, she did not know. All she knew was that she had to get rid of him—and fast, fast.

“Please, Bean, please,” she said, shaking him.

He opened his eyes sleepily and reached for her to kiss.

“Excuse my dragon breath,” he said.

“No problem,” she said, kissing him tenderly. Then she broke away, saying: “You really must go.” She went and got his clothes for him. Lazily, lazily, like a man underwater, he put them on.

“Is this the bum’s rush,” he asked, half hurt and half amused.

“My kid’s going to wake up any minute,” she blurted out. “I had a great time last night—you’re wonderful—but what am I going to do when Amanda toddles in here?”

She held open the door to the dog run, where little Bichon-Frisé turds lay twinkling under the new-fallen snow.

“Oh, god—the van,” she said.

“I’ll push it,” he said. “I’m good at manual labor—don’t worry. Lady—I adore you. Will you please remember that?”

He bounded into the dog run, flinging the red scarf around him.

“Out amongst the turds where I belong!” he said merrily, skipping over the frozen dogshit.

She watched as he sprinted up the driveway, found his van (which was gleaming kaleidoscopically in a snowbank), and began to push it back onto the road. It looked like an impossible task— but either his strength was so great or the power of the Goddess who had first stuck him, then unstuck him, was so strong, that in a minute or two he was able to push the van a few feet closer to the road.

He trudged over to Isadora’s sand barrel, picked up the banjo shovel which was poised priapically there, and began to spread sand and salt under the wheels of the van. Then he got into the outrageously painted vehicle, revved the motor, and began rocking back and forth, trying to get a hold on the road. Even the way he drove was sexual! Goddamn, Isadora thought, this man is going to be a distraction. She couldn’t wait for the sand to take hold and for his wheels to skid him out of her life forever.

When that happened, she almost burst into a solitary round of applause. Out, out, out, out of my life forever, she thought—like the mirage, the demon, the dybbuk you are! But even as she saw his van take off up the road, she was singing. She was singing love songs to herself as she stepped into the shower. “I’ve ne-ver been in love before ...” she sang, and then she laughed at herself, lathering blood and come out of her pubic hair, and watching it turn the shower water rusty as it whirled, whirled, whirled down the drain.