Eva set down
her glass, then reached across the table and took Mr. Esmeralda’s hand. She
stared into his eyes for a long time, as if she were searching for reassurance.
She said, “I have to tell you the truth, Carlos. I’ve never felt this way about
anyone else, apart from Gerard. This is the first time in all of my years of
marriage that I’ve actually dared to believe I could be happy.”
“Gerard makes
you so miserable?”
She looked
away. “Gerard still attracts me. Perhaps I’m a masochist. Perhaps I get some
painful pleasure out of being cheated. Perhaps I deserve everything I get.”
“Would you like
to think that you arc a martyr?
St. Eva the Sanctimonious,
broken on the wheel of her husband’s inconstancy?”
“That’s
unfair.”
“No,” said Mr.
Esmeralda. “It is quite true. If you were really angry at Gerard, you would
have left him years ago. But you enjoy being degraded. You enjoy catching
Gerard with Francesca, and hearing about his passion for her. It excites you.
It gives your life some spice, some variety.
It makes you
believe that Gerard is more exciting then he really is. He must be, if some
other girl wants him, too.
A pretty young girl like
Francesca.
The fact is, however, that Gerard is an uninteresting petty
criminal; a man whose little struggles with authority have done nothing to
mature a personality that is essentially boorish and self-centered and vulgar.
Some men, if they had been schooled in the same way that Gerard has, would have
become swashbuckling heroes.
Gerard has
achieved nothing but a condition of abject meanness, both of spirit and of
flesh. It is time you recognized it, if you haven’t already. And it is time you
said to yourself, ‘Is this what I really want for the rest of my life?
A man like Gerard?”
Eva said in a
hushed voice, “Mr. Esmeralda, you’re wooing me.”
“Wooing?” he
asked in surprise. Then, “Yes, if you want to use such a word. Yes, I suppose I
am.
Wooing.
She stared
across the restaurant unashamedly admiring her own reflection in the glass of a
picture frame for a long time, while Mr. Esmeralda admired her profile. It was
her better profile thank God; and the flickering candlelight gave her looks
magic which made her appear younger, more serene,
mysterious
.
Shcfe/t mysterious, too, which helped.
Calm and erotic and
mysterious.
And drunk.
“I suppose you
want to go to bed with me,” she said. The words didn’t quite come out the way
she had meant them to. They sounded squeaky and unbalanced, instead of alluring
and Garboesque; but once she’d spoken them it was too late. She turned and
stared at him, and he stared back.
“Yes,” he said.
“Of course.”
They were
silent in the taxi on the way back to Eva’s apartment. They didn’t even hold
hands.
When Eva let
them in, they found that the twins had gone to bed. The sitting room was tidied
up and in darkness. Mr. Esmeralda loosened his necktie and said, “How much
would you like a cocktail?”
Eva came back
across the soft white carpet and put her arms around his neck, kissing the tip
of his nose. “Not as much as I’d like you.”
“Then let’s
take two cocktails into the bedroom. Do you have any peach brandy? I mix a
formidable Fish House Punch.”
“A dry martini
will do.”
Mr. Esmeralda
looked down at this woman clinging to his neck, and for one moment he had an
almost uncontrollable urge to tug her arms away and slap her into sensibility.
But he needed her, and he had learned years and years ago that you never upset
anybody you need, no matter how much contempt you might feel for them.
“It will be as
quick as my trembling hands will allow,” he whispered.
The bedroom,
too, was Italian. Mirrors, chrome, and smoked glass. The only touches of human
life were a slender vase of lilies, a framed photograph of Gerard after he had
won the visitor’s golf tournament at San Pedro, and a single white stocking
draped over the side of the stainless-steel dressing-table stool.
Mr. Esmeralda
took off his jacket and hung it over the back of a chair. “Gerard is a man who
lives inside of himself,” he remarked, looking around him.
“How can you
reach the soul of such a man? I am surprised he loves anybody; although if it
has to be anybody, Francesca is the least surprising of all.
A
chilly, stupid girl.
If you knew her better you would like her worse.”
Mr. Esmeralda
stripped off his tie. Then he approached Eva, and held her in his arms, his
eyes liquid and brown and delightfully quizzical. He kissed her, and then began
to unzip her dress.
She said,
“Carlos...” but he hushed her and said, “You must call me ‘my dear,’ and that
is all.
Names have
unhappy memories.”
He gently
tugged the dress from her shoulders, kissing her face and neck. She felt as if
she were afloat, like a balloon. Eva, the Inflatable Woman–so light and heady
that the slightest warm breeze could carry her upward into the early-morning
smog of West Los Angeles and away across the San Gabriel Mountains.
Mr. Esmeralda
unhooked her beige lace bra. Her breasts were firm and full for a woman of her
age, and he held them in his hands with obvious pleasurfe. Her nipples
stiffened between his fingers, and he played with them until her wide pink
areolas crinkled and she began to feel that tingling which she hadn’t felt for
so long.
She murmured,
“My dear...
”as if she were quoting from a play.
Mr.
Esmeralda said, “Sshh.”
He pushed her
gently back onto the bed, onto the white-on-white bedspread, and removed her
stockings and sheer panties.
She watched him
as he deftly undid his shirt buttons, unbuckled his alligator belt, peeled off
his socks. Soon he was kneeling over her naked, his chest shaggy with black
hair,
his
penis rearing from the curly forest between
his thighs as purple as an overripe plum.”
He gripped her
legs and opened them up wide, so that the crimson lips of her vulva parted as
stickily as a mouth that has been feeding on cranberry syrup. He lowered his
mustachioed face and licked at her clitoris with the tip of his tongue, then
probed her urethra so deeply that she shivered. She moaned and twisted her
hips, but Mr. Esmeralda clasped her tight, and plunged his tongue into her
again and again.
She closed her
eyes. She shuddered, deep within herself. She thought
,
this is mad, and bad. This isn’t the way to solve anything. This isn’t the way
to save my marriage or to salvage my self-esteem. But, God, it feels beautiful.
He rose up at
last, and mounted her, his chin shiny and his eyes bright with lust. She
reached both her hands down between her legs and opened herself up for him, as
wide as she could, so that the very first time he thrust into her, he thrust
extravagantly deep, the head of his penis touching the neck of her womb and
making her jump in erotic shock.
He thrust again
and again, grunting with each thrust; and Eva tugged herself wider and wider,
as if she wanted to take all of him inside her, as if she wanted to take so
much that he killed her. He was right: she wanted to be martyred.
But only to the cause of her own excitement.
She felt
herself gradually ascending the foothills of an orgasm. She knew it would come
this time, that if she concentrated all her mental and muscular energy, she
would climax. She very rarely climaxed with Gerard, only when she was so drunk
that she didn’t care about his remoteness, or when she knew that he had been
with Francesca only hours before. Mr. Esmeralda panted and lowered himself onto
her, his hairy chest thick and wiry against her bare breasts, and for a split
second she felt an extra-ordinary sense of unreality and alienation, as if she
were dreaming that she was making love to some dark-pelted beast.
At eight, Mr.
Esmeralda swung
himself
out of bed and quickly began
to dress. Kuan-yin would still be waiting for him outside, and while he had
abused her unmercifully as a lover, he didn’t like to treat her inconsiderately
as an employer. You could only expect so much, even from people who were
uncritical and devoted.
As he tied up
his necktie, he leaned over the bed and kissed Eva on the ear. “You don’t have
to open your Tengu eyes,” he whispered. “If you are awake, I will call you. If
you are asleep, I will call you, too. You have been ecstasy beyond belief.”
He tiptoed to
the hallway, and released the chain on the door. He was just about to close it
behind him when he heard a soft voice say, “Mr. Esmeralda?”
He peered back
into the apartment through an inch-wide opening in the door. “Who’s that?”
“It’s me,
Kelly.’’ She came up to the door with tangled hair, dressed in a striped
nightshirt. “I wanted to say goodbye, and thank you.”
“Thank you?”
“I’ve never
seen Mother looking as pleased as when you invited her out last night.”
Mr. Esmeralda
opened the door a little wider. “Well,” he said, “thank you for saying thank
you.”
“She’s our
mother,” saidJCelly. “I know she drinks a lot, and I know she’s silly
sometimes, but we love her. You will take care of her, won’t you?”
“Of course,”
replied Mr. Esmeralda. He took her hand and kissed it. “She will be marvelously
taken care of, I promise.”
He left,
clicking the apartment door behind him. As he went down in the elevator, he
hummed to himself that sentimental old Latin tune, “The Rose of Rio.”
Across the
street, in a morning that was still chilly, Kuan-yin was sitting behind the
wheel of Mr.
Esmeralda’s limousine, listening to KMPC 710 and eating a cold
break- | fast of take-out odamaki mushi, steamed egg and noodles.
| Mr.
Esmeralda simply said, “Good morning,” as he i climbed into the back of the
car. There were hot-
towels !
waiting
for him in an electric steamer, and his shirt and suit were neatly laid out on
the seat.
i
“You looked
tired,”- said Kuan-yin.
“I need some
breakfast, that’s all,” said Mr. Esmeralda
, !
stripping
off his jacket, and then gratefully burying his j
face into the cologne-scented towels. “It’s been one of those nights.”
“You want to go
straight home?”
“No. Take me to
Laurel Canyon.”
“You’re sure?”
“Now I’m sure,
yes.”
Kuan-yin didn’t
ask what Mr. Esmeralda meant. It wasn’t her place to ask, and in any case she
wasn’t interested. She wasn’t a jealous person, but she did expect something
more from Mr.
Esmeralda than
the functional employer-chauffeur relationship they were going through now.
Perhaps he
would grow softer toward her when he found someone else who could excite him as
much as she used to. Perhaps he would always hate her for having summoned up
his greatest strengths and for having simultaneously exposed his greatest
weaknesses. She knew there was very little left in her life, apart from Mr.
Esmeralda and the few Chinese friends she knew in downtown Los Angeles. And the
Chinese proverb did say, “When you have only two pennies left, spend one on a
loaf of bread, and the other on a lily.” She would have to start taking care of
herself, both financially and spiritually. She had a feeling that her time with
Mr. Esmeralda was coming to an end.
Mr. Esmeralda,
buttoning up his clean blue shirt in the back of the limousine, was already
sure that the weather was changing, and that a storm was going to break before
too long. At least he was prepared for it, as much as anyone who had to deal
with a creature like Kappa could ever be prepared. Doctor Gempaku, very early
on, when they were first converting the ranch at Pacoima into a center for
developing Tengus, had told him, “Once you have instructed a Tengu to kill
somebody, then the Tengu must kill, whether it is the person you want to see
killed or not. I suppose the only way to protect yourself against a Tengu is to
elect a substitute to be killed in your place. It is written in the old scrolls
that if you offer the Tengu the blood of somebody you have lain with–a woman or
a man with whom you have had sexual congress–or somebody who owes you a lasting
favor, then the Tengu is obliged to accept your offer. Such an offer, after
all, heightens the evil of what is about to happen; and no devil as iniquitous
as the Tengu could refuse that.
Doctor
Gempaku’s words had crossed Mr. Esmeralda’s mind the very first time he had
walked into the Crowleys’ apartment and found Eva deserted, half naked, and
drunk. Here is a woman who is crying out for consolation, he had thought to
himself. Here is a woman who will take me as her lover just to spite her
husband. And, quite apart from the fact that taking Eva Crowley to bed will
enable me to score a particularly ironic point against that cold and arrogant
Gerard Crowley, it will also provide me with a living, loving sacrifice to
throw to the Tengus if Kappa ever sends them after me.
This morning,
however, Mr. Esmeralda was more than satisfied. This morning, he felt unusually
safe. Not only could he offer Eva Crowley to any Tengu which Kappa might direct
to kill him; he could also offer Kelly and Kathryn, bound to him by their
gratitude. His life-insurance policy had trebled in value in the space of a
single night.
A
t the same moment that Mr. Esmeralda closed the door of Eva
Crowlcy’s apartment, Sergeant Skrolnik opened the door of El Krusho’s cell,
folded his arms, took a deep breath, and said,
“It’s all
right. We’ve dropped the charges. You can go.”
Maurice had
been working out by lifting and lowering his stool with one hand. He blinked at
Sergeant Skrolnik and said, “What?” Sergeant Skrolnik said, “You deaf or
something?”