A God in Ruins - Leon Uris [42]
“Bottoms, bottoms,” she said to herself. White thigh boots. Now, let’s see, here we go. Across her midsection she painted the words and spread sparkles on it, reading: PRAISE THE LORD.
Greer heard a car parking outside. Holy moly—not a second to spare. She caught her breath and stood a few feet back, so he would have to get full sight of her.
A knock on the door. “Use your keys, I’ve got my hands full,” she called.
The key was tight from its summer’s rest. Finally, the door popped open.
“Fuck me, man!” Greer cried, holding arms and legs spread-eagled.
A number of beats of silence were required for everyone to get rearranged. Siobhan held a pair of shopping bags.
“Excuse me,” Siobhan said, “I was looking for the brothel. I’ll try down the hall.”
“Mrs. O’Connell?”
“Yes, lovely meeting you in person at last.”
“Oh, God!”
Siobhan set the bags down and went to the kitchen cabinet. “I think I need a drink,” she said, and belted down some Lemon Hart before Greer could stop her, staggered to the kitchen table as Greer pumped several glasses of water into her.
Suddenly, they looked at one another and burst out laughing and replayed the grand entrance and went hysterical.
“Thank God Dan wasn’t here!” Siobhan screamed.
“Or Maldonado!”
“Or Maldonado’s daughter!”
“Or Father Sean!”
“Or the dean of admissions!”
“You weren’t exactly expecting this, were you, ma’am?”
* * *
Chapter 11
BOULDER, 1971
Greer Little was a lover whose mind never strayed far from the scene. All the power pieces concealed in Quinn responded fivefold. Their open boldness of speaking out and then usually acting it out was astonishing.
It got so that the mere touching of one another while walking past each other could set off a conflagration. As apprehensions faded to trust, a cool sweetness settled over them. Time, thank God, stood still. The inevitable parting at the end of a year seemed far away, way down the runway.
When out of kissing distance, they rushed back together. And the humor was salty, raunchy, and very high. Neither of them were out to make the dean’s list but read voraciously when too exhausted to make love. They learned what their schools could give them, mostly learned on the queen-size mattress in the nook, where she went to read, with the kitchen chair for himself.
Once a week was party time. The place overflowed with happy, frustrated, angry, bewildered, and scared campus kids. Drugs were minimal, not so sex. It was the kind of campus where Nixon’s visit to China might get as much discussion as a new psychedelic drug. Oh, if they only had something going like Quinn and Greer.
Little bits at a time, Greer felt all right about giving him little pieces of New York. She did not want him to think she was heading back to some kind of subway or Central Park murder. She understood that Quinn was only partly interested in their trips on the wild side, and this gave her a sense of peace that the city was just not his thing. She’d often think, “We met in the wrong century, darling, but praise the Lord, we stopped and went a little way, hand in hand.”
During the past summer, Greer had cruised the scum holes of Eighth Avenue, purchasing books and magazines and checking out the porn films. The New York Public Library offered another trove. Crossing out and combining, she came up with a list of a hundred and six ways for them to make love.
“Done that, done that,” Quinn said, reading the list. “So, what’s new?”
“Us. Keep reading.”
“What! You found this in the New York Library?”
“In the same section with Mary Poppins.”
“You didn’t get this at the library. You have a fertile and diseased mind.”
“That’s beautiful, Quinn. You make a girl cry.”
Sometimes they smoked a joint, mostly at parties. Quinn felt he was in control, and she went wild with lust. The best times were three in the morning, waking up drowsy, downing a big glass of o.j. and having a few