Any Woman's Blues_ A Novel of Obsession - Erica Jong [121]
“Julian, Lionel,” I say. “Lindsay, Julian.”
“Leila, Lindsay,” says Lionel.
“Of course I remember Leila,” says Lindsay. “Who could forget such a talented artist?”
“Thank you,” I say.
“Don’t thank me,” says Lindsay. “You’re the gifted one.”
I see her attitude toward me has changed. When last we met, at the McCraes’, she was determined to cut me, to counteract Lionel’s interest. Now her strategy has altered. She is wooing me to counteract his interest. I remember doing something of the same with Dart’s bimbos once. Oh, how far away that all seems now! The obsession with Dart has been broken by the obsession with Renzo! Is this progress? It feels like progress, but I fear it is merely The Land of Fuck.
Off to the bathroom I go in my azure silk. A line of ladies snakes around a screen. Here in Venice, as in New York, the ladies’ facilities are less adequate than the gents’. The gentlemen’s lounge is unoccupied. I decide to liberate the gabinetto degli uomini. In I go in my huge blue skirt, and who should be coming out at just that moment but Renzo il Magnifico? In a moment, he is back in the men’s room with me, barring the door and coyly hiding his eyes while I avail myself of the facilities and wipe, wash and dry my hands. And then, with incredible swiftness, he has fallen to his beautiful brown knees, has whipped under my crinolines, unsnapped my crotch, and is pulling moans out of my mouth with his practiced tongue. It happens with the swiftness of a dream. (Perhaps, indeed, it is a dream? Sane mind: I hope so.) Under his tux, he wears no underclothes. The rest is silence, interspersed with moans.
I fix my makeup. He adjusts his tie and cummerbund. He leaves the men’s room first, eyes demurely downcast. I leave next. Two gentlemen wait outside, looking terribly blasé, as if this happens every day in Venice (which it does).
And back to the ball we go!
In due course, Julian and I are ushered to our table. It is not a good table. Upstairs, with the hangers-on, the grifters and drifters, we have been seated as far away from Lionel as possible. Is this a mistake? Didn’t he invite us to sit at his table? Or is this Lionel’s stratagem to keep me far from Lindsay? (Not that we could talk anyway in this din.)
Julian surveys the table. One deaf old man with false teeth that click. One minor chairlady of a minor New York ball, one fashion designer whose star has fallen, one washed-up Italian actress—a table of has-beens at the winners’ ball! Julian, who claims not to care about these things, is furious.
“We are too old,” he says, “and too rich to sit for three hours on these rickety gold chairs!” And seizing my arm, he leads me through the stifling rooms, down the red-carpeted stair and to a waiting motoscafo.
“Let’s eat at Harry’s Bar,” he says, “and then let’s hire a gondola, with three musicians.”
So off we go to Harry’s in tux and ball gown, I feeling wicked both for leaving the ball and for my interlude with Renzo in the gents’ (how much do I owe my analyst now?), and Julian feeling terribly pleased with himself for protesting the bad table.
“I thought you didn’t care about such mishegoss as bad tables,” I say to Julian when we are duly settled in at Harry’s with acqua minerale and buttery rolls.
“I don’t, really,” says Julian. “We’ve just got too little life left to spend it sitting on those chairs, with those people—see no evil, hear no evil, speak all evil.”
“You care,” I say. “Admit you care.”
“Leila, really, I don’t.”
“You do.”
“I refuse to argue the point.”
“Okay,” I say. But I am angry. I invited Julian to my gig—and it feels as if he left to spite me. Or did he get a whiff of my gondolier?
I let the matter drop. Life’s too short. We order risotto, fegato alla veneziana. We banter with each other, we survey the room. The usual stylish Venetians and garish Americans. The usual riffraff at the bar. Two young