Mitla Pass - Leon Uris [123]
IT WAS TOUCH and go, but with a super effort Richard Schneider managed to carry Leah over the threshold of the bridal suite. Morris and his wife, Erma, applauded their son’s feat as a pair of bellboys assaulted the stack of luggage in the hallway.
“These five pieces go down the hall to our suite,” Erma pointed out.
The assistant manager, a fawning Austrian, drew the lead-weighted velvet drapes open to the view of the ocean and waited for the ohs and ahs that followed appropriately from Richard and his parents. The Austrian then pirouetted his way around the suite pointing out the cornucopia of amenities.
The bellboys were rewarded with twenty-five cents each, and the Austrian with a silver dollar, as he backed out bowing and closed the door behind the four of them.
“Well, kinder,” Erma said, “you wouldn’t have need for us until dinner. Shall we meet in the dining room at eight, sharp?”
Richard glanced nervously at Leah as his mother awaited a reply. “Eight will be fine, Mother,” he said.
Silence. Terrible, stone silence.
“I think I’m coming down with one of my migraines,” Leah said.
Erma stiffened. “We didn’t intend to be a bother,” she said. “Elberon is like a second home to us, isn’t it, Morris? I’ve been coming here since I was a child.”
“Maybe the children would like to be alone,” Morris ventured meekly.
“Alone? Why, of course,” Erma retorted.
“So, we’ll see you tomorrow,” Leah said; “after breakfast,” she added for good measure and opened the door to show them out. “We’ll find you on the boardwalk or the beach, maybe.”
When they left, Richard was about to say “You shouldn’t have” to Leah, but didn’t. She had already gone into the dressing room adjoining the bedroom and was busy opening four new alligator Gladstone bags holding her elegant new wardrobe, which had been part of the marriage contract.
Leah had closed the drapes separating her from her husband and for the next hour tried on one dress after another, before a full-length three-way mirror.
Leah seated herself at the vanity table and leaned close to the mirror and touched her clear soft cheeks with the tips of her fingers. She looked deeply into her big, penetrating brown eyes, then felt her hair sensuously and ran her fingernails over the shapes of her ears. She puffed some perfume from the atomizer on her wrist, sniffed it, then applied some to the cleavage of her bosom.
Leah was totally entranced with her own beauty. Ethereal! Beyond beauty! Leah blew a kiss to herself, crossed her arms over her bosom, and touched her own naked shoulders, thrilled at the feel of her own flesh.
“God, you’re ravishing,” she said to her image, below her breath.
A light from the outside broke up Leah’s narcissistic flight as Richard entered and came up behind her. She rose from her seat and faced him. Richard tried to speak, but was tongue-tied. Suddenly! He flung his arms about her and lunged clumsily to kiss her, only to find her cheek turned away.
“Leah,” he croaked.
“Please, you’re suffocating me,” she said. “Everything in its own good time.”
After the same awkward spell he’d experienced all his life, Richard backed up, mumbling that he needed some fresh air, and left the hotel. He crossed over the boardwalk and took the steps to the beach, removed his shoes, rolled up his trouser legs, and sat in the sand close to the water’s edge, watching the bathers squealing in the breakers, glancing up time and again to the hotel suite. The shades remained drawn.
At teatime, Richard found a table alone in the outdoor courtyard. The hotel orchestra played a medley of Victor Herbert, the king of Broadway. Spotting his mother and father enter, he slipped away quickly and walked aimlessly up and down the boardwalk until daylight faded.
He returned to the empty parlor, then tiptoed into the bedroom, where Leah was asleep in shaded light on the chaise longue. Richard stood over her,