The Dud Avocado - Elaine Dundy [121]
“You own the whole house?” I asked, impressed, when we stopped outside the brownstone front on the little street of the jazz club.
“Yes, it’s all mine. I bought it with my first billion,” he said, letting us in. “I thought it would be a good idea. Roots and storage. Mainly storage, as it’s turned out. I only live in a couple of rooms. Step over those boxes and come in.”
We went into what I suppose you could call the living room. It was very comfortable and cozy, with deep sofas and records piled everywhere, but it was a bit odd. There was a large gnarled petrified tree stump growing in the middle of the room with a tree seat running around it, and the bust of a Roman Emperor standing in a corner with a brown felt hat on. Halfway up one wall hung a delicately carved gilt chair.
He put on some records and sat down next to me. “We’ve been having some kind of misunderstanding,” he said. “Would you mind telling me what it was all about?”
I told him I’d got sore because I thought he was handing me a line with all that five-year stuff. “I mean you didn’t have to say that to get me to come here,” I said. “I would have anyway.”
“You mean you didn’t believe me?”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter——”
“Miss Gorce,” he said rising. “You have the faith of a flea.”
“Oh, please don’t go away.” I said miserably. “I want to believe you. I do believe you. Really. Please.”
“Give me your lipstick.” I handed it to him and he went over to the fireplace and drew a large heart in the mirror above it, with the initials M.R. and S.J.G. inside. Underneath he wrote in large letters “I love Sally Jay.” “There, you have it in writing. Now do you believe me?”
“Oh yes!”
“Then come over here and kiss me.” He was sitting down again.
“Hmmm—that’s very interesting, I must say,” he said a little while later.
“What is?”
“What you just did.”
“What?”
“You just took off your earrings.”
“I did?” I stared at them on the coffee table, surprised. “Good Lord, I did it quite unconsciously.”
He moved a little closer. “You know what that means, don’t you,” he murmured into my ear.
I said yes. I said I did.
“Where are you going to love me?” I asked him faintly.
“On a bed for a start,” he said, helping me up.
“Oh good.”
I sat up in the bed, naked under the sheets, and watched him get undressed. It was as if I’d never seen a man getting undressed before and come to think of it, I guess I hadn’t. The others must have just kind of shed their clothes or peeled them off in a lump. I don’t know. Anyway I’d never noticed. But Max undressed expertly. Methodically. And I’d never in my life seen anything as sensuous as the unhurried grace with which his knowing hands flew over his body, stripping it of its clothes. Fascinated, hardly daring to breathe, I watched him undo his tie in two clean sweeping movements—downwards to loosen it, sideways to slide it off—and then go on to his shirt, his slim fingers slipping each tiny button through its hole with one deft twist. He sat on the edge of the bed. He pulled off his shoes. He put his socks inside them, placing them neatly together at the foot of the bed. He rose and went over to a chest of drawers, his back to me, and carefully began emptying the contents of his trouser pockets. I felt suddenly very warm. I sank back into the pillow overwhelmed by my own scent, the last few drops of eau de cologne I’d splashed on that morning. I heard the jazz from the club playing faintly down the street, and the thought that of all the people there that night I would be the only one to find out what Max actually kept in his trouser pockets was unbearably thrilling. I sat up watching tensely: Keys. Money (silver in one pile, paper in another). A handkerchief. A baby screwdriver with a cork stuck through it. Two dead flashbulbs. A pair of new shoelaces. A packet of new razor blades. Finally, catching sight of me through the dresser mirror, he slowly drew out—one from each pocket—my earrings, and smiling at me through the glass, arranged them, like fallen angels, one on each side, to encompass a