Serena had contempt for any predictability in lovemaking. She was upset when she triggered Levanter’s orgasm too soon. To her, an orgasm was a failure, the death of need. What touching was to the body, desire was to the mind: all she wanted was to sustain the passion, to make desire flow incessantly.
Often, when her body wriggled under his tongue, she seemed so engrossed in sensation that he thought she would not even feel it if he bit into her flesh.
For Serena, just as passion was demonstrated by gesture, desire was expressed by language. She would ask him continually about his feelings and responses. When his mouth was on her flesh, she wanted to know whether he felt that his tongue was shaping her. When she kept him aroused, she asked if he was aware of her giving him pleasure, or of himself, or only of the pleasure. And each time they were together, she kept demanding that he tell her what it was that made him want her so much.
Levanter could not link his need for Serena to any particular attitude, to any particular yearning. When she was not with him, he was an objective witness to his own need, viewing it as if it belonged to another man. When she was with him, he was devoted to her, like a criminal who could not part company with an accomplice.
He wondered whether it was her body that he wanted or simply her way of perceiving him, of giving him a sexual reality that he had lacked before. He recalled a young woman he had once met in Switzerland. Then, as with Serena, he did not understand the nature of his desire.
He had just walked into a drugstore in ValPina. A nurse was pushing a large pram toward the exit, and he peeked in. Only a face showed above the blanket. Levanter was surprised to see that it was the face of a woman in her early twenties. He thought it was a special kind of wheelchair and tried to see how her body was fitted into it. The body outlined under the blanket was no bigger than a baby’s. The woman seemed to be conscious of his curiosity and smiled at him. He smiled back at her and was astonished by the beauty of her features. The nurse cleared her throat to get his attention, then threw him a look of reprimand as she pushed the carriage out of the shop.
The proprietor of the drugstore, who had observed the encounter, told him that it was a woman in the baby carriage. She was twenty-six years old, the child of a well-known, prosperous foreign family. As an infant, she contracted a bone disease that left her grossly deformed; the doctors did not expect her to live, but the family was able to provide the best possible care and she had survived. Her head was of normal size, but the rest of her body was stunted and she had no legs.
Thus she had to be fed and cared for by others. Even though she was so greatly handicapped, the proprietor said, the young woman was intelligent and had been living a rewarding life. She went to school, spoke four languages, and was about to receive an advanced degree from one of the best art schools in Europe.
Levanter asked whether he could be introduced to her; as an investor, he explained, he was interested in the concrete predicaments that life set for each of us. The proprietor agreed to introduce him and the next day telephoned to ask him to a party given by a friend’s son, who went to the university with the young woman and had invited her.
It was a crowded party; she arrived about an hour after it began. Wrapped in a short blanket, she was carried in without much effort by a young man, who propped her on the sofa between two pillows. As most of the guests knew her, her arrival caused no unusual commotion. Several students came over to say hello; two or three sat around her on the sofa, others came and went. Slowly, Levanter made his way toward her. Soon the person who had brought him to the party introduced them. The girl smiled and, in an even, soft voice, said she recognized him from the drugstore.
Levanter was struck by the scope of her deformity. Short, twisted arms, with no elbows and unbending, barely mobile, fingers, stuck from her tiny torso like the forelegs of a baby toad. Under the blanket, her body appeared to be not much larger than the head it supported.
“I understand you are a student,” said Levanter. “What do you study?”
“History of art,” she answered.
“Any particular period?”
“A particular subject,” she said. “The role of the human head in Christian art.” She smiled thoughtfully. “As you can see, I have a vested interest in my studies.”
“I’m sorry I stared at you yesterday,” said Levanter.
She laughed. “Don’t be sorry. I like being noticed. I’ve spent years trying to persuade my nurse that the only unkind ones are those who don’t want to look at me. But she still disapproves of the staring.” She paused, then laughed again. “She should see the stares I get when I hitchhike!”
For a moment, Levanter thought he had misunderstood her. “When you what?” he asked.
“Hitchhike,” she said. “Each summer a friend takes me to the main highway and thumbs a ride for me. Of course, I always have money and my papers with me. Eventually, someone — a man or woman, a couple, or even a family — comes along who does not mind picking me up. After that, I’m on my own — passed from hand to hand, from car to car, traveling across Europe.”
“Aren’t you afraid?” asked Levanter.
“Afraid of what?”
“Of strangers. Someone could hurt you.”
She looked at him. “Hurt me?” She seemed surprised. “Most of the people I meet are protective of me. They are even reluctant to let me go, afraid that people they pass me to won’t take care of me as well as they have.”
Her voice was weak, and Levanter moved closer to hear her better. The fate that had mangled her body took nothing away from the wholeness of her face. The features were singularly expressive, giving trace to the nature and intensity of her thoughts and feelings.
“When I first began hitchhiking,” she said, “my parents were afraid I might be kidnapped and held for ransom. But that never happened. I’m sure even professionals couldn’t bring themselves to kidnap just a head. After all, isn’t it the head they threaten to send back when their demands are not met in time?” She laughed again.
The young man who had carried her in approached them. She introduced him to Levanter as her boyfriend. He carried her off to the buffet.
Levanter realized he had been imagining himself as her lover. He examined the feeling carefully and found nothing morbid about his craving. What fascinated him about this young woman was that she had incorporated her deformity into the totality of her life. She was a woman, and her view of herself in the world was that of a woman. Her view was as mysterious and exciting to him as that of any woman he had ever desired. He wanted to become an object of her emotions and her passions, to enter her world and be given her knowledge of it.
Later in the evening, Levanter asked the girl for a date. She told him politely that she was too emotionally committed to her boyfriend to see anyone else.
Levanter’s New York apartment was in mid-Manhattan, on a high floor, with a terrace overlooking one of the city’s busiest intersections. Occasionally, to amuse themselves, he and Serena would aim his powerful garden hose over the high wooden fence on the terrace and shoot a stream of water down onto the avenue below, trying to hit hansoms carrying tourists from the big hotels toward Central Park. The perfect score was to strike the passengers but not the horse and the driver; when the passengers were soaked, they would scream, and the driver, uncomprehending, would instinctively stop the carriage; by the time he started up again the passengers would have received a double drenching, but still would not know where it came from.
One summer night, a Hollywood studio held a giant reception for the New York première of a film in the new marble mezzanine of the subway station under the intersection. A crowd of spectators, press photographers, and a television crew had gathered on the sidewalk. The entrance to the subway was directly under Levanter’s terrace, and he and Serena, their hose ready, were able to see the event both in immediate view and, as the event was nationally televised, in close-up on the television set Levanter had moved out to the terrace for the occasio
n.
First, an actor known for his macho performances stepped from a long black limousine, waving to the crowd, which roared in response. Just as he was blinded momentarily by the floodlights, Levanter and Serena turned the hose on. In seconds, they could see their torrent on TV, washing over the man’s rugged features, upsetting his smooth toupee. As his make-up began to dilute right in front of the zoom lenses, he covered his head and ducked into the subway.
A famous Hollywood golden-youth couple emerged from their sleek auto and embraced before the cameras. They were just about to kiss for the benefit of millions of fans when the first dose of water blasted their perfect profiles. Dripping wet, they scurried to the subway, colliding at the entrance.
Levanter and Serena accomplished several successful dousings before the police, the cameramen, the press, and the crowd, all laughing, looked up to see the source of the stream; nothing was visible in the dark but endless rows of indistinguishable windows and terraces.
Once, after they had soaked several carriages, Levanter and Serena noticed the doorman from a building across the way pointing to the pool of water in the middle of the street. He kept motioning toward the sky as he talked to a group of curious passers-by. Levanter and Serena went down and walked over, pretending they had just noticed the puddle.
“It hasn’t been raining, has it?” said Levanter to the doorman. “Where did the puddle come from?”
The doorman looked at him and Serena. “I can tell that you folks don’t live here in the city,” he said with a wise grin.
“No, we don’t,” said Serena.
The man gestured at the surrounding high-rise apartment houses, hotels, and office skyscrapers. “It’s quite a place down here, as you can see,” he said solemnly. “All these tall buildings generate a lot of magnetism. Every few days that magnetism makes a little cloud, right about here.” He pointed straight above the pool of water. “A small cloud, it’s true, but it produces enough rain to make this puddle and sometimes to sprinkle on hansom cabs going by.” Proud of his explanation, he looked at his listeners for some sign of appreciation of his knowledge.
Levanter and Serena nodded thoughtfully.
“On different days, that little cloud may move just a couple of feet to the left or maybe to the right,” the man continued. “There’s no end to nature’s mysteries,” he concluded as another knot of people gathered around to hear his theories.
Serena phoned. She was flying into Los Angeles and was free to spend the night with him, she said. He immediately canceled his other plans and agreed to collect her in three hours at the airport. Almost automatically, he asked where she was.
“There is no message,” she whispered.
Levanter took a taxi to the airport. He was half an hour early and dismissed the cab. He wandered through the lounges, watched the departing passengers lined up to pass through the gates of the electronic surveillance gadgetry, had a cup of coffee, and finally went to stand at the entrance of the terminal, where he was to meet her.
She appeared, looking pleased to see him there. Behind her, a porter carried a dress bag and a soft fabric suitcase. Neither piece had an airline baggage tag. Outside the terminal, the dispatcher was trying to hail a yellow cab for them when Levanter noticed a black limousine parked at the curb. It looked far more spacious and comfortable and appeared to be for hire. He gestured to the driver, a short, middle-aged man, who quickly jumped out and came to pick up Serena’s luggage.
Opening the trunk, the driver tossed both pieces inside. Serena saw that he had thrown the suitcase on top of the dress bag and spoke to him sharply about crushing her dresses. He glanced at her and, without saying anything, rearranged the luggage. Then he closed the trunk, got behind the wheel, and waited for his passengers to get in.
Levanter gave the driver the address, asking whether he knew the way to the spot high up in Beverly Hills. The man looked at him in the rearview mirror and, again without a word, started the engine and drove off, accelerating as he reached the freeway.
Serena moved closer to Levanter. She put her leg over his, and he felt the pressure on his groin, the force of her hip against his. His right hand slid over her thigh, moved higher, caressing her, until she stretched over him, tense and excited. He put his left arm around her, and as she rested her head on his shoulder, he traced the outline of her breasts, then began stroking her through the thin fabric of her dress. Under his hands, she shivered and pressed against him.
The car turned off the freeway and sped along an empty road. Levanter saw that they had taken the wrong exit. He disengaged himself from Serena and leaned forward to tell the driver that he had left the freeway too soon and would have to go back and continue to the Beverly Hills exit. But the driver seemed to be in a daze. He did not answer, did not even look up into the rearview mirror. Instead, he accelerated suddenly, screeched across Sunset Boulevard, and started to climb along one of the dark roads of the canyon. The sudden turns and speed seemed to agitate Serena. Visibly frightened, she was about to say something when Levanter squeezed her arm, signaling her to remain silent.
From where he sat, Levanter could see three fourths of the driver’s face. The man’s hair glistened with perspiration, droplets of sweat streaked along his cheeks and neck and dripped from his eyebrows; Levanter wondered why he was wearing a heavy woolen jacket over his shirt. The driver made another rapid turn; one tire mounted the sidewalk and the front fender scraped the embankment. They were still going up the steep hill, and the engine, throttle fully open, was straining, its whine alternating with the screech of the tires.
At an intersection, the driver speeded up and barely avoided running into a car making a turn. At another intersection, he slowed down so suddenly that the car behind almost smacked into them.
Pushing herself rigidly against the backrest, her feet on the back of the driver’s seat, Serena clutched Levanter’s arm. She held her breath and, staring over the driver’s shoulder, kept her eyes glued to the road.
Assuming an even, almost joking tone, Levanter asked the driver to take it easy, saying that the constant slowing down and speeding up was making him and his companion dizzy. But the man did not respond. Gripping the wheel tighter with both hands, he made another rapid turn. For an instant, two tires lost their hold on the road; in reaction, the driver jerked the steering wheel the other way and the tires banged back onto the road. As they soared over the crest of the hill, Serena screamed and started to shout abuses at the man, but he only went faster. Frantically, she tried to open the car door as they sped down the other side of the hill, but Levanter restrained her. She trembled and cried.
The man had made no threats; he had waved no weapons and did not seem to be concerned about whether his passengers had any. Still, Levanter felt he had to stop him. He could grab the driver from behind and choke him, but there was the danger that, fighting back, the driver might press even harder on the gas pedal and kill them all in a crash.
Again Levanter spoke to the man. In a calm, conciliatory voice he asked him to slow down, to stop for a moment. He said that he and his companion would not mind being discharged at any house; they could phone for a local taxi that knew the way through this maze of unlit canyon roads. But the driver paid no attention to him. He kept the car racing at top speed. Levanter slowly slid off his seat as he spoke. He rested his hand tentatively on the driver’s shoulder. The man did not react. Levanter felt the rough surface of the sweat-soaked wool and, in a friendly manner, remarked that it was hot and he might be better off without his jacket. With Levanter gently patting him, the man seemed to lose some of his determination. He was slowing down.
Suddenly, Serena pushed Levanter sideways. He lost his balance and fell to the floor. Screaming, she threw herself forward, a shiny object in her hand. In an instant, she jabbed it into the driver’s neck. The man yelled, and the car jerked forward, picking up speed. Serena withdrew the object — a metal rat-tail hair comb — then stabbed the man in the neck again. He howled, twis
ting in his seat, and once more she plunged the sharp metal into him, this time under his jaw. He began to mumble, but the words died in his throat. Serena twisted the comb sideways and pushed it deeper; his sounds became a gurgle, and he sank lower on the seat. The car veered off, ran into the side of the hill, and stopped, its engine still running.
Levanter scrambled to his feet. He leaned over, pulled the comb out, and let it drop on the floor of the car. Blood gushed from a ripped artery, spilling over the back of the seat onto Levanter’s suit and shoes. He opened the door and, dragging Serena with him, stepped out and ran to the driver’s window. He reached in to turn off the engine. He looked into the man’s face: the driver was dead. Blood was pouring from his mouth and spilling over his chin; the eyes, still open, were fixed on the rearview mirror. Serena sobbed quietly.
It was after midnight; the canyon was quiet. On the other side of the road the palm trees stood motionless in the moonlight. Far away a dog barked, and another answered from below the hill.