23 -- The frigid princess
When the
phone rang, I thought it was a dream.
But I
opened my eyes anyway, squinting against the scalding morning sun I knew was
too angled to be late morning, and then I glanced at the clock.
Everybody
knew I worked the
But the
ringing persisted and I pushed off my covers to get up.
I figured
it had to be important and most likely bad news.
“Hello?” I said.
“Alfred, is that you?”
“Yes,
Peggy, it’s me. Are you calling me from your job?”
“I don’t
work on Fridays,” she said. “It’s one of the fringe benefits. I want you to
come over.”
Again, I
looked at the clock.
A whole
minute passed.
While
pleasant memories of playing guitar for her the previous night sill lingered in
my head, it had left me that much more exhausted, especially since I had
lingered late to let her nod off and then got to work an hour later than usual,
and thus got out of work late as well.
“This is
really kind of early for me, Peggy,” I finally said.
“Oh, I’m
sorry, I forgot. How about coming over around one?”
Even that
was kind of early considering how little sleep I had, but I agreed.
“Don’t
forget the guitar,” she said as she hung up.
I got to
her house around 1:30 with guitar in one hand and a binder full of songs in the
other – not all of them my songs, but songs I sang when I was home alone in the
house, songs that made me feel happy or sad or both.
Peggy had a
vacuum cleaner running – a sight so odd to me that I actually laughed, drawing
a scowl from her.
“This isn’t
funny,” she said, though quickly added. “I don’t dust. I will never dust.”
Since I
rarely did either, I couldn’t argue, and watched while she tucked the machine
away into a closet.
“I’m
hungry,” she said. “Why don’t you pop down to the deli and get us something to
eat while I finish up here?”
This
relieved me greatly since I had already dipped into the money meant for other
expenses and buying at the dele was a damned-side cheaper than going out to eat.
I bounded
down the stairs like a giddy teenager as manic in my moods as Petty was, partly
because so much of my mood depended on how sh3e felt at any given moment. While
this should have warned me to take care, I was elated anyway.
I gave the
deli guy a tip for making our turkey clubs, getting an odd look from him as
change.
By the time
I got back, Peggy had the stereo going.
“Landslide
“ filled the apartment, once again altering my mood.
I put the
bag down on the table and stared through the living room door at Peggy, who sat
memorized on the couch, not singing, not humming, just staring into space.
I noticed
for the first time the unicorn-shaped mirror with the crack down its middle.
“How did
that happen?” I asked, just as the song ended and Peggy looked up.
“Robert,”
she said. “He also broke the wall behind you.”
I glanced
at the wall behind the door where a hole the size of a fist had been poked,
about the height of where Peggy’s face might have been.
“Robert has
a mean temper,” Peggy said, rising from the couch to make her way to where I
stood. “He was aimed for my face. I ducked that time. Sometimes, he was too
quick for me. We’ll eat in the living room if you don’t mind.”
I shrugged
and carried my portion of the food to the couch, spread it onto the coffee
table as Peggy put on a few albums, then joined me.
James
Taylor, Carly Simon, and other softer sounds eased the tension out of the air
again.
When the
food was gone and the records over, she stood up, held out her hand for mine,
and said, “Come play for me.”
I
accompanied her to the kitchen where I had left my guitar and binder, unpacked
the instrument as she changed into her sleeping outfit and she settled into the
bed, motioning for me to sit on the edge of the bed where I could play.
I had
divided the binder into musical sets I once imagined I might perform out, but
never had. In truth, I liked courage to get up on a state and this was the
first any one actually asked me to sing for them.
“What do
you want me to play?” I asked.
Peggy had
propped herself up on pillows against the headboard as she usually did when
preparing to watch TV. She looked like a young, teenage girl rather than a
grown woman, and it was hard for me to remember that behind this mask of
innocence was a streetwise, experience-touched stripper, terrifying and deadly
when she needed to be.
I didn’t
need to glance over to the drug paraphernalia she kept on top of her dresser near
the door to recall just how addicted to that life she was, but I wanted to
forget it, needed to believe in this illusion, if not for her sake, then for my
own.
“I want to
hear my songs,” she said, referring to the four tunes I had played for her back
in my apartment the previous day and then again here after she had dragged me
back.
Besides
“her” four songs, I had a handful of original turns in my books. She didn’t
press me to hear them, but let me play the numerous cover tunes I had collected
from Neil Young and The Rolling Stones, to Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan.
One song
she made me repeat several times the previous night, that night and on later
occasions was a song by a local song writer named Dean Friedman, a tune called
“Sandy Eyes” I had taken a fancy to the first time I heard it, partly because
of its sentiment about how love transcends economic hardship, and how the hero
would continue to love his lover, rich or poor, regardless of how life turned
out.
I was
singing this for the second time when I felt something soft touch my neck and
after a moment I realized she had shifted forwards on the bed to kiss my neck.
I started
to put down the guitar.
“Don’t
stop,” she whispered, her mouth near by ear, her soft breasts pressing against
my back.
“But you’re
getting me excited,” I said.
“So should
I stop?” she asked.
“I never
said that.”
“Then keep
playing.”
So I turned
my attention back to the guitar, struggling to remember where my fingers were
supposed to go. The fact was they hurt. I rarely played this long at home,
usually performing only a half dozen songs a night. Peggy had me playing dozens
and often making me repeat the ones she liked best so that the tips of my
fingers on my left hand grew sensitive to the touch, often unable to press down
on the strings hard enough for the chords.
I started
the song again, trying to focus my attention on the sheet of paper in my note
book and the words I had to sing.
I didn’t
get through one verse before I felt her touch again, first her fingers, then
her mouth and finally the tip of her tongue playing gentling on my neck and
near by ear.
Again, I
stopped, and leaned the guard against the night stand as I turned to face her.
“What
exactly do you think you’re doing?” she demanded to know.
“I’m going
to make love to you,” I said, pushing her back against the pillows, my lips
finger her lips for a very gentle kiss.
Not until
later, did I realize that this was our first kiss – at lease as a prelude to
romance.
During my
previous attempts, she had always pulled back or responded with a peck on my
lips or cheek.
She didn’t
resist this time or rather as much, pulling away after an extended conflict.
“No, no, we
can’t do this,” she protested, her mouth to one side as I let my hand move down
her front, aching fingers from the hard edge of the guitar strings finding
softer territory to explore. Even numb from playing, my fingers felt her
breasts and her aroused nipples.
“Stop,” she
mumbled, this time avoiding my further attempts to kiss her.
“Why?” I
asked, my hand moving down to the place where her t-shirt stopped and her long
legs started.
“Because I
said so,” she said, still not stern enough for me to believe her – my hand
easing between her legs, finding the gap there, finding that gap wet with
excitement. “Oh,” she moaned. “But that does feel good.”
“I’m glad,”
I said, my heart pounding so hard it throbbed in my ears.
“No,” she
said, pulling herself back, and forcing my hand away from her. “I mean it,
Alfred. I can’t do this.”
I cased my
advances.
“Why not?”
I asked.
“I can’t
tell you why,” she said coyly.
She even
batted her eyes the way a small innocent girl might, giving me a look so out of
character with her role as a dance, I nearly laughed – it was a looked that
denied any connection to that other, vulgar world.
“Why the
hell can’t you tell me?” I asked, the mood completely evaporating, my condition
returning to one much less elevated.
I sat up,
feeling as confused as a broken traffic light with “go” and “don’t go” signals
flashing in her eyes at the same time.
I couldn’t
read which signal she really meant and so became jumped up inside, a traffic
jam of confused emotions I had no way of sorting out.
“You know
why not,” she said, clearly knowing that I had no clue.
Again, she
gave me that coy look – something straight out of “Gone with the Wind.”
“I just
can’t let you do it,” she said.
In a
desperate attempted to make sense of an insane situation, my mind began
churning out possible reasons why could not have sex with me – none of them
making the least bit of sense even as they popped into my mind.
“It can’t
be that time of month again,” I said. “You’re were just through that.”
“ALFRED!”
she said, mockingly offended. “I’m surprised at you.”
She sounded
like an outraged church woman, offending at my daring to mention such a bodily
function out loud.
“I told
you,” she said, “I can’t say.”
“Do you
have something contagious?” I asked, pressing the point.
“Do you
mean do I have a disease?”
“Yes,
that’s what I mean.”
“NO,” she
said firmly. “I do not.”
“Then you
must be frigid.”
“WHAT?”
The word
exploded out of her in a genuine expression of surprise, stripping her face of
its usual satirical mask. “Where the hell did you come up with that?”
“Are you?”
She just
continued to share her head.
“I’ve been
called a lot of things in my times, Alfred, but this is the first time anybody
has called me frigid.”
“You didn’t
answer the question.”
“Don’t be
stupid, just play the guitar.”
So I slid
to the edge of the bed again, recovering my guitar and turned the page in my
binder to the next song.
A great
sadness lingered in these tunes, drawing up in me images of more hopeful times
in my life when I had ambitions to be someone important, or do something
significant, when I had lived in a rooming house with other more hopeful souls,
each of us striving for some inaccessible dream time later denied us.
I went from
one song to another, and was just starting a third when I felt her lips on my
neck again, and the elevated ache she had inspired earlier returned more
acutely than before, digging down into the roots of me, tugging at parts of my
anatomy I never felt so intensely before – not just lust, but a glaze of
something infinitely more powerful, a rush of desire that would not end with a
mere fuck – I wanted to climb down inside of her and go so deep into her that I
filled every inch of her – her skin becoming my skin, her breaths filling my
lungs.
Down went
the guitar again, this time with a thump as I wrapped my arms around her and
pressed my chest against her, forcing her back onto the pillows with me on top
of her.
“I don’t
want you inside of me, please,” she whispered.
“But I need
to be in you.”
“Not yet;
not now.”
“If not
now, when?”
“Later, I
promise you.”
But she let
me kiss her, a long, lingering kiss that set up lips on fire as if we were two opposite
poles of a battery connecting, sparking also from contact she allowed my
fingers to have with the tips of her breasts through her thin t-shirt, and
then, cupping them, I felt her hard nipples against the palms of my trembling
hands. She even let me once more explore between her legs, allow those already
trembling fingers to ease up into her wet warmth where the rest of me could not
go. She even let my fingers linger on those rose pedal folds of flesh until I
made her shudder and moan.
“Enough!”
she finally said, pushing me away, her voice breathless, telling me more than
she ever intended.
“Just play
the guitar, Alfred.”
I could not
stop trembling as I recovered the guitar this time.
My fingers
stung all the more when they came into contact with the strings again after
having just careered something infinitely more tender, her moisture leaving
marks on teach fret as I struggled once more to play,
One through
the binder, I played only those few
other songs she requested, then stopped.
“Are you
going to play or not, Alfred?” she asked.
“My fingers
hurt,” I said. “I need to rest.”
“All
right,” she said. “But don’t get any more ideas.”
“I can’t
help getting ideas.”
“Why?
Because you think I’m frigid?”
“Well,
you’re certainly not a virgin,” I said.
“And how
would you know?”
“You’re a
go-go dancer.”
“Last time
I checked, dancing isn’t what stops you from being a virgin.”
“You know
what I mean.”
“I suppose
I do,” she said. “All of us on the stage must be bad girls, is that it?”
“Sort of.”
“Maybe
you’re right,” she mumbled, glancing up at the tapestry she’d hung on the wall
beside her bed, a woodland scene with a fox front in mid stride in the middle,
staring out as if caught in some nefarious act.
“If only
that fox could talk,” Peggy said. “It could tell you some wild stories. He’s
seen it all right here.”
She laughed
in her honking barroom laugh, one that her high school class mates recalled
years after her leaving Garfield High.
“Did you
know I once had a man fuck me here while I had my mother on the telephone? My
mother kept asking why I was breathing so funny and if I was all right and
whether nor not she should call an ambulance. I nearly bust a gut holding back
my laugh while that guy pumped me.”
“Did she
ever find out?” I asked.
“No, but
I’ve been tempted to tell her a few times. I just never got around to it. Are
you rested yet?”
“I suppose.
But I’d rather…”
“I know
what you’d rather do. Just play a few more songs and then I’ll go to sleep.”
I played.
This time she didn’t touch me – so I had not excuse to touch her. When I was
done, she fell back into her usual position. I started to rise to leave.
“Don’t go
until I go to sleep,” she said.
I glanced
at the clock. It was already later and I knew if I waited much longer I would
be late for work again, and have to stay late again, and I was already
exhausted.
But I sat
back down on the edge of bed.
“When you
go,” Peggy said, “don’t take the guitar.”
I nodded
and waited, and when she slipped off into sleep, I rose, leaving the book and
the guitar behind, hurrying into the hall so I could not have to witness again
the cringing, fearful, beaten Peggy that always arose out of her nightmares.
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