The Casanova Embrace Read online

  "All right. All right." She turned her head toward Eduardo. "You are also my friend."

  "A good friend." Raoul coached.

  "A good friend," the girl repeated. Raoul's hands were kneading her breasts now.

  Eduardo wanted to leave. You are being cruel, he admonished Raoul, but would not voice the sentiment. He was not quite certain whether the girl was being pained or pleasured, a reluctant or willing participant. Raoul continued to smile, kissing her ear and cheek and winking at him.

  "And there is something I would like to show the friend of my friend," Raoul said.

  "No. Please, Raoul," the girl said quickly, squirming.

  "A friend is a friend."

  Her eyes looked skyward in exasperation.

  "A friend is a friend." She shrugged. Was it resignation?

  "And here are the somethings." Raoul's hands dropped below her breasts, holding her viselike over her rib cage. "Dadaaa!" Raoul mocked a fanfare and the girls breasts, nipples stiff in a ring of goosebumps, glistened pugnaciously.

  He had shifted her body so that she would not be visible from the beach. Eduardo stood transfixed, but only momentarily, then dived and swam toward shore, looking backward only after he had gained the beach. They were still locked together. He was curious at the reaction of the girl, wondering if his pity was wasted. His answer was not long in coming as he watched them walk out of the surf hand in hand.

  "She is something, eh, Eduardo?" Raoul said. Eduardo had closed his eyes, letting the sun dry him as he lay in the beach chair. He squinted upward, saw the girl's smiling face, her hands playfully jabbing at Raoul's forearm.

  "You'll be at the party tonight," she said.

  "And Eduardo?"

  "And Eduardo."

  Then she was gone and he could feel Raoul settle beside him on his beach chair.

  "If it was me," Eduardo said, "I would have kicked you in the balls."

  "Then she would have hurt her own hand," Raoul said. He paused, slapping Eduardo on his stomach. "Someday I will teach you about women."

  "Teach me," Eduardo responded. "I have been surrounded by them." But he knew that Raoul was right.

  The patio of Anna's parents' home was decorated with long strings of Japanese lanterns and a three-piece band scratching out American dance music. A light breeze rustled the lanterns and the paper tablecloth under the punch bowl and the hors d'oeuvres that stretched across a long table. White was the dominant hue. The girls wore flowing white dresses and the boys white linen suits. The guests were, as always in Punta del Este, the sons and daughters of the oligarchs, a tight-knit group, more than welcome in the home of this ex-Nazi who had squirreled a fortune into the boot of the hemisphere, investing lavishly in the one commodity that gave him instant status, land.

  Raoul, looking luminescent in his glistening white linen suit, a blue silk handkerchief spilling out of his jacket pocket, surveyed the group, knowing that the female eyes were watching him.

  "Delicious," he said.

  "What is?" Eduardo asked.

  "The scent of cunt."

  "You're unbelievable, Raoul. Your whole life is wrapped up in your crotch."

  "Is there anything else?"

  His lectures were an exercise in futility, since, largely, they were given in his own head. You are looking at the dry rot of the twentieth century, he had wanted to say. It is hopeless, he decided. Besides, he adored Raoul. Even his blatant envy, in which Eduardo reveled, could not dim his adoration, and he loved to bask in Raoul's aura, knowing that proximity to Raoul enhanced his own importance.

  "How does it feel to be in the home of a butcher?" Raoul said suddenly. He would do this on occasion, reveal a tiny morsel of morality when one least expected it.

  "And here again is the butcher's daughter."

  Anna came toward them, radiant in white chiffon, her blonde hair bouncing, as she carried her smile forward, reaching out to touch Raoul's hand, acknowledging Eduardo's presence with a brief nod. She glided into Raoul's arms and he moved onto the dance floor, merging with her, a mass of white with four pairs of extremities. She rested her head against his cheek, her eyes closed, as Raoul undulated slowly to the music's rhythm, exhibiting his superior magnetism to the group.

  Eduardo pressed into the shadows, his shyness transformed to observation as he contemplated his peers. Within himself, he could not quite subdue his emotions with his intellect. It had been his principal exercise of late, but it was giving him increasing difficulty. The disparate affluence of his family had begun to enrage him. We have so much. They have so little. "They" were the vast underpriviledged, a nation within a nation. He had begun reading Marx, listening to the growing sounds of unrest that slipped into his consciousness through the press and his occasional contacts with servants and radicals on the campus. Observing the display of arrogant superiority fed his disgust and allowed him to play the role of poseur and snob in this gathering, where he had actually begun to feel alienated.

  The alienation was more than political. It was social. His relationship with girls was a trial and an agony. Near them, except for his mother and sisters, he felt awkward, clumsy, self-conscious. Could it be that he could not resolve his romantic view of love with the physical reality of sex? He could react, sometimes with embarrassing effects. Once he had actually had an orgasm while dancing with a girl and he had been reluctant to dance ever since. The moments before he fell asleep were an agony of physical hunger for him as his body craved sexual surfeit. Sometimes the image of Isabella and his father intruded. Even the sense of revulsion had reshaped itself and emerged as erotica and this, too, had filled him with guilt. But he had never confided that to anyone, certainly not Raoul, who would have ridiculed it. He had also not told Raoul that he was a virgin. Raoul would have been dumbfounded.

  "Eduardo," Raoul whispered as he swung Anna into the shadows. "Come pick yourself a cherry." Eduardo watched as he buried his tongue into her ear. She shivered lightly and giggled. "We will have to leave unless Eduardo finds himself a friend," Raoul warned. Anna, obviously frightened, crossed the patio and returned with a tall flat-chested girl who, like Eduardo, seemed either shy or intimidated by some inner alienation.

  "This is Estacita," Anna said with mocking sweetness. The tall girl reluctantly held out her hand, and Eduardo took it, feeling the nervous moisture of both of them.

  Raoul beckoned and drifted further into the shadows in the direction of the sea wall. In the distance, the surf pounded the beaches.

  Raoul removed a silver flask from his back pocket and took a long sip, passed it around to the group. Anna hesitantly followed, sipping freely. Eduardo lifted the flask but plugged the opening with the tip of his tongue, and Estacita refused. Anna melted into Raoul's arms again and they danced to the musical sounds, although only their pelvises moved in languorous circular motions. Estacita, giggling nervously, turned her eyes away, concentrating on the barely distinguishable surf in the distance. Eduardo continued to observe his friend and soon they were oblivious to him. Estacita moved back to the crowd, filling him with a vague sense of loneliness. He walked to the table, helped himself to some punch and faded again into the shadows, watching the couples, paired off in some mysterious mating game from which he felt brutally excluded. Contempt was no substitute for loneliness.

  Later, he roamed to the sea wall, looking for Raoul. He and Anna had disappeared. A muted curse hissed from somewhere on the beach below and he peered over the shallow wall following the sound. He could make out vague thrashings in the darkness, the sounds of struggle.

  "Raoul," he called, his voice lost in the shudder of the surf's sound. The thrashings persisted. "Damn you," he heard. Then the sharp sound of slapped flesh. He lifted himself over the sea wall and struggled forward, his shoes filling in the soft dunes. Again he heard the slap and could see movement in white, like sheets flapping in the wind. Hurrying closer, he reached the figures. Raoul had Anna pinioned against the wall and she was resisting energetically as Raoul struggled
to keep her still. He could see his friend's bare buttocks glowing like odd globes in the faint light.

  "Raoul," Eduardo hissed. The sound froze them and Raoul's face turned toward him, twisted with anger.

  "Mind your own business," he mumbled. His voice was heavy, his speech slurred.

  "He is hurting me," Anna pleaded. "Help me, Eduardo."

  "Goddamned tease," Raoul hissed, groping beneath her dress.

  The girl struggled furiously, whimpering finally as her energy failed. Eduardo gripped Raoul by the shoulders and pulled him away. They both fell into the sand. Anna slumped against the wall, rearranging her clothes. Eduardo was no match for Raoul, who quickly subdued him, straddling his body and pinioning his arms. He could smell the alcohol on his breath.

  "You must stop this," Anna called, rushing to them now, an edge of panic in her voice. Eduardo looked upward into Raoul's face, watching the contortion settle, the familiar look return.

  "You should have minded your own business," he said, smiling suddenly and shaking his head. He released Eduardo, who stood up and smoothed his clothes while Raoul, unruffled, calmly hitched up his trousers and redid his belt.

  "You'd think I was about to murder you, you bitch," Raoul said.

  "You know why?" Anna pouted. Eduardo was confused, as his eyes wandered from Anna's face to that of his friend. Raoul turned to Eduardo, seeking judgment.

  "I am a bareback rider," he said.

  "And I don't like playing Russian roulette." Anna whispered.

  "Screw yourself," Raoul said with disgust, grabbing Eduardo under the arm and hurrying forward.

  "Where are you going?" Anna cried.

  "The hell away from here."

  "But the party...."

  "Fuck the party."

  They did not look back, moving as swiftly as possible through the small dunes, parallel to the sea wall beyond which the music blared. They reached a path of wooden slats and walked swiftly toward the crescent road which fronted the beach, stopping only to empty their shoes of sand. In the distance, the lights of the hotels flickered. Eduardo followed silently behind Raoul.

  Had he mistaken the incident, Eduardo wondered, humiliated that he might have really intruded on some odd game. They went into the bar of the Mirador Hotel. Raoul squinted into the darkness and, nodding at the bartender, squeezed into the crowd at a spot to which the bartender had beckoned them.

  "Ricardo," Raoul said, acknowledging, as always, his proprietary interest. The bartender smiled and put a double Scotch in front of Raoul.

  "Give him ginger ale," his friend mocked, as if Eduardo's lack of interest in alcohol somehow denigrated his manhood. Eduardo caught the message of bemusement in his friend's tone.

  "I thought you were raping her," he said, the words, he knew, a confession of his ignorance. Raoul lifted his glass, drained it, replaced it on the bar, and laughed.

  "Raping her." He pounded his chest. "Me?"

  "It actually sounded like you were murdering her."

  "She loved it." He paused. "We were merely having a little dispute on some of the more technical aspects."

  "Technical aspects?"

  Raoul signaled the alert bartender for another drink.

  "Eduardo. You are truly the stupidest man I have ever met when it comes to women."

  "I'll grant you that," Eduardo said morosely.

  The bartender came over and leaned on the bar, pointing with his eyes to a dark corner of the lounge where a woman sat by herself. She wore sunglasses and an odd snarl on her lips, but was attractive, in her early twenties. Raoul slid toward the bartender.

  "She must raise the fare back to Santiago. And her lover has also stuck her for the price of the hotel," the bartender whispered. Raoul patted the bartender's arms and looked at Eduardo.

  "He is the cleverest bird dog in Punta del Este," Raoul said, watching the bartender bask in his sense of achievement. He stood up and, beckoning Eduardo to follow, moved through the crowded lounge to the woman. She did not look up as Raoul slid into the seat beside her.

  "Ricardo says you might welcome company." The woman looked to the bartender, who nodded a protective assent. She looked toward them and, with difficulty, let the snarl fade from her lips, managing a thin smile. But she did not remove her sunglasses and was, therefore, difficult to observe. Eduardo surveyed her. The sunglasses also created the illusion that she could not see him. Her skin seemed milk-white in the sparsely lighted room, her hair soft, but jet black, done in a pompadour. Because she was sitting it was difficult to see whether she was short or tall. The rise above the table showed large full breasts, features not lost on Raoul, who eyed them with unabashed interest.

  "I am Raoul and this is Eduardo. We are also Chilean."

  The woman nodded. She had acknowledged their presence with little interest. Raoul looked at Eduardo, winked and prodded him with his elbow.

  "Ricardo says you have a bit of a problem."

  The woman nodded, displaying nothing of her internal self. She was, despite her predicament, quite lovely, Eduardo decided.

  "It is purely financial," she said.

  "I understand," Raoul said, winking again to Eduardo. "And I am prepared to be your benefactor."

  "I will need bastante pleata," the woman said. "Cash."

  Raoul confidentially dipped into his pocket and pulled out a wad of bills. It was another familiar characteristic, the display of cash, always folded neatly and pinched with a heavy silver money clip. With a flourish he counted out the bills on the table, almost depleting his roll.

  Eduardo could not tell whether the woman had watched the process. Beyond the dark glasses he could see nothing.

  "And I am also the benefactor of my friend."

  "That will require an extra sum," the woman said. Obviously she had watched the counting process with eagerness. Raoul's head fell back as he laughed, signaling the waiter to bring more drinks. They came quickly.

  After Raoul had polished his off, he said, "The price is outrageous to begin with." His speech had become slurred. He called for another double Scotch.

  Eduardo, admitting his lust for this woman, was suddenly fearful that Raoul was merely toying with her. He felt the charge of his own excitement.

  "I can offer some.... "he hesitated ... "benefactions." He nearly swallowed the words.

  "You are my guest," snapped Raoul. "Besides, I am the negotiator." Another drink came. Raoul drank and ordered another. Raoul was being irritable and ornery again, Eduardo observed. The woman shrugged, took the bills from the table, and stood up. She was quite tall. They followed her through the crowd, into the lobby of the hotel, pressing into the small elevator. A bored operator brought them to her floor.

  Eduardo felt his heart beat heavily. The woman was thin-hipped, with firm buttocks that swung in a tight arc, suggesting promise and power. He felt the fear rise in him. Raoul staggered beside him. The woman stopped to open the door of her room. Her lover had apparently been initially lavish. The room seemed one of the best in the hotel, with a wide view of the ocean through a large bay window that opened onto a small balcony.

  Inside, the woman for the first time removed her glasses. Her eyes were puffy. She had obviously been crying. But her age was more readable. Eduardo imagined she was just a year or two older than they. Raoul poured himself a drink from an opened bottle on the cocktail table. Eduardo's eyes met the woman's. Let him, she seemed to say. Without her glasses she was less self-assured. He imagined he noted an element of disgust in her demeanor. She was also less arrogant. She sat on the large double bed, hesitating. Eduardo felt awkward, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

  "Well," the woman said, reaching behind her to unfasten the clasp of her dress. Material fell off her shoulder, revealing a pink brassiere strap. She unpinned her pompadour and her hair collapsed to her shoulders.

  "Why don't you look at the stars?" she said gently to Eduardo.

  "Yesh, the shtars," Raoul said, staggering toward the bottle again, hi
s face clenched with drunken concentration. The woman shrugged, darting him a look of bemused resignation. For the first time she smiled broadly, genuinely, he imagined. He went out on the balcony, stretching on a divan and looking up at the canopy of stars. The night was warm, the sound of the surf gentle now as the tide had moved further out to sea. In the distance he could hear faint music, probably from Anna's outdoor party.

  The woman's scent preceded her presence, the light smell of gardenias. Her voice was soft. He suddenly remembered Isabella, which only served to frighten him further as the image of that night outside his father's study flashed through his mind.

  "Your friend is beyond immediate hope," the woman said gently. "He is obviously ignorant of his body. Liquor is not an aphrodisiac."

  She seemed so knowledgeable, strong, confident. He felt intimidation now, although she seemed softer somehow than the hard arrogant woman at the bar. She moved her body closer toward him. The gardenia scent grew stronger.

  "It is amazing how ignorant men are about women," she said. He wondered whether she felt his presence, since she did not wait for a response. "He could not bear the fact that he could not move me."

  "Who?" he whispered, his throat tight.

  "Juan." She sighed. "I did admire him greatly. Of course, I told him that I loved him, which was a lie. I could have lied about the other. But he did not move me, and I finally told him that and he left. Just like that. I was at the beach today and he simply upped and left."

  "He was your lover?"

  "In a manner of speaking. But he could not bear the truth." She paused. "And yet it was not his fault. He was not the first. No man has moved me, not one, and, believe me, I have had many lovers."

  "You seem so young." He was finding his courage now, the implication clear.

  "I am twenty-two." She turned toward him and smiled. "My name is Elena, Elena Mendoza." She put out her hand and giggled like a girl much younger.

  "I am Eduardo Palmero."

  "I am not a prostitute in the traditional sense," she said. "But when one is desperate and there are fools.... "She paused. "He is a fool, you know." She jerked a thumb toward the room. "He is quite taken with himself, too much with himself to ever really move a woman."