Fanchon's Book(63)

"Fanchon, don't tell me you're still jealous."

"Well, I do worry about it once in a while. Some times I just know you'd like me better if I were more like her. And maybe I could be, you know, if I thought… uh… "

"Hmm? Could be what?"

"More like Rosalba. The same thing."

"Stop talking in riddles, Fanchon. What same thing?

"Oh… you know. Your-your toilet slave."

The green eyes surveyed me dully and yet I was sure I had seen a flash, a sudden sheen, a hint of the vivid emeralds they used to be. As if my laborious bid to play Rosalba's role had tapped a hidden lode. But only the listless torpor prevailed in her vague murmur. "Umm, well, perhaps. We'll see."

"Darling? You-you're not interested?"

"I didn't say that."

"Then what's the matter? Must I beg?"

"No. Just be willing."

"Willing? Oh, but I am, I am. That's what I'm telling you."

"Are you, Fanchon?" And again, cryptically, in a tone of mild exasperation undoubtedly calculated to exasperate, "We'll see… " End of colloquy; just like that, with loose threads dangling all over the place and nobody around to reweave them into the tapestry. Nobody but yours truly. And rightly so, since I now recognized that the denouement of the unfinished drama had to be of my own delineation. Little Miss Sulkylips was leaving it strictly up to me.

No, she didn't want me to beg. Just be willing. Simple enough in substance but surely ambiguous in intent, and I could interpret her instruction only in the light of previous controversy. To me it implied something far more formidable than a mere display of docility in the playing of a difficult role. I had to learn to enjoy it, somehow, to desire it, crave it-and yes, in a sexual context, to lust for it with a fiery thirst that could be quenched at but one fountain. (But of course; hadn't I always thought of her as the. source of my rejuvenation? my own providential Fountain of Youth?) There was no other way to placate the determined little debauchee. Sensuality was the sole approach to the kind of willingness she demanded. The final stitch in the pattern of my conquest: if I could accept this ultimate humiliation joyfully then the design would at last be complete-and the weird and wonderful tapestry of our love would remain eternally inviolate.

Joyfully? So be it! With a bang, not a whimper. Eagerly-that was how to go about it-ardently, voluptuously, even if I had to hit myself over the head with a hundred intellectual arguments to gain one such emotional-erotic response. Arguments like the fact that I owed it to her in payment of debt, the grinding exigency of it-trapped, helpless-didn't I feel a "no way out" tingle of excitement? Arguments like the sublime beauty of her body; I could shut my eyes and behold the naked splendor in detail, the intimate fluff-on-flesh, fascinating! and hadn't I once seen that soft cynosure as a gold-fringed chalice? Ah yes, a chalice, exquisitely wrought, a sacramental chalice by Cellini, and wouldn't I swoon in aesthetic ecstasy just sipping from such a treasure? Arguments, arguments, but I had already convinced myself and now it was only a matter of temporizing watchfully and selecting the perfect moment to show my willful one just how willing I could be.

It came sooner than I anticipated. That very night, late, after I had fetched her a tall drink and hovered close by on the off-chance that she might relent and let me kiss her pretty feet while she relaxed on the chaise and read the newspaper. Sullen as ever, the heartless little rascal ignored me even though she must have noticed that I was practically devouring her nude loveliness with my near-famished languishing looks. But she sat up and stretched after a while and then swung her legs to the floor and padded toward the bathroom-and I knew my opportunity had arisen. Propitiation time. It was now or never.