It didn't begin until he was nearly fifty. The young women were everywhere — photographers' reps, secretaries, stylists, models, account executives. Lots of women, and you worked and traveled and had lunch together, and what was astonishing wasn't what happened — the acquisition by a husband of "someone else" — but that it took so long to happen, even after the passion had dwindled2 and disappeared from his marriage. It began with a pretty, dark-haired young woman of nineteen whom he hired to work as his secretary and who, within two weeks of taking the job, was kneeling on his office floor with her ass1 raised and him fucking her fully3 clothed, with just his fly unzipped. He had not possessed4 her by coercion5, though he had indeed taken her by surprise — but then he, who was conscious of having no peculiarities6 to flaunt7 and who believed himself content to live by the customary norms, to behave more or less the same as others, had taken himself no less by surprise. It was an easy entry because she was so moist and, in those daredevil circumstances, it took no time for each of them to achieve a vigorous orgasm. One morning just after she had gotten up from the floor and returned to her desk in the outer office, and while he was still standing8, face flushed, in the middle of the room and adjusting his clothing, his boss, Clarence, the group management supervisor9 and an executive vice10 president, opened the door and came in. "Where is her apartment?" Clarence asked him. "I don't know," he replied. "Use her apartment," Clarence said severely11 and left. But they couldn't stop what they were doing where and how they were doing it, even though theirs was one of those office trapeze acts in which everyone has everything to lose. They were too close to each other all day to stop. All either of them could think about was her kneeling on his office floor and him hurling12 her skirt up over her back and grabbing her by the hair and, after pushing aside her underpants, penetrating13 her as forcefully as he could and with an utter disregard for discovery.
Then came the shoot in Grenada. He was running the show, and he and the photographer he hired picked the models, ten of them for a towel ad that would be set beside a small natural pool in the tropical forest, with each model clad in a short summer robe, her head turbaned in the client's towel as though she'd just washed her hair. The arrangements had been made, the ad okayed, and he was on the plane sitting alone away from everyone else so he could read a book and fall asleep and fly there unperturbed.
They had a stop in the Caribbean, and he got off the plane and went into the waiting room and looked around, saw all the models, and said hello to them before everyone got onto another, smaller plane and took a short hop14 to their destination, where they were picked up by several cars and by a small jeeplike vehicle, which he decided15 to ride in with one of the models whom he'd taken note of when she was hired. She was the only foreign model on the shoot, a Dane named Merete and probably, at twenty-four, the oldest of the ten; the rest were American girls, eighteen and nineteen years old. There was somebody driving, Merete was in the middle, and he was on the outside. It was nighttime and very dark. They were squeezed in tightly together and he had his arm around the top of her seat. Only moments after the car took off his thumb was in her mouth, and without his knowing it, his marriage had come under assault. The young man who started out hoping never to live two lives was about to cleave16 himself open with a hatchet17.
When they got to the hotel and he went to his room, he lay there most of the night thinking only of Merete. The next day when they met, she said to him, "I waited for you." The whole thing was so quick and so intense. They shot all day in the middle of the forest with the small natural pool, worked hard and seriously for the entire day, and when they got back he found that the photographer's rep who was along on the job had rented a house on the beach just for him — he had thrown a lot of work her way, and so the rep rented it for him and he moved out of the hotel and Merete came with him and they lived there on the beach together for three days. In the early morning when he was coming back up the beach from his swim, she would be waiting on the veranda18 wearing just her bikini underpants. They would start then and there, while he was still wet from his long swim. For the first two days he was always diddling around her ass with his fingers while she went down on him, until finally she looked up and said, "If you like that little hole, why don't you use it?"
Of course he saw her back in New York. Every day that she was free he would go to her place at lunchtime. Then one Saturday he, Phoebe, and Nancy were walking down Third Avenue when he saw Merete walking on the other side of the street with that easy, upright, somnambulant gait whose feral assuredness always slayed him, as if she were not approaching the Seventy-second Street light carrying a bag of groceries but serenely19 traversing the Serengeti, Merete Jespersen of Copenhagen grazing the grasses of the savanna20 amid a thousand African antelope21. Models didn't all have to be needle-thin in those days, and even before he spotted22 her by her glide23 and saw the sheaf of golden hair down her back, he identified her as his very own treasure, the white hunter's prize, by the weight of her breasts inside her blouse and the light heft of the behind whose little hole had come to afford them such delight. He displayed neither fear nor excitement upon seeing her, though he felt extremely ill and had to get to a phone alone to call her — getting to the phone was all he thought about for the rest of the afternoon. This wasn't ravishing the secretary on the office floor. This was the raw supremacy24 of her creatureliness over his instinct for survival, itself a force to be reckoned with. This was the wildest venture of his life, the one, as he was only faintly beginning to understand, that could wipe out everything. Only in passing did it occur to him that it might be somewhat delusional25 at the age of fifty to think that he could find a hole that would substitute for everything else.
A few months later he flew to Paris to see her. She had been working in Europe for six weeks, and though they spoke26 secretly on the phone as often as three times a day, that wasn't sufficient to satisfy the longing27 in either of them. A week before the Saturday when he and Phoebe were to drive to New Hampshire to bring Nancy home from summer camp, he told Phoebe that he would have to fly to Paris for a shoot that weekend. He'd leave on Thursday night and be home by Monday morning. Ezra Pollock, the account executive, would be going with him and they would meet up with a European crew over there. He knew that Ez was with his family until after Labor28 Day, unreachable on a tiny phoneless island several miles out to sea from South Freeport, Maine, so far from everything that seals could be seen socializing on the ledges29 of the rocky island nearby. He gave Phoebe the name and number of the Paris hotel and then reconsidered ten times a day his risking the chance of being discovered by her just so he and Merete could spend a long weekend together in the lovers' capital of the world. But Phoebe remained unsuspicious and seemed to be looking forward to picking up Nancy by herself. She was eager to have her home after a summer away, just as he was dying to see Merete after a month and a half apart, and so he flew off on Thursday night, his mind on that little hole and what she liked him to do with it. Yes, fixed30 dreamily on no more than that all the way across the Atlantic on Air France.
What went wrong was the weather. High winds and blustery storms swept through Europe, and no planes were able to take off all day Sunday and into Monday. Both days he sat at the airport with Merete, who had come along to cling to him until the last possible moment, but when it was clear that there would be no departures from de Gaulle until Tuesday at the earliest, they took a taxi back to the Rue31 des Beaux Arts, to Merete's favorite swank little Left Bank hotel, where they were able to rebook their room, the room mirrored with smoked glass. During every night ride they took by taxi in Paris, they performed the same impudent32 playlet, always as though inadvertently and for the first time: he'd drop his hand onto her knee and she'd let her legs fall open just far enough so that he could reach up under her silk slip of a dress — nothing more, really, than a piece of deluxe33 lingerie — and finger her while she adjusted her head to look idly out of the taxi at the illuminated34 shop windows and he, leaning back in his seat, pretended to be anything but riveted35 by the way she could continue to behave as if no one were touching36 her even as he sensed her beginning to come. Merete carried everything erotic to the limit. (Earlier, in a discreet37 antique jewelry38 shop down the street from their hotel, he'd adorned39 her throat with a stunning40 trinket, a pendant necklace set with diamonds and demantoid garnets and strung on its original gold chain. Like the knowledgeable41 son of his father that he was, he'd asked to examine the stones through the jeweler's loupe. "What are you looking for?" Merete asked. "Flaws, cracks, the coloring — if nothing appears under a ten-power magnification the diamond can be certified42 as flawless. You see? My father's words issue from my mouth whenever I speak about jewelry." "But not about anything else," she said. "Not about anything about you. Those words are mine." Not while shopping, not while walking the streets, not while taking an elevator or having coffee together in a booth around the corner from her apartment, could they ever stop seducing43 each other. "How do you know how to do that, to hold the thing—?" "The loupe." "How do you know how to hold the loupe in your eye like that?" "My father taught me. You just tighten44 your socket45 around it. Rather like you do." "So what color is it?" "Blue. Blue-white. That was the best in the old days. My father would say it still is. My father would say, 'Beyond the beauty and the status and the value, the diamond is imperishable.' 'Imperishable' was a word he loved to savor46." "Who doesn't?" Merete said. "What is it in Danish?" he asked her. "'Uforg?ngelig.' It's just as wonderful." "Why don't we take it?" he told the saleswoman, who in turn, speaking in perfect English and with a touch of French — and with perfect cunning — told the young companion of the older gentleman, "Mademoiselle is very lucky. Une femme choyée," and the cost was about as much as the entire inventory47 of the Elizabeth store, if not more, back when he was running one-hundred-dollar engagement rings of a quarter or a half carat to be sized for his father's customers by a man working on a bench in a cubbyhole on Frelinghuysen Avenue circa 1942.) And now he withdrew the finger sticky with her slime, perfumed her lips with it, then pressed it between her teeth for her tongue to caress48, reminding her of their first meeting and what they'd dared to do as strangers, an American adman of fifty and a Danish model of twenty-four, crossing a Caribbean island in the dark, transfixed. Reminding her that she was his and he hers. A cult49 of two.
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ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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dwindled
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| v.逐渐变少或变小( dwindle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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coercion
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| n.强制，高压统治 | |
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peculiarities
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| n. 特质, 特性, 怪癖, 古怪 | |
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flaunt
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| vt.夸耀，夸饰 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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supervisor
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| n.监督人，管理人，检查员，督学，主管，导师 | |
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vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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severely
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| adv.严格地；严厉地；非常恶劣地 | |
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hurling
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| n.爱尔兰式曲棍球v.猛投，用力掷( hurl的现在分词 )；大声叫骂 | |
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penetrating
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| adj.（声音）响亮的，尖锐的adj.（气味）刺激的adj.（思想）敏锐的，有洞察力的 | |
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hop
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| n.单脚跳，跳跃；vi.单脚跳，跳跃；着手做某事；vt.跳跃，跃过 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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cleave
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| v．(clave；cleaved)粘着，粘住；坚持；依恋 | |
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hatchet
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| n.短柄小斧；v.扼杀 | |
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veranda
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| n.走廊；阳台 | |
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serenely
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| adv.安详地，宁静地，平静地 | |
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savanna
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| n.大草原 | |
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antelope
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| n.羚羊；羚羊皮 | |
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spotted
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| adj.有斑点的，斑纹的，弄污了的 | |
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glide
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| n./v.溜，滑行；(时间)消逝 | |
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supremacy
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| n.至上；至高权力 | |
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delusional
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| 妄想的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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ledges
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| n.（墙壁，悬崖等）突出的狭长部分( ledge的名词复数 )；（平窄的）壁架；横档；（尤指）窗台 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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rue
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| n.懊悔，芸香，后悔；v.后悔，悲伤，懊悔 | |
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impudent
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| adj.鲁莽的，卑鄙的，厚颜无耻的 | |
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deluxe
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| adj.华美的，豪华的，高级的 | |
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illuminated
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| adj.被照明的；受启迪的 | |
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riveted
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| 铆接( rivet的过去式和过去分词 )； 把…固定住； 吸引； 引起某人的注意 | |
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touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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discreet
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| adj.(言行)谨慎的；慎重的；有判断力的 | |
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jewelry
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| n.（jewllery）（总称）珠宝 | |
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adorned
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| [计]被修饰的 | |
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stunning
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| adj.极好的；使人晕倒的 | |
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knowledgeable
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| adj.知识渊博的；有见识的 | |
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certified
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| a.经证明合格的；具有证明文件的 | |
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43
seducing
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| 诱奸( seduce的现在分词 )； 勾引； 诱使堕落； 使入迷 | |
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44
tighten
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| v.(使)变紧；(使)绷紧 | |
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socket
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| n.窝，穴，孔，插座，插口 | |
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savor
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| vt.品尝，欣赏；n.味道，风味；情趣，趣味 | |
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inventory
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| n.详细目录，存货清单 | |
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48
caress
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| vt./n.爱抚，抚摸 | |
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49
cult
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| n.异教，邪教；时尚，狂热的崇拜 | |
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