Mario Puzo - Fools die

“She had plenty of reason,” I said. “You’re beautiful and she’s not. And she’s got plans for Kellino tonight, and she was not going to have him distracted by you.”

“That’s silly,” she said. “I don’t like actors.”

“But you’re beautiful,” I said. “Also, you were talking intelligently. She has to hate you.”

For the first time she looked at me with something like real interest. I was way ahead of her. I liked her because she was beautiful. I liked her because she never went to parties. I liked her because she didn’t go for actors like Kellino, who were so goddamn handsome and charming and dressed so beautifully in exquisitely tailored suits, with haircut by a scissor Rosin. And because she was intelligent. Also, she could cry over a critic putting her down at a party. If she was that tenderhearted, maybe she wouldn’t kill me. It was the vulnerability finally that made me ask her to have dinner and a movie. I didn’t know what Osano could have told me. A vulnerable woman will kill you all the time.

The funny thing is, I didn’t see her sexually. I just liked her a hell of a lot. Because despite the fact that she was beautiful and had that wonderfully happy grin even with tears, she was not really a sexy woman at first glance. Or I was too inexperienced to notice. Because later, when Osano met her, he said he felt the sexuality in her like an exposed electric wire. When I told Janelle about Osano, she said that must have happened to her after I met her. Because before she met me, she had been off sex. When I kidded her about that and didn’t believe her, she gave me that happy grin and asked if I had ever heard about vibrators.

It’s funny that a grown woman telling you that she masturbated with a vibrator can turn you on to her. But it’s easy to figure out. The implication is that she is not promiscuous, though she is beautiful and lives in a milieu where men are after women as quickly as a cat after a mouse and mostly for the same reason.

– -

We went out with each other for two weeks, about five times, before we finally got to bed. And maybe we had a better time before we slept together than we did afterward.

I would go to work at the studio during the day and work on the script and have some drinks with Malomar and then go back to the suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel and read. Sometimes I’d go to a movie. On the nights I’d have a date with Janelle she’d meet me at the suite, and then she would drive me around to the movies and a restaurant and then back to the suite. We’d have a few drinks and talk, and she’d go home about one in the morning. We were buddies, not lovers.

She told me why she divorced her husband. When she was pregnant, she’d been horny as hell, but he didn’t care for her pregnant Then when the baby came, she’d loved nursing it. She was delighted by the milk flowing from her breast and the baby enjoying it. She wanted her husband to taste the milk, to suck her breast and feel the flow. She thought it would be so great. Her husband turned away in disgust. And that finished him for her.

“I’ve never told anybody that before,” she said.

“Jesus,” I said. “He was crazy.”-

Late one night in the suite she sat beside me on the sofa. We necked like kids and I got her panties down around her legs and then she balked and stood up. By this time I had my pants down in anticipation, and she was laughing and half crying, and she said, “I’m sorry. I’m an intelligent woman. But I just can’t.” We looked at each other and we both started laughing. We just looked too funny, both of us, with our bare legs and crotches and her white panties over her bare feet. Me with my pants and shorts snagging my ankles.

By that time I liked her too much to get mad. And oddly enough I didn’t feel rejected. “It’s OK,” I said. I pulled up my trousers. She pulled up her panties and we hugged each other on the sofa again. When she left, I asked her if she would come around the next night. When she said she would, I knew she would go to bed with me.

The next night she came into the suite and kissed me. Then she said, with a shy smile, “Shit, guess what happened.”

I knew enough, innocent as I was, that when a prospective bed mate says something like that, you’re out in the cold. But I wasn’t worried.

“My period started,” she said.

“That doesn’t bother me if it doesn’t bother you,” I said. I took her by the hand and led her to the bedroom. In two seconds we were naked in bed except for her panties and I could feel the pad underneath. “Take all that stuff off,” I said. She did. We kissed and just held each other.

We weren’t in love that first night. We just liked each other a hell of a lot. We made love like kids. Just kissing and fucking straight. And holding each other and talking and feeling comfortable and warm. She had satiny skin and a lovely soft ass that wasn’t mushy. Her small breasts had a really great feel to them and big red nipples. We made love twice in the space of an hour, and it had been a long time since I had done that. Finally we got thirsty, and I went into the other room to open a bottle of champagne I had waiting. When I got back into the bedroom, she had her panties back on. She was sitting cross-legged on the bed with a wet towel in her hand, and she was scrubbing out the dark bloodstains on the white sheets. I stood watching her, naked, champagne glasses in my hand, and it was then I first got that overwhelming feeling of tenderness that is the signal of doom. She looked up and smiled at me, her blond hair tousled, her huge brown eyes myopically serious.

“I don’t want the maid to see,” she said.

“No, we don’t want her to know what we did,” I said.

Very seriously she kept scrubbing, peering nearsightedly at the sheets to make sure that she hadn’t missed any spots. Then she dropped the wet towel on the floor and took a glass of champagne from my hand. We sat on the bed together, drinking and smiling foolishly at each other in a delighted sort of way. As if we had both made the team, passed some sort of important test. But we still weren’t in love with each other. The sex had been good but not great. We were just happy to be together, and when she had to go home, I asked her to sleep over but she said she couldn’t and I didn’t question her. I thought maybe she was living with a guy and she could stay out late on him but not stay overnight. And it didn’t bother me. That was the great thing about not being in love.

One good thing about Women’s Lib is that maybe it will make falling in love less corny. Because, of course, when we did fall in love, it was in the corniest tradition. We fell in love by having a fight.

Before that we had a little trouble. One night in bed I couldn’t quite get there. Not that I was impotent, but I couldn’t finish. And she was trying like hell for me to make it. Finally she started to yell and scream that she would never have sex again, that she hated sex and why did we ever start. She was crying with frustration and failure. I laughed her out of it. I explained to her that it was no big deal. That I was tired. That I had a lot of things on my mind like a five-million-dollar movie, plus all the usual guilts and hang-ups of a conditioned twentieth-century American male who had led a square life. I held her in my arms and we talked for a while and then after that we both came-no sweat. Still not great but good.

OK. There came a time when I had to go back to New York to take care of family business, and then, when I came back to California, we bad a date for my first night back. I was so anxious that on the way to the hotel in my rented car I went through a red light and got smashed by another car. I didn’t get hurt, but I had to get a new car and I guess I was in a mild sort of shock. Anyway, when I called Janelle, she was surprised. She had misunderstood. She thought it was for the next night. I was mad as hell. I’d nearly gotten myself killed so I could see her, and she was pulling this routine on me. But I was polite.