William Kennedy - Quinn's Book

She let her robe fall open, revealing the chemisette, the same order of undergarment Magdalena had worn the night of her death in the river of ice. It clung to Maud from shoulder to middle thigh. Maud imagined herself floating to the bottom of the icy river, snared by John’s hook, lifted aboard a skiff, then dragged, bitten, and bounced through the night toward this mansion, which Maud ever since had known as a place where the miracle of love rises gloriously out of death, relinquishes its scars, and moves on to the next order of fulfillment.

She opened the tie of her robe, cradled her breasts with both hands, removed them from constraint, and introduced Quinn to her matured bosom.

He stared.

He almost smiled.

He looked at her eyes.

He looked again at what was revealed.

He kissed her on the mouth.

He held her shoulders.

He stepped back from the kiss.

He touched her left nipple with his right fingertips, lightly. It was the color of cinnamon sugar.

He put his lips on her left nipple, tasted it.

He lifted her left breast in his right hand, moving it slowly from east to west, then west to east.

He attended her right breast with his left hand.

He put his lips on her right breast.

He lightly bit the nipple of her right breast.

He kissed her on the mouth, holding both her breasts in both his hands.

He stepped back from the kiss, levitating both breasts, moving them from west to east, north to south, and so on.

He kissed the cloven line between her breasts.

He licked the line and tasted her salt.

He held both her breasts with both his hands and pressed their softness against both sides of his face.

He raised his face to hers and kissed her on the mouth.

“Do you like me?” she inquired.

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard you say, and I’ve heard several.”

“Have you known a lot of women?”

“A fair number. It’s been a bazaar of enticement, you might say.”

“I’ve had six men.”

“A round number.”

“And several hundred suitors.”

“The fellow downstairs is one of the privileged half dozen, I presume.”

“He is not.”

“Has he ever put his mouth on your body?”

“Never. But even so, he is quite jealous. We must hurry. I want you to see all of me.”

“You’re very determined.”

“Only fools are otherwise.”

She picked the letter off the table and stuffed it into Quinn’s trouser pocket, then moved the candelabra farther apart and sat on the table.

“Do you remember how John came to Magdalena when she was dead, how he raised her clothing?”

“I remember it vividly.”

“I want you to do the same with me now. My breasts are blushing. Can you see?”

“I can.”

“I feel a sharp rush of blood to them when I get excited.”

“I could feel their pulse when I touched you.”

“They make the rest of me function. They’re the brains of my sex.”

“I’ll remember that.”

“Now, I want you to look at me, but you must be precise in what you think. I’m accessible to the man who knows exactly how he loves me. No voyeur will ever reach me.”

She lowered herself into a supine position on the table, freeing up her robe and chemisette. Quinn, seeking precision but astonished by Maud’s behavior, could only watch with awe her reenactment of Magdalena’s posture, the array of her apparel before resurrection.

“For God’s sake, hurry up,” Maud said, and Quinn folded her robe and chemisette upward to reveal the inversely triangulated center of his dreams, more striking than he had imagined, more symmetrical, the auburn crest of it an arc, an emerging sunrise of irresistible invitation. Maud closed her eyes and let her arms fall into the same position as Magdalena’s of yore. Quinn put the palm of his hand on her sunrise and she opened her eyes.

“No,” she said. “We’re not ready.”

“Who says we’re not?”

“My blood.”

“Why are you with him?” Quinn said.

“I have to be with someone once in a while. He’s bright.”

“And he’s rich.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“It used to.”

“Why are you talking about money when I’m in this position?”

“You should leave him.”

“Why don’t you take me away from him?”

“I wondered when you’d get around to kidnapping.”

“Look at me, Daniel,” she said, and she spread herself.

Quinn looked. “You are a most willful woman,” he said.

“Everyone has a right to a willful life,” said Maud. “I dare you to take me away.”

“And so I shall,” said Quinn. “But first I must know. Have you ever done this in front of a cake?”

She sat up and covered herself, moved the candelabra to where they had been before her ritual, snuffed the candles, opened the drapes to the upper porch, and sat on the velvet sofa precisely where she had been prior to Quinn’s arrival. Gordon then knocked on the door of the sitting room.

“Maud, may I come in?”

“Of course,” she said, and Gordon entered, smiling.

“I have to change for this evening,” he said, “and I wondered whether we should prepare a room for Mr. Quinn. I invited him to join us at the bazaar tonight.”

“What a good idea,” said Maud.

“I guess it would be valuable to see it,” said Quinn.

“It’s quite a spectacle for Albany,” said Gordon.

“Albany has spectacles and spectacles,” said Quinn.

“Then I’ll have them go ahead with the room.”

“If it’s not too much trouble,” said Quinn, “I wonder could I have the one I used to sleep in. Next floor up, opposite the stairs.”

“We have much grander rooms than that,” said Gordon.

“There’s grandeur also in repeating history.”

“Then you shall have it. I’ll have Cappy bring up your things and stable your horse.” Gordon looked at Maud. “You seem to be in your nightclothes.”

“I’m about to bathe,” said Maud.

“We’ll meet at a later hour, then,” said Quinn, moving toward the door.

“An excellent idea,” said Gordon, standing pat.

My dearest Daniel [Quinn read, lying in the bed he last lay in six years earlier, the careful handwriting before him composed six years earlier also], I am appalled by your unfeeling ways. You are a man of mercurial moods, and if you do not change, I shan’t promise that our love will survive, which would be lamentable. I have never ceased of loving you, but when you came into my dressing room and I hugged you as a savior, I felt something I had not felt since our kiss by the shore of Saratoga Lake (and I have known certain compelling intimacies with men in the intervening years). I conclude from this feeling that I have an enduring element in my makeup, one that, unlike most mortal characteristics of our species, resists change. Poets have talked of this but I have never credited them with propounding anything except romantic twaddle, and yet I must now confess they knew something I heretofore did not.

But you left me in such haste that I did not even gain the moment to tell you what led to our separation in Saratoga. I saw all that happened to you on the veranda that afternoon. I did not ride off on the roan stallion, as some thought, but created the ruse of my departure by convincing a stableboy to take the horse to a neighboring farm. I then hid in the hayloft with my bag and observed all events, for I was in need of time to think what I should do. Intuitively I knew you would never accept my solution to the situation in which I found myself that afternoon after our return. I was, of a suddenness, sorely pressed to provide for Magdalena in light of John McGee’s decision to leave us and pursue a career as a prizefighter.