NORMAN MAILER
613
"Hugh may be the most complicated person I've encountered," she
said, "but this weekend he's ridiculously simple. He's in a thundering
grouch because we can't get together at night. Daddy insisted on
putting me in the room next to Mother and him. So Hugh is falling
apart. He's outrageously priapic, you see. Back in Washington he's on
me all the time. I hope you don't mind hearing this, Harry. I've got to
talk. "
"Yes," I said. I didn't know what she was talking about. The facts
seemed to contradict each other. "How can he be on you," I asked, "if
you're both virgins?"
"Well, we go in for what he calls 'the Italian solution.' "
"Oh," I said. I didn't know anymore. Then I did. It was physically
painful to contemplate what she allowed him to do. Nor could I con–
ceive how it connected with all her soap and sunlight.
"Actually," she said with the quick, rising zephyr of a Radcliffe girl,
"I love it. It's debauched. To be a virgin and yet feel so wanton. Harry,
it's opened a purview on the Renaissance for me. Now I see how they
could observe the Catholic forms and yet live in such near-mortal viola–
tion of so much. That's not the unhealthiest approach, you know."
"Do you talk this way to everyone?" I asked.
"Heavens, no," she said. "You're special."
"How can that be? You don't know me."
"I only needed one look. Before it's over, I said to myself, I'm
going to tell this man everything. You see, Harry, I love you."
"Oh," I said. "I guess I love you too." I did not have to pretend.
The thought of Hugh Montague as a satyr hot on her back left me
feeling criminally wounded. I might as well have been the cuckolded
lover. I hated how her confidence had reached so easily to the very cen–
ter of me.
"Of course," she said, "you and I are never going to do anything
about it. We're cousins, and that's what we'll always be. Dearest friends.
At worst, kissing cousins." She gave the littlest example of such a kiss to
my lips. That too went all the way in. Her mouth had the scent of a
petal just separated from the flower. I had never been near a nicer breath.
Nor one with more surprises. It was like picking up a great novel and
reading the first sentence.
Call me Ishmael .
"Someday," she said, "after Hugh and I are tired of each other,
maybe you and I
will
have an affair. Just the passing kind to give a lot of
naughty pleasure."
"Kissing cousins," I replied hoarsely.
"Yes. Only now, Harry, I need a good friend. I need one like pure
stink. Somebody I can tell everything to."
"I'm incapable of telling all," I confessed, as if I had numerous ad-
