Pleasure My Lustful Heart: A Romance Novella (2 page)

Maybe it meant something to be a Porteous in Pennsylvania, but not at Tulane. The southern girls, they stuck with each other, and they shut me out. And the boys — there was nothing about a Yankee girl who looked like a hippie, that made their Confederate hearts beat faster. Once again I was looking for something that wasn't there. My adventure turned out to be a bust.

Misery does love company. Lucien Goodhue and I fell into each other’s arms, each thrilled to discover another truly unhappy person. Lucien, a gentle, withdrawn misfit from Birmingham, was in New Orleans to learn engineering. Our relationship happened so suddenly and so intensely that we understood from the very beginning that
intimacy was inevitable, and for me, the sooner the better.

On the first day we met, after talking for barely two hours, we hurried to his shabby student apartment off campus. The afternoon sun was pouring through the two windows of the studio. Without saying a word to him, I pulled down the window shades. The sunlight against the shades cast an amber glow on the room, and on us. It was surreal, and unbelievably exciting. I wanted to be naked, and I wanted to see him naked. I pulled off everything I wore, as Lucien stripped down to his white briefs. I went to him, hooked my fingers inside the briefs and pulled them to the floor. He stepped out of them.  He was even skinnier without his clothes than he was with them.

He wasn't yet as aroused as I was, and seemed embarrassed that his sex was still limp. "I'll be ready in a minute," he said, almost in a whisper.

"I can take care of that," I said, thrilled at my own boldness. Standing there in the middle of the room, I took him in both my hands and massaged him gently until he rose up. He was right. He was ready in a minute.

We stumbled to his unmade bed and fell into it. Lucien hesitated, almost as though he didn't know what to do next. I climbed on top of him, and we rocked together in a frenzy. I looked down at his boyish face, and his long brown hair against the pillow. His eyes were closed tight with the effort he was making.  Then I saw him arch his back off the bed. "Are you ready?" I said.

"Oh, yes. Yes," he said.  We rocked faster and faster, almost as if someone or something was chasing us. Finally, I felt him shudder as we climaxed together. It was sublime.

We made love again that afternoon, and regularly in the months that followed.

While Lucien was always a willing partner, it was usually I who initiated our frequent episodes of sex. It wasn't so much the satisfaction of sex that drove me. It was the knowledge that I was finally doing something adventurous, something daring. I told myself that Lucien belonged to me, fulfilled me. I had what I wanted — a boy who was as disdainful of the world as I was.

The closer Lucien and I drew to each other, the more we distanced ourselves from everyone else. One night I said, "Why are we staying here in this place we don't like at all, and be with people we don't like, either? Let's go away together — leave Tulane behind."  It was the boldest thought I'd ever had. But once I said it, I couldn’t let go. Being off together with a lover, for the first time in my life. The idea was irresistible.

But not for Lucien.
It frightened him. "Yes, of course I love you," he said. "Yes, I want to be with you. But where would we go? How would we live? And what about our parents?"

"We'll drive through Texas to Mexico," I told him. "Living is cheap there, and I can get some money, don’t worry. Our parents will love us anyway." I wasn’t sure about any of it — just pulling it out of the air. But I knew if I kept at it, I would convince him. Other people had been making up his mind for him all his life.

Finally, he grinned in that innocent way of his, and said yes. Next day, I took the diamond Pa gave me to a jeweler and sold it. Then we bought a decrepit 11-year-old Chevrolet from an equally decrepit used car dealer, with most of the money. We would leave for Mexico on Saturday morning.

But when Saturday morning came, Lucien was gone. The couple in the adjoining apartment said he’d left suddenly,
hitch-hiking back to Birmingham. Oh, and here’s an envelope he left. The message inside said only this:  “I’m not the right one.” He hadn’t signed it

I should have known from the start that Lucien was not a boy for an adventure. He didn’t have the courage to leave with me — or even to stay and face me.

Now I had no Lucien, no one at all. When I took the car back to the dealer, he gave me only half of what I'd paid to buy it. And my mother’s diamond was gone, sold by the jeweler hours after I’d brought it in. When I told my father, he never passed judgment on what I’d done. "Come back to Pennsylvania," he said , "and finish your degree here."

My adventure with a sweet, spineless boy from Birmingham was the most profound disappointment in my life. I promised myself then that it would be the last.

                              *      *      *

And now here he was, that boy from Birmingham, after nearly five years. Did he really think I'd see him, let him back into my life again? I remembered that he'd sent me a letter several months after I'd left Tulane. When I saw it was from Lucien, I threw it away without reading it. Other letters came for a while,
then they stopped. He hadn't tried to contact me again, until now.

It wasn't that I hated him, or even merely disliked him. I pitied him, not for what he did, but what he lacked. And I knew that was something that would never change. But my number was in the phone book, and I couldn't stop him from calling. I'll think about that later, I told myself. Right now I have to find out if Mr. Gregg
Monsell can make business magic for Porteous Limited. Just be careful.

CHAPTER 3

All my worries about my father, the business, my own future, were welling up in me. Could Pa continue to manage the company? After all, he was 66, an age when many executives decide to pack it in and play golf the rest of their lives. But Sidney
Porteous had never played golf, never wanted to. Manufacturing apparel is all he knew. Since Ma died, he spent every waking hour involved in the business. Now his world was changing, and it was becoming clearer every day that he couldn't handle it.

I looked across the sewing room floor. A third of the machines were idle. The sixteen operators who were working — mostly women, but two men — were busy sewing, hoping, I was sure, that there'd continue to be work for them. As sewing floor manager, I was the one they asked about how the business was doing. I always said, "New orders are coming in." Were they? Not really.
None that I knew about.

And now, what about this Gregg
Monsell? I hadn't heard him discuss a merger with Pa, but I couldn't believe Pa was right about Gregg saying he wanted to take over our company. Who would walk into a man's office and say such a thing? Pa saw him as a threat — he just wouldn't have anyone but himself managing Porteous Limited. But maybe we could be successful as part of a merged company, with a new kind of business. I didn’t have the experience to deal with such important decisions, but I was certain if we didn't do something soon, we'd become another victim of Chinese competition. Time was already running out.

I reminded myself it wasn't only my father's future and my own that were hanging in the balance here. There was my Uncle Aaron, who supervised the plant's fabric cutting, a critical process in the manufacture of apparel.

Uncle Aaron owned 25 percent of the company's stock, compared to the 75 percent Pa owned. My grandfather Emil, who founded the company and made it a success, had a disastrous, hateful falling-out with Aaron, his younger son. When Emil died, he left everything to Pa, nothing to Uncle Aaron. Pa felt sorry for his brother, and made him a supervisor, and a little later, gave him a piece of the company. Far from being grateful, Uncle Aaron came to resent Pa more than ever, and Pa gave up trying to please him. They avoided each other whenever they could. Pa was the final authority on everything in the company, and Uncle Aaron was a chronically unhappy man, divorced twenty years ago, who wanted nothing more than to find solace in his work. Uncle Aaron had no interest in the company's business decisions.

Though Uncle Aaron was at odds with Pa, he and I got on very well together, ever since I
was a kid. I guess I was the family he never had. Still, I wasn't about to tell Uncle Aaron about Gregg Monsell. Not yet. It would only confuse the issue. But I did want to see him before I called Gregg, to ask if he shared my worries about the company's future. I went to the cutting room, where Uncle Aaron was boss.

As always,
he met me with the barest hint of a smile, his cheeks red with the webs of blood vessels visible just beneath his skin, his graying hair combed across the top of his head, over his big bald spot. "I didn't see you all day yesterday," I said. "Thought I'd check in on my favorite uncle."

"Your only uncle." We said it together.
Our little joke, for as long as I can remember. "And you? You're still single?" His little joke, not mine. A strange theme for a man who had lived alone for so many years.

"Completely and absolutely," I said. "I have —"

"I know. You have a good job. A lovely apartment. A blue convertible." he said. He waved his forefinger at me. "But they won't keep you warm on a cold night."

"Enough," I told him. "This is not a lonely hearts club. When do I get the pieces for the Poster Girl blouses? We're sewing the last of the
Delman tops, so we'll be ready tomorrow — Thursday morning the latest."

"The cutting's finished now," Aaron said. He looked at me strangely.
squinting his eyes and cocking his head to one side. "But you knew that already, Kit. I told you on the phone yesterday. Today I can see you have something else on your mind. Tell me."

"Nothing special," I said, but it was clear he didn't buy it. "All right, as long as I'm here
."

"Go ahead. Ask me anything. My life is an open book." He plopped into a chair, tilted back, and put his feet up on a
work table.

" Are you
worried about this business?"

"
Worried? That's your father's department."

"
I mean, do you ever think we'll go out of business — unless we make some changes, that is?"

He thought for a moment. "
Changes? Like what?" he said, finally.

"I don't know. I'm just worried that we have to find a new way to keep the plant busy. Like today, I have sixteen machines that are idle."

"So talk to your father. He's the brilliant businessman in the family."

"
I would, except, he seems," I groped for the word, "preoccupied."

"You mean mixed up.
He doesn't make sense lately. It's no secret. Everybody knows. Look, you're his only child, and some day you'll run this company, maybe sooner than you think. If you believe we're in trouble, then you're the one who has to do something about it." He swung his feet off the work table and stood up. "More than that, I can't advise you about business. All I do is cut fabric. The only thing I know is — don't end up alone. Find a guy and get married."

"I'm too young," I said. "Got to go."

"Be happy. It's not so hard," he called after me as I walked back to the sewing room.

I knew that if Uncle Aaron's
work changed, if the company changed, he would be cast adrift. I'd hate myself if something I did made him unhappy, and I'd hate myself if I made Pa unhappy. I promised myself I'd be careful on both counts. But it was becoming clearer that it was up to me to make some tough business decisions. Because Pa refused to, and Uncle Aaron didn't know how.

I went back to my office. I closed the door, something I hardly ever did, and stared at the phone on my desk for a full minute before I dialed Superior Apparel. What was I getting into? Was I kidding myself that a 26-year-old woman with barely 4 years of business experience was equipped to steer the course of an established family company?
With my smart-ass approach, I'd sink the company. I'd better give this some more thought.

Too late.
Their operator picked up on the first ring. "Superior Apparel."

This is it. No more doubts.
Full speed ahead. "Gregg Monsell, please."

Ring. Ring. Ring. "This is
Gregg."

"Hi,
Gregg." Be casual, I told myself. Don't sound eager. "This is Kit Porteous. We met yesterday in —"

"—
in your father's office. Of course. Good morning, Kit."

"I felt I should call you because — because things got so confused yesterday. I don't want you to have the wrong impression of our company. My father has been so busy lately that he gets distracted. He says what he doesn't mean because his mind is on a million other things. Please don't think he would ever want to be rude to you. It's just that —"

"No explanation needed," he said. "Everybody has days like that."

"Really, I want you to know —"

"I do know. I understand," he said, drawing out the words, as though he was soothing a troubled child.

"Thank you for that." He's patronizing me, I thought.

"Kit, you came in on the tail end of our meeting. You didn't hear my idea for doing business together, your company and ours. Did your father tell you what we talked about?"