Punish Me with Kisses (16 page)

She clinked her glass against Penny's, then took a sip.

"The hot line's a gas. People call in with their troubles —VD, cystitis, lover gone, coming out. You name it—they call in about it, and old Cindy just sits there advising them in this real calm telephone voice I've got. Someone tried to make a date with me the other night. Said I sounded just like Daisy Buchanan out of
Gatsby
. You know, like my voice was 'filled with money' or something. If only the poor dear knew—"

Penny nodded through all of this, increasingly amazed. Cynthia was hard, cynical, but authentic, too, not the flighty girl she remembered from Maine.

"So, Child, what brings you down here? Out with it now. Don't beat around the bush."

"I've been living with Jared since September."

"Yeah—so I read. I always figured he did it, you know, even though you said you saw someone else. He had as good a reason as any of the rest of us, I suppose."

It was a strange comment, and Penny wondered what she meant. Already, she could see, Cynthia wanted to talk. All she had to do to draw her out was to keep her on the subject of Suzie and their mutual escapades in Maine.

"Why do you say that?"

"You mean 'good reason'?" She grinned. "Well—why not? You're old enough to take it. After all the shit you've been through you're entitled to know it all. The fact is, child, your sister was a rotten bitch. She didn't have any friends either, not real ones. I was supposed to be her 'best friend,' but now that I look back on it I realize I hated her guts. She was a seducer, old
Suze
. Sucked us in, made us fall in love with her, and then when she had us in her spell, made us feel like worms. She didn't want lovers. Didn't even want friends. What she wanted was slaves, and slaves was what she got." She stood up and began to pace the little living room, taking long strides, her boots clumping on the floor.

"I was in love with her. Adored her—I really did. First from a distance, then up close. I went in with my eyes open, because I knew where all her relationships finally led, but I didn't care, I just wanted to get my hands on that beautiful slinky body of hers. Started out kind of funny at Sarah Lawrence. We roomed together, you know. We'd swap clothes and stuff: shirts, shorts and jeans. We were the same size exactly, though she had all those luscious curves. So I started wearing her stuff, asking if I could borrow this and that, and, for reasons that escaped me then, I found wearing them turned me on. I wasn't sure why at first. I was denying my tendencies I guess. But then, I remember, when she'd go out on a date, as soon as she was gone I'd start looking through her drawers. I'd try on her panties and her bras—the few she had because she didn't like underwear very much. You know she used to go off campus to buy cigarettes wearing a
trenchcoat
with absolutely nothing underneath? I thought she was amazing. I'd never known anyone like that. Anyway just wearing her stuff made me feel good.

"She slept raw, too, like she was a goddess or something. In the mornings I'd wait in bed, waiting for her to jump up. That's what she did. She'd open her eyes, and then suddenly when she was ready she'd leap out of bed, and there she'd be, this beauty, stark naked, and she'd do these little exercises like touching her toes, and stretching backwards, and she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.

"One night, after she quit college and was working for Jamie, that photographer—he was
weird
, I can tell you, very
bi
and into all sorts of
scenes
—one night she calls me at the dorm. 'Want to make it with this stud?' she asks. 'The three of us together, a sandwich. All right?' Remember how she used to talk? Every line ended with a question—'all right?' 'OK?' So I thought, gee, this could be my chance, I'll play along and get my hands on her, too. So I took the train into town, and we end up with this very aggressive guy, this six foot six basketball player type. The three of us are in this huge bed she had at that little apartment she rented on Sixty-Sixth, and this guy's in the middle, and he's really turned on to us both. First he sticks it in her, then in me, then he goes down on her while I squirm around under him and suck him off. So we're trying all these positions, giggling away, and he gets off a few times like gangbusters, and
Suze
and I are eyeing each other every once in a while as if to say like isn't this
really cool
. But eventually he gets tired, sits back and says he wants to watch us play. This is what I've been waiting for. I smile coyly, and
Suze
says 'Why not?', and so we start off, and suddenly I'm getting what I want. It's all a great big joke as far as the two of them are concerned, but for me it's the whole point of the evening, the consummation of a year's worth of fantasies and dreams."

She finished off her glass of wine, then sat down, pulled out a joint, lit it and inhaled deeply. She offered it to Penny, who shook her head.

"I liked it. God, how I
liked
it. I mean I really got off on it, and of course I tried like hell to stay cool so I wouldn't let on and scare old Suzie off. But she picked up on me right away. The next morning she was watching me, studying me, and then she touched my cheek and smiled like she'd finally figured me out. That was her thing, you see—to find the other person's weakness, then exploit it any way she could. She didn't say anything, but it was clear enough. She kissed me goodbye, and every time we saw each other after that she'd touch me or kiss me or embrace me, and show me that same little smile that said 'I know what you like now, and maybe I'll give you more of it if you're good.' One night I came into the city, and it was too late to go back to the dorm. So we shared her bed, just the two of us. She lay real close to me, and I touched her, and she said: 'It's OK,
Cin
, make love to me if you want. It doesn't do all that much for me, but if it turns you on—go ahead.' Of course she had me then. She knew just how to do that, just which levers to pull. I'd work on her, do everything I could think of to get her going, and she'd just lie there with that big fat smirk on her face, saying 'It's OK,
Cin
—keep trying. I'm getting a little warm I guess. Try this. Try that. A little more of this, a little less of that—OK?' And so there I was working my tail off trying to get a fire going in that sleek cool body of hers. It was hard work, I tell you. And that's how I ended up her slave."

Cynthia inhaled again, then she shook her head.

"She was the
princess
, you see, the
goddess
who was doing me this big favor by letting me make love to her imperial self. I always had to do all the work. That was the game—that I had to try and turn
her
on. Never the other way around. Never mind about me. A kiss on the lips was about the best I ever got, and maybe a few pats and caresses and that was just about it. Well, after that she made me suffer all sorts of little ways. Made me go out with her on double dates, try out this guy for her, try out that guy, tell her what he liked so she'd know how to handle him, give her all the clues so she could get control. She made me run all sorts of little errands, too, like picking up her shoes and her dry cleaning, fixing her breakfast, giving her massages and backrubs, combing out her hair. Not exactly torture, but she'd make it as humiliating as she could. And sometimes she was really mean. I'd kiss her and then she'd push me away. 'Not now,
Cin
,' she'd say. 'I'm not in the mood right now.' Or 'Can't you keep your big fat paws off me,
Cin
? Like I know you got the
hots
for me, but like I'm really into guys, all right?' Sometimes I'd just plain beg. 'Please,
Suze
,' I'd say, 'let me kiss you, let me go down on you.' And then if I was real humble and begged her a lot, or did a special favor for her, she'd say 'OK—you got fifteen minutes. I got a date so make it fast—OK?' She knew I adored her. I must have told her so a thousand times. And then that summer came, and she needed me to help corral those guys. 'I want to fuck them all,' she told me. 'Every last one of them. Every one of those jerks. Together we'll do it; together we'll fuck them all.' So that's what we did that summer. That was our
summer project
. To fuck every one of them like she said. Every
single solitary
one. First her, then me; or first me, then her. She'd tell me: 'Your job,
Cin
, is to keep bringing them in. I don't want to run out. This is an assembly-line operation. If I'm busy with one, you keep the next one warm, all right?' Then she'd say: 'If you're a good little piece of ass,
Cin
, I'll let you have a little piece of me, OK?' God, she was unbelievable. That sister of yours was the
end
. She had me coming and going that summer every which way, and half the time I was in a daze, running errands for her, sucking around after her, taking out her trash, anything to keep her attention, anything to get a few minutes with her alone. We did this topless act around the pool. We went out and fucked on sailboats. We humped on that awful waterbed of hers. One night during a party at the yacht club we did it with a couple of guys in the men's locker room on the floor. She
made
me sleep with all these guys, most of whom I loathed. I didn't like sex with men by then, though I still knew how to put on an act. About half a dozen times we did threesomes in the
poolhouse
, and twice there were four of us together, and we kept switching off, and I never even knew their blessed names. I'd moan or something, then I'd feel her little hand on my thigh. 'Keep the faith,
Cin
,' she'd whisper. 'Keep the faith, OK?' So I kept the faith—"

Cynthia had been staring down while she told Penny all of this, as if it were so shameful she didn't want to show her eyes. She looked up finally.

"Surprised, huh? Surprised to hear what she was really like? But then you must have known some of this. You were watching us, weren't you? That's what I read."

"I was watching," Penny said, "but I had no idea. I never figured out the relationship quite like that."

"
Relationship
? I wish there'd been a
relationship
." Cynthia shook her head. "It was so empty. I don't know why she acted that way. Sometimes I had the idea she was playing some sort of game, like she had a plan, or was trying to prove something or other—like there was really something she was up to, something she was trying to do. But I never knew what it was, and I was so freaked out I didn't even care."

"What about the guys?"

"
Worse
! You should have heard some of the stuff she said to them. It's a wonder someone didn't—" She paused. "But then someone did. Probably one of them."

"One of her lovers?"

"Must have been. Who else? I told you—I always thought it was Jared, not only because he was there that night, holding the shears and everything, but because he was . . . I don't know how to say it exactly—"

"What?"

"Well, I thought he was sort of
crude
. Don't get me wrong. I also thought he was
gorgeous
. But he wasn't one of those Ivy League creeps. He wasn't phony, well-mannered; he wasn't a boy. You could tell by looking at him he wasn't the sort to take a lot of shit. So I just figured she went too far with him, and instead of taking it like the others he got really mad, and it was what she deserved anyway, like she was asking for it, maybe even trying to bring it on."

"Funny—Jared said something like that the other day." She paused. "Do you really think it's true?"

"I don't know. She was up to something, I'm sure of that. It was as if she was deliberately walking a tightrope, trying to provoke something, I don't know exactly what. Maybe she just wanted to be beaten up. She was sick enough. I often thought she got what she wanted, like she could maybe get off on that, death being the ultimate trip, as they say." She paused. "On the other hand
Suze
was life-embracing. She was funny, split. She let herself go, and she held herself back at the same time. You never really got to know her. There was this side she kept to herself."

They sat in silence, Penny sipping until her glass was empty, Cynthia smoking her joint down until it was barely a quarter-inch long.

"Tough, isn't it?"

"What?"

"Oh, you know—
life
. I remember seeing your picture in the papers. You were plastered all over everywhere those days, and you looked so injured. I felt real sorry for you then."

"I survived."

"Yeah—you did."

"I still get recognized sometimes."

"Sure. I read that stuff in Denver's column. What a shit he is. But it's funny, every so often, every six months or so I'm with some people and someone mentions the case. It sort of runs like an undercurrent, like Patty Hearst or Wylie-
Hoffert
or Valerie Percy, the one they never solved."

"Do you tell people you knew her?"

"Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Tell me, Child—I asked you this before—what brings you down here? Anything I can do?"