Pierre la Tour

Up in Heaven

1. my first affair

Marcia Phillips, Nee Edmunds, lifted her champagne goblet and smiled at her husband of a day across from her at the festively set, white-linened table the headwaiter himself had set up for them in the living room of their bridal suite at the Waldorf-Astoria.

“To our marriage, darling,” she said in a soft, throaty voice that shook and spoke a quivering eager feminine curiosity and, above all, a candid sensuality.

Across from her, Max Phillips raised his glass to join in that toast, an appreciative smile curving his sensuous mouth.

“And-to ecstasy, my sweet,” he added, his smile deepening as a vivid flush stained the pale ivory of Marcia's satiny cheeks.

The marriage of Max Phillips and Marcia Edmunds had roused great social interest, both being drawn from New York's elite families. Max was black-haired, sleek, lean, and athletic of body- thirty-eight, in the very prime of life. Steel blue-gray eyes, aquiline nose, with perceptively thin nostrils, a full mouth that suggested his voluptuous temperament without equivocation, a strong chin and jaw and arching broad forehead, gave him the mien of a self-made individual, candid and ardent — which he indeed was. Inheriting the family fortune, he nonetheless had made one of his own through his importing firm, which had given him full opportunity to pursue his own pleasures by way of many trips to Europe on buying excursions.

As for Marcia Edmunds, she had been ranked, three years before, as one of the loveliest debutantes ever to be introduced to the Four Hundred. Her mother, a stern, matriarchal dowager whose type is now virtually extinct, was famous in her day as a toasted beauty in musical and charitable activities. Marcia was twenty-two, and it was plain that she had a noble heritage of beauty, and a very desirable one.

She was stunningly formed, 5 feet 7 inches in height-more than the average girl. This tallness was in no way suggestive of meagerness or artificial sveltness. Her body was that of a young Juno, with magnificent round jutting breasts superbly spaced, erect and crowned with voluptuously developed buds. Her hips were sensually rounded, vivaciously resilient, agilely full and ripely feminine, and the gradually swelling sleek curved calves completed a pair of the most beautiful legs in all New York-as some reverent columnists had remarked on the occasion of her costly debut at this same palatial hotel. Long, beautifully moulded arms, whose upper curves were mouthwatering, were temptingly firm and rounded in ivory-skinned velvety-fleshed charm and grace. Patrician wrists and delicate long fingers knew the art of caress, of evocation. The arching roundness of her throat might have inspired an ode.

As to features, they were provocative and alluring, as Max's approving eyes noted lingeringly now above the goblet of his own champagne.

Ovally set cheeks, high forehead, snowy and intelligent; green eyes of dark yet luminous depth and facet, fringed by a very long gossamer dark-brown lash, emphasized in allure by narrow, exquisitely curving brows. A small Grecian nose, subtly flaring, mercurial, evidencing a vivid nature. A curving full and sultry mouth, whose ripe upper lip betokened a flair for petulancy, would make quarrels exciting and reconciliation far more so. A dimpled rounded chin.

In a word, dazzling and desirable. Max silently envied his own good fortune, for this was his wedding night. They had been married at four o'clock that afternoon at Holy Trinity Church. It had been a lavish ceremony, with hosts of friends of both families. Max's father was dead these ten years, but his mother, a doughty outspoken woman whom he admired for her gusto, attended. She told all and sundry in her hearing that her son had won a prize, and he agreed with her.

He smiled, thinking of it. Yes, looking at his beautiful young wife across the table, amid the fabulous luxury of the bridal suite, he was certain of it.

He had wooed her for six months. She had been drawn to him by his wit, good humor, sophistry, and vast experience on the Continent and throughout America. He loved life. He was not, for all his dabblings in affairs and liaisons-and he had had many-blase in the least. Beside him, all her younger suitors palled. Then, too, his family was established, of traditional aristocracy. He was wealthy. These attributes added to his fascination for her and made him a perfect marital partner- in all save one respect. And that she would learn tonight.

He had told her the Waldorf-Astoria had sentimental attachments for him, and suggested that they spend their wedding night here in the lavish setting of great wealth. Here-where the sofa was gilded with costly ornamentation for all of its lush softness and yielding upholstery, where murals, tasteful and expensive, bedecked the walls, where a blue-tiled bathroom, large and superbly furnished, offered the most discreet privacy and luxury for the most intimate of functions, where the great canopied bed loomed in a vast room whose carpeting was of thick, soft blue velvet, into which the slippered or bare foot sank with elegance.

They had a rich and lengthy meal. A connoisseur of pleasures of the table as of the bed, he believed that savory food of superb cuisine with varied and appropriate wines was ideal preparation to passion. It was aphrodisiac far more suitable than the cantharide itself, too crude a symbol for the intellectual male.

And when intellect was combined with passion, it composed a rare lover. Marcia had sensed this, physical virgin though she was, in accepting this man over a dozen younger and easily as wealthy and patrician candidates.

The chimes of the silver clock above the mantelpiece rang. They had spent three hours at the wedding supper, lingering from course to course, pausing at each to whet the palate for the next good things to come. Already, he had marked her with approval as a bon vivant like himself. He admired her grace in pouring the wine with a gesture that unfurled the sleeve of her beautiful blue satin negligee. She had, with a teasing smile, excused herself after being carried across the threshold to change into the gown with its gold satin belt and dainty gold leather sandals with platform heels, a thong at the arch and open toes. She wore beneath the negligee a lacy black bra and brief panties of the same gossamer material-for now secretly she wished him to take the droit des noces, the right of the first night. Hence, she being virgin, the right to unveil her and the removal of the negligee would be too decisive to fan the flame of passion. Wise virgin indeed. Also, gun-metal gray chiffon hose, held up flawlessly on those sculptured legs with green crepe-satin rosettes, were part of the unexpected ceremony after being carried across the threshold of their suite.

They were to spend three days here, it was agreed, thence to Italy, Greece, and Sardinia. It was early June of 1938, the world, though uneasy, was not yet plunged into war, Hitler's putsch still another ten months away. They were lovers- or would be, when the ultimate ceremony of the wedding was attained. And for lovers, nothing save their love exists.

She smiled at him from across the table, setting down her emptied goblet.

“It seems incredible, Max darling,” she murmured, “a few hours ago I was a nervous bride on whom hundreds of eyes were fixed and now, my darling, you have only one pair of eyes to adore me with.”

She nodded, a fond smile curving naturally red lips, which needed only the whispered touch of lipstick. “Yes, I'm yours now, alone with you- your wife, your sweetheart. I'd rather be that, I think, than just the wife part.”

“Ah?”

“Oh, of course, darling. When we met I said to myself, “There's a handsome dog who is obviously the type to get a girl mad over him, till she has him.'”

“Ah, and after that, after she has him,” he murmured, reaching for her hand, fingers entwined, exchanging a long searching look.

“And after that,” she said roguishly, the dimples in her creamy chin coming and going provocatively, “she'll just be plain mad for him.”

“Marcia!” He pretended to be shocked.

“But Max,” her fingers tightened and her eyes grew soft and fond, “you didn't think you were marrying an adolescent, I hope?”

“No, my darling. But you see, reputation means a good deal in your circle and I was accosted by heaven knows how many people who told me you were a paragon.”

“In what way?”

“In every way. You weren't one of those silly-brained debutantes whose only ambition in life was to break into print for many madcap escapades. That isn't to say you were staid and dull, dear-heaven forbid you ever should be that…”

“I don't think I shall-with you, Max dear.” Her voice was throaty, cajoling, teasing.

“For that, my precious one, I think you shall have a kiss.” He rose, came to her, and bent down, his hands caressing her shoulders, his lips moved down her forehead to her eyelids, thence to the tip of her nose, before they fused with hers in a long and ardent quivering kiss.

“Ah, and now, I shall go back to my place before I succumb to your witchcraft, Marcia, darling,” he chuckled.

“Thank you, kind sir-my darling,” Marcia whispered and blew a kiss to him, which he caught.

“Yes, paragon, but one with virtue. Yet somehow I felt you'd be unique, dearest, a wonderful sweetheart-the most desirable in the world.”

“You do find me desirable, my darling husband?” Her voice was very low.

“I think that kiss of a moment ago was ample evidence.”

“Evidence, but hardly ample.”

“Marcia,” his eyebrows raised in a mock surprise, “can this be the timid bride speaking on her wedding night?”

“Not timid, Max-I-well, darling, it's said a man and his wife shouldn't have any secrets from each other, and I don't mind too much confessing I've looked forward to tonight for some little time.”

“Marcia!”

“No, don't get up to kiss me yet, my sweetheart. Oh, but I do want your kisses terribly, but there's something else I want first.”

“Anything.”

“You promise?”

“Of course, with all my heart”

“I accept! Then-it's this, my love, my husband — I've come to you-well-shall we say-chaste? That's to say, I have had no affairs with any other man before you.”

“That, my adorable Marcia, I would have guessed instantly without your saying.”

She blushed and smiled. “Thank you, my loyal advocate. But-that's not to say I haven't wanted love, Max dear, love in the Continental sense, where it's meant to be a joy for both the lovers, not just a selfish pleasure of the man. You see, I have read books. I've read the great love stories, Max, of Heloise and Abelard, of the Browningsyes, and in a less ethereal way of Frank Harris and his amours. I've secretly pictured myself as a scienced lover's mistress, but till I said yes to you at the altar today, my love, I've never given anyone rights over me.”

He lit a cigarette for them both, then watched her intently, a little quizzical smile on his lips.

She resumed, “Tonight, you shall have every right-not only because you're my husband, but because I desire you to be my lover also-my first love. Assuming I can be wife and sweetheart enough to you to make that hope come true.”

“My darling, I know already that it will-for both of us-be rare delight we shall have of each other, and not only tonight.”

The blush deepened. For an instant her eyes were downcast, then clearly she fixed them on his face, resuming, “I hope that-and sense it-but I've a curious request to make of you. Don't think me pathological for it, for you have told me your cultural tastes, your personal habits, and likes and dislikes, just as you know mine, but I know absolutely nothing about-well-about your feelings on love-on wooing a girl. Our courtship was grand, but it went only to kisses and caresses. Thrilling as they were, they told me only that you were very gentle, considerate, and very devoted and adoring-all very flattering to an impressionable girl like me.”

“And you wish to know?”

Her lips made a laughing smile. “I wish to know, my dear sir, by what right of love's ability I shall let you into my bed tonight. I wish to know some of your amorous adventures before you saw me, desired me, and won me for your wife. No- don't protest-I fear I can't tell you any such story, for I have been, like Bayard, sans peur et sans reproche, in the matter of love affairs, as you know, but-well-this is my plan. I want you to love me passionately, with all your body as well as with all your soul. That's such a lovely line in the old service, I wanted it today. Do you think me quite shameless, Max dear? I truly did-that line where it says, 'with my body I thee worship.' Do you recall it?”

“I recall it, angel,” he said in a low voice, staring at her bemused.

She flushed again, inhaled her cigarette, exhaled a long lazy cloud, of blue smoke and watched it, perhaps to distract herself, then said, “Well, first you're to shave or bathe or whatever it is a husband does the first night till his spouse summons him, with fear and trembling, to her side. Only I shan't have any fear and trembling if you document yourself the way I want you to. Put on a dressing gown, then come sit beside me on the lovely circular loveseat before the window. Please pour out the champagne, but not too much. First I want your words to excite me, and then we shall see what we shall see. Is that too much to ask of my darling husband?”

“You're amazing and intoxicating, my dearest, and I foresee that I shall have no need of the champagne to inflame me for you.”

“No, no, Max, no wooing now. Go and do just what I've told you, and later you'll find a receptive sweetheart, all too eager for you.”

Finishing his cigarette, he arose, kissed the top of her head in mock obeisance, and left her.

Marcia rose, walked to the window and glanced out over New York's twinkling lights. They were on the topmost floor of the great hotel, which for an entire century had been identified as the most luxurious and aristocratic.

Then she pulled the Venetian blinds and turned off the light, leaving only a mutely glowing lamp near the circular loveseat before the great double window of the living room, and seated herself, stretching her body like a cat, flexing her arms, tingling with anticipation and excitement. She smoked a cigarette and then lay back, eyes half closed in reverie, arms clasped across her breasts, her lips slightly parted, nostrils flaring subtly, the swell of her bosom quick and responsive.

She was, as she had told him avowedly, a virgin. But in our enlightened and advanced day, there's a differentiation in that very term, which once had meant but one thing: the possession of the hymen which the lord and master would break in his feudal act of conquest on the wedding night. That is to say, her mind was sensitive, cultured, and for a girl of her set, remarkably free of inhibition. That indeed was one reason why she had chosen Max from all her suitors. She felt that this virile cultured man, older, wiser and more experienced, would be far more interesting a husband and lover than those youths of her own age who inherited wealth, were snobbish and superficial of mind. For there is, she knew, more to marriage than four bare legs in a bed.

Half an hour later he returned to her in slippers and purple satin dressing gown.

“My liege lord, welcome,” she said smiling, patting a place beside her. “Now sit down, light a cigarette and begin.”

He took his place beside her, his eyes drinking in her beauty, and he said humorously, “Where shall I begin and on what theme?”

“Darling, I'm very serious about all this, you know. I expect to be everything a girl can be to the man she adores, and you're going to help me by telling me your exploits. Yes Max, your exploits in the boudoir-in the bed. No, not since childhood, but as a man. And I think-on your travels, mainly-for I've always thought that European women brought up to regard lovemaking as a very delightful pursuit and with no guilt complexes attached give a man much more joy than one of our primly cloistered debutantes. Don't you agree?”

“To be sure, we're a race of puritans, Marcia. On the one hand we grant ourselves every prurient temptation-the movies, the theater, magazines, comic books. On the other, we're afraid of candid behavior to the point of neuroticism and frustrations. And I may say here and now, my beloved, that your attitude delights-not that I wasn't sure you'd be so frank and sweet and thoughtful, but that you actually want me to qualify my own rights to be your lover. Is that it?”

“Yes, my darling. Oh, yes, I can envision myself, when you tell me of your adventures, as this or that beautiful woman in your arms. And it will make me all the more jealously passionate now that I've got you for my very own.”

They kissed, but tenderly; he sought no overt caresses of her beautiful and scantily clad body so close to his.

Then sitting back and lighting a cigarette, he pondered, “In a way, my dear, to relate to you the stories of my adventures, as you put it, is almost to give me leave to make myself out a rake!”

“Oh, come, Max, surely you don't think me so prudish that I'd expect a handsome, virile, worldly, and very obviously handsome and attractive man of your age to be a monk. No, my dear, no more than I'd expect you to be cheaply promiscuous. I'm a bit selfish and my ego wants me to believe that in choosing me as your lifelong wife, you performed an act of selectivity based on your good taste.”

“Minx!”

“Roue!” she teased back, and they both laughed and held hands a minute. Very gravely, moving closer to him, she murmured, “Max, this is our very first night-a timeless night, to be remembered for all our lives. I want to absorb you- spiritually, physically, yes that too-but right now I want to sublimate with you, to see you as you were when you made love. Don't hold back anything. I mean that, yes, the most physical details. I want to know them all-how you react to love, to caress, and-to physical types of beauty and feminine attractiveness. Isn't-well-isn't there some sort of magic carpet which brought you to new beauty after beauty in the various countries you visited?”

“It's a very curious thing that you should use that phrase, beloved, for Jules Romains uses it in his Man of Good Will. Yes, there is a magic carpet of my youth, shall I say, whereon I was transported to some extremely delightful as well as exciting meetings. It does depart a little from the rather tried and boring stories that men tell of their conquests and of this or that waitress or hotel maid. But-do you actually want to know all and everything, as you put it?”

She nodded, eyes fond, teasing. “But everything, my liege lord. How the girl looked naked in bed, how her skin felt, her thighs…”

“Marcia,” he gasped, half laughing, half incredulous.

“You're not to think me wanton, my love. In a way, this is a most important session for me now, which precedes our making love. Instruct me, then, my dearest, on your body-its desires. Speak those words which you spoke then of the things that thrilled you so I'll know how to please you — when our time comes.”

He could not believe his ears. But she was impassioned and sincere. And he thanked his good fortune that he had found so enlightened a young woman who brought that most exciting combination to the bridal bed, of emancipated virginity and ardent eagerness for love!

“Well, then, Marcia, I'll accede to your wishes. First, a brief background. As you know, my father began this importing business toward the last year of his life. But, as he was already independently wealthy from his other pursuits in the market and investment house, he used it only as a hobby.” She nodded, her eyes studying his face.

“It wasn't till I was twenty that I had my first girl, and that was on the occasion of my graduation from Columbia, where I'd majored in languages because I was then very interested in the importing business and decided to make something of it. I'll say only that she was a girl in my own class. We were infatuated with each other, but she was much too neurotic to make a joyous lover, and fortunately I did not involve myself too deeply with her, not wanting to hurt her.

“Well, after college, I spent two years working for a very fine import firm to learn the competitive angles, but I made only one extended trip through the Continent and had my mind too much on my job to think of girls. It wasn't till I was twenty-eight, by which time I had taken over Dad's firm and expanded it and put in it a good deal of my inheritance as working capital, that my first real opportunity came.”

“So you had only one girl till you were twenty-eight, darling?”

“Yes. So you see, my sweet, I started on a chaste course myself.”

“Ah-but you didn't finish it, did you?” she teased naughtily, her eyes very soft and doting.

“Shall I stop before I offend your chaste ears, my love?” he smiled.

“If you do, I shall lock myself in the bedroom and not let you in.”

“A fate indeed worse than death!” They both laughed heartily and he took her hand and kissed it, while she kissed his hair gently.

“Very well. But once I start, young lady, there's no holding back.”

“I don't want you to suppress a single detail. Let's say this is my emotional champagne, which they tell me every timid young virgin needs before going to bed with her husband,” she said softly, and again he marveled at her adorable candor.

“Very well, and again may I say I'm amazed and delighted in your interest in my humble gifts. Should I hypocritically avow that all my life till this hour had been but preparation…”

She laughingly put a hand over his mouth, shook her head, said, “No, Max, you idiot, words won't convey that to me. Tell me what I'm to expect. Do you realize, my dearest husband, that all over America men are going to bed for the first time and while the man has whims and quirks, the poor girl is left in the dark as to what to expect in bed. For example, had I let you undress me and kiss me a bit and then carry me to our bridal bed, I should still, happy as I was from your interest in my body, have absolutely no way of knowing what makes your emotions tick- whether to expect a satyr devouring me or perhaps have my bottom paddled.”