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.