Читать книгу Melting the Snow on Hester Street - Daisy Waugh - Страница 12

‘It’s probably gonna sound funny,’ Blanche Williams was saying, a couple of miles down the road. ‘But I have respect for your wife. I have a lot of respect for her. I thought she looked just about as classy and dazzling as a girl can look in that emerald-green get-up last night.’

He had his head between her legs; his tongue inside her sweet, juicy knish … Half a second ago she’d been purring like a pussycat … Dammit. He put a soothing hand on her stomach, gave her ass a little pinch, and stayed right where he was, just as if she hadn’t spoken.

But once Blanche started on a topic, as by now he knew quite well, there was rarely any chance of her dropping it.

‘She’s beautiful,’ Miss Williams continued, ‘she’s mysterious. God knows, she’s a terrific actress … at least, that is, when she wants to be. And you know with all that, I got to ask myself –’ Blanche hoiked herself onto an elbow to look at him – ‘what in hell you’re doing spending your time with a Little Miss Nobody like me?’

He paused. Stopped. Lifted his head. ‘What’s that, sweetie?’ he muttered.

‘I was just saying …’

Max gave up. He stretched across her naked body for the cigarette pack, lit up two, one for each of them, and lay back on the pillow beside her. ‘… I heard what you were saying, baby.’

‘So?’

Max exhaled, disguising a small, dull sigh inside the smoke: ‘So … what?’

‘So … what are you kicking around with a dozy little broad like me for? When you have a class act like Eleanor Beecham waiting for you back home?’

It took a beat before Max replied. Blanche noticed it, even if he didn’t. ‘Baby,’ he said, ‘because I love “kicking around” with you.’ He laughed. ‘And you’re hardly “a dozy little broad”.’

‘But you never talk about her.’

‘Why would I talk about her?’

‘Because she’s your wife. Is why. And because I am your lover. And everybody knows you two adore each other. And because of the way you kissed her last night. And the way you two looked at each other. And because I am just jealous as hell. Is why.’

Max smiled into her pretty, honest eyes, and dropped a kiss on her pretty shoulder. ‘You have nothing to be jealous about, sweetheart. If you did, I wouldn’t be here.’ His hand returned to her slim stomach, and slowly continued on down. She paused – before reluctantly pushing his hand away. ‘You’re not being fair, Max.’

‘Baby,’ he murmured, not giving up just yet; nuzzling her neck, returning his hand. ‘… And nor are you … what are you fretting for, hmm? You have nothing to fret about, baby … just enjoy yourself …’

She pushed him away again, with more conviction this time, and climbed out of the bed. They’d spent the whole morning enjoying themselves in her bed already. And much as she would have loved to spend the rest of the day there with him, she needed to check in with the office. She had an interview with a new girl over at Columbia at three o’clock – some soon-to-be-big, Little-Miss-Girl-from-Nowhere, with a freshly invented life story to plug – and the Columbia people were keen for Blanche to do the big write-up. Added to which, she was determined that she and Max didn’t part company without having had at least a semblance of a conversation. In bed, Blanche was more than happy to be treated like a dirty little sex machine. Actually it suited her just fine. But out of bed, there had to be something between them to make her feel like a decent human being again.

Blanche was ten years Max’s junior, easily young enough to produce a litter of children if she wanted them, except she was adamant she didn’t. Her independence, so hard fought and still so fresh, was something she could never envisage surrendering. Blanche was a woman of her time, and proud of it. She paid her own way, made her own path – lived alone in her snazzy little apartment (very ‘moderne’ she told her disapproving family, back home in Oregon), in a spanking new apartment block just above Sunset. She and Max had been lovers, on and off – with two short breaks during which Blanche attempted to wean herself from him – since she interviewed him for the magazine five years ago.