HE HAD NO IDEA WHAT it would be like to make love to such a girl. He wondered about making love to her the same way he had wondered about lovemaking when he was a virgin. How could she be more experienced than he was? Maybe the priests had lined up to make love to her. He had heard that this was quite common. But how would that make her so brash?
He wanted to make love in her peculiar way. He wanted her to whisper the rules to this strange new type of lovemaking into his ear. He would follow the rules. He would abide by every one of them. He would get down on his knees and worship her if it was one of the rules. He really hoped that it was.
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MCMAHON’S LONGING TO BE with Rose made no sense to him. He wanted it to go away, as if it were the flu or some oddly unbearable pain. The only way to get rid of it would be to make love to her.
She was standing in the hallway with an apple on her head like William Tell—desperate. Inviting anyone to have their way with her. He couldn’t resist her. He took the apple and stuck it in her mouth so that she wouldn’t be able to cry out when he entered her.
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MCMAHON TOOK HER in the nursery. The pile of bricks toppled over. There was a giant dollhouse. All the little dolls seemed to be staring out the windows at Rose. They were gathered in the rooms, watching Rose the same way the orphans used to look out at the snow falling, the strange wonders of the outside world that did not belong to them. There was a row of tin soldiers on the windowsill. They weren’t on her side. Even though they were only three inches tall, they were men. There was a hobbyhorse standing in the corner. It was handmade out of orange yarn and had purple buttons for eyes.
Rose was so slender compared to McMahon. It wasn’t just a matter of size. It had to do with years. The older you got, the thicker you became. She had only been alive for nineteen years.
She liked that he was enormous. She felt as though she were scaling him like he was a mountain. He picked her up and carried her around the room as if she only weighed ten pounds. The Sisters would never pick her up and carry her just for fun. Just because they couldn’t resist. Just because they wanted to get her head up close to theirs. They never picked her up at all.
When he went down on her, she couldn’t believe how amazing it felt. It was like she had been thrown into a lake. She wanted it desperately. And she cried out in a pretty cry of joy when she came. And she hated herself for having sex with someone other than Pierrot. But then again, hating herself was part of what made it feel so good. The self-loathing that arrived right before you came was at the very extremes of feeling.
If this was how good sex felt with somebody you hated, what might it actually feel like with somebody you loved? she wondered. She’d always had an inkling that she was the type of girl who would love sex. But she had not realized she would enjoy it so much.
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MCMAHON WAS THAT BOY in the story who had to keep his finger in a hole in the wall of a dam. And he suddenly couldn’t stand the responsibility anymore. He just wanted to pull his finger out of the hole and go on to other activities in life. He was a prisoner to the hole. So finally he yanked at the finger and the flood came on. And it destroyed everyone around him and all of civilization, and everyone perished in the swoosh of the great waters.
And he was drowned for a moment and he experienced the euphoria that the drowned are supposed to feel just before life lets go of them, like a child letting go of the string of a balloon.
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ROSE WAS STILL THROBBING as she hurried down the hallway. She loved the feeling of McMahon oozing out from between her legs.
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AND WHEN MCMAHON got out of bed the next morning, he felt as though he were made out of ashes.
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THE NEXT DAY the maid was in the nursery and she saw the apple sitting there. How funny to find an apple just sitting there without an owner, without a history. She picked it up and bit into it. It was the most wonderful apple she had ever tasted.
19
A SPOONFUL OF DREAMS
Pierrot had a dream that he was sitting in a room that had a thousand lightbulbs suspended from the ceiling. The electric light was so great that it was as if it were shining from God. Irving believed it was a sign. He invested heavily in GE. Irving had begun to make investments based on Pierrot’s dreams. His returns were paying off wonderfully. He rarely listened to his adviser but to Pierrot instead. He told Pierrot he would leave him some money because he had rightfully earned it.
Pierrot yelled, “Don’t talk about such things!”
But Irving was frail, and the years were hard on his health. Pierrot helped Irving into the bathtub one night, as was his custom. Irving sat with a little tumbler of brandy in his hand as Pierrot shampooed his hair. He poured a bucket of soapy water over his head to rinse it and Irving noted that his brandy now had a soapy taste.