Almost Paradise Read online

  The pale skin of his wrist reminded him of her honey color. She was showing a lot of skin. Her dress was cut low in the front, and you could see the beginning of what he knew must be two beautiful—he shifted in his chair—bosoms and the shadowy valley between them. But she wasn’t fast, he was sure, because her hairdo was serious and her smile was friendly, not a come-on smile, like from a cheap girl.

  “Mr. Heissenhuber.” The nurse called him into the office. Richard rose and, more because he didn’t want this woman to notice what was happening with him, he smiled at her again. But he almost didn’t make it into the examining room. From his height he’d been able to see even farther down her dress, and though he knew she must be wearing a bra, he couldn’t see any. All he could see were two luscious, magnificent, firm…In the last six months, once they’d set a wedding date, he had gone below the neck with Patsy. But Patsy’s ended where hers were just beginning. He sat on the examining table, waiting for Dr. Neumann to find the acid to burn the warts off his hand, and wondered if she was wearing one of those little bras that just covered the tips, like in the French postcards. When he glanced down to his lap, he saw his hands were cupped, as though he were already feeling them. He was so embarrassed. But he had never wanted to touch anything so much.

  Sally smiled. The kid had a hard-on the size of a baseball bat. Although he wasn’t such a kid. Even though it was Saturday, early in June, he was wearing a suit and tie and looked like a real solid citizen, not one of the creeps who hung around the burlesque house waiting to grab a handful and have a party. This kid—this guy—must be in his late twenties. He was really good-looking, with light brown hair so neat you could see the comb marks and a manly, square-jawed face and a terrific mouth, kind of wide and full, but not slobber-lips. Sally figured if she played it right, he’d buy her a full-course dinner first.

  He couldn’t believe what he was doing. He went back to the waiting room, smiled at her, and said then and there, “I know you must think I’m very forward, but would you have lunch with me?” As he was saying it, he had a flash of dread that she was a foreigner and that she’d laugh at him or blurt out something loud in some garlicky language, but instead she said, in a breathy but genteel voice, “I’m sure I’d like that very much.”

  Then the nurse called “Miss Tompkins,” and she stood. “You’ll wait for me?” she asked, and all Richard could manage was a nod because he was so taken with her. She was tiny, a little bit of a thing. But a phrase he had read somewhere returned: “She’s all woman.” After she’d brushed past him to go into the doctor’s office, he all but fell back into his seat. He knew it wasn’t right, but he kept thinking about touching those big…he bet they were warm…he wished he could think of something else. But Richard Heissenhuber needed something to hold on to. He was a lonely man with no friends and few pleasures. In fact, he had not had a really good time since he was a child.

  Certainly his parents’ house, where he still lived, did not rock with mirth. Anna and Carl Heissenhuber were two humorless people who did not so much fall in love as discover a mutuality of interests. They both hated what they were. Coming from large Lutheran families, from homes where German was spoken, where May Day and Whitsun-tide were celebrated with hearty revelry and heavy platters of wurst and pitchers of creamy beer, they shunned the easy Gemütlichkeit of their boisterous, embarrassing relatives. They detested accordion music, hated wine. Their only passion was for blandness. They wanted to be completely American.

  So they married in a Presbyterian ceremony and moved from the German “Over the Rhine” section of Cincinnati to Walnut Hills, a neighborhood of graceful trees, Victorian houses, and inhabitants named Smith and Johnson and Turner. Their house was small, cleaner than most hospitals of the day, and utterly fitting for a family of their station in life; it was as if there were an invisible sign on the front gate: Residence of Bank Teller. It was painted a gray so dull it was almost invisible. The Heissenhubers made certain not to drink or smoke or appear to enjoy anything to excess. (Naturally, they never knew Margaret Smith told Bessie Johnson that Anna was duller than dishwater or that Tom Turner named them the Booberdoobers.)

  When America joined to fight the Great War, Carl was the first man in Walnut Hills to try to enlist and, although he was rejected because of severe myopia, the Heissenhubers felt the pleasure of knowing they had earned their neighbors’ respect. Only once during the entire war did they feel uncomfortable, and that was brought on by a thoughtless “Heinie” uttered by old, crazy Mr. Phillips.

  Richard was the only child of these two relentless Americans and a model one; he learned early and well that any act that called attention to himself was ill-considered: raucous laughter, bravado on the ball field, flashy friends were not for him. Life should be like the bank Carl worked in: muted and a little chilly.

  He was happier at his grandparents’. Carl’s thickly accented parents had mercifully died before Richard was born, but Anna’s parents, the Reinhardts, welcomed the boy with “Achs” and “Liebe Kinds” and powerful hugs. He visited them each Saturday, helping his grandfather whitewash the front stoop of the red brick house, sitting on a chair beside the enamel kitchen table and taking the eyes out of potatoes for his grandmother, listening while she recounted her week’s battles with Herr Bauer, the conniving butcher, and with Frau Meyer, her next-door neighbor whose slothful ways were the cause of the infestation of cutworms that were probably attacking the cabbage patch at that very second.

  But Christmas was the happiest time. From early morning, the kitchen was filled with odors so tempting Richard giggled with excitement. He would sit beside his grandmother and roll the dough for Pfeffernuss into balls between his floured palms, sneaking little bites of the dough when his grandmother ostentatiously looked away. Everything frowned on by his austere parents was encouraged here: huge meals and loud music and booming conversations in the forbidden language.

  Later that night, stuffed with goose, heavy with Honigkuchen, he and his cousins would follow his grandfather up the stairs, singing “O Tannenbaum” and “Stille Nacht” in high, clear voices. The sounds they made thrilled Richard; he believed he could hear an angel singing in the background. At the top of the stairs, his grandfather would slowly open the door to the Weihnachtstube, the Christmas room, which always seemed dark and empty at first, but then his grandfather switched on the lights and Richard beheld what seemed to him a miracle: a room full of dazzlingly wrapped presents, gifts in gold and silver and red, as rich as any brought by the Magi.

  But after his eighth year, Carl and Anna decided to celebrate Christmas at home. Holidays at the Reinhardts’ were too much. They glanced at each other over Richard’s head as they said this. Too much. Too much noise, food. Didn’t Richard always have diarrhea the next day?

  They had a real American Christmas at home. They had a tree with a simple star on top, Anna served turkey instead of greasy goose, and everyone’s stomach was fine the morning after.

  Richard recognized he was not one of the guys. He knew his contemporaries found him too serious. But for a time he had hopes that he would be accepted and make his parents proud. In his first year at the University of Cincinnati, he had been tapped for the best fraternity on campus, a fraternity of rich young men. But after his pledge class’s initiation, few bothered with him. They discovered his father was a teller, not the banker they had assumed. He was treated with hurtful courtesy. Still, he hung on the fringes of fraternity life, realizing he needed some brightness and fun.

  At first, he believed Patsy Dickens was the answer. She had been pinned to the president of his fraternity and everyone acknowledged she was one of the most popular girls on the UC campus. Definitely one of the prettiest. And she had fallen head over heels for Richard. After just two meetings—a conversation at a beer bash about whether home ec was a good major and a chance meeting in the library—she actually gave back the fraternity pin. Richard was stunned and embarrassed, but his fraternity brother had been most gracious,
shaking his hand and saying, “Guess the best man won.”

  So Patsy was his. He gave her his pin. Her adoration amazed him. “Richard,” she said, “you are absolutely the handsomest boy I have ever in my whole life seen. I mean it. Like a collegiate Cary Grant. Really and truly. Except you’re not a boy. That’s what really attracted me to you, you know. You’re a man. So serious, so mature. And respectful. I can’t tell you how important that is to me. Oh, Richard, I’m the luckiest girl in Ohio.”

  At first, his parents told him he had made a wise choice. Patsy’s father, after all, was an executive with Procter and Gamble and belonged to one of the finest country clubs in the city. Her mother, from whom Patsy had inherited her fluffy appeal, was a Daughter of the American Revolution.

  When they became engaged, the Dickenses invited the Heissenhubers to dinner to celebrate. They had never been in such a big house before. A maid in a black uniform and white apron served dinner. But something was out of joint: the Dickenses were so gushing, so absolutely, completely, and totally thrilled with Richard, that Carl and Anna began to have their doubts. Ken Dickens could buy and sell Carl Heissenhuber. Something wasn’t right. Couldn’t Richard feel it?

  “Are you sure she has a good reputation?” they asked him. “Are you positive her father is head of Household Abrasives?” Of course there was nothing really wrong with Patsy, they said. She was the bubbly sort, the type who might make a fine wife for a corporate executive. But Richard’s future world, banking, demanded, perhaps, a less outgoing personality.

  Carl Heissenhuber, although a key employee at Queen City Trust, was still a teller. Richard, however, an honor graduate of UC, had that piece of paper that would allow him to go all the way to the top. But it would be a treacherous climb, filled with peril, and one thoughtless remark from a flighty wife could drag him down before he was halfway there. He did not want his son’s potential compromised. Nor did Anna, who noticed that Patsy did not hold her liquor as well as she might and, though she never acted drunk, tended to chew noisily after two Rob Roys.

  “But she’s a wonderful girl,” Richard insisted. “From a fine family.”

  “If you’re satisfied,” Anna said, “then so are we.”

  But now Richard had his doubts, and to his astonishment he found himself sitting beside Sally Tompkins and confiding them to her. “It’s not that I don’t love Patsy,” he explained. “It’s just that she’s so willing to go along with anything I want—” Without even wanting to, his voice had stressed “anything,” so he quickly explained, “Please don’t think I mean anything.” He could feel his face glowing red and was glad the restaurant was dimly lit. “I would never ask her to do that.”

  “Of course not,” said Sally. She lifted her water goblet, pursed her lips, and took a tiny sip of water. “You have too much respect for yourself.”

  Richard nodded. Sally was so amazingly sensitive. They had been together for no more than twenty minutes, and already she comprehended him as nobody else ever had. She was an enigma: a one-hundred-percent woman who had a complete grasp of a man’s mind. “You must think I’m terrible, talking about personal things like this.”

  “You know I don’t, Richard.” And he did know. He knew Sally somehow, some way, looked within him and saw his best nature. She rested her hand on his arm. “You’re a fine person. I can tell.”

  He shrugged and gazed at the breast-shaped mound of potato salad on his plate. The heat from her hand was so powerful it radiated through his jacket and shirt. And then he felt her leg, not actually pressing against his but dangerously close. He knew the proprietor of Kautz’s Restaurant thought he was doing him a favor, seating them beside each other in one of those tight little booths, but it was almost too much. He swore he could feel the outline of her thigh through her dress.

  Sally shifted so she could face him, and the tip of her breast grazed his arm. “Maybe it’s because I’m an actress that I’m—well, sensitive to other people.” She gave him a small, understanding smile, and he became so confused and dizzy with desire that he nearly keeled over. “But a man of your type wouldn’t be worrying about Patsy unless there was something to worry about. There’s something wrong and I think you know it, but you’re too much the gentleman to admit it to yourself.” She shifted back and took a small bite from her club sandwich. A crumb of bacon dropped from it and landed halfway down her cleavage. He didn’t dare say anything.

  Sally couldn’t believe this guy. Here he was, a big, tall, good-looking he-man with class up the ass like the Duke of Windsor, and he was talking like a kindergarten baby. That Patsy sounded like a prize jerk. And his mother and father must be a couple of nut-cracking Krauts. Who could believe that such a guy, a college grad, a big cheese in a bank who even wore a suit on Saturday, would be acting this way with her? Not just hot for her in the pants department but lapping up every single word like she was Miss Fountain of Wisdom, 1939. Something stunk in Denmark. He wasn’t one hundred percent. It was like he was from another world, almost the same but not quite, and was wandering around, a little lost. She really felt for him.

  Going to the doctor and having lunch with Richard, she missed three shows. When she got back to the Royale, the manager grabbed her shoulder. She looked down at his hand, at the lines of green dirt under his long nails. She said, “Listen, Mr. Boyd, you keep your paws off me,” and he replied, “You listen, Madame Tits. You skip any more shows and you can take your crummy act across the river and start selling your stuff in the hoo-ah houses.”

  Anna had told Richard that women—nice women—under thirty did not wear black, but here was Sally, walking up Race Street in a tight black dress. Not so tight as to be cheap, but as she came closer he could see the slight swell of her stomach and the shape of her hips. It wasn’t low-cut like her dress earlier in the day, but in a way this was worse because each breast seemed to be wrapped separately, but too tightly, fighting the severe black fabric of the dress. He could almost imagine the material, stretched beyond its tolerance, ripping apart, and her two huge breasts bursting free into the warm spring air.

  He had called Patsy and told her he couldn’t go to the Five Oaks Country Club’s Merrie Month of May dance. He was very sorry but he had a terrible sore throat.

  All he really had wanted was to spend a little more time sitting beside Sally Tompkins, but now, seeing her, her gleaming hair caught up in two Spanish-looking combs, he wanted to dance. He wanted to go someplace where they played a lot of fox trots and pull Sally up to him, press her against him real hard.

  Sally knew culture when she saw it. So she tossed the old sea captain overboard and spoke tolerantly of her father, Reginald Tompkins, the Oxford-educated Shakespearean actor who never quite made it. “He wound up doing a lot of character roles,” she explained.

  “How come?” Richard asked. They sat on a blanket in a park on one of Cincinnati’s highest hills. Beneath them, the city gleamed in pure Sunday sunshine.

  “Well, he was so in love with my mother. I mean, he was always dashing from London to Madrid and back again. And even though my mother was a ballerina her parents were typical Spanish parents, very strict. So he spent years wooing her instead of playing in the provinces. You know, acting Hamlet in some two-bit English town somewhere. That’s how you get into the Old Vic Theater. But Father just took odd roles here and there so he could be free to travel to Spain.”

  “How did they finally marry?”

  “They eloped to New York.” Sally eased off her pumps and ran the soles of her feet over the cool, damp grass. “I guess I don’t have a—well, normal background like you’re used to here in Ohio.”

  “Not at all,” Richard said.

  “I know you’re just being polite. But really, we’re not your average family. We act on feelings. I mean, that’s what makes us actors to begin with.” She let a soft sigh escape.

  “Sally,” Richard said, leaning toward her. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Nothing, really.”

  �
��Please. Tell me. I’ve told you so much about myself. Don’t you think you can trust me?”

  “Oh, Richard,” she whispered, the tears nearly drowning her voice. “I’m so weary of the stage. I know—” She groped in her handbag until she found a handkerchief. “I know I’m a good actress, but I’ll never be a great one. Please, it’s true. And I’m twenty-six years old and I’ve been on the road since I was eighteen, when my parents died. I’m so very, very tired.”

  “Sally.” He sighed, circling his arms around her. “Oh, Sally.” She was so warm, so firm, and her perfume seemed to come from some rich jungle flower, sweet and hot as she was. “Sally, I love you.”

  She left her sequined bras and flamenco skirts at the Royale. She moved out of Montgomery’s Rooming House—a notorious burlesque hangout—and checked into Knauer’s Hostelry for Young Ladies. She had sixty-seven dollars, a small wardrobe of dresses unfit for decent Cincinnati, and a fourteen-carat gold bracelet an elderly admirer in Schenectady had given her after a long weekend. She severed all ties to her livelihood. She was taking a gamble. But she was playing poker with a raw amateur and she knew it.

  He broke his engagement to Patsy. Sally had pleaded with him to wait, to see if their love could stand the test of time, but he had merely smiled and shaken his head. He was ready. He felt he had been afflicted with a horrible numbing disease all his life, and now he was cured. For the first time he was truly alive. He looked at the roses climbing the trellis on the side of his parents’ house and for the first time gazed into their dark red hearts, stroked the silky petals with a fingertip. At the bank he inhaled the heady, important odor of ink rising from the trust indentures on his desk. He was alive. He stopped buying the Cincinnati Enquirer each morning and began surveying the ankles and arms, the breasts and backsides that bobbled about as the bus bumped toward downtown. He looked at women and women looked back at him, and for the first time he comprehended that he was truly handsome. And desirable. Women smiled at him or brushed against him as they got off the bus. Nice women. Pretty. But none of them like Sally.