Authors: Roberta Latow
‘He demanded to know why, so I told him that I had never seen a man drink in the street before. That’s when he sat down next to me. He was very brazen. He opened my coat, draped it back and smiled. “You’ve got a great body, very sensuous,” he said. “It likes the sun. Don’t cover yourself up on my account. I’m very hungry. Will you share your lunch with me?”’
‘And you did?’ asked Orlando
‘I didn’t know what else to do. I moved away from him on the bench and tore open the paper bag. I used it as a place mat and spread the food out on it.
‘ “What a mountain of food for lunch! Do you always eat like this?” he asked.
‘I thought that a strange question. Didn’t everyone? I had always assumed they did. All our family ate like this, and our friends. To me it was the norm. I remember being surprised to learn that some people didn’t.’
‘ “Don’t you?” I asked him.
‘ “No, but I wish I did,” he answered, and asked me what should he eat first.
‘ “I’d go for the sandwich,” I told him, and handed him half. There was an inch of meat in it and half an inch of cheese, and – well, you know Mother. She never did know how to slice bread less than an inch thick.’
Orlando began to laugh. ‘But Dad did.’
Then Dendre began to laugh too. ‘Mamma always said that was because he spent a lifetime cutting up animal skins.’
‘Funny, when we were children it never occurred to me what an odd couple they were and yet what a good marriage they had for all the differences in their characters.’
Dendre ignored the comment and continued with her story. ‘Gideon asked me if I’d made the sandwich. I remember telling him, no, my mother was the cook in our household.
‘ “You eat extravagantly. I was brought up in a house of crustless sandwiches with only a hint of filling. I was always hungry,” he told me.
‘ “And
I’ve
never eaten food like that,” I told him.
‘ “And what is this?” asked Gideon while biting into a
Kreplach
.’
Dendre laughed aloud again. ‘I explained it was a meat-stuffed ravioli and went on to describe the
K’nishe
too, as a baked meat- or potato-and-onion-filled pastry. Gideon had never even heard of Jewish food. He was ravenous. I watched him devour it all and still remember what delight I felt when he declared he liked Jewish food. So much so that I handed him my cup of coffee. When he was quite through eating and there wasn’t
a morsel of anything left, he smiled at me, and I fell hopelessly in love.
‘ “What’s your name?” he asked me.
‘ “Dendre Moscowitz.”
‘ “With a body like yours, Dendre, and a mother who cooks like this, I might just marry you so I guess I’d better introduce myself. I’m Gideon Palenberg from St Louis, a starving artist who will one day rule the art world. Do you believe me?”
‘ “Yes,” I told him. And I did, Orlando.
‘ “Come with me,” he told me, and pulled me up from the bench by my hands. He gathered up the remnants of our lunch and, still holding my hand, we walked over to a bin and he deposited them there, rather ceremoniously I thought.
‘I asked where we were going and he told me to his studio on Lower Brodway. He asked where I lived and laughed at my answer.
‘ “I should have guessed! You have a terrible Brooklyn accent. You should do something about it.”
‘I can see it all again, Orlando, as if it were yesterday. The way I pulled my hand away from his, the offence I felt at his criticism. The jealousy I experienced because he had an educated, cultivated accent.
‘ “I’m proud to have this accent,” I insisted, “and to come from Brooklyn. It’s the most wonderful of the city’s five boroughs, except of course for Manhattan. But Manhattan is something else. Have you even been to Brooklyn?”
‘I could see by Gideon’s face that he was surprised, maybe a little amused by my passion for home. “No,” he answered. “I only know that it’s on the other side of the East River and you can see Brooklyn Heights from Manhattan.”’
‘You’re babbling on about the past, dear. It’s now you should be dealing with. The past is dead, and dead is dead,’ Orlando told her not unkindly.
‘Maybe for you, Orlando, but not for me. For me it’s like re-running an old movie, one I must see. And who knows? Maybe a good look at where I was, where I came from, might validate the present. When you left Brooklyn for Harvard you really left your roots: me, Mamma and Papa, our perfect uncomplicated little
world of families with big hearts, green parks, a world of culture and institutions of learning.’
‘Yes, I did,’ he readily admitted.
‘And you’re thinking I didn’t, aren’t you?’ she asked.
‘No, dear, you left but you took Brooklyn with you. Even now, right here, when you have the world as your playground, a husband honoured and respected beyond measure, you appear to want to diminish his life and work, yours too, in favour of a middle-class existence, the penny-pinching, safe life we led in our Brooklyn youth. It’s a foolish person, Dendre, who after jumping the gully looks back. You might fall in.’
‘Is that meant to be an insult?’
‘No, dear, a warning. Now let’s join Gideon and put this anxiety and unhappiness aside. It’s so unlike you. I’ve never seen you like this, ever. It’s out of character.’
Orlando simply did not understand. Something fundamental had happened to Dendre. The princess had awakened.
‘You go ahead, there are several people I want to talk to. I’ll catch up with you,’ she told her brother.
As soon as he disappeared into the crowd, Dendre went to the cloakroom and produced the ticket that would claim her full-length chinchilla coat. Her father had not been a master furrier without her benefiting from his expertise and Gideon’s generosity. She slipped into it and for once felt that the extravagant and luxurious work of art did indeed suit her. She left the museum and walked in the cold, crisp air for several blocks before she hailed a taxi to take her down town to West 27th Street close to the Hudson River. It was a dark, silent and dingy street save for the blinking bright neon light announcing ‘The Sounion’.
Dendre walked from the street, deserted of people and traffic at that time of night, into the Greek restaurant to be met by the loud, screeching sounds of
bouzouki
music and the ebullient greetings of Dimitri Constantinos, the owner. She saw the redoubtable belly dancer, Yasmin, gyrating before a sea of mostly empty tables.
The Sounion came to life and was usually filled to capacity from midnight till five in the morning. Lonely Greek sailors, Greek ship owners, Greek Americans and homesick immigrants, even New Yorkers who had enjoyed their brief holiday taste of
Greek life, used the place for a fix of hospitality, fun, and to gladden their hearts.
A snap of fingers, a rush of waiters, and Dendre was ushered to a front table where Dimitri removed her coat and pulled out a chair for her. Yasmin nodded a greeting and waved to Dendre without missing a beat or a shimmy.
‘You are looking like a queen!’ offered Dimitri, raising her hand to kiss her fingers.
‘Always gallant,’ she told him, a smile coming to her lips. It felt good to be here. This mad, funny place where she and Gideon liked to escape for a touch of the Greece they loved and missed when away from it too long. They liked the place for its not very good Greek food, fantastic Greek music, and the many Yasmins the place had worn out over the years. Dendre and Gideon loved The Sounion and liked Dimitri. Gideon enjoyed the camaraderie of the restaurant which was far removed from the art world. He liked the cross-section of humanity who ended their evenings here. He liked drinking hard with them and dancing by himself as some of the Greek men who gave their custom to the place were wont to do: a form of inner expression they had no qualms about displaying.
‘Gideon, he is meeting you?’ asked Dimitri.
‘No. He’s at a party. I needed to hear some Greek music, drink wine, watch Yasmin and raise my spirits. So here I am. Who knows? Gideon might arrive. It wouldn’t surprise me. You know how he likes to dance when he’s in a happy mood.’
This was not the first time that Dendre had arrived alone at Dimitri’s place. He had many customers who liked, on occasion, to get away without their partners; the city’s fast-lane livers who wanted only to hear the music and drift away into a world suspended beyond this time and place.
He returned only once to place in front of her a platter of fresh fruit peeled and sliced and arranged around a small bowl of thick amber-coloured honey and another of pistachio nuts, roasted open and salted.
Dendre watched a few minutes more of Yasmin’s exotic dancing before the seductively plump and pretty young woman, heavily laden with dangling gold jewellery, rushed off the stage in a flutter of chiffon veils. And now the stars of The Sounion arrived: darkly handsome, dour-faced Greek
bouzouki
players.
Instruments in hand, they took their seats and sat next to one another in a straight line facing the tables of admirers. A few minutes later the music was eating into Dendre’s heart, and she fled back in time.
Dendre was trying to make some sense of what was occurring as Gideon Palenberg, holding her hand, pulled her through the Village and Lower Manattan to his studio. It was out of character for nineteen-year-old Dendre to allow herself to be picked up in the street by a man. She could make no sense of what was happening to her, her racing heart, the excitement of this adventure with a stranger.
She was overwhelmed by her feelings of sensual delight when he had boldly opened her coat and admired her figure then proceeded to eat her lunch with gusto. He had a look of lust in his eyes that triggered the memory of intimate sensations she had hitherto only experienced in the privacy of her bedroom, alone, while yearning to free herself from her virginity and get on with the business of sex and satisfaction.
Sex for Dendre was a fearful mystery. She wanted the security of marriage to legitimise the strong but well-suppressed libido which embarrassed her. Dating the Jewish boys from her neighbourhood, for the most part good-looking, clever, ambitious and sexy, she had looked on them first as husband material, only secondly as sex objects. Fear of being denounced as easy had determined her attitude to them. It reduced her sexual activity to nil, leaving her only to imagine sex which she knew nothing of and was eager to experience. The frustration of being a reluctant virgin but not having the least idea where to find the right man to whom to entrust her precious commodity (that was what her mother had taught her it was) had of late become an oppressive burden. Nineteen! It was time. She needed a strong, handsome and dashing man to rid her of her weighty problem. So between Washington Square and Lower Broadway Dendre fell in love.
‘If you walked a little slower, I could keep pace with you,’ she told Gideon.
Still with a tight grip on her hand, he stopped short and Dendre bumped into him. He laughed and told her, ‘I am always rushing to something, someone, someplace. I want to live at the top of my life, experience everthing – and you’re an adventure, something new to savour, like your mother’s cooking!’
And with that he changed pace from a fast walk to a run, Dendre making an effort to keep up with him. After several blocks, they slowed down and Gideon placed an arm round her shoulders. They proceeded through the streets like that. Gideon, sensing her unease and lack of sophistication, found her enticing, so different from the beautiful all-American blonde-haired beauties he usually favoured on his arm and in his bed. He also perceived the latent sexual promise in Dendre Moscowitz. Where the face had more character than a fashion model’s, the lush body lacked nothing. The way she moved was sensual, erotic even, so different from the still, almost introverted personality she displayed to the world. He was intrigued by the life of frustration he imagined she imposed upon herself.
As the streets they walked lost the charm of Greenwich Village, Dendre felt yet more unease about her adventure with this stranger. Filthy with rubbish and with few people visible, save for the drunken homeless lying on the pavement or leaning against mostly deserted buildings with boarded up doors and windows, there was here a frightening sense of poverty: of the heart and spirit and most certainly of the purse. There appeared to be no sign of life in the neighbourhood save for the several cats she saw scavenging, a few of whom streaked aggressively across the pavement in front of them while screeching for food. Where was the baker, grocer, cobbler, pharmacist? This was no neighbourhood community as Dendre understood one to be. This was a brick and stone desert.
At last Gideon stopped in front of a four-storey building. ‘We’re here. I can hardly wait to show you my work, hear what you think of it,’ he told her as he pulled her tightly into his arms. He kissed her passionately before unlocking the heavy metal door that was scrawled with graffiti. The dismal street, the stench of poverty and neglect, all vanished from her mind with that kiss. Dendre felt giddy with passion, high on his vitality, full of excitement
at the prospect of seeing his work. She was aware he had not released his grip on her as he pulled her into the lobby of the building she expected to be dark and dingy.
Gideon smiled at her expression of relief. It was all painted white, even the floor. There were several pieces of broken furniture painted in primary colours standing against the walls.
‘All retrieved from skips,’ he told her.
‘Rubbish furniture that you’ve turned into sculpture,’ she said.
Gideon saw the delight in her face. He had been right about her: she was hungry for life yet easy to train because there was something of substance to her. They would be good together.
‘Assemblage,’ he corrected. ‘Useful Assemblage, pieces that hold all my worldly goods: clothing, food, the bits and pieces to keep my life going.’
The hall lights, naked bulbs hanging from long black flexes, cast a warm glow rather than bright light. There was such vibrancy, such energy, such a richness of life and spirit in each piece as it emerged from the shadows. They made Dendre instantly understand that their creator, her kidnapper, was a force of nature, a phenomenon that changed everything that came into contact with him. Dendre, seduced by what she was seeing, unwound Gideon’s fingers from her wrist. She rubbed the soreness away as she walked around the room looking at his work.
‘Don’t waste your time here. This isn’t my real work, merely the make-do household furniture of a poor starving artist.’
Gideon grabbed her once more, kissed her again, this time slipping his hands round her throat and caressing it before he slid them under the bodice of her dress to caress a breast. He felt her stiffen with fear but she did not run away. He smiled at this lack of sophistication. He liked her just that little bit more for it. He sensed she was overwhelmed by her feelings for him and liked that too. Taking both her hands in his, he raised them to his lips and kissed her fingers. Still holding on to her hand, he led her once more to where he was certain she wanted to be.
The rickety electric blue wooden staircase they climbed was fiercely steep and cantilevered precariously off the wall. Dendre, whose fear of falling would ordinarily have kept her from mounting even the first stair, forgot to be afraid. She was too happy in her
infatuation with Gideon to do anything other than bound up the stairs with him.
The huge open-plan loft was flooded with midday sunlight from the vast windows at both ends of the room. It was nevertheless an eerie place with its high ceiling and cast-iron columns supporting the floor above. It smelled of damp, oil paint, linseed oil, turpentine. It was not so much an unpleasant odour as one that created a statement. This studio was an island of creative energy in the middle of Manhattan, a retreat, a place of isolation. The metal racks stacked with paintings, the white walls and orderliness of the space, gave Dendre a sense of organisation and strong purpose. It had an air of passion, dedication, endeavour on a massive scale.
Dendre caught a mere glance of some of the paintings set on the floor or leaning against the walls, a huge easel, a vast table where dozens upon dozens of squeezed-out tubes of oil paint lay neatly in rows, tins and glass jars holding worndown brushes of various sizes and lengths, a slab of glass obviously being used as a palette, as Gideon led her through the loft to an area where three mattresses lay piled one upon the other on the floor. They were made up with white sheets, a worn and tattered oriental rug thrown over as a coverlet. A table, or rather a wooden door set on two metal beer barrels, two wobbly wooden chairs in one corner away from the bed, a battered and noisy refrigerator and sad-looking cooker in another corner completed Gideon’s living amenities save for the loo, a bookcase next to it and a double sink of chipped white enamel. There was not even a screen to hide them from view.
He turned her to face him and, still holding her hands, took a step back to look at Dendre. There was chemistry between them, an attraction that could not be denied, a silent but desperate need that had to be fulfilled. He let go of her hands to reach up and stroke her mass of long, black curly hair. He ran his finger down the bridge of her nose, traced her lips with it. Neither of them said a word. He removed her coat and let it slip from his hands to the floor. He opened the buttons of her dress and slid it from her shoulders, letting it rest upon her hips. Then he observed her: breasts perfect in shape and size, nipples surrounded by a dark, deliciously decadent-looking halo that looked lustful, especially so for the pale firm flesh around it, skin soft as satin. He was enthralled by the ripeness, the readiness, of Dendre Moscowitz.
He would paint her many times. She would represent for him the changing aspects of a woman in lust.
That chemistry between them became more intense. Dendre wanted to do something about it but had no idea what, or even how, to begin. She knew only one thing: she wanted to be possessed by Gideon. For him to love her as she had never been loved before, with passion gone wild. She could only think of giving herself over to him for his pleasure, for him to do anything, everything, that might give him such powerful gladness he would never want another woman. She was certain Gideon wanted her at that moment as he had never wanted another. It showed in the way he devoured her with his eyes and the glorious lust that shone in his handsome face.
And she was right. Gideon adored women, the female body, and sex on a grand scale. Sex and lust, the excitement of debauchery, took him to a place where he felt at home. Every aspect of orgasm was for him an elixir, a regenerating ambrosia fit for the gods. There was something so much more to this odd, immature yet sensual girl than her outward appearance indicated. He was falling in love with the mediocrity of Dendre Moscowitz’s life, with the passionate secret soul that beat for him and him alone.
Gideon undressed in front of her, not hastily but because she could not take her eyes off him and he wanted her to savour every inch of his flesh. He was already erect, pulsating with desire to be taken over by her lips, to exchange sensual joy with her. The shock of seeing his ample penis so ready to take possession of her showed in her eyes. That look told Gideon she had never been so brazen with a man, so bewitched by a penis, so enamoured with the idea of sex in the streaming sunshine. He wanted her to fondle him, to excite his lust further. Nothing. She made no move towards him. Instead tears filled her eyes and her breathing became laboured. He knew instantly that passion and frustration were crippling her.
Gideon approached her and caressed her breasts, pinching her long thick nipples none too gently. Dendre moaned with pleasure and he kissed her intimately on the lips as he worked her dress down over her hips and tore the panties she was wearing first at one side then the other, slipping the cloth from between her legs. Naked now save for her white lace garter belt and stockings and still standing in her high-heeled shoes, Gideon viewed her as she
had never been looked at before. Holding her by the hand, arm extended straight out, he walked around her.
‘I’m going to paint you. Many times. Make you the most famous model the world will ever have known. You’re magnificent in your lust. You have a very sexy body. I want the world to look at you and see how glorious a fuck you are, how a sexual woman can nurture lust and love, in herself and her man.’
Dendre was on fire. Over and over again she kept begging silently, Oh, please God, let him take me now. Please, now. The waiting to feel him inside me is too painful to bear. Now, please.
Gideon pulled her down on to her knees. ‘You’re a delicious creature and I’m going to take you places you’ve never been, make you come until all your pent-up sexual energy is satisfied – and then from there take you further than you have ever been. I’m going to make you mine forever, and leave no room in your heart and soul for anyone else but me. Do you believe me?’
‘Yes,’ she told him, and prayed he meant what he said.
‘Then show me why I should do that?’ he challenged.
Dendre caressed his thighs, ran her fingers over his thick patch of dark blond pubic hair then the inside of his thighs, but she never touched his penis. It surprised Gideon that she was cock-teasing him. He was past young women who played that game. If it had been anyone else he would have given up on her right then and there and seen her out of his studio, never to return. But Dendre … a teaser who never delivered? It didn’t fit with her sincerity, the purity of spirit he sensed she had, her generosity, the passion and lust he saw in her eyes.
‘Why do you look away from my sex when you want it? Dance around my penis with fondling hands and fingers like some cheap tease? You and I, we’re not playing that game and we both know it,’ he told her as he placed the fingers of her hand round his member and ran her hand back and forth over it. With the palm of the other placed under his large and handsome testicles, he wrapped her fingers round them so that she cupped them and could caress them.
His sighs were of the ultimate in pleasure and he told her, ‘Oh, yes. How marvellous you make me feel. You’re a delight in giving and loving.’ And he closed his eyes, savouring her every caress.
Dendre felt a rush of power and strength coursing through her veins, her flesh. She came instantly and reached a moment of pure sexual nirvana. Once that moment passed she understood she had found the man she wanted to give herself to, now, at this moment, and for always.
Gideon was surprised by his own words and feelings. It was true, this was no game, no street pick-up as he had thought it would be when he first saw her. They wanted each other, to be in each other’s lives. He was amazed that she should have captured his heart when other, more beautiful and exciting women had not. He felt good in her hands. Sensations of sexual bliss took him over, body and mind. He liked the way she caressed him, fondled his testes. He imagined her holding them in her soft, warm, satiny mouth, licking them like a pussy cat.
Now for Gideon the excitement of sex had to move on. Still standing, he caressed the top of her head and told her, ‘I wonder if women know just how good that feels to a man? You’re lovely, I like the way you love me.’ He bent down and kissed her on the lips, licked them until they parted, then standing tall again he placed his hands over hers and directed the tip of his penis across her lips, back and forth, several times. Her lips parted. She licked him, at first hesitantly but then erotic passion, a hunger to taste more of him, took over and she sucked him gently into her mouth.