The Muffia Page 9
Then again, perhaps I’m just envious that I can’t look at things through those proverbial rose-tinted glasses. Sarah seemed content with her illusions. But I find it too difficult to shake the knowledge of what actually is or isn’t so only to focus on what I wish were true. Whatever. No one was listening to me, least of all Sarah. who was, at that moment, washing Nate’s underwear.
Chapter 10
Berggren Wolfe lives, along with her identical twin daughters, in a terrific house in a section of Greater Los Angeles called Mar Vista. Mar Vista is bordered on the west and south by Venice and its famous beach, by Santa Monica to the north and Palms to the east. The words Mar and Vista are Spanish for something like sea-view but every time I hear them together, I think of something ruining that view—as in marring my vista. I realize it may seem a little odd, but I can’t help sub-consciously thinking this every time I go to Berggren’s house.
This particular Friday night was no different. I saw the mental hurdle looming before me as I started up my fuel-efficient automobile and headed to Berggren’s sleek and lovely home, which offers guests a poquito peek at the Pacific from her roof deck. That night, however, I was determined to remain positive—about the view, the guests, everything. I would remain open, available, and not let anything mar the evening.
If I’d never actually met anyone I wanted to sleep with at any of Berggren’s parties that was probably just as much my fault as that of her guests. The root of my concern could be the fear that if I ever get coital with someone too close to any of my inner circle of friends and acquaintances, I’d find out he was once sexually involved with someone with whom I’d rather not have shared a penis.
This almost happened once when Ben, a guy I knew through Paige, kept making passes at me at her house while I, and he, were still married. I was even more disgusted when I found out he did this on a regular basis to many women we both knew, regardless of their marital status, and he did it in front of his wife! Worse than his flirtatious, obnoxiously persistent harassment was that I thought he was a complete idiot for being so coarse about everything. His wife surely had to know he was making a play for countless women, many of whom his wife counted among her friends. And he had to know that all the women he hit on would talk to each other and realize he perceived all of them as prey. He was attractive enough, I guess, but even if I were desperately horny, I draw the line at extra-marital coitus with people in my regular planetary rotation, and this guy was in too many of my friends’ concentric orbits. To sleep with him could disrupt all our lives. Luckily I had safely avoided him, and all like him. Though the fear of sharing a penis was still real, it was now tempered by my desire to get laid.
I arrived at Berggren’s right on time at 7 PM and was just stepping up to the open door and over the threshold, when I heard an odd shuffling of feet on the driveway behind me.
“’Allo there. Make way, please,” said a strapping young blonde man with a ponytail and Scandinavian accent. This must have been one of Berggren’s new assistants. He was rolling her table enlarger—a ten-foot diameter piece of particleboard—toward the front door and me. “Are you Madelyn?”
I nodded my head.
“I saw your picture, yah. I am Thor. So excuse me, Madelyn. Coming through vith the big round piece of vood.” Thor had one very cute accent. He looked to be about twenty. Seducing him would be a shade short of cradle-robbing, so I made myself content watching him with the big wood.
Perhaps the table enlarger requires a little explanation. When one enters Berggren’s house on a typical evening, one sees a smallish round piece of glass resting on an architecturally striking pedestal in the dining area. But when she has dinner parties with a head count over fourteen, the glass table can't handle the bodies. So voilà, Berggren created the table enlarger to place on top of the glass. With this big piece of vood in place, she can accommodate the cast of a play, film or perhaps a small orchestra. The only drawback was that when everyone was seated and talking, anyone on the opposite “side” of the table was completely inaudible.
“Yah, could I get a hand here?” An older male guest I didn’t recognize stepped in to help Thor lift the big vood and fit it snugly on top of the glass. Thor pushed on the enlarger, making sure it was balanced and wouldn't fall off if somebody leaned on it wrong.
"OK, Berggren—I’m off, yah?” What a shame, handsome Thor is taking off.
Still in the foyer, I looked beyond the table to the sunken living room with vintage 1960s furniture and a grand piano framed by the vista—marred by nothing. Berggren stepped up and gave Thor a hug goodbye before turning to me.
“Maddie. I’m so glad you could make it. We’re going to have so much fun. But I’m running late, what else is new? And Carl just left with the girls.” She gestured toward the kitchen. “I’ve got to finish getting dressed. So go introduce yourself. There are people you know.”
I watched her walk down the hallway then glanced into the kitchen where I saw about six people munching on appetizers and sipping wine. Two of them I thought I’d met before—at Berggren’s, of course— but the rest were new faces. I didn’t see anyone who immediately attracted me on any level, but I reminded myself of my commitment to remain open-minded; Berggren’s friends and acquaintances were all interesting and every one of them had something to say if I’d give them a chance.
I entered the kitchen and started chatting and pretty soon I began not to care that even though I’d come to the dinner party seeking exciting and moving, I was now extremely pleased to talk with individuals who were simply interesting. The wine certainly didn't hurt. Wine can make anyone seem more interesting.
People kept arriving and eventually we sat down to eat, conversation flowing freely and loudly. On my left sat a gorgeous man named Christian who’d recently arrived in California from Italy to make his name in production design. He’d come with Berggren’s mother’s husband’s sister, Petra, and was off limits because he was married with a wife socked away in some charming hillside village on the Italian coast. But since it was hard to hear anyone who wasn’t right next to me, he and I struck up an easy Italian-English exchange under the watchful eye of Petra.
At one point in the evening, I considered suspending my “no married men” rule for at least an hour after he informed me sotto voce that he and his wife have an open relationship. It’s not for me to judge what other couples do, especially Europeans, I reasoned, even if I wouldn’t have wanted that lifestyle myself. I was fantasizing about what sex would be like with Christian in a gauzily decorated bedroom with a sea breeze drifting over our naked bodies in a villa on a Sardinian mountain top, when I saw Petra glaring at me. So I pretended to busy myself with my napkin.
There was an empty chair on my right and I noticed another empty chair across the table next to ZsaZsi, Berggren’s new producing partner on an English-American collaboration. I waved to her over the yellow table-clothed expanse between us, and we had a brief, semi-audible conversation about their upcoming film project, which it sounded like they hoped to shoot in I-think-New Mexico in I-couldn’t-hear-how-many months. I like ZsaZsi. She’s a smart girl—smarter for having hooked up with Berggren. She yelled to me that her fiancée was expected at any moment, pointing to the empty chair next to her. I also had an empty chair next to me but had no idea if there was someone else coming who would fill it.
Dinner was going along—salmon, pasta, salad, plenty more wine—and conversation was flowing smoothly. Berggren was in her element, breaking the ice and getting us all to talk about ourselves by answering the question, “What would we do to make the world a better place?” It was like the Miss America pageant only we were all too old and jaded to suggest we could end world hunger.
It was just coming up on my turn and I was debating if I should fold and suggest something innocuous about planting trees and flowers, or if I should rant about impeaching elected officials and enforced ball removal for convicted pedophiles, when the doorbell rang and spared me the decision.
During all this, I was faintly aware that ZsaZsi’s fiancé, Nissim, and his friend had sat down and, I assume, started to eat. I remember seeing Petra come out of the bathroom and, when she spotted me monopolizing Christian again, glowering at me even more harshly than before. At that point, I turned to my right to find Nissim’s friend looking at me, probably thinking me rude for not at least acknowledging his presence and including him in my conversation with Christian. But he smiled an unreal smile, which caused his entire face to light up and his green-gold eyes to sparkle. His hair was very close-cropped and his cheekbones were those of a model, though thankfully a model older than the ones in the Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue. He said something and I thought I heard an accent, but I was so entranced by his eyes, I couldn’t be sure of what he’d said, let alone in what language he’d said it.
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“Would you pass the pepper?”
“The pepper?” I remember mumbling, still mesmerized. He did have an accent. Middle Eastern maybe? His eyes were penetrating, making me feel completely naked with my clothes on.
“The pepper. Of course—pepper.”
On my left, Christian was talking to the American costume designer on his left who’d recently returned from shooting a Lifetime movie in Bulgaria and who’d said she thought she could improve the world by dressing people in colorful clothes, thereby making it more difficult for them to be sad and depressed.
I reached for the pepper without so much as a glance from Christian and handed it to my new dinner companion. Our hands touched as I gave it to him and I swear I felt electricity. He said his name was Udi—Udi Hamoudi—like OOOO-dee, rhymes with BOOO-tee. Udi with the most beautiful, intoxicating eyes I’d ever seen. How had I not noticed him when he walked in? Christian seemed like wine dregs in comparison to this fine glass of Syrah.
Was it the fourteen point five percent alcohol acting on me? Possibly. But I didn’t care. All I was aware of was having a deep physical connection to my new dinner partner. I remember feeling warm and turned on as I gazed into those eyes. It felt as if we were alone instead of surrounded by eighteen other people; I was aware of only myself and Udi. Everyone else had been banished to Berggren's roof deck.
He said he was from Israel—he and Nissim both—where they’d met in the army at the age of seventeen. That explained his sexy accent. He told me he’d come for a visit because he hadn’t seen Nissim since his friend had moved to LA five years earlier. I could have listened to Udi talk forever with his Israeli accent and imperfect grammar. Grammar shwammer. I hung on every word.
More and more he drew me to him as he told me, between mouthfuls of salmon and salad, that he'd wanted to meet ZsaZsi before she and Nissim got married. He liked her, he said, and was happy for his friend. It turned out Nissim was now selling real estate in California and, by his own account anyway, doing very well. I could tell Udi was a little disoriented. Understandable. I would be too if I’d been in his place—foreign country and all, unfamiliar language, jet lag and a bunch of new people all at once. But he didn’t seem nervous. I was the nervous one. Heart racing, mouth dry.
Udi was charming, with lots of smiles and eyes that just kept sparkling. He was younger than I, I could tell, which kind of turned me on and made me self-conscious at the same time. I was trying to remember the last time I’d worked out, when he put down his fork and out of nowhere said, “You are beautiful.”
My breath caught and my heart beat even faster. Emotions darted around my body, making me weak. And my face flushed—all of which combined to make me speechless. I’m beautiful? When had anyone told me that when I believed it? My dad when I was sixteen, going to the prom? And yet I believed Udi.
He smiled, picked up his fork again and resumed eating. He’d said it so simply—it couldn’t have been a line. He had me at shalom. My bullshit detector was working, but the batteries were obviously fading. Still, I believed he’d said it without agenda, plan or design, perhaps because he thought he’d never see me again so it didn’t matter what we said to each other. But he was at least convincing.
“Oh, thanks, but, no, that’s, well . . . thanks,” I said, or something inane like that, not wanting to dwell on whether I was or wasn’t beautiful—a topic on which reasonable people might differ.
“You are. You know this, I think.”
I remember shaking my head and blushing again. It all really sounds kind of trivial now, trite to even mention it, but I was so stunned. He disarmed me of not only the barriers I’d put up, but of my fear. He just had this way of looking at me that made me feel completely exposed—emotionally stripped and vulnerable and helpless to resist. And I had the sensation that he was, too. Through his eyes, I felt like I could see inside him, and that I’d be safe there.
I hadn’t fallen in love in a long time, and I’m not even sure that was what was happening, but I was falling into something with Udi. What was also immediately apparent and attractive about him was that he had no obvious baggage—Berggren had met him for the first time that night, too. I just thought he was the sexiest man I’d ever laid eyes on and the perfect zipless foreign fuck.
At some point, I had an awareness of people slowly beginning to get up to leave the party. Meanwhile, I’d been energized. After the two recent experiences at Book Soup and Babeland, both of which could have gone somewhere, I wasn’t going to strike out three times.
After saying our goodbyes to Berggren, Nissim and ZsaZsi walked behind Udi and me as he began walking me to my car. He took my hand and, after a couple of steps, put his arm around me as we continued for the twenty or so yards left. I fell into him, like we’d been walking like that for years. We fit.
Udi didn’t know which car was mine—how could he? As we reached the Prius, we slowed and I reached for the door. But he placed his hand on top of mine, keeping me from opening it, instead turning me to face him. Then he leaned down, gently kissing me on my lips. The electricity I felt during dinner now had to be visible to anyone watching. Slowly, his lips pulled away from mine and he raised his head. He clasped my hand in his and looked into my eyes with such passion I became unsteady.
“Wow. That was—” I began, but before I could complete the sentence, he was kissing me again and I was kissing him—lips, longing, lust, his body hard against me and me pressing into him.
What I’d hoped he would taste like, smell like, kiss like turned out to be the reality of him; such a wonderful thing—not to be disappointed. If he’d pulled my dress up right there on the dimly lit Mar Vista street, I would not have resisted. Without a doubt, we could have provided the neighborhood with triple-X viewing that evening, which I'm sure would have improved a few peoples’ view.
“Come back to my hotel,” he whispered.
Chapter 11
So I did. After all my prudery, whether put on or real, with both Book Soup Steve and Cullen of tapas and Fleshlight fame, I decided it was the most mature thing to do. I couldn’t see what would be gained by holding myself out as some ultra-valuable commodity that needed to be left in the store until full payment was made.
The truth was, I didn’t want to deny myself, because I’d probably lose the opportunity to be with him ever. Despite the connection we had—his honest smile, masculinity, and eyes that told me so much about his innate goodness—there was no guarantee he’d: (a) keep my number, (b) dial my number even if he didn’t lose it, or (c) ever come to the U.S. again. So I decided to go with the bird-in-hand principle, though the idea of a bird in my hand wasn't something I particularly relished. Birds often leave unpleasant surprises behind and I wanted Udi to leave me only with joy.
Udi’s hotel was close to Berggren’s house and, like a day when you go down your “to-
do” list checking things off as fast as an airline pilot before take-off, everything clicked. It was like we were meant to be. Parking the Prius at his hotel, located in an area of Santa Monica known for parking hassles, was, on this evening, no hassle at all. A block away, a spot appeared and we swept into it. He ran around the car, opening the door for me, and lifted me up into his arms and began kissing me again. No one stumbled, nothing dropped. He was eager but not sloppy or in a hurry.
I was struck again by how neatly we fit together. My soft protrusions melded into his firmer ones and his hard cock pressed into my groin. Our respective heights served to allow our arms to gather each other comfortably and our lips to meet without neck strain. We were like that yin-yang poster, peas in a pod, water into soil, sugar into butter—so, so sweet.
Sometimes I think we endure the truth that we don’t always fit together very well because it’s easier than admitting the other person is not the right key for our lock. Finding that special key can be the challenge of a lifetime and some of us never find it. We settle—which kind of gets us back to that whole being in denial/believing in illusions thing. But let’s not wreck the mood.
Udi and I managed to walk the distance from the front door to the elevator demurely holding hands, but once inside, he looked at me again as if he intended to devour me. It felt like his eyes were boring holes through my body into my heated inner core. We were like radioactive isotopes seeking their purpose. I knew I was wet—in fact, I was past ready. The desperation of wanting him inside me at that precise moment made my legs feel as wobbly as a two-wheeled tricycle. I was swooning and he grabbed me again—this time to hold me up. His mouth came to my ear, my neck. Then it was his tongue and teeth, gently tugging on my earlobes.