Pinball Read Free Page B

she said. “Your records touch more people than any concert would.”
    He felt her eyes on him, pleading, as soft and inviting as if she were a child, and he was tempted to kiss her.
    “If my records touch you—can I?”
    “Do you want to?” said Andrea, and she leaned back on her elbow and faced him. As she did so, her breast brushed against his hand.
    “Only if you want me to.”
    “What makes you think I don’t?” she asked, inching closer, her lips parting.
    As he faced Andrea, he pondered what to do. He recalled a time in Oslo, during one of his European concert tours, when a young woman reporter interviewed him over dinner and then came back with him to his hotel. She asked him if she could spend the rest of the night in his room rather than drive all the way home, and although he found her tempting, he was perplexed, for during the whole evening she had not been the least bit flirtatious. He announced in the most straightforward way that his room contained only one bed, and she said that sharing it with him wouldn’t bother her one bit, for as a girl she had often shared beds with her friends. Given that gratuitous admission and the Scandinavian reputation for sexual openness, Domostroy felt confident enough to tell the young woman that all through dinner he had imagined the two of them making love in a variety of ways and that he wastherefore pleased and anxious to share his bed with her, as well as everything he had fantasized.
    The woman became indignant. “I think you have this all wrong,” she said. “All I asked was to share a bed with you, not you with the bed. For me,” she said, “sharing your bed would be like going swimming with you. When swimming, you don’t talk about it; you don’t ask each other whether you like to swim or whether you prefer swimming on your back or stomach. You just swim. Making love is the same way. Why don’t you try thinking about things that way!”
    Angry, she left. As for her lesson, it was lost on Domostroy, who as a boy had almost drowned and ever since had been afraid of water.
    “What makes you think I don’t want you to touch me?” Andrea repeated. “After all, I came to hear you at Kreutzer’s and slipped you that note about how much I liked you, didn’t I?” She shifted again, and now her breath was on his neck, her breast against his chest.
    In an instant he could cover her with his body, but he did not move. “Have you been with other musicians?” he asked.
    She looked at him quizzically. “Been with?”
    “I mean—”
    “You mean slept with. Sure. I’m a music student, remember? What about you? Don’t you fuck the girls who hang around Kreutzer’s?”
    He sat up and moved away from her. “You weren’t just hanging around. You came with a purpose.”
    “I did,” she agreed. “To know you.”
    “But—you already knew my music; wasn’t that enough? Music doesn’t make demands. Composers do.”
    “I don’t mind your demands.”
    “You don’t know me!”
    “I know myself.”
    “Would you come to see me if instead of what I am, I were, say, a piano tuner?”
    “Piano tuners don’t interest me. Patrick Domostroy does.”
    She moved closer. Her hand rested on his thigh, and pulling him to her, she gently kissed his earlobe.
    When he didn’t respond, she pressed her breasts against him, then kissed him on his neck. He shivered lightly and reached for her, an excitement surging through him, propelling him toward her. Suddenly she stopped and pulled away, and his yearning subsided.
    “I won’t pretend that sex with you is all that excites me,” she said, her eyes searching his. “There’s one thing you—and only you—can do for me.”
    A slight discord was growing between them. “What is it?” he asked, fearful that she might ask him for money.
    “I want you to introduce me to Goddard!”
    “To Goddard? Which Goddard?”
    “
The
Goddard. The one and only.”
    “Goddard the rock star?” he asked, feeling lost. He could