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During the drive out to town, she snuggled close to him, asked him teasing questions about other girls, just as if she were really his date. Were there any girls in his life? He shrugged coldly. Yes. Grandfather had—he grimaced—had him duly initiated. It had been an interesting experience, albeit clinical. And, he added carefully, he didn't trust women. Or have time for girls.
"Oh, Brant!" Syl said, half-laughing, but upset all the same because she thought he needed some warmth and love in his life. She squeezed his arm.
Her hair hung down her back that evening, and she had threaded a ribbon through it. She looked no older than eighteen, as she had promised.
Brant enjoyed that evening as he had enjoyed nothing before in his life. The men all looked at her hungrily, lustfully, for she was as gay, laughing, as a young girl; but she had eyes only for him, her date. There was nothing in his life as beautiful as Syl that evening— Syl dancing close to him, her perfumed hair grazing his cheek; Syl hanging on his every word, ignoring every other man in the room.
Outside the private club, afterward, he kissed her unexpectedly and felt her lips part under his, tasting of the bourbon he'd used to spike their drinks. Suddenly, she'd blinked her eyes and stiffened, pulling away quickly, pretending she was high.
"Ooh—I don't even know if I can stand straight. Guess you'll have to carry me home. But oh, Brant, it was such fun!"
"We'll have to do it again," he said slowly, feeling the unfamiliar tightening and swelling in his crotch, trying to slow his breathing—damning himself for being gauche and hating himself for being young.
Abruptly, needing to break the silence, Sylvia began to talk about having to leave.
"I—I have to go back sometime, Brant. Besides, I have a movie to complete, and—well, Europe is my home now, it's where I belong."
She saw the look on his face, and groaning inside herself, she touched his arm pleadingly.
"Come with me? Oh—but I mean it. You need Europe; you need change, travel, to find out what the rest of the world is really like. You need—you need to live, and to love, and, yes—even to be hurt. You need to learn how to feel. How can I describe it?"
She threw her arms out in a wide, dramatic gesture, and he began suddenly to laugh, throwing his head back, feeling the excitement and the strange new and forbidden tingle that started in his groin and spread all over his body.
Yes, he decided then. She was right; he needed to feel. He needed to get away, to see new things, meet new people—learn about life. And—he was rich, which helped. For the first time in his life, Brant began to realize how free and independent the money made him.
"Syl—let's go. Let's go—oh, I don't care! Tonight, if we want to. Will you let me stay with you?"
In his young, eager selfishness it never occurred to him that she might have someone else, some man in her life. But she, with her own kind of selfishness, did not care, either. She was caught up with the excitement of the moment, of feeling young, loving him. She caught his hands.
"Brant—Brant—of course you'll stay with me! Come on, let's hurry! We have to go back and pack and make reservations, and while we're doing that, I'll tell you all about it—about life in France and Italy and London and—oh, it"s all going to be so wonderful!"
She stopped, giggled. "Just think, we might even run into Fay and Richard. Imagine their faces if we do!"
At the thought, he laughed, too. She had brought laughter into his life, and he felt as if he'd only just learned how to laugh and have fun.
Syl taught him much more; she taught him everything. It was inevitable that it should happen, after all, and it did. She was too weak and too willful to let herself fight the lust she had begun to feel for Brant, mixed up with the real love she had for him; he was too young and hotblooded to let her stop him. She taught him slowly and with infinite patience that was rewarded by his retention and practice of everything she could show and teach him about sex. They made love endlessly and tirelessly—he was her young stud, her rich young lover, and she was the envy of all the other women in her set.
Under the warm sun of the French and Italian Riviera, Brant's body tanned to a golden brown as his hair bleached and grew longer. He became indolent, easily bored, and even more arrogant—except when he made love to Sylvia. With her, he was always tender, always seeking, speaking only to her of love, of caring. He grew, also, more sure of himself as a man and as a lover.
Brant had quickly gotten used to the money he had inherited and the power it gave him. He bought and learned to race fast cars and boats; he skiied on snow and in the water and took risks. He gambled in the casinos, and inevitably, too, he discovered other women. But they were all too easy and therefore eventually boring, without challenge. They offered themselves to him, and he took what they offered if he felt like it, but there was really only Syl for him—only Syl he could burrow into, stay in, let himself care about. With his youthful, selfish arrogance, he expected her to be all his, waiting for him; his alone, while he, being a man, could take what he wanted and needed of the other women who threw themselves at him.
The nights and days of frantic, endless loving began to take their toll of Sylvia, for Brant was almost insatiable as a lover. Under the harsh and burning sunlight, he began to notice the new, slight lines on her face, an almost imperceptible softness of her thighs and breasts. He became more open and blase about his other women; and one day Sylvia caught him making love to her new maid and threw a fit of screaming hysterics. She was almost ugly in her rage, and he slammed out of her house sulkily. When he returned repentantly that evening, she had gone out to dinner with the Spaniard, Morales, who was directing her new movie. Burning with an unfamiliar, jealous rage, Brant went to a party thrown by an expatriate Englishman and stayed until the end, becoming involved in his first three-way sex orgy that night.
Filled with remorse afterward and a sick kind of disgust, he went back to the villa. Syl was still with Morales. They lay together, sleeping, in her bed, which had been their bed. The covers, trailing onto the floor, exposed her body to the waist; her heavy breasts and tangled hair were half-covered by the man's revoltingly hairy body.
All injured vanity and hurt pride, seething with a mixture of rage and hate and pain, Brant walked out— left her house and took his own apartment in the same city. He would show her! He became a member of the most depraved and decadent set in Rome, going with both women and men according to the circumstances or as the inclination took him. He joined in orgies, experimented with drugs, made the scandal sheets regularly.
Having wanted only to punish Brant, and frantic now because instead of merely getting jealous and returning penitently to her, he had instead seized on her infidelity as an excuse to leave her, Sylvia tried to get him back. She telephoned; she wrote him letters; she made tearful scenes in public. He was coldly adamant.
She came to his apartment one hot noon, pounding on his door and screaming insults until he opened it to her. As soon as she saw him, she began to cry, her voice pitiful, pleading.
"Oh, God—don't you see that I love you? I love you, Brant. Don't hurt me anymore. Stop punishing me!"
"Sorry, but you blew it. You told me I should learn about life, Syl, and I've only just begun to learn. From all kinds of teachers, too. Man, am I learning!"
His voice was cruel, mocking her—her tear-ravaged face, her too-lush body, her lack of pride.
She couldn't speak, and he hammered home tire last bolt, the last and most painful insult.
