The remnants of an excellent dinner lay on the table before the four diners. There had been a chateaubriand; the bouquet of the sauce bearnaise was still redolent in the room, which also bore the aroma of wines, cognac and coffee. The lights were soft.
"Ooh, but I feel just wonderful after all that," exclaimed Louise, glowing with rapture. "I don't think there has ever been such a day as this!" Hector agreed. "Thinking back, honey, that wasn't such a bad idea at all. The way it's all worked out, I mean."
"You mean my idea of bringing one's infidelities right out into the open?"
"That's right. At first I didn't give it a chance. After all, this sort of thing just, well, damn it, it just isn't done. Trust you to swim slap across the current, however. The important thing is it worked."
"I didn't give it much of a chance either," said Claudine, elegant once more in her form-filling sheath of rich velvet.
"And you should know," cut in Hector pointedly.
"Who better?" asked Claudine. "I've lived my life according to my lights. Been the mistress of maybe a dozen husbands. And I've had my share of lovers. But this is certain – I've always believed these things should be kept right were they begin. Underground. Hidden. Then – wham! Just like that, Louise proves that what I've been convinced of all my life is not necessary. I'd never have said this could work out."
"Actually," put in Andrew, "the thing raises the whole question of right and wrong. Just who, I wonder, is to say what's right or what is wrong? I mean, let's begin at the beginning with this one: is infidelity wrong?"
"I don't believe it is," said Louise, after a moment's thought. She looked chic and cool after bathing and dressing. "The way I see it, it just happens. So? Everything happens. You win at baccarat. You buy an airline ticket and fly to New York. On a hot day, you decide to go in for a swim. These things all happen. They aren't a sin. They're not right or wrong. They just happen. It's the same with adultery, then. It just happens. Why in heaven's name call adultery wrong, then?"
"I think you've got a point there," said Andrew. "Perhaps it's the convention that's wrong, and that's all. It's because of the convention that people get that horrible guilt complex when they're been unfaithful. Why not say that the very first thing that's at fault is that word itself: unfaithful?"
"You mean it's a misnomer?" asked Claudine. "Let's decide it is a misnomer, for a start. Then where are we?" asked Andrew.
"I begin to see the point," said Hector. "Like in war, adultery would he no more than the opening of a second front, then?"
"Exactly," said Andrew.
"Suppose we can it that, then," said Claudine. "A second front – I rather like that."
"In which case, where's the wrong in it?" asked Louise. "I think I know where, though. It's when there's a sort of emotional hangover about the whole thing that the wrong creeps in. I'm thinking now about my own country folk, and the frigid English – those straitlaced types one comes across."
She took a sip of cognac, and drew deeply on her cigarette…
Then she went on: "They endure a marriage, or even an affair, for years. Finally they crack. They seek – and find – another partner. That of course should be the end in itself. But no. These idiots go further. They mess it all up by falling in love. That way lies madness. Because what happens? From then on, the husband or the wife is out of things, emotionally, with the unfaithful partner who's breaking his or her neck to latch on to a new emotional attachment."
"Now I see," said Hector, thoughtfully, Louise's point suddenly became very clear to him. "Well, that's just what we four haven't done, isn't it?"
"Fallen in love, you mean?" mused Claudine. "I think I see now. And damn it, the more I think about it, the more I realize the girl's right."
"She is," said Andrew, thinking back to his own country folk, the Calvinistic South Africans. Adultery to them was just about the senior sin in the decalogue, the greatest besmirchment of which humans were capable, "If only other people could be made to realize that. But you know it's not always possible, Louise – to avoid falling in love, I mean."
"Granted," said Louise. "With most people, Andrew, you're unfortunately only too right. But take ourselves. With people like us who are intelligent, who have no false standards of modesty, no barriers of behavior, how can we go wrong? I'd almost go so far as to say adultery should be reserved or specially set apart for such people as we are."
"That'd be the snag, then, as I see it," said Andrew, "Everybody thinks of himself as being smart, enlightened and sophisticated. Call it what you like. And since people can't seem to control this thing called love, what happens if love does come into the relationship?"
"Then you resist it, surely," said Claudine emphatically. "Why, hell, now I see clearly where I myself have been making a whole row of mistakes in my life. Louise is right, darn it. If you can embark on an adventure such as ours in cold reason, then hell, of course it isn't a sin! What's more I think it even suddenly becomes a virtue."
"That's what I believe," said Louise. "For certain people like ourselves."
"Well, after today count me in. I'm a disciple, Louise," said Andrew, smiling. "It's certainly taught me more than I've ever learned before, anywhere. And I've been around a bit."
"What about the sex factor, though?" asked Hector.
"Yes," admitted Louise dubiously. "Now there's a point, too."
"How do you mean?" asked Andrew.
"Like this," said Hector. "Today for example. How many people do we each honestly know who could have taken the punishment we dished out to each other? What I'm asking is, didn't she take it too far perhaps?"
Here Claudine was quick to join in.
"Not a bit," she said. "My opinion is that you just never can exhaust the possibilities of sex. Why sublimate the word. What I'm referring to is fucking, plain fornication in all its infinite variations."
"I don't agree," said Andrew. He tried to fall into the vernacular. "Today, for example, well, that cocksucking…" he spluttered in confusion. "I'd like to get that bit straight. That's not my speed. Not that."
"So you didn't enjoy it?" asked Claudine.
"Candidly, no I didn't," said Andrew.
"Then why did you submit to it?" asked Claudine.
"Because, well… because I didn't want to be difficult," he replied. "Because, too, I think I wanted the experience. Now I've had it, though, I think I can live without it. How about you, Hector?"
"Frankly, I didn't mind," said Hector. "I've always wanted, I think, to suck another man off. Reason I've held back up to now, I suppose, is because I've never met up with a fellow I've had enough faith in to let myself go with him. Today, for example, well today it just didn't seem so wrong."
"Andrew certainly was wonderful," agreed Louise. "For me, I'm beginning to think like Claudine, though. Right now, I'm prepared to say that there is nothing in the gamut of fucking to which I wouldn't submit. Oh, I've sucked a cunt before today. But that was a long time ago when I was still in school. Even then it was more in experiment than like today – for real. But up to now, all my life, I've just been straight fucked by men, their cocks, my cunt. Till Claudine came into the picture, that is. Now I see that a cunt is there not just to get pleasure but, well, to give it, too. And pleasure, the way Claudine goes about it, seems plain illimitable."
"It is, too," breathed Claudine reminiscently. "Look, let me try to explain what I think about sex. I always feel sex is like a musical composition… a Bach fugue, if you like, something with an inexhaustible series of variations. Any variation then is permissible. Some of the variations are better or preferable to others. But the infinity of variation, that is the important thing."
"Or take another analogy. The violin as an instrument. Sometimes I think of myself as a Stradivarius, an instrument on which any number of people are capable of playing. Some'll be tyros, others'll be maestros, and one or two will be real virtuosi. So you get it, all the variations, all the degrees of excellence in execution, and all of them permissible."
"But coming back to sex, that's why I draw the line at nothing. An orgasm's an orgasm, and I just cannot see any wrong or stigma in how that orgasm is brought on. A penis, a tongue, a finger – or any variations of these things – or even other thins, artificial things, mechanical things, if any of them can bring on an orgasm, it fits into my idea of sex."
They thought over this pronouncement.
Then Hector said: "Perhaps you're right, Claudine. That probably explains why I'm not as advanced along the road as you are. Why, there was a time today when I got scared. Lying there with Andrew frigging me half out of my mind. I couldn't help thinking: what happens when I come? I never have a second thought about what happens to the sperm when it's a woman, but Andrew? Ugh!"
"That's about the way I was feeling, too," confessed Andrew. "I've got probably further along the road to go than even you have, Hector, but right now I don't think I'll do that again."
"You people will learn," said Claudine. "For me, I doubt if there's a way of getting to orgasm that I haven't tried, or even that I wouldn't try. And I've loved it all. In my crowd, I promise you, anything goes. There are lesbians. There are pansies. And in between there are any amount of even queerer queers, and I've never regretted a brush with anyone of them! Sex, with me, is what you see when you roll away what's blocking your view of it. It's vast, so incomprehensively vast. I just pray I live long enough to know the whole gamut of it."
"That's what I pray, too," said Louise fervently. "The way we live, Hector and I, I've just been ripening for this sort of sexual revolt. Sometimes we're together, maybe for as long as a month. Then what happens? I get shot half across the world and when I'm free in any one place, then Hector is to hell and gone away from me. When we meet, we're lucky if we can manage a week together."
"And what good's that? Soon as I get the taste for it again, we're parted. But this time, and Christ knows what got into me," she cried, "unless maybe it was you, Andrew! No girl endures the magnitude of a penis like yours just once only, believe me. You gotta have it again and again. I got the taste for it. And suddenly, I knew just what was going to happen. I knew I was off on the sex jag of all time. There just wasn't going to be enough of it. So, thank all that's holy, you came into it too, Claudine. I don't think we'd have been anywhere without you to teach us. Where in God's name have you managed to hide this fantastic woman for so long, Hector?"
Hector smiled. Then the four sank into a long, easy silence.
Andrew broke it by saying: "So? Now it's started, can anybody tell me where we all go to from here?"
All were sobered by the thought. Hector, they knew, would have to leave in two days time for Greece. Louise had to remain on the Coast. Andrew, of course, would be tied up with his hotel duties.
"Hell, I'd forgotten you had so humble a thing as a day-by-day job," laughed Claudine. "Somehow you just don't look like a waiter."
"Not one, either," said Andrew. "Not forever, anyway. But here I might as well be. Anyway, when Hector goes, what then?"
"Yeah, what then?" asked Louise. She turned to her husband. "Would you be very angry, darling, if I had Andrew once in a while, while you're with Lambrakis?"
Hector choked down a sudden rise of resentment. Without the twitch of a single facial muscle to betray his thoughts, however, he said: "Not the slightest, Louise. You two go right ahead. Only on Louise's terms, remember. You don't go falling in love."
"Of course not," said Louise swiftly. "Oh, Hector, don't tell me you even had a suspicion that we'd do that – fall in love? Oh, darling, if you had even the tiniest doubt, I'd never! I'd wait for you forever!"
Claudine raised a quizzical eyebrow at this exchange. How far, she wondered, could Louise's theories work in actual practice? With a mocking smile, she watched Hector's reaction.
"Then you've got my permission," said Hector. "More. You've got my blessing, too."
Hector was thinking, suddenly, of a Turkish woman named Riva. Her last name did not come back to mind, but he saw in vision her body, like some glowing copper statue, stark naked and warm and feminine and loving, as it had been the last time they had met in a flat in Athens.
"You know, you're great people," said Andrew, with sincere admiration. "To think you just bulldoze me into this situation, then that we sit round here calmly talking ourselves into a thing that could explode like a load of dynamite, just as if we were discussing going to a movie or something."
"Nonsense. You're doing fine," said Claudine. "Anyway, do I fit into it anywhere? You got any use for me in it? I've an idea I'll be available, you know?"
"How could we leave you out?" cried Louise. "Of course we need you!"
"Glad to hear it. Glad to be able to be of some help," said Claudine. "And I'll help. For one thing, I'll watch your interests, Hector. If these two look like getting too serious, I'll cut it up. Leave it to me."
At that, the discussion ended. There were good nights. Then the cars left and in Claudine's villa, at long last, another winking light, visible from the vast, mysterious Mediterranean, went out.