Pinball Read Online Free PDF Page B

the pillows and cushions in a heap, settled back, and ran her hand through his hair.
    “None of the articles I read about you explained why you called your first work
The Bird of Quintain,”
she said. “Why did you?”
    Domostroy wasn’t sure whether her interest was genuine and he hesitated before he answered her.
    “In the Middle Ages,” he said, “a quintain was a practice jousting post with a revolving crosspiece at the top. At one end of the crosspiece was a painted wooden bird and at the other a sandbag. A knight on horseback had to hit the painted bird with his lance and then spur his horse and duck under the crosspiece before the heavy sandbag could swing around and unseat him. I thought the bird of quintain was an apt metaphor for my work—and for my life as well.”
    “None of the articles I read mentioned a wife, children, or a family,” she said.
    “I have none,” said Domostroy.
    “Why not?”
    “I lost my parents early in life. Then music took my time and energy. To compose music was, for me, to belong to everyone, to speak every language, to convey every emotion: As a composer, I was the freest of men. A family would have imposed on my freedom.”
    “And what about sports and hobbies?”
    “Never had time for much.”
    “Except for sex, according to
Hetero.”
    “Even sex only on occasion.”
    “Which occasions?”
    “When I have a partner. I don’t play solo.”
    “Who were your favorite partners?”
    “Women friends—artists, musicians, writers.”
    “Who are your partners now?”
    “A groupless groupie now and then. A jazzed-out jazz songstress, Those are the only women I share these days.”
    She eyed him sadly. “It looks as though these days love is all you compose. Don’t you mind not sharing your life with a woman of your own?”
    “I don’t. After all—I’m being shared as well.”
    “Would you mind sharing me?” she asked, stroking his flesh.
    “With whom?”
    “With my lover. A rock star.”
    “He fills your need. You fill mine.”
    She laughed. “I was just joking. I don’t have a lover but—aren’t you in the least possessive?” she asked.
    “I am—of new experience. Of time passing.”
    “Then pass it with me. Finding Goddard.’
    “Why do you want to find him so badly?”
    “Obsession. I also badly want to own a Tudor mansion and to fill it with original Pre-Raphaelite paintings. But—long before that—I want to know Goddard.”
    “Of all people—why Goddard?”
    “Why not Goddard? He’s a public figure, and I’m his public. I have a legitimate right to know all there’s to know about him.”
    “And he has a right to hide his name, his face, and his life.”
    “Not from me. I don’t separate him from his music.”
    “But he obviously separates himself.”
    “Too bad for him,” she said, and she leaned back, giving Domostroy another chance to marvel at the smoothness of her belly.
    “Tell me, Patrick,” she said later that week, “have you ever been completely free with a woman?” She was lying seductively on the bed near him. “I mean free to share with her all that’s alive or perverse or just plain spontaneous in you? To lay her any time, any place, once or twice, many times—or not at all? To let your instinctguide you to discover all that you want to know about her and yourself, all that you want to touch and take and taste in her?”
    “I’m free with you,” he said.
    “If you are, it’s because you’re, not in love with me. Because you have nothing to lose by being yourself.”
    “Surely you don’t want your kept man to fall in love with you,” he said, laughing off her remark. “‘In love, money shared increases love; money given kills it,’ says Stendhal, and he’s right: Think how obstreperous I could become if I started to resent your obsession with Goddard!” said Domostroy.
    He stopped speaking and began inching closer to her again, until he pressed tightly against her.
    Andrea took her knowledge of