Venus Envy Read Online Free PDF Page A

know he hasn’t?” Mandy’s natural curiosity was taking over.
    “Because when he cried all over me—and I confess I cried back—he stank of Giorgio perfume. The stuff oozed right out of his pores. Laura wears Hermès, as you might suspect. Giorgio is much too loud for Laura. The Garden Club would turn up its collective nose, literally. Even the daffodils would shudder.”
    “Um, um,” Mandy hummed.
    “You got it, girl. My brother may be a failure in many respects but when it comes to women he’s irresistible. It’s hard for a sister to see a brother as sexy but ever since Ican remember Carter has been a triumph of androgen, or whatever it is that attracts the girls like flies.”
    “My mother says women
are
like flies. They’ll settle on shit or on sugar.”
    “Your mother doesn’t like women much, does she?”
    “Well, this statement was provoked by my sister’s falling for a man Mother considered too dark for an Eisenhart. Mom’s a horrible snob that way.”
    “Yeah, so’s mine—about suitable matches. Before Charles married Diana I swear Libby would lie awake at night and plot how I might meet the Prince. ‘If only he could see you, sweetie,’ she’d say. ‘They want you when they see you.’”
    “True enough.” Mandy paused a moment while her dog barked. “Enough, Duncan.”
    The Scottie barked harder.
    “Duncan’s true to form,” Frazier remarked.
    “Am I forgiven?”
    “I said you were. Don’t repeat yourself. You know how I hate to be bored.”
    “I know. Well, don’t forget to write a letter to Tomorrow. Promise?”
    “I will. Bye-bye.”
    “Bye, boss.”
    Frazier hung up the phone. Like the claws of physical desire, loneliness and longing seized her stomach. There was so much to live for. How could she have so squandered her time? She thought of the lips unkissed, the thighs uncaressed, the paintings she’d just missed purchasing. She thought of the music she adored and how she wished she had kicked off her shoes and danced in the dew on spring grass. Simple pleasures, animal delights, all were shoved aside in her ascent and in her fear that if she cavorted, frolicked, and played, she might betray herself. Spontaneity evaporated inside her.
    Control. Control yourself. Control your destiny. Control your emotions. Well, she controlled all right. She controlled herself right out of any action that did not lead directly to her bank account.
    She lay there and wondered why so many people who considered themselves aristocrats violently opposed displays of emotion, honest exchange. Not that the middle classes were much better. They preferred to talk about emotion rather than show it. The joke was that talking about emotion often vitiated the emotion. They wound up bloodless. Frazier’s friends, the U.C.’s—the Upper Classes—preferred neither. A single poppy in a round crystal bowl sitting on a perfect terrace could elicit as much rapture from Billy Cicero’s mother as an orgasm. Probably more. Small wonder that Billy, like the moon, never showed his mother his dark side.
    Frazier kept returning to the lips unkissed. If only she had pressed her mouth between DeeDee Cheatam’s shoulder blades in their Tri-Delta days. And Frances Peterson. She was so hot, with her long, long body and her ice-blue eyes. Who knew what might have happened if Frazier had just reached out once or twice or, well, more than that. Then she had spurned Victor Nederlander, which nearly killed her mother. What she remembered about Victor, her beau in her middle twenties, was the downy hair on his chest. She made him crawl over hot coals for sex and then she hurt him by not enjoying it. What would have happened if she’d let go? Every now and then she’d escape to Charlotte, North Carolina, to the Guest Quarters with someone, male or female, only to forget them after the weekend. As Frazier had good taste, they were nice people, people worth remembering.
    Keep your distance. Don’t get involved. Don’t