Read Online Her One Obsession by Roberta Latow - Free Book Online Page B

and Dendre were walking arm in arm towards the entrance of the nearest subway station. Occasionally he would stop to take her in his arms and kiss her lovingly. Like a bolt of lightning they had been struck by unexpected love and were, in their own individual ways, quite dazed by what had happened to them.
    ‘When will I see you again?’ he asked as he toyed with the narrow lapels of her coat.
    ‘I keep imagining I’ll wake up and today, you, what we have had together, will all have been a dream. See you again? I don’t even want to leave you,’ she told him.
    ‘Then don’t,’ he answered.
    ‘If only you meant that,’ she replied, and bit her bottom lip nervously.
    ‘I never say anything I don’t mean, Dendre.’
    ‘I should have been home two hours ago, my mother will be frantic. I have to go. I don’t think you understand – this is the most important and thrilling afternoon of my life. I’ve fallen in love with you, Gideon, and I need to come to terms with that. I’m a simple Jewish girl from Brooklyn who in her whole life has never expected or wanted to be anything other than that. And then you come along and turn my head and my heart around.’
    ‘Stay the night with me.’
    ‘I can’t. What would I tell my mother?’
    ‘I can’t believe you said that! You tell her everything, like some pathetic teenager? Mamma approval, Dada love. There has to be a beloved elder brother too. You live and think like a bourgeois, my dear, but you fuck and love the erotic like a libertine. Straddle both lives and you’ll have the best of everything. That’s what I want for you, to be happy.’
    What was he telling her? There was sarcasm in his voice butno disdain. There was too a hint of indifference as to whether she did stay the night with him and that frightened her. What if she lost him! The thought was unbearable. Tears came to her eyes.
    ‘Tomorrow. I’ll come to you after classes tomorrow.’
    ‘Why not tonight?’ he insisted.
    ‘I’ve never spent the night with a man. Try and understand, I have a family to answer to. We’re close-knit, everything to each other, and I simply can’t run away from that. I need some time to ease myself away from them, but I don’t want to make a mistake and lose you.’
    They were standing at the entrance to the subway, Dendre looking wretched with anguish. He felt pity for her lack of courage, certainly not anger. It surprised him that he respected her because she wanted to do what was right for all concerned. He knew that if this was the stand she would take about her family obligations then she would take no less a one for him. Instinctively he knew she was the woman for him to marry, with whom to build a life and career. She was a solid foundation on which to place his ladder. With Dendre Moscowitz as his bedrock he could climb, rung by rung, through the art world to the top where he expected to reign supreme.
    ‘You won’t lose me. Tomorrow then, whenever it suits you,’ he told her with a smile.
    ‘You’re not angry?’ she asked
    ‘I’m never angry. If I don’t like what’s around me, I simply leave. Stop worrying, stop fidgeting. It’s never attractive. This has been a great day. Now I’m going back to the studio to work and you’re going home.’
    They kissed and Gideon watched her descend the stairs and be swallowed up by the stream of people making their way uptown for the evening. She took only a few steps before she turned for one last look at him but he was already gone.
    There were crowds of people waiting on the platform and Dendre distracted herself trying to work out where they had all come from since she hardly remembered seeing a soul on the way from Gideon’s to the subway station. That dead silence that happens at stations was suddenly broken by a loud swish of wind coming through the tunnel followed by the bright light from a train, the rattle of metal on the tracks. The train screeched to a halt, andwith a hissing sound and the