Exit to Eden by Anne Rice Read Free Book Online Page B

sculpture—and you have something so lush and ripe that you can smell the incense where there is no incense, taste the smoke and salt of flesh on sight.
    There is nothing quite like the moment of first discovering her there, no matter how many I have seen in the halls and the gardens, and seeing those heavy swaying breasts, and the moist triangle of pubic hair, as she waits for my command.
    Diana was always like a dancer, sleek and languid, her snow-white hair falling straight over her graceful shoulders and back. Her face is the contradiction because it's all pluck. Large, almost pouting lips and the roundest, most alert eyes I've ever seen. But it's the French accent that really gets to me. I've tried to analyze it, the effect, tried to get used to it. But it's one of her indefinable assets that simply will not quit.
    I couldn't pull her into my arms and kiss her. There wasn't time to start all that. I could see the enormous stack of manila files before the white computer screen on my desk. All the data was in the computer but I still liked to hold the photographs and the hard copy in my hands. I always sent for the folders, no matter how primitive they looked.
    "Open the windows, my dear," I said.
    "Yes, Lisa."
    The Bombay gin was waiting, glass already packed with ice, the limes just cut. Bombay gin is the only gin I can drink straight, and I never drink it with anything else.
    Out of the corner of my eye I watched her move with that same feline speed and agility, her long hands reaching slowly as if they were in love even with the cord that pulled the heavy purple drapes.
    For three years, she has lived within these walls, as the expression goes. Once a year for a six-week vacation, she vanishes. And I have to confess I have wondered where she goes, what she does, what she is like during that time. I'm told that Club members have offered her film contracts, marriage, luxurious private arrangements in exotic places. But that's nothing too extraordinary for the slaves here. That's one reason we make them sign up to stay for a while and pay them so much.
    I saw her once, dressed and on her way out for her holiday, walking arm in arm with another slave to the waiting plane. Someone said that five of them had clubbed together to rent a castle in the Swiss Alps. And Diana was already dressed for snow in a white fur-trimmed coat and a white fur hat. She looked Russian, like a giant of a ballet dancer, dwarfing the other girl as she moved in big easy strides over the landing field, her chin up, her little French mouth puckered naturally as if always ready to be kissed.
    But I don't know that Diana. I know only the naked subservient slave who is here for me night and day. She is perfection if there is such a thing, and in the unbroken quiet of the night I've often told her so.
    The sunlight poured in through the french windows, the great leafy limbs of the California pepper tree like a veil over the blue of the summer sky.
    It was too clear, that sky. The faint sound of wind chimes came from the garden; a wisp of cloud gusting south suddenly disappeared.
    And as she crouched near me, I reached down, slipping my fingers over her breasts—perfect breasts, not too large—and felt her silent yielding as she knelt, her bottom back on her heels as I liked her, her eyes moistening as she looked down.
    "Pour," I said, and started with the files. "You behave yourself while I was gone?"
    "Yes, Lisa, I tried to please everyone, Lisa," she said. I took the glass from her hand, waiting a few painful seconds for the gin to chill, and I drank a deep cold swallow, letting the immediate warmth spread through my chest.
    She was poised like a cat, ready to spring and slip her arms around my neck. I should have been unable to resist it really, but I still hadn't shaken the anxiety of the vacation. It was as if we were still circling up there.
    I went ahead and made the little indescribable gesture that said all right to her. And she knelt up and