Free Fatal Vision by Joe McGinniss Page B

the walk through the Village, because it was one of those beautiful fall days and we were holding hands and we were very much in love, and we stopped at an outdoor cafe, and we went through the park at the end of Fifth Avenue and watched the organ grinders and the, the, you know, ah, the people at the time when there were a lot of guitar players, urn, and we thought, you know, that Greenwich Village was super, um, that it was neat and artsy-craftsy, et cetera, cetera, and we had a very, like, lovely day.
    I also remember that night, the nice dinner we had at Freddy and Mildred's apartment. Mildred was a good cook and the dinners were always a little more formal than I was used to at my house. My house was very casual.
    At Mildred's, you know, everyone sat in certain places and you stood behind a chair until the table was all ready to go and then we all sat down and certain, ah, ceremony was always performed with the wine, and, ah, it was much more formal.
    We kind of enjoyed it. Colette and I were learning from it and it seemed very chic, although we used to occasionally make light of it and think that Freddy and Mildred were blowhards about it, that they were a little pretentious.
    But the other thing I remember about that night is when Mildred and Freddy went to bed, Colette and I sat up. I was sleeping on the couch in the living room. It was a long, I believe, green couch which they'd had for a long time. It was a very expensive couch. Colette had set up the bed— you know, set up the sheet and the pillowcases and the pillow and blanket and stuff, and we were sitting out there talking and we began kissing and ah, making out, as it were, um, and Colette, ah, got a little flustered and said that she really shouldn't be doing this at home.
    She didn't want Freddy walking out or Mildred walking out and, you know, I said fine and she went to bed, and I remember it was very strange because this was a little atypical of Colette: she came out about twenty minutes later and lay down on the couch with me, very quietly and a little apprehensively, and we began kissing and—and caressing each other.
    We ended up making love, and I remember it was one of those exquisite times where we were trying to be so incredibly quiet, and it was one of those times that Colette, ah—it was sort of the excitement of doing something, I guess, ah, that we shouldn't have been doing, and in a place where we shouldn't have been doing it, and the threat of Mildred and Freddy walking out at any moment, but it was more exciting than even usual, and she was sort of like giving herself to me by coming out of her room and getting into bed with me, and it was the first time that this had ever really happened because we had just recently begun making love, and we—it was a—incredible, very exciting session. We talked about this for years afterwards, in fact, as one of our most memorable lovemaking sessions.
    We never openly discussed whether she or I had slept with anyone else. She always avoided the subject of Penny Wells. She was not really jealous of Penny. She always felt, like, unthreatened by her, but she didn't see any need to discuss it. I think she wondered what the attraction was between Penny and I, but we never talked about it. I never told her that we'd had a tremendous physical thing going and, you know, we never discussed it. We sort of avoided those topics.
    We did talk about her feelings for Dean. Never about potential lovemaking with Dean. I'm not sure if she made love with Dean Chamberlain or not. My strong impression is that she didn't. She always implied that in conversation. We never talked—I never said to her, "Were you a virgin?" I never said to her: "Did you ever make love to Dean Chamberlain?" It always seemed like sort of a too-jealous thing to ask, and too immature, and I—we always tried to respect each other more than that. She never, for instance, said to me: "Did you make love with Penny Wells?" I think we tried to be