Free Passion Play by Jerzy Kosinski Page A

every movement of her body. He recognized Alexandra Stahlberg.
    “How are you, Fabian?” she asked with a faint smile. Her large oval eyes took on a mischievous glint as she smiled, her slightly parted lips revealing the milky perfection of her teeth.
    Fabian rose. She extended her hand and he took it—smooth and narrow, firm, cool.
    Memory summoned at once the pressure of her hands on him, the recollection of fingers probing, opening the way for lips and tongue. He glanced at her hands.
    She caught his look. “Are you still fascinated by a ring finger, Fabian?” she purred coyly, stirring and shifting toward her escort.
    “I am—by you,” Fabian said, as he pondered this second entry of Alexandra Stahlberg into his life.
    In the time since Eugene’s death, Fabian had seen Alexandra many times, but only in advertisements—tempting him in an airport waiting room, enticing him from the ranks of glossy magazine covers arrayed under the harsh lights of an all-night newsstand. Once, standing in line at a public telephone, he glanced up to find himself the target of her seduction. She loomed, demanding, on a billboard that announced some new lip gloss, her chin resting on those intricately twining fingers, one of them erect, brushing the provocation of her lips, as if to signal, to silence, to alert, her eyes locked in a duel with those who gazed up at her.
    Fabian and Eugene Stanhope had been friends. Eugene often hired Fabian as his partner in polo practice or matches, and they traveled in Eugene’s private plane to various clubs and tournaments around the country and abroad. Together they played against the Central Romana team of Maharaja Jabar Singh, the legendary Indian polo player, at La Romana, the resort in the Dominican Republic. On one flight to La Romana, Eugene introduced Alexandra, a young fashion model, to Fabian. She was an old friend, Eugene said easily, not troubling to conceal what Fabian could recognize at once—that Eugene and Alexandra were lovers. Later during the trip, to dispel gossip and to distract the vigilant eye of his wife, Lucretia, he asked Fabian to pretend that Alexandra was Fabian’s girl. Fabian agreed. From then on, he was frequently Eugene’s guest at Stanhope Estates; Alexandra would usually show up a day or two after his arrival for her trysts with Eugene.
    About a year after Fabian met Alexandra, Eugene again hired him as a practice partner before a tournament and invited him to stay at Stanhope Estates.
    A few weeks before he was to see Eugene, Fabian ran into Alexandra. She was with a French film producer; although only a casual polo acquaintance of Fabian’s, the Frenchman pretended intimacy, expressing a lively pleasure that Fabian and Alexandra, whom he apparently had known for a long time, also knew each other. Alexandra maintained a sullen silence, but the Frenchman revealed freely that he and Alexandra often traveled together, and that, with an eye to her obvious allure, he was planning to build one of his sexually explicit films around her. When with akiss he sent her off to go shopping, Fabian, who had been attracted to Alexandra from the moment of Eugene’s introduction, caught her anxious stare.
    Alone with Fabian, the producer boasted with elaborate detail and relish about his affair with Alexandra. What he said fueled Fabian’s fantasy, replacing old images with new, spurring his initial attraction. Fabian felt he should make a determined effort to know Alexandra.
    He arrived at Stanhope Estates eager to reassure her that she could trust his discretion; he would not betray to either man the critical presence of another in her life.
    Eugene had been called away on a short business trip, leaving orders that a comfortable old house on the grounds should be put at the disposal of Alexandra and Fabian. Alexandra took an upstairs bedroom; Fabian moved into a room on the ground floor. He released his ponies to be groomed and exercised at the Stanhope Stables, then