Contrary Pleasure Page 8

  And about herself, “Me? Gosh, I don’t know. I guess I was always sort of shy and funny. I couldn’t walk down the road without thinking people were looking at me and talking about how skinny my legs were. And it was awful forcing myself to leave the kitchen and go out on the floor and wait on strangers when I was old enough. I liked it best to go off in the woods alone. I love the woods. Then I was always pretending. You know, making up kid games. I was a princess and a wicked witch had changed all my subjects into birds and animals. When you stand still for a long time, they stop being afraid and come out. Red squirrels, porcupines, and beavers working. The best was finding a fawn once. All flattened out and hardly breathing. They don’t have any scent when they’re little. I hid where I could see. After a long time the doe came and got him out of there and pushed him along. He wobbled on his legs.”

  She talked and then she yawned and so they left, dressing in the darkness, going yawning to the car. They went back once, but it was not a good place even if it was the first place. They talked and they decided they both wanted a place where they could be safe and alone together. She solved that for them. She found a ground-floor apartment in the back of one of the old houses on Fremont Street. The apartment had its own private entrance. They came nearest to a quarrel when he insisted on being permitted to pay at least the increase in her rent. And she was shy about accepting presents—the little radio, the silver bracelet, the perfume which was lighter in body than what she had been using, and thus was better for her.…

  Now he drove swiftly to the city, eager to see her again, trying to forget all the implications of this intrigue, trying to think only of her and of tonight. It was odd how she was the one who thought up the little devices which protected their deceit. He had paid to have her telephone installed. The desk man at the club had been appropriately bribed. Should anyone phone him at the club, the desk man would say he would have Mr. Delevan call back. And he would phone Bonny’s unlisted number and give Quinn the message, and Quinn would phone from there.

  And it had been Bonny who insisted on his parking behind the gas station a full block away, and taking the short cut through the alley to her private entrance.

  The gas station floodlights were off, just the night light shining inside. He parked and walked down Grant Street to the alley, and through the alley to the scrubby lawn, and across the lawn to her narrow walk, to her private door. He tapped on the door and she opened it, smiling, and he closed it behind him and took her in his arms. Then he held her off at arm’s length.

  “New blouse?”

  “It’s the white one. I dyed it.”

  Now it was a pale blue. It brought out the subtle golden tints in her skin, and it was good with her hair. Now that the warm weather had come, she had started taking the sun outside her door, behind a low concrete wall that kept the wind from her. The sun streaked her hair, making it pale at the temples. It was coarse hair, alive, and he had seen it crackle blue in darkness when she drew a comb through it. There were little folds of flesh at the outside corners of her eyes that gave them the illusion of slanting down. Unplucked brows were a furry brown. Her cheekbones had a massive look, too heavy for the fragile jaw.

  “It’s a good color for you, Bonny.”

  One lamp was on in the room. It had a black metal shade. They sat on the day bed and he held her hand, content to be there with her, feeling safe and warmed in this place, as though a door closed gently in his mind, shutting out everything else. The hooded light slanted across her hand as he held it. He turned her hand over, examining it carefully. Though when her hands were in motion, they gave an impression of grace and fragility, at rest they had a thickness about them, a short-fingered thickness. Those hands were as surprising to him as her feet. Her feet were short and broad, a bit puffy across the instep. The rest of her had a patrician elegance that contradicted the peasant cast of hands and feet. The skin of her body was so fine-grained as to be almost textureless. Her bones were small and straight. With his fingertip he traced the faint blue lines of the vulnerable side of her wrist, then kissed the palm of her hand.

  This was overture, and they made love together with all the symbols and rituals that had become dear and necessary and familiar to them. Afterward, there on the studio couch he lay on his back and she was beside him, propped up on one elbow, talking down at him, and he saw how the lamplight made good shadows and highlights on the long elegance of her body, on the princess figure, that figure that was as controlled as a line drawing. He ceased to hear what she was saying and, reaching out a hand, he touched the highlighted line that swept from her armpit to the slender waist, creased by her position, then up and over the ivory hip and down to the warm socket of the back of her knee.

  She moved back a bit from him and stopped talking and he knew it was because he was looking at her. She did not enjoy his look. She suffered it because she knew he liked to look at her. It had taken a long time to overcome her modesty to this extent. He knew it made her uncomfortable. And the fact of her discomfort increased his pleasure in looking at her merely because it was such a strange contrast with Bess who, from the very first, had padded about with all the naked and sexless poise of a men’s shower room.

  Moreover this girl could sense his mood and adjust quickly to it. Bess crashed blindly through his moods like a movie he had once seen of an elephant eating its way through a cane field, munching in heavy pleasure as the feet came down on the green shoots.

  Behind Bess were the schools and the money, the cotillions, the student cruises, the country clubs. Theoretically she had been groomed carefully and expensively for life and marriage. But it seemed that somewhere the pattern had become so complicated that a certain primary function had been lost—the function of pleasing a man. Somehow men, to Bess and her set, had become Dagwoods, the Boys, poor dear helpless creatures to be harassed and chivvied into a weak form of conformity with what they—the Wives—considered the proper pattern for living. Bonny however seemed to have an instinctive awareness of her function. It gave her a timelessness denied the legions of women named Bess. She could have functioned in this special and dear way in any era, never patronizing or condescending.

  “What are you thinking about, Quinn?” she asked.

  “Us. As usual.”

  “Is it good? As usual?”

  He pulled her hard against him and said, against her hair, “What are you getting out of this, Bonny?”

  “Everything, probably.”

  “Why don’t you quit the job?”

  “And do what? Just hang around here all day. Gee, I’d go crazy.”

  “But what do you want of me?”

  She pulled her head away and gave him a surprised look. “Just for you to come here. Isn’t that all right?”

  “And when I can’t come?”

  She snuggled close again, sighed. “Well, then I just wait until you can. That’s all.”

  He felt a stubbornness that was like anger. He knew he should let it alone. Leave it at that. Be grateful it was like that and relax and be warmed by her. But he was being driven along by a stubborn search for complications, a need to make things difficult.

  “It doesn’t make sense. God knows it doesn’t. I’m thirty-six. You’re twenty. You’re only a little older than David. There’s not a damn thing in this for you.”

  “Let me decide that. Right now is enough.”

  “Is it? Is it, Bonny? Maybe I want to think ahead. Maybe this isn’t enough for me.”

  Her fingertips found his lips. Her head was buried against his shoulder again. “Hush, Quinn. Hush.”

  “I was never alive before. I was frozen—sterile. Now I feel alive. It’s in the way I look at everything. Everything has more form and color. The people and the streets and the places. I never looked at them before. And I keep asking, what the hell does she see in me?”

  She lifted herself up again, a small frown appearing, self-consciousness forgotten. “Well, you know I’ve thought about that, sort of. At first I
just liked the way you look. Sort of tired and confident, like in the ads. Then you talked that night and I found out you were sick inside. And needed warming. Needed me. Like I could be a stove where you could get warm. I wanted to help. Like when I was a kid. Forever finding sick birds and things and putting them in boxes with cotton and on the back of the stove to be warm. I guess I just wanted to give. And that is what I like. To give to you so that you’re well now, on the inside. And you see I love you now, too. So that’s what I see in you. And don’t start asking and asking about why I love you, because there aren’t any whys for that. You just do.”

  “And you actually, honestly don’t want any more than … just what we have.”

  “Oh, more would be nice, I suppose. It would be nice to be together all the time. But we can’t, so we can be happy with what we can have.”

  “I could divorce her.”

  “No!”

  “Why such a violent reaction? Why not?”

  “I just don’t want to talk about it. Just no.” And she got up quickly and walked away from him, out of the cone of light, the long legs, the milky flex of hips, carrying herself in a constrained way because she walked naked in front of him. Then she was in the far shadows, a long, pale blur in the darkness of the room.

  He said, carefully, wishing he could stop his own mouth, “Maybe you get so violent about it because you don’t want to be tied down that definitely with a man nearly twice your age.”

  And she used a voice she had not used before. A voice with toughness in it. “Why don’t you leave it alone? You’re getting what you want, aren’t you? It isn’t costing you anything. Just leave it alone.”

  “Don’t talk like that, Bonny. I don’t like the way it sounds, you talking that way.”

  And her voice was tired. “It’s late. I think you better go.”

  As he dressed he thought of what she had said and how she had said it. And he could not deny the little surge of relief within him when she had so flatly discarded any idea of divorce and remarriage. This life was now very comfortably arranged. With her each day had a new and special flavor. If she loved him and if she was satisfied with the relationship, then no one was hurt. He told himself that it was a decent impulse that made him bring it up. Fairness to her. Yet he knew that he had brought it up only because he had known her response beforehand, and tonight had felt a nagging need to hurt her—just a little. Had she accepted the idea, he knew there was no need for panic. He could keep inventing delays indefinitely. Sometimes he felt a little sick when he thought of what she could have been. There had been no way of knowing. And he might have placed himself in the hands of a greedy little tramp. So it was luck.

  As he laced his shoes he had a sudden odd feeling of loss. He had hurt her tonight. And would hurt her again. Each time it would be a bit easier. And each time would rub off some of the magic. He wondered why he had this compulsive desire to create tension between them. It seemed, in one sense, to be a stepchild of the exaggerations of bathos he had employed on that first night, on that first blind drive. Perhaps it was only because she was something he could use and, in using her, avoid the usual consequences of such use, and so wished to relegate her to the single function of the body, destroying all emotional overtones. The taker and the giver. A relationship with its inevitable shadings of cruelty, born of contempt, of domination.

  He was dressed and she turned more lights on. She wore a dark blue flannel robe with a full skirt effect under the wide white belt. Her eyes looked tired.

  “I’m sorry, Quinn. But we’ll keep on having trouble like this if we try to plan anything.”

  “But you see, darling, it makes me feel guilty. That’s why I strike out at you. You’re getting so little. You’re so right for a kind of life where you’d have a home, kids, security.”

  “I’ll worry about what I ought to have. I don’t want you to think about that.”

  He put his hand on her slim shoulders. In her slippers without heels she seemed very tiny, looking gravely up at him. He kissed her. “Okay, Bonny.”

  She smiled. “When will I see you again?”

  “It isn’t good. My kid brother is coming this weekend with his bride. As far as I can tell, it might not be until next Wednesday. But if there’s a chance to make it sooner, I’ll walk by you and give you the sign.”

  “I’ll be here, darling,” she said, close to him, her face against his chest, the top of her head under his chin. He stroked her straight back, wanting her again, enjoying the strong feeling of wanting her again.

  “I hate to leave,” he whispered.

  She pushed at him. “Go home now, Quinn. Go on. It’s late.”

  He looked back at her just before he closed the door. She stood watching him, almost without expression, her face the ancient face of woman, timeless and passive. He closed the door quietly. All the stars were high and far away. The night was cooler. He walked slowly to his car, pausing and searching the night sky when he heard the distant whispering rip of a night jet. But he could not find it against the stars. Her satisfaction had been complete and evident this night. He walked more quickly, squaring his shoulders, taking longer strides, thumping one fist against his thigh in rhythm with his walk.

  There was no reason why it couldn’t go on for years. Not if they were careful, discreet. She shouldn’t start to fade even a little for at least six or seven years. Perhaps longer than that, because her bones were so good. A nice safe arrangement. Sometimes Bess could be talked into taking a trip down to New York by herself. Shopping. Maybe go with a girl friend. Then he could move right in with Bonny. Buy some things and keep them there. Liquor, razor, pajamas. She could take time off from the job. Say she was sick. Like a honeymoon. Stay right there with her. She could cook.

  There certainly was no point in worrying about the rightness or wrongness of it. She was there, like a dollar bill on the sidewalk. If he hadn’t seen it, somebody else would have. Some dull clown. This way it was better for her. And she said it was enough for her. So it was enough for both of them.

  He drove home through the night feeling good, tapping on the edge of the steering wheel in time to the late jazz on the car radio. He felt big and whole and wonderful.

  And the sickening depression came without warning, came climbing up out of his belly, moving black across his mind. No reason for it. None. He stamped the gas pedal. The trees began to swing toward the car and then jump past him. The motor settled into a high note of strain and he leaned forward trying to see beyond the reach of the headlights.

  He did not see the car come up behind him. He heard the siren over his own motor sound and glanced in the rear-vision mirror and saw the red spot on top of the car. He slowed down, feeling sweaty and shaky. He pulled over onto the shoulder still moving fast enough so that his car bounced and swerved before he halted it. The police sedan pulled diagonally in ahead of him, the siren dying into a low growling and silence. They both got out quickly and the nearest one had his revolver drawn and ready.

  “Out!” the cop said. “Move!” Quinn got out. “Turn around and put your hands flat against the car.” He did so, feeling like a fool. Quick hard hands slapped him, took his wallet. One of them carried the wallet out in front of his car, looked at it in the headlight brightness.

  “You Mr. Delevan?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “You can turn around, sir. You got treated this way on account of when we come up behind you and clocked you at ninety-three, you started to pull away. That’s a silly thing to do, Mr. Delevan.”

  “I didn’t see you at all.”

  “That’s a hell of a big red spot we turned on.”

  “I’m sorry, I just didn’t see it.”

  “I hope you won’t get sore about us handling you this way, Mr. Delevan. You were in one hell of a hurry. What’s the idea?”

  “I was late. The road was empty. I wasn’t thinking.”

  The two policemen stood there uncomfortably, facing him. The powerful motor of their cruiser
made a bubbling sound. A truck went by, pulling wind behind it.

  “I’m glad to see you’re so much on the ball,” Quinn said.

  “Keep it down below sixty, Mr. Delevan. Good night, sir.” They hurried to the cruiser, banged the doors shut, and left. Quinn got slowly into the car. Exhilaration was gone. Depression was gone. He merely felt tired. He put the car in the garage, pulled the door down. The studio lights were off. Bess had left a light on for him. He drank a glass of milk, turned out the lights and went to the bedroom. She was asleep. She made a soft whistling sound with each inhalation. He undressed without awakening her and got into his bed. Farm dogs were barking on faraway hills. A diesel hooted in the valley. He turned on his side. The nervous sweat of his encounter with the police had given his body an acid smell. Take a shower in the morning. Take the car in and leave it at the garage. Ask Bess when the brown dacron was due back from the cleaners. Buy blades. And get a dozen Medalists in town. They don’t carry them at the pro shop. Got to work on that slice. Lucky break hitting that tree on the eighth and bounding back onto the fairway. That’s a funny sound she makes when it’s right for her. Sort of a whimper. He rolled onto the other side. If she’d stop that damn whistling, it would be easier to get to sleep.

  Chapter Four

  When the porter pushed the button that sounded the buzzer inside Roomette 8 of Car 801 on the advance section of the Commodore Vanderbilt, eastbound, at ten minutes of eight on a Thursday morning in June, forty minutes outside of Stockton, New York, the occupant of the roomette, Thomas Marin Griffin, awoke immediately and was immediately aware of his precise location in time and space. He answered the porter at once, pinched the shade latch, and slid it up. The fields were June-green, gently rolling, sprawling ripe in the morning sun.