He could feel her left leg slipping under him, and one cool hand pushing his head away from the breasts, and he could hear her saying, ‘Come on, darling, now, right now.’
For the brief moment that they were apart, he rising to his knees, she bending her long legs and holding them wide apart, he remembered how she always resisted the heat of prolonged foreplay and always led him to enter her the moment that she saw he was ready. For an instant, he determined to change that, to extend the prelude to love, to bring her to a passion matching his own, to make her commitment and animal-want rise to his own, but the instant eluded him and once more he was subject to her will.
Her firm hands were behind his back, her fingers pressing into his flesh, forcing him down toward her, bringing him down between her legs. He came down to his elbows, until his chest felt her nipples, and his hips were enclosed by the inner part of her thighs, and his rigid hardness, guided by her hand again, slowly sank into the folds of the soft, warm, moist wedge - the warmest part of her, the thought came and went, the warmest, warmest. And he was deeper in her now, and almost out, and deeper again, and back and forth and around and around. And he felt her lips on his ear, and her quickening breath, and he wanted her to moan and give, and open wider and shake, but she remained still and unmoving except below, where her buttocks responded to the rhythm of his motions, not wildly, not totally, but nicely and properly as in a dance on a dance floor, that much, that answering motion that was part of a form and no more.
If she couldn’t, then maybe he could, maybe he finally could
bring her passion to his pitch. He thrust harder and faster into her, as if trying to weld them into one, and her pelvis lifted and fell with him, and rotated with him, and no more.
Gradually he began to moderate his movement, and he heard her whispering, ‘Darling, what is it?’
‘I want it to go longer. I want to give you a chance to -‘
She clutched him. ‘No… no… don’t hold back. Come now, come right now.’
And she dug her fingers into his shoulders and closed her thighs more tightly around him and pressed herself against him, and instantly he was restimulated and no longer in control.
He heard her faintly once more. ‘That’s better, darling, better.’ And then, ‘Does it make you happy, darling, are you happy, do you like it?’
And then he heard no more, because he was telling her inside how it was, he was bursting inside her, shuddering, bursting, letting go and suffocating her in his nakedness.
It was over, and he was still inside her, but sanity was returning and soon he would be ready for reality.
He opened his eyes and looked at her. She was unmussed and poised and smiling coolly at him, as if pleased at his pleasure and pleased with herself for what she had done for him. The curl of her mouth told him that she was proud to have been able to serve and yet humble him by still maintaining an attitude above and beyond all this mean coupling, above this necessary act that could be described in books only by using dirty words.
And suddenly the curtain he had put down, tried to put aside earlier, was there once more. Through it he saw her more clearly, more honestly. And what he saw was what she held on to with unwavering self-pride, in a secret recess of her mind: that for her, lovemaking was a thing you did because it was a biological measuring stick of your health and normality, and lovemaking was a thing you offered because in the end it gave you an advantage. They had made love, and behind the invisible curtain she had emerged from the fornication as untouched and unsullied as if she had been a spectator at a sex circus, the bystander, the observer, someone superior to the ridiculous, helpless, uncontrolled, panting male member who required indulgence in this function. As ever, she had survived the filth and the beast to retain on her brow the tiara of civilized decency and ladyship.
And that was not all that Barrett perceived of her secret mind in these fleeting moments. There was not only the moral side of her triumph, but the business side as well. She had invested little in their performance, and yet she had profited so much. There had been no thought of fair trading. It was the way her father did business. You learned where others were weak or susceptible, and you took them over, absorbed them, offering little, only enough to hold them through their need, and then you came out of the partnership as the
one in control and in power. You were, in short, Father’s daughter-And he, he would become Father’s daughter’s necessary mate.
He had never read her secret mind so clearly. But he read it now, with a new insight, because he had read The Seven Minutes, and she had read it, and that had become the litmus paper that showed truth in its real color. Yet, despite this discovery of her, he felt helpless. He became conscious of his exposed flesh and her own, and it was unbeautiful and unromantic this night. He had played stud for royalty. His reward would be a tiny slice of empire. And this reward was the most intriguing and satisfying seduction of all.
‘How was it, Mike?’ she was saying. ‘Did you really enjoy it?
‘You know I did.’
‘I always like it when you love me. Do you love me?’
‘I showed you what I felt, didn’t I? That wasn’t push-ups I was doing.’
‘Really, Mike…. Are you through? My legs are beginning to ache. Do you mind?’
He withdrew from her, and in the moment of disengagement her legs were wide apart and what could be seen was all of her that was soft and warm and honest and natural. Quickly her lowered legs closed the best of her from view, and quickly the blanket was drawn over it and up to her breasts. The best was hidden, stored from sight for another-week, and what was left was the detached genteel head and the smiling glacial outsider’s face.
The lips set in the face of the detached head were moving. “There, you see, Mike, love can be decent and clean. You see that, don’t you?’
He saw that, yes, he did. He saw her in sharpest focus. His memory evoked pictures projected by J J Jadway and Geoffrey Chaucer, and the pictures revealed Faye Osborn, the simple essence of her, plain and unretouched.
Cunt, they showed.
Inside and all over, cunt, no more, no less.
The clarity of the pictures, their precise exposure, frightened him. This was royalty, and his thoughts were seditious. He fell back on his pillow. Banish sedition. Yet Faye’s whore, Cathleen, Jadway’s Cathleen, was there also, appreciating him, and her face was strangely the face of a girl named Maggie. Banish sedi tion, banish it.
And he did. He managed by force to conjure up different pictures, pictures of the safe good years ahead, glimpses of the imposing house in Bel-Air, the staff of servants, the chauffeured Bentley, the private Lear jet, the villa on Cap Ferrat, the celebrities, the social seasons, Faye so stately, so beautiful, so complementary beside him. The lift cauterized of meanness and devoid of commonness. The good life. The best.
What more could a man want ?
He turned his head on the pillow and smiled back at Faye. ‘I love you, darling,’ he said.
The following morning, promptly at ten o’clock, the doorbell rang, and Mike Barrett answered it and ushered Mrs Isabel Vogler into his apartment.
She proved to be a corpulent woman, probably in her middle forties, and on her graying head she wore a Sunday hat braided with limp artificial flowers. Her eyes were creased above two puffs of cheeks, and there was down on her upper lip, and a massive double chin or goiter, but her dark dress was fresh and neat and she moved with remarkable agility for one so obese.
She planted herself in the center of Barrett’s living room, surveyed it briefly, and said, ‘Well, this isn’t much of a job to take care of. Looks no problem to me. Like I said in the ad I put in the paper, I’m a real experienced housekeeper. How many rooms have you got?’
‘Besides this, there’s the bedroom, a bathroom, the kitchenette,’ said Barrett.
‘Can you show me ?’
‘Later,’ said Barrett, gesturing her to a chair.
Mrs Vogler settled down with a
grunt. ‘Don’t mind sitting whenever I can,’ she said. ‘When you’re in my line of work, and on your feet all day, sitting is a real vacation.’
Barrett found a place on the sofa across from her, took his pipe from the ashtray, and held it up. ‘Do you mind?’
‘Not at all. Mr Vogler, rest his soul, was a pipe smoker, but even his awful-smelling corncob was better than those men smoking cigars. You go ahead and smoke your pipe, Mr Barrett, and take no mind of me. It becomes a man, a pipe, even though it’s sure to mean plenty of holes in the furniture.’
Barrett lit his pipe. Through the partially open bedroom door he could see the still unmade bed that Faye had left at two in the morning, after extracting the promise from him that they would dine together tonight. He returned his attention to Isabel Vogler. He was not sure how it was best to proceed with this possible witness whom Maggie Russell had suggested, since he had lured Mrs Vogler to this meeting under false pretenses.
‘Was it difficult to make connections from Van Nuys to West Los Angeles?’ he inquired.
‘No problem at all. I have my own jalopy - didn’t my boy tell you ? Kids, once they got their heads in the television set, they don’t remember anything.’
‘Well, your youngster did very well with my call. Now, about the ad you placed, Mrs Vogler. Can you elaborate upon it a little more?’
‘You mean - ?’
‘I mean can you let me know a little more about what you’re after and about your background ?’
‘Like I told you, I have plenty of experience and I’m dependable, if that’s what you mean,’ said Isabel Vogler. ‘Since Mr Vogler left me widowed and penniless eight years ago, and with a child to rear, I’ve been working more or less steady. As a housekeeper, but I can cook too, if nothing fancy is required. When the child was younger, I took live-in positions and boarded him out, but since my last live-in employment, what with the child growing up, I figured he should at least know he’s got his own home, so I’ve been doing only day work. But that’s not so good, because it’s not regular enough. I want a position where I know I can come in three, four days a week, or, even better, all week, nine to five, and have some income I can depend upon. I’m doing everything I can to save up some money.’
‘You need money, then?’
‘I have a small savings account, but 1 want a bit more to make the future easier. Because maybe next year, or the year after, I want to have enough to go back to my home town where I came from and where I have friends and some relatives and can be better situated for my boy and me. That’s Topeka - Topeka, Kansas -I’m talking about going back to, and if I’m ever going to do it properly I’ll need the money for clothes and transportation and the time it takes getting settled. So that’s what I’m wanting, Mr Barrett, regular employment.’
‘What I have in mind might offer you a fair sum of money for that savings account,’ said Barrett. ‘Tell me, you spoke of your last steady live-in job. When was that?’
‘A year and a half ago, I’d say.’
‘Who was your employer at that time?’
Her face seemed to sink into her double chin or goiter. ‘He was Mr Griffith - Mr Frank Griffith.’
“The name’s familiar,’ said Barrett.
‘He’s pretty well known. He has these advertising agencies, and -‘
‘Yes, of course, it’s that Frank Griffith. How long were you in his employment, Mrs Vogler?’
‘Near on two years.’
‘That speaks well for you. Do you have a reference from him, or do you think he’d give you one?’
Mrs Vogler’s countenance had become a sorrowful pudding. She kneaded one fat hand with the other. ‘No, I’ve got no reference from him and I can’t get one. That’s been my trouble ever since, and that’s what’s so unfair. Whenever I tell my prospective employers that - well, they look at me like I’m a liar, like how can
anyone take a poor domestic’s word over the word of an important man like Mr Griffith. But believe me, swearing on my only child’s head, I’m not lying at all, Mr Barrett.’
‘Lying about what ?’
‘About Mr Griffith being unfair in firing me and refusing to give me a reference or any good word. It’s not fair. Andit’sbeen hard on me ever since.’
Barrett lit his pipe again. He was coming closer now, and nearer the end of his subterfuge. ‘I assure you, Mrs Vogler, your being fired and refused a reference does not prejudice me. However, it does make me curious to know what happened. I’m certainly prepared to hear your side of it.’ He paused. ‘Sa-ay, the name just struck a chord. Frank Griffith. Is that the same one whose son’s been talked about on television and mentioned in all the newspapers?’
Mrs Vogler’s porker features shook like jelly as she confirmed Barrett’s identification. ‘They’re one and the same,’ she said, ‘and the boy, that’s Jerry Griffith. It’s something I’ll nevei understand in a hundred years. Never. Because I know this boy like he’s my own. Or I knew him then, but that wasn’t so long ago, and nothing can tell me human nature changes in a year and a half. He was a good boy, the nicest person in the whole house, more like his mother, although she was a little creepy. It was his old man that was impossible. That’s what never comes out. If people only knew…’
‘Knew what, Mrs Vogler?’
‘Mr Barrett, don’t get no idea I’m the type that goes around gossiping and saying ill things about my former employers, but that Mr Griffith, that man, he was almost the death of me. The way he went lording it around the house, not that he was home all that much, but lording it over his wife when he was there until you like wanted to crawl into the wallpaper, and lording it over his son, and over me, treating me like I was some kind of alley cat or something. But it was the way he squashed down the boy that riled me more than the way he treated me. I kept it stewing up inside myself all the time, remembering my place and not mixing in, but one day I couldn’t stand it no more and I just spoke my piece like any person has to, and you can bet Mr Griffith wasn’t used to that kind of backtalk, and so then he spoke his piece and in an hour I was out of there and gone like I’d never been there so long. And reference, well, how was I supposed to get a reference?’
‘Couldn’t you get one from Mrs Griffith?’
‘She wouldn’t dare. She’s agreeable to whatever her husband does, like it or not.’
Barrett sat silently a moment, puffing on his pipe. What came next would be crucial. He had to cue her properly. ‘Uh, Mrs Vogler, up to this point I’ll be glad to take your word that you may have been unfairly treated. Yet, to be perfectly frank with you, it does come down to Frank Griffith’s public reputation - which is of the
best, absolutely impeccable - against your own complaint against him, which may have no real basis in fact. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m prepared to accept your word against his, but I’m afraid I’ll have to know a trifle more.’ He paused, then resumed with emphasis. ‘Here, on the one hand, we have a famous Olympic hero, a nationally known advertising man, a leading civic figure. On the other hand, we have you with your statement that this man is not all he’s supposed to be. Now, which - ?’
‘He isn’t what he looks to be!’ Mrs Vogler exclaimed, almost overturning her chair as she agitatedly shifted her weight. ‘Mr Barrett, if you want to know what somebody is really like, you should work intimately inside their house for them. That’s where you find out what nobody on the outside ever sees. That Frank Griffith, he isn’t what you might think. He drinks, he drinks a lot at night, and there’s no man nastier than a mean drunk. And his son, mostly Frank Griffith ignores him, but I’ve seen him cuff the boy, too, cuff a grown boy. And I’ve seen him pretty severe with his wife, too, considering she’s a permanently suffering invalid from rheumatoid arthritis, and him rough and mistreating of her, and worse -always humiliating her in the most shameful way. If you want to know the truth, he’s got no relationship with his wife, didn’t have one even before she was sick, because he had some chippy secretary in his office, i
f you know what I mean. I could tell you more, plenty, but you get the idea, and I’m not making these things up, I could prove them to you if I had to.’ She was out of breath, and she sat back, adjusting her floral hat on her head. ‘I’m no gossip, Mr Barrett, but you wanted to know about taking my word against his, so that wound me up. I don’t talk this much ordinarily. But that man cost me plenty, and I have a right to speak up for me. I hope you don’t think I was wrong doing that, and I hope 1 haven’t spoiled my chance for your job?’
Barrett stared at her. She was pure gold. She was what the impoverished defense needed. She was a winner, an underdog a jury could sympathize with. He must take care to handle her right He could not afford to lose her. Yet the truth must come out.
‘The job,’ he said. ‘Mrs Vogler, there is no job I can offer you, in the sense you had expected. But there is something else I can offer you. I can offer you money.’ He stood up. ‘I know. You’re perplexed. You think I’ve gone off my rocker. But I can explain. I can tell you how you can be of help to me, and how I can be of help to you. First off, I’m the attorney defending that so-called dirty book that both Jerry and Frank Griffith blame for Jerry’s trouble. Now, then…’
For five minutes, standing over her, Barrett related to the at first bewildered, then fascinated Mrs Vogler the background of the pending court battle and the means by which the District Attorney hoped to use the Jerry Griffith crime as an indictment of The Seven Minutes. Simplifying the patter of psychiatry and sociology as
much as possible, trying to translate it into Voglerese, Barrett attempted to explain how Jerry’s life in the Griffith household, as well as other outside factors, might have been what influenced Jerry and drove him to an antisocial act rather than any reading he had done. Barrett tried hard, because unless this idea was understood by Mrs Vogler she would have no comprehension of what he was after and the use she could be to him in the trial.
(1969) The Seven Minutes Page 29
