Eve had begun to giggle hysterically, one hand up to her mouth.
"Why didn't you finish saying it, David? Why would I resist? Oh, but that's funny! But I did try to fight them, you know, and mostly because of you, because I thought I was your girl, I thought you—but you really believe deep down that I'm some kind of a tramp, don't you? You think I'm easy, that I'd do it with just anyone— as you would. And you know what? I should have given in—maybe they wouldn't have kept on hurting me, then. Don't you see how funny it is? He offered me money the first time we met; he said I could name my price. And just a little while ago, he said he was going to send me a check. Does that make me a whore, David? You'd like to think of me that way, wouldn't you? It'd salve your conscience, I guess. Wait—you still don't believe, do you? I'll show you what they did to me. Take a good look, David darling. It might even turn you on. Look here—look at me, damn you!"
She began tearing at the buttons of her coat, clawing them loose so that they popped free and rolled all over the room. Then she tore the coat off herself and he saw the bruises that covered her body—that once-beautiful body he knew too damned well. He stared, horrified— and fascinated in spite of himself.
"Dear God, what—but Eve—it couldn't have happened. It doesn't make sense, dammit, that Newcomb should have raped you and then invited everyone else at the party to join in. No, it's crazy!"
"But it happened. It did! It did!" She laughed again, foolishly. "Look at your face; you should see yourself watching me. Do you like what you see? Would you like to fuck me, too? One more wouldn't make much difference, would it, and right now I'm too beat to fight."
Her laughter turned suddenly into sobs, and she slid to the floor unexpectedly, crouching, hiding away from his eyes behind the hanging curtain of her hair—kneeling there in a caricatured attitude of grief and penitance.
Something in the way she knelt there sobbing got through to him, and he took a step toward her.
"Eve, I'm just trying to make sense of all this. Quite apart from Francie, and whatever you say happened to her, why did you let Newcomb bring you back here after what he'd done?"
"Stop talking like a lawyer, damn you, David! Don't you understand? I was afraid! Don't you see that? He's a—a very frightening man, so cold, so completely evil— what else could I do?"
"He kissed you goodnight, and you let him. Don't bother to deny it, because I saw through the window, dammit! I was watching, waiting for you.. . ."
"I couldn't stop him, David. He's so damned strong, and I'm so tired. And I came in here looking for refuge, looking for something from you, and you judge me instead. You don't want to believe me, do you? You used me, and now that I've failed, you'd like an excuse to be rid of me. Because deep down you really think I'm cheap —you always did think that. I was good enough to screw but not good enough to marry."
"And that's all you ever wanted, wasn't it? Marriage, a guy to show off to your friends, a meal ticket—"
"That's not fair; that wasn't it at all, and you know it! You always twist my words around and try to make them into something else; you'd like to keep me crawling to you, apologizing, explaining—"
"Goddammit, I deserve some rational explanation, don't you think? You went to this party to find Francie, and you come back at five in the morning with some wild tale about being gang-raped—how can I tell what to believe? I know all about the other men you've had, "the new morality," you called it—what's okay for a man should be okay for a woman, too, and what's wrong with an occasional screw on the side, anyhow? Then, suddenly, I'm supposed to believe that you've changed your viewpoint, that you tried to fight off God knows how many guys just because you're my girl. Well, how do you account for continuing to see Peter while you were still supposed to be my girl? Christ, Eve—" "Shut up, shut up! I can't listen to any more. I can't— I don't want to believe this is you, and this is how you really think about me and that in spite of it I let you use ine. And because I did, you think I'd let all those people use me, too—it wasn't all guys, there were women, too, and oh, I can see your face change again! You really think I'm shit, don't you? And I am—God, yes, I'm shit and even less than that, I'm nothing because that's what you made me into and I let you—"
"You're not even coherent any longer, Eve. Perhaps I'd better leave now and talk to you again tomorrow, later—"
"Oh, no, you won't, David. There'll be no later, no tomorrow. I never want to talk to you or listen to you again. Get out, just get out quickly, will you please?" "You're hysterical, you don't know—" "Oh, yes, I do know! At last, David, at last I know where I really stand with you, and I should have seen it a long time ago, only I— Goddam you, get out! Get out of here, or I'll start to scream and I won't be able to stop!"
She looked up at him with her face ravaged and contorted and suddenly ugly now, with a big purple bruise showing darkly against her cheekbone.
She saw the way he hesitated, and read the irresolution in his eyes, and she hated him for it and for his pettiness and weakness, and most of all she hated her own weakness for him. He didn't really believe she meant it this time; he was still waiting for her to take the words back, crawl to him for understanding. The finality of it, the futility of her pleading for his sympathy and pity hit her like a sudden blow, and she started to whimper with pain and grief.
"You—you self-righteous bastard! What are you waiting for? What am I supposed to do? Would you like me to grovel at your feet, David? To tell you I did what I didn't do?'
There was a note of rising hysteria in her voice that both frightened and unnerved him, and he moved swiftly, grabbing his overcoat from off the couch, skirting her huddled figure.
At the door he turned.
"I'm sorry I asked you to go to the damned party, and I'm sorry if you feel I've let you down, Eve. Perhaps tomorrow—"
"Get out, damn you!" She screamed it at him, and he left quickly, the door slamming behind him.
And after David—silence. Only her own tearing sobs that threatened to rip her chest apart. She lay flat on the floor, fists pounding at die rug while she cried and cried until she was drained of emotion. After some time, she managed to pull herself onto her feet, shaking and sick with reaction.
Nothing mattered now in the face of David's rejection. Nothing that had happened to her counted against David's betrayal. She had disgusted him, and disgusted herself even more. God, he had even managed to forget his own sister in his need to accuse her and show how little he thought of her. If he had been any kind of a man, it would have been Brant Newcomb he'd have gone after, no matter what the consequences.
Eve closed her eyes and opened them again with a shudder, seeing once more the blank eyes and obscene, grinning faces as they had looked down at her body earlier. And David's face just a little while ago—so closed against her.
She walked slowly into the bathroom, catching a glimpse of herself in the full-length mirror as she passed it.
It was like seeing someone else—just a vacant face, a body that had been stripped of its humanity along with the clothes they'd torn off her.
She stepped under the shower and let the water soak her. Even her hair, her eyes, were drenched and streaming. Automatically she reached for the shampoo and began to wash her hair carefully. Thank God for reflex action. It was better to be all reflexes than to feel— to do everything like a robot, without a mind, without thoughts that could pursue and tear at her like furies. And she even thought casually that it would be easy to die this way, but far too much trouble right now.
I'm too tired; it's too late. Too late to undo anything or do it over again. I should have a tape recorder, so I could talk myself into sleep. Peter, you should be here now; here I am, a guinea pig.
Toweling herself dry, Eve watched herself in the mirror, seeing her body emerge mistily as the steam began to edge backward. The bruises looked as if they had been painted on, clumsily and carelessly—finger-paints! It was weird to be able to look at your own body this way and to feel as if y
ou didn't belong to it. She wanted to laugh, but laughter would not come. There were not even sobs left in her now—nothing!
Eve dropped the towel and walked into her bedroom, lay back on the bed. Without any real curiosity, she wondered what would happen now. Suddenly, the tiredness welled up in her, enveloping her like a shroud. She closed her eyes and let it take her without a struggle.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE TELEPHONE WENT OFF in her ear, ringing insistently, forcing Eve up out of a deep and frightening dream. She thought it was the alarm on her clock at first; she reached out for it with an arm that felt like lead, knocking it over. The ringing went on, and suddenly habit made her think, "David?" She felt the familiar, the unwanted quickening of excitement making her catch her breath.
Still half-asleep, Eve cradled the green trimline against her face, lying on her side.
A voice said warmly and softly in her ear, "How are you, Eve baby? Did you have a nice sleep and get all rested? Because I have some new friends coming in from out of town—you haven't met them yet, but they think they'd like to meet you. Why don't I pick you up around eight? And this time you won't play hard to get, will you, sweetheart?"
She was cold—suddenly so icy cold that she felt the telephone had frozen to her ear. She swallowed, but her throat was dry and no words emerged.
"Eve? You wouldn't try to hang up on old Jer, would you, sweetheart? Listen, I've just been telling Brant that I know you're really a very sensible girl; and you photograph so well, too. I just feel bad that you didn't have any fun last night—tonight will be different, I promise. And there'll be quite a bit of money in it for you if you cooperate."
She found her voice at last, but there was no emotion left in it. It was cold, like the rest of her—cold and dead-sounding.
"Is your friend Brant listening on the extension? I hope he is, because I want him to hear this, too. You see, I don't give a damn what you two do with those pictures, and I'm sure Brant can find better uses for his money. Buy yourselves some other girls to play your sick games with. And just remember, blackmail is a felony and so is rape—I'm sure your damn pictures will show I wasn't willing. Don't bother calling again, will you? I'm late for an appointment with my attorney."
She put the telephone down, holding it away from her as if it could sting, and found that she was shaking so hard she had to he there for a while, pressing her hands against her forehead as if to push her thoughts inside—keep them from tumbling out to overwhelm her.
Last night—God, it was already late afternoon! She had actually slept, managing to blank out horror and shock from her mind, maybe because she'd thought that nothing worse could happen to her than had already happened. But this was worse. Had they been testing her? Or did Brant Newcomb really think she'd be willing to play the whore for him and his friends? And there had been David, thinking her one. Not believing her. If it had been David who had called...
The telephone began to ring spitefully again, and with a mindless, vicious motion, Eve yanked the cord out of the wall jack. Let them all go whistle up the wind. David, too; she couldn't care any longer; even if there was a hurt place where love had been before, he'd taken that from her, too. Right now the only feeling left in her was a cold, deadly hate for Brant Newcomb. She wanted to get him, to show the world what he was, he and his friends with the famous names—sick, perverted animals, all of them! The hell with the pictures, she'd— she'd do a news story, an expose. He couldn't stop her. And if it was too hot for television coverage, she'd sell the story to the Record.
"Eve baby, you can't do it. You'd have to be crazy to try, because all you'd end up doing would be to destroy yourself, don't you see drat?"
Marti had been horrified, sympathetic, full of fury. But Marti was also pragmatic, pointing out to Eve just how impossible it would be to try to "get" Brant Newcomb.
"But you don't understand!" Eve said wildly. "If—if everyone he hurts or brings down the way he did me says the same thing—don't you see? It's like women who don't report rape because they're scared of the scandal. So some bastard gets away with it, to try again. Marti, I can't let him get away with it! He hurt you, remember? And there was Francie—what he did with Francie, who isn't even eighteen yet—"
"Think David will like his kid sister's name plastered all over the newspapers? Or yours, and his connection with you? Christ, Eve, nobody knows better than I what a bastard Brant Newcomb is—I warned you about him, remember? And if you tried to get your story heard out in the open, he'd find a way to stop you. It would be the word of everyone else there, against yours. He'd accuse you of trying to blackmail him. Shit—I don't mean to scare you, Eve, but he might do even worse than that; and no, I'm not being melodramatic, either. Brant possesses neither scruples or conscience—haven't you found that out for yourself?"
"But—"
Marti's voice softened; she put her hand on Eve's shaking shoulder.
"Look, honey, I know what you're feeling. Think I didn't feel the same way? And I'll tell you what—I feel madder at that prick David for sending you there than I—"
They both heard the buzzer at the door and stiffened.
"I'll get it," Marti said brusquely. "You just sit there and think over what I've been saying, will you?"
Eve got up and fixed herself a drink while Marti went to the door. She couldn't stop her hands from shaking, and she poured Scotch all over the top of the bar. Marti was wrong, she knew. And then, not daring to look around, she thought sickly, Not David, please! I couldn't face him again, not so soon....
It wasn't David, though. It was a messenger, a young man in a brown uniform.
"Personal, for a Miss Eve Mason."
Marti's voice: "Just a minute."
She came back to Eve, holding a long white envelope. Thick paper. Linen finish. Not stopping to think, Eve tore it open. A check fluttered out onto the rug. There was a note with it, and she read it disbelievingly while Marti was saying, "If you'll sign for it, I can— Eve?"
Sorry you couldn't make it this evening. The check is to take care of last night. Maybe another time?
There was no signature on the note, but she recognized the name on the check.
"Wait," Eve said, and from somewhere inside herself, hate and fury hardened her voice. She tore the note and the check, over and over, until the paper shredded in her hands, and then handed the untidy scraps to the gaping man.
"Give him this—the man who sent you. And there's no message."
A dramatic, satisfying gesture, but where would it get her? Where would anything she had planned to do and still wanted to do get her in the end? Even Marti wouldn't understand. Marti kept arguing with her, pointing out consequences with ruthless logic. And giving her advice she didn't want to hear.
"Go back to work. Tell them you were in an automobile accident and banged up your face. Why don't you call your shrink friend and ask him to prescribe a tranquilizer for you? Eve, you've got to try to put what happened out of your mind."
Eve felt as if her head were bursting. Hate and frustration joggled against despair while she kept saying doggedly, "But I must—don't you see that I must do something?' until Marti used the last, unanswerable argument.
"All right. You want to do something about it? Call David. He's an attorney, isn't he? And God knows he owes you some free advice, after all he—well, call him! See what he has to say."
Eve looked up at Marti, standing over her, and began to cry helplessly, hopelessly.
"Oh, God," she said, hearing the defeat in her own voice. "Oh, God! What am I going to do?"
But in the end it was all decided for her. Her future, and her chance to break with the past.
Just a week later, Eve found herself on a plane bound for New York, her mind still reeling. Even when they were halfway across the continent, she kept staring sightlessly at the same page she'd turned to in Mainliner magazine, listening to piped-in music through her headset while she tried to reconstruct how it had happened. The sheer, pure lu
ck of it—the chance she had dreamed about and waited for without quite realizing it. She hadn't really had time to think too much during the past few hectic days, spent in packing and last-minute arrangements. Perhaps because she hadn't wanted to think.
Now—God, if she could only relax! Be calm, remember Peter's last bit of free advice, handed out when he'd seen her off at the airport.
"You're a lucky girl, Eve. Just try to look forward from now on, luv. And—you'll put me on your show, won't you, when I get that book of mine published?"
Marti had helped her pack, but she'd had to fly down to LA "to talk to a man about a movie, darling." Did that mean that Marti was finally over Stella?
Stella, who'd been responsible for her first meeting David— Forget David! He was a part of the past, too. She'd left her telephone unplugged all of last week, and he hadn't come over. So that was that. She was better off remembering that other telephone call to the studio, which had everyone wildly excited for her. But at first, when Ernest Meckel had called her into his office, she'd wondered sickly if he'd heard something, if he were going to fire her.
"Sit down, babe." His face had been red with suppressed excitement. "You'll need to be sitting down when you hear what I just heard."
She'd almost fainted. It couldn't be true. It was a cruel joke, a hoax.
But Ernie was saying, "I have the official letter right here, signed by the president, no less. You know that since Babs Barrie left the 'Going On' show they've been looking around for a replacement, huh? Someone they'll groom to be the next Barbara Walters? Well, sweetheart, someone caught our show and thought you'd do just great! Of course we'll be damn sorry to lose you, but—"
A telephone call from one of the vice-presidents of the network had confirmed it, though. They wanted her for "Going On This Morning," and they wanted her right away. Could she leave within the week?
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