by Edwin West
He turned back to her, bewildered and astonished. “Angie, what are you talking about?”
It was out now--the idea was out in the open, and there was nothing for her to do but on go with it. She hurried over to him, clutching his arms, and stared pleadingly into his eyes. “We could do it, Paul!” she begged. “We could take Uncle James’ money, sell him the furniture and move away from Thornbridge.”
“What?” He actually bellowed the word, pulling away from her, backing and staring at her as though he couldn’t really believe what she was saying to him.
She followed him, her arms out to him, her eyes pleading for his understanding and agreement. “We could do it, Paul,” she assured him anxiously. “We could go away to some other city. We could call ourselves man and wife. Nobody would ever know, because we have the same last name. And then we wouldn’t always have Uncle James after us, and Bob, and we wouldn’t have to hide our love from anybody. We could tell them we were married instead of being brother and sister. It would be so much better.”
His hand carne around sharply in a semicircle, open, and the palm of it struck stingingly against her face. She stepped back involuntarily, eyes wide with shock.
He advanced on her. “Don’t ever say that,” he told her, his voice low and vicious. “Don’t ever say that again as long as you live. This is my home, don’t you understand that? You, of all people! Don’t even you understand what this house means to me?”
“I’m sorry,” she said numbly. Her hand moved, as though by its own volition, to her stinging cheek where he had slapped her. “I’m sorry, Paul,” she said. “I didn’t mean it. I was just upset. Don’t be angry with me, Paul. Don’t stop loving me, please--”
His face softened abruptly, became at once contrite and concerned. “Angie, I--oh, Angie, he made me so damned mad. I couldn’t even think straight there for a minute. I--God, Angie, I’m sorry I slapped you. I didn’t even think. I didn’t mean to do it.” He scooped her up into his arms and held her tight, rocking her slightly, cradling her in his arms. “I’m sorry, Angie,” he murmured.
“Oh, Paul,” she breathed, clinging to him. “Oh, Paul, I was so afraid. So afraid I’d lost you. You looked so angry at me. I thought I’d lost you for good when I said that.”
“Chicken, chicken, honey, don’t be afraid. I’m sorry. I’ll never do that again. I swear to God I’ll never raise my hand to you again.”
Gradually she calmed sufficiently to move away from him and looked at him with frightened, somber eyes. “It isn’t going to last, is it, Paul?” she asked.
“Of course, it is,” he assured her. “Angie, I’m not going to let that happen to me again. I’m--”
“Because it’s wrong,” she said flatly, following her own thought rather than what he was saying. “No matter how right it seems, no matter how much we love each other and how perfect we are together, it’s still wrong. And we can’t get away from that.”
“It isn’t wrong,” he told her.
“It is, Paul. Oh, it is. We have to hide all the time. We have to be ashamed all the time--”
He had taken a step toward her, arms out to her, but now he stopped and let his arms fall limp to his sides. “If you want--” he started. His voice was fiat and dull. He shook his head and started again, saying, “Do you want to stop? Do you want me to clear out of here? I could get an apartment.”
“No!” She felt sudden terror at the idea and ran to him, throwing her arms around him, clinging close to him.
“Angie,” he said gently, “if you--”
“Hush,” she whispered. “Don’t say anything at all.”
For if the sudden feeling of guilt, of wrongness, was strong and depressing, it was nothing against the empty terror she felt at the prospect of being without him. Anything was better than to lose him, anything at all.
She clung desperately to him. “Hold me,” she whispered. “Just hold me tight. Never let me go.”
“I’ll never let you go, chicken,” he promised fervently.
TEN
Danny McCann said, “Paul, my boy, I am going to go find me a girl. You really ought to come along. You’ve been home a good long while and you ain’t a monk as far as I know. Every boy needs a girl once in a while or he’s liable to forget what they’re for. So, come on along, boy. Tonight is the night.”
Paul looked up from his beer and studied Danny’s round, happy face for a minute. His own face was sullen and morose. Finally, he nodded and said, “What the hell. What the hell, Danny.”
“If that means you’re coming,” Danny told him, “get a wiggle on. The night progresseth.”
“Yeah,” said Paul. “We’ll take my car.”
“lt’s your gas,” Danny commented bluntly. “I’m all for it.”
They went out to the ‘51 Chevy Paul had bought three days before and Paul asked, “Where to? I’ve been out of touch.”
“I’d noticed,” Danny told him. “We’ll try Ricard’s. That’s usually pretty hot.”
“Okay.”
Paul gave one fleeting thought to Angie, waiting for him at home, and then he forced the thought from his mind. The hell with her.
In the last week and a half, since the night Uncle James had last been there, the strain and tension in the house had grown steadily. Paul couldn’t get it out of his mind that Angie had wanted them to leave the house. What made it worse, he could understand her position and could sympathize with her feelings.
But it didn’t make any difference. Angie was important to him, he had to admit, but nothing in the world was as important to him as home. Not even Angie.
Nor could he really feel easy about the relationship that had sprung up so unexpectedly between himself and Angie. After that first time, he hadn’t known what to do. At first, he’d assumed that it had been all his fault, that he had simply overwhelmed her, and that she would eventually have second thoughts about it and turn away from him in honor and revulsion. But gradually he had come to understand that she really did feel as strongly toward him as he did toward her, and that whatever guilt there was she shared equally with him.
How strange it was. He had tried to find his mate in Ingrid, tried to find the woman who could share his life and his interests, who could blend with him and be part of him. And it hadn’t been Ingrid, it could never be Ingrid. It had been Angie all along.
If it could only stay as simple and straightforward as it had been in the beginning. But it couldn’t and he knew it. Angie was getting more and more upset about the secrecy they had to maintain, more and more depressed, and her mood was infectious. They were snapping at each other more and more now, arguing and bickering, and it had come to a head this evening over some silly thing. It had started over a dirty coffee cup he’d left in the sink--and he’d finally just stalked out, climbed into his ear and driven over to Joe King’s Happi-Tyme Tavern to find Danny.
And there he had stayed, getting more and more depressed, and more and more angry at Angie for not allowing things to remain simple and clear-cut, and for forcing him to understand her position. When, at last, Danny made the suggestion about looking for girls, he had agreed more to get even with Angie for the position she’d put him in than for any other reason.
The funny thing was, he didn’t really expect this search to be successful. Most of the time, he knew, Danny and the other guys just drifted around, without too much success. Once in a while they scored, but the odds were against it.
And the funniest thing was, this time they beat the odds.
Her name was Barbara Grant and her boothmate’s name was Laurie Sanderson. Danny latched onto Laurie right away and it was fairly obvious that the two of them had met this way before. Which left Barbara Grant for Paul.
She smiled at him, a tall and slender black-haired girl of his own age, dressed in muted dark colors, wearing eye make-up a bit too heavy and a bit too dark. “Hi, Paul,” she said. “Long time no see.”
“Long time no see,” he agreed. They had gone through hig
h school together, in the same graduating class but not in the same home room, so that he knew her only vaguely.
“I hear you were in the Air Force,” she said, making conversation. He allowed as how he had been in the Air Force. He wasn’t prepared to talk much, but she was an adroit listener, drawing him out gently. Soon he was telling her all sorts of anecdotes about his time in Germany, and the four of them sat at the booth in the back of Ricard’s, in animated conversation, while Angie and all the problems she stood for faded in Paul’s mind, and he found himself taking an interest in Barbara Grant, after all.
What made it nicer yet, Barbara Grant had quite obviously also taken an interest in him.
They spent an hour and four dollars at Ricard’s, and then Danny said, “Hey, did Paul tell you? He just bought himself a car. A fifty-one Chevy. What do you think of that?”
Both girls said they thought it was just great,
“Listen,” said Danny, as though the idea had just occurred to him. “Let’s all go for a ride in Paul’s new car, What do you say?”
The girls thought that was great, too.
In the car, Paul felt as though he were seventeen again. He’d played this scene more than once in his last year in high school, and the year after that, before he’d gone into the Air Force. From now on, it was practically automatic.
They drove around at random first, but gradually, in their seemingly directionless traveling, they eased closer and closer to Flattop, the minor mountain north of the city, where everybody used the parking lot at the lookout point for a lovers’ lane.
Finally, the conversation in the front seat became desultory--in the back seat it had stopped altogether. Barbara Grant cuddled close against Paul and his arm went around her. He stopped his aimless driving and headed directly for Flattop.
It was a Saturday night so the parking lot was already scattered with darkened cars. Paul found a semi-isolated spot far back from the edge of the lookout, near the woods, and switched off the engine and the lights, Barbara’s face turned up to his, pale and dim in the darkness, and he bent forward to kiss her.
From the back seat, Danny murmured a hasty, “See you later,” and the back door on his side opened and then closed again. Paul glanced out the window and saw Danny and Laurie moving off into the trees, and he could make out the blanket draped over Danny’s arm.
He turned his head back to Barbara again, waiting in his arms to be kissed once more, and whispered, “Maybe we ought to switch to the back seat. No steering wheel.”
She nodded. “All right.”
They made the switch, each getting out on their own side, and coming together at once in the back seat. Barbara’s arms slipped around him, her lips clung hungrily to his, and he knew at once that she was going to be easy. There wouldn’t have to be any make-believe love talk or anything with Barbara Grant. She was hungry for sex.
Once they were together in the back seat, neither of them spoke another word. He kissed her, he caressed her, he went through all the motions of the preliminary love play, and she didn’t even put up a token resistance. Her breathing was loud and ragged in the closed car. She moaned when he squeezed her breast and kissed their taut nipples or stroked the inside of her thighs, and she wriggled out of her clothing at the least suggestion from his hands.
She had an exciting build, full-breasted and lean-flanked with generously proportioned hips and her hot naked flesh responded instantly and avidly to the searching touch of his lips and hands.
The seat was too narrow for them to stretch out comfortably. His legs were all jumbled up on the floor, and hers were bent, the knees jutting up into the air, and in the darkness she was a pale and pallid shape, knees high, arms reaching up for him, face anonymous and blank. Their breathing was rapid and heavy now.
He hesitated, looking down at her. She was like an animal, a grunting rooting animal there before him, squeezed into quarters too tight and too cramped for the animal movements she wanted to make. He hesitated, wondering what he was doing here, wondering why he had come out here when Angie was waiting for him at home. Then Barbara reached up and pulled him down to her. They became animals together.
She was good. There was no question of that. She was very good and obviously had had lots of practice. Even in the cramped quarters of the back seat, she was good. She moved like a gourd in a samba band, the rhythms of her surging hips as rapid and complex as that of any jazz drummer. She drew him on and held him back, drew him on and held him back, until at last his own stolid rhythm held sway and for one long taut second the car was absolutely silent, even their breathing stopped by the mystique of the moment, and then sound came back to the car in the mingling of two long grateful sighs.
She was good. Oh, yes, she was good. From one point of view, she was much better than Angie. Angie, until recently, had been a virgin. Angie didn’t know those tricks with hands and lips and tongue--didn’t know those complex rhythms. Barbara knew a heck of a lot more than Angie, she’d had a lot more experience, so from that point of view she was much better than Angie.
She was good. A lot of experience had gone into that body, to make her good. She was so good she reminded him of Ingrid.
***
He got home at two in the morning, three-quarters drunk and carrying a bottle of blended whiskey three-quarters empty. He was in a foul mood. The sight of Angie in his bed, sitting up with a book in her lap, waiting for him--and looking so Goddamn beautiful! --only served to make his mood worse.
He had the irrational feeling that Angie would know, that she would be able to smell the other woman on him or something. He knew it wasn’t true, that the only thing she’d be able to smell on him would be booze, and that from across the room. Still he felt guilty and he had the feeling that he looked guilty. He was just drunk enough and mad enough and guilty enough to blame Angie for making him feel guilty.
He glowered at her and grumbled, “What the hell are you doing up so late? Don’t you know what time it is?”
“I was waiting up for you,” she said simply.
“What the hell for? What the hell are you looking at me that way for?”
“Paul--”
“Don’t get out of bed! Don’t take care of me, for Christ’s sake. I can take care of myself.”
He slammed the bottle down on the night table, stripped off his clothes and crawled into bed beside her, immediately rolling over on his side, away from her. He couldn’t look at her. She was so damn beautiful and sweet and innocent. And he was a rotten son-of-a-bitch, stinking of the pig pen, stinking of the pig he’d just pronged on Flattop.
“Turn off the goddamn light,” he growled, and shut his eyes.
She obediently switched out the light, and a moment later he felt her press herself against him, her arm coming around his waist, and she murmured, “Paul? Won’t you kiss me good night, Paul?”
It was too much, it was too damn much, and he yanked away from her, leaping out of the bed, crying out, “What the hell’s the matter with you? You’re my sister, for God’s sake! What’s the matter with you?”
The silence after that was so shocked, so ringing, so heavy with his guilt, that without another word he fumbled the bottle into his hand and fled the room. He went across the hall to her room, without turning on any lights, and collapsed on the bed.
He could hear his own words still ringing in the silence, felt the tingling of guilty horror. He tilted the bottle to his mouth, not taking it away until he was sucking air from it. Then he rolled over in the ringing, stunned silence and fell asleep.
ELEVEN
Angie didn’t wake up till noon on Sunday, the next day, which was only right since she hadn’t managed to get to sleep much before dawn.
