by Sally Mandel
Her reaction to his physical presence reminded her of those experiments at the Museum of Natural History in which someone would hold on to a source of electricity. As the current passed through his body, his hair would stand on end. Brian was her source, and if he passed anywhere near her, the tiny soft hairs on her skin would rise up in waves, following his path.
To be honest, Sharlie thought, if there were any raping to be done at Loew’s East, she’d probably end up doing it herself.
They walked out of the theater at nine o’clock that evening.
“It’s early,” Brain said, steering her down Third Avenue. “Come on up to my apartment.”
The air was sharp and cold, and he held her tightly against him as they walked. She watched the other night people approach and pass in the street, steam billowing rhythmically from each mouth—dozens of colorful locomotives chugging purposefully along invisible tracks. Little engines that could, she thought, remembering her father’s all-time favorite children’s story. He had read it to her regularly, all admiration for that simpering blue engine with the positive attitude: I think I can, I think I can. Well, they can, all these bustling Third Avenue engine-people with their pink cheeks and healthy turbine bodies. But what about me? Tell me what I’m supposed to do now, Daddy, with this gorgeous young man hauling me up to his apartment to see his etchings or his law journals or his whatever.
I cannot, I cannot, I cannot. I cannot seem to say no.
Brian propelled her into his building, nodding at the doorman, who leered suggestively, Sharlie thought, as they passed through the glass doors. In the elevator Brian pressed the button for 8, and still he didn’t release her. He held her next to him, Siamese twins joined at the hip, and when they walked down the hall toward his apartment, his thigh moved against hers through all the layers of skirts and pants and coats. She glanced up at him. She had already learned enough about his face to detect the mischief there—a slight tension around his mouth, two or three tiny crinkles by the eyes. She thought, he’s enjoying this, the rat fink.
Inside the apartment he snapped on a closet light, its indirect glow soothing after the glaring fluorescence of the hallway. He shrugged off his coat, then unbuttoned hers, slipping it off her shoulders. She felt as though he were undressing her.
Except for a few quick public kisses in the ticket line and some rather imaginative hand holding inside the theater, their physical contact had been negligible and always muffled by heavy winter clothing. Now, with his hands moving down her arms, which were covered only by a thin cashmere cardigan, it was as if he were caressing her skin just beneath its surface. She must have made a sound, because suddenly Brian stopped and took a close look at her.
“Bad idea.”
Sharlie stared up at him, dazed.
“What?”
He put his hands just above her hips, holding her away from him.
“I have no business doing this.”
Sharlie was thinking about how he could easily encircle her waist with his fingers, and she had to fight hard to understand the remark. Finally it occurred to her that he was expressing concern for her health.
“Oh, that,” she said, a little drunkenly. “Hey, Brian, really, I know my own heart.”
Then she giggled, listening to her own words.
“I mean …”
He smiled.
“I’ve got this built-in stethoscope,” she stammered, “and really, so far, so good. It’s my knees. They’ve gone all … insubstantial.”
He led her to the couch, but he sat very still, his hands on his thighs. Sensing the tension in his body, Sharlie put her arms around his neck and held him, her head nestled in the space between his shoulder and his ear. She sighed.
“It’s nice without all the insulation.”
Then she shifted her body, facing him so that more of her met more of him. She felt his shoulder relax, and soon his hands began to move up and down her back, gently, molding her to the hard contours of his body. Her heart clattered noisily, but the voice in her head responded with a defiant I don’t care!
She imagined she was being dropped from a plane into a free fall, and while she speculated momentarily about the parachute, mainly there was the sky rushing past and the conviction that death doesn’t mean a thing in the face of such exhilaration.
She lifted her head so that she could study his face—the strong cheekbones softened by slightly rounded padding. Smile muscles, she thought.
With her finger, she traced the line of his jaw. Except for short stubble at the chin, his face was quite smooth. She touched his mouth, running her finger along his lower lip, a long straight line that lifted slightly at each end, just enough to hint at the humor lurking there.
His hand slipped underneath her sweater, the palm rough and warm against her bare skin. She pressed into him and put her mouth on his. Letting her body guide her, she arched her back, wondering at the simultaneous tensing and relaxing of various pieces of her—breasts stretched tight, pulling, and yet her arms dropped weakly to her sides as if the muscles there had simply melted away. She pulled back from him, put her hand at the top of her sweater and, staring at him with eyes immense and glistening, began to undo the buttons.
When she’d finished, Brian slipped it off her shoulders. Naked, her skin shone in the soft light like pale marble. His fingers were gentle, slowly exploring all the curves and shadows. After a moment Sharlie looked down at his hands as they covered her breasts, and she shook her head.
“What?” he said softly.
“I thought I must be glowing in the dark,” she whispered.
He pulled her against him, and she heard him murmur, “You are.”
Sharlie insisted that he send her home in a cab rather than deliver her in person. She wasn’t ready for the convergence of Brian and her parents. As she let herself in the front door, she wondered if she would ever feel prepared for that particular moment of reckoning.
Maybe if she stalled long enough, Walter would disappear or something. She couldn’t bring herself to wish him dead, and anyway, if anybody were going to die, it would be Sharlie. They’d all have to meet sooner or later, she supposed, but for God’s sake, let it be later. Especially not tonight, when the outline of Brian’s hands was surely gleaming from her breasts as if traced in Day-Glo paint. Through her sweater, through her coat, two phosphorescent imprints as clear as the cement hands on the sidewalk in front of that Chinese theater in Hollywood: Brian Morgan Was Here.
She called out a noncommittal hello and rushed past the doorway of the living room, where she knew Walter and Margaret were waiting with set, silent faces for an account of this important night.
Once inside her room with the door shut, she took a long look at herself in the mirror, smiling at the rosy reflection she saw there, grinning at the smile, laughing at the grin. Finally she sobered up enough to realize how exhausted she was, and she undressed, taking her time, examining her body in the mirror as if she hadn’t seen it before.
Always she had glared at her image resentfully, regarding her body as the traitor, the villain of the piece. Now she tried to view herself as Brian evidently did.
She heard the sounds of her parents preparing for bed and sighed thankfully. How much simpler to keep Brian stashed away someplace where they couldn’t get at him and mar the perfection of their hours together, clomping brutally across their tenderness, two sets of heel marks, little sharp ones and flat heavy ones, treading to the merciless rhythm of common sense and reality.
She looked forward to lying in bed in the dark, remembering tonight, relishing it all as if it were some precious treasure to hold cupped in her hands, to turn over and over and examine from all sides.
She pulled her favorite long white nightgown over her head and took one more appraising look in the mirror. Anemic, she thought, but her dark hair mingled softly with the creamy frills at her neck, and her eyes were filled with light. She crawled into bed, and before she�
��d replayed the memory of herself walking out of the theater with Brian onto Third Avenue, she was asleep.
It must have been about four o’clock in the morning. She awoke startled, the cold pain gripping her hard across the chest. The sweat-soaked nightgown weighed heavily on her legs, and her pillow was clammy under her head. She reached for the brass bell on her night table and rang it sharply. With the movement, something through the center of her arm twisted as if it were being wrung by giant hands.
As she fell back to wait for Margaret to bring the medication, she thought that it had to happen this way. Hubris. That’s what tonight was, and here came Agony Jones to tell her how he felt about her presumptuous expedition into the forbidden territory called love. She could almost hear him intoning, with words like thunder, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me!”
Okay, okay, Sharlie answered silently, I get the point. And lying there contorted with pain she raised a white fist to that deep resonant voice and thought, Agony Jones, you bastard, who the hell do you think you are—Charlton Heston?
Chapter 9
The phones jangled steadily, but Brian was deaf to them. In fact, sometimes in the night the absence of their ringing woke him from a restless sleep. Now, however, it was his intercom, buzzing at him like a gigantic enraged mosquito.
Oh, Jesus, not Mrs. Salvello, he thought with dismay as he heard the gravelly voice on the other end of the receiver. She’d brought the firm an age discrimination suit, an action Barbara believed would one day prove historic. In the meantime Brian endured regular doses of Mrs. Salvello’s admiration.
“But, Mister Morgan, you know all those judges personally. You can get the date moved up, can’t you? I mean, my nerves, I just can’t take much more of this. And my daughter’s mixed up with this man. She’s only sixteen, and he’s a junkie or a pimp, you should excuse me. Just this weekend she looked me straight in the eye, and you won’t believe this, Mister Morgan, I mean, I’ve been a good mother, and I believe in discipline, I always have, it’s not as if I spoiled her or let her get away with anything when she was a kid, I mean, Mr. Salvello didn’t mind giving her a good strapping when she deserved it.…”
Normally Brian could put his attention on hold and go on working through the verbal deluge. Eventually the client would run down and, in a voice choked with gratitude, thank him for his understanding and wisdom, which had consisted of a few well-placed hmm’s and oh really’s. Meanwhile, he would have proofread a brief, signed his correspondence, and skimmed the law journal. Mrs. Salvello paid one hundred dollars an hour to talk about her daughter’s sexual digressions and then reported to all her friends what a brilliant attorney she’d hired.
Today, however, her percussive narrative pounded away inside Brian’s head like thousands of tiny hammers. He longed for an hour of peace to think about Sharlie, and imagined himself saying, Hey, Mrs. Salvello, you think you got problems? There’s this beautiful girl who’s very sick and will probably never hit twenty-seven and you sit there babbling about your daughter, who’s most likely brain-damaged because dear old Mr. Salvello bashed her head in when she was a kid for showing her little bottom to Anthony down the block.
“Mrs. Salvello?”
The voice at the other end ran on for a few more phrases just out of momentum, then came to a halt in midsentence.
“… and you’re such a … What?” she said, baffled.
“I’ve got to be in court in a few minutes. Could you call back another time? Unless there’s something urgent …”
“Well, I guess there’s nothing urgent, I mean, I know you lawyers are very busy, and I’m sorry I bothered you about my daughter. I mean, someday when you’re a parent … you don’t have any kids, I can tell that. Well, you give me a call when you have some news for me, and I’ll just wait. I’m a very patient person. Mr. Salvello always said … well, I guess you don’t want to hear about it, with your appointments and all.…”
Finally she came to an abrupt halt and hung up. Brian stared at the phone in remorse. Poor lonely woman.
Half an hour later Barbara Kaye appeared at his door. Brian had been staring out the window, and he wondered how long she’d been watching him. He noted uneasily that she was wearing her “invincible suit,” the navy-blue three-piece thing.
“I’ve just had a call from Salmonella.”
Barbara’s habit of distorting their clients’ names had always disturbed Brian. He believed it encouraged an attitude of contempt toward the people they were supposed to be helping, but today he let it pass. His lack of response was not lost on Barbara. She leaned against his desk, her arms folded around an assortment of papers and files.
“What’s all this bullshit about talking to me because she thinks a woman could understand her half-wit daughter? I thought you were going to keep her off my back.”
“Sorry,” Brian said vaguely.
Barbara watched his face, waiting for him to look up at her. He did, finally, and she continued with quiet urgency.
“I want this case. She needs to have her hand held and she’s getting billed for it. You’re the one who told me she’s a pathetic old lady with nobody to talk to.”
“I’ll call her later,” Brian said with obvious lack of enthusiasm.
Barbara stood tall and handsome, head set in the no-compromise position so familiar to Brian and to the judges presiding at district court. She kept unsmiling eyes riveted on Brian’s face until finally he threw his hands up in a gesture of concession. She shook her head, and he prepared himself for the full treatment.
“I do not read the usual level of human compassion in your face lately, and that scares me.”
Brian smiled dubiously at her, thinking. Nothing scares you, dear Barbara.
“No, somebody around here has to bleed for our guys,” she said. “I count on you for that. What the hell is going on?”
She waited, but Brian remained silent.
“You expending all your sympathy on this new girl?”
His eyes narrowed, and she shook her head.
“I can’t lay off, Morgan. You bring it in here, and it’s not private anymore.”
He sighed at the rising heat in her voice and waited for the rest.
“You leave early every day and come trailing into court unprepared, and for all the work you accomplish when you do haul your ass in here, she might as well be standing over there in the corner doing a striptease.”
She leaned over to tap his forehead with a long bright-red fingernail.
Brian said quietly, “You’re right, Barbara. I’m sorry, okay?”
“What happened to the tennis freak?” Brian kept his face blank. “Susan. The one with the good legs.”
“Nothing.”
Barbara stared at him. “Nothing happened, or nothing’s going on there?”
Brian only raised his eyebrows at her to let her know he’d heard the question and chose not to answer.
“You made a nice-looking couple.”
“Do I ask you about your love life?” Brian snapped.
“No!” Barbara burst out, with a bitter laugh. She averted her eyes, staring out the window at the bright sky. Brian watched her pupils contract into tiny black specks. He was astonished to see that she was hurt. There had been harsher words between them over courtroom procedure and client relations, battles in which they attacked each other’s basic competence and judgment. What had he said this time except a fairly restrained “butt out”?
He was about to make a bewildered apology when she turned to him and said quietly, “Her father’s a real shit.” Brian looked nonplussed, and she smiled. “Listen, I heard her name. I met Walter Converse at the McKaye examination before trial.” Still Brian gazed at her in silence. “Don’t you want to know the details?”
“Mildly,” he said, and her smile widened at the curiosity in his face.
“Converse sits on the board at Hollins Communications.”
“Wasn’t McKaye
the executive they canned for a juvenile offense?” Brian asked.
Barbara nodded. “He ripped off a baseball mitt from the five-and-dime when he was fourteen. The other kids made it out the door, but Bill got caught.”
“You got him a quarter of a million, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, but he had a tough time finding another job. Hollins wanted him out, and I think it was Converse who dredged the whole thing up. He made these impassioned speeches about ethics and morality, and what amazed me was he really believed his own bullshit. It was like a crusade, for God’s sake. Christ, I’d hate to be his kid.” She hesitated. “How sick is she, anyway?”
“Very.”
Barbara watched him carefully for another moment.
“You know something, Morgan? You’re a soft touch for the suffering multitudes. That’s one of the reasons I hired you, and also because you’re also a shrewd lawyer and you can turn your compassion into logic. But you want to hear my theory?”
“Not particularly,” he said, knowing she’d tell him anyway.
“Walter Converse’s daughter is sick and helpless, and you absolutely cannot resist her. You’re going to protect her and make her all better, except that if you did, I guarantee you that a bouncing, healthy Miss Converse would have nowhere near the same appeal.”
Out of line, Brian thought. This was not his taste in ties she was complaining about. He felt none of the usual combative stimulation of his arguments with her, the productive contests of will that left them exhausted and smiling and proud of each other, no matter who won the point. He looked at her flushed face and tried to remember his gratitude.
“You’re wrong,” he said, carefully controlling his voice.
“I don’t think so.”
“In any case, you can keep your theories to yourself.” He heard his voice quaver.
“That would be nice, I agree,” she said. She slid off the corner of the desk and began to inspect her armful of files, leafing through the papers silently, methodically, giving him ample time to absorb her displeasure.
