She lived up on West 69th Street, in one of those buildings that looks as though it must have grown like a tree because nobody in the world would be idiotic enough to build a building that way, and I accompanied her all the way up in the elevator and to her apartment door.
Where she said, “Thank you for a lovely evening.” Scarcely original.
“The evening,” I said, also with scant originality, “is a pup.”
“I don’t hear it barking,” she said.
Now, there’s no possible answer to a nonsense line like that. So I didn’t try to answer it. Instead, I wrapped my manly arms around her womanly body, and I kissed her.
She kissed very well. She curved against me as though she wanted to be glued in place, and her fingers played at the back of my neck, and her waist was just the perfect size for my arm.
We broke at last, and she smiled. “Thank you again,” she said, her voice huskier than normal.
“Thank you,” I said gallantly, and reached for her again.
She backed away, bumping into her apartment door. “I have to go to bed now,” she said.
“Of course,” I said.
“Now, Harvey,” she said. “You’ve been a perfect gentleman all evening.”
“Ridiculous,” I exclaimed, stung to the quick. “Who did you think that was in the movie, the little old lady on the other side of you?”
“You know what I mean,” she said, smiling again.
I coughed, not too convincingly. “I’m dying,” I told her, “for a cup of coffee.”
“That isn’t what you’re really after,” she said. She was being coy again.
“Let’s talk about it,” I said, “while I drink the coffee.”
“Well, all right.”
She unlocked her door, and we went in. I drank the coffee—it was instant, and terrible—and then she started talking about me going home again. We were in the kitchen, so I merely backed her up against the refrigerator and kissed her again. She responded just as nicely as she had the last time. I was emboldened, certain that she was simply putting up token resistance, and so I started to waltz. Still kissing her, I waltzed her out of the kitchen and across the living room, headed for the bedroom beyond. But midway across the room she took the lead away from me and veered us away from the bedroom door and toward the sofa. I went along with the gag, figuring that if she wanted to make an intermediate stop it was okay with me, and we tumbled onto the sofa together, our arms still around one another and our lips still pressed firmly one to one.
When we came up for air at last, she murmured, “We shouldn’t, Harv,” and sort of wriggled against me.
“You’re absolutely right,” I told her, and unbuttoned her blouse.
We discussed the situation, amid kisses and caresses and other amusements, for about half an hour, which is to say until we were both nude. And then I suggested that it was time we went on into the bedroom.
“Harv, we shouldn’t,” she said, a line that was getting progressively sillier as we went along.
“At this point,” I told her, “I think we absolutely should. Not only that, I think we must, if you see what I mean.”
She giggled, seeing what I meant.
But she wouldn’t get up from the sofa. And so, at last, I simply got to my feet, gathered her into my arms, and carried her into the bedroom, where I plopped her down on the bed during another, “Harv, we shouldn’t.”
Perhaps we shouldn’t, but we did.
Did you ever see a fan with ribbons tied on the front grill? When the fan is turned on, the ribbons fly straight out, fluttering and jumping around like mad. Change this picture from the horizontal to the vertical, change the ribbons to arms and legs, and you have some idea what I had to contend with, once we decided to do that which we shouldn’t.
Talk about explosions! Another thing those ribbons lack are claws. I was certain that by the time it was all over I was going to be black and blue everywhere except where I was clawed bright red. Very colorful, no doubt, but not too comfortable.
But such mundane thoughts cannot hold one’s attention long under circumstances of that type, nor did they hold me for very long. I simply gave as good as I got, discovered that both of us enjoyed the mutual pummeling no end, and so we hurtled on across the bed to ecstasy.
When it was all over but the heavy breathing, Laura smiled at me and stroked my cheek with soft hands, and lit me a cigarette. I smoked it, contented, and Laura said, “You see? Not true at all.”
“Must be the Chinese,” I said.
After a while, we put our cigarettes out, turned out the light, and prepared ourselves for sleep. Shortly before sleep came, I whispered, “I’ll get my things from the Y tomorrow.”
She murmured, “Mmmmm.” And we went to sleep…
…Only to be awakened by somebody shaking my shoulder, and a gruff male voice said, “Okay, buddy, you’ve slept it off long enough.”
I tried to say, “Go away,” but I think what actually came out was, “Gremmmfff.”
“It’s time to join the conversation, little man,” said the gruff male voice.
I opened my eyes.
That was a mistake. In the first place, I wasn’t twenty-two any more. In the second place, I wasn’t in Laura Gray’s bed anymore, I was in Jodi’s bed. In the third place, I had the kind of hangover that made Grant such a surly general. And in the fourth place, there was a man I’d never seen before leaning over me, waking me up.
I’d never seen him before. Up till that moment, I hadn’t known how lucky I was. Now my luck had changed.
This guy would scare little children. This guy would also scare mothers and Marines and Mau Maus. He looked like a boxer who’d lost a close decision to a meat-grinder.
“Time to join the party, little man,” this apparition told me. A meaty hand descended from on high and love-tapped me on the cheek. I think it loosened teeth.
“I’m awake,” I said.
“Good boy,” said the monster. He backed away, saying, “Now, sit up like a good little man.”
I sat up, like a good little man, to discover that I wasn’t in Jodi’s bed after all, I was on Jodi’s sofa in Jodi’s living room. And I was fully dressed, including my shoes. I had slept with my shoes on and now my feet felt like boiled turnips. All puffy and yellow.
I sat there, blinking miserably, and slowly it came home to me that I was in a woman’s apartment, but I had been awakened by a man.
A husband! No, that was ridiculous, Jodi was a whore. That didn’t mean she couldn’t have a husband, though I didn’t think she did have one, but it did mean that her husband—real or hypothetical—would stay away from her place of work.
A policeman?
Maybe I was being arrested. Maybe it was a vice raid. That was a charming thought.
I peered blearily at the monster again. He might have been a policeman—there are policemen who have that orangutan quality—but he didn’t seem particularly anxious to arrest me.
Then I noticed Jodi, sitting in the armchair across the room. She was still wearing the knit green dress, and still had one leg crossed over the other to reveal all that gleaming thigh, but now she was simply sitting there, her face a careful blank as she smoked a cigarette.
“Jodi,” I said. “What’s going on?”
“I’m about to tell you, little man,” said the monster.
Jodi didn’t look at me, she looked at the monster. “Al,” she said, her voice tired, as though she didn’t expect any answer at all, “why don’t we just leave him alone? Harvey’s a nice guy.”
“Am I going to hurt him?” demanded Al. I would have liked to have known the answer to that one myself.
I said, “I have to go home.”
“Not just yet,” said Al. He pulled over a chair and sat down in front of me. He offered me a cigarette, and when we had both lighted up he said, “Now you’re a married man, am I right?”
“Yes,” I said.
“And Jodi here’s a whore, right?”<
br />
“Yes,” I said.
He pointed the cigarette to the right. “And that thing over on the table there is a camera, right?”
I just stared at it. It had one eye, and that eye was baleful.
“Now, little man,” said Al cheerfully, “I got a proposition for you.”
FOUR
Now I have gone through something very much like thirty-four years of reacting incorrectly. Whenever confronted by the sort of situation in which my response ought to be thoroughly predictable, I cross up the experts and do something wrong. When I was twelve, and cooped up in a coatroom with an apprentice Lolita, a warm-blooded moppet with auburn tresses who kissed me with lips and tongue, with arms tight around me and budding breasts rampant, I was not excited, not shocked, not even taken back. I stepped away from her and asked her, solicitous as a student nurse, what brand of toothpaste she used.
I could cite other examples, but this should suffice. Take heed—I am not boasting. Perhaps there is something wrong with me, perhaps certain cerebral connections have been disconnected within my cranial cavity. I do not know, nor do I particularly care. What I do know, as sure as Luther Burbank made little blue apples, is that I am a perennial source of disappointment to persons who bounce supposed-to-be-shocking bits of news off me.
I disappointed Al.
There I was, disturbingly respectable, thoroughly married and gainfully employed. And there was Jodi, recently ravished. And there was this camera which had purportedly caught us in flagrante delectable. According to all the established rules, I was supposed to fall on my knees and beg, or race to heave the camera through the nearest open or shut window, or simply do a lap-dissolve into saline tears.
Perhaps it was the afterglow of a tumble with Jodi—which had obviously taken place, and which had undoubtedly been enjoyable, and which, damn it to hell and back, I could not recall. Perhaps it was the Vat 69, which left me with no hangover but with a delicious sense of well-being and security. Perhaps it was the elementary fact that the possible loss of my Spiritless Spouse did not terrify me. If a slew of pictures would send Helen flying to Reno, I would shed no tears. I would even supply transportation, in the form of a new broom.
So I did not fall to my knees in the manner of a sorrowful supplicant. Nor did I make a grab for the camera. Nor did I abandon my masculinity and weep.
What I said was: “Has anybody got a cigarette?”
Al didn’t, or didn’t care. Jodi passed me a flip-top box which I glumly recognized as an account of MGSR&S. I took one and set it aflame, sucking in smoke and expelling perfect smoke rings, wispy symbols of what Jodi meant to me. Al waited patiently, the perfect anthropoid. Jodi looked sorrowful.
Then I said: “When you print the roll, send me three copies of each shot.”
I looked at Al while Jodi laughed happily somewhere in the background. I watched animal expressions play across Al’s face. Any moment, I thought, he was going to hit me.
He didn’t. “Look,” he said. “Don’t be a stupid, huh? You know what I can do with those pictures?”
“You can’t sell them to the Daily News,” I said. “They draw the line at cheesecake. You can peddle them to school kids, I suppose, but I hear the competition is keen. When you come right down to it, what in hell can you do with them?”
“Jesus,” he said. “I can show ’em to your wife.”
“She’d blush.”
“Look—”
“She might even cry,” I went on thoughtfully. “Helen cries easily. When she needs a new dress, for example. But she wouldn’t get physically aroused, if that’s what’s on your mind. Nothing gets Helen physically aroused.”
He was nonplussed, or unplussed. Or plussed. “Listen,” he said. “You got a job, huh?”
“Huh,” I said.
“You know what happens when your boss sees these shots?”
“Now that’s a different story,” I said. “Not at all similar to Helen’s case. He wouldn’t blush.”
“Look—”
Look, listen, huh. A spectacular vocabulary. “He wouldn’t cry either. He’s not exactly the tearful type.”
“Listen—”
“Huh,” I concluded. “On the other hand, he would get physically aroused. In marked contrast to Helen, he would get very much aroused. He’d probably spend his lunch hour with Jodi, or someone comparable. Or locked in his private bathroom with the pictures.”
Al looked uncomfortable. Jodi was still laughing, louder and more happily than ever. I seemed to have fallen upon an advantage, though I wasn’t too sure how or why. I stood up, dropped my cigarette onto the rug and squashed it. When you had an advantage, you were supposed to press it. They teach you that on Madison Avenue.
“You said something about a proposition,” I said forcefully. “Let’s hear it.” I almost added My time is valuable, but that phrase just then would have been uncomfortably ludicrous.
“Yeah,” Al said, slowly. “Yeah, a proposition. I don’t know, little man. I think you’re all bluff, you know that?”
I didn’t answer.
“Then again,” he went on, “I don’t know if maybe I don’t have enough chips to call.”
He turned from me to Jodi. “I think this one is a waste of film,” he told her. “He don’t seem to scare. I could shove him around but that won’t do any good. I think we should find somebody else.”
“I told you,” she cooed. “Harvey’s a nice guy.”
“That’s a matter of opinion,” Al said. “I think he just might be a louse. But unless he runs one hell of a bluff, he honestly don’t give a damn.” He raised both arms to heaven. “Now how in hell,” he wanted to know, “can you pressure someone who doesn’t give a damn?”
There was a moment of silence. I looked at Jodi, at green knit dress, at crossed legs, at expanse of thigh. I wished Al would go away.
“The proposition,” I said.
“Forget it, little man. We’ll get somebody else. Go home to your wife.”
I shuddered at the very thought. “Let’s hear the proposition.”
“I told you—”
“Oh, tell him, Al.” Jodi smiled. “Harvey’s a nice guy.”
“Why tell him? What the hell good—”
“I just might go along with it,” I said. “Without the pressure. I’m a real oddball.”
Looking back on this conversation, the inference is inescapable that I could have sounded like the damnedest dolt on earth. The whole episode, complete with whore and photographs, resembled nothing so much as blackmail pitch. The “proposition” could only be a demand for money. And here was I, successfully excavated from the pressure, suggesting that I might go along with the proposition for the hell of it. Just tell me about it, I was saying in effect, I’ll pay through the nose just to be a good sport.
But at the time blackmail did not even enter my mind. Perhaps I had watched too many television crime shows—they filled the time between various commercials that I had to catch. Blackmail was too simple. I expected more complicated plotting. At a grand for a half-hour script, one has a right to expect complicated plotting.
Besides, if Jodi was whoring herself into twelve thou a year, money could hardly be their problem. And Jodi was not the blackmailing type. There was something far too honest in her emotional makeup. She wasn’t that sneaky.
So I took it for granted that they wanted a patsy, not to pay them, but to perform some task for them. I had no idea what such a task might be. And I was tremendously curious. Chalk it up to the monotony of the day-to-day existence. Chalk it up, if you will, to Hellish Helen who was waiting for me, and who would be so not nice to come home to. Chalk it up to the Vat 69, or to Jodi’s creamy thigh. Or to profit and loss.
Al said: “Jodi, I think he’s nuts.”
“He always was,” she said. “A little. But he’s a nice guy.”
“They finish last.”
She looked thoughtful now. I studied her face and her expression was disturbingly familiar. Then i
t came back to me. She had had just such a look in her pretty eyes when, in bed, she was engaged in figuring out a new way to do it.
“Al,” she said, “maybe we ought to tell him.”
“Don’t be a stupid.”
“We should,” she said, positive now. “I’m sure of it.”
“And if he blabs?”
“He won’t, Al. Harvey’s a—”
“—nice guy,” I put in.
“A nice guy,” Jodi said. “Besides, I think he really might go along with it. And he’d be perfect, Al. You know damned well he would be perfect.”
The damned took me aback. Jodi was not the swearing type.
“I know he’s perfect,” Al was saying now. “That’s what I was telling you, and you tried to tell me to leave him out of it. Now I want to leave him out, and he wants in, and you say he’s perfect.” He paused a moment to let that sink in. “I think,” he wound up, “that I’m maybe going nuts.”
“Maybe,” Jodi said. “But just think about it, Al. He’s perfect, just as you said. And if he goes along with it, because he wants to, he’ll be a lot better than if he’s forced into it. When you rape a girl, she doesn’t put her heart into it the way she does when she’s interested in the game. Right?”
He nodded. The image must have been right up his sewer. I wondered how many girls he had raped, and whether they had put their hearts into it. They evidently had not, because this was the argument which convinced him. He resumed nodding his head, so forcefully that I thought for a moment it might part company with his body, which would have been no major loss. Then he stepped over to me (I was still standing, and smoking a second of Jodi’s cigarettes by this time) and jabbed a forceful finger into my chest, as if pushing a doorbell.
“Little man,” he said, “I think maybe you’ve got rocks in your head. But if you want in, you have in. If you don’t want it, you will have to for everything which Jodi tells you, because otherwise you could have a bad accident.”
“Huh.” I said.
“Listen,” he said, to both of us. “Look. I am getting out of here, Jodi. This has been a very bad night for me, Jodi. First I take a roll of pictures, which as it turns out we can use for wall paper, or maybe to start a fire in the furnace. Then you and this bird play some kind of Ring Around The Rosie and I don’t quite get what is coming off. I am going home, Jodi, and I am going to bed.”
Sin Hellcat Page 5
