The Last Chance

by Rona Jaffe

  She rose slowly, feeling such relief at being alive that it made her dizzy. Then she was angry. She felt violated, she wanted to kill them. Why wasn’t there anybody around to protect decent, innocent people on the streets? She ran to her building and leaned on the super’s bell, beginning to sob.

  “Who is it?” his tinny voice came from the speaker.

  “Nikki Gellhorn. I was mugged and they took my keys.”

  He came right out to let her in, and when he saw the state she was in he insisted on accompanying her into her apartment, until she sent him away, insisting she was all right.

  “Have a drink,” the super said. “A drink. It’s good, you’ll feel better.”

  “Okay, thank you. Goodbye.” She locked the door and threw the heavy metal bar, knowing the boys had her address and her keys and could come back any time except for that bolt, which suddenly looked fragile. She forced herself to pour a shot of vodka, spilling most of it, and gulped it down like medicine. Then she called the locksmith. First things first. She felt as if she and the locksmith had become old friends. He said he would bring new cylinders for both locks and three sets of keys, one for her, one for the super, and one for the cleaning woman. Oh, no, he remembered, she needed four, didn’t she? Four? Oh—Robert. No, Nikki told him, three sets were fine.

  The vodka, or perhaps the locksmith, had calmed her somewhat. She poured herself another shot and drank it more slowly. Robert … Would he have been angered, horrified, or pleased if he knew of her encounter tonight? Would he have said “I told you so”? Of course he would. He would have told her that none of it would have happened if she had stayed with him in the country where she belonged. What about all the housewives who got raped and murdered in their own houses in the country while their husbands were at work? He would never think of that.

  She called the police, just in case someone found her wallet and credit cards after the boys had taken her money. God, those credit cards! She’d had all of them with her. She went through her dresser drawer until she found the list of credit-card numbers she’d kept in case something happened. The department stores, of course, were closed. The credit-card companies had numbers to call, but one was busy and the other didn’t answer. Nikki decided to leave them all for the morning. She wouldn’t go to the office until she had everything done. She felt filthy and defiled and wanted to take a shower, but she had to wait for the locksmith. She inspected her leg. Nothing lethal. What was she going to do about the presents? They’d have to be replaced, of course, and she’d never get her money back. To have a mugger charge things on a stolen charge card was one thing, but if he took your merchandise after you’d charged it yourself, tough luck. She sighed. Why had she bought that Gucci attache case?

  Tomorrow was the lunch with Rachel, Margot, and Ellen. She’d have to replace their presents on the way to the lunch. Where could she go, with no money and no charge cards? She thought. Her driver’s license, which she never used any more, was tucked into her dresser drawer with her checkbook and other important documents. She could use it for identification and go to Tiffany’s. Chic, expensive places were so much more trusting than ordinary stores. Besides, she didn’t plan to go into hock, just buy them each something nice in silver as a memento of their friendship. That was what Christmas should be for anyway.

  She kicked off her shoes and telephoned Rachel. No answer. It wasn’t very late, so maybe she was still out somewhere. Nikki dialed Ellen. She was out too? The whole family was out. Maybe they were at the stores. Margot was probably home. She dialed Margot’s number. No answer. Was everybody in the world out tonight? Nikki felt very alone and deserted. She wanted to call her daughters, hoping Robert wouldn’t answer, but she restrained herself. They’d only get upset, and there was nothing they could do. She knew she couldn’t pretend everything was all right and she’d just called to say hello; they knew her voice and its intonations too well for that.

  Who in the world could she call? She had dozens of casual friends, but it didn’t seem right to call them to tell them what had happened, not because they wouldn’t care, but because telling an acquaintance made it seem as if it were an anecdote instead of a personal trauma. She knew herself, and she knew she would try to pretend it was less upsetting than it had been. Was it possible, Nikki wondered, to become strong without giving up something on the way? She had come so far, but there was so much more to learn.

  She turned on the television, imagining for one irrational moment that the lead story on the news would be her mugging. Then she laughed. She was alive! Her watch and rings and earrings might or might not turn up in some pawnshop, but who cared? She was alive! Her shoulder ached where she had fallen and her leg was scraped, but none of that was fatal. Her anger and hate and resentment and helplessness were not going to prove fatal either. She was alive. And life was the only gift she really wanted.

  At this moment the life force in Rachel had never been stronger. Even now, as she let Hank drag her to the bed, she was thinking, terrified but trying to figure out what to do. Her thoughts rushed toward Lawrence and his love for her, the preciousness of her body, but she forced herself to put her mind on a simple course of self-preservation. If she thought of what she had become because of Lawrence—a woman who was loved beyond all others by a man she adored in turn—she knew she would break down and cry. Crying would not help her. She looked at Hank’s wild, almost hypnotized eyes and wondered why she had never noticed before that he was crazy. Probably because she had never really noticed him at all. Everyone thought of him as that jerk Ellen had married. She wondered if he had always known it and if that had in part been what had driven him mad.

  Who did he want her to be now, Ellen or Rachel? Not Ellen, for Hank was afraid of Ellen. Yet when he threatened to punish her, it was Ellen he hated, not Rachel, for she had never done anything to make him angry. Or had she? Had she done something without knowing it? Had his distorted mind imagined she had? She knew he intended to rape her, it was quite clear. She also considered the possibility he might kill her. He could easily kill her accidentally with those big hands of his, it would take only a small shifting of his mood. She tried to be as passive as she could and not break into hysterics, which she felt would anger him.

  “Please, Hank,” she said, “don’t hurt me.” Her soft voice sounded like a gasp. “I’ve always been your friend. Please let go.”

  From the small changes in the pressure he was exerting on her throat she knew he was trying to read her mind and was reacting to what he thought he saw there, but she didn’t know what he really wanted, and she suspected he didn’t either. Sex, he had to want sex. It was what they all wanted, really. All those years before she met Lawrence, all those men who dated her and lied to her and wanted only to jump on her—in the end it was all they had ever wanted, to get her into their beds, to use her—and she had let them, because she was beautiful and dumb in the sixties, and that was what people did. It had ensured her survival then, she had thought, to be an acquiescent doll, a body. She had blocked it out and made it meaningless when they took her to their beds, so they could have what they insisted on and expected.

  “No, Hank,” Rachel said. “I don’t want to. Don’t do this. I don’t want to.”

  “Shut up,” he said. “You’re mine. You owe me.”

  “Why?”

  “Your fault. Everything. Your fault.”

  Now, suddenly, something in Rachel snapped and she was back in the past. Let him fuck her if he wanted to. Then he wouldn’t hurt her any more and he would go away.

  “All right,” she said. Her voice was emotionless. “Do it.”

  He wondered what was going wrong. All the time he had imagined this scene it had been so perfectly choreographed, so exactly conforming to his lusts and desires that it had driven him into a sexual frenzy. But now he was here, and she was in his hands, and it was not going right at all. At first it had been perfect. Her terror, the way he had ripped off her clothes, all had been perfect. He pushed her nak
ed body down now on the huge bed in her bedroom, and she lay there, looking at him calmly, as if he wasn’t there at all. Her legs were slightly parted, as if she was waiting for him. But she was not excited, she was just … there. Not the frightened, begging goddess of his fevered fantasies but just a limp and very beautiful woman who didn’t care what he did to her. She seemed almost to be inviting him.

  Inviting him? No, it was not him she invited. She had turned into a vessel, available to anyone, untouched, uninterested. She might as well be dead the way she lay there, and yet she moved one hand slightly, automatically, as if to caress him. He shrank away from her touch.

  “Be Rachel,” he commanded, but his voice came out like a moan of entreaty, not a firm command. “Be Rachel …”

  She lay there, her soft lips curved in a half smile that was both invitation and introspection. She wasn’t Rachel. She was just … anybody. He had never been so disappointed in his life. He tore off his clothes, knowing she wasn’t going anywhere if he let go of her, trying to reawaken his fantasy, but it did no good. Hank hunched over her, four-legged like a beast, and saw his erection dwindle away to nothing. She didn’t even seem to notice. If she had noticed, if she had laughed at him, he would have killed her on the spot. But she just lay there as if they had all the time in the world, and he knew then that there would never be a time for them.

  He heard noises coming out of his throat, animal noises, and he threw himself on the bed beside her, curled up like a fetus, his back turned to her, his hands covering his face, his knees drawn up to his hated groin, and he wept.

  Rachel turned her head and saw Hank huddled on her bed crying. “You don’t love me,” he kept gasping, “you don’t love me.” She could hardly make it out. She raised herself on one elbow and looked at him. He was completely oblivious of her. Her hand, almost of its own volition, reached out to stroke his tormented head, and then she drew back. She got up and put on her robe again.

  She knew she could call the doorman or the police, but she also knew with certainty that she was safe, and so she sat down on the edge of the bed, as far away from him as possible, and watched him, waiting for him to calm down. His great, white naked body was pathetic, a beached whale. She was suddenly overwhelmed with an exhaustion so draining that she nearly fell. It was over. All she wanted was for him to dress and go home so she could sleep.

  But he wouldn’t stop crying for a long time, and then he wouldn’t stop talking. He finally pulled on his undershorts and his shirt, but he wouldn’t go. He kept repeating the same things: that he had always felt unloved, inferior, that no one wanted him, no one respected him, he was a failure, he had nothing to live for. She wished he would go. Part of her felt slightly compassionate in spite of what he had done to her, because she had never seen a human being suffering such an abject and obviously painful loss of dignity. It was as if she was his mother and he a child who had come home from school to tell her he had been made the outcast: he couldn’t seem to tear himself away from her presence, as if she was the only warm, comforting thing left.

  He stayed there until morning. At last, when the light showed under the shades and it was eight o’clock, she persuaded him to go.

  “You must go now, Hank,” she said softly. “Your family will be worried to death.”

  He finished dressing quickly. The long night was over, and he seemed quite ordinary again. He was sane, at least for a while. Rachel walked with him to her front door and opened it. “Good night,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. She wondered if he was schizophrenic.

  “Good night,” she said, and he went away. She locked and bolted the door.

  She went into the kitchen and put on the kettle. He had even known that the maid had taken these few days off and she would be all alone, without Lawrence. He had known everything. She realized that the creepy feeling she’d had all these months had been because he was watching her. And the white roses …

  She shivered. She wanted most of all to call Lawrence, to tell him what had happened, but she knew it would upset and frustrate him, because he was trapped out of town with meetings all day. He would be back tomorrow. If she tried to reassure him on the phone that she was all right, that Hank hadn’t hurt her, Lawrence wouldn’t believe it. He would rush back, and she didn’t want to put him through that. She would tell him face to face so he could see she was unhurt.

  She thought of calling Ellen to warn her that Hank desperately needed a psychiatrist, but she was too tired to face it. Besides, maybe Hank was home already. She took her tea into the bedroom, pulled off the bedspread he had lain on, and threw it on the floor. She could never use it again. She would get another one later. Right now she just wanted to sleep.

  Maybe she wouldn’t go to the lunch. How could she possibly face Ellen today? Sleep first, and think later. Rachel was tired of always being the thoughtful one who remembered things one should do.

  At eleven thirty in the morning Margot woke up. She knew it was morning because she saw the wan light coming through the slats of her shutters. But morning of which day? She was supposed to be dead. She felt so groggy that she wasn’t even depressed, just disappointed. Why hadn’t the pills worked? What was she, some kind of superwoman, doomed to live forever? But her lassitude was comfortable, as if she’d been given an enormous dose of some kind of tranquilizer. It occurred to her that she was supposed to be at a lunch with Ellen and Rachel and Nikki, and she wondered if it was today or long past. She was too tired even to call. She couldn’t make it today anyway. She rolled over on her side. She felt so comfortable … cheated, but the pain had become less. She had tried to die, and she had lived. Live to die another day. She didn’t want to think about that. This feeling of being so drugged and comfortably sleepy that the pain was somewhere far away was like a blessing. She drifted off into a soft sleep, woke, and slept again. For the first time in her life she felt important, and she didn’t know why.

  The city was awake and going about its business. Workers were at their jobs, traffic clogged the streets, Christmas shoppers pushed their way through the stores, children freed from school for their holiday vacation rushed or loafed, the planned day and the unplanned already set in motion. At eleven thirty in the morning, just about the time Margot had awakened, Rachel woke up too, her conscience like an alarm clock. If she didn’t go to the lunch at least she should call one of them. But they would all be disappointed. And now she wasn’t tired at all. She had enough nervous energy to keep her going for hours. She kept wondering how she could tell Ellen. She would just have to brave it through the lunch for the sake of all of them, and then get Ellen aside afterward for a drink and tell her privately what had happened with Hank. She had to tell her. The man was dangerously disturbed.

  Poor Ellen. Ellen always treated Hank so abominably, she might even have been responsible for Hank’s breakdown. But Hank had picked Ellen, hadn’t he? Yet Rachel suspected the textbooks she studied weren’t always right. Ellen and Hank had been embryos when they got married, how could either of them imagine then how it would turn out?

  Rachel took a hot shower. She felt much better. In a way she was even looking forward to the lunch. She couldn’t stay home and brood, and it might be fun. She had been extravagant and gotten her three friends each a turtleneck cashmere sweater from Halston: beige for Nikki’s blondness, taupe for Ellen’s tawniness, and dark gray for Margot’s very white skin and dark hair. They would all be delighted. She was glad she had gotten the same present for each of them. She wanted the three of them to feel equally cherished. It had seemed a good idea at the time, and now it seemed even better. Ellen would have a bad shock soon enough. What a rotten thing to have happen just around Christmas.

  She hurried to dress and put on her makeup. Twelve thirty was early for a lunch and she didn’t want to be late. Rachel hated to keep people waiting.

  Nikki had been on the phone in her apartment all morning. She called her secretary to say she wouldn’t be in until after lunch, got everything straightened
out with the department store credit departments, called the credit-card companies, put it all in writing to confirm it, and cursed the bureaucracy that had changed the little country store where they knew everybody into a vast network of computers and numbers where anyone could be anyone. Her shoulder and leg still hurt. She stopped off at the super’s apartment on her way out to deliver his new set of keys, and he said he was going to have the lock on her mailbox changed that morning and would give her the new key when she came home. It had never occurred to her that the boys who had mugged her even had the key to her mailbox. Well, then they had the key to the front door of the building too, didn’t they? The super sighed. Yes, he knew that, and he was having the lock changed. He had to give all the tenants new keys, which was going to be a nuisance, because they all came home at different times and would be furious when they couldn’t get in, not to mention the ones who had gone to Florida for the winter.

  “Why don’t we just dig a moat and put in a drawbridge?” Nikki said. “Those people had the right idea in the Middle Ages. One drawbridge, no keys.”

  “With alligators in the water,” the super said. He laughed, pleased to see she was bearing up well after her shock of the night before.

  She went to the bank to replace her spending money for lunch, and then she decided to walk to Tiffany’s. The streets seemed so safe in the sunlight. People were walking their dogs, carrying groceries … Where the hell had they been last night when she needed them?

  Tiffany’s looked nice and empty until she got to the second floor. It was jammed. You would think things were cheap here! The little silver gifts were on display on a long velvet mat on one of the counters, with numbers on them, and you waited on line until it was your turn and then told the salesperson which number you wanted and were presented with a neatly tied blue box with a number on it. Nikki thought that all the people who received silver Christmas presents from Tiffany’s at Christmas would be surprised if they saw the assembly line they came from. She tried to look over the heads of the mob that surrounded the counter to inspect the key rings, silver pencils, calendar holders, swizzle sticks, more key rings, thimbles, pillboxes, rulers … She looked at her watch. She would be here all day if she waited. If she didn’t hurry she’d be late to the lunch. She wandered down the aisles of more expensive presents. It wasn’t empty there, but at least it wasn’t so crowded.