First Deadly Sin

by Lawrence Sanders

  “Memories of past pleasures?”

  “Something like that. But also too reminiscent of bad Italian restaurants with candles in empty Chianti bottles and too much powdered garlic in the sauce. I hate fakery. Rhinestones and padded brassieres.”

  “My wife—” he started. “My ex-wife—” he amended, “wore a padded bra. The strange thing was that she didn’t need it. She was very well endowed. Is.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  “Gilda? A very pleasant woman. We’re both from Indiana. We met at the University. A blind date. I was a year ahead of her. We went together occasionally. Nothing serious. I came to New York. Then she came here, a year later, and we started seeing each other again. Serious, this time.”

  “What was she like? Physically, I mean.”

  “A large woman, with a tendency to put on weight. She loved rich food. Her mother is enormous. Gilda is blonde. What you’d call a ‘handsome woman.’ A good athlete. Swimming, tennis, golf, skiing—all that. Very active in charities, social organizations. Took lessons in bridge. Chinese cooking, and music appreciation. Things like that.”

  “No children?”

  “No.”

  “How long were you married?”

  “Ahh …” He stared at her. “My God, I can’t remember. Of course. Seven years. Almost eight. Yes, that’s right. Almost eight years.”

  “You didn’t want children?”

  “I didn’t—no.”

  “She?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that why you divorced?”

  “Oh no. No, that had nothing to do with it. We divorced because—well, why did we divorce? Incompatibility, I guess. We just grew apart. She went her way and I went mine.”

  “What was her way?”

  “You’re very personal.”

  “Yes. You can always refuse to answer.”

  “Well, Gilda is a very healthy, well-adjusted, out-going woman. She likes people, likes children, parties, picnics, the theatre, church. Whenever we went to the theatre or a movie where the audience was asked to sing along with the entertainer or music, she would sing along. That’s the kind of woman she was.”

  “A sing-alonger with a padded brassiere.”

  “And plastic flowers,” he added. “Well, not plastic. But she did buy a dozen roses made of silk. I couldn’t convince her they were wrong.”

  He rose to blow out another three candles. He came back to sit in his Eames chair. Suddenly she came over to sit on the hassock in front of him. She put a light hand on his knee.

  “What happened?” she whispered.

  “You guessed?” he said, not surprised. “A strange story. I don’t understand it myself.”

  “Have you told the Mortons?”

  “My God, no. I’ve told no one.”

  “But you want to tell me.”

  “Yes I want to tell you. And I want you to explain it to me. Well, Gilda is a normal, healthy woman who enjoys sex. I do too. Our sex was very good. It really was. At the start anyway. But you know, you get older and it doesn’t seem so important. To her, anyway. But I don’t mean to put her down. She was good and enthusiastic in bed. Perhaps unimaginative. Sometimes she’d laugh at me. But a normal, healthy woman.”

  “You keep saying healthy, healthy, healthy.”

  “Well, she was. Is. A big, healthy woman. Big legs. Big breasts. A glow to her skin. Rubens would have loved her. Well … about three years ago we took a summer place for the season on Barnegat Bay. You know where that is?”

  “No.”

  “The Jersey shore. South of Bay Head. It was beautiful. Fine beach, white sand, not too crowded. One afternoon we had some neighbors over for a cook-out. We all had a lot to drink. It was fun. We were all in bathing suits, and we’d drink, get a little buzz on, and then go into the ocean to swim and sober up, and then eat and drink some more. It was a wonderful afternoon. Eventually everyone went home. Gilda and I were alone. Maybe a little drunk, hot from the sun and food and laughing. We went back into our cottage and decided to have sex. So we took off our bathing suits. But we kept our sunglasses on.”

  “Oh.”

  “I don’t know why we did it, but we did. Maybe we thought it was funny. Anyway, we made love wearing those dark, blank glasses so we couldn’t see each other’s eyes.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “The sex? For me it was a revelation, a door opening. I guess Gilda thought it was funny and forgot it. I can never forget it. It was the most sexually exciting thing I’ve ever done in my life. There was something primitive and frightening about it. It’s hard to explain. But it shook me. I wanted to do it again.”

  “But she didn’t?”

  “That’s right. Even after we came back to New York and it was winter, I suggested we wear sunglasses in bed, but she wouldn’t. I suppose you think I’m crazy?”

  “Is that the end of the story?”

  “No. There’s more. Wait until I blow out more candles.”

  “I’ll get them.”

  She snuffed out three more tapers. Only three were left burning, getting down close to the iron sockets. She came back to sit on the ottoman again.

  “Go on.”

  “Well, I was browsing around Brentano’s—this was the winter right after Barnegat Bay—and Brentano’s, you know, carries a lot of museum-type antique jewelry and semi-precious stones, coral and native handicrafts. Stuff like that. Well, they had a collection of African masks they were selling Very primitive. Strong and somehow frightening. You know the effect primitive African art has. It touches something very deep, very mysterious. Well, I wanted to have sex with Gilda while we both wore those masks. An irrational feeling, I know. I knew it at the time, but I couldn’t resist. So I bought two masks—they weren’t cheap—and brought them home. Gilda didn’t like them and didn’t dislike them. But she let me hang them in the hallway out there. A few weeks later we had a lot to drink—”

  “You got her drunk.”

  “I guess. But she wouldn’t do it. She wouldn’t wear one of those masks in bed. She said I was crazy. Anyway, the next day she threw the masks away. Or burned them, or gave them away, or something. They were gone when I got home.”

  “And then you were divorced?”

  “Well, not just because of the sunglasses and the African masks. There were other things. We had been growing apart for some time. But the business with the masks was certainly a contributing factor. Strange story—no?”

  She got up to extinguish the three remaining candles. They smoked a bit, and she licked her fingers, then damped the wicks. She poured both of them a little more vodka, then regarded the candelabrum, head cocked to one side.

  “That’s better.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “It is.”

  “Do you have a cigarette?”

  “I smoke a kind made from dried lettuce leaves. Non-nicotine. But I have the regular kind too. Which would you like?”

  “The poisonous variety.”

  He lighted it for her, and she strolled up and down before the mirrored wall, holding her elbows. Her head was bent forward; long hair hid her face.

  “No,” she said, “I don’t believe it was irrational. And I don’t believe you’re crazy. I’m talking now about the sunglasses and the masks. You see, there was a time when sex itself, by itself, had a power, a mystery, an awe it no longer has. Today it’s ‘Shall we have another martini or shall we fuck?’ The act itself has no more meaning than a second dessert. In an effort to restore the meaning, people try to increase the pleasure. They use all kinds of gadgets, but all they do is add to the mechanization of sex. It’s the wrong remedy. Sex is not solely, or even mainly, physical pleasure. Sex is a rite. And the only way to restore its meaning is to bring to it the trappings of a ceremony. That’s why I was so delighted to discover the Mortons’ shop. Probably without realizing it, they sensed that today the psychic satisfactions of sex have become more important than physical gratifications. Sex has become, or should become, a dra
matic art. It was once, in several cultures. And the Mortons have made a start in providing the make-up, costumes, and scenery for the play. It is only a start, but it is a good one. Now about you … I think you became, if not bored then at least dissatisfied with sex with your ‘healthy, normal’ wife. ‘Is this all there is?’ you asked. ‘Is there nothing more?’ Of course there is more. Much, much more. And you were on the right track when you spoke about ‘a revelation … a door opening’ when you made love wearing sunglasses. And when you said the African masks were ‘primitive’ and ‘somehow, frightening.’ You have, in effect, discovered the unknown or disregarded side of sex: its psychic fulfillment. Having become aware of it, you suspect—rightly so—that its spiritual satisfactions can far surpass physical pleasure. After all, there are a limited number of orifices and mucous membranes in the human body. In other words, you are beginning to see sex as a religious rite and a dramatic ceremony. The masks were merely the first step in this direction. Too bad your wife couldn’t see it that way.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Too bad.”

  “I must be going,” she said abruptly, and marched into the bedroom to retrieve her cape.

  “I’ll see you home,” he said eagerly.

  “No. That won’t be necessary. I’ll take a cab.”

  “At least let me come down to call a cab for you.”

  “Please don’t.”

  “I want to see you again. May I call you?”

  “Yes.”

  She was out the door and gone almost before he was aware of it. The smell of snuffed candles and old smoke lingered in the room.

  He turned out the lights and sat a long time in darkness, pondering what she had said. Something in him responded to it. He began to glimpse the final picture that might be assembled from the bits and pieces of his thought and behavior that had, until now, puzzled him so. That final picture shocked him, but he was neither frightened nor dismayed.

  Once, late in the previous summer, he had been admiring his naked, newly slender and tanned body in the bedroom mirror. Only the nightlight was on. His flesh was sheened with its dim, rosy glow.

  He noted how strange and somehow exciting the gold chain of his wrist watch looked against his skin. There was something there … A week later he purchased a women’s belt, made of heavy, gold-plated links. He specified a chain adjustable to all sizes, and then had it gift-wrapped for reasons he could not comprehend.

  Now, only hours after he had first met Celia Montfort, after she had slept in his bed, after she had listened to him and spoken to him, he stood naked again before the bedroom mirror, the room illuminated only by the caressing nightlight. About his wrist was the gold chain of his watch, and around his slim waist was the linked belt.

  He stared, fascinated. Chained, he touched himself.

  4

  JAVIS-BIRCHAM PUBLICATIONS, INC. owned the office building, and occupied the top fifteen floors, on 46th Street west of Ninth Avenue. The building had been erected in the late 1930s, and was designed in the massive, pyramidal style of the period, with trim and decoration modeled after that of Rockefeller Center.

  Javis-Bircham published trade magazines, textbooks, and technical journals. When Daniel Blank was hired six years previously, the company was publishing 129 different periodicals relating to the chemical industry, oil and petroleum, engineering, business management, automotive, machine tools, and aviation. In recent years magazines had been added on automation, computer technology, industrial pollution, oceanography, space exploration, and a consumer monthly on research and development. Also, a technical book club had been started, and the corporation was currently exploring the possibilities of short, weekly newsletters in fields covered by its monthly and bi-monthly trade magazines. Javis-Bircham had been listed as number 216 in Fortune Magazine’s most recent list of America’s 500 largest corporations. It had gone public in 1951 and its stock, after a 3-1 split in 1962, showed, a 20-fold increase in its Big Board price.

  Daniel Blank had been hired as Assistant Circulation Manager. His previous jobs had been as Subscription Fulfillment Manager and Circulation Manager on consumer periodicals. The three magazines on which he had worked prior to his employment at Javis-Bircham had since died. Blank, who saw what was happening, had survived, in a better job, at a salary he would have considered a hopeless dream ten years ago.

  His first reaction to the circulation set-up at Javis-Bircham was unequivocal. “It’s a fucked-up mess,” he told his wife.

  Blank’s immediate superior was the Circulation Manager, a beefy, genial man named Robert White, called “Bob” by everyone, including secretaries and mailroom boys. This was, Blank thought, a measure of the man.

  White had been at Javis-Bircham for 25 years and had surrounded himself with a staff of more than 50 males and females who seemed, to Blank, all “old women” who smelled of lavender and whiskey sours, arrived late for work, and were continually taking up office collections for birthdays, deaths, marriages, and retirements.

  The main duty of the Circulation Department was to supply to the Production Department “print-run estimates”: the number of copies of each magazine that should be printed to insure maximum profit for Javis-Bircham. The magazines might be weeklies, semi-monthlies, monthlies, quarterlies, semi-annuals or annuals. They might be given away to a managerial-level readership or sold by subscription. Some were even available to the general public on newsstands. Most of the magazines earned their way by advertising revenue. Some carried no advertising at all, but were of such a specialized nature that they sold solely on the value of their editorial content.

  Estimating the “press run” of each magazine for maximum profitablity was an incredibly complex task. Past and potential circulation of each periodical had to be considered, current and projected advertising revenue, share of general overhead, costs of actual printing—quality of paper, desired process, four-color plates, etc.—costs of mailing and distributing, editorial budget (including personnel), publicity and public relations campaigns, etc., etc.

  At the time Daniel Blank joined the organization, this bewildering job of “print-run estimation” seemed to be done “by guess and by God.” Happy Bob White’s staff of “old women” fed him information, laughing a great deal during their conversations with him. Then, when a recommendation was due, White would sit at his desk, humming, with an ancient slide rule in his hands, and within an hour or so would send his estimate to the Production Department.

  Daniel Blank saw immediately that there were so many variables involved that the system screamed for computerization. His experience with computers was minimal; on previous jobs he had been involved mostly with relatively simple data-processing machines.

  He therefore enrolled for a six months’ night course in “The Triumph of the Computer.” Two years after starting work at Javis-Bircham, he presented to Bob White a 30-page carefully organized and cogently reasoned prospectus on the advantages of a computerized Circulation Department.

  White took it home over the weekend to read. He returned it to Blank on Monday morning. Pages were marked with brown rings from coffee cups, and one page had been crinkled and almost obliterated by a spilled drink.

  White took Daniel to lunch and, smiling, explained why Blank’s plan wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t do at all.

  “You obviously put a lot of work and thought into it,” White said, “but you’re forgetting the personalities involved. The people. My God, Dan, I have lunch with the editors and advertising managers of those magazines almost every day. They’re my friends. They all have plans for their books: an article that might get a lot of publicity and boost circulation, a new hot-shot advertising salesman who might boost revenue way over the same month last year. I’ve got to consider all those personal things. The human factors involved. You can’t feed that into a computer.”

  Daniel Blank nodded understandingly. An hour after they returned from lunch he had a clean copy of his prospectus on the desk of the Executive Vice President.
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  A month later the Circulation Department was shocked to learn that laughing Bob White had retired. Daniel Blank was appointed Circulation Director, a title he chose himself, and given a free hand.

  Within a year all the “old women” were gone, Blank had surrounded himself with a young staff of pale technicians, and the cabinets of AMROK II occupied half the 30th floor of the Javis-Bircham Building. As Blank had predicted, not only did the computer and auxiliary data-processing machines handle all the problems of circulation—subscription fulfillment and print-run estimation—but they performed these tasks so swiftly that they could also be used for salary checks, personnel records, and pension programs. As a result, Javis-Bircham was able to dismiss more than 500 employees and, as Blank had carefully pointed out in his original prospectus, the annual leasing of the extremely expensive AMROK II resulted in an appreciable tax deduction.

  Daniel Blank was currently earning $55,000 a year and had an unlimited expense account, a very advantageous pension and stock option plan. He was 36.

  About a month after he took over, he received a very strange postcard from Bob White. It said merely: “What are you feeding the computer? Ha-ha.”

  Blank puzzled over this. What had been fed the computer, of course, were the past circulation and advertising revenue figures and profit or loss totals of all the magazines Javis-Bircham published. Admittedly, White had been working his worn slide rule during most of the years from which those figures were taken, and it was possible to say that, in a sense, White had programmed the computer. But still, the postcard made little sense, and Daniel Blank wondered why his former boss had bothered to send it.

  It was gratifying to hear the uniformed starter say, “Good morning, Mr. Blank,” and it was gratifying to ride the Executive Elevator in solitary comfort to the 30th floor. His personal office was a corner suite with wall-to-wall carpeting, a private lavatory and, not a desk, but a table: a tremendous slab of distressed walnut on a wrought-iron base. These things counted.

  He had deliberately chosen for his personal secretary a bony, 28-year-old widow, Mrs. Cleek, who needed the job badly and would be grateful. She had proved as efficient and colorless as he had hoped. She had a few odd habits: she insisted on latching all doors and cabinets that were slightly ajar, and she was continually lining up the edges of the ashtrays and papers with the edges of tables and desks, putting everything parallel or at precise right angles. A picture hanging askew drove her mad. But these were minor tics.