Kiss Me Once

by Thomas Gifford

  The point was, you just never knew what life was going to throw at you next. Whether it was Pearl Harbor or a bad leg for the rest of your life or Markie Cookson pouring you champagne one day and the next time you see him he’s a piece of garbage on the beach. You just never knew when you were supposed to laugh. There was always something funny going on. Life wasn’t a movie. Life was kind of random and it could always get a lot worse than you’d ever imagined.

  So 1944 was upon them.

  Terry put Herb Contreras on Cindy for two weeks. He used his Leica and collected a lot of pictures of her minding her own business. She went to an afternoon string quartet concert; she browsed Scribner’s bookstore for hours, bought a dozen current novels; she had her hair done, facials, manicures; she bought clothing; she lunched. Almost always alone. No girlfriends. Only one man. What emerged from all those black-and-white glossies was a portrait of a very lonely woman.

  The man she met twice for lunch was Colonel Bryce Huntoon, who looked more like a movie hero’s best friend every day. He was in uniform both times and the luncheon spots were hardly hideaways. Once they met at “21” and once at the Algonquin. If they’d been trying to attract attention they couldn’t have chosen more wisely. There were pictures of Cindy smiling wanly at some comment, accepting a light for her cigarette, sipping a martini, eating sole and chicken, always in repose while Huntoon did everything but wear his napkin for a hat to amuse her. He never seemed to get more than the pensive, vaguely detached smile.

  One afternoon Cassidy went with Herb and she met Huntoon down on Wall Street. They took a cab and Cassidy flagged one, followed. This was a break in her pattern. They got out down at the tip of the island and took the ferry to Staten Island. Cassidy was thinking: love nest on Staten Island, and the thought made him sick. He didn’t want her to sleep with Bryce Huntoon. He didn’t want her to sleep with anyone. He wanted her to want him. He wished to God he had the nerve to have the affair with her that Terry figured they were having.

  It was cold and windy on the ferry. Herb seemed to be taking pictures of everything but Cindy and Huntoon, but they were all he was shooting. Cassidy lurked far away, huddled inside his coat, stealing glances. He needn’t have feared exposure. Huntoon couldn’t take his eyes off her and she just listened to him and stared off across the choppy water. Cassidy felt his eyeballs freezing but when they went inside he was afraid they’d see him if he followed. His death of pneumonia would be on her head. All they did was ride to Staten Island and turn around and come back. Whoopee.

  Huntoon? What the hell was he supposed to be doing? All the time he watched them they never touched each other. He asked Herb what he made of it after two weeks.

  “Damned if I know, Lew,” he said. “The way she looks, the guy must be a homo. But whatever he is I’ll bet he’s not her Valentine, y’hear what I’m saying? Chemistry ain’t there. No sparks. Whose fault, I dunno. But, God, is she built or something! No knockers but there’s something about her. I break out in a sweat.”

  On the fifteenth day of surveillance Herb followed her to the Waldorf, where she met a different man for lunch.

  Terry Leary.

  Herb was a real soldier. He said he felt like a fool but he just kept shooting.

  When they parted, Cindy Squires kissed Terry’s cheek. In the photographs Herb developed that night Terry looked very pleased with himself.

  When Cassidy got to the office the next morning, Olive Naismith looked up from her Underwood and stopped beating up on it. Clacking away, Olive was a furious typist. She was a pretty girl, very dark with a perfect oval face, like a cameo, hair so brown it might have been black, and large teardrop breasts hanging provocatively from narrow shoulders. He figured Terry probably slept with her from time to time and bought her the occasional fancy dinner. It was a cinch she wasn’t working for Dependable Detective to get her hands on a vast salary. Terry also supplied her father with gas stamps from some private supply.

  “You won’t believe this,” she whispered, casting her huge soft eyes toward the inner office, “but Himself slept in the office last night. He was working when I got here at eight to catch up on my typing.”

  “Tell me the truth, Olive. You volunteered to stay with him, comforting him with apples through the night—”

  “Mr. Cassidy! Really!”

  “I can’t accept that as a denial, Olive. Sorry.”

  He found Terry in his shirtsleeves, with an overnight growth of stubble, and his perfect slick blond hair mussed from scratching his head. His fancy suspenders even looked slack, tired. He had the Max Bauman file open on the desk and a couple hundred eight-by-ten glossies strewn about. He was scribbling on a Big Five tablet and there were four cigar butts in the tractor tire. Never had a room smelled worse. Worse than old jersey and shoulder pads ever smelled. Cassidy threw open both windows and let the snow blow in off the cement ledge.

  Terry looked up and yawned. “Little close in here, is it?”

  Cassidy poured himself a cup of coffee.

  “I had lunch with Cindy yesterday.”

  “I saw the pictures.”

  “Well, I got an earful from the woman in the case. She thinks Max is going nuts.”

  Cassidy sat down on the edge of the desk and began sorting through the photographs without really seeing them. Lunch at the Waldorf. They made a handsome couple. “He didn’t seem so nuts when he came to us.”

  “Oh, I’m not so sure. I thought the Daughter-of-Time-Whore-of-Babylon routine came from the general direction of the moon—”

  “Point taken. But that’s talking crazy, not acting crazy. Acting crazy is eating breakfast out of your underpants. He’s not sick,” Cassidy said, “he’s just in love.”

  “Not to hear her tell it. She’s scared, right down to her shoes. Says he flies into uncontrollable rages. He smashed a Chinese vase worth ten grand—maybe our ten grand, for chrissakes—when she told him she wasn’t having an affair with anyone. Then he fainted in the middle of dinner one night—scared her half to death; just fell into his apple pie in the middle of a sentence. She said this Bob Erickson character was there and carried him upstairs and put him to bed. Max didn’t remember it in the morning. The thing is, Lew, a lot of his rage is directed at her … I’m thinking maybe she’s right, maybe Max is headed ’round the bend. I’ve been trying to figure out what to do; that’s why I never got around to going home. I’m freezing my ass off, Lew.”

  Cassidy closed the window most of the way.

  “Did you tell her we’ve been tailing her?”

  “Yep. Mainly because Max hiring us fit right in with what she was telling me.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “She was a little numb, didn’t say much.”

  “You mention Huntoon?”

  “Nope. Should have, I guess, but it seemed irrelevant by the time she’d gotten the load off her chest. I’ve got a plan, y’know.”

  “What am I gonna think of it?”

  “Damned if I know, amigo.”

  She stood in the doorway with the lights of Washington Square behind her, snow falling hard, twinkling like diamonds in the mink. The collar was turned up, framing her face. She was so pale and immaculate she reminded him of the nuns of his childhood. Her mouth was tight, teeth behind the harsh lipstick chattering. She wore a beret tugged down on the almost white pageboy. She managed a small smile. “Lew,” she whispered, and brushed past him into his darkened living room. “No, don’t turn on the light. They could get here any moment, they could be watching—make me a drink … hurry, Lew …”

  She was unsteady on her high heels, clung to the refrigerator door while he splashed Scotch over ice, then made one for himself. It was past midnight. She took the glass with both hands and drank deeply.

  “I’ve run away, Lew. From Max, from Heliotrope, from all of it … I left my dressing room, out the back door, nobody saw me but they’re bound to be looking for me by now … kiss me, Lew, hold me …”

  He put his a
rms around her, felt the cold melting snow on his face. He held her, whispering to her until she stopped shaking.

  “Lew, I didn’t know where else to go; there wasn’t anybody but you I could go to. I love you, Lew, and now it’s all up to you. I’m so scared … we can’t let him find me, he’ll kill me … you’ve got to hide me, take care of me.” She finished her drink and sat down, staring at him. “Please, Lew. Say something—”

  “Thinking,” Cassidy said. “I’ve got just the place to stash you for the time being. Give us some breathing room—place in Connecticut, belongs to friends of mine who winter in Palm Beach. They always leave me a key so I can hide torch singers running away from gangster boyfriends—”

  “We’ve got to hurry, Lew. He’ll think of you and Terry. He’ll be here looking for me.”

  Cassidy had just gotten into his coat, located his keys and gloves, when the telephone rang. He picked it up, faked a hearty yawn.

  “Lew, sorry to wake you. This is Bob Erickson. I’m calling for Max—”

  “Max? Max isn’t here—what can I do for you, Bob?”

  “No, Max is here. We’ve got a crisis on our hands, frankly. Max is pretty worked up. We can’t find Miss Squires. She just disappeared from her dressing room. Damn strange … you there, Lew?”

  “Sure, sure. Max think she was kidnapped maybe?”

  “Why, I don’t know—”

  “It’s possible, y’know, Bob. Max has enemies—”

  “I think he’s worrying about something else altogether.”

  “You do? Like what?”

  “Hell, you know, Lew—another man. That’s all he thinks about, another man.” Erickson’s voice had fallen to a whisper. “Max thinks she’s got a boyfriend, Lew … he’s going crazy with worry right now. He wants her back. He’s going to find her, Lew, wherever she is—”

  “What a mess … and nobody saw her leave—”

  “She must have grabbed a cab … or had someone waiting for her. He says she’s capable of anything.” He sighed heavily beneath the weight of his problem. “Level with me, Lew. I know the kid’s been wanting to make a break for it … she might turn to you for help—you or Terry Leary. If she came to you I think we can calm Max down, get her back—”

  “Well, she hasn’t come to me. I’ve been in bed for an hour. What’s Terry say?”

  “Max is trying to get hold of him right now.”

  “Look, more than likely she cracked under the strain of things with Max. Probably checked into a hotel for the night just to be alone and think things over. Or maybe she caught the late train up to Boston. She’s got a kid brother at Harvard—”

  “Say, that’s a lead! Jesus, I hope you’re right about that—that’d be perfect. She goes to see her brother. Can’t get more innocent than that!” He sounded like a man who’d just noticed that his parachute had finally opened.

  “Check up on it tomorrow,” Cassidy said. “Keep Max under control—”

  “Easier said than done. But thanks for the tip.” He was about to hang up. “Oh, Lew. A word of advice—”

  “Always welcome.”

  “Play straight with us on this, Lew. Max would be awfully disappointed if you didn’t.” The line went dead.

  She put her arm through his while they walked to the little Ford. She was still a little unsteady, wobbling on her heels. There were a few flakes of snow blowing around, landing in the mink. She held tight to his arm. She was scared. When she tried to talk, her voice shook and her teeth chattered and finally she gave it up. He kissed her and told her everything was going to be all right.

  They were on the highway with New York disappearing in the darkness behind them. The Ford convertible had a few wind leaks so even with the heater on full blast it was cold in the car. They were playing Glenn Miller on the radio. She was toying with the blackthorn stick, withdrawing the sword a few inches, pushing it back in, again and again and again.

  “Damn it,” she said. “This isn’t quite the way I wanted us to get together.”

  “Well, it wasn’t going to happen at all—”

  “Don’t say that, I don’t want to hear that. Anyway, you don’t know. You can’t know. I’d have figured out something else, sooner or later.” She popped the button and the knob released on its spring. She pushed it back down, until it caught. “I feel terrible about Max. I don’t know if I did the right thing … Would I have done it if you hadn’t been there for me? Has Max really acted all that crazy? Or did I exaggerate just to make this happen …”

  “I don’t know. You sure convinced Terry.”

  “Is it too late to change it back? Undo it?” She gnawed at a gloved fingertip.

  “Getting there.”

  “I don’t know what I’ll do. If I don’t go back to Max … and I’m not, I’m out of that now. Out of Max’s life, out of a job, I won’t have much money.”

  “You’ll get another job.”

  “Lew, you’re not getting it, are you? Max is going to kill me when he realizes I’m not coming back.”

  “You’re right, I’m not getting it. I thought we were getting you out of the way while Terry calms Max’s nerves—”

  “I suppose that’s what Terry does think. He thinks I’ll go back then. I’m telling you, I’ll never go back. Do you get it now?”

  He shook his head, watching the road disappear beneath the blowing snow.

  “I want you, Lew. I couldn’t wait any longer.” She too was staring ahead into the night where the headlights stopped abruptly in the shifting wall of snow. “This is the only way I could think of, that’s all.” She sighed, bit at the thumbnail. “There’s one problem, though—”

  “At the very least,” he said.

  “Either I’m going to get killed … or Max is. The only way to keep me alive is for Max to die. If he lives, Lew, he’ll kill me for leaving him. That’s it. I’m just telling you how it is.”

  Listening to her, he saw in his mind the little girl sitting on the tombstone, swinging her legs.

  The house was set at the top of a long sloping hill, on the crown of a rolling meadow which lay under a crisp, clean, deep snow cover. The snow shimmered, blue in the moonlight. They turned off the road and fit into the shallow ruts leading nearly a mile, a single lane, between two rows of stripped, wraithlike poplars. There was a barn behind the house. Cassidy got out, staggered in the blast of wind, and forced open the huge swinging door which stuck in the snow. He was just able to squeeze the car inside. The smell of cold hay and packed earth made him sneeze in the silence. She waited while he got her suitcase out of the trunk. Together they tramped across the driveway, hunched against the gale. The key worked in the side door and they went into the kitchen. The house was still, frigid, waiting.

  The electricity worked. A long, two-story, lodge-style room had huge fireplaces at either end. There were several oil lamps with thickly smoked glass chimneys, colonial pine cabinets and tables, and hooked rugs the size of battleships. The firewood in the buckets was dry, the bark pulling away from the hard wood. The pantry held lots of cans. The caretaker who lived in town kept the refrigerator stocked for friends of the owners. All the faucets were running.

  Cassidy built two fires and they sat before the flames waiting for the cold to leave them in peace. There were Grandma Moses and Currier & Ives prints, some other flat, depthless colonial paintings on the knotty-pine walls. Also a rack of guns on one wall above an antique cupboard with a marble splash back. The fire threw dancing, hypnotic shadows about the long room. She leaned into his arms. He kissed her and she held him longer than he’d ever been held. She was crying, the tears mingling in their mouths.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered, “I didn’t know I’d be this scared. It’s been a game almost, planning how to get away from him, thinking about not having to face him every day and every night, thinking about how I wouldn’t have to be afraid of his rage … it’s the sex, that’s what’s done it to him. He’s lost it, it’s over for him and when he looks at me the humi
liation he feels … it’s driven him crazy.” She sniffled, blew her nose, blinked at the tears. She laughed softly. “I’m pretty crazy, too. I haven’t made love for so long, Cassidy … will you take a long time with me, go very slowly? Oh, I don’t feel like a whore anymore, Cassidy, I feel like a little girl … oh, my, that’s good, keep doing that, do that for a long time, oh, your teeth, I can feel your teeth, Cassidy … nibble me to death …” Her fingers were in his hair, holding him between the soft thighs, her flesh warmed by the flames and by the fires deep in her belly. After she’d come the first time, she lay panting, licking the taste of her orgasm from his mouth, whispering again and again, I don’t want to die, Cassidy, please don’t let me die …

  Somewhere in the night their bodies joined again and voices were saying I love you, I love you, and he couldn’t say who was talking, it didn’t make any difference. By that time they’d become one, one voice, one creature, and they lay shivering despite the roaring fire. Those words … And now he knew he was scared, too. He had so damn much to lose.

  In the shadows she whispered, “Let me be a whore for you now, just for you, just for a moment, I want you to do something for me …”

  She led him to the bathroom. She sat on the toilet and parted her thighs. She was breathing hard, through her mouth. She pulled him down to kneel before her, half moaning, told him what she wanted. And he leaned into the heat of her, felt her fingers spreading the matted, damp hair, peeling herself open until he could put his mouth where she wanted. She was trembling, gasping, her soft little belly quivering, rocking back and forth, then she screamed down deep in her throat, said I can’t hold it, I can’t hold back, oh, God, love me, love me no matter what I do, please love me, and her orgasm seemed to tear her apart, tore the breath from her, and she came and came and her bladder emptied into the toilet and she pulled his face into her belly while she bent forward over him, her hands flat on his back, convulsing against him until she was empty and spent and he leaned back covered in sweat, hers and his, and rested against the wall. She dabbed tissue between her legs, flushed the toilet, and stood up, making herself small, huddling against him, burying her head on his chest. He felt her lips move against his flesh, “I’m so embarrassed,” and he almost couldn’t hear her. “I never did anything like that before … I never felt anything so violent inside me. Like I was coming apart … Are you disgusted?” He covered her mouth with his, picked her up in his arms, and carried her back into the shadowy room. He limped on the bad leg but he felt like the strongest, best man in the world. He put her down on the great rag rug before the fire and pulled their heavy coats over them. She fit herself against him, curled within his arms. “Cindy,” he breathed into her delicate ear, “there is nothing, not one single thing, you could ever do, or ask me to do, that is anything but what I want … Nothing that is you could ever be other than what I want … nothing.” He kissed her ear and she gave a deep sigh of contentment. He touched her mouth with his fingertips and felt her smile.