The Henderson Equation

by Warren Adler

  “You haven’t a single doubt?” he asked gently, stroking the back of her free hand. She felt no agitation, he decided, his hand caressing her flesh. She drank another deep draft of the wine.

  “Of course I have doubts,” she said. “But the point is that there is enough here worthy of being told.”

  “That’s Gunderstein’s argument. He’s right.”

  “Then why not print the story?”

  “Because there are no absolutes in this business, Everybody perceives the truth differently.” He squeezed her hand, waiting for a return movement, but it remained limp in his. How could she know that it was not in his power to decide? She would find that out soon enough. He must now give her some hope of victory, some sense of his own hesitation, as if there were any.

  “I haven’t completely made my decision,” he said simply, hoping she would jump to the bait.

  “Well, you haven’t satisfied me as to why you’re not going to run it. Perhaps I can make you see that we have got to run this story.”

  “I hope you don’t see me as pigheaded.”

  “Not at all, Mr. Gold.” He felt the return of her pressure on his hand, knowing then that he had touched her compassion, feeling no remorse or guilt, forcing himself now to see only the abstraction of her young body, her attractiveness to his senses.

  “Being the commander isn’t easy, Martha. This power over the word is a ridiculous burden. You can’t imagine how difficult it is. It requires a great respect for moral value.”

  “Yes, that’s exactly the point. It is, after all, a moral question.” She finished the glass of wine. He moved closer to her now, seeing the flush begin on her cheekbones, a gentle film of goose pimples on her arm. He felt his sexuality stir, dispelling the fear of potential fulfillment. It was a special joy to feel his manhood harden in his pants.

  “Do you really understand?” she asked, letting him frame her face in his hands.

  “I understand,” he said, which he did, her sense of outrage, her exquisite belief in fairness and honesty. This is strictly a peccadillo, a lark, he told himself. He had no desire to be mentally intimate, felt unable to abide the thought of afterplay, the intellectualizing of the act, the need for her to unburden. It was an unhappy prospect and for a brief moment he hesitated. There was no way she could make the remotest dent in his resolve to keep the Henderson story out of the Chronicle. He had already made his surrender, had tasted the bile of defeat, and Henderson with his unwelcome confession had put the finishing touch on the decision.

  She might be giving the experience a mystical frame, hallucinatory, as if it were necessary to offer herself to the cause of truth. Lifting her from the chair by the pressure of his hands on her face, he touched her body with his, feeling the softness of her flesh beneath the incredibly thin film of her clothes. He pressed his pelvis toward her so that she could feel the urgency of his hardness. He felt himself shiver, giddy with the desire to humiliate her, create some violation on her body. Perhaps he would strangle her, he thought, as his hands slipped from her cheeks to her throat. Instead, he lifted her chin and brought her lips to his, kissing her, tonguing her deeply, until her response was sure.

  Who is this stranger? he asked himself, lifting her dress, his fingers groping between the cheeks of her buttocks. He was hoping she might resist now, challenge his manhood, force his brutality. Am I feeling Charlie’s madness now? he wondered. Must I feel Charlie’s madness to find myself? But she did not struggle, perhaps feeling his need for this violation, as if it might seal a bond between them. I am being ludicrous, he told himself, as he tugged downward on the elastic of her panty hose, pinching each cheek of her buttocks, urging her to cry out in pain. Stepping back suddenly, he removed his trousers, watching her, feeling the hard length of his erection as she watched it, her eyes revealing confusion, fear. Not a sound passed between them as he pulled her downward to her knees, feeling her resistance, then surrender. Her hands groped on the carpet for support, perhaps knowing what must happen, expecting it to happen. Did she suspect his mendacity, his need to abuse? He kneeled behind her as he sought a swift, brutal entrance in the attitude of pursuit, the way of dogs. She was dry, tight, but despite his own pain, he pushed on relentlessly, feeling the strength of his brutality and her humiliation as her body fought silently to reject him. She cried out, a wailing sound of agony, as she accepted his thrust, his abuse. The wail was drowned in the air, as he plunged forward, gripping her hips, forcing her movement as she whimpered in pain. There was no pleasure in it for him, only compulsion, which whetted the fury of his movements, made him see the shape of his own helpless animality. He could not will himself to stop as he moved her body back and forth, feeling the harsh envelope of her flesh as it fell back on his erection which spitted her without mercy, until he felt his own pain turn to numbness.

  “Please come,” she shouted at him through her agony, reaching a hand behind her to caress his testicles, but he knew that was impossible, since it was hardly the culmination he could induce as he gripped her body, holding her buttocks close as she tried desperately to disengage. He could feel the sweat pour from him through his exposed flesh, the pores of his hands, his belly making sticking sounds as he plunged relentlessly. He did not know how long it went on, except that he finally became conscious of a sudden sag in her body. Disengaging, he turned her over. She had fainted, her features frozen in pain. He lifted her limp body to the couch and ran to the bathroom where he soaked a towel in cold water, then returned and bathed her face, watching her regain consciousness. Her eyes looked up at him, terror-stricken, helpless.

  “You fainted,” he said. Even at that moment he could not find any gentleness.

  “You hurt me,” she whispered, the color returning to her cheeks. He seemed to be goading her to hate him. She pushed his hands from her body and sat up, the towel still pressed to her forehead. It was only after she had stood up, balancing herself against the couch as she winced in pain, that he could summon any compassion. He watched her walk unsteadily into the bathroom, her buttocks still exposed, her dress still stuck to her back. Seeing her this way, he could visualize the measure of his own venality. It was more than rape, he told himself. It was an attack on her pride, her goodness, her conception of decency and honor, all things which he imagined he had debased. He felt sick with the knowledge of his own capacity to inflict such horror, but it gave him no feeling of expiation, no sense of the moment of truth, no release.

  He listened to the sound of water running in the bathroom, imagining how she must feel as she administered to her abused body. He could feel his stomach knot and nausea begin, the retching rise in his gut as he dashed into the kitchen and put his head under the faucet of the sink, turning the cold water on his head. Then she was standing over him, watching. He turned the faucet off, feeling her eyes, the water dripping onto his shirt.

  “I should never have come,” she said. She was still pale, but she had recovered her equilibrium.

  “Then why did you?” he asked. He wanted to sob, but found the strength to resist.

  “I thought I could persuade you,” she said calmly.

  “You didn’t.” He cleared his throat, hesitated. “I took advantage.”

  “I asked for it,” she said, her voice strong. “Consider the blame shared.”

  Who is the victim, he wondered? Had he been the manipulated or the manipulator? Once again he felt the nagging vulnerability of his age, of his generation and all its anachronisms.

  “I was prepared to do anything to get that story printed,” she said, shuffling into her coat.

  “Where the hell is the morality in that?” he said, suddenly angry.

  “The truth is worth any sacrifice.”

  “And I thought that I had abused you.”

  Her head moved from side to side, her blonde hair soft and flowing with the movement. She started toward the door, turning, her hand on the knob.

  “Despite this bungle, that story must be told.”

  �
��Bullshit,” he shouted. “I decide that.” A shadow of fright fell on her face as she let herself out the door.

  “You had no right,” he shouted after her, knowing that she was out of earshot, as he ran into the bedroom and flung himself down on the bed.

  What he experienced then could not be sleep, since he was conscious of his sense of place, a sensation of floating on the pedestal-propped bed in the clear expanse of space. The glass of the large windows had become invisible and he was simply hanging in the Washington air, suspended near the blinking red lights of the neighboring television and radio antennas. There was some logic in his position. It was, after all, his own room, in his own apartment. The incongruity was Charlie’s face sneering at him, disembodied, like one half of a helium-filled balloon. He could hear his own voice barraging Charlie’s face with questions, although he could not make out what these questions were, only that they were becoming increasingly repetitive in tone and inflection; he was apparently asking the same question over and over again. It was maddening not to be able to make out the sound of his own question, or to find the substance of it even in his own mind. Worse, the face that was Charlie’s did not understand the question, and it increased his agony to see that Charlie’s face was almost flat and did not reach that place in his skull where the ears should be. So he was screaming, or so he thought, a question that he could not understand, even though he was the one who was screaming it, and which could not be heard since the face that was allegedly receiving the question had no ears. Only the clicking sound of typewriter keys, coming from somewhere in the distance, relieved what had become an interminable, hopeless, unbearable frustration. He knew that once he found the source of the sound, he could tap out his question and because the face of Charlie did have eyes, here at last might be a way to get through. He felt something inside himself leave his body in search of the typewriter, whose clacking keys grew louder, then faded, then grew louder again, until finally the sound of the keys disappeared completely and he knew he was screaming out a foreign sound. But his eyes were open now and he could feel a hand on his shoulder shaking him.

  “You’re having a nightmare.” It was Jennie’s voice. He could barely catch his breath and his clothes were bathed in sweat. “You were howling.”

  “What did I say?” he asked, exhausted. The memories, of the dreamlike episode were clear. Perhaps she might unlock the mystery of the unheard question.

  “Just odd noises. You must have had a bellyful of cheese.” With her words came a faint odor of wine, champagne perhaps. “I’ve been writing my story.” The source of the typewriter sound, he thought, looking at his watch. It was only eleven. She had dashed from the White House to the apartment to write her story, to get him to help.

  “I was going to be a real rat and wake you,” she said brightly, brushing back his matted hair. Sitting up, he felt a sharp pain in his loins, remembering. She flicked the switch, bathing the room in suffused light. Her hair smelled of cigarette smoke. Leaning against the headboard, he lit a cigarette, puffing deeply, looking around the room. Was he searching for Charlie’s face in the air, noting the spot where it had hung, disembodied and scowling?

  “Take a gander, salamander,” she said, pushing the copy paper in front of him. He took it and started to read, the stilted awkward sentences assailing him like hurled rocks.

  “What shit!” he said. He could see her mouth tighten, her eyes narrow.

  “I seem to be particularly constipated tonight.” She grabbed the lit cigarette from his hand and puffed, blowing the smoke out like gusts of anger. “I really saw it, too,” she said. “The stupidity of the inane toasts. The platitudes. That silly little Jordan king with his ramrod back and deep voice, a pint-sized Omar Sharif. The tacky dresses of the Cabinet wives, the oh-so-with-it show biz types, the whole media exploitation, another contrived happening. I tried to carry it in my head until I could get to a typewriter, and then I sat down and it all came out like dry little turds.”

  Normally he would have been gentle, praising her, making changes, merely rearranging words to give greater scope. But now he held the copy as if it were a disintegrating animal corpse. She looked at the face of the clock on the end table.

  “I’ve got to get it down to the Chronicle,” she said, holding out a copy pencil. He held the copy out at arm’s length and dropped it in a pile on the bed.

  “Don’t tease, Nick,” she said, reaching to retrieve the paper. When she had reassembled the pages, she handed it back to him. This time he flung it in the air, watching the papers float to the floor.

  “Come on, Nick. Really, I haven’t time.” He watched her carefully, wondering how long it would take her to discover the reality. Again she started to retrieve the papers.

  “Please, Nick,” she said, holding the papers now as if she were hugging a child. “Stop playing.” She reached out, copy in one hand, pencil in the other, her lips pouting, a contrived attitude of a cute little girl begging for a favor.

  “You can’t bake bread with horseshit,” he said, smiling.

  “Please, Nick. Pretty please.” She stubbornly refused to accept his refusal, sure of her hold over him.

  “Submit it the way it is,” he said quietly. She looked at the first page of the copy again.

  “They’ll laugh at me, Nick. You’re quite right. It’s absolutely awful. The copy desk people will snicker over it. They’ll tear it apart and tomorrow Margaret will know, Nick.”

  “What will Margaret know?”

  “That you’re not helping me anymore. I’ll be at her mercy.”

  “There’s always Myra.”

  It was said softly, but he could see it strike her like a tracer bullet. Her body actually moved backward as if it had been hit.

  “Myra?” She looked dumbly at the copy in her hand. The pencil dropped to the floor. Perhaps she was contemplating the possibility of Myra’s assistance, because she said, “Myra can’t write. Can she?” Was it an attempt to twist the accusation, test the validity of his knowledge?

  “Don’t you know?” he asked, conscious of his own sense of control.

  She watched him, unsure, looking at the face of the clock. “Please, Nick. Stop playing with me. I’ll miss the deadline.”

  “They already have the guest list and the pictures.”

  “Nick, please.”

  “Story to appear in tomorrow’s editions,” he hissed, taunting her.

  “Please, Nick. The other paper will have it. You’re being cruel.”

  She was trying to recover from the reference to Myra, denying it to herself. He could see she was ravaged by panic. No more Pygmalion, he told himself. She stood watching him for a moment, her mouth twisting.

  “You’re really not going to do this?” she asked. She was trying a new tactic now, contrived contempt.

  “Why should I?” he asked, enjoying his power.

  “You owe it to me.”

  “That is absolutely the ultimate in egocentricity, Jennie.”

  She must have seen that her power had diminished extensively. “You’re still mad at me,” she said. “That’s it. You’re still pissed off.”

  “I’m nothing.”

  “You made me so damned mad, Nick. I just had to get away.” Did she really understand how far off the mark she was? he wondered.

  “It doesn’t matter anymore, Jennie. I don’t give a flying fuck.”

  It might have been the hurled obscenity, but he could see now that it was dawning on her. She sat down at the edge of the bed, the copy on her lap, her head nodding.

  “I’m sorry, Nick,” she said, her hand gripping a thigh, caressing. Even that won’t work, he told himself, feeling his soreness as he shifted away from her. Not now.

  “I was flattered,” she said. “Myra needed someone, a woman, to talk things out with. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Knowing you, a great deal. I trusted you. I told you things.”

  “Nick, I swear,” she said quickly, genuinely panicked now. “I didn�
�t break our confidence.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Believe me, Nick.”

  “Believe you?”

  “Nick, please understand. It was a woman-to-woman thing. She needed someone.”

  “Loneliness at the top, I suppose.”

  “Yes, something like that.”

  “Then why the big secret? Why all the subterfuge?”

  “We didn’t want you to be upset, that’s all.”

  “How kind.” He could imagine their discussions, probings. What was the best strategy to manipulate old Nick? First Margaret. Now Jennie. The conspiracy of the sisters. He remembered Henderson’s words. “I’ve given you my balls.” What a joke. At this rate neither of them would have any balls to give.

  “The king is dead, long live the queen,” he said bitterly, watching her face for some reaction. He imagined he detected uncertainty, perhaps fright. Then he saw the inner workings of the subtle cover-up, the grave face.

  “We had a mutual interest.”

  “You mean old Nick.”

  “As a matter of fact, it was for you,” she said, her eyes misting.

  “Come off it, Jennie,” he said coldly. “Save it for the Academy Awards. We both know what you are.”

  She brushed away a tear and straightened. “Well, apparently the storm is over,” she said. “You do owe me something for my time.”

  “You mean for the use of the flesh.”

  “Well, you’ve got to admit, I gave you the best of my talent.”

  “Your only talent.”

  “It is something.”

  “Then we’re even,” he said bitterly, feeling a whimper begin somewhere deep inside him. “You did me. I did you.”

  “Please, Nick. Do me now.” She handed him the copy paper. His fingers refused to grasp it as it fell across his lap. “Just this once. Until I can get my bearing again. It’s one small lousy favor, purely professional.”