“You were watching me in the mirror, weren’t you? What’s your opinion?”
“Was I watching you? Excuse me. I really wasn’t paying the slightest attention to what I was doing. I was thinking of something else.”
“I’m disappointed.”
“Are you? I don’t see why you should be.”
“It’s always pleasant to be looked over by a good-looking woman, provided the impression is favorable. My mistake, however. And my apologies. Are you waiting for someone?”
“No.”
“In that case, may I buy you a drink?”
“I already have a drink.”
“It won’t last forever.”
That was true, she thought. Even with the most careful nursing, the double manhattan wouldn’t last forever, and it would be nice, when it was finished, to have another. Surely there was nothing wrong in allowing a man to buy her a drink, or even several drinks, in a bar that was a sanctuary that she did not want to leave. It was, in fact, kind and considerate of him to offer, and would be a rudeness on her part to refuse.
“Perhaps I’ll be ready for another by the time it comes,” she said.
“If you aren’t,” he said, “it won’t spoil.”
No longer under the necessity of nursing, she drank her manhattan quickly, and he kept her company in rye. Ii the meanwhile, he had given the signal for duplicates, which were supplied by the attractive bartender with the twisted nose and thick ear.
“My name is Neal,” he said. “Charles Neal. My friends call me Chick.”
“How do you do, Mr. Neal,” she said formally. “My name is Ivy Galvin.”
“Oh, come on. Be my friend.”
“I don’t know. It was nice of you to buy me a drink, and I’m prepared to be friendly for it, but I don’t believe I could call you Chick.”
“Why not?”
“As a name, I don’t like it. Does that offend you? I don’t want to be offensive.”
He stared at her with his pale, shallow eyes and thought that she was certainly tight, probably a nut, and altogether something nice and easy to be had for the night.
“I’m not offended.”
“I’m willing to call you Charles, however. Is that satisfactory?”
“Sure. Call me Charles. I haven’t been called Charles since my old man ran me away from home.”
“Were you run away from home? I was too, in a way. Not exactly, but in a way. It gives us something in common.”
“Maybe we can find other things in common. Let’s work at it.”
She lost track of the number of manhattans she drank and the length of time she was in the bar, but there were quite a few over a period of quite a while, and in this period, while the manhattans were being drunk, she was aware of the pressure of a knee and the sly and tentative explorations of a hand, the knee and the hand being the property of Charles Neal, whom she could not bring herself to call Chick. She tolerated his trespasses, which were minor, for the sake of the manhattans, which were sustaining, and in fact she was proud of herself for the really competent way in which she was getting along in a strange situation that would once have terrified her, and it just showed again that she could get along quite well in any situation whatever if she only had the confidence.
Someone kept feeding coins to a jukebox, and it seemed to Ivy that the same music was played over and over again, a full-voiced woman singing “Oh, How I Miss You Tonight,” and it was that song in that voice that became the night’s accompaniment, with power to restore it later, not in the fuzzy details of what happened, which were always vague, but in its emotional quality. After the consumption of a good many manhattans, Ivy felt the need to relieve herself, and she slipped carefully off her stool and said, “Excuse me, please,” and started toward the door of the ladies’ room that was clearly marked by a little electric sign above it. But the door was animated by a capricious spirit and insisted upon playing jokes on her. Although she had located it exactly before starting and had walked directly toward it, it kept shifting a little to the right or to the left, so that she had to stop and start again each time in a new direction. Moreover, it kept withdrawing slowly, so that she gained on it only about half as much distance as she should have, and therefore required twice as long to reach it.
There was a clock in the restroom, which she was able to bring into focus after a few moments of intent concentration, and she was surprised and delighted to see that it was eleven o’clock and that she had managed to pass several hours of the night with practically no trouble. It was evident to her now, however, that she had drunk quite enough manhattans for one night and had better return to the hotel to which she’d gone after leaving Henry’s, and The name of the hotel was, she believed, the Hawkins. Yes, that was it. It was named the Hawkins, and it was just down the street a short way, in the next block or the block after.
Leaving the restroom, she returned to the bar to say good night to Charles Neal. She owed him this courtesy, she thought, for being generous and buying her so many manhattans. She did not attempt to get back onto the stool, a difficult and dangerous exercise, but stood beside him and spoke politely in his ear, forming the shape of each word with care before enunciating it.
“Than you very much for the manhattans,” she said, “but I think I had better leave now.”
“Where are we going?” he said.
“I’m staying at the Hawkins Hotel. It’s only down the street a little way, though, and it isn’t necessary for you to come with me. I can get there easily by myself.”
A comedian, he thought. A lush and a nut and a goddamn comedian.
“I wouldn’t think of letting you go alone,” he said.
“Really it isn’t necessary, and you’ve already been quite considerate and generous enough. I wouldn’t want to put you to any trouble.”
“You’ve got a real sense of humor,” he said. “You kill me.”
These words surprised her, for she had intended no humor, and they were spoken in a hard, fiat tone of voice that did not suggest that he was in the least amused. But her senses had become unreliable, and it was likely that her impressions were distorted. Anyhow, he was definitely determined to see her to the hotel, having already slipped off the stool as a beginning, and it would be ungracious of her to make an issue of it. And so she permitted him to walk out of the bar and down the street beside her.
The sidewalk was unsteady and kept tilting toward the street. This caused her to keep bumping into Charles Neal, who was between her and the curb, and once, at an intersection, the pavement moved so suddenly as she was stepping down from the sidewalk into the street that she stumbled and would have fallen if he had not held her by the arm. After that he continued holding her by the arm, even when it was no longer necessary, and when she assured him that she was perfectly all right and did not need his help, he only laughed and kept hold of the arm, and the laugh had the same hard, flat, disturbing sound that his voice had had at the last moment at the bar.
The lobby of the hotel was empty, except for the night clerk, another elderly man who was asleep in a chair behind the desk, his head fallen back and his Adam’s apple working convulsively as he sucked air through his nostrils and blew it out noisily through his mouth. Since she had carried her room key with her in the pocket of her coat, Ivy did not find it necessary to waken him. She walked across the lobby to the elevator and stopped, turning to face Charles Neal with what she hoped was an attitude of decisiveness.
“Thank you for coming with me,” she said.
“Don’t mention it.”
“Good night, then.”
“Joke again.”
“What?”
“Suppose we have a nightcap in your room.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t have anything there to drink.”
“No? Well
, I’ll just see you safely upstairs.”
She understood then, going up in the elevator, that she had made a wanton commitment to a dangerous man, and when she opened the door of her room and entered she was afraid to try to close it against him. Slowly, with despair, she removed her hat and coat and faced him.
She was horrified to see that Neal too had tom off his own coat and tie, tossing them toward a chair, and was now loosening his belt. Her eyes fastened on the stiff brush of hair at the parting in his shirt, and before she began to shiver with revulsion, she was conscious of a sharp spurt of unwanted excitement within her.
Chick’s clothes had been deceptive in the bar. She saw now that he was brutally formed, and that with such a man there would be no mercy. Not knowing what else to do, she backed slowly away, her frantic gaze fixed on his pale eyes, with their shallow glitter of blind lust. Slowly Chick walked after her.
His pointed tongue flicked wetly over his half-smiling lips, and it dawned on her for the first that he thought she was playing his game, teasing him on, building his passion, and a moan of realization formed in her throat.
This whipped him into action, and suddenly he lunged at her, the veins in his neck swollen and pulsating as if ready to burst. One grimy hand darted out and grabbed the collar of her dress, while he shoved her savagely with the other. The dress ripped like paper and Ivy sank helplessly to the floor.
Laughter exploded in his throat, as his hard flanks imprisoned her sides, and he reached down to draw her to him. Slowly, with calculated brutality, he brought her up against his rigidity, the hard length of his male body pressing into hers at every point. Her senses reeled, unable to cope with this strange and terrifying excitement, then took refuge in the paralysis of pure terror.
His searching hands were now taking rough liberties with every part of her, caressing her breasts, massaging her flanks, exploring her thighs, his mouth ravenous on her neck, her ears, and finally sinking between her lips.
It was in her mouth that her paralysis was shattered, and without warning she bit down on his lip, and tasted blood. He cursed and slapped her back-handed across the face. Like a cornered animal, she lunged for his hand with her teeth, and again he cursed and struck her harder, so that she fell to the floor.
There, between sitting and lying, she stared down with mute shame at the exposed pink of her breasts. How much longer would this go on? And did it really matter any more? Was this not, perhaps, the violation she had been unconsciously seeking from the beginning? No, no, she thought, it was the ultimate degradation that she should lose in violence to a stranger what she had hoped to gain in tenderness from a friend.
With a flicker of regained hope, she looked up almost beseechingly into Chick’s bleeding face, as if somehow he ought to understand this. But Neal was beyond the reach of such sanities, and this time he made no effort to bring her to her feet, but flung himself down upon her with such force that it drove the breath from her body.
In the desperate moments that followed, she cried out once, not loudly, but in a plaintive hopelessness that she knew no one would ever hear.
CHAPTER 10
Between nine-thirty and ten, while Ivy was enjoying the illusory warmth and security of too much alcohol, Henry was on the way home. He arrived just before ten, and he was already beginning to feel uncertain of a number of things he had accepted as true in Lila’s apartment. He was also beginning to feel guilty in proportion to his growing uncertainty, and he was nagged by the suspicion that Lila, in addition to being beautiful, was extremely clever as well. He had been altogether too ready to accept her diagnosis of Ivy, which was a measure of his own cowardice in trying to justify his own injustice, and now that he was away from her beauty and her assured voice and her willing flesh, he thought that he could detect in her remembered words and behavior a pattern of deception that he had not seen before.
He faced the rather humiliating conclusion that he had probably been seduced for a purpose other than pleasure, and this purpose was simply that of making Lila Galvin appear convincingly something that she was not. After all bisexuality was not particularly rare, and certainly had a far greater incidence than was generally known. Lila was, by the nature of her ambition, especially vulnerable to a kind of disgrace that could destroy her life as she wanted it to be, including probably a marriage for money and position, and her fear of Ivy, what she might say and do, was surely commensurate with her vulnerability. He wondered if this fear could actually become murderous. He had never fully believed Ivy’s story about the sedative, but he had considered it an effect of feverish imagination, not calculated deception, and he had not doubted until tonight, in Lila’s apartment, that Ivy had believed it herself. Now, in his own rooms, where the sense of Ivy’s presence was strong and Lila’s wasn’t, he again began to believe in Ivy’s innocence, if not her reliability.
Lila had said that Ivy was a psychopathic personality, a liar and cheat and egoist as well as deviate, but this was not so. It was Lila who lied, and possibly it was Lila who was the psychopathic personality. Henry’s knowledge of abnormalities was no greater and no broader than his experience of observation and reading, but he was certain that psychopathic personalities did not commit suicide or seriously try to. They destroyed others, never themselves. And Ivy’s suicide attempt had been genuine, there was no question about that, and she had been saved only by the thinnest and most ludicrous of chances, that she could in no way have predicted.
It was Lila who lied. She was very beautiful and very clever and maybe very dangerous. She had lied with her voice and with her body, and he had believed, for a while, both lies.
And where was Ivy? Well, she had gone away, because she had been told to go in anger that was now regretted. The rooms above the bookshop seemed desolate and deserted, and it occurred to Henry that emptiness, against all logic, existed in degrees. He noted the tidiness of the living room, and the tidiness somehow emphasized the absence of the person who had accomplished it. Walking into the bedroom, he saw the packed bag against the wall, and then, looking into the drawer of the chest, saw that the twenty dollars had been taken. The packed bag indicated that she intended to return for it, but this might no be for a long time, or might be never. In the meanwhile, she was gone, because he had sent her away, and where could she possibly be?
Was she, like the night he had found her, roaming the streets? The thought of her doing this was deeply disturbing, increasing his conviction of senseless cruelty and concomitant guilt, and he had a vision of her passing like a lost child through the intermittent areas of light and darkness along the cold streets. She had taken the twenty dollars, however. Having the money, it was unlikely that she would go without shelter and a bed the first night.
Perhaps she would go back to Lila. This thought was in his mind suddenly, and it was the most disturbing possibility of all. If she roamed the streets or stayed somewhere for the night in a cheap room, it was at least a sign of stubborn adherence to rebellion, a refusal to capitulate, but if she returned to Lila it would be a final admission of failure, the definitive submission. She had not been there while he was, that was certain, and he had left late enough so that she should easily have arrived, if she was coming at all. But perhaps it had merely taken her a long while to make a decision, or to be driven to it in desertion and desperation, in which case she might be there at this moment, and it was imperative, now that he had thought of it, to know if it were so or not.
Putting on his hat and overcoat, he went downstairs to the street and turned left toward the Greek’s as far as a public telephone booth on the corner. It was very cold in the booth, and the bulb which lighted it was growing dim. He found Lila’s number listed in the directory and dialed it. Her phone rang and rang in short bursts at the other end of the line, and he was about to give up and break the connection when her voice came on abruptly. “Hello,” she said. “This is Lila Galvin speaking.�
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“Henry Harper,” Henry said.
There was a long pause before she spoke again, and in the pause a suggestion of wariness. Her voice, when she spoke, was so cool and impersonal that it seemed completely unrelated to the voice in which he had heard, a few hours ago, the soft solicitations and gutturals of passion.
“What do you want?” she said. “Why are you calling me at this hour?”
“Is Ivy there?”
“Ivy? Certainly not. I supposed that she was with you.”
“She’s gone. She was gone when I got home.”
“What made you think she came here?”
“I only thought she might have. It was the only place I could think of that she might go to.”
“Why did she leave? Was it because of something you did to her?”
He had been made sensitive to inference by his feeling of guilty responsibility, however irrational it might be, and he was, sitting cramped in the cold and dimly lighted booth, shaken of a sudden by a diffused and futile fury that was at once directed inwardly upon himself and outwardly upon both Ivy and Lila.
“Listen to me,” he said. “Whatever I have done to her is not one-tenth so bad as what you have done to her, or what she has done to herself. Anyhow, it will do no good to make accusations or call names. She’s gone, and where she may go finally and do to herself in the end is something I don’t like to think about. Neither do you, I’ll bet. You don’t like to think about what she may do to herself and, incidentally, to you.”
“Are you trying to threaten me?”
“If you’re threatened, it’s not by me.”
“I thought earlier tonight that you might have a little intelligence, but I see now that you’re a complete fool.”
“On the contrary, you thought earlier that I was a fool, and I was, but you’re beginning to think now that I may not be. Never mind that, however. There’s no use talking about it. I’ll look for Ivy, and if I can’t find her I may report to the police that she’s missing.”
Take Me Home Page 16
