by James Jones
At the time, he had had a strange, not-pleasant feeling that she had known what he was doing all along; that she had with her cool, capable, efficient way made her deductions, and then made up her mind, and decided to go into it with full knowledge of what she was doing. But that was no way to go into a love affair, and afterwards he had decided that that startling, terrifying groan he had heard was the result of her passionate physical nature she had been trying to control. Later on, after he got to know her better, he was positive of it. Apparently, there was something about him that excited her tremendously. And yet she never seemed to get excited when he himself wasn’t. Apparently, it was only him who could bring it out in her.
It had been very uncomfortable in the car, both of them in heavy coats as they were, but he had held her to him as best he could and after the second long kiss had put his hand on her leg on the outside of her dress. Edith had not done anything. But after another kiss, she had pulled her mouth off his and said in a low quiet voice, “You better think what you’re doing.”
“I am,” he said, and reached for her mouth.
“I’m in love with you,” she said.
“I’m in love with you, too, Edith,” he said.
She looked at him and then smiled, as tenderly as he could ever remember anybody smiling at him before, and then reached up her mouth to kiss him again.
“Even if I am old enough to be your father,” he said. “I think I’ve been in love with you for a long time. And didn’t know it.” It was only then that he thought of the streetlight. Someday when the bypass had gone through, this street—Wernz Avenue—would become a sleepy backstreet; but right now it was the main road in and out of town. Even if it was late at night. Edith had apparently thought of it at the same time he did.
“We shouldn’t be here like this,” she said.
“No. Well, I guess I better let you get on home,” he said, but not meaning it at all.
“All right,” Edith said and straightened her hat.
Frank had not expected her to agree. What he had thought was that maybe they would drive on over to the Terre Haute road, and park; or get a motel. And if there was any question of them being recognized, they could go on to the other side of Terre Haute. He had thought she would want to be with him—have sex with him—and not just go on home. He had only said that to be properly self-effacing.
“Well, what about your lipstick? and all?” he temporized.
“I can fix it in the dark,” Edith said. “You’d better get on back to town.” She leaned over smiling to kiss him and then opened the door.
So he had sat empty-headed and watched her as she walked away out from under the cone of light, her head down replacing her lipstick that he would have to yet wipe off of him. He was to learn later that whenever he said anything to her about doing something like that, she did it. No question, no argument; just did it. Even if she had seemed to be passionately hot a moment before. It made him have to be careful of what he said. But at the time, he hadn’t known that. So he just sat and watched her go, a little panicky that he might have hurt her feelings some way, and thinking that now he would have to wait at least three more days, till Monday. The weekend was going to be hell. Well, at least, it had all been decided anyway. He did know that she was really in love with him like he’d suspected, he had thought triumphantly as he turned the car around.
Frank in his progress toward the Hotel Parkman to see Dave could afford to smile back at himself with amusement now. In spite of Dave, he felt good, he wasn’t even very mad at Agnes anymore. Girls of twenty-four did not very often fall in love with men of forty-five. It must have been when she saw the way he handled the business at the store and all the other deals he was engaged in. It had probably been a revelation to her. Hell, he didn’t claim to be handsome, he wasn’t going to try and kid himself it was that.
With his ball-shaped head on his barrel-shaped body Frank stepped off the curb and made his way slowly across Wernz Avenue to the north side of the square and turned west with a stately nod at a middle-aged lady who spoke to him as she passed.
Monday had come soon enough—although he sure hadn’t thought so at the time, he grinned to himself. Monday night when he had driven her home he had not had to talk about her life and her future at all. But he didn’t want it to look to her like that was all a put-on, so he had talked about it a little anyway. Edith had sat beside him in the car quietly, staring straight ahead out the windshield after the one quick warm, sort of embarrassed smile she had given him when she first climbed in. He had had then a feeling that he was to have often again with her, and that was a sort of uneasy feeling of wondering what she was thinking so quietly. His reaction to it was to always think irritably, Damn women, anyway! And yet the atmosphere in the car was totally different than it had been Friday night, too. All of Friday night’s heavy unpleasant suspense was gone now, and they were closer together, like sort of an unspoken agreement between them, even if she was so quiet. He had waited until they were only about two blocks from the streetlight at Roosevelt Drive, but she still did not say anything.
“Well, where are we goin to go?” he was forced to say finally.
“Go?” Edith said without turning her head. “I don’t know. Where will we go?”
“I thought we might drive over on the Terre Haute road. There’s a lot of nice new motels over there,” he said.
“All right,” she said. “A motel would be nice.”
“Or we could just go over on the Terre Haute road and park someplace,” he said.
“All right,” Edith said. “Whatever you prefer.”
“Myself I’d rather go to a motel,” he said. They had already passed the Roosevelt Drive streetlight now, he noted with a kind of relief. They were off the brick onto the concrete highway, running on out past the few remaining houses toward the bridge at Israel.
“I think we’d better go on on the other side of Terre Haute,” Edith said, still without turning her head. “I suppose we’d better be pretty careful about being recognized,” Edith said. “Especially you.”
“Well, we have to go somewhere!” Frank said.
“I suppose so,” Edith said.
She seemed so very damned far away. He couldn’t let it pass.
“Unless you don’t love me anymore,” he said, feeling a little panicky. “I can always turn around and take you home.”
With that, she turned her head to him and smiled, and his touch of panic instantly faded.
“Poor Frank,” she said. It was the first time she had ever called him anything but “Boss” or “Mr Hirsh.” She didn’t seem younger than him at all, he noticed.
“Oh, I make out pretty good,” he said, feeling fussed but pleased. “Here. Come on over here. You don’t have to sit way over there.”
“All right,” she had said, and leaned over against him. It wasn’t very comfortable, what with the heavy coats and all, but she had stayed there, and they had driven on in silence.
When he went in to register at the motel, far out east on the other side of Terre Haute, he had, suddenly, and without having thought about it, signed a fictitious name. He hadn’t meant to especially, and, in fact, had not even contemplated signing a register at all until it was right there before him. And he didn’t know why he did it.
Edith was waiting for him at the door and after he had parked they went inside where she took her coat off and laid it neatly out on a chair, and then said:
“Did you sign a fictitious name on the register?”
“Well, yes,” Frank said, feeling a quick guilt; “yes, as a matter of fact, I did.”
Edith nodded. “Good,” she said. “I thought about it before and was going to mention it to you, but I forgot it.” She then took off her shoes and sat down in the other chair and sat looking at him expectantly, her knees pressed together in her skirt, and occasionally wiggling her toes up and down in the feet of her stockings.
Frank had thought to bring a bottle with them, and now he
was glad. He took off his own coat and mixed them both drinks of whiskey and water, talking back over his shoulder to her through the doorway. It was really a very nice modern little place, and he was glad of that. God! what stresses a man wouldn’t go through! just for a little lovin and sex.
“I’m not used to drinking whiskey much,” Edith called. “Don’t give me very much. I don’t want to get tight on you.”
“All right,” he said and put less in the second glass and brought them in.
“And you want to be careful about getting tight yourself,” she said. “Remember, you have to drive back to Parkman.”
“Yes,” he said, “that’s right.” She was right, also, about the whiskey; after two drinks, Edith got a little giggly. “I’m sure glad you brought that whiskey,” she said, sighing and punching back her hair. He sat across the room from her on the bed and had not the vaguest idea of what they talked about or what he said. But finally after he finished downing his third stiff one, he just simply got up and went over to her in her chair. Edith was still sitting with her knees together and he got down on his knees by the chair and kissed both her knees in the textured stockings, and then raised up to kiss her on the mouth while she looked at him sort of helplessly.
He still had no idea how to get through the awkwardness of getting their clothes off; and he was still in his suit coat. But finally, after a timeless period of kissing her, he reached up with trembling fingers and began unbuttoning the blouse of her tailored suit, trying to make it look playful.
“Wait,” Edith had said tenderly and got up and went to the bath. “I’ll be right back.”
Frank watched her go helplessly, dim pictures rattling around in his head of her wanting to turn all the lights off or coming out in her slip or making him shut his eyes.
“But I want to see you!” he cried out.
“You’ll see me,” she smiled and shut the door.
When she came out two or three nervous swallows of straight whiskey later, she came out nude, carrying all of her clothes neatly over one arm which she held away from her rather than using it as a cover. At first, with the strong light of the bath behind her through the door, she was only a silhouette, but as she came out into the room, the light from the three different lamps hit her and he could see her, and Frank gazed at her dumbstruck thinking once again that there was really nothing anywhere quite so beautiful as a naked woman, and wondering also again why it was women never seemed to understand that. Looking oddly helpless, Edith laid her stack of clothes across the back of the chair with her coat on it and then turned to him and smiled that almost embarrassed smile and walked over to him through the three different lights that moved across her as she moved, to where he sat on the bed and knelt down on one knee and began untying one of his shoes.
As if burned with a hot iron, Frank jumped up off the bed and began tearing off his clothes, pausing only to do the buttons. The strange thing was, her body looked exactly like it had when he used suddenly to see her walking stark naked around the store. Exactly. With wild glaring haste he went on down through his clothes, layer after layer, flinging them off him.
“Frank! Frank!” Edith exclaimed softly. “You have to wear those clothes back home. Don’t do that!” and went round picking them up and folding them over the other chair back where his coat was.
But when he seized her, she suddenly became again the almost wildly desperate woman who had kissed him so passionately Friday night, and emitted again that terrifying cry which still startled him, as she turned to him.
There was something about when a man possessed a new woman that was like no other thing on earth, he thought triumphantly. It was a good thing women didn’t know it, how men felt. But maybe they did know it? Briefly, for a second or two, he felt deeply frightened and could not say why.
But Frank, standing at the northwest corner of the square now and looking down the hill to the Parkman where he had to go (that damned Dave!), was pretty sure that women did not know. If he was a woman and he knew, he would never let any man sleep with him ever. But then he wasn’t a woman; he was a man. And women were not like men. Women hungered to be owned and dominated, he thought happily. They just weren’t like men. And Edith Barclay was a good example.
He had gotten her home all right that night, and had let her off there at the streetlight, and then gone on home to bed himself. And all the way home, she had talked about what they were going to have to do to be careful. It had been obvious, even to him, that she was thinking more about him (and perhaps Agnes) than she was thinking about herself. They must not ever show anything around the store that might be noticed, and if she even seemed a little colder to him than before, he must understand and not be hurt. Also, she was not going to stop dating Harold Alberson, or any of the other young fellows she dated sometimes. It would look very funny if she suddenly stopped dating everybody. But she was telling him ahead of time and he was not to worry. Nothing would happen.
He had had a twinge of rectum-tightening pain run up his back at that; but she had already anticipated it and gone right on: There just wasn’t any other way for them to do it, and he was just going to have to trust her that was all; and he needn’t worry about a thing.
And that was the way it had been since January. That they had been able to keep it such a secret was sufficient proof of the wisdom of the policy. Even Agnes didn’t know anything about it; and, in fact, he and Agnes had really been getting along together better the past five months than they had for years.
He and Edith had their night or two a week, and as far as he was able to tell nobody anywhere was any bit the wiser. There were some joints north of Terre Haute around Clinton where nobody from Parkman ever went and where he took her several times for dinner and a few times they drove down to Sullivan, but usually it would just be a motel and maybe he would go out and get hamburger sandwiches for them afterwards, and they would sit and eat them and drink and talk, and he told her all about the bypass deal. It was really a wonderful love affair.
And all the time, she kept on dating that white-collar, idiot-headed jerk Harold Alberson and a few others; and he himself went on with his own life and business. And yet he trusted her. As much as Agnes almost. It looked as though he had finally found the mistress he had always dreamed about—not out of some chorus line in some city, or some sophisticated nightclub-chasing businessman-woman like Geneve Lowe—but right in his own hometown, a girl out of a low-class laboring family (who had nevertheless grown beyond it), his own office girl.
Frank had not forgotten his solemn promise to himself about sleeping with his hired help. He had never been the kind of man to just shuck off things like that, and he was not that kind now. If a man didn’t stand by his own personal integrity and self-respect, he was nothing, and he was no good to anybody. But he could not honestly feel that in the case of Edith he had jeopardized either his integrity or his self-respect. All that was canceled out by the fact that she loved him as much as she did.
And that she loved him very much, there could be no doubt, he thought not without a certain pride. The whole point was, Edith was not of the material of which ordinary mistresses like Geneve Lowe were made. She was not particularly ambitious, she did not want money, she did not seem to give a damn about living the high life. She was just as content with hamburgers in a motel as she was with a ritzy dinner someplace.
When he tried to buy her gifts, she turned them down; even jewelry. She didn’t want him to give her anything, she said. Once he had suggested her taking an apartment by herself, that he would finance it. Her answer had been that it would look very funny, her suddenly moving to an apartment, and people would wonder where she got that extra money, no, she had better stay there at home. And she was always so calm and collected about it. Apparently, she wanted nothing from him except himself.
She was, in short, a respectable woman. He would no more have dared to try any of the things with her that he did with Geneve Lowe than he would have thought of trying it with
Agnes. That made a certain hardship in the relationship, he admitted, but it was the only one. And he yet had hopes of educating her. She was really very naive.
But other than that, he thought as he walked down the hill, he had the perfect mistress. Once he had told her that if he made a real success on this bypass deal, he wanted to buy her a house. He wanted to do things for her; hell, it was the only way he had to show her he appreciated her. But she had merely smiled, that strange sad little smile she sometimes got for apparently no reason. A house, she said, would be worse than the apartment he had suggested, wouldn’t it?
The bypass deal was progressing admirably. He had been up to Springfield twice, once in February and once in April, at Clark Hibbard’s invitation, not counting this last trip day before yesterday which he had just got back from. And all three trips had been nice ones. Clark had put him onto a friend of his who apparently knew everything and just about everybody, but Clark had not gone out with them himself. “Can’t, you know,” he apologized; “Betty Lee’s family.” But Frank was not to let that stop him. They went out every night he was there; and on one evening Clark had had him out to the house for a formal dinner, where flushed with cocktails he talked continuously to a large, fat man beside him (he never did find out who the man was) in order to keep his eyes from being drawn to the body of Betty Lee at the end of the table. It was the same way on the April trip, and now this one. Each time, they spent a great deal of time with the man Clark had got hold of through his father-in-law, who was to buy the land up for them. And now after this last trip the actual buying was going forward. He didn’t see how they could miss.
He himself had scraped together every penny he could, and had even mortgaged their house—without telling Agnes. And Clark had been able to put together almost as much without however having to touch the Oregonian or any of his business interests. Probably borrowed it from his father-in-law. And Betty Lee’s father had even offered to put some money into it himself if they needed any more, the voting power of which he would put into Frank’s hands, as Clark himself was doing.