I insisted on paying and we both ordered the fried chicken dinner with canned green beans, but real mashed potatoes. Not at all bad. The Congressional Restaurant should serve food like that. The young daughter balanced the dishes in heart-stopping fashion and took them away. We finished up with the free coffee and Mom’s homemade pecan pie.
I hadn’t had my usual evening drink, nevertheless I felt surprisingly at ease. Maybe we needed this. Needed to get acquainted. Do some ordinary things together. She was pleasant to be with. I suppose I’d be more pleasant if I could think of just one thing in the entire world other than her.
I wanted to hear her speak, to watch her talk, to tell me everything about herself. The order in which she put her clothes on and how she took them off. I wanted to know what she ate for breakfast, what she wore to bed, the name of her childhood pet, everything. Of course, I didn’t in fact ask any of those things aloud.
I did ask about her perfume. I liked it from the start and now it was even better. It was the warm fragrance of Betty Jo herself. I hoped the scent would remain in the car forever. If I knew the name, I could buy some for Ellen. Then when I was lying with her, I would think about Betty Jo. “I like your perfume. What is it?”
“I’m not wearing any. You’re smelling soap.”
I didn’t believe her. She was most likely embarrassed to mention some inexpensive brand from some common store. I would learn all such details later once she knew me better, if she became my mistress. I wondered if she’d mind moving to DC. I didn’t want to be driving to Baltimore all the time. Of course, Baltimore would be safer as far as people seeing us out together. I’d want to be with her inside the apartment most of the time. She could go out by herself on the nights I was busy. Although, it’d be best if she told me where she was going.
As we finished our coffee, my thoughts went back to how to get closer to her. There had been no drinks, so she wasn’t feeling high. We hadn’t eaten at my hotel, so we couldn’t just go upstairs. What should I do? What should I say? The day, the night, the opportunity, was getting away from me. I’d wasted it and tomorrow we’d be in Florida. She stood to leave and asked me to take her across the road to her motel.
We drove across to Papp’s and stopped in front of her room. I gave it another try. I tried to think of something persuasive. What I said was, “Are you sure you want to get out?”
“Freddy, you're about as romantic as my dirty sneakers.”
“I’m just acting like any sensible man.”
“I don’t meet a lot of those. Is this how they act?” She got out and gave me a little wave. “Goodnight, Freddy.”
“Wait, wait,” I called after her. I got out quickly and went around the car to her. “I’ve changed my mind about the hotel room. You can have your own private room at the Marriott after all.”
She just looked at me.
“No room with me, no double beds. Is that romantic?”
“Not at all. But it’s better. A single rose would be better.”
“I’ll send a dozen up to your room.”
“I already have a room here.”
“Not like this one. I’ll get you the top floor executive suite if you want. The best of whatever they have. Drink champagne in the Jacuzzi and whatever. You’ll be like royalty up there. Order room service...whatever you want.”
“And?”
“No and. I won’t bother you. Won’t even phone you.”
“Freddy, I do want to thank you for the ride and the dinner. I truly appreciate it.” She gave me the nicest smile yet. “I’ll be over at the café in the morning. If you don’t show up, I’ll understand and I’ll be okay. But I’ll bet you’re over there before sunrise waiting for me.”
That polite thank you was all I was going to get from her. She turned and left me. The only night, the only chance to have her in my arms had passed. So painful to watch that body with those perfect hips and long legs undulate away from me into her motel room. Was all that accentuation for my benefit? She already had me under her spell.
After she was safely inside her room, I drove back to the Marriott. This was crazy. If Betty Jo hadn’t been along, I’d have driven on to Florida without stopping. I had two Martinis in the lounge while I returned some phone calls, and carried a third drink up to my room. I watched a sexy movie, but it wasn’t as good as thinking about her. At last I fell asleep.
The next morning, I was up early and rushed through my shower and shave. My head was full of Betty Jo thoughts although at this time yesterday morning I didn’t know she existed. Yesterday my head was clear and full of purposeful direction. I knew the path I was on, the path my father and wise men before him had followed for centuries. Get an education, work hard, excel, and you’ll succeed. It wasn’t complicated for me. I’d already reached my goal of unquestioned success. I laughed at those frivolous fools dancing down the purposeless path of dissipation. Until yesterday morning.
How could I have come this far without someone exactly like her in my life? She was everything. All my problems lay outside myself until I met her. Now my mind was tangled with thoughts of her. They wound around through every crevice in my head like a dark feverish snake.
I checked out, and rolled my bag across the lobby, and out into the slight chill of a bright November dawn in Georgia. I checked the gas gauge as I pulled out onto the side road. We weren’t that far from the Georgia-Florida line. I’d fill up around Jacksonville.
I don’t know why I hurried over to Mom’s Café. I knew I was early. I supposed strippers didn’t get to bed before 4 a.m. and were accustomed to sleeping late. It was a glorious morning and I stood outside the café taking in deep breaths of the fresh Georgia air and wondering why I didn’t get up to see the sun rise every morning of my life. The morning would be perfect after she showed up. I could look across the road and see the door to her motel room. No open curtains. No sign of her.
Maybe she wasn’t coming. Maybe she hadn’t gone straight to bed last night. Maybe she’d met some man staying at the motel. She could have borrowed Papp’s car and found some rough Georgia bar. The entire place would fall silent as soon as she walked in the door, and they would immediately crown her queen. She might have chosen some unworthy hunk to take back to the motel. Some tattooed biker. Maybe I’d never see her again.
After an hour of standing there, I gave up and went in the café. I had just finished the best country breakfast ever when she reappeared in my life. She came in looking unusually fresh and appealing. I greeted her and told her to order whatever she wanted.
“Just want a coffee to go. Can we just drive to Florida without all these stops?” An older pigtailed daughter of Mom brought her a take-out coffee.
We got underway again on I-95. Here it was a fresh new day. The last day. This was it. We’d be in Florida later and I wasn’t any closer to intimacy with Betty Jo, let alone converting her into my mistress.
She leaned back, crossed her legs, and looked out the side window at the Georgia scenery zipping by. I thought I had time to sneak a look at her without her yelling. I’d never paid any attention to a woman’s knees before and now I stared in strange fascination. How smooth and creamy they looked. Flawless knees. Dimpled and soft as if they were brand new, never used.
“Freddy, do you mind? The highway’s out in front. Try to glance at it now and then.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve never seen myself like this. I don’t understand myself. And I certainly don’t understand you. I think we both should loosen up and enjoy the situation. You don’t have to be constantly on guard as you are. You’re treating me as though I’m just another man who doesn’t appreciate you for what you really are.”
“Freddy, you assume I want to screw you because I strip to make a living. Only a man in a man’s world could come up with this stuff. You’re not my type, get it? I could hand you a bronze plaque that reads ‘Freddy. It ain’t gonna happen.’ And you’d still be convinced that somehow a party will soon start.”
She had
accurately sensed my frustration. Perhaps I’d misunderstood the situation entirely. Perhaps I’d been too subtle. “I don’t mean to insult you, but what if I just flat out paid you?”
“Hookers get paid. Female friends and housewives do it for free.”
She might have thought I took her for someone cheap. “I’m talking about real money. Much more than you think I’m offering. You’d have money in the bank and a lot of money in your pocket when you walked in on your mother. You don’t want to show up as broke as she is. You could fly back to Baltimore first class.”
“Hold on, let me get out my calculator.”
“You’re making fun of me. What if I offered you something really big, a luxury apartment, expensive clothes, a glamorous lifestyle?”
“You left out the sun and moon. How far do you go before you realize you’re making an ass out of yourself? I know what I want, Freddy, and that isn’t it. Look, I admit I tricked you into giving me a ride. You appeared harmless and I loved this big safe car. I was stranded and it was up to me to take care of myself. I needed to keep myself safe. So the first thing I did before I ever approached you yesterday morning was to write down your license plate number. I have it tucked away in my purse in case something bad happens. You men don’t have to think about such things, but the world out there can get very nasty very quickly. No one is getting over on this girl ever again.
“All I want from you is the ride. I didn’t ask for food or drinks from you. And that was very nice of you, Freddy. Did I play you a little? Sure. I was keeping the ride going. Now I’m getting the ride without doing anything. So why should I do anything.”
“You could be nice.”
“Look, Freddy,” she said softly, “Don’t you understand you’re asking me to trade sex for a ride to Florida? How dare you? I don’t do things like that. Second, once we do the deed, then the ride might be over. Ask any teenage girl. The chance of a man like you kicking me out of his car while he’s still horny is zilch, nada, and zero.”
“I’m not going to put you out or leave you stranded whether I’m sexually satisfied or not, Candy.”
“Don’t call me Candy.”
“If you’re so pure in thought and deed, you mind telling me how you paid for that motel room last night?”
“What, your imagination suddenly stop working?”
“You got that old man off, didn’t you?”
“We were just sympathetic spirits. We understood each other. We each had something the other wanted. So, we made a deal. He was at my door this morning—told me I could stay a month free.”
“No doubt ready to sign over the motel to you.”
“I’m joking, Freddy. Do you really think I’d do Pops a little favor for the price of a motel room? I told you I don’t do that stuff. If I had diddled him, he’d be on a respirator right now thanking God for his last good time and saying he now was ready to go. The truth is we were talking about Florida. He told me he used to drive down and see his girlfriend in Apalachicola, but the last time she unexpectedly told him she was getting married. Poor guy. He said I reminded him of her. My guess was every woman he sees reminds him of her. That’s all. Told me he had one room rate for the tourists, but he gave me the lower rate for locals. You know what else he said? Anyone as pretty as me should float through life free anyway, like a national resource, so everyone could look at me. Wasn’t that nice? Oh God, to be able to float through life.”
“But that’s exactly what you are doing. I’m not suggesting your life is easy, and you don’t have to pay your way. But you float along in social situations by making promises with your sexuality.”
“If you’ve been promised anything, you did it to yourself.”
“That’s not true. And I’m not talking about just me. I’m talking about every man. You make promises with your body language and the way you carry on. You don’t just flirt. You put on your stripper personality and act sexually bold. Are you saying I’ve misinterpreted all that?”
“Freddy, what do you expect me to do? You haven’t had one single non-sexual thought in your head since I got in this car. Now how is that supposed to make me feel? Treat me like an object and I’ll react like an object.”
“You’re the one who made yourself up like an object to get this ride. You’re the one who conveniently told me you dance around naked for a living. You’re the one who put those sexual thoughts in my head. And if I hadn’t reacted, you’d move, or twist, or touch your legs or something until I got the message. You tease so much you don’t even realize you’re doing it. You’ve the power to turn a perfectly normal man into a delusional idiot. You love it and you use it. Now you’re saying I’m wrong for misinterpreting all your sexual manipulations.”
“Okay, you’re right. I used sex to get the ride. I do fall back on that when I need to. I’m sorry.”
“You believe the best way to hurt every man is to make then lust after you, excite them, and leave them frustrated to the point of abject agony. Which is what you’d do to George if you could do it over. Remember what you told me about stripping? The idea was to make every man in the room think you’re dumb enough to actually have sex with him. Maybe, subconsciously, you’re still trying to hurt George. Your goal is to make men suffer.”
“That’s ridiculous. I like men. I don’t want to hurt them.”
“Why did you tell me you were a stripper?”
“What? You asked me what I did.”
“When you’re out in the real world, what happens when you tell a man you’re a stripper? We both know. The man looks at you in a different way. He immediately starts to judge your character even your morals. And his judgment isn’t likely to be charitable.”
“Strippers being immoral is a cliché.”
“Yes, and so commonplace why on earth would you tell a stranger that you strip unless you were seeking such a predictable reaction?”
“I’m not ashamed of being a stripper.”
“That’s not the point. You purposely told me you stripped knowing exactly how I’d react. From then on, it was easy and you got me going knowing I’d crave you and subsequently be disappointed and hurt. You hurt me on purpose because I’m a man.”
I was thinking it all through as I spoke. I thought the rape made more of a mess of her psyche than she realized. Suffer Freddy. Suffer all you men out there who’d like to have her. Suffer because of George. That’s why it was now a part of her being. She couldn’t turn it off if any man was watching.
“It’s no mystery to me why you were attracted to stripping. You’ve been doing a sex dance in front of men ever since that rape. Just so you could get them excited and then let them stew in their own lust. All the while thinking ‘Go to hell, George. Go to hell all of you.’”
“Wow, Freddy where’d all that come from?” She sat still for a minute then shrugged. “Anyway, it’s all a bunch of silly shit and not what’s going on with me.”
“I’m sorry, maybe I went too far. But if you women put all your sexual power together you could rule the world.”
She said, “Frankly I don’t see what all the fuss is about. You see one naked body, you’ve seen them all.”
I looked over sharply. Her expression was extremely stern for a moment and then she burst out laughing. I thought she was laughing at me, and for an instant I was angry. That’s when I saw this warm almost motherly smile on her face for a moment before she started laughing again. Then I caught the joke. And I started laughing as well. She hadn’t said it to pity me. She wasn’t laughing at me. She was laughing at the ubiquitous power of sex. Whether it’s a naked woman or a naked man, we’re all in this ridiculous sexual attraction game together. The outrageous effect of sex enslaves us all. Its chaotic passion lies within us and we’re subject to its rule. We live at its mercy.
We sat there riding side by side for a beautiful moment. Two helpless humans laughing together at the absurdity of sex, and how it makes us act.
I realized I’d been acting foolish and ungentl
emanly. I don’t know what she realized at that point, but she appeared softer, even slightly vulnerable. Perhaps she’d experienced some insight into her own behavior. We’d made a small connection. At least we had laughed together honestly for the first time.
At that moment, what I wanted was to clear the air of sex and for us to act like adults friends who happened to be traveling companions. “Look, Betty Jo, This is entirely my fault. But things don’t have to stay this way. We got off on the wrong foot. Let’s start over.”
“Let’s keep it on the wrong foot.”
At that moment I gave up. She was unattainable. She was smarter and more complicated than I ever expected. She had my number. She had me. She’d make the rules from then on and I’d let her. I’m not proud to say it, but I’d have done anything for her. I’d grovel at those zebra-striped shoes. Now I didn’t want to get to Florida because then she’d be gone.
For the next hour, I was afraid to look over at her. I didn’t want her scolding me. I noticed she seemed to be interested in how the scenery conspicuously changed as we proceeded farther south. So I took a chance. Her shoes were off and I could look down cautiously and see her bare feet and toes. I kept my eyes mostly on the highway. I don’t think Candy was aware I could look down and see her bare feet.
Chapter Twenty-four
We crossed into Florida late that afternoon. This was the home stretch. Betty Jo started watching for a suitable place to get gas and coffee. She was excited. “Freddy, I hope this is the last damn stop before Fort Lauderdale.” Apparently, no question remained about how far I would take her. Although we had never discussed the subject, I was to drive hours out of my way and deliver her precisely to her mother’s doorstep. That was all right with me; I’d be near her that much longer.
She spotted a crowded truck stop near Jacksonville and told me to exit and pull in there. You notice she’s calling the shots. “You gas up. I’ll be back in a minute.”
She got out and did that walk of hers across to the main building with her head up in the air, those hips in motion, and those long legs going up as far as the eye could see. All accentuated by the tall heels she wore. How nice for everyone. Two cars honked. Without moving her head, she raised a hand to acknowledge their approval, but kept walking straight ahead.
The Price of Candy Page 18