He stood up. He took change from his pocket. Bernice saw him touch a quarter, then obviously change his mind. He reluctantly pushed a dime under the corner of his plate. Bernice thought he was sweet, trying to save her money like that.
It was almost nine o’clock when they arrived in Clearwater. They walked five blocks before Carlos found a hotel with rates to suit him. When they had their room, he got a telephone book. He found the county clerk’s office. By much telephoning, he was able to get in touch with Carrie Newson, a clerk in the license bureau. Finally he hung up and smiled at Bernice. “O.K.,” he said. “Let’s go get married.”
For Bernice there hadn’t been any moment before this one. She was floating on clouds of velvety bubbles. She moved beside Carlos without knowing where they went or whom they saw. She knew the clerk was a stout woman who thought Carlos beautiful and so droll. There were baby diapers spread over everything in the front room of the clerk’s house. She called in a couple of neighbors for witnesses. Everybody took it calmly except Bernice. The civil ceremony was quick, cheap, and shoddy. Bernice had dreamed of a church and an organ’s muted music, a minister’s hushed voice. But she wouldn’t have changed anything. She heard Carlos say, “I will.” She heard her own voice from some distant place saying, “I will, I will.” And they were laughing at her. And it was over. They were back in their hotel room. And Bernice wished for a lace nightgown.
Carlos undressed casually before her distended eyes. She knew with a twinge of jealousy that Carlos was accustomed to undressing before girls. He had done it so often that they were all one and all the same, and it was so casual that it never occurred to him that she was any different than all the others.
She sat in the uncomfortable hotel chair. Her lips were parted. Her feather-cut hair was damp across her forehead. She couldn’t take her eyes from him as he undressed. The strength went out of her, and she sat limply staring at him. She saw the muscles bulge across his wide shoulders. His tanned chest was lightly dusted with short dark hairs. His belly was corded with muscles and was naturally sucked in over his slender waist. He dropped his trousers and kicked them to a chair. His underpants were green and orange.
He turned and looked over his shoulder at her. “Hey. You gonna sit there all night?”
“Carlos—” her voice was a whisper. She was staring at him. “Carlos—”
He frowned. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Carlos—” She lifted her hand toward him, but it was trembling so badly that she dropped it again. “Carlos—”
She managed to push herself up from the chair. She put out her arms. He took a step toward her, still watching her oddly. When her icy hands touched the warmth of his solid, muscular arms, she wilted against him.
“For God’s sake, Bernice!”
She was dead weight. With his hands on her back, he tried to support her. But she slid down, her lips raking his body as she crumpled. She caught her arms about his legs and buried her fevered face against him. “I love you,” she whispered. “I love you. I love you.”
“Then get up. Get undressed, honey.”
“I can’t, Carlos. I can’t get up.”
“What are you saying? What’s the matter with you?”
She brushed away her glasses, the glamour glasses suggested by Gloria Soonin, and looked up at him beseechingly. “I can’t get up. Laugh at me. Anything. Only I can’t get up. You’ll have to help me.”
His face twisted into an angry snarl. “What is this? What kind of dodge is this?”
“Be patient, Carlos!” she pleaded. “Be patient. Help me up. Help me up, darling. Pick me up.”
He bent over and picked her up easily in his arms. She laughed a little and clung to him. “Take me to bed,” she said.
He carried her to the bed. “Now. Tell me,” he said. “What’s the matter?”
She stared up at him and began to cry. “Don’t you know what’s the matter? I can’t move. I love you. I can’t move. You must help me, Carlos.”
He clutched up the front of her dress to lift her. Her shoulders came upward a half foot or so, and her head flopped back. “Damn it!” he growled. “Damn you!”
Her dress tore in his fist. Angered, he ripped it away.
“Yes!” she whispered. “Yes. Yes. Yes.”
He tore off her bra and her panties. She reached up for him and pulled him down upon her. He fought to get free, but her arms were like steel wires. Some of the terrible desire in her communicated itself to him. With passion that was more like anger than love, he thrust her back on the bed. But his passion was no match for hers. The violence in his green eyes only stirred her more. When he tried to fall away from her, she moaned at him. “No, Carlos, no. Don’t stop, Carlos! Please!”
“My God, I’ve got to!” he gasped. “Don’t you know anything?”
“I can’t help it!” she wailed. “I can’t help it, Carlos. You must! Please, Carlos. Please!”
“Let go, Bernice,” he said. His voice was sharp. “Let me go. I’ll hit you. So help me God, I’ll hit you.”
For a moment, her breath rasping across her taut lips, she clung to him, her face twisted with hatred. Abruptly she released him and fell back against the pillow.
He lay above her and looked at her. Her breasts heaved as she breathed heavily. Her nipples were tense, pointing. She had turned her face away and buried it in the bed covers. He could hear her muffled sobbing. He touched her shoulders, but she shook his hand away.
He sat on the edge of the bed, naked, and lighted a cigarette. He tried to be a man of the world about it.
“My God, Bernice,” he said, making it all a joke. “You’d kill me if I let you.”
She didn’t answer. Finally he snuffed out the cigarette.
He glanced impatiently over his shoulder. She was still stretched tense and white beside him on the bed. For a long time he wouldn’t hear her breathing, and then he would hear a short, indrawn sob.
His eyes bitter, he snapped off the light and lay down in the darkness beside her. There were few sounds in the small-town night. The silence itself was immense and hurting against his eardrums. He reached out, got his trousers from the chair, and touched the fold of bills in his pocket. He grinned contentedly, tossed the trousers back to the chair. In ten minutes he was snoring.
Bernice listened to his snores for what seemed hours. Finally, she too slept. And for the first time since Lloyd’s death, she was able to sleep dreamlessly.
When she woke up, it was just daylight. She turned over in bed and looked at Carlos, the muscular, perfect body sprawled out on the bed, the tousled curly head on the pillow.
Maybe it’ll be better, she told herself miserably. Maybe next time I won’t be so crazy. But she knew better. The sight of his body, the touch of his hand would always excite her in a terrible, wonderful way that wasn’t ever going to be quickly sated.
She shivered.
He was always going to drive her crazy with desire. And he was never going to be able to satisfy her.
Oh, God, she thought. Oh, God!
Nine
She stood it as long as she could. Her breathing was quick and short, and seemed to blast across her parted lips. She felt that she couldn’t stand it, lying there looking at Carlos’ bare body on the bed beside her.
Carlos continued to snore. She lay beside him, looking at the way the sparse hairs grew across his muscled chest.
She wanted to touch him, feel him. But she was afraid of what he might think if she woke him up and he found her almost sick at her stomach with wanting him.
She wriggled on the bed, needing to press herself against him. She had to hold her arms rigid at her sides to keep from putting her hands on him.
She watched him wake up. He rolled over, flopped on his back. He stretched his arms, yawning. Bernice’s mouth was cottony. She stared.
He looked at her. “What time is it?” he said.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s early. Real early.”
“No, Carlos. No. Are you?”
“God, yes. This gulf air makes you hungry first thing in the morning. Usually I can’t eat a thing right when I wake up. But I’m hungry now.”
“Let’s not eat yet,” she said. “Please, let’s not eat yet.”
Frowning, he rolled over and looked at her. Their eyes met. She watched it happen. She saw him begin to want her, responding to the heat in her, the need for him, the desire that made her breathless and pale.
He grinned at her. “Hey,” he said. His voice was low. “Hey.”
He reached out, digging his hands into her hair, pulling her down.
That was all Bernice wanted. That was all she’d been waiting for. She drove herself in upon him. Her hands dug into him, her fingernails raked him, her teeth sank into him. He cursed her. But the curses were like tender caresses. He tried to thrust her away and then he was dragging her in closer, holding her tighter, cutting off her breath, strangling her, and she didn’t give a damn.
That day they left Clearwater and took a cottage on the gleaming beach south of Indian Rocks. Carlos seemed to be searching for a particular kind of place. They kept moving until he found it. The Rockledge Motel pleased him, and that puzzled Bernice, because the rental was ninety dollars a week. She knew already that Carlos didn’t like to spend money that well. But there was something about the rate, the cottages, the surroundings that was just what he was seeking. She had never seen him so pleased with himself.
She wanted to ask him what was the matter, what hounded him, what was he running from? But that other thing, the fact that Carlos couldn’t satisfy her, was already an unspeakable matter between them. She didn’t want any more trouble. She was sure things were going to be all right once they settled down, once they got acquainted.
Besides, the island pleased and excited Bernice, the brightly colored cottages that laced the narrow fingers of land. There were many islands, locked together by humpbacked bridges on which sun-baked fishermen crawled like ants. A narrow black highway wound from the top island to the tip of the last one. All day long it was crowded and loud with cars. On the bay side fishermen dozed in rowboats, and in the gulf sleek women sunbathed on the decks of yawls and sloops and yachts. Children hunted snails or screamed in the shallows along the endless stretches of white sand and green water and dazzling sun.
It was all a million miles from the dingy house where Lloyd Deerman had died. It was a place of brilliance and light and warmth. It was going to be heaven for her and Carlos. They didn’t have to run any more. This was far enough. All they had to do was settle the trouble between them, and everything was going to be swell.
The first night they went swimming. It was after eleven o’clock, and the beach was silent except for the rumbling of the waves. Lights winked along the horizon and cars zipped past on the highway. They swam out past the sand bar into the darkness. Bernice caught her breath. When she lifted her arms out of the water, light poured off of them.
“Phosphorus,” Carlos told her. She watched him swing his arms in wide bright circles under the water. “Swim around, you’ll glow.”
They slid out of their bathing suits and swam together, like yellow flames under the water. They were like kids and Bernice knew they were going to be happy now. God, how could people help being happy in a place like this?
But that night Carlos was sleepy when he staggered into the cottage. He fell across the bed and was asleep before she had creamed her face. That night Bernice had a dream. And it was hellish, because Lloyd Deerman was drowning, falling and rolling and twisting in water bright with phosphorus. And the hell of it was that even though he was falling in the water, Bernice could hear the splintering crack of the stair railings and nothing could save her from that sound.
Near their cottage was an odd-shaped green building that was the community shopping center. Before it curved a wide green sidewalk shaded by palms and bordered by crotons and cacti and running lantana. In the modernistic stores was sold every kind of merchandise. There was even a movie theatre and a small exclusive bar.
And there was a dress shop. It was run by a swish named Elhanner. There was one thing that Elhanner understood. He knew all there was to know about what clothes a woman of any shape or size should wear.
Bernice walked in, and, hypnotized by the beautiful clothes, she spent almost five hundred dollars before Carlos could drag her out of there.
Her eyes gleamed at the styles Elhanner brought out for her to see. She didn’t notice how silent Carlos became as she began to spend money. He sat and watched her. She thought about the grim look in his beautiful face only in passing.
Elhanner was making a play for Carlos’ attentions. She shuddered. Carlos was angry because the fairy was preening before him.
Carlos said nothing until they were outside the shop. They were walking along the palm-fringed green sidewalk. She heard his breath exhale.
“My God, Bernice,” Carlos said. “What are you trying to do, buy everything in that goddamned Good Fairy’s shop?”
“They’re so beautiful,” Bernice said. “And he’s so right about everything I should wear.” She didn’t tell Carlos that Soonin’s had given her a short, compact course in selecting clothes. “Elhanner knows more about clothes than I ever will.”
“You’ve got more stuff than you can ever wear,” Carlos said. “Now let’s stop going in there!”
She smiled. “You don’t have to go any more unless you want to, Carlos. I know he makes you uncomfortable.”
He looked at her, his mouth twisting. “Elhanner doesn’t make me uncomfortable. If he goes crazy enough about me, I ought to be worth plenty to him.”
“Carlos!”
“All right. You asked me. I’m telling you. A queer going nuts over me is no worse than some dames I’ve had to put up with.”
“Carlos. Stop talking like that. It’s indecent. It makes me sick.”
“Maybe you think it didn’t make me sick, seeing you spend money like that!” he snarled.
She sighed. “It’s my money, Carlos.”
“O.K.! It’s your money. You don’t have to rub that in. So now I’m not even supposed to say anything about the way you throw it away. O.K., spend it any way you want to!”
“Carlos, I’m sorry. I won’t buy any more clothes. There were a couple of things I wanted. But I won’t get them.”
“Sure. Get ‘em. It’s your money. You’ve told me so. Sure, I’m not working.”
“I don’t want you to work.”
“Sure, I came down here on your money! It’s your money that I eat on, that I sleep on. Sure. Spend it any way you want to.”
She caught his arm. “Carlos. Please don’t be angry. It’s just that there were so many things I wanted. Believe it or not, I’ve never had the things I wanted. Just like you’re the first person I ever loved, this is the first time I’ve ever been in a place like this. It’s like a dream. This is the first time I’ve ever seen so many lovely things. I know you’re just trying to take care of me, and just trying to take care of my money. I’m glad, darling. I’ll let you. It makes me feel good to know you’re taking care of me.”
“If I’m going to take care of you, let me. Stay out of that fairy’s store.”
“I only want to look nice so you’ll love me!”
He threw open the cottage door and strode in. “Spending money like that is no way to make me love you.”
“Why are you so mad because I spent a little money?”
“A little money! Five hundred dollars! Just don’t expect me to like it.”
“You don’t want me to have anything!”
She spat that word at him. They knew she didn’t mean clothes. They stared at each other. This was as near as Bernice had come to telling Carlos that he couldn’t satisfy her.
They had known it, but as long as they didn’t talk about it, they could pretend.
He was pale. “All right. Leave me, then.”
Leave him? She shook her head slowly. She hadn’t meant that. God knew she’d only been trying to strike back at him.
She ran to him. She slid to her knees, pressing her face against him. “I don’t want to leave you. I don’t know why I said that. I just don’t want you mad with me. I couldn’t stand it away from you. All I want is for you to love me. Love me. Hold me, Carlos, love me.”
“No,” he said. “I won’t let you talk to me like that.”
She buried her face against him. Her heart was pumping twice as fast as it should. She was wild for him. Even his anger excited her.
He pushed her away. “Let me alone,” he said. “You think all you got to do is throw it at me and everything is O.K. You think just because it makes me hot to see you get so wild for it, all you got to do is go crazy.”
“I don’t go crazy,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t, Carlos. You drive me crazy.”
He stalked toward the bedroom. “I wouldn’t let anybody get me down like that.”
“Nobody gets me down. You get me down.” She ran after him.
She pressed herself against him, feeling nothing but the excitement inside her, not even knowing how she was working her body against his.
He began to laugh and tried to push her away again. But Bernice knew. He had begun to respond. It didn’t make any difference that it was nothing but the hell in her that got him.
She wanted to yell with laughter. She knew now. She could get him. She could always get him. She was the great-grandmother of every whore who ever lived. She knew all the lures. They were born in her. Better than anything else she knew the pull of raw hot passion for Carlos.
Her hands like talons, she grabbed the back of his head and jerked his mouth down against hers. His teeth cut her lips, thudded against her teeth.
“Damn you!” he snarled. “You damned little slut. Let me alone.”
He pulled away from her. His swinging arm drove everything off the dresser. She didn’t even hear the noise, the bottles and the combs and the jars clattering on the floor and rolling under the bed.
Fires That Destroy Page 9