“I just thought you were someone I could count on,” she said. “I guess I was wrong.”
Then she was walking very fast, bumping against tables, chairs, blinded by her tears, aware only of a loud noise in her head, and an awful pain in her heart.
Chapter 5
David Sloane pushed out through the hospital’s heavy plate-glass door, ducking his head as hard rain pelted him in the face. He jerked up the collar of his camelhair overcoat, hunching his shoulders, cursing his bad luck as he struck out toward Flatbush Avenue and the subway.
It was really coming down, dammit, and he hadn’t thought to bring an umbrella, much less a raincoat. And forget about getting a cab, on a night like this, and in this part of Brooklyn. He was stuck with riding home soaked, alongside the dregs of the IRT.
David had a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. He found himself wondering if his luck—the scholarships, high marks, elections to journals, Class Councils, honor societies all through Princeton, top ten percent of his class at Columbia, the internship and now chief residency—might somehow be turning, just a little here and there around the edges, to shit.
Not that anything really awful had happened yet. But it had been ages since he’d felt this spooked about anything. And after all those years of working his ass off, just as he was almost set to get out there and make himself a bundle, he could not afford any bad shit coming down on him. Christalmighty, not now.
And it all began last week with her, didn’t it? Miss Riverside Drive, Miss Kiss-My-Ass Jew Princess.
The bitch.
Stalking out of the cafeteria as if the whole thing were his fault. Stupid, stupid female. But he’d have dealt with it. Only she had to go off the deep end. Crazy talk, about having the baby.
He’d thought she was different. But now he realized she was no better than those others after all, every coed, nurse, lab technician he’d ever screwed. Which one of them had ever been thinking about [139] him when they were spreading their legs? Shit, a diamond ring for the third finger of their left hand was all they cared about.
But Rachel, he’d thought, was smarter than that. A woman with brains who knew how to fuck. That rare and tantalizing creature—an ice princess with legs just itching to be spread. He’d seen that in her first off, not that she herself had the remotest idea. He had an intuitive sense about women, like a smell, and right away he’d sniffed it, her whole sexual history laid bare—the high school Romeos who’d whispered love clichés in her ear while fumbling with her bra hooks, the Haverford preppies whose entire lexicon of sexual expertise you could stuff in a condom, and maybe a funny uncle tucked in somewhere, copping a feel when he thought no one would notice. Not a virgin, but the next closest thing—a woman without a clue how to use what was between her legs because no one had ever shown her how. A woman so frozen, the right touch would set off a flood like spring melt off a mountain. A woman ripe for the plucking.
Yet there was something else about her, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. A hard nugget at the center of that pampered innocence like an uncut diamond. She had a coolness that had sized him up and found him not good enough, like those girls with long tanned legs in tennis shorts sipping ice tea out on the porch of whatever resort he happened to be busting his hump at that particular summer—Spring Lake, Sea Girt, Deal—daughters of rich daddies shelling out big bucks for their tennis lessons, along with the occasional fuck on the side if the instructor happened to be cute. Their eyes would flick over him when he picked up their empty glasses with lipstick marks like pink kisses around the rims, then move past, reducing him to a speck in the dark mirrors of their sunglasses, while they went on talking as if he weren’t there—bitching about the food, their tennis game, the lack of interesting guys.
David, ducking out of the rain to buy a newspaper at the hole-in-the-wall candy store halfway to the subway, found himself remembering Amanda Waring. One of the tanned honey-blond bitches flocked on the porch at Spring Lake. After observing the restless way she crossed and uncrossed her legs whenever a good-looking man was around, and the hard, frantic energy with which she drove balls across the net out on the tennis court, he’d made it a point to catch her eye, and hold it. A lady in need of a good lay, he had thought.
[140] By that summer, with a year of Princeton under his belt, David knew a few things he hadn’t before. Like how to dress so no one would guess you were a hardluck Polack from Jersey, trying to impress the rich folk. He’d packed only some faded Levi’s that clung to him like a second skin, a pair of scuffed Docksiders, two plain white shirts and a cashmere crewneck one of the rich kids had carelessly left behind last summer. So when he was out of his busboy uniform, he could have passed as one of them.
Amanda must have thought so ... at least for a little while, David thought with a sweet acid taste in his mouth, as he palmed his quarter in change and glanced briefly at the headlines: astronauts land safely after moon orbit. But he was not in the least tempted to read on.
He remembered a big gazebo out on the lawn behind the main building. A lot of the kids hung out there at night, smoking and getting drunk on half-pints of Jack Daniel’s and Southern Comfort. David had gone there a few times, and one night Amanda invited him to sit next to her. When the bottle was passed to him he only pretended to drink—good Christ, he had more than his share of that poison at home with Pop. He’d kept fairly quiet, too. Better they think him the shy type than make a fool of himself.
Then someone initiated a game of Truth or Dare, and suddenly there was Amanda, giggly drunk, wriggling out of her slacks and top, then streaking in her bra and panties across the dew-soaked lawn toward the pool. The others were either too drunk or too bored to go after her. Only David, afraid she might do something really stupid, like jump in the pool and drown, had run after her.
He caught up with her in the moon-shade of a giant mulberry tree a hundred yards or so from the pool. Out of breath and moist with perspiration, she collapsed laughing into his arms.
He took her on the wet grass, not surprised to find she was a virgin. Not surprised, either, when she wrapped her legs about him and bit his shoulder, crying out in muffled delight.
The next day he approached her as she was strolling down the gravel path to the tennis courts, racket slung casually over her shoulder. Her thick blond hair was caught back in a ponytail, and she was wearing a pleated white tennis skirt that flipped up in back when she walked, exposing the twin crescents of her sweet white ass where her panties had ridden up.
[141] When David moved his hand down her smooth brown arm, trying to kiss her, she pushed him away with a disgusted look.
“Look, let’s just get one thing straight,” she hissed, first looking around to make sure they were alone. “Whatever happened last night didn’t happen, and if you say it did—if you breathe a word of it to anyone—I’ll scream bloody murder and say you raped me. My father is an attorney, and a son of a bitch besides. He could get you fired and probably arrested. And I don’t think you want that kind of trouble, do you?”
Without this job, he’d have no money in the fall for books, clothes, haircuts. Not to mention the risk to his scholarship if she decided to stir up trouble. Hell, he hadn’t been working his butt off playing Stepin Fetchit to these rich assholes to see it all go down the drain over some stupid bitch with hot pants and a short memory. She wasn’t worth it, not by a long shot.
What hurt was realizing she’d seen through him all along, that he really wasn’t good enough. She’d enjoyed him, briefly and a little guiltily, like a girl on a diet sneaking a candy bar. Now she was simply throwing away the wrapper.
David had taken one long last look at her, engraving this moment of humiliation in his memory so he would not forget. And he never had. Even now, with the cold rain stinging his face as he dashed to make the green light, David could recall that exact spot on the sunny gravel path where the boxwood hedge had become overgrown with honeysuckle, the lazy hum of bees, the far-off droning of
a power mower. But trying now to picture her face, all he could see were the twin images of himself reflected in her sunglasses, minute, insignificant.
But that kid had been Davey Slonowicz from Jersey City. A month before going back to Princeton, he had it changed legally to David Sloane.
And David Sloane was no chump. Just the opposite. He chose the women, and he called the shots. And if it was time for an affair to end, goddammit, he would be the one ending it.
So damn Rachel Rosenthal to hell. To think he’d almost been taken in by her, almost made a real fool of himself. Yeah, she had gotten to him, scratched her way down inside him somehow. He thought of this black chick he’d been seeing, a nurse with a gorgeous pair of knockers and kinky tastes who liked it up the ass. Christ, [142] he’d even find himself thinking about Rachel while he was fucking Charlene. And he’d never done that before. Shit, no wonder he was feeling so damn shaky.
David saw the light go red on him as he reached the corner before the subway entrance. Fuck it. He started crossing anyway, shrugging at the blare of horns, the glassy squeal of tires braking on wet pavement. Two running strides, and he was at the opposite curb, leaping over the lake of filthy water that fanned out from a stopped-up storm drain.
Running—David felt as if he’d always been running. At first from his father. Sure, you got to become a track star early when your old man is a drunk, to get out of the way fast before he slams your face in for any number of federal offenses, like forgetting to tie your sneakers, or turning the TV up too loud, or just plain being in his way. Miller time. Weekends, after a hard week behind the welding torch, was always Miller Time in our house, a case of beer chilling in the fridge, another case stashed in the front hallway closet.
After six or seven beers—David remembered learning to count them the way a condemned man on death row counts his last minutes—Dad would go from boozy good cheer to junkyard-dog mean.
Hey, Davey, you a fuckin’ fairy or something? Nose always buried in a book. You think you’re too good for your old man, that it? Huh? Well, let me show you a fuckin’ thing or two you may not have learned from all those books. ...
He’d had to learn to run; his senior year in high school, he’d come in first in the statewide cross-country championship. Nearly straight A’s, too. Almost 800 on his SATs. A full scholarship to Princeton. He’d had his lonely days at college, feeling like he didn’t belong, but then he’d found a bunch of guys, and from then on Jersey City was ancient history. It was as if he were saying to the old man, Now let me show you a fucking thing or two.
And soon I’ll be out of this rathole hospital as well, he thought. I’ll set up in Morristown or Montclair, or maybe Short Hills, where they have bucks, and all want at least two kids, and a good OB, of course. Their kind, who talks nice and gives lollipops to their kids, and doesn’t get annoyed when they call, with heartburn or gas, panicked they’re going into labor.
[143] Yeah, he’d be his own man at last, free. And he’d be goddamned if he’d let some cunt, even a rich cunt, tie him down forever. Maybe in five years or ten years he’d be ready for the house with the white picket fence, but not now.
David, making his way down the steps into the bowels of the IRT, thought of something and broke into a sweat. Suppose she really went through With it? Then he would be a father, whether he wanted to be or not. Somewhere out there would be a kid with his features, his blood running through its veins. It would want things he couldn’t possibly give. And someday maybe it would even hate him the way he hated his old man.
David was so shaken up by the time he reached the platform, he dropped his last token before managing to fit it into the turnstile. He felt afraid of Rachel, like he used to feel afraid of his pop, a stitch in his belly, a dry cardboard taste in his mouth.
Damn her, why was he letting her do this to him? Then he was remembering the morning Rachel found a pair of black lace panties, probably Charlene’s, under his bed, and said nothing about it, just smiled sweetly and disappeared into the kitchen to fix breakfast. By the time he got out of the shower, she was gone. There was a place set for him on the table, a goblet of fresh-squeezed orange juice, cloth napkin in a ring. And right on his plate, those same black lace panties spread over a toasted English muffin. The note propped beside it read “Bon appétit.”
No, even though she’d turned on the waterworks like the rest of them, she was tough and calculating too, cool as a chilled silver fork. And what if she dragged him down no matter what he did? The way Pop had. David had wanted to move out, get away, from the time he was thirteen, earning a few bucks of his own washing dishes after school for Muldowney’s. But always, whenever he came close to just packing his bag and cutting out, he found he couldn’t. Pop had a secret weapon, the thing that scared David the most: the old bastard had needed him somehow.
David felt a rush of fetid air, saw deep in the tunnel the headlights of an approaching train, and it was like his father’s breath in his face, those bloodshot eyes lit by a drunken fury closing in for the kill.
Y’think you’re so smart, better’n me. But you’ll never get away from [144] me, Davey. And y’know why? ’Cause I’m in you. Part of you. Every time you look in a mirror, I’ll be lookin’ back at you. ...
Then there was only the thundering train, and the hard hammering of his heart.
David stepped in, sinking onto the hard plastic seat. He looked around, and saw a wino in a filthy parka slumped right across from him, asleep. Not going anywhere, just keeping off the streets, keeping warm. Disgusting.
But in a weird way, this bum made him feel good. He reminded David of how far he’d come, of how much he had accomplished. He felt stronger. Whatever curve ball Rachel threw at him, hell, he’d handle it.
“Hello, David.”
A woman’s voice, greeting him from the darkness of his living room. David’s heart sideslipped like a car skidding off an icy road. Who in the he—
“Rachel?” He fumbled for the light switch.
Christ. Rachel, yes, but he wouldn’t have recognized her. She sat still and straight in the Eames chair by the fireplace, hands folded in her lap, almost primly, like a very good child in school. Another odd thing. It was the first time, come to think of it, he’d ever seen her in a dress. A pretty one, too. Some kind of soft cotton, with a swirly pastel pattern, batik maybe. Her hair, which usually floated in a soft gold-brown cloud—the color of saltwater taffy—about her shoulders, was clipped back with a barrette, leaving her neck bare, white, and slender. He felt again the way he had on the subway platform, scared, as if something bad were about to happen, and at the same time, curiously aroused.
It was her eyes that spooked him most of all. Huge and dark, yet oddly vacant, like windows with the shades drawn. Whatever she was feeling was behind there, leaving him out in the cold.
There was a bottle of Cuervo Gold on the coffee table in front of her, half empty. No glass, no ice. Christ almighty. Rachel didn’t drink. A glass of wine and she was under the table. So here she should be smashed, out cold, and she looked sober as a parson.
Watch it, buddy, he thought. We’re skating on very thin ice, here. Just watch your ass.
[145] “Mind if I join you?” he said, peeling off his sopping coat and tossing it over a chair. Then he sat down on the sofa opposite her, every muscle in him tense, wary. He picked up the bottle, looked at the label. “Would you believe this has been sitting in my cupboard since last Christmas? A gift from my father. Every year he sends me one. I don’t usually drink, but it’s a cold night out. A little snort might take the chill off.”
Jesus Christ, why doesn’t she say something, or blink an eye at least? What the hell is going on here?
Then she stirred. He saw a shudder passing through her, and her gaze locking onto him. Cold. Sub-fucking-zero. He could feel his balls shrinking up into his crotch.
Tipping the bottle toward his mouth, David noticed his hand was shaking. And down his arms he felt goosebumps breaking out.
But it was the look she gave him that made him lower the bottle. Oh Jesus, her eyes. Their blankness had lifted, giving him a glimpse of something frightening inside her, something terrible, a white heat burning blue at the center.
“I don’t want you drunk when you do it.” She spoke again, that same maddening tonelessness, like the flat whine of a cardiac monitor after the patient has arrested.
He slammed the bottle down on the blond-wood coffee table, and some of the amber liquor slooshed out onto his hand. He brought his knuckles to his mouth, sucking them dry, the sharp tequila taste stinging his mouth.
“Do what? Jesus, Rachel, you’re scary, you know that? Sitting here in the dark like a goddam spider. You could have called, let me know you were coming. Did you think I wouldn’t want to see you again?”
He had to look away when he said it. The truth was he wished she were on another planet. He wished they’d never met.
“I don’t care about that,” she said. “After tonight it doesn’t matter.”
“Mind letting me in on your frequency? What the fuck are you talking about?”
He wasn’t so scared anymore. Now he was getting pissed off.
“I mean I don’t care about us anymore. That’s over. I’m here about it, the baby.”
[146] Oh Jesus. Oh Christ. Here it comes. She’ll say we should get married, in name only, some bullshit like that, so it won’t be a bastard.
If he ever needed a drink, it was now. Fuck her. He tipped the bottle, letting the booze slide easy down his throat, warming him all through.
Averting his eyes from her, looking about the room, he noticed how bare, stark really, it was. He’d moved in—how long ago?—six, seven months. It had seemed like the next step up. Small, on the dark side, but fantastic location—that always impressed women. Seventieth, close to Central Park. Not exactly overlooking the park, but near enough to watch the droves of pretty girls in shorts and halter tops walk by in the summertime.
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