by Diana Ramsay
"There's no need to get defensive about it. I'm not challenging you. I'm merely trying to assemble data. From my point of view, the story is quite remarkable."
"Why? Isn't it a commonplace that inside every frustrated spinster lurks a whore dying to be released?"
A guffaw. It sounded strained. "Very much a commonplace, but I don't think I've ever heard it phrased quite so succinctly or so wittily, Joyce. I may call you Joyce, mayn't I?"
"I don't see how I can stop you."
"Oh, now, look!" Exasperation played havoc with the bedside manner for a moment. Only for a moment. "This isn't an inquisition, for God's sake, Maybe I'm pressing beyond the point of good manners, but I'm just plain fascinated by this neighbor of yours. The transformation isn't a unique phenomenon in itself. It's so well known that someone has even written a play about it—Tennessee Williams, if I'm not mistaken. What's unique here is that it seems to have taken place so suddenly, and this makes me wonder if something happened to touch it off. A severe emotional shock, perhaps, or an un-looked-for rush of attention from some man. Something to explain why she's locked up in a chastity belt one day and giving out keys to all and sundry the next."
"I notice you're no slouch at turning a succinct phrase yourself."
"Flattery will get you anywhere you want to go. Except off the subject." The professional smile was firmly in place. "Now, Joyce, come clean. You're an observant woman. You must have seen signs of upheaval in the offing. Am I right or am I right?"
"You couldn't be more wrong." Joyce drained her glass quickly. "As I told you, I took notice of her only because I couldn't help it, and unlike you I'm not a student of human behavior. Now if you'll excuse me, I need another drink." She was halfway across the room before he could open his mouth for the gallantry that was de rigueur under the circumstances. It was flight, and pretty ignominious flight at that. Well, too bad. Damn Sheila for sicking him on her in the first place. Probably it was a mistake to have been quite so rude to him. Probably the little gray cells were hard at work right now, reading all sorts of ulterior motives into her reluctance to discuss Charlotte Bancroft's activities. What did she care? What the hell did she care?
Her glass replenished, she joined a quartet, two advertising men and their wives, who were evaluating the achievements of Picasso in lukewarm tones. Very lukewarm. It was hard to summon up much interest in what they were saying, but at least they were safer company than the psychologist.
Stupid of her to have let his curiosity get under her skin like that. He would wonder about it. He might even come up with the idea that she felt in some way responsible. Which, of course, she did, though the psychologist would never in a million years come within miles of guessing why, unless he was clairvoyant. Who could have foreseen that her scheme would have such consequences? Not in her wildest speculation had she envisaged anything like them. Immediately after the distribution of the cards (according to Anita they had traveled as far as Yonkers and Shea Stadium), she had been on pins and needles, half expecting the roof to cave in, half expecting given the notorious indifference of New Yorkers toward everything under the sun—that nothing at all would happen. But, within the space of a single day, something had. First, the sudden cessation of the radio, followed by heavy, unquestionably masculine footsteps mounting the stairs, pausing for an instant outside her own door, and continuing on and up. A brief silence, broken by slow, cautious footfalls overhead, a door opening and shutting, the heavy tread of the visitor. A scuffling noise, as of a tug of war in progress. A long silence. Then—the unmistakable sound of the sofa bed being opened; more scuffling; the dropping of shoes to the floor.
The entire sequence flashed through Joyce's mind with the unstoppable drive of a radio newscast, and, as always, she felt an impulse to laugh? Hurriedly she brought her glass to her lips and sipped from it. Camouflage?
Once the initial shock was over, how could any civilized person respond with anything but laughter to the thought of Charlotte Bancroft's discovery of sex? Certainly it tickled the funny bone to imagine how, instead of reacting with anger to a telephone call that must have been something other than chivalrous, she had been so taken with the voice at the other end of the wire that she was willing to get something going. After the fact, it seemed predictable enough: someone with a need for attention as profound as Charlotte Bancroft's would hardly be likely to put too fine a point on what kind of attention it was. "You've discovered a new panacea for lonely hearts," Anita said, and laughed and laughed. It had been funny once. It was still funny, damn it.
A martini too many, that was the trouble. Sometime during the course of Joyce's wool-gathering, the Picasso-loving quartet had packed up and left her. No great loss. Then she saw that the glass in her hand was almost full, so the diagnosis of one martini too many had to be incorrect. The trouble was one martini too few.
She drained her glass and, lowering it, picked up movement out of the corner of her eye. Lo and behold, the psychologist was at her elbow.
Hello again." There wasn't a glimmer of bedside manner In the smile he offered her. It was tentative, somewhat nervous. "I owe you an apology for hounding you like that. I got carried away and didn't know when to stop. I'm sorry. Honestly."
"That's okay. I shouldn't have been so touchy, even if I am sick and tired of hearing myself spin the same yarn over and over again."
"I can see how you would be. You must get a lot of requests for encores. I realize I was being a pest. But you know how it is when you get interested in something. I do psychological consulting for an advertising agency—in plain language, that means spying sanctioned from on high—and the neuroses start to repeat on me after a while. Dick handles a lot of work for the agency, and he happened to mention your neighbor to me the other day, and one thing led to another. The only reason I'm here tonight is to scavenge for the details. Well, not the only reason." He heaved a sigh. "I got lonesome. My wife's in Chicago visiting her folks."
Joyce laughed. "Such disarming honesty. I'm sure your curiosity is purely professional, but—"
"Oh, I wouldn't say that. Semi-professional would be more accurate."
"Professional or semi-professional, I'd be glad to gratify it if I could, but—"
"You would?" Nothing tentative about his smile now; it was downright beamish. "What about physical manifestations? Have you noticed any difference in the way she looks?"
"You don't give up, do you? As a matter of fact, I have. The other day I ran into her on the street. The first time I've set eyes on her since it all began. She didn't see me, or didn't seem to. She didn't seem to see anything. She looked a bit starry-eyed. And positively soigné—as though she's been concentrating on taking the kind of trouble women usually take. Makeup. A decent haircut and a rinse. She was wearing a very pretty dress. Blue paisley with bell sleeves. Probably new. I remember seeing one just like it in a window on Greenwich Avenue quite recently. I almost didn't recognize her, to tell the truth. I had to do a double take."
"Sounds like a change for the better. The better for you, if she's not torturing you with her radio anymore."
"She's not. Oh, she still plays it now and then—pretty loud, sometimes—but I notice it simply the way one would notice a nuisance. A minor nuisance. I have the sense she's listening to the radio, not using it as a weapon of assault, and so I'm not bothered."
He nodded. "She's found an interest to replace you, that's clear. Let me get you another drink." He took the glass out of her hand and dashed away, as though he feared she'd leave him flat if he delayed.
In an instant he was back with a martini for her and a whiskey and soda for himself. "Very dry," he said, handing her the martini. He raised his glass aloft. "Here's to your neighbor's new interest."
Had the clink of the glasses been any sharper, they probably would have shattered.
...
Footsteps. Several pairs of feet pounded up the stairs, slowed down as they passed Joyce's door and crossed the landing. They started up the seco
nd flight, but someone stumbled and the ascent came to a halt.
A girlish giggle rang out. "Clumsy," Charlotte Bancroft whispered, the sibilant a whistle. "You've got two left feet."
"Mus—mus—mustn't make fun of people." A throaty baritone, slightly the worse for alcohol. "Naughty girl."
A hand slapped flesh. Not lightly.
"Ouch! Keep your hands to yourself, if you don't mind. You're the one who's being naughty."
"Quit holding up the parade, sister." Another voice—a reedy, rather quavery tenor. "When we get upstairs we can all be naughty together."
"That's what you think," Charlotte Bancroft said. "The very idea. Shame on you!"
"That's what we know," the baritone said.
The sound of a scuffle. Charlotte Bancroft's giggle rang out again, was cut off by a series of slaps. The ascent was resumed at breakneck speed. Then, overhead, a door opened, slammed shut.
There is a lot to be said for living in Greenwich Village. There is a lot to be said for the fact that, given a sudden, decisive impulse to get out of doors at an hour when most people are retiring for the night, one can snatch up a trench coat and toss it over one's underwear and go, confident that others will be wandering around in equal or greater dishabille. Then, too, killing time need not be quite the purposeless activity it would probably be in some other neighborhood, for there is always Eighth Street, where, if one has the fortitude to brave freaked-out youth, representatives of black, red, chicano, gay, and women's power, assorted eccentrics and tourists and unclassifiables, one can do some nocturnal browsing in record shops and bookstores.
Joyce gave it two hours. Then, just to be on the safe side, she walked around the block until, as she passed for the third time the brownstone reputed to belong to the Mafia overlord, a man came out on the steps and stared at her with hard, blank eyes. A warning to do her pacing elsewhere? Simple lechery? She did not linger to find out, fleeing back to her own four walls.
The coast appeared to be clear. Or at least the building was silent. Joyce put down her purchases—a record coupling Mozart's clarinet concerto with his clarinet quintet and a copy of the New York Review of Books and fixed herself a gin and tonic. She drank it without haste, scanning the journal. The silence was uninterrupted. She turned on the phonograph and heard the quintet all the way through, the charming variations of the closing movement providing a much-needed lift to the spirit. Still there was silence. Blissful silence.
She decided to postpone listening to the concerto until after her bath. But scarcely was she settled in the tub, a cigarette smoldering on the rim, reading an article on the incarceration of Russian intellectuals, when she heard footsteps on the floor above. A moment later, a couple of pairs of feet descended the stairs and crossed the landing.
"Wait a minute." The same baritone voice heard earlier.
The footsteps came to a halt just outside Joyce's door.
"Hang on till I find my matches. I need a butt in the worst way after that workout. Man, I haven't seen action like that in a long time."
"Didn't I tell you she was a lulu? You know"—the tenor voice dropped—"when I picked up that card I thought it was Some kind of gag. But I figured what the hell, try anything once."
"You sure got on to a good thing. Not many of the amateurs go for stuff like that these days. They're too liberated or something."
" 'Or something' is right. When you find any who will put out you have to talk yourself hoarse trying to convince them you respect them, not to mention pumping so much food and drink into them you might as well invest in a pro." A snicker. "With her, you won't get laryngitis or go broke getting her in the mood. A two-minute phone call is all it takes."
"That's for sure. In a way it's sad to think of her giving it away like that." A mournful note had crept into the baritone voice. "I mean to say, you can tell she's an educated woman and all. Did you get a load of all the books?"
"Who the hell was looking at books?"
"You know, I bet anything it's the teeth. You gotta feel sorry for a broad with teeth like that. Jesus, it gave me the creeps just to look at them."
"I didn't notice it cramping your style any. Come on and get that fucking wood lit already, will ya?"
"Hold your horses. I got this hole in my pocket and things fall into the lining, so I gotta—Here they are." A match was struck. "Hey, Jerry, I just thought of something. Why don't we invite her down to the poker game on Thursday?"
"I don't think much of that one. There wouldn't be enough action for her, would there?"
Hoots of laughter, quickly suppressed. Footsteps moved away from Joyce's door, descended to the ground floor at a gallop. The street door opened, slammed shut.
Joyce sat rigid, unable to move, holding the New York Review of Books tightly. She was still breathing, she hadn't suddenly been turned from flesh and blood to stone: the slow rippling of the water testified to that. The neglected cigarette fell off the rim into the water, creating an island of grayness. That got her moving. She sprang out of the tub, and the New York Review of Books, slipping from her grasp, added the darkening powers of its print to the water. Filth. Filth, filth, filth. Slime. slime, slime. Shuddering, teeth chattering, she snatched a washcloth from the shelf above the tub, wet it at the sink, and soaped it lavishly, She began to rub the soap over her body. Water from the saturated cloth dripped to the floor. She went on rubbing. Rubbing and rubbing and rubbing. She thought of Lady Macbeth. Aptly, for that rubbing. too, had been an exercise in futility, ineffectual against a stain on the soul that was indelible.
Anita told her that her conscience was working over-time, and made no bones about it. "For God's sake. act your age. What's to feel guilty about. I was playing games like that on the roof when I was eleven years-old. It's a phase you go through. Where did you grow-up anyhow? In a convent? Okay, maybe the norm for Hell's Kitchen isn't the norm for kids everywhere, but grown-ups play games like that all over the place all the time and nobody even bats an eyelash. You've lived in the suburbs. You know about the wife-swapping parties and the swimming pool orgies and the rest of the trap. Where's the difference? Anyhow, you didn't force her into anything, so quit worrying. As far as I can see, you've done old Charlotte a favor. If it hadn't been for you, she might have gone to her grave without anything more than dim memories of petting in the back seat when she was sixteen. And who knows if she had that much to remember?"
Wisdom or gutter morality? Either way, it hardly helped to allay the pangs of conscience. How she longed to talk the whole thing over with somebody other than Anita, who made it plain she did not welcome any further airings of regrets because "spilled milk goes sour faster and stinks worse than any other kind."
Joyce gave in to temptation and confided in Hank McDermott, the sports editor of Yardstick, over a drink he invited her to have with him after office hours, as he did fairly frequently. He already knew about her difficulties with Charlotte Bancroft and about the bizarre resolution of them, so it didn't require much of an effort to spill the rest to him. In fact, it required so little effort that she wasn't aware she was going to make a confession until the words came pouring forth. Throughout, bless him, he contemplated his glass in silence, giving only an occasional un-surprised nod to show he was with her.
"Naturally I never intended anything like this to happen. You can imagine how I feel—like all kinds of a pig. After all, my little plot wasn't nurtured with the milk of human kindness, and now I've had it brought home to me how fragile a vessel I took aim at."
"You couldn't have known." He raised his head, bald except for a sparse black fringe just below the crown. His sensitive, slightly down-tilted dark eyes were full of sympathy. "She was the enemy. You were fighting back."
Joyce looked away from sympathy. She didn't want sympathy. She didn't deserve sympathy. "That's too easy, somehow. It doesn't really help. I wish I'd chosen any other scheme of retaliation. Preferably something simple, like stacking garbage outside her door. Not something where the conseq
uences stretch out and out with no end in sight. You know, at really bad moments I even start thinking about that Hiroshima pilot, about how his hands are cleaner than mine because he was acting under orders and— Absurd, I know, but still—"
"Damn right it's absurd. Stop trying to puff yourself up into Public Enemy Number One. You'll never make it. You know what your real trouble is? You've never had anything big and ugly to take responsibility for, that's your trouble."
"You're right on target there, Hank. I've spent my entire life placing responsibility on other people. A real parasite, that's what I am. I suppose it shows."
"There are worse things to be, unless you're the kind who devours the host, and you're not." He lifted her chin with his forefinger, forcing her to look at him. "Don't go overboard, babe. At some time or another we all get ideas about how we've manipulated somebody else's life. Delusions of grandeur. People go the way they were meant to go. Take my word for it."
"I can't shake the sense of responsibility so easily. I did do some manipulating, after all."
"Sure. You turned on a light switch, You didn't put the current there, did you?"
"That's what I keep telling myself, but..."
"No buts. Just keep on telling yourself. Over and over and over until you believe it. Chances are you're wasting your pity. Chances are she'll find some guy who appreciates a zealous lay and shack up with him and live happily ever after."
Joyce laughed.
"That's the ticket. Laughing about it makes a hell of a lot more sense than crying. Keep laughing."
"I wish I could be that heartless."