He stood up close to her, his eyes serious, his mouth still drawn. He put his hands on her shoulders and peered at her. She saw that he was deeply concerned and she was sorry for an instant that she had lashed out at him. Yet something was not quite right about the whole picture.
"There's only one thing I care about," he said. "And that is if you'll marry me and give us a fair chance. I know how involved you've been with Angie and I'm not enough of a fool to overlook it. But I think we can work things out between us." He smiled gently. "Anyway, I'd like to give it a try."
He was the old familiar Walter again, soothing her, reassuring her. Yet, somehow, it didn't feel the same anymore.
Always, in the past, he had seemed to know what she was feeling before she said a word. But she knew in her heart that he didn't really understand how she felt about Angie, that he probably never had.
She glanced at the tight line of his mouth. So proper. So unforgiving. It would never occur to Walter that her love for Angie had been deep and sincere. Not because he didn't believe her capable of love. He would expect her to feel that way about him. But simply because he could not really approve of the love of woman for woman. And because he did not approve, he refused to allow for the existence of it.
No wonder he had always known how she felt! She had gotten so used to him telling her everything that she had come to accept his word. He told her what to think about plays, what to think about books, whom she ought to vote for. And she had listened. Listened to everything except the one thing that really mattered. He had not been able to tell her who or how to love. Her feeling for Angie was pure and entirely her own.
She stepped back and took a good look at him. It was as though she had never seen him before. How could she have been so wrong about so many things? Why hadn't she been able to see him for what he really was before?
Good, dear, gentle Walter, her beloved friend—a stuffed shirt and a prig. And he claimed to love her. In his own way, he was no different from Angie. Or maybe he was worse Angie at least made a try. But sex with Walter would be a dull, sterile, hopeless thing. She did not need that. She needed someone who could thrill her, bring her alive.
She could just imagine what marriage with Walter would be like. He would rule her life completely, pulling the strings that made her walk and talk, speaking of love in academic abstractions to hide his own incompetence. By his standards, that would be fine. It was only wrong when Angie did it.
She could have slapped his smug, prim face. Yet she did not really despise Walter for being himself. She despised him for making her feel like a fraud when he was the guilty one. And for what he thought of Angie. It would take a lot of man to make her forget the joy she had known in Angie's arms. Walter was a fool if he thought he could do it.
Obviously he did. Suddenly she had to prove to him that he was wrong. It would mean the end of everything for them. Still, she knew it would have to be that way. It was the only language he would understand.
She leaned close to him and looked into his eyes. "Walter," she said cagily, "do you know you've never even kissed me?"
He looked astonished. "Well, of course I know," he said. "I thought..."
"You're not supposed to think. If you feel like it, just go ahead and do it."
She put her arms around his neck and drew his head down to hers. She saw that he was flushed and his breath was warm against her lips.
"Like this," she whispered.
She kissed him hard, her tongue forcing his lips apart and darting into his mouth. He held her primly, like a maiden aunt. She put her hands on his behind, pulling herself against him. She felt his body go tense and try to draw away.
She would not let him go.
By now she was furious with him but determined to make him take her. Holding him tight, she rubbed herself against him, forcing him to respond.
It was Walter who got them to the couch and he who pushed up her skirt. But it was Carolyn who did the rest. She stopped his fumbling hands and led him to her.
It was as dull, as uninspired as she had known it would be. She lay there, wretched and immobile, hoping he would soon be satisfied.
He withdrew his weight from her and snuggled beside her on the couch. His eyes were closed, the smile on his lips triumphant.
She watched his face with interest, seeing him even more clearly now than she had before. When he stirred and opened his eyes, she winked at him and trailed a fingertip around his lips.
"Was it good?" she murmured.
"Hmm," he sighed.
"I'm glad," she said. She sat up then and reached for her panties. "It's the first time I've been to bed with a virgin."
He didn't say anything, didn't move, just sat looking as if he were going to be ill. She had wanted to jolt him, to shake the complacency right off his face. And she had certainly succeeded. She felt no pity for him. Like Angie, he would not change as a result of the experience, not really.
With her back to him, she slipped into the panties and stood up. She adjusted her skirt and smoothed down her hair. Then she finished the brandy in her glass with one swallow and prepared to leave.
He leaned forward and grabbed her arm. "What are you trying to do?" he said harshly. He was on the verge of tears.
"I'm not trying anything," she said. She pulled away from his grasp. "You're the one who's been playing games, Walter. My friend. My bosom buddy. You've had me right where you wanted me for ten years and I didn't have the sense to realize what was going on. If it hadn't been for Angie, I never would have found out." She shook her head.
"You don't want a wife, Walter."
She watched a spot of color flare in his cheeks. She knew he wanted to strangle her. Yet he tried to remain calm, rational.
"That's not true," he insisted. "I want to marry you, Carolyn. You know that."
She reached out and patted his cheek. "I wouldn't marry you if you were the last man on earth, Walter."
He raised an eyebrow. "You went to bed with me," he said. "Why?"
She shrugged. "You weren't the first person," she said. "Or the last, thank heaven. I usually enjoy sex." She was being deliberately cruel but she didn't care.
"And, of course, you didn't enjoy it with me," he said, his eyes narrowed with satisfaction. "So, you are a lesbian, then. Angie was right."
Carolyn laughed in his face. "No. Just a woman," she said. "But you don't like women, do you, Walter? They're all either queers or whores, aren't they? And, I suppose, by your standards, I'm both."
He stood up, towering over her, murder in his eyes.
She knew he could kill her easily, but she didn't think he'd dare. She did not back away. "What do you with your desires, Walter? Read dirty books? Or maybe you don't have any sexual needs."
He slapped her then, a stinging blow across the cheek.
She didn't flinch. "I suppose that's as good a way as any to get your kicks," she said.
"Get out of here," he muttered. His voice was dry and hoarse. "Get out and don't come back. You deserve Angie.
You don't deserve anybody that's decent."
She laughed again and reached out to pat his arm. "I certainly don't deserve you, if that's what you mean."
He took a step toward her.
She held up her hand. "Never mind," she said. "I was just on my way out."
She turned and walked rapidly away from him, her steps quickened by the fury bursting inside her. He made no move to stop her.
Without looking back, she slammed out of the apartment.
CHAPTER 13
Carolyn drove through the park at Eighty Sixth Street and headed uptown toward home.
Her anger had already begun to wane. She felt not the slightest twinge of regret for what she had done to Walter.
He had it coming to him, after all. After what he had been doing to her all these years, he deserved at least that much. It wasn't that she had been getting even. It wasn't like it was with Angie. She simply couldn't allow her life to be ruined again. And Wal
ter would have done that, if she had let him. She was glad she had been able to make a clean break with him—instead of dragging it out as she had done with Angie. She knew she and Walter would never see each other again.
Still, she felt far from pleased with herself. Her experience with Walter had done more than open her eyes to his faults. It had forced her to recognize her own. She had always believed that people got out of life exactly what they bargained for. And if Walter and Angie were the best she could do, it was not her place to condemn them. She knew she had better get busy patching up the pieces of her life, make new friends, find a new love—before it was too late.
She locked the car and strolled casually along the street toward the house. Already the rosy highlights of another dawn reflected off the picture windows of top floor apartments. From a terrace drifted down the dying merriment of an all-night party. The boy from the apartment below hers was out walking his poodle.
It was like any other weekend morning. Yet for Carolyn this one felt different. For she was coming home to an empty apartment and for the first time, she felt glad instead of lonely.
In the elevator she kicked off her shoes and rubbed an exploring thumb over the blister forming on her right heel.
She wondered if there were any part of her that had not been battered during the past week. She sighed gratefully, believing that the ordeal with Angie was finally through. In stocking feet she crossed the hall and opened the door to her apartment.
She knew even before she switched on the light that something was wrong.
Her first thought was that the place had been ransacked. The chairs had been overturned, the couch pulled away from the wall. Practically everything she owned, all the junk that had been crammed into two valises, was strewn across the couch and floor. The valises, she suddenly realized, were gone.
She picked up a paisley scarf that was now in tatters and, holding it, sank down onto the couch. Lines of fatigue etched across her forehead and around her mouth. All the joy and sense of release she had felt fizzled out of her and she felt suddenly very old.
She could understand the missing suitcases. Angie would have taken them to pack her own things. But the disorder of the room, the torn scarf made no sense at all.
Angie wouldn't have bothered: her destruction was of a subtler kind. She liked to mete out punishments she felt suited the crime. And for what Carolyn had done to her, it would be a real dilly. Already she had made a halfhearted attempt at suicide. If she had sincerely wanted to get even, she would more likely have slashed her wrists and draped her lacerated (but carefully bandaged) body across the couch. It was not Angie's custom to be piddling about her dramatic effects.
For an instant she thought of Walter. There was something petty enough about torn lingerie to be his doing. God, how her attitude toward him had changed! Still, she knew it could not possibly have been he. He could not have gotten back to the apartment before her. Besides, he couldn't have gotten in. Angie was the only other person who had a key.
More curious now than annoyed, she got up and wandered into the bedroom. It too was dishevelled, but not as completely as the livingroom. Drawers hung open, the closet had been cleared out, the bureau stood bare. Even Angie's stack of beauty magazines had disappeared.
Yet the bed was still neatly made, with Angie's pink satin mules poking out from under the edge of the spread. If she had left everything else, Angie would have taken the slippers. They had been a birthday gift from Mums and Daddy.
When she realized that Angie had, after all, sent Jimmy to collect her things, Carolyn was more than annoyed, she was furious. Not that she had wanted another scene with the girl. That she wanted to avoid at almost any cost. They had already done all the damage to each other that either of them could take. It would only be a repetition of all the scenes that had gone before. A furious, impassioned struggle, emotional murder to both of them.
But the idea of Jimmy wrecking her apartment, tearing her clothes was outrageous. And poor Bridgit! She must be terrified.
It occurred to Carolyn that, for the first time since she had picked the cat up sick and starving in the street, Bridgit had not come running to welcome her home. She had been so concerned about her own problems that she had completely overlooked Bridgit. Now, she was worried. Quickly, she began to open doors and poke into corners, calling to the cat.
When she had finished one round of the apartment, she began again, more slowly. Ten minutes later she gave up the search. Bridgit, like Angie, like the valises, had disappeared. The valises and Angie she could live without. But this time, somebody had gone too far.
Not bothering to think what she intended to do, Carolyn put on a pair of sandals and slammed out of the apartment.
Too nervous to wait for the elevator, she ran down ten flights of fire escape steps to the ground floor.
The little Renault leaped forward. She hardly noticed the lights. On Thirty Eighth Street she turned and slowed down as she neared the bar where she had last seen Angie.
Directly across the street, she parked and turned off the engine.
For a few minutes she simply sat in the car, smoking a cigarette and wondering what to do. She knew that Angie (and probably Jimmy, too) was somewhere in the neighborhood. Yet she had no idea where Jimmy lived or where he might have taken the girl. She didn't even know what she wanted from them if she found them, except to find out what they had done with Bridgit. If anything had happened to that cat as a result of Angie's stupidity... Well, she didn't know in exactly what manner but Angie would pay for it somehow.
Now that she had come this far, she couldn't just sit still and wait for something to happen. But she didn't quite know where to begin. The bar, of course, was closed. She had not expected to find anything there. But Angie had gone into the bar and vanished. Obviously there must be an exit other than the main door and it was her business to find out where it led to.
She got out of the car and stood leaning against it, smoking and examining the front of the building across from her. Five floors of corroded sandstone, some of its windows curtained, others with white X's splashed across them.
It looked like any tenement anywhere in the city. Following the scattering of X's, she discovered that the building was one of three about to be torn down and replaced. None of the buildings had an obvious front entrance. Their ground floors all seemed to be commercial sites. But near the corner, at the end of the last building, an alleyway made a narrow slit between two stores.
She felt a tremor of elation. Quickly she ground the cigarette under her heel and started across the street.
Almost running, she took the last few steps to the alleyway and plunged into the entrance. It was dark and smelly in the narrow passage. Creeping sideways to avoid overflowing garbage cans and the mucky filth down the center of the alley that sucked at her feet, she worked her way through to an open courtyard crisscrossed by clotheslines and frayed electric wires. A dim light bulb hung from a pole in the center of the yard.
She walked directly to the middle building, the one that housed the bar, and into the damp, gloomy hallway.
Despite the growing light outside, she could see only a few feet beyond the doorway. But it was enough to convince her she had been right.
At the end of the hall was a narrow door that must be the back entrance to the bar. Set into the wall beside it, a bank of mailboxes flaky with rust. Lighting matches, she scanned the name plates. Under 5D, a piece of adhesive splotchy with ink and the imprint of a thumb carried the name J. Turner. There were no bells. She walked back to the stairs and started to climb.
When she reached the top floor, she felt winded and filthy and perspiration itched across her back. She rapped loudly on the door of apartment D.
Before she could rap again, the door swung open.
Jimmy stood just inside, wearing only shorts, and by the expression on his face, she knew he had been expecting someone else.
Practically naked and outlined clearly in the doorway, he
looked gigantic. Carolyn wondered fleetingly what she had intended to do. Beat him to a pulp? Maybe kick him in the shins?
She found herself grinning foolishly and mumbling Angie's name.
It was a moment before he recognized her. Then he shrugged. "I don't know where the hell she is," he said. "She's not here."
"She was here," Carolyn said.
"So she was here. She's not here now." He started to shut the door. Carolyn wedged herself in the doorway. He looked annoyed, but he let go of the handle and walked away from her.
She trailed into the apartment after him. "I know she was here. I followed her."
He picked up a can of beer and took a gulp from it. "What do you want from me?" he said. He took in the tiny room with a wide sweep of his arm. "Do you see her?"
She didn't even bother to look. She knew by his attitude what had happened. Angie had run out on him, too.
He paid her no further attention while he finished the can of beer and started on another one.
She sat down on a kitchen chair that, with a bed and table, furnished the room. Both windows were open wide but not a breath of air filtered in. The place was dusty but neat, not from tidiness so much as from lack of clutter.
Carolyn marvelled that Angie preferred this airtight box to the air conditioned comfort of Columbus Avenue. It had been because of Angie that Carolyn had left the old brownstone she loved. Angie was terrified of cockroaches, revolted by dingy apartments. At least, that's what she said. Glancing about her, Carolyn realized that there were many things about the girl she had never found out. She was sure she would not have liked most of them.
But it did not surprise her that the girl should be drawn to Jimmy. He had all the qualifications Angie demanded in a man: he was tall, dark and handsome, built like the "after" part of a Charles Atlas ad, and not bright enough to give her a hard time. Another one Angie could twist around her little finger. Observing him, Carolyn felt a twinge of pity for herself as well as for Jimmy. Angie had run out on them both tonight. They had a lot in common.
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