Enough of Sorrow

by Lawrence Block

  At last she stopped. She went into a luncheonette and forced herself to have a cup of coffee. She bought aspirin at a drugstore and had the clerk bring her a glass of water. Her headache gradually receded, her stomach finally began to calm down. It had miles to go, but it was better.

  She took a cab home. Not because she wanted to, not because she honestly thought she could face Rae. But because she had to see the blonde girl, had to find some way to wipe the slate at least part of the way clean.

  But how? And what was she supposed to do now? What would she say? Worse, what would let her get through the day, and the next day, and the one after that?

  She looked at her watch. It was almost seven, which meant that she was due at the office in a little over two hours. She didn’t think she could make it. She looked like hell and felt worse, and she knew it wouldn’t do her an awful lot of good to put in eight hours behind a desk. Nor would it do Mr. Gordon any good. He had told her that her job was to look pretty, to lend the office a note of what he called class. And she did not feel, somehow, that she could lend class to anything; the way she looked and felt, she would reduce the appearance of an outhouse.

  When the cab stopped, when she dragged herself into the apartment, she was not tremendously surprised to find that Rae had left. It was logical enough. She had come home late and drunk, and she had been completely rotten in every way saying unforgivable things and doing unforgivable things, and of course Rae had left.

  There was a note:

  Karen—

  I don’t know what’s the matter but I do know that I can’t possibly stay here now. I tried to tell myself that the drinking was just a phase and thought you would get through it but we both know better than that now, And tonight was too much, maybe it’s my fault for being weak but I can’t and won’t go through that sort of scene. I’ve had it before and I won’t have it again.

  I’ll be staying at a hotel for a little while. I think we need a chance to settle down, and you need time to decide what’s what. I’ll be in touch.

  I still love you, and always will, I fear.

  Your Rae

  At nine o’clock she called Gordon’s office and no one answered the phone. She smoked two cigarettes and tried him again “This is Karen,” she said. “I’m not feeling well, Mister Gordon. I don’t think I can come in today.”

  “Sure, kid. You take care of yourself. Figure you’ll be out any length of time?”

  “I don’t think so. But if I spend a day in bed…”

  “You do that, Karen. Just take things easy until you feel a little better, okay?”

  It was not a lie, she thought as she put the receiver back in its cradle. She was definitely not feeling well, and she definitely couldn’t come in that day. And she would spend the day in bed, just as soon as she got herself fixed properly so that she would be able to sleep again.

  The boy from the liquor store delivered a quart of Johnny Walker Red Label.

  She took one small drink, then got out of her clothes and went into the bathroom. She spent a long time under the shower, scrubbing the scent and taste of sick lust from her skin. She washed herself again and again, as if her entire body were as imbued with the essence of depravity as Lady Macbeth’s uncleansable hand. Here’s the taste of lust still, all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little girl…

  She left the shower at last and toweled herself dry. Then she took the bottle of scotch and crawled into her bed—their bed, she thought—and drank until she was able to slip securely off to sleep.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Her fingers curled around the stem of the glass on the table before her. She drew a breath, let it out slowly, and raised the glass to her lips. She took one small sip and put it down before her. One drink with lunch—that was the system she had decided upon. One drink and no more with lunch, and then nothing until she had finished work for the day. Then back to the apartment, back to the awful loneliness of the apartment, and one drink before dinner, and then…

  Then she would drink herself to sleep. But no heavy boozing before then. One drink at lunch to take the edge off, one drink with dinner to give the food some flavor. After dinner, home, alone, so desperately alone, she could drink herself into a stupor with a clear conscience.

  “You’re looking dreadfully sad today,” Adrian March said.

  “Am I?” She smiled. “I’m sorry.”

  “Is something wrong, Karen?”

  “Oh not really. A…a good friend of mine whom I used to see…someone I used to see rather often…well, moved away for the time being, you see, and I’m a little blue. Nothing I won’t get over.”

  She wondered how true that was, wondered if there was any chance that Rae would come back. One night Rae had come back, and that could have been her chance, and she blew it to hell and gone. It had been a desperate night, and after she had carefully limited herself to that single drink at lunch and that solitary cocktail before dinner, she had gone back to the apartment and really hung one on.

  And, when she was about ten seconds away from the neutral blessing of unconsciousness, Rae walked in.

  So that tore it.

  If she had been sober, they would have kissed and made up. But she was not remotely sober, was in fact about as far as it was possible to be from sobriety, and they did not come close to making up. She tried. She did a great deal of crying and begging and promising and more crying, and Rae sobbed some, and Rae wound up filling another of her suitcases and walking out the door. She would be out of town for awhile, the blonde girl explained. It would give them both a chance to cool off a little. And when she came back, in two or three weeks, or maybe a month.

  “A boy friend, Karen?”

  She started. March was smiling gently, and she drew herself quickly back to the conversation. No, she thought. A girl friend, whom I love, who used to sleep with me.

  “Yes,” she said. “A boy friend.”

  Because what point was there in telling him embarrassing things, things he did not need to know?

  “He’ll come back.”

  “Maybe he will. And maybe not.”

  “He will if he knows what he’s about.”

  She forced a smile. “You’re sweet,” she said.

  When the office door opened she turned on the intercom and said, “Oh, hello, Miss Jones. Can I help you?”

  I’ll see her, Gordon’s signal flashed.

  The dancer smiled hugely, and in that instant Karen remembered. Cherry Jones was the girl she had seen on that horrid lost night in the Village. At the lesbian bar.

  Hastily she flicked the switch to cut off the intercom, just as Cherry Jones said, “Look who’s here! Little Miss Lovely—”

  She gasped for breath. “I—”

  “Don’t be embarrassed, baby. I’ve been a long time thinking about you, you dig? Funny the way you don’t tune in on people you see all the time. Like part of the furniture. I saw you here all those times and I never guessed you were a swinger.”

  The dancer wore too much makeup. Karen saw her breasts were almost absurdly large, all out of proportion. Her dress was cut far too low in the front and was far too tight around her opulent hips. And, beneath the makeup, her face was harsh, tough, rot pretty at all. And yet, in spite of this, she felt an unwelcome stirring In her loins, an unwanted quiver of desire.

  She had never felt this rush of heady hunger for a girl other than Rae. Not when she was sober, at any rate. On that night in the Village everything had been twisted all out of proportion and she could scarcely recall what she felt; it was bad enough that she remembered a portion of what she did and a portion of what was done to her.

  But now…

  “Mister Gordon will see you now,” she stammered.

  “He can wait a minute, Karen. That’s your name, isn’t it? Karen?”

  She nodded.

  “And you’re all strung out because somebody knows your secret. Don’t let it hang you up. You know my secret, too, don’t you? And I don’t exact
ly run ads in Billboard telling the world that I like the girls just as much as the men like me. See?”

  She didn’t say anything. If only she didn’t find this girl so overwhelmingly attractive, she thought, then she might be able to hold up her end of the conversation. And yet she wanted the stripper and disliked her at the same time. It was not a healthy attraction. It was purely sexual, a physical longing that made her enormously uncomfortable.

  “We ought to get together, Karen.”

  “I don’t—”

  “I’m not all-the-way gay, you know. I swing…both ways, is what I mean. Boys or girls. Whatever rings the bell. I’ve got a long feeling we could ring a couple or three bells for each other, doll. See?”

  “I—”

  “I’d better see Leon now. Sit tight, little doll.”

  While the stripper was in Gordon’s office she buzzed him on the phone. “I’ve got a yen for a cup of coffee,” she said. ”Okay if I duck out for a minute or two?”

  “Sure thing,” he said. “Bring me back a coffee and Danish, will you?”

  She took her time, hoping the stripper would be gone when she returned. She dawdled at the lunch counter and thought about the girl. That would be the end of the whole thing, she told herself. A cheap brazen tramp named Cherry Jones. A girl who could come up with such gems as I swing both ways. Boys or girls. Whatever rings the bell…

  When she got back to the office the stripper had already left. She said a silent prayer of thanks, took Gordon his coffee and Danish pastry, then returned to her desk. There was a small business card on her desk near the telephone. It was scented with some sort of musky perfume.

  Black raised lettering on a pale green card.

  And, on an upward slant, the girl had written: Call me when you’re in the mood.

  Don’t hold your breath, Karen thought. Don’t hold your god-damned breath.

  But three nights later, three Rae-less nights later, alone, so badly alone, so entirely alone, she put down the bottle and padded over to the telephone and dialed a number.

  I should have died long ago, she thought, hating herself, hating the world. I should have bled to death on Rivington Street. I would have been better off that way.

  And, when a familiar voice answered, she said, “I’m in the mood, Miss Cherry Ice-Cream-Soda Jones. I’m in the mood.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The bottle was empty by the time her doorbell sounded. She walked carefully to the door, placing one foot very precisely before the other, very pleased to discover that she was capable of walking the straightest of lines drunk or not. And tonight she knew that it was very good to be drunk. Tonight sobriety was unthinkable. When you took a trip to Hell, you had to bring your camera.

  Darling forgive me, she prayed silently, for I know not what I do…

  When she opened the door she saw two women sanding in the hallway. Cherry was there, dressed almost obscenely in the tightest slacks she had ever seen and a gold lame sweater that covered her like a coat of sparkling paint. And, next to Cherry, she saw a very thin slip of a girl with a long equine face and washed-out blondish hair worn in a pony tail. The girl smiled and showed large teeth.

  “I brought a friend,” Cherry said. “Hope you don’t mind.”

  “I—”

  “After all,” the stripper said, “any number can play. The rules of the game are flexible, doll.”

  She didn’t know what to say. She stepped aside, and Cherry and the other girl came into the apartment. The girl could not have been more than eighteen, Karen thought. If that. She wore a paisley shirt with a button-down collar and a pair of black flannel slacks. Her wrists were very thin, with a tracery of blue veins showing prominently. Her eyes, Karen saw, had a glint in them that was almost psychopathic.

  “This is Evelyn,” Cherry said. “A protégée, so to speak Ev, doll, this is Karen, receptionist and Gal Tuesday for the illustrious Leon Gordon, purveyor of human flesh.” Cherry flashed a smile. “Why don’t you two kiss hello?”

  Karen did not believe that this was happening. No lovemaking could be so utterly lacking in feeling, so wholly devoid of anything but the elements of desire. The slender girl came toward her and raised her pale lips for a kiss, and Karen found herself kissing the upturned mouth while she marveled at her own apparently limitless capacity for depravity. Because this was entirely depraved and she could not believe it was actually happening, that she was actually letting herself get involved in something so extraordinary. This would pass, she knew. In a moment or two this ephemeral illusion of sobriety would fade out and the alcohol in her bloodstream would take control, and she would be able to relax and enjoy it all.

  And that, somehow, was the most frightening aspect of the whole affair.

  “Got anything to drink. Karen?”

  “No.”

  “Guess you worked your way through all the juice before you called. Dutch courage, sugar?”

  “Maybe.”

  “People get themselves in such a state. Life’s too short to get all hung up on things. No point. Something’s fun, you go ahead and do it. Something looks like a groove, you see if it lives up to expectations. Spend a lot of time thinking and all you do is buy yourself a headache.” Cherry looked to the thin young girl for confirmation. “Am I right, Ev?”

  “The rightest,” Evelyn said. It was the first she had spoken. Her eyes danced and her head bobbed in time to some imaginary tune audible only to her. Her voice was low, throaty, bubbling. She sighed lazily and her hands reached boldly out, to grasp Karen at the waist. “Crazy, crazy,” she said, and Karen felt a spasm of desire strike her in the chest with the force of a coronary explosion. She fell forward into the girl’s arms and sought her pale lips greedily, and the girl kissed her and laughed and kissed her again. Karen closed her eyes and surrendered to the kiss. She could hear Evelyn’s rapid breathing, could hear Cherry taking off her clothes, then padding nude about the room to turn off all of the lights but one.

  Cherry whispered, “Don’t be selfish, dear.” And Evelyn giggled softly, her laughter like ice cubes in a tall drink, and she kissed Karen a final time and rubbed their bodies together and then released her. Karen swayed on her feet, at the point of collapse. Then the tall stripper took her into her arms, and she was pressed against Cherry’s nude and opulent body from head to toe. She felt the weight and warmth of the dancer’s huge breasts, the heat of her loins, the strength of her tightly muscled arms and legs.

  A kiss…

  She felt as though she were being passed back and forth, like a wine bottle shared amongst congenial alcoholics in a Bowery hallway. And, responding to the force and fever of Cherry’s embrace, she felt again like two people in one body, the one observing, the other participating—the one disapproving, the other too caught up in desire to care. The Two-Karens Syndrome, she thought. And then she stopped thinking entirely and let the second Karen take over completely…

  Brittle visions.

  A beach by night. High tide and a haze around the moon. A wash of furious surf on the sea, waves dashing against a breakwall, rolling onto the sand.

  Lightning splitting the opaque face of the sky. Stark silence, and then the rumble and roll of thunder out over the sea. Silence once more, and a girl’s shriek rending the sheer fabric of the night.

  Upon the sound, a rattle and a hiss. A diamond-back rattlesnake, eyes like chips of agate, tongue flashing in a burlesque of forbidden lust, head back, body coiled in desperation, poised to strike. A rattle, a hiss, the snake’s body thrusting out straight and firm and rather like a man.

  Waves high as housetops, waves that did not break, waves that towered up onto the beach, up over the sand, up over the snake and the shrieking girl, high, wide, as wet as death, as wet as blood.

  Brittle visions, dark as drowning, close as Hell.

  The bed, once hers and Rae’s, then hers alone, had seemed impossibly large when she had slept in it by herself—oceans of mattress on every side, deserts of empty space all aroun
d her.

  Now, as she betrayed both Rae and herself in that bed, it seemed strangely small. A little bed overfilled with female flesh in abject abandon.

  She lay on her back holding Evelyn in her arms while Cherry was kissing her legs. She held Evelyn’s little breasts and squeezed them. Like tiny teacups without handles, like the little cups of green tea they served at Chinese restaurants. Almost tasteless tea until you learned to breathe its fragrance, and then it went to your head and delighted you…

  A rolling peal of laughter from the girl. Insane, Karen thought. A literally insane person, over the edge of the mind’s bright eye, out of touch with the serrated edge of reality.

  But who was she to judge insanity? To cast stones through the walls of her own glass castle? To build fires in the halls of her own private ice palace?

  Bodies moved upon the bed. There ought to be more liquor, she thought. More alcohol to fasten once and for all the doors of perception, to shut them and bar them permanently. This was bad, this occasional spasm of the conscience. Another few drinks and she would have shut out the perceptive Karen entirely; a few less drinks and she would have spent the evening alone instead of having her flesh shared by these two lovely devils.

  Watch out for Mister In-Between…

  Evelyn’s face danced before her. The girl’s eyes flashed fire, cold fire. and the girl’s tongue darted out and it was the snake’s tongue, forked like a devil’s tail, and Evelyn’s head weaved and bobbed like the rattlesnake readying to strike, and Karen’s ears screamed with a rattle and a hiss and a shriek in the stillness of the night.

  “Oh, you’re evil,” she said aloud. “That’s what you are, did you know? Cold fire. Evil.”

  A roar of laughter. Glass shattering. Someone—Cherry?—singing an old Eartha Kitt song. I want to be evil, I want to be bad…

  When did it end, how did it end? And where? It seemed now to be endless. Some of the time the perceptive Karen withered and died, and she entered into the spirit of lust with complete abandon and nothing held back, nothing in reserve. Other times she did not know what she did because the memory failed to register. And other times a thread, a ribbon, a trace of perception returned and imposed itself upon her. But still the endless parade endured, still the bodies tumbled in the bed, still lips and tongues and fingers and breasts and thighs and loins played the endless game in endless pointless mindless soulless hunger.