69 Barrow Street

by Lawrence Block

  But at the same time he was a marvelous lover, and easily as virile a man as she had ever met. And he had an incredible imagination.

  Besides, she needed a man like Ralph, a man she could push around whatever way she felt like. In his own way he loved her, and in her own way she supposed she loved him. Hardly the storybook kind of love with a picket fence and children, but love just the same. They were in the same boat.

  He was sitting on the couch in the living room. When she walked in he looked up at her but said nothing. She smiled.

  “Well?”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  Her smile widened. “You might tell me how nice I look.”

  He shrugged. “You look fine.”

  She did, and she knew it. She was wearing a lemon-colored sack dress just a shade deeper than her hair, and she had the sort of figure that kept a sack dress from looking like a sack. Her breasts and hips rubbed against the yellow material as she walked and accentuated all the sensuous lines of her full body.

  “You look fine,” he repeated. “Is that all you want?”

  “Do you think it is?”

  He shrugged again, feigning boredom.

  “I want to talk to you,” she said. “Why else would I come in here? I just want to have a nice, pleasant conversation with my lover.”

  He just looked at her.

  She sat down next to him and slipped one arm around him so that her breast pressed into his shoulder. He tried to ignore her but she could sense how she was exciting him, how he wanted her. This was going to be good.

  “I met a girl today,” she said. “She just moved into this building.”

  “Oh?”

  “She’s very pretty,” she went on. “Young, small—a lesbian, of course.”

  He laughed. “You make it sound as though every girl in the Village is a lesbian.”

  “Most of them are.”

  “And I suppose you intend to have her?”

  “Of course.”

  “Suppose she doesn’t want to be had?”

  “She’ll want to,” Stella said. “I can tell.”

  “Stella,” he demanded, “what in hell is the matter with you? Do you have to crawl in bed with everyone you see?”

  “Only with my friends.”

  “And you don’t have any enemies.”

  “That’s right,” she said, smiling.

  He turned away from her. “Leave me alone.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “Well, what the hell do you want from me?”

  “I told you. I want to talk about the girl.”

  He sighed.

  “She’s very pretty, as I said. I think you’ll like her.”

  “What the hell’s the difference whether or not I like her?”

  “Well,” she said, “you’re going to watch, of course. You might as well like what you’re looking at.”

  “You bitch.”

  She pouted. “That’s not nice, Ralph. You always watch. You know that.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “You don’t have to,” she said. “You can always get out and leave and take your paints and brushes with you. Of course you’d starve to death, but—”

  “Shut up!”

  She laughed, delighted. She let one hand drop to his thigh and squeezed him, gently. “Or else you can watch. Maybe we can make it more exciting for you this time, dear. Maybe you can have the girl when I’m done with her.”

  Ralph looked at her, puzzled. “But she won’t want that, will she? If she’s a lesbian—”

  “She might not have any choice in the matter, dear. I could help you, if you think it’s too much for you.”

  He stared at her, his eyes wide with shock. “You don’t mean—”

  “That’s exactly what I mean.”

  “God! Stella, don’t you have any feeling for people? Don’t you—”

  “Oh, shut up,” she commanded. Suddenly she was bored with the game. It was amusing the way Ralph was so easily shocked, as if he wasn’t as depraved as she herself was. But she didn’t feel in the mood for conversation any longer.

  “Stand up,” she ordered.

  He stood up.

  “Now take off your clothes.”

  He moved to the window to shut it but she stopped him. “Leave it open,” she said. “So what if somebody watches? I don’t care.”

  He started to protest, then stopped and began to remove his clothing. She stood motionless before him until he was completely nude. There was a mocking smile on her face.

  She stepped closer to him until mere inches separated them. Then suddenly she clenched her left hand into a fist and drove it into his solar plexus. When he doubled up in agony her open right hand lashed out and caught him across the face. Her fingers left long red marks where they struck him.

  He didn’t say anything.

  She smiled. “That’s for arguing with me,” she said. “That was your punishment. Now you can have your reward.”

  She reached down and lifted the sack dress to her waist. There was nothing under the dress.

  “I think I’ll leave the dress on,” she said. “It’s fun that way sometimes.”

  He still said nothing. He was numb with anger and desire in equal parts, wanting to love her and possess her and kill her. And so he remained silent and motionless.

  She stretched out on her back on the oriental rug, her dress up around her waist. She looked up at him, a smile playing with the corners of her mouth.

  “Come on,” she said. “What are you waiting for?”

  He took her, furiously and brutally and savagely, and all the while her cruel discordant laughter rang in his ears.

  Chapter Two

  MORNING.

  Ralph Lambert rolled out of the bed gingerly, being careful not to wake Stella. He yawned and rubbed sleep from his eyes. Then, before leaving the bedroom, he stood silently by the side of the bed and looked down at Stella.

  She was sound asleep, her mouth pressed against the side of the pillow and her lush white body curled like a cat about to spring. Sleep softened the hard lines around her mouth and eyes and made her far more gentle and feminine than she was when she was awake. She invariably slept nude, and because the night was so warm she had thrown back the covers and slept on top of the bed.

  Ralph saw her with the eye of an artist. While any man would have been captivated and excited by Stella’s body, Ralph was able to study it in detail and to realize just how beautiful it was.

  Stella was thirty, three years older than Ralph. With the sort of life she had been leading it was almost a miracle that no signs of wear or aging appeared to the eye. Her breasts were still perfectly firm, and breasts as large as Stella’s generally show the signs of age earlier than smaller ones. Her complexion was clear and perfect from head to toe.

  She was so beautiful, Ralph mused. How could anyone so beautiful be so inexplicably bad? It was impossible to understand.

  He left the bedroom and closed the door behind him. A fast shower made him feel alive once again, his skin fresh and clean and his mind able to concentrate. He toweled himself dry and stood at the open bathroom window, gulping huge breaths of the early morning air. The air was as fresh as air ever got in New York and it made him feel even more awake and more alive.

  He almost felt good.

  But not quite. Not quite, because he knew that no man in his position could ever feel good. No man with Stella hanging on his neck like a millstone.

  A millstone? That wasn’t a particularly good image, and he closed his eyes to hunt for a better one. An albatross, perhaps. A sexy blonde albatross. He remembered the poem by Coleridge in which a sailor shot an albatross and the corpse of the bird hung around his neck for months bringing terrible luck to the ship.

  That was Stella, all right. Hanging around his neck and lousing him up.

  Returning to the bedroom, he dressed quickly and quietly. Stella slept on. He glanced at her again and the events of the previous nig
ht flashed through his mind briefly—the insults, the slapping, the humiliating way she had forced him to make love to her on the floor with her dress on, the terrible laughter that tore from her throat all the while until passion caught her up and the laughter changed in midstream to a gush of foul obscenities. For a moment a wild impulse gripped him and he longed to kill her, to press the pillow over her nose and mouth and hold it there until she choked to death.

  But the impulse passed quickly. Ralph was not by nature a violent man. He could fight when pressed and he could lose his temper easily enough, but he had never yet gotten mad enough to commit murder.

  But he had to admit the idea was an attractive one.

  For a moment he considered frying himself a couple eggs in the apartment’s small kitchen. Then he decided against it. He didn’t want to be around when Stella woke up. Even if he didn’t get up the guts to leave her, he wanted to spend as little time around her and the apartment as possible.

  He left the apartment and walked down the hallway to the door. The weather was nice out, with a hot yellow sun just coming into view and the sky clear-blue with hardly a cloud in it. He sat down for a moment on the stoop in front of the building and lit the first cigarette of the day, enjoying the lift it gave him as the strong smoke hit his lungs.

  When the door opened behind him a second or two later he turned his head slightly to see who it was. That’s when he saw her for the first time.

  She was wearing black toreador pants that were tight around her hips and legs and a light green sleeveless blouse that looked as cool as the grass in the mountains. She wore sandals on her feet and her hair was short and dark brown. Her body was trim and neat; in fact, there was an overwhelming impression of neatness and coolness and quiet self-possession about her which hit him at once.

  He liked her instantly.

  “Hello,” he said. He smiled.

  She smiled back.

  “I haven’t seen you around before,” he said. “Did you just move in recently?”

  “Yesterday morning.”

  “First time in New York?”

  “No,” she said, and she smiled as if the question were very funny.

  “Been in the Village before?”

  She nodded. “For several years.”

  Suddenly he said: “Sit down for a minute. It’s very nice here.”

  She seemed to be hesitating.

  “Come on,” he said, indicating that she could sit on the stoop beside him. “The sun’s nice and it’s still cool out. Later in the day you’ll want to spend your time sitting in front of a fan, but now it’s nice enough just sitting in the sun and enjoying it.”

  “All right,” she said. “But only for a minute.” She sat down.

  He wasn’t sure where to begin. He felt that he wanted to get to know this girl, wanted to talk to her, but it was hard to hit on a conversational opener. Still, she was obviously willing to talk with him. Otherwise she wouldn’t have sat down.

  “My name’s Ralph,” he said. “Ralph Lambert.”

  “I’m Susan Rivers.”

  “Have you had breakfast, Susan?”

  “Not yet. I just got up.”

  “There’s a place down the street where they make a good mushroom omelet. Interested?”

  She hesitated, and this time it wasn’t hard to see her hesitation. She seemed genuinely worried about something and he wondered idly what it might be.

  “I’m not trying to make a pass,” he assured her. “I live on the first floor here and there’s a girl who lives with me, so I’m not a guy on the make. I just thought you might like to have breakfast with me.”

  She relaxed visibly. “All right,” she said. “A mushroom omelet sounds like a good idea.”

  They stood up simultaneously and began walking along Barrow Street toward the restaurant, a small quiet place around the corner on Bedford. He noticed things: the way the top of her head was just level with his shoulder, the clean freshly bathed smell of her that rose to his nostrils, the cool, calm air about her. As they walked they talked about nothing in particular and he hardly managed to follow the conversation even though he was a participant in it. His mind was wrapped up in an appraisal of the girl. He felt that he wanted to get to know her, wanted to find out for himself just what sort of a person she was and what made her tick.

  They both ordered mushroom omelets at the restaurant, with orange juice and toast and coffee. They ate in relative silence—the food was good and they were both quite hungry.

  Then, over coffee and cigarettes he said: “Do you work, Susan?”

  She nodded.

  “Where?”

  “Do you know the ceramic and jewelry shop on Macdougal Street just below Eighth?”

  “I think so.”

  “That’s where I work. I design ceramics and do a little of the actual throwing myself, too.”

  “That sounds pretty good.”

  She shrugged. “It doesn’t pay much but I like it. I can work pretty much my own hours and knock off for a day or two whenever I feel like it. And it’s…well, creative, I guess.”

  “That makes a difference.”

  “It really does, Ralph. I’m not talking about the artistic angle of it or anything. I don’t pretend to be artistic, whatever that means exactly. I’m just making things—ashtrays and vases and bowls that people can use and enjoy. It’s more a craft than an art.

  “But the thing is that I’m figuring out a way to make something and then making it, sort of with my own two hands.” She held up her hands to illustrate the point. He noted that her hands were quite small with slender and well-formed fingers. Her fingernails were clipped short and she didn’t wear any nail polish.

  He said: “I know what you mean.”

  “It’s a feeling of building something,” she went on. “It makes a difference, a tremendous difference. Sometimes I get the feeling that my life is just a waste, that I’m not doing anything important and I might as well not be alive at all. But then I put on a smock and go in the workroom behind the shop and put some clay on the wheel and throw a pot and bake it and glaze it and…it just makes me feel a lot better, Ralph. As if I’ve accomplished something. As if I have a…a reason for existing, if you can understand what I’m trying to say.”

  “I understand.”

  They fell silent. He took a last drag on his cigarette and ground it out in the glass ashtray on the table. He felt very comfortable with her, more comfortable than he had felt with a woman in years. There was a definite feeling of ease between them, as if they understood and appreciated and respected each other, thinking the same things and experiencing the same emotions. Why, her attitude about her ceramics work was damned similar to his own feelings about his painting.

  As if she were reading his mind she asked: “What do you do, Ralph?”

  “Not much of anything.”

  She waited for him to explain.

  “I’m a painter,” he said at length. “Or at least I was a painter. I haven’t done anything in months.”

  “How come?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve been in an awful slump, Susan. I just haven’t had the slightest desire to do any work. My brushes don’t even feel right in my hand anymore. Not too long ago I set up the easel in my front room and hauled out the paints and brushes. And I stood there looking at the canvas and I didn’t know what to do or where to begin. I felt like a damned fool, just standing there pretending to be an artist and not even getting a drop of paint on the canvas.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “It’s a weird sort of feeling. Guys I’ve talked to say it can happen in any line of work. There’s even a term for it—a writer friend of mine calls it writer’s block. He says it happens to him every once in a while and there’s not a damn thing he can do about it.”

  “I guess you just have to ride it out, huh?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “In my case I think it’s something different. It’s not just that I can’t paint, it’s that I don�
��t even want to paint anymore.”

  “You’ll probably snap out of it.”

  “I guess so.”

  “You will, Ralph. All you have to do is keep trying. I think you’ll make it.”

  He smiled at her.

  Stella woke up like a cat. First her eyes opened slowly and closed again. Then she opened her eyes a second time and stretched herself slightly, tensing the muscles in her legs and reaching up over her head with her arms.

  She yawned, her mouth opening wide and the air rushing into her lungs. She stretched again, her whole body tensing and flexing to send the blood coursing through veins and arteries.

  The waking-up process took almost five minutes and by the time she clambered out of bed she was fully awake with her eyes wide open. She wondered where in hell Ralph might be.

  It would have been nice to have him around, she decided. She loved sex in the morning, especially when you were still half awake and half asleep. Then you came together without preliminaries, almost like animals, two bodies reaching and straining for each other and possessing each other without the brains getting in the way.

  It was good in the morning.

  But Ralph wasn’t around—and, unfortunately, neither was anyone else. She hurried into the bathroom for a shower and turned on the water. Then she kicked off her slippers and climbed into the small bathtub.

  A shower, like everything else she enjoyed, was a sensual experience for Stella. She didn’t just soap her body and rinse it. Instead she caressed herself with the soap, loving the smooth and slippery way it passed over her body.

  She loved to soap her breasts. She kneaded the lather into the soft smooth skin in a manner that was almost physically arousing. She did the same for all the erogenous zones of her perfect body.

  Then, when she was through, she turned on the cold shower full blast. Needles of icy liquid pain pelted her all over and hurt her in a deliciously invigorating way. The freezing water lashed at her breasts and belly and made her even more aware of herself.

  When she had stepped out of the tub and toweled herself dry she stood for almost fifteen minutes before her mirror. She loved to spend time at her mirror; she had done so since she was a small child.