The Wrong Kind of Money

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  “Oh, you want to play a little hard to get? Okay, I can play that game, too. Let’s have some fun.”

  “I’ll—”

  He advances steadily toward her as she backs away. “You’ll scream? Nobody’ll hear you. Go ahead—scream. I’d like to hear you scream.” With one hand he seizes her wrist again, then her other wrist in his other hand.

  “No! Stop!”

  “I like a little—resistance.” Now he has both wrists grasped behind her in one solid grip, and with his free hand he is dipping deep into the front of her dress, pinching her breast hard, and at the same time forcing her with the weight of his body backward against the bed. “Give me a little more fight,” he says.

  “Stop! You’re hurting me!”

  “Good. It’s better if it hurts a little.…”

  “No! Stop! Oh, help!” she cries at the top of her voice. “Noah—help me!”

  But now he has her pressed against the bed with the full weight of his six-foot-two, one-hundred-eighty-pound frame. One elbow is jammed forcefully across her throat, and with his other hand he snatches up the front of her dress and seizes her panties and roughly grabs her pubic hair. “Finger-fuck you first,” he mutters in her face. “Warm you up.”

  “No! Oh, help! Someone help!” she screams again. “Noah!”

  But now he takes his left hand and covers her mouth, while the right hand gropes and twists her panties, pulling them down across her knees, and there is the sound of fabric ripping. His own knee comes up hard between her legs, spreading them apart, and his finger penetrates her, first one finger, then two, then three, and she twists her head to one side and bites down, hard, on the fleshy part of the palm of his hand. There is a gush of blood, and he pulls sharply away from her and looks down at his bleeding hand. “You bit me, you little bitch!” he whispers. He says this in a tone almost of wonder and bewilderment.

  “I told you to stop. I meant it,” she says. Blood trickles from her mouth, and she spits it out.

  He reaches into his jacket pocket for a handkerchief, and quickly wraps his bleeding hand in this. Then, in almost the same movement, he reaches into another pocket for a cigarette, and lights it with the gold lighter. Lighting his cigarette, his hand trembles, and he glares down at her with a look of purest hatred. “What did you want me to do?” he demands. “Did you want me to rape you? Is that what you wanted?”

  “That’s what you tried to do.”

  “Liar! That’s one thing I’ve never had to do, thank God. But you wanted it. You know you wanted it. Why’d you ask me into your bedroom if you didn’t want it? Why’d you make your bedroom the last room on the little house tour?”

  “I told you. I changed my mind. Woman’s prerogative. But this is a real first for you—right?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “It’s the first time a girl has said no to the great Bill Luckman—and his big, fat cock. Well, frankly, it didn’t feel so big and fat to me.”

  He steps toward her, and his right hand, still holding the cigarette, swings suddenly in a wide arc, and he strikes Melody hard and sharply across the face. Hot ashes from the cigarette fly into her eyes, and she cries out again. “Take that, you little cock tease!” he says. “I’ll get even with you for this, you know.”

  “And I’ll see to it that you never write anything about the Lieblings,” she says.

  He turns toward the door, unbolts it. “You’re going to pay for this,” he says. “I’m going to see to it that you keep paying for this. Writers work with words. I’m going to have the last one.”

  “And it was Tolstoy, asshole!”

  He lets himself out of the room, closing the door behind him, leaving Melody sprawled, dry-eyed, across the bed.

  She giggles briefly. Then, soon afterward, she hears a new set of footsteps in the hall, and she begins to sob.

  From the hall, he goes into Carol Liebling’s bathroom and runs cold water on his bloodied hand. He stanches the blood with toilet paper and flushes the paper down the toilet. In the medicine cabinet he finds a box of Band-Aids in assorted shapes and sizes, selects one, and covers his wound with a wide adhesive strip. Also in the medicine cabinet he sees a pharmacist’s plastic bottle with a label reading, “Mrs. Carol Liebling—for sleep.” For reasons that he himself may not entirely understand, he reaches for this and pockets it. Then he pees noisily in the toilet and flushes it again. Then he returns to the living room, his left hand thrust deep in his trouser pocket.

  “I’ve had a lovely evening, Carol,” he says. “Thank you so much for including me.”

  “Can’t you stay till midnight? We thought we’d watch the ball drop in Times Square, and I’ve got some noise-makers, and we’re going to open some champagne. It’s sort of a tradition for Noah and me.”

  “Thanks, but I promised some friends that I’d stop by at another party,” he says. “Thank Noah for me. It was wonderful to meet you both.”

  “Where’s Melody?”

  “Powdering her nose. Or she may have gone to bed. She mentioned that she was quite tired.”

  “I’ll walk you to the elevator,” Anne says.

  Outside the apartment, as they walk toward the elevator, he says, “Actually, your friend Melody is pouting. She’s quite a piece of work, isn’t she?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Her little tour of your apartment ended in her bedroom. She tried to put the make on me. I told her I didn’t do that sort of thing with minors.” He presses the elevator call button. “She got mad. I told her to cool her jets. So, if she tries to bad-mouth me, that’ll be the reason.”

  Anne giggles. “Melody did that?”

  He shrugs. “Price of fame, I guess. Girls throw themselves at me. It gets to be embarrassing. But you—I can tell you’re different.”

  “Melody!”

  “Oh, I suppose you have certain lesbian feelings for her. That would be natural at your age.”

  “I can’t wait to have my first lesbian experience! But it wouldn’t be with Melody. I’d want it to be with a perfect stranger. Melody is my—muse!”

  He studies her face in the soft hall light. “I think you’re a little like your aunt Ruth, the countess—beautiful and glamorous, but a little … flighty, and easily hurt. You’re very sweet.” He bends and kisses her lightly on the lips. “Happy New Year,” he says. “I hope to see you again.” Then the elevator doors slide open. He steps inside, the doors close, and he is gone.

  Anne stands for a moment in the elevator foyer, her fingers on her lips.

  Now, as Noah is leaving the meeting with his mother in the library, which did not go well, he passes the door to the yellow guest room and hears what seems to be the sound of a woman sobbing. He hesitates, then taps at the door. When there is no immediate response, he opens the door a crack and sees Melody, fully dressed, lying across her bed, her shoulders shaking.

  “Are you all right, Mellie?” She half rises, and he sees that the front of her dress is covered with blood. “My God, what happened, Melody?” he asks her, quickly closing the door behind him. She looks up at him, and he sees her red eyes and swollen face, and there is a fresh burst of tears. “Who did this to you, Melody?”

  “Oh, Noah,” she sobs. “It was so awful … so awful …”

  “Tell me what happened, Melody.”

  “He … Bill Luckman … he tried to … tried to rape me.…”

  “There’s blood on your mouth.”

  “He bit me. He pushed me down on the bed and bit me.”

  “My God …” He steps quickly into her bathroom and runs cold water onto a facecloth. He returns to her, and though he can’t see where the skin is broken, he wipes the blood from her face and lips. “My God,” he says again, and he sits down beside her on the bed. His face is grim. “Now, tell me just exactly what happened,” he says.

  Through more tears, she tells him. Not just exactly, perhaps, but enough.

  “Did he—?” He wants to ask her, “How far did he ge
t?” or something to that effect, but somehow he cannot bring himself to ask such a surgical question of a girl like Melody.

  But she knows what he is thinking. “No!” she says. “But he was hurting me. When I started to scream, he stopped. Then he hit me in the face.”

  “Little bastard. Arrogant little bastard. I knew there was something about that arrogant little bastard I didn’t like.”

  “Oh, Noah, I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault. I asked him to come tonight. I thought he was—nice. He said I’d been teasing him, leading him on, but I swear to God I hadn’t been. At least I didn’t mean to be.”

  “Of course you weren’t. And it’s not your fault at all. He’s just an arrogant little bastard and a bully, and now, thank God, you’ve found out what kind of a guy he really is. In a way you’re lucky, Mellie. It’s better he’s shown his true colors now than later—if you’d gotten any further involved with a thug like that.”

  “Oh, Noah, I feel so—ashamed. And stupid.”

  “He’s the one who’s stupid—anybody who’d try a thing like that. He could go to jail. You know what’s wrong with a guy like that? He’s had too much success too soon. It’s gone to his stupid head. He thinks because he’s suddenly some kind of celebrity, he can get away with murder. He’s got a stupid, sick mind to begin with. And when a sick mind gets hooked up with a swollen ego, you get—somebody like Mike Tyson, for Christ’s sake.”

  “What should I do, Noah?”

  “Do?” he says. His face grows thoughtful. “Look,” he says at last, “unpleasant as it was, I don’t think we should get the police involved in this. You could file charges. Criminal charges. But do you really want to do that? You’ll just be asked a lot of terrible questions. Who invited him into your bedroom?—things like that. He’ll deny everything. He’ll say you led him on. All I can say is that I saw what he did to you. I didn’t see him do it. It will be your word against his. He’s been in the public eye a lot lately, and so there’ll be publicity. Maybe even national publicity. And then a trial. Do you want to go through all that, Melody?”

  She shudders and shakes her head.

  “A thing like that could destroy your reputation, Melody. Even if we put him in prison, that sort of thing could follow you for the rest of your life. Everywhere you go, people will say, ‘She’s the girl who claimed—’ And so on.”

  She nods. “But the only thing that scares me, Noah—the thing that scares me is that someday he might really hurt somebody, maybe even kill somebody.…”

  “I don’t think so. He’s too much of a coward. Rape is a cowardly act, it seems to me. Maybe he’s learned his lesson. Let’s hope so. And as for you, you’re young, Mellie. You’ve got an awful lot of years ahead of you. If I were you, I’d chalk this up to experience—learning that there are a lot of bastards out there like him. I’m not saying forget about it. I’m saying remember it, and maybe you’ll be quicker to catch the signals next time.”

  “Should I tell Anne? Should I tell Carol?”

  “What’s the point? What good would it do? Why would you want to relive the experience all over again with them? Just keep it in a little secret drawer in the back of your mind.”

  “There’s blood on the bedspread. How do I explain that?”

  “You could always tell Mary that you—”

  “Yes,” she says quickly. “I know what I can say. But do I look just horrible, Noah?”

  He smiles at her. “No, you don’t look horrible. You look as though you’d been through a rough experience, but you don’t look horrible. And I’m glad you told me about it,” he says. He reaches out and covers her hand with his, and she squeezes it hard. “Let’s keep this our little secret, Mellie, okay? No sense upsetting other people. This will be our secret,” and he brushes his lips across the top of her dark head. And for a moment—oh, just for the briefest of moments—he asks himself why he has just done this. “Your secret will always be safe with me, all your secrets, always,” he says, and there is one final small sob as she rests her head lightly on his shoulder. “I’m proud of you, Mellie,” he says. “You handled a difficult situation in the best possible way.”

  “Thank you, dear Noah.”

  “Now, why don’t you take a nice, long hot bath with salts?” he says. “Then get into bed and have a nice, long sleep. Do you want a sleeping pill? Carol has some.”

  She shakes her head.

  “And here’s something else you should probably do.” He rises, picks up the facecloth, and steps into her bathroom again. He rinses the cloth with fresh cold water and squeezes it out. Returning, he says, “Keep this over that left eye as much as possible. Keep adding cold water. Also hold it against your mouth. You may have a shiner in the morning, and also a fat lip where he bit you, though that doesn’t look so bad now. We’ll have to think up an excuse for that. Maybe you slipped in the shower or something.” He presses the cold cloth against her face. “Do that, at least until you fall asleep.”

  “Thank you, dear Noah,” she says softly. “I love you, Noah.”

  He laughs nervously. It was that fresh, clean scent of her hair that wouldn’t seem to disappear.

  “That wasn’t meant to be funny,” she says, not looking at him.

  Carol Dugan Liebling is sitting in her nightgown at her dressing table, removing her makeup, using many tissues, when he steps into their bedroom. Hearing the door open and then close, she looks up at his reflection in her mirror. “Well, darling, how did it go?” she asks him. “The meeting with your mother.” Then she says, “Not well. I can tell by the expression on your face.”

  “A ten percent salary increase. That’s all.”

  “Not the big job.”

  “Not yet.”

  She sighs. “Well, darling, you’ve been patient this long. I suppose you can be patient a little longer.”

  “It’s beginning to look as though I’ll have to wait until she dies. And from the way she’s going, it looks like I’ll have a long, long wait. I’m beginning to feel like Prince Charles, waiting for the queen to die.”

  “She didn’t even mention it?”

  “Oh, yes. She mentioned it. But—”

  “But with the usual condition.”

  He nods.

  “Aunt Bathy.”

  He nods again.

  “The same as last year.”

  “And the year before that.”

  She studies his face in the mirror for a moment. Then she turns in her chair and faces him. “Darling,” she says, “perhaps it’s time you told her why you can never accept that condition. Perhaps it’s time you told her what you know. About Bathy. Wouldn’t she understand why you feel the way you do?”

  “I don’t think so,” he says. “She’d deny everything. She’d accuse me of having dreamt the whole thing. She wouldn’t believe me. I know her.” He removes his jacket, tosses it across a chair, loosens his necktie, and lies down across one of the pair of twin beds, staring upward at the ceiling.

  She rises and goes to him, smelling of cold cream, a peppery, cucumbery smell. She sits on the bed beside him. “But look on the bright side, darling,” she says. “A ten percent salary increase. That’s not bad, is it? I think that’s pretty nice. And the big job? You’ll have it sooner or later. It’s only a matter of time.”

  He says nothing. With one hand she smooths his forehead and pushes back his dark hair in which flecks of gray are beginning to appear, and with her other she begins unbuttoning his shirt. “Let’s get some sleep, darling,” she says. “It’s been a long evening.”

  He brushes her hands away a little roughly. “Don’t get into your mothering modality,” he says. “Hell, I don’t even think I want the damn job!”

  “Now, darling, of course you do. You’ve worked for it for years.”

  “What makes you think I want to stay in this lousy business for the rest of my life?”

  “Darling, I know it’s frustrating at times, but—”

  Still staring at the ceiling, he says, “T
here’s always Aesop.”

  “Aesop? What are you talking about?”

  “Aesop. A.E.S.O.P. It stands for An Exceptionally Solid Other Plan.”

  “Now, darling, don’t talk like that. You know it worries me when you talk about quitting.”

  “Well, that’s what I’m damn well talking about!”

  She shifts her weight on the bed. “Well, slip out of your clothes and come to bed,” she says. “It’s late.”

  “I feel like lying here like this for a while,” he says.

  “Okay,” she says. She rises and turns off the lamps beside both beds, and then slips between the turned-down covers of her own bed. In the darkness she says, “Becka told me your mother said something unpleasant to Ruth while I was on the phone. That’s why she and Ector left.”

  He says nothing.

  “I wish your mother could learn to be a little nicer to her children,” she says.

  He still says nothing.

  “Poor Noah,” she says.

  “Now, don’t start feeling sorry for me, Carol!” he snaps.

  For a moment or two she, too, says nothing. Then she says softly, “Happy New Year, darling,” and turns away from him in her covers, facing the wall.

  But a little later, finding that she cannot sleep, Carol Liebling decides she must take a pill. But when she goes to her bathroom and opens the medicine cabinet, where they are always kept, her bottle of Seconals is nowhere to be found. She also notices that the toilet seat is up. She puts it down again.

  Outside in the street, the Lincoln Town Car moves homeward toward 1000 Park Avenue, bearing but two passengers now, in the still heavy rain. Miraculously now, considering the congestion of traffic earlier, the streets are nearly empty. Theirs is the only car in sight. The windshield wipers thrash furiously back and forth, fighting the rain.

  Cyril yawns noisily. “Notice, Maman,” he says, “that we are now on Third Avenue. And we are moving uptown.”

  “Snoring sailors,” his mother says.

  “Hm?”

  “The sound the wipers make. Manush, manush. It always reminds me of the sound of snoring sailors.”

  “Now, when have you been around any snoring sailors, Maman?” he asks her.