“I call my sugar ‘Candy,’” he said, “‘cause she makes my peanut brittle! Haw! Haw! Hee! Hee!”
“Oh, Jesus, here we go,” Susie said. “I need another drink. Gordon, get us and you and David a drink.”
Susie had little brown shadings under her eyes now, so she looked softer than the last time he’d seen her, and a little tired. Her dark blue eyes were bigger and more vulnerable. She’d lost all traces of baby fat too, and she didn’t seem anywhere near as big a girl as she once had—but he supposed his own attitudes had changed a great deal. Perhaps a woman would just not seem as big to him now.
The fifth on the refrigerator was dead, but Susie and the Palmers had a new fifth of blended whiskey they’d chipped in on—Beady and Candy had to keep it in their apartment, Susie said, or else her father would soak it up like a blotter. Gordon had a fifth of bourbon in the trunk of his car, so he went to get that while Beady went for his fifth.
“We’ll make a party!” Candy said. “We need a girl for little David, though. My Jesus, ain’t he cute? I could go for him myself!”
“How’s Wood, David? How’s he doing now?” Susie asked seriously, ignoring Candy.
“He’s kind of quiet. He reads all the time,” he said.
“I cried and cried when I heard,” Susie said. Tears jumped into her eyes. “He’s the nicest person I ever knew.”
“Hey!” Candy said. “Cut that gloom stuff! Turn on the radio! We’re going to make a party! How about that little girl upstairs. What’s her name? How about it, Suze?”
“Phyllis?” Susie said. David felt that in his presence Susie was being polite, or at least acting in a way that surprised Candy Palmer.
“Yeah. Phyllis. Why not? She’s got a cute little set of boobs even if she is a little homely.”
“Well, you could ask her,” Susie said doubtfully. “She’s awful young—I mean with drinking and all.”
“Coming from that family? Come on, honey.”
“Her mother and father’s home tonight. I saw them come in.”
“They could give a shit and you know it.” Candy got up and went to the telephone. “Hon, I forgot my glasses. What’s their number?”
“Maybe David—”
“What? She’s not going to scare li’l David.” Candy winked at him. The heel of one of her red pumps tapped the floor. She had a nice figure, even if she was pretty old, and suddenly David did want another woman around to make it even.
“Call her,” he said. “What the hell?”
So Susie looked up the number and Candy spoke to the girl.
“Hi, hon. This is Candy Palmer, and we’ve got a swell party going down to Susie’s place. Only thing is, we’ve got an extra boy, so we thought maybe you’d like to stop by and meet him? Well, tell them you’re baby-sitting for us. Aw, come on! He’s a good-looker, hon, no kidding. Come on, now! What?” Candy laughed. “Don’t you worry none about that at all! For one thing, I don’t think so, and for another thing I know it’s not true! You’re one of the most attractive persons I know. What, honey? Speak up! No, he’s not listening.”
She winked at them and drew her mouth down humorously. The listening and convincing went on for a while. Beady and Gordon came back, and were shushed while Candy listened and cajoled. Finally Candy looked at them and nodded her head in triumph. “Oh, fine, honey. Gooood. Ten minutes? See you then!” She hung up. “Poor little thing don’t think she’s much, you know? But she’s awfully sweet. A sweet kid if I ever saw one. You’ll love her, Davy.”
“Does she?” Gordon said.
“Oh, shut up, Gordon!” Susie said.
“She’s got a great personality!” Beady said. “Haw, haw!”
“You cut that out!” Candy said, and turned to David. “I wouldn’t sic no ugly on you Davy, now I mean it. You’ll see. Phyllis is a peach of a little thing.”
“Now you’ve got me all nerved up and interested,” Gordon said.
“Okay,” David said. “You take Phyllis and I’ll take Susie.” Susie looked at him quickly, and he saw that they were all pleased by this first positive thing he’d said.
“All right,” Susie said, half jokingly. She came up close to him. “My goodness, Davy. You’re a lot taller than me now. I think you grew in the Army!”
Gordon laughed hard at that.
Candy was tuning the radio, trying to find the kind of dance music she wanted, while Beady and Gordon made drinks. Beady went to their place to get the ginger ale Susie and Candy liked with their whiskey.
It was a warm night and getting warmer in the room. When Candy found the right music, fast but not too fast, she said, she came up behind David and pulled off his Ike jacket. The T-shirt under it was paint-splattered but clean, and this informality—especially the rakish splotches of green paint—made David feel at ease and a little reckless. He danced with Candy, her perfume so heady and thick it was like putting his head in a box. She was slippery silk, and light on her feet. When he pulled her hard against him she giggled and rubbed back. The next song was “Nature Boy,” so they stopped and picked up their drinks.
“You know what ‘Nature Boy’ is backwards?” Beady said. “‘Seratan Yob.’”
“That’d be ‘Natures Boy,’” Candy said. “Did you see the picture of the fellow that wrote it? He’s sitting there naked! I mean bare-assed, and his little skinny legs are crossed, and he hasn’t got any tummy! I swear, you can see his little backbone sticking right through, he’s got himself so sucked in. And the prettiest blond hair you ever saw.”
…a very strange enchanted boy…
the sugary voice sang from the radio.
“A queer,” Gordon said.
“I bet he’s not,” Candy said. “He’s too queer to be a queer.”
David’s drink was bourbon and water; Gordon had made it, and it was strong. He put it on the refrigerator and danced with Susie, prim and proper at first. Although he’d known Susie all his life, he’d never put his hands on her. It was strange to feel her muscles and soft places against him, her breath whiskey-sweet against his neck. They moved around the table and she let her head rest on his shoulder like a little girl. His lips touched her ear and he began to get an erection, which seemed strange because he had really never before in his life thought of Susie that way. The gang-bang incident in high school hadn’t made him think of her as a sexual object, but as a legal, social sort of object—a victim. But now she was, suddenly, singular and real. Her light cotton dress became unsubstantial under his hands, as though some chemical process were disintegrating its fibers, and all he had in his arms was the smooth naked girl.
Gordon and Candy were dancing and laughing, while Beady drummed on Susie’s canister set. David didn’t know the name of the song, but it had a simple rhythm he could follow easily. When it was over, Susie gave him a long, serious look. It was a dark look, and he could read it, or part of it. Her plum-dark eyes looked right into his mind, and what he thought he saw her considering was him in bed with her. He had occurred to her just as she had occurred to him. This thrilled him and made him jumpy. But why not? Why not?
A hesitant little knock on the door. Beady opened it. “Open the door, Richard,” Beady sang, “or don’t shut the door on me dick!” In stepped a little girl in a plain, light brown dress. She looked about twelve years old, but David looked again and the little twelve-year-old had hips and a waist. She was very shy, and stood aside with her hands clasped together in her skirt. Her face was dim, but upon close examination it looked like a monkey’s face, with tiny little nail-hole eyes and a pug nose like a peanut stuck on sideways. She smiled widely and shyly, revealing thousands of sharp little teeth. It was a barely human face, dark and twisted by self-shame. It quivered, and he saw that she was being very brave. Susie introduced her, but David immediately forgot her last name. He got her a drink of whiskey and ginger and they stood, a rather formal maneuver into position, by the telephone stand, in order to introduce themselves and talk.
David was becoming
glib on the whiskey, and felt himself to be extremely sophisticated and cosmopolitan. Phyllis lisped. She took a sip and said in a voice he could hardly hear, “Thank you. Thith ith nythe.” She was nineteen, and she worked at the Leah Laundry. He could smell the Clorox on her—just a whiff. It was awkward talking to her because he looked down upon the top of her head at her black hair salted with dandruff, and her upper lip stuck out farther than her nose. He suggested they sit down, so they sat down at the table while the others danced. He had the weird feeling that he was not engaged in a really human pursuit, and he’d glance at Susie as if over there where she was, dancing wildly now with Gordon, the really human world was going on.
They drank. He danced with Phyllis, but the top of her head came to his sternum. Beady grew red, flaming red in the face, and danced with everybody and then with himself. The room developed a rotatory tendency. Later, when Susie and Gordon disappeared, Candy danced with herself. Beady would jerk himself into a kind of sobriety and drum on the canisters. “Sweet Eloise has a social disease,” he sang, “crabs in her hair and a crotch full of cheese!” Candy cursed him for a drunken slob and said she didn’t want to go home, so he’d better sober up and dance. David felt himself to be drunk. He was no longer listening to Phyllis’ answers, or even to his own questions. And she would not talk except to answer his stupid questions. Her eyes were like tiny black spiders crouched back in their holes, and he’d peer around and up into the holes to see if he could make out a small glimmer of intent.
He wondered what Gordon and Susie were doing. Had they taken the couch in the next room or gone to Susie’s room, or what? Finally he took Phyllis by the hand and led her into the next room. First they sat on the couch and then they lay on the couch. He couldn’t bear to kiss the poor girl. All those tiny teeth intimidated him. He felt like a shit, an utter shit; he remembered saying this out loud. Then he did kiss her, and her mouth was human and sweet. She moaned, and said nothing at all about his hands. She did have hard little breasts, hard as apples. Once he kissed her where Letty loved to be kissed; this shocked him—the shock of faithlessness, of adultery. He couldn’t understand this little girl, didn’t know her. Why should he get her all messed up? If he did, if he went ahead, in the morning he would feel bad, sick, lousy. It was as though she’d never heard of resistance, that a girl might say no to a boy. He had her pants down around one ankle and was poised, about to enter her, when he stopped. “Are you a virgin?” he asked. “Yeth,” she said. “Do you want me to?” he asked her. No answer. “Do you want me to go ahead with it?” She wouldn’t answer, but she moaned. She was all liquid and passive, and he ached. But then a lawyerlike stricture seemed to take over his brain. What did he want the girl to do, sign a statement to the effect that David Abbott Whipple, hereinafter referred to the party of the first part, is given permission to have sexual intercourse with Phyllis Simian, hereinafter et cetera? What if she really was a virgin? He had no rubbers and he might get her pregnant. David, do you take this woman? Ow! And why had she not resisted at all, in any way?
“I’ll get us a drink,” he said, and gracelessly removed himself from her. He pulled up his pants and hid his erection as best he could, pulling his T-shirt down over it.
In the kitchen Candy sat morosely across from a snoring, crapped-out Beady Palmer. “Cheers,” she said. “Some party. Everybody goes off to neck and leaves the old married slobs looking at each other.”
He felt steadier in the light, and he made the drinks with the last of the ice cubes. Candy came over to him, her drink in her hand, and slipped in between his arms. “One more waltz for the old dame, huh, Davy?” He put the glasses down. What the hell? The radio had faded down and they could hardly hear the music, but they danced slowly around the table. She felt his erection immediately, rubbed against it and smiled, then really pushed and did a slow bump and grind on it. Beady slept on. She did the most exaggerated bumps and grinds, bending her knees and coming up against him. When they came around behind Beady she poured part of her drink on his head, but he snored on. Her left hand was under David’s belt in back, pulling him up against her. “Mmmmm,” she hummed in his ear.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a slight, quick, brownish thing pass by. He was only vaguely curious, but then the door to the hall opened and closed and he knew it was little Phyllis.
He danced Candy through the door to the next room, and they stood kissing and grabbing at each other. She hummed even when their mouths were locked and her tongue was all over his teeth and in between his jaws. He pulled her toward the couch and started to pull her down on it.
But she didn’t want to lie down on the couch.
“Unh, unh, unh,” she said. She wanted to stand up. He unzipped her shorts and she zipped them up again, and all the time their tongues were touching. He became a little firmer, and she resisted a little more firmly. Suddenly all the kissing and hugging was ridiculous, flimsy, frustrating. He picked her up and put her down on her back on the couch. She fought silently, but he pinned both arms beneath her and leaned on her chest, his arm free to work at her shorts.
“Jesus Christ!” she whispered furiously. “For Christ’s sake, can’t you take a joke? Get off!”
“Unh, unh,” he said.
“Look, David, get your hand out of there!” She was really angry. “I was just kidding around, now cut it out! Let me up!”
He had his thumb in her, to see if the way was clear. She was wet and ready, but dammit, he had to get the shorts off.
“You want him to hear?” she whispered, hissing at him. “Jesus Christ, he’s just sitting there, you bastard! I mean it! I’m absolutely serious, now! Let me up! I do not want you to screw me. Is that clear?”
He had the shorts unzipped and down to her knees, but she held her legs tightly together and he couldn’t get them any farther down.
“Let me up! Get off me! You want me to yell for help? You want me to scream?” When he didn’t answer, but just kept working, she began to grind her teeth, to try to bite him or butt him with her head. Both her wrists were in his left hand, and he could feel the hands writhing, trying to scratch and gouge. She made the mistake of trying to use a leg for leverage and he whipped the shorts past this break in her defenses. Her silk pants came apart easily, as if they had been made of tissue paper.
“David,” she whispered, trying a new, calmer method. “Listen to me. You are raping me. Do you understand that? And also I detest being manhandled by men. I cannot stand it! Do you know what the penalty is for rape?”
He had his pants and shorts off by this time. He’d considered just pulling them down partway, but he’d need his legs completely free.
“If you go on with this,” she said in a really vicious, pressured whisper. “If you continue to go on with this terrible thing, I am going to call the police. Do you understand that? I will call the police and a doctor, who will examine me and prove that I have been forcibly raped and misused. This, I promise you!”
He got a knee between her legs and began to pry them apart with superior leverage.
“I can’t stand this! I can’t stand it!” she hissed.
With a quick shift and jump both his knees slid between her legs. He let one of her wrists go and her hand came up to rake his face, but he ducked it and pulled the cushion out from under her shoulders so he had her bent back and down, then caught that flicking hand and had her pinned like a wrestler. She tried to kick loose, tried to avoid him with her pelvis, desperately moving it up and down and sideways, but she was open to him now and he went deep into her, to her moist center.
She gurgled and hissed, cursed him, whined and cursed him, still trying to get away. He began to move soft and easy now, hard and slow and soft and easy, and soon her attempts to move her pelvis away from him chimed with his movements, and she stopped cursing him and let him ride her, pushing with greed against him. In the dim light from the doorway her frizzled hair glowed; she arched her neck, and her mouth was open as though she were screaming. H
e let her arms loose and she pulled her blouse and bra up away from her breasts, then pulled up his T-shirt so their chests could come together. Her hands hooked his buttocks. Her breaths came shorter and shorter until they were hardly breaths at all and finally he thought: All right, you bitch, sue me now. And the back of his head melted, his lower back congealed with an ooze of sweetness and he became a great hose that semen rushed gushing and tumbling through, boiling oil and chunks of ice, hot and deep into the woman.
She mumbled words that meant nothing. Clicks and random vowels. She couldn’t seem to get her breath, and he pulled out the hose and put his feet on the floor. Then he was stunned by a blow on the side of his face. She had one of her red pumps, and she got him again, so hard he thought it must have drawn blood. He disarmed her and she went after his eyes with the other hand. Finally he had both of her hands. Because of her earlier capitulation, he was astounded. “What the hell’s wrong with you?” he asked.
“You brute!” she said, low and vicious.
“What?”
“You raped me! You forced me! I’ll tear your eyes out!”
“Now, wait a minute,” he said.
She struggled and hissed. “Dumped your load in me!”
He was uncomfortably aware that, naked himself, he held this naked wildcat, both of them disarrayed indeed, within twenty feet of her sleeping husband.
“Brute! Brute! Brute!”
He wondered just how the situation could have been worse. My God, he thought. It couldn’t have been planned better. With a sudden impulse that was perhaps suicidal he pulled her over on his lap and said into her captive ear, “In a minute I’m going to give it to you again, you prick-teasing bitch!”
She tried to bite his arm. One thing he knew, and had known from the beginning, was that she didn’t want Beady to know anything about this. The most violent of her outbursts had been muted so as not to arouse her husband from his stupor. Now, given that fact, the object was to get the hell away from this woman with the loss of as little skin and blood as possible. “We’ll wake Beady up,” he said. He had an urge to whack her backside with the flat of his hand; maybe that would bring her sanity back. She still tried to bite him. “If I let you go, will you calm down?” he said reasonably.
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