Chapter 1
Eric wasn't drunk. But he was watching her and she was drunk. She was so drunk that he felt his stomach beginning to turn as she swayed around the room. All of her swayed. From the heavy breasts tumbling out of her brassiere to the stockinged feet. They looked so clean, those feet. So white and dry. She had put more care into her feet than in the feeding of her stomach. That's why she was drunk. From those whiskies on an empty stomach. He should have insisted that she eat something first. But he hadn't insisted. He never had insisted. He never even thought about insisting, as though the idea of her listening to him was more frightful than the sight of her drunk in this spring afternoon, in this golden day that opened onto New York with cool and graceful fingers. He had stayed out of work to meet her at the train, believing that their coming together again would somehow make her different.
She fell down onto the sofa, dragging her fingers unfeeling across the rattan carpet. It had been a neat, commodious apartment until she arrived. And now it was all afray, like her hair, like her wild voice ringing amuck in sentences that swung through jungles of thought and tangled them. He watched her and told himself how horrible she was, how weak and horrible he was for wanting her here, for believing she could care, could change. He felt his life sfiding out of control and it made him irritable with the discomfort of losing this precious control. He thought if he got rid of her now, he would be all right forever. And he sat in his sling chair and he watched her silently and he wondered if she would have come here to him if she didn't care for him somewhere down there beneath the muddle.
"It's hot in here," she said. "Wherever I go, it's always too hot." Her voice petered out in a sigh. She stretched an arm up along the foam rubber cushion. The inside of it glistened moistly. "Open the window, Spooky. I need to feel a breeze on me."
"They're all open."
The room felt quite pleasant to him. Sounds of traffic drifted in with the slightly pungent odor from the factories along the East River. He was pleased with his apartment, satisfied that he managed his own cooking and organized a domestic routine so that he always had fresh shirts and a pressed suit. It was quite an accomplishment, after five years of married life to a woman as meticulous as his ex. But he knew that Cee-Zee wouldn't appreciate this independence that he clung to. She wouldn't understand how it felt to be the wind instead of the tide blown by it. Strength, management, building, these were phantasies she could not grasp and make real. He would have felt sorry for Cee-Zee if he could feel entirely safe from the niggling desire to impress her.
He slid out of the chair in one long motion that carried him across the room to her. He sat down gingerly beside her thighs, leaning the heel of his hand on the couch back, not wanting to touch her, not wanting to start the series of explosions inside him that could so easily shatter his good sense.
"Why don't you take a cold shower. It'll sober you up. You'll feel better."
The sunlight played on the ivory colored silk of her blouse. The soft material caressed the high swells of flesh.
He wanted to put his palms one on each and press down till he felt the beating of her heart, the pulsing of blood, passionate, desirous of him. But he knew the secret of Cee-Zee and it stopped him from touching her. She was the kind of woman you didn't overbear. He had seen her turn to bored iciness beneath the insistence of a man's desire. They called her frigid, they called her teaser. And he had smiled to himself, knowing that she was certainly none of these if, if one were smart enough to let Cee-Zee do the chasing.
He glanced away from her to the identification bracelet on his own wrist. His name, Eric Spokane, engraved on the curve of silver looked deep and sturdy in shadow. He liked to see his name in print. On doors, on stationery, anywhere. Eric Spokane, a neat, indestructible package. Not Hilda, not Cee-Zee, not any woman could undo that package and mess it up.
"You know something?" Cee-Zee said. "You have three eyes. And they're all green." She swallowed and shut her own eyes tight. "I feel terrible." One hand groped, found his shirt cuff and pulled his fingers to her lips. She put one of them into her mouth.
He felt the sticky lipstick on his skin, the curl of her tongue around his fingernail. Quickly he reached under her back and lifted her to a sitting position, carefully removing his finger from her mouth.
"Open your eyes or you'll get dizzier."
He dragged her up onto her feet, holding her firmly around her waist. Her ribs moved rapidly in the circle of his grasp. He got her to the bathroom sink and leaned her over it.
"I can't," she gasped. "I really can't." He turned on the cold water faucet and patted her forehead with his own wet hands. "Leave me alone for awhile."
He judged her to see if she were steady on her feet.
Her tall body, bent like a young tree, seemed strangely graceful even in this small tiled room, "Call me if you need anything." Then he stepped outside and pulled the door shut behind him.
He lit a cigarette and viewed the trickle of her belongings around the room. She had arrived without a suitcase, probably without five dollars in her purse. Of all the people Cee-Zee knew in New York, she had chosen to come to him. The thought had both troubled and flattered him all day. Now the balance was moving more in the direction of trouble. Marriage had almost convinced him that the sport of woman taming was for innocent kids. And in the first few months after his separation from Hilda, the abundance of available women had almost convinced him that the sport was even less of a sport. But Cee-Zee was fair enough game. She wasn't after his money and she wasn't after the conventional prestige of getting a Mrs. tacked onto her name. In fact, he wasn't quite sure what she wanted. But he knew what she wouldn't give up. The drifting dependence, a strange form of independence was the core of her life. She was like a war orphan who could be no further deprived. Since she had nothing, there was nothing one could take away from her. And since she wanted nothing, there was nothing one could give to her that she would value.
If he were smart, he would accept their relationship just as it stood.
He went to the kitchen and took a can of tomato juice from the refrigerator and punched two triangular holes into the top. And if he were smarter, he could get Cee-Zee to fall for him. Check-mate. And so, having defeated the worthiest opponent, he could close shop on the sport of woman taming forever. That was what he wanted, after all. To convince himself irrevocably that to be alone except in bed was the natural state of man. That this idea of love and moonbeams was nothing more than a female illusion. He poured the thick red juice into a highball glass and added pepper and salt.
The bathroom door opened slowly. He listened to the sound of her feet padding toward him. With the glass in his hand, he turned and saw her leaning sideways against the molding of the alcove. She had taken off her blouse. Wearing only her bra and skirt, she looked cooler now, calmed down. Dark streaks of water stained her blonde hair, pulled neatly back from her temples. She rubbed her nose and smiled.
"Whew." She smiled and shook her head. Her eyes seemed relaxed now. All the make-up was scrubbed off her face and high spots of color glistened in her cheeks. She seemed very young. Perhaps nineteen, perhaps twenty. Except for a small bulge of belly beneath the tight skirt, the design of her body was firm and athletic. She folded her arms and shook her head no to the tomato juice.
"Come on," he said.
"There's nothing more in me to come up."
He smiled, added gin to the mixture and drank it himself. "This is one helluva breakfast." He put the glass into the sink. "I don't suppose you'd care for scrambled eggs and toast and coffee."
She picked up his cigarette hanging on the edge of the cupboard. "I wouldn't mind."
"So long as you don't have to cook 'em."
"I wouldn't even mind that."
"Oh?"
"Well," she shrugged. "What difference does it make?"
He straddled a chair and watched her go through the procedure of arranging breakfast, noticing without surprise that she accomplished it with deftness. He wondered idly about the variety of odd jobs she must have held in the low times between lucrative boyfriends. She found the dishes and silver without asking him and set the table neatly for two with a kind of impersonal formality that gave him the feeling of being in a restaurant right in his own home. She percolated coffee and toasted the English muffins, feeling quite at ease without her blouse, adaptable to any situation, superior to most, he thought with pleasure.
They sat opposite each other and he watched her down her food with healthy appetite, her upset stomach forgotten. The steaming coffee had been properly brewed, the eggs cooked with the precise degree of fluff and dryness. He talked little and thought only of the sheer physical enjoyment of sitting before a meal which had been prepared for him. Over the second cup of coffee they lit cigarettes. Cee-Zee tilted back her head and yawned the stretching motion of contentment.
"I don't suppose you'd care to know why I came back to this stinking city in the middle of April," she said, making pictures with the matchstick among the ashes.
"I don't give a damn." His tone sounded full of conviction. He looked at the distorted reflection of himself in the chrome percolator, pleased with his nonchalance.
"Well anyway, I can stay here for a few days without getting in your way or anything? I mean, I wouldn't want to make it awkward if you have a hot affair going."
"Thanks for the kindness. But you can stay here." His manner didn't indicate that he had or didn't have involvements.
"Well, are you getting laid or aren't you?"
"I do all right."
She drew her breath in irritably. "I swear, men are the worst phonies. Look, honey, I don't care if you steal into the elephant cages at night. I'm just trying to be considerate, that's all."
"Yes, I understand." He spread his palms toward her. Her tricky temper was something he had not yet learned to anticipate. "But I'm not so involved with anyone that I'm not boss over my own apartment."
"You should have said so in the first place."
He lifted the cup to his lips so she wouldn't see the satisfaction he was trying to conceal. It was always grand to observe Cee-Zee fizzle out. Her moments of childlike helplessness were so few that it was kind of a sport in itself to accomplish.
In view of this achievement, he thought it all right to help clear the dishes. With his usual habit, he tried to stack them neatly, but Cee-Zee piled saucers on top of cups to defeat his symmetry with such effectiveness that he could hardly believe she didn't do it on purpose. She caught him beside the stove and lifted a bare elbow to his chest. "Did anyone ever tell you that you have a nasty disposition?"
"Of course. I'm famous for it."
"You are nasty and narrow-minded and probably selfish."
He kept his face rigidly serious, delighting in her intensity. "Also brutal."
"No doubt."
"Ask any of my past lovers."
"You know how I know?"
He could feel her breath on his face. Its warm moistness made him lean the slightest bit closer to her.
"By those red hairs in your sideburns. Any man who has red bristles in black hair has the vilest disposition imaginable."
"Is that why I have no friends?" He could see the pink marks on her flesh where the brassiere cut into her bosoms. He wanted to run his finger between the flesh and the material to ease the pressure.
"Poor little boy, does it need friends?"
He was at least ten years older than she, yet he did sometimes feel like a boy with her. "Yes, it needs friends."
She put her forearms on his shoulders but he did not move to grab her. He could feel it coming, the shift of her body weight against him. Still, he must not hurry her.
"If you need friends, you must learn to be friendly." Her lids had drooped slightly but he could feel that she waited alert, sensing how she stimulated herself by this foreplay.
Her arms began to move now along his shoulders till he felt the tips of her brassiere touching his chest. She began to rub them ever so slightly back and forth while she tilted her head against the side of his neck and ran the cool point of her tongue behind his earlobe. In a sudden compulsive action, she thrust herself tightly against him. His hands went down along the bare skin of her back and he gripped the solid fleshy buttocks, lifting her in one strong movement against him where it counted.
"You're such a nice boy when you behave yourself." She spoke in short breathy syllables.
"Am I behaving?" He moved himself against her in circular motion.
"Beautifully."
A dish in the sink slid over and clattered down among the silver.
"I have a lousy housekeeper," he said. "Poor darling. Open my skirt."
He reached along to the side zipper and pulled it down. Exploring beneath the skirt, he felt the smooth half slip cling electrically to his touch. He followed the ridge of her garter belt along the contour of her thigh. He wanted to slam her to the wall and ram himself up her guts till she howled. A drop of perspiration ran down his spine and soaked into the bunched up part of his shirt tail.
"Why don't you take those silly clothes off?" she said.
"Whose?"
"Ours."
He knew he was teasing her beyond endurance and that was what he wanted. He was going to make her rape him. Then she couldn't laugh at him afterward.
The faucet began to drip with large hollow splashes. "Let's go someplace where it's quiet," he said. He put two fingers into the top part of her bra and tugged her gently back into the living room. "I can still hear it dripping," he said. "Well, I can't."
"You're just not sensitive."
He pulled her around the pine table and across into the bedroom. Bamboo blinds screened the light, throwing a gauzy pattern onto the low bed.
"You give me a hard time," she said.
"Not worth it?" He smiled, sitting her onto the bed with a sudden plop.
He fell down on his back and dragged her on top of him.
"All right," she said. "I'll undress us."
He folded his hands behind his head, watching the glisten of saliva on her lower Up. He did not relish her strangely masochistic tendency, but he respected her need.
She yanked open his belt buckle and clawed his shirt up. She flung herself face down on his belly.
"I hate hairy men," she growled.
She hated everything, she hated herself. He knew that when she ceased to hate, there'd be nothing left but a puppet of a woman.
Rocking back on her knees, she unhooked her garter belt and drew it off with her slip and skirt. She dropped her bra across his face. Its warm odor sifted into him. He lay thus with his eyes closed, feeling her hands tug down his trousers. The clink of change in the pockets came to a sudden dull stop and he knew all his clothes were on the floor. A sudden image of Hilda always insisting that he brush his teeth first and take a shower made him want to grab Cee-Zee and split her wide open with his lust
"Come out from under there," she said.
He flung the bra aside and sat up to grasp the large brown nipples between his lips. Slowly he worked at her body, probing every curve of her, searching out the hidden places, savoring each quiver of her skin till her body lay oiled in the film of her perspiration. Staring down at her, he watched her lips twisting in wordless desire, the little veins in her eyelids blue and trembling. When he gave it to her, her nails dug into his back. He felt the throbbing of his senses and the yielding, grasping need of her body, the desire to slash her guts and ruin her for everyone else. She pulled his head down and bit his Up.
And the telephone rang with a jarring voice.
She pushed him off her and shimmied across the rumpled bed. "That'll be for me."
"You?"
"Yes, I gave this number."
"For Chrissake, to whom?"
But she was speaking into the receiver now, cuddling it to her chest.
He lay there staring at the ceiling and listening to her voice. It sounded calm and pleasant and gentle. As though she had been sitting with him in the living room all this while, drinking tea. A searing cold sensation spread slowly through his chest. He knew this sign in himself. And he knew that Cee-Zee was not going to walk out of his life until she crawled.