Chapter 4
The young Negro jazz trumpeter looked bored. He was handsome and immaculately dressed and his horn shone like the bumper of a solid gold Cadillac, but his eyes wore a tired, droopy expression, hooded and heavy-lidded as he looked down from the small stage at the auience shoe-horned into the tiny Village club. He blew low mournful glottal notes with a careless, almost thoughtless slurr-dit-dit-dit-dit-da-da-ummm-lagging way behind the beat established by the rhythm section, but he seemed not to care, to be unaware of their presence even as he created phrases to suit the fancy of some remote inner ear of his own.
The audience loved it. He was cool, the epitome of coolness, unconcern, don't-give-a-damn. "Look at me," he was saying with his horn; "I'm suffering. But you don't give a damn. Well, neither do I, you squares." Or maybe he was just tired because it was three A.M., the last set of their gig in this stuffy, sweaty, cigarette-stale glorified water closet that called itself a jazz room. Or, more likely, he was holding a good head from marijuana smoked in the kitchen during intermissions. He was certainly in a world all his own. Which maybe was why the fans were digging him. A good portion of them were tuned-in; you could almost smell it through the cigarette smoke.
At a tiny table against one wall of the room, Jerri Thornton was saying: "Dig him honey; isn't he the most?"
Marsha had reached a stage of intoxication that had enabled her to lose herself in the music temporarily, and though she was far from being a jazz critic, she nodded.
"I never heard a trumpet sound like that."
"I don't mean him" Jerri frowned. "Like he's out of it. Dig the rhythm-that's my guy on drums."
Marsha peered through the cigarette smoke at the drummer, a thin scrawny young man sitting up against the wall, big droplets of sweat rolling down his slanted forehead under a dark thatch of hair as he metronomically patted cymbals and snare with his brushes, creating a hissing, rolling sound that you hardly noticed behind the soloist until you started picking it out.
"Oh," Marsha said, leaning close to make herself heard above the sounds, "I didn't know you went with a musician."
"That's Bernie," Jerri smiled, her eyes fastened on the stand. "I want you to meet him. He'll come over after the set's done and we'll have a drink together."
"I don't think I could stand another drink," Marsha groaned-but her protest was lost in a sudden rumbling growl as the Negro powered bluesy gut notes into the bowl of a brass mute. The bassist followed with a solo and then the two of them traded fours for awhile, and then the pianist took them out-the set was over. There was a mild scattering of applause and then a lot of the customers began to scrape chairs and signal for waitresses to bring their checks. The music was over for the night and it was almost closing time.
In a few minutes, Bernie, the drummer, came over and sat down at their table.
"Baby, this is Marsha Kinsted," Jerri said. "Marsha, Bernie Goldoni."
He took her hand and shook it and said hi.
"You're new."
"She just came to the city a while ago," Jerri explained. "From Cleveland."
Bernie had big dark eyes in a thin face. He gave her a friendly smile. "Nice. You like jazz, Marsha?"
"Yes, but I don't know much about it, I'm afraid. I liked that trumpeter but Jerri says he's no good."
"I didn't say that!" Jerri complained.
"Mm, yes you did," Marsha said, grinning a little drunkenly. "I distinctly remember."
"Don't fight over it," Bernie laughed. "Manz has some good things. All he has to do is listen to the group now and then."
"Why don't you invite him to sit down with us?" Jerri said. "He seems cool."
"She go for that?" Bernie said.
"I don't know. Do you object to Negroes, Marsha dear?"
"No", Marsha said, feeling that her liberalism was being put to test.
"Crazy," Bernie said, and waved to the Negro, who was still on the stand putting away his horn.
He came over and sat down next to Marsha. Bernie introduced him around as Phillip Manzilla. He was part Cuban. The place was in the process of closing but a waitress brought them a round of drinks before the deadline occurred. Jerri and her boy friend immediately got involved in the kind of personal conversation that excludes casual friends, and Marsha didn't know exactly what to say to the Negro, who studied her unblinkingly with those soft and liquid and remote eyes of his.
"That was pretty," she said finally. "That solo of yours, I mean."
"I'm glad you dug it. I was watching you from up there."
"Really? I didn't notice."
"Sure. This gig's been a drag, but it's nice to have something nice to look at. Takes your mind off."
"Off what?"
He shrugged lazily. "Things."
"I feel that way sometimes."
"You do?"
"Yes."
"Then you know what I mean. Like if you're not with what's going on, you can fasten your thoughts on something else, and that makes things a groove again."
"Did I distract you?"
"In a nice way, like-dig? I blew better when I saw you digging me. It's funny-a cat in the audience can turn me off when he gives me the eye, but you turned me on, baby."
Marsha was struggling hard to get this meaning, her brain feeling thick and slow, but she sensed the compliment behind his words.
"Thanks," she said.
"What's he conning you into?" Jerri said, turning to them. "Let's all go up to my place and split a bottle hey?"
Bernie frowned. "A bottle? Hell, I copped you a bag of stuff last week-don't tell me you smoked all that tea up already, baby!"
"You smoke, man?" the Negro said to Marsha.
Marsha looked at him helplessly, and then at Jerri.
"She's just a baby," Jerri said. "Give her time, huh? Besides, she's had too much already, maybe we better forget it."
"It was your idea," Bernie retorted. "What a drag!"
"Well leave it up to her," Jerri said, and turned to Marsha again. "What about it honey-think you could take a set tonight?"
"A set?"
"You know; a party. Up in my place-I've got some records and things. If you don't go for it, say so-I'll be the last person in the world to put you down for copping out."
Marsha's head was spinning a little, but the evening had been so pleasant she didn't want to spoil it.
"Okay," she said, "let's go. Only I need a few cups of coffee first."
"I'll make a pot," Jerri said, getting up, and for some reason Bernie laughed at that remark.
The four of them left the deserted club together. It was a warm delicate night outside. Cabs prowled the Village streets, picking up fares as the closed joints emptied out their straggling customers.
Marsha walked unsteadily and her date put his arm around her.
"Oh!"
It had given her a start for some reason, perhaps because he was a Negro. But then she remembered that she was a call girl, and she laughed.
"What's funny?" he said.
"Me," she said, and put her arm around him, and they walked that way down the street to find themselves a cab.
Cynthia Lockhart owned a ten-room cooperative apartment in a new luxury building in the sixties along Fifth Avenue, Central Park East. Ten rooms are a lot of rooms, especially for a single woman. Cynthia did not entertain often, but when she did she entertained lavishly. And she liked a lot of room to roam around in. It helped her to think, walking around from room to room, and through the years she had developed the habit of having a lot of private walking space to do her thinking in, mostly in the wee hours of the morning. Aside from her tendencies to claustrophobia, she was also an insomniac. She didn't worry about that much, however. Sleep was merely wasted time, an annoying biological necessity.
She was not walking up and down now. She was seated before a white baby grand piano, out on the rear garden terrace, enjoying the night air and the sensuous chords of a Liszt etude as she ran through them with her long, beautifully manicured fingers. She wore a white full-length robe, laced with delicate designs in gold thread, the high collar turned up in back, framing the exquisite upsweep of her ash blonde coiffure, the wings of the lapels turned aside and cut deep in front, framing the plush fullness of a pair of quite remarkable breasts. On her feet she wore a pair of silver sandal slippers, exposing toenails painted an irridescent green-the color she also wore on her full lips.
Inside in the living room, in a deep, high-backed leather chair facing the open sliding glass doors leading to the terrace, sat Marc Ferris. He was almost invisible in the shadows, dressed in a dark evening suit, but the live glow of a cigarette lighted his features as he puffed on it intermittently. In his other hand he held a cocktail glass containing the remnants of his third martini of the evening.
He was watching Cynthia, her white figure at the piano framed against the backdrop of a nighttime Manhattan skyline. Knowing her as he did, he wondered how it could be that, at certain times, like this one, she could fill him with a sense of mystery and wonder.
It was strange. The music and the martinis lulled him, the sight of her on the terrace vaguely excited him-he felt suspended between two opposite kinds of sensation. It was as though she were a witch in disguise, weaving some kind of spell around him.
The spell was broken when the music stopped rather abruptly and Cynthia rose from the piano. She put a cigarette in her handsome mouth, lit it and walked inside.
"That was beautiful," Marc said. "Why did you stop? I could have sat here all night listening."
"But I couldn't sit there playing all evening. Fix me a drink, Marc darling."
Marcus got up and went to the teakwood and silver serving bar built into a corner of the spacious room. Without saying anything he began to mix a martini according to the formula she required, knowing the exact amount of each ingredient from long experience. Even the number of stirs-twelve and a half. Cynthia did everything precisely-it was the secret of her success.
"Thank you darling," she said, accepting the drink when it was finished. "Mm-perfect. Shall we sit here on the sofa? You're so very quiet tonight."
"It's a quiet sort of night. And your beauty leaves me speechless."
"Thank you, Marc-even if it is nonsense."
"It's no lie, Cynthia dear."
"It's a lie of the worst sort. I'm forty-four, darling. See these lines? She leaned her face close to his, touching it with her fingertips. "I could have them removed in Switzerland, of course, but it's so futile. I'm getting old.
You won't look at me this way much longer."
"You'll never grow old, baby."
"That's more like it. If you're going to He to me, play the role. I like to be lied to if you do it rough."
He put his arm around her, caressing her low-slung breast through the material of the robe. They hadn't made love all evening, though he had been at her apartment for hours. He could tell she was in one of her moods, that that would have to be led up to-as he was doing now.
He thought: It's not completely a lie, but not completely true either. She was old chronologically, yet she had more than most women still in their early thirties. More than most women, period. There were lines, fine little etchings of lines, if you looked hard enough-about the eyes, the corners of the mouth. With most women her age, those would have been wrinkles. Her skin was near perfect from years of expensive pampering and from a natural inner vitality that defies age. Maybe she was riper now than she had ever been, in fact. A woman over forty either loses her sex completely or goes into a second bloom, deeper and more carnally exotic than the first.
He knew now that she had had lovers before he met her-a wide variety of them, ranging from boys to old men. But she was adroit in keeping her affairs secret. Even now, there were things he didn't know about her, couldn't fathom. But that was part of her charm also. The mystery.
"Any likely prospects show up today?" she said, breaking in on his thoughts.
"Oh yes. A girl named Marsha Kinsted, from Cleveland."
"Yes, I remember the brochure. The photo escapes me at the moment though. Is she blonde or brunette?"
"Neither. A redhead."
"Ah. She must be quite lovely then. If she's a natural redhead, that is."
"She's natural."
"Hmm-you investigated then." He chuckled, amused at the way she had drawn it out of him.
"Naturally. I was thinking of the business first, of course."
"You're supposed to let Mr. Rudin take care of that part of the interview, darling I"
He leaned forward, grinning. "I can't believe my ears! Cynthia Lockhart-jealous?"
Her lemony eyes narrowed. "Be careful, Marc. I'm not in a mood to be toyed with. I'm thinking of the business also-your third of it as well as my two-thirds. It's bad policy to give a candidate the wrong impression before she becomes a valuable asset to the school. You are supposed to be the embodiment of dignity; your job is to impress both candidates and clients with the respectability of our operation. The business is so often associated with shady types in the public mind-which is why I saw it as a challenge, I suppose. Carelessness could ruin the name we've built up."
"I'm doing my job the way I see fit, baby. That's the way it's got to be."
Her eyes blazed momentarily. "Do you see fit to try every girl who walks into your office, perhaps?"
"Easy now. Not every girl, baby-but there was something I had to find out about this one."
"Something Joe Rudin couldn't have found out?"
"I saved time, let's say. You wouldn't want her moved in if she was frigid or a pro, would you?"
"Of course not-that's one of the rules we established at the start. But still...."
"Oh, come off it. I wasn't thinking about anything except business at the time."
"You've got a good business head, Marc. But you're apt to let your other talents interfere. That's the only thing I'm afraid of."
"Well, there's nothing to be afraid of then."
"You know how important some of our clients are. Even when a girl's done with us, she represents the school."
"No lectures now. We've been in this together too long for that. I know the rules and I play by them."
"Good." She crossed one shapely leg over the other and the robe parted, revealing a beautifully turned calf. "Take me to bed now, Marc."
"Do I stay the night?"
"Is that a condition of your taking me to bed?"
"Well, the night's almost over. I don't fancy climbing out of the rack at four A.M. to catch a taxi."
"You must be getting bored with me. Perhaps I should find another lover, if you're going to talk to me that way."
He laughed, slipping his hand under the robe. "Go ahead. You won't find one as good."
"You're horribly conceited."
"And so are you. That's why we get along so well, isn't it?"
"There are limits, though."
He slid his hand further, and she slowly, reluctantly relaxed.
"What's the limit, Cynthia? Tell me the limit."
"The limit is-ohhh!"
The limit had been reached. The sky's the limit with her, Marc thought to himself. He could feel the tremble of her against his hand.
"Marc!"
The front of the robe slipped open with the flick of his other hand, exposing her big, low-slung breasts to his eyes, the deep valley of shadow between. Her exotic perfume excited him further.
She stiffened, pretending to resist, still miffed with him. But her resistance had no substance behind it. He knew she had decided earlier that day that she wanted a man to share her bed in the evening, and Cynthia Lockhart never went back on a decision. She might go without a man for a long time, letting the urge ripen and grow strong, until that interfered with other things-and then she would decide to have one, and she would have one.
That was Cynthia.
He caressed her for awhile, kissing her big drooping breasts and warming her with his hands, feeling the excitement grow gradually in intensity for her. Only the belt held the robe closed across her waist; somehow this partial vision of the perfection of her body excited him more than complete nudity and he left it that way.
"Marc, Marc-kiss me!"
He slipped to the floor, leaning forward.
She was agitating now, moving slowly on the couch. He made his love suspenseful as he could, making his way slowly.
Her long fingers wound themselves in his hair; her lips fell slack and she began murmuring softly. "Oh! Oh, ok, ok, oh!"
Muffled sounds to his ears, muffled by the silken softness against his cheeks.
He made her wild. She leaned forward, wrapping her arms around his head and damn near suffocating him.
"God!"
Suddenly he found himself locked in an embrace he couldn't break. He was surrounded by living, female flesh.
Instead of pulling away he gripped her tighter. There was a pleasure to be got in exciting a woman this way-a vast, primal kind of pleasure. Perverse or perverted, some might call this, but in the art of making love to a woman those words have no meaning, they belong to an entirely different vocabulary.
The vocabulary of desire is much, much simpler.
"Oh!"
"Ah!"
"Love me, love me, love me damn you-oh damn you, damn you!"
"Mmmmm."
"More, more!"
"Mmmuhhh!"
"I'm melting-don't you know I'm melting darling? Oh! Oh!"
He strained to bring her to fulfillment. "Ah, ah, ahhhhh!"
He could see her straining too, her muscles taut and hard as a board now-her entire being straining to release itself.
Her cry became a rising whine: "Ahhhh!"
She rushed at him in one great tumble and she seemed to explode-and then that was over.
For her. But not for him.
Breathless but still eager with desire, he gathered her and rose, lifting her from the sofa.
He carried her that way into the bedroom.
The bed was a round pale lavender pool in the middle of the spacious room. Round in shape and silk-sheeted, it looked like a stage set waiting for the actors to appear. And all around the room the audience waited-a glass audience, consisting of floor-to-ceiling mirrors.
The actors and the audience were the same.
He deposited her on this softly lighted stage, undid the belt of the robe and slipped it off her amply curved form. Everywhere around the room and even on the ceiling the startling white form with its full fleshy curves was repeated, over and over like a pattern, but each angle a bit different, each tableau of white against pale lavender depicting a new delight, a new wonder.
And then there were two bodies on the bed, in the center of the lavender circumference, and the mirrors sprang to animated life, repeated over and over, until the entire room looked as though it were moving.
"Darling," she rasped, locking her arms around him, "tell me: was she good?"
"Who?"
"That new girl-Marsha, the redhead." "Hell, Cynthia-"
"Tell me!"
"Okay. Sure, she was fine."
"She liked you?"
"Like a bunny."
"And you?"
"I always like that. Let me-"
"You must bring her here then!"
"Here? What-what about the rules?"
"Here, to this room-so I can watch!"
"I don't know-"
Her nails sank into the muscles of his shoulder blades, bringing a surprised cry of pain from him. "Here!" she repeated.
He had never seen her crazy like this before. He raised his hand to slap her, but she sank back against the soft sheet, her eyes closed and her mouth slack, like a portrait of passion.
"If you wish," he whispered, smiling.
And then the mirrors began their dance again, wilder than ever this time.
Four A.M. The streets were deserted and the building was quiet-except for Jerri Thornton's apartment, where an FM set played the cool intricate riffs of West Coast jazz from an all night station at a listenable volume.
Jerri had changed to an informal houserobe, but Marsha still wore the same outfit she had started the evening with. She was stretched out on the couch, her mind fuzzy but tuned in to the music and it's restrained, low-key excitement.
Somebody was stroking her leg. This fact registered gradually through the music, like a series of low notes rising higher and higher.
When the finger music reached the point of crescendo she opened her eyes.
"Hello there," Phil Manzilla said to her, a white-toothed smile on his face. He removed his hand from beneath her skirt. Somehow she felt the loss acutely, for the music had ended at the same moment
"You have a very nice leg."
"Which one?"
He laughed. "The one I was massaging, man. Hate me for that?"
"No. Only we better stop. I have to get some sleep before noon tomorrow."
"Yes, it is getting late. Sorry if I was being sneaky but you sort of nodded out on me and I couldn't resist, "The music put me away, I'm afraid."
"You really dig sounds, don't you? You're a real cool chick, honey."
She sat up groggily. "Thanks. But my head feels like Swiss cheese or something. I really have to go."
He looked disappointed, but he stood up and helped her to her feet. Jerri and her boy friend had slipped off into the bedroom, leaving them alone.
He touched her on the shoulder. "You wouldn't refuse a guy a cup of coffee, would you?"
"Well-just one."
"Your place?"
"All right."
Then she remembered she didn't have anything in her pantry at all as of yet. "I'll have to borrow some stuff of Jerri's," she said, and started for the kitchen seeing the light on and thinking Jerri and her friend might be in there.
She discovered they weren't quickly enough. She had to pass the bedroom on the way, and she saw the couple in there. They were on the bed, with nothing covering them except the soft yellow glow of a bedside table lamp.
She couldn't help stopping and looking. The tilted lampshade made a subdued spotlight effect-spotlighting the busy twosome.
They seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely. They were there for all the world to see, with the door wide open and the shade rolled up. Beyond the window was the rear of the apartment house across the way, and any one staying up there to watch the Late Late Show would be getting his money's worth. And not by looking at the television set, either.
TV would have been a waste of time.
The show on the bed was much better. It had the kind of vital interest, the true-life involment, the simple and straightforward realism that never gets past the Hollywood censors.
A touching tale.
Very touching.
And suddenly, all the Midwestern prudery that lay beneath Marsha's hardened layer of experience burst to the fore. Her face turned to flame as she watched.
The thing to do, of course, was tiptoe silently away and leave the apartment.
Of course.
But something made her stay-and perhaps it was the very prudery that had caused her to blush. She was suddenly seized by curiosity and a desire to observe something she had never seen before. At least, not this way.
But finally she drew away and went on into the kitchen, where she found a jar of instant, and returned with it to the living room.
"We'll have to have it black," she said. "And from the hot water tap."
He nodded and the left the apartment together.
In her kitchen, the coffee was quickly made and served in china cups which she found among other dishes the former inhabitant had left behind.
"I hope you like it black," she said.
He grinned. "Any way is fine, long's the company's right. You feeling straight now?
"Yes, much better. I'm not used to drinking much, I'm afraid."
"You're sort of a strange chick."
"How strange?"
"Like I don't know how to figure you."
"Well, you're strange too, you know. Sometimes yon seem so far away from what's going on around you."
"That's partly because I smoke pot, I guess."
"Is that it? I've never tried that."
"A lot of the girls smoke it"
"They do?"
"Sure. That's how Bernie and Jerri got together-he brings her her ounce once a week."
"But-isn't it habit-forming?"
He laughed. "Sure. Like love and cigarettes. Man, everything's habit forming-it's just a matter of picking up the right habits."
"But I mean, doesn't it hook you or something like that?"
"No, man-that's what the squares think. They don't know the difference between monkey food and plain good grass."
"Monkey food?"
"Hard stuff. Dope. Like heroin or morphine. don't ever get mixed with that stuff baby-you can't kick it."
"But marijuana-"
"It's less habit-forming than nicotine. Look it up in the library if you don't believe me. It's safe and it does less to your system than alcohol."
She laughed, sipping her coffee. "You'd make a good salesman."
"Baby, I'm not selling anything."
She colored. "But I am-is that it?"
He shook his head. "I didn't mean that. You're a nice chick. You're okay, Marsha. Whatever you do, that's your groove. Me, I'm just a part-time musician and full-time bum."
"And I'm just a call girl."
They looked at each other and then laughed. He held out his hand and she took it.
"Pleased to meet you," she said.
"And I hope we'll meet again," he said, rising from the table.
She walked him to the door.
"Thanks for the coffee," he said, turning.
"Thanks for the company. I'm exhausted, but it's been good. I've been alone in this city so long I was getting too much inside myself."
"Can I give you a ring sometime then? Or maybe you could call me, if you're lonely and bugged-maybe that would be better. My number's in the book."
"Thanks, Phil-it's been a nice evening."
She leaned up and kissed him and he returned the kiss warmly but briefly.
He left then. She went to her bedroom and undressed slowly. The bed felt good under her. It was nice to be tired like this, after having done something. Before falling asleep, she thought: it might be a pretty interesting kind of life at that. And then her heavy eyelids closed and her mind gave itself up to the deep dark womb of sleep.