Chapter 4
At page 219 Lee bogged down. His protagonist hung from a figurative cliff, waiting for the author to do something, anything with him. For minutes Lee's fingers remained poised above the keys in a state of suspension; he read what he'd written-read it again. He couldn't kill him.
If he did that, the book would be over for all practical purposes, and he had projected it for slightly over 300 pages. On the other hand, he couldn't resolve the man's conflict, because that too would end the book. Something had to be done; something that would carry the story at a fast pace toward a tenable conclusion. He must avoid anti-climaxes.
He lit his pipe.
Creaking sounds, everywhere, in the quiet of night, with Joan asleep and his typewriter silent. It was his favorite part of the day-a time for thought, for dreams, even for the occasional but rare profundities.
He had learned one cardinal rule with The Plunge, which was quite simply to stop writing when you got bogged down; it had happened to him once or twice before, and like a fool, he had gone on writing, only to tear up what he had written on rereading it-so now he stopped, threw the cover over the typewriter.
He tried reading.
His mind returned to the faculty party at Stone's house-another night of insipid intrigue, as he privately thought of them. He didn't want to attend. He saw no discernible percentage in attending, but Joan insisted that it was good for him to go, and he didn't want an argument; an evening of torture was infinitely preferable to days of sullenness on his wife's part.
He had passed Stone several times in the corridors at school, and the older man had merely nodded perfunctorily in his direction, a bare acknowledgement of his existence. Lee was quite sure that Stone had murdered him in his mind. Funny, he thought-you go into the enchanted ivory tower of academe to get away from the politics and jungle warfare of the business world, and in the end you wind up with precisely the same situation. Get more than one person together, and there is competition, vested interests and a host of other interactive inconsistencies: the old sociological axiom that holds true in all cases. Yet he loved teaching; he knew that he was what was commonly referred to as a dedicated teacher. He had been a fool to think that teaching itself was the primary end-the truth was that you had to dig through the muck to find the gold, and damned little at that.
Joan heard the typewriter stop. After several minutes of listening to Lee walk around, she knew he had finished writing for the evening. Glancing at the luminous dial of the alarm clock, she saw that it was a little after twelve. He would probably be coming to bed soon, and she wanted desperately to fall asleep. To pretend sleep was a mild, but nevertheless real form of deceit, and she didn't want to deceive Lee on any count.
But her mind would not permit sleep.
She tried every sleeping position, and after a minute or so, found that she was uncomfortable. A sure symptom of insomnia, she decided. Things flitted through her mind like blips on a radar screen, with unrelenting regularity. The blips centered around Stone's gathering, and Lee's reluctance to go, It seemed strange to her that a man with Lee's love for his job was not willing to do the necessary little things to enhance his future. Attending a party given by your department chairman was a simple matter; yet Lee balked like a mule, making it necessary for her to prod and urge and cajole, and finally, in a fit of desperation, demand. She knew it was good for his career, and it was her job as his wife to see that he did the right thing. It was one of the unpleasant responsibilities of wifehood, to help your husband with his career.
Every time she asked Lee about the results of his interview with Stone, he was evasive and vague. He told her that nothing had happened. She trusted her husband; yet it seemed absurd to her that nothing had come of it. It had been over a week. Lee came home every afternoon, graded papers, planned classes or wrote. Lately, he had been holding meetings with that prize student of his, what's-her-name-Brenda something or other. She was supposed to come to the house tomorrow evening, which meant of course that he wouldn't be able to work on his novel. Joan couldn't see why he did things like that, got himself involved. It did nothing for his career, did not raise him in Stone's eyes.
She heard Lee's footsteps.
Rolling over, she pretended sleep.
He was very quiet. She heard him take off his shoes, put them gently on the floor; there was a rustling sound of clothes being removed, and finally the sag of extra weight against the mattress, his body next to hers.
She was silent.
He was silent, and she sensed his agitated state of sleeplessness. Without seeing him, she knew he was lying on his back with his hands locked behind his head, staring up at the invisible ceiling. He had been preoccupied lately; there were things on his mind, and she hadn't the vaguest notion of what they were. At times, Lee was brooding and uncommunicative: still another strike against him. If only he were a little more outgoing and gregarious like Al Cook, for instance. The man was thirty-two years old and was already a full professor, simply because he had managed to catch Stone's attention by dint of critical publication and faculty meetings and gatherings. Cook played the game with vigor, and benefited there from, while her husband, more intelligent than Cook by far, was still struggling along with an instructor's ranking, despite his Ph.D. Of course, Lee was nowhere near thirty-two years old, but he made no effort to play the game.
"Lee, are you awake?" she asked in the dark. His tension made her tense.
"Yes."
"How much writing did you get done tonight?"
"Five pages," he said. "Five good pages; then I got stuck."
Five pages did not seem like very much production to Joan.
"At this rate, you'll never finish." She heard Lee sigh impatiently.
"Look, I'll explain it to you again, Joan. A novel, especially a first novel, is not a ledger book. It's slow, careful, usually painful going. When you start balking, you quit, or just tear it up the next time around. Give me credit for knowing what I'm doing, huh?"
She sighed.
"Sometimes I don't think you care one way or the other about your future, Lee-our future."
"I care very much, and you know it," he said heatedly. "But just let me do it my way, huh? I'm reasonably intelligent and ambitious and I have a clean-cut appearance that people just love. As a matter-of-fact, some people think I'll go a helluva long way. I wish you'd share that faith."
"I'm sorry," she grumbled. There was no use trying to help him; he resented every effort to be helped. Why couldn't he see that she was trying to help him, and not make his life miserable? It was the one, the only sore spot in their marriage, everything else was perfect.
"Just let me do it my way," he continued, "let me be Lee Cushing and not one of Stone's lackeys. I know what I'm doing."
"But Paul's your boss," she reminded him, "and you have to please him"
"I also have to do what's best for me, and brown-nosing Stone isn't one of those best things."
"He hired you. He can fire you when your contract runs out."
"And somebody else hired him, and if Stone makes the gross error of firing one of the most popular teachers and a writer with potential, Dr. Stone will make his life very troublesome. And Dr. Stone knows that. You see, I play my own sort of game, Joan, risky at times, but one that could pay great dividends in time."
"It just seems sometimes that you're purposely antagonistic toward Paul, that you're waving a red flag in his face."
"Sometimes I am," Lee replied. "And stop calling him Paul, for God's sake. At least in bed."
"Well, let's go to sleep," Joan said. There was a note of finality that told Lee she was angry. He hadn't convinced her; there would be other times, other arguments, other interferences. Nothing less than tangible results would keep her off his back.
What was she afraid of? "
Why didn't she trust him, have faith in him? These were all questions that bothered him more than the interference itself: the implications of that interference were what upset him. It was like her saying I don't trust you, you idiot, so I have to see that you do the right thing.
He had wanted to make love.
He had smelled her, woman's odor, a mingling of soap and sweat-it excited him, tingled his senses. Usually, when he came to bed late, Joan would be waiting; or if she were asleep, a sixth sense would awaken her, and in a delightful state of semi-consciousness, she would rollover and press her warm body against his. The nightgown would rise up her legs and gather around her waist. His hands would stroke her thighs and buttocks while his lips sought the swollen nipples of her breasts, all under the warm, drowsy spell of blankets.
Her small gentle hand would reach out and seek him.
It would touch him, intimately, in many different ways. His response would make her shiver and moan with eager anticipation, and his hand would run to the inside of her thighs and move upward, seeking her.
And she would be ready.
Deliciously ready for the final embrace.
Sometimes, she would roll on top of him and scrape her hard nipples down the length of his chest and belly, kissing him as she did, seeking his flesh, finding it....
Then, he would take her.
The mattress would rock to the tempo of their bodies working in primitive, perfect unison while their hands stroked and caressed, their lips seeking and finding. Her breasts would fill his hands, her thighs would surround him and drag him down into the hungry core of her being, and it was invariably, without exception a perfect meshing of bodies and souls and hearts.
But it would not be tonight.
It would not be because Joan was angry. She was angry for such a patently absurd reason, that he was angry with her anger. It was a childishly petulant anger. And she was doing something she had promised never to do: use her body as an ultimate weapon; use sex as a repressive agent. Now, she was doing just that. True, he hadn't attempted to make love to her yet, hadn't even touched her, but she had turned herself away from him, had moved her buttocks so that they touched no part of him. Her body was stiffened in an attitude of remote coldness. It was a silent, devastating way of saying, "Don't try your luck tonight, Charlie."
And he didn't try.
As much as his body cried out for release, his pride overrode any attempt?, to make love. A refusal would be like a slap in the face. He knew she was awake, knew that if he gave in she would turn over and they would fall into one another's arms, press their bodies together in hot, breathless intimacy. All he had to do was resort to a bit of emotional and idealistic prostitution. Well, let her lie there stiff as a board, he thought. Let her hold out. I am going to be a man first and foremost, even if a stupid man. But I am going to be a man.
Paul crawled into bed at one-thirty. Peggy knew the time, because she had just looked at the clock several minutes before. He had been writing his critical essay for Wisconsin Review, a leading academic magazine devoted to literary criticism. It was to be his monthly publication. Paul Stone III, she thought, would decidedly not perish, because he published in such astounding abundance.
But his marriage, their marriage was definitely perishing from lack of contact, lack of attention on his part. One-thirty in the morning! He had been home since five-thirty, had eaten a hurried dinner and left immediately for his study; she had not seen him since. Thus it went, night after night, weekend after weekend. He never stopped, never smiled tenderly at her, never patted her hand, or whispered three simple words-never made advances toward her, which in time becomes a slap in the face for any woman. It is a silent statement of disinterest and unconcern.
Now he was in bed, still awake.
"Did you finish your article, Paul?" Peggy asked.
"Yes. All finished. I can start planning the next one tomorrow."
"Everyone's coming over Friday night, incidentally; they all accepted our invitation."
"The Cushings. They coming?"
"Yes, why do you ask?"
"Just wondered. Lee Cushing is not my idea of an enthusiastic member of the academic community."
Peggy did not want to discuss it.
She wanted to vomit from shop talk.
She wanted to tell him about a dress she'd seen on sale, a movie she'd heard good things about, a juicy incident concerning the couple next door they never talked to. But this was small talk, idle patter, and her husband had no time, no room, no capacity to indulge in it. Her husband was a big, noxious bundle of profound thoughts, a reeking paragon of intellectuality.
All those dreams, dried up and dead.
Those dreams of togetherness.
Those nights of constant lovemaking.
It seemed now as though those things had never occurred, they were so remote and blurred in her memory. It was like a hazy dream, so indistinct that you cannot separate it from reality. Her need surpassed that of a husband. It had degenerated into a primitive need, a basic biological drive for sexual gratification. He wouldn't have to talk now, or whisper sweet words, or reassure her that he loved her and needed her....
No.
If he would just boff her. It would be enough.
She would survive by aid of physical release alone, since her emotions, her compassion was all dried up by months and even years of half-use.
It had reduced itself to that level. At thirty-four years of age, after ten years of marriage, no children (she had given up on that too) and now no relationship, Peggy Stone decided that she had nothing except a hollow shell that could be loosely called existence. Money, prestige-neither could buy or replace what their marriage lacked.
Peggy was naked.
She seldom slept without a nightgown, having heard that men reacted more violently to suggestiveness and allusion than to nakedness itself. But tonight, she decided to be blatant about the thing; certainly he would get the message?
Evidently not.
He was lying there, log-like.
"Paul." Her voice was hushed, strained in the dark.
"Yes?" Already the creeping note of impatience in his voice, the note that said, "You have committed the sin of interrupting my profound thinking."
Screw your profound thinking, she thought. Better yet....
"Make love to me, Paul. I need to be made love to."
"I'm awfully tired, Peggy."
"Make an effort, Paul. Exert yourself. I don't make many demands on your time, do I? Make an honest-to-God effort at being a man, won't you?"
"That's hardly a mature criterion of manhood-"
"Spare me the theorizing, please! Don't talk! Act! For once in your life, stop hiding behind the facade of intellectuality, and do something human."
"Animals are capable of that," he said.
"And I'm an animal, Paul. Being an animal is part of the human condition you're always writing about, but it escapes me how you can discuss something that you don't know a damned thing about."
Her voice was growing ugly.
"No need to get vehement about it," he said stiffly.
"For God's sake, will you stop being civilized and just have me? Most men complain about not having enough sex, and I'm throwing myself at you!"
Sigh.
"You make it damned difficult to get in the mood, with your argumentive attitude," he grumbled.
"Then hit me. Work me over a bit." Her voice was calm outwardly, with a faintly tremulous note running close under the surface. She was approaching hysteria.
Dr. Paul Stone III, B.A., M.A. and Ph.D., man of much intellectual renown, couldn't cut it. He could not evoke anything like physical desire toward his wife. Paul Stone campus wonder, was a bedtime failure. His wife aroused antagonism in him rather than anything like physical or emotional sympatico.
It was embarrassing.
Humiliating.
Maddening.
At one time, she would have been embarrassed for him, but not any more. She felt sorry for herself. He lacked desire, therefore missed nothing. She was a seething mass of desire, therefore missed everything.
"You impotent creep," she rasped, turning over. There was a horrid note of finality, of dire pronouncement in that evaluation. Paul sighed wearily, and rolled over, their bodies almost a foot apart in the king-sized bed.
He thought of his article for next month, and fell asleep; his last conscious thought was Whom do I promote to associate professor?