Chapter 4
Cotty found himself wanting Paula Greer more and more as the days wheeled past. It became something of an obsession with him. She didn't encourage him, not in the slightest. Not once during the next two weeks did she relax her cool, indifferent manner toward him. This only served to inflame his passion. He had a strong hunch that she would be willing under the right circumstances, the right circumstances, of course, being the elimination of her husband. She never hinted of this to Cotty, but his conviction grew steadily.
He did learn that she was deathly afraid of Greer and didn't dare leave him. "He'd find me, no matter where I went, and drag me back," she said with a shudder. "And I don't know what he'd do to me then."
This conversation, the first break in her reserve, took place one morning after Greer and Juval had left for a nearby town on business. Paula remained behind. On learning of this, Cotty went looking for her. He found her sunning behind the freak-show tent, a bandanna binding her breasts and a strip of cloth not much larger than a diaper across her loins. She was lying on a blanket as vividly red as blood, and she reminded Cotty of the many pictures he'd seen in the girlie magazines. She had black cups over her eyes, and he wasn't sure she knew of his presence.
He stood looking down at her for a full minute. Absently he took out a cigarette and lit it.
"If you're going to stand there and look at me like that, the least you could do is light one for me." She drew one golden leg up.
Cotty dropped to his knees on the edge of the blanket, fumbled out a cigarette with trembling fingers, lit it, and put it between her lips.
Paula drew deeply on the cigarette and let smoke drift out of her mouth. Without preamble she said, "I'm frightened to death of Basil, you know."
Cotty listened to her attentively, but he was disconcerted by the eye cups. It was like talking to a blind person. He didn't know whether or not she kept the cups on as a gesture of contempt, but he decided not to push his luck. He said, "How do you think he'd find you so damned easy?" He laughed lightly. "He's not psychic, is he?"
"Don't laugh," she retorted. "He could be. Sometimes I think he is." With an abrupt gesture, she removed the cups. The green eyes smoldered with more emotion than he'd ever seen her display. "Besides, there's another reason I won't leave him. I've been married to that man for five years now. You know what you said the other night about it being like living with a half-dead man ? Well, it is! Every time he touches me..." A shudder rippled her body. "I think of him being dug out of that damned casket every night. I feel I've earned his money!"
Cotty was taken aback by her vehemence and was surprised by her sudden decision to confide in him, but the mention of money caught his attention above everything else. "Money? What do you mean, his money?"
"He's loaded, didn't you know? I don't know how much, but it has to be considerable. Basil was a top-money attraction for twenty years with an escape act." She laughed shortly. "Until his guts leaked out!"
"How did that happen?"
"His strongest act was patterned after Hou-dini's most famous stunt. Basil was strapped in a straitjacket, locked into a trunk, and lowered into a river. His performance was always spectacular. Sometimes he popped to the surface before the trunk even had time to settle to the bottom of the river. Sometimes he waited until everyone thought he had drowned. Well, one day he outsmarted himself! He waited too long, then something went wrong and he nearly drowned. They pumped a barrel of river water out of him. He never had the guts to go down again and that finished him as an escape artist and brought him down to the carnie level. God, how he hates it! How the mighty have fallen!" Her laughter was bitter, her contempt scalding.
Cotty said, "How did he do it? How did he always manage to get out of the trunk?"
"How do I know? He didn't confide in me."
"But the act must have been gimmicked!"
"Of course it was gimmicked." She ground out her cigarette in the grass with an indelicate snort.
"The guys who do these stunts never reveal their secrets. They take it with them when they die. And that's another thing. ... He's scared green that he'll die in that casket some day, that he won't be dug up in time. That's why he'll only trust Juval for that chore. Juval spooks me, too, but I sometimes feel sorry for the little guy. Basil's made the dwarf so dependent on him that Juval would be lost without him. Juval has been with Basil since the little guy was about ten. Juval worships him and sometimes I think he's the only person Basil's ever cared for. He's the only one I've ever seen him gentle to. But even there he played a dirty trick. Juval's brighter than you might think but Basil never taught him to read and write. He did teach him a bastard form of sign language that only the two of them can understand. Oh, he's a wonder, my husband. The guts of a chicken, with a sadistic streak de Sade would have been proud of, all that money and a tight fist to go with it. And a lush, to boot!" Cotty stared. "A lush?"
"Oh, a secret one, of course! He has been interested in hypnosis for years and studied it extensively. Now it boils him to have to use self-hypnosis in what he considers a cheap carnie act. But show business is all he knows and he can't quit. So, most nights after he's dug up, he sits in the trailer and gets quietly smashed. To forget, he says. Not that I mind too much. It keeps him out of my hair." She slanted a glance at him, laughing again. "Not that he bothers me too much in that respect. Since he lost his guts, he lost that, too. He can't get it up anymore."
Cotty wasn't shocked by her sudden crudity. On the contrary, it excited him; he read it as a raw invitation. But, remembering her previous brush-offs, he decided to pay her back in kind. He looked away, making an elaborate business out of lighting a cigarette. After a little, he said casually, "Considering you feel that way about him, why did you marry him in the first place?"
She sat up, eyes blazing, and Cotty braced himself for a whack across the mouth. Then she relaxed and lay back down. "Give me a cigarette, will you, sweetie?"
He lit a cigarette for her and she put the cups over her eyes again, then told him how Greer had found her stripping in a burlesque house in St. Louis and had made her a part of his act. She was surprisingly frank but even so Cotty read much between the lines, sketching in some parts he was convinced she skipped over. Greer had taught her how to wear clothes, how to walk, how to talk and many other things as well. When she learned he had money, she was ready to accept when he offered to marry her. That happened after she'd been in his act for two years, after he'd made her over to his liking.
"You know what he says sometimes? He says I'm his Liza, like that flower girl in some play by Shaw, that he made me over from nothing into what I am." She ripped the cups away, her lip curling. "Can you imagine that coming from him?" she laughed sarcastically.
Cotty very well could. He suspected that Greer had turned a vulgar stripper into an exciting, sophisticated woman. He doubted that the man had been able to improve her morals to any great extent. But that was all to the good. That, too, only made her more exciting.
"Sure, he taught me some things," Paula went on. "After all, I didn't get much schooling. I was raised around carnie girlie shows and burlesque houses. My mother was a show girl. My old man ... I never knew him. I don't think my mother ever knew for sure who he was." Paula had slipped easily into a flip manner, her voice becoming brassy; even her body in repose managed to appear taunting, wanton. Cotty caught himself eyeing her pelvis uneasily, as though he expected her to perform a series of lewd bumps and grinds any second. He wet his lips and tore his gaze away.
Paula continued in a biting voice, "But can you imagine Basil handing me that crap? Setting himself up so high above me! He's a bastard and all the carnies have him pegged for one. He thinks he's too good to associate with the carnies and they couldn't care less."
"Does he often go off like this with Juval?"
Her shoulders twitched in a slight shrug. "A couple of times a week during still dates like this, when we only show in the evenings. In a few weeks we start playing the fairs. God, what a grind that'll be! In that damned tent from noon until after midnight with the townies asking stupid questions. 'How does he do it?' 'You sure he isn't really dead ? ' 'How does it feel like, being married to a man like that?'" Her voice was savage, mimicking. "I could tell them what it's like! It's a drag, that's what it's like! At least with Basil and Juval out of my hair like this I can relax a little. I may get bored stiff but I don't have to watch every move I make."
Cotty said, "We could do something about the boredom, have a beer or something."
"No!" she said explosively.
He leaned forward and put his hand on her thigh just above the knee. Her skin was smooth, silken, heated from the sun. "I only meant...."
"I know what you meant." She slapped his hand away, her glance darting about. "And keep your hands off! Suppose someone saw you and told Basil?"
"Oh, I don't think you need worry. You know carnies mind their own business. And you said yourself they don't like him. So who would...? "
"I'm not taking any chances. Just because I felt like letting my hair down and talking a little. ... God, I need someone to talk to! But that doesn't mean I want to risk everything playing games with you." Her eyes glittered like frost. "You get randy, go play with that mousy cook tent cashier. The way she pants after you, I imagine she falls on her back and spreads her legs every time you crook a finger."
Anger poured through Cotty, bringing him to his feet. He stood glaring down at her. "You're a cold, teasing bitch!" he said in a choked voice. "You can't treat me this way!"
"Can't I, sweetie?" she said mockingly. "I'd say that's just what I am doing."
Cotty spun on his heel, trembling with fury. It was as though a door had opened to unspeakable delights, only to be slammed in his face as he started across the threshold. As his anger began to subside, his mind went back over the scene, probing at it as a tongue probes at a sore tooth, and some of it didn't ring true. The way she'd opened up to him, then closed it off like the wrench of a faucet didn't make good sense. Had she been acting there at the end? Had she been afraid somebody was watching? It was an answer that he desperately wanted to believe and it did make more sense.
And yet, during the next few days, he was to wonder. She was cold and distant again, even in what few moments he could manage alone with her. It began to get to him, making him short-tempered and snarling. His frustration only increased his itch for her and caused him to try again and again, meeting with repeated rebuffs.
Even Gil Meeks commented on his surliness. "What's gotten into you lately, kid? You're as raunchy as a bear. Aren't you still pulling 'em in at the freak show?"
"I'm doing fine, better than ever," Cotty said. Which was true. With added experience and a growing technique he had made the ten-in-one the top grosser on the midway. "It has nothing to do with the show. It's Paula. She's driving me up the walls."
Meeks laughed. His cigar winked like a red eye in the darkness of the concession tent. "Broads! You young studs are always in a lather over some broad. I'm glad I'm past that."
Cotty tried to see the man's face in the dark. He wasn't that old, for hell's sake! Meeks couldn't be far past forty. Cotty managed to keep his curiosity in check. He heard a bottle clink, smelled the strong odor of whiskey and heard Meeks swallow. Then the man said in a toneless voice, "I know what you're thinking, kid. I used to be a womanizer, but no more. And age has nothing to do with it. I got caught in the wrong bed by a husband waving a pistol around. He was a lousy shot. At least I think he was a lousy shot. Anyway, with one bullet, he made me as useless as a neutered tomcat." His short laugh was mirthless. "And that's why I get my kicks nowadays from booze, cigars, and money."
He fell silent, and Cotty recalled Paula's remark about Greer. A dark shadow moved across his mind like an arctic wind. When a man lost that, for whatever reason, he lost his main reason for living.
After a moment Meeks said, "What I can't figure is why Paula Greer, kid? You've got Debra Frost dangling and a carnie's the best place in the world for easy tail."
"I don't know, Gil," Cotty said. "I really can't explain it to you."
Naturally Debra noticed something was wrong with him. In his obsession with Paula, he saw less and less of Debra. She asked him repeatedly what was wrong and he brushed her off. She tried to find the blame within herself and that only made him furious.
"Goddammit, stop pushing me!" he snarled at her. "Why do women always think they have to come first before everything else? I've got other things on my mind. I'm not going to be a show talker all my life!"
"I'm sure you're not, darling," she murmured. "I just thought it was something I'd done. Or maybe another girl. That isn't it, is it, Cotty?"
"Of course not," he said automatically. "Why would you think that?"
"I just wondered, is all."
He slanted a glance at her. She was walking with her head bent, one toe scuffing the sawdust. He was walking her from the cook tent to the Frost trailer. This was about the only time he saw her of late, on the rare occasion when he stopped in the cook tent for a late cup of coffee. He wondered if she did know about Paula. But how could she? There was nothing to know. He realized that if there were something between Paula and himself and Debra was accusing him, he wouldn't be at all angry. He would be pleased.
He had a sudden inspiration. Glancing around, he saw that they were directly opposite Meeks' flat joint. Cotty seized Debra's arm, hustled her under the tent fly, helped her over the counter, then vaulted after her.
Debra had no chance to protest until they were inside. Then she said breathlessly, "What are you doing, Cotty?"
'You said something about another girl. I'm going to show you there's no other girl."
"But darling. ... Here?"
"Here. Can you think of a better place?"
He found her in the dark and pressed her back against the counter, his mouth stifling any further protest. He knew that Meeks usually slept in a hotel room. But sometimes, when he'd had too much to drink, he spent the night on a cot in the tent. The possibility that Meeks might be there, a few feet away, didn't bother Cotty. On the contrary, it gave him a perverse thrill.
Briefly, Debra was stiff, unresponsive, in his arms. Then her body went soft and pliable, her curves and hollows fitting into his. He closed his hand around the shape of her breasts through the sweater she was wearing and she accepted the thrust of his tongue in her mouth with a shuddering sigh. When he took his mouth away to breathe, she said worriedly, "I don't like this, Cotty. Somebody might see us. And Evan will be expecting me...."
"Nobody'll see us. And like I told you, it's high time you were letting your old man know you've grown up."
His impulse to steer her into the tent had been a spur-of-the-moment thing. But the touch of her body, the taste of her mouth, her half-yielding, half-rebellious attitude-all had sparked his desired
He closed with her again, jamming her roughly against the counter, grinding his mouth down on hers until their teeth clashed painfully. A yelp of mingled surprise and outrage came from Debra. She drummed her fists on his shoulders and squirmed wildly. Cotty tightened his arms around her cruelly, then raised his mouth to say, "Stop acting up, Debra. You know I don't like teasers."
"But Cotty, I'm not teasing! You started this. ... Oh!"
Craftily he had slipped a hand under her skirt, then drove it all the way up to the nexus of her thighs. She cried out as he rotated his knuckles and sagged against him.
"Now tell me you don't want it, baby," he said gloatingly. He hooked his fingers in the elastic of her panties and ripped them from her loins, shredding them like so much confetti. He unzipped his trousers, releasing himself, and drove against her, taking her ruthlessly, her back banging against the counter each time he lunged to her.
It was over quickly, their mutual climax shattering. Debra cried out shrilly, shuddering, and clung to him fiercely.
Cotty's hands released their grip on her hips. He found the edge of the counter and gripped it with all his waning strength as the receding spasms of ecstasy ripped through him. Debra slipped bonelessly through his grasp and fell in a huddle on the ground.
Cotty heard her start to sob. Women, he thought dimly; they're all alike. They all want it, but when they get it, they start the tears flowing.