Chapter 11
Which way to the bar?" Brick asked the superstitious desk clerk. "To your left and down that corridor, sir."
"Thanks."
Brick crossed the bustling lobby of the garishly modern motor lodge. The place was one of several glorified motels that had sprung up on a tract near the river freeway to catch tourists just entering the city via the interstate bridge. The motor lodge was ten blocks from Hamilton Street. Brick had walked the entire distance after receiving the phone call in the office of Peabody House shortly after nine-thirty.
Disturbed by the late evening message, Brick hurried down the hallway between the lodge's managerial offices toward double glass doors. Beyond them, murky reddish radiance from recessed brackets sprayed the bar with weird lights.
With customary lack of ceremony, Brick struck the butt of his palm against the door's push-plate and bowled into the lounge. Three salesmen occupied a corner booth, poring over a profusion of graphs and bar charts. Up a short stairway Brick saw the majority of evening cocktail drinkers now seated at dinner in the lodge dining room. Besides the bartender, who was acidly reading a J. X. Williams novel, the only other person in the bar was a woman. Elaine Olsen.
The girl had a cool smile on her lips and a martini at her elbow.
Brick felt his temples tighten as he threaded between the cocktail tables the way he'd once made broken-field runs on Sunday afternoons before a hundred thousand cheering fans. Angry, he stopped in front of Elaine, trying not to see how desirable she was.
Her rounded hips were clad in a dress of clinging satin that also sheathed her breasts with iridescent radiance. The dress bodice was scooped daringly low; Elaine wore no brassiere tonight, the deep cleft between her golden-perfumed breasts was plainly visible.
She sat with legs crossed. The hem of" the cocktail dress didn't do a full job of concealment. Brick shifted his ground. He didn't want to glimpse those sensual thighs, or the startling contrast of the tops of her nylons and the gold flesh just above.
"Of all the damn despicable tricks-" Brick began.
The barman drifted in their direction. Elaine slid a slim platinum case along the bar.
"Have a cigarette, darling. Then have a drink. Let's be civilized, shall we?"
The barman's interruption controlled Brick's urge to swear.
"What'll it be, mister?"
"Bourbon. Make it a double, no ice."
"Yes, sir. Coming right up."
"The least you can do is show a little politeness and sit down, Brick."
"After you suckered me with that phony telephone call-?"
"Why not?" replied Elaine in a chilly fashion. "I wanted to see you once more. I knew that my voice wouldn't bring you away from that precious settlement house of yours. But I thought that if I had our man Thompson call-with a message that Artemus Olsen, representing the Peabody House trustees, wished to talk to you privately tonight-you'd come hopping. And so you have."
Brick snagged a smoke from the platinum case. He had it halfway to his lips before he decided he wanted nothing of hers. Or at least he must make her think so.
Elaine continued to regard him with sly merriment. Sullenly Brick sat down and stared at the bar.
The barman arrived with the bourbon. Brick drank half at a single swallow. Recalling what similar indulgence had done to him the previous night, he put the glass aside hastily and swung around on the stool. About to speak, he was arrested by the sight of Elaine leaning forward as if to engage in conversation. The deliberate movement exposed the upper surfaces of her breasts, including a tiny fragment of the big red aureole at the end of each. Her breathing was rapid. It made the breast-ends push in and out with an excitement all their own.
"What am I supposed to do now?" inquired Brick. "Gaze dreamily at the merchandise and spend a few minutes reminding myself that it's not mine any more."
"Don't say that!"
Her hand reached out involuntarily to touch his where it rested on his trousers just above his knee. The light scrape of her nails electrified him against his will. Elaine's lips trembled faintly, redder than fresh blood as she told him:
"Brick, I'm not trying to hurt you. Can't you understand that everything I do, I do because I love you?"
"Including demanding that I quit the Peabody job?"
"Even that. It's nothing but foolish idealism-"
"Idealism hell! It's as real as Chip's body lying mangled on that morgue slab."
"Please, Brick! Lower your voice."
"The hell I'll lower my voice! You drag me here like a pet animal with a ring through its nose and then expect me to sit here and like it!"
Leaning forward again an almost-desperate note in her voice. Elaine said huskily:
"But don't you, darling? Don't you really?" Brick shook his head tiredly. He was angry with himself for letting his gaze be drawn again and again to those impossibly rich creamy breasts dancing and quivering within inches of his hands. And her strong, passionately muscular thighs, over which the fabric of the dress stretched so tightly that the long stretched ridges of her garters stood out in high relief.
"Hell of a choice you give me, Elaine. But I made it quite a while ago. You simply haven't realized it yet." Elaine seemed puzzled. "Realized what?"
"That a man can't sell himself for sex."
Flushing, Elaine looked over her shoulder in embarrassment. The barman was deep in his book. The three salesmen had gone into the dining room.
"Is that all I mean to you, Brick? Were all the things you said when we were alone together-as close as a man and a woman can get-merely lies to make me feel good while you had me?"
"Of course not!" Brick was angered anew by her obstinacy, her refusal to understand. "I still feel the same about you-I mean," he amended, "I did until you arranged this particular subterfuge. But we come from different worlds. In yours, you can't understand any piece of goods that doesn't have a price tag. You figure I should have one. Maybe I do. Maybe in any other circumstance I'd sell myself to you and like it-like knowing that what I was getting in return was there...." he pointed.
"You're insufferable! Vulgar and disgusting and-"
"And telling you the truth for once!" he exploded. "Face up to yourself, Elaine! Have you ever gotten anything-wanted anything-your old man's bank account couldn't wrap up the instant you crooked your finger? Well, you should have come to that morgue with me and seen Chip laid out dead. Would your goddam checkbook have done any good? I'm asking you, Elaine.
Could you go down to Hamilton Street and buy decency for the kids who live there? My folks had money enough to care for both Chip and me. He still went wild. Money didn't buy him away from the desire to run loose like an animal. Don't ask me how I escaped. I guess I was lucky.
But the kids on Hamilton don't even have money to fall back on. Money won't begin to pay for what it takes to give them a chance to breathe something besides gutter air the rest of their lives. Friendship-honesty-trust-understanding on their own level-that's why I'm down there. And you can't buy me back like a pack of cigarettes."
Elaine began in low tones, glanced at him pointedly over the rim of her martini glass.
"Suppose I told you that you were finished on Hamilton Street because Peabody House might be too. You know how the trustees feel about the project. My father is one of the-"
Brick leaped off the stool and flung a bill on the bar.
Elaine stood up too, breast ends shoving out in high relief.
"Where are you going?"
"Out. I'm not the kind you can blackmail."
With a ferocious stride, shuddering so angrily that he was afraid he'd turn on her and brush her lovely face with his knuckles, Brick slammed through the glass doors of the lounge. Immediately on his left was a fire door to the parking lot. Brick shouldered this aside and plunged into the cool night air, sucking great gulps of it to relieve his furious anger.
The parking lot was a dark waste, illuminated only here and there by dim automobile parking lights and a single lamp on an iron stanchion, far on the other side at the lot entrance. Behind him Brick heard the fire door clang. High heels rat-rat-tatting.
He walked more rapidly, dodging betwen the parked vehicles. He heard Elaine cry out:
"Brick-wait a minute! Don't run. There's nothing to run to. Peabody is done for!"
Not believing, Brick Fontaine turned. Elaine approached, breathing rapidly. Her thighs made a whispering, a rustling as her nylons rubbed together.
"Here's the Bentley, Brick. Just in the next lane. Come have a cigarette."
Turning, Elaine hurried off between an Imperial and a Cadillac. Her buttocks swayed with provocative, saucy precision as she approached her car and held the door, Brick shook his head. Elaine shrugged, sat on the cushions and smiled up at him.
"Oh, I know you'll be angry, Brick. But you'll get over it."
"Get over what?" Brick's voice was thick, hushed. "Damn you, tell me-"
Elaine studiously concentrated on lighting her cigarette.
"Today I had a chat with my father at his office. He's a very understanding man, my father, being a widower with only one daughter. When I told him I thought the Justus J. Peabody Settlement House had a very shaky record of success, he agreed. When I told him I wanted him to close it as a personal favor to me-he agreed to to that also. The motion to close will be put before the trustees when they meet next week.
You see, Brick, for a long time the other trustees have been in favor of abandoning the project and using the trust funds to start a community health clinic in another location. Administration of the Peabody estate is entirely in their hands.
They'd have closed Peabody this summer if it hadn't been for your interest in it. My father raised his voice against the entire board when you applied for the job as director, just because you were also interested in me. I didn't mind your interest. Then. I thought it might kind of a hobby for you, a diverting charity. But when it consumed you-ate you up like a disease-"
Elaine paused, smiling.
"Brick, I hope you understand."
Brick's teeth were clenched:
"You closed it? Just like that?"
"Just like that, darling. In father's office, this very afternoon. So now you needn't trouble yourself with guilt. There's no excuse for feeling you've shirked your duty. The public statement will announce that Peabody House is suspending operations due to a lack of interest on the part of residents of the neighborhood it has served in the past."
Crushing out her cigarette beneath her spiked pump. Elaine stood up quickly. She flung her arms around Brick's neck, caressing him with her long sloping thighs, with the girdled fever of her belly, with the tip-trembling heat of her breasts. Her mouth moved reply, wetly, near his ashen lips:
"Brick, Brick! The decision is out of your hands now. Come home with me. Come home with me and see if you really care about Peabody any longer. Let's go to bed, Brick. Patch up this quarrel the way we used to, darling-"
When she grasped his hand, she saw his white-furious face.
"Why are you looking at me so queerly, Brick?"
"I'm going to fix you for this, Elaine. I'm going to fix you the way you've needed fixing for a long time."
"Brick, what are you doing with my dress? Brick-leave me alone!"
Elaine struggled, caught in Brick's grip. He opened the rear door of the Bentley and flung her inside. Her skirt flew up over her thighs, exposing the black elastic tightness of her garters. The dim light of the parking lot hinted at silken whiteness somewhere high between her nylons.
Brick slammed the Bentley's front door. Then he entered the tonneau, feeling savage, wanting to maim, hurt, injure.
"Don't Brick! Don't stare at me like that, Brick. What are you-!"
"I'm going to rape you," he said. "Rape you until you scream for mercy. We'll see whether you can buy your way out of this too!"
She flailed them, hammered his face with her fists. He was far too powerful for her.
Fastening both hands on the low-cut top of her cocktail dress, Brick ripped her hard from neck to navel. He whipped his hands wide so that the lacy froth of her slip peeled from each breast quivering with fright. Elaine howled in pain.
"Don't-Brick-" she shrieked, fending him off. "Don't-!"
He saw her through a raw red curtain of fury, desiring only to hear her scream now, to hear shrieks of penitence as he tore her body to bits, proved to her finally and for always that there were some things she could not have merely because she asked.
At the moment she wanted him to stop, stop tormenting her. A harsh laugh twisted Brick's lips as he wrestled her to the floor of the tonneau, shredding her dress with his powerful hands, tearing her skirt apart, demolishing the lacy purity of her slip.
Finally he exposed the sheerly-clinging white panties which she tried to protect with her hands.
Mercilessly Brick forced those hands apart. He pulled downward on her panties. She let out a scream. He clipped her on the jaw.
Her head lolled. Brick crouched over her, triumphing in her exposed nudity. He laughed in her face.
"Okay, Elaine. Okay bitch. Write me a check and see if you can stop me!"
"I love you, Brick, I love you, don't you see that I-aiieeeeee!"
"Why-don't-you-call-daddy-to-help-you-out-now?...."
He delighted in bringing her pain, delighted in watching her bite her lips as she flung her head from side to side, moaned, beat at his flanks impotently.
Then, horribly, Brick Fontaine's flesh betrayed him: he began to want her.
He could tell she wanted him also.
Her laughter rang dizzily inside the car:
"Oh darling, I've won. I've won!"
He was outraged, sick at his defeat. Her cries of pleasure stoked his fury all the higher, lashed him to assault her even more forcefully. They crashed around in the tonneau, bodies bruised by jolting against the seats and the floorboards.
But the more savage his attack, the more aroused she became.
She helped him, assisted him with love-caresses. Finally it was not Brick Fontaine hurting a woman but Brick Fontaine loving a woman who was blind-hot with a delirious urge for climax.
"Oh, my angel! My sweet man! My lover, my lover! You can't get away now!"
Her laughter, her shrieks and moans of passion mocked him. With a strangled sob he whipped his arms around her and tried to squeeze the breath from her hot body as the cataclysm claimed them both.
In the last seconds, Brick knew how completely he had been betrayed.
He drew away from the nude girl panting on the tonneau floor. He shoved his shirt into his trousers, realizing she'd turned the tables. Despite everything-despite his curses, her treachery, his will to maim-he loved her.
Brick lurched from the Bentley and ran into the night. Far behind, a tinkling sound, rang feminine laughter.
That was Elaine; Elaine the vindictive; the demanding; the all-too-human, all-too-frail woman whom-God save his soul-he still loved helplessly.