Chapter 3
The ceiling of Vic's apartment was blank and white, but from the way he stared at it you might have thought he was studying a complex tapestry.
Actually, life for him had become nothing less than that. Anyone simpler than he would have had no trouble at all understanding what was expected of him and what had to be done. A man like Sparling, for instance. For him it was all very plain. He was threatened, and when you're threatened you fight. You don't think about the ethics of it. You find your enemy's weak spot and you kick him there. If it happens to be his groin, that's tough. If you can't hurt him with a kick, try something else. Butter him up, blackmail him, take away something he loves, give him something he loves. There are ways. If you're simple, like Sparling, just find them.
To Vic it wasn't simple at all. Sure, finding a place for the convention was the easiest part of it, and outfitting the affair spectacularly was as easy as spending money. And money wasn't going to be any problem at all.
No, once he made up his mind to do it, the doing was simple. But making up his mind? Barriers just don't come any larger than that. Okay, when corruption is all around you it's no skin off your nose to be cynical about it. You're not really participating in it. Just not doing anything about it, that's all. And then somebody says "Come on in and join the fun." You raise your hand and tell him you're doing fine just watching. And he says watching isn't doing, and you know he's right. There's no substitute for the real thing. But doing the real thing is more than dipping your footsy in the water. It's a wholesale plunge. And it can be cold, and it can be deep, and there can be consequences you never thought of when you stood around making cynical observations.
You can drown, for instance.
That's corruption. A big swimming pool filled with your favorite liquor. Just keep your head up and sip a little at a time and you find the horror underneath the laughs, and the dark depth beneath the inviting surface.
Still it's your favorite liquor, and you can control yourself.
The liquor for him was money-a hell of a lot of it-add two parts of prestige-a whole industry grateful to him-and power, pitchers and pitchers full of it. How many men would stop after the first drink? Maybe if they thought about the hangover a little more....
A gentle tapping at the door interrupted his thoughts. The taps were tiny, as if made with the nails. It was a woman's knock, and then he remembered he was supposed to take Dana out tonight. He called out "Come in" without moving.
Out of the corner of his eyes he saw Dana's form. She was dressed in a black sheath with a square cut neckline.
The dimness of the room caused the deep curves of her breasts to stand out in vivid, voluptuous relief. She wore no girdle, and that faint swell of her belly that had tantalized him so much the last time heaved gently, rhythmically. Her hair was pinned up high, showing her graceful white neck to its fullest advantage. She stood still waiting for him to invite her further inside, or to say something or even look at her. He did nothing. She looked at the ceiling where his eyes were focused and said "I can think of nicer things to look at."
"I'm looking at nothing," he said coolly. "Anything is nicer than nothing."
"Something is nicer than just anything. Something special is the nicest of all."
"What makes you think you're something special?"
"What makes you think you can pass up a date with me:
"I never said I would. I just said I'd see," he said irritably.
"You didn't say you wouldn't, either. So I took it to mean...."
"Okay, I get the message."
"But I'll leave," she said, turning away.
She hesitated and Vic knew she had no intention of going. "No, stick around. I'm sorry. I forgot all about tonight. A lot on my mind."
"Maybe I can remove some of it. Why don't you ask me to sit down?"
"Of course." He got off his back and sat up. She eased herself into a soft chair opposite him and drew her knees up, circling them with her arms. The hem of her dress dropped from her knees and slid down her thighs to show the tops of hex stockings and an inch above. He looked at her legs, which were gold in their stockings, but cream-colored where the nylon left off. Beyond that was darkness, and all the lines of her limbs pointed to it like railroad tracks that point to a tunnel. A tunnel of love.
"What's up?" she asked.
He told her about Sparling's proposition.
"I kind of figured you'd react that way," was her answer.
"You knew about it?"
"I know everything that goes on in that company. I know things Sparling doesn't, things you don't, things the public doesn't know-and things Congress doesn't know."
"You're pretty valuable."
"And dangerous, don't forget that." The hem of her dress slipped another inch. He could see no panties. He wondered if she had any underwear on at all.
"Why do you say you know I'd react that way?"
"Because you're a complex guy. You see a thousand problems where only one really exists."
"What's the one?"
"The one is 'what's the easiest way to get what I want?' "
"That's your problem. My problem is, 'what do I want?' If I don't know that, then I have a thousand problems."
"What I want right now is a good stiff drink. Will that create any problems?"
He smiled and got to his feet, going to the sideboard across the room. "That's no problem at all. I wish everything was as easy to solve as that. What do you want?"
She put her hands to her head, mockingly. "Decisions, decisions."
"I'm for Scotch."
"I second the motion."
They had their drinks and then another round, and by that time Vic had begun to come to the conclusion that there was virtue in limited intelligence. Life for Dana was black and white. I want or I don't want. Why couldn't he turn himself off and reduce things to that simplicity? Well, he couldn't, but there was no reason he couldn't enjoy the company of someone who could. Especially with two drinks under his belt-and a third being mixed.
Finally she said "Look, let's put all the morality out of the picture for the time being. For me it's a question of where we're going to throw this shindig and how we're going to work it."
"But...."
"No buts. That's it. That's all there is to it."
He sat opposite her and looked at her intently. She was like one of those Hindu cobras. Poisonous, but hypnotic. He wanted desperately to believe that's all there was to it, and he found himself coming under her spell. Her gentle voice was lulling his qualms. Every once in a while she'd shift her body and take his mind further from what was bothering it. Her legs were slightly parted, and she made no effort to close them or pull her dress over her knees. She would lean toward him when making an important point, and the neckline of her dress would fall away. Deeply, but never deeply enough to show the brown buttons of her nipples, whose outlines he could see under the thin fabric. He felt a growing desire to take just one finger and push the top of her dress down an inch, making the tip spring out and come to life over the pressure of that finger.
She knew how to provoke, how to make a man forget and how to make a man know exactly what he wanted.
He shook his head. Things were becoming a little fuzzy. "Okay," he said, "let's play the game your way."
"Now you're talking,' she said, leaning back in the chair and putting her knees together, a gesture he didn't fail to notice. Play the game her way. How could he resist? Everything he had to gain was so concrete, and everything he had to lose so damned vague.
"How do we go about it?"
"Well, the first problem is where, right?"
"Right."
"Well, I have the perfect spot."
"You do?"
"Yes. Do you have an atlas? All these books around here, I'd imagine you must."
He slapped his shirt and pants pockets as if looking for a pack of cigarettes. "I know I had that atlas around somewhere."
"Don't be funny."
"Oh, yes. There it is." He got up and pulled a large, heavy book off the top shelf of his wall-to-wall bookcase. When he plunked it down on the coffee table in front of the couch it made a big cloud of dust. "Where to, Mac?"
"Bahamas, cabby, and step on it." She got up, a little wobbly from the drinks, and came around behind him as he began to leaf through the book of maps. At last he came to one of the Caribbean, with a big insert in the upper left hand corner, labelled "Bahama Islands."
"Why, there's millions of them."
"Not quite, but there are over seven hundred."
"I'll take five, gift wrapped, please."
She put her arms around him, pressing her breasts against his back. She pointed at a speck on the eastern perimeter of the group. "You'll take that one there," she said with an uncertain finger.
Vic put his eyes close to the map. The island was so tiny they couldn't fit the name inside. The tiny letters trailed off into the Atlantic Ocean. "Topaz?"
"Topaz."
"You couldn't get five people on it, let alone a whole convention."
"It's bigger than it looks-a few miles square."
"How the hell did you come up with it?"
"An old sugar daddy I once knew took me there. He almost bought it for me."
"Why didn't you take it?"
"Because you can't wear it to the opera or drive it downtown. Besides, it was pretty shabby."
"Tell me more," he said, closing his eyes and trying to picture the place.
Her arms still around him, she began to flip open the buttons of his shirt as she spoke in a sensual monotone. "Topaz. It's like most of the other islands in the Caribbean, lush and green, very warm, surrounded by emerald green water." She pulled his shirt out of his pants and undid the last button, brushing below his beltline with her hand. "There's a hotel on it," she went on, "the Carib Jewel. In the twenties it flourished, and it had gambling."
Delicately she removed his shirt.
"Please go on," Vic said, quite aware of the double meaning.
"Gladly," she answered, unhitching his belt and buttoning his pants. "When Prohibition was repealed Topaz dried up. The only business closed down, the tourists Stopped coming, and the island went to seed."
She pulled down his zipper and ran an exploratory hand down his stomach. Vic pulled his breath in as her ringers crept downward.
"You must be thinking about Topaz," she admonished.
"It sounds intriguing," he said, loving the touch of her hand, feeling himself responding to it.
"My idea is to repair the place, fix it up to be the swanky hotel it used to be, liquor, gambling, and women."
"Where do we get the women?"
She took her hands off him. He heard a zipper pulled, and suddenly he felt the unbelievably soft sensation of her breasts on his shoulders, pressing his neck as if he were wearing a silk life preserver. He moved his head from one side to the other, pushing his cheeks into the warm flesh, touching their rising, hardening tips with the corners of his mouth. Her voice was fading as she lost interest in Topaz and replaced it with thoughts of another kind. "The islands are studded with brothels. We'll import them. Vic...?"
"Yes?"
He whirled around to his left, engulfing the out-thrust breast with a mouth moist and hungry.
Her head was thrust back, her mouth open and panting, her eyes glazed, all recognition of everything but Vic's lips faded from their expression. She offered her other breast. "Kiss me harder."
He responded and her body quivered as though hit by lightning. She pulled her dress down and off. Vic kicked off his pants and drew himself up to her. Her arms circled him, pulling him as close and tight against her as two humans can be. "Oh, she sobbed, tears of pleasure springing into her eyes. "Oh, oh, oh" she moaned in rhythm to the drive of his body, each "oh" coming louder and faster than the last, until the last one was sharp and fierce. She convulsed and pulled him so hard against her he thought they would weld together. For Vic the moment was just as explosive. He hugged her to him with all his strength, and they lay wrapped in each other's arms, squirming, twisting and sighing until there was no more feeling to be squeezed from the experience.
After a long time Vic said, half to himself, "So this is what it's like to forget your identity."
"Easy, isn't it?" she whispered, understanding him perfectly.
Vic said nothing.