Chapter 11
SANDRA SAT TENSELY beside me. The darkness had not given me a good look at her face.
"Where can we go?" she asked. "Driving around is no good. We might be seen."
Excitement drummed in my temples.
"How about my apartment?"
She asked a few questions, seemed satisfied.
"All right, yes. Your place would seem all right."
Minutes later we were in my apartment. I mixed drinks while Sandra walked around nervously, touching objects, smoking in quick, jerky movements. What had become of what I had imagined would be defenses?
I brought her a drink and drew her to sit on the daybed that doubled as my bed at night.
She looked down at her drink, then brought the glass to her lips and downed its contents in a few swift gulps. She held the empty glass out to me.
"I'm going to need another one of these, Mark."
I brought it to her. She accepted it. I sat down beside her.
"I'm doing a terrible thing," she said. "I shouldn't be here." She pressed her palms against her cheeks. "I'm really a terrible person-you must have heard. Howard is good to me. He's a fine, intelligent, considerate man. I shouldn't be doing this to him."
I didn't know what to say. Howard seemed to have nothing to do with me. Certainly I had no wish to discuss him. I said nothing.
Sandra finished part of the second drink and seemed to settle down a bit. Her eyes swept over me, fastened on mine.
"You're a handsome boy, Mark. I suppose I ought to tell you that-" she smiled suddenly, nervously-"since you called me beautiful."
"And do I remind you of someone?"
She nodded.
"Yes."
A flush rose to her cheeks-again that inner radiance. She seemed a creature of sudden changes. Abruptly she was calm and again her eyes seemed to seclude the two of us from the world-even from our immediate surroundings.
My disreputable pad was suddenly a place of fateful-perhaps glamorous-intrigue. Sandra might be, I thought, the most woman I had ever tangled with.
A kind of unbearable pressure was building up inside me. I wanted to feel her close to me, to taste her lips. I moved toward her on the daybed. My knee bumped hers. I took her clumsily into my arms. Her body stiffened. She stared hard at me. The brown of her eyes darkened. Her red mouth was inches away. I tried to kiss her.
She tensed more, turned her face away. "No. Don't do that."
I forced the issue. My lips covered hers. Hers were cold and unyielding. She fought free, spilling her drink, and stood up. "Please take me home." I stared at her in amazement.
"Are you completely nuts?"
I blurted the question. For some reason it sounded inane.
Her face was like porcelain.
"I said, take me home. I had no business coming here." I jumped up. She had started toward the door. I was suddenly angry.
"Why, you damned tease-"
I caught up with her in two quick strides, grabbed her and swung her around. I felt like hitting her and knew an insane wonder-would she shatter like an animated porcelain toy?
I jerked her roughly against me and my mouth smashed down on hers. I bruised her lips with the savage kiss and tasted blood. I was startled-at the same time I knew a hot surge of elation. Nothing about this reminded me of Nell. I wanted also to erase the image of whomever I reminded her of.
Her reaction was not what I expected. For a moment she remained a frozen statue in my arms. Then she turned into a wild woman.
She uttered a sobbing moan. Suddenly her nails were raking through my clothing. Her mouth came alive under mine. Her body seemed to unlock and a tumbling rapids of dammed-up passion was unleashed. Her body convulsed against mine.
We fought our way down to the floor. She made unintelligible sounds. Her dress had pulled up and I glimpsed flashing thighs. They became a part of a kaleidoscopic montage of sight, sensations and sound. I barely grasped what was happening. I realized dimly that she was clawing at me, ripping buttons off my shirt in her wild haste to get it open. At the same ripe she was sobbing as she rained kisses over my face.
The details of how we became undressed will always remain a blur to me. But abruptly long, slim legs were vising instead of fighting me and she was panting wild obscenities in my ear as we rolled on the floor.
I found myself meeting insanity with insanity. I remember wondering-was this maturity? No question about it, she had taken over-as Nell usually took over in our relationship-but with a difference. Sandra seemed at the opposite pole from Nell's gentle normalcy.
Normalcy? What in Nell's and my relationship had been normal? I found myself questioning, for the first time, the very fundamentals of what I had always accepted as the one completely joyful joining of my entity with another's as my being was sucked into the maelstrom of Sandra.
We fused-Sandra and I-in explosive sequences like thunderous waves crashing on a night-darkened shore.
Later we sprawled, naked and exhausted, still on the floor. Sandra found and lit a cigarette. She inhaled deeply. For the first time I was able to see her clearly, my mind unfogged by uninformed desire.
I propped myself on an elbow, allowed my gaze to trail slowly, lingeringly, over her. She was as slender as she had seemed when dressed. Her body was firm without girdle or bra. Below her breasts I could see the tracing of her rib cage and below that her belly dropped concavely. Her hip bones protruded slightly.
Her breasts were fuller than I had imagined. They spread slightly from their own weight. Her shoulders were sculptured over finely formed bones.
She puffed on her cigarette, staring at the ceiling, breathing slowly and evenly. I could almost see renewed desire creeping back into her body, giving it a tone and tension, and I knew it would soon be storming against me again.
She turned her face toward me and I felt the impact of her eyes.
She asked, "Who is Nell? Is she whom I remind you of?"
Had I called her Nell while we were making love? I shook my head.
"No," I said. "You're not at all like her." I neither lied nor told the truth.
I cut classes for a couple of days to go home for Debbie's wedding. The whole deal impressed me as a barbaric, pagan ritual. Debbie walked around with a glazed expression. I guessed she was experiencing whtt socially passed for happiness. If a bride was supposed to be happy-Debbie was happy.
I was relieved when the performance was over and I could return to my life at school. Its tempo had picked up.
I came back on a Sunday, late in the afternoon. I shed my suit, put on comfortable slacks and an old sweatshirt. I stacked the stereo with jazz, opened a can of beer and flopped on the daybed. For two hours nothing got to me except jazz and four cans of beer.
Then a knock came at my door. Alice Rawson came in.
"Hello, Mark," she said quietly. "Hi, honey."
Something was on her mind. I sensed it the minute I tried to kiss her hello. She turned a cool cheek to my lips. She moved away from me, picked up a book from my desk, stared at it blankly and put it back down again.
"What's the bug?" I asked.
No answer.
"Want a beer?"
"Do you have anything stronger?"
"Sure, I think I have some whiskey here somewhere."
"That would be fine. With soda." I mixed her drink, opened another can of beer for myself. The familiar pad, jazz and beer had wrapped me in a warm and comfortable glow. Alice did not seem about to come in with me and I felt a little irritated.
I sat on the daybed. Alice made it a point to sit in a chair. She drank some of her highball, then held the glass in both hands. She looked sad.
She said, "I haven't seen much of you the last two weeks, Mark."
"Last few days you know about. I had to go home. Before that-I decided to reform and get in some studying."
She gave me a brooding stare.
"Mark, don't he to me," she said quietly.
I shifted uncomfortably on the daybed. I wished she had picked some other time for what I guessed was coming.
"I don't know what you're talking about," I said. "Why should I lie to you?" She drew a breath. "Because of Mrs. Clinton."
My guess as to what was bugging her had been correct. I wondered who had told her about Sandra Clinton.
Alice said, "You're always making a big thing about honesty. Now be honest with me. It's true, isn't it? I mean you and that woman-"
I shrugged.
"Okay, I've seen her a few times. Who told you?" Her face was pale and stiff.
"You ought to know you can't keep a thing like that quiet on a college campus. A student running around with one of the professor's wives-everyone is bound to hear about it."
Apparently Sandra and I had not been as discreet as I had imagined.
I could think of nothing to say. I felt embarrassed. I was particularly sorry that Alice had found out. I owed her nothing-we had no deal on about fidelity or any of that jazz. I had been straight enough with her about my feelings-no strings were attached to either of us. Still, I had no wish to hurt her feelings.
Alice swallowed the rest of her drink.
"I realize it's silly of me to come over and make jealous sounds. The number one rule of a successful female is-don't get jealous. The number two rule is-if you do get jealous, don't show it. All the columns tell a gal that the worst thing she can do if somebody is beating her time is to run over to her boy friend or husband and make a big noise. I am jealous. But the reason I came has more to do with your chances of getting into trouble. If you were involved with anyone but the wife of a college professor-I might have been able to stick to the rule book."
"What's your point?"
"If you don't already grasp it-I don't know why I bother to tell you," she said heatedly. "I find it difficult to stand back biting my tongue while you're jumping into soup with both feet. Mark, what the hell is it with you anyway? Have you got some kind of death wish? Are you on a self-destruction kick?"
"Alice, damn it-"
"Let me finish. I know what you're going to tell me. You're free to do as you please. I don't have any claim on you and I ought to keep my mouth shut. Well, it's true that we're not married, not even engaged. But I have been sleeping with you off and on since last year-and you matter to me."
Her eyes filled with tears.
If she had come over to make me feel lousy she was succeeding. I had the uncomfortable feeling that what she had said about my being bent on self-destruction held an element of truth. Something was bugging me, had bugged me for years. Even before Nell-although Nell had at one time seemed to me an answer to my frustrations. Even now my thoughts went back to her. She had come to epitomize my restlessness, my anger and dissatisfaction with things as they were. In Sandra Clinton I had at least found a new area to search and question-I had not yet managed to pigeonhole her as I had Alice and all others-except Nell.
Sandra might not have the answer I sought-but she filled me with questions.
Alice told me she had come without much hope that she could talk any sense into me. She was right. We argued pointlessly while I drank more beer and became nastily drunk. Alice finally blew up and slammed out of the apartment.
But her visit upset me. It had stirred up some shadowy demons that had been lurking around the dark edges of my mind. I found myself in a black mood after she left.
I'm not sure how the evening would have ended. Fortunately Sandra telephoned me around nine o'clock. The minute I heard her voice my mood lifted. I felt challenged.
I said, "I'm glad you called." Her voice was guarded and tense as always. "Howard has to spend some time tonight at the laboratory. I have about two hours. Will you be home?"
"Of course."
Silence at her end of the line. I thought she had hung up.
Then: "I've missed you very much." The line went dead.