Chapter 6
BETH and Sandra went their separate ways after they stepped into the bar of the Stamen Motel, and no one would have guessed the two women had arrived together. They had achieved a routine as efficient as it was quiet, and Beth neither knew nor cared to know the identity of the man Sandra was meeting. It was enough for Beth that she would see Bruce again, and even though they had had their last encounter only forty-eight hours earlier, she felt breathless, a trifle giddy and as eager as a bride. Perhaps, she told herself, she was going a little too far to think in terms of being a bride. A wife who was meeting a man other than her husband, and who was being paid for the companionship, could not exactly consider herself virginal.
Nevertheless, she belonged to Bruce and no one else, she insisted to herself. She could scarcely wait to see his expression when catching sight of her in her new, figure-hugging suit of raw silk that was barely a shade darker than her hair. She was wearing new, matching pumps with skyscraper heels, she carried a handbag covered with the same material, and the jade links that swung from her ears swayed gently as she made her way across the crowded room. She was positively dazzling and, equally important, knew it.
Bruce was waiting for her at their usual table and smiled warmly as he rose to his feet. His admiration was as intense and obvious as she had hoped it would be, and her heart seemed to skip a beat when their eyes met.
"You've already ordered me a drink," she said, pleased, and then stopped short. Another man was sitting at the table, frankly studying her from head to toe.
Ruddy and powerfully built, he looked as though he might be in his early forties. The fabric of his suit was expensive, the suit itself was extremely well cut, and both his shirt and necktie were custom-made. He was freshly barbered and, Beth suspected, had spent time under a sunlamp. His air was that of quiet authority. He was the type of high-pressure executive she instinctively disliked.
"Hello, honey," Bruce said genially. "Beth, meet Dave."
Conscious of the fact that no last names had been mentioned, Beth nevertheless carried off the encounter gracefully, as a lady should. "How do you do?" She extended a doeskin-gloved hand.
Dave's grip was powerful. He enveloped her hand with his and held on to her far longer than was polite.
Bruce helped her into her chair, and both men complimented her on her appearance.
Beth's sense of pleasure had evaporated, and she tried to tell herself she was foolish to feel disappointed. There were a dozen reasons why the stranger might be sitting with Bruce, the most probable being that they were acquaintances who had met in the bar by chance.
In the next quarter of an hour, however, a few casual remarks exchanged by the men indicated that they were business associates. Dave, then, had come to the Stamen with Bruce.
Beth assumed that Dave was also meeting a girl and hoped she would appear soon so she could go off with Bruce. Their time together was so precious that she hated to waste even a minute of it.
To her surprise, Bruce ordered a second round of drinks, not bothering to inquire whether she wanted another. She shook her head to indicate that, as usual, one was her limit.
Brace's smile was a trifle forced. "This is a special occasion."
"Oh?" She couldn't imagine why she felt uneasy and waited politely for an explanation.
He turned to the older man. "It isn't very often that Dave and his desk can be separated," Bruce said.
Dave chuckled but made no reply as he puffed on his cigar.
"He's the hardest working guy I've ever known," Bruce continued. "A living dynamo."
Beth wondered why he was going to such pains to keep on Dave's good side, and she observed them more carefully. When Dave's cigar went out, Brace's lighter was ready, and when the drinks came, Brace made certain that Dave's was cold enough. It finally occurred to her that Dave was, in all probability, Brace's employer. She had seen so many men behaving in that same alert, attentive way when with their business superiors.
She did not want the second martini, but time dragged, the glass sat in front of her on the table and, with nothing better to do, she sipped it. She could feel the liquor taking hold and was a trifle annoyed. Her sexual pleasure might be dulled somewhat, and she wished Brace would show the courage to pay their bill, stand and take her off.
To her astonishment, he suddenly glanced at his watch and jumped to his feet. "The office should have heard from Los Angeles by now," he said. "I'd better check." He smiled fleetingly at Beth as he hurried from the room.
The ugly suspicion crossed her mind that he was deliberately leaving her alone with his boss, but she knew him too well for that.
Dave lost no time. His free hand darted under the table, and his strong fingers closed over Beth's knee. She tried to withdraw but was unable to free herself from his grip without making a scene, and she wished, fervently, that she were not wearing such a short skirt.
"Must you?" she asked coldly as his hand slid a little higher on her thigh.
"You bet. When I see a luscious peach, I eat it. When I'm with a girl like you, I do what comes natural to me." Dave chuckled, knocked the ash off his cigar with his free hand and then pointed the glowing end at he glass. "Drink up, baby."
He was so coarse that Beth decided to take refuge in liquor and obediendy drained her drink.
Dave immediately ordered them another round.
She noted that he did not tell the waiter to bring another for Brace, however, and her misgivings increased.
"This is quite a place," Dave said, still stroking her thigh as he looked around.
Beth's patience was exhausted. "May I remind you that it's a bar, not a Swedish massage parlor?" she asked frigidly.
He thought her remark vastly amusing, but she was relieved when he took away his hand and placed his elbow on the table.
"Is that better?" he wanted to know.
"Much." He might be Brace's superior, Beth thought, but she had no desire to be even civil to someone so gross.
Their fresh drinks arrived, and Dave immediately raised his glass in a toast. "Here's to it." He polished off half of the drink in a single gulp.
Beth decided to stall until Brace reappeared and took only a tiny sip.
"That's no way to drink," Dave protested.
"Thanks all the same, but I know my capacity."
"A big girl like you? Maybe I'd better teach you how to drink." He spoke so loudly that Patsy Blair, who was sitting a short distance away with a man, glanced over and raised an eyebrow.
Beth was embarrassed, and in her confusion took too large a swallow.
"That's more like it, baby." Dave beamed.
The liquor was definitely taking hold now, and Beth's sense of frustration increased. She began to think it un-likely that Brace would return, and was so crashed by the unexpected development that her mind became as numb as her body. Dave spoke to her several times but she replied in monosyllables. There was, however, a pressing problem: she had to find some way to be rid of Dave without creating an uproar.
He gave her no opportunity. Taking a roll of money from his pocket, he threw a bill on to the table. "Let's go, baby," he said.
Before Beth could protest, he had pulled back her chair, taken a firm grip on her arm and led her toward the lobby.
She made a last, desperate attempt to think of an evasion, an excuse, but her mind seemed paralyzed.
A minute or so later she was alone with Dave behind the closed and locked door of a bedroom.
His cigar clenched in his teeth, he looked her up and down greedily. "I believe in business before pleasure. The fee is one hundred. Right?"
Beth lost her temper but would not give him the satisfaction of knowing it. "The fee," she said icily, "happens to be whatever I feel like charging."
"Independent, huh?" Her attitude struck him as funny.
"I'm in a position to be independent." Beth made an attempt to grope through her martini-inspired fog. If she named a charge sufficiently outrageous, he might walk out on her. On the other hand, in the event he did accept, she could use the money to remit to her cousin Phil who had a few hours ago contacted her about a sudden necessity for approximately two hundred dollars. She had thought, originally, that the satisfaction of her cousin's need could be delayed a few days, but here was an opportunity for rapid action she knew Phil would be terribly grateful for. If she had to corrupt herself, it might as well be for a good cause. "For you," she said, "two-fifty."
Dave's eyes narrowed. "For that kind of dough, I want a sample."
Beth felt like a character in a play, an actress on a stage portraying a prostitute. "Sorry, Buster. No tickee, no washee."
His hard eyes seemed to bore through her. He took his time inspecting her and, as he carefully surveyed her, she had the uncomfortable feeling that he was mentally undressing her. "You've got a deal," he said at last. "But, baby, you'd better be worth it." Taking his bankroll from his pocket, he counted out two hundred and fifty dollars in tens and twenties.
Here I am with a slob, Beth thought, and all that matters to me is the money. But the money, after all, is for Phil.
"Away we go," Dave said. "Peel, baby, and let's see what you've really got."
The forty-five minutes that followed proved to be less agonizing than Beth had anticipated. She paraded for Dave in the nude at his command, sat on his lap and allowed him to paw her, then permitted him to make love to her on the bed. She pretended to enjoy his caresses, simulated passion when he reached a climax and, in all, convincingly acted the role of an abandoned woman.
At last he left her, promising to see her again in the near future. Beth spent a long time scrubbing herself in the shower.
The reason I felt nothing, she thought, was because I had three drinks. The gin numbed me.
She was just fooling herself and knew it. Sex with Dave meant no more and no less to her than did sex with Charlie. Both men had left her completely cold, and it did not matter whether she had no liquor at all or drank to excess. Men simply lacked the ability to stir her. With one exception.
Bruce. With him she could soar into the most distant realms of outer space.
She dressed slowly, feeling scant joy in her lovely new outfit, herself or the world. She had only one satisfaction, which was that she could send the money to her cousin Phil immediately.
At last she was ready and surveyed herself in the mirror. My hair is too light, she thought. I'm wearing too much eye make-up, and my lipstick is too glossy. My heels are too high, and the way my skirt fits me is a disgrace. I don't just look like a whore. I am a whore.
A sudden longing for Bruce overwhelmed her, and in almost the same breath she hated him with a savage intensity that made her tremble.
Unable to leave the motel while she was in such a shaken state, she sat down on the edge of the bed and tried to put her feelings and thoughts in order. One part of her being insisted that Bruce had betrayed her but, in all justice to him, she had to admit that she was being unfair to him. He had never said he loved her or wanted to marry her, nor had he even asked her to reserve herself exclusively for him. He had accepted her at face value for what she was, an attractive young housewife who prostituted herself, part-time, for cash on the barrelhead.
Was Bruce really drawn to her? Obviously, enough to have paid her the better part of two thousand dollars. So he found sex with her eminently satisfying. Or had, until today. But she had no way of knowing whether he felt any spark other than the physical. Refusing to blind herself to reality any longer, she thought it un-likely that Bruce considered her in any terms other than bodily ones. A man didn't turn a woman over to someone else if he felt even a vestige of real affection or respect for her.
Beth laughed harshly. Why should Bruce respect her? She had cheated on her husband and broken her marriage vows every time she had met Bruce. Having willingly accepted his money, she couldn't claim that she herself had been motivated solely by love.
Yet, she felt certain, she had been in love with Bruce, until this afternoon. Staring at the closed Venetian blinds and watching the spring breeze fluttering the muslin curtains, she wondered if what she had felt had actually been true love, as she had believed. Harshly, angrily, she forced herself to take inventory.
Her sex with Bruce had been perfect. No sophistry or rationalization would ever convince her otherwise.
He had intrigued her, to be sure. Yet she still knew virtually nothing about his life, his work, his background, any more than he knew about hers. Was he silent or talkative the first thing in the morning? How did he react when he faced a vocational crisis? When he loved a woman, was he jealous of her? Obviously, he didn't mind sharing a call girl with a colleague. Was he free with his money, or stingy? Did he play golf? What were his reading tastes?
She didn't know and would never find out, she thought.
Shattered and demoralized, Beth reached into her handbag for a handkerchief, dabbed at her cheeks to wipe away the tears that would not come, then twisted the material in her fingers. One thing was certain: she had been living in a delusive dream-world long enough. The time had come to face facts squarely and rearrange her life accordingly. She pressed the wad of bills Dave had given her, counted the money and, smiling sourly, stuffed it into her inner purse.
It was just as well she had earned so much today, for herself and for her cousin Phil, because this day was her last as a prostitute. Never again would she degrade herself by leasing her body to a coarse stranger. She had sugar-coated a pill by allowing herself to believe that Bruce really cared for her, but now she knew better. His opinion of her was no higher than Dave's or that of any other man she might meet and entertain under similar circumstances.
The only positive result of the filthy experience had been financial. Thanks to her ability to conjure up a romance with Bruce out of whole cloth, she had been able to send Phil Bates almost half of the money he needed to protect her investment. But her inheritance simply wasn't worth any longer the anguish she was being forced to endure.
Cousin or no cousin, inheritance or no inheritance, she couldn't live the life of a tramp any more. Sexual satisfaction or no sexual satisfaction, she couldn't let her mind dwell on Bruce again. It didn't matter whether he had really betrayed her or whether, because of her lively imagination, she had created a situation where none had actually existed.
The Sandras and Patsys and Carolyns, girls with no morals, no consciences and no standards, could spend the rest of their lives at the Stamen, if that was what they wanted. Maybe cheap affairs relieved their boredom, but she preferred to find her kicks in other ways. Or, if necessary, to live a life devoid of kicks. Excitement wasn't everything, money wasn't everything, and together they could add up to a big zero. Decency was more than an abstract term, and self-respect was something tangible.
Beth stood at last, smoothed her skirt and, after taking a last look at herself in the mirror, stepped out into the corridor, her hips swaying as she minced on her absurdly high heels.
A man left a room down the corridor, glanced at her and halted. "Hi, doll," he said as Beth drew nearer. "Let's go into orbit together."
She swept past him, ignoring his existence as she made her way to the taxi stand.