Chapter 2
TWO DAYS had passed. Encouraged by his success with the blond nurse he had never seen before, Barry Norton was at it again. This time his appointed victim was no stranger but his own girl, Melody Flemming.
Melody gave herself wholeheartedly to the excitement of his kiss. There was an electric intensity to everything Barry did. His embrace was infused with a frenetic heat to which Melody, being human, could not help respond.
For the moment she overlooked other strange things about Barry, although she was quite familiar with them. His straggly chin-beard, for instance. His long, rather lanky hair and the suggestion of recessive calculation in his pale-blue eyes. No matter what he said or did there was always the impression that the curtain was drawn, an opaque veil obscuring what really was in his thoughts.
Melody was nineteen and full to bursting with elan vital, racing red blood and vivid imagination. These were the keys upon which Barry now was playing for all he was worth. His hope was to evoke from her the ultimate passion that would mean surrender. He had been this far before, and farther, but always she had recovered in time to elude him. Would that happen again? She squirmed against him, finding the male of him with her soft femininity, and suddenly there washed over her the trembling weakness of the healthy woman teased past endurance, and she went limp in his arms.
Mistaking this relaxation for capitulation, Barry went swiftly to work. Before she could recover sufficiently to give battle, he had eased her softly to the pine needles that paved the woods floor, had divested her of the single item of lingerie she wore. A stinging pain ripped through her vitals, shocked her into full realization of what was happening. Shrieking her anger, she made a quick, acrobatic twist that deprived him of what he had achieved. At the same time, grasping his shoulders, she pushed with such desperation that he spun off her to sprawl on the carpet of needles.
Melody fought for possession of herself. In a moment she was showing no particular annoyance externally although she continued to seethe within. She plucked her panties from the bush where he had thrown them, slipped them on. Her dusky brown eyes were intent but without heat, steady but fearless. "After the wedding," she said in an even voice. "I've told you that over and over again."
A perfect hell of fury blasted at Barry's senses but he managed to quell it. The left corner of his mouth twitched uncontrollably and when it finally stopped it left a peculiar half-smile on his face. The pale-blue eyes took on that strange opacity and regarded her fixedly.
A chill tickled the girl's spine. She supposed those eyes of his were what had always rescued her from his advances in the past. Why, she could recall a time when he had looked at her as though she were an animal he wanted to flay while alive and breathing-or so she had imagined, telling herself that she was silly. All men became oddly behaved when in the grip of passion. Still, those eyes and the way they stared had usually been enough to calm her fever of the moment. Today, though, the blast of sensation set off by his kiss had almost proved her undoing.
"Wedding," he said in a carefully controlled voice that was strangely lifeless. "Wedding, I hear. All the time wedding-yet whenever I ask when, you stall and hedge. One day, Melody, you're going to regret tormenting me." He clasped his long fingers and gave them a furious wrench, making the joints pop.
"I don't torment you," she said. "Not on purpose."
"You torment and torture me. You're a girl, and girls like to see men in agony. They like to make men squirm like a worm on a pin... " His eyes were opaque and glassy. "A worm on a pin. Yes."
A shudder coursed through her. "You don't understand, Barry," she said. "It's just that we've been promised since we were children. We've been thrown at each other. Our families decided that some day we would marry and now they take it for granted-but I want to be sure."
"Sure of what?"
"Sure that I love you. Sure that you love me."
"What guarantee do you want from me?"
She tossed her head, her shoulder-length red-brown hair swishing silkily. "That performance you put on a minute ago-was it love? You behaved like an animal in heat."
"Who wouldn't be in heat? You're the most desirable girl alive."
She shrugged. "A man is not a beast. A man is supposed to reason and think-and control himself."
"Come off it, Melody. You want exactly what I want, and just as much as I do. You think I know nothing about women? I've had my share of experience, damn it."
She flushed. "You brag about it enough. I suppose telling me of your conquests is supposed to endear you to me."
"I go to other women only for what you won't give me."
Her chiseled lips twisted. "Well, this would be a fine evening for it. You've been refused here, so go ahead- find some mangy lady of commerce and have yourself a ball. Why should I mind if you come to me slightly used? You'd accept me slightly used by someone, wouldn't you?"
He went white but not a muscle of his face moved. The half-smile seemed frozen on. "All right, Melody." He jumped to his feet. "Will you marry me this week?"
"No," she said tightly.
He nodded. "That's what I thought." He turned his back and walked off. Soon he was lost in the depths of the woods.
Melody sighed, marched away in the opposite direction. Here on the fringe of the pine woods occupying a good part of her family's land, she was only a few hundred yards from home.
A narrow escape, she mused. Technically, she supposed, she was no longer quite a virgin, but she felt no difference in herself.
Melody was a passionate girl as well as an intelligent one. She read romances avidly. She had sinned many times vicariously and the nature of her daydreams made her vulnerability quite plain to herself. Once again, Melody sighed. She was ready. There was no mistaking that. Had it been another man... A cool shiver raced over her skin. Other men stayed away because of Barry.
Everyone knew she was promised to him.
In front of the sprawling old house with its slender and delicately fluted iron columns stood an ancient Packard phaeton, its top down and the twin windshields folded down. The elegant thoroughbred perched on stainless-steel wire wheels as bright as new. The rich maroon finish glistened with wax.
It was Missy Blumendahl's car, Missy being a neighbor of the Flemmings. Melody loved Missy. The woman meant more to Melody than did her own mother-who had run to fat, constantly complained, and bitterly resented a world that was strange and baffling to her. Joyce Flemming's husband had allowed her unlimited money, had taken fine care of her. But he had died in a nasty plane accident. After that, Joyce had gone to pieces, growing more dissociated and more blindly self-indulgent and apparently more stupid every day.
Missy was sitting on the porch and looking out across the close-cropped lawn that separated the house from the woods.
She snorted like a passionate stallion and smote a thick thigh with gauntleted driving-gloves. "Thought you said she was with Barry."
"She is," replied Joyce, reclining with what she thought was glamour on a wicker lounge.
"Well, she ain't now. Here she comes lookin' thoughtful-and no wonder."
Joyce sat up in a surge of surplus flesh. Her small dark eyes rolled dully. "Whatever do you mean?"
"Oh-." Missy uttered her favorite four-letter word, making Joyce wince. "We've been over this plenty of times, but you refuse to see what's staring at you nose to nose. Barry may have possibilities as an artist-but he belongs in a padded cell. Melody, on the other hand, is not only beautiful but sane. Why are you feeding her to that refugee from a psycho ward?"
Joyce scowled. She had never liked Missy. "Go ahead, call him names. The fact remains that his family is one of the oldest in the state. They have money, name, position-" Missy, quite as well-fleshed as Joyce, now leaped to her feet, controlling her hundred and eighty pounds and five foot five like a trained athlete. Her face was pink and her hair, palpably with the aid of chemicals, a brassy yellow. She was encased in slacks as tight as the skin on a sausage but her bulges, while many, were hard and conditioned. "Dammit, Joyce, the Norton family has gone completely to seed. Barry's father inherited money, yes, but he's a full-blown lush who never did anything constructive in his entire life. Only such a father could produce a warped specimen like Barry."
"Nobody else in the county ever calls him warped. Nobody else sees anything wrong."
"His lunacy sticks out like a sore titty," retorted Missy. "But when you're rich, and something of a painter besides, they don't call you nuts. They call you eccentric." She snorted. "Well, that eccentric boy-friend of Melody's is going to bust loose and carve someone up one of these clays. I just hope to God it isn't your daughter."
Joyce was pale: "You can't mean that," she whispered.
"Didn't you ever hear of the cats he crucified to the smoke house? Or the two puppies he baked alive in the oven? Don't tell me you figured it was just youthful hijinks, something he would outgrow."
Joyce reached for a half-consumed highball, drained the glass. "You've been listening to people talk. Anyone with what the Nortons have is target for all sorts of irresponsible yammer. I'm surprised that you'd be one to spread it. Lurline would never permit... "
"Lurline? Barry's mother?" Missy laughed raucously.
"Lurline is up to the eyeballs in Norton lore and Norton wealth, so she chooses to ignore Norton lunacy. As for you, how can you cling to the dark-age idiocy of selling off your own child?" Joyce started weeping. "You don't understand," she blubbered. "All you do is listen to gossip, but you don't understand. Since Fred died, no one understands... It's so hard running the place, seeing that ends meet... "
"Oh, knock it off," blared Missy. "If I'm any judge, Bridge Pilgrim is a better plantation manager than Fred ever was. Bet you he's made you more money per year since Fred's accident than Fred made, but you don't know how to use it. Frankly, old girl, you're incompetent. You thrive on it. You'd rather be an object of self-pity, or any other kind of pity, than buckle down and take hold of things. While my last husband, Ike, was alive-God bless every inch of his Hebraic skin-he taught me all there was to know about business. Fred didn't teach you because he was too moronic or you were, or both. But don't give me any of your poor-mouth about makin' ends meet, because I can tell you to within ten bucks what your bank account reads like."
Joyce wiped her eyes and made a fresh drink. Missy did likewise, helping herself from the bottle and ice bucket standing on a wicker table.
"Well, one thing Fred did teach you-how to buy good whiskey."
"I shouldn't drink," said Joyce sadly. "The stuff has calories."
"Sure does," rumbled Missy. "But no cholesterol." She took a healthy swig. Then, setting down her glass, she grinned. "Say, look who we got here!"
Melody had reached the house. She climbed the steps and walked the length of the veranda.
"Hello, Missy," she said, and went into the bear hug the older woman offered her.
Missy kissed her noisily. "Been wanderin' in the woods?"
Melody nodded grimly. "Barry and I went for a walk."
"You don't seem too happy about it."
"I'm not. He's becoming impossible. Why, he-ah-he depanted me not many minutes ago."
"Child!" gasped Joyce, turning pink. "What on earth are you saying?"
"You need an earphone?" asked Missy offensively. "I heard her perfectly. He tried to get in her breeches. Didn't succeed, I hope."
"No, but he came too close for comfort."
"Well, well and well," remarked Missy mildly, and sat down on a hide-bottomed rocker with a thump.
Joyce started crying again. "Everyone is the same. No one understands. Just gossips and scandal and lying and... "
"Do you mean to imply," asked Melody icily, "that I'm lying?"
"You know that Barry is a perfect gentleman."
"Well for the luwa dandruff," ejaculated Missy.
"See," blared Joyce, "you don't understand, either. Barry is an artist, sort of a Bohemian type with his beard and all, and naturally feels the usual rules don't apply to him. So maybe he takes liberties. But he's a gentleman from a long line of gentlemen. He-"
"Oh, for God's sake," blurted Melody. "You're maundering, Mother. And I've got news for you. I've made up my mind about marrying him."
"You have?" squealed Joyce, perking up. "When?"
"Never," said Melody.
"What?"
"That's right, Mother. I've always tried to ignore it- but there's something about him that makes me think of a snake. For the first time in my life, I've been doing some real thinking."
"Have you told him?" gloated Missy.
"Oh, I hope not!" bleated Joyce. "Surely you'll change your mind, Melody. You two have been keeping company so long."
"Yes-you and his mother saw to that," Melody said slowly. She frowned. "I was never allowed to keep company with anyone else. And you arranged that he was always on hand. You gave me a sort of stubborn brainwashing, feeding it to me from the cradle on up. You had me actually believing your spiel because I couldn't find any good reason not to. But today I came awake. I refused to overlook his strangeness, the way he makes my skin crawl. I realized I had been putting up with him only because I'm a girl and need male company. But I have no further use for him, Mother, and I don't think he has any use for me-except physical."
"Go off to college," advised Missy. "There are plenty of good boys there who would be only too happy to keep you company."
"No," announced Joyce, more iron in her voice than they had ever heard before. "Absolutely and definitely, no. Until you're of age, Melody, you'll do what I say. Now, I want you to give this romance half a chance. You can make a go of it. It's the only thing I'll consider."
"Then," said Missy brassily, "You're a goddamned fool. A fat goddamned fool in the bargain."
"I won't have you talking like that to me," screamed Joyce, struggling to her feet.
Missy smote her powerful right thigh with her gloves and strode down the broad steps. At the bottom she stopped and looked back.
"Come see me, honey, when you _get a chance."
"You bet I will," said Melody, tears of rage glistening on her cheeks.
Missy Blumendahl enthroned herself on the fine old leather of the car seat and flogged the long lean vehicle into motion. Snorting with indignation, she fed gas lavishly. The big phaeton picked up speed. Wind tore at her scarfed head and batted her in the face but she liked it.
She topped the long hill that gave her a view of her ante-bellum home, a tremendous pile of brick and pink stucco with gigantic columns around three sides. Missy was fond of saying that Fahenstock, named for her great-great grandfather, was so much a part of herself that for her to admire it was pure narcissism. She stopped at the crest of the hill and gazed raptly. There the place stood as it had for a hundred and twenty years: majestic, awesome in its rich simplicity, surrounded by a forest of pine and hardwood trees older than the house. Over the double front doors loomed a tremendous fanlight of Belgian stained glass and now the sun, reaching through the old house, through a hallway possibly, shined for a few magic moments on the fanlight and the result was breathtaking. It was like a giant girasol opal glitteringly alive.
Missy nodded with satisfaction and started her car again.
As she drove along, she spoke aloud to herself.
"Too bad we ain't got some sort of head-shrinker in the county. Have to talk to Dr. Fontenot about that."