Chapter 13
Jim felt Maria's violent, uncontrolled shivering and forced himself to forget everything else. No matter what happened in that dark space of time, he had to make up to her, and he had to fight against her fear. She trembled like a cold, wet puppy in his arms. Each spasm seemed worse than the last, and he searched desperately for her lips.
He found them with his and at the same time smelled a strong odor of gasoline. It hit him hard, for the smell reminded him of a time when their lovemaking had been at its very best. It had been back in Vermont, in the spring, and they bad gotten stuck in the mud on a back-country road. He had tried to rock the car out, but the motor heated up, and he couldn't get it out of the mud hole.
Maria didn't care. She huddled close to him, and the air was sharp with the acrid smell of gasoline, and they had made love. It was a good love, as if the whole world had to wait for them to get done, and it had. Nobody had come along, and he had had to get a farmer to pull them out.
They were on the high disk. Maria's voice rose softly into his ear, and he held her under him. He forgot the darkness and their high position and the dangling rope ladder. He had only one thing to do. He had to comfort Maria, for she was close to him and dear to him, and he had only one thing to comfort her with.
And if that thing were sex...
... it didn't matter.
For such a long time he had thought of sex only in its most violent terms. It had come at him like the swift quick breaking of glass, or it had meant a swift current of electric shock. Now, soothing her with his body, he knew it was something better and deeper.
This sex was tender. It was done tenderly and movements which had formerly been swift, violent thrustings and probings were fused into the subtler rhythms of a more gentle union. They melted together in a tender blending of bodies, and he tasted her lips and felt the tender gentle movement of her body, and he guided her with something like his old control.
He had gained back in that movement and dance of gentleness something long gone out of him. He had almost forgotten it, but now he could feel it coming back. He felt, for the full period of their union, as if he were a sculptor who, with infinite pains and gentleness, was moulding a thing of beauty out of the raw sex act.
He maintained it. It was glorious. They held it up together, until he could no longer suppress the mounting pressure which suddenly gushed out pure and strong, and, in fact, they were fused into a single breathing statue.
Her grateful whisper moved a small current of air along his cheek, and he felt her fingers on his naked back. "Thanks, Jim. That's what I've wanted for so long..."
He couldn't say anything then but the truth. "I know, Maria, I know."
Other words might have sounded superfluous, so he didn't use them. She sighed softly against him and seemed to sleep then with him still inside her, and thus he must have fallen asleep, too.
The strong, sharp smell of gasoline awakened him. He shook his head and muttered softly, "I guess we've got to get somebody to help pull this damn car out of here."
Then he remembered. He opened his eyes quickly, desperately, and there was no more blackness. He saw a cone of bright yellow light shining over them, and he knew that somebody stood behind them, beyond his range of vision. Panic pressured his spine to such an extent that he lay there completely frozen. He tried. He fought with himself, But he couldn't force his neck around. He couldn't see...
His neck had turned into a column of solid steel. He couldn't move his head. He couldn't. He couldn't.
The voice was cold, unemotional. "I see I'm a little late. So, Jim, boy, you finally made it."
If he had really known all along that it was Arlene, fear had withheld recognition from his brain. Her voice brought it back. Slowly, as if it still might break, he turned his head and looked at her. It was Arlene, all right. She stood over them, with a flashlight in one hand, and with a revolver in the other. He wondered for a haphazard second where she had gotten it, but then he knew the answer. She had stolen it from Ken. He might have had it in his pocket when he died.
He tilted his head, forced himself up on his elbows, stared at her. He felt like asking her how she had gotten there without disturbing them, but he saw the answer to that in one quick glance. Behind her, a folding stairway had been lowered from a trap-door. Beyond her head, a dark space opened into a passageway leading off below the roof. It had to be there. To get up to the disk, the dancing girls had to have some quick method of climbing up.
"Arlene," he asked sharply. "What do you want? Haven't you done enough already?"
Her smile was grim and succinct. "Not quite. There's just one other thing. It'll be a little quick, a little dramatic, but I'm going to have it..."
He stared into her tense, hard eyes, and he tried to turn over, but his body seemed frozen to Maria's. Arlene noticed it and laughed. "Don't worry, Jim. Hell, I'll get you thawed out of that hole in no time flat."
She jammed the revolver in the pocket of her tight black slacks, then reached into her shirt pocket. She took out a rag, which she slowly unwrapped from its plastic covering. She tied the rag to one of the metal rings, fastened to the drop wires, and then struck a match. Obviously the rag had been soaked in gasoline, for it flared suddenly in her face.
Arlene loosened the ring. It slid down the wire with a long shrill screech of metallic sound, and instantly the blackness ignited into raw red light. A line of fire rocketed around the edges of the huge Circus Room, and the three of them rode the black disk like a badly tossing lifeboat caught in an ocean of fire.
Arlene strode back over him. "Okay, Jim, you can get off her now, and you might as well get your big fat can over to the edge of this thing. For a few minutes, anyway, Maria's going to be mine."
Jim felt a tight web of panic crawl through his arms and legs. He couldn't move. She kicked him suddenly, painfully, in the guts. He felt the sick taste of pain, and then he came unglued. He wanted to do something. He wanted to fight Arlene, but he couldn't believe what he saw.
Not even Arlene could do that sort of thing. She couldn't possibly intend to do something with that revolver, but it became only too apparent that she had that very idea in her sick head.
She straightened up over Maria and gestured suggestively with the gun. "You've felt his tool, darling. Now you can feel this. Maybe, it's not as hot at first. But, Maria, dear, it can be! As for an orgasm, I don't think you've ever felt anything quite like this one in your life. When it goes off, I think this will give you quite a thrill, and if it proves to be your last-well, that won't hurt anything."
Maria muttered, "Please don't!"
"Aw, come on, darling. I'm sure this should be most delightful and satisfying for both of us.
Jim had crawled weakly over to the edge of the disk. He had been squeezed empty of feeling. He felt like a discarded tube of old shaving cream. He looked back at that incredible scene of a woman dressed in black slacks and a green shirt, holding a savage gun. She loomed erect and hard over a naked white female body. The black revolver made an erect, menacing shadow against the roaring red flames, and hell itself opened doors into his brain.
All of a sudden, Arlene knelt. She made a swift, stabbing movement with her gun, and Maria screamed. Jim rolled over, forced himself to his knees, shouted at her, "Arlene, damn you, don't do it!"
It amazed him. He couldn't believe he could swing it, but the tone of his voice stopped her. She hesitated for a long moment, her black revolver held close between Maria's white thighs, and then she stood up.
She walked over, stood over him with the gun, aimed it straight at the center on his forehead. He watched the cold gleam in her eyes, he watched the muzzle moving just between the ridge of his nose and his hair line. He knew she wouldn't miss. She couldn't miss. She was too calm, too cold, too deadly.
She took another step. Her voice carried a sharp steel whip in it. "Go on. Move back. Go on!"
He glanced behind him. He knelt within a yard of the edge of the disk, and there was nothing there but a drop and fall of three stories. The bright roaring flames circled faster and faster around the lower ball-room. He tried to think. He couldn't think.
She stepped closer, gestured slowly with her gun. "Go on, move! You've had your fun, Jim. Now I'm going to have mine."
He gave way in front of her. He moved back a few inches. He could feel the space there behind him, waiting for him. He would have liked to have done something heroic, but she had the gun. She kept it pointed straight at him, and he couldn't help Maria - ever again.
"Jim, damn you, move!"
"No!"
He had said it. He looked up at her, and his negative word surprised him. After saying that one word to her, he felt better. He rallied some lost inch of strength, forced himself to move off his knee, to plant his right foot firmly on the disk.
Then with the gun threatening him, he forced himself to stand, all the way up. He knew she should have shot him, but perhaps the force of his rebellion did something to her. She watched him. She watched him like an expert killer, waiting for the right second, the one final movement. He watched her finger. The gun held true.
He forced himself to look into her eyes instead of at the gun, and then he forced himself against that hellish pressure and threat to take one slow step forward. He took it. He moved, and for the longest time, he didn't know what she would do, but his movement finally caused her to back away. It was a slight thing, but it was something. He could understand her thinking. She wanted to keep the gun clear.
"Stop it, Jim. I'm going to shoot. Jim!" She barked his name sharply, as if barking a command at some disobedient, but formerly well-trained, animal. He heard it, knew what it meant, but he didn't stop moving an inch at a time, slowly, pushing her back.
"Jim, don't you dare come near me!"
Right then, with all that steel tension in her voice, he expected her to break down and shoot... but she didn't. He kept up his slow painful inching, one fraction of an inch, then another. He didn't look away from her eyes, and he forced her back to the folding stairs descending from the trap door.
There, she stopped, with her back to the crude simple strip of railing, and would not move any further. He could see it. He could see the desperation flaring in her eyes, as a quick surge of red flames painted a hard message upon her face. She wouldn't let them escape, ever-not up those life-saving stairs. They could never get past her and get out the passage through the old hotel.
She held the gun. She muttered her verdict, quickly, savagely. "You've got to burn, both of you!"
He stared at her left ear. He tried to think. Maria lay behind him, and he couldn't turn to look at her. He didn't dare. He wanted to do something for her. Now that they had finally found again the marvelous tenderness of real lovemaking, he had at least to try...
But what could he do?
They were caught together, inextricably, locked in hell, and blood red flames swept faster and faster up the high white walls. He wanted to tell Maria something. He wanted to tell her that he loved her, but he could only stand there silently poised over eternity. He couldn't unfreeze his lips.
What could he do? They had not come there in the way Arlene had come there. They had climbed up the rope ladder, swinging in space, discovering in their coming how Ken had been murdered. He looked deliberately, carefully, at Arlene and wondered if he could bluff her. He wondered in his swift race against death and time, if she knew about the lower trap-door that opened up through the podium...
If he had any luck at all, she didn't.
If she didn't, if he and Maria could get down the ladder and out through the basement passage, then...
He didn't have time to be cute about it. Each second was pushing them in, ready to explode. Long snake-tongues of flame hissed up from the extremities of the room, and the center space below was still free of fire, but it wouldn't remain free for long. He didn't turn around, but he spoke.
"Maria," he said, and he forced his voice to sound urgent and imperative. "Get up and start down the rope ladder. I'll come down after you."
He scanned Arlene's face, not daring to hope, not daring to breathe. He looked for some hint of what she might be thinking. Would Arlene shoot them, immediately? Or would she rather see them burned up in the lower, stronger flames?
Her face revealed no sign of understanding his plan. He made himself smile at her, and Arlene's mouth whipped out a short, grim smile in return. "So you want to burn, huh?"
"Yeah!"