Chapter 8
Jim had no strength left. He lay there and felt ashamed, but there was nothing he could tell Maria. What could he say? How could he ever explain the foolishness of turning over and looking up at Arlene's naked underparts? What man could?
He lay there, feeling the cool night breeze rustle over his chest and stomach and stared at the white ceiling. Upon it, he saw a whole sequence of events. They went flitting by like the color slides Arlene sometimes flashed on their bedroom ceiling with an upturned slide projector, while he lay in bed, and she entertained him with her hand.
"How about this one, Jim. Don't you like it? Isn't the position admirable?"
The color scene changed. A tall man moved into position over a short blonde. "Or how about this one, Jim? Look at the size of him, and doesn't she look really happy, Jim? Just look at the big smile on her face."
A long sequence of slides raced by, and then he was no longer lying down. He was back in the closet with the door closed, the air ventilator on, and he was watching through the secret window.
Arlene played with a young girl. The girl seemed neither scared nor especially interested, but Arlene developed her love program into a long extended campaign, coaxing the girl's underclothes off, coaxing with her fingers, with her lips, until the girl exploded whitely in Jim's vision, like a never-ending gush of milky water a mile high.
"If you ever refuse me, Jim, I'll bring out everything you've done. I'll use it in court..."
"But, Arlene..."
"You better obey."
He had no choice, and through the years his obedience had become a thing of habit. He couldn't help himself. He had to do what she asked, but with Maria standing there naked, still not moving, he wished he could somehow defend himself against her scorn and pity.
He had forgotten his own nakedness, but when she turned and looked at him, he remembered it. He was grateful when she stepped over to the light-switch and snapped it off. She made night again, and the only light came through the long rectangle of the door, and the smaller one of the window. Red neon flickered in spasmodically, keeping time to his heart-beat, as he waited for her to speak. He knew what she would say. He didn't know how he would answer her.
"Why didn't you lock the door, Jim?"
She closed it deliberately, dropped the fastener into place.
He felt agony boiling in his throat, and he couldn't get it out. This time it wasn't his fault. They had been in too much of a hurry to get at each other. He had forgotten honestly, but at another time, in another place, it might not have been by true mistake...
He knew that. He didn't know what to tell her. He could only use empty words. "I'm sorry, Maria. It just happened, I guess."
"Never mind, Jim. It was my fault too."
He heard her moving around in the darkness, and then she was coming close to him. He expected her words then too, and this time, it was worse. He still didn't know what to tell her.
Maria's voice made a soft, compelling whisper: "Jim, I don't believe one word she said. I know we can do it. I know we can win. We started, and we can do it."
He sensed her moving slowly towards him, and the soft white of her body in the darkness filled him with more guilt than ever. Maria's impression of his senses had always remained pure, but he knew he could do nothing now. He had listened to Arlene, and she knew what she was talking about. He lay there, helpless, and he had neither power, nor strength to make love to Maria that night...
"Jim you can... can't you?"
He knew her hands were searching for him, and he shivered, expecting their contact at any second. She was on her knees beside him, she was trying to touch him. "Jim, darling, we've got to do it. Come on. Now!"
He stared beyond her kneeling form, stared at the red light, and when it splashed in, it seemed different. Now it looked like blood, and it was splashing their bodies with blood, and the sight disgusted him. He rolled away from her, trying to escape the cool touch of her fingers, and her hands slipped from his hips.
He forced himself to stand up, and he was struggling with her. He couldn't understand it himself, but he was trying to get out of her arms. He had to prevent any contact with her, and he walked to the window, fumbled with the shade. "Look, Maria, I'm sorry. She's right. I can't do it. I'm no good tonight-no good at all!"
She came close to him. "But what's happened to you, Jim? Tell me."
"I can't." He kept fumbling with the shade, pulled at it, then felt it slipping out of his fingers. He heard it slapping frantically as it went around and around against the upper window panes. Red light flashed in, hit his naked body, and he could see Maria out of the corner of his eyes as she shivered with uncontrolled agony.
"Jim, it's not true, is it? It can't be. I was so close, Jim. So close... so-close, after all these years."
Her words hammered him like steel fists, and he wanted to comfort her. But he couldn't. He stood dead in the night, uncomfortable himself, feeling strange in that strange town, in that strange room. He wanted to help, but he couldn't.
"I can't help you, Maria. I'm sorry."
"Tell me. Tell me, please. What is it? What has she done to you?"
He stood beside her and couldn't look at her. He watched through the window, saw the movement of cars in the street. A young girl stepped off the curb and jaywalked across. She had an armload of groceries, and Jim followed her curiously until she stepped up on the other curb. She was young enough to be his daughter, young enough to be prey for Arlene's hunger. He bent his head, and it was not in prayer, and he felt the enormous weight of the room descending on him.
"Jim?"
"Yeah?" He moved away from the window, and made mechanical motions of bending over and picking up their clothes.
"Are you okay? You're not sick, are you?"
"I'm okay, but I've got to go back to her. She's waiting."
"Don't do it. She'll kill you!"
"So what? Does it really matter?" The words were bitter in his mouth, but he had to utter them. He felt then as if he could only give strength to Maria, by making her angry at him, by forcing her somehow to see that he was no good for her.
"Jim?"
She stepped close to him, and he watched her face and shoulders gleam whitely in a whirling circle of light. Neon added raw red tones to the merry-go-round effect, and the night pulsed around them with a million insect sounds.
He listened to her breathing, and he heard the sound of his own heart. It filled his head with a dull echoing thump. He dreaded any contact with her, but he knew she wanted to touch him. She would want to feel him, to check on developments, prove at all costs that Arlene was wrong.
He had to stop her. The honest hunger and thirst of her body could have no food for fulfillment. He could not comfort her. He could not console her. He was licked, and he couldn't even explain.
"Don't, Maria, don't do it. She was right." He stepped away from her, avoiding her hands, but she followed him. She couldn't understand his defeat and emptiness. Nothing would satisfy her but the hard rough feeling of him as a man, and he couldn't be a man for her.
"Jim, stand still."
He stopped automatically, as if the voice had been that of Arlene. But it was not Arlene, it was Maria, and Maria grabbed his right hand. He wondered what she was going to do with it, but he knew that too. He felt her bring it down across the white tension of her quivering belly flesh, and then she shoved it between her legs. It surprised him, startled him even, that she was still ready.
Her body trembled at his touch, and her voice carried rough urgency. "Kiss me!"
"I'm sorry, Maria."
"Don't talk, just kiss me."
He felt her fumbling for his other hand, and he let her take it. She pressed it up to her right breast, and he felt the round shape in his fingers, and his brain told him to stop, but his fingers cupped her soft flesh. It seemed unnatural to him, as if his hands and fingers were holding on to some life-saving device while the rest of him was slipping away into the obsidian depths of hell.
Her mouth made a warm impression on his neck, and she tensed herself tighter, tighter, and she drew him in.
"Maria...!"
"Don't talk. Just feel me. Keep feeling me. Feel me good, Jim. Real good!"
"I want to, but I can't. Not tonight."
Her soft flesh had woven itself around his fingers and hands, and he couldn't free himself, but his brain told him he had to.
"I've got to go."
"Come on, Jim. We can do it like we used to do it. I can feel it in your hands. Remember how it was those first times-when we were far away from her? Remember those spring nights in the deer camp on Ganson Ridge?"
"Yeah." He said it automatically, and he didn't know why he said it, because he had forced those nights out of all memory! He had not been able to think about them-during those years with Arlene-and continue to exist.
"Remember it all? Remember just how I feel when we're going good, when there's nothing there but us and the night, and no sound but our sound? Do you?"
He felt her capturing him with her words, with her naked flesh, and he felt it twisting around him tighter and tighter, and he still wanted to escape. But he couldn't. She pressed his hand tight, held it with her legs. She was whispering things, things that made no sense, but he was not even listening. For the first time in years, he was remembering how it was.
He had had an old Ford car, which he had fixed up and used to take her riding down the length of the mountains, with the spring nights clutching in at them. The earth smelled rich and wild and full of sap, as if it would burst. He drove narrow dirt roads, holding her with one arm, and his lights jerked like quick white jets through the black trees along the road.
Sometimes night-birds fluttered in front of them, making quick slashes up and down, and sometimes deer jumped like crazy jumping-jacks across the road in front of them. It excited him to see their white tails leap up, erect and proud, and he pulled her closer and closer, as if he might lose her suddenly if he didn't.
They parked often. He sometimes couldn't wait to find a wood road, or a trail where they could get the car off the main route long enough to satisfy the hunger of kissing her and feeling her. He would turn off the ignition and then throw himself on top of her.
Her mouth tasted like some wild fresh honey, and she had a scent of almonds in her nose or in her mouth or in her hair, which drove him wild. He twisted under the steering wheel and slid his hands down to her knee. She wore thin sheer stockings, and that drove him crazy too. He wanted to feel them under his naked body, and he yanked her skirt high, and she helped him, and then for a while he sat there in the night, toying with the tops of her black nylons.
He had talked her into wearing them, and she did it for him. He loved to look down and stare at the milky perfection of her white skin in the pale light from the dash. "God, Maria!" he would say. "It's like milk. How about me drinking some of it? How about me drinking you up?"
Their love-play lasted for a long time, and then he felt her giving away, letting him in. He had never forgotten those first few times, for it was like a smooth object of pure sensation entering another smooth object of pure sensation. There was nothing else, ever in the world, but Maria's holding him.
She held him inside her, and he had always forgotten Arlene.
"So you remember, huh?"
He heard Maria's voice, and he wondered why she had said it, and then he felt her hand fingering his hardness, and he understood. His memory had been too strong, and she seemed to sigh with relief, but he knew it wouldn't last.
Along with the reality of that moment, Arlene walked back. Once again, she crawled back into his brain, and no matter what Maria did now to tell him, to catch him with quick, panting words, it wouldn't work. His ecstasy was gone.
"Maria, I can't!"
His words didn't strike her hard, and she didn't shove him away. "Jim, darling, don't worry. It's okay. You did come back to me, if only for a little while. It'll be all right. We've got time. We can do it, Jim. You can escape from her."
He didn't believe it. He didn't think he could escape, ever, but she sounded so happy, and so glad. He couldn't kill her hope completely. "Yeah," he said. "Maybe we could try."
"Yes, Jim." Her body was too close now, and he struggled for air. He pulled away from her, and he didn't want to leave her completely, but he had to breathe. He reached down and touched her face with trembling fingers.
"But, Maria, let's not try it here. I can't stand it here. She's contaminated the whole place. Let's get out of here. We can go to some joint."
He heard her pleading with him, and he wanted to be sorry, but he couldn't. "But, why, Jim? Why not here? This is my place. I've been here a long time."
"I don't know. I can't explain it, Baby. But don't you know some place, outside of town, far away from here. Someplace we could really be alone."
She was silent for a long time. Then she said, "There's the Blue Bar Motel and Cafe. It's out about fifteen miles on Lake Breenbay. We can go out there."
He reached for her, but as soon as she began talking, she seemed more excited. "Come on, darling. We'll go there. It'll all come back to you... all of it, darling!"