Chapter 9
Maria had felt him, had lost him, and been deeply disappointed when he wanted to get out of her place. But she realized, after a moment, that he was probably right, that no matter what they did, Arlene would always be there in that room. She would always be staring out of the shadows at them, always laughing.
She picked up her underthings and began to get dressed. She found herself fumbling and turned to him. "Jim, help me with this darn bra. You took it off. Help me put it back on."
He laughed. "You took it off yourself. Don't you remember? Me, I couldn't get the damn thing unfastened, but I'll help you put it back on."
He did. His fingers moved swiftly and surely at their task, and it didn't take them long to get dressed. She didn't watch him, not wanting to embarrass him, and she only hoped for one thing. She wanted the real Jim back beside her, back inside her. She took one last look around, and he held the door open for her as they went out.
Her car was in the garage behind the store, and they walked to it. Jim looked at her with a question in his face, but at her nod he climbed simply into the driver's seat. She watched him, but he drove steadily without looking at her. She hated to see him so close, and yet so distant, and she slid herself over to be close beside him on the seat.
When she did, he dropped his right hand from the wheel to feel her leg. His touch excited her, and she made a game of coaxing him along. She let her own hands search in wild excitement under the steering wheel. She felt him, she felt the resistance to her touch, but also the desire, and she heard virility come back into his voice.
"How do you expect me to drive when you're doing that?"
"I don't."
She waited for him to speak, but he leaned over the wheel intent on the road. When they were about ten miles out of town, he slowed down and dug his fingers hard into her thigh.
"Dammit, Maria, I've had enough. Where can we park?"
Yes, she had him. His fingers excited her. His voice excited her, and she shivered with anticipation and leaned over hastily and kissed him on the cheek. "Just a little further, Jim. There's a dirt road on the left. It goes off into an old limestone quarry."
She saw the big elm, and pointed out the entrance to him. Since they had left, she had not thought about Arlene. She had forced that woman out of her head, and only now Arlene flashed back in a quick terrible image, but Maria swept her out again. She didn't think. She couldn't think.
Jim stopped the car. "I can't wait, Maria."
"Me either." She dug her hands down into his clothes, ran one into his pocket, and felt him through the material. Their headlights sprayed across a high white wall of limestone, and he reached over to snap off the switch. She felt his fingers reaching up, fingering her, and then he was pushing himself towards her.
She felt the intense throb of his body, and she moved her knees wide apart. His lips tore at her. His hands moved over her as if they were kneading her flesh like so much dough, and she was ready-so ready. She had waited too long, and she felt a bright flashing behind her closed eyelids. She had forgotten Arlene. Nothing existed but that supreme moment of coming explosion. Nothing!
"That feels so good, Jim!"
"Yeah!"
She heard nothing. He said nothing else, but a shadow fell abruptly across their open window. A brisk voice and a flashlight snapped in at them out of the darkness. She wanted to die right here, but she could not shut out the sound of the voice.
"Sorry, folks, you can't park here. Hotel or motel-but not here. This is a State Park now. No parking after sundown!"
The State Trooper snapped off his light and walked back to his car, and she was glad he was not one of those who stopped in at the coffee shop sometimes.
She heard Jim cursing hoarsely and long under his breath, and she couldn't say anything. His disappointment matched her own. They had been cut off, frustrated one more time, and she couldn't stand it, but she knew his frustration was just as great. She tried to think of something to say to ease his disappointment, but could find no words.
After she got her dress pulled down, he held out a cigarette to her. Then he started the car and drove on out to the Blue Bar Cafe. She didn't expect many people would be there, and there weren't. When they got to the bar, Jim ordered Scotch on the rocks, and she felt like having a stinger. She needed something strong, sweet, sudden.
The bartender, Hank Goodwin, greeted her with one of his usual curt comic comments. "Whatsamatter, Sue. You need a Bee Bite? A big girl like you."
She tried to think of something clever to say in reply, but she only managed a quick, "I'm beat."
"Thought so. Who's your Romeo?"
She introduced Jim, and then she tried to relax, tried to feel Jim's shoulder next to hers. When Hank wasn't looking she dropped her free hand down and touched Jim's leg. Behind them, one couple moved in slow circles on the dark dance-floor, and she didn't even hear the music. For her, there was no more music, could be no more music, until they had completed the necessary act to unlock their worlds of feeling.
She did look around however and saw that Hank's four musicians seemed to be playing mostly for themselves. She didn't want to feel so lost, didn't want to feel Jim slipping away, and she lifted her hand and placed it on top of his. She didn't know what to say.
"Jim, tell me about your business."
He turned and looked at her abruptly. "What for? That doesn't really matter."
"Dammit, it does. Everything matters to me -to us-to you. You know that." She knew she was spinning out loose words, but she had nothing else to hold him, and she had to hold him.
He shrugged in an easy way, and began pushing his glass in tight circles on the counter. After what he had gone through, he didn't seem terribly nervous even when performing that silly action. She only half-listened to him. She had to try and figure something out, and she couldn't.
"Hell!" he said. "After I left Vermont, I got set up in business in Massachusetts, near Springfield. I've got ten hardware stores now. I guess I do all right. As for money, I've got a pile of it in the bank."
He said the last with some pride, and she studied his face. If they had luck, they could do it. They could get away from Arlene, but only...
It made her feel frustrated to think about it. Arlene represented a point in her thoughts, a point where a long road reached a solid rock wall, and there was no way of getting over it, around it or under it. She went back to studying Jim's face and knew she had to dig deep into the tender flesh of his soul.
She tried it. He stopped talking, and she couldn't seem to reach that delicate center. She wanted to make him talk, but he wouldn't. Slowly, painfully, as if it were so much medicine, she drank her drink. It made a swift, cold chill in her mouth, and then after she swallowed it, she asked him if he wanted to dance.
She had to do something with him.
He half-turned towards her, half-opened his mouth to answer, but he didn't get a chance to say what he wanted. Maria sensed somebody standing behind her, and she turned around to see a woman move suddenly close. The woman leaned over them, and said almost as if she were Jim.
"Sure, why not! It's been a long time since we danced together, Maria. Don't you remember how much we danced that last winter we were together? How all the jerks thought it was because we didn't have any partners? That was a real laugh, wasn't it, Maria?"
Maria choked back a scream and stared as Arlene swung onto the bar-stool beside her. Arlene's laugh sounded deep and low in her throat, Arlene's hand stroked her back with that horrible touch. With quick movements, Arlene's fingers burned through the thin cotton material of Maria's dress, and stopped exactly over the hard outline of Maria's bra strap.
When she felt that, Maria whipped herself away. She didn't think when she grabbed Jim's arm. She forced him to the dance-floor, and they moved like two robots making awkward steps under a flood of crazy green lights.
"Damn you, Jim!" she said hoarsely, and she bumped and ground her pelvis savagely into his. "You've got to think of something. We've got to get away from her. We've got to kill that goddamn bitch."
He looked at her sincerely, tried to smile. "I only wish we could."
"Think of something. Try!"
The whirling lights on the ceiling covered them with green-and-yellow splinters. The floor seemed smooth and even, but their dancing together was agony. She looked up at him, felt his right hand in her back, and his eyes looked like dark ink in that light.
"I don't know, Maria, but maybe, I've got something. Maybe... It might just work."
"What is it?"
His plan was simple. She agreed to it, carried off her end of the deal as quickly as possible. She went over to the drummer as if asking him to play another number, and made arrangements for him to drive off in her car just as soon as he saw them shoot out of the Club.
Jim figured it would be enough to fool Arlene, and as they carried it out, it was. Arlene fell for it, and Arlene took off right after Maria's car. Then, as soon as Arlene had gotten out of sight, Jim took Maria's hand and led her off into the night.
She saw the lake glimmer faintly. Jim found a path and led her along it. Deep pine scents tickled her nose, and she remembered the times in Vermont. Whether for good or for bad, pine mixed with sex made a perfume she could never forget.
She stopped an involuntary sneeze, and he grabbed her hand. "You okay?"
"Yeah."
She felt his hand. It burned with its potential feel, and she tried to keep her desire under control. Jim led her through the woods, through the night, and she didn't care where he was taking her.
It must have been an hour of crashing along through brush and plants near the lake shore, before Jim found what he was looking for. He stepped ahead of her, disappeared for a second into a curtain of branches, and then came back to her.
He led her through them and up a short steep incline to a pleasant pocket in the crest of a small hill. Above her head, a wild, alarmed moon whipped by like a harried jack-rabbit, and she stood and listened to the night. There was no sound. They were far from the dance-floor. Nothing moved anywhere except pine needles close by as they rustled softly in the breeze.
"Come on," he said, "Sit down."
"Just a second."
She didn't want to rush into this. She had been cheated too often. Her body couldn't stand it anymore. This time it had to be right. She wondered if he felt the same way, but he was already sitting down, and he didn't pull her close as he might have.
She stood there, feeling the night, waiting for some unexpected glimmer of light in the darkness. There was nothing. She sat down slowly then and lay back, as if trying to recapture that raw flame in her female softness.
She understood then, how Arlene had castrated him. Sex could be shut off by such wild uncontrolled emotions, and it would take time to restore its normal life. She stared straight up through the dark branches of the pine tree and she watched a column of clouds race silently across the moon.
She whispered up at them, and then she smelled the earth. The last touch of heat was still in it, and her pulse began to race. She knew she had to control herself. She had to be right for both of them-neither too soon nor too late.
Her hands brushed the warm carpet of pine needles. She felt the warmth in the ground. She poked her fingers down through the needles, and felt the earth, and it seemed to her as if the sun must have soaked into that spot for a long time. Right then, she imagined that they were both lying on a fur rug miles square and hundreds of feet deep.
"Jim...?"
He understood her unfinished question and answered it. "Yeah, it sure is nice. Maybe like magic. Just like back then."
"Jim, now!"
Without any further waiting, she offered her immense hunger. She held it out to him with eager body and pressed it into his waiting hands and mouth, and he sank quickly down beside her. She reached for him, helped him slip off his shirt and pants. They both got panicked at his undershorts, and ripped through them in their struggle for relief. Not saying a word, doing nothing but feel, they wrestled in silence, and the moon spilled down over them. She felt it pouring down across her, down across him, splashing them both with thick white.
"Look," she said excited by it, "it's just like whipped cream."
"Shhh!"
The moon spotlighted their struggle, and the white intense light made-when she looked sideways at them-even her discarded clothes look like so many wildly scattered flower petals. His hands and lips worked on her body. His body commanded hers, and she was taking him in. She worked her body hard, meeting him well, and controlling each thrash of her hips. She eased out the agony of her passion in long slow movements. "Jim, darling, Oh, Jim! That's the way I want it. Like that, darling. Like I have wanted it for so long!"
"Okay, baby, okay!"
His breathing made hard, urgent sounds, and his tongue curled into her ear, and she felt the slick wet slippery movement of it pressing against the increasingly tight ache of her eardrum. It was exquisitely beautiful, and her tight wet hunger grew ever more voracious as long-craved fulfillment drew closer.
He took her. He was taking her. He was always taking her, and she knew that they were winning against everything tainted and evil in the World. Time stood still. She knew nothing but a huge silver thrust of moon. Pine trees and earth whirled around and around over her head like a giant merry-go-round and a million Roman candles let off quick exciting explosions. A white flash, a red flash, boom, boom, BOOM!
She had Jim. She had Jim! Finally, completely, with nothing else there, she had him. Her eyes had been closed, she had dropped away into nothing. She had come back... gone again. She had tossed herself in an almost unconscious state of letting herself go, of not being anywhere on earth, of not even existing. She struggled against such total loss of herself, and then she felt fingers inserted where he had been.
"Jim, why are you doing that?"
He didn't answer, she didn't insist. She lay there relaxed, feeling something. She remembered the touch of other hands, like a quick scar in her brain, and then she opened her eyes. She pushed herself up against a great weight and stretched, out her hand.
She felt for Jim's face. She touched and touched again, but it was not Jim's face. Her naked fingertips brushed lips cold as frozen steel, and the naked body tossing on top of hers, manipulating the fingers so cunningly, was not Jim's. Maria stared about her in terror, looking for Jim.
She saw him, and she couldn't understand it. She saw him huddled close beside them. He sat huddled in an awful attitude. A nightmare of silence surrounded him, and his face hung between his knees. She didn't understand, but she saw then the fiendish satisfaction which seeped out of Arlene's lust-filled face.
"Yes," Arlene said, "Yes, my dear, it's me! We're together again, aren't we?"
Maria couldn't stop her screams. They came in waves, and they shattered the night. Her too-long-tormented muscles exploded like hard-bent steel springs. She hurled Arlene from her and, without once looking back, ran screaming across the naked hill. The night loomed black and gigantic above her, and as she ran, it seemed to open vast, ugly jaws in a grin of hate. She screamed again and again, and kept running, and the night screamed after her its dark, unholy terror.