Ralph Gilmore could not escape from the nightmare. There was no escape
anywhere, for his world had become star-crossed with dark patterns of
betrayal and outrage that hid the light of the sun and turned the still
wet, slippery pavement beneath his feet into a quagmire. He experienced
a sinking sensation, a hollowness at the pit of his stomach which
forced him to take refuge in his room and even there he could find no
peace.
It was impossible to avoid remembering, impossible to keep the
tormenting events of the past two weeks from screeching, roaring,
clattering back into his mind like an onrushing subway train, its red
lights ablaze. A jostling on the platform, a violent shove and he was
lying directly in the path of the train, glued to the rails by blind
terror. Only--the rush of returning memories was worse than that, much
worse. If it had been merely physical, if it had been merely something
that could crush and destroy him he might have welcomed it. But there
was no escape from a horror of the mind, unless drink or drugs could be
used as an anodyne and something deep in his nature prevented him from
taking that dangerous road to forgetfulness.
Sleep was out of the question. When he threw himself down and shut his
eyes the torment had become worse, the memory pictures more unendurable.
Unendurable, torturing now--like salt on raw wounds--but there had
been moments when some of them had seemed very precious, worth dying
for, worth ... say it, bring it out into the open ... worth killing
for. But wasn't that an insane way of looking at it? The scales never
came down completely, or balanced completely on one side or the other.
There had to be some joy in the most agonizing of memories. Otherwise
a man would never go on, would never wade deeper into a dark morass
of guilt and self-torment. Knowing himself to be betrayed, but still
going on, putting himself beyond the pale. There had to be a glittering
prize shining in the darkness, beckoning, offering moments of
respite--offering far more than that. Wild joy, forbidden pleasures,
the mind-beguiling beauty of Medusa before her snake-wreathed face
turned her victims to stone.
It was a nightmare now, engulfing him, making him want to die. But it
hadn't been that way at the start. It had started glowingly, a new way
of life opening up, a bright prospect of fulfillment stretching out
before him with nothing at all to mar it.
There was nothing depressing or unwelcome about the acclaim of the
really important critics, the substantial literary recognition he'd
only pretended to despise in moments of immature cynicism. And it was
not tormenting even now to go back and dwell on all the financial
rewards which were showered on brilliant young novelists who were both
serious and widely popular writers--rewards which had been almost
within his grasp.
Success had not been a prospect reserved for the future alone--a
prospect veiled in uncertainty that might not materialize for months or
years, or turn out, in the end, to have been completely illusionary.
Success had swept so close that it had taken on an aspect of immediacy.
He had felt its invisible pulse-beats all about him, had glimpsed the
bright fluttering of its wings. And with it had come an undreamed of
happiness, something he'd hardly dared to hope for.
A woman he could worship, and adore and build a shrine around. A woman
at the center of his life--not just at the periphery. A woman who did
not think him awkward and self-conscious and ridiculously helpless in a
practical way. A woman who knew what artists, writers, musicians--all
creative people--were really like. A woman who didn't want to mother
him, because she knew he had no real need to be mothered, that he had
great inner strength and needed only to be understood and accepted for
the kind of person he was.
He could not avoid asking himself, even now, just how much finding out
the truth about her had changed him. Was he still the same person,
thinking the same thoughts, capable of acting toward others in the same
way? Or was he a different person entirely, thirty years older than
the twenty-five years which made him, in the eyes of the world, still
little more than a boy by actual year-count.
He felt incredibly old and drained--a man of seventy couldn't have
felt any older. But no man of seventy could have been torn as he was
by emotions so deeply rooted in despair. Both explosive violence and
its tormenting aftermath of black despair could only be experienced
in their full intensity by the young. In old age such emotions could
still be destructive to body and mind, but never in quite so terrible a
way.
He had a sudden, almost uncontrollable impulse to pick up the
typewriter which had helped to betray him and hurl it with violence
to the floor. But instead he stood rigid, unmoving, before the room's
one small window, with its bleak, brick-wall outlook until time
became fluid, backward-sweeping, and the present less real than a
certain morning, almost three weeks before, when she had returned the
manuscript he'd sent her with words of glowing praise, and a suggestion
that he make a few minor changes which did not distress him at all.
"One of those big, brown envelopes, Ralph. Looks like another one of
your stories came back. Ralph, you awake? Want me to open it and tell
you--like you asked me to do the last time? You said it might bring you
luck. It sure sounded silly to me. You can't change what's in a letter
after it's been mailed, silly. But I'll open it if you want me to."
The knocking which had preceded the voice had been loud, insistent. It
had continued for ten full seconds, but curiously enough, it was the
voice itself which awakened him, even though he could not distinguish
the words and their significance was completely lost on him.
He sighed and rolled over on his side, drawing the sheets up more
tightly about his naked shoulders. Then, abruptly and almost instantly,
he cursed under his breath and threw the sheets back, reviling himself
for his lack of self-discipline in succumbing to drowsiness at ten in
the morning.
He'd overslept again, which was unusual for him. He was at his best
right after breakfast, when the typewriter keys seemed to come to life
under his fingers and the beautiful words rushed pell-mell across a
virgin sheet of white bond stationery--so fast that the keys sometimes
interlocked, and caused an infuriating delay which he could do nothing
about.
Orange juice, scrambled eggs and buttered toast, followed by three
cups of strong black coffee, could work wonders right after breakfast.
By noon he often found himself slowing down just a little. But he
increased his writing tempo again right after lunch and continued on
briskly, as a rule, until he called it a day at four in the afternoon.
He had never been a burner of the midnight oil--the phrase had an
old-fashioned but Parisian ring which he somehow liked--not even in
college when he'd had to cram a hell of a lot to bluff his way through
sessions of trig and calculus which he violently disliked. A writer
could be independent, at least, completely himself, choose his own
hours of work--
The knocking came again, louder this time, putting an abrupt end to his
thoughts.
"Wait a minute!" he called out. "I just got up. For Pete's sake, you
little dope, give me a chance to put something on."
"How did you know it was me, Ralph?"
"No one else would make such a racket!" he called back.
"I'm sorry, lover boy. I just thought--"
"Stop it, will you? What kind of a reputation are you trying to pin on
me? Please, Nora, show some sense. I've got a busy day ahead of me."
He crossed the room, whipped a pair of gray doeskin slacks from the
back of a chair, gathered up his socks from under the bed, kicked off
his slippers and sat down on the edge of the bed, pulling on socks and
trousers with awkward twistings-about.
When he went to the open door he was also wearing a shirt.
It never ceased to amaze him how closely life paralleled fiction--even
the most realistic, hard-boiled kind of fiction, the Hemingway sort of
thing. A struggling young writer and the landlady's daughter--brother,
it sure could be made to fit. Anywhere, any place, any time, which
meant, of course, that the hard-boiled writers were basically
incurable romantics who took their cue from the way life always has of
duplicating romantic patterns all over the place--every hour of every
day and night. Especially every night.
Not that he'd slept with her or wanted to particularly. She was a
forlorn, pathetic, over-effusive, well-meaning girl of nineteen, who
could not speak grammatically for more than three sentences at a
stretch, but whose syntax was colorful enough at times to arouse the
interest of most protective males. A man with a Pygmalian complex
would have been instantly drawn to her, would have seen tremendous
possibilities in her.
"_Darling, I'll make you over completely. You don't realize what
tenderness, affection, understanding can do. You're a rare and unusual
woman, but you've never had a chance to develop._"
Perhaps he should have felt that way himself. But somehow he couldn't.
She just wasn't physically attractive enough. Not bad looking, exactly,
and a beauty parlor could have done wonders for her. But he had other
things on his mind--at least for the moment.
She stood facing him in the doorway, looking more forlorn than usual,
as if she regretted the slightly mocking way she'd called out to him
through the door, calling him "silly" and all that--he had been too
drowsy to take in the words, but he had an obscure feeling that she'd
said something she was now regretting and her first words made him sure
of it.
"I guess this story just wasn't liked by one of those stupid editors
you're always saying don't know their--it's a word I don't like to
use--from a hole in the ground. Do you want me to open it for you?"
"No, I'll open it," he said. He took the large, bulky envelope from
her, and started to close the door, half-blocking the aperture with his
body, but she squeezed past him into the room.
She crossed the room with a slow, self-conscious undulation of her
hips and sat down on the edge of his bed. He felt a sudden stab of
compassion for her. She was doing her pathetic best to entice him and
he was in no mood to be enticed.
The bulky envelope had given him a jolt. It wasn't the worst jolt he'd
ever experienced--he'd sold fifteen stories to the small-circulation
quality magazines and two to the slicks, and you had to expect
rejections now and then--but he had counted heavily on this particular
story going over big.
It was an unusual story, a powerful story. He'd put virtually
everything he had into it. And now--it had been slammed, thrown back in
his face, with probably a miserable, printed rejection slip. Editors
just didn't give a damn how much they hurt you--or insulted you. Quite
famous authors occasionally got printed rejection slips. He knew that,
but it didn't make the outrage even slightly more palatable or easy to
accept.
He looked at the neat, printed address--Ralph Gilmore, 559 West 38th
Street, New York City--and an angry flush mounted to his cheekbones.
Not typewritten--_printed_--as if some incredible new machine had been
used to add insult to injury.
He tore the envelope open and hesitated for an instant before removing
its contents. What if he had been jumping to an unjust conclusion?
He had no absolute assurance that the envelope contained a rejection
slip. Quite possibly the editor had written him a long and sympathetic
letter, expressing sincere regrets.
No ... that would have been worse. A hundred times worse. The
manuscript had been returned to him, so obviously it had been rejected.
What the hell did he care about how sorry the editor might feel about
it?
Nora was staring at him with a look of bewildered concern on her face,
as if she didn't quite know what it was all about, but could tell from
the way he was glaring at the envelope that he had no intention of
tossing it on the typewriter table, crossing to the bed and putting an
arm about her waist. Not immediately, anyway, and she'd hoped it might
happen this time, that he might turn to her for comfort at least. Three
bulky envelopes in a week, and she knew how much rejections upset him.
Writers were different from other people and probably most of them were
a little crazy.
She'd dreamed about it and hoped for it, but how could she make it
happen when he was so strange, so different, from anyone she'd ever
known. The men she'd known had made it plain just what they'd expected
from her in return for taking her out, making her feel important,
a somebody. If she hadn't liked them she wouldn't have given them
anything in return--she could be a real little bitch at times, why deny
it--but she _had_ liked them, she had, she had! All except that Duncan
worm she could have killed and that piece of--
She didn't say the word, even to herself. He didn't like that kind of
coarseness, got upset whenever she came right out and said what she
knew to be true. Not in a woman anyway. He could use worse language
himself, could go way beyond anything you'd hear in a bar unless you
were standing close to someone who mistook you for a hustler and was
too drunk to tell the difference even when you moved quickly away from
him.
She wanted to please him--God help her, she did want to. She couldn't
explain it, because there was nothing so wonderful about him, even
if he was a writer. But if he really wanted her, if he did or said
something to make her sure, she'd go all the way with him. She'd have
to be sure, because she had to like a man terribly, to worry about
him and think about him and want to buy him things--a new scarf, a
necktie, no matter how many neckties he had or how much money he spent
on her--and be jealous of him and swear she'd kill any other woman who
looked at him twice ... she had to love him that much and that terribly
to go to bed with him.
All right, he wasn't the first one. There had been ... four others.
But she'd never ... cared for ... anyone quite so much and if he was
too blind to see it, or thought the stories he was always writing and
getting returned were more important than a woman in bed with him, a
woman who knew how to make him forget everything but the warm, clinging
sweetness of....
All right, those were his words. Words from one of his crazy
manuscripts. She'd copied them down and read them more than once,
because they'd excited her. But that didn't mean she didn't feel that
way herself. She couldn't use fancy words, maybe, but she knew what it
meant to a man to hold a woman close, and pass his hands up and down
over the smooth flesh of her shoulders and fondle her breasts.... And
she knew what it meant to a woman.
Poetry too. He wrote poetry. "There's nothing in it," he'd said. "A
great poet can starve to death, even quicker than an important novelist
can. I won't be victimized to that extent. Read these if you want to--I
don't give a damn about them. I probably won't write another poem in
the next twenty years."
It didn't make much sense to her. If he was so worried about starving
to death why couldn't he go out and get a job in a bakery?
She watched him closely as he tore open the envelope, quite sure that
he would go into a rage when he read the letter attached to his story.
It had happened ten or twelve times before, when she'd brought him his
mail--either a letter or a printed slip which he'd tossed at her as if
he expected her to become angry too.
What was there to be angry about? If he couldn't write well enough to
get his stories taken by the magazines, what was to prevent him from
going out and getting a paying job?
She had expected him to be angry, and felt a little let down,
disappointed even, when she saw that he was reading the letter with
only a slight frown on his face.
The frown vanished before he stopped reading. It changed to a smile and
then, quite suddenly, he was laughing, yelling, waltzing around the
room like a real gone beat. She got up, a little frightened, and stood
staring at him, unable to believe her eyes.
"It's accepted," he shouted, "Believe it or not, it's accepted and it's
going to be published. A female editor who knows strong writing when
she sees it--who isn't scared off by the kind of candor that goes a
little beyond Faulkner but is too genuine to ignore. And to think that
I used to say unkind things about female editors!"
"You mean--the story's sold and you're going to get paid for it?" she
asked, a stunned incredulity in her eyes.
"Of course it will be paid for," he said. "It's one of the biggest
magazine groups in the country. Their check is as good as a signed
order from the Secretary of the Treasury, for sixteen hundred dollars
from the United States mint."
"Gee--that's wonderful."
"Wonderful isn't the word for it. I don't give a damn about the dough.
What's the matter with you anyway ... haven't I tried to explain? Oh,
sure, the dough means a little something to me. I wouldn't be human
if it didn't. But the important thing is the story is going to be
published. It's the best thing I've ever done--tremendous writing,
really tremendous writing. I'm not being egoistical, I have very high
standards. I know precisely what literary distinction is and when I've
achieved it--quite by accident perhaps, once in a blue moon--but I've
written enough and torn up enough manuscripts and suffered enough to
know. This is a great story. It will knock the critics' eyes out."
"I guess I don't--"
"Don't apologize, don't say a word. It's a little too much for me at
the moment, too. Did I ever tell you that you're beautiful?"
"No," she said. "You've never told me that. And I don't think I am."
"But you are. How would you like to have dinner with me tonight? We'll
celebrate. We'll really kick over the traces."
"Ralph, I don't know. You've never asked me before. How come you've
never asked me before?"
The "how come" grated on him, but he did his best not to look aggrieved.
"It's because I've been too busy--and too worried," he said. "You don't
know what a writer goes through--eight, ten, twelve hours a day. The
creative agony does something to you--makes you feel either detached,
way off in the clouds somewhere or so nervously keyed up that you can't
take down-to-earth realities in your stride. You forget things, make a
fool of yourself, miss priceless opportunities. Like ... telling you
how beautiful you are and how much it would mean to me if you'd say
yes ... yes ... yes. You will have dinner with me."
Her surrender was complete, because it had already been decided upon.
But it was the kind of surrender he hadn't expected, hadn't really
wanted at all. It was physical and immediate and it appalled him,
brought with it a commitment he hadn't planned on, an involvement he
might have welcomed in a moment of desperation, when the sex hunger
was a gnawing ache in him and loneliness was a gnawing ache, and a
woman--any woman--would have been better than the gross mental images
no sex-starved man can avoid conjuring up at times. But he wasn't
desperate now, he'd been thrown a lifeline, and all the east was gold,
bathed in the bright rays of an unexpected sunrise.
"Say what you just said again," she said. "Tell me I'm beautiful, even
if we both know it's a lie. Say anything you want ... so long as you
really need me, and we're not kidding each other about that part of it.
Tell me I'm just a crazy kid, bitten by some kind of bug and I won't
mind at all. Say I'm well-stacked even if I'm not beautiful, as if you
were talking to someone about a girl you didn't respect too much. I
won't care if you really need me, and do respect me, deep down...."
She was in his arms before he could say a word in reply, was straining
against him, running her fingers through his hair, opening her lips and
almost forcing him to kiss her with the kind of ardor it would have
been impossible for him to wholly avoid. He suddenly realized that all
she was wearing was a skirt and blouse, that both garments were so thin
he could feel the texture of her skin through the cloth.
He could feel more than just the texture of her skin. Every movement of
her body, every impassioned ripple of her flesh, increased the intimacy
of her embrace and made him lose his head completely.
It was over almost before it had begun and although it had been sudden
and maddening, tempting them both to abandon all restraint, he had
found the strength to gently but firmly grasp her by the wrists and
prevent her complete surrender. He felt cheated, tortured for an
instant and then a wave of relief swept over him, because what had
almost happened would have been a very serious commitment and he was
not the kind of man who could take complete physical intimacy lightly.
Casual love-making was impossible for him. It never failed to stir him
to the depths, to awaken impulses of loyalty and devotion, to place him
under an obligation. He was perhaps different from the general run of
males, but if he had gone out on the street and picked up some pathetic
little prostitute and gone home with her the relationship would not
have been entirely sordid and physical.
He sat now on the edge of the bed as if turned to stone, watching her
get up with shining eyes and a deep flush on her face, cross the room
to the door and go out, closing the door very softly behind her. He'd
known what she was thinking. Next time it will be completely wonderful
and he won't feel awkward and embarrassed afterwards and not know what
to say.
She'd be thinking that, but it wouldn't be the truth. He had no
intention of letting it happen again, of going even as far as he had
before he'd found the strength to save himself from absolute disaster.
A moment or two before, with the returned manuscript still unopened in
his hand, he'd had a momentary impulse to let himself go and accept the
consequences, even if they would have been as binding in his scale of
values as a marriage ceremony. He could never have walked out and left
her--unless love died and they both agreed that the relationship had
deteriorated and ceased to be important.
But all that was changed now. He'd opened the envelope and the letter
had changed the world for him and if she hadn't thrown her arms around
him and kissed him so passionately when he'd merely asked her for a
dinner date in a moment of unreasoning exaltation....
It had been a physical response solely, the kind of response which any
normal male with the blood warm in his veins would have been unable to
exercise complete and instant control over, no matter how great his
strength of will. It had been instinctive, the touching off of sex's
trigger-mechanism in his brain, the automatic arousal which yielding
softness, sweetness, femininity in all of its rapturous abandonment
made inevitable in the male.
There was no reason for him to reproach himself or feel guilty about
it. If for a moment he'd abandoned all restraint, carried her to
the bed, and seared her lips with kisses which she had welcomed,
demanded, insisted upon--had not the tightening of her arms, the almost
convulsive straining of her body against him proved that she had been
equally aroused?--if for a moment he'd become almost savagely primitive
in his love-making, was that something which called for sackcloth and
ashes and the covering of his head, as if he were a grieving widow
instead of the completely normal, robustly endowed man he knew himself
to be?
Hardly. Since she had been so completely eager and willing the cynical
and unjust could brand his restraint as amusing if they wished and
regard him as something of a fool. But he had his own standards and
preferred to maintain them. An old maxim came almost unbidden into his
mind. "They say what they say--let them say."
For a moment the exaltation he'd felt on reading the letter had been
scattered to the winds, like dust particles in a rising gale or dust
in a city apartment blown in all directions by a draft from an open
window, or swept under the bed by an untidy housekeeper. And it had
been the most precious kind of dust--a fine sprinkling of gold, each
particle brightly shining.
There was no one with a broom who could sweep it into view again, but
it was coming back now by itself, creeping slowly back, and he could
feel the splendor of it beginning to suffuse him. In a moment, if he
just remained quietly seated on the edge of the bed, he could gather up
all of the shining particles, and go out and put through a phone call
from the drugstore on the corner.
She'd suggested he phone her as soon as he received the letter.
Returning a manuscript for minor revisions when it was practically
bought and paid for was unusual. But he had a feeling that he had
sent the story to a very unusual editor. A woman who did things in her
own, independent way, ignoring what was customary and established and
rule-of-thumb, but with no sacrifice of efficiency.
Most editors would have kept the manuscript in the office, written him
a letter of acceptance, and asked him to call and discuss the changes
which would have to be made in it. But she'd sent it right back,
assuming, no doubt, that the acceptance would so gratify and stimulate
him that he'd sit down immediately and make the most important change
while he was keyed up and at his best creatively.
It had probably seemed to her a gamble worth taking. All it had cost
the firm was a dollar in postage and there could be no substitute for
that kind of emotional stimulation, especially when there were a few
pages that the author had perhaps grown cold on, or lost interest in.
It was a strong indication that she understood writers, knew precisely
how their minds worked. Most writers, anyway. It wasn't her fault that
she had gone slightly astray in his case. Every writer was unique--no
two individuals in any creative field were ever exactly alike. For
a moment he _had_ been stimulated enough to sit down, and make the
most important change without even going out to buy a fresh pack of
cigarettes and take a brisk, six-minute walk around the block.
It was just that--he felt too damned good right at the moment to sit
down and concentrate. All of the golden dust had been gathered up now
and it set up a shining--both inside his mind and outside--so that the
whole room seemed filled with a glow that outshone the noonday sun.
Fifteen minutes later he stood in a drugstore phone booth so
oppressively over-heated that it would have bothered him, if he had
been about to phone a friend who never knew when to hang up. But now he
was scarcely aware of the heat and it gave him no concern. Few editors
had time to waste in inconsequential talk, and he had no intention of
making a bad impression on her by baring the innermost secrets of his
life.
That would come later ... if at all. He had a feeling that it would
come eventually, because a woman who understood writers as she seemed
to do would be unlikely to find that kind of conversation boring.
* * * * *
Everything was happening so fast it took his breath away. The miracle
had increased in brightness and now he was sitting in a taxi on his way
to Cafe Seventy in the East Sixties.
His phone call had been switched to her office very quickly and her
voice had been decisive and a little sharp on the wire. But the instant
he'd told her who he was no woman's voice could have taken on more
graciousness and charm.
Informal, too. Delightfully ... no, _intimate_ wasn't too
presumptuous a word. There had been an unmistakable undercurrent of
intimacy in her voice, as if she'd known him for a long time and they
shared a secret ... a very precious kind of secret she preferred not to
talk about within the four walls of a cold, briskly efficient magazine
office.
It had meant, of course, that she was suggesting that they have lunch
together, but before he could think of just the right words she herself
had done the inviting. She had picked the cafe and the time--"About
two ... I'm afraid it has to be a little late...."--and now, in about
five more minutes, he would be there.
It was a very warm day and the air felt almost solid enough to cut with
a knife. But the high humidity didn't bother him, because a breeze
fragrant with springtime scents was blowing through the cab, even
though the driver and no one on the streets--no one anywhere except
himself--seemed to be aware of it.
When the cab drew into the curb in front of the cafe he added a tip
to the fare that dispelled most of the driver's gloom. He got out,
walked into the cafe as if he'd just decided while taking a stroll
that the place looked all right, and so why should he stop to examine
the three-dollar-minimum luncheon menu pasted to the window? He had an
almost irrepressible impulse to tip the uniformed doorman too, just for
the hell of it.
He saw and recognized her quickly enough, because she'd told him what
kind of hat she'd be wearing and there was only one woman in the place
that went with the kind of voice he'd heard on the phone.
It came as a distinct shock to him to discover that she wasn't alone.
There was a man seated opposite her at the small table she'd chosen--or
he had chosen for her--in a softly-lit recess on the left side of the
cafe, about half-way to the back.
He disliked the man straight off, without precisely knowing why. He was
about forty-five, with slightly graying hair cut rather short, a bland,
almost mild-mannered way of smiling and nodding as he talked, and
features which were distinctly on the handsome side. He was wearing a
tropical worsted suit of expensive weave--the kind of suit you couldn't
purchase readymade anywhere for less than a hundred dollars and you
knew it was custom-tailored. Three hundred dollars would probably have
been a more likely estimate of what the suit had set the man back. He
wore a small red carnation in his buttonhole which the July heat had
not yet succeeded in wilting.
Ralph became aware suddenly that she had raised her eyes and recognized
him. But before he could respond with a nod and smile and draw closer
to the table all of the blandness went out of her companion's face. His
face hardened and an angry glint came into his eyes. He arose from the
table, so angrily and abruptly that he overturned the chair he'd been
sitting in.
What he did then was totally outrageous, unheard of. He leaned across
the table and slapped Helen Lathrup on the right cheek, putting such
force into the blow that the _smack_ was audible to everyone in the
cafe.
There was complete silence for an instant; no one moved or spoke. Helen
Lathrup sat rigid, an ugly redness suffusing the right side of her face
from temple to throat.
Then a woman gasped and a man muttered: "Why doesn't somebody kill the
bastard?"
It was exactly what Ralph felt like doing and he made no attempt to
control the impulse.
Helen Lathrup's escort had straightened on delivering the blow and was
just starting to swing about when Ralph reached him, caught hold of his
right arm, making the turn complete, and sent his fist crashing into
the man's face.
It was a nose-breaking kind of blow, aimed directly at the
bastard's--he was certainly that!--nose and mouth and not at his jaw.
Ralph didn't just want to drop him to the floor. He wanted to send him
to the hospital.
He thought he heard a cartilage crunch and splinter, but he couldn't be
sure.
The man made no attempt to fight back, to defend himself in any way.
However much he may have wanted to do so, he was clearly incapable of
it.
The blow had stunned him. He swayed for the barest instant, back and
forth like a marionette on a wire that had gone suddenly slack, and
then his knees gave way, and he crashed to the floor and rolled over on
his face.
Ralph stood very still for an instant staring down at him, almost
equally stunned but feeling a hot surge of triumph pulsing upward
through his chest, rising to his brain, half-intoxicating him.
He was kneeling on the floor at the bastard's side, turning him over,
looking with satisfaction at the thin trickle of blood that was
running from his mouth, when he felt the tugging.
Helen Lathrup was bending over also, close to Ralph, her breath hot on
his face, her fingers biting into his arm, as if she knew that only
pain could bring him quickly to his senses.
"We must leave," she breathed. "We _must_. Do you hear what I'm saying?
I'm known here--they won't try to stop us. And he won't lodge a
complaint. I'm sure of that. _John Darby wouldn't dare--_"
He raised his eyes and saw that she was deathly pale, that even the
redness, where the vicious ugly bastard had slapped her, was starting
to recede. He could see that it had left a slight welt, and all of his
fury returned again for an instant, so that he could scarcely breathe.
She was trembling now and there was a pleading urgency in her eyes.
"Hurry, before they feel they'd better send for the police, if only to
protect themselves. We don't know how badly he's been hurt and it will
take them a minute to find out. They won't try to stop us, I tell you,
if we go right now."
In one way, it was like a nightmare that had come upon him in broad
daylight, been thrust upon him unexpectedly when he had thought himself
fully awake. And in another way, it was an intoxicating kind of trance,
filled with sound and fury, but a trance from which he had no desire to
escape.
Sitting in a cab at her side, with the sound and the fury behind him,
it seemed suddenly that he was in another dimension of time and space,
where nothing but miracles could take place. The fact that she was
trembling still, her very agitation, seemed to make her more desirable,
for it awoke in him protective instincts along with a feeling of
adoration.
He had never thought that any woman could be quite so beautiful. He had
never dared to hope that he would find himself so intimately involved
with a famous editor who was also the most beautiful woman he had ever
seen.
For he _had_ become intimately involved with her. He had fought another
man in a very primitive way as her champion and defender, and it was
impossible not to think of that as intimacy. It had brought him as
close to her, if only for a moment, as a lover's embrace would have
done.
Was not that kind of violence one pathway to intimacy? A murderer was
intimate with his victim in a quite terrible way, even when physical
love-making was completely absent. This was not that kind of intimacy.
But in defending her and trying his best in a moment of savage rage to
injure the man who had struck her, hadn't he come close to her in much
the same primitively intimate way? The only difference was--he hadn't
come close to her with the intention of doing her harm. But the same
savage currents had flowed for an instant between them, bringing them
very close.
She was sitting so close to him that he could feel the warmth and
yielding softness of her body through her thin summer clothes--a
softness that was also a firmness, a roundness--and his temples began
to pound, and a trip-hammer started up in his loins.
He glanced at her quickly and saw that her eyes were shining in a very
strange way. A wild kind of excitement seemed to be stirring in her.
It should have given him warning, should have given him pause. It
should have at least flashed across his mind that a woman can become
wildly excited in the most primitive of all ways--by just the sight of
two men fighting over her, willing and eager to kill for her. And even
if one of the two had just struck her brutally and no longer desired
her, just the fight alone....
But he did not realize that for many days.
For a fortnight they were together constantly, and his admiration for
her had become like a singing flame, his every instinct had whispered
that he had found the one perfect woman at last, and that nothing could
mar for him the perfection of her body when she came, slender and white
and trembling a little, into his arms.
It had not taken him long to discover that wherever Helen Lathrup
went--people whispered that she went everywhere, but never in his
presence had one of those whispers been heard--she stood out, was
the center of all eyes. In a crowd, at concerts and recitals, in
smoke-filled Beatnik-patronized expresso restaurants in the Village, on
the exclusive, walled-off beaches of fashionable summer resorts there
was and could be only one Helen Lathrup.
And when the blow finally came and she refused even to speak to him on
the phone, when he surrendered all of his masculine pride and allowed
himself to become defenseless and completely at her mercy, he had not
at first completely despaired, or turned against her like some sick and
humiliated dog backed into a corner and forced to bite at last.
He had gone on begging for her favors, for one more dinner date, one
more hour alone with her, one last opportunity, however brief, to prove
to her that their quarrels had been needless, and he would find a way
to please her still.
He had gone on pleading even when he could no longer deceive himself
about her. Tormenting him gave her pleasure and she was not only the
most beautiful but the cruelest woman he had ever known.
It was only when she attacked him where he was most vulnerable ... in
his work ... it was only when she sneered at the novel she had once
praised and returned it to him with blue-pencilings that made him no
longer want to go on living ... it was only then that he decided that
he could endure no more, and that only her death would set him free.