"Do you want to get into show business or don't you?" McCarten demanded.
"Well, of course I do."
"Okay, then. I'm offering you a job worth $95 a week at the start, $120
after six months. And you're giving me the modesty act."
"I didn't think I'd have to undress myself to get a job. I'm sure other
agents--"
"Other agents wouldn't even let you get past their receptionists,"
McCarten said flatly. "They don't bother fooling around with green
talent. You were just lucky you walked in on a morning when I didn't
have much to do, so I was able to give you a break. Just try going
elsewhere, and see if you get anything. The contract's right there on
my desk for you. I'll send you right over to the studio and you can
start rehearsing this afternoon, and your first paycheck on Friday.
Now, come on. Show me what you've got, baby. For Christ's sake, there's
nothing so awful about displaying the body God gave you."
_I don't want to_, Laura thought frantically. _I don't want to show my
nakedness to you. I'm not that sort of girl. But you've got a job for
me._ Her throat went dry. What did it matter, just taking off the bra
and letting him look? If it gave him satisfaction, and if he wouldn't
let her have the job under any other conditions--
"All right," she said in a faint voice.
"There's a sensible girl."
Her cold fingers went behind her back. She fumbled with the catch for
a moment, almost hoping that it would be impossible to get it open.
But the hook left the eye and the tight halter sprang away from her
breasts. She felt a sudden gust of cold air around them, and felt the
flaming redness of her skin.
McCarten's eyes were like augers. He stared at the two high mounds with
awed fascination.
"D-do I get the job?" Laura asked, stammering from shame. "Can I get
dressed now?"
"Just a minute," he said in a strange, harsh voice. He moved toward
her, and before she could step away or cry out he was up against her,
his small soft hands cupping her breasts. She felt his pudgy fingers
tightening over the ripe swells, felt his fingertips pressing on
the suddenly hard tips of her nipples. His mouth was against hers,
cutting off all outcry. His hands left her breasts, went to her hips.
His fingers hooked into the waistband of her briefs and pulled them
down over her thighs, and she was naked, and he had his hands on her
buttocks, and then he was holding her in an unbreakable grip and
carrying her to the leather couch.
She shoved his face away from hers. "Let go of me," she whimpered.
"Just one little thing more, honey," he crooned. "Then the job is
yours. I promise--"
"No. No--I'm a virgin--"
He laughed harshly and pressed her down on the couch. She felt the
cold leather against her back and buttocks. She wanted to scream, to
cry out, but her voice betrayed her in her extreme fright, and nothing
emerged but a feeble little cry. He was kneeling above her, holding
her down with one hand, unzipping his trousers with the other. She
closed her eyes tightly, not wanting to see. She was weak and limp
with terror at the unexpected attack. His weight was on her, now. She
had her ankles locked together, but he slipped one foot between them,
and the hard shoe brought a little cry of pain from her, and she was
forced to break her grip, and the next moment he had spread her thighs
apart and she felt the sudden agonizing thrust, and the world swirled
around her crazily. She did not lose consciousness, but she felt dazed
and stunned, and she was only dimly conscious of his body moving above
hers, of the constant pain. And then she heard him shudder and let his
breath out hoarsely, and it was over, and he was rising from her.
She looked at him in horror. _I've just been raped_, she thought
inanely, her mind catching up to reality. _He threw me down on the
couch and raped me._
"I didn't know you really were a virgin," he mumbled. "Christ, I didn't
think there were any virgins left. I figured you'd give me a good time,
to earn the job. I didn't know--"
She shivered. Fire raged in her loins, and she looked down and saw
blood on the couch and she realized she was at the edge of hysteria.
All she knew was she had to get out of here. She pushed herself up from
the couch and rushed past him into the other room and began to pull her
clothes on. He followed her in.
"Listen, baby," he implored. "Don't take it this way. I got carried
away by the way you looked, and all. Christ, I never suspected--listen,
calm down, I'll give you the job, everything will be all right--"
"I wouldn't take your filthy job!" she cried. With trembling fingers
she buttoned her blouse. "Get out of my way!"
"Don't think you can call copper on me, honey," he said, his tone
changing from a wheedling one to an angry one. "You don't have a case.
I can claim you came in here and tried to twist my arm to give you
a job, and pulled a tease act that made me lose my head at the last
minute. Agents are always having girls come into the office and try
to sleep their way into a job. The cops know the setup, and they'll
believe me. So don't try running to them. Be a smart girl and take the
job--"
"No!" she spat at him. She snatched up her handbag and ran past him, to
the door, out into the hall. The world was reeling around her.
_Raped_, she thought.
She rang for the elevator.
_CHAPTER TWO_
It was April, but a cool breeze was blowing down Broadway as she
emerged from the building. She stood for a moment, still dazed by the
rapidity with which it had happened. Her loins still throbbed painfully
from the violent attack. She could still feel the touch of his hands
on her breasts, the weight of his body above hers, the terrible moment
when the castle of her body was penetrated--
She began to walk, knowing that she had to keep moving or she would
crack. She walked mechanically, looking straight ahead, seeing nothing.
The interview had turned into nightmare so rapidly that her mind still
could not fully accept the happening, the transformation of herself in
a few short minutes of urgent action from a virgin to a soiled woman.
She had never thought it would happen this way. In Marshall, the boys
had always regarded her as too pretty for them; they put her up on a
pedestal, as the town's prettiest girl, and though everybody tried to
date her no one made any serious passes at her. There were plenty of
willing pimple-faced farm girls if they wanted sex. Laura had reached
the age of twenty-one without any real experience of life. And now she
had her experience. The hard way.
She kept walking, uptown. A big clock on a building in front of her
read ten minutes to two. She did not want to go back to the Y. Somehow
she knew she would never be able to face the other girls, the matrons,
all of them. They would be able to see at a glance what had happened to
her, and she would never be able to face their smiles of pity.
She wondered what she was going to do now.
Go back home? Return to the farm and the sleepy little town, only
a week after she had left it? Come home devirginized, raped, a
sad advertisement of the terrors of big city life? That would be
humiliating. _I went to New York to break into show business, but the
first man I went to raped me and I came running home._ No, that would
never do.
Go to the police? She was afraid to. McCarten was too shrewd. He would
never have attacked her if he hadn't thought he could get away with it.
He would come up with some angle to save himself. Her name would get
into the papers, and she would become a figure of public contempt, the
girl who yelled rape.
What then, she wondered? Go to some other agent? And meet the same kind
of reception, she thought bleakly. One foot swung ahead of the other,
step after step after step. Dazed, confused, she had no idea of where
she was going, what would happen now.
She reached Columbus Circle. To her left, the towering bulk of the New
York Coliseum loomed up. To the right were the plush hotels of Central
Park South. Straight ahead was the park, just beginning to blossom into
tentative greenness after the long winter. Numbly, Laura waited for the
light to change, and went across into the park. The wind was colder
there, with no buildings to block it, and she pulled her light coat
tightly around her.
She found an empty bench and sat down, jamming her hands into her coat
pockets. A squirrel ran up to her, waited for a peanut, and, getting
none, scowled at her and went sprinting away. Laura tried to smile, but
no smile would come.
She had started the day with such high hopes. She had made a list of
five or six theatrical agents in the area near the Y, and she had
planned to make the rounds until one of them found work for her, on
television perhaps, or in a chorus line of a nightclub or show. And
instead the day had turned into nightmare.
_Why did he do it?_ she wondered. _Because he knew I was green, because
he figured he could get away with it. Maybe he didn't even have a job
for me. Maybe he was just sitting there with nothing to do, and when I
walked in he figured he'd try to get all he could out of me._
She sat there, brooding, feeling the pain still throbbing between
her thighs. She wondered if he had done any permanent damage, torn
something perhaps.
_Maybe I'll kill myself_, she thought suddenly.
The thought presented itself fully formed. She frowned in surprise as
it appeared in her mind. She had never thought of suicide before. But,
somehow, it seemed oddly appealing now. Here, alone in this strange
city, friendless, her body polluted with a strange man's lust, it
seemed a tempting way of wiping the slate clean. No more problems, no
more discouragements, no more heartache. Just rest.
_There's a lake somewhere in Central Park, isn't there? Maybe I could
throw myself in. Or I could jump off a tall building, or step in front
of one of those speeding taxicabs._
There were so many possible ways of killing one's self in New York
City. It was simplicity itself. Laura rose, with a vague idea of
self-destruction in her mind. Suddenly she felt terribly dizzy, sick to
her stomach. She wanted to throw up. She wanted to lie down and die.
She took five unsteady steps and felt her legs beginning to give way,
and she lurched forward, trying to find something to hold on to.
A girl appeared, walking briskly up the path. Laura took another
spinning step and started to fall. Blindly she reached out for the
strange girl, clutched at her, fell to her knees. She felt the pavement
scrape through her nylons.
"Excuse me," she muttered. "Dizzy--so sorry--"
She realized she was on her knees with her arms locked around the legs
of the other woman. Confusion shrouded Laura's mind.
"Dizzy," she mumbled again. "Sorry--"
"Here. Let me give you a hand," the girl said, in crisp, clipped New
Yorkish tones. Laura felt hands under her arms, lifting her to her
feet. She swayed unsteadily, trying to support herself, but the moment
the girl removed her hands Laura began to topple again. The girl caught
her before she fell, and eased her back to the bench.
"You haven't been drinking," the girl said. "What's the matter? Dizzy
spells?"
"I--I don't want to be any trouble--"
"Just let your head hang back, and take it easy. I've got plenty of
time. Do you know what's wrong? Are you pregnant?"
"No--just had a faint feeling," Laura whispered. "So kind of you to
help me. Don't want to be any trouble--"
"You look all feverish. Are you sick?"
"I'm--I'm dizzy, that's all. Chills all over." With an effort she
brought her head up and looked at her benefactor closely. The other
girl was no more than twenty or twenty-one. She was shabbily dressed.
Her face was pale and thin, and her dark eyes gleamed with almost
unhealthy brightness. Her lipstick was smeared. But she was smiling
sympathetically. Laura tried to return the smile. She was so glad that
despite all the stories she had heard about New York at least one
person was not too busy to help someone in trouble.
Laura said in a choked voice, "My legs just dropped out from under me.
I've had a--a very upsetting experience. It sort of stunned me." She
began to shiver again.
The other girl looked troubled. "Maybe I can take you home. Where do
you live?"
"At the Y," Laura said. "On Fiftieth Street. But I don't want to go
there. They'll think I've been drinking. I don't want them to think
that. I--I don't know where to go--"
"Let's go to my place," the girl suggested. "It's only a couple of
blocks from here. You can lie down until you get your strength back."
"No, please--don't put yourself to any trouble--"
"I can't just leave you here," the girl said. "Come on--give me your
arm. Can you walk?"
"I think so."
She leaned on the other girl, who, for all her leanness, was
surprisingly strong. They hobbled to the park entrance at Columbus
Circle.
"I live on 58th just across Eighth," the girl said. "Come on, now. One
step after another and it gets us there."
Somehow Laura found the strength to get across the street, past the
endless stream of autos. One step after another. She huddled close to
her savior, thinking only that it was wonderful for someone to have
come along and help her this way. Sweat bathed her body, and the city
around her seemed dreamlike and unreal. _Step. Step. Step. Step._
"Here we are," the girl said. "I live on the third floor. Lean on me,
and up we go."
It was a shabby little building, with a dark, creaky staircase.
Clinging to the banister, Laura let herself be dragged upward. _Step.
Step. Step._ Rest for a few moments on the landing. _Step. Step._ Rest
on the second landing a moment. _Step._ Up the final flight of stairs,
down a dark corridor. Pause for a moment in front of a door while the
girl gropes for keys. The door opens.
Laura stumbled inside. It was a long, narrow room, with two single
beds, a stove, a tiny refrigerator, a little broom-closet of a
lavatory. Laura sank down gratefully on one of the beds and kicked her
shoes off.