"Why not Saturday?"
"No, sorry, Dan. No can do. I'm--busy."
He sounded hurt. "Well, Tuesday will have to do for me, then. Suppose I
pick you up at your place and we'll take a drive out into Connecticut
for dinner and a show?"
"Sounds fine," she said. "You make all the arrangements and anything
you get will be great with me."
They talked a little while longer; he seemed unhappy about what
he assumed were other dates she had, but she eluded any direct
questioning. _How can I tell him that I'll be working a convention over
the weekend and serving as a bedwarmer for twenty or thirty middle-aged
lechers? Let him think what he wants. At least he won't ever know the
truth._
She arranged with Spinelli to take the following Tuesday off, and
Dan picked her up at six. She was dressed a little daringly, that
night, in a provocative off-the-shoulder blouse, and in his shy way
Bittner goggled at the exposed square inches of bosom without making
any specific comment. Laura smiled and kissed him as she got into his
little foreign car.
"I've got reservations at a restaurant just off the Merritt Parkway,"
he told her. "And tickets for the Village Playhouse in New Canaan.
They're doing Shaw tonight, _Man and Superman_."
"Fine," she said. "I've never seen it."
She nestled close to him as he drove. The little car clung bumpily to
the road, going up and down with every tar-line or pebble. They talked
as he drove, mostly about him, his work, his impatience to have a
second date with her.
He was definitely more forward than he had been on the first date,
letting his hands rest lightly on her bare shoulders for a moment as
he helped her off with her jacket, and holding her hand during the
play and even slipping his arm around her. Considering how most of
her escorts behaved, though, Laura could only regard him as almost
comically reserved. It was a novelty, though, to have her body
respected. A very pleasant novelty.
On the way home, though, there was a nasty jolt for her, one that
nearly wrecked everything.
It was eleven o'clock, and Bittner had tuned in the news broadcast.
The commentator, droning along, said suddenly, "_Police are continuing
to probe the so-called Hotelroom Murder Case, and several suspects are
being questioned as a result of the discovery of the strangled body of
Marilyn Rivers, twenty-two, in a hotel room on West 57th Street early
this morning_--"
"_Oh, God!_" Laura gasped.
"--_informants suggested that the dead woman, allegedly a prostitute,
was strangled by a customer after a quarrel over payment. Residents of
the hotel heard shouting coming from the room shortly after midnight,
and a 'tall, heavy-set' man reportedly was seen in the hotel just
afterwards. Meanwhile, in juvenile court this afternoon_--"
Laura reached out and snapped the radio off. She was shaking
uncontrollably.
"What's the matter?" Bittner asked, startled by her behavior.
"That--that news bulletin. The murder in the hotel room--" Laura sobbed
without tears. She could not speak.
Growing more astonished, Bittner said, "Didn't you hear about it
before? It was in all the afternoon papers, and on the radio--"
"I didn't see them."
"Well, anyway, why are you so upset? Honestly, Laura, you look like
you've just lost your best friend or something."
The savage, if unintentional, irony of his words struck home deeply.
Laura looked away, burying her face in her arm, and fought her way back
from the edge of hysteria inch by inch, telling herself that she had to
regain her self-control, _had_ to, _had_ to....
After a moment she said in a hollow voice, "I don't know what happened
to me. I guess I was just struck with pity. Some poor girl trying
to scrape up a living taking men to a hotel room, and one of them
strangling her because it was easier than paying her the five dollars
she wanted from him--"
"It happens all the time, sweet. These streetwalkers never know when
they're likely to get slashed or strangled or beaten up. There are
some men who actually enjoy beating them up, you know." He slipped one
arm around her shoulders, driving with the other. "Don't be so upset,
though, honey. After all, people die every day. And this girl wasn't
anything society needed. She was probably full of disease, and stupid
and ugly besides, and--"
"Stop it."
"But--"
"_Stop it! Stop it!_"
Bittner was growing more and more confused. "Honey, I wish I knew what
got into you all of a sudden. Sure, I feel sorry for that girl too, but
you're carrying it a little too far, aren't you?"
"Maybe I am," Laura forced herself to say. "I--I'm very tired, that's
what it is. Overstrung."
"We'll be home soon. A good night's rest and you'll be as good as new."
They lapsed into silence. Laura heard the steady pounding of her
heart, and gradually her mind accepted the awful words. How could I
tell him? she asked herself. _How could I explain that she WAS my best
friend, that she picked me up off the street when I was sick, that she
slept in the same bed with me, that she was good and kind to me? How
could I let him know that the girl he loves had been a friend of a
skinny little whore who was murdered in a dirty hotel room?_
There was no way she could explain to him the reason for her
outburst--no way that he could accept, at any rate. She grew calmer,
and a feeling of pity replaced the earlier horror at the news.
They parted quickly at Laura's door. Bittner made no attempt to come
inside. They kissed, but it was without the fervor of their first. Then
he smiled and was gone, and she let herself into the apartment.
Switching on the television set, she picked up a late newscast. They
were going over the murder story again. They showed a tattered snapshot
of Marilyn, her own photo from her wallet. She looked thin and harried
in the photo; it was a good likeness. They showed a photo of the room,
with the sheet-covered body on the bed. They discussed the various
suspects who had been rounded up. That was all. By tomorrow, the
suspects would be released, the murder forgotten. The law did not waste
much energy solving the murders of whores.
Laura shut off the set and poured herself a stiff drink. She felt
overwhelmed with sorrow and guilt, guilt for having failed to keep her
promise to Marilyn. They had not spoken since the first week of her
employment by Spinelli. And now they never would again. It had been
almost inevitable, Laura thought, that Marilyn would end this way,
snuffed out, her troubles over. She was so fragile, the night so dark,
her clients so brutal.
And now she was dead. Laura downed her drink and prepared for bed. It
had been awkward, then, when two of her worlds had impinged, when her
grief for Marilyn had startled the man who thought she was innocent.
Confusion made Laura's head buzz. She realized now that she was in love
with Bittner--who quite probably thought she was a virgin.
_I'll destroy him if I don't break up with him now_, she thought. _If
he ever learns how I've strung him along, he'll be crushed. It's a
cruel world. A cold, nasty world where people set traps for themselves,
themselves and each other. Some people sell themselves, others buy--and
the good people, the innocent people, somehow they get caught up in it
all and are ground to bits._
_God help us_, she thought. _God help us all._
_CHAPTER TEN_
There was nothing about Marilyn in the paper the next day. It was
yesterday's murder, already stale. And, in any event, it was a very
small tragedy, meaning nothing to anyone, except for one mourner at the
other side of the city who could not tell anyone why she felt grief for
an unimportant dead whore. Laura flipped bleakly through the papers
and, finding nothing, threw them away. Marilyn had ceased to matter to
the world.
The worst of it all, Laura thought, is that the victim didn't
necessarily have had to been Marilyn. It could have been any of the
girls who worked the 59th Street-Central Park region.
_It could have been me_, she thought with a little quiver of horror.
It could have been, so easily. Unbidden, the scene formed on the screen
of her imagination. There she was, dressed shabbily--not the way she
dressed these days--standing in front of the park, waiting, waiting. It
was late in the day; she had a few dollars in her handbag, and she was
tired and sweaty from a long day's work. As the twilight shadows fall,
a client approaches--a big man in a stevedore's cap, hulking, unshaven.
She wants to refuse him, but he is insistent, picking her up with a
quick line, plenty of filthy words. They go to the hotel. He orders her
to undress, standing back and admiring the pink-tipped globes of her
breasts, the white soft skin of her thighs, the gently rippling flesh
of her full buttocks. He drops his trousers: he throws himself down on
her, squeezing her tender breasts with calloused hands, thrusting his
body against her, taking her with brutal speed and lack of tenderness.
And then, afterward, rising from her naked body with his lust
satisfied, he reaches for her handbag, takes out the money she had
earned that day. From the dresser, he takes the bill he had given to
her only a few minutes before. She rises, protests, shouts shrill
abuse at him. He laughs, turns toward her with a cruel smile on his
face, seizes her. Thick fingers bite into the soft flesh around her
throat. The heavy paws contract. She claws at the tightening hands,
unable to remove them, and he shakes her like a doll, and the pain goes
ripping down like a red-hot ingot thrust into her breasts, like a bolt
of lightning in her loins, and her legs grow weak and her eyes begin
to bulge and she hears his booming laughter as life slowly ebbs from
her....
Laura shuddered.
_It might have been me. Marilyn used to talk about perverts who enjoyed
hitting or choking prostitutes. I was lucky, that's all. I got out in
time, into a different league where they don't play so rough._
The telephone rang. Laura snatched it up eagerly, grateful for anything
that would serve to interrupt her mood of morbid depression.
It was Spinelli.
"How's my favorite redhead this morning, eh?"
"Surviving," Laura said cheerlessly. She wasn't in a mood to make
conversation.
"That's all? Just _surviving_? Chick, you know it's against the house
rules just to _survive_. You've got to live, live, _live_!"
"Not today, Phil. I'm not in a very lively mood, I guess."
"After a day off?"
"I'll perk up. I--I've got a headache. That's it, a terrible headache."
"You going to be okay by tonight? Take some aspirin, or something.
You've got to be your old sparkling self this evening."
"Where am I supposed to be working?"
"Hotel Whittier. There's a banker named McDermott in Suite 1411 who
wants company."
"Dinner date?"
"No," Spinelli said. "You go to his room around nine o'clock. No
dinner, no show. As long as you've got a headache, it's just as well
that way, yes?"
"I suppose so," Laura agreed. "You know anything about this McDermott
that I ought to know?"
"Not much. Just that he's loaded with dough, and you stand to pick up a
nice bit of change. The last time I supplied him with a girl, he tipped
her two bills. I'm not guaranteeing a repeat, but keep it in mind."
"Don't worry, I will!"
"He's going to be in town for a week," Spinelli added. "When he
contacted me, he implied that he might be interested in making use
of the same girl for several nights. Be nice to him and you may have
earned yourself a fat piece of change by the time the week's over."
Spinelli hung up. Laura walked to the window and stared out onto the
river. She thought about Dan. He was so good, so gentle--and in for
such a shock when and if he found out the truth.
_Maybe there's a way out_, she thought. _Maybe I can slide out of this
filthy profession and talk Dan into moving far away, to San Francisco
maybe, or Seattle, or someplace else thousands of miles from here.
Thousands of miles from these terrible memories._
She went into the bathroom and stripped for her morning shower.
Her body, reflected in the full-length mirror against the bathroom
door, looked young and vibrantly healthy. Her breasts seemed to have
grown more ripe since the loss of her virginity; the two full globes
jutted proudly forward, heavy bowls of soft flesh tipped with dark
reddish-pink. It was a wide-hipped, strong body she had. A woman's
body, a body built for childbearing, with those big breasts and broad
hips.
But call-girls don't have children, she thought.
They take precautions. And in the rare instances when the precautions
fail, they employ the best abortionists money can buy to deal with the
little accident. Spinelli kept a little book in which he recorded the
dates of each of his girls' menstrual periods, and when the period
started getting a couple of days overdue he began asking questions,
and if it got as much as ten days overdue he would whisk the girl off
to his doctor for an examination and tests. Spinelli didn't want any
of his prize livestock being put out of commission for a year or so
by a pregnancy. He didn't want to run the risk that childbirth would
alter the firm roundness of a valuable pair of breasts, or paint blue
vein-lines on a much-admired pair of thighs. He didn't want his girls
busy with diapers and perambulators when they should be earning money.
No, Laura thought. Call-girls don't have children.
She wondered what it would be like to have life swelling in her womb,
to have her breasts grow stiff and heavy with milk, to experience the
hundred inner changes of pregnancy. She wondered what it would be like
to be the mother of Dan's children.
_I could swing it_, she thought. _It's only three months since McCarten
raped me. I could manage somehow to forget all the things I've done in
those three months. I could wipe the slate clean and start all over
again, fresh ... with Dan...._
She stepped under the shower, setting the controls for a fine
needle-spray of cold water. The little needles lanced her skin with
exquisite pinpoint pain. The trick, she thought, was to get out--to
draw the line and say, After tonight no more, and to stick with it. To
resist the lure of the $500-a-week salary and the hundred-dollar tips.
To quit before it became too late ever to break the bond.
She had a good reason now. Dan. A decent, honest man who loved her, or
who seemed to.
_Get out now_, she told herself. _You've got the best motive for
quitting that you'll ever have, and you haven't been in it so long that
it's changed you._
She turned off the water and left the shower and towelled herself
vigorously dry. Decision crystalized; she walked to the phone, grabbed
up the receiver, began to dial Spinelli's number, to tell him it was
all over, that he would have to send some other girl to amuse Banker
McDermott this evening at the Whittier.
She got as far as the second letter of Spinelli's telephone number.
Then, weakening, she paused, staring at the dial.
_What am I doing?_ she asked herself in horror. _Suppose Dan isn't
interested in marrying me? I can't assume anything. I mustn't rush
blindly ahead._
Slowly, Laura replaced the receiver. Before she burned all the
bridges that linked her with Spinelli, she would have to make sure of
Dan's intentions. In the meantime, she would have to continue taking
assignments as usual.
She walked through the livingroom, out onto her terrace, spread out
her robe and lay down nude on top of it. At this hour of the day, the
diagonal rays of the sun slanted over the terrace wall. No one could
see her as she sunbathed here, and she had come to enjoy the daily hour
in the sun.
Stretching out comfortably, Laura turned her breasts and loins to the
sun and basked in the warm radiance. She had tanned quickly, all over
her body. It gave her a pantherishly sensual appearance that attracted
much approval from her clients. Men accustomed to women whose skins
were fishbelly-white between their breasts and their thighs were
delighted with Laura's golden-brown breasts and buttocks and belly.
After a while, she turned over, lying on her stomach while the sun
caressed her buttocks. There in the warmth, all tension departed. She
knew what her direction was, now. As soon as she was sure of Dan's
intentions, she would sever all connection with Spinelli. And they
would go far, far away, and she would bear him children.
She even became reconciled to the death of Marilyn. The poor girl was
out of her misery, now--no more walking the streets, no more days of
humiliation and loneliness. Marilyn would have been a prostitute to
the end of her days, and life would have become more and more of a
bitter struggle for her as what little erotic appeal she had dwindled
inexorably with the years. Now she was spared the anguish of age.
After an hour of sunbathing, Laura came in, feeling relaxed and
glowing. Her maid had arrived and was tidying up the apartment. Laura
prepared a light lunch for herself.
It was a relaxing day. She had awakened early, and she did not have
to begin work until nine in the evening, so she had a full day for
shopping and reading and decorating her apartment. She went out to eat
around seven, dressed in slacks and a blouse, and had a light meal at
a delicatessen on Second Avenue. By seven-thirty she was back in her
apartment, and an hour and a quarter later she was in a taxi on the way
to the Whittier and her rendezvous with Mr. McDermott.
The Whittier was an old-line hotel on Fifth Avenue, very elegant, very
tasteful. Laura entered the lobby as though she were a visiting member
of the Royal Family, as Spinelli had instructed her long ago. ("Never
walk into a fancy hotel as though you're a whore, or they'll throw you
out. Make them think you're Queen Victoria herself and you'll get a
warm welcome.")
Regally entering the elevator, Laura said in loftily sophisticated
tones, "Fourteen, please."
The elevator boy practically bowed. The car rose swiftly.
The hallway was floored with plush carpeting that seemed to be a foot
deep. Laura walked briskly along the corridor, watching the numbers
descend, until she came to 1411. She knocked.