"That's right."
"I'm Robert McDermott. Call me Bob. And come in, do, come in!"
Laura stepped in and let McDermott help her off with her jacket. He was
a man of medium height, probably about fifty; his hair was thin, and
what there was of it was white, but his face was unlined and his pink
cheeks were pleasantly plump. He had pale blue eyes and the friendly,
open look of an aging cherub.
He hung up the jacket and turned to survey her. Laura had dressed
well for the occasion, in a tailored suit over a tight silk blouse.
Everything tasteful, nothing on vulgar display. When the time came for
McDermott to see her body, he would see it, but she was determined not
to flaunt acres of bare bosom at him as an appetizer beforehand.
"I've taken the liberty of ordering some liquor," McDermott said.
"Would you care for a highball, Laura?"
"If you do."
"By all means! Will it be Scotch, rye, bourbon? I've got a very
well-stocked little bar here, as you see. Or if you prefer some liqueur
or brandy, we could ask room service--"
"Rye will do," Laura said, smiling. "And some ginger ale, please."
McDermott fixed the drink for her. She waited while he prepared his own.
"To a wonderful evening," she said, lifting the glass toward his.
"Amen to that," McDermott said. "Cheers."
She took a shallow sip. He drank more deeply. Putting the glass down,
he stared with sudden intensity at her.
"How old are you?" he asked abruptly.
"Over twenty-one, Mr. McDermott."
"I should hope so. But not very far over, eh? And call me Bob. How old
do you think _I_ am, eh?"
"I'm sure I couldn't guess."
"I'm sure you can. Come on, girl, don't be so afraid of offending me!
Take a guess!"
"Fifty?"
"Fifty-eight!" he crowed. "You wouldn't believe it, would you? Not a
wrinkle on my face. If I still had my hair I could pass for forty, I
bet." He took another deep gulp of the highball. "I'm still a young man
in many ways," he said with sudden seriousness. "But my wife is an old
woman. Two years younger than I am, but you'd think she was seventy.
It's a terrible thing, Laura, when a wife grows old faster than her
husband does. It's made my life miserable. Miserable."
Laura said nothing. She had been through this sort of thing
before--the unhappy middle-aged man who took almost as great a pleasure
in baring his personal problems to his mistress-for-a-night as he did
in making love to her. The best tactic, she had discovered, was to
remain sympathetically silent. Men love a good listener.
McDermott went on, "We've been married thirty-six years. Can you
imagine that? I married her the day I graduated from Harvard.
Look--here's her picture, one that I took in the spring of that year.
Tell me what you think of her."
McDermott groped in his wallet and delicately pulled out a snapshot.
Laura took it from him. It was old and faded, turning brown with the
years, but the smiling girl it showed still had kept the beauty of that
day nearly forty years ago. She was slender, with a classic serenity of
feature and elegant posture.
"She's lovely," Laura said quietly.
"Yes. _Wasn't_ she? Take a look at this one now. On a cruise ship in
the Caribbean last winter."
The second picture showed McDermott and an elderly woman standing at
the rail of the ship. McDermott, wearing a polo shirt and Bermuda
shorts, looked gay and youthful. But the woman--!
It was possible to detect the underlying features of the girl of that
time-browned snapshot. But only barely possible. Thirty-six years had
wrapped a layer of wrinkled, sagging flesh around the classic chin.
They had rounded the square shoulders, had thickened the Grecian nose,
had made coarse flabby lumps of flesh out of the smiling lips. The eyes
had lost their sparkle; the hair was frizzy and unkempt. The woman
looked like McDermott's mother, not his wife. Laura shuddered.
"It's hard to believe," she whispered, as she gave the picture back.
"Of course, it's a lot more striking to you, seeing the two pictures
side by side. I've watched it happen gradually, so I'm not as rocked
by the contrast. But it's an awful thing. Awful." He gulped down his
drink. "How about a refill?"
"Not yet, thanks," Laura smiled. "I've still got a way to go on this
one."
"Of course. Mind if I--?"
"Not at all," Laura said.
As he prepared a second drink for himself, McDermott said, "We've
got three children. Bob Junior, he's thirty-three, a vice-president
at the bank. A little too snobbish, but otherwise a fine boy. And
my son Richard, he's thirty, an Air Force officer. Joined the ROTC
in college and liked it so well he made a career out of it. I don't
see much of him. The girl's name is Elaine. She's twenty-seven, I
think. Her husband's a professor at Yale. What a bitch she is! I think
she's slept with half the student body in New Haven. Well, that's her
business--hers and her husband's. But those are my children. There was
a fourth one, too. Donald. Also an Air Force man. Killed in Korea, he
was. He'd be almost twenty-nine, if he'd lived. My wife turned into
an old woman the day we got the telegram about him from the Defense
Department." McDermott scowled. "Well, I was upset too. But it's almost
eight years, now! I'm used to the idea that Don is dead. Elizabeth
isn't. She still wakes up at night and goes into his room." McDermott
looked up, sudden anguish in the baby-blue eyes. In a hoarse voice he
said, "Do you know how long it's been since my own wife has slept with
me? Not since the day Don died. Not since the middle of the Korean War.
You probably weren't even going to High School yet, back then. And she
hasn't let me touch her since that day. Not that she'd been any ball
of fire in the bedroom for years. Not that she ever was. You know how
New England girls are raised, or at least how they _were_ raised back
then? The mothers tell them that sex is evil. They tell them that no
good woman possibly can enjoy sex. They tell the girls to sleep with
their husbands and make children, but once the children are all born
you don't have to sleep with the dope you married any more. God, I'd
like to strangle that old bitch, Elizabeth's mother!" McDermott shook
his head heavily. "I'm talking too damn much, I guess."
"I don't mind," Laura said softly. "If it makes you feel better to get
these things off your chest, I don't mind listening at all."
"You're a good girl," McDermott said. His voice was getting a little
thick, and his pink face was growing flushed. Laura suspected that he
had begun drinking long before her arrival. "You see why I live for
these visits to New York? I can't do anything up in Boston, oh, God,
no! If I ever got caught there, they'd practically crucify me on the
Common. But four times a year I come to New York and I can live again."
His eyes sought hers eagerly. "Four times a year I can have some
genuine affection and sympathy. Sure, I have to pay for it, but that's
better than not having it at all."
He gulped down the second drink and put the glass on the table.
"Don't let me have any more," he said. "I want to stay sober enough to
appreciate you. You're a very beautiful girl, Laura. I need some beauty
in my life. I earn a hundred thousand a year, you know? More than some
people make their whole lives. And I'm unhappy. Funny, isn't it?"
"Money doesn't always make people happy."
"Damn right it doesn't! I see these people who work for me--tellers,
they make $60 a week maybe. And they go home to their wives and lay
them every night. Every goddam night!" He reddened. "Sorry if I get a
little coarse. It's the drinks. But these people, they bang their wives
all night long, on their lousy $60 a week. It's all they have, is fun
in bed, but I don't even have that. I just have my Cadillac and my big
house and my coupons to clip and my stone-cold bitch of a wife. Come
here, Laura."
She put her glass down and walked across the room toward the couch. He
rose, a little unsteadily, as she came close.
He let his hands rest lightly on her shoulders, and smiled at her.
"While I was waiting for you," he said, "I made up my mind that I
wasn't going to exploit you tonight. We both know why you're here,
but I promised myself I wouldn't hop into bed with you before eleven
o'clock at the earliest. I'd show some restraint. I'd sit around and
make polite conversation, and pretend that we were good friends who
had known each other for years. But I can't do it. It isn't even ten
o'clock, but I can't hold out."
Laura smiled tenderly. "I understand," she said.
"I really believe you do. Let's go into the bedroom, shall we?"
They went in together, hand-in-hand. Laura felt a tremendous wave of
pity for this man, this millionaire whose life was so lonely. She
almost forgot that this was a cold business transaction, that he was
buying her for a night at a fixed price. She felt almost like an angel
of mercy, performing an act of kindness.
They stood by the bed, and she pressed her body against his and he
kissed her, hesitantly at first, then more passionately as his desire
mounted and his natural reserve diminished. She realized he was
hesitant, and she took his hands and put them on her blouse, and he
cupped her breasts for a moment before beginning to unbutton her. He
removed her blouse and, with shaking hands, unhooked her bra, and she
heard his little sharp indrawn hiss of delight at the first sight of
her bare breasts. He kissed her stiffening nipples tenderly.
"Lovely," he muttered. "Lovely."
She helped him undress her, and within moments further she was nude and
he was undressing too. His body was fleshy without being fat; he had
obviously taken pains to keep himself in trim, and it certainly did not
seem like the body of a man of fifty-eight.
Naked, they embraced, and he carried her down to the bed.
"Be kind to me, Laura," he whispered. A little shuddering sigh of
longing burst from him, and with sudden frenzy he clasped her, his
hands gripping her breasts tightly, and she surrendered to him. He
gave one deep-throated gasp of delight and uncontrollable desire,
and almost immediately reached his release and sank down limply
between her breasts, his breath coming in harsh bursts, and he said
apologetically, "It happened so fast, Laura. It happened so fast!"
She stroked his back consolingly.
_CHAPTER ELEVEN_
They rested for a while, and then, about an hour later, vigor returned
to him and they began to make love again. This time McDermott's
lust was less urgent, his passion more easily restrained, and their
lovemaking lasted longer. When it was over, McDermott switched off the
light and they got under the covers. He curled up against her, his face
nestling in her bosom, his mouth pressed to one hard little nipple.
Within moments he was asleep. Laura smiled at him in the darkness, this
unhappy man at her breast, old enough to be her father but nestling
there as though he were her child. She adjusted her body to fit his; he
muttered something unintelligible and she joined him in sleep.
At half past seven the next morning, the room telephone rang. Laura
swam up rapidly through layers of sleep, and nudged McDermott awake.
"The phone," she said.
"Answer it," he mumbled.
"No," she said. "It wouldn't be right. You'd better get it."
He nodded dimly and, leaning across her body, picked it up. After a
moment, he said, "Thank you," and replaced the receiver. "It was the
desk," he explained. "I asked them to phone me early so I wouldn't
miss my appointments." He sat up on the edge of the bed, thumbing his
eyes. A golden-gray stubble had sprouted on his cheeks. He looked
rumpled and older, now, in the morning. He smiled at her. "Christ,
but you're a vision, Laura. Lying there with that red hair all over
the pillow, and all your skin showing. You're the only woman I've ever
known who could look beautiful at half past seven in the morning." He
leaned over, planting a kiss just below her navel. Squeezing her thighs
affectionately, he rose and shambled off toward the bathroom. Laura
heard the shower running, and then, a little while later, there was the
sound of an electric razor. When McDermott came out, he looked much
more capable of facing the morning. But his eyes were bloodshot.
"The annex is yours, my dear," he said airily.
Laura showered quickly, just to refresh herself a bit. When she came
out, pink and scrubbed, there was a towel around her, but McDermott
made her remove it. "Delicious," he said. "Delicious. I'd rather
eat you for breakfast than a grapefruit. What lovely skin you have.
Elizabeth had skin like yours ... once." He scowled. "I keep talking
about her. I must be boring you."
"Do you have many important appointments this morning?" Laura asked.
"Oh, God, yes. I've got to be at the Chase Manhattan by half past nine,
and then there's lunch with the Morgan Guaranty fellow at noon, and
after that--" He shook his head. "It's a busy life, this business of
money managing. But I suppose other people work just as hard, with a
good deal less of a reward." He took a starched shirt from a drawer.
"Will you join me for breakfast at the hotel coffee shop?" he asked.
"Of course," she said.
No one looked askance at them as they rode down together and went into
the handsomely-appointed coffee shop. It was a _very_ dignified and
conservative hotel--which meant that the guests were free to do as they
pleased, so long as they did it in a dignified and conservative manner.
Over coffee, McDermott said, "I'd like to see you again tonight, Laura.
Is it possible?"
She shrugged. "If it were up to me, I'd say yes. But I don't arrange my
own assignments. You'll have to--go through channels." She did not like
to mention Spinelli by name.
McDermott smiled faintly. "All right. I'll try to arrange it. You're a
very wonderful girl, do you know that, Laura?"
"I enjoy making people happy," she said.
"You've made me _very_ happy. And I'm looking forward to spending much
more time with you. But just in case your schedule doesn't permit me to
see you again, I'd like to give you something just as a little token of
gratitude for the wonderful time you gave me last night." He reached
into his jacket pocket and produced a sealed envelope. He slid it along
the table to Laura, who slipped it into her purse without looking at it
at all, smiled, and murmured a "Thank you."
They parted, then, McDermott entering a taxi to take him downtown to
the financial district, Laura hailing a cab to take her eastward to her
apartment. Only when she was home did she open McDermott's envelope.
Wrapped in a blank sheet of Whittier stationery, she discovered three
crisp, fresh hundred-dollar bills.
She gasped. Three bland, smiling images of Benjamin Franklin's face
looked up at her.
It was a phenomenal tip for a night's work. Even if she saw McDermott
again tonight and he gave her nothing additional, she would have no
cause to complain about a lack of generosity. It meant that at the
very least she would have $800 this week. Money ceased to have meaning
when it cascaded in at such a rate. She closed her eyes, thinking of
her burgeoning bank account, wondering whether she would ever find the
courage to break away from so lucrative a way of life.
Shortly after noon, Spinelli called.
"You must really have bowled McDermott over," he said. "He phoned in
giving an enthusiastic report on you, and practically demanding that I
let him have you for the rest of the week."
"What did you tell him?"
"I had you lined up for the camera convention tonight and tomorrow,"
Spinelli said. "But McDermott was practically drooling into the
receiver, so I've made some switches. Tania and May will work the
convention, and you'll be with McDermott tonight and tomorrow, and
maybe the day after that if he's still in town. I figure it doesn't
hurt to please him a little extra. He's got plenty of influential
friends."
"Okay," Laura said. "What time tonight?"
"He wants to take you to dinner. Be there around six, I guess. Did he
give you a tip last night?"
"He sure did," Laura said.
"How much?"
"Three," she said.
Spinelli was silent for a moment. Then he whistled and said, "You sure
_must_ have impressed him. What did you do, mix Spanish Fly in your
perfume?"
"I listened to all his troubles, and then I went to bed with him,"
Laura said. "That puts me one notch up on a psychiatrist. _They_ just
listen to your troubles."
Spinelli laughed. "I think I ought to tell you that McDermott isn't the
only one who's been raving about you. Your public is wild about you,
kid."
"I'm flattered, I suppose."
"You ought to be. And--just between you and me--you may be in for a
little elevation of the base salary, if you keep going the way you've
been going. How does it feel to be rich, huh?"
"I don't mind at all."
"Maybe you'd rather be in the chorus line on Ed Sullivan's show?"
"Thanks all the same, Phil. I'll stay where I am."
"Smart girl. You know what's good for you."
Hanging up, Laura bit her lip. So Spinelli was thinking of giving her
a raise! Pretty soon she would be the top attraction on his list, that
meant. She was already the best-looking girl in his organization, and
as she gained in poise and sophistication she was increasingly in
demand among the rich clients Spinelli served. A raise would make it
harder and harder for her to give up the life. If she went to $600 a
week--why, that was $30,000 a year! And tips were averaging four or
five hundred a week more. A few years of income on that scale and she
would be independent for life, if she invested her earnings wisely.
At half past three that afternoon there was a call from Dan.
"I've been trying to reach you for two days," he said. "I phoned around
dinnertime yesterday, but there was no answer."
"I was out," she said.
"You're a hard girl to find, sometimes. When am I going to see you
again?"
"When would you like to?"
"Tonight?"
She paused. "I'm sorry, Dan. Tonight's out. I--have a tremendous amount
of work to catch up on."
"Tomorrow, then?"
She thought of McDermott. Sadly she said, "I hate to do this to you,
honey. But I'm going to be busy tomorrow too, and most likely the day
after."
"Catching up on important work?" The sarcasm in his voice was only
faintly disguised.
"Yes," she said.
"Listen, honey, you don't have to try to soften things. If you're
dating somebody else those nights, you can come out and tell me the
truth. I won't fold up and die."
"I'm working, Dan," she said. "Honestly." _It's the truth, isn't it?_
she asked herself savagely.
"All right. Have it your way. I'm not going to try to force myself on
you."
"Look, Dan--darling--believe me, I'd give anything to be able to see
you the next couple of nights. But I can't. Absolutely. It's impossible
to explain, but I--I can't."
"Okay," he said mildly. "I told you, I'm not out to force the issue.
But I do want to see you. I've some very important things to discuss
with you. In person."
"Monday?" she said.
"Monday's fine. Pick you up at six or so for dinner?"
"Swell, darling!"
"Till Monday, then." He blew her a kiss. She returned it, and they hung
up.
Immediately she phoned Spinelli and requested a day off for Monday.
He was reluctant, but she pinned him down to the admission that she
was entitled to several more days off that month, and that he had not
scheduled her yet for anything beyond the weekend.
"How come it's so important?" he asked.
"It isn't, really. Just that I feel like taking a breather."
"You had a breather just a couple of days ago. You seem awfully eager
for another one."
"I've got some things to catch up on, Phil."
"Oh? Say, now, you aren't involved in anything on your own, are you?
You know I don't take much to free enterprise in this organization."
"Would I jeopardize myself by anything as dumb as that?" she asked
angrily.
"Women do peculiar things when they think they're in love," Spinelli
said with calm menace in his voice. "We've been getting along swell,
Laura. I wouldn't want you to mess up a splendid arrangement."
"All I want is a day off on Monday, Phil. If you're going to imagine
all sorts of wild affairs--"
"Okay. Okay. Take Monday off," Spinelli said brusquely. "I withdraw all
insinuations. Friends?"
"Friends," she said.
When she put down the phone, she felt a sharp pang of guilt and fright.
_I'm getting into this thing deeper and deeper_, she thought. Spinelli,
who was anything but a fool, was beginning to get suspicious. It would
be only an elementary precaution now for him to station a detective on
her tail to watch her after-hours activities. Spinelli would find out
about Dan that way.
She knew what would happen. Spinelli would do nothing to her--not
directly. But Dan would be visited one night and the facts of life
would be explained to him, perhaps with a baseball bat, perhaps with a
knife. And she would be told quietly not to make a second mistake.
She had lied to Dan, and she had lied to Spinelli. The tangle of her
lies was increasing--perhaps, she thought bleakly, it would soon weave
itself into a noose for her throat. Dan had to talk to her about
"something personal," and she had a good idea that it meant something
to do with a ring. But how would she elude Spinelli's vigilance? How
would she ever break free of him? She was too valuable now for Spinelli
to let her go without an effort. And he could so easily keep her,
simply by telling the truth about her to Dan.
There was no way out.
There was nothing to do but live from one day to the next, and hope
against hope that--somehow--everything would turn out all right.
Fear and despair chilled her. Spinelli was urbane and amiable, but the
urbanity was only a mask for the ruthlessness beneath the surface. She
could not hope to defeat him in any sort of struggle.
The wise thing would be to give up Dan, thus avoiding the conflict with
Spinelli and the chance of harm to him or of possible exposure. But she
could not give him up. He was the one chance she had--perhaps the only
one she ever would have--to escape into a decent life. He was the first
man she had known who tried neither to buy her nor to rape her. He was
the only one who regarded her as a human being, not as a two-legged sex
machine. She loved him for that.
She loved him.
But she dreaded what was coming.
She forced all thoughts of the dilemma from her mind, and began to
dress for the evening. Since it was a dinner date, and a second date as
well, she dressed more daringly, in a gay and provocative gown whose
neckline actually cut _below_ her breasts, leaving only a filmy band of
gauze and lace to cover the bosom. There was a special bra to go with
the outfit, one that embraced her nipples and hugged the lower curves
of her bosom. She had never worn the gown in public; with a jacket,
though, it seemed moderately decent, and a really high-class restaurant
would be accustomed to such a dazzling display.
McDermott was impressed. He was ready, immaculate in formal tuxedo,
when she knocked at his door at five after six that evening. He
kissed her hand, and then--to the accompaniment of her delighted
giggles--lightly kissed her exposed bosom. "Won't you be arrested in a
gown like that?" he asked.