"But--"
"They checked with Mr. Bittner," the nurse said coldly. "Mr. Bittner
said that he did not want to see you under any circumstances. I'm
sorry, Miss Haynes. We can't admit you."
_CHAPTER FOURTEEN_
Laura dreamed of Dan that night.
She dreamed that somehow the mistakes of the past had magically been
undone--that she had never gone to McCarten's that day, had never been
raped, had never embarked on the chain of events that had ultimately
brought her to Phil Spinelli. And, so, Dan had never tried to kill
himself on the East River Drive. But they had met, though--that much of
the past remained unchanged in her dream--and they had fallen in love,
and now they were getting married.
She dreamed of a small wedding, just a few friends on hand. She stood
at Dan's side, gleaming in her white dress of virginity, and after
the ceremony they made a quick escape, getting into Dan's little car
and heading upstate for a honeymoon in a secluded mountain resort. By
sundown, they had eaten and were alone in their room, and they smiled
at each other shyly, Laura a virgin and Dan an inexperienced man, and
with hesitant fingers Dan began to undress her, opening her bra, laying
bare her young, full breasts that no man had ever touched, and finally
her body was naked to his, and he was undressed too, his body slim and
manly, and he took her uncertainly in his arms, just as frightened as
she was, and they kissed, a timid kiss at first, then more passionate
until it inflamed them both, and in one moment of blazing happiness she
surrendered to him, and she heard him mutter "I love you, Laura" as her
virginity vanished without pain, and their bodies were moving together
in perfect accord, every motion bringing incredible pleasure to both
of them, and they were moving faster and faster now, his hand resting
on the rising sweep of her breasts, she gripping the firm muscles of
his back, and she felt the great throbbing contractions of fulfillment,
and above her he was breathing deeply, and in another moment they would
reach a thundering ecstasy, a perfect climax to their first act of
love--
She woke.
She sat upright in bed, trembling. She had put pajamas on before going
to bed, and they clung stickily to her skin, pasted to her body by
perspiration. Angrily she ripped the pajamas off and flung them to the
floor. Her loins ached; the dream seemed so vivid that for a moment she
could not understand why Dan was not right here, next to her in the
bed, and then she remembered that he was lying in the hospital, on the
borderline between life and death, and he had refused to let her see
him.
The bedside clock said three A.M. Laura tried to return to sleep. But
sleep would not come; she twisted and turned, moving from one position
to another without finding any comfort. Every nerve in her body was
drawn tight. The dream still hovered with her, and it was almost as
though she could feel Dan's hand tenderly cupping the fullness of her
breasts, Dan's body lying between her thighs. But it was only a phantom
of the night. She had never slept with him--and now she never would.
The hours dragged mercilessly on. At half past five, Laura decided
it was pointless to try to sleep any more. She sat up at the edge of
the bed, her head bowed, supported by clenched fists, elbows on her
thighs. She looked down at the heavy globes of her breasts. Her nipples
tingled painfully from the imagined stimulation of her dream.
The sun was rising, now. Laura walked to the terrace and stepped out on
it, still naked. The morning air was cool and fresh; the summer heat
would not descend on the city for some hours yet. She stood there,
feeling the river breeze caressing her naked breasts and bare loins,
not caring whether anyone might look up from the street below and
see her. For a long moment she stared down, many stories down to the
street. It would be so easy to clamber up onto the little parapet and
to float out into space, falling twelve, thirteen, fourteen floors.
They would find her naked body later in the morning, the breasts
flattened to ruin, the tapering flawless legs crushed and shattered.
Shaking her head, she walked back into the apartment and shut the
terrace window. It was six in the morning now. The dream of love was
far behind her, fading like the dream it had been. It no longer seemed
to have even the semblance of reality to her.
She poured some juice, made some toast, put up a pot of coffee. She
breakfasted morosely, too tired to care what she was eating or how it
tasted. At half past seven she telephoned the hospital.
"I'd like to find out how Mr. Dan Bittner spent the night," she said.
"Just one moment," came the impersonal, disinterested voice from the
hospital switchboard. "I will check on that information for you."
Laura waited. A moment or two later, the operator said, "Pardon me. Are
you a relative of his?"
"I'm--a friend," Laura said. "A very close friend of his."
"I'm sorry, then. Mr. Bittner died during the night."
"Oh," Laura said, in a small voice. She had been expecting it. It came
as no surprise. She had _known_ he would not last the night. _And I
never even said goodbye to him_, she thought sadly.
"His parents have been notified," the operator went on. "If you'll
leave your name with me, I can give it to them when they arrive to
claim the body, and they will get in touch with you concerning the
funeral arrangements for him."
"That's all right," Laura said quietly. "It doesn't matter, about the
funeral. I wouldn't want to see him dead. Thanks, though. Thanks."
She let the phone drop back into its cradle.
She felt no hysteria, no wild grief. There was only a lingering,
festering bitterness, a cold rage against the universe that had
designed events to turn out in this way.
_I killed him_, she thought acidly.
_As sure as if I'd put a gun to his brain myself, I killed him. I ought
to give myself up for murder. I knew all along that it would kill him
to find out the truth about me. I should never have let him become
involved with me. But I did. And I killed him._
She stared at the floor, thinking of the people she had known in New
York, and what had happened to them. Marilyn ... dead. McDermott ...
ruined. Dan ... dead. At least one of those deaths was unquestionably
her fault. Marilyn's fate and McDermott's were simply coincidentally
involved with her.
But still, it was a horrid trio of memories.
Rising, Laura paced the apartment, wondering about the course of her
life since she had come to New York. She had earned a good deal of
money, but that was her only positive accomplishment. On the credit
side, money. On the debit side, betrayal of every ideal she had once
known. She had sold her body, had deceived herself more than anyone
else, had led a good and innocent young man to his death. She had
mingled with lechers and perverts and pimps.
_Not very pretty, is it?_ she asked herself.
Not at all. Somehow her life had gone off the track. Somehow instead
of the show-business career she had come to New York to win, she had
achieved success in whoredom instead. Nothing much to be proud of.
Nothing much to wire home to the folks in Kansas.
She walked to the dresser drawer and opened it. A gun lay under a
pile of blouses. It was a .22 that Spinelli had given her, to use
as protection in case any burglar tried to force his way into her
apartment. It was loaded, but she had never used it. It was a small,
well-made, expensive-looking little gun. The low-caliber bullet it
fired would not always kill, but it could cripple--and if it hit a
vital area it could destroy.
She took the gun out and balanced it on her palm. All she had to do was
wrap a finger round the trigger, lift the gun to her temple, and fire.
She would die instantly. There would be none of the lingering horror
of poison, or the deadly terror of the long wait before your hurtling
body reached the street. A tightening of one finger, and death would
crash through her brain, ending a useless and empty life.
She slid her hand round the cold butt and raised the gun. Her finger
quivered over the trigger. Her hand shook.
For a long moment she remained poised, on the brink of pulling the
trigger. No one would miss her, she thought. The Kansas folks had
probably already begun to forget her. Spinelli would miss her, sure.
He'd miss the money she brought him, that's all. Dan would not miss
her. Not now. She was of no importance to the universe. She was an
enemy of society.
She deserved to die, she told herself.
But the finger resting on the trigger remained relaxed. She did not
fire. She sat motionless, hardly breathing, while the battle raged
inside her mind. _End it, end it_, part of her shrilled. _Why go on?
Money isn't everything. Life isn't worth living if you can't respect
yourself. You might just as well pull the trigger._
But the reply came quickly, anguishedly: _No, don't. Death is too
final. If you live, there's always time to repent, to change, to atone
for the harm you've done. Suicide is a coward's way out. It would be
the last sniveling act of a weak and worthless person. It takes guts
to go on living from one day to the next. It takes courage to try to
repair the mess you've made of your life._
Slowly, she let the gun down.
The tension broke. She was slick with her own sweat, and her heart
raced dizzyingly. She went into the bathroom and got under the shower
again, scrubbing the beads of sweat from her breasts and thighs and
buttocks. She came out and began to dress--not in anything fancy,
just a simple dress of the kind she wore back in the dim days before
Spinelli.
By ten o'clock she was ready to leave. Almost as an afterthought, she
dropped the .22 into her handbag.
The morning was warm and bright, a perfect late-summer day with just
the merest hint of the approaching autumn in the soft breeze coming
down from the east. Laura considered taking a taxi, but decided against
it. Her own legs were good enough. Besides, she didn't have very far to
go.
It was half past ten by the time she reached Spinelli's apartment
house. She had not walked rapidly. In New York, everyone sprints, but
this morning Laura had chosen to stroll. She had plenty of time.
All the time in the world.
The doorman in the palatial lobby of Spinelli's building recognized her
and smiled.
"Miss Haynes to see Mr. Spinelli?"
"That's right," Laura said.
In this building, no one went up unannounced. Laura waited while the
doorman rang upstairs on the house-phone and told Skalkottis that Miss
Haynes was here to see Mr. Spinelli. Skalkottis rumbled an "Okay"
so loudly that Laura heard it plainly. She walked into the waiting
elevator and punched 20.
Skalkottis met her in the foyer as she stepped out of the elevator and
into Spinelli's apartment. The hulking bodyguard said, "How come you
didn't phone before you came over?"
Laura shrugged. "I didn't know I was coming. I was out taking a walk,
and all of a sudden I realized I was right near Phil's place, so I
figured I'd stop up and say hello. I haven't been here for a while."
"Phil has some visitors," Skalkottis said uncertainly.
"That's all right. He won't mind if I join them," Laura replied
breezily. Before Skalkottis could stop her, she marched past him and
into the long hallway, past all the rooms of breathtaking beauty,
looking for Spinelli. She found him finally in the long room with the
terrace, the enormous room where Spinelli had administered her final
exam before graduating her into his staff.
He had two visitors.