The black spider scuttled between two soda glasses, and Maria Wyzerk, who had called herself Sue Belden for five years, watched as it crawled slowly back out at her. Thin hairs trembled menacingly along its obscene body, and Maria's belly contracted. She grabbed a wet rag from the counter and hammered on the spider so hard two glasses fragmented and the thing turned into a shapeless black blob.
"Hi, there!"
The man spoke so casually behind her that she jumped. She wondered how he had gotten in without the screen door slamming. She didn't turn yet, for she felt too much like throwing up. "What do you want?" she asked sharply, still trying to control her stomach.
"Nothing but a cup of coffee and a couple of doughnuts."
She didn't look at him. She dug her left hand in tight over her waist and dropped the spider's death-rag into the plastic waste-container near the sink.
"You sure pulverized it," the man said. His voice vibrated with dry, friendly humor.
She didn't look at him. "I had to kill it," she said, "I hate spiders. They make me nervous when they go crawling all over like that."
"You should use DDT or something."
She didn't answer, but filled his cup automatically and placed it on the counter. She took two doughnuts out of the rack and placed them on the counter. She didn't look at him.
"Hi, Maria!"
She heard the sound of the stranger's voice calling her by her real name, and she couldn't understand that either. She looked at him then fast enough, and it was her ex-husband, Jim White. The shock made her say something she didn't want to say. "Damn you, Jim, it's your fault!"
"Baby, cut it out," he said trying to grab her hand, "You know damn well what happened."
"Yeah, I know. So where's Arlene?"
"Back at the motel."
"I thought so!"
"Look, Maria, if you're going to be a bitch about this!"
"I'm not, but I still love you. Damn you, Jim, don't you know? You want to see something? Look!" She shoved her left hand in front of his face, and he stared at her gold wedding ring. He should stare, for he had placed it on her finger twelve years before.
"You still wearing that?"
"Yeah, funny, ain't it? You want to have a great big old laugh?"
"Look, Maria, I'm sorry. I'm sorry about every damn thing..."
He didn't finish what he was trying to say. Even before she heard it, he caught the soft rasp of the screen door being pushed and opened. His head jerked to the side, and they both listened to those same clicking steps. It seemed to Maria that she was watching a crazy scene from a fantastic movie, as she stared at the one woman who had been the curse of her life.
It was Jim's present wife, Arlene, and Arlene wore a green dress more perfectly fitted to her body than ever. Not even ten years had marked the incredible sleek beauty of her face. Her skin bore no blemish, and her steel-green eyes flashed a smouldering look, first at Maria, then at Jim.
"I was wondering where you were, lover. I didn't know you might bump into our old friend so easily. I hadn't planned on its happening so soon. Hi, Maria. Shall we shake hands like long-lost Englishmen, or shall we kiss warmly like Frenchmen, or shall we...?"
"Shut up, Arlene!"
Maria jumped back. She clasped her right hand to her burning cheek. She had not made a sound. She had not said it. Jim had yelled at Arlene, and now the tight, sweaty tension of her white uniform-dress stifled her. She stared down for a second at her own fluff of pink apron, then surprised a quick gloating look in Arlene's eyes, as Arlene seemed to gaze right through the apron.
"Don't yell at me, Jim!"
Arlene took her eyes from Maria's tiny pink triangle. And though Arlene didn't visibly adjust her dress, Maria sensed how Arlene's body twisted, tight and restless, into that green metallic silk. Briefly, Arlene hesitated, took one last look at Maria's pink wedge, then lowered herself beside Jim. She cupped her hands loosely and rubbed them along his neck as if she were stroking a pet animal, and Maria watched with disbelief as Jim went rigid.
"What's the matter, little old husband? You feeling sick or something?"
Jim didn't answer Arlene, but Maria didn't want to see any more. She didn't want to hear any more, and she turned away from the scene. Filled with sudden, swift-grown agony, she glanced around at the German Coffee Shop's blue-and-white decor, looking desperately for customers, but the place was empty. She watched a fly buzz noisily toward the ceiling, but it no sooner got there than it got stuck in a mysterious twist of cobweb, and hung buzzing its death pains into a sharply reflected ray of morning sun...
* * *
Jim felt the soft white flesh of Arlene's hands. They held him as they had always held him. She took him with her hands and refused to take him with her body, and he wondered how he had managed to yell at her. He had walked into the coffee shop thinking about nothing, and Maria had been such a quick, wonderful surprise to him. She looked tired in her waitress uniform, but she was more enticing and sexy than ever.
He sat motionless, and he didn't shove Arlene's hands away. He couldn't. He felt suddenly hot, as if all that July day had suddenly poured itself full of scalding water. His white shirt collar squeezed his neck, and he didn't know why he wore them a half size too small. He didn't go along with Arlene's, "Because they stay up better that way, dear. Much better than that other part of you."
Maria's beauty throbbed through him like slow fire, and he didn't think about Arlene. He didn't dare. But why was it, he wondered, that he had not recognized Maria at once? Why had he pulled that curtain down so hard and violently in his mind? Why had he forced himself to forget?
Even her movements while swatting the spider were distinctive. Only Maria could move like that. He felt a savage, sudden itching in his right eye.
Hollyhock, Wisconsin, was a quiet town. He wondered if they ever had any excitement even on Saturday nights, and he stared out the window to his left across a long low rise of green hill. In the center of town, behind him, was a mammoth white structure surrounded by a jungle of trees and brush. Even from a distance, he had been able to tell it was rotting to pieces. In contrast to that eyesore, most of the houses made neat white building-blocks along the clean streets.
They had stopped in Hollyhock the previous night, on their way to upper Michigan. Arlene had seen the Red Robin Motel. She had told him to stop, and though it was evening, and they both still felt relaxed and refreshed, she had not said one word about going out and looking for young stuff. He was glad about that, for he knew it would have been risky trying anything in a strange new place.
He had crawled into his usual twin bed, and he had felt her white hands stroking him, and then he had fallen almost violently asleep. On the counter, right in front of him, placed there by his first wife, his coffee had now taken on the color of liquid mud. He stared carefully into the long H-design on the stainless steel spoon. He had never seen a design like that before, and as an experienced hardware man, he knew most things about metals, paints, gadgets of all kinds.
He didn't want to recognize Arlene, didn't want to look at her.
"Jim, darling!"
"Don't touch me!"
"Maria, what did you do to him? You didn't have time to knock off a quick piece, did you? So what's the story?"
Jim went suddenly tense and sick. Once, when he was eleven, back in Vermont, his mother had caught him looking at nude lingerie models in a mail-order catalogue and doing something he shouldn't. She had yelled at him horribly. He reacted now as he had then. An enormous pressure pushed down on his head, and he turned to look out of the black night into the green day.
"Maria, can't you talk? We're all old friends, old buddies, old sleeping buddies, so come off it."
Maria stood silent, and her hands hung loosely at her sides. Only her fingers moved convulsively like the legs of the spider she had just killed. They seemed to move by themselves, without her conscious control.
Jim felt Arlene turn towards him, and she tweaked the tender lobe of his right ear.
"Don't!"
"Why not, lover? Shall I tweak something else? Show Maria how big you've grown?"
He tried to twist around and move away from the counter stool, but Arlene swung his stool quickly back into place. He felt properly punished, and he heard her husky voice ringing in his ears.
"Whoa, lover, not so fast! We're going to be here for a long time, and we're going to have a lot of talking to do... aren't we, Maria?"
Jim watched pure agony. He saw it drawn on Maria's face, and it seemed to drain like some strong festering venom out of Maria's whole wounded body, and then it centered into twin pockets of caged poison in her blue eyes. He wanted to help her, but he couldn't. He wanted to fight for her, and searched for strength, but found none. He heard the soft swift movements of Arlene's lips coating words with slime, and he listened to the dying fly, dangling and buzzing, dangling and buzzing...
Maria stared at them and felt only one thing. She had to get rid of Arlene before Arlene destroyed her whole universe. She wished she could pick up a wet rag, and somehow squash that deadly steel female into a shapeless blob. She couldn't. She could only face her one-time friend.
"Arlene," she said, "Get out! I didn't want to see you. I didn't ask you to come here."
"Why not? Are Jim and I too much for you?"
Arlene smiled a quick, meaningful smile, and her lips looked as if they had been brushed with quick bright strokes of blood. She rubbed back a wisp of hair from her white, unwrinkled forehead, and Maria was struck by the familiar contrast of black against white.
"Please go."
"Why should I, my dear. Why? Jim likes it here. I like it here. Couldn't you please give me a cup of coffee... and try not to put any arsenic in it?"
Maria stared at her, felt her itching palms begging her to slap the woman, but Arlene's lips only turned up further, more provokingly.
"You can poison me later. Maybe when we have cocktails. Maybe when we go dancing. Would you like to go dancing? Maria, dear, I don't think you have been dancing in a long time. You have wrinkles of loneliness under your eyes. Have you been well, dear? Do you sleep nights? No man? Too many men? What's the matter, dear, you wouldn't splash my cup of coffee, would you?"
Maria listened silently and lowered the cup to the counter. She felt something like an earth tremor running up and down her spine, but she didn't let the coffee splash over. Somehow, she managed to keep the saucer clean. She jerked her eyes away from Arlene's face and looked desperately at the silent jukebox and wished she could remember some happy, once-heard song.
"Maria, dear, what's the matter, don't you love me any more?"
"Get out!"
She yelled the words at Arlene. She felt her bra cutting hard savage lines into her ribs, and cold sweat running down under her tight panty band. She had to get rid of that woman. She couldn't stand it any longer. She was being destroyed.
"Please, get out!"
Arlene leaned over slightly, then pushed back from the counter, as if she were trying to stand up, but Jim grabbed her and held her down. Maria watched green iridescent silk sparkle and tense along Arlene's hips as if the material would burst.
"Maria, please, I want to talk to you-real quiet-like."
"No, damn you! You destroyed everything I ever wanted, ever loved, ever had. Get out of here... please, get out of here."
Maria couldn't stand watching Arlene let herself down so slowly. It hurt, especially when Arlene picked up her coffee cup and rubbed its white clean edge as she had always done. She did it deliberately, as if she meant her act to be another slap in Maria's face, and then took quick small sips.
"Good coffee, Maria. But not like we used to make the stuff, is it? Remember our private special, secret recipe for long nights? Remember?"
Maria wanted to say she remembered nothing, that she had forgotten everything, but she couldn't. She remembered too much. There was nothing about Arlene Harte that she had ever forgotten. How could she forget? How?
"Remember, once, how we gave some to old John Arthur, back in Vermont?"
"Please, go now - please!"
"But Maria, it was such a joke, wasn't it?" Then, as if machining steel parts on a very expensive lathe, Arlene lowered her cup, settled it slowly into her saucer. The cup made no sound. "Come on, Maria, come on, take my hand!"
"Maria, don't do it!"
Chapter Two
If Jim asked himself a million times why he yelled like that, he would never be able to come up with the real answer. He refused to look at the real answer. He couldn't possibly be still in love with Maria, could he? How the hell was that possible after what he had done? How could even one drop of love come in to the world that had been fashioned for him by Arlene?
But he had yelled at Arlene. He didn't want to see her playing again with Maria, doing with Maria the things she did with other women. Those things which he had watched-and which, he had to admit, though he didn't want to - he got a kick out of.
Why had he yelled?
He watched Arlene's sharp eyes examining him. He watched her full lips twist into a sarcastic, knowing smile. He wanted his strength back, but he couldn't find it. He had some small remaining fragment of something which he once was, and he felt Arlene's fingers twist around it and choke it back into sudden submission. He looked pleadingly at Maria. He tried to tell her to resist.
"So, Jim, boy," Arlene said, "you're coming back to life - you're coming up from the dead, lover. Is that what you want to do?" Arlene's voice stroked him. Her words fingered him with the coldness of her white bony digits.
"Let's cut out of here," he said and tried to pull her up.
"No!"
"Jim, please get her out of here-please!"
It was the way Maria's voice pleaded with him that got him the most. He couldn't stand to see her crying so silently under the smooth exterior of her face. She was just barely keeping everything back. Arlene had been too cruel to Maria, had used her too much and too often.
"Jim, please. Please, Jim!"
What could he say? What could he do? He looked at her, and he tried to find one word which would comfort her, but of all the words he knew or had ever learned or had ever used on her, he didn't have one now that would do any good.
"Go ahead, Jim, say something nice to her. Go on, can't you find even one word?" It was terrifying how completely Arlene got inside his thoughts. Even tight inside his own brain, he couldn't escape her. He now knew, could see in that instant, why Arlene had come to him. She had come to him those years before wanting Maria, because Maria fitted her pattern.
Arlene's wide, beautiful mouth could swallow up sex with a hunger which was never satisfied, but it was not a hunger for men. And though it feasted on all women, it was not a gnawing hunger for all women. No, it was only one thing. A great exquisite hunger tore across Arlene and dominated her, and it was a hunger for only one woman.
That hunger had always dominated her.
Arlene wanted only the soft richness of a woman who had grown up in the Vermont hills.
Maria Wyzerk!
When Jim had thought about it after its happening, he knew partly why it had happened, but he had never dared touch the thought with his mind too long. Frankly, he didn't have the guts for it. But Arlene had spun, coldly, with her own beautiful body, a thin steel web. It was a cold, brilliant web, and it stayed hard and unbreakable. She had caught him with it first, and then she had fingered for and found satisfaction to a hunger which encompassed her small world. She had caught Maria in its toils like one sick and buzzing fly.
Arlene had told him often enough how it had happened. He insisted on not listening, and she had insisted on telling him. Her words would have come through to him, even though the concrete covering on his ears had been a mile thick.
"She was so lonely up there in the hills, and I got you to go up and bring her down to go out with us. Don't you remember, Jim, don't you remember, how we took her dancing? And how you used to square dance with her? She felt so soft and comfortable in your arms, remember? Then think of how she felt in mine. I had to feed on that, Jim... It was my only hope. My whole life, feeling that wonderful maddening body."
"Shut up!" He had said.
"Why should I shut up? So you can have other dreams in other places? No, Jim, you'll listen, because it excites you. It excites you to know how I knew you, and how I got you married to Maria Wyzerk, and then how, when you went to war, I got close to her. You don't want to hear it. But Jim, you can not stop hearing it - ever!"
He could never forget those years. He had been captured completely by Arlene Harte. She was the most attractive woman in all Lemon Creek County. He had watched entranced as she dominated men. He had watched her perform, watched the effortless way she danced, watched how she probed with her eyes into her partner's eyes and how, when she danced with him, she slipped her small pink tongue tip in slow circular motions over her half-opened lips.
"Want a quick taste?" She would ask.
He would not answer her then, but later in the car he would tell her he loved her, and he would feel the wet slippery movement of her lips engulfing him... as if she would eat him up, too.
Then something had happened. Maria seemed to be with him more and more frequently. He slept with Arlene and took Maria to the dances, and Arlene had somehow suggested-and he could never remember exactly how she had twisted words and sentences - that maybe he should marry Maria, and not her. And then- in that summer of unbearable heat-he had married Maria.
A few months later, drafted, trained, yanked away from the hills, he went to Korea. He had learned the thin, sad face of the Orient, its slimy war and the red splash of red death in black mud. In Tokyo, on leave, he had thrown himself into as many whorehouses as he could find, trying to forget.
I And that was the funny part of it, for he was trying to forget not Maria, but Arlene. He had to forget her. He had to get her out of his blood stream. Forget her voracious, all-consuming hunger... but he could not forget.
He knew later, from Arlene, after she had split him away from Maria, hoping to tie all three of them together - somehow, someway, in that mad fashion of hers - what had happened when he was overseas. Arlene had pulled Maria off to dance after dance in the hills. Those dances were real swinging jobs, and Jim knew how the men and women loaded booze into the backs of their old cars and went for a good blast.
He could visualize Arlene, laughing, joking, sitting close to Maria in a back seat, telling Maria wild risque stories, and she would be showing Maria how to drive hard-faced, hard-muscled country boys crazy with her twisting, turning, ever-tormenting body.
"Don't kiss them," she would say, and she would turn her full mouth towards Maria, "just give them a lick and a promise, that's all. You know what, don't you, dear? They love it!"
He had grown used to hearing long sequences of past events drawn clear for him. He had grown used to hearing Arlene's voice dwell on the most intimate details. "Jim, she was so innocent and naive. She believed everything I told her. You know, she thought J was the one who brought you home safely. I convinced her. It was easy."
Arlene described how she had played on Maria's tight-knotted, deeply ingrown core of fear and belief. Maria Wyzerk had been brought up by Polish-American parents. Her father worked in a marble quarry, and her mother still read the old sign-books. Arlene knew that. Arlene had convinced Maria she knew everything that there was to know about the world of secret signs and symbols, and while he - Jim - was in Korea, Arlene had brought out one new scare after another.
Arlene went to Maria with a special purpose in mind. She went in the full round moon of those months. When the Vermont land lay thick and silver, like thick custard topping a lemon pie, she met Maria at the dark, broken-down shape of old man Wyzerk's farmhouse gate.
"Come on, darling, well walk a little ways..."
"Jim!"
He dropped the voices of the past. It disappeared, and he listened to the voice of the present. His confused thoughts shot bright machine-gun patterns through Jim's head, and he heard Maria saying his name, and he looked up at her.
"Jim, please...!"
"What?"
"The mayor, Andy Cohler, is coming with the police chief. For god's sake, Jim, keep her shut up."
He saw Arlene looking towards the doorway, and she seemed to radiate more than heat when the two men walked quickly in from the sidewalk. One was stout and wore a wrinkled business suit, with a large buckled belt holding up his sagging pants.
His face seemed both kind and rugged at the same time, and he had none of the air of the usual police official. But Jim knew him to be the police chief. The other man wore a neat black suit and bore himself very carefully, as if old age might be too much for him. But his voice was quick and cheerful, and he greeted Maria with great enthusiasm.
"Hi, Sugar, how's my baby today? You got some good Danish? By the way, Sugar, when are we getting married?"
Maria managed a small smile. "You're forgetting your wife, aren't you, Mayor?"
"No - not me. Did you ever hear of two wives hurting anybody?"
Jim listened to their quick dialogue, and he knew why he didn't like it. He knew exactly what was wrong with it. Whatever those people talked about, it would still be good and clean, like the majority of German homes in Hollyhock. They would all be neat and belong to the established order.
But he and Arlene did not belong, and now, as he glanced over to watch Maria's movements, he could see an almost mysterious change in her. After he and then Arlene had entered her world of the German Coffee House, they had contaminated its cleanliness. They had put her back into that same deep hole from which she had escaped, and Jim recognized the fact and felt sorry.
He wanted to tell her his findings, but he had to keep silent and watch. He could only barely control his anger, when Arlene swung around and looked full at the two men with a gleam of crazy interest in her eyes.
"We're new here," she said. "Just got in last night, but we'd like to spend our vacation in your town. My husband's in the hardware business, and we have a whole month. I was wondering if you knew of some place we might rent."
The mayor smiled quickly. "I don't keep up with that sort of thing, but my friend, Jerry Williams here, could fix you up. He's supposed to be the Police Chief of this town, but he's got his hands in all sorts of doings. Right, Jerry?"
The heavy face looked condescendingly at his friend, and the chief put down his cup. "I sure wished I had your gall when it comes to talking to pretty ladies, Mayor. If I did, I'd be hung with more than one bigamy rap, that's for sure."
"Cut it out, Jerry. You suppose you got an address for these nice folks?"
"Sure thing. Old Mrs. Steinhauer is gone away for the summer, and they could have her place real easy like. In fact, I've got the keys right with me, now. You want to take a look at it."
Arlene smiled. "A little later, if it's no bother. We're just having our breakfast now, and we want to look around town a little bit. Looks like a real nice place you've got here, Chief."
"We like it, well enough."
"Any crime?" Arlene dropped her two words like silver coins in the air, but they settled peacefully enough into the Police Chiefs understanding.
"Naw, not a thing. It's lucky I've even got a job, and as for the Mayor, here, he doesn't have a damn thing to do from one day to the next."
When Jim looked at Maria, he saw her coming back from the booth, and she seemed to be struggling to control an immense, growing anger. She stepped swiftly behind the counter and leaned over close to Arlene. "Look," she whispered, "you leave my friends alone."
Arlene did not whisper back. She spoke up loud and clear. "Maria, dear. I wouldn't dream of hurting them. I think they're both charming people, and I'm glad I've got to know them. I think we'll have a long happy friendship, don't you, Chief?"
She turned rapidly and directed the last part of her statement at the busily eating Chief, who smiled at her happily.
Jim realized his isolation. He had retreated across too many worlds. He had lost his fingerhold in his high climb up a tall mountain and had slipped into the depths. Arlene's words repeated themselves in his mind. She had uttered them a week before they had left his Massachusetts store. She had spelled it out, illustrating with clear-cut gestures.
"Lover, I like them when they're young and soft. They're like sweet milk, and they've never had time to turn sour, and they taste so wonderful..."
He thought of all her words, and of his ten years' living with her, and the dead buzzing of the fly lingered in his mind like the bad sick taste of something rotten.
Chapter Three
Maria's memories had not focussed themselves until the Mayor and Jerry walked in. First, she had thought of asking them for help, telling them about Arlene, asking them to kick Arlene out of town. But only too soon, her memories pointed out to her why she couldn't do it.
Yes, Jim had gone to war and, to fill Maria's loneliness, Arlene had made frequent appearances. Maria had never known about such things. She had never even heard of them, but Arlene was a facile teacher. Arlene met her back of Dad's barn - with the moon creaming the whole world-and Maria stared into a Di-ana-esque which glowed with white violence stolen from the moon.
She stared down at Arlene's long hands, and Arlene motioned for her to follow down an old cow path and through dark pines. Maria, as a child, had often smelled their piney, pungent aroma, but now she shivered when she inhaled it. Shadows circled crazily and Arlene walked swiftly through them, creating strange motions with her hands and arms.
It seemed as if Arlene were stroking herself and diverting her own flesh, but it could have been a trick of the shadows. Arlene walked through alternating black and white, and when the light cut across her face and body, it revealed to Maria sheer beauty and sheer horror. For it seemed in that white-black world, as if Arlene's body were ready to explode. Maria expected the moon to ignite it and send dark pieces of Arlene Harte flashing into orbit.
Maria wanted to grab hold of a rough branch and save herself by holding on, but she couldn't. Arlene led, and Maria followed to a sheer granite cliff that overlooked a wide, ever-expanding valley, where yellow lights glowed up in rectangular silence from a dozen farms. Maria was not so much scared as shocked. She had expected the lights to be friendly ones. They were not. They shone coldly, severely, and Arlene stood there looking down at them, searching for something in the night.
Arlene's silence provoked Maria, but then Arlene turned and spoke with a husky voice that whipped the night into a wild, white froth.
"Give me your hand, Maria! Here, darling, take hold of my zipper. Help me off with this stupid dress. We have to do it for him. You know that, don't you? We have to work hard to get him back to you."
Arlene stepped close to Maria, and Maria smelled the hard insistent thrust of Arlene's perfume. It was a violent, raw, uncontrolled smell. Maria found herself staring up into a white oval face, in which Arlene's eyes burned colder than ever. They melted the night with their lust and passion, and Arlene's wide, curved eyebrows stood like twin arches over twin icy fires.
Arlene's long nose was delicate, perfectly chiseled, seemed to Maria's way of thinking as perfect in beauty as that of a goddess cut from marble. Maria didn't dare look down at the curved, supple body, but she knew in those summer nights that Arlene's green-silk dress looked black as carbon. The moon flowed down across Arlene's shoulders, and the air trembled with the moon's endless milky ejaculations.
Even as Maria kept on silently staring, Arlene's hand reached out. Fingers smooth as stone coaxed and cupped Maria's left breast. Maria felt their chill as they pressed through her thin cotton blouse, and then the chill was transformed into sudden heat, and Arlene's mouth jerked down over her left nipple.
Maria shivered with fear, yet she couldn't force the other woman away. She didn't like it, yet she felt the dark stain of another deeper fear. She believed Arlene. She believed what Arlene read out of the melted lead, she believed Arlene could save Jim. She had nothing else. She had to believe her.
Arlene must have known it, must always have known it. Arlene used clever words. She was skilled with her movements with her hands, and Maria felt Arlene pulling on her superstition, working with it, playing with it, moulding it to her purpose.
Maria stood there, feeling Arlene's hands on her body, hearing words emerging from Arlene's facile mouth. They flowed out into the night like swift, liquid arrows. "It's not wrong to be naked in the moonlight. You know that, Maria. You know I must use my power. I must help Jim, and I must read the signs right."
"But why do we have to-"
"Because, darling, we must."
Maria stared into the distance, didn't look any longer. But on those nights, whipped, driven by Arlene's insistence, she had crawled into a small, sheltered cave. In there, she lit a blow torch and melted a small pot of lead. She felt the enormous heat, saw it glaring off the walls of the cave. She saw the dull glow of raw fire in the pot, scented the acrid smell of hot metal.
She had carried the pot out to Arlene, not wanting to see any more, but forced into it. She had started, and she had to continue. Out there, Arlene stood utterly naked, waiting for her. Arlene's hands moved with the quick, jerky movements of rubbing the moon into her body. She spread white silver softly around the jet-black area at the fork of her hips, then rubbed the moon down between her legs. The sight frightened Maria more than ever, but Arlene watched her coming.
She stopped her actions, sighed so loud the noise carried far into the night. Arlene grabbed the melted lead and poured it out into a bucket of water. White steam exploded. The magic was beginning, growing fast and hard with the swiftly congealing metal, and Maria grew impatient as she watched.
The metal ran silver. It lay like a raw wound on the ground, and Arlene knelt over it to read mysterious, magic signs which would tell of Jim's fate.
"Yes, Maria, he suffers. Today a bullet killed his buddy (and when later Maria got his letter, she knew then Arlene had told the truth), but Jim is all right. He misses you much. Others are killed, but he will come back to you."
"When?"
"Soon, my dear."
"And nothing else is wrong?" Maria asked the question blindly, not of herself, but as if the words had been forced from her mouth. Then she waited breathlessly, not breathing at all. She felt only the raw moon falling cold and silver over them. She saw the moonlight, like molten metal filling the valley under the mountain, and Arlene still knelt naked over the ugly awful shape that lay twisted on the ground. Her back stretched taut, with her vertebrae reptilian prominent along its length, and the moon stroked her round shoulders, the roundness of her hips, as Arlene went on examining some twist in the lead.
What did it mean?
What, Maria kept asking herself, as she saw Arlene's black hair distort itself into curls of ink and flow like ink over her naked arms. Her large breasts hung down in pointed, luminous globes, her body looked cold and hard as the marble statues in a nearby cemetery. Maria watched Arlene poke at the lead and awaited an answer, grew more and more impatient.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing is wrong. But wait! I think I do see something. Maria, you must make a sacrifice. You must do something immediately or he will never return. Great danger walks behind him. It crawls like a huge skeleton. It raises gigantic hands, and it looks like death. Come, my dear, give me your hand. We must fight it. We'll do it together. We must, we must, we must..."
Maria had tried. She had tried to tear herself away from those spidery hands. She had tried to hurl herself free. She had felt utter revulsion. Something had coiled up, trembled, exploded inside her body, as she kept trying to escape.
She wanted to run away, but Arlene held her. Arlene's voice was soothing her, Arlene's hand was running down her skirt zipper. Maria's skirt was slipping away. Arlene's hands were moving down with the band of her panties, rolling them off her hips. Maria felt the cold air, and the soft warmth of Arlene's fingers moving into a softness only Jim had known. She felt it, felt disgust, yet at the same time, molten lava flowed across her soul.
Her body shook and trembled with a raw aching need for relief. She couldn't stand it. She had to turn and run, yet she could only stand with her knees trembling violently together, blocking Arlene's approach. She felt the other woman thrusting her knees farther and farther apart. She felt Arlene's hard marble lips brushing down across her shoulders. She felt Arlene's hot tongue sucking at her throat, going down to her breasts.
She felt her own nipples jutting out, popping out, doing violent things, as if they didn't want to react, but had to. Her nipples wanted and didn't want to be tongued with such red-hot violence. Her nerves exploded. She couldn't stand it, and that softness, centering in her femininity, throbbed with cruel pain.
"Hold still, darling, you're slipping away." Words bubbled like foam out of Arlene's mouth, Arlene's tongue pushed more and more agony into her body.
"I can't!"
"Of course, you can!"
The lips moved cold as the moon away from her center, and Maria looked down. She watched Arlene's head move like a giant black spider up the paper-white space of her own naked body. Maria felt cold and dead as silver crystals in a moonscape scene, yet she had no relief. "I can't."
"But, darling, you believe."
Yes, Maria had believed. She made that her life, and it seemed true that Jim had escaped so narrowly, so many times. Maria had to accept, had to take Arlene's magic. She had to bring Jim back to her. She had to know him again, had to know what it felt like to be a real woman, sleeping with a real man.
Behind them lay a blanket Arlene pulled her down upon it. Maria felt herself falling, felt herself being pulled into a pit which grew deeper and deeper, and she tried not to see, tried not to look, at her own actions. But she saw flesh, her own flesh, and it mixed together with Arlene's, and it looked like scraps of white paper, ripped out of a book and thrown carelessly aside on a black carpet.
Arlene placed herself atop her, moved across her, pressed her down. Arlene bent down out of the night and moved her lips across Maria's mouth. Arlene's tongue pinned her, and Maria felt the sudden intense thundering and rising of her own agony, and she knew she had to burst. She had to let herself go, feeling herself spinning off into fragrant milky-white moonlight and forgetting everything else.
She hated it, yet she expected and waited for that ultimate feeling. She felt Arlene's hot, wild, wet surging tongue, and she rolled her hips in awful agony. Her knees flew apart spasmodically, leaving her wide open. The moon hung rigid in her face, and she felt it spattering Arlene's taut, unreal body.
Stark white rays flickered between them. The moon orbited inside her and she had her relief, looking into its inscrutable silver face, but feeling Arlene. Their bodies burned with white heat, then flared up in a single silver flame, and when it was over, she watched Arlene roll away without making one further sound.
Arlene lay rigid and still in the moonlight, and Maria sat up shivering in the chill night air, feeling disgusted, yet somehow relieved, and she watched the tight space of Arlene's closed eyelids. The moon shadowed the white thin skin and made that space look like two white, dead eyes on a drowned person.
Maria couldn't help it after that. She had to pray. She fought against herself, but it always came and happened again. In those months, with the moon tugging at every essence and nerve in her body, she returned to the cliff again and again. Arlene kept it up for a year, toyed with her, used her and, in the winter, after she had performed the dark, magic ceremony of reading the lead, she did something else.
Maria felt Arlene's ice cold, naked body, and her lips were ice cold, and she came to her, possessing her in new ways. Arlene's tongue touched hidden springs in Maria's body, and her nerves wanted to scream and kick as Arlene consummated their lesbian act in the utter darkness of the cave.
It was worse there, for sometimes Arlene pulled her ear tight, blew into it and then laughed at her reaction and aversion. "Maria, you're a stupid fool. It doesn't matter, don't you see? We're doing it for him. We're bringing him back safe to you. He's your man. You need him, and we're bringing him back... safe! We're making our powerful magic for Jim... for Jim!"
Arlene's hot tongue moved out from Arlene's cold lips like a thin hot snake, then it coiled up inside her, making her explode, bringing the softness into a raw state of ready, churning agony. Maria clawed then at her own breasts, ending her eternal need with more and more pain.
Once Maria ran away and went to New York. She escaped in the great mass of buildings on the East Side, but Arlene came and found her. "Darling, I miss you. I need you. Why did you run away?"
"I can't stand you! I can't stand what we do."
"Not even this...?"
Arlene's magic never stopped. It flourished like a strange, potent, darkling plant. Arlene spun velvet webs with her beauty, and she held Maria locked in the silver-steel spider web of her alabaster thighs. Maria screamed with pain, and nobody heard. And sometimes the pain was delicious, but mostly it was torment.
"I can't stand it!" she yelled at Arlene, and she wept sometimes, feeling lost and hurt. She felt disgusted with herself. She hated the female-inspired bursting of her passion. She hated Arlene, but sometimes she felt betrayed by the other woman, for she was not Arlene's only satisfaction.
After a month's search, Arlene found twin youths of twenty-one. Maria couldn't imagine why Arlene wanted them, but after a week of Arlene's torture, it happened. Maria watched Arlene tormenting them, playing one against the other, laughing with fiendish pleasure when, a few weeks later, they both committed suicide.
Maria had felt guilty about it. She caught hold of her friend then and looked at her accusingly. She insisted on an answer. "Why did you make them do it?"
"Do what, my dear?"
"Kill themselves?"
"But I didn't! Hell, kid, if they wanted to have a chicken race with each other, each in his own identical car, each doing ninety on a narrow dirt road, is that my fault?" Arlene shrugged her lovely shoulders, dismissing their death as lightly as if she'd done nothing worse than drop a paper napkin at a drive-in.
"Damn you! They were both in love with you. Don't you know they loved you, Arlene? And since they both couldn't have you, they had no way out."
"But they could have had me! I offered myself, darling."
"Not normally, you didn't. They couldn't have you. You know that."
"Pooh! That's a damn lie. That's not me. I didn't kill them."
They stood in the middle of a deserted dirt road, near the farm of Maria's father, and Arlene's laugh rang out across the stone fence. It tumbled like a crazy thing into the hemlocks and pines, and that laugh twisted with the sound of crackling crumbling steel.
"Maria!"
She shook her head, slowly, dully, and she heard Jim's voice. Arlene was laughing with a crazy sound, and Maria wondered why, but then she understood. The Mayor must have told a joke, and it must have been slightly dirty, for Arlene couldn't control herself. "Man," she said, "that's a good one!"
The Mayor laughed himself. "I wish I had a woman like you. If I did, I'd be telling jokes all the time. But, listen, folks, we've got to go. If you need anything, just holler."
The Mayor followed Jerry out the door, and the three of them were left alone. Arlene was still chuckling, and Jim remained silent. Maria couldn't stop staring at him. He sat there, real enough. He held onto the counter, real enough. He wore a conservative grey suit, summer weight. His shirt collar looked much too tight, but his shoulders seemed strong, and they jutted through the thin suit material.
But Maria wondered if he were strong. What had gone wrong with him? With them together? She tried to imagine her Jim living with Arlene, caught by Arlene and then resisting her. How could he? How could he live with her for ten years, caught in that steel web of Arlene's steel body? What kept him going? Why wasn't he dead like the stupid fly? Against those glittering poisoned webs, which Arlene spun so carelessly, how could one man ever fight for so long.
"Jim, lover," Arlene purred, turning towards him, "What's wrong with you? Don't you like a good dirty joke any more? You used to know enough of them."
"You didn't have to egg him on, not here."
"Why not? Ya scared, huh? Ya afraid somebody will find you out - find us out? That they'll learn what Maria used to do?"
That comment slapped Maria like an open hand, and she stepped close to the counter. She had to get to Jim, talk to him at least once. She faced him fully for the first time since the break that had split their lives wide open years before.
"Please, Jim," she said, "tell me something. Be true about it. Are you stronger than she is -are you?" She found herself searching his grey-green eyes, pleading with him. She was looking for strength in that New England jaw.
"Look," she went on, "can you break away from her? Please, Jim, think it over. Could you come back to me and forget her?"
She waited for Jim to answer, but his lips pressed in a thin, nervous line, and his hands showed white at the knuckles. He didn't answer, but Arlene spoke up quickly, interrupting, and pulled at her husband's arm.
"Go ahead, Jim, tell her. Tell her the truth. Tell her you ain't got no guts, no guts at all."
Maria glanced from one to the other, and still Jim didn't say anything, and Arlene sat there with her right thumb planted on the edge of her coffee cup, and she was stroking its smooth pink edge with obscene sensuality.
"Jim, please...!"
But he didn't look at her. He swung around to Arlene, and a low growl came from his throat. "You want to leave us alone for awhile? You want me to be with her, tell her the real truth? Is that what you want?"
"Why not, dear boy?" Arlene raised her hand from the cup, and she laughed, and the sound of her laughter was tight and ugly.
Jim heard it. He seemed to be fascinated by it, like a rodent charmed by the shrill descending scream of a hawk. The skin over his face drew into a tight, grim mask. Maria watched that familiar face, and she could only think of a rubber glove drawn tight over the right hand of an operating surgeon. Jim swung away from Arlene, shrugged his shoulders, then pushed his coffee cup away noisily. Maria thought he was going to stand up and run out of there, but he didn't.
He didn't look at anybody in particular, but his words boomed out loud and clear. Maria wondered if he were yelling at her, but she knew he wasn't.
"You damn, no-good bitch!"
"Thanks, lover, I like you too." Arlene lifted her coffee cup, twirled it deliberately for a second, then held it toward Maria.
"Could I have a refill, please?"
Maria wanted to spit into it more than anything else, but she went back and got the pyrex pot and filled Arlene's cup. As she did so, she felt the electric tension of Arlene's eyes violently searching her face.
"You sure, you want him back, my dear? What can he do for you? He's impotent... helpless. He doesn't make love any more. Maria, he sits there and looks at dirty pictures, just like when he was a little boy. And he dreams, Maria. You know what he dreams about? He dreams of a girl in a brook when he was a boy, and the girl is naked, and she looks like you. All wet, golden, soft and warm..."
"Shut up, Arlene!"
Maria couldn't believe it. Jim had yelled at Arlene four times, and she watched his face. Pain, torture, a great need and a great desire erupted in his eyes. His forehead wrinkled abruptly, and Maria wanted him back. She knew it then... she still loved him. She could save him, and he could save her. But then, she wondered suddenly, how? Just how? Was there any possible point of return?
Arlene gestured at him, her white hand flat, empty. "Don't you see it, Maria? He's a boy. He's not a man. He's a fish or something. He's got all twisted and turned up inside, and he's nothing. Nothing any more but a big can of garbage."
Maria tried to speak, but she saw Arlene's lips curl back, and she hesitated. Arlene's lips curled all the way back, and Maria thought she would hiss like a snake, but her words made only the same continuing whisper of sound.
"Do you want a big stinking hunk of nothing? Pure crap? Look, I'll be fair with you. I'll tell you what. You come on over to our motel tonight! About ten? You can try him and see. You want to do that? You dare do that, Maria?"
Chapter Four
"Shut up!"
Jim felt his voice carrying him away, and he had to use it. "Shut up, Arlene! Maria, don't listen to her. She's nuts... crazy!"
Jim heard himself roaring, and his voice reverberated back at him from the mirrors and the stacked glasses. He could hear Arlene's quick, ripping comment, but he couldn't force himself to look at her.
"Okay, Jim, who's crazy? Who's really crazy?"
Jim felt himself slam the counter. "You arranged this whole business, Arlene. You think I'm blind? You had to get right back in your old saddle again, didn't you? You had to get back to her..."
Arlene's voice went icy cold. "Go on, Jim. Go on and tell her, tell her all about me. But what about you? You and your dirty pictures!"
Jim clamped his mouth shut. It was a lie-he didn't care about the pictures-maybe he never had-Maybe, on the other hand, she did. And with Arlene's set-up with that frequent young stuff in the house so fully displayed, what did he need of stupid photographs? But Arlene lied. She always lied.
It seemed years ago that he had first learned his wife lied. She did it constantly, and if he said anything about it, she only made it worse. To Arlene, there was no such thing as truth in the world, yet there was no lying for her, there was only her enormous unsatisfied hunger.
He had supported his wife, stuck up for her often enough. He had excused her many times, but when it came now to being squarely in front of Maria and then hearing Arlene lie, it became too much. Of course, he had roared like a bull and had felt foolish doing it, and now he couldn't start in all over again.
He had somehow to control the situation. He had to keep pushing back the lines of that triangle of which he was a key part, so that the steel walls of the thing would not crush and destroy them all. But how could he do it?
Maria's face and lips glowed with a pale light. Her eyes seemed very blue, almost splinter-like, and her lower lip trembled slightly at the right corner as it used to when she was scared or something. Arlene's face showed nothing. Her eyes held a deep and expressionless look, but Jim knew his wife too well.
She hung poised on a slim, thin edge of explosion. One thin blue vein close to her hairline in her forehead jutted out too prominently. Arlene, when she got that angry, could kill. She never had, but Jim had felt the vicious animal ferocity that would claw and rip savagely into any opponent and stop at nothing.
"Maria," he said softly trying to avoid Arlene's impending explosion, "I'm sorry we came. I don't want to see you hurt again."
Maria tensed up and shouted at him. "Me hurt! But, Jim, it's you who's been hurt. Look at you! You're no longer a man! She's ruined you! Look at you..." Maria's voice dropped off, and her eyes slicked over with a wet film.
Almost tottering, she still stood in front of him, and under the soft blonde waves of her hair, he knew she was trying to control her face. An expression of revulsion and pain flooded into it. He couldn't stand to see that soft slickness of her lips or her teeth, white and pure under the pale line of lipstick.
Arlene spoke before he did. "You tell him, Maria. Go on and tell him he's a castrated old horse. No guts! No nothing!" Arlene laughed again wildly, and to that moment, if he had tried, Jim might have caught his anger, and held it back, but it boiled over.
He turned towards Arlene, yelled at her, "You lesbian! What have you ever been but a damn lesbian? You and your little girls-you and your stupid hunger. Shut up and leave us alone..."
He tried, but he didn't keep track of the argument after that. Something else had happened. He simply followed his words as they worked their way through Maria's eyes. He had lashed out at Arlene, but he had missed her. He had struck Maria instead. He had cut her to the quick.
He had yelled lesbian at Arlene, but Maria had been hurt! Like a little girl, Maria Wyzerk stood there and trembled as if struck by a savage lash.
What could he say? It would have been kinder, better, to say nothing. But he spoke blindly, trying somehow to ease her pain. "Maria, please don't cry."...
* * *
Maria listened to her former husband, and his statement stung her like yellowjackets routed from their home beneath an old board. She was torn apart. She listened to Jim-to them-and she wanted only to get out of there. Outside in the hot July sunshine, she could escape and disappear. Her life had been settled, peaceful, and now suddenly, out of nowhere, these people had come and fractured it into jagged, raw splinters.
She kept staring at Arlene, wondering why she was there. What possible twist of chance could have brought her there? Or was it something else? Did the witch have the power of finding her even in Hollyhock-even under the false name of Sue Belden? She wanted to kill her, but she had no possible way. She could imagine herself holding a gun, maybe, but Arlene was stronger than any of her attempts to kill...
Yet she had to do something. She had to try. She had to put a stop to this growing, grotesque nonsense which was destroying her life. She began yelling, "Get out, you damn bitch. Get out of here!" Her words rose with frightful intensity. "Stay out of my life, Please! You've killed me, and you've killed Jim. Isn't that enough for you? What more do you want? Get out!"
Arlene smiled softly, raised her hand as if she were holding a fragile object in her palm. "Don't be nasty, Maria. I'm not going. I like it here, and besides, you two are my little pets. My precious, darling, little pets. And you know what, Maria? I've got you... I've got both of you just like two little flies, in your little stinking houses, in your little stinking rooms."
"No, damn you, I don't believe it. You couldn't have found me!"
Arlene laughed. Her laughter began with strange small clickings, but then it rose suddenly big and filled the room. Arlene's laugh horrified Maria. She ran away from behind the counter. She searched frantically for some way of stopping it, but she had nothing.
She went back to the register, took out a quarter and went to the juke-box. She turned the volume so high that cups and saucers vibrated on the back shelves, but even that massive noise didn't blot out Arlene's laugh. Jim sat hunched over, his eyes closed silently, and Maria felt sorry for him. He had tried to say something for her. At least he had tried to be on her side...
Maria wanted to reach over and touch him. She wanted to bring him comfort, but she stood back against the wall, clenching her hands tight over her pink apron, and knew she couldn't touch him. Arlene was in the way. Arlene would make fun of any gesture of tenderness or love. She would kill it with her laughter and her scorn.
Maria didn't touch him, and Ken Wylie, the local cabby, strolled casually in. He slammed the door in his usual way, scuffed across the floor, and his loud-colored sport coat dangled loosely over his left arm. "Hi, Sue baby," he yelled, "What's the matter, kid? Jeez, what a racket around here! What the hell's going on?"
Mornings, when he came, she smiled. She always had, but she couldn't force it, and she didn't smile now. She wanted to tell him something nice, to thank him for showing up, but she couldn't do that. Without being asked, she poured him a cup of coffee, and then she stood there staring at him.
He caught her look, and glanced up. His chubby face was concerned. "What's up, Sue? What's the matter, baby?"
"It's nothing..."
"Come on, spit it out."
She studied his face, his kind eyes. "Look, Ken, you've always wanted to do something for me. Well, here's your chance. See that woman sitting there. You can throw her out for me. She's rotten. Ken, she's..."
He shrugged his shoulders: "Don't worry, baby. It's already done."
"I'm sorry."
Ken gave her a quick, shy grin, and his stubby nose twisted at a rakish angle. She watched him swagger over to Arlene, and she was sorry she was using him in this way. It didn't seem right to her, yet she had no other out. Jim could do nothing. She could do nothing.
"Come on, sister," Ken said to Arlene, "You're moving out of here."
He stood close to Arlene, and his fat stomach almost pushed into her face, but Arlene didn't even turn.
"Come on, don't play dumb, baby! You're on your way out." Ken clapped a hand on Arlene's shoulder, and Arlene went rigid. The thin remaining laughter drained from her face, and a muscle just to the rear of her eyes, snapped tight. Her mouth snarled something Maria couldn't understand, and Maria half-expected to see Arlene's head jutting up at a showy, somehow enticing angle, as if trying to win over one more man.
Arlene didn't react that way. She whipped around and her teeth showed like those in the jaw of a mad dog. Ken looked at her, and shoved his hands into his pockets.
"Sister, I've done all the talking I'm going to do. Now, either you move out peaceful like, or I'll kick you out."
"Go to hell!"
"Man, what's wrong with her?" Ken glanced back at Maria, but Maria could only gesture silently as Arlene exploded in sudden fury. She shoved her cup and saucer off the counter and twisted away from Ken's hands. She did it so violently that her green silk dress practically split across her hips. She slid roughly off the stool and grabbed the edge of the counter. Ken was trying to seize her by the shoulders, but Arlene swung back at him. She had a fork clutched in her right hand. She jabbed it viciously at Ken's face, but Ken ducked and caught her wrist in his right hand. He squeezed hard, the fork dropped.
"You bastard!" Arlene spat out. "Okay," he said quietly, "that's enough of that. You're done playing around."
Maria watched thick layers of muscle ripple under Ken's shirt, and she wondered how often he had been in fights. He almost lifted Arlene from the floor and propelled her towards the door. When he reached it, he gave it a kick open with his foot. For a moment, Arlene clawed against the door jamb, and her violence reached an insane peak. Her words didn't make sense any more, and she was spitting, and her high heels screamed hollowly against the floor.
"Come on, baby, come on! You're going out."
"I'll kill you, you little bastard. I'll kill you!"
"It'd take more than you, Sister."
"I'll get you, and I'll get you good!"
Ken struggled hard. The good-natured glow vanished from his face, and he heaved himself forward, trying to get control of Arlene's squirming body. Arlene's beautiful face turned into a mask of hate and violence, and Maria didn't want to look at it, but she had to watch what Ken was doing.
Arlene's strength seemed incredible, and Ken looked stuck there. He couldn't get her any farther. Suddenly, Arlene tore herself partly away. She brought up her left knee hard, split the hem of her skirt, then drove her other knee into Ken's lower stomach. Ken went pale and hunched over weakly, almost letting go of Arlene.
"Jeeez...!"
"I told you, I'd get you!"
Ken panted briefly, caught his strength, then shoved her out the door. He held her there for one long moment, then lifted his foot and booted her out across the sidewalk. Arlene tumbled, fell to one knee, came up screaming at him.
She didn't try to come back inside. Maria watched her walking off to the right towards the Motel, and Maria didn't dare look at Jim. Ken came struggling back to the counter. He was panting now, and his face looked white in terms of his usual ruddy complexion.
"Wow!" he panted, "You sure got nice friends. What's the matter with that babe, anyway?"
Maria wanted to thank him, but she didn't know how to do it in front of Jim. She took a couple of doughnuts from the rear rack and placed them on a plate in front of Ken. "I'm sorry, Ken. I didn't mean to get you involved. It just happened."
"Forget it. Where'd ya run into her?"
She watched Ken sipping his coffee, and she wished she could belong to a quiet ordinary world, where everything followed normal patterns... where there were no dirty, perverted intrigues.
"Oh, I met her a long time ago. Back East."
Ken shrugged. "How'd she get out here?"
"I don't know."
"How come? Didn't she tell you?"
"No."
Maria remembered his question, and she wondered exactly how it had happened. What had brought that sex-spider back into her life? And why?
She didn't dare look at Jim, and Ken drank his coffee. He finished off his two doughnuts, then lit a cigarette. He gave her a quick look, which said lots of kind things, and then he left. After he was gone, she stood watching the door, thinking about too many things. She wanted to look at Jim. She wanted to see him, wanted to tell him things.
She couldn't understand why she still loved him, and she couldn't understand why Jim had done nothing. He had started to be for her. He had almost reacted, and then, suddenly, he'd turned into a nothing again.
"Jim, what's wrong with you?"
He didn't answer her. He sat there fiddling with his empty cup, and she watched lines in his face, which were neither hard nor soft. He seemed blank, washed out, but she remembered times when he had been all hard, all man, and she had loved him when he was like that.
He caught her look and tried to smile. It didn't work very well. "I'm sorry, Maria. I didn't know you were here in Hollyhock. If I had known..."
"You wouldn't have come back?"
"I don't know."
She felt an enormous tension pulling tight across her chest, it pulled in so tight her breasts hurt right out to the nipples, and she couldn't breathe.
"What brought you here then?"
"It was her idea - she said we would take a business trip out here to Wisconsin and upper Michigan. We do business with a couple of manufacturers out here. That's all."
She felt her face, tried to rub some feeling back into her cheeks, and her lips felt like pieces of sticky wood. "Are you sure that's all? Did she know about me?"
"I don't know."
He sketched vague, hazy movements, and Maria tried to understand him. He swung away from the counter and walked over to the jukebox. He moved nervously, as if he were controlled by some eccentric spring-motor, and he fumbled with the buttons, pretending to look for a song. It disgusted her to see him so caught in a trap which must have been partly his own doing.
"What would you like to hear?"
Her sympathy had been torn from him, but now, as he rubbed the crooked bump on the lower right side of his nose, and as he scratched the top of his red head in perplexity, she felt better. "Go on, play F-nine."
"What's that about?"
He dropped his coin, thumbed buttons.
"It's a thing called Tenderness. It's a nice song."
"I never heard it."
"They like it out here, and I like it because..."
"Because, what, Maria?"
"It makes me feel tender."
He had been walking back towards her, but he stopped dead and stared at her. Something seemed to have come into his face that hadn't been there for a long time.
"Do you mean that?"
"Yes."
She couldn't stand his look. She had to reach for a towel, and she fumbled around. Finally she picked up a glass and began polishing it. She blew on it, making it mist over, and then she worked at it so hard the glass gleamed like new diamond in her hand.
"Maria, do you still love me?"
Until that second, she had been caught in a slow-building desire, but then reality opened up for her. Jim belonged to Arlene, had belonged to her for some time. A severe constriction tightened her throat. She could hardly speak, and the music sounded raw in her ears. It was not tender. It was savage.
"Look, Jim," she said, "How come you're not going after her? She waiting for you, isn't she?"
"Maria, I thought... To hell with her! Dammit, Maria, we don't have to talk about her, do we? You know what she is. I know what she is."
He sat down, and his voice dropped to a whisper. He didn't look up. "We both know what she's done to you and me."
"You mean, you're a lesbian too?" She had never used the word before, and it shocked her so much she had to put the glass down. It had trembled in her hand like a crazy thing. Strange, sick spasms caught at her stomach, and she wanted to be alone and be sick.
"I couldn't be that and be a man."
"You know what I mean, Jim."
"I didn't realize until I saw you today that I had cheated myself. I still love you. It's crazy, but true. She couldn't destroy that. She never did destroy that."
"But, Jim, so what if you do love me?"
She didn't mean her words to sound so rough, so mechanical, but she had nothing else to communicate. She watched a spark of hope flicker in his face, flicker, then die.
He dragged his fingertips in meaningless patterns across the blue counter, and he did not look at her. "I thought we could fight her. Me and you together. We never did fight her right. Did we?"
"No."
"I'm not going back to her, Maria. I want to stay with you." His voice leaped out and pleaded with her, and she felt his eyes searching her face, looking for some ray of hope, some possibility. "Maria, don't you want me to do that? Don't you want me to come home with you tonight?"
She felt dead, lifeless, and the weight of too many, too long suppressed desires held her back. "What good would it do? She'll follow you wherever you go, and you can't get away from her no matter what you do."
She watched his right hand turn into a fist, his fist slam hard on the counter, making his coffee cup jump in its saucer. "We made a damn big mistake once, Maria. We don't have to make it again. We can be stronger than she is. We can beat her at her own game."
"Maybe, Jim. Maybe..."
Chapter Five
Jim looked at his ex-wife and wanted her in bed. His real feelings for women had been too coiled up and hidden away, too distorted by Arlene. Now, seeing Maria in her thin uniform, he remembered vividly what her body felt like. He could sense the hot, wet impact of it, and he wanted to fight Arlene's slimy activities. And he knew he couldn't do it alone. He needed Maria's help, but Maria seemed emptied of feeling. Her face was strained. Little ridges at the corners of her eyes drew tautly.
The palms of his hands got hotter and hotter, and sweat collected between them and the counter-top. Everything was hot, and he had to talk to her, but he couldn't.
She had turned away. She was preparing menus, setting up two tables.
He wanted sex.
It crawled through his head like a rain of hot sparks as he visualized how it had once been. She had been lying on a table in the kitchen. He had stood at the end close to the sink.
She liked it that way, and he had been with her for a long time-as if it would never end.
"Maria..."
She kept on brushing off the table, kept her back turned to him, but she answered. "Yeah?"
"Remember the first time?"
"The first time what, Jim?"
The matter-of-factness of her voice emptied him of desire. He had to start thinking about something else. He couldn't stay that way. He had better get out of there, better get back to Arlene and get her out of town while there was still time.
"Nothing."
She did look around then, and she walked up to him. She held her hands at her waist as if she didn't know what to do with them. "I'm sorry, Jim. I do remember. I've always tried to forget, but I never could."
She sketched a quick gesture at him, and he grabbed her hands. She didn't yank them away. He felt the hard band of her ring, the soft moisture of her palms. His own were still sweating.
"Maria... do you still want me that way?"
She opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again. She didn't speak, but her breath made a sharp, abrupt sound, something between a groan and a sigh.
"You were the best of all, Maria. Nobody ever beat you."
"And her?"
"We never have sex."
"What do you do then?"
In spite of himself, he couldn't control the strong flood of color into his face. He knew he must be redder than a beet. "I couldn't tell you."
"I see."
She stepped away abruptly, left him sitting there, and it wasn't until she got clear around the counter that he got up himself and forced himself to follow her.
She watched him come. "What do you want?"
He felt a huge pressure scratching inside him, but he had to touch her, feel her, pull her to him.
"I want to kiss you."
Through all the years, never really kissing anybody, never really knowing what it was like anymore, he had somehow kept the memory of Maria's lips. He knew instinctively that if he had been blindfolded and had to kiss a thousand lips, he would have still have found Maria's every time. Their warm, soft roundness and their quick response thrilled through him.
"Maria?"
"Yeah, Jim..."
"Can I come home with you tonight, after you get done?"
"I want you to."
He spun the rest of the day out in foolishness. He sat in a back booth, and watched her work. The mayor and Jerry Williams came back. Polite, neat residents came in. All day long, he shoved Arlene out of his head, and he knew she was in the motel room waiting, just sitting there and waiting, not reading, not smoking, not drinking, just sitting there and waiting...
Once he had seen her in a similar situation. He had come in the back door of their house back in Massachusetts and walked up to the bedroom silently. She had sat there, waiting. Her attitude, her face, were like those of some creature far beyond any human feeling. Her eyes projected strange intensity into empty space, her hands were folded into twisted tentacles. They looked like an octopus waiting to strike.
He had crept out again, and gone around to come in noisily, in his usual fashion, through the front door.
The rest of the afternoon, he did not talk much with Maria, but they exchanged glances which held much significant meaning. She understood what he wanted, and he knew she wanted it, too. He felt, in that soft silent time, with the slow drift of sunlight coming in through the windows, that he could succeed in escaping from Arlene. He had a chance. He had to use it.
At four, Mrs. Karin Karster showed up, and the friendly proprietor of the shop insisted Maria should take off for an extra hour. She could handle it all herself. "Why there's nothing to it, Sue, go on and take your friend out. Get away from this hot box. Have yourself a good time."
The kindly German face smiled at Jim. "She doesn't get out enough. A good girl like her, and what does she do, she just stays home all the time. She should have a big family, lots of kids, a big fine house!"
He almost expected her to add some German phrase, but she didn't go that far.
He stood at the door, waiting for Maria to change into her street clothes. The sinking sun bothered him more than ever. Twilight lurked just offstage over the tall green trees with a significant leer. It seemed to be filled with too much sullen heat, as if there might be a storm or some sudden wind.
She breezed out in a light blue cotton dress. Its simplicity suited her perfectly, and her body filled out the material in a warmly suggestive, seductive fashion. He wanted to feel her flesh moving softly beneath his hand as they walked-He wanted to know that she was there close beside him.
She smiled as she stepped out the door, and then, as they walked along the wide, clean sidewalk toward the bridge he had crossed early that morning, the whole day's warmth hit him. Suddenly he didn't dare touch her hand, and when she smiled up at him and asked if he wanted to go right home, he had to say, "Look, Maria, I'm too nervous. Let's go to some bar for an hour."
At first, she didn't answer. They crossed the gully and the bridge, and then she seemed to understand. "Okay, Jim, I don't like bars much, but we can have a couple of drinks if you like. How about the Black Panther? It's right over there beyond the old Muddy Oaks." She designated the huge white structure looming up on their right.
For some reason he was moved to question her about it. He said, "What happened to it? Why'd they fold?"
"Right after repeal. It was a big place for rich guys out of Chicago. Nobody ever goes in there now. But they tell me that inside they've got a huge inner ballroom called the Circus Room. They gave stag parties."
She didn't say anymore, and he didn't question her further about it. They had more than one drink at the bar, which was very dark and very quiet, and he watched the blue clock in the middle of the bar for an hour. By the time they got out, the day had bowed out of the top of the sky, and there was more than a hint of darkness in the streets of Hollyhock. The lights had not come on yet, but the town itself had slowed to a very slow crawl.
He walked her home through the almost deserted streets and stood looking up at her apartment, over the Hopper Shopper Supermarket. A big red sign came on as he watched, and when it did, he felt her grab his arm and squeeze.
"Ready, Jim?"
"Yeah."
He followed her up the narrow green stairs and stood beside her while she fumbled for her key. He could smell the provocative perfume that came from her hair, but he didn't touch her. He didn't touch her until the screen door slammed behind them. She reached past him to shut the inner door, but he grabbed her and pulled her tight.
Nothing stood between them. They were together, grabbing at each other, and he tasted the swift rise and fall of giant emotion. It moved between them like an eruption of the earth. She shoved her lips into his neck, and his hands held her body. He raised her up to him.
"Don't."
"Don't what?"
"Don't hurt me, Jim."
Her words opened the raw bleeding wound he had been trying to shove away, and he thought back to the hundreds of times, they had been together.
Tenderness...!
They had been tender. Each second had coated itself with a feeling of meaning far beyond the violence of the sex act. He had exploded deep, hard and rich inside her, and she had taken him, satisfied, lying there with a rich smile on her lips.
In those nights after their marriage, he had often lain awake, watching her face. Tender dreams seemed to sketch themselves across her forehead, seemed to toy sometimes with her eyebrows. Her blonde eyelashes would flutter with some hidden joy. She didn't wake up. He felt her naked body lying close, and he protected her soft flesh with his whole being.
He would lie back on the pillow and look at the soft play of light on the ceiling. He would be at peace with the night, and sometimes, when he felt just right, he would cup his hand softly over the center of her female being. He didn't even wake her up with his movement.
He felt the crisp blonde hairs moving under his fingers, and sometimes he would hear her sigh, and she would wake up just enough to reach down and adjust his hand so his fingertips spread the soft, delicate lips softly carefully. He thought she would wake up any second and roll over and want him, but she stayed that way in deep, tender sleep.
He felt his voice go panting out through the darkness in her room over the supermarket, and he thought all time would explode before they got ready for loving. He opened his eyes, and red neon shapes jumped erratically across her wall. He closed them and felt her lips. She pawed at him, and the roughness of her hands aroused him.
He had to be gentle, but there was no time. She tightened her mouth into a bite, and then he felt it opening wet and round into a tongue kiss. He slammed himself into her. He felt his hands pawing down across her body. He ripped through a row of buttons on her dress, and she didn't say a word.
He dug hastily into the tight opening over her bra. He saw his hands fan out her breasts. The soft white shapes dragged him down, and he sank his hand to them, and he moved his tongue over each nipple.
"Darling!" she panted, "I've missed you."
"Yes."
"Oh, Jim, do it. Do it, hurry up, and don't stop."
Chapter Six
M aria meant it. For the first time in all those bleak, never-ending years, she had the real thing again. She felt the hard-rising pressure of his body against her thighs. He was hot, hot all over, and she wanted him. She reached down. The slick woven wool of his grey suit slid under her hands, and she forced herself not to go down to him too soon. His fingers slid over her spine and pressed into the hollows between each bump.
She felt the magic of his hands undoing her clothes, and she was breathing so hard she heard nothing else. She wanted to rip herself free of all restraint. She wanted to be naked. She wanted to crush herself against him with all her softness, she wanted to feel his hardness.
"Jim..."
She felt his fingers fumbling with her bra, and he couldn't work the fastener loose. His fingernails scratched her, and she wanted to feel him. She slid her hands around and tugged at it, but she was fumbling as much as he was. Through her dress, covering all other sensation, she felt his insistent, demanding pressure. His mouth worked, sometimes hard, sometimes soft, against hers, and his tongue slicked in and out through her lips like a warm, wet eel.
She drew away from him just long enough to push his shoulders back, to hold him, to look at him. She couldn't believe that he was back, and a moment's fear swept across her.
"What if she comes?"
Jim didn't stop pressing his hand in, making her softness wetter, slipperier. But he was struck by her question, he had to answer it. He turned his face away. He seem to stare a-cross her room to where it was filled with dense shadows. Neon lights danced in strange red explosions through them. Red light streaked in, went crashing out. Everything went hard, red, and the bright pulse of light drove her crazy inside.
"To hell with her, Maria! We've got to show her we don't care."
"But Jim, I'm scared."
"Don't be scared, baby." His head, his mouth, his lips worked down along her neck. His tongue would not stay still long enough from titillating her naked breasts, from making wide wet circles around her erect nipples.
She pressed his head in, muttered in his ear, "She's so vicious, Jim. She's like a spider... Oh, Jim, darling, don't stop... She's like a sex-spider... Jim!"
She twisted, wallowed, writhed in full deep response to his movements. She was ready, waiting. A thin layer of perspiration covered her body, and she felt like a hot damp, jungle creature. She watched his lips move up, hang over her. His eyes seemed half closed. She thrust her mouth up to his, she tugged roughly at his belt, at his slacks... she had to have him free, ready, waiting, as she was.
His lips caught hers, and she felt the pulse of his breath and smelled the man smell of it, and she exploded into a running brush fire that could never be put out by water. Flame raced through her body, exploded in her head. She remembered seeing, in some otherwise forgotten city, a teen-age punk toss a match into a wet slick of gasoline. There had been an instant whooshing noise and an explosion. She exploded the same way. Her body leaped, burned into an intense, never-ending heat. She threw herself into it and felt hot flames engulf them both.
Flames lifted them. They were fighting, but not the flames. She hurled herself against him, she felt him rising tall above her. She flung herself on his hardness, and fingered it into position. He quivered, groaned at the sensation.
"Maria, not that way. I want you!
"Quick!"
She sank to her knees on the soft rug and pulled him down to her. She searched with her lips, pulling at him. Hot flames of passion made him whip back and forth as if his spine would break. Under her fingers, her mouth, her hands he whipped himself into a frenzy.
"Maria, let me get at you."
His lips, his tongue, his mouth leaped at her, and she stroked his face with her fingertips, and the rough satisfaction of his beard dug hard into her soft thighs.
She trembled, groaned. She felt an enormous ready quivering run through him, and she had to be ready to whip around to receive him. She moaned eagerly at the feeling of her body pushing out such enormous warmth. Sudden fluids flowed inside her, and she couldn't keep from thrashing her hips in eager torment. She was ready, ready. She held herself open.
"Oh, Jim, come on, take me. Here, take me. Here, dammit, here...!"
"Maria! Yes, I'm going to make us forget everything. To hell with Arlene!"
"I'm ready."
"Yes."
She watched impatiently as his head came up, came around. His face made an erect, dark pattern against the incoming flood of red light. His lips closed hard over hers. She tasted him, and moisture dribbled through between his lips, and she couldn't see him. She only knew the red throbbing light, and the red hard feeling of hope for satisfaction.
He was too close to her. Her eyes were open, but Jim's features disappeared in the wild fury of their continuing kiss. She felt the raging fire of his body. She felt him moving closer. She opened herself to him. His fingers inserted. She felt them digging wildly. "Yes!" she whispered, unable to keep still, her breathing went hard with excitement. "There-right there, Jim!"
She felt the hard impact of his body. He had not grown soft physically, at least, and she yearned for all of it. Night air blew suddenly across her face, and she demanded, insisted upon their coming victory over everything evil in the world. Cool wind touched her naked skin. She felt air along her knees, and a sudden chill fingered her spine. It lasted only a second, and then his hot naked skin comforted her. Sweat dripped between them, and his warmth and hard motion shut off all knowing.
"Oh, Jim!" she muttered out of deep depths of passion. "We can do it. We can win!" She kissed out her words as if they were erotic pieces of candy.
"Come on, Jim." She felt how rough, how urgent, how far gone they were, and the pressure of her emotions surprised her. She had never been so caught up in her feeling of love, never even back then. Jim heard her, but he didn't answer with words. He answered her with his hard, driving body, and she felt him. She felt him...
"Don't stop!"
She talked to him. She told him, and her words would not be silent.
"Jim, hurry up!"
His body quivered, and he had stopped. She couldn't believe it, and when he twisted away from her, it seemed like a nightmare.
"Jim!"
She struggled to get her head up. It seemed then as if the whole dark room were pressing her down to him. He panted with sudden, peculiar sounds. She seized his shoulders, shook him, and then he felt cold to her. The chill stopped her own raw, flaming motions.
"Jim, what is it?"
His strangled agony frightened her. She wanted to scream at him, tear at him. She wanted him back where he belonged, between her legs.
"Jim, tell me."
His voice croaked out a feeble halting sound in the night. "I think I heard something."
Maria forced her head up higher. She had to see, but she couldn't see. The room looked the same, but even as she stared into those red, and black shadows, something moved. She stared past the dark mass of Jim's head and shoulders, and she looked out of the protective warmth and isolation of their lovemaking straight into a vision from hell.
A thing oozed slowly out of the corner near the window. It stopped, stayed still, was half-red, half-black, but then that sharp strange shadow, which struck through all her perception, picked up speed and flowed along the wall. It stepped towards the living-room light-switch. Maria's breathing stopped, and she couldn't stand the pressure pounding in her stomach. She hardly noticed it when Jim rolled away, easing himself over slowly onto the rug.
She knew what it was then. The thing was human, and Jim had felt its presence. It had stopped him from taking her, from satisfying her, and then she knew who it was. Maria's throat throbbed with a sudden itch, and she waited for Arlene to speak, and when Arlene spoke, Arlene's words grated in slow sequence across the room, each more sarcastic than the other.
"Okay, if I turn on the lights, kids? Now that you've started playing your old house game? Now that you've had some of your fun?"
Maria wanted to scream, but her lips were glued shut. She couldn't say anything. She felt too surprised and too hurt. She wanted to kill something. She wanted to exterminate that insect. Like the black spider she had seen earlier that day, Arlene crawled out of nowhere at them.
Arlene had stopped them from doing something good and decent, and Maria watched her happiness escaping. It had hung on such a high, slender thread, and now one raw, naked blade was slicing through it.
She needed help. She wanted Jim to act, but he didn't do anything. He didn't say anything. He lay there like a white lump on the carpet, and she lay alone, far from him, coiled into a monstrous, human cinnamon bun.
"Come on, Jim," she pleaded, "Jesus, Jim, come on... I'm ready!" She had to yell at him, tell him, call him to her, and she heard her own voice screaming in thin, hard sounds, and she couldn't stop the noise.
She saw him move. She heard him speak, but his words were no help. "Arlene, don't do it."
"Why not? You sure won't stop me, lover boy!" For one second only, the room held its depth of red-and-black mystery, and then Arlene flipped the switch. The noise clicked through Maria's brain, and she found herself lying in a flood of raw white light. She stared at Jim, as he lay hunched on his elbows, white, naked, his eyes directed at the rug. He seemed to see nothing, know nothing, and the skin of his face looked whiter than a clean paper napkin on a dirty back street.
"Jesus, Jim, please, please, please...!" She couldn't even cover herself. Her hips, her legs, her knees were weak, soft, vulnerable. She couldn't even drag herself away from Arlene's devouring eyes, and Arlene took her time in inspecting every wet stain on her body.
Arlene's lips moved sarcastically: "Got you a little worked up, didn't he? Too bad he couldn't have made it."
Maria couldn't bear that voice, that look. She read only too well the hot desire peering out of Arlene's eyes. Arlene wanted to be the cause of those wet stains, the source of that hard-throbbing passion. Maria saw it all, and she whipped around suddenly and made her fingers into claws. She dug them into Jim, she tried to get him to react, but he lay there. He didn't even move when she ripped bloody lines along his arms and hips, and his body looked small and ugly in defeat.
She hated to see him like that and turned away, but Arlene had watched her too closely.
"Not very pretty, is he? Arlene s voice whispered down at her, and Maria watched Arlene's long legs stepping close to her. "But you see, my dear, that's the way he always is. He can't do it. He's not what you need, my dear."
Maria watched Arlene lift her dress slightly, then kneel slowly down beside her. Arlene's voice alternated between suggestive softness and demanding urgency. "What you need, my dear, is something with fire and heat in it. You want to burn up with it... How about it, Maria? How about those times on the cliff? How about them? Or how about me and him in bed, and you..."
The suggestion dropped off, and Jim half-sat up. "Shut up, goddamn you!"
He said it, then fell back down again. Maria felt her guts heave sickly. She stared at Arlene's black head of hair as she had stared at the black blob by the dead spider. She wanted to throw up. She wanted Jim, but he seemed dead, inside and out. True, he had spoken to Arlene, but the effort had been too much. He lay there, deader than ever, and Arlene smiled down at him softly, as if she could never get mad at him.
Fascinated, Maria watched Arlene stand up. She stepped over Jim and placed her hands on her hips and kept smiling her thin, knowing smile.
Chapter Seven
"Well, boy," she said, "aren't you the brave little one." She lifted one foot, held her shoe rigid, and then ran the sharp point of her spike heel up and down Jim's white skin. Where it touched his back, it left a faint red line.
Jim tensed, and Maria thought he would at least grab Arlene and jerk her off her feet. But he didn't. He rolled over on his stomach like a white soft slug, and the raw violence she had felt mere minutes before, had faded out of his face and eyes. Arlene stood over him and kept running her heel up and down his back, while Maria watched with sick fascination.
"Nice boy," Arlene whispered, "Nice boy. Down... Down now! Little boy, must obey his mother. Down, boy, down!"
Arlene murmured the words as if soothing a sick child, and then she started to laugh. Maria felt the laugh might explode into the same wild uncontrolled sound of the morning, and she forced herself up. She couldn't stand this lesbian hysteria, she didn't even think about her nakedness as she got to her feet.
"How did you get in here?"
"I have ways, my dear."
"Yeah, like a snake!" "
"Hah! He had to follow you back to your dirty little apartment, didn't he? He's my husband, isn't he? What can you say about that?"
Maria stared full into the awful beauty of Arlene's twisted face. "You've destroyed him, ruined him!"
Arlene's lips made soft fluttering movements. "Don't be silly, Maria. He had to do it here, didn't he? Why didn't he play it smart and take you someplace else? Why did he bring you here and then leave the door open? Tell me!"
Maria forced herself to take a step forward, but she couldn't speak.
"Why didn't he catch a plane with you? Take you a thousand miles from here. Hell! He's gutless. He could have taken you away with him, but not my Jim. He's nothing. Don't you understand that?"
Maria found herself raising her hand, jabbing it towards Arlene. "Get out of here."
"Why?"
"Get out before I kill you!"
As if soothed by the threat, Arlene let her face assume its marble tranquility. "Not just yet, my dear. I want to show you something."
Arlene swung away and moved even closer to Jim. Maria watched her step over him, and she watched Arlene place her feet so they were loosely separated on both sides of his neck. Jim lay flat under her, his face pressed into the carpet, not moving.
"Come on, Jim, boy. Turn over. Nice and slow now. And look up at what Mommy's got for you."
Maria shoved her hands against her mouth. She had to jam her lips tight against her teeth to keep from screaming. She couldn't believe what she was seeing. She wanted Jim to fight, to struggle against Arlene, but Jim turned over slowly. He moved so carefully that no part of his face or head touched Arlene's feet or ankles. When he was all the way over, he was looking straight up under Arlene's skirt.
Arlene pointed at him, and gestured quickly. "See what I mean, Maria. He's not a man. Soft like that. Is he, Maria, is he?"
All day long, Maria had struggled between nightmare and paradise. This became pure nightmare, as she watched the actions of her former husband. He seemed so weak and helpless. Tears formed lazily in the corners of his eyes, and then went dripping in snaky lines down his cheeks. Maria had never known him to be like that, but he was crying now, and he didn't make a sound.
The sight was too much for her. Maria got mad. An agony of anger erupted inside her. Raw violence earthquaked through every one of her nerves, and she wanted to take a knife and cut through Arlene's body, spilling the black blood out of it, stamping on the exposed vital organs.
She stepped over quickly to Arlene. It surprised her how fast Arlene whirled around to meet her. She almost laughed as Arlene's smug expression changed into something like fear. Taking advantage of that second, Maria lashed words at her. She wanted to learn the truth.
"Jesus, Arlene, what have you done to him? Why have you destroyed my man?"
Arlene shrugged, let her hands drop. "He likes it that way. He wants it that way. As a matter of fact, he used to come around begging me to make him that way. He didn't want to be a man." She stopped, looked directly at Maria, and her lips tensed into thin precise red lines. "Hell, Maria, he was only kidding you just now, kidding himself. He can't do it anymore. He's through!"
Maria had had enough of that talk. She wanted to control herself, but words exploded through her teeth like glass fragments. No matter what, she had to make Arlene out the liar she was. Her life, his life, the whole world depended on it.
"That's not true, Arlene. He almost did it."
Arlene shook her head scornfully. "Oh, yes, my dear. I'm sure of that. But I came didn't I? Didn't I?"
Like the forked tips of a snake's tongue, Arlene's eyes flickered down. They didn't look at Jim, they were caressing the rich mound of her own blonde hair, probing in, feeling, and Arlene's eyes made Maria tremble with shame. She felt like reaching for her dress, like picking it up out of the crumbled leaf pattern on the floor, but she didn't.
"He would have done it if you hadn't come."
"But I did come. I always come at just the right time to save him from doing something he doesn't want to do. Isn't that right, my queer little love? How many times have I saved you now, Jim? Want me to tell her? Want me to make a list of all the women you tried to make, and couldn't?"
"You know better than that, Arlene," Jim choked out. "You know the truth about those girls."
"But, Jim boy, you could have taken Maria, and you could have escaped with her-like you tried to escape once or twice before. Come on, Jim, why didn't you do that? Didn't you have guts enough to even try?"
Jim lay there staring; he didn't say anything, and Maria shivered without hope. Arlene's words cut through every inch of her. She felt like whimpering. She couldn't understand what had kept Jim and Arlene together. The sheer raw beauty of Arlene's body couldn't have done it alone. It had to be something else.
What could it be? What made up the secret power and control Arlene held over Jim, the power that made him coil up like a worm, instead of a man? Maria asked these inner questions, but she could find no answers.
She studied Arlene and read nothing but destruction. Arlene destroyed things. Instead of using her body to create, to build, to make love with if nothing else, she used it to destroy. Arlene had perverted her female being into an engine of destruction.
With that cynical smile on her lips, she was working hard toward Jim's ultimate end. She played with him, toyed with him, smashed him as a wilful child might smash a favorite doll. The child picked it up, strained to lift it high, then smashed it on a concrete sidewalk, secretly glad to get rid of it.
"Get out, you bitch," Maria said, "Get out!"
Arlene smiled back at her, and then Maria felt her anger get boiling hot. She tried to imagine what might hurt that woman, and she had one weapon-herself. She finally realized that, for Arlene, it was her body which was all important, and she had to use it to strike and kill.
She raised her hands, cupped them under her own breasts. She did it violently. She fingered her nipples once, made them jut out, and then she thrust her chest at Arlene.
"Look, you damn lesbian, this is what you've always wanted. You tried to destroy Jim, because I wouldn't stay with you, because I hated you. You wanted my body-my tits, didn't you?"
Maria's violence transformed her. She was twisting her breasts, almost yanking them from her own body, and Arlene's face turned pale. The green-steel eyes glazed with longing, with anger, and Arlene's lips went loose.
"Maria, don't-please!"
But Maria thrust herself close to Arlene. She shoved her breasts against the other woman's hands, and then she spit full into Arlene's face. Her action, even as it was done, surprised her. She could never have imagined doing such a thing, but seeing the spittle drip down off that incredibly beautiful, wicked face, transfixed her, and she stood there, still holding her breasts.
Arlene shook her head violently as if she were trying to get rid of something red hot. Her lips curled angrily. "God damn you, Maria!"
Arlene shook her head one last time, and then Maria felt Arlene's hand whip across her cheek. The blow came like the flash of a snapping spring, and it burned hot and startling, and Maria jumped back letting go of her breasts as she waited for another show of violence.
It didn't come. Instead, Arlene stepped back, and stood there, staring at the floor. Her hands hung emptily at her sides, and she seemed to be struggling with words.
"Maria, I'm sorry."
Arlene seemed to be forcing herself, forcing her spit-upon-body back under control, but the control would not come easily. The conflict had been too great. Spittle dripped off her chin, and she didn't move. She didn't even try to wipe it off. Maria took one last look and walked to the phone. She picked it up, dialed the cab-company number, asked for Ken.
She had finally made the right move. If Ken had gotten rid of Arlene before, she knew he could do it again. She held the smooth black receiver and, after seeing Arlene's cruel domination over Jim, she felt strong again.
Ken answered, and she told him quickly what she wanted. His answer was simple: "Okay, Sue, I'll be right over."
She put down the receiver slowly, then looked at Arlene. "He's coming over, and you'd better be gone before he gets here."
During this time, with Maria at the phone, Arlene had simply stood there. It seemed to Maria that the other woman would finally get control of herself and shake off the dull look on her face. But Maria's comment changed that.
Fury flared up inside Arlene and brought Arlene close to explosion. The tense pressure in her eyes threatened to burst into flames, to whirl into a whirlpool of destruction. Arlene moved her right foot, seeking balance, and anger grew in her cheeks, and it took her some time to speak.
Maria had to strain to hear her choked-out words.
"You mean you'd let that dirty little bastard see you stark naked like this?"
"Why not? Who knows, maybe he's seen me this way often enough. Maybe he even likes me, Arlene. Maybe he likes to feel me here, here, and here. Who knows?"
Her pointing finger jabbed at her own body, and she watched the effect in Arlene's face. Arlene struggled hard with her anger and could not control it.
"Like hell he does!"
"Just think. Maybe it feels as good to him as it did to you."
"Damn you!"
"The door's right there. You can get out anytime. It's you who are fouled up in everything. You don't know anything decent anymore."
"Damn you!"
Maria heard the swift curse and thought Arlene might finally detonate and do something drastic. Maria was prepared to duck, but her enemy swung away and walked slowly towards the door. With fearful fascination, Maria watched her reach for the knob.
Arlene stopped, looked back at her. "You think you've won,. don't you?" Arlene's face glowed with all its hellish beauty, and a strange joy shone in her eyes. "But you haven't, Maria. I'm going, and I'm not even going to take little Jim-boy with me. He can stay here, Maria. You can keep him all night if you want. Why not?"
Arlene's hand closed slowly over the doorknob, and for a second, she seemed to caress it lovingly. "Just to prove to you that he can't do anything, you're welcome to try anything you like. In fact, I suggest you do that. Try any little sex tricks you can dream up. Go ahead, for all I care. He won't-"
"Get out!"
Maria moved toward the door, drawn by something stronger than herself, but Arlene threw the door open, let it bang against the wall. "Don't worry, Maria, I'm going. But Jim will never come through for you. He's had it for today. Haven't you, lover?"
"Please, Arlene...!"
Jim's voice sounded weak, lost, like the whine of some lost puppy. Maria looked at him, wondering. His body seemed drawn out into a long white bony shape, and he lay dead on her blue rug. Arlene spoke to him again, saying obscene things, but he didn't look up.
Maria grabbed an ashtray from the coffee table and moved to throw it. Arlene only smiled politely and stepped through the doorway. Her voice trailed off down the stairs, descending faster, it seemed, than her body. "Poor, Jim... Poor, poor, Jim!"
Chapter Eight
Jim had no strength left. He lay there and felt ashamed, but there was nothing he could tell Maria. What could he say? How could he ever explain the foolishness of turning over and looking up at Arlene's naked underparts? What man could?
He lay there, feeling the cool night breeze rustle over his chest and stomach and stared at the white ceiling. Upon it, he saw a whole sequence of events. They went flitting by like the color slides Arlene sometimes flashed on their bedroom ceiling with an upturned slide projector, while he lay in bed, and she entertained him with her hand.
"How about this one, Jim. Don't you like it? Isn't the position admirable?"
The color scene changed. A tall man moved into position over a short blonde. "Or how about this one, Jim? Look at the size of him, and doesn't she look really happy, Jim? Just look at the big smile on her face."
A long sequence of slides raced by, and then he was no longer lying down. He was back in the closet with the door closed, the air ventilator on, and he was watching through the secret window.
Arlene played with a young girl. The girl seemed neither scared nor especially interested, but Arlene developed her love program into a long extended campaign, coaxing the girl's underclothes off, coaxing with her fingers, with her lips, until the girl exploded whitely in Jim's vision, like a never-ending gush of milky water a mile high.
"If you ever refuse me, Jim, I'll bring out everything you've done. I'll use it in court..."
"But, Arlene..."
"You better obey."
He had no choice, and through the years his obedience had become a thing of habit. He couldn't help himself. He had to do what she asked, but with Maria standing there naked, still not moving, he wished he could somehow defend himself against her scorn and pity.
He had forgotten his own nakedness, but when she turned and looked at him, he remembered it. He was grateful when she stepped over to the light-switch and snapped it off. She made night again, and the only light came through the long rectangle of the door, and the smaller one of the window. Red neon flickered in spasmodically, keeping time to his heart-beat, as he waited for her to speak. He knew what she would say. He didn't know how he would answer her.
"Why didn't you lock the door, Jim?"
She closed it deliberately, dropped the fastener into place.
He felt agony boiling in his throat, and he couldn't get it out. This time it wasn't his fault. They had been in too much of a hurry to get at each other. He had forgotten honestly, but at another time, in another place, it might not have been by true mistake...
He knew that. He didn't know what to tell her. He could only use empty words. "I'm sorry, Maria. It just happened, I guess."
"Never mind, Jim. It was my fault too."
He heard her moving around in the darkness, and then she was coming close to him. He expected her words then too, and this time, it was worse. He still didn't know what to tell her.
Maria's voice made a soft, compelling whisper: "Jim, I don't believe one word she said. I know we can do it. I know we can win. We started, and we can do it."
He sensed her moving slowly towards him, and the soft white of her body in the darkness filled him with more guilt than ever. Maria's impression of his senses had always remained pure, but he knew he could do nothing now. He had listened to Arlene, and she knew what she was talking about. He lay there, helpless, and he had neither power, nor strength to make love to Maria that night...
"Jim you can... can't you?"
He knew her hands were searching for him, and he shivered, expecting their contact at any second. She was on her knees beside him, she was trying to touch him. "Jim, darling, we've got to do it. Come on. Now!"
He stared beyond her kneeling form, stared at the red light, and when it splashed in, it seemed different. Now it looked like blood, and it was splashing their bodies with blood, and the sight disgusted him. He rolled away from her, trying to escape the cool touch of her fingers, and her hands slipped from his hips.
He forced himself to stand up, and he was struggling with her. He couldn't understand it himself, but he was trying to get out of her arms. He had to prevent any contact with her, and he walked to the window, fumbled with the shade. "Look, Maria, I'm sorry. She's right. I can't do it. I'm no good tonight-no good at all!"
She came close to him. "But what's happened to you, Jim? Tell me."
"I can't." He kept fumbling with the shade, pulled at it, then felt it slipping out of his fingers. He heard it slapping frantically as it went around and around against the upper window panes. Red light flashed in, hit his naked body, and he could see Maria out of the corner of his eyes as she shivered with uncontrolled agony.
"Jim, it's not true, is it? It can't be. I was so close, Jim. So close... so-close, after all these years."
Her words hammered him like steel fists, and he wanted to comfort her. But he couldn't. He stood dead in the night, uncomfortable himself, feeling strange in that strange town, in that strange room. He wanted to help, but he couldn't.
"I can't help you, Maria. I'm sorry."
"Tell me. Tell me, please. What is it? What has she done to you?"
He stood beside her and couldn't look at her. He watched through the window, saw the movement of cars in the street. A young girl stepped off the curb and jaywalked across. She had an armload of groceries, and Jim followed her curiously until she stepped up on the other curb. She was young enough to be his daughter, young enough to be prey for Arlene's hunger. He bent his head, and it was not in prayer, and he felt the enormous weight of the room descending on him.
"Jim?"
"Yeah?" He moved away from the window, and made mechanical motions of bending over and picking up their clothes.
"Are you okay? You're not sick, are you?"
"I'm okay, but I've got to go back to her. She's waiting."
"Don't do it. She'll kill you!"
"So what? Does it really matter?" The words were bitter in his mouth, but he had to utter them. He felt then as if he could only give strength to Maria, by making her angry at him, by forcing her somehow to see that he was no good for her.
"Jim?"
She stepped close to him, and he watched her face and shoulders gleam whitely in a whirling circle of light. Neon added raw red tones to the merry-go-round effect, and the night pulsed around them with a million insect sounds.
He listened to her breathing, and he heard the sound of his own heart. It filled his head with a dull echoing thump. He dreaded any contact with her, but he knew she wanted to touch him. She would want to feel him, to check on developments, prove at all costs that Arlene was wrong.
He had to stop her. The honest hunger and thirst of her body could have no food for fulfillment. He could not comfort her. He could not console her. He was licked, and he couldn't even explain.
"Don't, Maria, don't do it. She was right." He stepped away from her, avoiding her hands, but she followed him. She couldn't understand his defeat and emptiness. Nothing would satisfy her but the hard rough feeling of him as a man, and he couldn't be a man for her.
"Jim, stand still."
He stopped automatically, as if the voice had been that of Arlene. But it was not Arlene, it was Maria, and Maria grabbed his right hand. He wondered what she was going to do with it, but he knew that too. He felt her bring it down across the white tension of her quivering belly flesh, and then she shoved it between her legs. It surprised him, startled him even, that she was still ready.
Her body trembled at his touch, and her voice carried rough urgency. "Kiss me!"
"I'm sorry, Maria."
"Don't talk, just kiss me."
He felt her fumbling for his other hand, and he let her take it. She pressed it up to her right breast, and he felt the round shape in his fingers, and his brain told him to stop, but his fingers cupped her soft flesh. It seemed unnatural to him, as if his hands and fingers were holding on to some life-saving device while the rest of him was slipping away into the obsidian depths of hell.
Her mouth made a warm impression on his neck, and she tensed herself tighter, tighter, and she drew him in.
"Maria...!"
"Don't talk. Just feel me. Keep feeling me. Feel me good, Jim. Real good!"
"I want to, but I can't. Not tonight."
Her soft flesh had woven itself around his fingers and hands, and he couldn't free himself, but his brain told him he had to.
"I've got to go."
"Come on, Jim. We can do it like we used to do it. I can feel it in your hands. Remember how it was those first times-when we were far away from her? Remember those spring nights in the deer camp on Ganson Ridge?"
"Yeah." He said it automatically, and he didn't know why he said it, because he had forced those nights out of all memory! He had not been able to think about them-during those years with Arlene-and continue to exist.
"Remember it all? Remember just how I feel when we're going good, when there's nothing there but us and the night, and no sound but our sound? Do you?"
He felt her capturing him with her words, with her naked flesh, and he felt it twisting around him tighter and tighter, and he still wanted to escape. But he couldn't. She pressed his hand tight, held it with her legs. She was whispering things, things that made no sense, but he was not even listening. For the first time in years, he was remembering how it was.
He had had an old Ford car, which he had fixed up and used to take her riding down the length of the mountains, with the spring nights clutching in at them. The earth smelled rich and wild and full of sap, as if it would burst. He drove narrow dirt roads, holding her with one arm, and his lights jerked like quick white jets through the black trees along the road.
Sometimes night-birds fluttered in front of them, making quick slashes up and down, and sometimes deer jumped like crazy jumping-jacks across the road in front of them. It excited him to see their white tails leap up, erect and proud, and he pulled her closer and closer, as if he might lose her suddenly if he didn't.
They parked often. He sometimes couldn't wait to find a wood road, or a trail where they could get the car off the main route long enough to satisfy the hunger of kissing her and feeling her. He would turn off the ignition and then throw himself on top of her.
Her mouth tasted like some wild fresh honey, and she had a scent of almonds in her nose or in her mouth or in her hair, which drove him wild. He twisted under the steering wheel and slid his hands down to her knee. She wore thin sheer stockings, and that drove him crazy too. He wanted to feel them under his naked body, and he yanked her skirt high, and she helped him, and then for a while he sat there in the night, toying with the tops of her black nylons.
He had talked her into wearing them, and she did it for him. He loved to look down and stare at the milky perfection of her white skin in the pale light from the dash. "God, Maria!" he would say. "It's like milk. How about me drinking some of it? How about me drinking you up?"
Their love-play lasted for a long time, and then he felt her giving away, letting him in. He had never forgotten those first few times, for it was like a smooth object of pure sensation entering another smooth object of pure sensation. There was nothing else, ever in the world, but Maria's holding him.
She held him inside her, and he had always forgotten Arlene.
"So you remember, huh?"
He heard Maria's voice, and he wondered why she had said it, and then he felt her hand fingering his hardness, and he understood. His memory had been too strong, and she seemed to sigh with relief, but he knew it wouldn't last.
Along with the reality of that moment, Arlene walked back. Once again, she crawled back into his brain, and no matter what Maria did now to tell him, to catch him with quick, panting words, it wouldn't work. His ecstasy was gone.
"Maria, I can't!"
His words didn't strike her hard, and she didn't shove him away. "Jim, darling, don't worry. It's okay. You did come back to me, if only for a little while. It'll be all right. We've got time. We can do it, Jim. You can escape from her."
He didn't believe it. He didn't think he could escape, ever, but she sounded so happy, and so glad. He couldn't kill her hope completely. "Yeah," he said. "Maybe we could try."
"Yes, Jim." Her body was too close now, and he struggled for air. He pulled away from her, and he didn't want to leave her completely, but he had to breathe. He reached down and touched her face with trembling fingers.
"But, Maria, let's not try it here. I can't stand it here. She's contaminated the whole place. Let's get out of here. We can go to some joint."
He heard her pleading with him, and he wanted to be sorry, but he couldn't. "But, why, Jim? Why not here? This is my place. I've been here a long time."
"I don't know. I can't explain it, Baby. But don't you know some place, outside of town, far away from here. Someplace we could really be alone."
She was silent for a long time. Then she said, "There's the Blue Bar Motel and Cafe. It's out about fifteen miles on Lake Breenbay. We can go out there."
He reached for her, but as soon as she began talking, she seemed more excited. "Come on, darling. We'll go there. It'll all come back to you... all of it, darling!"
Chapter Nine
Maria had felt him, had lost him, and been deeply disappointed when he wanted to get out of her place. But she realized, after a moment, that he was probably right, that no matter what they did, Arlene would always be there in that room. She would always be staring out of the shadows at them, always laughing.
She picked up her underthings and began to get dressed. She found herself fumbling and turned to him. "Jim, help me with this darn bra. You took it off. Help me put it back on."
He laughed. "You took it off yourself. Don't you remember? Me, I couldn't get the damn thing unfastened, but I'll help you put it back on."
He did. His fingers moved swiftly and surely at their task, and it didn't take them long to get dressed. She didn't watch him, not wanting to embarrass him, and she only hoped for one thing. She wanted the real Jim back beside her, back inside her. She took one last look around, and he held the door open for her as they went out.
Her car was in the garage behind the store, and they walked to it. Jim looked at her with a question in his face, but at her nod he climbed simply into the driver's seat. She watched him, but he drove steadily without looking at her. She hated to see him so close, and yet so distant, and she slid herself over to be close beside him on the seat.
When she did, he dropped his right hand from the wheel to feel her leg. His touch excited her, and she made a game of coaxing him along. She let her own hands search in wild excitement under the steering wheel. She felt him, she felt the resistance to her touch, but also the desire, and she heard virility come back into his voice.
"How do you expect me to drive when you're doing that?"
"I don't."
She waited for him to speak, but he leaned over the wheel intent on the road. When they were about ten miles out of town, he slowed down and dug his fingers hard into her thigh.
"Dammit, Maria, I've had enough. Where can we park?"
Yes, she had him. His fingers excited her. His voice excited her, and she shivered with anticipation and leaned over hastily and kissed him on the cheek. "Just a little further, Jim. There's a dirt road on the left. It goes off into an old limestone quarry."
She saw the big elm, and pointed out the entrance to him. Since they had left, she had not thought about Arlene. She had forced that woman out of her head, and only now Arlene flashed back in a quick terrible image, but Maria swept her out again. She didn't think. She couldn't think.
Jim stopped the car. "I can't wait, Maria."
"Me either." She dug her hands down into his clothes, ran one into his pocket, and felt him through the material. Their headlights sprayed across a high white wall of limestone, and he reached over to snap off the switch. She felt his fingers reaching up, fingering her, and then he was pushing himself towards her.
She felt the intense throb of his body, and she moved her knees wide apart. His lips tore at her. His hands moved over her as if they were kneading her flesh like so much dough, and she was ready-so ready. She had waited too long, and she felt a bright flashing behind her closed eyelids. She had forgotten Arlene. Nothing existed but that supreme moment of coming explosion. Nothing!
"That feels so good, Jim!"
"Yeah!"
She heard nothing. He said nothing else, but a shadow fell abruptly across their open window. A brisk voice and a flashlight snapped in at them out of the darkness. She wanted to die right here, but she could not shut out the sound of the voice.
"Sorry, folks, you can't park here. Hotel or motel-but not here. This is a State Park now. No parking after sundown!"
The State Trooper snapped off his light and walked back to his car, and she was glad he was not one of those who stopped in at the coffee shop sometimes.
She heard Jim cursing hoarsely and long under his breath, and she couldn't say anything. His disappointment matched her own. They had been cut off, frustrated one more time, and she couldn't stand it, but she knew his frustration was just as great. She tried to think of something to say to ease his disappointment, but could find no words.
After she got her dress pulled down, he held out a cigarette to her. Then he started the car and drove on out to the Blue Bar Cafe. She didn't expect many people would be there, and there weren't. When they got to the bar, Jim ordered Scotch on the rocks, and she felt like having a stinger. She needed something strong, sweet, sudden.
The bartender, Hank Goodwin, greeted her with one of his usual curt comic comments. "Whatsamatter, Sue. You need a Bee Bite? A big girl like you."
She tried to think of something clever to say in reply, but she only managed a quick, "I'm beat."
"Thought so. Who's your Romeo?"
She introduced Jim, and then she tried to relax, tried to feel Jim's shoulder next to hers. When Hank wasn't looking she dropped her free hand down and touched Jim's leg. Behind them, one couple moved in slow circles on the dark dance-floor, and she didn't even hear the music. For her, there was no more music, could be no more music, until they had completed the necessary act to unlock their worlds of feeling.
She did look around however and saw that Hank's four musicians seemed to be playing mostly for themselves. She didn't want to feel so lost, didn't want to feel Jim slipping away, and she lifted her hand and placed it on top of his. She didn't know what to say.
"Jim, tell me about your business."
He turned and looked at her abruptly. "What for? That doesn't really matter."
"Dammit, it does. Everything matters to me -to us-to you. You know that." She knew she was spinning out loose words, but she had nothing else to hold him, and she had to hold him.
He shrugged in an easy way, and began pushing his glass in tight circles on the counter. After what he had gone through, he didn't seem terribly nervous even when performing that silly action. She only half-listened to him. She had to try and figure something out, and she couldn't.
"Hell!" he said. "After I left Vermont, I got set up in business in Massachusetts, near Springfield. I've got ten hardware stores now. I guess I do all right. As for money, I've got a pile of it in the bank."
He said the last with some pride, and she studied his face. If they had luck, they could do it. They could get away from Arlene, but only...
It made her feel frustrated to think about it. Arlene represented a point in her thoughts, a point where a long road reached a solid rock wall, and there was no way of getting over it, around it or under it. She went back to studying Jim's face and knew she had to dig deep into the tender flesh of his soul.
She tried it. He stopped talking, and she couldn't seem to reach that delicate center. She wanted to make him talk, but he wouldn't. Slowly, painfully, as if it were so much medicine, she drank her drink. It made a swift, cold chill in her mouth, and then after she swallowed it, she asked him if he wanted to dance.
She had to do something with him.
He half-turned towards her, half-opened his mouth to answer, but he didn't get a chance to say what he wanted. Maria sensed somebody standing behind her, and she turned around to see a woman move suddenly close. The woman leaned over them, and said almost as if she were Jim.
"Sure, why not! It's been a long time since we danced together, Maria. Don't you remember how much we danced that last winter we were together? How all the jerks thought it was because we didn't have any partners? That was a real laugh, wasn't it, Maria?"
Maria choked back a scream and stared as Arlene swung onto the bar-stool beside her. Arlene's laugh sounded deep and low in her throat, Arlene's hand stroked her back with that horrible touch. With quick movements, Arlene's fingers burned through the thin cotton material of Maria's dress, and stopped exactly over the hard outline of Maria's bra strap.
When she felt that, Maria whipped herself away. She didn't think when she grabbed Jim's arm. She forced him to the dance-floor, and they moved like two robots making awkward steps under a flood of crazy green lights.
"Damn you, Jim!" she said hoarsely, and she bumped and ground her pelvis savagely into his. "You've got to think of something. We've got to get away from her. We've got to kill that goddamn bitch."
He looked at her sincerely, tried to smile. "I only wish we could."
"Think of something. Try!"
The whirling lights on the ceiling covered them with green-and-yellow splinters. The floor seemed smooth and even, but their dancing together was agony. She looked up at him, felt his right hand in her back, and his eyes looked like dark ink in that light.
"I don't know, Maria, but maybe, I've got something. Maybe... It might just work."
"What is it?"
His plan was simple. She agreed to it, carried off her end of the deal as quickly as possible. She went over to the drummer as if asking him to play another number, and made arrangements for him to drive off in her car just as soon as he saw them shoot out of the Club.
Jim figured it would be enough to fool Arlene, and as they carried it out, it was. Arlene fell for it, and Arlene took off right after Maria's car. Then, as soon as Arlene had gotten out of sight, Jim took Maria's hand and led her off into the night.
She saw the lake glimmer faintly. Jim found a path and led her along it. Deep pine scents tickled her nose, and she remembered the times in Vermont. Whether for good or for bad, pine mixed with sex made a perfume she could never forget.
She stopped an involuntary sneeze, and he grabbed her hand. "You okay?"
"Yeah."
She felt his hand. It burned with its potential feel, and she tried to keep her desire under control. Jim led her through the woods, through the night, and she didn't care where he was taking her.
It must have been an hour of crashing along through brush and plants near the lake shore, before Jim found what he was looking for. He stepped ahead of her, disappeared for a second into a curtain of branches, and then came back to her.
He led her through them and up a short steep incline to a pleasant pocket in the crest of a small hill. Above her head, a wild, alarmed moon whipped by like a harried jack-rabbit, and she stood and listened to the night. There was no sound. They were far from the dance-floor. Nothing moved anywhere except pine needles close by as they rustled softly in the breeze.
"Come on," he said, "Sit down."
"Just a second."
She didn't want to rush into this. She had been cheated too often. Her body couldn't stand it anymore. This time it had to be right. She wondered if he felt the same way, but he was already sitting down, and he didn't pull her close as he might have.
She stood there, feeling the night, waiting for some unexpected glimmer of light in the darkness. There was nothing. She sat down slowly then and lay back, as if trying to recapture that raw flame in her female softness.
She understood then, how Arlene had castrated him. Sex could be shut off by such wild uncontrolled emotions, and it would take time to restore its normal life. She stared straight up through the dark branches of the pine tree and she watched a column of clouds race silently across the moon.
She whispered up at them, and then she smelled the earth. The last touch of heat was still in it, and her pulse began to race. She knew she had to control herself. She had to be right for both of them-neither too soon nor too late.
Her hands brushed the warm carpet of pine needles. She felt the warmth in the ground. She poked her fingers down through the needles, and felt the earth, and it seemed to her as if the sun must have soaked into that spot for a long time. Right then, she imagined that they were both lying on a fur rug miles square and hundreds of feet deep.
"Jim...?"
He understood her unfinished question and answered it. "Yeah, it sure is nice. Maybe like magic. Just like back then."
"Jim, now!"
Without any further waiting, she offered her immense hunger. She held it out to him with eager body and pressed it into his waiting hands and mouth, and he sank quickly down beside her. She reached for him, helped him slip off his shirt and pants. They both got panicked at his undershorts, and ripped through them in their struggle for relief. Not saying a word, doing nothing but feel, they wrestled in silence, and the moon spilled down over them. She felt it pouring down across her, down across him, splashing them both with thick white.
"Look," she said excited by it, "it's just like whipped cream."
"Shhh!"
The moon spotlighted their struggle, and the white intense light made-when she looked sideways at them-even her discarded clothes look like so many wildly scattered flower petals. His hands and lips worked on her body. His body commanded hers, and she was taking him in. She worked her body hard, meeting him well, and controlling each thrash of her hips. She eased out the agony of her passion in long slow movements. "Jim, darling, Oh, Jim! That's the way I want it. Like that, darling. Like I have wanted it for so long!"
"Okay, baby, okay!"
His breathing made hard, urgent sounds, and his tongue curled into her ear, and she felt the slick wet slippery movement of it pressing against the increasingly tight ache of her eardrum. It was exquisitely beautiful, and her tight wet hunger grew ever more voracious as long-craved fulfillment drew closer.
He took her. He was taking her. He was always taking her, and she knew that they were winning against everything tainted and evil in the World. Time stood still. She knew nothing but a huge silver thrust of moon. Pine trees and earth whirled around and around over her head like a giant merry-go-round and a million Roman candles let off quick exciting explosions. A white flash, a red flash, boom, boom, BOOM!
She had Jim. She had Jim! Finally, completely, with nothing else there, she had him. Her eyes had been closed, she had dropped away into nothing. She had come back... gone again. She had tossed herself in an almost unconscious state of letting herself go, of not being anywhere on earth, of not even existing. She struggled against such total loss of herself, and then she felt fingers inserted where he had been.
"Jim, why are you doing that?"
He didn't answer, she didn't insist. She lay there relaxed, feeling something. She remembered the touch of other hands, like a quick scar in her brain, and then she opened her eyes. She pushed herself up against a great weight and stretched, out her hand.
She felt for Jim's face. She touched and touched again, but it was not Jim's face. Her naked fingertips brushed lips cold as frozen steel, and the naked body tossing on top of hers, manipulating the fingers so cunningly, was not Jim's. Maria stared about her in terror, looking for Jim.
She saw him, and she couldn't understand it. She saw him huddled close beside them. He sat huddled in an awful attitude. A nightmare of silence surrounded him, and his face hung between his knees. She didn't understand, but she saw then the fiendish satisfaction which seeped out of Arlene's lust-filled face.
"Yes," Arlene said, "Yes, my dear, it's me! We're together again, aren't we?"
Maria couldn't stop her screams. They came in waves, and they shattered the night. Her too-long-tormented muscles exploded like hard-bent steel springs. She hurled Arlene from her and, without once looking back, ran screaming across the naked hill. The night loomed black and gigantic above her, and as she ran, it seemed to open vast, ugly jaws in a grin of hate. She screamed again and again, and kept running, and the night screamed after her its dark, unholy terror.
Chapter Ten
The night drowned Maria in its terrifying depths. She could feel it slipping around her like wet rubber, pasting damp, cold leaves against her naked skin. Far off, somewhere, there had to be a road, but she didn't know how to get to it. She ran and didn't stop, until finally, a tree slammed into her. She grabbed hold of its cold, rough bark and held on, panting. She couldn't force herself any further, and she expected to hear Arlene's hellish, demanding voice. She turned quickly, looked behind her.
Nobody followed her.
Jim's crazy action seemed impossible to her. Why hadn't he yelled, fought with Arlene, done something? What had happened to him, back there on the top of the hill? What had killed him off in the very heart of their lovemaking?
How could he slip off like that and let Arlene come and take her? At the thought of Arlene's fingers, Maria shivered violently. It seemed to her then that the night turned into an enormous black spider. It pursued her, crawled after her, swallowed her with its ugly mouth.
She wanted to scream and couldn't, for her throat had been emptied of sound. She felt the rough bark of the tree and tore at it with her fingernails. After several attempts, she made her lips move, trying to call for help: "Please help me, somebody!"
Her words slid through silence, and she heard them, but she stood alone. Nobody could hear her. Yet she knew she had to talk, had to say, "Please...!"
She touched her lips to the bark, kept muttering words nobody could hear. She knew it. She knew she was lost, that Jim was gone, that everybody in the world was gone, that somewhere, back there hidden in the night, Arlene followed her, stalked her.
"Oh, help, please!"
She flung her naked hips tight to the tree, then forced herself to leave it. She ran across fields, fences, another field. Every step pained her naked feet, and she knew they must be bleeding, but she didn't think about them. She ran. She walked, then ran again...
She had no gauge of time. The moon looked mad in the revolving sky, but it seemed to her that it took her years before she got to the road. She stood on a tall slope above it and watched it wind between a long double row of trees. Between the trees, in strange pulses of occasional moonlight, she saw the road's shiny black surface.
She saw it and thanked her luck. She looked down at her nakedness, and it seemed to her as if she could never force herself to walk down there. It would be too embarrassing to stand naked beside the road, waiting for a car, but finally she went down.
No cars came however, and the longer she waited the more naked and scared she felt. She had no way of covering herself. She thought desperately of using leaves like Eve, but the idea seemed too stupid. She stood back behind the huge trunk of a maple and waited. A night-bird called somewhere. She shivered and knew it was a small back road, that there could not be much traffic on it.
Perhaps she had waited for half an hour, perhaps more, when she peered out and saw two headlights approaching. It was a car all right, but it came so slowly she couldn't even hear the sound of its motor. She stared at the lights, and it seemed to her as if the driver were going slow on purpose, almost as if he were looking for someone. Instantly, she thought of Arlene. She wanted to hurl herself back and run into the fields and escape.
Her feet hurt too much. She was too scared. It made her heart tremble when the car got close to the tree, but she shivered desperately and forced herself to put out her hand. She stuck out her whole arm after it, and pressed herself closer to the bark.
The car stopped at once. She heard the car door open, and then a man's voice spoke softly. "Hey, Sue, is that you? I've been looking for you ever since I got your phone call. My motor went out, and you were gone when I got there."
It was Ken's voice, and he started to walk towards her. She could hear the heavy tread of his feet, and she felt so amazingly happy. It was as if finally, after a long winter of suffering, spring had suddenly come out of nowhere. If came as suddenly and mysteriously as the willawah, which cuts through the Canadian snows with its hot sudden breath and makes the ice disappear within a few hour's time.
Ken stepped closer, and she had to stop him. "Ken-wait. Don't come near."
"Hey, what's up?"
"I don't have any clothes on. "
"So, what's wrong with that?" His voice sounded amused.
"Please don't be funny. I was never happier to see anybody in my life, really, Ken."
He didn't ask her any more questions. She could hear him start to walk back to his cab, but he stopped. "Don't sweat, Sue. I've got an old raincoat back in the heap. I'll get it for you."
In moments, he came back, and offered the raincoat, and she hurried to slip into it. Once more, she felt as if she belonged to the human race, as if she had escaped from a long night's hell. She walked away from the tree trunk, and looked at Ken. He stood there, so confident, beside his cab, looking up and down the road. Only when she got close, did she see that his face wore a tight expression which pulled his mouth in severely at the corners.
"What's the matter?" Sue asked.
"Oh, it's nothing, Sue. I went to the Blue Boar Motel. Hank told me you'd been there... you and that guy. I found out about your car too."
"And?"
He didn't answer. His face seemed to strain even more as he looked back down the road in the direction from which he had come. "Who's that dame, Sue? She sure is an odd one. You know, she kept following me around as if she wanted to talk to me, as if she wanted to ask me something, but she didn't."
Suddenly, unavoidably, Maria shivered. She tried to imagine what had happened back at the motel, and she could only guess Ken and Arlene had met at the same time outside the Club. "When did you see her?"
"It couldn't have been long after you and your friend took off, but then she beat it, too." He turned and looked at her, and Maria watched him flubbing a fat right hand behind his ear. "She must've took off like a shot. One second I'm talking to her, the next she's gone."
"Ken, what's bothering you?" She looked at him steadily, and when the moon fell just right, she saw his fat cheeks rise up tensely under his eyes, and push his eyes into deep slots. He seemed almost scared.
"Nothing, Sue, nothing. Come on."
They got in, and Ken turned the car around and drove back towards town. They sat together in the front seat, silently, for about ten minutes, when she remembered to ask him the time.
"It's about midnight, Sue."
At that second, she glanced over and saw a flash of light in his rear-view mirror, and then she watched him discover it too. It seemed to surprise him for some reason, and he kept glancing up at the mirror. His anxiety grew, and she felt she had to calm him down. "Heck," she said, "it's probably only a farmer coming into town early."
"Yeah..." His voice trailed off, and she felt him press down hard on the accelerator. The motor roared, and they picked up sudden speed. They should have left any slow-driving farmer far behind, but moments later, sharp headlight beams shot by on the left side and a car edged up fast in an attempt to pass.
Ahead of them, the road swung into a series of curves, and Maria noticed that Ken tried to keep in front. He tried to hold the center of the road, but the other car kept nosing up behind them. The shrill mounting sound of speed screamed like a witch's keening in her head, and she looked at Ken. "Why don't you slow down? Let them go ahead?"
He made a rough sound in his throat. "I'd sort of like to, Sue, but something tells me I'd better not."
He gunned his cab fast between a long series of white guard-rails, and the other car crashed hard into his rear bumper. The impact knocked her against the dash, and then, before she realized what had happened, Ken was fighting the wheel, trying to keep them out of the ditch on the far left-hand side of the road.
His action gave the other car a chance to pull up on the right, near her door. Maria held onto the dash, and watched the struggle. The other car had pulled close and kept forcing Ken towards the ditch, but he yanked at the wheel, swore under his breath.
Maria looked at the other driver, and now she could see very clearly who it was. Both cars must have been running at 60 or 70, and she didn't recognize the other car, but Arlene was driving it, and Arlene's face looked like a white, jagged piece of paper ripped from a book.
The speed and violence of the race made her sick. Arlene opened the window and shouted at her, "Maria, you tell that son-of-a-bitch to stop and let you out. I want to see you. I've got something to tell you, Maria. I'm sorry about that other."
Speed screamed. Metal screamed as the two cars rubbed side by side, and Arlene's voice screamed in her brain. Maria watched Ken, and deliberately kept from looking at Arlene. On the next curve, which swung left, Ken gunned the car, and they shot ahead on the inner curve. Arlene dropped back, and the race picked up more and more speed.
Ken kept up a steady stream of swearing, and Maria watched a black-and-white landscape rip past. Nothing seemed fixed or still in the black-and-white fields, and a hard steel line rocketed whitely down the center of the road. She watched it race at her, and she thought it would slash through her, like a wildly flashing razor blade.
"Ken, I'm scared."
"Hey!" he said not turning his head. "Don't let me snow you, kid. I'm plenty shook up myself." He didn't take his eyes off the road, but stayed there wrestling the wheel.
Maria stared at the red arrow on the speedometer. It went to 80, to 85, then to 90, and then it dropped back. At one point, on a long straight stretch, it shot over 95, yet the other car hurled itself alongside. Metal screamed like a sharp, sick bone-fracture, and Ken rode the wheel with all his strength.
Arlene's fierce, triumphant shout rang clearly out of the whirlpool of speed. "If you don't tell him to stop, I'll run you off the road. You can die for all I care."
Maria stared over at the fierce white slash of Arlene's face and said nothing. She fought against Arlene, she would not let herself give in to that force. She could not give in to it, and she felt her brain whirling in a torment of black and white speed. Speed increased, and her eyes followed an exploding, expanding road. If anything were on that road ahead of them, they could never stop in time...
Ken must have sensed her feeling, for he dropped his hand on her knee. "Don't worry, kid. We'll make it."
"It's not me, Ken," she said, "I'm worried about you."
"Another mile, and we can get rid of her."
"How?"
"You'll see."
She tried to count the racing seconds. She tried to weigh them against her hope. The road screamed under them like a wickedly wriggling serpent, and black-and-white trees whipped past them like exploding black-and-white chess-pieces across her universe. Wild motors throbbed like two gigantic, overly rapid beating, hearts.
She stared at the hurtling road. She watched Arlene. Suddenly, a white sign flashed the name of some town on her right. She watched Ken push down harder on the gas. A few isolated houses blazed past, and then they were close to a river and a bridge. She saw the white flash of guard-rail. It sickened her.
The bridge loomed up sharply to the right. Ken braked quickly, skidded in a sickening curve, but fought his way out of it somehow, and they came out dead center on the bridge. The cab picked up sudden speed, and Maria had-as she looked back-only a split-second of time to watch Arlene's attempt at the same quick turn.
Arlene didn't make it. Her car hurtled off the bank into the river, and Ken said nothing about it. He continued driving on into the night.
Finally, when they got close to Hollyhock, he turned to her. She tried to relax. She couldn't. Her black-white nightmare had merged into soft grey. In the world outside the car, everything seemed mixed with buttermilk, and she wasn't strong enough to fight anymore.
"Whatcha want to do, Sue?"
She felt herself shivering in his raincoat, and she couldn't control herself. "Gosh, Ken, I don't know. I can't even think."
"Want to stay over at my place?"
"Ken, I've bothered you too much now."
"Come on, kid. Cut it out. I'll fix you a drink, and you can sack out. There's that apartment over my garage. Ain't nobody in it now." He smiled at her and his face seemed to hold a world of nothing but pure kindness.
She reached over suddenly, touched his shoulder, and it surprised her that his shirt was wet with sweat. "Thanks, Ken. I sure appreciate it."
His house was on King Street, which followed along the gully, and his garage backed right over the deep cut in the earth. She went into his kitchen, had a good stiff drink, and then he took her out and pointed up the stairs.
"Here's the key. There's everything up there you'll need. I'll see you in the morning, and for God sake's, Sue, don't worry about a thing."
She crawled into the bed, covered up and tried to go to sleep. Something knocked her into sleep faster than she could have imagined, and she rolled up in deep slumber...
She never knew what woke her up. It might have been a distant telephone. When she looked out the window, she saw that the moon had gone down, and the night was as black as carbon. She stared out towards Ken's house, and then she saw him step quietly out his kitchen door. He took a quick look up towards her window, then got into his cab and drove off.
For a long time in bed, trying to think about nothing, she wondered where he had gone, but then she thought it must have been somebody wanting a ride somewhere, and she went to sleep and thought no more about it.
Chapter Eleven
Jim sat on the edge of his bed and stared around the motel room. Two elements disturbed him. Although he was alone, two things moved. He sat on the edge of his twin red bed in his white undershirt and undershorts, and guilt pinned him down.
He could not go find Maria, or help her, for he had betrayed her completely. He could have acted-yet he had not acted. He had to sit on his bed like a stupid, reprimanded child and wait for Arlene.
He didn't know where she was. From the top of the hill, Arlene had disappeared into the night, and now he could only remember Maria's screams. In his empty, silent room, two things bugged him.
Brown, red colors circled dizzily in his eyes, and he could not stop following them from right to left, from right to left. His eyes went from luggage rack to dresser, to bathroom door. The brown-and-red room tincanned him in, and into its color scheme, a violent green painting kept drumming repulsion reactions into his consciousness.
He could stand neither the color nor the subject matter. And he couldn't even be sure what that subject matter was. It might have been an elongated green insect, like a praying mantis, or it might have been a broken bottle on a black overturned table. He didn't know.
Maria's lips swam up frantically in his memory. For a while he had almost escaped with her. He had seen Arlene coming toward them, stalking them, undressing, showing her body to him, and he had done nothing.
Why?
Why did a green bottle look like a dead insect?
Why did he have to get Arlene out of town?
Why was he wearing his stupid undershirt, his stupid undershorts? Why were they so white?
Why...?
Once, he had given Arlene an orchid. He remembered it well. It had been several years before, after the first shock of leaving Maria had gone out of his body. It had happened when he was dulled, deadened, defeated by Arlene's mouth and hands.
He remembered it well. He had brought the orchid home after work. Arlene's face lifted slowly, meeting his look as he held out the flower. Her right hand slowly swept back the falling mass of black hair on the right side of her head, and her lips moved in a quick dramatic pout.
"What's that for?"
"It's for you... It's an expensive orchid."
Her hands went to it, felt it. Her white fingers crawled along the brownish, reddish petals with convulsive, caterpillar movements. Her white fingers were eating the orchid petals.
"Jim?"
"Yeah."
"Why did you buy it?"
"For you."
"Because you love me?"
"Do you want me to tell you the truth?"
"No."
He had needed a shower. He felt hot and sticky. He started to leave the bathroom, but Arlene stopped him. She slipped swiftly out of her green dress, and her motions were those of a snake casting off its old skin. Then she had taken his orchid and shoved it into a private place. He remembered the look of pure triumph on her face. She had dropped quickly back on the bed, spread her knees: "Okay, Jim, come on, let's you and me baptize it..."
He had forced himself into the act, and that had been one of the last times. He had distinct, ugly memories about it, and he felt like a huge green insect himself, one making awkward movements, crawling in and out of a big red rose, and then he had felt broken green glass, and then he had felt hot, wet warmth, which had a certain shock-value, because of the cold slippery movements of the orchid petals.
She lay there, looking up at him. She reached down and pulled it out. Arlene held it up to him. "Do you want to eat it."
"No."
"Then I will." Arlene had held it delicately poised above her red mouth, then opened her lips. The orchid fell. Her lips and jaws moved. Her Adam's apple went up and down a couple of times, and Jim watched her...
The motel room made him dizzy. The brown and red colors were very unpleasant, but he didn't want to look for Arlene. He wasn't sure whether he should look for Maria or not, but he now knew he couldn't find her. How could he ever find her? The green picture hanging above his old tan suitcase reminded him of broken glass, and he tried to imagine where he had seen something like it before.
He couldn't remember...
Two hours later, it must have been about five-thirty, Arlene walked in. She stepped through the door, locked it, stared at him for a minute, and her face gleamed with a mysterious expression, which he could only classify as triumph. "Guess what, dear!"
He looked at her firmly. "We're leaving here this afternoon, Arlene. We're getting out of Hollyhock, and we're never coming back."
She strode towards him, placed her hands on his shoulders, and rocked his head back and forth. "Darling, you'll never guess what I did."
He groaned.
"What's the matter? Aren't you interested in your little wifey anymore?"
"Cut it out, Arlene. If we have to live together, let's just make the agony as easy as possible, okay?"
"But, darling, that's the best part of it. It's such a joke! There's no more agony. I've fixed it. Maria will never enter our lives again. You want to know what I did..."
Vaguely her words sank in, and he tried to follow them. Then some subconscious reaction made him focus more decisively on Arlene's face. Her eyes glittered a savage green, and suddenly he felt very much afraid. "Arlene, just what the hell have you done? Tell me quick."
She danced back two steps. "Look at you! See, now you're interested. Now you want to know all about it, huh?"
"What did you do, Arlene? Did you kill her?" His dullness sharpened into acute pain. The very thought seemed impossible, knowing Arlene's lesbianism, but it fitted too well Arlene's present mood and attitude.
She laughed coarsely, looked at the ceiling. "Not her, darling. But I did something better. Want to hear?" She studied his face, and then sat down carefully beside him. She even took a second to smooth her skirt as if that action had any meaning or any importance. "I didn't kill Maria, but I've fixed it so she will be removed..."
"Dammit, Arlene, what have you done?" He couldn't keep the panic from bubbling up in his voice.
"Don't rush me, darling. You've got to wait. This is too priceless. Remember that cab driver? The one who insulted me?" She stared intently into his eyes.
"Yeah."
"Well, I killed him. I did it very, very cleverly too. You would be proud of me. Want to know something?" Words exploded from her, unrestrained, frightening. "You can always lead a man on. They think a woman might like them, might love them, might want them, and their filth..."
He sat there sickly, dully. He couldn't do a thing about it. The world wasn't real. Nothing made sense. He half-listened to her. He half-watched the slowed-down motions of the room itself. He thought that maybe the green picture wasn't so bad after all. It soothed him, somehow.
"Arlene..."
"And when we got all done-I mean when I got all done-I left him there, and it's her stuff that he's got in his pocket. You know what I mean... her private things, like..."
Suddenly, he knew. Suddenly, in that quick second's time, sitting half naked on the bed, he knew full reality. His wife was a spider, and she had caught him, and then she had caught the friendly taxi driver who had kicked her out. And now she was catching Maria, too, in her deadly web for the second time, and this time, it was final. There would be no out.
"Why are you telling me all this?" He had to know. He had to watch the expression on her face, discover her real direction. Her beautiful chin lifted ever so slightly, and she smiled at him with what was meant to be a warm smile.
"We've played games too long, Jim. It was time to test you-I'm sure you're on my side. One-hundred percent on it, but I had to know for sure. This will prove it."
"But, Arlene, you've killed a man!"
Her smile turned into a short, abrupt laugh. "So what, Jim, so what? Are you going to go moral on me all of a sudden?"
A swift sinking feeling hit him in the bottom of his stomach, and he couldn't answer her. He thought of Maria. He thought of Arlene, and her vicious act, and the knock on the door surprised him. He picked up his trousers, tugged them on. He wondered who it was. He looked briefly at Arlene, but she only shrugged her shoulders indifferently, and then he walked over and opened the door. Jerry Williams stood there with two police officers. "Mr. White, I'd like to speak to you and your wife for a minute, please. May I come in?"
"Sure, why not?"
Jim tried to control his emotions. He knew that the police chief had found out about Arlene. He forced a smile, then stepped aside and motioned the men in. He shut the door after them, gestured towards the two available chairs.
The Chief saw his gesture and said, "No, thanks. We're kind of in a hurry." His round face seemed less round now, and he wore a harried, almost frightened look in his eyes.
Jim forced himself to speak: "What can I do for you?"
The police chief turned and gave him a very penetrating glance. "It'll only take a minute. Have you been in all evening?"
Jim looked past him, looked at the other officers, one of whom seemed very nervous and kept dropping a pair of black gloves. He considered for a second and then said, "We were out earlier, but I've been here since midnight."
"And your wife?"
Jim hesitated, then looked directly at the Chief: "She came in at the same time I did." He didn't know why he lied, but it seemed as if he had been forced into covering up her tracks. He had not done it out of loyalty, but out of-"
"Tell me, Mr. White, how well do you know Sue Belden?"
This time the police chief gazed at him steadily and seemed to be waiting very carefully for his answer. "Now, look, Mr. White," he said, "If you don't want to...!"
"I was married to her once. I know her very well. What's the matter? Why are you asking me these questions?"
The Chief took a pad out of his coat pocket, and slapped it against his left hand. "Well, it's tough, I know, but we think she killed a man last night." For one moment, the Chief turned from Jim and looked over towards Arlene. It was only for a second, and then he swung back quickly towards Jim. "It doesn't make sense to me. I didn't think Sue could ever commit such a fiendishly clever murder, but..."
"But, Chief, I don't know what you're talking about." Jim found himself stammering out the words. He was playing a game, and he knew it. Suddenly revolted by the game, he went to the closet, got his coat off its hanger, pulled it on.
Behind him, the Chief slapped the notebook in his hand a couple more times, then started for the door. He stopped. Jim looked at him.
"Mr. White, Ken Wylie was hanging over there in the Circus Room of the Muddy Oak Hotel. All I know is that he was deader than a mackerel and that somebody did it."
"But, Sue... I mean, Maria..."
The chief caught the slip, looked at him. "What is Sue's real name?"
Jim started to answer, but Arlene spoke up from the bed and beat him to it. "Maria Wyzerk, Polish, from Vermont."
The chief turned his cold gaze on Arlene. "Okay, Mrs. White, is there anything else you can tell me?"
Arlene opened up a big smile for him. She shook her head slowly, deliberately. "No, Mr. Williams, I'm afraid not. I always thought Maria was a bit strange at times, but if you want to pin that killing on her, no! She's not the-type."
The double perfidy of Arlene's words made Jim shiver inside with rage, but he stood there and controlled himself. He did walk over to his suitcase. He had a bottle of bourbon there, and he took it out quickly. He held the bottle towards the two officers. They shook their heads coldly. One did moisten his lower lip with a quick flick of his tongue.
Jim took his glass, held it firmly. He looked at the Police Chief. "So what do you want us to do?"
"Nothing much. If we need you, we'll call you. Go on, man, have your drink. But if you two can manage it, we'd like you to stick around for a couple of days anyway."
Jim glanced over at Arlene, and her smile bubbled out quickly and brightly. "We're in no hurry, Mr. Williams. We like your town. We'll be happy to stick around. By the way, have you picked her up yet?"
The chief shook his head with a heavy sad motion. "No, not yet. As a matter of fact, we haven't been able to find her." He stepped quickly towards the door. "Sorry for bothering you folks, we'll be going now."
The door closed slowly behind them, and Jim went back to looking at the room. He studied the colors carefully, he didn't look at Arlene. She dropped back on the bed, closed her eyes. Her hands seemed suddenly taut as they rubbed her cheeks.
"I'm tired. I'm going to have a shower, and then we can make love and have a nap. Okay, lover?"
Jim didn't say anything. He forced himself to stand there with one hand on the dresser top, and he took a steady drink from the glass, which he had filled to the brim with whiskey.
On her way to the bathroom, Arlene stopped close behind him and breathed on his neck. "I'm glad you're drinking, dear, but don't get too drunk. You know what it does to your lovemaking powers."
He didn't finish the glass. He waited until she had the shower running full, and then he got completely dressed. He did it quickly. He took his billfold, a flashlight and his shoes, and he stepped out the door. He had to warn Maria. That much he had to do.
Once outside in the early-morning light, he looked across the vast apron of the parking lot, but he saw nothing. Nobody was in sight. He knew it must have been about six-thirty, and he started to run across the lot, but then, off to his right, parked on a side street, he saw the police car.
He stepped back quickly to the edge of the motel. He didn't know what to do, but then he looked behind him and realized that the area in back of the motel bordered the property of the Muddy Oak Hotel. He could see the hotel roof in the distance, and he could cut through there without being seen.
It jolted him to think of Ken Wylie being murdered in that old abandoned place. It jolted him even harder to think Arlene had done it. Fighting off his aversion, he forced himself around the right-hand corner of the motel. He walked through a strip of weeds, then stepped over a partly fallen-down fence. He found himself surrounded by pines, cedars and spruce. The fresh summer day began to sparkle on a multitude of leaves and needles, but he felt no joy from it.
He had one thing to do. He had to find Maria, and he had to figure out where she might be. This didn't take him long. If she weren't at her apartment, then she had to be someplace where she had a friend. From what she had said, that place could only be Ken Wylie's.
It seemed strange to him that the police hadn't checked on things there, but if they hadn't, he would have to beat them to it. But where was Ken's place? He ran as fast as he could through the trees. He came to a weed-infested clearing in front of the hotel, peered out. There was nobody there.
He skirted the edges of the huge white building and came out on Cedar Street. Nothing was in sight except a few cars, and nobody paid any attention to him, while he hurried to a phone booth. He found Ken's address in the Hollyhock section of the multiple town phone book. It said 316 King Street.
When he got there, he surveyed the whole house carefully. There were no cops in sight. He strolled past the house, making careful observations, and then he saw where she must be. Behind the house, was a big white garage, and over it there were a couple of windows. Ken must have built an apartment of some kind up there.
Jim didn't hesitate a second. He walked briskly down the concrete drive, found the outside door. He saw the steps leading up and then raced up them. He knocked roughly, urgently, on the grey door and called softly at the same time, "Maria, it's me. I've got to see you. Let me in."
He was surprised at how fast she came to the door, for she wore a thin nightgown and had obviously just waked up. Her eyes looked bleary, and she couldn't seem to focus them. She spoke with a sharp, bitter tone, but other than that reproach in her voice, she didn't accuse him of anything. "I didn't think I'd see you again."
"I'm sorry, Maria,"
"What do you want?"
Quickly he told her the whole story. He watched her face until he saw the tears in her eyes, then looked away. She must have felt pretty bad about Ken. He didn't attempt to whitewash his own attitude in front of the police, and he stated the thing just as it had happened. She wiped her eyes, looked at him, studied him.
"Why did you come here? Why didn't you defend me to the police?"
He swallowed hard, then reached for her hand.
"Maria, I don't know what she planted on him, or why they're looking for you. We've got to know that, and I only wanted to get away from Arlene-clear my head."
She glanced up with the hurt expression of a little girl. "What are we going to do, Jim?"
"We'll have to find a place to hide out until I can find out exactly what happened-find out how she did it."
He squeezed her two hands, pulled her towards him, as if hoping for some revelation. Nothing came, and he heard behind them, out in the street, the sound of a car pulling up in front of Ken's house. He hurried to the window, and from there he could see the front end of a police car. "It's the cops," he said, "We've got to get out of here."
He went past her without looking at her and took a quick glance out the back window. The garage backed on the big gully which cut through the town, and a small stream ran like a white ribbon along the bottom of it. The window gave onto a short length of shed roof. He opened the window, turned to her.
"Okay, Maria, grab some clothes. You don't have time to dress. We'll go out this way."
He waited, then helped her out onto the roof. The slope was not too steep, and the asbestos roofing made a good grip for his shoes. He lowered the window behind them and helped her down to the edge, where he lowered her to the ground. He jumped down quickly after her. She waited, and he spoke to her.
"This gully cuts right back into the Muddy Oak property. We can stay out of sight under the trees and then get into the hotel without being seen."
Her voice sounded strained, frightened. "But why, Jim?"
"We can hide out in the hotel some place. They'll never think of looking for you there."
"But, Jim, suppose he's still there."
"No, Ken's gone. The Chief did mention it. They've got him down at the morgue."
They had been gone for about fifteen minutes, when Jim stopped and listened to a siren start up and howl behind them. But it faded off in the opposite direction. Jim didn't stop again. He kept leading her through the trees. Twenty minutes later, he pulled her up a steep bank of red clay. It was very slippery, and he had to hang onto various small poplar trees to get up.
When they got near the clearing, he took a cautious look at the old hotel, and it looked more vacant than ever in the bright sun. Nobody seemed to be anywhere near it, and he led Maria towards the back. When he passed by earlier, he had noticed a brand new padlock on the front door.
It seemed stranger than ever to him now that there was no police guard. But with such a small force available, Jim knew Williams didn't have enough men to spare.
He found a broken basement window in the back, and finished taking out two long, deadly-looking splinters of glass. Then he tried to help Maria through. He wanted to lower her down to the floor inside. He had studied it carefully, and at this spot their entrance would not be noticed. The building was full of broken windows. Rotten boards hung everywhere. Clapboards sagged at crooked angles on all the outside walls.
She had gotten half way inside, and was sitting on the ledge, when she stopped suddenly. He heard the raw, ripe terror in her voice. "Jim, there's a big black spider. I can't go any further."
Chapter Twelve
M aria had expected to see spiders in something as old and dusty as the abandoned hotel. She hadn't expected to see one so suddenly. It had lowered itself deliberately in front of her, dangling like a miniature monster on a string. She jumped back instinctively and, when she did, slashed her right hand on a piece of broken glass.
"What's the matter, Maria? Those spiders are harmless."
"It scared me."
Then he noticed her cut hand and reached out to take hold of it. His touch seemed cold and unreal to her, and she watched him examining the blood which welled up steadily out of the gash in her palm. He seemed preoccupied about something back there in the distance behind them, and he even had the gall to suggest she shouldn't leave any drops of blood on the ground.
"They might see it."
He reached into his pocket after a minute and gave her his handkerchief. His every action seemed to her to be getting weaker than ever, to be losing something of his masculinity, but she had been forced to follow him, to escape with him. She kept wondering about him. And she knew that if only she could depend on him, everything would have been all right.
"Hurry up, Maria. We've got to get inside."
"Okay."
She lowered herself again and hunched through the opening. She sat on the wall, then dropped inside the basement room. The spider was still there, but she didn't look at it. In the room itself, the light made the high walls look milky and unreal, and a strange heavy smell like that of rotten cabbages welled up in her nostrils.
Jim took a swing at the spider, missed, then dropped in after her. She didn't look at him. She looked around the strange white room and wondered what it had been used for. There was no real sign to give any indication. There was a high shelf, a dangling light bulb, nothing else. Two closed doors led out of the room, but both of them were closed.
She watched Jim walk back to the one which faced the window through which they had just come. He hesitated, reached out for the door knob, then opened it. Beyond him, she could see a long dark corridor leading into the depths of the hotel. Jim stood indecisively, fumbling for something in his pocket. When he pulled it out, she saw it was a flashlight, and then he motioned for her to follow.
She listened, but the only sound she heard was a distant dripping. It seemed to her that they were moving endlessly down a narrow tunnel of enamel black, pulled ahead endlessly by a cone of yellow light. The sharp acrid smell of rotten cabbages wouldn't leave her nose. She felt like sneezing, but forced herself not to.
One constant thought stayed in her brain. Ken had been a real buddy to her. She couldn't stop thinking about him. He was dead. Arlene had murdered him. She could visualize it rather easily. That bitch had only extended her talents. Somehow, she had led him on. She had enticed him, and then she had killed him...
But how?
They stopped at the end of the tunnel. Jim flashed his light around, but didn't say anything. He looked more indecisive than ever. After watching him for awhile, seeing he was frozen, she suggested rather sarcastically, "You want to stay here?"
That shook him up. He turned and faced her. "No, it's too much like being rats trapped in a hole some place. We've got to get higher. We've got to find some place where they can't take us by surprise."
She looked around, peering into the dark corners. In one, hidden by shadows, she saw a ladder that appeared to lead up into a round hat-box structure above. She pointed it out to him. "Jim, I wonder where that goes?"
He looked at her, forced a smile, then started up it. She watched him climbing. His big feet moved slowly, and his hands reached up one after the other, and she got the distinct impression of a caterpillar crawling up a stem of grass. Half way up, his shoe slipped off one rung; he almost fell.
"Jim, please be careful."
"Yeah."
He got to the top, strained for a second against something above him, then raised a trap-door over his head. He appeared to be looking around, shining his flashlight into the upper darkness, leaving her in a thick puddle of darkness underneath. Then he held his flashlight steady, apparently staring at something for a long time. Finally he lowered himself back down the ladder. "It's okay. I think I've got a place for us up on top."
"What were you looking at so long?"
"You'll see when you get up there."
This time, he moved up even more slowly than the first. He was holding the light down so she could see the rungs of the ladder. She didn't feel afraid. She was used to ladders. Back on the farm, she had been up and down them frequently.
Jim went through the trap-door, and she followed him. He closed it carefully behind her, so she wouldn't step back and fall through. She looked around, and the first thing she saw was a rope ladder. It dangled right in front of her. As she watched it sway back and forth, she kept wondering what made it move. She sensed that there must be a hidden draft, but she couldn't stop looking at the ladder itself. She knew instinctively Ken had died on it. Jim had not told her anything about that. Perhaps he hadn't known it either, but now he did. This was Ken's noose, Arlene's web.
She expected to feel nauseated and sick, but she didn't. She looked up towards the ceiling. High overhead, at least three stories above them, was a huge round disk. It hung suspended like a moon in the top center of the huge room, and Jim's flashlight painted it white. She knew then that this was the infamous ballroom.
This was the whispered-about Circus Room, and she remembered some of the stories about it. They had called it the Circus Room for a very definite reason. The sex circus they gave there had been something in the old days. When Mrs. Karster recalled them, a slight blush crossed her kindly German face.
A crowd of rich men had come up from Chicago, and from that high disk, when the orchestra gave a signal from the very podium where they were now standing, something dramatic happened. A group of completely naked girls held onto rings and slid down tight wires to the extremities of the room.
Through the present darkness, the silence, out of the depth of time, Maria could hear the bursts of long-gone raucous masculine laughter, the raw trumpets blasting hot jazz notes, the swift wild flurry of white female flesh.
Champagne had flowed. It was always a stag affair. The men had an orgy, and it had been a yearly tradition until prohibition was repealed, when the hotel lost its attraction for fun-seekers, lust-seekers, booze-seekers.
Jim studied the ladder, felt it with his fingers, but said nothing. After a couple of minutes, he looked back at her. His voice was solemn, restrained. "Maria, how in hell did she do it?"
His question was her question, and she had no way of putting the answer into words. But she knew. Right then, she could look up, just as Ken must have looked up, and she could visualize Arlene up there on the disk, with the ladder coming down through the round central hole, and Arlene directing a flashlight down over the lush perfection of her naked body. She must have offered an interesting invitation.
Maria had even seen her do it once. Arlene had stood on a tall rock in Vermont, and had held a light with the beam slashing down across her white legs, her white naked thighs, leaving a black slash of hair. For Maria, it had not been tempting, but she could understand how, for a man seeking such a sight in the darkness, it would have held invincible drawing power. Arlene would have whispered down to Ken: "Think you can make it?"
"Yeah."
Maria could hear the tension and desire throbbing in Ken's voice, and then Ken would have begun to climb. What he was climbing to was not a woman's red-hot body, but his death. Jim's voice cut suddenly into her thoughts.
"What gets me is why the Chief said it was so damn fiendishly clever."
"Let's go up," she suggested, and Jim led the way. Scaling the rope ladder appeared to be much harder for him than the wooden one, for as he ascended his body jerked back and forth. He kept at it though, until he was a few yards from the disk. She saw him stop and look at a rung of the ladder, then look at his hand.
"When you come up," he said, "watch out for this rung. There's something sharp on it."
She waited. He climbed the rest of the way, got his arms over the edge and pulled himself through. When he was standing on the disk, he stepped back and shone the light down for her.
"Think you can make it?" He asked.
"Sure."
She climbed up slowly, trying to keep the rope from swaying too much, but the rhythm caught her, and she found herself swinging as much as several feet back and forth. She forgot the dizzy swinging. She had a much stronger question in her mind, and when she got to the same place in the ladder where Jim had stopped, she understood the answer to that, too.
It surprised her, and the shock whispered through her like the thin sound of a breaking wire. It didn't seem possible Arlene could be that devilish. At that point, the ladder was stiffened by two long steel bars in the ropes, and she examined a loose dangling coil of wire at their lower extremity. The wire had blood and skin still on it, and she tried to understand the mechanism, and then she understood that part, too.
The ladder had been triggered like a snare. At the last second, Ken had looked up, listening to Arlene's voice, looking at Arlene's widespread crotch. He had touched the rung which had the sharp particles of glass in it. He had jerked his hand instinctively up and grabbed the next thing above him. It had been the trip wire. He had pulled it out.
The noose had whipped over his head. The stiffened section of ladder had given way like an unfolding section of picture post-cards, and he had been snapped by the neck. The explosive, horrible, shock would have killed him instantly.
Maria shivered. She forced herself not to think about it, and she avoided the glass particles, looked up at Jim and climbed. But even when she tried not to, she could hear, in the thick, turgid darkness, Arlene's sick laughter. It must have rained down over Ken's dead, dangling body like so much venom dripping from a snake's mouth.
Jim took her hands and helped her over the edge. When she had sat down on the floor of the disk, far from the hole, he looked down at her. "I guess you figured how it happened, huh?" "Yeah."
"I didn't think she could be so damn clever - or so damn mean. What in hell could she have placed in his pocket?"
Maria sat there, with her hands firmly planted on the wooden floor. The whole world of darkness welled up around her like a universe completely separated from the earth, and she tried to think that part out to its inevitable end. It was harder to do.
Arlene could have gone back to her apartment, before contacting Ken and making a date. She had probably called him on the phone- perhaps, Maria had heard the phone ringing- and suggested, since she was married, a very private place. She must have spent the day, while Jim and she were in the Coffee Shop, looking around the old hotel, figuring things out. Maria glanced at Jim quickly. "Didn't she tell you?"
"No."
She tried to clear her head. It must have been something linking her name very clearly to Ken, and to his dead body. She shivered, and then she knew. She had a prescription for special pills. She wasn't supposed to have it, really, but one time, she had had a serious infection of the fallopian tubes. She couldn't have any children. She had provided herself with the pills for such time as she might find a man.
Unfortunately, Ken had never been that man.
She smiled grimly at the thought-Ken had gotten her pills anyway. He had them in his pocket, as he hung there dead. Poor Ken! Maria saw the final vision of Arlene descending the rope ladder, crossing over his dead body, spitting on him probably, then stuffing the pills in his pants pocket.
That clue would have seemed too pat to anyone save Jerry Williams, but Jerry would have been trying to shake his head saying that she, Maria, couldn't ever do such a thing. And then one of the police officers would have found the pills.
"Maria!" Jim said suddenly, "There's nothing to be afraid of."
"But what's that whining noise? Don't you hear it?"
"It's those damn wires. They're strung too tight. The air-currents blow across them. They just sound funny, that's all."
"But, Jim, I keep hearing footsteps."
"I don't."
But he stopped talking and strained to listen in the darkness. Within the vast structure, there was a shuffling, moaning sound. She did seem to hear footsteps, but they came from somewhere above, not from below. She tried to reason it out, then knew that the two of them must be very close to the top of the hotel, and that there couldn't possibly be anything over them except the roof.
She felt his hand move over and touch her knee. It moved up her leg. He touched her all over, and her body shivered with fright as if she had been out all night like a puppy in the snow and rain. She couldn't control herself. She had to shiver.
"Come here," he said softly, "let me hold you."
Jim sat down beside her and held her, and they we"re silent. There was nothing for them to do. They had to wait. She felt him beside her, but she couldn't see him, for he had turned off his flashlight. His breathing sounded like the soft touch of cat claws on wood.
She asked, "You scared?"
He didn't answer, and again she wondered what she was doing there. It didn't seem possible that she could depend on Jim, who was no longer a man, who no longer had guts, sexual power or anything else.
"I'm not scared," he said finally, "I'm trying to figure some way out of this thing. Maybe we should have run away."
"Where?"
"I don't know, but anything would be better than just sitting here like stupid jerks."
She was the one who got scared first. The thick darkness moved in tight across her face. She could feel it, and then she felt it inserting slippery black hands under her dress. Finally it was inserting itself inside her. She jerked back. She couldn't stand it. She reached for Jim, grabbed his arm. "We've got to do something. I'm scared, Jim. I can't stand it anymore. We've got to get out of here."
He wrapped his arms around her, and when she felt his warmth, she began to feel better. He kissed her on the lips, on the neck. She felt his hands moving in the right way, the old skillful way, and she was thankful. He gave her some relief.
"Jim," she said softly, "I'm sorry that I thought so bad of you."
Chapter Thirteen
Jim felt Maria's violent, uncontrolled shivering and forced himself to forget everything else. No matter what happened in that dark space of time, he had to make up to her, and he had to fight against her fear. She trembled like a cold, wet puppy in his arms. Each spasm seemed worse than the last, and he searched desperately for her lips.
He found them with his and at the same time smelled a strong odor of gasoline. It hit him hard, for the smell reminded him of a time when their lovemaking had been at its very best. It had been back in Vermont, in the spring, and they bad gotten stuck in the mud on a back-country road. He had tried to rock the car out, but the motor heated up, and he couldn't get it out of the mud hole.
Maria didn't care. She huddled close to him, and the air was sharp with the acrid smell of gasoline, and they had made love. It was a good love, as if the whole world had to wait for them to get done, and it had. Nobody had come along, and he had had to get a farmer to pull them out.
They were on the high disk. Maria's voice rose softly into his ear, and he held her under him. He forgot the darkness and their high position and the dangling rope ladder. He had only one thing to do. He had to comfort Maria, for she was close to him and dear to him, and he had only one thing to comfort her with.
And if that thing were sex...
... it didn't matter.
For such a long time he had thought of sex only in its most violent terms. It had come at him like the swift quick breaking of glass, or it had meant a swift current of electric shock. Now, soothing her with his body, he knew it was something better and deeper.
This sex was tender. It was done tenderly and movements which had formerly been swift, violent thrustings and probings were fused into the subtler rhythms of a more gentle union. They melted together in a tender blending of bodies, and he tasted her lips and felt the tender gentle movement of her body, and he guided her with something like his old control.
He had gained back in that movement and dance of gentleness something long gone out of him. He had almost forgotten it, but now he could feel it coming back. He felt, for the full period of their union, as if he were a sculptor who, with infinite pains and gentleness, was moulding a thing of beauty out of the raw sex act.
He maintained it. It was glorious. They held it up together, until he could no longer suppress the mounting pressure which suddenly gushed out pure and strong, and, in fact, they were fused into a single breathing statue.
Her grateful whisper moved a small current of air along his cheek, and he felt her fingers on his naked back. "Thanks, Jim. That's what I've wanted for so long..."
He couldn't say anything then but the truth. "I know, Maria, I know."
Other words might have sounded superfluous, so he didn't use them. She sighed softly against him and seemed to sleep then with him still inside her, and thus he must have fallen asleep, too.
The strong, sharp smell of gasoline awakened him. He shook his head and muttered softly, "I guess we've got to get somebody to help pull this damn car out of here."
Then he remembered. He opened his eyes quickly, desperately, and there was no more blackness. He saw a cone of bright yellow light shining over them, and he knew that somebody stood behind them, beyond his range of vision. Panic pressured his spine to such an extent that he lay there completely frozen. He tried. He fought with himself, But he couldn't force his neck around. He couldn't see...
His neck had turned into a column of solid steel. He couldn't move his head. He couldn't. He couldn't.
The voice was cold, unemotional. "I see I'm a little late. So, Jim, boy, you finally made it."
If he had really known all along that it was Arlene, fear had withheld recognition from his brain. Her voice brought it back. Slowly, as if it still might break, he turned his head and looked at her. It was Arlene, all right. She stood over them, with a flashlight in one hand, and with a revolver in the other. He wondered for a haphazard second where she had gotten it, but then he knew the answer. She had stolen it from Ken. He might have had it in his pocket when he died.
He tilted his head, forced himself up on his elbows, stared at her. He felt like asking her how she had gotten there without disturbing them, but he saw the answer to that in one quick glance. Behind her, a folding stairway had been lowered from a trap-door. Beyond her head, a dark space opened into a passageway leading off below the roof. It had to be there. To get up to the disk, the dancing girls had to have some quick method of climbing up.
"Arlene," he asked sharply. "What do you want? Haven't you done enough already?"
Her smile was grim and succinct. "Not quite. There's just one other thing. It'll be a little quick, a little dramatic, but I'm going to have it..."
He stared into her tense, hard eyes, and he tried to turn over, but his body seemed frozen to Maria's. Arlene noticed it and laughed. "Don't worry, Jim. Hell, I'll get you thawed out of that hole in no time flat."
She jammed the revolver in the pocket of her tight black slacks, then reached into her shirt pocket. She took out a rag, which she slowly unwrapped from its plastic covering. She tied the rag to one of the metal rings, fastened to the drop wires, and then struck a match. Obviously the rag had been soaked in gasoline, for it flared suddenly in her face.
Arlene loosened the ring. It slid down the wire with a long shrill screech of metallic sound, and instantly the blackness ignited into raw red light. A line of fire rocketed around the edges of the huge Circus Room, and the three of them rode the black disk like a badly tossing lifeboat caught in an ocean of fire.
Arlene strode back over him. "Okay, Jim, you can get off her now, and you might as well get your big fat can over to the edge of this thing. For a few minutes, anyway, Maria's going to be mine."
Jim felt a tight web of panic crawl through his arms and legs. He couldn't move. She kicked him suddenly, painfully, in the guts. He felt the sick taste of pain, and then he came unglued. He wanted to do something. He wanted to fight Arlene, but he couldn't believe what he saw.
Not even Arlene could do that sort of thing. She couldn't possibly intend to do something with that revolver, but it became only too apparent that she had that very idea in her sick head.
She straightened up over Maria and gestured suggestively with the gun. "You've felt his tool, darling. Now you can feel this. Maybe, it's not as hot at first. But, Maria, dear, it can be! As for an orgasm, I don't think you've ever felt anything quite like this one in your life. When it goes off, I think this will give you quite a thrill, and if it proves to be your last-well, that won't hurt anything."
Maria muttered, "Please don't!"
"Aw, come on, darling. I'm sure this should be most delightful and satisfying for both of us.
Jim had crawled weakly over to the edge of the disk. He had been squeezed empty of feeling. He felt like a discarded tube of old shaving cream. He looked back at that incredible scene of a woman dressed in black slacks and a green shirt, holding a savage gun. She loomed erect and hard over a naked white female body. The black revolver made an erect, menacing shadow against the roaring red flames, and hell itself opened doors into his brain.
All of a sudden, Arlene knelt. She made a swift, stabbing movement with her gun, and Maria screamed. Jim rolled over, forced himself to his knees, shouted at her, "Arlene, damn you, don't do it!"
It amazed him. He couldn't believe he could swing it, but the tone of his voice stopped her. She hesitated for a long moment, her black revolver held close between Maria's white thighs, and then she stood up.
She walked over, stood over him with the gun, aimed it straight at the center on his forehead. He watched the cold gleam in her eyes, he watched the muzzle moving just between the ridge of his nose and his hair line. He knew she wouldn't miss. She couldn't miss. She was too calm, too cold, too deadly.
She took another step. Her voice carried a sharp steel whip in it. "Go on. Move back. Go on!"
He glanced behind him. He knelt within a yard of the edge of the disk, and there was nothing there but a drop and fall of three stories. The bright roaring flames circled faster and faster around the lower ball-room. He tried to think. He couldn't think.
She stepped closer, gestured slowly with her gun. "Go on, move! You've had your fun, Jim. Now I'm going to have mine."
He gave way in front of her. He moved back a few inches. He could feel the space there behind him, waiting for him. He would have liked to have done something heroic, but she had the gun. She kept it pointed straight at him, and he couldn't help Maria - ever again.
"Jim, damn you, move!"
"No!"
He had said it. He looked up at her, and his negative word surprised him. After saying that one word to her, he felt better. He rallied some lost inch of strength, forced himself to move off his knee, to plant his right foot firmly on the disk.
Then with the gun threatening him, he forced himself to stand, all the way up. He knew she should have shot him, but perhaps the force of his rebellion did something to her. She watched him. She watched him like an expert killer, waiting for the right second, the one final movement. He watched her finger. The gun held true.
He forced himself to look into her eyes instead of at the gun, and then he forced himself against that hellish pressure and threat to take one slow step forward. He took it. He moved, and for the longest time, he didn't know what she would do, but his movement finally caused her to back away. It was a slight thing, but it was something. He could understand her thinking. She wanted to keep the gun clear.
"Stop it, Jim. I'm going to shoot. Jim!" She barked his name sharply, as if barking a command at some disobedient, but formerly well-trained, animal. He heard it, knew what it meant, but he didn't stop moving an inch at a time, slowly, pushing her back.
"Jim, don't you dare come near me!"
Right then, with all that steel tension in her voice, he expected her to break down and shoot... but she didn't. He kept up his slow painful inching, one fraction of an inch, then another. He didn't look away from her eyes, and he forced her back to the folding stairs descending from the trap door.
There, she stopped, with her back to the crude simple strip of railing, and would not move any further. He could see it. He could see the desperation flaring in her eyes, as a quick surge of red flames painted a hard message upon her face. She wouldn't let them escape, ever-not up those life-saving stairs. They could never get past her and get out the passage through the old hotel.
She held the gun. She muttered her verdict, quickly, savagely. "You've got to burn, both of you!"
He stared at her left ear. He tried to think. Maria lay behind him, and he couldn't turn to look at her. He didn't dare. He wanted to do something for her. Now that they had finally found again the marvelous tenderness of real lovemaking, he had at least to try...
But what could he do?
They were caught together, inextricably, locked in hell, and blood red flames swept faster and faster up the high white walls. He wanted to tell Maria something. He wanted to tell her that he loved her, but he could only stand there silently poised over eternity. He couldn't unfreeze his lips.
What could he do? They had not come there in the way Arlene had come there. They had climbed up the rope ladder, swinging in space, discovering in their coming how Ken had been murdered. He looked deliberately, carefully, at Arlene and wondered if he could bluff her. He wondered in his swift race against death and time, if she knew about the lower trap-door that opened up through the podium...
If he had any luck at all, she didn't.
If she didn't, if he and Maria could get down the ladder and out through the basement passage, then...
He didn't have time to be cute about it. Each second was pushing them in, ready to explode. Long snake-tongues of flame hissed up from the extremities of the room, and the center space below was still free of fire, but it wouldn't remain free for long. He didn't turn around, but he spoke.
"Maria," he said, and he forced his voice to sound urgent and imperative. "Get up and start down the rope ladder. I'll come down after you."
He scanned Arlene's face, not daring to hope, not daring to breathe. He looked for some hint of what she might be thinking. Would Arlene shoot them, immediately? Or would she rather see them burned up in the lower, stronger flames?
Her face revealed no sign of understanding his plan. He made himself smile at her, and Arlene's mouth whipped out a short, grim smile in return. "So you want to burn, huh?"
"Yeah!"
Chapter Fourteen
Maria looked down at her naked body. Jim was naked, too, and in that roaring torrent of flame, they looked like chunks of pink plaster. She stared at Jim and tried to imagine him carrying the whole thing through. With his lack of guts, it didn't seem possible.
But he had done the other. He had satisfied her. He had been true. Their lovemaking had been complete, and there had been in that darkness nothing raw, nothing violent. Totally, completely, his tenderness had possessed her, and with Jim's coming she had known heaven.
She stood up. Jim moved his face around an inch at a time, just enough to see her out of the corner of his eyes, and he spoke again, but this time his voice was soft. "Go ahead, Maria. Take your time."
He seemed to weigh his words, as if in that short precious act, he were pitting them against all the vicious, slashing violence of Arlene. He used them like a sword against Arlene with her revolver, against the crackling, snapping inferno of the old Circus Room.
She felt some confidence. She stepped to the round hole in the disk. "Okay, Jim," she said softly, "I'll go."
It was strange to her. When he had first spoken to her, commanding her, she had thought maybe he had snapped completely. She could only think of him wanting them to burn rather than be destroyed by Arlene, but then, in the acrid blast of furnace air, in the quick snap of time, she remembered, too. If they were very, very lucky, they might stand a chance.
She hesitated on the edge of the circular hole. The long ladder swung beneath her like a faint wisp of spider's silk. She looked around. Arlene stood there, a mere few feet away. She held the gun frozen in her right hand, and her beautiful lesbian body looked more striking than ever in its tight black slacks, its green shirt. Each lick of reflected flame revealed Arlene into a red-lipped sorceress.
She had at last found her real realm. Maria saw her standing in it. After years of rigging traps, Arlene had finally come to her true home. She seemed to dominate the flames. She seemed to dominate and control the whole vast throbbing pulse of fire.
Maria took one final quick glance at Jim. His nakedness seemed weak. He looked like fragile white clay, likely to shatter into dust at any second. But his eyes held hard determination, and except for a tight flicking motion, which he made when his left hand kept opening and closing, he made no other movement. Maria wondered, as she started to descend, if he would have the power, the guts, the strength to follow her down.
"I'm going, Jim," she said, and her head moved down from the disk to the space underneath. She left Arlene and Jim above her. In the awful space under the disk, she didn't dare look down. Even the air trembled with red violence, and she was lowering herself into a heaving, tossing current of red light. The fierce roar of the flames spun in her ears. The distinct smell of gasoline, of smoke, clawed through her nose and throat. She felt a quick ripping into her lungs and started to cough and choke.
She held on, descended. When she looked up, she couldn't see either Jim, or Arlene. She stopped, caught her breath and yelled, "Jim, please come on! We've got to get down now!"
She passed the grim, crucial section where Ken had lost his life. She had no more time for tears, and she got within a few feet of the bottom. She thought that Jim would never try, that he had been captured and held by Arlene's power. Then she felt a tight movement of the ladder. It swung even more uneasily, and when she looked up this time, she saw Jim dropping down over the edge. He swung onto the ladder. Standing right above him, Arlene was there looking straight down.
Maria felt the firm podium under her naked feet. She held the ladder, hoping that would help him, but it seemed to her Jim would never get down. It was taking him forever. Time was running out, and he couldn't move fast enough. His white naked body passed in and out of exploding bursts of angry red light. The black gun in Arlene's hand looked more and more threatening. It seemed to her then, and she realized it clearly, that Arlene would shoot. Jim's dead body would tumble like a rag doll into space.
Maria pressed her hands to her throat. She shoved back hard against her own adam's apple. She had to cut off any sound. If she yelled, just by accident, it might increase the percentage of Arlene's pulling the trigger. She had to force herself into stupid silence, and in the vast area of the Circus Room she couldn't even stop the sound of her heart. It jumped out at her, racing like a motor pushed to the limit and about to leap off a high mountain curve into space. Frantic flames flooded the room, and her head filled with just one thought... "Oh, please, Jim, please hurry up!"
But Jim hesitated. He looked up, too, and seemed to study Arlene. The thought became clear in his mind also that Arlene was ready to shoot. He knew it, he knew perfectly well there was not a single thing he or she, or anybody in the world, could do about it.
She felt the quick, taut whisper leave her lips. She swung her hand up, and shoved it back with all her strength. "Jim, please...!"
After hesitating several more seconds, Jim began to lower himself again, descending slowly, his eyes still fastened on the black creature above him. It was a black creature with long strands of black hair curling around its face, and it had the savage smile and deep penetrating gaze of a killer insect.
Into the fire-rimmed vacuum, the insect spoke. "When do you want it, Jim? Now, or when you get to the bottom?"
Jim didn't answer. He continued to descend, and his body swung like a ridiculous, white, swinging toy.
Arlene's voice stopped him. "I can't miss, Jim. That's one thing you never knew, did you? You never knew the hours I spend practicing in the shooting gallery back home. You never knew that, did you? Nor did you know what Kelly Green and I did afterwards? Did you, Jim?"
For Maria, everything in the huge room had built into one intense violent inferno. Her heart raced with it, her breath escaped in savage gasps through her hands, and she tasted the hot acrid smell which made her choke and cough. Flames snapped out in long, leaping explosions, to shatter up and down the walls. The ladder swung sickly, made weird gyrations, as Jim swung slowly down it.
Maria looked up at him. She pleaded silently, and she could see that Arlene was about to shoot. She would shoot. Maria knew it then, and she could do nothing. She couldn't even take the bullet for Jim. She knew it as a cold, stated fact. Jim descended, a step at a time, and that was all. He waited for Arlene to shoot. That was all, and he was within a few short feet of her head.
Above them, Arlene loomed centrally in the hole in the middle of the disk, and Arlene started to kneel. The sound, when Maria tried to recall it, was like that made by billions of agonized wasps driven to savage frenzy at once. At first, the sound came as a soft whisper, so high-pitched it seemed nobody could even hear.
But then it changed. The sound became a thing. It was there. It had begun, whisper-like, high, beyond hearing. Suddenly it filled the universe with one supreme stupendous keening cry. Maria looked up quickly, trying to see what it was. The Circus Room filled with the noise, throbbed with it. She heard the lashing, whipping, snapping, more than she could see it, but for one second, and that second was enough.
Dozens of wires... wires everywhere. They had been melted or burned loose from their anchors around the walls of the room, and they snapped back violently toward the disk that was their center. Incredibly, they lashed back at once. They had been strained tight, stretched for years. When they let go, they acted like sudden springs, whipping back toward the center of their steel web.
Arlene, for one second, must have had the time to understand it, too.
She had remained poised above them ready to shower them with venom, but the full force of those rapidly striking wires rose against her. They caught her. They wrapped her up. For a split second, she stood clean, black, central. She took half a step. She said something indistinct, something strange, something beyond knowing, and then she was finally and forever caught.
Arlene metamorphosized into a twisting, turning, savagely cocooned object. That spider's web of steel had swiftly recoiled upon itself, and Arlene was the victim... Arlene turned into a ball of black dead tissue.
Her body disappeared suddenly from their vision, only one thing remained. Her violent, animal shriek screamed out into the Circus Room. It cluttered the room. It almost quenched the flames with its frantic intensity.
Maria listened to it savagely. It refreshed her, but she wanted to close her ears to it. Arlene's death-sound would never leave her hearing again. She stood there hypnotized, transfixed, as if her wound had been cut by an arrow, and that arrow had penetrated through into her intestines and spine.
She didn't breathe. She looked up, and the scream had stopped, but in her ears it went on. She listened, listened... And she would have stood there waiting for the flames to devour her if Jim had not grabbed her arm. He dragged her down after him through the trapdoor in the podium. He guided her feet down, and that was all.
Once at the bottom, he hesitated. He listened to the sounds above. They both could hear the mounting fury of the fire. Wood, plaster, glass, metal exploded in the Circus Room above, and their present darkness held only the rotten smell of cabbages. He didn't have his flashlight. They had to feel their way along, and they were naked.
"Watch out," he would say, "there's some stuff on the floor."
She said nothing. She couldn't. She couldn't open her mouth or make her throat work. She felt her way until they were in the back room, which now looked milky, strange, untouched by flames. She turned to him. She looked at him. "Jim," she said suddenly, "You've got to kiss me."
She waited for him, and he did. They turned then and looked for some old rags. There were strips of old flour sacks or something, and then she followed him out of the hotel. The first people they ran into were Jerry Williams and another policeman.
Jerry smiled at her, and turned away to tell the police officer to get her a coat or something. "It's okay, Sue," he said, and his voice was fatherly, kind. "We found out that Mrs. White did it. We had a man posted at the Motel, and after she left, we searched her room." He turned and looked apologetically for a second at Jim. "There was evidence. For one thing, she had Ken's cab key."
Maria didn't have the strength to speak. Jerry turned away from them, and they all looked back at the hotel. The fire had now broken through the roof, and the efforts of the fire truck and the several firemen were futile and useless. Maria watched smoke burst through the roof, until it made a gigantic black column.
The black pillar towered over the hotel, over the town of Hollyhock, and Maria shivered as she felt the power of it standing and pushing up so immensely over her.
She started shivering, uncontrollably, and she knew she couldn't stop. Luckily, Jim came over and halted the agony of her body by pressing her close to his side. He didn't shiver, and he looked strong in the golden sun of the July day under a completely blue sky. His words told her all she wanted to hear, for then, and for always.
"Maria," he said, "it's okay. We don't have to worry... ever again!"
