... his hands went to her knees, to the softness of her inner legs, to her breasts, to every part of her glorious body. The more he touched her the more violently she trembled. Finally, she could stand it no longer and she . ...
COZY UP WITH KOZY BOOKS
CHAPTER I
Al was less interested in the girl behind the wooden desk than he was in the huge blue-winged blow fly that battered away at the dirty pane of glass. The fly reminded him of his life; pointless and ineffectual, a life of constant, unimportant circles. The girl reminded him of no one.
"Friday is a bad day," the girl said. "Friday is always a bad day to try and set up interviews."
Al nodded but did not speak. He continued to watch the fly. The fly went up and down the pane of glass, making a lot of noise. It was, at the moment, the only noise in the employment office.
"I called four or five hotels about you," the girl said. She opened a bottle of fingernail polish. "A couple of owners said they would be in town today but you never know if they'll remember. Most of them have to shop and-"
"I know. Friday is a bad day."
The fingernail polish was bright red. "It's an off period, too, Mr. Evans. If you had been here a month ago, when the hotels were hiring, I think I could have helped you."
Al shifted his weight to his heels and hitched the cane chair closer to the window. He found a cigarette and lit it. There was so much dust in the small, dark office that he could both smell and taste it.
"There must be something I can get to do around here," Al insisted. He inhaled the smoke, thoughtfully. "Like I told you, it doesn't have to be a manager's job."
The girl made no response. She merely nodded and examined her fingernails.
"Hell," Al continued, "I'm not lazy. I'll take any job you've got-storekeeping, anything-just so long as there's a buck in it."
Again the girl failed to respond. In disgust, Al turned away from the girl and looked down at the street. A golden blonde was just getting out of a Caddy convertible. The top was down and he could see the piles of packages on the rear seat. The color of the blonde's dress matched the color of the car. His glance followed the movements of her stalk-slim legs as she came across the street. Al smiled his approval. Finally, she reached the sidewalk and disappeared from view. This time Al grinned. He could go for something like that, any hour of the day or week. He grinned again. He sure could. Over Ellen's dead body he could.
"I don't know why you came all the way up here to the mountains," the girl was saying, waving her hands to dry the polish. "There are lots of employment agencies in New York."
"I thought I'd save time this way."
"Well, you won't. Not unless you're lucky."
The door at the bottom of the stairs banged shut and somebody began coming up the steps. It didn't sound like a man. It sounded more like the short, staccato beat of a woman's heels. The noise moved up the stairs and into the room. It was the blonde Al had seen getting out of the Caddy.
"Hello, Miss Ford," the blonde said. She had a rich, clear voice. "How are you?"
The girl stood up. "Oh, Miss Qimmings! It was nice of you to come in."
The blonde smiled and placed her pocketbook on Miss Ford's desk. The pocketbook was very large, only slightly smaller than an overnight bag.
"Your phone call interested me." The blonde hesitated and her gray eyes sought out Al's face. "Is this the gentleman?"
"Yes." Miss Ford pointed a freshly painted fingernail at Al. "Mr. Evans, Mrs. Cummings. Mrs. Cummings, Al Evans."
"Hi," Al said, standing up.
The smile widened. "Why, hello, Mr. Evans."
She was medium height, about five-seven, but when she looked up at Al she had to tilt her head back. The movement accentuated the smooth sweep of her throat and tightened the dress over her full, rounded breasts.
"Glad to know you," Al said.
She had a strong chin, a clean, straight nose and frank, wandering eyes. About twenty-two, Al thought; maybe twenty-three.
"Miss Ford says you've had experience as a hotel manager, Mr. Evans."
"Yes; that's right."
"Have you ever managed a resort hotel."
"No. Not a resort hotel."
"Do you know anything about one."
"Only that the rates are high."
Her lips curved again. "You have a sense of humor, Mr. Evans."
"You need it in the hotel business."
She sat down on the edge of Miss Ford's desk and dangled one leg. It was smooth and straight and very long.
"May I ask a few questions about yourself, Mr. Evans."
"Of course."
"Where did you receive your training."
"At Cornell."
"You graduated from school there."
"Yes."
She lit a cigarette and watched the smoke trail upward toward the ceiling. Slowly, she swung her leg back and forth. Al followed the movements of the leg with interest.
"Start at the beginning," she directed. "Tell me about yourself."
He explained that he had been born in Monticello, New York, in the heart of a large resort area.
"I worked as a bus boy, bartender, bellhop, pot rassler-everything," he said. "When I got out of college I went with the Penn-Dell in Stroudsburg as an assistant, then on to Evansville with the Cumberland. A year later I was managing the Wyandott in Syracuse."
"Which was your last hotel?"
There was no use lying about it, Al thought. She could hardly be less impressed with his record. He could hardly blame her for that. His past, up to a certain point, was pretty much the same as the past of any other twenty-eight-year-old hotel executive.
"The Flamingo," he said. "In Casablanca."
"Where's that?"
"In Africa. French Morocco."
Her leg stopped moving. "Why did you go there?"
"They paid a lot of money."
"How long were you there?"
"Eight months."
"Why did you leave?"
"I got fired."
He wished that Miss Ford wasn't in the room. He hadn't told Miss Ford about the hassle. Actually, he hadn't planned on telling the truth to anybody again; the trouble and the reflection on his record had cost him several good jobs already. But it had happened and he knew, now that he thought about it rationally, that the incident could not be buried and forgotten.
"What did you do, Mr. Evans?"
"I was in a fight." Al felt uncomfortable. "A knife fight."
"Yes?"
"There was a girl and this fellow tried to open me up. I got the knife away from him. It was-sort of messy."
"You had a right to defend yourself," she said.
"Yes. But the man was a native and the state department had some friction over it. The hotel gave me the boot and I had to pay my own passage home." His voice was brutal, bitter, as he remembered it. "Only I didn't have the money. I worked my way back on a ship."
Miss Ford was shocked. The blood seemed to drain out of her face.
"Believe me," she said to Mrs. Cummings, "if I had known this, I wouldn't have bothered calling you. I was under the impression that Mr. Evans had a perfect history."
"This girl," Mrs. Cummings said, ignoring Miss Ford. "What did she have to do with it?"
Al shrugged.
"I thought I was in love with her."
That, of course, was hardly true. He hadn't been in love with Sonia. He had taken her only because her body had been free for the asking.
"A native girl?"
"Well, she wasn't a native," Al said. "I guess she was part Irish or something. She had red hair and she was very pretty. She just lived there in Morocco, that's all."
"And a man cut you up because of that?
"No. He didn't cut me. I cut him."
"I see."
"I guess he had a right," Al admitted. "He was married to her."
Miss Ford was even more shocked. "This is ridiculous," she said. "I'm sorry I've wasted your time, Mrs. Cummings, but I thought-"
"Oh, you haven't wasted my time," Mrs. Cummings disagreed. "Not unless Mr. Evans isn't interested in my proposition."
It was Al's turn to be surprised. When he had told her about his past experience he had noted only a mild interest in her eyes. Now that he had told her the worst about himself she seemed to be impressed. It didn't, he decided, make very much sense.
"I'm listening," Al said.
"My husband and I own the Hotel Haidee outside of town," she told him. "It's a three-hundred-roomer and neither one of us is much at getting things done. We need someone to manage it for us."
The Hotel Haidee, she said, was a year-around resort hotel located up in the hills on the edge of the Lake of Tears. It featured high rates, sophisticated entertainment and catered pretty much to an exclusive, hard-drinking crowd.
"It isn't an easy job," she assured him. "You have to take a lot of guff and you have to be the kind of a man who can hold his own." Her eyes measured Al's six-
four and one hundred ninety pounds. "You seem like a man who can hold his own."
"I can try."
"The job pays a hundred a week to start, with everything found. If you do a good job, we'll pay you more. If you don't do a good job, you won't be there very long."
Al smiled. He liked here directness.
"Sounds worth a try to me," he said. "When would I start."
"I didn't say you were hired yet." Her leg began swinging back and forth again. "Now did I, Mr. Evans."
"No."
"So why jump at conclusions?"
Al hunched his shoulders and walked toward the door.
"To hell with it," he said. "You want to play games with somebody, Mrs. Cummings, you find yourself another partner."
Her laugh halted him in the doorway.
"You've got a temper," she said. "I like men with tempers, Mr. Evans."
He didn't look back at her.
"Well, I've got one," he said. "A dandy."
There was something about her laugh that left him cold. It was an empty laugh, almost vicious.
"You can have the job," she said. "And you can start today, Mr. Evans."
He turned and faced her. He felt foolish for his outburst. But he recognized the reason. There was something about this girl, a strange, exciting quality, that disturbed him.
"I'm ready," he said.
Miss Ford, now that she had made a few bucks, began to gush. She just knew that Mr. Evans would prove most capable. Why, she had known it the moment he had walked into the office.
"I try to be selective," Miss Ford said. "I don't take everybody who walks in here."
Miss Ford was still feeling happy for herself as Al followed Mrs. Cummings, down the stairs. Al rather liked the way Mrs. Cummings went down the stairs, not sideways as some girls did because their girdles were too tight, but straight ahead as though she knew where she was going.
You can wait in the car," she told Al when they reached the street. "I have to pick up some newspapers."
Al went over and sat down in the Caddy. There was a drug store on the corner and he thought of phoning Ellen. But Ellen, he reasoned, could wait. Ellen had been waiting a long time.
Mrs. Cummings was a good driver. She whipped the Caddy through the traffic, turned right at the square, not far from the hotel where Ellen was waiting for Al, and took the highway out of town.
"I hope you'll like it," Mrs. Cummings said. "I really do, Mr. Evans."
"You might call me Al."
"And you can call me Reba-Al."
The sun was bright overhead and the air was filled with heat. A breeze caught under the hem of her skirt and lifted it. She pushed the skirt down with her hand but when she took her hand away the material blew up again. She kept her hand on the steering wheel.
"I hope you get along with my husband," she said. "He drinks quite a bit. Don't pay any attention to him while he's drinking."
"I won't."
"And-you know a hotel. There's always lots of gossip. I wouldn't pay much attention to all that I hear, either, if I were you."
"No."
"They like to talk about me."
"You?"
"Yes. But, then, I guess the owner is always a ripe subject for conversation."
"I suppose so."
About ten miles out of town they turned left onto a dirt road. The loose gravel striking the fenders sounded like rain on a tin roof. On either side of the road stretched the cool depths of an evergreen forest.
"There's something I forgot to ask you, Al. Are you married?"
"No."
"Engaged?"
"Sort of."
It was a reasonable accurate answer; Ellen thought they were engaged and, sometimes, even Al himself suspected it. "Where is your girl."
"In town. Waiting for me. At a hotel."
"I wonder if you're like some of our guests."
"How's that?"
"Double rooms for minds with a single purpose." Al didn't say anything. He stared down at her legs, at the rounded knees beneath the nylons. He wondered, vaguely, how many bedrooms had seen those legs, how many men had known them.
"You won't have to do anything today," she said. "The main thing is to get settled."
Al relaxed and looked up at the sky. 'I'll get a cab to run my clothes out from town," he said.
"And your girl?"
"My girl, too, if she can."
Reba Cummings smiled. "I guess we can fix her up with a room. Of her own."
"Thanks."
"Does she do hotel work."
"She's a good hostess."
"Well, we don't need a hostess."
Ellen also sang and danced but Al thought there would be time to go into that later. "That's the hotel up ahead."
The woods slid past and then they were riding beside a well-tended golf course. A few people waved or shouted and Reba waved back.
"Do you play golf, Al?"
"Some."
The main hotel was huge and like all of the other buildings it was painted white. The porches were wide and long and the outdoor furniture colorful. Beyond the hotel the lake stretched into the distance, its white rim snuggling up close to towering, blue hills.
"It's pretty," Al said but, mostly, he was thinking of the girl beside him. "Very pretty."
Her eyes seemed to taunt him. "You like?" she wanted to know.
"I've got a yen," Al admitted.
She could be had, Al thought as he followed her up onto the porch. She could be had, easy. It was in her eyes, in her walk, and she'd known damned well what he'd been talking about. He liked her walk. Her lips rolled just right, sort of loose and free, and they were just the right size. He wet his lips with his tongue. They were plenty all right.
The interior of the hotel was clean, modern and the carpets were thick. They walked up to the registration desk and Reba introduced him to the room clerk on duty.
"Paul," she said, "Al Evans, our new manager. AL Paul Dempsey."
Al shook hands. Dempsey's hand was small, weak. He looked into Dempsey's face. Dempsey's eyes were weak, too. Almost immediately, he found himself disliking Dempsey.
"Paul will show you to your room, Al. Later on I'll get somebody to take you around the place. Right now, I've got to get the meat out to the kitchen for dinner."
"Sure."
"I'll give you three-four," Dempsey said after she was gone. "It's a front room, facing the lake. Cool at night."
"Thanks."
"Every manager has had that room."
"Every manager?" Al demanded. "How many have there been?"
"Three this year, so far."
"What happened?"
Dempsey took a key from the rack and came around the desk.
"They got fired," he said, simply. Al followed the clerk up the stairs.
CHAPTER II
THE Hotel Haidee was a medium-sized hotel in the land of gigantic resort hotels. It featured all of the usual advantages plus a few that weren't quite so usual. The golf course was standard length, well-groomed and tended by a sufficient number of caddies. The swimming pool was Olympic-size, the waters of the lake clear and cool and the tennis courts were fashioned from the finest of natural clay and flat sand. There were handball courts, a dancing pavilion, an archery range, a string of gentle riding horses and a couple of bars where a person could get drunk. But beyond these points the similarity of the Hotel Haidee with other resort hotels stopped. Beyond these points the Hotel Hiadee was vastly different.
The biggest attraction at Hotel Haidee was unrestrained sex.
Sex, Al soon discovered, was free to anybody who was interested-the help, the guests and the casual wanderer from town. Of course, the local yokels didn't have much luck on a week-end, because sex arrived from the city in big Caddys and Chryslers on Friday night; but during the week-say, about Wednesday-some of the females were tormented for love and they could be had without any trouble. Some of the girls, however, were untouchable; they went steady with each other and they made love the way girls make love. This was also true of the men, especially some of the male workers; a bus boy might go steady with a bellhop and one of the salad men might make unorthodox, but frantic, overtures to a desk clerk. Upon rare occasions the male lover who worked for the hotel was able to single out a companion from the guest list but this was not the general rule. Most of the male guests preferred female companionship, and if they were unable to obtain this from one of the dozens of lonely girls and women who occupied many of the rooms, they could always count on a waitress to make life an affair with as many ups as downs.
"It's a whorehouse," Pete Addison, the storekeeper, told Al. "You either lock your door at night before you start to undress or you'll find yourself going to bed double."
Naturally, Pete added, he never locked his door. In fact, he left his door open. And almost every night the little blonde from cigarettes came in and took her clothes off and got into bed with Pete.
"She's got more bounce than a rubber ball on a hot pavement," Pete bragged. "She can go all night and still yell for more." Pete grinned. "But she never yells when she leaves me. She just says thanks."
Al soon discovered that the blonde from cigarettes, four girls from the grill and two waitresses also worked out of the hotel's secretarial service. Of course, none of the girls could take shorthand, or type, but that was hardly a requirement. A lonely executive found himself trapped in a lonely hotel room, with a jug of scotch or rye, and he was hardly in a mood to write a letter home. All he needed was the body of a willing woman to make his vacation complete. And the fact that the girls were registered with the hotel as secretaries absolved the hotel of much of the blame. Who, for gosh sakes, could control the actions of a secretary once she was in a guy's room? Everybody knew that most secretaries either laid their bosses or somebody else, anyway, didn't they? What difference did it make if the man was a stranger or a friend? They could become impregnated by one just as quickly as the other, couldn't they? And if the girls were satisfied and the man paid his rent when it was due, who was to yell? If the hotel didn't make female flesh available the men would only cart along some piece of yard goods from the city who might get drunk and start a fire or run down one of the halls, in the middle of the night, yelling rape, rape, rape. A thing like that could be embarrassing and, besides, it would wake people up.
"I hate this place, Al," Ellen said before the end of the first week. "I hate it. Let's get out of here, Al."
T hate it, too," Al admitted. "But, the way things are right now, I can be in love with almost any place for a hundred bucks a week."
"Or anyone?" she flashed. "Could you be in love with anyone for that much, Al?"
"You know better than that."
"I know you," Ellen said.
They were in Ellen's room on the third floor. It was not a big room, a single, but it had a nice clear view of the lake. Sometimes, like now, Al came up there when things were quiet downstairs.
He went over to Ellen and kissed her. "What do you know about me?" he asked.
Ellen was a small girl with long black hair, brown eyes and a voluptuous figure. She had told him, once, that she was thirty-eight around the bust but the way she looked just then, in a loose bandana that hardly hid anything at all, she appeared to be at least forty.
"I know I love you, you damn fool," she said, surrendering her lips. "Why do I love you, Al?"
Her lips were big and warm and he liked them because they were always wet. Not only that, but she had a way of moving them against his mouth that always sent the hot fire of need racing through his blood. She moved them now, slowly, in tiny circles, and he felt the aching need drop into his gut and legs.
"I'm so pretty," he told her. "That's why you love me."
She pulled her head and looked up at him.
"I thought I was the one who was pretty."
"You are."
"What about Reba Cummings? Is she pretty, too?"
"Oh, hell, are we going into that again?"
"Please, Al. I'm not blind. I've seen how she looks at you. It worries me, Al."
He kissed her again. "Well, it shouldn't," he said. "It's how I look at her that ought to count with you."
"And I've seen that, too, Al."
"All right. How do I look at her?"
"When you don't think I see you?"
"Yes. When I don't think you see me."
"You look at her as though you wanted her worse than any other woman in the world."
"Nuts," Al said.
But it was true and Al knew it was true. He kept telling himself all the time that he didn't want Reba but he knew that he did. He had wanted her that first moment he had seen her and he wanted her even more now. At first, he had told himself that it was just a imagine, a passing thought that any virile man might have for a beautiful woman, but he recognized it as being more than that. Every time she got close to him, which was often-behind the bar, in back of the desk, in the office-so close that he could smell the woman of her, his head started to pound and his hands shook. When she smiled at him, which was also rather often, it was even worse. He couldn't take his eyes off her mouth or stop thinking about how it would taste if he kissed her.
"She's married," Al said, defensively. "If nothing else would stop it, that would."
Ellen laughed. "Marriage doesn't mean very much to them," she pointed out. "She runs around the hotel all day long and he sits in the bar getting drunk with the customers. I'll bet there isn't hardly a night that somebody doesn't have to carry him up to bed."
Again Ellen was correct. Twice Al had taken Arnie Cummings up to his suite and upon each occasion he had later seen Reba outside, walking in the moonlight. No, there wasn't much marriage there, that was for sure. It was just a scrap of paper. Arnie, mostly, was too drunk to do anything about it.
"I don't know what we're arguing about," Al said, lighting a cigarette. "This whole thing is silly. So the place isn't much good? So what? So it's the only thing I could get and we have to make the best of it, that's so what."
Ellen turned away from him and walked over to the window.
"Al," she said, her back to him. "Al, honey, don't get mad at me. But this isn't for us. It isn't for you and it isn't for me. We weren't brought up this way. Lesbians, queers, people sleeping with everybody else. It isn't right, Al. I-Al, I want to get out of here!" She swung around. She was breathing heavily and her eyes were wet. "Please, Al! Let's go somewhere else!"
He stubbed the cigarette in an ash tray and went to her.
"You're serious about this, aren't you?
"Oh, yes, Al!"
"You know what it means, don't you? It means looking for another job, or getting turned down because of that trouble I had. It means-"
"Why didn't Mrs. Cummings turn you down?"
"I don't know."
"There must be other people who will understand, Al. She can't be the only one. If we just keep looking, we're bound to find something."
"Maybe."
"And I'm able to work. Even if you don't get a job with as much money, I can get something to help out. We'll get by, Al. Honestly we will."
She was a good girl, Al thought; a fine decent girl. He had met her in Syracuse and she had waited for him all the time he'd been in Casablanca. He had been going to send for her the week that the trouble had started. She had been hurt, because of the woman, but she had been forgiving, too. Upon his return, she had crept into his arms, her lips eager and trusting, and she had helped him forget.
"Does it mean that much to you, Ellen?"
She nodded. "You know that it means everything to me, Al. Neither one of us has anybody, only each other. I-Al, if there was ever another woman I couldn't stand that. Before, it was different. Before, you were away and I could understand. But now, Al-Al, let's not ruin it for ourselves. Let's get out of here before something terrible happens."
She was a good girl, he thought again; a good girl and she never complained. It was only right that he respect her feelings. She had been with him all the time, all the way, and he couldn't let her down now.
"Okay," he said, wearily, "I'll give Mrs. Cummings my notice."
"Oh, Al! Al!
With a little cry she came into his arms. He could feel the fullness of her breasts push into his chest and as his arms went around her, his hands upon the nakedness of her back above the top of the shorts, he found her skin hot and satin-smooth.
"I love you," he said.
"Oh, Al! Let's go back to Syracuse."
"Any place you say."
"We'll get something."
"Sure."
But, he thought, what would he get? A fifty dollar a week job checking groceries in some crummy restaurant? He shook his head. It was a stupid thing to do but if Ellen wanted it that way, then he owed it to her. In a sense, he would be glad to be leaving Hotel Haidee behind. He had never understood lesbians or sympathized with queers. There was only one thing, except money, that he really wanted at the hotel-one thing that he'd do well to leave alone. "Kiss me," he told her.
He had all of the woman here that he needed, all of the woman that he could ever handle. Ellen's last name was Cassandra and she possessed all of the traditional fire and flame of the Italian race.
She smiled up at him. "I love to kiss you," she whispered.
Her mouth was clean, her breath fresh, and when she kissed him her lips parted ever so slightly.
"I love you! I love you, Al!"
His tongue moved against her teeth, forcing her mouth open. For a brief moment she struggled against him and then, sighing, her lips separated all the way and he was able to go inside. His tongue, searching, went faster and faster, and then she was kissing him back the same way. Her hands went up to his hair, pulling his head down, as she moaned and clung to him in wild ecstasy.
"Al! Al!"
Blindly, he pushed her toward the bed. It was always this way, kissing her like this at first, hurting her some with the pressure of his arms, and then wanting her so badly that he couldn't wait.
"Untie me, Al!"
"You don't have to tell me," he breathed.
He found the bow knot in the bandana and with sweating hands jerked it loose. The bandana, however, did not fall to the floor immediately. It lay upon the high, precious shelf of her breasts, lifting and falling with each tiny movement. Groaning, he savagely whipped the bandana aside and let it flutter from his fingers to the floor.
"Wonderful!" he gasped.
Her breasts were huge, thrusting, and they were almost flat across the top. They were generously far apart, curving upwards and the red peaks in the centers were hard and jutting.
"Oh, Al. Al!"
He took them in his hands and held them and his hands were more than full. His fingers moved down into the soft flesh and she closed her eyes and clung to him.
"Kiss them," she pleaded.
He held them in his hands and kissed them, first one and then the other. They became hard and swollen in response to his feverish caresses. He kissed them gently, tenderly, eagerly. "Al, Al, Al, Al!"
He pushed her down onto the bed. "Take me, Al! Take me!"
He pulled off her shorts and threw them on the floor beside the bandana. She lay naked upon the bed before him. Her body convulsed with desire. Hurriedly he undressed and lay down beside her. Without opening her eyes she reached into the drawer of the night stand and placed something in his hand.
"Here, Al," she whispered, smiling. "Let's not forget."
She guided his hand, helping him. Her lips were greedy and frantic as she kissed him.
"Al, I love you! Oh, Al, how much I love you!"
She always said this, always acted this way-twisting, turning, begging-but, later, she would be sad and sometimes she would cry. She cried because she enjoyed it so much and she was afraid and she didn't want a child, not now, and she didn't trust anything.
"Al, Al. Now, Al!"
She pressed up against him, her arms like tiny bands of oiled rope. Her breath came in irregular, agonizing gasps. Her body arched, lifting, seeking him.
"Now, Al! Now!"
But at the last moment, when he went for her, when his hands were upon the rounded flesh of her buttocks, she fought against him.
"No, Al! No! Please, Al! Not now!"
She always fought against him. She always fought and, as now, he always ran his hands up and over her back and down over her thighs, making her tremble.
"Al, Al," she kept mumbling.
His hands went to her knees, to the softness of her inner legs, to her breasts, to every part of her glorious body. The more he touched her the more violently she trembled. Finally, she could stand it no longer and she came to him, shaking and moaning, crying out for him to take her, helping him to take her.
"O-o-oh, Al!"
And then it was over and she was lying beside him, her head turned away. Tears filled her voice. "Al, why do we do it?"
He looked up at the ceiling. "I guess it seems like a good idea at the time," he replied.
"Al, don't be flip!"
"All right. So we wanted to do it. That's all. We wanted to do it and we did. We've done it before. Why do you torture yourself this way?"
She rolled over, facing him. Her glance washed down over his face.
Supposing you made me pregnant, Al."
"Well, I didn't."
"No. But supposing you did. Would you marry me."
"You know I would."
She sighed and moved in close to him. Her body felt damp and warm.
"Then why don't you marry me anyway, Al?"
He laughed. "Maybe I will."
"Be serious."
"I am."
"Kiss me."
"It's a pleasure."
He closed his eyes and kissed her. He hadn't answered her question. He never answered her question. He always avoided it. Maybe, he thought, he didn't love her, not that way.
He kept his eyes closed and kissed her again.
It was a hell of a cruel thought.
CHAPTER III
There was one thing about it, Reba Cummings thought: no matter what she had to do, she wasn't going to let Al go. She was going to hang onto Al. Al, she had long since decided, had something to offer to her life.
Al was different than any of the other hotel managers she had hired and fired. Al knew the hotel business-hadn't he tripped up that bartender beautifully?-and he was able to tolerate, if not condone, the actions of the creatures who inhabited the rooms of Haidee Hotel.
Personally, Reba hated every one of them. She hated the hotel business. And she hated her husband.
Sometimes, even, she almost hated herself as much as her sister, Helen, but, of course, for another reason. She hated herself for having married Arnie in the first place. And she hated her sister for having been smart and ending up rich.
Helen was rich. Very rich. It was, when you thought about it, rather ironical. Helen's husband, Ted Lavina, was very poor. Helen had inherited everything from her father. Which was, Reba thought, a stinking, lousy shame.
The hotel had been her inheritance and her father had trusted her so little that half of the property had been left in Arnie's name. It was unfortunate, she speculated, that Gordon Franklin hadn't lived to see what a mess Arnie could make of his life. Had he lived, her father wouldn't have left Arnie a used postage stamp. Her father had disliked people who couldn't be trusted.
"You're all over the lot," her father had said to her. "First it's one man and then it's another. Why don't you settle down and marry Arnie Cummings?"
She had married Arnie, not because she had been in love with him but because her father had insisted.
"Arnie's got a head on his shoulders, he has. You'll find that out when the two of you get to running the hotel."
"The hotel?"
"Yes. The hotel. I'm leaving the hotel to you and Arnie, jointly. And I am setting up a trust fund for Helen. Anybody knows she won't be able to live on what that stupid jerk can provide her."
Gordon Franklin had been wrong. Now, less than five years since his death, Arnie was drinking himself blind and Ted was doing very well in a hot air heating business in Olean. And Ted wasn't using any of his wife's money. Ted was funny that way. Ted wanted to make his own road on his own terms.
"I've got a thousand dollars a month coming in that I don't know what to do with," Helen often said. "Can you imagine anything like that?"
Reba could imagine what she could do with a thousand dollars a month. With a thousand dollars a month she would kiss the hotel and Arnie good-bye and head south, or north, or any other direction that her imagine directed. The only trouble was that she wouldn't get the thousand dollars a month until after Helen's death. Her father's will had been very definite about that point; Ted Lavina would never get a red cent of the Franklin fortune. This arrangement, quite naturally, was fine with Reba. Except that Helen wasn't dead and it didn't look as though she would die for a long, long time. Not unless she were rushed into it, she wouldn't die.
She had to be rushed, Reba thought! Helen had to be shoved over the side.
It wasn't so bad when she thought about it, not even when she thought of doing it with her own hands. After all, Helen wasn't happy. She'd been trying for more than six years to get herself pregnant by her husband and she hadn't had any luck. All that time she'd been reinvesting that thousand a month, praying for a child who would be able to use it. Why did Helen keep on kidding herself? She was barren, or her husband was hopelessly sterile, and the money would just lay there and rot. If she didn't want the money, if it couldn't do her any good, why did she have to hang onto it and keep everybody else waiting? Why didn't she just let it go to her next of kin and be happy about the whole thing?
That last summer, the summer before, Reba had thought about poisoning Helen. She had even purchased the poison, a cyanide solution used for insects, and had placed it far back in one of the closets. But she had abandoned the idea when she determined it was too risky. Somehow, she had to be more clever about it. She had to be more subtle. Or, better still, she had to get somebody else to do it for her.
Arnie had told her that she hired and fired too many managers. Well, perhaps she had. But what good were they when, after she knew them, she found out that they couldn't possibly fit into her plans? She required the services of a man who could be taught to kill for her and, because of this association, she sought a man who could be reasonably acceptable in a physical sense. She had not found such a man until she met Al Evans.
She could, she felt, become attached to Al simply because he represented a well developed specimen of the male animal. She could go to bed with him willingly, lustfully, but even if she did that it wouldn't be enough. To satisfy her physical urge was one thing, to attain her goal quite another. No, Al Evans had to yearn for her just as much as she yearned for him. She had to make him want her so blindly that anything else she might suggest would be insignificant. She had to arouse his interest to such a point that he would be willing to kill for her if necessary.
It was not easy. She tried rubbing against him every chance she had, letting him feel her body. She wore clothes that were much too low in front and whenever she went into the office she managed to bend over at an appropriate moment, exposing herself. In moments such as this she was able to feel his eyes upon her as he drank up the curving swells of her breasts. She hoped and prayed that he would touch her, but he did not. Always he remained aloof, almost shy, and sometimes she felt like screaming at him. If she had acted with anyone else in the hotel the way she had acted with him she would have been down before she could have unzipped her dress. It was frustrating.
Reba hated his girl. Ellen was very dark and very lovely and Reba hated her. She hated Ellen because she was part of Al, she belonged to him, and Al didn't seem to be concerned about anybody else. She hated the way Ellen walked, the way the girl smiled, the way her big breasts bounced around underneath the sweaters she often wore. Reba came to hate Ellen so much that she began to refer to her as Miss Busters.
"That's a hell of a thing to say," Arnie told her during one of his infrequent moments of sobriety. "She sure got a pair of apples but you shouldn't call her that. Hell, baby, you aren't so small up there, either."
And she wasn't. Her last bras, size thirty-eight, were now much too tight. Sometimes she didn't wear a bra and especially if she was going into Al's office she didn't wear one. She wanted Al to have plenty of room and nothing in his way if he ever got the urge. But Al didn't get the urge. Al just looked at her and drooled. It was frustrating as hell.
She could have had a hundred men in the hotel. She could have gone up to the door of almost any room, knocked, and been in bed before the sound of the door, slamming, faded away. And she needed a man. She needed a man so damned bad that she couldn't see straight anymore. Arnie wasn't any good. Arnie was drunk most of the time. And when Arnie was sober he was down shacking up with that hostess. Arnie liked the hostess, the redhead in the grill room. The redhead was skinny and Arnie said he liked skinny girls. He claimed a guy could tell what he was getting when he had a skinny girl.
Maybe her father had been right, she thought; maybe she was sex mad and money mad. At the age of fifteen she had gone to bed with her first man and she had been doing it ever since. She liked to feel a man's body, to touch and to own it. She liked the sweat of a man and the funny sounds that he made. She liked the feeling of superiority when she realized that a man, once he had tasted her body, could no longer resist. Arnie was the only exception. But Arnie was her husband and Arnie was a slob. In addition, Arnie claimed that he didn't like his sex the way she preferred to give it to him. Arnie, she decided without much thought, was a jerk. Arnie wasn't one-two with a man like Al Evans.
"Al," she told him. "Al, you're right on the stick. How did you ever figure that Punky was beating the bar for bucks?"
"Easy. You see the crowd in there and you see the cash register. You add up two and two and you know he must have been bringing his own liquor in from outside. Nice way to start in business if you can handle it."
"Al, you're wonderful!"
She'd given him another chance then, holding it right out in front of him, but he hadn't taken it, "It's my job," he'd said.
She'd tried other ways, too. She kept him out in the kitchen late at night, talking about things that weren't important, or drinking at the bar, but always he had gone up to that room on the third floor. She knew. She had followed him. One night she had gone into the next room, three-five, and listened. She had heard the bed springs in there going like crazy-crazy. It had made her sick with fury and envy.
"Wake up," she'd told Arnie after she'd gotten into bed beside him. "Wake up and give me what I cry for."
"Good night," Arnie had said, thickly.
She had lain there that night twisting and turning, her belly on fire. She had wanted Al so much, so terribly much, and there hadn't been anyone at all.
The next day Al came into her office and quit.
"Fourteen days," he said. "If you want me to give you that much notice."
"But why, Al?"
"No reason. Just shoving on, that's all."
"Don't you like it here?"
Al didn't say anything.
"Don't you like it here, Al? Don't you?"
She knew that he didn't. Who could like such a place as Hotel Haidee with its lesbians and queers and perverts?
"I know," she said before he could reply. "I feel the same way about it. But what can I do, Al? It's my husband's idea and half of this hotel belongs to him. Please Al. Stay for the rest of the season and help me out. Will you, Al?"
"No; I'm sorry."
"Isn't there anything I can say? You've been doing a good job, Al. A wonderful job. The meals have been better, food costs are down, and everybody-likes you. Why not, Al? Why not give it a try for just a little longer?"
But he wouldn't listen. His mind was made up. Desperately, she sought for something to change his thought. She had flaunted her body at him and he had rejected that. There was only one other thing that she could offer him.
"Your girl might like a job in the dining room as hostess."
"No," Al said.
She gave it to him slowly, gently. "You've been doing such a fine job, Al, that I was going to keep the promise that I made to you."
"Yeah? About what?"
"More money. Remember, I said that I would?" Al nodded. "It isn't the money," he said. "Believe me, it isn't that."
She smiled up at him. "What would you say to two hundred a week, Al? You're worth that much to me."
"That's a lot of money," he pointed out.
"Don't worry. I won't be paying for something that I won't get."
"It's more than most resort hotels this size pay."
"I know. But you're a better manager than most of the others have, too, Al."
He wants to go because of that bitch, she thought; he wants to go because she wants him to go. And he isn't going. He isn't going at all. Not if it costs three hundred a week. She was buying more than the services of Al Evans. She was buying him. And she was willing to pay high for the privilege.
"Two-fifty a week, Al," she told him, turning away. "Two-fifty a week or you can go to hell!"
"I'll think it over," he said.
"All right." She swung around, letting him see her smile. "I'll be in the bar after dinner. You can find me there."
"Sure."
She left the office, feeling better. Al was hungry for a dollar. Al would come to her.
Somehow, she just knew that he would.
CHAPTER IV
He didn't tell her until that night, until after dinner when they were sitting together beside the pool. And, as it turned out, it was Ellen who brought up the subject.
"Did you speak to Mrs. Cummings, Al?"
"Yes."
"What did she say?"
"She said she would pay me two-fifty a week if I would stay on."
"Al-you didn't!"
He found a cigarette but he didn't light it. He had thought about the whole thing very carefully. Two-fifty a week was a lot of money. In a couple of months they could save enough to move on somewhere else. As it was, they barely had enough for bus tickets.
"Look," Al said, not looking at her. "You want to go back to Syracuse. All right. There's nothing wrong with Syracuse. But neither of us has got even a room or anything else there. The day we hit the town we have to go to work. We have to go to work or we sleep in a two dollar room and live on coffee and buns. Is that any way to live? Cripes, we did that for two months. Do you want to go through all that again?"
The two months after his return from Casablanca had been rugged. Ellen had met him the day he'd gotten off the boat and in less than two days they had spent the fifty dollars she'd had in her purse. He'd washed dishes in restaurants, worked in a couple of spots as a food checker, and they'd existed like animals. Ellen had found a job as a waitress and it had taken them several weeks to save enough money to make the trip up to the mountain resort section. It would be worse if they went on to Syracuse. In Syracuse, it would be more dishes for him and another era of table hopping for Ellen.
"I'd rather put up with anything than this," Ellen said. "I-I'm afraid of this place, Al!"
"Why?"
"These girls. These men. Al, some of them aren't human! It isn't right for us to be here."
Al struck a match and lit the cigarette. "Forget about the girls and the men, will you? Close your eyes to it. Stop chasing other people's morals. Think of us. Here we are with two-fifty a week coming in. Think of that. In a month or so we can save enough to get out of here. What's the difference how I earn it as long as it's legal? I'm not doing any of those things. You aren't doing them. Why concern ourselves?"
A couple came though the shadows, walking very close together. The man's arm was around the girl's waist, and the girl's hand was in the man's pocket. The girl was laughing and the man was smiling.
"You see what I mean, Al?"
"No."
"Al-please."
"No."
Ellen reached up and pulled his head down. She kissed Al on the mouth.
"Let's not argue, Al."
"I'm not arguing. I'm just saying."
Her lips moved against his mouth. "Al, please! Please, Al! I don't want to stay here. Please, Al, let's go!"
Angrily, he jerked his head away. What was the matter with her anyway? Couldn't she understand anything at all?
"Ellen," he said, patiently. "Ellen, you just don't do things like that. It' isn't that simple. Even if I could walk into a job
Angrily, he jerked his head away. What was the matter the day I got into Syracuse, or any place else, I wouldn't be able to earn as much. Let's face it. Why fight the facts?"
"Al," Ellen whispered, "you're a fool."
"Why?"
"She's buying you. Reba Cummings is buying you with money. Can't you see that?"
"I've done a good job for her," Al said, defensively. "I've dropped the meal costs and put the bar on a paying basis. Even the grounds look better. I've gotten more work out of the help than she ever did."
It was true, Al thought. He was not prejudiced. He didn't care if a person was a lesbian or a queer; as long as the work was done properly, that had nothing to do with it. He had made his attitude very clear to the employees and they respected him for it. The results had been more than satisfactory. In Al's estimation people were people and, no matter what their faults, they had to be treated that way.
"I don't care," Ellen said. "I don't care what you say, Al, it's all wrong. We shouldn't be here. We don't belong here. Please, Al, let's go as we planned!"
They were going to fight. He knew that. And he couldn't help it.
"No," he said.
She drew away from him.
"I'm not going to say." Her voice was unsteady. "Do you hear me? I'm not staying, Al!"
He felt sorry for her, for himself. "I can't stop you," he said. "You can do as you want."
She was hurt. "Is that all you can say, Al?"
"What else is there?"
"Al." She was pleading with him now. "Al, don't we mean anything to each other."
"You know we do."
"Then-why, Al? Why."
"I told you."
"Al," she said, "I don't think you love me."
"You always say that when you get mad."
"But I don't, Al. I don't!"
"All right," Al said, impatiently. "Have it your way. I don't love you. I'm a bastard. What are you going to do about it?"
She stood up. I'm going by myself," she replied. "I told you I would."
Al grinned. "On what?" he wanted to know. "You haven't got more than five bucks. And I'm not giving you any money to run off on. Not tonight. I'm not. Nor tomorrow. You want to call it quits over a silly thing like this, then call it quits. But you'll be on your own, Ellen. Don't expect me to help you."
"Al!" she cried. "Al."
"I mean it."
"Oh, Al!"
He got to his feet as she started to walk away. "Be reasonable, Ellen," he said.
She turned and faced him. Her eyes were huge and dark. Her breasts rose and fell beneath the dress.
"You must be blind," she told him. "Blind!" She choked back a sob and her voice lowered. "Al, I don't want to lose you. Can't you see that! I don't want to lose you! Even if it is hard for use for a while I wouldn't care. As long as we're-"
"No," Al said. "My mind is made up."
She hesitated briefly, apparently torn between conflicting desires of throwing herself into his arms or of running away.
"Oh, Al!"
She wheeled and ran from him. She stumbled once near the edge of the pool, let out a little scream and then continued on up the grass toward the hotel. Al sighed and followed slowly.
He felt annoyed but not particularly disturbed. Ellen had always been a trifle headstrong. By morning, or in a few days at the very latest, she would realize that he was doing the sensible thing. He had no fear of her running away. She didn't have enough money to go anywhere and she didn't have any place to go. Probably she would sit in her room for a day or so, crying, and then she would come to him. She had come back to him before and she would do it again. Everything would be good as soon as that happened. They would kiss and make love on her bed and she would tell him what a little fool she had been.
Several guests spoke to him as he crossed the terrace and made his way toward the bar. They were average couples in search of forbidden love. The off-beat lovers usually clung to the darkened corners of the grill room, secluded corners which afforded the best opportunity for the use of wandering hands and the search of frantic, passionate lips.
Al entered the bar. The long room was crowded and filled with smoke.
"God dammit," he asked the headwaiter, "how many times do I have to tell you to keep the exhaust fans running?"
"Sorry, sir," the headwaiter mumbled. "Sorry!"
"Well, get 'em turned on, will you?"
"Hey, Al!" somebody shouted. "Care for a drink?"
It was Arnie Cummings. He was seated at a table with a man and a woman. The man wore glasses and looked like a salesman. The woman was young, in her middle twenties, and she had very brown hair.
"Sure," Al said and sat down. "Rye and ginger."
There was a bottle of rye on the table. Arnie always kept a bottle on the table. He said it saved the time of the waiters and waitresses. He splashed some rye into a glass, a little ginger and pushed it toward Al.
"To the best damned hotel manager in the mountains," Arnie said, lifting his glass. He winked. "And at two and a half bills a week he'd better be good."
"Skoal," Al said.
The man and the woman laughed and drank. "My sister-in-law and brother-in-law," Arnie said, finally. "Al, Helen Lavina. Melen, Al. Al, Ted Lavina. Ted, Al."
"Hi," Al said.
Ted Lavina nodded and smiled.
"We just got in this afternoon," Helen Lavina said. She had a deep, husky voice. "It hasn't changed much since last year, has it?"
"I wouldn't know," Al replied.
"Not much," Arnie stated. "We've still got a lot of jerks. But what are you going to do? You get a crowd like this coming to a place and you can't stop them. You're stuck. Besides, some of the normals go for this stuff. They get a bang out of it."
"I'm glad I'm in the heating business," Ted Lavina said. "I don't think I could stand this."
Arnie laughed. "Some of these babies get pretty hot, too," he said. "Hotter than any old furnace you ever put in a house."
Helen Lavina's face colored slightly. She had, Al thought, a very pretty face, soft brown eyes, curving lips, a delicate nose.
"The same old Arnie," she observed. "You never miss a word."
"Same old Arnie," Arnie agreed, lifting the bottle. "Getting drunk as a fiddler's bitch."
"Whatever that is," Ted said.
"It's just a bitch," Arnie told him. "We've got a lot of them around here, haven't we, Al, old boy?"
"Why, sure," Al said. "Sure enough."
Al had another drink with Arnie and the Lavinas and then excused himself. He liked the Lavinas well enough but he didn't care for Arnie when Arnie was sopping up the liquor so fast. Pretty soon Arnie would get sick and then he would have to be carted up to his room.
Al stopped at the bar and inquired about Reba.
"Mrs. Cummings just went up to her room," the bartender said. "She told me to tell you."
"Okay."
The Cummings suite was on the second floor, directly over the lobby. Al walked through the bar, across the lobby and started up the stairs.
He wondered, vaguely, how Reba Cummings would accept his decision. Two-fifty a week was a lot of money. Maybe she had only been kidding him, baiting the hook, and maybe she'd tell him to go to hell. But, no, she wouldn't tell him that. She needed him too much. Somebody had to run the hotel for her and he had been doing a good job.
He knocked on the door of suite number twenty-four. The window at the end of the hall was open and he could smell the clear, fresh air blowing in from across the lake. From the grill room downstairs drifted the sounds of the music, a tango.
"Come in!"
He pushed the door open and entered. This was the first time he had been inside the Cummings suite. The living room was the size of two bedrooms and it was lavishly furnished with low, modern chairs and settees, wrought iron tables and imagine lamps. The rug was thick and blue and extended from wall to wall.
"Is that you, Ted? Helen?" Her voice came from one of the other rooms. "No. Al."
"Oh, Al. How nice! Won't you sit down? I'll be right out Fix yourself a drink if you want."
"Thanks."
Al remained standing by the door. He could smell the combined odors of bath salts and perfume. Once in a while he could hear her moving around. It was cool enough in the room but he could feel the sweat gathering on his forehead. Nervously, he took out his handkerchief and dried his hands. They were shaking. It was ridiculous.
"Make me a short one?" she called. "Scotch and a little water."
"All right."
He found the liquor cabinet and made the drink. His hands still shook and this angered him. There was nothing to worry about.
"Well, Al?"
He swung around. She stood in a middle of the room, facing him. Her moist red lips were curved in a smile. "Hello." Al said, thickly.
She wore a pale blue negligee and he could see that she wore only panties and bra underneath. The bra was tight, very tight, and it forced her breasts into two high, thrusting mounds of flesh. The belt of the negligee was pulled snugly across her flat little belly and he could see, where it flared out below, the long, tapering lines of her legs.
"Well, Al?" she said again, still smiling. "Did you fix my drink?"
"Year." He handed her the glass. He tried to rip his stare away from her swollen breasts, but he couldn't. "Yeah, I fixed your drink."
She walked over to one of the chairs and sat down. It was even worse after she did that. The negligee dipped down between her legs and when she leaned back, looking up at the ceiling, it got very taut across her body.
"But you didn't come up here to pour me a drink, Al," she said, softly. "You came up to tell me something."
"I'm staying."
She never moved. "That's nice," she said. He kept watching her. Reba's body was alive, glowing, waiting. He took a deep, unsteady breath. "If the deal's still good," he added.
She sat up, quickly. The movement loosened the top of the negligee and one of her big breasts nearly thrust itself into full view.
"Of course it's still good," she told him. She lifted her drink and winked at him across the rim of the glass. "Everything is just as good as it ever was, Al."
His throat was dry. He reached for a bottle and poured a double shot into a glass.
"To luck," he said.
"To us," she corrected him.
He nodded and drank.
"We'll make a good pair," she added. "You see if we don't, Al. We'll run this hotel like it's never been run before. And we'll both make money at it."
"Sounds good to me."
He placed his empty glass on the cabinet and started for the door. She stood up, blocking his way. There was an amused smile on her lips.
"What are you running for, Al?"
"I've got to go down to the kitchen."
"The kitchen is closed."
"I know that, but I've got to check on that motor in the meat freezer. It was acting up this morning."
He tried to move around her but she stepped in his way again.
"Al," she repeated, "what are you running for."
"I'm not running."
"But you are, Al. What are you afraid of?" Al just looked at her.
"Jeeze," he said, finally, "what do you want me to do?" Her eyes lifted to his face.
"Kiss me," she said, simply. " 'Kiss me once, kiss me twice, and then kiss me again.' You ever hear that song, Al? Isn't it a nice song?"
"You're drunk!"
"Not on two drinks, I'm not. But I know what I want. I don't want us to drink to luck. I want you to kiss me for luck."
He didn't know what to do. If he ever put his hands on her he wouldn't let go, not until after he'd taken what he wanted. He'd drag her into the bedroom, whether she wanted to go or not, and he'd take it from her. He shook his head, trying to clear it. If he ever went that far he'd ruin everything. He was sure of it.
"Just once," she taunted him. "Just kiss me once."
Slowly, deliberately he lowered his head. There wasn't anything wrong in it, he told himself. A lot of people kissed other people, for luck or any number of other reasons. Besides, it would be better to kiss her, to prove to himself that it didn't have to go all the way. He could kiss her and convince himself that Ellen had been wrong. He didn't want this girl, not that way, any more than she wanted him.
"Why not?" he demanded.
His mouth touched her lips only for a second. They were hot, parted, willing. She closed her eyes and moved her tongue against his teem.
"Kiss me, Al!"
He put his finger under her chin and pushed her head away.
"I did," he told her.
She said something to him as he left the room but he didn't hear what it was. He couldn't hear. There was such a roar and a pound in his head that he couldn't hear anything.
He went down the stairs. His legs were heavy, weak. Ellen had been right. He had to have Reba Cummings. And, apparently, she felt the same way about it.
It would, he thought, be a sweet touch of hell.
Or all of it
CHAPTER V
It was hot out on the lake. The sun was high and blistering overhead and the calm surface of the water reflected the glare.
"Gee, Mr. Evans," the kid said, pulling on the oars, "I didn't know you knew anything about turtle trapping. I've been trying to catch a turtle ever since Declaration Day."
"Well, you'll have one in the morning," Al prophesied, looking at the trap. "You see if you don't."
The trap ought to work, Al thought. He hadn't made one in years but he hadn't forgotten how. A piece of old tennis court net, three barrel hoops, plus three long supports and the kid was in business. The trap, actually, was about the size of a barrel with a funnel-shaped mouth. All they had to do was stake it out in three or four feet of water, with the dead fish hanging inside, and leave it for the turtles to have a ball.
"Sure nice of you to help me," the kid said.
Al looked at the kid. The boy was about fifteen, a farm kid from down the road and his name was Everett. He caddied on the golf course, washed windows and did odd jobs around the kitchen.
"Forget it," Al said.
"Well, thanks, anyway."
Al was glad to be on the lake with the boy. It was clean out there, quiet, and he could think. Even with the boy talking he could think. And he had to think. He had to think and think until all of the hate was drained from him.
He looked down at his fists and shuddered. They were huge, balled up like rocks, and he wanted to put one of them straight into Arnie's face.
Slowly, his hands relaxed and he stared at the thick fingers. That was no good, he thought miserably; it wouldn't solve anything. He could smash Arnie with one blow, but where would it get him? In trouble, that's where it would get him. Deep in trouble. He had no business messing in Reba's private life.
"Cripes," the kid was saying, "you get a look at Mrs. Cummings this morning? She looked like she must have run into six doors all at once."
Al nodded. It hadn't been that bad but one of her eyes had been slightly discolored and there'd been a bruise on her right cheek. She hadn't said that Arnie had slugged her but he had known. They hadn't spoken at breakfast.
"Over that way," Al told the kid. "Into shallow water. By that stump."
Everett pulled on the left oar and the boat turned toward shore. The water lapped noisily against the bow.
"Sure nice of you to do this," the kid said again.
He had kept himself occupied with the building of the trap almost all morning long. It had been something to do, something that would prevent him from thinking about Reba and her husband and Ellen. But now that the interlude was almost finished, now that he would soon have to return to the hotel, he might just as well face it.
He still wanted Reba.
And he hated her husband's guts.
"This ought to be all right," Al told the kid. "You got the stake?"
"Right here."
The kid steadied the boat and Al dropped the trap into the water. It settled to the bottom.
"You always puncture the air sack on the fish," he said, nodding in the direction of the bait. "That way, it won't float out of the trap."
"I'll try to remember," the kid said.
Al took the stake and put it inside of the trap, pushing the sharpened end down into the mud.
"That'll hold any turtle in the lake," Al announced. Then, as the boy lifted the oars, "Row me in to shore, will you? I'll walk back."
Everett was surprised. "Gee, you're a funny one," he said.
Al got off on a narrow point of land and told the kid to go back to his job in the kitchen. Everett began rowing down the lake. He was whistling.
It was no good. Al thought as he walked along; no good at all. Maybe Arnie had given his wife a trouncing but maybe she'd had it coming. It was none of his affair any more than a lot of the things that went on at the hotel were any of his business. If one guy wanted to go to bed with another guy, who had a right to interfere? If a girl got her kicks from another girl, who had a right to knock down their door and give them hell? And if a fellow felt as though he wanted to belt his wife around, who was he, Al Evans, to criticize?
Al swung east away from the lake, in the direction of the hotel. He had to forget about it, that's what he had to do. He had to forget the memory of her kiss, the soft invitation of her lips, and he had to go about earning his two hundred fifty bucks a week. He couldn't do it walking around in the woods, or making turtle traps for some kid, or arguing with Ellen. He had to settle down and get in the swing of things. He had to forget what was going on around him and just keep his eyes on the money. The money, that's what counted. Nothing, when he got right down to it, meant so much as the money.
No, that's wrong, he thought; that's entirely wrong. Ellen meant something. Ellen meant everything. He cursed and kicked a dead limb out of his way. Why was he kidding himself? If Ellen really meant so much he wouldn't have left her alone in her room. He'd have been up there, pleading with her to understand, assuring her that everything would be all right. As it was, he hadn't seen her and he hadn't been near her. The night before, lying upon his bed, he hadn't even thought about her. He had thought only of the promise of Reba's lips.
When he arrived back at the hotel the desk clerk told him that Mrs. Cummings wished to see him in her suite.
"She hasn't been feeling too well today," the clerk said.
"Or looking too well, either," Al said.
Al went up the stairs and down the hall to Reba's door. He knocked twice before she opened the door.
"Hi, Al," she said. "Come in."
Her eye was still discolored, her cheek bruised, but she had used a liberal amount of make-up and the marks did not show quite so much.
"They said you were out on the lake. Did you have fun."
"I went with Everett."
"Oh, I thought you might have taken your girl." A smile played around her mouth. "Or is she mad at you? I haven't seen her since yesterday."
"She's mad all right."
"Because you're staying on?"
"Yes."
"Well, don't feel badly about it. My husband is mad at me, too."
"So it would appear."
Reba shrugged. "It isn't the first time. And I guess it won't be the last."
Al didn't say anything. The strange anger which he had felt that morning raced through him again. "Have a drink, Al."
"Why not?"
He followed her across the room. She wore a thin dress of pale emerald green, cut very low in both back and front. The material clung to her so tightly that he could see the narrow lines where her panties encircled her legs.
"Rye?"
"Rye is fine."
"I wanted to talk to you, Al," she said, pouring the drinks. "About some entertainment. Don't you think we ought to have some entertainment in the grill room for week ends?"
"Well, it wouldn't do any harm."
"A singer, maybe. And a girl dancer. And a ventriloquist. I just love those people who can imitate voices, don't you?"
Al accepted the drink. "I guess they're good for laughs."
"I thought we could drive down to New York in a few days and pick out some acts. Would that be all right with you?"
"I've got no objection."
She's beautiful, Al thought, looking at her; beautiful and smart. High, proud breasts; a beauty-contest face; and a smile as warm as the sunlight. How could any man mistreat such a lovely creature?
"How come your husband beat you?" he asked suddenly.
"He was angry."
"Yeah. But, why?"
"He came in here last night right after you left and found that dirty glass. He didn't even ask me who'd been here. He just hauled off and let me have one."
"The son-of-a-bitch!"
She reached up and placed a finger over his mouth. "Now, now," she warned. "Let's sit down, Al."
"Where is he now?"
"He went into Rose's Point with my sister and her husband. Did you meet them?"
"Yes." He sat down on the settee beside her. "They seem like nice people."
"That's because you don't know them very well."
"Oh?"
"He's very dull and she's unhappy. It's quite a combination."
Al tasted his drink. It was strong. The liquor burned as it slid down his throat.
"I'm sorry about last night," he said. "Oh, forget it. Arnie gets those spells."
"No. I mean, about kissing you."
His voice shook just a little and there was a big empty space in his chest. Now that he was here with her, alone, he wanted to talk about it. Hell, he wanted to do it again.
"I wanted you to kiss me," she reminded him. "I asked you to."
The windows facing the lake were open and there was a breeze blowing inside but Al though it was hot in the room. It was so hot and close that he could hardly breathe. He drank some more of the liquor and it didn't help a bit.
"I ought to get down to the kitchen," he said.
But he didn't move. He just sat there. He wanted something to happen. He didn't know what it was but he wanted it to happen. Anything.
"Another drink, Al?"
"No, thanks."
"You don't drink much, do you."
"Not a great deal."
"Al, do you know something? You're a funny guy, Al."
Al looked at Reba. She was smiling. He liked her best when she smiled. She had wonderfully full lips; red, ripe lips, the kind of lips that were meant to be kissed.
"You're a funny girl, too," he said.
"Am I?"
"Yes."
She placed her head carelessly upon his shoulder. Her hair had a fresh, lake-
water smell to it.
"Am I, Al?" she murmured. "Tell me why I'm funny."
"Well-"
He didn't know what to say. She was so close to him now that he couldn't think. All he wanted to do was take her in his arms and kiss her. It was the damnedest feeling-like he was being lifted up from the ground and held there.
"I ought to get down to the kitchen," he said again.
She turned her head, looking up into his face, and laughed at him. Her lips were wide apart, her mouth almost wide open, and he could see the red, inviting tip of her tongue.
"You won't find the same thing in the kitchen that you'll find here," she told him.
Al's head hurt and he wished that he hadn't drunk the liquor. His belly was on fire and the flames were shooting out into all parts of his body.
"Kiss me!" she whispered, straining toward him.
He knew that he shouldn't and he fought against it. He knew that he shouldn't but he also knew that he would.
"Your old man'll beat you again," Al said.
"I don't care." She lifted her head, her lips, her whole body. "This time I'll make it worth his while."
Blindly, savagely, he went after her. His lips felt dry and lost as he pressed them against the wet, searching void of her mouth. A long, shuddering cry escaped her and she bit at him, hurting him.
"Al, Al," she moaned. "Al, honey!"
She moved her head from side to side, rotating her lips. He felt them forcing his mouth open wide, tasted her sweet breath, felt the wild caress of her urgent tongue.
"Al, you're so good!"
She lifted herself and crept into his lap. He could feel every curve through the thin dress. Her flesh was a flaming, twisting need.
"Baby!" he said, thickly.
He did not have to reach for her. She took his hands and put them to her breasts. Still kissing him she unbuttoned the dress and unhooked her bra.
"For you," she told him.
His hands went to them, lifting against them, and they began to ripen like luscious fruit accepting much-needed food from a radiant sun. He bent his head and buried his face in a desert warmth that throbbed with every thrill of life. She trembled and pressed in against him.
"Sex me, Al!" she cried. "Sex me good!"
His head no longer hurt and his legs were no longer numb. Only a great overwhelming need seized him; a need that was so big that it shut out all else.
She would not let him take off his shirt; she did that, kissing him on the chest as she did so. She would not let him remove his pants; she did that, too, her hands deft and sure, her eyes bright as she looked up at him.
"You're a big man," she told him, huskily. "So big."
She stepped out of the dress and placed it over the back of a chair. For a moment she stood before him dressed in only a pair of sheer black lace panties. And then the panties were off, lying upon the floor, and she was poised there in all of her naked glory. Her breasts were much larger than he had imagined, gigantic, but they stood up proudly, like polished white marble cones tipped with blood. Her stomach was flat, hardly anything at all, and her hips were wide, child-bearing hips, with just the proper amount of lush fullness. Her legs were long and unblemished, beautifully tapered, and when she moved the muscles rippled beneath the skin. She was, Al saw, a true blonde.
"You're lovely!" Al breathed.
He had never seen anything like her before, never, and when she came down into his arms, her hands seeking and finding him, his head started to pound and throb again. There was a pain in back of his eyes, deep inside, and he thought that his head would swell and swell until it would split wide open. Her hands were gentle, sure, and when she touched him his head hurt even more.
"Sex me!" she begged him again. "Sex me!"
She got down on her knees, on the floor before him. She kissed him on the feet and legs.
"I love to kiss you! To kiss you here. And here. And-oh, Al, to kiss you like this!"
Al twisted in glorious agony as she kissed him again and again and again.
"Now kiss me!" she urged, desperately. "Kiss me!"
He kissed her eyes, her hair, her face, her throat, the tormented peaks of her breasts. She clung to him, whimpering, her body shaking with need and fire.
"Now!" she told him, throwing herself upon the settee. "Now, Al! Sex me and sex me!"
He was a child of wanton desire. He went to her body, experiencing the softness of it, the glorious wonders of it, and his own body screamed with a terrible, haunting yearning that knew no bounds. He felt as though he were being swept across gigantic mountains, that he was being suspended in mid-air over a torturous, smoldering volcano that threatened to belch fire. He screamed once, trying to hurl himself away from the rim of the volcano, but the rumbling, trembling earth exploded. Hot lava washed over him as the earth roared and exploded again. He screamed again, begging for mercy, but again and again and again the ground split apart and the molten lava poured forth. Finally, in a moment of unrestrained panic, he crept, weakened and sobbing, from the brink of the abyss. He collapsed upon the softness beneath and lay there in the fiery rays of the late afternoon sun.
"Al, honey."
"Yes?"
"Al, I think you'd better go down to the kitchen now." He dressed, hurriedly. He wanted to look at her, to smile at her, but he couldn't. He was scared.
Some day, he knew, she would ask him to do something. And he would do it. No matter what it was, he'd do it. It was no more complicated than that.
CHAPTER VI
Ellen had missed breakfast again but she didn't care. The way she had been feeling she doubted if she would ever want to eat again.
A drink, that's what she needed; a great big drink with enough booze in it to knock her silly. No, not just one drink; a whole bottle. Or two bottles. Rye. Rye was the best. She could drink rye and not get sick. And she was sick enough already; sick way down inside, not just in her stomach, where it hurt so much that it became first fire and then ice.
Al, she thought; Al, you stinking, stupid, miserable fool, that woman is going to ruin you, Al. She's going to drive you all the way down and then she's going to kick you for falling. Al, Al, don't let her do this to us. Al, you damned fool, can't you see what's happening?
She rolled over on the bed and sat up. It was better when she opened her eyes, kept them open in spite of the tears. With the sunlight streaming in through the window she couldn't see Al so plainly, the way he smiled, his dark hair, how big he was.
Al, she thought again, unable to help herself; Al, why didn't we go back to Syracuse, or stay in New York, or do something else?
She got up from the bed and moved across the room. She never wore anything when she slept and her nude body flashed in the mirror. She stopped and turned, slowly, almost hesitantly, and regarded her reflection. Sometimes when she was lonely, like now, or unsure of herself, like now, she could find some strange, inner courage just by looking at herself. And sometimes she found less. Sometimes she found a personal disgust that nothing, not even the rye, could destroy.
Pretty. Men thought her pretty. Al said she was pretty. Others, though not men, had told her the same thing.
Others...
Oh, no!
Look into the mirror, she told herself; keep looking into it until you see who you are, what you are. And then perhaps you will know.
Just as Al must know.
Just as some of the others have known.
Look into the mirror, Ellen. Look! What do you see?
Dark hair, almost black, that's what you see. Dark hair, neither short nor long but inclined to be curly. Especially that little curl that comes down over the right side of your forehead-no, the left side, because you're facing the mirror. Remember, you're facing the mirror; everything you see is in reverse. All right, so the curl is on the left side; what difference does it make? You never have to wet it, never have to fuss with it. It was even in that picture you had taken when you were ten, the one your aunt threw away, years later, when she found out what you really were.
Forget about your hair. It's black and smooth, thousands of silken strands, but it's only part of the whole. Just a part.
Examine your face, examine it carefully. Brown eyes, though anger or tears make them appear dark, almost the color of your hair. Not a pink skin nor white, but an in-between, sort of the shade of an olive that's been lying in the sun. Cheekbones, hardly noticeable, glowing down to a small, firm chin, lips that were always red, even early in the morning. Lips with the shape of a kiss.
Look further, she thought; it isn't your face that men and the others have been after. Your face is just a face, pretty, but just a face. Everybody has a face but everybody hasn't got what you've got down below.
Her eyes lowered, lingering before they moved on. Big, well-formed breasts for a small girl-uptilted breasts that were so large and close together that the cleavage was like a fine, deep line drawn with a pencil. Milk-white breasts tipped with the bright red berries of life. Wonderfully sensual breasts that had known love, all kinds of delightful love.
Her eyes moved down to the flatness of her stomach, the gentle bulge below her navel, going lower to her generous thighs. Her thighs, so solid and yet soft, so fine and firm, had known the song of love, too. And her legs-tapered legs which she never had to shave-had made much of the music of love. Love.
What was it? Where did it begin? How did it stop? Look into the mirror, beyond what your eyes see. Look into the past where it all started, where every bit of it happened. Look.
No, it didn't start there, not the day her father died. Or did it? Yes, perhaps the burial of Tony Cassandra had been the birth of something else.
Or another death.
Her mother had died in childbirth, five minutes after Ellen was born.
"He wanted a boy," Ellen's aunt told her years later. "And he stayed drunk for six weeks."
She tried to remember, now, a time when her father had been sober but she only recalled one instance. That had been the night he died, two days after his admittance to the hospital for a ruptured stomach ulcer.
"Go with your Aunt Stella," he had told Ellen. "She'll take care of you."
But Stella Trotta, once she had learned that her brother-in-law carried only five hundred dollars of weekly insurance, had been reluctant to accept another member into her already crowded cold water flat.
"You'll get thirty dollars a month from Social Security," the undertaker said.
That settled it; Ellen moved in with the Trottas the same day of the funeral.
She was fifteen at the time, fully developed, and when the oldest Trotta boy got her alone in the damp-smelling hallway he pinched her where it hurt and told her she really had a pair.
"Show 'em to me," he insisted.
"No!"
"But you're livin' with us."
"I don't care."
The oldest Trotta boy, Eddie, was seventeen, going on eighteen, and he was no blood relative, having been born of his father's previous marriage to a woman who had gone back to Denmark.
"I'll get you," Eddie promised. "I'll get you good."
He got her three months later, one afternoon when everybody else had gone shopping.
"Lookit what I got for you," he said, coming out of the bathroom. "Lookit, Ellen."
"Eddie, don't you come near me! You-filthy thing!"
He continued to walk toward her.
"Just lookit, Ellen. It's all yours."
She backed away from him, groping for the door.
"Don't you try runnin', " Eddie warned her. "You don't do like I say and you won't be stayin' around here much longer. I'll just tell the old man you came fuckin' into my room and wanted me to bounce you. That's what I'll tell him. And he'll kick you out, that's what he'll do. You hear him sayin' all the time how that thirty dollars don't do no good on your board."
"Eddie-you wouldn't!"
His face twisted. "Oh, wouldn't I?"
He would. She knew he would. And Nick Trotta would believe Eddie. Nick believed everything Eddie said.
"Eddie!" She pressed up against the door as he approached her. "Eddie, please don't!"
She knew very little about sex, except what she heard from the girls in school. Some of the girls sounded very experienced. They said that a man put a girl down and then did this funny thing that felt so good. And you didn't have to be afraid, Cindy Marks said. You didn't have to get in trouble unless you were stupid.
"I ain't gonna hurt you none," Eddie said, reaching for her. He was gasping and there was sweat all over his face. "You be nice to me and I'll be nice to you."
He grabbed her by the hair and even in her terror this surprised her. She had thought he would go for the front of her blouse or put his arms around her and try to push her over to the davenport. But he didn't. He just fastened his hands in her hair and twisted it until she began to sob.
"Be nice to me," he repeated, thickly. "Be awful nice to me.
Slowly, he forced her downward to her knees. And then, his hands still in her hair, he moved in close to her.
"Nice," he said again, trembling all over. "Nice!"
Later, she crept out to the fire escape, staying there long after the family returned to the flat. Down below were the rusted garbage cans, the high board fence and the jungle of clotheslines which, on Saturday, were empty. Down below or up here, she thought, there is nothing but poverty and rottenness.
"Sun's warm, isn't it?"
Ellen swung around, knowing that none of the Trottas would ever speak to her like that.
"Yes," she said, noticing it for the first time. "It is warm."
The girl who stood beside Ellen on the fire escape was young, in her early twenties, and she had honey blonde hair. She lived alone in a small apartment at the end of the hall. Ellen had heard that the girl worked in one of the fruit market offices. Her name was Madge Edwards.
"You're crying," Madge said.
"Am I?" She hadn't noticed that either.
"And your face is so white."
"I-I guess I don't feel very well."
"Would you like a cup of tea?"
"I-" In that moment, she wanted somebody, anybody, to talk to. "Yes, thank you. That would be nice."
Madge's apartment was unlike any of the others Ellen had seen in the building. The walls were newly papered in attractive colors, the ceilings painted and unchipped, and the rugs on the floor were thick and clean. Most of the furniture was new and soft feeling when she sat on it. She wondered, even that first day, why Madge lived in such a poverty ridden neighborhood.
"It's near my work," Madge explained.
She visited Madge many times after that, trying to avoid Eddie. But she couldn't avoid Eddie. Three weeks later, also on Saturday afternoon, Eddie caught her alone in her bedroom.
"Lookit," Eddie shouted. "Lookit what I got for you." She was afraid to submit to him but more terrified of denying him.
"Eddie," she pleaded with him. "Please don't. Not again."
But nothing she could say would sway him. He kicked the door shut and locked it.
"You're gonna get it," he promised her. "You're gonna get it good."
This time wasn't the same as before. This time he ripped all of the clothes from her body and threw her down on the bed. She lay before him, terrified, shaking as though she had been seized by a chill.
"Boy, lookit them busters," he exclaimed, falling down upon her. "Oh, man, lookit 'em!"
"Eddie, no!"
He slapped her, hard, across the face. "You shut up, you hear? You got nothin' to say about this. Nothin'. "
He wasn't at all like the boys and girls talked about in the school. He didn't kiss her on the mouth. He didn't kiss her anywhere. He filled his hands with her breasts, hurting her, and for a second his wild eyes looked down into her face.
"I've been savin' this for you," he whispered, savagely, lunging forward.
Pain filled her, a gigantic, searing, overwhelming pain that was filled with blackness and hate and disgust.
"EDDIE!"
She moved her body, fighting him, and the pain became all the worse.
"No, no," she cried. "No, Eddie! NO!"
She clutched at his arms, raking him with her fingernails.
"You bitch!" he gasped.
He released her breasts but she was too quick for him. She jerked one arm forward, up to her mouth, and then her teeth fastened over his flesh. He howled with pain but she did not let up. Her teeth went deeper, deeper, and pretty soon she could taste the blood.
"Oh, you bitchy, bitchy, bitch!"
He pounded her on the head with his fist and somebody else was pounding on the bedroom door. The noise at the door grew louder, filling the room.
"It's pa!" Eddie was on the floor beside the bed now, his face filled with pain, bloodless. "Oh, let go! Let go!"
Her mouth was filled with blood and she could feel it dripping down off her chin and striking her warmly on the breasts.
"Let go!"
The taste and the smell of his blood was everywhere and she closed her eyes against the nausea that threatened to overcome her.
"Open up in there!"
"Pa!" Eddie shouted. "Pa, smash the damned door down!"
Only then did she try to free Eddie but she couldn't. Her mouth simply would not open. Wide-eyed she watched the thin paneling of the door shake and splinter as the old man hurled his squat, powerful shoulder against it. Seconds later the door gave way and Eddie's father came into the room.
"What's going on in here?" he demanded.
Eddie writhed on the floor. "She-Pa, she bit me."
"By great, I guess she did."
Eddie's father shoved two blunt fingers into Ellen's mouth, one on either side, and pried it open. When he was free Eddie started rolling around on the floor, hanging onto his arm as though he had been shot.
"She asked me in here," Eddie blubbered. "And then lookit what she went and done."
The elder Trotta seemed to notice for the first time that Ellen was naked.
"You no-good whore," he spat. "Get your clothes on and get out of here."
No one spoke to her as she left the flat. Her Aunt Stella, who was talking to her husband, was saying that this is what a body got for taking a ass in off the streets.
She stayed with Madge for a year and a half, until Madge was arrested for taking money from the company where she worked. But during that time she found more with Madge than she had ever found with anybody else-until Al. Madge encouraged her to take dancing and singing lessons, paid for them, and, in some small way, tried to make out of Ellen what she herself would like to have been.
Six months after she moved in with Madge it happened. Strangely enough, she wasn't surprised nor, at the time, displeased by what occurred. They had been sleeping together in the same bed, both of them nude, and it was probably that which brought it on. Madge became her lover, completely and finally, and for the next year they lived together as such. When Madge was arrested and taken away she gave everything she had to Ellen, including the furniture which was later reclaimed by a finance company.
Ellen took a job in a diner, quitting school, and continued with her dancing and singing lessons.
"You've got a lot of talent," her teacher said. "Not a great talent, maybe, but one which will get you a job in one of the smaller clubs."
One night when she was reading the paper she saw the account about Eddie Trotta. He had been arrested for raping a fourteen-year-old girl, the daughter of one of the tenants in the building where the Trottas lived.
"She told me she was eighteen," Eddie was quoted as saying, "and she asked me into her room."
The police, the account stated, did not believe Eddie's story.
Nor did Ellen.
Look in the mirror, Ellen thought now; look in it carefully, beyond what is there, and see the truth. Remember that this wasn't the beginning, but only part of it. Remember the first club where you worked, the greasy hands of the owner, the little tights and bra that didn't cover anything. And remember one of the other girls, a dancer, and how it was love with her, too.
Look in the mirror.
Remember the first night that you knew it was wrong, that Eddie wasn't like all men, that love with another woman wasn't the way it should be. Remember quitting the club and running, of quitting other clubs and running again.
And remember Al.
Yes, remember Al; remember the first time you saw him. And don't forget his smile, the way it went down inside of you, staying there, making you grow up for the first time.
"You're pretty," Al said.
"I love you," Al said.
Two weeks after they met Al held her in his arms in a darkened bedroom and spoke with his mouth against her lips. "You won't be sorry," Al pleaded.
She wasn't. It was the most wonderful night of all, wiping out the memories of Eddie, of Madge, of all the others.
Look into the mirror again, she thought; be critical and be honest. Those memories aren't gone. Nothing is gone. It's still there inside of you, just as it was before. Only one thing is changed. Al is gone. You've lost Al.
"Al," she said aloud. "Oh, Al!"
She swung away from the mirror, crossed the room and picked up the phone.
"Room service. Good morning."
"This is Ellen Cassandra up on three. Would you send a bottle of rye up to my room, please?
There was a moment's silence. "Sorry, Miss Cassandra, but credit hasn't been established for your room. You'd have to pay the boy-"
"Never mind."
She replaced the phone and laughed a little hysterically. Maybe the mirror was wrong. Maybe it didn't reflect everything exactly the way it was. Maybe this, about Al, was the beginning.
Or the end.
CHAPTER VII
Reba felt so good that she went back to bed. Al had been everything she hoped him to be, and a little bit more. Her body still radiated a delicious ache from the way he had taken her. And no man had ever accomplished that before, this lingering aftermath which was almost as good as the act itself. None.
She closed her eyes, pressed her face into the pillow and tried to remember how it had been, every single touch of his hands and lips that had led her up to the completeness of being a woman. Her hands caressed her thighs, her hips, moving upward across the fire in her stomach to the still hardened cones of her breasts. Make him wait for it the next time, she thought; make him beg. Don't give yourself to him again until he has promised to do the one thing that he must do.
Her hands lifted to her face, pressed experimentally into the flesh and moved away. Her face was sore, there was no doubt about that. She hadn't noticed it when Al had been kissing her but there was plenty of hurt there now. The left side of her jaw throbbed and her left eye seemed to be puffed up, not as much as it had been, but still puffed. She smiled and the skin felt tight, dry. Curiously, she flexed the fingers of her right hand; they were stiff and sore, too. She was fortunate, she decided, that her hand wasn't swollen. She had battered hell out of her face the night before with that hand.
"You're out of your mind," Arnie had shouted at her that morning when she had accused him. "I've never hit you, not once."
"Well, you did last night. And more than once."
"You're lying!"
"Am I? How do you know? You were so damned drunk you didn't know what you were doing."
Drunk, Arnie was always drunk, that was the nice part about it. For all Arnie knew, or could prove, he could have stabbed her nine times with a butcher knife and then slit his own throat.
She rubbed at the soreness of her face, thoughtfully. It had required some courage on her part to mark up her own face this way. But it had been worth the effort and the suffering. The help, at breakfast, had looked at her and then at Arnie and they had drawn their own conclusions. He's got a temper, they'd say. He drinks all the time and he's got a dirty, rotten, nasty temper. Yes, that's what they'd say. He's got a temper-look what he did to his pretty wife, beat the devil out of her.
She smiled again and this time she didn't notice the stiffness or the discomfort around her mouth. Al believed it, too. And that was the important thing. Al believed it. Al hated Arnie's guts.
She arose from the bed and crossed the room to the dressing table. It wasn't necessary for her to remove the negligee-Al had seen to that. Al, she thought, searching for her bra, you're like a lot of men-the brains you're supposed to be carrying around in your head are all located somewhere else.
She picked up the bra and threw it down again. She didn't need a bra or anything else to keep out in front with the best of them. No, she wouldn't wear a bra. She'd put on that pink sweater, the one that had shrunk a little, and she'd let them bounce. She'd let them bounce around in front of Al until he saw them in his sleep. By the time she got finished with him he'd think they were more lively than those white balls they used on a movie screen for a community sing.
She did, however, put on a pair of black panties, not because she believed in panties but because she disliked the way that storekeeper was always beneath the back stairs, looking up at her, whenever she went up or down. Let him charge his batteries with one of the waitresses. If he was too stupid to do that he wasn't entitled to any free looks. The storekeeper of the year before had made a lot of the waitresses happy and he'd left a couple of them wishing that they'd stuck to eating green apples and gotten sick that way.
Hotel Haidee, she thought, as she wiggled into her skirt. She paused, laughing. Hotel Sex, that's what it was. Hotel Sex. You could retread a tire with the "safeties" lying around the outer edge of the golf course. That you could do. You could retread a tire and have enough left over for an inner tube.
She completed dressing-Lord, but the black stockings certainly looked good on her legs beneath the black skirt and examined her face in the mirror, paying special attention to her lips. Her lips were swollen, forming a questioning, provocative pout. Al, and not her fist, had done that. Al kissed with the urgency of a suction pump drawing silt up out of a swamp.
Al, she thought, reaching for the lipstick; Al, you're all finished. You're done. You're wrapped up like a Christmas package on its way to hell.
Several things annoyed Reba at the moment but one took preference over all others. Ellen, that little wop girl Al had dragged along with him. Miss Busters, Reba thought, whenever she considered the girl. Or Miss Cow. Miss Cow was probably better. Miss Cow, waiting to be impregnated and calfed.
She wished that she knew more about Al and the girl. Was she just a girl Al had picked up or was there something deeper than that? If it was something deeper it might complicate matters. But it couldn't be deeper. If it was, or anything close to that, Al wouldn't have come up to her room and done what he did. A man, Reba felt, did not cross lines if they were firm. A man did what he wanted to do only if the lines were weak or non-existent.
She walked through to the living room and picked up the phone. Paul Dempsey, on the desk, answered almost immediately.
"Paul, have you seen my husband?"
"No, Mrs. Cummings, I haven't,"
"Or my sister?"
"Mrs. Lavina? No, I haven't seen her, either."
"Damn them," she said, angrily. "I suppose they went into town again."
"I don't know, Mrs. Cummings."
She waited just long enough so that the pause would have its full effect.
"Paul," she said, this time making her voice sound weary, "would you send up some ice-for my face?"
"Yes, Mrs. Cummings. Right away."
"And let me know if you see Mr. Cummings-or my sister."
He said that he would and she thanked him. As she hung up she congratulated herself upon having created some of the background which would be necessary for the events that were to follow. And they would follow. Of that she was sure. This time there would be no turning back.
Why hadn't she thought of this before? Helen, dead, was the first and most desirable thing; but Arnie blamed for her death, and convicted of it, would make it doubly good. She would inherit Helen's trust fund and she would be rid of Arnie. What more could a girl wish for?
She glanced at the phone. She hadn't said that Arnie was running around with Helen but she had conveyed that impression. She hadn't said that Arnie had beaten her but she had, simply by the way in which she had talked to Dempsey, implanted that thought in the clerk's mind. Dempsey had a mouth as active as an old woman at a rummage sale and in less than an hour everybody who worked for the hotel would know that Arnie Cummings was running around with his sister-in-
law. Why hadn't she thought of this before?
Lighting a cigarette she walked to the window. As she stood there looking out she failed to see the swimmers on the beach or the white sails of boats racing along the north end of the lake. All she could see was money. Piles of money. Helen's money. No, not Helen's money, not all of it. Part of it was morally hers, no matter what her father had decided.
It's his fault, she thought; it's the old man's fault that Helen is going to die. He laid the pattern when he signed that will, just as surely as though he'd plotted Helen's death.
She turned, moodily, from the window and walked across the room. She didn't know how Helen would be killed; that would be up to Al. Al would have to plan and execute the killing, do it in such a way that Arnie would be blamed. She didn't care where or how it was done as long as it was done. As his reward, Al would get half of the money-and her body. What more could any man ask? Money and her body, both highly usable.
The phone rang and she answered it.
"Yes?"
"This is Dempsey, Mrs. Cummings. Mrs. Lavina and Mr. Cummings just came in. Mr. Lavina was with them."
"Thank you, Paul."
"I-I forgot about the ice, Mrs. Cummings."
She smiled. "That's all right. Never mind about it now."
She replaced the phone and took a long drag on the cigarette. It was even better than she had thought. Dempsey hadn't forgotten about the ice; he'd been so busy talking that he hadn't gotten around to ordering it. She could just imagine some of the talk that had been going on.
"Isn't it a shame, that no-good bastard doing that to his wife? And her the one who's holding things together around here."
"I always said that Lavina woman had the hots. Why, you can tell, just by looking at her, that she'd start a fire in the nearest bed."
"Yeah? Well, you just wait until the redhead hears about this. And she thought she had him all to herself."
"I'll bet she's got more than that to herself. Must be some reason she's wearing a girdle lately. Trying to hide something, you can be damned sure."
"Boy, have I got a scoop! Cummings has got that Helen Lavina knocked up higher than a kite. They said he and his wife had a hell of a row and..."
Gossip. Hotel gossip, growing like a mushroom in a human forest of sex and slime. Gossip that would grow bigger as the story was told, repeated and then re-told by the same people all over again. By the time the police became interested in the Hotel Haidee nobody would be able to decipher the difference between fact and fiction.
Arnie came in a few minutes later and she gave him no opportunity to get settled.
"You get your stuff together and get out of here," she stormed. "If you think you're going to clout me around again you've got another think coming."
Another plant, them living apart. It was perfect.
"Now, look here," Arnie protested. "You climbed all over me this morning and you're at it again. Hell, I never clipped you, Reba."
"Oh, no? Do you think I got these marks from scrubbing my face too hard?"
Arnie sat down on the davenport and stretched out his legs.
"It's time we had a talk," he said. "And a long one. Right now, I feel just in the mood for it."
"Well, I don't."
He ignored her. "You've been running this show long enough. Ever since I can remember you've had your way. I'm getting sick of it. Let's sell the hotel."
"What?"
"I said, let's sell it."
He had said the same thing before, many times. Occasionally she had been tempted to agree with him. Only Mr. Fleming, at the bank, said they wouldn't get a great deal out of it, considering the size of the mortgage. Actually, the bank would be glad to see the property sold since the board of directors no longer felt the loan a desirable one. Some of the strange people who inhabited the premises were not, it would seem, understood by the powers who were in control of the bank's policies.
"Go to hell," Reba told Arnie.
"You always say that."
"And I always mean it."
"I don't know why we can't get along."
"I do. You drink too stinking much."
"You drink plenty, yourself."
"Maybe I do. But I don't go around busting you in the mouth every time I do."
"Reba, I didn't!"
She walked over to him and tilted her head at a saucy angle. "Take a look! Take a look!" He wet his lips with his tongue. "If I did-"
"You did!"
"-I don't remember it."
"You never remember anything."
He stared up at her, his eyes confused. Finally, he let out a long breath and shrugged his shoulders.
"If I did," he said, almost convinced, "I'm sorry as hell. Honest I am, Reba. I got going with Helen and Ted and you know how it winds up with me. If I'm going to start doing things like that I ought to quit drinking."
That was a laugh but it was what she wanted him to say. Whenever Arnie toyed with the possibility of getting off the booze he started drinking worse than ever. Once he had quit for a day and then he had been plastered for a whole week. Of course his continual drinking wasn't absolutely necessary to her plans but it might help convince the police that Arnie was capable of doing anything.
"I don't want to talk about it," she told him, returning to the window. "You get your stuff and get out of here. That's all I want."
"But, Reba-"
"You heard me. Shut up!"
He sighed and got to his feet. "All right, if that's the way it is, then that's the way it is. Only you're wrong, dead wrong. I don't care what you say, I-"
"Shut up, Arnie."
She watched him, her lips curling, as he walked through to the bedroom. He tried to walk very straight, his shoulders back. She wondered if he would walk that straight when he was on his way to the gas chamber, or the electric chair, or wherever it was they sent people who killed somebody else. She guessed that he wouldn't.
He halted and spoke over his shoulder. "Look here, Reba
"I said, shut up!"
"Sure," he agreed, wearily. "Sure."
She listened while he packed. Every sound was a forward movement, a step in the right direction. She had gotten rid of him easily. From now on all she had to do was concentrate on Al.
Al, she thought dreamily, glancing out of the window again; Al, you're going to be so jazzed up that you won't know your left foot from your right. Al, you're going to do it, alone, with nobody to help you. You see if you don't, Al.
Just see if you don't.
CHAPTER VIII
Al checked over the chef's meat order twice and then threw it aside. He didn't know whether it was right or wrong, too much or too little. What difference did it make, anyway?
He leaned back in the swivel chair behind the desk in his office and closed his eyes. God, where was he going? What was happening to him?
Subconsciously, he put one hand down to his belly, rubbing the spot where the native in Casablanca had intended to stick the knife. But he wasn't thinking of the native. He was thinking of Sonia-and of the girl upstairs. In two very distinct ways they were similar. Both of them meant trouble, bad trouble, and both of them had plenty of the one thing that would make a man forget trouble.
In spite of his concern a tight, thin smile tugged at his lips. His body was still tingling, still alive from what had happened up there in the bedroom. So what trouble was there in it for him if her husband wouldn't take care of her and she wanted to get somebody else into the act? That might be putting it rather bluntly but that's the way Al saw it. Reba's husband was a jerk, a drunken fool, and anything he had left over he gave to the redhead. Al's smile widened. Arnie was still a fool; he wasn't giving the redhead everything she was getting. A half a dozen other guys in the hotel were giving it to her, too. Only if something happened Arnie would be the guy who was caught. He'd be caught and hung up in the air good.
Al slowly relaxed and lit a cigarette. It was a waste of time to worry about Arnie; Arnie would have to take care of himself.
Worry about yourself, Al thought; worry about yourself, mister, before you get jammed up worse than a juke box with a phony quarter.
He sat forward, trying to dismiss the thought, and examined the chef's meat order again. Why don't we have the stuff delivered out here, he wondered; why does somebody always have to go into town for it? But he knew the answer to that It was a smart trick in the resort business to pick up your own meat in town. If you had it delivered to the back door you never knew what you were charged for. A dishonest chef, working with a dishonest supplier, could bust your back by the middle of the season. No, it was better this way. Better and safer. But it was a nuisance.
Folding the meat list he stuffed it into his shirt pocket. Why kid himself? He was damned glad to have an excuse to go into town, to get away from the hotel for a little while. He had to think. Christ, but he had to think.
He stood up and kicked the chair in against the desk. Think? What was there to think about? This wasn't French Morocco where some crazy guy would try to gut you just because you'd accepted the opportunity of giving his wife a little fun on the side. This was the States, where the wife did what she wanted with whomever she wanted to do it. The country with the eternal triangle. And it wasn't dangerous, not dangerous at all. You gave the wife her pleasure as long as she sought it and then you left her alone. It was no more dangerous nor complicated than that.
The office door opened and Paul Dempsey came in. He came into the office about this same time every day. Al seldom bothered to look at the clerk. Dempsey, though he tried to avoid it, always simpered and Al hated people who simpered.
"Are you going into town this morning, Mr. Evans?"
"Yeah."
"Fine. I'll have the bank deposit ready for you."
"Okay. Leave it on my desk and I'll pick it up on the way out."
He walked past Dempsey and through the little hall behind the reservation desk to the lobby.
"Let Mrs. Cummings know," Al said over his shoulder. "She might start looking for me."
Up in his room he shaved and then showered. While he was under the shower he turned it on full, first hot and then cold, trying to drive that feeling from his body. But he couldn't. It was still there, gnawing at his insides, as he pulled on slacks and sport shirt. There was no use fighting it, futile to deny it. He had had her once and he wanted her again. He wanted her again and again so much that he couldn't think of anything else. But not up in her room; that was too risky. Perhaps when they drove to New York, looking for entertainment, they'd be able to stay overnight. That was it, stay overnight. Get a hotel room, a bottle of liquor and really jazz it up.
Somebody knocked on his bedroom door.
"Come in!" he shouted.
It was Ellen and he could tell, even before she spoke, that she was checking out of the hotel. Every time she readied herself to travel she wore the black, close fitting dress that did more for her curves than any other dress she owned. "Hi," Al said.
She closed the door and stood with her back up against it. "Al, I've got to talk to you."
He sat down on the bed and began tying his shoes. "Go ahead."
"Al, I've never asked you for anything unreasonable before. You know that, don't you."
"Yes."
"And I wouldn't ask you now only there isn't anybody else to ask and I have to."
He tied his shoe, untied it and began tying it again. "I'm listening."
"You remember when you got back, Al. Off the boat. You didn't have anything and-
Al, there was that fifty dollars I'd saved. I-it was for us, Al."
He recalled the fifty dollars and how quickly it had gone. One day? Two days? That part he had forgotten.
"Go on."
"Well-" Her voice was small, weak. "Al, I can't stay here any longer. I can't! I hate this place. I-Al, I'm leaving this morning."
"You're a fool," Al said, defending himself more than he was defending the hotel. "Not a fool," he said, tempering his observation, "but foolish. You don't have anywhere to go."
"I'll find a job."
"I could give you something to do here."
"No, thanks."
He stood up, hunching his shoulders. He didn't want to argue with her. Something that had belonged to them was dying, or it had died. Regardless of whatever else it was he had, the death of what they had known together wasn't pleasant.
"You want the fifty dollars," he said.
She nodded, closing her eyes a little as she did so.
"I wouldn't ask unless I had to, Al. I wouldn't."
"That's all right." He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. "It's yours. It belongs to you."
She accepted the money and folded it into a tight little square.
"I wish it hadn't happened," she said, huskily. "I wish."
"I know. Syracuse. Somewhere else. Something different. But-it isn't like that, Ellen. I tried to tell you. I get two hundred and fifty bucks a week here, every week, and I just can't throw it away."
"She's buying you."
"Maybe." It was a good thought, one which he had entertained himself. Few resort managers were paid so much a week and not all of them were offered an extra bonus that was collected in bed. "Maybe."
"She'll ruin you, Al."
"Nobody's going to ruin me," Al said, crossly. "Get that out of your head. I'm just taking what I can get as long as I can get it."
Ellen opened the door. "I hope, for your sake, that you're only talking about the money."
She went out and closed the door behind her. Al stood in the center of the room staring at the door. The feeling which he experienced was a strange mixture of pity and disgust. He hadn't even asked her where she was going, what she was going to do. He'd simply given her the fifty dollars and watched her go. Just like that.
Perhaps she would return to Syracuse and to that little club where he had first met her. He didn't know what it was about Syracuse that she liked so much, unless it was because it was a clean city, a friendly city.
The club had been friendly, too, not large but small and intimate, the lighting soft. He had been at the bar but when she had started to sing he'd turned around.
"A kid," the bartender had said. "A sweet kid."
She'd been wearing a long, red gown that clung to every part of her body. Al hadn't been able to take his eyes away from her. And, later, when she had come out to do a little dance in a very brief costume, he had been even more impressed. You've got to have some of that, he'd told himself; you won't have lived until you've had some of that. A few nights later she had given it to him and he'd been getting it ever since. Until now. Now it was done. Finished.
He left the room and started down the stairs. He walked slowly, still remembering, trying to forget. A lot of things died. People died. Kids died. Hopes died. Plans died. And, not infrequently, love died. It was hard to explain, this thing that happened to love. You held a woman in your arms, a willing woman who wanted you to possess and own every secret thrill of her body. You held her not once but a hundred times, in a hundred different ways, in a hundred different places. It was almost as though it would never end, that it would always be this way. And then, not even meaning for it to happen, you found something else, or like it was with him now, something else and somebody else. Money and another woman. Either one or the other might be enough but the two, together, created an invitation which a man couldn't resist.
Part way down the stairs he stopped and stood very still. Sweat stood out on his forehead and he could feel it running down his back, soaking into the sports shirt at the belt line.
Be sensible about this, he told himself; don't be a damned fool. Ellen is right. She was right when you went to North Africa; she told you that it would never work out. And she's right now. She's so right that your guts twist and churn just from knowing it.
He walked along the second floor hall to the Cummings apartment. His hand trembled as he knocked.
"Who is it?"
"Al."
"Oh, Al. Come in."
He entered the room and she moved toward him. The front of her sweater was alive, lifting up and down with every step she took.
"You shouldn't have come here," she said.
"Why not?"
She stopped close to him. "Arnie and I had a heck of a row and he moved out. I don't want any more trouble."
"I see."
She smiled, her lips full. "We've got other rooms in the hotel, Al," she told him, softly.
His throat was dry. "I'm driving into town. Anything you need?"
She pulled his head down and kissed him on the mouth. "You might stop at a drugstore and get-"
He jerked his head away from her. "I'm quitting," Al said. The two words, now that they were out, made him feel stronger. "I'll stay on to the end of the week. That'll give you a chance to get someone else."
Her eyes were cloudy. "But-why?"
"You know my record. Do I have to have a reason?"
"No, I guess not."
He reached for a cigarette but he didn't light it. "Like I said, I'm going into town. Is there anything you need."
"Pick up the meat and groceries."
"That's why I'm going."
"And make a deposit at the bank."
"I figured on doing that, too. Dempsey's leaving it in my office."
"Then there isn't anything else." Her warm fingers touched his arm, squeezed it. "Unless you change your mind, AL that's the only thing I need right now."
He stepped out into the hall. "I won't," he said.
It was closer to the kitchen by the back way so he used the rear stairs. The steps were unpainted and made a great deal of noise.
He went over the list with the chef again but the chef said nothing had been left out. He was a small man, nervous appearing, and he kept looking into a pot of soup all the while he was talking to Al. It was a dead time of the day, just before noon, and most of the waitresses sat at the help's table drinking coffee, and talking. The girls were young, most of them rather pretty. They wore thin nylon uniforms, white, and he could see the straps of their bras underneath. Reba had selected the girls carefully, keeping in mind the requirements of the hotel, and all of the bras were jammed to the tops with ripe young flesh. One, a blonde, looked as though she were wearing falsies, she was so pointed and far apart in front. But Al knew they weren't false. He had seen her down at the beach one afternoon, bending over, and everything she carried around under her uniform belonged to her. She smiled at him now, as he passed the table, and he returned the smile. It paid to be friendly. A guy never knew when he might get hard up.
Pete Addison wasn't in the storeroom or, if he was, he wasn't answering the door. Al lingered a few minutes, grinned and departed. If there was one thing Pete liked better than sitting around doing nothing it was laying around doing something with one of the girls. Pete had an old army cot in the storeroom and it was claimed by some that the cot got more use than any two beds in the hotel.
He passed through the now crowded lobby and entered his office. The heavy brown envelope meant for the bank was on his desk and he picked it up. Without looking into the envelope he turned around, entered the narrow hall and started past the desk.
"Oh, Mr. Evans," Paul Dempsey called to him. "I'm glad I caught you before you got away."
"Yes?"
"Mrs. Lavina wondered if she could ride into town with you."
"I thought she went in earlier."
"She did, but she forgot to bring her bathing suit and she'd like to get one. She's-" Paul lowered his voice. "She's a swimming addict, she really is. You've got no idea the time that woman spends in the water. Why-"
"Sure," Al said. "Tell her to meet me out front near the wagon."
He took a step away from the desk, then halted.
"Get me Miss Cassandra on the phone," he told Dempsey.
"I can't. She already left."
"What?"
"She turned in her key. A cab came out from town for her."
"Oh."
Outside, Al sat in the Ford station wagon and waited for Helen Lavina. Why did somebody always have to hold a guy up when he was in a hurry? If he could get into Rose's Point he might be able to catch Ellen at the railroad station or the bus terminal. God dammit, why did somebody always...
"Hello, Al. Keep you long?"
Helen Lavina opened the door and slid in beside him. Her perfume was expensive and thick and it filled the car. "No. That's okay."
He started the Ford, backed out of the parking area and swung down the drive toward the highway. When he got to the intersection he stopped the car and waited for a milk tanker and a couple of other cars.
She wore a brown dress that hugged her ample body in all the right spots. She wasn't as big around the bust as her sister, and a lot smaller than Ellen in the same area, but she was all woman and there was no mistaking that. The dress was short, up over her knees, and he was still looking at her legs long after the last car went by. She had one hell of a pair of legs all right; big, soft calfs and smooth, trim ankles.
"The road's clear," she said.
He swung the Ford onto the highway and let it climb to fifty.
"Dempsey tells me you do a lot of swimming," Al said. "Yes. I love it. Don't you."
"Well, it's okay." . "But I don't suppose you have much time."
"No, not much." They rode a while in silence.
T think Reba was very lucky to get someone like you,"
Helen Lavina said. "It takes a peculiar knack to run a summer resort."
"Thanks."
She laughed, as though she had just discovered a huge joke. "I didn't mean 'peculiar' quite the way it sounded."
"No, I know you didn't."
"But, Al, I hope-Al, some of those people who come to the hotel give me the creeps. They really do. It doesn't have to be that way. It used to be a nice place."
The hotel had everything, Al thought; a convenient location, good swimming, fine golf course, not to mention the tennis courts or the rest of it. Helen knew what she was talking about. Hotel Haidee could draw a good clientele, not just a bunch of animals who walked around in clothes.
"It could be all right," he admitted.
What was he wasting his breath for? In a few days he would be out of it and gone.
"You could make it all right," she said. "A man like you, Al-well, Reba will listen to you, Al. She won't listen to me or to Ted or Arnie, even when Arnie's sober."
"Which isn't very often."
"No." She leaned back and the hem of her dress rode up a trifle higher. Al hoped he'd be able to keep his eyes on the road. "But I feel sorry for Arnie, just the same. I've always felt sorry for Arnie. It's a tough blow for anybody when a thing like that happens."
"I didn't know anything happened."
"Probably you didn't. Arnie never talks about it and I doubt if Reba would tell you. Maybe I shouldn't either, A."
"Then don't."
She looked out of the window, at the fields beyond, and then back at Al. He had to stop counting the inches between her exposed knees and thighs.
"But I should, Al. I think I should. The way it is, you'll think Arnie's just a slob who doesn't know enough to stop drinking and you'll think Reba's hard and brittle. Well, she is-harder than I am, or ever was. But maybe if I'd lost a baby I'd have become that way, too."
Al was astounded. "She lost a kid?"
"The second year of their marriage. A boy. He was six months old. He smothered to death in his crib."
"Oh, no."
"Nobody ever blamed either Arnie or Reba for it but I know they blamed themselves. It was one of the things that helped to hasten the death of my father. He was wrapped up in that baby. As soon as that happened my father didn't care anymore, he just didn't care. And when Arnie started drinking he even overlooked that." Her tone became slightly bitter. "But he disliked Ted. Nothing Ted ever did or said was right. I've often wished that he'd lived long enough to see the difference in the two men."
Al said nothing. Somehow, Al wasn't surprised about the tragedy. There was something deep about both Arnie and Reba-a cruel deepness which he hadn't understood. Perhaps this was it. Surely, it was enough. A lot of people changed for lesser reasons.
"Reba never wanted the baby," Helen was saying. "Oh, I don't mean that she didn't want him, ever, but she was upset because it was so soon. She was ashamed of herself, of the way she looked when she was carrying him, and she wouldn't go out hardly at all. But after Haidee died-"
"Haidee?"
"Yes. My father changed the name of the hotel for him. He thought it was a nice name, though I never told him that it wasn't a boy's name. Haidee was a beautiful Greek girl in Byron's Don Juan."
"Well, what do you know?" Al breathed. "What do you know?"
She turned on the seat, facing him, and the skirt rode up a little higher.
"Don't tell either one of them that I told you, Al."
"I won't."
"It's only because I thought you should understand. They're not easy to take if you don't."
"No."
He drove on into town and let Helen off at a ladies shop on Center Street, saying that he would pick her up in about an hour.
After he left Helen he continued on to the railroad station but he didn't see anything of Ellen.
"We ain't sold a ticket to Syracuse in over a month," the man at the ticket window said. "I'd remember it if I did."
It was the same story at the bus terminal. No Ellen. Nothing-He was at the wholesalers about half an hour and then, the back of the wagon loaded with cartons, he rode down to the bank.
"I don't know how much is in there," he said, pushing the envelope across the counter to the teller. "But whatever you come up with is okay with me."
Al lit a cigarette and watched a woman come in through the front entrance. The sun was to her back, very bright, and she wasn't wearing any slip beneath the thin summer dress. He could see her legs, all the way up to where there weren't any legs. They were nice legs, long and shapely and above them she was even better. She looked like a singer, or a doctor's wife, or somebody with plenty of dough.
"Mr. Evans?" the teller said.
"Yeah," Al replied, still watching the legs.
"There isn't anything in here. Mr. Evans. Only a deposit slip for eleven hundred and forty-two dollars." The teller hesitated. "And eighty-one cents."
"What!"
"The envelope is empty, Mr. Evans."
Al forgot about the girl and her legs. He leaned forward, across the counter, and stared at the envelope in the teller's hands. There was no use arguing the point-it was as empty as a blind man's cup at four o'clock in the morning.
"There must be some mistake, Mr. Evans."
"Yeah, I guess there is."
The teller smiled apologetically, as though he were sorry for Al, the bank and anybody else-in the civilized world who might require his sympathy.
"I'll bet you brought the wrong envelope, Mr. Evans."
"I did something all right." But he hadn't. There was only one envelope and it was used exclusively for bank deposits, except on Monday when the change was banked, too, and Dempsey put everything in a cloth bag. "I sure as hell did."
He barely remembered leaving the bank or walking down the street to the parked station wagon. He was responsible for the money and some son-of-a-bitch had lifted it. Somebody had gone past Dempsey's desk, while he'd been upstairs or out in the kitchen, and they'd taken every dime of it Every stinking dime. Even the eighty-one cents.
He could have laughed and he could have cried. Eighty-one cents. The dirty, stealing bastard.
He opened the door of the station wagon, then slammed it shut and walked down to the drugstore on the corner. He had to know now, not after he got back to the hotel. Now.
Dempsey answered the phone. Dempsey had a good telephone voice; he sounded like a man and not a half-baked queer who simpered through life.
"Paul, this is Mr. Evans."
"Yes, Mr. Evans!"
"Paul, this may sound a little strange but there's something I want to know. This morning, after I went upstairs, who went into my office."
"Well, I did, Mr. Evans."
"When you put the bank deposit on my desk?"
"Yes; that's right."
"Anybody else?"
"No, Mr. Evans, nobody else."
"Are you sure?"
"I-oh, of course, I'm sure. How I know is that Mr. and Mrs. Johnson were checking out and there was some trouble with them over their bill. They thought that orange juice delivered to their room-to their room, mind you-well, never mind. They thought they shouldn't have to pay for it, seeing as they came down to breakfast. So I was right here at the desk all the time, Mr. Evans, arguing with them."
"And no one went into my office?"
"No, sir. No one."
Al thanked Dempsey and hung up. His face was white, his lips quivering, as he departed from the drugstore. What a miserable thing to have happen.
Back in the car he sat staring into the hot afternoon sunlight. Twelve hundred bucks. Shot. Gone.
He closed his eyes and tried to think about it. Dempsey hadn't lied, of that he was sure. Dempsey was too scared of his job to lie. No, no one had gone past his desk. Somebody had come in through the open window, emptied the envelope and gone out the same way. It was the only way it could have happened.
Cursing, Al slammed his fist against the steering wheel. Pain shot all the way to his elbow and a small fountain of blood began pouring from one kunckle. Thoughtfully, he put the knuckle in his mouth and began sucking the blood.
It was hell. Hell! No matter which way he turned, or how he thought, it was hell. Dempsey had put that money in there on the desk and as far as anybody knew he, Al, had left the hotel with it. Even the cops wouldn't have any difficulty figuring out that a guy who had quit his job just a few minutes before might have decided to make off with a little something extra for his services.
Al cursed violently and slammed his fist against the steering wheel again. Nothing was right. Nothing ever went right. First Ellen and now this. And after this...
Sweat ran down from his forehead and crept into the corners of his eyes, burning. After this there was only one thing he could do. He had to stick with the hotel, if Reba would let him, and he had to find out who had taken that money, if he could. Ellen would have to wait. Everything would have to wait.
Things, Al decided as he started the car, were in a miserable mess.
CHAPTER IX
Reba sat on the cot in the storeroom, watching Pete Addison who sat a few feet opposite on a case of number ten tomatoes.
"You're making a mistake, Pete," she said. "A very big mistake. You can get yourself into all kinds of difficulties for doing what you're doing."
Pete's handsome face was unworried. "Well, it won't be the first time and I'll put dollars on it that it won't be the last. You take out of this little old world whatever you can get your hands on."
"Not always."
"No, not always. But this isn't not always. This is one of the times that you do."
Reba didn't know how long she had been there in the storeroom. Maybe forty-five minutes. Perhaps an hour. She was getting a trifle tired of Pete and his talk.
"You'll be sorry, Pete."
"That's for me to judge, Mrs. Cummings."
"Or for me."
If Pete had been inside of the building, tending to his work, or if she hadn't hooked her skirt over that nail in the windowsill, none of this would have happened. But Pete had been outside, right there where he could see her, and she had gotten herself hung up on that nail like a horse with a broken leg.
"There must have been some reason you were coming out of that window with that dough in your hands," Pete said for at least the tenth time. "What was it, Mrs. Cummings?"
"None of your business."
He grinned. "Everything that goes on around here is my business. You said that yourself, when you hired me. You said if I ever saw anything funny going on I should come to you and tell you about it. So I saw something funny. But I'm not telling you. I'm asking you, Mrs. Cummings."
At first, when he had helped her down from the windowsill, she had thanked him because she had thought he was only being helpful. Even the way he had looked at her thigh, revealed by the long rip in the skirt, hadn't bothered her any.
"What I do around here is my affair." she said.
"If that's so, then how come you're down here in the storeroom with me? You didn't have to come just because I asked you."
She smiled at him, sweetly she hoped. "That's also my affair, Pete."
He dug in his shirt pocket for another cigarette. "I won't buy that, Mrs. Cummings."
"Then, don't."
"You had some reason for coming out of that window."
"The door was locked."
"That's easy enough to find out."
She sighed and looked away from Pete. She had played it foolishly, very foolishly, but there hadn't been any other way. Dempsey had been at the desk, talking with that couple, and she hadn't been able to get into the office without being seen. Climbing in through that window had been easy enough but getting caught on that nail had really twisted things up. All that had to happen now was for Pete to let it be known that he had discovered her with the money in her hand and her plan would be ruined. As it stood now, it would appear that Al had taken the money and that might force him to stay on at the hotel. It would also provide her with a weapon that she could use against him later on.
"What do you want, Pete?"
His glance traveled down over her sweater, not hurrying, and fastened at a point just above the rip in her skirt. "You know what I want."
"Don't be a fool!"
"Don't you be a fool, Mrs. Cummings. I've been watching you ever since I've been here at the hotel and I haven't seen you come out of no windows before. I've sort of got the idea that you're trying to put somebody in a bad spot. I don't know why but that's the way it strikes me."
"And why would I do that?"
"I just said I didn't know. But you were coming out of the manager's office with that money. You take that money, it turns up missing and there's only one person who could be blamed for it. Al Evans."
Storekeepers ought to be dumb, she thought; or, anyway, they ought to stay in the storeroom where they belonged.
"I have no reason to hurt Mr. Evans."
"Maybe you do, Mrs. Cummings. Maybe you do."
There was no use of prolonging the situation; first, she had gotten herself hung up on that nail and now she was hung up on him. She might as well admit that fact and take it from there.
"Just what do you want, Pete."
"I told you what I want."
"No, you didn't. For all I know, you want some money."
"Are you kidding."
"I'm not kidding."
He arose from the carton of tomatoes, stretching his arms over his head and gave her a long, knowing wink.
"Money doesn't interest me, Mrs. Cummings. You do."
"Me?"
His eyes darkened. "Aw, come off it, will you? Stop horsing around. We're not a couple of kids. You know the kind of a hotel you're running here. Why else do you suppose I came up here looking for a job?"
"I guess I thought you needed the money."
"Get your mind off of money for once. Money a guy can pick up anywheres. Hell, I've had hotel jobs that pay half again as much as I get here. No, it isn't the money. The money doesn't have anything to do with it. A guy built the way I am has to have something besides money. Something that's even better than money. Maybe now, Mrs. Cummings, you know what I'm talking about."
She did. "I'm afraid I don't," she said, teasing him. "Almost everybody I know says that money is the most important thing."
He came across the short space and stood towering above her.
"That's a lot of crap. You ask any one of the waitresses upstairs and see what they tell you."
"I wouldn't say that was everybody."
"Or those secretaries, the ones who run around to all the rooms. You think anybody is fooled by that gimmick? Hell, they're selling just one thing and we both know it. Sell it? What am I saying? Some of them like it so well they come right down here and give it away."
"Now you're being vulgar."
He shook his head. "No, I'm not, either. I'm calling it the way it is. This hotel is sex from one end to the other. I can name you four waitresses who go steady with each other and there isn't a bus boy in the place who'd look at a dame. Who are you trying to kid, Mrs. Cummings?"
"I'm not trying to kid anybody," she replied. "Those things happen sometimes and you can't control them. But they don't have anything to do with us."
He sat down beside her and the crossed wooden legs of the cot squeaked.
"It's got plenty to do with us. Plenty. The day I came up here and you hired me-
do you remember how you were dressed that day? Black blouse, tight jeans-
everything tight. And not a thing on under that blouse. I could tell. You came out of the office, toward the desk, and my head was bobbing up and down like a cork. You don't remember that, do you? Well, remember it. I haven't forgot it for one second since that time. Maybe that's why I didn't think of asking for any more money. I wasn't thinking of money, just one thing. And I'm still thinking about it. You know what it is, Mrs. Cummings. You got it. You've got it just the way I want it."
"Take your hands off of me!"
But he didn't. His right arm was around her shoulders and his left hand was at the front of her sweater, trying to get up inside. She pulled his hand away but it returned again, pawing at her.
"Say," she demanded, "Just what do you think you're doing?"
He laughed and tried to kiss her on the neck but she avoided his mouth. "I'll give you one guess, Mrs. Cummings. You don't need no more than that."
She struggled loose from him and stood up.
"I get it," she said, moving away from him. "I get it."
He leered at her as he followed her across the storeroom.
"You'll get it," he said.
This was crazy, she thought; all wrong. If she permitted him to blackmail her into having relations with him she could never be safe, never be sure. But if she could make him think that she was doing it for no other reason except that she liked him there might be a good chance that he would never mention the incident.
She turned, facing him, drawing her body up so that he couldn't miss one thing that she had.
"I want it," she said, smiling at him.
He stopped dead still, looking he her, his lips slightly parted.
"You-what?"
"I said, I want it. From you," she added, driving it into him good and deep. "Why else would I be here?" He filled his lungs with air and it came out in a rush.
"Then it wasn't-"
"Look," she said, gripping the bottom of the sweater with both hands. "Do you think you could force me to come in here unless I wanted to?" She laughed at him. "I own part of this hotel, Pete. If I want to climb in and out of windows, who's going to stop me? And if I want to take money-money that's mine, anyway-
who's to tell me not to?"
Pete's face was confused. "I'll level with you," Pete said, spreading his hands wide. "You've really shook me up."
She brought the bottom of the sweater up just a little way, holding it there so he could see the pink flesh that she was offering him.
"And I'll shake you some more. Pete. You told me what you thought, the first day you came up here, and how did you know that I didn't think the same? You've seen my husband. You've seen what a drunken slob he is. Do you think I ever have any fun with him?"
Pete, whose glance was riveted on the bare spot between her skirt and sweater, wet his lips with his tongue.
"He must be nuts," Pete decided.
"They say he found something he liked better."
"He's still nuts. How can he like anything else better?"
She elevated the sweater, keeping it just below her breasts, giving him a view that caused his eyes to fly open.
"I'm human too," she said, softly. "I like men. And-Pete, from what they tell me, you're quite a man." She started toward him, her hips swaying, her thigh poking out at him from the rip of her skirt. "But, Pete, I don't believe everything I hear. You'll have to show me, Pete. You'll have to show me just how good you really are."
She paused in front of him, still smiling, her head thrown far back.
"Get out of your clothes, Pete," she commanded. "What!"
She fingered the sweater, teasing him as she threatened to yank it up over her head.
"Your clothes, Pete. Get out of them and stop making me wait."
"But-"
"Don't you want to, Pete?" she murmured.
He nodded, unable to speak, and began fumbling with his clothes. Watching him, she had the sudden urge to laugh at him. A man looked so comical, so embarrassed, when he undressed in front of a girl. Yet the man expected the girl to take off most of her clothes. It didn't seem fair.
She threw the sweater aside and unzipped the skirt. Pete, who was now seated upon the cot in his shorts, seemed to forget about what he was supposed to be doing.
"I was right," he said, thickly. "You don't wear any bra."
She lifted her hands and cupped her breasts suggestively.
"Do you think I need one?"
"Hell, no!"
"Neither do I. Some girls call them their treasures. I call them my pleasures."
"They sure look it."
Her hands lingered over the skirt. "Come on," she said. "I haven't got all day."
"I sure wished you did have."
She slid out of her panties and skirt at the same time. She felt no shame. It was like going to the bank with an armful of money-you never had to be ashamed about how much you had.
"I'm ready," Pete said, unsteadily. Her eyes found him. "So I see."
"And I see you're no phony blonde."
"You see a lot of things."
She went to him and his arms encircled her. Still standing she felt his face against her, sensed the growing anticipation of his hot, searching lips. The pressure of his arms increased and her back arched. A terrible need gripped her way down deep, inside.
"Pete," she managed. "Pete!"
Slowly, ever so slowly, he came off the cot and fell upon his knees before her. "Pete!"
She knew then why so many of the girls came to the storeroom. Pete, in his own way, was quite a man.
Later, near the middle of the afternoon, she returned to her rooms on the second floor. As soon as she had showered and changed she called Dempsey at the desk and asked to speak to Ellen Cassandra.
"She isn't here," Dempsey said. "She left this morning."
"You mean, she's gone?"
"Yes, she's gone."
"Well, thanks."
She fixed a long drink of rye, using some water from the tap in the bathroom, and sat down on the bed to think. So that was why Al had quit-he was going to follow that little bitch. How lucky it was she had struck upon that plan of taking the money. Al wouldn't be so cocky anymore. Al wouldn't be cocky at all.
But it isn't any good, she told herself; it's twice as bad as it was before. With the girl gone Al would be panting to chase after her. If he was at all disturbed about the loss of the money-and there was no doubt that he would be-
he'd get it somewhere, somehow and then he would be gone. And she couldn't let that happen, not after she had gone to all this trouble. She had to have Al. No, she couldn't permit anything to go wrong, not now. She needed Al for a tool, a great big, hard tool that she could do with as she pleased. The thought, for some reason, amused her and it made her think of Pete Addison. Pete would do it for her, she could get Pete to do anything for her. Hadn't Pete said that she had the nicest, fullest lips, the best body in the entire hotel? Only Pete wasn't a man. Pete was a lot short of being a man.
Reba wished she knew more about Ellen but she didn't She had tried a couple of times, unsuccessfully, to become friendly with the girl but she had found Ellen to be both cautious and aloof. She was sorry now that she hadn't tried harder, that she had let the opportunity pass.
While she was on her third drink Reba tried to reason out what she would do if she were Ellen. Oh, if she had plenty of money she'd get the hell away from Rose's Point and live it up a little. But supposing she was busted, or nearly broke, what would she do then? Yes, that was the thing-what would she do then?
Al had said that Ellen sang some, danced a little and had, upon occasion, waited on tables. That made her ideal resort material and there were more resort hotels in the immediate vicinity than anywhere else except with the possible inclusion of Monticello and Liberty. It would be easy for a girl to get a job and pick up a few bucks. And how did a girl get a job? Well, she could go around to the hotels but she needed transportation to do that and Ellen didn't have a car. Her best bet would be to register with an employment agency and let them take care of the details. And there was only one private agency in town, the Tri-State Agency. Of course, the state had an office in Rose's Point, too, but anybody who wanted action was a sucker to go there. Half the time, even when they had a call for a job and an applicant to fill it, they didn't wake up to the fact until the season was just about over.
As soon as she finished her drink Reba picked up the phone, got the desk and asked for the outside line. In a matter of moments she was speaking with Miss Ford at the Tri-State Agency.
"This is Mrs. Cummings. Out at Hotel Haidee. Perhaps you can help me."
"Well, we'll certainly try, Mrs. Cummings."
"By the way, the manager I got from you is a very good man."
"I'm glad to hear that, Mrs. Cummings. Frankly, I was afraid we might get a complaint about him. He came in here and registered for a job and he didn't tell us all the truth. As you know-"
"He's done wonders here."
"I'm glad."
"Now, Miss Ford, here's what I have in mind. We haven't been running any entertainment out here but I thought we might start out with three or four pieces of music and a girl singer. I-"
"We don't handle musicians, Mrs. Cummings. I think there's a union-"
"Yes, I know that, but I wasn't interested in the musicians. We have the musicians but what we need now is a singer. I thought-well, you have some college girls listed with you, and I thought if one of them happened to be majoring in music-"
"All of the college girls are placed, Mrs. Cummings. It's getting along in the season."
"Yes, I guess it is, at that."
"But there was a girl in here, not over an hour ago. Very pretty. She asked for a waitress or hostess, but I told her we didn't have anything open right at the minute. I note, however, now that I'm looking at her card, that she has done some singing and dancing. She lists a club in Syracuse, a-"
"What's her name?"
"Ellen Cassandra."
"She sounds foreign."
"She may be but she doesn't speak that way."
Reba pretended to think it over. "No, she wouldn't do, Miss Ford. I'm sure she wouldn't. Let me know, though, if anything else turns up."
"I'll keep you in mind." Miss Ford sounded unhappy. "I'll give you a ring right away."
As soon as she had completed her conversation with Miss Ford Reba rang the desk.
"Dempsey," she said, "I'll be out for a while. Probably an hour or so."
"Very good, Mrs. Cummings."
She left the hotel by the back way and walked around to where the Caddy convertible was parked near the unloading platform. As she drove down the drive several guests waved to her and she waved back.
It was only six miles to Benny's Hideaway and she drove rapidly, barely missing a hay rigging on one of the sharp curves and in another spot nearly plowing through a flock of screeching chickens. Actually, she wasn't in any hurry about seeing Benny. Every time she saw Benny, which was about once a month when he straightened up with her on the secretarial service, she felt old wounds being reopened, old wounds that bled with a fury and hatred-and something else-that was difficult to conceal.
At one time, Benny Summers had been a nice guy. His father, a doctor, had been well-off and Benny had been an honor student in both prep school and college. But then something had happened to his father's investments and Benny had quit college, intensely bitter and viciously sore at the world.
"I made up my mind that I wouldn't be able to go out and buy it any more," he often said, referring to his more lucrative enterprise. "So I decided that the next best thing was to sell it to other people."
Benny, in addition to his duties at the Hideaway, maintained a string of about thirty girls. All of these worked the resort hotels during the summer but as soon as the major part of the season closed down, after Labor Day, they were returned to New York where they could be kept busy. The girls, with the exception of two who were "specialists," got twenty dollars for a half an hour, ten of which went to the girl with the remainder being split between Benny and the hotel. Not all hotels, of course, used the girls but the demand was enough so that Benny could have kept a hundred busy. Benny, on the other hand, said thirty were enough; he made a good living, wore nice clothes, drove a big car, and had plenty of money to spend. Not only that, but Hideaway, with its intimate atmosphere and risque entertainment, paid off in the coin of the realm.
Reba had known Benny for a number of years, since the year before he had dropped out of college. And she had known him well. He hadn't been the first with her but he had been her first real love and she'd clung to him long after she had known there couldn't be anything for them. He had changed so much, so quickly, and it had frightened her. But it had taken her love for him a long time to die. It was odd, she thought now, that it had been too much love that had killed it.
The Hideaway was situated a short distance off the main highway, at the end of a winding dirt road. It was a low, rambling, rustic appearing building and the only thing attractive about it was the flower bed that extended along the entire width of the front. At this time of the day the parking lot was empty and she brought the Caddy to a halt up close to the entrance.
She found Benny inside, where she had known she would find him, over at a table near one of the windows. There were a lot of invoices scattered around on top of the table and the ash tray was jammed full of cigarette butts.
"Hello, Benny," she said.
He nodded and glanced at a calendar on the far wall.
"You're early," he said, lighting another cigarette. "You busted or something?"
Oh God, she thought sitting down opposite him, he's hard; he's so hard you couldn't smash him with a hammer.
"No, I'm not busted. I wanted to see you about something else."
"Okay. But you can have some dough if you want it. Those girls at your place have been doing more than good. Don't any of those guys down there bring their own women?"
He's hard, she thought again; tough. No matter how many times she saw him she couldn't get over about how he had changed. He didn't give a damn about anybody and he worshiped only one thing-money. Because of his greed, of his disregard for the law, she had toyed with the idea of having him help her in what she wanted to do. But she had discarded it; Benny wouldn't settle for less than everything. And she wanted that for herself.
Reba laughed. "We've got a lively bunch of males at the hotel."
"You can say that again."
"And it's money."
"Sure. What else is there?"
And then, just as it happened with them every time, they lapsed into silence. It was almost as though they were each trying to find something in the silence, something that they had lost. But they never found it. Whatever it was had now become distorted beyond recognition.
"So what's up?" Benny wanted to know, leering at her. "Or should I let you ask me that?"
There was only one way to get along with Benny; you had to play it his way or not at all.
"All right," Reba said. "You tell me. What's up?"
He made an obscene gesture with one hand. "The same old thing. The day I got nothing up I'm gonna kill myself. There's no sense of a guy hanging around unless there's something up."
She wished that she smoked. It might relieve the tension. He never let her forget what she had been to him once.
"Benny," she said, "you're still putting on some acts at night, aren't you?"
He added the half smoked cigarette to the collection in the ash tray.
"You don't run a place like this and not have some acts. Sure, I've got acts. There's Bobo and Nelson, a couple of guys. They-say, did I tell you about the salesman and the farmer's daughter? Seems as though-"
"What else?"
"Well, Betty. She puts on a tit show around midnight."
"Is that all?"
"Is that all! Christ, do you think I waste my dough on a lot of free acts? Besides, I got a few girls around, hustling drinks and taking care of the loose guys. What else do I need? This Bobo and Nelson, they've got lots of dirty jokes and that Betty is all upper story. All she has to do is come out and walk around and everybody thinks they've got their money's worth."
"Could you use a singer?"
"To hell with a singer. I've got a juke box, haven't I."
"But no singer?"
"Say," he demanded, leaning across the table, "what do you want me to do-start a second Persian Room?"
She gave it to him straight. "There's a girl I'd like to have you hire."
"To do what?"
"Sing and dance."
"Not interested."
"But this girl wouldn't cost you any money."
"All dames cost me money."
"This one wouldn't. I'll pay her salary. All I want you to do is give her a job. Give her a job and make her do like you say."
Benny sat back and looked at Reba for a long moment. "I've got a weak heart," he told her, joking. "Break this to me gently. You're going to pay her salary."
"A hundred and fifty a week."
"That's a lot of money."
"Maybe it is, but I want her to do a couple of things which I doubt if she's ever done before. You know, sing dirty songs or have her dance around while she's stripped down. Maybe she won't do it even for that kind of money. And maybe she will. As a favor to me, I'm asking you to give it a try, Benny."
"For old time's sake?" His smile was almost a sneer.
She hated him for reminding her of what had gone before.
"For old time's sake," she said.
He reached for another cigarette. "Who is this babe?"
"Her name is Ellen Cassandra. You can get in touch with her through the Tri-
States Agency."
"And I take it you don't want her to know that you've got anything to do with it?"
"That's right."
Benny grinned. "I'll take care of it," he promised. "Today."
"And, Benny-Benny, this is important to me. Don't let me down. I want this girl embarrassed and humiliated and anything else you can do to her."
"She pretty?"
"Very."
"I'll do the anything else."
She couldn't look into his eyes. "I know. You wouldn't miss that part of it."
"Why should I?"
Driving back to the hotel she tried not to think about Benny but she couldn't help it. Any feeling which she had ever had for him was dead but there was one thing about him which she would never be able to forget. Benny had been Haidee's father.
CHAPTER X
It was a lucky break for Ellen-if she could only get the job. Gosh, how she hoped that she would be able to get it!
She stood on the corner of South and George Streets, waiting impatiently for a taxi. Miss Ford had certainly been prompt in trying to find something for her to do. And at a hundred and fifty a week!
"I don't know what this man expects," Miss Ford had said. "He is paying a lot of money and perhaps he is looking for an experienced professional. But it won't hurt for you to take a taxi out there and talk to him, not if you have the money."
Ellen had the money, about thirty-five dollars. Even now, as she stood on the corner waiting, she couldn't think of that money as belonging to her. It had been theirs to share; it had belonged to them. Every time she spent a dollar of it it was like knocking a chip off of a tombstone.
The cab slid around the corner and came to a halt. The driver, as in most small towns, opened the front door for her. In a small town you rode in front; in a big place, say Syracuse, you rode in back. Somehow, she always liked it better up front.
"Where to, Miss?"
"Benny's Hideaway. Do you know where it is?"
The driver, a young kid in his late teens, snickered a little bit.
"Sure, I know where it is. Everybody knows."
He was a careful driver, paying close attention to the traffic, but once they were outside of town, on the open highway, Ellen had the uncomfortable feeling that he was watching her more than he was watching the road.
"Benny's got quite a place," he said.
"I don't know. I've never been there."
"You haven't?" He turned his head and looked at her frankly, his eyes appraising the snug fit of the black dress. "You one of his girls?"
"I'm a singer. And I dance."
"Oh. You dance. What kind of dancing?"
"Just dancing. Tap. Some ballet."
The kid scratched his head. "I never heard of any of that stuff out at Benny's," he said.
The countryside swept past on either side and she was appreciative of the fact that the driver seemed satisfied to observe a short silence. She had always liked the country, the freshness of the air, the smell of new-mown hay. It was fun to look at the houses and wonder who lived in them and to speculate, without really trying to solve the problem, about what the people did and how they lived. Whenever she saw a place that was run down, uncared for, it distressed her. She thought then of the apartment where she had lived with her aunt, of Eddie and his filth, of her life which, at the moment, was as twisted as some of the barbed wire fences.
"You'll do, girlie."
"What?"
"I said you'd do."
"Do?"
"Yes. Benny-likes pretty girls."
"He does?"
"Sure. How else would he stay in business?"
Sometimes, as now, she felt an inner disgust because of her physical beauty. A girl was better off if she was inclined to be ugly, if she could get and hold a man with something other than a good figure and a lovely face. Put the two together and you came up with just one thing: sex. Why fool herself? Sex had put her into Al's arms and it had kept her there until he was tired of her. Al didn't care about what she believed, or what she hoped for, or how she was inside. Al had been in love with her sex, what she could give him-only this, of course, wasn't love, not real love-and he had left her as soon as he had found something better. She should have seen it coming; she should have been smart enough not to have been fooled. Money was better; money was the one thing that she couldn't give him.
"It's a nice afternoon, isn't it?"
"Yes," Ellen replied. "It is."
She had lost Al. She must accept this. She had lost him and they would never find each other again.
Benny's Hideaway wasn't what she had expected it to be at all. It was off the highway and it looked like a fishing lodge sticking out from under the trees.
"Shall I wait for you, Miss?"
"I think you'd better."
"You ought to find Benny somewhere near the bar."
"Thank you."
Inside, she found Benny sitting at the bar drinking scotch on the rocks. He was a tall, dark-haired, dark eyed young man with very white teeth. At the moment he was talking to a blonde girl who stood on the other side of the bar. The blonde was obviously bleached, almost white, contrasting strangely with her dark eyebrows.
"Well, the agency didn't lie," Benny said when Ellen had introduced herself. "They said you were pretty."
"Thank you."
The blonde, apparently bored by the conversation, moved down the bar. She began wiping off some of the bottles with a paper towel.
"Pretty good, Mr.-"
"Just call me Benny."
"Not bad," she said. "I haven't done any dancing in a little while but it's something that comes back right away."
Benny swung all the way around on the stool. "Let's see you walk across the room.
"Walk?"
"Yes; just walk."
Slowly, feeling his eyes following her, she started across the small dance floor. She had only gone a few feet when he stopped her.
"Turn around and come back."
Ellen did as she was told.
"You've got a nice shape," Benny said. "Small and compact." He smiled and regarded the top of her dress. "Well, not small. But compact."
"Thank you," she murmured again. She didn't know what else to say. She had never had a man look at her in quite this way, as though she were a piece of yard goods spread out on a counter for inspection.
"And you sing?"
"Yes."
"Popular songs?"
"Yes, I do. Would you like me to run through a couple for you?"
"That won't be necessary."
She felt defeated and a sense of rebellion welled within her. She had taken a cab all the way out here into the country and now he wasn't even going to give her a chance. But she consoled herself with the fact that a hundred and fifty dollars a week was an awful lot of money. It had been silly of her to dream. She wasn't a professional, she was just average, and she wasn't worth anywhere near that amount.
"Would you like a drink?"
She shook her head. "I'd better not. I-I have a cab waiting for me outside."
His eyes were curious. "Don't you want the job."
"Yes, but-"
"Angie," he said, addressing the girl behind the bar, "take a ten out of the register and pay off that cab, will you? But, first, give us a drink." Benny glanced at Ellen. "What will it be?"
A rising hope replaced her feeling of defeat. "Rye and soda," she said. "Rye and soda it is."
As soon as Angie poured the drinks Benny lifted his glass and gave Ellen a wink. "Luck," he said.
"Luck," she smiled. "I have a feeling that I'm going to need some."
"Not with that figure."
"No. I mean, my singing and dancing. I'll have to put in a lot of practice, Mr.-
Benny."
"Look," he said as Angie went outside to pay the driver. "Let me set you straight on a few things. You see this joint at this time of the day? It's dead, deader than last year's income tax dough. But at night it jumps, it really does. We get people from all over-the hotels, cabin colonies-everywhere.
They aren't looking for perfection. They're looking for entertainment."
"I'll do my best," Ellen said.
He waved her determination aside. "There's just one way you can give us your best around here, and it doesn't have anything to do with your singing and dancing. Believe me."
"I don't-understand."
"If you'll be patient I'll try to tell you." He drained his glass and pushed it aside. "First, though, I'm going to tell you a little bit about yourself. You're a nice kid, Ellen. You've been brought up right, or you've tried to live right. By right I mean what people say, how they judge you. Maybe you've had some pretty good jobs and maybe you haven't. My guess is that none of them have been very good. Am I right?"
"Well, I never made a lot of money," she admitted.
He picked up his glass again and rattled the ice in it. "So how else can you judge a job? No matter how good you sing, no matter how good you dance, it can't give you as much pleasure as the money you get paid. Am I right again?"
"I suppose so."
"A hundred and fifty a week is a considerable amount of money."
Her drink tasted strong. "Yes, it is."
"Frankly, I'd be paying more for your looks than I'd be paying for your ability. Ability I can buy for what I pay. Looks I can't always get. And what I need here is looks. This isn't one of those supper clubs where you can be skinny as a rail and get attention. The people who come here are out for a ball and there's only one way we can give it to them. If you want to be refined about it, you'd say we specialized in risque entertainment. But if you're blunt about it, the way I am, you'll call it for what it is. I hope I don't offend you."
"I doubt if you will."
His smile was amused. "We'll soon find out."
"Yes; we will."
"I call it a tit and pants show."
Oddly enough, she was not offended. She had heard the term, at least one of them, used many times in the streets where she had been brought up. There had always been something obscene about it, as though those who spoke that way about a girl were referring to her as being slightly better than a cow, indirectly associating the cow with a bull and making something sexy out of it. But Benny's explanation was more business-like than vicious and, consequently, it failed to carry its full meaning.
"I think I know what you mean." Ellen said. "I'd have to wear a real tight fitting dress, low in front, and-"
"No dress," Benny told her. "Oh, at the start you could, coming on, but you'd have to end up your act in a pair of little thin panties and a net bra. We've got one girl who doesn't even use a bra. She just strips right down and lets them get a good look."
The drink was still strong but Ellen couldn't taste it. The warmth in her stomach turned into a hollow, empty cold. "-I couldn't do that."
"Why not."
"I-I just couldn't."
"Even for a hundred and fifty a week."
"It isn't the money."
"It must be the money," he said, "or you wouldn't be out here." He shifted on the stool and moved closer to her. "Don't try to fox me, Ellen. You need this job so badly that it hurts. If you don't take it you'll wind up working for some crumb earning thirty-five or forty bucks a week waiting on tables. Isn't that so?"
Unable to speak, she merely nodded her head.
"And they're going to look at you, anyway. A girl with your shape is bound to be looked at, regardless of what she's doing. Is it any worse to let them see you in a net bra, or without anything on, for a hundred and fifty a week than it is to have some jerk in a dining room pray that you'll bend over his table and he'll get a free look-when you're only getting paid twenty-five percent of what you can earn here? Is it?"
She had never considered it in this light before but, in a way, it was true. And nobody knew her around Rose's Point, nobody except Al and he didn't count anymore. She supposed that she could force herself to do it for a while, until she could save enough money and go on to something else. It wasn't as though this was in her blood, that she believed it right to make a living displaying her body to a lot of men. She didn't, actually, have much choice in the matter. She had to do this or nothing.
"When would I start?"
"Tonight."
Nervously, she emptied her glass. "I-I hope they'll like me," she said.
Benny laughed and rested a big hand on her right knee. "Like you?" he inquired. "You'll drive them nuts." Betty Combs was a hardened, wind-blown blonde who had made her way downward via the hotels of Atlantic City and the little bars off of Lexington Avenue. Her shape, however, has lost none of its youthfullness and this, she said, was due to her somewhat late realization that she couldn't wear out every bed on the East Coast.
"You can't even keep count of them," she told Ellen. "You're out of one and into another before you hardly know it." She laughed and looked into the mirror, puckering her lips. "What am I saying? Who says you hardly know it?"
They were in a small dressing room, just off the narrow hall that led to the rest rooms in the rear. They had been in there for more than an hour, getting ready to go on and waiting for Bobo and Nelson to finish their act. Betty would be next and Ellen was scheduled to follow her. She had thought that she might be frightened but she wasn't. A half a dozen drinks had calmed her nerves to the point where she wondered if she had any left.
"You'll waste your time if you do any singing," Betty said. "All they want to do out there is look."
Ellen stared downward at the flesh-colored bra and panties, both of which were about two sizes too small.
"They'll get a look," Ellen said. As Betty turned to glance at her she thought she noticed a trace of envy in the pale gray eyes. "A good look," she added.
"Well, you've sure got plenty for them to look at, kid." Betty applied lipstick to her mouth, then caught a piece of Kleenex between her teeth. "You from around here?"
"No."
"Neither am I. Any folks."
"None."
"We've got something in common," Betty said. "I've been making my own way ever since I got planted in my mother's womb."
"Have you been at the place here very long?"
"This is my second year. I came up in August, last year, and worked until he closed down for the season. Then I came back in June."
"Benny seems-all right."
"Benny's a bastard, which puts him on a par with all other men. They're all bastards. Show me the guy that doesn't want to get everything he can from a girl and then run like a thief ahead of the cops."
"Some of them are like that," Ellen agreed, remembering Al.
"Some of them! Show me one who isn't."
"Well."
Betty arose from the dressing stool and moved around the room. Her hips were somewhat slim, almost on the mannish side, but the rest of her body was fluid and alive.
"You're new at this," she said to Ellen. "Just a kid. Green. I could tell you a lot."
"I wish you would."
"You'd run and tell Benny."
"No, I wouldn't."
Betty shrugged and hitched at her net bra. There were supposed to be tiny silver stars in the center of each cup but she had removed them. The dark red nubs stuck out prominently.
"So what do I care if you do?" she demanded. "You're going to find out all about it, anyway. If you don't get it from me you'll get it from somebody else." Betty paused and sighed. "I don't know why the hell I bother, unless it's because I like you, kid. And I hate to see anybody so young go into this with their eyes shut."
"You're not so old, yourself."
"Twenty-three."
"That's only four years."
"But they've been full years, kid. Mighty full."
Betty, although there was little physical resemblance, reminded Ellen of Madge. Betty was brutally frank where Madge had been soft and hesitant but there was, deep underneath, some similarity.
"We're nothing but come-ons," Betty said. "Most of the crowds we get out here are men. The girls you see are either free lancers or some of the girls who are working for Benny. Our job is to give them the hots so they'll spend their money. And believe me they get them. Some of those guys spend twenty bucks for five minutes in the back seat of a car."
Betty continued to talk, elaborating upon the operation of Benny's Hideaway. Benny controlled the secretarial services in several of the resort hotels and whenever the girls weren't busy-this was usually during the middle of the week-
they came out and worked the tables and the bar. They received a percentage of the drinks they pushed and they got fifty percent of what the men paid for their favors.
"But that doesn't stop you from picking up a few extra bucks," Betty said. "Benny doesn't have to know about it and what he doesn't know about you can keep for yourself. Why, hell, I picked up fifty dollars from an old guy last night. And all I had to do was hold-well, hands with him for a little bit.
The poor old guy was so thrilled at me paying attention to him that the only thing he could get up was the idea."
There was a bottle of rye on the dressing room table and Ellen poured another drink.
"You'd better not hit that too hard," Betty cautioned.
"I'm nervous."
"Of course, you're nervous. But once you get out there you won't be."
There was a knock on the dressing room door. "You ready, Betty?"
Betty made a wry face. "I'm ready, Benny."
Benny laughed. "I'm always ready, too."
"The son-of-a-bitch," Betty said under her breath, "he wants his for nothing."
Betty went out and closed the door behind her. The sounds of the patrons at the bar drifted into the dressing room, faded away. It became very hot and quiet in the room. Ellen looked at the bottle again, hesitated, then reached for it.
It'll do you a lot more good than harm, she told herself. You can't go out there, not for the first time, and face a bunch of men strictly on nerve alone. You have to have something to back you up.
She looked at the bottle, thoughtfully. She'd never been much of a drinker, recalling what it had done to her father, but there was a time, or there seemed to be a time, when a person had to turn to the amber fluid. Once in a while it was the only thing left.
Casually, she inspected the dress that she was supposed to wear. The dress belonged to Betty and it was much too small. Even if she could get it on again-
she had tried it on earlier with Betty's help-she'd never be able to get out of it by herself. And the dress which she had worn out from town wasn't any good; they'd give her the big laugh if she went out there in that.
She had another drink.
She still didn't know what she was supposed to do, how she should act when she got out there. Benny had told her to sing a little if she felt like it but if she didn't that was okay. And don't tap dance, he'd said. Or ballet. Just get out there and let them look at you.
"Suit yourself about the bra," he'd told her. "But give them a show. You've got plenty to show so go out there and show them. And don't worry about anybody putting their hands on you. That's one rule we've got around here. If you want to put your hands on some guy, maybe mess up his hair, that's different. You play it the way you see it and everything will be fine."
Fine, Ellen thought; oh, it'll be just dandy. She reached for the bottle.
Get yourself looped, she thought; not so that you can't stand up but so that you won't feel anything or realize what is going on. Think of all of those men as being Al, a lot of Als, and give them just a peek, nothing more. Don't ever give anything away again. Come up to the fence if you have to, but don't let anybody cross it. Don't be a chump. They all want the same thing. Al. Everybody. All of them. They want it bad but they can't do anything about it unless you let them. Don't let them. Drive them nuts. Make them wild over you. Make them hunger for you. It's the only way you can get even. Get even. Yes, that's it, get even...
"Okay, kid, you're on."
Ellen hadn't seen the door open nor had she heard Betty come in. She tossed her head, fluffing out her hair, and placed the bottle on the dressing table.
"I'm ready," she said.
Betty stood aside, holding the door open. Her breasts were naked, heaving, and she held the tiny bra in one hand. "You all right, kid."
"I'm fine."
Ellen stepped out into the hall and turned left. Benny was in the shadows, waiting for her.
"Jeeze!" he exclaimed, staring. "Jeeze! Where's your dress."
"I couldn't be bothered with it."
Benny whistled. "Maybe you are worth a hundred and fifty bucks a week," he said, more to himself than to anybody else.
She was out there in the smoke filled room before she realized it. The lights were dim, a pinkish red, the faces of the spectators nearly lost in the smoke and the dimness. A fast South American tune blared from the juke box.
"Hey," somebody said. "Look at the cans on her!"
She turned her head, laughing at the speaker. He was a sucker. A fool. He had about as much chance of getting what he wanted as he had of being elected president.
"And those legs," somebody else said. "Boy, what those legs couldn't do to a guy. Can you imagine what it would be like if she'd let you-"
The liquor and the beat of the music tumbled through her veins, running over. Her eyes closed dreamily as her body, picking up the wildness of the rhythm, began to sway. A man-seated near-by sucked in his breath. Gracefully, as though she were moving across hot tropical sands, she began to glide forward, circling the tiny dance floor, every nerve end tense, every muscle alive.
Oh, give it to them good, she thought, despising all of them; give it to them so good that they'll never forget you. Make the palms of their hands sweaty, make their bodies tremble; send them to bed with the vision of you so fresh that they won't be able to think of anything else. Torture them, the only way you can ever torture a man. Make them suffer.
Her eyes were open now, wide open, and her mouth was parted and smiling at them. The movements of her body had slowed, becoming more deliberate. She was using her hands now, too, lifting them to the cones of her breasts, suggesting what they might do, taking them away again.
"You like?" she breathed.
She stood over a ringside table, lingering, and then she gave the first of a series of bumps that carried her out to the center of the floor. She continued to bump, her legs far apart, her hands gently stroking the inside of her thighs. A man started away from one of the tables toward her but somebody grabbed him and held him back.
"You mustn't get too anxious," she warned, smiling intimately. "Control yourself."
There was a lot of laughter.
Still bumping she reached behind her and unfastened the bra. A terrific roar filled the room and she lifted the bra loose and, rotating her shoulders, allowed her big, swollen breasts to ride free and easy.
"The rest!" a man at the bar shouted. "The rest of it, baby!"
The cry was soon taken up by others and there was a loud, restless stamping of feet.
"The rest! The rest!"
But she wouldn't take off the rest, not for anybody, not for anything. Waving the bra at them she backed into the narrow hall, then turned and fled to the dressing room. She was crying as she dashed inside and slammed the door behind her.
"You poor kid," Betty said, taking Ellen in her arms. "You poor, poor kid."
Betty's lips were so soft.
So very, very soft....
CHAPTER XI
Al couldn't sleep. Every time he closed his eyes he saw twelve hundred dollars, a whole long line of twisting, laughing one dollar bills. Or maybe it wasn't a line, maybe it was a rope. A rope with a noose of one-dollar bills at the end of it. A rope where he could stick his head. Or where he had already stuck it.
He was up at seven. Dempsey didn't come on the desk until eight and Al had missed him the afternoon before. Christ, he'd missed everybody. He'd been up to the Cummings suite twice but Reba hadn't been around. He'd even waited in the bar until long past midnight and she hadn't showed up. He wondered, vaguely, what she would say when he told her that he had changed his mind and that he was going to stay on. He hoped it would be all right.
"Good morning, Mr. Evans."
"Good morning, Sam."
He walked past the night man on the desk, through the lobby and on outside. The sun was new but burning hot and it glistened from the dew on the grass. At that time of the morning every sound was magnified and he could hear the harsh rattle of pots and pans from the direction of the kitchen. Voices, the heavy voices of the male kitchen help and the shriller voices of the waitresses, followed him as he crossed the lawn and walked down the gentle slope toward the lake.
He liked the lake, the smell of the reeds and grasses along the shoreline and the sounds of the water lapping regularly against the dock. When he'd been a kid, back in Monticello, he'd often gone out to one of the lakes alone, just to be by himself and think. Now that he looked back at it, now that the years had dimmed so many of the urgencies of the past, he realized there had been very little to think about at the time. Should he take the blonde out on Saturday night or should he ask the brunette? It hadn't been a great deal more complicated than that. Only once. And then he had thought of running away from home.
"I think I'm caught," the blonde had told him. "I think we made a baby, Al."
He'd gone out to the lake several times after that and at one point he had even considered drowning himself. It was a good thing he hadn't. The girl hadn't been pregnant, just mixed up on her dates, and everything had worked out fine. A few months later the girl had married a guy who worked in a sawmill and this time she hadn't been wrong. She'd gotten as big as a house. But the blonde hadn't forgotten AJ and he'd been glad when it had come time for him to return to college.
"You can come up to the apartment any afternoon," she'd told Al one day, smiling a little as she'd glanced down at her growing bulge. "And we won't have to be careful anymore, Al. We can't do any more harm than there's already been done."
He hadn't seen the blonde again but he had gone back to the lake one night-with the brunette. It had been his first real experience with the brunette but it hadn't been his last.
"I'll be a virgin when I marry," she said. "But that don't stop me from giving nice boys like you a little fun."
It hadn't.
Now as he approached the Lake of Tears, walking slowly through the wet grass, he thought of all of that again. No, none of his problems had been serious then, nothing much more than the usual problems of growing up. But the one which faced him now was critical; it could change his entire life.
The money had been his responsibility and it was gone. More important, it would appear to anyone who didn't know the truth that he had taken it. If Reba Cummings wanted to be mean about it, she could charge him with the theft and, in almost any court, she could make it stick.
He walked up onto the dock and stood looking down at his distorted reflection on the surface of the water. The Lake of Tears, that's what the Indians had named the lake. The Lake of Tears, because there was no visible supply of water, which came bubbling up from dozens of springs at the bottom of the lake. The Indians, unaware of this source, had claimed the lake had been created from the tears of white settlers who had pleaded for mercy. The settlers, or so the old saying went, had pleaded in vain.
"Hiya, Mr. Evans."
Al looked up at the smiling face of the boy standing on the shore.
"Oh, hello, Everett."
The boy untied one of the boats and stepped into it. "That turtle trap you made for me works pretty good. I got four of them already. One weighed more'n thirty pounds."
"That's fine."
"You sure make a good trap, Mr. Evans."
Al watched as the boy rowed out into the lake. So he made a good turtle trap. So that was fine. Maybe he could make another kind of a trap.
Al returned to the hotel. Sam was still on duty at the desk and he said good morning again.
"Tell Paul I want to see him as soon as he comes on."
"Very well, Mr. Evans."
Al entered the office and closed the door. Twelve hundred bucks! Where in hell was he ever going to get it?
The only other way to get into the office was through the window. He walked over to the window and stood looking down. It was about five feet from the ground, low enough so that almost anybody could have crawled in through it. He started to swing away, then stopped and bent to examine the sill. He remembered having seen the nail there when he had previously opened the window. He had thought, at the time, that it had been left there by one of the painters, or perhaps a carpenter who had been doing some work on the building. But the nail had been sticking straight up, not bent the way it was now. And it was bent outward.
"You wanted to see me?" Dempsey said, opening the door.
There was about as much sense in talking to Dempsey about the money as there was in trying to take up a collection to restore the theft. The bent nail told the story of how it had been done.
"No," Al said. "Never mind."
After Dempsey went out, closing the door behind him, Al circled the office, cursing. Son-of-a-bitch, he was in a jam, a tight jam. In a lot of ways it was even worse than that native facing him with a knife.
Frequently, he ate his breakfast in the kitchen, with the help, but this morning he didn't feel like listening to a lot of noise and wisecracks. It would be quieter in the dining room and he would be able to sit by himself and think about this thing further. All he wanted was coffee anyway.
Reba was in the dining room, seated alone at one of the tables near a window that overlooked the lake.
"Join me, Al," she said. "I get nervous when I have to eat by myself."
"Sure."
She's pretty, he thought as he sat down opposite her. Well, not pretty. Beautiful. Most of the swelling had left her face and that dark mark was gone from beneath her eye. Her lips were red, red as a winter's sunset, and the dress she wore was the same color. The dress was square-cut across the front, but low, and when she leaned forward, reaching for the cream, he could see that the only support she had down inside were the two naked mounds that shoved up and out.
"You upset me yesterday," she said. "I hope you've changed your mind about going."
"Well, as a matter-of-fact, I have. I was a little-hasty."
"I thought you were."
Al was relieved. "Then it's okay if I stay?"
"You know better than to ask that. Of course, it's okay. I want you to stay."
Al grinned. "Hell, I feel almost like eating now."
"We'll start out all over again, Al."
"Yeah."
Her knee, beneath the table, touched his leg. "From scratch," Reba said, smiling. "We'll start from scratch."
He ordered bacon and eggs and all the while he was eating he kept looking at her. She really had it. She sure did. She had it plenty.
"I'll be busy in the kitchen most all morning." he said, "but I haven't got much for this afternoon. Left take a turn around the lake."
"You going native, or something?"
"Well, it's just an idea."
She frowned. "I wish I could but I can't. I've got to go over the books today and that's going to take me until five or six."
"I thought you had an accountant."
"I do, but why should I take his word for everything? He just knows figures but I know the hotel business. I can spot things sometimes that he misses."
"I see your point," Al said.
He saw something else, too. If she went over everything she sure as the devil would come up with that shortage. He had to do something and he had to do it fast.
"I wanted to get this out of the way because I thought we might run down to New York tomorrow," she said. "You know, about that entertainment. If we're going to do anything about it, we might as well do it now."
"Maybe we could call an agency."
Reba's smile was warm and wet. "Why do that when we have a good excuse to get away for a little while?" Her knee pressed in against his leg. "And we don't have to hurry back. We can stay overnight."
Just looking at her, remembering how she had been that first time, made Al's head pound. It pounded so hard his legs hurt.
"What about Arnie?" Al wanted to know.
"To hell with Arnie. I told you how it is with us."
"Yeah; sure."
"I could ask you the same thing about that girl, that Ellen. What about her."
"She left."
"I know she did. Is that why you wanted to quit? Were you going to follow her?"
"Forget her," Al said, shortly. "To hell with her, too."
"You don't mean that."
"Would I say so if I didn't?"
"You might." As Reba stood up he got an even better look down the front of her dress. "If it's what you thought I wanted to hear."
"Forget her," Al repeated. "She's dead stuff."
"Is she? Well, we'll see." She smiled down at him. "Meet me outside around seven. Maybe we can help kill her off for keeps."
His glance followed Reba across the dining room. He hardly noticed her hair, hanging almost down to her shoulders, and he didn't pay very much attention to her legs. Her hips were what intrigued him. The motion of her hips made the dress sway back and forth and he had the wild, insane urge to bury his hands in them. But, when she disappeared, the urge soon left him. He continued to stare at the entrance but he wasn't seeing Reba anymore; he was seeing Ellen Cassandra. Ellen was a nice girl and she had loved him. In return, he had treated her shabbily. He doubted if he would ever be able to forget her. But he could try. It might be hard but he could try. He could try with Reba. Even though he couldn't forget Ellen, Reba would be able to soften the hardness for him.
Al spent the remainder of the morning with the chef but when they came to the subject of the menus for the coming week Al gave up in disgust.
"You figure it out," Al told the chef. "Anything you give them is okay with me."
"How about a meat loaf for Monday?"
"Yeah, but take it light on the sage."
Al didn't know why it was but almost every chef he had known fixed meat loaf with so much sage that it was impossible to taste the meat. Of course, a few people liked sage but most didn't. At times Al thought the practice to be a silent reminder of the grudge which most chefs held against the whole human race.
Somebody, he thought as he left the kitchen, had taken that money. A waitress. A bellhop. Somebody. Some no-good bastard had crawled in through that window and made off with the bank deposit. And he had to find that money. There was no compromise with what he had to do.
He knew it would be pointless to question the help. The biggest liars in the world worked in hotels, especially resort hotels. And the most dishonest.
Had he been working in a big city hotel he would have gone to the bell captain. Most bell captains knew more than hotel managers. But Hotel Haidee didn't have a bell captain, just a couple of kids who ran luggage and waxed floors. In a resort hotel the storekeeper was apt to know more about the employees than anybody else. The storekeeper controlled the food, the liquor and, not infrequently, the time slips of those who were employed in the kitchen and the dining room. He became, in some instances, a wheel who was both feared and respected.
The door of the storeroom was open and Pete Addison was inside, sitting upon the cot. Pete said he kept the cot in the storeroom so that he could lie there at night and watch for rats but it was a generally accepted fact that the cats on the premises chased the rats and Pete exerted his talents in more amusing directions.
"Hello, Pete," Al said.
Pete didn't get up. "Why, hello, Mr. Evans."
"Pete, I'd like to ask you something."
"Sure, Mr. Evans. Go ahead."
Al sat down on a bag of sugar and lit a cigarette.
"Pete," Al began, "have you noticed any of the help who's had an unusual amount of money to spend in the last day?"
"Are you kidding? Two days after payday everybody in this place is busted and payday isn't until Sunday night."
"No, I'm serious, Pete. Have you noticed anything like that?"
"Can't say that I have."
"One of the waitresses? A bellhop? Anybody at all."
"No."
"Hell," Al said, "I thought you might have."
"Somebody lose some dough?" Al nodded. "You?"
Al nodded again.
"That's rough," Pete said. "Rough."
"You can say that more than once and be right." Al dropped the cigarette onto the cement floor and stood up. "Well, let me know if you do. I'd appreciate it, Pete."
"Naturally."
Later that afternoon Al changed into swimming trunks and went down to thes beach. Numerous umbrellas were stuck into the sand and there were bodies lying around all over. Some of the bodies, he noticed, were pretty good. There was one girl, a model from New York, and she was lying flat on her stomach, trying to get a tan all over her back. She had loosened her halter strap, which was all right, but she had propped herself up on her elbows, reading a book, and it wasn't difficult to understand why she was a model. Most every man on the beach was trying to read what was on the jacket of the book.
Al felt a great need for physical exertion and he swam out to the raft, not the one nearest the shore but the one way out in the lake. Few of the guests ever attempted to swim that far.
"You're pretty good," somebody said as he pulled alongside.
It was Helen Lavina.
Al climbed up the ladder and sat down on the edge of the raft.
"You must be pretty good yourself," he said. "That's quite a haul."
Now that he saw her without a dress on he noted that she had a nice shape. It wasn't as good as Reba's-her breasts weren't nearly as large or firm and her thighs weren't as heavy-but her lines were smooth and rather neatly packaged together. He decided, looking at her, that Ted Lavina had gotten a pretty fair deal.
"Oh, I'm a terrible swimmer," Helen said, adjusting the shoulder straps on her suit so that Al couldn't see too much. "Ted says he's scared to death that I won't make it out here one of these days but I tell him I can't learn unless I practice. Besides," she added, smiling, "I'm not afraid. I love the water."
"Still, you ought to be careful."
"I am. I take a long rest before I start back."
"Supposing you never made it out here?"
"Oh, come now, you're as bad as Ted and Reba." She stood up quickly; her figure looked a lot better when she wasn't sitting down. "I'll show you, Mr. Evans. Maybe I'm not the world's best swimmer but I'm not the worst, either."
She dove off the raft, making a big splash, and began swimming toward shore. A few seconds later Al followed her. She was right. She wasn't the world's worst swimmer. The world's worst swimmer had already drowned.
He kept beside her all the way in. For a short distance she swam overhand but pretty soon she changed over to a rather clumsy breast stroke. When she tired of this she started using a sidearm movement that was far from perfect.
Al felt sorry for her. She was naturally clumsy in the water but she tried. He could see it in the determined look in her eyes, how she was trying. By the time they reached shallow water she was nearly exhausted.
"You go out there to that raft very often?" Al asked.
Helen nodded and gasped for breath. "Every-day. It's a challenge."
"Sometimes you're better off if you don't accept challenges," he told her.
Al left her at the beach and walked back toward the hotel. Someday, he thought, she'd head out there for that raft and she wouldn't make it. Or she'd get out there all right and she wouldn't make it back. There wasn't a great deal of difference in either thought; she'd be just as dead one way as she would be the other.
Up in his room Al changed into shorts and lay down on the bed. The swim had been okay but he'd just been fooling away time. He ought to be ripping the hotel apart, looking for that twelve hundred dollars. If Reba ever came across that shortage while she was going over the books all hell would break loose.
He must have fallen asleep because when he awoke the shadows of early evening had crept into the room. Somebody was banging on the door.
"Yeah? Who is it?"
"It's me, Mr. Evans. Pete."
"Come in, Pete."
Pete came in and Al sat up on the edge of the bed. He always felt like hell after he'd fallen asleep that way. He yawned. Days were for working. Nights were for sleeping. He grinned. Or for something else.
"I've been thinking over what we were talking about this afternoon," Pete said, "and maybe I've got a lead for you. Do you know Dixie Walls?"
Al was immediately interested. "I don't think I do. Should I?"
"She's one of the suckertaries." Pete never referred to the girls who worked the rooms as secretaries. "Some of the guys call her Dixie Balls." He snickered. "I got no idea why, believe me. I never messed with that chick."
Al had seen some of the girls but he didn't know them. Most of the girls were young, pretty and they did look like secretaries.
"She's a redhead," Pete said.
"Flame red? Cut short?"
"That's her. But who looks at her hair? She's got some shape, that baby. Why last night in the bar she bends over to put on her shoes-she sits barefooted at the bar, you know that?-and I thought those bubbies of hers were going to get right down on the floor and start walking. Of course, I'm sitting there and she sees what I'm looking at but that didn't bother her any. She just says she wouldn't mess around with me none, because-get this-she says I look like a bottle baby. I'm telling you, Mr. Evans, she's a tough one, that Dixie Walls, or Balls, or whatever her name is."
Al was getting bored. "What's that got to do with the money?"
"I'm coming to that. like I said, I was sitting at the bar last night, right close to her. I guess they weren't very busy because there were four or five other girls there, too. They were all drinking imagine drinks that cost an arm and a leg. And she was paying for them, wouldn't let anybody else shell out a dime. Even Tony, the bartender, was kidding her about it but she told him not to worry his head, that there was plenty more where that came from. I thought you ought to know, Mr. Evans. None of those girls, no matter how much money they make, ever spend their dough that way."
"Thanks Pete. I appreciate your help."
"Well, it may not be help but it's worth a try."
"You're darned right."
"She even turned down a chance to make a room call. I heard her. A dame like that Dixie has to be loaded to turn down a quick buck."
"Yeah."
"Loaded, Mr. Evans. Good and loaded."
As soon as Pete had departed Al shaved and dressed. Maybe there wasn't anything to the lead and maybe there was. But it would be foolish for him not to follow it. Doing almost anything was a lot better than doing nothing. Twelve hundred bucks was a wad of money. Somehow, he had to find it.
CHAPTER XII
Al waited for Reba until nearly eight thirty. Finally,' as it began to grow dark, he left the parking area and went inside of the hotel.
"Have you seen Mrs. Cummings?" he asked Dempsey.
"No, sir, I haven't."
"Was she down for supper?"
"Not that I know of. But she could have been, without me seeing her."
"Did she call for me anytime this afternoon."
"No, sir, she didn't."
"Ring her for me, will you, and I'll pick it up on the house phone."
"Yes, sir."
But there wasn't any answer. Strangely, he was not disturbed. Not that he didn't want to see her. He did. But if she hadn't tried to reach him, or had gone out unexpectedly, it meant that she was not aware of the missing money. And just at the moment the money was the most important thing. Unless he could locate it and dig himself out of this mess there wouldn't be anything else.
He walked through the lobby to the grill room. As usual, Arnie was at his favorite table, his eyes glazed, a bottle in front of him.
"Hey, Al, old boy, old boy, have a drink, huh?"
"Sorry," Al said. "I'm looking for somebody."
But his hand caught Al's arm and held it. "Have a drink, I said. What the hell, you can't be in that much rush."
Resignedly. Al brushed Arnie's hand aside and sat down. He reached for an empty glass and poured a short shot into it.
"Only for a second," Al said. "Honest, I've got to run."
"Don't b.s. me." Arnie leaned forward, his arms on the table. "I don't b.s. easy."
Al felt uncomfortable. He didn't want a scene with Arnie, not right now. A scene with Arnie was the furthest thing from his mind.
"Nobody's trying to do that, Arnie. Especially me. Why would I, Arnie? I work for you, don't I."
"You work for my wife. That's different."
"I wasn't aware of it."
Arnie's eyes narrowed. "You're a liar," he said. "You're like all the rest of them, Evans. You're not satisfied with the job. You've got to make a play for her, too."
Al fought to control his temper. "Take it easy, Arnie. The bottle's getting ready to throw you."
"I got an idea you had better luck than the others," Arnie persisted. "I got it set in my head that she's lifted her dress for you."
"That's a hell of a thing to say."
"Well, she's a hell of a woman." Hastily, Arnie lifted his glass and took a long swallow of the liquor. Some of the amber liquid dribbled down over his chin. "A hell of a woman." He took another drink and rubbed the liquor off of his chin with the back of one hand. "But why should I waste my breath telling you what you know already?"
Anger boiling within him, Al stood up and jammed the chair in against the table, almost upsetting the bottle. The muscles in his shoulders knotted as he bent over, one huge hand fastening onto the front of Arnie's shirt.
"Listen, you stinking drunk," he said, levelly, "you say one more thing to me about your wife and I'll smack you silly. And you tee off on her again, like you did the other night, and I'll bat your brains in. You got that, you drunken slob?"
Arnie, his face growing white, tried to pry Al's hand loose but Al wouldn't let go. Al twisted the shirt, putting on the pressure and nearly lifting Arnie up out of the chair.
"You got it, you bastard?"
Arnie nodded and blinked his eyes.
"You'd better have it!"
Al, making a face as though he had been holding a snake in his hand, released Arnie and walked over to the bar. He felt himself shaking, his legs weak. He hated guys like Arnie Cummings. People like that made him want to puke.
"Bourbon," he said to Tony. "And stiff."
There were several people at the bar, including two of the girls, a couple of blondes, but the redhead was not in evidence.
"Have you seen Dixie Walls tonight?" Al inquired.
Tony leered. "You mean, Dixie Balls."
"Well, whatever her name is."
Tony glanced along the bar. "Not tonight. But she don't come here every night." Tony leered again. "Some nights they keep her so busy she don't have time to put on her clothes."
Al stirred the drink. "You got any idea where I could find her?"
"You that hard up, Mr. Evans?"
"No. I just want to talk to her."
"Well, that's a new one."
"Maybe it is. But it's the truth."
Somebody started rapping a glass on the bar for a refill and Tony moved away. A few moments later he came back to Al.
"You might find her up the road," the bartender said. "Most of the girls wind up at Benny's Hideaway."
Al had heard of the place but he had never been there.
"I heard she was in here last night and that she had a lot of money."
"She didn't run out of it, that's for sure. I ain't seen a dame with so much money since I got my divorce. We sold the house and the wife ran away with my share, too. I couldn't do a thing, not a thing. I went to the cops but-"
Al pushed his drink aside and left the bar. Dixie fitted the description of the person he was looking for perfectly. The quicker he found her the quicker he would know.
He experienced no difficulty locating Benny's Hideaway. It was off the highway but the red and green neon lights showed brightly in the night. There were a lot of cars in the parking lot and he had to leave the station wagon near the edge of pine woods.
Inside it wasn't at all like he had expected it to be. But he hardly noticed the heavily varnished wooden walls or the rather crude bar at one end. He doubted very much if anybody paid much attention to these things. There were so many half-dressed women around that you couldn't move without stumbling over one of them.
The tables were crowded with men and women and a few couples were out on Jie tiny dance floor, swinging it wild and hot to the music from the juke box. One of the girls had a partner who liked to spin her and every time he did this her skirt rode up high above her hips. It was difficult to tell, because of the subdued lighting and her speed, but it didn't look as though she wore anything beneath the skirt. She had long, stalk-slim, white legs and when she whirled into her partner's arms, squealing, she didn't care much whether the skirt was up or down. If it was up it stayed that way and if it was down the fellow dancing with her soon took care of that.
The redhead sat alone at the bar. There was a vacant stool beside her. Al went up and eased his weight down on it.
"Hello, Dixie," he said.
She turned, looking at him, and he noted that she had a deceptively young and fresh appearing face. He also noticed something else: she wore a pink knit skirt and sweater that had been made from a mold at least two sizes smaller than her ample body.
"I don't think I know you," she said.
"Does that make any difference?"
She studied him briefly and then smiled. "Not particularly. Only I'm wondering how you knew my name."
"I'm manager of the Hotel Haidee." He held out his hand. "Al Evans. Glad to know you, Dixie."
She had a small, soft hand, very warm, and she didn't try to take it away from him.
"How are you, Al?"
"Not bad." He waved for a bartender. "But I feel better, now that I've found you."
Al ordered bourbon with soda and Dixie said she would have scotch, with water.
"Is this business, Al?"
"Yeah, this is business."
"You don't look like the kind of a fellow who'd have to do much looking."
"I didn't. I found you, didn't I?"
"No, not that. You know what I mean."
Al tasted the drink. It was weak; a small shot for a big price.
"You never can tell," Al said. "A guy sees a girl and he gets a yen. If he has to pay for it, he has to pay for it. If it's free, he's lucky."
"This isn't for free."
"I know."
Dixie shrugged and when Dixie shrugged she shrugged all the way from the waist up.
"Just so's we understand each other, Al."
He leaned closer. "How much?" he asked. "How much, Dixie?"
"Twenty bucks for a trick. And a hundred for all night."
"A trick would be all right."
"Then it's twenty."
"Where?"
She shrugged again. "It's pretty much the same one place as it is another. You got a room at the hotel, haven't you?"
Al had no intention of going the distance with her, even if she called it customer's night and gave it away for nothing, but he had to get her outside.
"Yeah, I've got a room."
"Well, that works out pretty good," she said. "I've got a one o'clock appointment at the hotel, anyway. I only came up here to kill some time and see the acts."
"Acts?"
"Yes. you missed the fellows. They're a riot. Where they get all their stories from I don't know."
"What are we waiting for, then?"
"The girls. They've got a new one they say is a real corker. You don't mind waiting a little while, do you?"
He did, of course, but he didn't want her to become suspicious of what he had in mind.
"I don't care," he replied. "They say waiting only makes it all the better."
She lowered one hand to his knee and moved it up and down.
"Or-something else," she suggested, knowingly. "It does that, too, Al." Her hand paused. "Maybe, for a change, it'll be fun with you. You're a pretty big man, Al."
His hand, in the shadows, wasn't idle, either. "You're a pretty big girl," he said.
They had two more drinks and then the girl came on. She was almost naked, except for a tiny pair of panties and a thin net bra.
"That's not the one I mean," Dixie said.
It wasn't much of a dance, Al thought; nothing like burlesque. This was raw sex, sex designed to go further than mere stimulation of the senses. Less than a minute after her appearance the girl shed her bra and began moving between some of the tables. She made no attempt to keep time with the music from the juke box. As she departed, however, there was a round of applause.
"She's not so hot," Dixie said. "But they say the next one really sets the joint on fire."
The number on the juke box changed to a haunting South American beat. Al saw that everybody was staring intently in the direction of the dimly lit hallway which led back to the rest rooms.
"Wait'll you see this doll," a man at the bar said. "I'd give a hundred bucks to take a whack at that for five minutes."
"Yeah?" another man inquired. "Bet you'd need a doctor to patch up your busted back."
Al sucked in his breath, when he saw her. God, she was beautiful. Beautiful!
"Hey." Dixie gasped, "you trying to ruin the ball park?"
Al hadn't realized he was squeezing her so hard. "Sorry," he murmured. "Sorry."
Numbed, Al watched Ellen as she came across the room, keeping time with the music, her body undulating, a smile on her lips, her head thrown back. She looked naked in the flesh colored panties and bra, even more naked because the bra allowed the brownness of the centers to show through.
"They were right," Dixie said. "She's got what it takes."
"Yeah."
"Built."
"Yeah. like a thousand dollar whore."
Inside his guts were a mixture of flame and nausea and hate. This was the girl he had slept with, the girl he had loved, and here she was displaying her body like candy at a five and dime counter.
"You like?"
Teasingly, she paused at one of the tables, her hands behind her, working on the bra. A number of men whistled as the bra came off and Ellen smiled. She bent low over the table, close to one of the men, and she pressed a naked breast against his face. He responded like a baby being lifted from its crib.
"O-o-o-oo!" Ellen cried and leaped away. "You do like!"
Al tried but he couldn't look at her any more. He couldn't stand to see what she was doing to herself, her body. He heard the laughter of the men, their shouts, and they reminded him of animals in a zoo.
He had been a fool. Oh. what a fool he had been! He had thought of her as being kind, gentle, sweet, and now this had happened. A guy just never knew. He just didn't. A girl was like a lovely flower, like a poppy. Outside, she was smooth and clean and wonderful but inside she was poison and death.
"Get them down!" somebody was shouting. "Get them down!
Sure, he thought savagely, get them down. Get them down for everybody. Give everybody a chance. Sell yourself, you cheap whore. You can get a hundred, two hundred dollars a night. You can get more from a dozen men than you can from one. Take it. Take it while you've got it to sell.
"Down!" went the chant. "Down, down, down-baby, take them down!"
Beside him he could hear Dixie breathing heavily. She took his hand and placed it where it had been before, only higher. Her flesh was willing, waiting, but he might just as well have been touching a stick of wood.
A roar filled the room, then died away.
"Aw, hell," a guy complained, "you ain't never gonna see her strip all the way down. Didn't I tell you? She's a teaser, that's what she is."
"Teaser? If you'd been watching close you'd have seen she slid them down far enough so you could see-"
Al got down from the stool. "Let's go," he said, shortly. "They'll be looking for me at the hotel."
Dixie sighed and smiled at her half-finished drink.
"I knew it," she said. "A fellow gets one look at her and he's ready to climb a picket fence."
He gave her the bait. "All right, let's go climb the fence."
She clung to his right arm as they walked outside, holding it in such a way that his elbow rested against her left breast. Although he was still confused and hurt by having seen Ellen a few minutes before, he was conscious of the girl's sex. She had more than her share. And she wasn't trying to keep any of it for herself.
As soon as he reached the highway and turned left she snuggled in close to him.
"You can put your arm around me," she said.
He did.
She laughed. "Oh, don't be so stiff about it. They're yours-for a while. What are you waiting for?"
He tried to remember where he had seen that entrance leading behind a shale bank but he guessed it was a couple of miles further down the road.
"Nothing," he said.
She had on a bra and when he couldn't get his fingers inside of it she leaned forward and unfastened it for him. "There," she said.
Her breasts weren't flabby but they were soft and she sure as hell needed to wear a bra or something. He could just imagine her running around without anything on. She'd look like two fiat tires on a new Buick.
"I like you, Al," she whispered. "I like you a lot."
She had busy hands, experienced hands, and they did all of the things which many men would have expected them to do.
"I like big men," she said.
His foot on the gas pedal, when she kissed him. jumped up and down and he nearly put the station wagon off the side of the road.
"Oh hell!" he exclaimed.
"I earn my money, Al," she murmured.
"I guess you do."
She kissed him again, longer this time.
"If you made it thirty dollars," she suggested, "I could earn it right now.
He twisted away from her. "I know a place to stop."
"For thirty."
"For thirty."
Her mouth teased him. "You're sweet, Al. Sweet."
"What makes you say that."
"Because you want me to."
The shale bank loomed ahead and he slowed the Ford. She sat up suddenly and looked around.
"That's a good place," she said. "I've been in there before."
"Don't make me jealous."
He swung the car off the highway and let it drift out of sight behind the mound of stones and dirt. Then he cut the light and shut off the motor.
"I'd like a cigarette," Dixie said.
He gave her a cigarette.
"You know what they call me?" she asked. "They call me."
"Yes; I know."
"I'll prove it to you, Al. I'll prove that they're right." She hesitated and a trace of humor crept into her voice. "Only I would like to have my money in advance. It isn't that I don't trust you. you understand, but-"
"Sure," Al said. "You'll get it."
He gave it to her, quick and hard, the open part of his hand right against the side of her face. "Hey. now-"
"You sleazy bitch," Al grated, grabbing both her arms. The cigarette fell from her hand and he crushed his foot on it. "We've got things to talk about, you and me."
She tried to pull away from him. "Say, what the hell-"
"Shut up." He began to exert tremendous pressure on her arms. "You had a bundle of dough last night. Where did you get it?"
"What?"
"I said you had a bundle of dough last night. You were flashing it around the hotel. Where did you get so much money"? "
"Let me go!"
"Where did you get it?"
Brutally, viciously, he bent her arms. A sob of pain escaped her.
"None of your-damned-business."
"It is my business." He was almost shouting now. "I want to know where you got that money."
"No. You'll tell Benny."
"To hell with Benny."
"You will. I know you will."
"To hell with Benny," he repeated. "What do I care about Benny? All I'm interested in is that dough. How did you get it? Climb in through the window?"
She kicked at him, trying to free herself.
"Are you nuts, mister? What window? Why would I climb in through any window?"
"To get the money."
He thought she was going to spit in his face. "You stink, you big crumb. You stink! All right, go ahead and rough me up. It won't be the first time. Some of you guys, you get a girl like me and you think you can do anything. Go ahead, slam me around. Go ahead!"
One way or another he was going to get it out of her. One way or another, no matter what he had to do, he'd get the truth from her. Cursing, he threw his weight against her, forcing her deep into the corner of the car.
"You tell me, baby. You tell me or I'll work you over so you won't know whether you've got one or if you gave it away to the highest bidder. You hear me?"
She couldn't help hearing him. If there'd been someone standing out on the highway they'd have heard him, too.
"You'll tell Benny," she whimpered.
"This has got nothing to do with Benny. Get that through your head! I don't give a hell about Benny."
"You-don't."
"No."
He could barely see her in the darkness. Her face was clouded with pain and anger. "Let go of my arms."
"If you tell me about the money."
"Not until you let go of my arms." Al relaxed his grip.
"You'd better made it good," Al told her.
Her explanation was so simple that he believed her. Why hadn't he thought of the possibility before? She'd gone out with this guy, a salesman, and he'd been loaded with money.
"He didn't know how much he had or how much he'd spent," she said. Then, defensively, "I only took four hundred. I could have taken the rest of it. But if Benny ever finds out-"
"He won't. Not from me."
"The salesman never missed it. I know he didn't. I saw him yesterday and he didn't even remember that he'd been out with me. If he had or if Benny ever found out, I'd-well, Benny'd give me a terrible going over. He says he doesn't care much what the girls do but that's one thing that he won't stand for."
"Don't worry about it," Al said. "I have no intention of telling him."
She crossed her arms, rubbing them above the elbows, and leaned back against the cushion.
"You had me scared for a while," she said. "I'm sorry."
"It's the first time I ever did anything like that. When I took the money-oh, what's the use? Once you get caught up into something like this you can't ever break loose from it. Where would I go on four hundred dollars, or a thousand? I'd only end up doing the same thing. I'm just as well off here as I would be anywhere."
Al lit a cigarette and reached for the ignition key.
"The thirty dollars," she said. "It's all off, isn't it?"
"Yes."
She crept close to him. "I'm glad," she told him. "You're a nice guy when you aren't mad, Al. Real nice. And you aren't going to tell Benny. I want to make it right with you."
Sobbing a little as anything he might have said jammed up tight in his throat, she bent to her task.
CHAPTER XIII
Al didn't know exactly when it happened. Maybe it happened during the drive to New York, with the top of the Caddy down and the wind blowing the dress up high on her legs, and maybe it happened at the theatrical agency, when he saw how positive she was about what she wanted and how quickly she made decisions.
"The combo will be fine," she told the man at the agency. And the girl. They can start right away. And at union scale."
Quick. Certain. Definite about what she sought.
And maybe it had happened before, the first time he had held her in his arms. Or prior to that, in the stuffy little room at the employment agency. But it had happened, this much he knew. She was his kind of woman.
All woman.
"Well, that didn't take very long," Reba said as he drove uptown to the George Washington Bridge.
"I hope they're good. We didn't even see them."
"They'll be good. You can believe an agent. You tell him what you want and he either has something for you or he doesn't. He's not out to bluff you. He makes his living from commissions and he can't do that unless he keeps everybody happy."
They could have picked up a local band near Rose's Point and Ellen could have done the singing but the plan had hardly seemed worth discussing. Ellen had made her choice, violated every dream he'd ever had of her. She could go to hell, that's where she could go. To hell. And she would if she stayed with Benny long enough.
"We could make it back to the hotel," Al said. The clock on the dash registered a few minutes before four. "In time for dinner."
"Do you want to, Al?"
"That's up to you."
"Is it? We told everybody we wouldn't be back until tomorrow."
"I know. But I thought we'd be busy down here all day."
"Did you?"
She was baiting him, teasing him. He wished he could feel gay, accept her mood, but every time he was on the verge of forgetting about all else that missing money began hammering at his brain, driving him almost nuts. He had thought of telling her the truth, hoping she would understand, but he had rejected the idea. It was possible that she wouldn't, that he wouldn't be able to get her to accept his explanation, and he was afraid of losing her. Ever since this morning, riding down to the city, he had been afraid of losing her. The job no longer mattered, except in its relation to Reba. She was his kind. He recognized that now.
"I waited for you last night," he said. "Where were you?"
"I told you. Pete was off on his inventory and we were going over that. It was almost nine before I got-finished with him. And then I couldn't find you."
"I took a ride."
"So you said. But you didn't tell me where."
"They say that's quite a place."
"It's a dump."
"I heard one of the girls say they have a new dancer out there. A real man eater."
Al tooled the big Caddy onto the bridge. "Remember the girl Ellen who was staying out at the hotel."
"Yes."
"She's the one."
"Oh, Al, I'm sorry."
"Don't be. It's just one of those things."
It was. Now that he thought about it he realized that he had known very little about Ellen. They had met in Syracuse, at that little club. From that point on the past had not been important, only the future. They had loved and that had made the present important, too. But you couldn't overlook the past forever. You never could. Most likely, she had been doing the same thing. He didn't know. He didn't care. It was just one of those things. A guy had to look at it that way. Picking a woman was like throwing hoops at a carnival. Sometimes you got a ringer and sometimes you missed the peg. You lost your dough and you knew better next time. Or you were a jerk.
"You're the boss," he said when they reached the intersection. "Which way?"
"Seventeen is slower. And," she added, significantly, "there are cabins along it."
He cut over onto Route Seventeen.
"I'm not thinking of the cabins," he grinned. "You know me better than that."
She laughed, pleased with his lightness.
"That's more like it," she said. "You've acted all day long like you've been in mourning. I thought it was because of the girl."
"No. Not her."
She was sitting in the middle of the seat and now she leaned against him. He could feel her bare arm, the warmth of it, and the warmth went all athrough him.-
"What's the trouble, Al?"
"Nothing."
"You know better than that."
"How much do you like me, Al."
"More than I should."
"Is that bad?"
"It could be. You've got a husband."
"That isn't the only thing. There's something else, Al. A woman can tell."
He started to sweat. There was no point in carrying the farce further. He'd never find the money and he wouldn't be able to replace it. It would be better if he told her than if she found out for herself. "Well, I am a little upset," he admitted. "I had an accident, guess you could call it an accident. At least, I didn't have anything to do with it." Up front, rested against the side of a grassy hill, a row of neat white bungalows glistened in the sun. Down below, caught in the belly of the valley, was a small lake. There were no cars parked by the bungalows; the place looked deserted.
"I know," Reba said, quietly. "You don't have to tell me, Al."
"What?"
"I said I think I know what's been bothering you." She hesitated. "It's all right, Al."
He gripped the wheel tightly. "But you don't understand. I-"
"Listen to me," she said. "I told you I was going over the accounts yesterday and I did. But before I could close them out I had to call the bank and check on the deposits made since the last statement. Dempsey's record showed a deposit of almost twelve hundred dollars which had never been made."
The sweat covering Al became hot, then cold. "I should have told you, Reba. As soon as I discovered it missing I should have."
"Its all right, Al."
"You don't believe me?"
She pointed to the row of bungalows along the side hill. "That looks like a nice quiet place. Why don't we stop here."
"If you want to."
"I want to," she said. "You know I do."
He turned off the highway and drove down a narrow lane to a fieldstone house. An elderly man in shirtsleeves waved for them to stop.
"Looking for somebody?" he inquired.
"We wanted to rent a cabin," Al said. "My wife and I."
"You ain't lost?"
"No, we're not lost."
The old man scratched his head. "First rental I've had all week long," he said. "Used to be that we filled up most every night, but after they put in the God damn throughway-"
"How much?"
"Ten dollars."
Al paid the man. "Which one?"
"Take your pick. They're all unlocked. You can bolt the door from the inside."
"Thanks."
They selected the bungalow nearest the lake. It was hot inside, worse than out in the sun, and Al opened up all of the windows.
"Too bad we didn't bring along swim suits," Al said. "That water looks pretty good."
Reba unbuttoned the two top buttons of her blouse.
"After dark we won't need any suits," she said. "And it'll be nicer then."
Al nodded and looked around the room. The interior was small but neat and there was a tiny bathroom at the far end. A double bed with a pink spread on it rested in one corner. The slightly battered dresser looked like something from a farmer's auction and the slip cover on the one easy chair had a rip in it. But it was worth ten bucks. It was Worth ten bucks for this.
"I wish I had a drink," Al said.
"There's a place down the road."
He remembered the spot, about two miles back.
"You want ride along?"
Al paused at the door. "About the other thing," he said. "Dempsey put the dough in on the desk while I was out in the kitchen. I never noticed the money was gone until-"
She came to him and covered his mouth with her hand.
"I said it was all right, Al. It doesn't matter."
"But-"
"Just kiss me. I don't want anything else."
Her lips moved as he kissed her and her arms crept up around his neck. He could feel the fullness of her body against him, straining.
"You'd better go for that liquor," she whispered. "Or well never get it."
All the way down to the store he kept thinking about her. He had been unduly concerned about nothing. Reba was good, straight as they came. Any other girl would have blown the whistle on him for something like that. He hoped that she would believe him but the fact that she might not, and that it didn't make any difference, was even better. It meant that she cared just as much as he did.
And, yet, just as he had felt that first night when he had been with her, he had the feeling that there was something about her which he didn't understand, a sinister something that was a little brutal and fascinating at the same time.
He bought a bottle of scotch, one of rye, two bottles of soda and two of ginger ale and drove back to the bungalow. He was totally unprepared for what he found when he went inside.
She was lying on the bed, all stretched out, wearing nothing but her bra and panties.
"My gosh," Reba exclaimed, "but it's hot."
Al glanced at Reba. He was plenty hot. He was burning up.
He carried the bottles over to the dresser and put them down.
"If it isn't one thing it's another," he said, disgustedly. "Now I've got to go and get some ice.
"There's enough in the bathroom. In the sink. While you were gone I went up to the house and begged a couple of trays full."
He started for the bathroom. "What do you want, rye or scotch?"
The bed made a noise as she stirred. "There's only one thing I want right now," she told him. "And you know what it is."
He stopped, hardly breathing.
"Maybe I ought to make another trip somewhere," he said. "To pick up-"
"No, Al. I want you-the way you are."
He forgot about the drinks, the money, everything. He even forgot about his clothes. He just went over there to that bed and got down there with her and fastened his mouth over her lips.
"I'm crazy about you," he said, thickly.
She was unlike any woman he had ever had before, strangely different than the first time he had had her. She was violence and love and tears and laughter. She was flame and fury and, in the next instant, passive and tender.
"Al!" she cried. "Oh, Al!"
At first, he was in this room, their bodies one and the same and then, suddenly, he was no longer there at all. He was a child again, a little boy, and the colored lights all around him were mysterious and wonderful.
He was at a carnival, that's where he was, on the roller coaster at a carnival. And he wasn't alone. There was a girl with him, although at the moment he couldn't see the girl because he had shut his eyes so tightly that he couldn't see anything.
The movement of the car on the roller coaster was forward but it didn't seem to be that way at all. To Al it seemed as though it was just up and down, up and down. Every time they went up he thought his guts were being shoved up into his throat and every time they went down, so far down that it was incredible they didn't hit bottom, the girl let out a tiny little cry and clung to him, trembling furiously. He liked it better when they went down because he liked the feel of the girl's body and the heat of her lips. "O-o-oh, Al! All
They went faster and faster, up and down, up and down. He opened his eyes and a thousand lights and a thousand different colors whirled past.
"Hang on!" he shouted. "This is the last one."
They went down, down and down. He felt the breath being ripped from his body as down and down and down they went. The girl let out a strangled scream and flung herself upward to meet the terrific force crushing down upon her.
"O-o-oh!"
She collapsed in Al's arms.
It was nice along the lake, dark and warm. They were both undressed, lying upon the sand, looking up at the sky overhead.
"I hope that old guy doesn't come down here with a flashlight," Al said. "He does and he sees you he won't give his wife a rest for a week."
Reba laughed and kissed Al on the mouth.
"How much rest am I going to get?"
"Not much."
Her lips lingered over his face. "I don't need much. You ought to know that now."
Cripes, he thought, what a woman; what a lovely, passionate, beautiful woman. No, she didn't need much rest. She didn't need any. She was like a well-oiled machine that could run forever.
"Al," she said, finally. "Al, I'm glad we didn't drink very much."
She'd had one and he'd had two. "Why?"
"Because I want to talk to you. About us."
His hand crept beneath her and worked its way up to one naked breast. Who wanted to talk? There was something else they could be doing. He smiled up at a star that winked in the sky. Maybe he was a born optimist.
"I'm listening," Al said.
She moved so that her breast fit in the palm of his hand. "It's a short season, Al. It'll soon be over. And-then what?"
T don't know."
"I love you, Al." He kissed her, wanting her more than ever. "I love you, too."
"How much? All the way."
"Every inch of it."
"Enough to do anything for me? For us?" It was coming at last; he knew it was coming. The night became chilly and filled with silence.
"Anything." It was almost a whisper. "Anything at all."
"But you don't know what it is."
"We'd need money if we went away together."
"I guess we would."
"A lot of money. Enough so that we wouldn't ever have to worry again."
"But not the kind either of us would want."
"No, I guess not."
"And there's no reason why we should have to worry about that. I know where we can get it, Al. I know where we can get enough money to last us the rest of our lives."
"The hotel?"
"No. I've thought of selling it but that isn't any good. There's a big mortgage against it and hardly anybody would want to run the kind of place we've been running. You take any buyer, they'd hold that against us. They'd chisel and chisel and by the time we got all done the bank would get almost everything. Not only that, but half of the hotel is in Arnie's name. We'd get peanuts."
"Yeah," Al agreed, "I can see that."
"And Arnie's a bastard. Just at the last minute he'd probably do something to foul it up."
"He is a bastard."
"You sound like you hate him."
"Maybe I do. He had no right knocking you around that way."
She reached up and touched the side of her face with the tips of her fingers. When she took her fingers away she put them down on his hand covering her breast.
"The marks are about gone," she said.
"The ones outside, maybe. But they hurt inside, too."
"Yes."
"I wish there was something I could do."
"There is, Al."
"I don't know what."
She took his other hand and brought it over to the opposite breast.
"You like them, don't you, honey?"
He bent and kissed her in such a way that she could never have another doubt.
"I want them to belong to me."
"They can, if we do it right."
"You mean, your husband."
"And my sister."
"What!"
She rolled over on her side and now he could feel the full length of her body. It pressed in against him, leaving none of her secrets hidden. He tried to pull away.
"Al, listen to me!"
"But your sister. Baby-"
Her lips subdued him. "Listen to me, Al. Listen! We haven't done anything yet. We're just talking about it. We can talk, can't we? For land sakes, it doesn't do any harm to talk."
He suppressed a shudder. "I suppose not. Only."
"Al, listen to me. Listen to me. You have to understand, you have to see. When my father died he left the hotel to Arnie and me. It was deeply in debt, worse than it is now. That's why I had to run it the way I've been running it. Do you think I enjoy having a bunch of women hanging around and have the other hotel owners say I'm running a whorehouse."
"No."
"When my father died, Arnie was different. He didn't drink and he seemed to be the sort of a guy who could give a lot of help."
"He sure as hell changed."
"Yes. But not at first. The first year he pitched right in and I thought we had something to work for. Then-Al, I had a baby. It died. Suffocated in the crib. He's hardly been sober a day since that time. I-it's been very rough for me."
"I know."
"But all this time my sister didn't have to worry. Dad left her a trust fund that pays a thousand dollars a month for the rest of her life. She doesn't have to worry. Ted doesn't have to worry. But I have to worry and I have to put up with a drunken fool who doesn't know from diddly nothing."
"It isn't fair," Al said.
"No, and it never was fair. Helen didn't have to keep all that money for herself. She could have been reasonable about it. But she wasn't. A year ago, when I needed some money for the mortgage-it was in the winter and things were dead-I went to her. She wouldn't let me have a dime. Still, she and her husband will come out here in the summer, stay three or four weeks, drink a lot of liquor, eat the best foods, and never offer to pay a cent. Do you think that's being decent."
"Are you kidding?"
"If I had my way about it I'd kick them out. But Arnie won't. Arnie's a stupid slob."
The moon was beginning to come up now but it was still dark along the shore of the lake. Frogs croaked from the safety of thick reeds and in the distance an owl hooted. Trucks and cars moved along the highway, their headlights stabbing through the night.
"I don't see what your sister has to do with us," Al said.
"The trust fund reverts to me at her death."
"Is that all?"
"Isn't it enough?"
"A grand a month," Al said, trying to depreciate the situation. "It isn't what you would call a fortune."
"But it is. You figure it out. It comes in every month, rain or shine, and you never have to worry about it. If we live and collect it for twenty years it's almost a quarter of a million dollars."
The sounds of the night were all around them but Al didn't hear a thing.
"Yeah," he said, softly. "You're right. A quarter of a million bucks."
"Two-fifty a week."
"What about the months with five weeks."
"Silly! We'd live on love the fifth week."
"Or do that for four weeks and take the money on the fifth."
"You're laughing at me," she said, angrily, drawing away from him. "You think it's a joke."
"No, I'm not. Talking the way we are is no joke. It's serious. It's the most serious thing I ever talked to anybody about."
"She's got it coming. They've both got it coming."
"That may be. But it's still serious. Serious enough to hang us side by side."
Her lips moved against his mouth. "Not hang us, honey."
"Not in this state." Outwardly he was calm but inside he was as cold as though death had just touched him. "Th give you the chair in this state."
"They'll give Arnie the chair, you mean."
"What for?"
"For Helen's murder," she replied quite simply.
The steadily rising moon conveniently disappeared behind a long, low bank of clouds. When it again probed the night, washing the beach in its brightness, they were gone.
It happened that way.
CHAPTER XIV
They lived in town, in a two and one half room apartment on Water Street. Benny had told them they could use one of the empty cabins in the woods, out behind the Hideaway, but Betty said she couldn't sleep in all that silence, that she had to be somewhere near the noises of passing traffic.
"You get used to it in the city," she explained. "Then you try to bend your ear in the woods and it's like crawling down into a grave."
Of course, Betty had been living in town right along, before Ellen met her.
"It would be more convenient," Ellen said. "And it wouldn't cost us anything."
"Don't be a fool," Betty advised her. "Benny doesn't give anything away, not unless he's got an angle in it for Benny. And you know what it is, don't you? You've got him stacked up because you won't play with him. You just work and let it go at that. But I know Benny. He wants you, honey. He wants you so bad he'd cut off his right-well, no, he wouldn't do that. But he'd do almost anything else. Anything."
Ellen guessed this might be so. Benny had a habit of coming back to the dressing room, of walking in on her after she'd finished a performance and before she'd had a chance to get dressed.
"You've sure got a set of twins," he'd say, looking at her, drinking in her near nakedness. "I never seen a dame built the way you are, baby. Most of the girls I know who are big are sort of sloppy, but you aren't. You've grown up like a school girl who got shots for something that wasn't wrong with her."
Ellen hated to have him come into the dressing room this way, to see her, to lean up against the closed door, sort of smirking, and give the impression that he was able to touch and fondle her with his eyes. "You get out of here, Benny."
"What's the matter, baby? You didn't have no objection to all those guys out there seeing what you've got."
"That's different. I do that for money. But I don't let any of them come back here afterward. You pay me for five minutes of my time and that's what they get. That's what's different, Benny. It's a lot different."
"You could do something else for money, baby."
"I keep telling you I don't want to talk about that."
"You could even do it for my money. And Benny doesn't often pay for what he ought to be able to get for nothing. But when I see something I like I'll go whole hog on it."
She never argued with him when he started in on her like that. He was paying her a hundred and fifty dollars a week for a little dancing and a lot of insults. She could put up with almost anything until she had enough money so she could move on.
"I never figured it of you," Benny said several times. "You and that dame. I'd like to wake you up from that trance, baby. I'd like to show you that it's better to have a man-not that I'm only half, you know-than it is to have a whole woman."
Benny, she realized, was only trying to do with her what he did with all of the other girls. Benny's girls, she had learned, were Benny's girls in more ways than one. They went out with men, paid him his cut and went to bed with him for free. It was rumored that Benny could go from one to the other all night long and not even have to stop for a second breath.
"We'll be lucky," one girl said, "if we don't all go back to the city knocked up."
"Not me," decided another girl. "I don't take chances. A girl who takes chances with any of them must be out of her mind."
"You take a chance with Benny, honey," said the first one.
"He always gets to me last. You call that taking a chance?"
"With anybody else but Benny, no. But with Benny you do. They say Benny eats a dozen eggs a day."
"Let him eat two dozen, for all I care. I knew a guy, once, who lived on nothing but eggs and if he funned me more than once a week he was giving me a break."
Oddly enough, most of the girls didn't talk about sex a great deal. They discussed clothes, their families, their ambitions if they had any-almost anything to help them to forget, for a few minutes, about what they were doing. Most were single, a couple had been married and one had a boy in a summer camp upstate.
"I'm doing it for him," the mother said. "I hope he never finds out."
They all drank and Ellen drank her share or, if it had been measured out, perhaps a little more than her share. She didn't particularly care for the taste of the liquor, or the numbed confusion which it created in her brain, but it was the only thing she could use and force herself to face those men every night. The alcohol filled her with a false sense of pride, pride in the fact that her body was as good as the best of them and better than most, and the pride, if she concentrated on it, helped overcome the shame. The shame came later, after it was over, when the headache usually started and the effects of the liquor were gone. But there was a greater shame than this, too, the one which, she supposed, drove her to drinking in the first place.
At night, as soon as the show was over, Betty called a taxi and they drove back to town. Sometimes they talked on the way and sometimes they were silent; it all depended upon Ellen. If Benny left her alone she felt free, glad that the night at the Hideaway was over, but when Benny came into the dressing room she became upset. She thought then not of Benny nor Al, but of Eddie and what he had done to her. This made sex something dirty, a fearful monster from which she must escape. It made even the memories of sex with Al-those moments when they had said they loved each other-almost dirtier than anything else. She could close her eyes and see only one thing about a man, the one thing that made all men live and the one thing that made some men die. She saw it and she hated it. She hated the male and what he was and just the thoughts of him, the way he was built and what he wanted to do, sent chills all through her. Not the kind of chills a person got with a cold, but the kind of a chill that came from dying inside, of drying up inside, of finding, for a brief instant, nothing that mattered at all.
And then they would be in town, in the apartment, and Betty would be understanding. They would undress, sometimes in the darkness and sometimes in the light, and they would get into bed, hardly saying anything, lying there beside each other naked in the dark. The cars would move along the street down below, tires rumbling on the brick pavement, and they could hear the shouts of the people leaving the tavern on the next corner. Almost every night the salesman and his girl friend in the room adjoining got into a fight and his curses could be heard through the paper-thin walls. So could the girl's crying. And later, when the cursing and the crying stopped, it would be quiet for a few minutes. The bed springs in there never made very much noise, not at first, but pretty soon the squeak would become a constant, demanding sound.
"You know what they're doing in there, Ellen?"
"Yes. He's-taking her."
"I feel sorry for her.
"So do I."
Ellen, closing her eyes, trying to shut out the sounds, would think of the girl not as a girl only but as something beautiful and holy that was being violated. She had never seen the girl but that didn't matter. The girl was a girl and, as such, the represented one of the most wonderful things in the world, the female body with all its mysteries and pain and suffering. Her hands would go to her own body, because her own body was wonderful, too.. She would touch her throat and then allow her hands to drift down to her breasts, pausing to explore the high, thrusting mounds and the gathering hardness at the tips. Usually they were full and hard and she could barely breathe when she felt of them. Further down her tummy was flat, lifting up to meet her stroking hands. Here, inside, was the secret of woman, the ability to give life, the urge to create life. Here was where man became unimportant physically. A woman did not need a man physically to plant the seed, to start a life. A woman could go to a doctor and the doctor in his clean white office could impersonally meet the challenge of woman's body. Did this not make man's body insignificant? Did it not prove that woman was man's master?
"Ellen?"
"Yes."
"It's stopped. The noise has stopped." T don't hear anything."
"It's stopped and now she's afraid. Every girl is afraid afterward. You have to be afraid, because they use you for only one thing. They don't' care what happens to you. None of them do."
By this time Ellen and Betty would be close together, on their sides, facing each other. She seldom remembered when her anxious hands crept to the figure of the girl lying so near.
"No," Betty would say, breathing heavily. "Let me."
Betty's lips were warm and wet, softer than the softest tissue, and when they closed over Ellen's mouth they did so with a tender, hungry eagerness that would not be denied. She kissed with her mouth open, wide open and gasping, and her hands, equally soft, were as gentle as a morning rain upon thirsty flowers.
"Oh, you're so lovely! I love you, Ellen!"
In the darkness of the room her lips would become wild, pleading for the eternity of love. And Ellen would respond, both willingly and frightened, giving her that love. At the height there was no fright, only a tumbling, surging need that swept her past all reason, all doubt, all fears.
In the morning, however, there was fear. And, as she looked at the girl sleeping on the bed, there was an almost frantic challenge to hate. She thought of Madge and Madge was no longer kind and good. Madge had been a stranger whom she had never understood, a stranger who had awakened in her something that should not have lived. Betty, too, was a stranger; a stranger from a confused, bitter, ugly world. Yet she hated neither. She hated only herself. The ground did not become wet if it did not rain. People were bad only if inside of themselves they were no good.
In the afternoon she visited the bar on the corner. Betty did not go with her since Betty either had a date at the hairdresser's or there was a movie playing that she wanted to see. Ellen was grateful for the opportunity to be alone, to be able to have a few drinks in the quietness of the bar and try to think.
"The usual, Miss? Rye and soda."
"The usual."
The bartender was young and blonde, very tall and broad, and he had a nice smile.
"You come in here every day, just about."
It was her third time. "Just about."
"Live around here?"
"Down the street."
"I saw you the other night."
"Did you?"
"Out at Benny's Hideaway. I went there with a friend from out of town. You put on-quite an act."
"I didn't put anything on," she said, defiantly. "Well, you know what I meant. I only meant."
"Let's not talk about it."
But she was the only one at the bar-it was a neighborhood place, doing most of its business after quitting time at the factories-and he insisted upon talking. Ellen had no objection when he talked only about himself. He was a graduate of a law school and he had taken his bar exam the week before.
"My uncle owns this tavern," he said, "and he asked me if I'd help out while he took a short vacation. It's a lot different than I expected. The people who come in here are nice, regular, and I make more money than I would clerking in a law office."
"Could I have another drink?"
"Gee, you drink pretty fast."
"Yes, I do."
He paused before her on the opposite side of the bar, the bottle in his hand. "You're very pretty," he said.
She was on her fourth drink and she didn't give a damn. That was the nice thing about the liquor, whether it tasted good or not-you just didn't give a damn. To hell with the world and all the slobs who thought they could make it spin faster.
"You ought to know. If you were out to the Hideaway."
"I wasn't talking about that. Your face and your eyes. They're nice. Awfully nice."
Without any reasonable explanation she felt an inner glow, a glow that didn't come from the whiskey.
"Thank you," she said.
"I mean it."
"That's the nicest thing that's been said to me in a long time."
He poured the drink, his eyes not upon the glass but looking deeply into her face. "I doubt it," he said. "Probably you just weren't listening."
"Perhaps not."
Still looking into her face he reached behind him and put the bottle on the back bar. "I like you," he said.
"Do you flatter everybody when you serve them."
"My name is Thomas," he said, ignoring her sarcasm. "Jerry Thomas. I'm going to be a lawyer."
"You told me."
"I went to Cornell." Ellen said nothing.
"You put me in mind of a girl I knew at Cornell. She had a pretty face and nice eyes' too." He looked uncomfortable. "But her figure wasn't as good as yours. Of course, I only saw her in a bathing suit but I'm pretty sure that it wasn't as good."
His directness bothered her and she rebelled against it. "You've gotten a good look at me-"
"Name's Jerry."
"Yes, i got a. good look. You've got a lovely figure."
"Jerry."
"Yes, I got a good look. You've got a lovely figure."
"Thanks."
He reached under the bar for a glass and she thought he was going to have a drink. But he didn't. He merely half-filled the glass with water and placed it near one elbow.
"She died," he said. "She was killed in an auto accident. We were going to get married."
"I'm-sorry."
"Like I say, you put me in mind of her. I hope you don't get mad at me because I talk this way but I can't help it. Ever since I first saw you I've been thinking about her again, a lot. And I was thinking about her out there at Benny's last night. Not because you reminded me of her so much just then, but because I was wondering if she would ever have done what you were doing."
"That's easy to answer," Ellen said.
"No, it isn't. I don't know what your reasons are but they must be pretty solid. You're not at all like the other girls who hang around out there. A fellow can just look at you and see that you don't belong. A fellow could have looked at Annie and seen the same thing. I know it all sounds sort of crazy and I'm not very good at explaining it."
The glow inside returned and this time it stayed with her. She smiled, she guessed, for the first since she'd met him.
"You'll have to do better than that in a court of law," she advised him.
"I guess I will."
"But I know what you mean-Jerry. It was sweet of you to say it. You're saying that I've done a lot of things that your girl wouldn't have done but this doesn't make me any worse."
"Something like that."
"I think you'll make a fine lawyer. You're-convincing."
"Am I."
"Yes. Very."
It was four o'clock before she realized it and she hadn't touched the last drink. They'd been talking about a lot of different things, the town, the people in it, the summer resort folks and how it hurt business when there was a rainy weekend. He had been born in Rose's Point, raised there, and he had plans for opening a small office. His father was a welder on the Erie, his mother a fairly regular church-goer and he had a sister who was married to a dentist.
"You'd like them," he said. "And they'd like you."
At four an elderly man came in to relieve Jerry. She knew, even before he put it into words, that he would ask her to go somewhere with him.
"My car is just outside," he said. "Would you care to take a little ride? Along the river, where it's cool? Lots of afternoons, when I'm finished here, I-"
"Thank you, Jerry. I think I'd like that."
It was cool, just the way he had said it would be. And when it ended, when he let her off at the corner, she was sorry it was over. There was something strong and decent about him that she admired. Something that she herself did not have.
"Good-bye, Ellen," he said.
"Good-bye, Jerry."
She hoped, hardly daring to have the right to hope for it, that it was only the beginning.
CHAPTER XV
Reba dressed leisurely. She felt fine. That night with Al in the bungalow had really wrapped it up. He was like a gigantic bull with a ring in his nose; all she had to do was lead him.
And he was a good lover. This wasn't one of the requirements which she'd had in mind, when she'd been looking for a man to help her, but it was nice to have some of both. She could use the money and her body could use his love; it was a happy combination.
Love, she thought now, as she slipped into the fire-red dress, how he could love! He never wanted to stop, that fellow. He just wanted to get into bed, or anywhere else, and give her what he said she cried for. On the way back, not five miles from the hotel, he'd pulled the Caddy over to the side of the road and they'd gone up into the woods. This had been wonderful, the best yet, and she'd thought he'd never give up. They hadn't taken off their clothes the first time but they'd been shielded from the road and then they had undressed each other. He had kept her there on the sand and leaves for almost two hours and she'd been so exhausted that he'd almost had to carry her down to the car. Yes, it had been wonderful! She'd had many men during her life, enough for a couple of hot-blooded girls, but she'd never experienced anybody like Al.
Now, only a few hours later, she wanted Wirt again so badly she wished they'd never returned to the hotel.
She hadn't planned it this way, not at an. She had planned to find a man to do the killing for her and then she had decided to leave him. Once a man killed for her he wouldn't have much choice in the matter and he'd have even less claim to the money. But now there was Al. And Al changed everything. From here on out it would be even better. She would have what every woman wanted a man and money.
She glanced at the clock. It was nearly nine, Al would be in the office. She hadn't told him that she would call but he would be there waiting. He could get up to her room in a couple of minutes, easy.
Smiling, she crossed the room and lifted the phone. Dempsey answered almost immediately. No Mr. Evans was not in his office. Mr. Evans had been in earlier but he had left word that he was going down to the lake.
"Thank you, Paul."
She walked over to the window and looked out. Al was seated on the boat dock, out near the end, his long legs dangling down almost touching the water. He seemed to be staring fixedly at something out in the lake.
She smiled and turned away from the window. What was Al thinking about? Helen? She had, that night in the bungalow, put it up to him squarely. The money would belong to her but the problem of getting it was his responsibility. In the beginning, he had been shocked, just as she had expected any man to be shocked, but the liquor had made all things possible, even desirable, and her own body love had done the rest. By dawn he had been talking about Helen as though she were already dead, dead in such a way that Arnie would go screaming to the chair for something that he hadn't done.
She was disappointed that Al hadn't been in the office. She needed Al so badly, right now, that her whole body was a sheet of tortured flame. She glanced at the bed and then away. A double bed. A bed made for something other than sleeping. A bed with quiet springs and a soft, deep mattress. A bed made for love.
She was nervous and she was sorry she didn't have a drink. She seldom drank early in the morning but this morning she needed one. A drink would help her to determine something, to know something about herself that she had to know.
Maybe, after all these years, she was faced with the possibility of being over-
sexed. The thought, rather than disturbing, she found somewhat amusing. Over-
sexed. A woman who just couldn't get enough. A woman who had to have it or die inside.
Neither Arnie, nor any of the others, had affected her this way. Even Benny. With Arnie it had been just a physical act to be endured, enjoyed, too, during fleeting moments that were all too infrequent. There had been more satisfaction with Benny. She supposed this was due to the fact that Benny had been ruthless, violent in his demands; and, especially following her marriage, when she had found Arnie dull, they had both been silently frantic to achieve the ultimate. They had stopped using a lot of the things that many people used "I was going to float a loan to keep us in business," Benny had said, jokingly-and on the second month he had made her pregnant. Of course, Arnie had thought the child to be his but Reba had known better. She felt that every woman always knew, subconsciously, when it really happened. Just as she had known in college that Bill had gotten to her all the way.
Sometimes, as she looked back on it, she thought that she might have been in love with Billy Sales. Billy had been from a fine Philadelphia family, a typical crew-cut college boy who played all sports well. She had met him during her first year as a freshman-he'd been a junior-and prior to getting her first semester's marks she'd let Billy start in on a physical education course for which the college didn't give any points. Before summer's vacation she had gone through the cycle of carrying Billy's baby and of getting rid of it with the little brown pills Billy had gotten from a friend of his. Billy had felt badly about the whole thing; he had wanted to marry her. And the next year he had felt even worse. She had discovered, during summer vacation, that one man, for her purpose, was about the same as any other. She had taken her new-found knowledge back to college that fall, and for the next three years she had been as popular as a whore in a gold rush.
Love, however, had very little to do with it and the way she felt now, alone there in the room, it had nothing to do with it. Her body was yearning, hungry, and somebody had to give her the release which she sought. Al had started it all. Al had awakened in her something which she didn't understand and which she hadn't felt previous. And Al wasn't around to take care of things. He was sitting down there on the dock, doing nothing except looking at the lake. It was a stinking shame.
Reba left the room and started down the hall. She met Helen near the top of the stairs.
"You ought to do something about Arnie," Helen said. "He was worse last night than ever."
"To hell with him," Reba said, shortly. "He's got his life and I've got mine. You know how he drinks. He always drinks. No matter what I say he goes down to the bar and gets drunk. Should I worry about a man like that?"
"But if you talked to him-"
"Talk to him? I'm not talking to him. I'm all through with him." She started past her sister. "It's none of your business, anyway. I don't try to tell you what you should do and you've got no right to tell me."
"Reba?"
"What?"
"You're cruel. You've always been cruel. Why must you be that way?"
"For the same reason you're like you are. I was born as I am."
Helen said something else but Reba kept on walking away from her. In a few days, if everything went all right, Helen would be dead. She couldn't, no matter how she tried, look at her sister and not see her dead. And she disliked looking at anybody dead.
"There's a phone call for you," Dempsey said as she reached the lobby.
"All right. I'll take it in Al's office." It was Benny. "Hello, baby," he said. "Hello, Benny."
"The girl quit," Benny said. "How do you like that? She walked out on me last night. Left me flat."
"I'll send the money over to you."
"Oh, hell, I don't care about that. She was a sensation. When she was out there on the floor there wasn't a guy in the Hideaway who could think anything else except what he wanted to do to her."
"Including you?"
"You know me, baby."
"I knew you."
Benny laughed. "Was it a pleasure?"
Just talking about it, thinking about it, built up a glorious pressure within her.
"It was at the time," she admitted.
"It could be again."
"Not for us, Benny. That's over."
"Well, what about the girl? Do you know where I can find her."
"No."
"I thought you might. That's why I called."
"Sorry, Benny, but I don't. And I don't care where she is. Not now. I had something on my mind when I placed her there and now it's settled. I've no reason to give a damn about her any more."
"Maybe you don't, but I do," Benny said. "Ain't no dame who walks away and leaves me hung up this way. I'll find her. So help me, I'll find her."
"Maybe somebody'll help her," Reba said.
"No," Benny disagreed. "Ain't nobody can help her now."
Benny hung up without saying good-bye but Benny always did that. Even when Reba had been going with him this habit of Benny's had angered her. One second you were talking to him and the next instant you were carrying on a conversation with yourself.
"Pete would like to see you in the storeroom," Paul said as she emerged from the office. "Says he's got a little trouble down there."
Reba nodded and continued on through the lobby, in the direction of the back stairs. Pete had been having plenty of trouble down in the storeroom lately, most of it all one kind.
She found Pete in the storeroom, sitting on the edge of the cot and looking at a girlie magazine. Pete had at least two hundred girlie magazines which he kept in an empty Del Monte pineapple box. Not only did he have these magazines but he also owned about a dozen imported periodicals, beautifully printed, with numerous photographs to illustrate the works. Some of the pictures were of naked men and women, in various stages of sexual intercourse, while others were of group activities. Pete had shown Reba some of the magazines, and once he had asked her to read part of an illustrated one aloud. She couldn't remember what she had read, because she had been very passionate at the time and the words had lost their meaning.
"Close the door," Pete said.
She closed the door.
"You'd better lock it, too."
She locked it.
"You must keep yourself pretty busy," Reba said, smiling. "Every time I take a breath you're yelling for me. Honest, I didn't know that being a storekeeper was so much work."
"Now you're laughing at me."
"No, I'm laughing with you."
"What?"
"I said I was laughing with you." She filled her lungs with air and yawned, stretching her arms up over her head as she did so. The dress was tight and she held herself that way, letting him look at her. "You think you make me mad, dragging me down here every time you get the urge. Well, you don't. I like it. You're-different, but I like it."
Pete threw the magazine aside. "You didn't talk that way the other night."
"You made me late for a date; that's why I was upset."
"With Al Evans?"
"You've got no right to question me."
Pete stood up and walked over to the Del Monte box. "I've got lots of rights with you, Mrs. Cummings. I've got more rights with you than anybody else around here." He reached into the box and brought out one of the magazines. "Here, I want you to read me this. You don't have to start on the first page-just like all of them, it doesn't say anything until after a couple of pages. You start on page three and you read it all the way through.
He brought the magazine over to her, opening it as he did so. She glanced at one of the pictures as he handed it to her. It was an unconventional picture of a man and a woman. She wondered, vaguely, how two people could degrade themselves by posing that way.
"She's meditating," Pete snickered, pointing to the girl. "Meditating."
Slowly, deliberately, Reba closed the magazine and then began tearing it into shreds.
"Hey, now! Damn, what are you-"
"You shut up, Pete! You hear me? Just shut up."
Pete frowned. "That cost me twenty bucks."
"I don't care if it cost you a hundred dollars. What do you take me for, anyway? What kind of a person do you think I am?"
"You're down here, aren't you? That ought to answer it for you."
She threw the shredded remains on the floor. "I'm down here because I want to be, Pete, and for no other reason. I'm no better than you are or I wouldn't be here."
"You can't kid me, Mrs. Cummings," Pete said. "I know about that money and you wouldn't want me saying anything about it. All I'd have to do-"
"Reba shook her head. "You're wrong, Pete. You were right before but you're wrong now. You can tell everybody in the hotel what you saw and I wouldn't care. I accomplished my purpose."
She hadn't told Al about taking the money but she felt pretty sure that it wouldn't make any difference between them if she did tell him. He might even like it, to know that she had thought enough of him to do everything she could to keep him on.
"You serious, Mrs. Cummings?"
"I'm serious. And I'm serious about something else, too, Pete. I could get you into a lot of trouble for having those pictures around. And I could get you into trouble over what you've been doing with some of the girls. But I could get you in more trouble over me. I could go to the police and tell them you forced me to do-these things."
Perspiration covered Pete's forehead and he looked worried.
"Hell, I didn't mean anything by it," he said. "Maybe I didn't do exactly right, Mrs. Cummings-but there's no harm done."
"You call what you've been doing not harmful."
"Well-"
"Can you imagine what you've done to all those young girls?"
"Honest, I-"
"Or what you've done to me, Pete? Don't you know that something like this has an effect upon anybody?"
Pete wiped at the sweat on his forehead and licked his lips with his tongue.
"I didn't make none of them come down here," he said. "They keep coming by themselves."
"And read your picture stories for you?"
"One of them does."
"What kick do you get out of that, Pete?"
"I don't know. I just do. It's just like some people who read comics. They get a bang out of it; I don't. I go for something like this. I got something that keeps telling me to look at pretty girls and then read about them. But it's a whole lot better when the girl reads them to me. She gets a kick out of it, too.
"And you wanted me to do that."
"You did it before."
"That was before. You forced me then, Pete. But you can't force me now. I won't do anything I don't want to do." He returned to the cot and sat down.
"I wish I could do it again," he said. "Just once more. I wouldn't bother you again."
"Do what?"
"You know. Do what I did."
The tension grew like a huge ball within her. She felt that it was getting so big that it was about ready to burst and leave her scattered in pieces all around the room. Her mouth was dry and hot and she could feel the breath going in and out of her lungs.
Al, she thought; oh, Al, why aren't you handy when you're so badly needed? "Why, Pete? Why."
"You're better than all the others."
"Am I?"
"You know you are. You're-wild."
"How wild, Pete?"
"Like an animal in the jungle. I don't know. I could put it into words when you're that way but I can't do it now."
That ball inside of her became bigger, tighter. Her head pounded, not just in front but all the way back to the base of her neck. There was an exciting hollow in the pit of her stomach that extended far down into her legs, down as far as her angles. Her feet were numb, as though they were frozen and she had just put them in ice cold water.
"Get yourself ready," she said, reaching for the zipper on the dress. "This is your last trip to the jungle, Pete."
"What?"
"This is the last time I'm coming down here. So you might as well make the most of it."
He sat up on the edge of the cot and waited for her. She lifted the dress over her head and placed it on top of a pile of boxes.
"Take off your bra and panties," he said. She walked toward him, smiling. "No," she said. "That's your job."
He stood up and with trembling hands unhooked the bra. When her breasts were free of their prison he bent and kissed each one in quick succession.
"Ripe," he whispered, reaching for the elastic band. "Ripe as fruit on the vine."
"Then pick them," she pleaded.
Still kissing her that way his hands kept going down and down and down. She moved her legs, first one and then the other, helping him. Then she gave a little kick with one foot and felt the filmy garment fly free.
"Hey," Pete exclaimed, suddenly, "what are you doing?"
"You know what I'm doing," she panted.
"But-"
"Never mind. Let me handle this."
Pete's laugh was shaky and he began to tremble.
"I guess you are," he sighed.
There was no resistance in Pete as she pushed him down onto the cot. He lay there, looking up at her, his eyes wide. She bent over him.
"You said I was wild," she reminded him. "Let me show you just how wild." Lower and lower she bent. "You haven't lived until now," she told him, her voice muffled. "You'll want to die right here, Pete."
An hour later she left him broken and exhausted.
CHAPTER XVI
Al lounged on the dock and attempted to convince himself that he was not a killer. Why, back on the farm in Sullivan County, he had been reluctant to shoot even a woodchuck. No, he wasn't the killer type.
Or was he?
That native in Casablanca, Al would have killed that native if he'd been given half a chance. And there was a girl, too, whom he could have killed easily. She had lived in Port Jervis, not far from Monticello, and she had accused him of taking her across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania and raping her. Only it hadn't been rape and it hadn't happened in Pennsylvania. It had happened high up in the mountains overlooking Port Jervis, where more than one girl had gotten the shingles pulled loose from her roof, and she had said it was all right. She hadn't protested, she hadn't fought; she had said it was all right. She'd even had some things along with her, in her red pocketbook, and she'd given him one. But after, early the next week, she had written to him, charging him with rape and saying that she was going to the cops unless he married her. Yes, he had been ready to kill then, in a blind, futile, terrible rage. He had driven down to Port Jervis, perhaps with that thought in mind, but the girl had refused to see him. The fellow who had made her pregnant had consented to marry her and her need for Al was no longer urgent nor desired.
But he could have killed. That was the thing; he could have done it, either to the native or the girl.
He lit a cigarette and flipped the match out into the water, playing a game with himself that he had played a long time ago. If the match went past the floating maple leaf he would do it; if the match fell short of the leaf he wouldn't.
The match sailed fully two feet past the maple leaf.
He inhaled deeply and watched the smoke rush out of his nose. This would be death for love and money, not anger and fear. The other way, in some respects, would be easier. Motivated by anger or fear a man just went ahead and did what had to be done; he didn't think, not the way Al was thinking just now, and he didn't suffer from any inhibitions. He did the job, nasty as it was, and forgot about it.
The easiest part about killing her, Al thought, was the planning; not the physical or moral aspects of it, but the planning. That was simple. Of course, Arnie wouldn't be blamed for it, the way Reba had suggested, but there was an advantage in that. To frame Arnie for Helen's death required a lot of patience, more than Al possessed, and it also demanded a clever set of circumstances. An accidental death would be accepted by the police and there would be hardly any investigation. There would be no trial, no chance of a slip-up. As soon as Reba wished she would be able to divorce Arnie. What if Arnie did get the hotel? The way things stood at the bank the hotel wasn't worth the powder to blow it to hell. And with a thousand bucks a month they didn't need the hotel. All they needed was each other.
He played the game again with the cigarette butt and the cigarette went even further than the match.
Closing his eyes against the hot glare of the sun on the water, he went over the whole situation again. He was in love with her, not just her body, but the way she smiled and the way she looked at him, sort of misty and far away and as though he were a little boy. Well, maybe he was a little boy with her. Right from the start he had been attracted to her. He had wanted her more, he recognized now, than he had ever wanted anybody else or anything before. Ellen had only been a part of the picture of the woman he had to have. Reba was the complete and final picture. Reba was his woman and, good or bad, he was her man.
"Hello, Al."
He opened his eyes, blinking them, and turned his head. Helen Lavina stood a few feet away, smiling down at Al, her compact little figure barely hidden by the one-piece bathing suit.
"You're early," Al said.
"Early? No, I don't think so. I come down here every morning. Ted goes to the golf course promptly at ten-thirty and then I come down here."
This was even better than Al had expected.
"And you swim out to the raft?"
"Twice a day. But I like it better in the morning than I do in the afternoon. In the afternoon I have to listen to people fuss over me that I'm going to drown."
Al looked out at the raft.
"It's quite a ways," he said.
She laughed. "Now don't you start in on me. I have a lot of confidence and I'm not afraid. I think that's half of it."
"I hope it's all of it," Al said.
Helen Lavina came over and sat down beside him on the dock.
"Al, I'm glad I found you down here. I wanted to talk to you."
"That's funny," Al said. "I wanted to talk to you, too."
"You did? What about?"
He dug for another cigarette. "I was wondering about your bill. Do you take care of it by the week or do you wait until the end of your stay?"
She acted surprised. "Why, we don't pay any room or board, Al."
"I see." The cheap bastards, they could at least shell out something for their food. "Sort of a family courtesy, huh."
"You might say that."
Al grinned. "Well, I guess I can't pick up a buck on that deal." He lit the Winston. "You said you wanted to talk to me. What about?"
"The hotel. It isn't the nicest place in the world. These people-"
"I don't set the policy," Al reminded Helen. "All I try to do is keep things in line."
"But, surely, you can't agree that it's right to have all of those-women hanging around, can you?"
"No." He was lying; he didn't care, one way or the other. "I don't have anything to say about that, though. They were here when I came."
"Yes; I know." She looked at his cigarette, longingly, but he didn't offer her one. "What do you think of my sister, Reba?"
"She's my boss," he said, lying again. "Further than that I haven't given her a second thought."
"And Arnie?"
"Arnie's a drunken slob."
"You sound very positive about that."
"I am. I believe what I see. He hasn't drawn a sober breath since I came on the job."
"Have you ever wondered what drove Arnie to so much drink?"
Al was getting a little tired of Helen Lavina. "No. It's nothing to me. I've seen his kind all over."
"Don't you have pity for anybody."
"I'm a hotel manager."
"A good one. That's what I wanted to talk to you about. Al-Al, how would you like to run this place if there were nice people here-none of these girls, none of the trash-and you could do just what you wanted to do?"
"What are you driving at?"
"This. I have some money saved up, quite a great deal. And Ted has done well in his business. We both have a good credit standing. Arnie and Reba are loaded down with that mortgage at the bank."
"You're thinking of buying them out?"
"Only Reba. We don't want to hurt Arnie."
Al tossed the cigarette into the water and this time it went way out past the leaf. The leaf, of course, had drifted closer to the dock. Everything was drifting closer.
"You couldn't hurt Arnie any more than he's hurting himself," Al said.
"If Reba wasn't around I think Arnie would straighten out. So does Ted. You didn't know Arnie before he started drinking. I did. He used to be a fine man. I think he could be again. He doesn't know anything about the hotel business but he could learn if he had somebody like you to help him. You know the hotel business, Al. Ted and I can tell. You go about things in the right way."
"It's my job."
"Would you stay on with us if we can swing it."
"I'll think it over."
Her eyes were serious. "I wish you'd say you would."
"All right. I will."
What difference did it make what he said? They were out to get Reba, to get her good, and they'd never get away with it. Arnie and Ted could have the hotel. They could bury Helen on the front lawn and use it for a monument.
"Thank you, Al. That's all I wanted to hear."
"You're welcome."
He watched her as she dropped down off the dock and into the water. She had a nice shape but inside she carried a hatred for her sister. It was the excuse Al had been seeking, the other side of this moral fence that made everything seem right and just.
"So long, Al," she waved and began swimming out toward the raft.
"Good-bye," Al told her.
He followed every motion, every movement that she made. For the first fifty yards she swam rather well but after that she began to falter. By the time she reached the raft she was barely treading water. She just made it and that was about all.
Al arose to his feet and started walking back to the hotel. He knew exactly how to do it. It would be simple. And nobody would ever know.
Just the two of them.
With the exception of one thing, Reba thought the plan was great, just great.
"We can't miss," she said. "Only I wish Arnie were in on it."
It was late evening, not quite dark, and they had driven down the highway a few miles, turning off onto a wood road that led to some abandoned hunting cabins. The smells from the woods crept in around them and occasionally a tree toad cried for rain.
"Look," Al said for the second or third time. "I've been over this thing from every angle. In order to get Arnie blamed for what's going to happen to Helen you'd have to put the two of them together, alone. And you'd have to give him a motive. It would take weeks to work it out and even then it might fall through. This way, there isn't any murder. It'll be an accident and there'll be plenty of people, including Ted, who'll tell the police that it was no more than expected."
"I suppose you're right, Al."
"I know I'm right. Hell, you said yourself that this hotel wasn't any great shakes as far as money was concerned, so why take a big chance over it? You won't have any trouble getting a divorce. Arnie's drinking is enough to give you the green light on that one. We'll have the income from the trust fund and that's what we're after, isn't it?"
"That," she said, crawling into his arms. "And each other."
It was good there in the car and for a long time they didn't speak. Her body was like the woods-mysterious, unruly, savage. He lost himself in her, responding with alternating tenderness and violence, and when it was over he continued to hold her in his arms. "I love you, Reba."
"And I love you, Al honey. We're good for each other."
"The best."
It was dark now and in the distance a train whistle sounded. "I'd like to stay here for the rest of the night," Al said, "but we've got to get back to the hotel."
"There'll be other nights."
"A million of them." Al's lips nibbled gently at her mouth.
"Al-Al, when are you going to do it?"
"Tomorrow."
She kissed him. You're not losing any time."
"The quicker the better."
They went over it again, how he was going to do it. "There's no chance of a mistake, Al? You've thought it all out?"
"A hundred times."
She was still in his arms, pressed in close, and when he tried to move away he couldn't let go of her. "Baby," he whispered. "Baby!"
She liked to kid him when he was like this. "You must have two batteries, Al."
"Two? Hell, I've got half a dozen."
This time he bit her. He didn't mean to bite her but, oh, she was something! She had more than one battery, too, and she was charged up higher than a high tension wire. Even when he stopped she didn't want him to stop.
"Al, Al," she murmured, twisting in his arms. "Al!"
It was his turn to kid her. "I must have left my lights on too long," he said. "My batteries are all run down."
"You're sweet, Al."
"You're sweet, too."
They drove back to the hotel and Al got out near the parking lot.
"Remember what I told you," he said. "Tomorrow act like nothing unusual is happening. When it's discovered, do the same as you would if one of the guests drowned. Call the police and sit tight."
"Yes, Al."
"Kiss me for luck."
"Luck."
The taste of her lips still on his mouth he turned and walked to the entrance of the hotel. Some of the people sitting on the porch spoke to him but he paid little attention to them. From now on he had to work fast.
Inside, he stopped at the desk and spoke to the night man.
"Leave a memo for Dempsey, will you?"
"Yes, sir."
"I'll be in New York all day tomorrow-I'm leaving tonight and it'll be after dinner before I get back. Tell him to take care of anything that comes up."
"Yes, sir."
"While I'm getting ready call the Erie and find out what time the next train leaves for New York. I think there's one around midnight. And, while you're at it, call me a cab."
The clerk reached for the phone and Al moved away from the desk. It might be that his precautions were unnecessary but it certainly wasn't sense to take any chances. He would be gone from the hotel the entire day and his presence would be missed. His trip to New York would explain that to everybody's satisfaction.
Up in his room he packed an overnight bag. This he could leave in one of the lock boxes at the railroad station. The only thing in it that he needed was the swimming trunks and these he could carry in his jacket pocket.
The cab arrived a few minutes later and before he departed he again reminded the desk clerk of his instructions.
"Don't you worry any," the clerk said. "I've got it all written down. Have a good trip, Mr. Evans."
"Thanks. I will."
On the way into town he tried to relax but found it impossible. This was a one way street he was traveling. After tomorrow there would be no turning back.
CHAPTER XVII
Ellen's room was in the East End of town, in a big gray building that faced the river. It wasn't, by any standards, a desirable room. The paper on the walls was faded, the ceiling cracked and the three-quarter bed had a big hump in the middle. But it was paid for until the end of the week and Miss Ford said she ought to have a job by that time.
She had arisen late and, remembering the night before, she smiled. Jerry was a most wonderful person. When he kissed her he kept his hands on her shoulders and he didn't try to do anything else with them.
"I'm sure I love you," Jerry had said. "I'm sure I love you very much."
It was a nice comfortable feeling, knowing how Jerry felt. "I think I love you, too."
"Starting out won't be easy for us, hon. There'll be the expense of my office and I'll have to build up a practice. We could live in with the folks for a while, but I don't think any house is big enough for two families. Do you?"
"No." His shoulder against the side of her face had felt so strong. "I can help, Jerry. I can work for a while. I'd like to help."
"You're a wonderful girl, Ellen."
Wonderful. She lay there on the bed, staring up at the ceiling and thinking about that. Wonderful. No, she wasn't wonderful; Jerry was. Even after she'd told him everything about herself, starting with Eddie and ending with Al and Betty, he hadn't changed a bit.
"We all make mistakes," he said. "Nobody's perfect."
"I'll leave her tonight."
"I wish you would."
Her parting with Betty had been stormy, heated. Betty had called her a cheap whore and a lesbian but as Ellen had stood in the doorway, looking back at her, Betty had stopped mouthing the filthy, angry words.
"Don't leave me," she'd begged. "Don't leave me now, Ellen. I love you so much. Ellen, don't leave me!"
"Good-bye," Ellen had said, closing the door upon a dark corner of her past. "Good-bye, Betty. I-I feel sorry for you."
Sorry. She felt sorry for everybody who didn't know about love. She felt sorry for Eddie and Al and Betty. Not that love wasn't part sex, because it was a part of it and you couldn't change that. In his arms, she had wondered how it would be with Jerry and she had known, instinctively, that it would be fine and clean and decent. There would be no shame, no rebellion, no regrets; just a desire to love and to be loved for reasons far greater than mere physical attraction. There could, she felt, be nothing greater.
She got out of the bed and dressed slowly. There was no hurry since Miss Ford had told her that if she came down to the agency about noon that would be all right. Naturally, Miss Ford had been curious about her leaving Benny's Hideaway but Ellen had merely told her that she didn't care for the work.
She was just pulling up the zipper on her dress when someone knocked on the door. "Who is it."
"Window cleaner."
"Oh. Be with you in a second."
The windows needed cleaning, there was no doubt about that, but the rug on the floor could use it worse. It was funny how some people spent their money.
She opened the door and then tried to close it again, quickly.
"No," she cried. "No!"
Benny had his foot lodged between the edge of the door and the casing.
"Hello, doll," he said. He put his shoulder against the door and forced his way into the room. "You left without your pay and I thought I'd drop it off personally."
She didn't want any money for what she had done. Remembering how she had performed for him out at the Hideaway still made her feel ill.
"How did you find me?"
"Easy. I went to the employment agency and said you had some money coming. The girl gave me your address right away."
"Thanks, but you can keep it."
He smiled and swung the door closed. "You owe the agency a part of it."
"I'll earn it some other way."
"How?"
"I don't know. But I will."
He shook his head and glanced around the room. "This is no place for you, doll. This is a dump."
Ellen said nothing. She didn't like Benny and she wished he would go. There was something sinister about his dark eyes that had always frightened her.
"Dames just don't run out on me," he said.
He'd told her that before, the night she'd quit, but it hadn't deterred her in the least. She had known, for the first time in her life, what she had to do. She had to be respectable enough to be somebody. She had to make herself good enough for Jerry.
"There's two hundred bucks," Benny said, walking over to the dresser and throwing the bills down on top of it. "A hundred for your work. And a hundred for what you're going to do for me now."
Color flamed in her face. "Benny, I told you before, I'm not that kind."
"The hell you're not. There ain't a girl alive who won't do it for money."
"Here's one."
"Or nothing. A lot of them do it just for kicks. Maybe you're that kind, huh?"
"Benny, I don't want to talk about it."
"Neither do I. I want to do it."
"Benny-"
"Shut up, you bitch! Who do you think you're kidding? Not me. You're not kidding Benny. I've been around your kind too much not to know a circle from a square when I see it."
She started for the door but he was much too quick for her. He caught her by the arm and spun her around. She had all she could do to keep from staggering and falling down on the bed.
"Benny-"
"Damn you, I said shut up. Shut your mouth. You're going to listen to me, you no-good slut. You came out there to the Hideaway, sucking around, and I gave you a good job at a imagine salary. All right, so you earned your dough. I'm not complaining about that. You've got a real Hollywood shape and when you pulled out all the stops you made the old joint shake. But you didn't play the game the rest of the way, my way, Benny's way. And I was sucker enough to let you get away with it. Hell, I should've bumped you right there in the dressing room. Fact is, I should've bumped you before I ever gave you the job."
Ellen glanced in the direction of the door, but she wouldn't have a chance of getting to it. He was too big and strong and she was too far away from it.
"I've got thirty-forty girls working for me and you're the only one I ain't had, doll. I don't intend to start letting my record get ruined now. You know what I mean? I came here to get what I want and I aim to have it."
"Benny-"
"For dough or for fun. I don't give a damn which."
She tried to think of something else but all she could think of was Eddie. Another Eddie. A bigger, more vicious Eddie who cared about nothing.
"Please, Benny."
"For dough or for fun," he repeated. "Take your pick."
It was a foolish thing for her to try, but there was nothing else that she could do. She bolted for the door.
He hit her hard, very hard, right on the point of the chin. She felt her head being snapped back, her knees buckling and the floor rushing up to meet her.
"Benny!" she screamed.
"Bitch," he snarled and kicked her twice. "Bitch!" He dragged her across the room and threw her down on the bed.
"I'll show you," he promised, wildly. "I'll show you I get what I go after." He began ripping at her clothes. "You whore, you dirty whore. You think you can tease me and get away with it? You think so, you whore, you? I'll show you. I'll show you!"
He tore the dress all the way down the front and then he went to work on her underclothes. He didn't even bother to unfasten her bra; he just snapped it apart in the middle.
"Beautiful! Oh, Christ, what a pair!"
Ellen's head was filled with a dull, terrible roar and she was only half-
conscious of what he was doing. She tried to sit up but he hit her again, not so hard this time and it didn't hurt.
"Benny." There was so much blood in her mouth that she thought she would choke on it. "Benny."
"Relax," he said, undressing her the rest of the way. "Take it easy and you'll enjoy it more." He laughed. "Take it easy and slow."
She opened her eyes and shuddered as she looked up into his face; it was distorted and ugly.
"Benny." It was a prayer, the only one she knew. "Benny, don't."
"Shut up."
She saw the door open, saw Betty coming through it. She saw the scissors in Betty's hand, raised high, and she saw the look of hate on Betty's face.
"Don't!" she screamed, lifting herself up on one elbow. "Don't."
But it was too late for a warning or rationalization. The hand holding the scissors lifted and fell, lifted and fell again. Ellen heard the dull sound of the scissors going into Benny's back, the gasp of pained surprise that escaped him.
"No!" he moaned. "Oh, n-ooh!"
Bright red blood appeared at the corners of his mouth and began to drip from his nose. Desperately, he rolled away and threw up his arms, covering his face.
"Damn you!" Betty breathed. "Damn you!"
Again and again she plunged the scissors into his chest, his stomach, any place she could hit him.
"Please, no!" Faintly. "Oh, please!"
Ellen crawled across the bed. Blood covered one of her hands and there was a wide streak of it across her breasts.
"Betty! No! No more. Don't. Please! Betty, not any more. Betty, stop it. Stop it!"
"I'll teach him. I'll teach the bastard, bastard."
"Betty!"
"Shut up. I'll teach him. I'll."
"BETTY!"
Slowly, Betty turned from the body lying on the bed and dropped the scissors to the floor. For a brief, awful moment she remained motionless, staring down at Benny, and then she turned away. There were no tears in her eyes, no expression on her white face.
"He had it coming," she said. "He had it coming for a long time."
Ellen scrambled from the bed. "We'd better get a doctor."
"He won't need any doctor, not now. He needs a hearse."
In some way, not knowing quite how, Ellen managed to find a few clothes and to dress. The odor of the warm blood was now thick in the room.
"He may not be dead, Betty."
"With that many holes in him he's got to be dead."
"You don't sound afraid."
"I'm not afraid. He had it coming, the son-of-a-bitch. All last night, out at the Hideaway, he was bragging about how he was going to get you. It was a joke with him. A big joke." She nodded her head in the direction of where Benny lay. "Let him laugh at it in hell."
"But, Betty, the police-"
"The police aren't going to bother me any. He was at the point of raping you when I came in here. No, the police won't do anything to me. If I know some of them well enough they'll say I did a good job getting rid of him."
Ellen had disliked Benny, feared him, but she had not wished him dead. Every time she thought of him lying there on that bed she wanted to run somewhere and hide.
"How did you find us?"
Betty walked to the door. "I told you how he was talking last night. This morning I got a cab and I followed him to the employment agency and then I followed him here. I waited outside of the door. I wasn't going to cause any trouble if you gave your-permission. Then when I opened the door and saw what he was doing I just lost my head. I don't know. I just lost it. But I'm not sorry. He had it coming."
"Betty-"
"They'll call it a lesbian killing," Betty said, opening the door. "Not the cops, but the newspapers. The newspapers like stories of that sort. We have to expect that both of us may be hauled through the mud. For myself I don't care, but for you I do. But that wasn't the reason at all. I followed Benny mostly because I wanted to find you, wanted to talk to you. I wanted to tell you that I was mad when you left me but that you're a nice kid and that you probably did the right thing. I wanted to tell you something else, too. I wanted to tell you to get away from this while you've still got a chance, before you get lost in it. And you can get lost. Look at me if you have to have the proof."
"Don't punish yourself this way, Betty."
"I'm not punishing myself. It's the truth. I'm not afraid to admit it."
"Betty, where are you going?"
"For the police," Betty said, stepping out into the hall. "Where else is there to go now?"
The police were polite, firm and thorough. One of them, a sergeant who said he had charge of the refreshments at a club meeting that evening, questioned Ellen nearly all afternoon.
"Did you know Benny Summers very well?"
"No, I didn't."
"How come you let him into your room."
"I thought he was the window cleaner. He knocked on the door and he said he was the window cleaner."
"And after you opened the door he just barged in on you."
"Yes."
"What did he want."
"He-he-"
"Don't be afraid, Miss. We're only trying to get at the truth. You tell us what he wanted."
"He asked me to have-sexual intercourse with him."
"And you refused."
"I certainly did."
"Did you ever have sexual intercourse with him before?"
"No."
"What happened after you refused?"
"I tried to run out of the door and he struck me. In the face. It stunned me. Then he pulled me over to the bed and started to rip my clothes off."
The sergeant opened the pasteboard box and told her to look inside.
"Are these the clothes?"
"Yes."
"Dress? Bra? Panties?"
"Yes; all of them."
"After that, what happened?"
"I told you before. The door opened and Betty came in."
"Was he having sexual intercourse with you at the time."
"No, he-almost."
"I see. And this Betty? What association was there between you and Betty?"
"We were-friends."
The sergeant consulted a series of notes. "I hate to disagree with you, Miss, but we have evidence that would indicate you were more than that. You shared a room together until a day or so ago. The salesman who occupied the adjoining room says he heard the two of you having a terrific argument. He has told us many of the things that were said, indicating that you and this Betty were-
lovers. Is that true?"
"Yes." Her reply was almost a whisper.
The sergeant smiled and pushed the notes aside. "Well, it isn't important in this instance," he said. "I asked you only to see if you would be truthful with me. It's been my experience that a person who is truthful about one thing will be truthful about others. I believe you, Miss. I believe that Benny's death came about exactly the way you have described it. But a man has been killed-a serious thing. Whether or not we're all better off with him dead is of no consequence. The law was made for everybody. You understand that, don't you?"
"Yes."
"And you must understand that your friend will stand trial for Benny's death. She may plead temporary insanity. I don't know. It may work. I don't know that, either. The only thing that may hurt her is the fact that she was carrying a pair of scissors, not a usual thing to be found in a woman's purse. She claims, however, that she always carried them-for protection-and this would seem to be borne out by the lining in the pocketbook. There is a hole at one end that could have been made by the constant wearing of the points. It will be up to the jury, of course, but if she has a good lawyer she should have more than a fighting chance."
"Yes."
"I'm telling you all this because I want you to know how I feel. As a police officer, I must enforce the law, but that doesn't mean I have to feel sorry about what happened to Benny Summers. I don't. He was the lowest kind of low but he operated in such a way that we were never able to bring him in. To be frank about it, he was just no good. But he's dead-killed-and your friend Betty will have to stand trial. You will be called upon to testify. It will not be pleasant. But if you tell the truth, the way you have told it here, you may be able to help a girl who helped you escape from something worse than dying. There isn't much more to it than that, Miss. She did something for you, and now it's your turn to do something for her."
"I will."
They released Ellen late in the afternoon and as she walked down the steps of city hall and into the sunshine she heard someone call her name.
It was Jerry.
"Are you all right, Ellen."
"Yes, I'm fine."
Nothing's all right, she thought, looking at him; nothing will ever be right again. A lot more than Benny Summers had died in that room.
"Jerry-"
"Don't say anything, hon. You don't have to. I know all about it."
"But, Jerry-"
"These things happen," he told her, quietly. "They happen all the time, to a hundred different people in a hundred different ways. The thing to do is to stand up and face it. There's no use running, no use being sorry. You stand up to it the best you know how."
Ellen's eyes were bright with tears. "You're awfully good to me, Jerry."
"No, not that." He took her arm and led her down the street toward his car. "I'm being good to myself, too, Ellen. From here on out it's the two of us, just as it was before. If I let you down I'd be letting myself down and no man wants to do that. A lawyer has to have the courage of his convictions."
"Lawyer?"
He grinned and squeezed her arm. "The telegram came through this morning. I passed my bar exam."
"Oh, Jerry, how wonderful!"
He opened the car door for her. "And I've got my first case."
"You have?"
"Yes. Defending your friend Betty. There won't be any money in it for us but it's the least we can do for her. I don't know if she'll get off scot-free, but I don't see how they can give her more than two or three years probation. Probation would be a good thing for her. I've talked with her and she doesn't seem to be a bad sort. A little strong-arm guidance may straighten her out."
"I guess I could use some of that myself."
"Don't worry," Jerry said, slamming the door. "You're going to get it."
She smiled and watched the traffic slide by. He was a good man and it would take her a long time to catch up with him. But she would. Of this she was sure.
CHAPTER XVIII
The lake water was cold, the morning dark gray. After swimming out to the raft from the West Shore Al crawled up onto it and lay there panting. He could stay on top of the raft until it started to get light, but then he'd have to go under it.
He was a little tired and his feet hurt but just being in the water for a short time made him feel better. He placed the jar of vaseline and the rubber gloves and the ear plugs in a pile on the raft beside him and closed his eyes.
In another few hours, before noon, he would kill her. He would kill her and nobody would ever suspect it. It would be a good job.
From around the shore of the lake came the sounds of frogs and the other noises peculiar to the country. In the distance a dog barked. And not so far away somebody rattled the lid on a garbage can. Sunrise was rapidly approaching.
Presently he stood up and pulled the rubber gloves over his hands. The man in the drugstore had told him they were the largest size made but they felt plenty small. He found the vaseline jar and opened it, tossing the lid into the lake. Then he smeared the stuff down across his body, covering as much of it as he could and being careful not to drop any onto the raft. The vaseline would serve two purposes-it would protect him against several hours in the water and the girl wouldn't be able to grab him and hang on. As soon as he'd done this, he let the empty jar sink into the lake, pushed the ear plugs into his ears and dropped off into the water, feet first.
He came up under the raft. It was rather a big thing, kept up by six empty oil drums and it didn't float very high in the water. But there was plenty of room to breathe and when he got to the middle of it he found a cross-piece that ran between the barrels and he sat down on that. He blew the water out of his eyes and smiled. It was better than he had figured, almost like sitting on a stool at some bar.
He moved around on the cross-piece, being careful not to shake the raft, and stretched his legs. The water was cold beneath the surface and once in a while he felt a small fish peck away at his legs.
Daylight crept in between the cracks separating the planks overhead but there was no sun. There had been an early morning shower, during which he had become thoroughly drenched, and the morning promised to be cloudy. A gentle breeze rocked the raft once in a while and he could feel the motion of the water around him but he couldn't hear anything. He couldn't risk getting any water in his ears, which would affect his hearing, and he wouldn't remove the plugs until later. He had to be certain that he would be able to hear her swimming toward the raft. Once he was into it he couldn't afford to make any mistakes.
He had, he told himself, planned this killing with a great deal of care. He had left the hotel, for that night and the next day, and the night clerk was well aware of the fact that he'd been on his way to New York. The cab had dropped him off at the Erie station and he'd purchased a round trip ticket to the city. No one had seen him place the suitcase in the lock box. No one had seen him leave the railroad station. And no one had seen him return to the lake. He had walked every damned foot of the way, after stopping at an all night drugstore. Carefully, he had hidden his clothes beneath a pile of brush and leaves along the shore of the lake.
Yes, it was perfect. Or it would be as soon as Helen was dead.
The cross-piece began cutting into his legs and he shifted his weight. At the start, he'd been rather anxious about the possibility of there being any wind but now he was glad there was some. The natural motion of the water would conceal any unusual movements of the raft. He continued to wait.
He didn't know what time it was-why hadn't he bought one of those waterproof watches?-but he would be there, ready for her, even if he had to hang onto the cross-piece with his teeth. Patience was the one thing that he must possess. He must be willing to suffer a little, perhaps risk his own life, in the pursuit of taking the life of another. In patience there was safety. Once patience was gone safety would disappear also.
Al sat there on the cross-piece, waiting.
It must be getting along in the morning now because the light that came down between the cracks was much brighter. He removed the plugs from his ears.
At first he couldn't hear anything, except the slosh of the water against the raft, but presently the breeze moved on and he heard the sounds of voices, muffled and all jumbled up. The voices did not come from the beach but from the hotel, probably on the porch.
He yawned, clearing his ears, and waited.
Voices. Laughter. More voices. Then an interval of silence.
Slowly, he removed the rubber gloves, tied them together in a knot and wrapped them securely around the cross-piece.
He waited and waited.
The wind rose, died, then whispered softly across the water. His body tensed. He heard the wind but he heard something else, too. Somebody swimming. Swimming out to the raft.
He lowered himself off the cross-piece, deep into the water, and held on with one hand.
She came closer, closer.
A hundred feet.
Fifty feet.
Twenty-five feet.
He filled his lungs with air and went down, swimming hard and straight for her. It was dark down there, a soft darkness like twilight, and for an instant he was afraid that he might not be able to see her.
He saw her legs first, white legs moving against the gray overcast. Abruptiy, he changed his course and came at her from behind.
She kicked at him as he fastened both hands on one foot and pulled her down. She kicked again and again but he carried her down and down into the blackness of the water. He closed his eyes against the blackness and what he had to do. Killing her was enough. Even if he could see her he didn't want to witness the expression of fear that must be on her face.
His right arm circled her tiny belly. He felt her stiffen momentarily and then his fist was digging into her, up front, forcing the air out of her lungs. The big middle finger of his left hand moved down over her neck and found the artery just forward of her ear. He jammed his fist into her stomach again and bore down with tremendous pressure upon the artery.
He held her like that until his own chest started to ache and she no longer struggled in his arms. His left hand dropped down to her breast, cupping it, but there was no heart beat. She was dead.
He left her like that. The pain in his chest changed to red fire, filling his whole body, as he swam down deep and came up under the raft. His hands found the cross-piece and clutched it. He brought his head up out of the water, not making any noise, and let the air out of his lungs in a steady, seemingly endless flow.
He couldn't hear. He couldn't see. He couldn't do anything except hang onto that cross-piece. He brought his right hand out of the water and bit down on his thumb to keep from screaming. The air coming in through his nostrils mixed with the fire in his chest. He wanted to be very sick.
He hung there like that for a long time. Finally, the roaring in his head stopped and he began to breathe normally. Sounds drifted across the lake, laughter and voices from the hotel porch, but other than that there was nothing.
Sometime later it started to rain and the rain continued throughout the afternoon. No one came down to the beach. No one came by in a boat. He was all alone on the lake, hiding under the raft, waiting for the coming of darkness.
It was over with, finished. After a while she would be missed and eventually they would drag the lake. They would find her. And everybody would say it had been accidental, expected.
Al grinned and took a drink of the lake water. It had come off neat and sure. Not one hitch. Not one.
He hadn't had very much time to think about the money before but now he thought about it. A thousand dollars a month, every month, wasn't a bad piece of change, not bad at all. They wouldn't be rich but they wouldn't be poor, either. They could travel. They could drink. They could have fun. And they could love.
Love.
It would be good for them; it really would be. As soon as they could get away from the hotel they'd rent a room some place and throw away the key. They would stay in the room until one of them had to quit. He grinned and drank some more of the lake water. He wouldn't be the one to quit. He'd never quit. He'd die on the job, working overtime, before he'd quit.
A thousand a month. Twelve grand a year. It took a lot of money to pay interest like that. Even at six percent-and who paid more than four or five?-it required at least two hundred thousand. That was real king size money. Helen Lavina hadn't died for peanuts.
It was dark almost before he realized it, dark and still raining. He untied the rubber gloves from the cross-piece, tucked them inside his trunks, and swam from beneath the raft
He didn't have to be careful now. All he had to do was swim to shore, find his clothes and walk into town. He congratulated himself that he had had the foresight to include a clean pair of slacks and a shirt in the overnight bag. He couldn't return to the hotel looking like a ass on an outing. After all, wasn't he a very rich man now? And in more ways than one. He had the money and the woman. Of the two he didn't know which one was best.
If, indeed, there was a choice.
CHAPTER XIX
Al ordered four eggs over light with plenty of bacon. While he was waiting for the eggs and bacon he drank three cups of coffee.
"You must've been starved," the short order cook said, wiping his hands on a dirty towel. "Most of what we get this time of the night is just sandwiches."
"Yeah."
Al was the only customer in the diner, which was one block South of the railroad station. By the time he finished eating, the New York train would be in and he'd be able to catch a cab out to the hotel.
"Care to read the paper, mister?"
"Thanks, no."
He had walked every foot of the way into town and he had changed his clothes in the men's room at the station. At first, he had thought of getting a hotel room, where he could have a shower, but had decided against it There was no sense of taking chances.
The short order cook placed the plate of bacon and eggs in front of Al.
"Hell of a thing about that killing," he said. "But, I always say, you rub two dames and a guy together and you can light cigarettes from the sparks they shoot off."
Quite suddenly, Al didn't feel like eating the eggs or drinking any more coffee.
"What killing?"
"This one," the cook said, reaching for the paper. "The one they wrote up."
Al relaxed. Even if somebody had found Helen it wouldn't be in the paper so soon. What was the matter with him, anyway?
"Let me see that," Al said. "And give me another cup of coffee."
"Why, sure."
While he ate he read the account in detail. A girl by the name of Betty was being held for the death of Benny Summers. Summers had been attacked in a cheap rooming house while attempting to rape a girl named Ellen Cassandra.
"That's a hot one," Al said, shoving the paper aside. "She rapes easier than any girl I ever saw before."
The cook was interested. "You know her?"
"Like a book."
"They say she's a looker."
"She is."
"You suppose they were fighting over the guy or amongst themselves?"
"Over the guy," Al said, with conviction. "I'll bet they both wanted to be first."
"That's what I figured," the cook agreed, rubbing his hands on the dirty apron again. "You read these dames one way and they spell you something else."
"Check."
Al threw two ones on the counter, told the cook to keep the change and walked outside. The New York train was just pulling into the station.
So she got it, Al thought; the little bitch got her fanny hung up onto a limb. It didn't surprise him any. Nothing that Ellen might do could surprise him after that night out at the Hideaway. The fellow in the diner was right in double-
time; you couldn't tell about a dame. You simply couldn't
He caught a cab in front of the railroad station.
"Hotel Haidee," he told the driver, getting in. "You know where that is?"
The cab spun away from the curb. "Everybody knows where it is. Half the fire companies in town are out there now looking for some dame. They think she drowned in the lake."
"How long ago?"
"Not long. Maybe half an hour."
Al, when he had been changing his clothes, had heard the fire whistle. He had thought it to be a local alarm. "They find her yet?"
"I don't know. But they will. They always do."
It seemed like a long ride out to the hotel. When they swung off the highway and turned down the drive Al could see a number of lights out on the lake.
"They must be dragging for her," the cab driver said. "You'd think they'd wait until morning, when they could see."
"Maybe they think there's a chance for her."
"Is there ever? When you're drowned, brother, you're drowned."
"I suppose that's true."
Al got off in front of the hotel and paid the driver. As he walked inside he felt nothing, nothing at all. He couldn't afford to feel anything. To feel anything was to feel guilt and that was dangerous.
"Hello, Dempsey," he said.
Dempsey looked up from behind the registration desk. "Mr. Evans-I Am I glad to see you back."
"You are? What's the matter?"
"Matter? Why, we've had a drowning in the lake. Or everybody thinks it's a drowning. The police and firemen are down there looking now."
"Drowning?"
"Yes." Dempsey frowned and nodded his head. "Here comes Mr. Cummings. He can tell you all about it."
Al reached for a Winston as he turned around.
"I just came from the lake," Arnie said. "They found her. She's dead."
Dempsey sucked in his breath. "Dead?"
Arnie nodded. "For quite some time. They think it happened this morning, right after she went down to the lake."
Al puffed on the cigarette. "What happened?" As if he didn't know, as if he couldn't tell them a dozen things they'd never find out. "Dempsey says somebody drowned."
"Reba," Arnie said. "Reba drowned."
"What!" The whole world shook, stood still. "What!"
"Reba. She wasn't missed until almost dinner because Ted and Helen and I didn't get back from town until then. I knew she'd gone down to the lake before noon. I mentioned to her that Ted wasn't going to play golf, because the grounds were so wet, and that the three of us were driving down to the bank. I don't know why she went down there but she told Dempsey she had to deliver a message to somebody. It wasn't like her to-Al, what's the trouble."
"Oh, no. No!"
Arnie rubbed a hand across his face and nodded. He appeared to be completely sober.
"You thought a lot of her, Al; I know that. I'm not blaming you. She was a beautiful woman and you didn't understand her. But she was my wife and I knew her. Now she's lying down there dead and I shouldn't say anything against her but I can't help it She was no good, Al; no good. The only way I could stop from killing her was by drinking myself stupid. Somehow, with the whiskey, it wasn't so bad. I could forget that I was sterile, that the baby we had wasn't mine, that she was alone in the house with it when it suffocated. I could almost forget that there weren't any covers over the baby's face when I walked in and found him dead."
"God," Al said again. "God!"
"She wasn't any good, Al. She never was. There was only one person she ever cared about. Herself."
Al turned away from the registration desk and walked slowly through the lobby. He was still carrying the overnight bag but he failed to notice it.
It was raining again, a fine drizzle that came in from the lake. With a great deal of effort he crossed the lawn and continued on in the direction of the bobbing lights along the shore.
He had killed her. She had come to tell him there was no use waiting, that Helen had gone into town, and he had killed her. It had been a mistake, he hadn't known, but that didn't change it one bit. She was dead and he had done it.
There was an ambulance parked on the beach and a couple of men were lifting her body into it. The sheet, if it had been over her face, had slid down and she was smiling.
"She must have been pretty," one man said.
"Yeah," the other one agreed. "I saw her a couple of times when she was alive. Lost her driver's license once and came in to see about it. She was awful pretty."
They pushed the stretcher into the dark interior of the ambulance and one of the men closed the door.
"She must have overestimated her strength," a trooper said. "The way I figure it, she was trying to make it out to the raft and she ran out of gas."
"They'll never learn," his companion decided, staring after the red lights on the departing ambulance. "Seems useless, doesn't it?"
The two troopers walked up the beach in the direction of the patrol car. Eventually they, too, were gone.
Only then did Al Evans begin to sob.
There is no longer any reason for Al to cry, although his days are empty, his nights lonely. There is nothing to cry about. It is over. It is finished. Done.
"Life," Al said to Jerry Thomas when the jury returned with the verdict. "Two bits and I get life."
And he did. It was the only bet he'd ever made that he wanted to lose, one of the very few that he'd won.
"It was the vaseline," Jerry told Al. "They didn't notice it until they started to make up her face before the funeral and they had trouble with the powder. She must have pressed up against you when it happened. It got the cops to thinking."
The police had checked everything out thoroughly-even the raft. They found vaseline under the raft, and a smudge on the side of it. They'd asked for alibis of everybody who had known her. Al's had stood up for a while-but not long enough to save him.
"You say you were in New York that day," Jerry pleaded with him. "Where were you? Where did you go? Who saw you?"
Al hadn't expected it to go this far and he'd been unprepared.
"Let 'em prove it," Al said. They had.
They'd located the drugstore where he'd purchased the rubber gloves and the vaseline. They'd even uncovered the diner where he'd eaten.
"I remember this guy," the cook testified. "It was just before the New York train came in, because we were empty and we always get filled up with the train crew after Number Four shows up. Not only that, but he had a meal and, mostly, we just do sandwiches at that time of the night."
The jury had listened to the evidence, weighed it for forty minutes and found him guilty.
"We can appeal it," Jerry said. "We can carry it to a higher court."
"Forget it."
Jerry was understanding. "Perhaps you're right, Al. The evidence was quite-
conclusive. These things are always appealed to a much higher court than the one I'm talking about."
Al looked at him thoughtfully. He knew what Jerry was talking about. Sometimes these lawyer guys just make sense.
