Part 35 (1/2)

”I don't mind, Ed.”

I gave her a brief run-down on the way things seemed to shape up at that point.

”Let me try some names on you,” I suggested. ”Maybe you can tell me whether Karen mentioned them.”

”You can try.”

I ran through the eight jokers who had been at the stag. A few sounded vaguely familiar to her, but one of them, Ray Powell, turned out to be someone Ceil knew personally.

”A chaser,” she said. ”A very plush East Side apartment and an appet.i.te for women that never lets up. He used to see Karen now and then, but there couldn't have been anything serious.”

”You know him-very well?”

”Yes.” She colored suddenly. She was not the sort you expected to blush. ”If you mean intimately, no. He asked often enough. I wasn't interested.” She lowered her eyes. ”I don't sleep around that much,” she said. ”Karen-well, she came to New York with stars in her eyes, and when the stars dimmed and died, she went a little crazy, I suppose. I wasn't that ambitious and didn't fall as hard. I have some fairly far-out ways of earning a living, Ed, but most nights I sleep alone.”

She was one h.e.l.l of a girl. She was hard and soft, a cynic and a romantic at the same time. She hadn't gone to college, hadn't finished high school, but somewhere along the way she had acquired a veneer of sophistication that reflected more concrete knowledge than a diploma.

”Poor, Karen,” she said. ”Poor Karen.”

I didn't say anything. She sat somberly for a moment, then tossed her head so that her bleached blond mane rippled like a wheat field in the wind. ”I'm getting morbid as h.e.l.l,” she said. ”You'd better take me home, Ed.”

We climbed three flights of stairs. I stood next to her while she rummaged through her purse. She came up with a key and turned to face me before opening the door. ”Ed,” she said softly, ”if I asked you, would you just come in for a few drinks? Could it be that much of an invitation and no more?”

”Yes.”

”I hate to sound like-”

”I understand.”

We went inside. She turned on lamps in the living room and we sat on the couch.

She started talking about the modeling session she'd gone through that afternoon. ”The money was good,” she said, ”but I had to work for it. He took three or four rolls of film. Slightly advanced cheese-cake, Ed. Nudes, underwear stuff. He'll print the best pictures and they'll wind up for sale in the dirty little stores on 42nd Street.”

”With the face retouched?”

She laughed. ”He won't bother. n.o.body's going to look at the face, Ed.”

”I would.”

”Would you?”

”Yes.”

”And not the body?”

”That too.”

She looked at me for a long moment. There was something electric in the air. I could feel the sweet animal heat of her. She was right next to me. I could reach out and touch her, could take her in my arms and press her close. The bedroom wasn't far away. And she would be good, very good.

Two drinks later, I got up and walked to the door. She followed me. I stopped at the doorway, started to say something, changed my mind. We said good night and I started down the stairs.

If she had been just any girl-actress, secretary, college girl, or waitress-then it would have ended differently. It would have ended in her bedroom, in warmth and hunger and fury. But she was not just any girl. She was a halfway tramp, a little tarnished, a little soiled, a little battered around the edges. And so I could not make that pa.s.s at her, could not maneuver from couch to bed.

I didn't want to go back to my apartment. It would be lonely there. I drove to a Third Avenue bar where they pour good drinks.

Somewhere between two and three I left the bar and looked around for the Chevy. By the time I found it I decided to leave it there and take a cab. I had had too little sleep the night before and too much to drink this night, and things were beginning to go a little out of focus. The way I felt, they looked better that way. But I didn't much feel like bouncing the car off a telephone pole or gunning down some equally stoned pedestrian. I flagged a cab and left the driving to him.

He had to tell me three times that we were in front of my building before it got through to me. I shook myself awake, paid him, and wended my way into the brownstone and up a flight of stairs.

Then I blinked a few times.

There was something on my doormat, something that hadn't been there when I left.

It was blond, well-bred, and gla.s.sy-eyed. It had an empty wine bottle in one hand and its mouth was smiling l.u.s.tily. It got to its feet and swayed there, then pitched forward slightly. I caught it and it burrowed its head against my chest.

”You keep late hours,” it said.

It was very soft and very warm. It rubbed its hips against me and purred like a kitten, I growled like a randy old tomcat.

”I've been waiting for you,” it said. ”I've been wanting to go to bed. Take me to bed, Ed London.”

Its name, in case you haven't guessed, was Lynn Farwell.

We were a pair of iron filings and my bed was a magnet. I opened the door and we hurried inside. I closed the door and slid the bolt. We moved quickly through the living room and along a hall to the bedroom. Along the way we discarded clothing.

She left her skirt on my couch, her sweater on one of my leather chairs. Her bra and slip and shoes landed in various spots on the hall floor. In the bedroom she got rid of her stockings and garter belt and panties. She was naked and beautiful and hungry...and there was no time to waste on words.

Her body welcomed me. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, firm little cones of happiness, quivered against me. Her thighs enveloped me in the l.u.s.t-heat of desire. Her face twisted in a blind agony of need.

We were both pretty well stoned. This didn't matter. We could never have done better sober. There was a beginning, bittersweet and almost painful. There was a middle, fast and furious, a scherzo movement in a symphony of fire. And there was an ending, gasping, spent, two bodies washed up on a lonely barren beach.

At the end she used words that girls are not supposed to learn in the schools she had attended. She screamed them out in a frenzy of completion, a song of obscenity offered as a coda.

And afterward, when the rhythm was gone and only the glow remained, she talked. ”I needed that,” she told me. ”Needed it badly. But you could tell that, couldn't you?”

”Yes.”

”You're good, Ed.” She caressed me. ”Very good.”

”Sure. I win blue ribbons.”

”Was I good?”

I told her she was fine.

”Mmmmm,” she said.