Nikki (24 page)

Nikki could see the pupils of her flower-blue eyes widen in the dim light and there was a flutter beat in the hollow at the base of her throat. Nikki dropped her face and kissed Dolores’s open lips. Dolores turned with a short, sharp cry, and put up her hands. Nikki caught her wrists and forced them down, and when she felt the sudden tension and beginning struggle of Dolores’s body under her she mashed down with all her force.

“Lie still and kiss me back when I kiss you!” Nikki demanded.

“You’re mashing me!” Dolores whimpered. “Please let me up.”

Nikki tightened her grip on her wrists and said softly, “I told you to kiss me when I kiss-you!”

She put her lips to Dolores’s. Dolores held herself tightly for a moment; then suddenly her mouth was working hotly, kissing Nikki. She even lifted herself, her mouth clinging as Nikki tried to pull away for air. Dolores dropped back panting. For long, long moments they gazed, totally silent, into each other’s eyes, the feel of their breathing bodies a warm, pulse-like pressure. Nikki guided Dolores’s hands up around her body, then stroked her own hands slowly over Dolores.

“Please, please, Nikki, don’t take him away from me.”

“I could.” She put her hand above Dolores’s nose, snapped her fingers. “Like that!” She felt a hot, thrilling race of triumph.

“You could take anyone.”

“If you please me, maybe I won’t.” Nikki bore down with the point of one hip, deliberately hurting her captive, making her writhe. After a moment Dolores’s hands were caressing again, and Nikki moved forward till her throat was over Dolores’s parted lips. She lowered herself, felt the warm lips kissing her throat. “Are you going to please me?”

There was no answer.

“Yes, you are!” Nikki said. “For years you’ve wanted to love me;
begged
me to master you. Well, we’ve faced the truth about me, that I’m a bitch. Now your master is going to be your guts and force you to face some truth about
you
, too!”

Nikki unbuttoned her own blouse with a flurry of motion, stripped down her jumper top and leaned her body above Dolores’s face.

Dolores was silent, rigid below her; Nikki could feel her hot breath, but Dolores made no other move. Nikki pressed herself down against Dolores’s face.

Dolores twisted. “You’re stronger,” she cried, panting, “you could force me.”

“I don’t have to force you!” Nikki said harshly. She lifted herself away from Dolores. Abruptly Dolores hugged her, and began timidly to kiss her breasts and to stroke her with her hands. An exquisite fire ran up and down Nikki’s body like madness at the feel of this submission, this blind ecstasy of adoration.

Suddenly Dolores gave a raw yelp. She tensed and sat up with a wild look in her eye. She pushed roughly at Nikki, and swung herself around into a sitting position on the couch. Nikki stood up and began to fasten her blouse. Dolores looked at her with a stunned, dull look, her mouth agape.

“Get out of here,” she said hollowly. “You’re horrid!”

Nikki gave her a wry grin. “You scare yourself, huh?”

“Get out of here!”

“Not so tranquil, your tranquilized jungle,” Nikki taunted.

Dolores’s voice rose an abrupt octave. “Get out of my home right now!”

Abruptly Nikki stood up and climbed the stairs to her room. Minutes later she heard Dolores come upstairs. She continued grimly ramming, wadding; stuffing things into her suitcases. She glanced snappishly across her shoulder to see Dolores standing outside, her face distressed.

“Oh, Nikki, that’s no way to pack.”

Nikki collapsed forward, holding her stomach, laughing silently. When she straightened, Dolores had gone. She heard her phoning for a cab. Five minutes later Nikki was moving her luggage out the front door.

“You could wait inside,” Dolores said.

“It might reflect badly on you, forcing me to wait out in the cold. But I’ll bribe the cabbie not to talk.” Nikki went out, started watching the driveway.

“I’ll wait out here with you.”

“Don’t get yourself a cold,” Nikki said, not looking at Dolores. Car lights showed in the driveway at the front of the property. “There’s my cab.” She turned with a tart smile. “I’m finished as far as you’re concerned, but I’m still one up on you. You can’t kill me fast with the kids, not without hurting them.”

She laughed abruptly. “So I exist a little while longer with
them
.” She turned her face. “Get away. You’re making us both feel worse. And relax, don’t worry about me.”

The car neared. It wasn’t a cab. Archer Cole stopped, got out, and came over to them, wearing a puzzled expression.

“Well, well, well, Archer,” Nikki cried gaily. “Did you come to take me for a nice little drive?”

He nodded. “You’re going somewhere?”

“Clever you!”

The cab was coming. She walked out to it. “My bags are over there,” she told the driver, getting in. “Hurry, please.”

There was an intolerable delay, with Archer coming over with one of her bags and trying to argue her into letting him take her. She had to get shrill about it. Then, finally, she was riding, alone, down the hill road. She closed her eyes.

“I guess,” Archer said reluctantly, “I’d better push off. Unless—” his eyes ran speculatively down to Dolores’s legs, up to her face, dropped again to her dishevelled blouse. “—you’d like to offer me a drink.”

“That,” Dolores said after a moment, “is a damned fine idea.”

They stood by the sofa, touched glasses. They drank, smiled at each other, looked away. “Where’s Jim?” Archer said casually.

“Who the hell knows where Jim is? Maybe there’s a rendezvous …” She clamped her mouth shut, drank lengthily from her highball.

“You don’t mean with Nikki,” Archer said.

Dolores shook her head impatiently. “Forget I said it. He’s in town. He’s got work at the office, and he’ll be staying over. At the St. Francis,” she added.

He pursed his lips. “Anyway, he’s not due home. You must be lonely, with Nikki gone and your husband gone. Nobody to talk to. I wonder—could I fix myself another drink?”

“I’ll do it, and get one for myself.”

He stood close beside her and she was acutely aware of his good looks, his sympathetic interest. She tensed her arm abruptly at the light stroking touch of his finger on her sleeve.

“You’re awfully nervous,” he said softly as she turned and looked up at him.

“Stop looking at me that way! I’m a married woman.” Her eyes narrowed, her lips clamped together and she bent to the drink-making job. “You can do much better,” she said bitterly. “It seems
every
male, given free choice … Here’s your drink.”

“Talk to me, Dolores,” he said, his gaze steady and warm on her. “Whatever’s on your mind, let me be your friend. I’ve always considered you the loveliest girl I ever knew.”

“Oh, nonsense! Always it was that way, they preferred Nikki, always, in college, anywhere. Still, I thought there was one man, just one man in this whole world … That’s all a woman really needs, just one man who’ll always, under every condition, think she’s the most desirable. For me Jim was the one and only man. Never, not once, not even fleetingly in my mind, did I think of betraying him. But as she said, as Nikki with her sure, instinctive cutting way pointed out, I’m false; I show a pretty tidy surface and pretend the jungle creature in me doesn’t exist.”

“Hysteria makes you even more beautiful,” Archer said. “Exciting. You always did excite me, Dolores.” He took a step and she backed away. He came on. “That sweet calm of yours, that command and controlled assurance always got me. I’d see you with your kids, and I’d wish I was one of them. And something else excited me about you. It was that unseducible quality about you, that sign you wore telling every man you couldn’t be had, couldn’t be moved.”

He caught her shoulders and yanked her against him, mashing her breasts hard in against his chest. She felt herself shivering, and when his face came down she didn’t turn her lips. His mouth was wet and cold from the iced drink. She pushed her hands against him, then she relaxed. The feel of her submissiveness stirred his aggression sharply. He began feverishly to kiss her face, her throat; his hands moved with skilled seductiveness over her breasts, her thighs.

Abruptly, breathing shakily, Dolores turned her back, tipped her head forward, lifting her hair in her hands, baring the sensitive intimate back of her neck. When he began to kiss her there she thought of Jim’s lips with a frenzied blend of anger and sexual excitement. She broke free, kicked off her shoes, and ran to the stairs, thrilling to the feel of his pursuit.

“Hurry … hurry,” she said, starting up the stairs.

She lay silent and throbbing on her Back, her head on his arm, her hair loose around her face.

“Wow!” Archer said.

She felt shame and disgust creeping like a chill over her warm body. “Please get up and dress!”

“It’s cold outside. Mama didn’t raise a fool. I should leave this …” He reached over and fondled her naked body. “Oh, no.”

“I’m not playing. Get up.”

“Aw, come on, gorgeous.”

She sat up, got out of the bed, flung a robe around her.

“I meant it!” she said. “Now, get up and get out of here!”

Nikki blinked and jumped nervously at the sound of the buzzer. She hurried to the house phone.

“Who is it?”

“Archer! I’ve got to see you, Nikki.”

“It’s late. Store’s closed. No free merchandise.”

“Nothing like that. Baby, I know you’re all alone and upset. Just let me come up. Please, Nikki?”

She pressed the release button.

She looked at him closely when he came in the door. He shut it behind him and grinned at her. “I was worried sick about you.”

“Took you long enough to get here, if you were so worried sick about me.” She moved closer, inspected him carefully. Suddenly she brushed at a corner of his mouth. “Feathers. Swallowed a canary, huh?”

“Huh?”

“How was she?”

“Dolores? Don’t be silly.” He swung around, taking off his coat, but she saw the smug little grin.

“The hell you didn’t have her!” she shrilled.

“Well, so what!”

“Damn you! How many hours since you asked me to marry you? But you get a chance at Dolores, walk in when she’s in a condition to be had, and snap it up. Well, if you prefer her, you can go to hell.”

“I don’t. I don’t,’ he said earnestly. He tried to pull her into his arms. She twisted fretfully away from him, walked into the living room. He came in and sprawled on the long low sofa and smiled up at her. He patted his knees. “Come here, baby, and sit on my lap.”

She stayed on her feet, pacing. She shook her head. “What did you come back for? We were through.”

“I can’t stay through with you. I’ve got to have you. You’re so … so … I don’t know … vivid, commanding.”

“Even more commanding than your mother? I won’t be any mother substitute. I won’t take you over. I don’t want that in a husband. I just fell in love with you—or thought I did—so I could marry and settle down near Dolores.
That’s
done, and so are we. Go back to your Gloria and your nice little job with the great big strong corporation … Oh, I forgot, you saw the light. You were going to give up that career. I bitched up your confidence in yourself, punctured your pretty little bubble.”

“Cut it out, Nikki. Please marry me. You won’t find it so hard to …”

“Subordinate myself to the demands of the corporation?”

“I know you love me, underneath it all. You snap at me because you care so much.”

“Just like Mama!”

“And if you found any difficulty in adjusting … well, I told you about the free psychiatric service.”

“Nobody’s going to brainwash me into thinking the way
they
think. I know what that corporation represents, and I hate it, Would they teach me to love it?”

“C’mere!” He suddenly seized her arm and jerked her off balance and sprawling onto his lap. She scrambled and struck at him as he laid her down. He forced a kiss on her mouth. Some of the tension eased out of her. “Just relax, dearest,” he whispered, “and forget everything except I’m your man and you love me.”

“And sex will banish all my protests about anything and everything, and I’ll believe whatever I’m told to believe. But not even by
you
… You’ll just be mouthing corporation policy.”

“It’s
me
you’ll submit to. You’ll
learn
submission. You told me before that I should learn to get mad. Now I’m mad, and I’m going to have you.” He kissed her again. Then again.

“But I don’t really feel like it, Archer.”

“I don’t care,” he said with a sudden rise of excitement. “In fact, I want you to stay unresponsive. The idea of making love to a totally unresponsive woman gets me. Just let me knock myself out and you stay unmoved and even a little contemptuous, in complete command of yourself while I …”

He came heavily upon her. “I love that expression in your eyes, that coldness, that scorn. You’re in command, dearest, dearest. Now, let me have my pleasure.”

“Get off me.”

“No!”

She got one leg free, brought her knee sharply up into his groin, freed herself and ran. When he followed she caught a heavy ashtray, raised it overhead at arm’s length and smashed it on his head. He staggered and blinked. She stood quivering with cold, threatening rage.

“I’ll kill you if you don’t get out of here.”

He rubbed his head, stunned, then hurried away from her. He snatched his hat and coat and was gone. She opened the door after him and slammed it for double-good measure, then chain-locked it.

She stood at the big window of her apartment looking out over the city as the sky darkened, listening with sensuous pleasure to the Symphonie Fantastique, thinking that Dolores would be putting now Jimmy, now Val, to bed, both of them happily exhausted after Val’s birthday party. She smiled wistfully, an intense, lonely aching in her breast. She went over to the phone, consulted a merchant’s booklet and phoned a liquor store.

She smoked, paced nervously, waiting for the delivery. She put on another record and paced out of the room, into the bedroom, back again. She went into the little foyer and listened, waiting for the liquor delivery. She found herself listening compulsively to the elevator machinery, its stops and starts as other tenants rode up or down; she listened for door closings, tried to judge which floor the elevator was stopping at. She occupied herself with these utterly meaningless trivialities until the deliveryman arrived with the whiskey.