The Deceivers (14 page)

He kissed her, and her kiss was immediately fierce and heavy against his mouth, her arms twining around him, her fingertips working at the nape of his neck, sliding up into his hair. Still holding their mouths together he pushed her back and swung his legs up onto the couch and gathered her legs up clumsily with his left hand, so that they ended up lying face to face with Cindy on the outside, with his back against the back of the couch. And they each made small adjustments to fit their bodies together more perfectly, the endless kiss enduring, breathing quickly and harshly from their nostrils, breath mingling. With fingers working blindly, he undid the snaps at the back of the halter. She made a moaning sound in her throat as he pulled it free and then pressed herself against him with great strength. The catch and zipper were on the right side of the ranch jeans. He undid the catch and pulled the zipper down and then began to peel the tight jeans back and down, rolling and working them off from the round, taut, satiny, globular buttocks as she pressed her mouth more savagely against his and made whimpering sounds in her throat, and her body leaped and jerked and quivered with each touch of his hand as though his touch burned her. Then quite suddenly her mouth was gone, and she was fighting him silently and desperately. When, in surprise, he loosened his hold, she thrust herself back so violently she fell from the couch, knocking the coffee table over. She thudded heavily against the rug, and a beer can rolled to click against the stone of the fireplace.

He sat up and looked at her. She sat bare to the waist, the jeans down around the tops of her thighs. She looked up at him, her face twisting, tears spilling out of her eyes, and whispered, “Not here. My God, darling, not here. Not like this.”

And he looked around the room as though awakening
from a sound sleep to unfamiliar surroundings. Of course she was right. Not here. Not in this house, in this room, on this familiar couch. He had made love to Joan on this couch. To have done this to her here would have been a special and unforgivable wickedness. He shook his head to clear it. His breathing was deep and rapid.

“Don’t look at me,” she whispered.

He looked at her, at the abrupt ivory of her breasts, at a blue vein under rounded snowy texture, at coral nipples fiercely erect.

“Please,” she whispered, and held her arm across her breasts. He looked away from her, and he heard her stand up and heard the small insectile clicks of the fasteners, the faint gritty sound of the zipper. She sat heavily on the couch beside him and leaned against him, her forehead against the angle of his jaw. She took a deep and shuddering breath and whispered, “That was so horribly close, my darling. So terribly, terribly close.”

“And the next time?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. Oh, God, I don’t know what to think. It’s like I’d … turned into some kind of animal. You touch me and I haven’t any will or conscience or anything. There’s just the wanting. What are we going to do? What are we going to do, Carl?”

He turned and grasped her by the upper arms, holding her strongly, and shook her a little and said, “But you’re right. Not here.”

“I know.”

“Then where? Where and when?”

“Carl. Please.”

“Where and when? Say it.”

“You’re hurting my arms. Please.”

He let go of her. She was crying again. She looked at him with grave eyes, looked at him for a long time and said, “Nobody would ever have to know. Please tell me that nobody would ever have to know.”

“Unless we have the worst possible kind of luck. Or unless we get foolish and careless. Anybody could have come to that door, you know.”

She turned sharply and looked at the front door. She got up quickly, righted the coffee table, picked up the beer cans and the ash tray. She put them on the table and sat down beside him again.

“If nobody knew,” she said, “it wouldn’t really hurt anything.”

“I guess it wouldn’t.”

She laced her fingers in his, looked down at their joined hands. “I feel so ashamed of us.”

“I know.”

“We’re being animals.”

“I know that too.”

She looked up at him. “But maybe it’s the quickest and best and most final way to get over it. Wear it out. Have a perfect glut of each other. Sicken each other.”

“And how many times have people used that as a rationalization.”

She shook her head violently. “I don’t know. I don’t care. All I know is I can’t go on this way.” She picked his hand up and held the back of it against her cheek, and then turned his hand over and touched his palm with her lips. “Arrange something, darling. But quickly, quickly, please.”

“A motel?” he said flatly.

She released his hand and seemed to shiver. “I’d hate that. It’s so ordinary.”

“Well, it’s like this. In real life, I’m actually a millionaire and it so happens my yacht is anchored off Palm Beach and we can fly down and …”

“Don’t try to hurt me, darling, because you want to hurt yourself. All right. This is clinical. This is pure, unadulterated, inexcusable sexual infatuation. But let’s not be cruder than we have to be.”

“I’m sorry.”

“There’s one place that might be all right.”

“Where?”

“Scott and Lucy Jessup offered me the use of their place at the lake. I’ve never been up there, but …”

“I have. It’s no good. Those cottages are ten feet apart and, at this time of year, loaded with Scott’s and Lucy’s friends and their kids.”

She looked doleful. “This is so ridiculous. Here we are with two empty houses, but …”

“I know. We can’t use either of them. Too many memories looking over our shoulders.”

“Maybe … the motel thing would be all right. But a nice motel, darling.”

“There’s a batch of nice new ones thirty miles east of here, just off the turnpike.”

“I know the ones you mean. Those new ones. How will we arrange it? We’ll have to be so terribly careful. It can so easily be terribly right or terribly wrong. And maybe it will be terribly wrong in any case.”

He lighted a cigarette and stood up and paced slowly back and forth across the living room and stopped in front of her, looking down at her across the coffee table. She looked flushed and thoughtful and lovely.

“How about this. Tomorrow, after work, I’ll drive directly out there and get a room. I’ll explain the local license plates by telling them carpenters and painters are working on the house, and my wife and I have to have a place to sleep.”

“For a few nights.”

“Yes, for a few nights. I can get the key then and pay in advance, and after I leave the hospital I can come back here and pick you up and we can arrive out there after dark. And leave early enough in the morning so I can get to work.”

“I don’t want us to be seen leaving here together, and I certainly don’t want anybody to see you bringing me back early. I should take our car, I think.”

“All right. When I go out tomorrow, I’ll look for a place where we can leave it, between here and there. I’ll tell you, and we can use that as a meeting place.”

“That should work,” she said. “It’s as though … we’re plotting some kind of a murder, darling.”

His smile felt crooked. “Maybe, in a sense, we are.”

Her face showed quick concern and she got up and came around the coffee table and took his hands and looked into his eyes. “My darling, I don’t want you to have any regrets. Nobody will ever have to know … about us. We’ll take this one little piece of time out of all the days of our lives and use it selfishly for ourselves, and when it is over, it must be completely over forever. But if you think it isn’t worth it … if you think …”

He pulled her close and kissed the side of her nose. “Hey, that’s my line, not yours.”

“I know, but … I feel as if I were the one the most willing to …”

“Nobody takes the responsibility. We share it equally, Cindy. This is our affair. Equal partners.”

“Our affair. That certainly is the right word.”

“Yes.”

“Our tawdry, sneaky little affair. We’ll keep remembering that there’s nothing glamorous about it, Carl. Please keep
remembering how messy it is. And, before we start it, I want you to say one thing to me. You can call it a rationalization if you want. It probably is. But I want to hear it said. You only have to say it once, if it’s going to be too hard a lie to say.”

“I love you, Cindy.”

“And I love you, Carl. Was it hard to say?”

“Very easy to say. I’ll keep on saying it.”

“I think I have to hear that. I think I have to be told I’m loved and wanted, or I don’t think I’ll be any good at … this kind of thing. So even if it’s a lie, keep telling me, so for a little while, for a few nights, I can believe it.”

“I promise. I’ll phone you tomorrow evening when I get out of the hospital.”

She kissed him lightly on the lips and turned toward the door. He went to the door with her. Once she was outside she came back close to the screen and said, “I’m going to suffer the conscience qualms of the eternally damned between now and then, darling, but do you know one thing I’m glad of?”

“What?”

“That it’s tomorrow night, not tonight. I want all this time to think about it.”

“Sensualist.”

She winked broadly and gaily and said, “Of course.” And was gone across the lawn, long legs swinging, head high, pony tail bouncing, the pelvic basket balanced surely and gracefully on the changing focus of the long round legs.

After she was gone, he could not believe that it would happen. Maybe it was some kind of game she was playing. He could not believe that a fruit of such perfection and ripeness could fall from the high branch into his waiting hands.

   The nurses had changed at four o’clock and would change again at midnight. The new nurse was Mrs. Pierce. She had grizzled blond hair, a stocky body and a pugnacious face. She seemed to be giving him grudging permission to talk to his wife.

Joan was still flat, but her color was better. Her eyes still had the staring look. She smiled and held his hand tightly and said, “Darling, were you here before? Really?”

“Yes, I was here before. Right after they brought you down. And I told you what Bernie said.”

“I couldn’t tell if I’d dreamed you were here. And I can’t remember much of the dream. What did they do to me?”

He sat beside her and she kept hold of his hand while he went over it all again. He was with her over a half hour. When he was with Cindy, Joan seemed equally remote. He had the insane impulse to smile brightly at her and say, “Guess what Cindy and I are going to do tomorrow, dear.” And then he would wonder if she could read it in his face. He had never been able to lie to her successfully.

He told her what the kids had said and what his mother had said, and about Marian and her sister-in-law. And he read her the letter from Nancy and the post card from Kip and left them in the drawer of her night stand to read over. He told her to sleep well, and kissed her and winked at the stolid nurse and left, feeling guilty and relieved, and filled with a tremorous anticipation that made his belly feel hollow and his head light.

As he had eaten before going to the hospital, he was in bed by nine-thirty, and asleep minutes later.

Everybody he met in the office during the course of work on Wednesday morning wanted to know how Joan was. He found it very difficult to work. He would check a draft of a report and suddenly the words and figures would blur and fade and, where they had been, Cindy would appear, smiling at him, or giving him that broad and wicked and promissory wink. But he managed to get the urgent things out of the way.

At quarter of twelve he phoned Jim Hardy and said, “Jim, I’m pretty well caught up here, so if it’s okay with you, I’ll work through until about two-thirty and then go on out to the hospital.”

“Sure thing, Carl. You didn’t have to ask. Give that little girl of yours my love.”

“Thanks, Jim,” he said and hung up. It was one of the meaningless courtesies of the office. He had to ask Jim, and Jim had to say go ahead, and he never failed to say you didn’t have to ask. But if you didn’t ask and Jim decided he wanted you for something, then you would have built yourself a very sturdy doghouse, suitable for long wear.

As he drove toward the hospital he realized what a thorough hypocrite he was being. He had not planned to visit Joan during the afternoon visiting hours, yet if he used her as an excuse to leave, he stood a better chance of getting out on the turnpike in time to find a vacancy in a good motel before they were all taken by the summer vacationers. The realization of his duplicity gave him a sour look at himself that clouded, momentarily, his anticipations of Cindy. He wished he could turn off that portion of his mind which continued to make these bitter little reappraisals of the ethics and motives of Carl A. Garrett. Think no longer of loyalty and fidelity and trust, and this violation of them. Is this so crucial? The male is polygamous, they say. And this fine taut unhappy girl is marvelously ready. And she will make no trouble. So feast on what the gods see fit to place before you, and do not question your luck.

Or, in that comforting lexicon of thieves of all varieties, what Joan doesn’t know will not hurt her.

And Mencken adequately defined conscience as that still small voice that says somebody might be looking. Nobody will be looking.

It is neither crucial nor unique, is it? When the man of the house was out stalking the saber toothed tiger, somebody went tippytoe into his cave. And on this particular hour the entire planet in its orbit has an imperceptible tremor generated by that same ancient act. We’ve just erected too many barriers of myth and convention around it. Haven’t we?

Or, traditionally, blame it on being in the dangerous forties. And remember how sorry you are for the things you don’t do.

Or, for the love of God, just try to stop all this thinking. Think only of Cindy, she of the long golden legs and the blue-gray eyes and the expressive mouth and the dark blond hair.

   Nurse Calhoun was on duty again. Joan was cranked up, her hair fixed, lipstick on, her eyes better but still not quite right.

“I told you you shouldn’t come out in the afternoon, darling,” she said. “But I’m glad you did come, anyway. Just a little while ago they had me sit right up with my legs over the side of the bed. Dangling, they call it. They make you dangle on the day after. Honestly, dear, it’s incredible. The day before yesterday I was trudging up and down the halls, and now I’m weaker than a kitten. I couldn’t stand up and take a step if my life depended on it.”