I was too shocked to think. I carried her to the studio couch and I made love to her harshly, violently, with her nails raking into my back and my body pressing hers and hurting her. At the climax she let out a little cry deep in the bottom of her throat and it seemed as if everything was as perfect as it could ever possibly be.
We lay there a long time without speaking, holding close to each other. Then suddenly she drew away from me and sat upright on the couch, resting her chin in her hand. There was a deep, far-away look on her face and her eyes were as deep a green as I had ever seen them.
“Hello,” I whispered.
She didn’t answer.
“It happened,” I said. “I told you it would happen if you just let it. I told you—”
I stopped short. She seemed to be in a different world, but at the same time it looked as though my words were hurting her in some way. I waited, and it was very silent in the room for a few long seconds.
When she spoke her voice seemed to be coming through the type of filter they use when they want to make it seem as though a voice is coming over a telephone. She talked very slowly and there was something ghostly and supernatural about the quiet whispery tone of her voice.
“Nothing happened,” she said. “Nothing at all. I wanted it to happen so I acted it out. I acted every bit of it.”
I couldn’t say anything. I just shook my head back and forth like a robot.
“Nothing,” she went on in that same tone of voice. “It was like a part in a movie. My body was doing things and I was somewhere else watching and seeing it and not feeling a damned thing. I—”
She left it at that. I got dressed and made us a pair of drinks, but she didn’t want one and I had them both. She sat there like a statue for a little while longer, finally dressing and walking out of the apartment like a sleepwalker.
I watched her leave. After she was gone I stared at the closed door like a schizo staring at a wall.
Then I reached for the bottle.
I don’t know exactly what happened after that. I have vague memories of stumbling over most of Los Angeles, of spending part of one night with a prostitute who was old enough to be my mother and about as drunk as I was, of slugging somebody and of getting slugged myself a few times. But it’s all a blur. I woke up five days later with my head aching viciously and my money gone, and when I stood up the sidewalk was rocking back and forth crazily.
Then the slide downhill started. It was easier than you can imagine — drinking the money away, not writing a line, getting my option dropped when my contract ran out with the studio, drinking and drinking and borrowing money when the money ran out and drinking and drinking and drinking.
And now I was back in New York and thinking about making a comeback. For a minute there didn’t seem to be any point, any point at all in the whole deal. Why bother? I had managed to find something out, and that something said to chuck it all and hit the skids for keeps.
Because everything comes easy except what matters.
Because when you get something you find out you never really wanted it in the first place.
Because the things you really want are the things you can never get.
I picked up the suitcase and started walking, crossing Amsterdam and heading toward Columbus. It was autumn in New York — like the song — and the air was getting cool. Autumn’s the best time in New York, but this was going to be a miserable autumn.
For a change.
Chapter Two
104 West 85th street was another red-brick building like all the rest. I set my suitcase on the steps and checked the address against the piece of paper I clipped out of the Classifieds, then rolled the paper into a ball and flipped it at the gutter.
I gave the bell a ring and waited. For a long moment nothing happened; then I heard footsteps and waited for the door to open. When the door opened I smiled automatically.
I always smile at a good-looking woman.
And the woman was more than good-looking. She was tiny — maybe five feet tall and, at the moment, barefoot. Her hair was chocolate brown and cut short in one of those Italian haircuts, and the haircut fit the pixieish quality of her face. Her eyes were brown and alert-looking.
She was dressed simply but neatly. A tight brown skirt encased trim hips and legs and an equally tight yellow sweater held her firm small breasts. She smiled back — a short, quiet smile that fitted in with the petite body and the pixieish face.
I asked her if I could see the landlady.
“I’m the landlady,” she told me.
I almost told her that she didn’t look like a landlady, but it was corny and I managed to catch it before it came out.
“My name’s Dan Larkin,” I said. “About that room—”
“Come this way.”
I turned and followed her down the hall. The place wasn’t bad on the inside — for that neighborhood it was unbelievably clean. There was a carpet on the hall floor and the stairwell was shipshape and the stairs didn’t creak under my feet. I followed her up the stairs, my eyes glued to her neat bottom, and we stopped on the second floor. She turned a key in the lock and led me into a room.
It looked like the room in Greenwich Village a long time ago. My eyes took it all in, thinking of it as a place to live and as a place to write in.
The bed looked good, and I never could bring myself to bounce up and down on a bed before renting a room. There’s something mildly obscene about it.
There was a table by the window and I went over and leaned on it a little. It was sturdy and wouldn’t wobble when I had a typewriter rattling away on top of it. There was an old roll-top desk in one corner that would do for whatever papers had to be filed away. In front of the desk was a chair that looked properly uncomfortable, and next to the desk was a chest of drawers that would more than hold what wardrobe I had left.
“The rent’s eight dollars a week,” she was saying.
“Six,” I said automatically.
We played games for awhile and settled on seven and I gave her two weeks’ in advance. The fourteen bucks made a sizable dent in my capital — I had enough for a second-hand typewriter and food for a few weeks, but not a hell of a lot more. Putting my wallet back into my pocket I thought about the money I had run through in the past few years. It wouldn’t have been so hard to put some of it away for a rainy day, and here I was in the middle of a deluge without the proverbial pot.
It was a shame.
She took my dough and wrote out a receipt for it. I folded the receipt and started to look for a place to put it and she drifted off out of the room, letting me follow her pretty little tail until she was gone and the door was closed behind her. She was nice to watch — damned nice.
I settled on the desk as a resting place for the receipt and solemnly filed it away in one of the tiny compartments. Then I set my suitcase on the bed and started unpacking. The clothes — two pairs of pants, half-a-dozen shirts and the usual assortment of socks and underwear — went in the dresser. The pint of rye remained in my hand for a few minutes while I tried to convince myself not to open it. It was a struggle but I won and the rye wound up in the desk.
I kicked off my shoes and stretched out on the bed. My eyes closed by themselves and my head sank into the pillow. It was tough staying awake — I didn’t sleep much on the train for the past few days, and I wasn’t in the best condition of my life.
But it was no time to sleep. There were too many things that had to get done — and soon. I had to get started on something — a story, a book, it didn’t make much difference what. The big thing was to get words on paper, and unless I did that and got those papers in an envelope and those envelopes on editors’ desks, the money was going to run out.