“Yes.”
“Maybe I wish he’d get eaten by the rats, I don’t know. Otherwise, why did I think of it?” She shook her head again. “Listen,” she said.
“I’m listening.”
“You won’t, will you?”
“Won’t what? Get eaten by rats?”
“No, I’m serious. I mean hurt me. You won’t will you?”
“No. I won’t.”
“Because I’m a pretty mixed-up girl, you know, and I don’t need anything like that right now. I’ve got enough troubles, with my brother and everything. I mean, this may be the romance of the century and all that, but I’ll tell you the truth, I’d rather pass it by if it’s going to make me unhappy. I’m unhappy enough as it is.”
“I won’t make you unhappy, Janet.”
“I just have the feeling I shouldn’t start up with you, that’s all.”
“What do you want me to say, Janet?” The throbbing pain in his left temple, which he had thought was easing, now seemed stronger.
“I think I want you to say goodbye.”
“All right, then.”
He made a motion as though to move away from her, but she caught at his arm and drew him back sharply. “No!” she said. “I want you to tell me everything’ll be all right.”
“I love you,” he said.
“That’s not what I want to hear.”
“Janet, I don’t know what you—”
“It’s not just going to bed with me, is it?”
“Janet, I told you I love you!”
“I know you love me. But... can’t you say the rest?”
“What rest? What is it you want to hear?”
“That it’s not just going to bed.”
“It isn’t,” he said wearily.
“Then tell me.”
“It isn’t just going to bed.”
“Tell me you’ll take care of me.”
“I’ll take care of you, Janet.”
“Will you protect me, and love me?”
“I’ll protect you, yes, and—”
“And keep me warm?”
“Yes, Janet, I’ll keep you—”
“And make me happy. Will you make me happy, Sam?”
“I’ll make you happy. I’ll love you. I’ll always love you.”
“All those things? Will you do all those things?”
“I will, I will.”
“Say it.”
“I will love you and... and protect you and...”
“Keep me warm...”
“Yes, and keep you warm, yes, and make you happy, I will do all those things, Janet, I promise.”
She looked at him with sadness in her eyes, and then she gave a brief discouraged nod and said, “You’ll screw me, Sam, that’s what you’ll do. That’s all you’ll do.” She sighed heavily. “Will it upset you if I pay for a cab?” she asked.
His headache was gone by the time they reached her apartment. That was all right, but everything else was all wrong. She had been inordinately silent in the cab on the way crosstown and uptown, staring through the window on her side while the pulse in his temple pounded and throbbed. She had not touched him, had not even held his hand, had simply sat far over on her side of the taxi staring through the window. He had felt the headache recede and then emerge more strongly again, recede further, emerge, recede and then fade and then vanish completely, to be replaced by an anger that gathered force as her silence continued. He had promised not to hurt her, but now he wanted only to hurt her. He had promised to protect her, but now he wanted to destroy her. Her silence infuriated him. As the cab wound through the park and then emerged on Central Park West and continued west to Broadway, coming closer and closer to her apartment, he found himself building furious fantasy after fantasy, of beating her, of forcing her to her knees, of striking her repeatedly across the face. Her silence excluded him, and angered him; her silence shut him out of a world he was desperately trying to re-enter. When the cab stopped in front of her building, she paid the driver without a word, raising a disdainful eyebrow, he thought, and then stepped out of the cab and went directly into the building without waiting for him and without looking behind her to see if he was following. The hell with you, he thought, and he almost turned and began walking in the opposite direction, but something pulled him to her, the knowledge that she was a thin thread connecting him with the life of this city, perhaps the only thread. He did not want that thread to break. He followed her into the building.
Her apartment was on the third floor. She unlocked the door and waited for him to enter the kitchen, and then locked the door behind him and slipped the chain on it. She turned toward him and smiled briefly, a very curious grudging smile, and then put her arms around him and kissed him. She kissed him with surprising ferocity, moving her lips and grinding her teeth against his, and thrusting her hips forward. He could feel the hard bulging mound of her beneath the straight black skirt, pushing against him fiercely, and then she ripped her mouth from his and looked directly into his face with an anger in her eyes, a fury he had not seen there before, and she said, “Go on in. I’ll be with you in a minute.”
She indicated the other room with a toss of her head, and then turned and went into what he assumed was the bathroom. He suspected she was going to put on a diaphragm and the knowledge distressed him because this was not at all what he had expected of her, not the experienced insertion of rubber and cream, not this cold-blooded intensity that seemed to be on her face, that seemed to govern the movement of her body, frightening him. He walked into the other room. The bed was still unmade, the sheets rumpled from the night before. The room seemed to be a combination bedroom-living room, with bookshelves on one wall, and a record player, and a stack of 45 rpm’s on the floor beside the player. A framed photograph of a boy in an open-throated white shirt was resting on a shelf beside the bed. He did not know why, but he assumed it was her brother. He sat on the edge of the bed and took off his shoes, and then lay back against her single pillow, which was stained with lipstick.
He hoped she would not come to him naked. He thought that if she came to him naked, he would leave the room immediately. He could hear water running in the bathroom, and then silence. She is taking off her clothes, he thought, and was suddenly saddened by what seemed to be an exaggerated theatricality, the setting of a stage, the costuming of performers; it had not been this way with Doris long ago. He closed his eyes and waited. He heard the bathroom door opening, and then whispering shut behind her, she closed it so gently, and then heard the padding of her bare feet across the kitchen linoleum. She stopped beside the bed. He opened his eyes.
She had loosened the pony tail, and her hair fell softly about her face now, intensifying the green of her eyes and the paleness of her cheeks. She had taken off the black skirt and the tights and the French-heeled pumps, but she was still wearing her sweater and he knew from the soft yielding look of its front that she had first removed her bra and then put the sweater on again. Below the sweater, she had put on white cotton panties, flat over her stomach, cut high against her full thighs. Her narrow hips were tilted forward in a phony model’s stance that magnified the thrust of her crotch, made it seem pulsing with an eager forward inner rush of its own. He reached out his hand, palm upward, and seized her between the legs.
“You’re still dressed,” she whispered.
She fell onto the bed beside him, his hand still clutched relentlessly between her legs. She undressed him swiftly, contorting her body the way she had contorted her face earlier, performing innumerable physical tasks simultaneously, her hands busily working as she loosened and unfastened and stroked and unbuttoned and teased, her lips covering his mouth and then sliding over his throat when she unbuttoned his shirt, her thighs rotating against his restless hand between them, her back arching, and then twisting, rolling onto her side, unloosening his belt, and thrusting her hand deep, rooting blindly, grasping him harshly and fiercely and possessively, pulling him rigidly free, and giving a faint rushing moan, her legs moving again in a rocking piston motion, one leg jutting straight suddenly to hook his trousers with the heel of her foot, the other leg still bent, the knee coming up against his chest, polished white, and then throwing his shirt wide and bending over almost double to kiss his belly and his groin, her mouth opening over him in a sidelong wet and sliding motion, and kicking his trousers free, and lifting her own sweater to reveal the small perfect breasts and puckered schoolgirl nipples, Doris, he thought, Doris. She rolled her body onto his and slid her hands flat beneath the elastic of her panties, pushing them downward swiftly over her flat stomach and deep navel, freeing her crotch from his hand, moving rapidly out of the panties, knee bending, and then rolling onto him again. She hesitated over him for a moment, spread-legged, teasing him, poised, and then descended in a kind of harsh and vicious glee, covering him, pulling him into her. “Oh, love,” she said. “Oh, love.”