“Even if it does,” she said, “if you went into law …”
“I can’t wait,” he said. “I’ve waited long enough. I’ve been in enough schoolrooms. If I need law, I’ll hire lawyers.” Echo of Duncan Calderwood, that hard-headed man. They hire schooling. “If you want to come along with me, fine. If not …” But he couldn’t say it. “If not,” he repeated lamely. “Oh, Julie, I don’t know. I don’t know. I think I know about everything else, but I don’t know about you.”
“I lied to my father and mother …” She was sobbing now. “So I could be alone with you. But it’s not you. It’s Boylan’s doll. I’m going back to the hotel. I don’t want to talk to you anymore.” Weeping uncontrollably, she hailed a cab on the Avenue. It squealed to a halt and she opened the door and got in and slammed the door behind her.
He watched the cab roar away without moving. Then he turned and started back toward the party. He had left his bag there and Gretchen was going to make up a bed for him on the living room couch. 923, he remembered, the number of the hotel room.
Alimonied, Mary Jane did well for herself. Rudolph had never been in a wider or softer bed and in the glow of a lamp on the dressing table (Mary Jane insisted on keeping a light on) the large, warmly carpeted room, its walls pearl-gray silk, showed an expensive decorator’s touch. Deep-green velvet curtains shut out the sounds of the city. The preliminaries (they had been brief) had taken place in the high-ceilinged living room furnished with gilt Directoire pieces and large, gold-tinted mirrors, in which the embracing couple were caught in a vague and metallic luminosity. “The main event takes place inside,” Mary Jane had said, breaking away from a kiss, and without any further agreement from Rudolph had led him into the bedroom. “I’ll get ready in the bathroom,” she said, and kicked off her shoes and walked splendidly and almost steadily into the adjoining bathroom, from which had immediately come the sound of water running and the clink of bottles.
It was a little bit like being in a doctor’s office while he prepared for a minor operation, Rudolph thought resentfully, and he had hesitated before getting undressed. When Mary Jane had asked him to take her home from the party, well after midnight, with only four or five guests still sprawled around, he had no idea that anything like this was going to happen. He felt a bit dizzy from all the drinking he had done and he was worried about what his head would feel like when he lay down. For a moment, he had considered stealing quietly out and through the front door, but Mary Jane, her intuition or her experience at work, had called out sunnily, “I’ll just be a minute more, darling. Make yourself comfortable.”
So Rudolph had undressed, putting his shoes soberly side by side under a chair and folding his clothes neatly on the seat of the chair. The bed was already made up for the night (lace-fringed pillows, he noticed, and pale-blue sheets) and he had slipped under the covers, shivering a little. This was one way of making sure he wouldn’t be knocking on a hotel door that night. 923.
As he lay under the blankets, curious, a little fearful, he closed his eyes. It had to happen some day, he thought. What better day than this?
With his eyes closed, the room seemed to be dipping and wheeling around him and the bed under him seemed to move in an uneasy rhythm, like a small boat anchored in a chop. He opened his eyes just as Mary Jane came into the room, tall, naked, and superb, the long body with the small, round breasts and splendid hips and thighs unwearied by matrimony, unscarred by debauch. She stood over him, looking down at him with hooded eyes, veteran of many seasons, sweeper-up of stragglers, her red hair, dark in the glow of the lamp, swinging down toward him.
His erection was swift and sudden and huge, a pylon, a cannon barrel. He was torn between pride and embarrassment and almost asked Mary Jane to put out the light. But before he could say anything, Mary Jane bent and swept back the covers in a single tearing gesture.
She stood beside the bed, inspecting him, smiling softly.
“Little brother,” she whispered, “little beautiful brother of the poor.” Then, soft-handed, she touched him. He jumped convulsively.
“Lie still,” she ordered. Her hands moved like small, expert animals on him, fur on damask. He quivered. “Lie still, I said,” she said harshly.
It was over soon, shamefully soon, a fierce, arching jet and he heard himself sobbing. She knelt on the bed, kissed him on the mouth, her hands intolerable now, the smell of her hair, cigarette smoke and perfume smothering him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, when she raised her head. “I just couldn’t …”
She chuckled. “Don’t be sorry. I’m flattered. I consider it a tribute.” With a long graceful movement, she slid into bed beside him, pulled the covers over them, clamped him to her, her leg silken over his thighs, his semen oiling them both. “Don’t worry, about any little thing, little brother,” she said. She licked his ear and he was shaken once more by a quiver that started from her tongue and convulsed his body down to the tips of his toes, electrocution by lamp light. “I’m sure that in a very few minutes you’ll be as good as new, little brother.”
He wished she’d stop calling him little brother. He didn’t want to be reminded of Gretchen. Gretchen had given him a peculiar look as he had left with Mary Jane.
Mary Jane’s gift of prophecy in her chosen field had not deserted her. In less than a very few minutes her hands had awakened him once more and he did what Mary Jane had brought him to her bed to do. He plunged into her with all the hoarded strength of years of abstinence. “Oh, Christ, please, that’s enough,” she cried finally, and he let himself go in one great thrust, delivering them both.
Freak, he heard Julie’s bitter voice, freak. Let her come to this room and this woman for testimony.
“Your sister said you were still a virgin,” Mary Jane was saying.
“Let’s not talk about it,” he said shortly.
They were lying side by side now, on their backs, Mary Jane’s leg, just a leg now, thrown lightly across his knee. She was smoking, inhaling deeply, and smoke drifting slowly up when she let it go from her lungs.
“I must discover me some more virgins,” she said. “Is it true?”
“I said let’s not talk about it.”
“It is true.”
“Not anymore, anyway.”
“That’s for fair,” she said. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“A beautiful young man like you,” she said. “The girls must be ravenous.”
“They manage to restrain themselves. Let’s talk about something else.”
“How about that cute little girl you go around with?” Room 923. “What’s her name?”
“Julie.” He did not like saying Julie’s name in this place.
“Isn’t she after you?”
“We were supposed to get married.”
“Were? And now?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“She doesn’t know what she’s missing. It must come in the family,” Mary Jane said.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Willie says your sister’s absolutely delirious in the hay.”
“Willie ought to learn to keep his mouth shut.” Rudolph was shocked that Willie would say something like that to a woman, any woman, to anybody about his wife. He would never quite trust Willie again or completely like him again.
Mary Jane laughed. “We’re in the big city now,” she said, “where they burn the gas. Willie’s an old friend of mine. I had an affair with him before he ever met your sister. And occasionally, when he’s feeling down or needs a change of scenery, he still comes around.”
“Does my sister know?” Rudolph tried to keep the sudden anger out of his voice. Willie, that drifting, frivolous man.