She permitted it with a feeling of rising suspense, curious to discover what they had planned for her next, gradually more and more anxious to participate. She did not think beyond the ultimate and inevitable act, knowing only that by the time it finally happened, two weeks after her eighteenth birthday, she was eagerly seeking the relief it brought. Beyond it, she vaguely visualized a continuing though certainly unpromiscuous sort of girlish sexual activity. She did not know that nothing but complete and utter subjugation would satisfy her captors.
She was finally made to understand this on the weekend the frat boys rented a Philadelphia hotel room and repeatedly used her, all twenty-six of them, one after the other throughout the night and the next long day. They had prepared for the event by purchasing condoms at the drugstore owned by Chickie's father (a brilliant touch thought up by Richard Longstreet) and then had come to Chickie with a ready-made alibi. She was to say a girl from Penn had invited her up for the weekend. They even supplied her with the girl's name, Alice Malloy. Chickie had no doubt she was a real girl the boys knew. She was too frightened to refuse the invitation, and besides she didn't know what was in store for her, or perhaps she did, it was all very confusing. All through the night, they kept saying, "You love it, don't you, Chickie?" to which she kept answering, "No, I don't, no," the next boy asking the same question, "You love it, don't you, Chickie?" and always she answered no, and thought of escape, and was terrified, and finally on the afternoon of the second day, she shrieked, "Yes, I love it, I love it, I love it!" and began giggling uncontrollably, and knew at last she was only what they said she was, a townie piece of twat.
In later years, when these nice fraternity boys got married to girls from Radcliffe and Smith and Sarah Lawrence and Vassar, and settled down to raise families, and went to work in business suits, they separately felt a pang of guilt when they recalled what they had done to Chickie in the winter and spring of 1957. But their guilt was dissipated by memory of the strange excitement they had known at the time, the knowledge that they (or rather Richard Longstreet, the frat genius) had inadvertently stumbled upon the key to Chickie Brown: she was a terrified little girl wanting to be victimized. This was exactly what they did to her, repeatedly, until finally their own lust seemed inspired by Chickie's appetite, and they could absolve themselves of any blame they may have felt at the time; they were obviously in the company of an insatiable nymphomaniac with masochistic tendencies, or so she was described by Richard Longstreet, who was a genius.
And in later years, when Chickie thought back upon that winter and spring, as she was doing now in her office while the snow swirled against the plate-glass window, she felt again the same surge of excitement, the same flushed embarrassment, the same tremor of fear she had known then and ever since with a variety of men including the Indian who had beat her until she ached and had given her a Persian cat in remorse. So Sidney Brackman, the dear silly man, wanted to marry her. She thought again of Italy and Greece, and the warm sand beneath her. She would be wearing a bikini, they would stare at her breasts and her legs, she would experience that familiar feeling of terrified lust engorging her, rising into her throat and her head until she wanted to scream aloud, or giggle, or die.
Will you win your stupid case, Sidney Brackman? she wondered.
If I were only sure you would.
Samuel Genitori, the chief counsel for API, was a rotund little man with a balding head and mild blue eyes. He was wearing a blue pinstripe suit with a light blue shirt and a dark blue tie. He carried a pair of eyeglasses in his hand as he approached the stand, but he did not put them on. To the court clerk, he said, "Plaintiff's Exhibit Number 8, please," and when he received the chart he put on the glasses briefly, studied the chart for a moment, took the glasses off again, and looked up at Arthur.
"Mr. Constantine," he said, "yesterday afternoon a chart was submitted to this court, and marked Plaintiff's Exhibit Number 8. It listed the alleged similarities between the movie The Paper Dragon and your play Catchpole. I show this to you now, and ask if this list was prepared by you."
"By me and my attorneys, yes."
"And it purports to show, does it not, the alleged similarities that were not present in Mr. Driscoll's book?"
"Yes, it does."
"It contains only those that appear in the play and in the film, is that correct?"
"That is correct."
"In your examination before trial, Mr. Constantine, you testified to some other alleged similarities between the play and the film, did you not?"
"That was a long time ago," Arthur said.
"Please answer the question."
"I don't remember whether I did or not."
"Perhaps I can refresh your memory."
"Please do," Arthur said.
"Did you not testify that there is a scene in the movie where a man is shown with his foot wrapped in bandages? Did you not claim that this man with his foot wrapped in bandages was stolen directly from your play?"
"I don't remember making that claim."
"Then let's try to be a bit more precise, shall we? This is the transcript of your pretrial examination, and I'm going to read now from page 198, this is you talking, Mr. Constantine: Tn the motion picture, there's a scene between the lieutenant and his commanding officer, and in the background we can see a line of men returning from the front. One of these men has his foot wrapped in bandages. This man was not described anywhere in the novel, but there's a scene in my play where a group of men are waiting for a stretcher, and one of the men has his foot wrapped in bandages.' Did you say that, Mr. Constantine?"
"If it's there, I said it."
"Then I take it you also said, because it's here on page 199, you also said, 'This man is a minor character, and his appearance in the movie can only be explained as an unconscious copying from the play.' Did you say that?"
"I did."
"Do you still feel this similarity indicates copying?"
"It's a minor point," Arthur said, "and I believe it was later withdrawn. That's why it doesn't appear on the chart."
"You no longer claim the man with his foot in bandages as a similarity?"
"That's right."
"Did you also testify during your pretrial examination that marksmanship was discussed in both your play and in the movie?"