How strange it was. What she had been doing in Goldie’s Casablanca was not exhibiting herself, but hiding; from them. Taking on protective coloration. To him alone, he was sure, had she been truly revealed. And it was this revelation that teased him. Taunted him, now.
The coat and blouse were off. Suddenly and almost innocently the slip dropped, the last curtain between them. This was the true Jane, all of Jane. The Jane tempting, delectable, rosy between her big-nippled, big-aureoled, tiny breasts, ivory in the shaven area above her triangle of Venus. He tasted this throbbing curving flesh with his hands, then his seeking lips. As desire soared hotly within him, it mounted responsively in her. She gave herself to him completely, part by smooth part (so very smooth, indeed), and yet not solely giving, but taking. Drawing on him as he drew on her. Fire slowly, sensuously. Then at increasing pace, until theirs was the swift, searing throb of climatic love, waxing to a poignant ecstasy beyond anything either had ever known—and waning, waning, as the crested wave breaks and wanes, only to renew itself and again rise surgingly to a new peak of bliss.
After they had slept together he found himself realizing that he had never felt so delightfully sober in his life, though granting that the picture might change a bit if he made a sudden movement. From where he lay he could see Jane in the mirror. She’d thrown on his dressing gown and was mixing drinks for them. A faucet gurgled briefly. Then she came back and he turned over and hitched himself up on an elbow.
“Here,” she said, handing him a glass.
He laughed. “I’m not sure what this will do to me. My mind’s in a delicate state.”
“Just a small one,” she said. “To us.”
“To us.” They clinked glasses. Following her example, he drained his. She sat down on the bed and looked at him.
“Hello, darling,” he said.
“Hello.”
“Feeling okay?”
“Wonderful.”
“Not worried about anything?”
“Of course not. What made you ask me that?”
“I don’t know. You look sort of sad.”
She smiled. “Isn’t it all right for love to make you sad?”
“I suppose so, in a way.”
“It makes you sad because when you’ve loved, you’re empty and your guard’s down. And you’re a little frightened because right there before you is the one you love, so tender and easily hurt, and his guard’s down, too.”
“But then joy ought to follow the sadness, before it’s even had a chance to get started.” And he touched her arm, tugged gently at the dressing gown, but she just stayed smiling at him, and after a while he took his hand away.
“You’re sure you’re not bothered about anything?” he queried.
“Oh, darling,” and it seemed to Carr that tears came into her eyes, making them bright, “this is the happiest night of my life. Whatever happens I want you to know that I love you utterly and completely.”
He sat up a little. “Nothing’s going to happen.”
“Of course not. But I wanted you to know.”
“Oh, sure.” He hitched himself around a bit as to face her. “But now that you’ve brought up the question of what’s going to happen to us, let’s talk about—”
He faltered. It seemed to him that a black haze had suddenly raced across the room. He rubbed his eyes. When he took his hand away, the room was swimming.
“I didn’t know I was that drunk,” he muttered. “I never thought that just one more drink—”
He looked quickly at Jane. She hadn’t moved. She still seemed to be smiling, very tenderly, almost pityingly. He turned his queerly heavy head toward the little table by the bed. With an effort he brought the brown blur into focus. The surface of the table was bare.
“The powders!” he said, and he had difficulty forming the words. “You put them in my drink.”
She didn’t answer.
“Damn you,” he said, pushing himself toward her smudged image, “you’ve got to—”
He felt her hands on his shoulders, pushing him back.
“You’ll be all right. You just need a little sleep.” Her voice seemed to come from the floor above. He tried to fight her, but he couldn’t lift his hands. The darkness was gaining fast.
“No I don’t,” he protested. “Ja…Plea…
“Just a little rest.”
“I won’t forget you…” he croaked miserably, “I won’…I wo…”
She was leaning over him. For a moment his vision cleared and he saw her face streaming with tears, and her white neck, the unloosened dressing gown, and her breasts. Then the darkness narrowed in around her and closed like the iris diaphragm of a camera.
Chapter Nine
The Blank Hours
Carr Mackay rubbed his face against the pillow, rolled over, slitted his eyes open and grimaced at the bright narrow oblong of light beneath the shade.
He waited impatiently for the alarm clock to stop ringing. When the last tinkle finally game, his mind eagerly dove back inside his body and lost itself in countless vague awareness of weight and tension, little pleasurable aches.
Then, just as it seemed certain that he must drive off to sleep again, he briskly got up, stuck his feet in slippers, went to the window, pulled up the shade, looked at the street, sniffed rheumily at the air, and went to the bathroom.
A large washrag, drenched in water hot as he could get it, wrung out, and held to his chin and cheeks, elicited from him the morning’s first smile. The lather felt good, too. He stroked it on thoughtfully, trying to get a uniformly thick coat, like a meringue pie.
When this job was completed to his satisfaction, he picked up his safety razor, squinted at it to make sure it was clean, screwed the handle until the blade had the proper tension, and looked at himself in the mirror. His nostrils twitched with friendly distaste.
“You’re a dumb character, Carr Mackay,” he said to himself in a kindly way, as he pulled the razor down his jaw. “Thirty nine…and an interviewer at an employment agency. That’s the measure of your ability in the workaday world!” He finished the cheek with quick little chops, held the blade under the hot faucet, and started on the other cheek. The first stroke was always the most fun, like shoveling snow. “Oh, but your job’s just a stepping stone? You’re going places from there? In a month, you say, you’ll be Mackay of Fisher and Mackay, editorial counselors? A little big shot?” Pulling his upper lip taut over his teeth, he tucked the razor under his nose and pulled it down carefully.
“Listen, Mackay, whom do you think you’re fooling? Why not admit you’re going to wriggle out of it at the first opportunity, even if you have promised Marcia? You know very well that you hate any and every new job, and that you doubly detest one in which you’re supposed to dazzle other people. And even if you have to take it to placate Marcia, it’s a foregone conclusion that you’ll end up as Mr. Fisher’s office boy. On top of all that the thing’s a pipe dream.” Reversing the razor, he mowed his lower lip. “Oh, but something very different is going to come along, is it? Some totally unexpected event that will burst through the dull round of life and open up a world of mystery and delight? Mackay, my friend, we have been listening to that quaint notion of yours for a long time and we’re getting very sick of it.” He attacked his chin fiercely; it was the crab grass in the lawn of his beard.