Читать книгу Lesbian Pulp Fiction - Katherine Forrest V. - Страница 15

Allison was a big help. She thought my idea about getting zonked a splendid one. We bought enough booze to float the Saratoga, set it up with ice, glasses, etc. on the sideboard and proceeded to goof it up. I was half-drunk already from not sleeping and the firewater finished the job. Allison got loaded for the first time since I had met her. She was even more adorable that way. Maybe I thought so because in the condition I was in the view from left field made almost everything look good. Like I was digging her the most. It matters why?

While I could still articulate, I told her about what had happened. Not only that day, I filled her in on all the smut I had learned about during the preceding six months.

When I finished, Allison said, “Now I know who killed Cock Robin.”

“Who?”

“Happy Broadman. He didn’t do it himself, of course. He made Cinderella do it by hitting him with her glass slipper. Then, when she married the Prince, Happy was the caterer for the reception. The Prince and Cinderella had a baby boy named Twinkletoes. Happy had a contract with them so they had to let him perform the circumcision. He used a serpent’s tooth instead of a knife so the child was traumatized and grew up to be Rumplestilskin.”

“Brother, you’re gone, my love. Like way out. Before you lose contact altogether, what about helping me decide what to do?”

“That’s simple, come to California with me.”

“Whether or not I go to California with you will be decided independent of my employment status. The question is, for the sake of argument presuming that I’m going to keep living and working in New York, should I quit my present job?”

“I refuse to accept the basic premise. Therefore, I can’t help you decide. I will not even think of your staying in New York. You’re coming to California.”

“Dictating to me again?”

“No, using Pavlovian conditioning. I figure that if I repeat it often enough I’ll brainwash you till you can’t do anything else but come with me.”

“There’s another word for it,” I said.

“Nagging?”

“Precisely. I had enough of it at home. My mother could have won prizes if they held contests in nagging.”

“So now I’m like your mother?” Allison said teasingly.

“Yes, and I don’t like it. Cut it out.”

“What’s the matter with you? You’re supposed to go for it.”

“I don’t want you to be a mother to me,” I protested.

“Nonsense. You’re gay and therefore you’re seeking mother substitutes with whom to re-enact the primal situation. I read that somewhere once.”

“You read books?!!! Thank God that I found out before it was too late. I’ve heard about people like you. Your kind is trying to undermine the very foundations of this country. I heard that once at a Ku Klux Klan meeting. Fellow who had the local tar and feather concession was talking. Very interesting talk, very timely. I learned all about you all city folks that night. You people with book larnin’ is a menace to decent folks.”

Allison crossed over to in front of the television set. “May I take this occasion to announce that one member of the Literate Society to Stamp Out Mom and Apple Pie is in her cups? In fact, you might say I’m inebriated. No, I like four sheets to the wind better. All my sheets unfurled and spread out to catch the vagrant winds.” She spread her arms out wide to illustrate. The gesture knocked her off balance and she swayed back against the TV set. It knocked the rabbit ears antenna down and it fell around her, one limb on each side of her shoulders. Allison pondered this for a moment and then looked up with a profound expression. “That’s me…symmetry always.”

I roared. When I recovered myself, I said, “I have just discovered that I’m in love with the kookiest woman in New York.”

“You just find that out?”

“No, I’ve known it right along but that last bit finished me. Allison my love, you win the prize for irresistible insanity. You’re marvelous, my love, simply marvelous.”

“You really mean that?”

“As James Joyce would put it, ‘Yes.’ ”

That cracked her up. She fell all over me with love. Ever been kissed by someone who can’t stop laughing? Their lips keep sort of trembling. It tickles.

I mixed us another drink. Halfway through that one I began to get “Sloane’s Reaction” (that’s the name I gave it. If Bright could have a disease named for him, why couldn’t I have a response to liquor in my name?). “Sloane’s Reaction” consisted of most of the effect of the alcohol being concentrated in one particular area. Some people get weak in the knees from booze. Up about a foot and a half was bull’s-eye for anything I drank.

If we were going to come to any solution that night I’d have to push the conversation right then, before my mind goofed off with my body.

“Allison.”

“Yes, baby?”

“Ugh. Don’t use that word now. Since you brought up that mother substitute routine I’ve gotten self-conscious about it.”

“You never objected when I used it before.”

“I know. But now it’s too blatant. I crave subtlety in my regressive acting outs.”

“Who’s been reading books now?” She lifted one eyebrow mockingly. Allison did this as she winked, by closing both eyes and then opening one. Perfectly adorable. “Anyway, tell me how I can subtly shanghai you aboard the plane to California next week?”

“Allison! Please, baby…I mean, darling…try to be serious for a moment. We could reach a conclusion about this in a few minutes. Then, I promise you, I won’t bother you with any more of my troubles for the rest of the night.”

Allison composed her face into that absurd caricature of attentiveness that drunks wear. It was ludicrous. She looked as if she were trying to convince an arresting officer of her sobriety.

“Don’t you have any thoughts on the subject?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said, looking very grave. “To me it’s all very simple. I don’t know why you insist on making a prime spot production out of it.”

She stopped speaking. I could see the alcoholic fuzziness creeping back into her eyes. I fought it fast.

“So it’s simple. So tell me about it,” I said.

“Very simple. Lovely girl, Sloane Britain, wonderful girl…but she’s got some strange idea about herself.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like she thinks she’s some kind of real down cynic. A mentally retarded orangutan would see through that pose five minutes after meeting her. But she’s lived with herself for over twenty years and she still believes most of the nonsense she tells herself. Very sad.”

I was beginning to feel highly uncomfortable. The truth doesn’t always hurt. More often it is just embarrassing as all hell.

“So, being the adorable idiot that she is, she thinks that she can work in an office where honesty and sincerity are dirty words,” Allison continued. “She thinks that she ought to believe that all human beings are out to exploit each other. So what difference does it make if Happy Broadman happens to have carried exploitation to the point of being an art? Cynic Sloane wants to think that working for him might be a good idea. She might learn the fine points of being self-seeking from her boss.”

Allison stopped and stared at me fixedly. Then she stretched out on the couch with her head in my lap.

She was still staring at me with eyes that held a potpourri expression of amusement, compassion, mischievousness, and advanced inebriation.

I was no temperance advertisement myself. Otherwise, I don’t think I could have taken her observations. That she was saying those things at that time didn’t bother me too much. What got me was realizing that she had most likely held the same opinions for a long time. All the while that I had been trying to come on as a juvenile delinquent version of a composite of Messrs. Shaw, Wilde and Voltaire, with a dash of Dorothy Parker thrown in, Allison had been seeing through it.

“My beloved Miss Britain,” she went on, “I have news for you. You’re no cynic. Sure, you see that life and people are ludicrous. It’s the foundation of your humor. You laugh at the absurdity of everything and everybody, including yourself. Nothing wrong with that, human beings a re ridiculous and some people, I among them, suspect that life is nothing but a cosmic joke.”

She raised one finger, like a platform lecturer about to make a point. Instead, she continued the gesture upward and grasped a strand of my hair with it. She continued to play with the lock of my hair throughout the remainder of her discourse.

“In fact, at the risk of having you throw an apoplectic fit, I will go so far as to say that I think you’re almost naïvely idealistic. Emotionally, I mean. Intellectually you know that the great majority of people will be doing more good when they’re fertilizing the flowers than they ever did in their lifetimes.

“Now, to the point of all this: In the light of your aforementioned idealism, it is my opinion (don’t blame me, you asked me for it) that for you to continue working for Happy Broadman would be self-destructive. In fact, I would predict that before too long one of two things would happen if you did. Either you’d get the screaming meemies or an ulcer or some other form of hysteria…or you’d blow the whole works one day by denouncing Happy to his face and putting yourself through a highly unpleasant scene. So, wouldn’t you agree that it’s a better idea for you to quit your job now before things get any easier than they are?”

“I…I guess so,” I said weakly.

“Good. I’m glad that’s taken care of. Now, Sloane,” Allison’s voice became pathetically beseeching, “could I get drunk again? I had such a lovely buzz on before.”

Placing me on an equal footing again. Restoring the frayed edges of my ego by asking my permission. Having me mix the drinks for us both like I was the efficient hostess and she only an invited guest dependent on my largesse. What a woman!

More than ever before I was aware of my luck. Allison was the kind of woman most men looked for all their lives and never found. Warm, loving, intelligent, beautiful, charming and completely feminine. And she was in love with me!

My moment of humility didn’t last but at the time I was filled with wonder…what did someone like Allison see in me? Could it have something to do with the rotten things that had happened to me before? Maybe there was something to that idea of suffering being rewarded?

I stayed deeply engrossed in remembering what Allison had said. Not that I was thinking about it or analyzing it. It was more like I kept repeating her words to myself. Like it was religious. Like I had had a mystical experience or something.

All right, so everything Allison had said was so true of me it hurt. So what? This proves I should pack up and follow her across the country? Maybe I was making too big a deal over it? After all, she hadn’t told me anything new about myself. I knew those things about myself, I just acted as if I didn’t because I fully expected by doing the right things I would someday become more like what I was on the outside.

That naïve idealist routine, for instance. I knew that underneath my assumed hard exterior (hard like glass…impervious to all but the sharpest assaulters but likely to shatter if hit by the wrong tone of voice) I was like somebody’s overgrown dog, ready at any time to pledge undying devotion to any slob who threw me the right bone. Lucky for me no one did. The gimmick was that I thought that continually assaulting my naïve convictions with the seamy facts of reality would eventually penetrate and teach me to be less trusting. The way I saw it, you had to be tough. Real hard, like steel or the world would walk all over you. I was in great shape. I thought I was like the most mature, well-informed on all the latest trends in morbidity, a regular Hedda Hopper of neurotica. The truth was that I had gotten older but not much smarter. I was still mentally only on the second landing and the window wasn’t open.

The big deal was that someone else had seen through the façade. It’s possible Allison wasn’t the first one to do so. I was having conniptions because she was the first one who had the conviction to let me know what she saw. Can’t blame most people if they kept their thoughts to themselves. Usually, I had had an aversion to people giving me their analyses of my psyche. Among the literati of New York City that’s the favorite indoor sport. Like charades, every goof who had read a magazine article about psychology felt qualified to play the game, what was the other guy acting out? That jazz gave me the chills. Those lovelies wouldn’t dream of diagnosing a physical illness but they had no qualms about regarding themselves experts in the science of psychology. I didn’t go for it and I wouldn’t put up with hearing half-baked interpretations of my unresolved Oedipal conflict and all that sort of stuff. That stuff’s for the professionals. I must have frustrated a lot of armchair Freuds in my time. Tough, baby dolls, real tough.

What really counted was that Allison loved me. She saw through me but that didn’t mean she didn’t like what she saw. That meant that she had a right to see the personality I presented to the world and the private one I had gone to such lengths to submerge. After all, she loved both sides of me and that’s what really mattered.

“Hey, come back. You haven’t said a word for ten minutes.”

“I was thinking about one of the reasons why I love you,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“Let me try and illustrate it this way: if you hadn’t been able to eat for three days, what would you say was wrong with you?”

Allison looked at me as if she were afraid that I had finally flipped out so far I’d never come back. “I’d say that I was hungry.”

“That’s what I thought. And that’s one of the reasons I love you.”

“Because I get hungry? Girl, I’ve heard of being weird, but this beats all.”

“Really? You should read Stekel. However,” I explained, “that is far from being my hangup. No, the point I’m trying to make is that you can get hungry without calling yourself oral-retentive. That’s one of the reasons for my loving you. I’ve known too many of the other kind. People who can’t enjoy eating an artichoke without thinking they’re oral-regressive.”

“I know the type. Sounds like some of the friends I made when I first came to the city. They bored me stiff.”

“Yeah. You know, I’ve gotten revoltingly sober in the last hour. What about you?”

“Me too. I thought this drink would get me back where I was before but it hasn’t. We’re almost out of Scotch too.”

“I could go down and buy some more,” I suggested.

“Hey, I just got a better idea. Ever had a Sidecar?”

“No.”

“You’ve been missing something. It’s my favorite cocktail but I seldom drink it because after three of them I’ve been known to start thinking I was Madame Butterfly.”

“That must be quite a scene,” Allison said.

“You shouldn’t know from it. Once, at a party, I lost count of how many I drank. All I know is that at one point I came out of the john with the end of a roll of toilet paper in my hands. I unwound it all the way into the living room where I proceeded to announce that I was that Butterfly cat. All the time I was tearing the tissue into little pieces and tossing them about like they were flower petals.”

“You’re making it up.”

“So help me Giacomo Puccini, I’m telling the truth. At least that’s what I’m told I did. I don’t remember that night too clearly,” I protested. “Anyway, I have a bottle of brandy in the kitchen and some Cointreau somewhere around the place. A smidgeon of lemon juice and we’ve got a Sidecar. How about it? Should I mix up a batch?”

“On top of Scotch? Oh, what the hell, let’s try it anyway. But please,” Allison requested, “no Madame Butterfly tonight.”

“Don’t worry, I passed the Puccini stage long ago. It’ll be Der Rosenkavalier, at least.”

“H-m-m-m. As I remember, the opening scene holds some interesting possibilities.”

“Hold it. We better take this topic up again after I’ve made the drinks or we’ll never get around to them.”

I had never mixed a Sidecar before. I guess it takes practice. Anyway, mine were palatable…but just barely. We had three each. I was seeing the world through rose-colored glasses…someone else’s prescription.

We were sitting on the floor, leaning back against the couch. I felt safer down there. Allison had her head on my shoulder and my arm was around her.

Suddenly I became aware that she had her tongue in my ear. No, that couldn’t be right. She wouldn’t just start out that way. She’d build up to something like that. Guess I had been drinking up such a storm I hadn’t known that she had been kissing my neck.

When she withdrew her lips I turned and gathered her to me. “Well, hello there, pretty girl. Where did you come from?” I teased as I took liberties with her clothing.

“Glad you’re back. For a while there I thought you were more interested in your drink than you were in me.”

“Baby, you know I’m weak for you. Wait a minute and I’ll prove it,” I said, standing up and unfastening what appeared to be a million zippers.

“You should have music.” Allison got up and put a stack of records on the phonograph. She turned the volume control way up. She had selected some jazz records of the Kansas City and Chicago barrelhouse and blues styles. Old stuff like they used to play in the speakeasies and brothels. It came swinging out of the speaker real raunchy and low-down. So right for the occasion. It was very definitely not the time for Italian opera.

“OK, you’ve got your accompaniment. Now do your bit,” Allison said.

I didn’t get what she meant at first but then I dug it and I goofed. I mean, like brother, I flipped. That wasn’t my bit.

Allison was still standing by the phonograph. “Come on, I’m waiting. The curtain’s up. The music’s playing. What are you waiting for? A fan?”

“Allison, I couldn’t. I’d be too embarrassed.”

“Nothing to it. Just make like you’re in bed. Let the music reach your hips. Like this.” She came toward me slowly, giving it back to a frantic bass fiddle with bumps and grinds that would do credit to a shake dancer twenty years in the business.

By the time she reached me she had me in a sweat. I grabbed her and ripped off what few clothes she still had on. She let me but when I tried to kiss her she backed away and began moving around again.

They hadn’t taught her that in her ballet classes. But the training had helped make her graceful. There wasn’t much room for her to show her stuff but she didn’t need much. She mostly stood in one spot and made her body go places while her feet stood still.

Man, I was kicked right out of my mind. But I really cracked up when she pulled a bit I had seen once at a strip joint on Third Street in the Village. When I watched that professional stripper do it I had been a little embarrassed but mostly as bored as the dancer had been. When the woman I loved did the same thing the effect, to understate to the point of absurdity, was different.

Allison extended her tongue out as far as it would go. She brought her hands up and licked the palms of each. Then, arching her body back from the waist so that her gorgeous breasts swelled out full and inviting toward me, she brought her hands down and cupped her breasts, like she was offering them to me. Then, she placed her palms flat against the pink tips and caressed them, her body swaying longingly, an expression of languid sensual delight on her face, her eyes open and staring at me with defiance and excitement.

With an involuntary moan, I fell to my knees before her, clasping her legs tightly and burying my lips in the silken pliancy of her thighs. Allison swayed sinuously in my arms.

Ardent pulsations coursed through the writhing body in my arms. My legs had lost their power. I couldn’t rise. My body stretched upwards, stretching, straining for fulfillment. Up, up, my body pressed against the muscular hardness of her legs, my lips and tongue seeking, needing. Allison was shivering, small meaningless sounds coming from the depths of her throat.

Allison tossed limply, leaning against me for the support her trembling legs could no longer give her. A thin high-pitched scream and long shudders wracking through the length of her body and then my name repeated and repeated over and over again.

We were lying on the floor, the rayon rug prickling my bare skin. I was too relaxed to bother moving.

Allison was lying with her face cradled in my bosom. Her body was limp, her eyes closed. I could tell that she wasn’t sleeping, though, by the rhythm of her breathing and by the small grasping motions she made at me every time I shifted my position slightly.

She stiffened one arm against the floor and propped herself up to a near sitting position. Her face was almost white, drained, exhausted. I noticed that the arm she was using to support herself was trembling as if too spent to expend any effort.

She stared at me long and hard without speaking. Then, in a voice that was heavy with desperation said, “I love you so much. Too much. I’ll have to pay for this, Sloane. It must be sinful to get so much pleasure from one person. Somehow I feel that there must be something evil in my wanting to have you be the center and meaning of my life. Sloane, I want that so very much. God help me, I adore you!”

“Darling, you shouldn’t look at it that way. That way of thinking’s merely a carry-over from the medieval…” I never got to finish my statement. A look of longing had come over Allison’s face. Feverish desire set her eyes aflame. She cut me off in mid-sentence with an insistent kiss.

Her lips, which I had always known to be soft and gentle, bore down on me inflexibly. I was taken aback and put off by the punishing fierceness of her kiss.

It was Allison who was kissing me, however. Allison who was roughly fondling me. The woman I loved whose body was crowding mine. As the initial surprise passed away, I began to respond. I could feel my taut muscles relaxing. My lips parted and I invited more sensual kisses.

Allison reacted by lessening the whiplash ferocity of her lovemaking. She became tender and adoring.

Briefly, she raised herself a few inches, to tell me, “Every time we touch, I feel as if a miracle were happening.” Then she came back to my lips. But in the brief moment when she had her eyes open I had seen passionate desire that bordered on desperation.

I wriggled free and stood up. “I got up because I can’t really believe that you want to make love again. Not so soon. I think you’re doing it for some other reason. I don’t know what it is but I’m highly suspicious of its being something other than sexual.”

“Wrong, my love. I want you because I love you. If you think I should be some sort of limp lily now, I’m sorry to disappoint you. Sloane, I want you. I’m aroused again, honest. Maybe I’m turning nympho in my old age.”

“Sure?”

“Dammit, what do you want? A signed affidavit? Let me put it this way, if you don’t stop questioning me this instant and get back here in my arms where I can say whatever I have to say in sign language, I’ll make you stop.”

“Oh? You’re also getting pretty cocky in your old age,” I said. “What makes you so sure you can stop me?”

Allison smiled. Now I know what they mean by that Cheshire cat bit. She looked as if swallowing the canary were her hourly habit. “The records are still stacked. All I have to do is put them back on the changer and start the music playing. I don’t think you’d keep giving me such a hard time if I were to start dancing again.”

“Aah, I’ve seen that act already. Your performance would suffer from repetition. It just wouldn’t have the same effect,” I lied. “You know, like a mystery story. Once you know the ending, there’s not much point in re-reading the story again.”

Allison stretched luxuriously, emphasizing the slim voluptuousness of her figure. Then she put her hands on her sleekly rounded hips and gently kneaded the supple flesh. “You only saw the first act. There are two more and an encore. Shall I begin?” she cooed.

“D-don’t bother. Any more of that and I’d be a candidate for a nut hatch.” I meant it. I was so steamed up it was killing me to keep up the teasing and not just fall to it. Another performance of Allison’s and I’d be locked up for loving her to death.

“There’s only one way to keep me from dancing again. Come over here, darling,” Allison cooed.

“Do we have to use the floor again? My back already feels like the bottom of a birdcage. If you want me, come after me.” I turned and ran into the kitchen.

Allison ran after me, laughing. We were both giggling so much we could hardly keep running. Guess we were both racked up by the same thing, an image of how we would look to an observer, running around the apartment naked.

I barely escaped her grasp as I headed out of the kitchen, through the living room, to the foyer. It was a long narrow hall with the bedroom at one end and the door to the outside at the other.

I ran until I collided with unyielding wood. The outside door. In my excitement I had run in the wrong direction.

Allison had me trapped. There was only room for one person to walk down the hall at a time. She surged up against me, not able to break the momentum she had built up while running. The impact crushed me to the door. The wood protested loudly and the thud of my impact gathered volume in the empty halls and stairwell. Oh Christ, and with the landlord living right in the building! I was sure there would be an eviction notice for me the next day. You understand, I didn’t know exactly what time it was but it had to be some time after midnight.

The unexpected noise flipped us both. We thought it was funny. We goofed it up laughing and making guesses about what the other tenants had done when they heard the sound. Like what they had been doing when it happened and how they might have interpreted it. We were breaking each other up.

Allison stopped laughing first. There was nothing humorous about the way her fingers were probing my body. What there is to do with hands in order to achieve certain effects, she was doing. Anything else, there isn’t.

My laugh went to a grin to something quite other than hilarity. Allison had her hand behind my head, tugging a handful of my hair until my head was inclined backward. She bent over me and brought her mouth to mine. Instead of kissing me, she kept her lips a fraction of an inch away and traced the outlines of my mouth with the tip of her tongue. Playing with the contours of my parted lips.

She was using her hands and fingers to fondle me like a bibliophile examining the Guttenberg Bible. A delicious languor spread through me. My heart was beating frantically, blood spurting lustily through me, throbbing inside me that blocked out sight and sound, present and future. Only Allison and the exquisite sensations of her touch were real.

“No, no, Allison. Please, not here. Not so close to the door. The neighbors…they’ll hear us.” Some part of my mind that I wasn’t in touch with was being rational. I heard myself speaking but wasn’t aware that I was articulating, nor had any idea where the logical, coherent thoughts came from.

“They can’t hear me making love to you, baby. That’s just between us,” Allison said. She followed her words with a probing kiss and then her mouth was roving my body, just the tip of her tongue extended.

Her mouth was on my breast, the wet pink wonder teasing the tips. I was sinking further and further into ardent urgency. My body had gone slack with need and it was only the pressure of Allison’s body propping me against the door that kept me upright. I was falling limply. Allison started easing me down to the floor, not stopping her stroking.

“No. Please,” I said weakly. “I don’t want to here. Not on the floor. Not in front of the door.”

Allison’s voice was tight and husky. She had to take a deep breath before speaking. “I guess you’re right. That might wake someone.” She swayed against me and buried her head in my shoulder. “Oh, dearest, it’s so wonderful when you finish. I love the way you go out of your mind and become so free and wild and unrestrained. My baby, it’s so good to see you when you’re like that. You’re a different person, primitive, uninhibited and so completely mine. And the things you say at that time! Like they came from deep inside you where your sincerest feelings are. You say such lovely things to me then, Sloane precious. As if you had no control over what you were saying, sometimes you whisper so that I can hardly hear you, other times there are no words, just rapturous sounds, and sometimes you just let go and proclaim your ecstasy. Those times you usually call out my name. Like it was something of great beauty. Or loudly, as if you wanted to tell the world that I was the one you love.” She picked her head up. “Yes, I guess you have a point. We had better get away from the door.”

Allison helped me get up. Every bone and muscle in my body had turned to jelly. She propped me up in front of her as we went down the hall to the bedroom. Allison kicked the bedroom door shut behind us with the heel of her foot.

I was on the bed. Allison was standing next to the bed staring down at me. Then Allison was embracing me, the slippery velvet of her perspired body pulsating against me. Mouth on my mouth. Silken lips against mine. Hands and fingers stroking, clasping, fondling. Lips touching, brushing, sliding over my body. Agonizingly exquisite tongue seeking, caressing. I in the torturous ache of ecstasy, in the rapture of transport, then, quickly, knotted up with tension…release and flowing out and, “Allison, Allison, Allison, I love you. My precious darling. Allison, Allison, Allison, Allison…”

What was probably much later, I realized that sunlight was coming in the room from around the edges of the drapes. There was a clock on the bedside table. I twisted myself up and to the side in order to read its face which was turned away from me. I was very careful not to awaken Allison who was sleeping in the embrace of my left arm. I picked up the clock and brought it close to my eyes. Myopia and a hangover made me tempted to use Braille. Finally, I was able to make out the time.

“Is it very late?” a sleepy voice inquired from the other side of the bed.

“We must have fallen asleep. It’s 9:15 already. I’m going to have to hustle to get to the office in time.”

“Damn! I’ve got an appointment with a photographer for this morning. I’m due there already and I don’t even know where the hell I left my clothes around this voyeur’s dream. And I have to go back to my place to pick up my stage makeup. Oh, I hope he waits for me. I don’t care if he kills me for being so late, just so long as he’s there. He’s one of the best cameramen in the business and I’ve waited months to get this appointment with him. I need a lot of new stills for distribution on the Coast. They’re going to know Allison Millay is in town if I have to send them pictures and bios every day for a year.”

“You better have some breakfast. Posing under those hot lights will knock you out if you don’t. Remember, you’ve had hardly any sleep. Couple that with not eating and holding poses in the glare of those hot spotlights and they’ll have to carry you out frothing at the mouth.”

“You’re right. I’ll grab something to eat while I’m in the taxi. I won’t have time to sit down to breakfast.”

I let Allison have the bathroom first because she was so late. I’d never make it to the office on time but, if Judy or Happy had anything to say about it they’d be sorry. I was in no mood to put up with their nonsense that day. I would only be half to three-quarters of an hour late. They had no right to make a big deal out of that. Every human being is a little late for work once in a while. Once in a while? Face it, Sloane, I told myself, you’ve been late so often in the six months you’ve been there that the elevator operators probably think you’re due at work sometime around eleven. So what? Just let one of them say anything today and I’ll make them wish that they had stayed in bed. With my voice, I can make almost any line sound like an impeachment proclamation if I’m careful of my delivery.

Allison finished washing and was standing before the bathroom sink, putting layers of greasy makeup over the dark circles around her eyes and on the pink and blue blemishes around her mouth, the ones I had put there. She was looking at her reflection in the mirror as if she saw there some sort of hag. I should look half as ugly as she.

I got into the shower while she was making with the paint and took a quick one. Allison was combing her hair when I came out. She must have seen my reflection in the mirror because all of a sudden she whirled around toward me.

“Sloane, baby, did I do that? You look like you’ve been through the wars. You’re covered with bruises. How did you get a black-and-blue mark there?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten last night?” I was on the verge of tears. It would’ve been too much if Allison had been like those drunks Banner, Perry Matthews and Herb Talman…if her passion had come from a bottle and was a thing that meant no more to her than a hangover the next day.

“I remember what I felt last night. My emotions, most of the action and that it was divine. The exact continuity of events is a little mixed up in my mind. I do know that we were both pretty frenzied and that things were done by both of us last night that we’d never gone in for before. As I recall, it seems to me that we made love all over this apartment. However, I don’t remember the exact sequence of events. No, I couldn’t give a detailed plot outline of last night. Is that important?”

“No, of course not. I don’t think I could either. There is one thing that will bother me if I don’t ask about it now, though. Last night, when we started making love, you know, when you danced to the phonograph music…well, what happened after that worries me. You were sort of, well, hard like. I’m not referring just to your actions. There was a lack of your usual loving warmth and tenderness. I’m talking about an emotional quality that wasn’t there. It was somewhat like the difference between love and lust.”

Allison breathed a deep sigh and bit down on her lower lip. “I know. I’m always that way. When I’m hurt, I withdraw. Because of the way I feel about you I couldn’t just keep away from you. Instead, something inside me shut off. I suppose you’ve got those bruises because, and I assure you I wasn’t conscious of it, I wanted to hit back at you for hurting me so much.”

I had been standing like some kind of idiot with the sopping wet towel held before me, dripping puddles onto the floor. I started to speak but a gurgling croak came out…I hadn’t remembered to close my mouth before speaking, it had been agape all through Allison’s reply.

“Baby,” I finally managed, “I don’t know what I did but if I hurt you, I’m sorry, genuinely so. But I can’t imagine what I did wrong.”

“You didn’t give me your decision about coming to California with me. It was our last night together and I expected you to say something. Even if you had said no, it would have been kinder than not saying anything. You acted as if whether you came with me or not was an unimportant matter. I wasn’t going to force you to put anything into words. I’ve got a little pride left. Not much, I admit, but enough to keep me from humiliating myself any more than I had already. I suppose your silence meant that you’ve decided not to go to the Coast. Is that right?”

“Just a little old minute. I mean no such thing. What’s the rush? ‘The Singer Show’ isn’t leaving for two more weeks. I could get plane reservations by calling in a week in advance. It’s a big decision. I wanted as much time as possible to think it over. I didn’t think you’d mind if I didn’t let you know until next week. What’s this bit about last night being our last night together. Why, for God’s sake?”

“Because of yesterday’s new development. I got in touch with you just as soon as I knew about it myself.” Allison must have seen the complete bewilderment on my face because she looked at me incredulously and asked, “You got my message, didn’t you?”

“What message?”

“The one I asked Judy to give you. I called while you were out to lunch. I was going to be busy the rest of the afternoon and couldn’t call back so I dictated a message for you to Judy. She said she’d give it to you as soon as you came back to the office. I made everything clear in that message. That’s why your acting as if everything was just the same hurt me so much.”

“Allison, I swear to you, Judy didn’t give me any message yesterday. She didn’t even tell me you had called.” Damn that freak Judy! That wasn’t the first time she had “forgotten” to tell me about personal calls that had come in for me when I was away from my desk. Don’t tell me her memory had been bad. If anyone called Happy, Judy would remember it all right. She could be dying and she’d gasp it out with her last breath. She didn’t have the gumption to tell me she didn’t like my getting personal calls at the office so she let me miss about half the calls she answered for me. I guess I was supposed to interpret this to mean that I shouldn’t use the phone except for business. I knew what she was getting at but I hadn’t let it stop me. The messages I hadn’t gotten probably weren’t all that important. If someone urgently needed to talk to me, they’d call back. But this time Judy had gone too far. This was being malicious, not just petty. “It’s the truth, Allison. This is the first I’ve heard of your calling the office yesterday.”

She collapsed against the sink, weak with laughter. “It’s too incredible,” she gasped. “I thought things like this only happened in Restoration comedies. The crucial message that goes astray and the ensuing farce scene where the boy and girl meet and insult each other because they don’t know what’s happened and each of them is talking about something different. Oh-oh, this is too rich. Somebody ought to have said that they’d never darken the other’s door again. That’s all we would have needed to make this period piece complete.” She broke up in helpless laughter again.

I waited until she had subsided to giggles before asking, “Just what was it you asked Judy to tell me?”

“I called you right away because the Crystal soap people want me to start filming those spot commercials Monday of next week. That means that I’ve got to fly out to the Coast in four days. No, three days. It was four yesterday. Anyway, they’re going to keep me busy for the two weeks until ‘The Singer Show’ arrives and I have to start rehearsing for that. I won’t have a chance to come back to New York. When I leave a few days from now it’ll be for good. At least, for the next three years. So, you understand now why last night was the last one I could spend with you? I have only three days and nights to do a mountain of packing, close out my bank account, say good-bye to all my friends, buy a load of new clothes, return the books and records I’ve borrowed from friends, take care of ten thousand business matters. I’m going to be too busy to blow my nose for the next three days. Coming here last night was allowing myself a luxury which I really couldn’t afford. Now, do you understand why I was hurt? Remember, I had no idea that you didn’t know it was our final chance to be alone.”

“Allison, now that I know, I wouldn’t have blamed you if you had told me to go to hell in a wheelbarrow.”

“Thank the Lord I didn’t do something like that. Then we would never have straightened this out.”

“Yeah. Well, frankly I’m so taken off guard by this that I don’t know what to say. Would you hate me very much if I didn’t let you know until tonight? I could call or maybe come over and help you with your packing.”

“It’s all right, darling,” Allison said. “I’ll wait for your call tonight. In the meantime, I’ll be praying to every god, saint, angel, prophet and holy man I can think of from every religion known to me that you will be on the plane to California with me. Look out the office windows during the day. If you see a girl doing what looks like a demoniac mazurka around one of the trees in Central Park, it’ll be me. I think I’ll try invoking the Druid deities too, I’m afraid to leave anything out.”

I finally got to the office a few minutes before eleven. Happy was giving dictation to Judy in his office. They both looked up as I got off the elevator. I stared down anything they were about to say. There was blood in my eye that morning, I tell you. To rub things in a little more, I disappeared into the john for ten more minutes. By the time I finally sat down at my desk Judy was ready to have apoplexy.

She brought some work out for me to do and lingered in my office, waiting for me to give some excuse for my tardiness. I didn’t say a word. Instead, I pointedly got out an ebony and silver cigarette holder that I had never before used. It was a real classy thing that a client had given me, six inches long and mucho impressive. I stuck a cigarette into it, lighted it and waved the thing around affectedly. Hip Judy was not but she got my message that time. She went back to her own office like a whipped puppy.

Happy was having a ball with one of his chicks on his private phone. I don’t know what the girl was saying to him but I could get a good idea from the way he kept squirming around as he talked to her. Every once in a while he’d get a real sappy grin on his face as if she had just said something especially toothsome.

Meanwhile, the phones were ringing like crazy and I was trying desperately to get him to answer a few calls. Some of them were real important business calls but Happy didn’t seem to care. He just went on talking and twitching.

I had my hands full with the phones until about one o’clock when things quieted down. That was the first chance I had had to look at the work Judy had given me to do. It was time for me to go out to lunch but I decided to have a sandwich sent up. I wanted to be fair, coming into work two hours late was enough, I’d make up the time by working through my lunch-hour.