Naked Came the Stranger (13 page)

Billy: You sound worried, dear. Don't tell me you've gone and
run up a gambling debt, or spent the milk money on demon rum?

Gilly: Oh, you're so silly. No, I'm just speaking figuratively.
It's simply that money can be a problem. Billy: Yes, but you know
what they say. It can't buy happiness.

Gilly: Perhaps not, but there are times when it can quell
anxiety.

It was the week before Christmas, traditionally a
time of heightened emotion, and two residents of King's Neck shared
the feeling that the world, or at least their private worlds, would
soon end. Neither of the two anticipated a particularly pleasant
finale. Marvin Goodman was once again on the verge of bankruptcy. And
Gillian Blake was pregnant.

Marvin Goodman groped anxiously toward the Danish modern mailbox
that hung from the rough-hewn shingles of his Custom Split, and
extracted a dozen envelopes of various sizes, shapes and colors. The
sight of the cellophane windows was sufficient to justify his
next-to-worst fears, to induce his recurrent daylight nightmare.

He walked noiselessly through the foyer into the living room,
barely conscious of the thick velvet pile ($22.50 a yard) that
cushioned his steps. He totally ignored the climate control system
that nurtured his well-being, the Tanganyikan carvings, the
pre-Columbian figures, the abstract expressionist oils, the
limited-edition art books that fed or stimulated his aesthetic
needs.

Marvin tore open the wide manila envelope first and watched as the
garish illustration of a one-time comic book hero and erstwhile
companion of his youth fluttered to the floor. "Bat-shit," Marvin
said, resisting the temptation to grind his heel into his fallen
idol's groin. The sadistic smile that had accompanied the impulse
faded as speedily as the gray winter sun over the Lombardy poplars
marking the Goodmans' rear property line.

"Bat… shit," he reiterated slowly, while a dozen mauve,
perfumed sheets fell from a squarish envelope tastefully imprinted
Saks Fifth Avenue.
A remaining sheet, imprisoned between
Marvin's thumb and forefinger, indicated that $249.89 worth of unpaid
merchandise had been transferred from the Saks showroom to the
Goodman residence during the past thirty-day period. Added to
previous shipments, still unpaid, the total due now exceeded the
Goodmans' joint checking account balance by an amount approximating
seven hundred dollars. Marvin did not have the strength to figure it
to the penny.

Combining X-ray vision with computerlike speed, Marvin's troubled
mind assessed the contents of the other envelopes. Each envelope's
return address triggered a response that fed a familiar figure to the
accurate accounting department in Marvin's brain. Long Island
Lighting Company ($44) … Suburban Meats ($52) … Green
Pasture Farms ($35) … New York Telephone Company ($32)
… Dr. Hetterton ($145 outstanding) … and so on.

"Helene!" Marvin screamed. "Helene!"

"What do you want, honey?"

"Get your ass down here."

Through more than a decade of marriage to Marvin, Helene Goodman's
cells had developed responses of their own. On the rare occasions
when she sensed unqualified hatred, she sought refuge. Anger,
Marvin's most familiar attitude, was met with yielding softness,
unswerving agreement and the promise to improve, to really try like
hell next month. Manifestations of softness on Marvin's part, on the
other hand, were invariably tested for small advantages. It was the
sort of thing Helene had excelled at since high school – and
even then there was evidence of great and practical flexibility. She
would not stir, for example, should a popular boy's hand move toward
her indifferent breasts if a prom was in the offing; however, should
the same young man seek to continue his explorations on the way home
from the prom, he would win only rebuke. Now in her early thirties,
Helene had not appreciably changed. Her breasts, though fuller, were
still indifferent. Her use of them, though refined through time, was
still primarily geared toward inducing Marvin to do her bidding.
Figuratively as well as literally they served as pacifiers. At this
moment Helene instinctively opened the third button of her blouse to
expose her cleavage more fully. She put on her fun-loving face, and
as she worked her way down the abbreviated staircase she added the
final touch, the hip swing.

"What's the matter, honey?" she said, at the same time catching
sight of the Saks' bill crumpled on the thick carpeting. "Did Saks
make another little mistake?" Marvin flicked his head slightly, a
boxer evading a left jab. He had, within his solid accountant's mind,
constructed a flawless case. His profligate wife had obviously,
perhaps even deliberately, overspent their available funds on
personal luxuries. She had done this despite a November promise to
try like hell to do better. She was wrong and she would be punished.
He was the aggrieved party and would determine her fate. But the
possibility of a bookkeeping error had not been considered. Big
department stores are not supposed to make mistakes and yet, as an
accountant, Marvin knew how often they could -and did. The
possibility, however remote, destroyed the perfection of his attack.
It would have to be erased before he could feel completely victimized
and thus self-righteous once again.

"What the hell do you mean
another
mistake?"

"Oh, honey" – teasingly now – "you remember that time
you were so angry that you got all mixed up. You called me a 'gold
damndigger.' And how cute you looked when you had to apologize.
They'd sent us your mother's bill by mistake. You remember that,
don't you?"

It had happened, of course. Six years ago, as he recalled. He also
recalled that Helene's explanations had seemed so absurd at the time
that he had stopped just short of hitting her. And then Saks had
admitted the error. And his widowed mother, whom he constantly held
up as a model of economy, had actually run up the staggering bill. It
was a multiple embarrassment and, in order to let his wife recover
her self-respect, he had stood idly by while she embarked on her
greatest buying spree. Wincing at the memory, he revised his strategy
– after all, was not discretion the better part of malice?

"Are you telling me they screwed up again?"

Helene brushed her freshly dyed black hair away from her forehead
with a calculatedly casual motion and bent over in front of Marvin to
retrieve the Saks bill. She simultaneously inhaled, allowing Marvin a
long look down the front of her blouse. She briefly studied one sales
slip after another, and at the fifth she stopped.

"Here it is," she said. "I just knew there had to be a
screwup."

Marvin studied the sales slip. It appeared entirely normal. It was
for a dress that had been ordered by telephone. It had been ordered
on the 27th day of November. It came to a figure of $125.

"And where's the screwup?" he asked.

"No dress, honey," Helene said. "No dressee, no tickee. Anyhow,
there shouldn't be any tickee. I never ordered that dress and they
never sent it."

"You sure?" Marvin remained skeptical. "I mean, that's kind of a
weird mistake. They've got your name and address down there."

"What does that mean?" Helene moved closer to Marvin, close enough
so that the biceps of his left arm rested against her right breast..
Then she applied the pressure. "Some dumb broad writes the wrong
address and the bill goes out. You think Mr. Saks checks these things
personally?"

"But that's not the point," Marvin said. "It's not just a mistake.
It's money. You think they're just going to take my word for it?"

"Well, what can we do – take them back the dress I didn't
get? Come on, Marvin. You were ready to tell me off – how about
taking some of that anger down to Saks and show them what a big man
you are? Your mother would have been down there ten minutes ago."

In the garage Marvin stepped through a transparant Plastic kite
and climbed into his white Cadillac convertible. Batshit, he thought.
As he gunned the car down the graveled street, Helene was upstairs
looking at the $125 dress with the Saks label. She had once heard it
said that, if he knows his client is guilty, a good lawyer tries to
postpone the trial as long as possible. Witnesses can die; victims
can change their minds; clients can take ill suddenly. Yes, given
time, all kinds of things can happen. She shrugged, closed the closet
door, went back to the copy of
Vogue
she had been reading
before the interruption.

The Saks shipping department manager managed to produce a receipt
bearing Helene's unmistakable signature within a half minute of
hearing the complaint. Marvin's shock at the enormity of his wife's
falsehood was exceeded only by his humiliation which, in turn, was
exceeded only by his gratitude that the encounter had taken place in
the manager's small and sparsely populated office. Publicly, at
least, his image was still intact. But even that was only a matter of
time. Twelve days, a month, maybe six months – the time would
surely come when the men would arrive to reclaim the Cadillac, the
furniture, the appliances, the home… the reputation.

He thought briefly, standing outside the shipping manager's
office, of the offer he had received last year to handle Mario
Vella's books – a most generous offer he had seriously
considered until thumbing through the books one night. Now Vella was
dead, murdered they said, and it was just as well he hadn't got
involved. Another offer from the government tax man who tried to
interest him in a bogus refund scheme. The endless opportunities to
collect exorbitant fees from clients anxious to falsify their
returns.

His integrity was perhaps exceeded by his fear, but there was a
third factor that held Marvin back. And that was the instinctive
understanding that it would be Helene – not little Barry or
little Jacquie (or little Marvin, for that matter) – who would
gain from any additional income. The coin was a bad one –
heads, Helene wins; tails, Marvin loses. Nobody had ever called
Marvin a born loser. But then, nobody ever had to.

"Marv," the voice said. "Marv Goodman."

He turned to look into the most exquisite green eyes he had ever
seen.

"Come on now," the voice continued, "I know you're Marv
Goodman."

He stared at the eyes, at the wide, slightly thin lips, at the
small white teeth and the swift tongue that curled over them.

"Gillian," the voice said. "Gillian Blake."

Marvin was entranced at the way the tongue seemed to slip in and
out with each syllable. It was moist and agile.

"I'm hurt," she was saying. "I really am. It was just last week at
the King's Neck Property Owners Association meeting. Remember? I sat
right next to you. You kept telling me if they increased the dues any
more they'd have to form a credit association."

"Of course," Marvin said, recovering. "How've you been, Mrs.
Blake? And how's… um… your husband?"

"His name is Bill, and he's the same as ever," she said.

"But I had to ask you why you're standing here looking so serious.
I saw you in there a few minutes ago and I was certainly impressed. I
had no idea you were so … forceful. You were certainly giving
them all kinds of trouble."

"Oh, that." A forced laugh. "You can't watch these bookkeepers
closely enough."

He hadn't thought of himself as forceful in at least ten years,
and it pleased him enormously that someone did. But why not? He was a
young thirty-six. Tennis and skiing kept him in good shape. Tennis
and skiing, he thought, also make an excellent substitute for sex, if
one needed substitutes. He only weighed five pounds more than when he
had won the Intrafraternity Tennis Championship at Cornell fifteen
years earlier. He had always thought of himself as being ruggedly
handsome, and his marriage had, if anything, increased the hardness
of his looks without appearing to age him. And now, in the presence
of Gillian, he felt strong and young. More than that, he sensed the
woman's interest in him.

Gillian's interest had, in fact, been aroused – but for not
quite the same reasons. What Marvin would describe as rugged good
looks, Gillian would dismiss as malevolence, even sadism. Gillian had
first noticed Marvin Goodman the very day they had moved to King's
Neck. He was in the Security National bank as she and Bill were
establishing their accounts. He could not be missed. He was arguing
heatedly with a junior executive about what seemed to be an overdrawn
checking account. Then, too, he could not be missed the night of the
party. On that occasion he was involved in a dispute with his wife
over the fact that not one of the other wives polled required $75 a
week for food shopping. (His wife, Gillian recalled, handled the
incident with perfect calm, a woman who well knew the use of sex as a
weapon.) The next encounter was at the Property Owners meeting. And
this was the fourth time fate had joined them together. In each
instance, Marvin Goodman had been wrapped up in a subject of
increasing importance to Gillian.

Money. Fifteen hundred dollars was the price quoted. She knew it
was high and she knew she had to raise it – and quickly. The
demands of her job precluded a visit to Japan or Puerto Rico; her
status as a celebrity made any unknown doctor too much of a risk. The
one doctor she could trust, a highly recommended Lexington Avenue
neurosurgeon with a profitable sideline aborting the unwanted
offspring of the rich and the famous, charged a flat fee of
$1,500.

Gillian looked at the plate glass window behind Marvin and saw
that it was freckled by raindrops.

"Damn!" she said. "That spoils everything."

"What's that?" Marvin said.

"That rain," she said. "Here 1 thought I'd have a chance to walk a
few blocks with you and maybe even talk you into buying me a little
drink. Damn rain!"