Punish Me with Kisses (30 page)

"I don't think James likes me," she said. "He hisses whenever I come too close."

"Don't ever think he doesn't like you. He just isn't ready for you yet."

"I feel uncomfortable with him. I was wondering if you had another older cat."

Dr. Bowles shook her head. "You must learn to live with James. He's a fine old tiger cat. You must learn to compromise and get along." There was something strict in Dr. Bowles' manner, something of the schoolmarm that was as appealing as her sympathy. "People can't go on lording it over other animals. James is there to remind you you're not alone. All of us, people and animals, trees and forests and lakes and streams—we're all interconnected and must share the earth. You must prove yourself to James, win him over. Then you two will get along just fine."

"Will I get better?" Penny asked solemnly just before she left.

"It is inevitable," the psychiatrist said, patting her on the arm.

S
he wasn't certain exactly when she knew she was being followed. The notion crept up on her, began as a suspicion then grew into a conviction as she came to recognize her followers. There were several of them—stocky, suited, middle-aged men who worked in alternating shifts and pairs. One would wait in a car outside her townhouse, another in the lobby of B&A. She'd see them standing nearby on the subway or pretending to stare into shops as she walked the streets, four or five of them looking pretty much the same, retired cops, she guessed, now corporate security men. She doubted they were the black-bag crew who'd ransacked her apartment. That would have been a specialty team brought in to do a dirty job. These guys struck her as friendly and unthreatening; in fact their hovering made her feel safe. With them around she was less apt to be pushed in front of a subway or mugged or raped, all the awful things that can happen to a woman in New York.

Once she caught on to them, knew their faces, she began to see them everywhere. And then she felt sorry for them, for they were so incompetent, so easily spotted, engaged in such slovenly work. She didn't want to hurt their feelings by waving or striking up conversations, the sort of taunting games she'd seen played in private eye films by smart aleck detectives trying to enrage lummox police. She felt sorry for them, too, because their job was boring. It wasn't as if she ever did anything except jog and go to work and shop. Her routine was so unvarying she could imagine the staccato rhythm of their reports: "9:57—subject entered office building; 12:29—subject left for lunch; 17:57—subject took subway to 86th street; 23:22—subject's lights went off—"

No, she wasn't going to wave at them or humiliate them or show them up. If she did they might be replaced. These men, she felt, could be shaken off any time. All she'd have to do would be to go in one entrance of a building and out the other, and she'd be free until she came home and they caught up with her again. She wondered what they thought of her, whether they admired her or found her sexy, or whether they thought of her as a snotty bitch. Perhaps they respected her for her austerity. Perhaps they felt contempt. But as she thought about that and considered what being followed meant, she realized that they were merely pawns and that it was the opinion of the man they reported to, her father, that she really cared about.

Suddenly then she saw how being followed could be put to use, how her father, out of concern for her safety, had given her a new way to communicate. He'd always been so hard to reach, so cool and distant, self-absorbed, remote. But now, each morning, she could force him to deal with her by doing things which his security men would report. It was a fascinating way of reaching him, forcing him to come to grips with who she was. It struck her, too, that it was almost what Suzie had done in Maine, provoking him, trying to get his attention by deliberate carrying on.

There were all sorts of places in her neighborhood designed to facilitate relationships which would make superb arenas for what she had in mind. There was a lesbian bar where no men were allowed and one had to ring the buzzer to get in, a tough leather bar called "Strut," and an elegant bar for bisexuals with a brass bamboo decor, and then there were the singles' places, the real hard-core singles' bars on First and Second Avenues, the sole purposes of which were to provide places for young men and women to make arrangements to screw.

I'm horny
, she thought.
What would Suzie do if she were horny? She go out and find what she wanted. She'd go to a singles' bar, pick someone up and get laid.

Her father would know what she'd done. The men who followed her would note it down. Her father would read about it and be shocked. Yes, she would start carrying on as Suzie had and see what he would do. Could she provoke him into rescuing her before her new life turned lethal, give her the love and warmth he'd always withheld? Or would he just look on, remote, removed, a cold and silent man, watching her through the eyes of surrogates?

She chose a place called Aspen, which sounded healthy to her, implied Ivy League types, rosy-checked from winter weekends on the slopes. She passed it several times, peered in the windows trying to size up the people inside. They looked all right, so on a Wednesday night the third week of January she cooked herself a hamburger, put on her winter coat, and being certain to pick up her Chapman security man, her "tail," she walked over to Second Avenue to try her luck.

Faces turned as she came through the door. She was prepared for that and relieved. The room was gloomy, false-romantic, she thought. The people had the look of young lawyers and executive assistants. She didn't care if they recognized her—she was out in the open now.

Before she even reached the bar she was approached by a guy in a three-piece suit.

"Seen you around someplace, haven't I?"
God, she thought, is this really going to be that banal
? "Hey—" he snapped his fingers, "—around the reservoir, right?"

"Right." She nodded.
Jesus Christ
, she thought.

His name was Andy. He'd gone to Williams, was an executive trainee at a brokerage house, an early morning jogger, too. "Quit the park for the winter," he said. "Now I run at the Y. You still go out? Amazing. You must have a lot of grit."

"
Grit
. That sounds like the sort of word they use around the hockey rink at St. Paul's."

He grinned, refused to be insulted. "Wouldn't know," he said. "Went to Andover myself."

"How's the Y anyway?" She had an image of a pack of males circling a tenth-of-a-mile wooden track, their feet making a roar.

"It's OK. Warm, at least. Want to discuss running shoes? Adidas versus Nike, that sort of crap?"

She liked him for that. The score was even, they'd each put the other down, they were New Yorkers and the rules were set: no bullshit conversation, no phony-
getacquainted
courtship talk.

"You're neat," he said. "OK if I buy you a drink?"

"
Neat
?" she said. "That's even worse than grit."

They took their Bloody
Marys
to a table. He came to Aspen a lot and was glad to tell her about the other people in the room. "He's with Citicorp. The girls say he's hot stuff"—"She keeps a record of who she's slept with—gets so smashed she can't remember, and God forbid she sleep with the same guy more than once."

Penny nodded. "
God forbid
."

"I used to see you running with a guy. You and he still go around?" She shook her head. "Glad to hear it. He didn't look like he shaved too well."

"At least we can't fault you on your grooming," she said. Andy's cheeks were perfectly smooth. His light brown hair was well cut, every hair in place, his clothes perfectly pressed. Even his shoes were shined. "You're not a T-shirt and blue jeans type, except maybe on Saturdays. Right?"

"That's me. 'Saturday's Generation.' You'll find me at Bloomingdale's checking out the argyle socks."

She laughed and was already imagining what he'd look like stripped.

"You know," he said, "I bet you could be a lot of fun."

"Is that your way of saying you'd like to try me out?"

"Yeah, you got it."

"OK," she said. "Your place or mine?"

He lived on the corner of Lexington and Eighty-Fourth, and since that was closer they decided to go there. It was a white-brick doorman building with cut-glass lighting fixtures in the lobby, and awful marbled wallpaper in the halls. His apartment was a "studio"—probably cost $1,200 a month, she thought. The furniture was Door Store and Workbench with maybe some
Conran's
thrown in. He had an expensive stereo, a color TV, a queen-sized bed, a rubber plant, and a bookcase stocked with texts on economics and a complete Will and Ariel Durant.

It was amazing, she thought, the way you could size people up. The whole setup was so predictable for a trainee stockbroker, an ex-college jock who still worked out. Good upper-middle class taste. Square and proud of it—just the sort of boy
Suzie'd
screwed that summer in Maine. Yes, she thought, he'd fit in perfectly at Bar Harbor, but his family went to Nantucket, a fact that came out as they talked.

At one point, when he excused himself to go to the bathroom, she shuffled through the corporate reports neatly arranged on his coffee table. The Chapman International annual report was there. She opened it with trepidation. There was a full-page color photograph of her father on the inside cover. "Dwight
Berring
," the caption read, "Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board." She studied his face. His head was backlit, his features
subtley
modeled. The photographer had caught the
squareness
of the jaw, the graying sideburns, the commanding yet boyish look. He was attractive, handsome, dominant—for a moment, a split second, she tried to imagine what he'd be like in bed.

She heard the toilet flush. Andy was coming back. She quickly closed the report, stuck it back in the pile.

"Well," said Andy, "shall we undress each other, or shall each person undress himself."

She glanced at him. "Why doesn't each person make his or her own decision?" she said.

"The undressing part—that's what I call The Big Moment."

"What's so big about it?" she asked.

"Showdown time, when you finally see what you got. I had a girl up here couple of weeks ago who'd had a mastectomy. She didn't mention it, of course, until after the lights were out."

"What did you do?" They were unbuttoning their shirts.

"Told her it didn't matter. Didn't have the heart to tell her to leave."

"But you wished you had,
right
?"

"Sure. A bar encounter is supposed to be a turn-on, not a sensitive I'll-pretend-I-don't-notice-you're-missing-your boob kind of thing."

That made her angry, made her want to talk tough like Suzie and put him down. "I know," she said, "I get turned off, too, when a guy has an
undescended
testicle. Hey—" she stopped undressing. "You don't, by any chance?"

"Come find out," he said.

She reached to his crotch, took hold.

"Hung, aren't we?" she asked sarcastically.

"
I
am. I hope
we
're not," he said.

They fucked for an hour with a certain hostility generated by that exchange. She found it totally predictable and not without pleasure, too. They tried three positions. He made her come with his mouth, she got him excited with hers, and then she rode him to a second climax while he lay on his back. Not like Mac with his spankings, or Jamie
Willensen
with his three-way scenes, and not like Jared either—not so sensuous, so intense, and certainly not loving—just good clean ski-lodge sex. He wasn't a bad lay, she thought, but she didn't tell him that when she left. It was only when she got home, to find James perched on her window seat staring at her with reproach, that she realized the one thing they hadn't done was kiss each other on the mouth.

The next morning, riding the subway, she felt a flush of power. She imagined her father reading the report: "Subject went to singles' bar, left with unidentified male; proceeded to his apartment, spent several hours there, returned home clothes disheveled, satisfied expression on her face—"

Well
, she thought,
that ought to give him something to think about
.

She began to drop in at Aspen two or three times a week.

Sometimes she only stayed a few minutes. The game was to find a partner and get out. If there wasn't anybody interesting around she'd go home and watch TV. Her kittens amused her, their little cries, their sudden leaps, but she didn't like being cooped up with James. It was as if he knew what she was doing, knew all about her degradations, her promiscuity, her shames. When she'd come home he'd be waiting for her, glaring, his back arched, his claws gripping the comforter or the window seat. She saw a connection between the way he hissed and the way her father whispered when he was mad.