Seducer (10 page)

“It would have been distracting, to say the least.”

“That’s what I thought, and I kept wishing and wishing you could.”

“Next Saturday, I’ll look harder.”

“All right. If you care to wait.”

He finished his cheap, bad wine and set the empty glass on the floor beside his chair, where it looked natural in relation to the general litter.

Getting up, he walked over to the bed and sat down beside her. She immediately twisted around from the hips and put up her mouth to be kissed. After the kiss, which transcended the scent and flavor of the port, she stood up and elevated him quickly and deftly, with the hiss of a zipper and a whisper of cloth, to the status of friend. She was slim and taut and full of tricks, and the most remarkable thing of all was that there was never the slightest sense, before or during or after, of the familiar stale redundancy.

In the abatement of excitement, under his eyes and hands, she seemed to preen and project herself, not so much in brazenness as in childish pleasure in her body and complete assurance of its ability to sustain its charm even in the dulled and difficult aftermath of passion. It was a mute and rather arrogant expression of braggadocio, defying him to deny what was plainly true and inviting him to enjoy what was openly in evidence. With the tips of her fingers, in self-love, she traced the lines of her small alert breasts, her nipped waist, her lean and talented hips and flanks.

“Did I please you?” she said.

“Yes. Very much.”

“Have you ever known anyone half so good?”

“No, no. Not half.”

He kissed her throat, drawing his lips downward across silken skin.

It was surely an illusion induced by the character of subsequent events, and actually applied much later to the present instance, that there was all the while in the room an elusive and caustic scent of sulphur.

B
UDDY WALKED UPSTAIRS
to Maggie’s efficiency apartment, so-called, and knocked on the door. He had not seen her now for quite a long time, although he had tried, and he had been feeling, as a consequence, extremely depressed.

As always during such dark episodes, nothing he saw or touched or did was securely related to reality. He moved with a gaseous sensation of lightness, and he had difficulty, at times, in focusing his eyes properly. His humor was ugly. His potential was dangerous.

He was not anticipating a warm welcome. On the contrary, he was expecting curses and threats, and this expectation was based soundly on something that had happened more than a week ago, and what had happened was a fight, a real Donnybrook, between him and old Cannon. The fight had been Buddy’s fault, of course, although he had not actually planned it, and had known immediately after it was over that it was a bad mistake.

Motivated by his hatred for the man who was stealing his girl, he had merely waited for Brad at a place along the route the latter usually took home from the campus, and he had originally intended no more than to stand and hate and wish his adversary the worst of luck, a kind of irrational catharsis, but then at the last moment, in compulsive violence, he had stepped onto the sidewalk and blocked the way with glowering belligerence. Brad had stopped and taken a half-step backward, not in fear, for he was no physical coward, but in surprise. He had never seen Buddy and did not know him, but he had instantly a conviction of his identity.

“I want to talk to you, ” Buddy said.

“Yes?” Brad said.

“You don’t know me, do you?”

“We’ve never met, but I think you may be Buddy Jensen.”

“I suppose Maggie’s told you about me.”

“You mean Miss McCall? She’s mentioned you, I believe, but we really haven’t discussed you at length. Miss McCall and I are only casually acquainted, you know.”

“Like hell you are!”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that you’re a hell of a lot more than casual acquaintances, that’s what I mean, and I’m warning you to let her alone if you don’t want trouble.”

“As a matter of academic interest, suppose Miss McCall and I were as well acquainted as you seem to believe. And suppose that I refused to abandon her merely because you demanded it. Why would you do?”

“I’d beat your God-damn face in, that’s what I’d do.”

“In that case, you’d better begin beating as a matter of principal, for I’d pay absolutely no attention to you in this imaginary situation, or in any real one that I could possibly think of.”

“Maybe you think I won’t do it.”

“I think you may try, but I doubt that you’ll succeed.”

It had never occurred to Buddy that old Cannon would display such calm courage, even contempt, and he was so blindly enraged that he leaped forward and swung wildly and took a stiff blow in the face for his carelessness. With blood streaming from his nose, he settled down to a more methodical attack, stalking his adversary and hurling clenched flesh and bone only when there was a fair target. After several minutes his youth and superior stamina began to tell to his advantage, but even so it was a grim and bitter battle, fought in silence except for wheezing breath and thudding fists, that exceeded anything that he had experienced since boyhood encounters in back alleys. In fact, he was in danger for a while of taking the beating he had set out to give, and he was more than willing in the end to stagger away and leave Brad, on his hands and knees on the concrete sidewalk, dripping blood and struggling to rise.

The fight had only made matters worse with Maggie. Buddy had seen her afterward on the campus, and he had tried to stop her and speak to her, but she had only called him a dirty name and spat on him, soiling his jacket. Having made bad worse, he had attempted several times to force his way into her apartment, and then, having had no luck, he had begun spying on her and following her at a distance. But he had not returned again to her apartment until now, this evening, when he waited in the hall after knocking on her door.

After a few seconds had passed, Maggie opened the door. She was wearing a white terry cloth robe belted loosely at the waist. Bare feet were tipped with bright red nails. When she saw Buddy in the hall, her face assumed an expression of ferocity.

“What do you want?” she said.

“You know what I want. I want to see you. Let me come in.”

“Like hell I will. I told you not to come here again, and I meant it. Go away.”

She started to close the door in his face, but he reached out and braced himself against it before she could complete the action.

“There’s no use closing the door,” he said. “If you do, I’ll break it down.”

For several seconds they strained against each other, she trying to close the door and he not trying to force it open any wider, but merely to hold it where it was. Then she relaxed, accepting the futility of her effort, and the ferocious expression on her face altered subtly to one of contempt.

“Well,” she said, “I can see that you are even more despicable that I thought you were. You’re nothing but a stupid, hulking baby, that’s what you are, and I suppose I must treat you like one. You can come in and cry if you want to, but that’s all the good it will do you.”

She turned and walked into the room, seating herself on a leather hassock and lighting a cigarette that she took from a crumpled pack that was in a pocket of her robe. She smoked the cigarette calmly, looking away from him and appearing for all the world to have forgotten entirely that he had just come to the door, and that he was now standing a few feet away glaring at her darkly from under his heavy brows.

“Do you think you can go on ignoring me forever?” he said.

“Why not?” She drew on the cigarette, tilting her head back and blowing a long plume of pale smoke upward at an angle. “I don’t owe you anything. I can ignore you forever if I want to.”

“That’s what you think.”

“So it is. I just said so.”

“You’d better think again,” he muttered, his eyes ugly and narrow.

“I may do that. Someday when it suits me. I’ll let you know if I ever want you to come back.”

“That’s damn considerate of you. What gives you the idea that I’ll just hang around waiting to hear from you?”

“Suit yourself. It makes no difference to me if you do or don’t.”

“I ought to beat hell out of you, that’s what I ought to do,” he said.

“Try it,” she said tersely. “You’ll be sorry if you do.”

“There’s no need. I’ve got a better way of taking care of you now.”

“Is that so?” She glanced at him slyly from the corners of her eyes, feeling much more uneasy than her attitude indicated. “You’re simply scaring me to death!”

“You’d better be scared, if you’re not.”

“I can’t imagine why. I’m not in the habit of being scared by just any overgrown baby who insists on hanging around when he’s no longer wanted.”

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’ve been up to,” Buddy murmured.

“Have I been up to something? Please tell me what it is. I can hardly wait to hear.”

“I know all about you and old Cannon. Don’t think I don’t.”

“What about us?” Maggie asked, her voice a brittle taunt.

“You’ve been sneaking out with him on the sly, that’s what. Just last night he picked you up at the corner of Twelfth and Doan Streets, and there have been plenty of other times before that.”

“You seem to know quite a lot. I wonder how a stupid lout like you could learn so much and remember it so long. It might be interesting to know how you found out all these things.”

“I’ve followed you, that’s how. I followed and waited until he picked you up. I even wrote down all the times and places.”

Now she turned her head and looked at him directly, her face set in such lines of loathing that his own face flushed, and the black brows drew straight above his eyes.

“In other words,” she said, “you’ve been spying on me. You’re not only ugly and stupid, you’re a disgusting sneak and spy besides. Did you follow us and watch us after he picked me up? No, you couldn’t do that because you haven’t had a car since the old wreck you were driving when you killed that man, and you don’t have the brains to get one. Too bad. You would have found it interesting. A natural sneak and Peeping Tom like you, who are no better than a pervert, would have enjoyed it immensely. Shall I describe it to you? I’d be happy to tell you just what happened if you’d like to know.”

“Don’t bother. I’ve got a good notion what happened. And I’ve got another good notion to kill you for it.” His big hands clenched spasmodically and his lips thinned out.

“A notion is all you’ve got, I imagine. On top of all the other dirty things you are, you’re almost certainly a coward, too.”

“You keep on playing fancy with old Cannon and see how much of a coward I am.”

She looked around for a convenient ash tray. Not finding one, she deliberately dropped her cigarette on the floor and lifted a foot to grind it out. Remembering just in time that her foot was bare, she held it suspended for a moment over the small red coal, then withdrew the foot and picked up the cigarette and arose from the hassock in a single fluid pattern of motion. Strolling over to a table with accented, indolent swaying of her terry cloth behind, she buried the cigarette in a pile of butts and ash overflowing a saucer.

“It’s really amusing how you keep referring to him like that,” she said. “You’re just jealous because he’s handsome and you’re ugly, and he’s smart and you’re stupid, and he amounts to something and you don’t and never will. You make me sick, and that’s the truth. Every time I look at you I want to vomit.”

“Keep on talking to me like that, and you’ll be worse than sick.”

“Oh, God! Threats again! I’d like to remind you that it’s you who had better be careful of what you say and do.”

“I suppose you’re harping on that old hit-and-run stuff again.”

“That’s right. I am.”

“You were with me when it happened. Remember? If you told on me, you’d only get yourself into trouble, too.”

“Like hell I would!” Maggie flared. “The cops would be tickled to death to have a witness.”

“I’ve told you what I’ll do if you ever tell.”

“God, yes! You’ve told me and told me and told me.”

She was leaning back against the table, staring at him contemptuously. After a moment, with deceptive casualness, he walked across and took her by the hair with one hand and the throat with the other. She did not resist or stir, but continued to stare at him with no change of expression whatever.

“Maggie,” he said, “come away with me.”

“Don’t start that again. You know I won’t.”

“I don’t want to hurt you. I’d be sorry afterward if I did.”

“I’ll say you would. You don’t know the half of it,” she told him.

“Maybe I’ll kill you.”

“Maybe you will, and maybe you won’t. Most likely you won’t.”

His soft grip on her throat tightened for a moment almost imperceptibly, and then relaxed. Turning away with a sigh, he walked to the door, where he stopped with one hand on the knob, looking back at her.

“It’s no use,” he said. “It’s absolutely no use.”

“That’s right,” she said. “It isn’t.”

He went out, closing the door behind him, and she had in the first few moments after his leaving a strange feeling of emptiness that was nearly loneliness.

This feeling did not last long, however, and she went over and sat down on the hassock again and lit another cigarette and began to wonder if he would really try to cause her trouble. Considering the matter and Buddy’s basic nature, she didn’t think he would. It was much more likely that he would go into a wild spell, as he sometimes did, and get himself into some kind of trouble instead, or maybe even kill himself in one of the fits of despair that often took hold of him.

And if he did the latter, she thought, it might be the best possible thing for himself and everyone else concerned.

T
HE YEAR HAD TURNED
, the holidays had come and gone, and it was a cold, clear night. Though the outside temperature was below zero, it was warm in the car with the engine idling and the heater fan turning a low speed. It was a kind of anesthetic warmth that was just faintly scented with exhaust fumes.

Below the bluff on which the car was parked in a grove of leafless trees, a river in the moonlight was a silver shield of ice above black water still moving.

Maggie was drowsy. Turning her head in Brad’s lap with the soft sound a kitten makes, she pressed a cheek against his thigh and reached up lazily to trace with the tips of fingers the hard lines of his jaw.

Beneath her cloth coat, drawn loosely over her like a cover, he stroked the satin surface of her shoulders, her lean and narrow back and compact rump. She shivered, drawing her knees up closer to her belly.

“Are you cold?” he asked.

“No, no. Not cold. It’s not that.”

“Perhaps you had better put on your clothes.”

“In a little while. When it’s time to go.”

“It’s time now. Almost eleven.”

“Really? So soon? Darling, we have so little time together. It’s not fair.”

“I know. I’m sorry. It may be that we will soon have no time together at all.”

“Don’t say that. I don’t like it,” she complained. “Why do you say such a thing? ”

“Never mind. I’m just depressed, I guess.”

“No. Something’s happened. You’ve been worried all evening. I can tell. What is it?”

“Nothing that you can do anything about,” he stated flatly.

She sat up suddenly beside him, drawing her coat over her shoulders like a cape.

“Don’t be too sure of that. I’m often quite clever at doing something about things when I set my mind to it. Are you in serious trouble?”

“Serious enough. I don’t think I can stand much more, to put it honestly. It’s impossible to go on as I am, at any rate.” A deep frown ridged his brow and his eyes held a bleak expression.

“Has your wife learned about us somehow? I don’t see how she could. Darling, we’ve been so careful about everything. I haven’t taken even the slightest chance.”

“It’s not Madelaine. It’s Cornelia, God damn her. She’s obviously determined to drive me insane, and I’m almost convinced that she’s insane herself.”

“It serves you right. I simply can’t understand why you ever got involved with such a woman. Ugh! It’s disgusting to think about.”

“All right. Please don’t start that again. I wish now that I hadn’t told you about her. But I thought you might be a little understanding, especially after your own experience with that oaf of a Buddy. You’re hardly in a position, darling, to be critical of my taste.”

“Oh, well, we musn’t quarrel,” she murmured. “You had your Cornelia, and I had my Buddy. Maybe it was a mistake that we were honest and confided in each other. It’s often a mistake to be honest about private matters. What has Cornelia been doing?”

“Anything to harass me and keep me uncertain and disturbed. The woman’s sick in the head, that’s all. It’s a wonder I didn’t see it sooner.”

“That’s because you were busy looking at other parts, darling, although they aren’t so damn attractive either, if you ask me. What has she been doing specifically?”

“Telephoning me at home. Leaving the most dangerous and incriminating notes in my box at school. God knows what she will do next, if I don’t find a way to stop her.”

“Don’t be absurd,” Maggie declared. “There’s nothing at all that you need to do. After a while she will stop of her own accord. A phony bitch like her would never hurt herself to hurt someone else, which is what she would have to do. She’s only trying to frighten you as a kind of revenge, or to make you come back to her on her own terms. Can’t you see that? You mustn’t be a coward and permit it to spoil things for you and me. It’s not exactly pleasant to spend our time talking like this when we might be saying and doing things much more interesting and exciting.”

“It’s easy enough for you to call me a coward and to say that nothing needs doing. In my position, it’s a little more difficult to be so assured where Cornelia’s concerned. I wish to God that she were dead, and that’s the truth.”

His voice was petulant and his face in profile, touched by the weak light of the remote moon, was the face of a sulking boy.

She began to laugh at him, the wicked little aspiration that seemed to come from some inner, inexplicable glee. Suddenly as if by compulsion, she took hold of his head and pulled it down against her naked breasts and held it there tightly, as if he were truly the injured boy he had seemed to be. Her voice had nearly the quality of a croon, the expression of a half-dream.

“You’re such a child,” she said. “Truly you are. In spite of being important and intelligent and all that, you are much more a child now than I have ever been, even though I am not important at all and have practically no intelligence whatever. You’re a
bad
child, however. You are always doing bad
things
.

“I imagine that you have been getting yourself into fixes like this for years. Somehow you have always survived and been forgiven for being bad. Now you are afraid and hurt and angry because you think you may have to face the consequences of what you are and can’t help being.

“Don’t worry, darling. Cornelia’s a fraud. I promise you. She will do nothing but make threats, and pretty soon she will not even do that. It’s in no way necessary for her to die. If you are going to wish someone dead, you had much better wish it for Madelaine. She’s the real problem and the real danger, and has much more to contribute by dying than anyone else. Come, darling, let’s be sensible and wish that Madelaine were dead instead of Cornelia. There’s something to be gained from that.”

He felt, indeed, absurdly young and comforted, his anxiety abated and senses lulled by the whisper of her voice and the exciting scent of her warmly naked flesh. The scent, so far as he could tell, was an odd and soporific combination of cinnamon and carbon monoxide. Its effect, at any rate, was strangely pleasant, for it left his mind floating free and unencumbered on the surface of a vast lethargy, at liberty to indulge in the most exciting play of speculation.

“Madelaine’s strong as an ox,” he said. “She’ll live forever.”

“No one lives forever. Some people, for one reason or another, die sooner than others. They have accidents or something.”

“Not Madelaine. Nothing happens accidentally to Madelaine. Things happen to Madelaine because she makes them happen.”

“Or someone else makes them. The capacity to make things happen isn’t limited to one person.” Maggie’s voice held a positive ring.

“If something accidental happened to Madelaine, something unfortunate might happen to me. If something went wrong, I mean. Under the circumstances, I would certainly be the most logical suspect.”

“That’s true.” Maggie stroked Brad’s hair, holding his head against her pink-nippled breasts. “Accidents are tricky and are better avoided. It would be very difficult, I should think, to plan one that wouldn’t go wrong in some way and turn out to look like something else. It would be much simpler and safer, in my opinion, to do directly what you wanted to do, and make it appear to have been done by someone else.”

“Wouldn’t that be a dirty trick to play on someone else?” he asked with a strange sort of detachment.

“I don’t mean someone else specifically. I mean someone else generally. It would be too bad to arrange for someone else specifically to pay your consequences.”

“What kind of general person would you suggest?”

“Oh, a burglar, maybe. I suspect that lots of unjust blame is put onto burglars.”

“I can think of instances when it was tried and didn’t work.”

“So can I, now that you mention it. Do you know what I would really do if I wanted something done to someone and did not wish to be associated with it? I’d have someone else do it, a third party, when I was somewhere else and couldn’t be reasonably suspected in the least. It’s what’s called having an alibi, isn’t it?”

“What about the third party? Wouldn’t he run the risk of being suspected?”

“Not if it were someone who would not be related to either of the other two,” Maggie replied. “It would be like taking a stranger off the street.”

“And it would put you at the mercy of this third party for the rest of your life. It would be difficult to live in such constant jeopardy.”

“It would put you at
each other’s
mercy, wouldn’t it? It seems to me it would. And if you were two people who were equally involved and did it for each other, for your own sakes and what you wanted, it wouldn’t make any difference one way or the other.”

“It’s all very interesting as a kind of abstraction, but actual circumstances are something else entirely,” Brad stated.

“Abstractions? I know nothing about abstractions, darling. It’s merely a way something might be done to someone. Even to Madelaine, for instance. She frequently goes to bed early with a sick headache and takes a sedative. Isn’t that what you told me? Isn’t that what she did this very evening, as a matter of fact? One evening when she did, you would only have to arrange to go somewhere else where you would be seen and known and remembered, so that no one could possibly blame you for what happened at home. While you were gone someone else could simply walk in a door that you had left unlocked and do quickly what needed to be done.”

“You sound as if you’ve had experience,” Brad said drily.

“No, darling. It’s only a game we’re playing. It’s only a way of thinking out how something might be done.”

“Yes. Of course. We’re only playing a game.”

But it was a game, he knew, that needed only a word or a sign in exactly the right desperate moment to become a plan. And he knew, also, that Maggie had offered herself obliquely in a crooning voice as the instrument of murder.

Brad’s mind, free-floating on the vast surface of the drowsy half-dream, was wonderfully receptive and immune from guilt. He could accept without wonder the enormity of his own dark potential and he could sense for the first time without fear and without shame the fullness of his submission to the ageless and lawless woman-child who held his head against her warm breasts and stroked his hair.

“Darling,” she said, “I’ve heard that Madelaine is quite wealthy. Is that so?”

“Yes. It’s so.”

“How much money does she have altogether, do you think?”

“I don’t know. About a million, I’d say.”

“A million dollars is quite a lot,” Maggie said.

“Yes, it is.”

“I wonder what it would be like to have a million dollars all your own.”

“I couldn’t say. I’ve never had a million.”

“You have some of the use of it, though. That’s almost as good.”

“Is it? I suppose it is.”

“It would be too bad to lose it after having it,” Maggie murmured, pressing his face firmly against her bare skin.

“Yes. It would.”

“I’d like very much to have some of the use of a million dollars. Do you think I may ever have? It seems almost too good to be possible.”

He didn’t answer. His senses were acute in the sustained half-dream. He could hear with stethoscopic clearness beneath flesh and bone the sure and steady beating of her heart. Her breasts rose and fell at last on a sigh.

“Darling,” she said, “we must go back now. The clock on the dash says almost twelve, and we must not become careless and indiscreet.”