The Grifters (8 page)

He felt lazy and comfortable. He felt restless and guilty. This was the beginning of his third week out of the hospital. He was fully recovered, and there was no valid excuse for his remaining here. And yet he lingered on. Lilly wanted him to. The doctors passively encouraged him to, seeing little to be gained by his protracted convalescence but a broad margin of safety in it.

The ruptured vessels of his stomach
could
open up again, under just the right circumstances. They
could
be re-ruptured. Thus, if he wished to remain completely inactive and beyond reach of the smallest risk, it was quite agreeable with the doctors.

Aside from Lilly and the matter of his health, Roy had another reason for staying on. A guilty reason, and one he tried not to admit to. She, Carol Roberg, was in the kitchen now, cleaning up their luncheon dishes and doubtless preparing a dessert for them. He didn't want any himself-he had gained almost seven pounds in the past two weeks-but he knew that she did. And not for the world would he have interfered.

Carol was very dainty about her eating, as she was about everything. But he had never seen anyone who could stow away so much food so quickly.

He wondered about that, her insatiable appetite, when he was not wondering about her in a different way. Most women he knew seemed hardly to eat anything. Moira, for example…

Moira…

He squirmed uneasily as he recalled her visit this morning. He had told her yesterday in a subdued telephone conversation that Lilly was leaving the apartment early today, and suggested that she drop by. So she had come, pulling up startled when she saw Carol, then giving him a quick, questioning look.

Carol sat down in the living room with them. She apparently felt that it was only polite to do so, and she tried to make conversation about the weather and the usual routine topics. When, after what was probably the longest half-hour on record, she had finally excused herself and gone into the kitchen, Moira turned on him, tightmouthed.

"I tried to send her out," Roy said helplessly. "I told her to take off a few hours."

"
Tried
to? If it were me, you'd just said to beat it."

"I'm sorry," he said. "I wanted to be alone as much as you did."

He glanced quickly over his shoulder, then went down beside her chair and took her into his arms. She submitted to a kiss, but there was no response to it. He kissed her again, letting his hands rove over her body, probing the soft, sweet-scented curves. After weeks of enforced continence, and the constant temptation which Carol represented, he had never wanted Moira as much as he did at that moment. But abruptly she had pulled away from him.

"Just how much longer do you plan on staying here, Roy?" she asked. "When are you moving back to the hotel?"

"Well. I don't know exactly. Pretty soon, I imagine."

"You're not in much of a hurry, are you? You like it here."

Roy said awkwardly that he had no complaints. He was being well taken care of-much better than he could be in a hotel-and Lilly was anxious to have him stay.

"Mmm, I'll bet she is, and I'll bet you're darned well taken care of, too!"

"What do you mean?"

"Are you kidding? I've seen the way you looked at that simpering little simp of a nurse! Either you're losing your grip, or you think she's too good to tumble. She is, but I'm not!"

"Oh, for God's sake…" He reddened. "Look, I'm sorry about today. If there was any way I could get rid of her without hurting her feelings…"

"Naturally, you couldn't do that. Oh, no!"

"Let's just say that I wouldn't do it then," he said, tiring of apology.

"Well, forget it." She picked up her gloves, and stood up. "If it suits you, it suits me."

He followed her out into the hallway, trying to smooth over the rift without unbending too far. Liking her, desiring her more than he ever had, yet wary as always of any tightening of her hold upon him.

"I'll be out of here any day, now," he assured her. "I'm probably a hell of a lot more anxious than you are.

"Well…" She smiled tentatively, the dark eyes searching his face. "I'm not so sure of that."

"You'll see. Maybe we can go to La Jolla this weekend."

"Just maybe?"

"I'm practically sure of it," he said. "I'll give you a ring, hmm?"

So he had got things straightened out, for a time, at least, and after a fashion. But he had gotten nothing in return, nothing but the status quo, and unsatisfied desire squirmed in him relentlessly. Something was going to have to give, he told himself. With Moira's presence still lingering with him, with Carol so readily accessible

Carol. He wondered just what he should do about her anyway. Or whether he should do anything about her. She looked completely virginal, and if she was, that was that. She'd remain that way, as far as he was concerned. But looks could be deceptive; and sometimes, when she consented to a kiss and she clung to him for a moment, well, he wasn't so sure about her status. Was, in fact, almost positive that he had judged it wrongly.

And in that case, of course…

She came in from the kitchen, bearing two creamtopped parfait glasses. He accepted one of them, and she sat down with the other. Smiling, he watched as she dipped into it, wanting to sweep her up in his arms and give her a hearty squeeze.

"Good?" he said.

"Wonderful!" she exclaimed enthusiastically. Then, looking up at him, pinking with self-consciousness. "All the time here, I am eating! You think I am such a pig, yes?"

Roy laughed. "If they made pigs like you, I'd start raising them. How about eating mine, too?"

"But it is yours. More I could not possibly eat!"

"Sure you can," he said, swinging his legs off the bed. "Will you come into the bedroom when you're through?"

"I will come now. You want your rubdown, yes?"

"No, no," he said quickly. "There's no hurry. Finish your ice cream first."

He crossed the deeply carpeted living room and entered the bedroom. Entering the bedroom, he hesitated for a long moment, almost deciding to stop now while he could. Then, swiftly, before he could change his mind, he flung off the robe and his pajama top and stretched out on the bed.

Carol came in a minute or two later. She started to get the alcohol bottle from the bathroom, and he held out his hand to her.

"Come here, Carol. I want to ask you something."

She nodded, and sat down on the edge of the bed. He drew her closer, bringing her face down to his; and, then, as their lips met, he began to draw her prone.

Nervously her body suddenly stiffening, she tried to pull away. "Oh, no! Please, Roy. I-I-"

"It's all right. I want to ask you something, Carol. Will you tell me the truth?"

"Well"-she tried to muster a smile. "It is so important to you? Or perhaps you are teasing me again, yes?"

"It's very important to me," he said. "Are you a virgin, Carol?"

The smile washed abruptly from her face, and for a moment it was something completely blank. Then, a trace of color came back into it and her eyes fell, and almost imperceptibly she shook her head.

"No, I am not a virgin."

"You're not?" He was vaguely disappointed.

"I am not. Not by many times." Under its surface firmness, her voice shook slightly. "And now you will not like me any more."

"Not like you? Why, of course, I do. I like you more than ever!"

"B-but-" She smiled tremulously began to glow with a kind of joyous incredulity. "You really mean it? You would not tease about so important a thing?"

"What's so important about it? Now, come on, honey!"

Laughing joyously, she allowed him to pull her down against him; hugged him with laughing wonderment. Oh, my, she said. She was so happy. And then, with no real resistance, bubbling with the happiness, he had given her, "But-shouldn't we wait, Roy? You would not like me better?"

"I couldn't like you any better!" He tugged impatiently at her white uniform. "How do you get this damned thing-?"

"But there is something else you must know. You have a right to know. I-I cannot have children, Roy. Never."

That stopped him, made him hesitate, but only for a second. She had an awkward way of phrasing things, twisting them around hindside-to and putting the emphasis in the wrong places. So she couldn't have children and that was all to the good, but he would have taken care of that, anyway.

"Who cares?" he said, almost groaning in his hunger for her. "It's okay and it's okay if you're not a virgin. Now, can't you stop talking, for God's sake, and-"

"Yes! Oh, yes, Roy!" She clung to him in wondrous surrender, guiding his fumbling hands. "Also, I want to. And it is your right…"

The uniform fell away from her; the underthings. The innate modesty, the fears, the past. In the drapedrawn dimness of the room, she was reborn, and there was no past but only a future.

The purplish brand still lingered on her outflung left arm, but now it was merely a childhood scar; time dulled, shrunken by growth. It didn't matter. What it memorialized didn't matter-the sterilization, the loss of virginity-for he had said it didn't. So the thing itself was without meaning: the indelible imprint of the Dachau concentration camp.

Roy grinned at her lazily. She was sweet, a lot of woman, he thought. And about the most honest one he'd ever met. If she hadn't told him that she wasn't virginal…

"You are all right, Roy? You do not hurt any place?"

"I never felt better in my life," he laughed. "Not that I haven't been feeling okay."

"That is good. It would be terrible if I had given you hurt."

He repeated that he was feeling fine; she was just what he'd needed. She said seriously that she also had needed him, and he laughed again, winking at her.

"I believe you, honey. How long has it been, anyway, or shouldn't I ask?"

"How long?" She frowned a little, her head tilted in puzzlement. Then, "Oh," she said. "Well, it-it was-"

"Never mind," he said quickly. "Forget it."

"It was there." She extended the tattooed arm. "There also I was made sterile."

"There?" he frowned. "I don't… What's that, anyway?"

She explained absently, her smile fixing; the tiltedup eyes looking at him and through him toward something far, beyond. Seemingly, she was speaking of the abstract, a dull and tenuous theorem scarcely worthy of recital. Seemingly, she was reading from a fairy tale, a thing so filled with terrors that they clung stagnating to one another; never advancing the plot or theme, physically motionless, merely horror piled upon horror until they sagged slowly downward, drawing the listener with them.

"Yes, yes, that is right." She smiled at him as though at a precocious child. "Yes, I was very young, seven or eight, I think. That was the reason, you see: to discover the earliest possible age at which a female might conceive. It can be very early in life, as young as five, I think. But an average minimum age was being sought. With my mother and grandmother, it was the other way; I mean, how old could the female be. My grandmother died shortly after the beginning of the experiment, but my mother…"

Roy wanted to vomit. He wanted to shake her, to beat her. Standing apart from himself, as she was standing from herself, he was furious with her. Subjectively, his thoughts were not a too-distant parallel of the current popular philosophizing. The things you heard and read and saw everywhere. The pious mourning of sin; the joyous absolution of the sinners; the uncomfortable frowns and glances-askance at those who recalled their misdeeds. After all, the one-time friends, poor fellows, were now our friends and it was bad taste to show gas-stoves on television. After all, you couldn't condemn a people, could you? And what if they had done exactly that themselves? Should you make the same regrettable error? After all, they hated the reds as much as we did, they were as eager as we were to blow every stinking red in the world to hell and gone. And after all, those people, the allegedly sinned-against, had brought most of the trouble on themselves.

It was their own fault.

It was
her
own fault.

"Now, listen to me," he broke in on her angrily. "No, I don't want to hear any more, damnit! If you'd told me about it in the first place instead of just saying that-letting me think that-that-"

"I know," she said. "It was very bad of me. But I too was thinking something else."

"Well, now," he mumbled, "I don't want to put you in the wrong. I like you; I think the world of you, Carol. That's why I asked you what I did, told you it was important to me. I can see now how you might have taken it the wrong way, and I wish to God there was something I could do to square things up. But-"

But why did she keep looking at him that way, smiling that totally vacant smile; waiting for him to fill the vacuum with life? He had said he was sorry, apologized for something that was partially her own fault. But still she sat there waiting. Did she seriously expect him to give up his life, the only way of life acceptable to him, merely to correct a mistake? Well, she had no right to do so! Even if he could give what she had expected and apparently still desired, he would not do it.

She was a nice girl, and it wouldn't be fair to her.

"Now, I'll tell you what," he said, smiling ingratiatingly. "We can't change what's already happened, so why don't we just pretend it didn't happen? How will that be, hmm? Okay? We'll just forget this, and make a brand new start?"

She looked at him silently.

"Fine," Roy said briskly. "That's my sweet girl. Now, I'll skim on out of here, and let you finish dressing and-and, uh…"

He left, pulling on his robe as he went out of the room. Returning to the den, he flopped back down on the hospital bed, stared out unseeing at the panorama to the south; still seeing the girl in the bedroom. He'd put things very badly, he guessed. His usual glibness had failed him, just when he needed it most, and he'd sounded peevish and small-time.

What had happened to him? he wondered. What had gone wrong with his pitch?

It had been an honest mistake. She'd suffered no actual loss because of it. Why couldn't he make her understand that? Why, when he could so easily pull a real swindle without a kickback?

You can 't cheat an honest man, he thought
. And was unreasonably irritated by the thought.

He heard her approaching, the starchy rustle of her uniform. Working up a smile, he sat up and turned around.

She was wearing her coat, a quaintly old-world garment. She was carrying her small nurse's kit.

"I am leaving now," she said. "Is there anything you want before I go?"

"Leaving! But- Oh, now, look," he said winningly. "You can't do that, you know. It's not professional. A nurse can't walk out on a patient."

"You do not need a nurse. We both know it. At any rate, I have ceased to be a nurse to you."

"But-but, damnit, Carol-"

She turned away from him, started for the door. He looked after her helplessly for a moment, then caught up with her and pulled her around facing him.

"Now, I'm not going to let you do this," he said. "There's no reason to. You need the job, and my mother and I both want you to have it. Why-"

"Let me go, please." She pulled away from him, again moving toward the door.

Hastily, he placed himself in front of her. "Don't," he begged. "If you're sore at me, okay; maybe you think you've got a right to be. But my mother's involved here. What will she think, I mean, what will I tell her when she comes home and finds you're-"

He broke off, reddening, realizing that he had sounded fearful of Lilly. A ghost of a smile touched Carol's lips.

"Your mother will be disappointed," she said, "but not surprised, I think. I have thought your mother did not understand you, but now I know that she does."

Roy looked away from her. He said curtly that that wasn't what he meant at all. "You've got some money coming to you, your wages. If you'll tell me how much…"

"Nothing. Your mother paid me last night."

"All right, then, but there's still today."

"For today, nothing. I gave nothing of value," she said.

Roy let out an angry snort. "Stop acting like a two-year-old kid, will you? You've got some money coming to you, and, by God, you're going to take it!" He snatched the wallet from his robe pocket, jerked out its contents and extended it toward her. "Now, how much? What do I owe you for today?"

She looked down at the money. Carefully, shuffling through it with a finger, she selected three bills and held them up.

"Three dollars, yes? I have heard that was the usual price."

"You seem to know," he snapped. "Aah, Carol, why-"

"Thank you. It is really too much."

She turned, crossed the carpet to the door and went out.

Roy raised his hands helplessly, and let them drop to his sides. That was that. You couldn't square a beef with a stupe.

He went into the kitchen, warmed up some coffee and drank it, standing up. Rinsing out his cup, he glanced at the clock above the stove.

Lilly would be home in a few hours. There was something he must do before she got here. It wouldn't make this Carol thing all right with her, and it would mean tipping his hand, but it had to be done. For his own sake.

Dressing and going down to the street, he was just a little rocky. But not because there was anything wrong with him,only from his long inactivity. By the time he had gotten a taxi and reached his hotel, he felt as strong as he ever had.

He was a little embarrassed by his reception at the hotel. Of course, he'd always worked to make himself likable; that was an essential part of his front. But he was still warmed and vaguely discomfited at the way he was welcomed home (
home!
) by Simms and the owner's employees. He was glad that he didn't have to chump them; leave them up the creek, paddleless, where people who liked him were customarily left.

Flustered, he accepted their congratulations on his recovery, reassured them as to the present state of his health. He agreed with Simms that sickness came to all men, always inconveniently and unexpectedly, and that that was how the permanent waved.

At last, he escaped to his room.

He took three thousand dollars from one of the clown pictures. Then, having carefully replaced the picture on the wall, he left the hotel and went back to Lilly's apartment.

The place seemed strangely empty without Carol. Hungeringly empty as it always is when a familiar something or someone is no longer where it was. There is a haunting sense of wrongness, of things amiss. Here is a niche crying to be filled, and the one thing that will fill it will not.

Roaming restlessly from room to room, he kept listening for her, kept seeing her in his mind's eye. He could see her everywhere, the small stiffly-starched figure, the glossy tip-curling hair, the rose-and-white face, the small clean features, upturned in childlike innocence. He could hear her voice everywhere; and always he, you, was in what she said… Did he want something? Was there something she could do for him? Was he all right? He must always tell her, please, if he wanted anything.

"
You are all right, yes? It would be terrible if I had given you hurt
."

He started to enter the bathroom, then came up short in the doorway. A towel was draped over the sink. Scrubbed, rinsed, and hung up to dry, but still faintly imbued with the yellowishness of washedout blood.

Roy swallowed painfully. Then, he dropped it into the hamper and slammed down the lid.

The long hours dragged by, hours that had always seemed short until today.

A little after dusk, Lilly returned.

As usual, she left her troubles outside the door; came in with an expectant smile on her face.

"Why, you're all dressed! How nice," she said. "Where's my girl, Carol?"

"She's not here," Roy said. "She-"

"Oh? Well, I guess I am a little late, and of course you're all right." She sat down, made gestures of fanning herself. "Whew, that lousy traffic! I could make better time hopping on one foot."

Roy hesitated, wanting to tell her, glad of anything that would let him delay.

"How's your hand, the burn?"

"Okay," she waved it carelessly. "It looks like I'm branded for life, but at least it learned-taught-me something. Keep away from boobs with cigars."

"I think you should have it bandaged."

"No can do. Have to dip in and out of my purse too much. Anyway, it's coming along all right."

She dismissed the subject carelessly, pleased but somewhat embarrassed by his unusual concern. As the room grew silent, she took a cigarette from her purse; smiled gayly, as Roy hurried to light it.

"Hey, now, it looks like I really rate around here, doesn't it? A little more of this, and-What's that?"

She looked down at the money he had dropped into her lap. Frowning, she raised her eyes.

"Three thousand dollars," he said. "I hope it's enough to square us up, the hospital bills and all."

"Well, sure. But you can't- Oh," she said tiredly. "I guess you can, can't you? I hoped you were playing it straight, but I guess-"

"But you knew I wasn't," Roy nodded. "And now there's something else you've got to know. About Carol."