The Group (31 page)

Libby fanned herself. “Come into the kitchen,” she said to Polly. She had to talk to her alone. “Now, Polly,” she said, “I don’t mind giving you the
bowle
. After all, you got the woodruff for
me
. But don’t, please don’t, take Gus into that place of yours and introduce him to all those weird characters. For my sake, if not for your own, don’t.” What Libby meant was that the quaint life of Polly’s rooming house was all very well to dilate on to other girls, when you were having a bite alone, but a man would think, to hear about it, still more to see it in the flesh, that you were desperate for company if you had to fall back on that. A man, any man, wanted to imagine that you were courted by all sorts of glamorous rivals. …Libby frowned. No, that was not exactly her thought. What was it about those roomers, about the brownstone house itself, the very carpet on the stairs, Polly’s little tray of gold-speckled liqueur glasses with the worn gold rims, Mr. Scherbatyeff’s smoking jacket, that Libby’s feminine instinct told her would cook a girl’s goose with any normal member of the opposite sex? As though a visit to that house would betray something horribly personal, like a smell, about Polly. The smell of poverty? But Gus LeRoy might like that. No; the smell of having seen better days. That was it. That was what they all—the house, the lodgers, and Polly herself, alas—had in common. Having seen better days and not making those crucial distinctions any more, not having any real ambition. Hoarding a few sepulchral joys, like the pomander balls Polly made for Christmas presents—oranges stuck with cloves and rolled in orrisroot and tied with ribbons to hang in your closet or perfume your drawers. Actually, those pomander balls were quite snazzy; they were a very original present and cost practically nothing. Libby had written down the receipt in her Florentine-leather receipt book, and she was going to get Polly to help her make some herself for next Christmas. But somehow it would be all right for Libby to do it, whereas for Polly …? It would even be all right, strangely enough, for Libby to live in that rooming house, not that she would; she could say she was gathering material for a story. …“I wasn’t planning to, Libby,” answered Polly, rather stiffly. “Anyway, let’s forget about the
bowle
. Please.” “Now don’t be trying,” said Libby. “Here, Ida,” she called to the maid, “get Miss Andrews that little glass cocktail shaker. Go and fill it from the punch bowl, and make sure it’s clean, please. Perhaps Miss Andrews would like some of the
pâté
too. You’re sure?”—she turned swiftly to Polly. “Now what are you going to do? He’s going to drive you to your door. …” By dint of close questioning, Libby established that Polly intended to leave the
bowle
at her house and then she and Gus LeRoy were going to have dinner at that famous Yiddish restaurant right around the corner from Polly’s—the Café Royal, where all the stars from the Yiddish Theatre went and the journalists from the Jewish newspapers. “Whose idea was that? His?” “Mine, I’m afraid,” said Polly. “It’s not the
quietest
place.” “Nonsense,” said Libby. “It’s just the thing. Pluperfect.” She thought it clever of Polly, since Gus was so hard to talk to, to pick out a place where you could just look at the other patrons and not try to make yourself heard. She herself had been in transports when Polly took her there one night, frankly turning around and rubbernecking and getting Polly to tell her who the celebrities were (every
one
of them was a “name” to his co-religionists, which showed you the emptiness of fame) and uttering cries of delight when the food came, till Polly told her to stop, claiming that it would hurt their feelings to be looked at as curiosities, when anyone could see that that was why they came here—to show off. “No, it’s perfect,” she said thoughtfully, putting her index finger to her check. “Now what are you going to have to eat? That wonderful scarlet bortsch
we
had, with the boiled potato popped into it …?” “I haven’t thought, Libby,” said Polly, taking the cocktail shaker, filled, from the maid. “No, no,” said Libby. “Ida will wrap it up for you. You just go to my dressing table and straighten your hair a bit.” She lightly pushed some of Polly’s silvery hairpins back into the knot at the nape of her full neck and then stood back so that she could examine her profile: Polly was going to have to watch her chin line. “Help yourself to some of the perfume in my atomizer.” As Polly was leaving, with Gus LeRoy behind her awkwardly fingering his mustache and then leaping forward to settle Aunt Julia’s old silver-fox tippet over her almost bare shoulders, Libby stepped in and extracted Polly’s promise to bring back the cocktail shaker tomorrow evening, because Libby might be needing it; that way, Libby would be able to hear the postmortem.

Kay and Harald said good-bye; they were going to have a hamburger before the performance. Harald went every night, to check on the house and see that the actors were still playing their parts as he had directed them. Kay sometimes went with him and sat in one of the actors’ dressing rooms. “She snorts like an old war horse,” explained Libby, “at the smell of the grease paint. You can’t keep her out of the greenroom. At college, she was a director.” There was one of those silences that come toward the end of a party. A few guests still lingered, not realizing, obviously, that Libby had a dinner date with Nils. “Oh, don’t go yet,” she urged the woman from the Metropolitan, who obediently sat down again; Libby hated the feeling of a room emptying too quickly, as though everyone were afraid of being the last to leave. It was still light out, a perfect May evening. The greenish-white dogwood grew paler in the shadowed corner; the tall Rhine wine bottles glimmered green and gold on the damask-covered punch table; there was a smell of strawberries and lilies of the valley in the room—Nils had brought her a little bunch. Ida was ready to go, with her black satchel; Libby paid her off and in a fit of spring madness told her to take the rest of the
pâté
home. “You are generous,” said Nils. “With your maid and your friend. The Liebfraumilch girl.” So he too had noticed Polly’s display of bosom. Libby laughed uncertainly. The way he had said “generous” made her slightly uneasy. The Metropolitan Museum woman leaned forward. “Speaking of Liebfraumilch, do any of you recall that amusing Tintoretto in the National Gallery? ‘The Milky Way’? Such an unusual conceit.” Everyone looked blank. “When will we be alone?” Nils murmured into Libby’s ear.

This happened sooner than Libby had anticipated. All at once, the other guests, seeing him whisper to her, got up and left. One minute they were there, and the next they were gone. He turned to her. “I’ll get my wrap,” she said quickly. But he seized her hand. “Not yet, Elizabeth. Why do you let them call you that horrible nickname?” “You don’t like it?” “I like Elizabeth,” he answered. “I like her very much. Too much.” He pulled her to him and bent back her head and kissed her. Libby responded; she had dreamed of this moment so often that she knew just how it should be—her head falling back, like a chalice, to receive his lips, her nostrils contracting, her eyes shut. Nils’s lips were soft and warm, contrary to her imaginings, for she always thought of him in a ski sweater, fair and ice-cold, his blond hair windswept under the peak of his cap. The thin skin of his face was very tight-drawn, over reddened high cheek-bones, and she would have supposed, with all that outdoor life, that his lips would be hard and taut. He brushed his mouth back and forth gently over hers. Then he tilted her chin, looked into her eyes and kissed her passionately, taking her breath away. Libby staggered back a little and released herself. “Elizabeth!” he said, and again he pulled her to him and kissed her very gently, murmuring her name. In a minute—or hours, she could not really tell—she could feel his large teeth pressing hard against her closed mouth. She broke away, staggering back a second time. She tried to laugh. “Quiet,” he said. She pulled the chain of the big brass table lamp, for it was getting dark, and leaned against the table, supporting herself with the palm of one hand while with the other she nervously pushed back her hair. He came and stood beside her, encircling her shoulders with his arm, so that she could rest against him, her forehead brushing his cheek; he was four inches, she reckoned, taller than she was—a perfect difference. Standing like that, at rest, Libby felt utterly comfy; time slipped by. Then he slowly turned her to him, and, before she knew it, he had his tongue in her mouth and was pushing it against hers. His tongue was very firm and pointed. “Give me your tongue, Elizabeth. Give me a tongue kiss.” Slowly and reluctantly, she raised the tip of her tongue and let it touch his; a quiver of fire darted through her. Their tongues played together in her mouth; he tried to draw hers, sucking, into his mouth, but she would not let him. A warning bell told her they had gone far enough. This time he let go of his own accord; she smiled glassily. “We must go,” she said. He ran his beautifully manicured hand up and down her arm in its long tight taffeta sleeve. “Beautiful Elizabeth. Lovely rippling muscles. You’re a strong girl, aren’t you? A strong passionate girl.” Libby felt so flattered that she allowed him to kiss her some more.

Then he went and pulled down the blinds and led Libby toward the sofa. “Come, Elizabeth,” he said disarmingly, “let’s read some poems together and drink some wine.” Libby could not resist this; she let him take the
Oxford Book
from her poetry shelf and pour them two brimming glasses of Liebfraumilch from a fresh bottle, which he uncorked. He came and sat beside her on the sofa. “Skoal,” he said. “Rhine maiden!” Libby giggled. “Shakespeare,” she said unexpectedly, “died of an overdose of Rhenish wine and pickled herring.” Nils looked through the book, frowning; Libby’s favorite lines were underscored, and the margins were peppered with exclamation points and question marks. “Ah, here it is!” he cried. And he began to read aloud “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”: “‘Come live with me and be my Love,/ And we will all the pleasures prove. …’” Et cetera; Libby felt a tiny bit embarrassed; that poem was such a chestnut—she had known it by heart since she was sixteen. When he had finished, he leaned over and kissed her hungrily. “Oh, but I wager you don’t know the answer, sir,” she said laughing and extricating herself. “‘The Shepherdess Replies.’ Sir Walter Raleigh.” And she began to recite from memory. “‘If all the world and love were young,/ And truth in every shepherd’s tongue …/ Then these delights my mind might move/ To live with thee and be thy Love.’” Her voice faltered as he gazed at her. “…‘Thy coral clasps and amber studs…’” How did it go? The upshot was that Raleigh, speaking for the shepherdess, refused the shepherd’s kind invitation. “Give me the book,” she begged. Nils demanded another kiss in payment—a longer one. She was limp when he let her have the book. His hand stroked her hair as she thumbed through the index, looking for Raleigh; the pages, irritatingly, stuck together. She tried to ignore his hand, which had reached the back of her neck and was toying with the collar, and concentrate on finding the poem. All at once, she heard one of the snaps at the back of her dress open.

At that faint sound, all Libby’s faculties stood alert; her spine stiffened. Her eyes goggled. Her Adam’s apple moved as she swallowed. She realized he was planning to seduce her. The book fell open of its own accord on her lap. This must be the Continental approach. Those barons and counts used maneuvers so obvious that you would not think they would try them. Oh, poor Nils, how he was dropping in her estimation. If he only knew how old-fashioned he seemed! Another snap surreptitiously opened. Libby could not decide whether to laugh or be angry. How to show him his mistake, without hurting his feelings, so that they could still go out to dinner? Her senses had stopped fluttering, like a clock ceasing to tick; her blood was perfectly mute. As if he were aware of the change in the temperature, he turned her head to him and stared into her eyes. Libby swallowed again. When he drew her to him and kissed her, she kept her teeth gritted. That ought to give him the hint. “Ice Maiden,” he said, reproachfully. “That’s enough, Nils,” she said, trying to sound more friendly than she felt. She plunked her feet firmly on the floor, closed the book, and started to get up. But suddenly he had her in a vise of iron and bore her backward on the sofa. “Kiss me,” he said roughly. “No, not that way. Give me your tongue.” Libby thought it wiser to comply. He was frighteningly strong; she remembered with horror having heard that athletes had uncontrollable sex urges and something, too, about Scandinavians being the most ferocious Don Juans. Who had said that—Kay? This kiss actually hurt her; he was biting her lips. “Please, Nils!” she cried, opening her eyes wide, to see his eyes staring at her like two blue pinpoints and his lips drawn back across his teeth like a wild animal about to charge. He had changed into a totally different person, very cruel-looking. Libby would have been fascinated if she had not been so scared. He was holding her down with his body, while his hands sought to caress her. The more she wriggled, the more determined he got. As she struggled, the snaps opened at the back of her dress; a hook tore loose from her brassiere. Then she heard a fearful sound of ripping material—her brand-new dress bought at Bendel’s spring sale! With one hand, he tore the bodice open, clear away from the sleeve, which remained dangling on her arm; with the other, he held her pinned down by her wrist, which he twisted when she tried to move. He buried his head in her neck and started pulling at her skirt.

Libby was moaning with terror. She considered screaming for help, but she had never spoken to the people in the other apartments, and she could not bear to be found by strangers in her torn clothes and general disarray. Dimly she thought of Polly and those lodgers, who would have rescued Polly in a second if anybody had attempted anything. She wondered if she could faint, but what might not happen while she was unconscious? The doctors at Vassar used to say that a woman could not be forced against her will. They advised girls to kick a man in his testicles or jab him there with your knee. When she started to try that, aiming with her knee at what she hoped was the right place, Nils gave a crowning laugh and slapped her lightly across the face. “Bad girl.” The transformation of Nils was the most painful aspect.