The Losers (4 page)

Flood bounced from the car with unusual energy, went up the wooden steps to the wide porch that stretched across the front of the house, and rang the bell. “Come along, Raphael,” he said over his shoulder.

Somewhat painfully, his muscles stiffened again from the ride, Raphael climbed from the car and started up the steps to the porch.

The docr opened, and a small woman looked out inquiringly. She was short, perhaps just over five feet tall, and she wore jeans and a loose-fitting cambric shirt of the kind Raphael had seen mill workers back home wear. Her hair was quite dark and caught at the back of her neck by a red bandanna. The skin of her face and throat was very white, and her figure under the loose shirt was full. She had a smudge of pale green paint on one cheek. “Junior,” she said in an exasperated tone. Her voice was rich and melodious. “You said
noon.”

“Sorry, ‘Bel. We got away early.” He grinned down at her.

“I’m a mess,” she protested, glancing down at the front of her shirt. She was holding two long, pencillike paintbrushes in her right hand. “You always do this to me, Junior.”

“This way we get to see the real you, ‘Bel.” Flood’s grin was slightly malicious. “Let me present the Archangel Raphael,” he said, turning and beckoning.

Isabel Drake’s eyes widened, and she stared directly at Flood as if he had just said something totally unbelievable. Then she turned and looked at Raphael. Very clearly he could see a kind of stunned recognition cross her face. Her eyes seemed to cloud for a moment, and she looked as if she were about to say something. Then she shook her head slightly, and her
face
became a polite mask.

“Mrs. Drake,” Raphael said rather formally, inclining his head in a sort of incipient bow.

“Please,” she replied, “just ‘Bel.” She smiled up at him. Her eyes were large, and her lips sensual. “There’s no point in being formal, since Junior arranged for you to catch me in my work clothes. Is it really Raphael?”

Raphael made a face. “My mother’s idea of a joke. I’ll answer to Rafe if it’d make you more comfortable.”

“God no,” she said. “I love it. Raphael—it’s so musical.” She switched the paintbrushes and offered her hand. Raphael took it.

“Oh dear,” she said. “The paint. I completely forgot.”

Raphael looked at his hand and laughed at the smudges on his palm.

“It’s only watercolor, but I
am
sorry.” “It’s nothing.”

“Junior,” she said sharply, “I positively
hate
you for this.”

Flood, who had been watching the two of them intently, laughed sardonically.

“Come and see my little house,” she invited them. “Then I’ll get cleaned up and change.”

The interior of the chalet smelled faintly of the woman’s perfume. The walls of the living room were paneled with walnut, and there were dark, open beams at ceiling height, forming a heavy latticework overhead above which open space soared to the peaked roof. The furniture was of dark, waxed wood and leather, very masculine, which somehow seemed to accentuate Mrs. Drake’s femininity. The floor was also dark, waxed wood, and fur throw rugs lay here and there, highlighting major points in the room. The morning sun streamed through a window high in the wall above the beams, catching a heavy crystal service on a buffet in the dining area beyond the couch. The gleaming cut glass filled the room with a golden light that seemed somehow artificial, an unreal glow that left Raphael bemused, almost powerless. Here and there on the dark walls muted watercolors added that touch of something indefinable that spoke of class.

“Pretty fancy, ‘Bel.” Flood looked around approvingly.

“It’s comfortable.” She shrugged. “The kitchen’s through here.” She led them into a cheery kitchen with a round table near the broad window that faced a wooden deck that overlooked the sparkling waters of the lake. An easel was set up on the deck with a partially finished watercolor resting on it.

Raphael looked out at the painting and recognized its similarity to the ones hanging in the living room. “You do your own, I see,” he said, pointing.

“It passes the time.” She said it deprecatingly, but he could see that she was rather proud of her efforts.

“Say,” Flood said, stepping out onto the deck, “that’s really pretty good, ‘Bel. When did you get into this? I thought dance was your thing.”

Raphael and Isabel went out onto the deck and stood looking at the watercolor. She laughed, her voice rich. “That was a long time ago, Junior. I found out that I’m really too lazy for all the practice, and I’m getting a little hippy for it. Male dancers are quite small, and it got to be embarrassing the way their eyes bulged during the lifts.” She smiled at Raphael. “Good grief, Raphael,” she said, her eyes widening, “what on earth did you do to your arm?” She pointed at the large, dark bruise on his upper bicep, a bruise exposed by his short-sleeved shirt.

“The Angel here is our star athlete,” Flood told her. “Yesterday afternoon he single-handedly destroyed an opposing football team.”

“Really?” She sounded interested.

“He’s exaggerating.” Raphael was slightly embarrassed. “There were ten other people out there, too. I just got lucky a few times.”

“That looks dreadfully sore.” She touched the bruise lightly.

“You should see his chest and stomach.” Flood shuddered. “He’s a major disaster area.”

“They’ll fade.” Raphael tried to shrug it off. “I heal fairly fast.” He looked out over the lake.

“Come along now, you two,” Isabel ordered. “I’ll show you where the bar is, and then I
have
to get cleaned up and change.” She led them back through the kitchen into the dining room. She pointed out the small portable bar to Flood and then went upstairs. A few minutes later they heard a shower start running.

“Well,” Flood said, busily at work with the shaker, “what do you think of our ‘Bel?”

“She’s a lady,” Raphael said simply.

Flood laughed. “You’re naive, Raphael. ‘Bel has breeding; she’s got class; she’s got exquisite manners and taste; but she’s
not
a lady—as I’m sure you’ll soon discover.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Raphael asked, a little irritated by Flood’s flippancy.

“You’ll find out.” Flood began to rattle the shaker.

“Isn’t it a little early for that?” Raphael asked, sitting carefully in one of the large chairs in front of the fireplace in the living room.

“Never too early.” Flood’s tone was blithe. “It’ll anesthetize all your aches and pains. You’re gimping around like an arthritic camel.” He came into the living room, handed Raphael a glass, and then sprawled on the leather couch.

“Nice house,” Raphael noted, looking around, “but isn’t it sort of—well—masculine?”

“That’s ‘Bel for you.” Flood laughed. “It’s all part of her web. ‘Bel’s not like other women—that’s why I like her so much. She’s very predatory, and she usually gets exactly what she wants.”

“You’re a snide bastard, Flood.”

“Bight on.” Flood laughed easily. “It’s part of my charm.”

A half hour later Isabel came back down in a flowered print dress that was sleeveless and cut quite low in front. Raphael found that he had difficulty keeping his eyes where they belonged. The woman was full-figured, and her arms plumply rounded. There was about her a kind of ripeness, an opulence that the firm-figured but angular girls of his own age lacked. Her every move seemed somehow suggestive, and Raphael was troubled by his reactions to her.

They passed the afternoon quietly. They had lunch and a few more drinks afterward. Isabel and Raphael talked at some length about nothing in particular while Flood sat back watching, his hard, bright eyes moving from one to the other and an indecipherable expression on his face.

In Raphael’s private place he told himself that he really had no business being there. ‘Bel and Flood were aliens to him—bright, beautiful, and totally meaningless. With a kind of startled perception he saw that sophisticated people are sophisticated for that very reason. Meaningless people have to be sophisticated, because they have nothing else.

When it grew dark, they changed clothes and went over to a supper club in Oswego. Raphael rode with Isabel in her sedan, and Flood followed in his Triumph.

At dinner they laughed a great deal, and Raphael could see others in the restaurant glancing at them with eyebrows raised speculatively. Isabel was wearing a low-cut black cocktail dress that set off the satiny white sheen of her skin, and her hair, dark as night, was caught in a loose roll at the back of her neck. As Raphael continued to order more drinks he saw that there was about her an air of enormous sophistication that made him feel very proud just to be seen with her.

As the evening wore on and they lingered over cocktails, Raphael became increasingly convinced that everyone else in the room was covertly watching them, and he periodically forced his laughter and assumed an expression of supercilious boredom.

They had a couple more drinks, and then Raphael knocked over a water glass while he was attempting to light Isabel’s cigarette. He was filled with mortification and apologized profusely, noticing as he did that his words were beginning to slur. Isabel laughed and laid her white hand on his sleeve.

Then Flood was gone. Raphael could not remember when he had left. He forced his eyes to focus on Isabel, seeing the opulent rising mounds of creamy white flesh pressing out from the top of her dress and the enigmatic smile on her full lips.

“I’d better catch the check,” he slurred, fumbling for his wallet.

“It’s already been taken care of,” she assured him, still smiling and once again laying her hand lingeringly on his arm. “Shall we go?” She rose to her feet before he could clamber out of his seat to hold her chair.

He offered his arm, and laughing, she took it. They went outside. Once out in the cool night air, Raphael breathed deeply several times. “That’s better,” he said. “Stuffy in there.” He looked around. “Where the hell is Damon?”

“Junior?” She was unlocking her car. “He wanted to take a look around town. He’ll be along later.”

They climbed into the car and drove in silence back toward Isabel’s house. The night seemed very dark outside the car, and Raphael leaned his head back on the seat.

He awoke with a start when they pulled up in the drive.

They got out of the car and went into the house. He stumbled once on the steps, but caught himself in time.

Isabel turned on a dim light in one corner of the living room, then she stood looking at him, the strange smile still on her face. Quite deliberately she reached back and loosened her hair. It tumbled down her back, and she shook her head to free it. She looked at him, still smiling, and her eyes seemed to glow.

She extended her hand to him. “Shall we go up now?” she said.

v

The autumn proceeded. The leaves turned, the nights grew chill, and Raphael settled into the routine of his studies. The library became his sanctuary, a place to hide from the continuing distraction of Rood’s endless conversation.

It was not that he disliked Damon Flood, but rather that he found the lure of that sardonic flow of elaborate and rather stilted speech too great. It was too easy to lay aside his book and to allow himself to be swept along by the unending talk and the sheer force of Flood’s personality. And when he was not talking, Flood was singing. It was not the music itself that was so distracting, though Flood had an excellent singing voice. Rather it was the often obscene and always outrageous lyrics he composed, seemingly on the spur of the moment. Flood had a natural gift for parody, and his twisting of the content of the most familiar songs inevitably pulled Raphael’s attention from his book and usually prostrated him with helpless laughter. It was, in short, almost impossible to study while his roommate was around.

And so, more often than not, Raphael crossed the dark lawn in the evenings to the soaring cathedral that was the library; and there, in a pool of light from the study lamp, he bent to his books in the vast main hall beneath the high vault of the ceiling.

And sometimes he saw in another pool of light the intent face of the girl whose voice had so stirred him during his first few weeks on campus. They spoke once in a while, usually of material for the class they both attended, but it was all quite casual at first. The vibrant sound of her voice still struck him, but not as much as it had before he had met Isabel Drake.

If his weeks were consumed with study, his weekends were devoted to what he chose to feel was debauchery. Isabel Drake proved to be a woman of infinite variety and insatiable appetite. She seemed to delight in instructing and guiding him in what, a few months earlier, he would have considered perversion. He did not delude himself into believing that it was love. She was charmed by his innocence and took joy in his youthful vigor and stamina. It was so far from being love that sometimes on Sunday nights as he drove back to Portland, physically wrung out and even sore from his exertions, he felt that he had somehow been violated.

For the first few weekends Flood had accompanied him, delivering him, as it were, into Isabel’s hands. Then, almost as if he had assured himself that Raphael would continue the visits without him, he stopped going down to the lake. Without Flood’s presence, his knowing, sardonic eyes always watching, Isabel’s demeanor changed. She became more dominant, more demanding. Raphael sometimes had nightmares about her during the week, vivid, disconnected dreams of being suffocated by the warm, perfumed pillows of her breasts or crushed between the powerful white columns of her thighs. He began to dread the weekends, but the lure of her was too strong, and helplessly he delivered himself each Friday evening to her perfumed lair by the shores of the lake, where she waited—sometimes, he almost felt, lurked—in heavy-lidded anticipation.

“Have you read the Karpinsky book yet?” It was the girl, Marilyn Hamilton, and she spoke to him as they came out of the library one evening after it closed.

“I’m nearly finished with it,” he replied.