The Paper Dragon (22 page)

Chickie agreed that it was very sudden, but she saw nothing wrong in helping out a fellow whose girl had come down with a cold, especially since he was one of Paul's brothers. The party that Friday night was a nice gathering with some girls from town and some girls from colleges in Pennsylvania and here and there. Everyone was very nice to her, even Buddy and Paul who were with others girls but who each danced with her once and told her what a really nice person she was. John, the fellow who was her date, was a very good-looking boy who resembled Tony Perkins and who had cultivated the same sort of shy smile. He drove her home to Ramsey at two o'clock in the morning in a red MG convertible, and thanked her profusely at the door, telling her she had saved his life and wondering if he could see her again maybe next weekend. She said she would love to, and they made a date for the coming Saturday. But before then, she received calls from two other frat boys she had danced with, and before she knew it the weekend was booked solid. Then Paul called and asked if she'd like to hack around with him again this Wednesday the way they had last, have a soda or something, and she said yes, she'd love to. Buddy called that same day to tell her they were showing some old monster movies over at the school gym on Tuesday, and would she like to go with him?

The scheme had been devised in the reading room at the frat house, Buddy telling the others what had happened and then enlisting their aid in teaching this kid a lesson she would never forget, that you don't go around slapping the president of their frat, or
anybody
in their frat for that matter. The boys all agreed that this was a horrible offense and if permitted to gain circulation, if permitted to spread to all the other townies, could lessen their stature and their ability to get into townie pants every now and then.

These were all nice boys, Chickie was later made to understand, who really had nothing against her and who perhaps, for all any of them knew, simply wanted an activity to carry them through the long winter months and into the spring. Chickie was unfortunate to have been chosen as their extracurricular project for that semester, but then she shouldn't have slapped old Buddy, nor should she have been so obviously intrigued nor so obviously frightened. The boys knew she was frightened, and they also knew she was intrigued. In addition, they were all much older than she, being nineteen or twenty or thereabouts, worldly-wise in the ways of townie maids, and bolstered by the solidarity of brotherhood and the knowledge that they would not have to score
this
one alone.
This
one was to be a joint effort without a chance of failure, a little cooperative project which, if they played their cards right, could provide something steady for the rest of their college days.

The plan was rather clever, if they said so themselves, and once it proved effective against Chickie, they tried it often and with varying results against several other girls — until a supposed virgin named Violet Plimpton discouraged any further joint efforts by causing twelve boys in the frat to come down with cases of the clap. Chickie, though, was a clean girl, and a nice girl, and in fact a very sweet girl against whom they harbored no ill feelings, if only she hadn't slapped a fraternity brother. They modestly admitted that not a single one of them working unassisted would have had a prayer of getting her, but neither were they about to attempt an assault without first manipulating the odds and insuring the outcome. Permutations and combinations, said Richard Longstreet, who was a very bright and ugly boy from Palm Beach, Florida, the frat genius, peering through his black rimmed spectacles and grinning at his brothers who listened attentively as he outlined his plan.

The assault, as Longstreet explained it, had to be slow and patient because first of all she wouldn't be eighteen until May and they didn't want to take any chances with jail bait (hear, hear, the brothers chanted) and secondly because it just wouldn't work unless they played it cool and easy. She had to believe that each of the seven hand-picked frat brothers were independently competing for her favors, and she had to believe that they did not exchange notes and, as a point of honor, never
never
discussed a girl they were simultaneously dating. (They established this without question in the third week of the campaign, when four of the frat boys separately called to ask for a Saturday night date, seemingly ignorant of the fact that she had already made a date with another of their brothers.) To further allay any of her suspicions, Longstreet said, they would evolve a system of staggered advances that could not possibly seem like the result of collusion, but would seem instead' random and erratic. Paul would be the first to touch her breast, for example, but Mitch would only
later
soul-kiss her, a seeming regression, and David would then try to get his hand under her skirt. We will even, Longstreet said, make provision for a villain in the group of seven, an expendable man who will try to go too far with her, unclasping her bra and going for her naked breasts,
knowing
the move is premature and hoping Chickie will stop dating him. He will subsequently be replaced by a more civilized fellow, selected right now, who will participate up to the time of the final assault. Paul, until then, and as part of the overall scheme, will never try to get further with her than his first grab.

Longstreet admitted that this would all be very unfair to poor Chickie because what they were going to do was drive her out of her mind (hear, hear, the brothers chanted) without her ever once realizing she was being led down the garden. What we're going to do, Long-street said, is manipulate and control her psychological and emotional responses so that by a process of gradual conditioning she will be ready for whatever we choose to put before her next. Her responses will all be calculated beforehand,
we
will decide when to give her a surfeit of affection and understanding,
we
will decide when to deprive her or when to resume the attack. In short, we will destroy her defenses one by one, creating a permissive climate that will make it simpler for the next man to take her yet a step further in persuasion, until she is conditioned to
expect
a certain amount of stimulation, until she is indeed looking
forward
to it. And by the time we have brought her to the point of highest expectation, why then we'll see who's gonna pluck her. After that, Long-street said, it's anybody's.

The plan in practice worked almost the way Long-street outlined it, not because it was foolproof, but only because Chickie contributed a certain amount of confused eagerness to its execution. Whatever she told herself later, whatever eventual surprise she professed to the boys when they explained to her in a very friendly and open manner how the plan had worked, she
really
suspected something from the very beginning, and her suspicions were all but confirmed by the end of the second month. To begin with, she knew without doubt that all girls exchanged notes, and it must have entered her mind almost at once (whatever protestations they made to the contrary) that seven boys from the same frat might just conceivably say a word or two about her in passing. So she never really bought the "independent dating" routine or the "point of honor" nonsense, nor did she believe it accidental that she was being rushed by the seven best-looking and most popular boys in the frat. She was somewhat thrown off stride when Freddie Holtz took off her bra and began fumbling around with her breasts, big clumsy football player, especially when all the others were so tiptoey apologetic if they for God's sake accidentally brushed against her or anything. But even then she had the feeling she was
supposed
to stop dating him, which was exactly what she did. And, of course, he was immediately replaced by another of the frat boys, so that there were always seven of them (in the final week they were dating her every night, dating her in sequence and getting her so completely confused and excited that she was ready for anything) but hadn't she been aware from the very beginning? Frightened, yes, when Mitch thrust his tongue into her mouth and tightened his arms around her; surprised, yes, when she found her own tongue eagerly searching the soft inner lining of his mouth; surprised, too, when she felt so suddenly wet, and idiotically thought her period had come, and then pulled away from him breathlessly, terrified, yes, but aware, aware. And later when David provisionally touched her leg, and immediately pulled back his hand, she knew without question that one or another of them would go further the next time, and was not at all surprised when Mark worked his hand up under her bra and onto her naked breast the following Saturday. She had begun to detect a pattern by then, however erratic and hidden it was, and she was aware of a steady progression, a series of escalating liberties that were infallibly calculated to lead to greater liberties. She knew. But she permitted it.

She permitted it with a feeling of rising suspense, curious to discover what they had planned for her next, gradually more and more anxious to participate. She did not think beyond the ultimate and inevitable act, knowing only that by the time it finally happened, two weeks after her eighteenth birthday, she was eagerly seeking the relief it brought. Beyond it, she vaguely visualized a continuing though certainly unpromiscuous sort of girlish sexual activity. She did not know that nothing but complete and utter subjugation would satisfy her captors.

She was finally made to understand this on the weekend the frat boys rented a Philadelphia hotel room and repeatedly used her, all twenty-six of them, one after the other throughout the night and the next long day. They had prepared for the event by purchasing condoms at the drugstore owned by Chickie's father (a brilliant touch thought up by Richard Longstreet) and then had come to Chickie with a ready-made alibi. She was to say a girl from Penn had invited her up for the weekend. They even supplied her with the girl's name, Alice Malloy. Chickie had no doubt she was a real girl the boys knew. She was too frightened to refuse the invitation, and besides she didn't know what was in store for her, or perhaps she did, it was all very confusing. All through the night, they kept saying, "You love it, don't you, Chickie?" to which she kept answering, "No, I don't, no," the next boy asking the same question, "You love it, don't you, Chickie?" and always she answered no, and thought of escape, and was terrified, and finally on the afternoon of the second day, she shrieked, "Yes, I love it, I love it, I
love
it!" and began giggling uncontrollably, and knew at last she was only what they said she was, a townie piece of twat.

In later years, when these nice fraternity boys got married to girls from Radcliffe and Smith and Sarah Lawrence and Vassar, and settled down to raise families, and went to work in business suits, they separately felt a pang of guilt when they recalled what they had done to Chickie in the winter and spring of 1957. But their guilt was dissipated by memory of the strange excitement they had known at the time, the knowledge that they (or rather Richard Longstreet, the frat genius) had inadvertently stumbled upon the key to Chickie Brown: she was a terrified little girl wanting to be victimized. This was exactly what they did to her, repeatedly, until finally their own lust seemed inspired by Chickie's appetite, and they could absolve themselves of any blame they may have felt at the time; they were obviously in the company of an insatiable nymphomaniac with masochistic tendencies, or so she was described by Richard Longstreet, who was a genius.

And in later years, when Chickie thought back upon that winter and spring, as she was doing now in her office while the snow swirled against the plate-glass window, she felt again the same surge of excitement, the same flushed embarrassment, the same tremor of fear she had known then and ever since with a variety of men including the Indian who had beat her until she ached and had given her a Persian cat in remorse. So Sidney Brackman, the dear silly man, wanted to marry her. She thought again of Italy and Greece, and the warm sand beneath her. She would be wearing a bikini, they would stare at her breasts and her legs, she would experience that familiar feeling of terrified lust engorging her, rising into her throat and her head until she wanted to scream aloud, or giggle, or die.

Will you win your stupid case, Sidney Brackman? she wondered.

If I were only sure you would.

Samuel Genitori, the chief counsel for API, was a rotund little man with a balding head and mild blue eyes. He was wearing a blue pinstripe suit with a light blue shirt and a dark blue tie. He carried a pair of eyeglasses in his hand as he approached the stand, but he did not put them on. To the court clerk, he said, "Plaintiff's Exhibit Number 8, please," and when he received the chart he put on the glasses briefly, studied the chart for a moment, took the glasses off again, and looked up at Arthur.

"Mr. Constantine," he said, "yesterday afternoon a chart was submitted to this court, and marked Plaintiff's Exhibit Number 8. It listed the alleged similarities between the movie
The Paper Dragon
and your play
Catchpole
. I show this to you now, and ask if this list was prepared by you."

"By me and my attorneys, yes."

"And it purports to show, does it not, the alleged similarities that were not present in Mr. Driscoll's book?"

"Yes, it does."

"It contains
only
those that appear in the play and in the film, is that correct?"

"That is correct."

"In your examination before trial, Mr. Constantine, you testified to some other alleged similarities between the play and the film, did you not?"

"That was a long time ago," Arthur said.

"Please answer the question."

"I don't remember whether I did or not."

"Perhaps I can refresh your memory."

"Please do," Arthur said.

"Did you not testify that there is a scene in the movie where a man is shown with his foot wrapped in bandages? Did you not claim that this man with his foot wrapped in bandages was stolen directly from your play?"