“Uh-huh.” She wiggled around a little on the bed and wound up closer to me — so close that although our bodies weren’t touching I could feel the heat of her.
“You’re beautiful,” I said. It came out in a whisper.
“Do you really think so?”
“Of course.”
She purred like a kitten. “I’m glad,” she said. “I’m glad you like me.”
“Any man would like you.”
“Maybe — but a girl always likes to hear it. Tell me again that you think I’m beautiful.”
I told her.
She looked at me and a light was dancing in the corners of her eyes. “What do you like best about me, Dan?”
“How do you mean?”
“What part of me do you like best? Show me.”
I showed her and she giggled.
“Not there,” she said. “I don’t mean there. What else?”
I kissed her again and took her breasts in my hand, holding them gently and fingering the nipples.
“These,” I said.
“Honestly?”
I nodded and squeezed them again for emphasis.
“Don’t you think they’re small?”
“Not particularly. Hell, anything over a handful is wasted.”
She burst out laughing and even blushed a little. “You’re funny,” she said. “You know, I used to be ashamed of them, the way they were so small. I had hardly anything until I was almost seventeen.”
“You don’t have to be ashamed now.”
“I used to be ashamed of lots of things,” she went on. There was a dreamy look in her eyes and she seemed to be talking half to me and half to herself.
“I was ashamed the first time I let a boy kiss me, and I was ashamed the first time I let a boy do anything more than kiss me. And I was ashamed the first time I let a boy go all the way. It was a bad time, too. It was in the back seat of a car and he didn’t seem to know what he was doing and it hurt like holy hell and...”
She was on the verge of tears and I drew her in to me, snuggling her head up against my chest and running my hands over her back. I just wanted to keep holding her, to keep her warm and safe and quiet.
“But I’m not ashamed any more,” she said fiercely. “I’m not ashamed to admit I’m a person and there are things I enjoy doing and things I need.”
“You shouldn’t be. You should be proud.”
“Proud?”
“Certainly. You’re a woman, Marcia. You should be proud to be a woman. Some women can’t, you know. Some women...”
She kissed me. “Tell me about her, Dan.”
“Who?”
“Allison.”
I almost fell off the bed for the second time that evening. “How did you—”
“You called me by her name, Dan. While you were making love to me.”
So I told her. I told her the whole story — the story of the long road up and the long road down, of the books and the stories and the movie scripts and the women and the whiskey. I told her, and it wasn’t easy to tell but it was far easier than it would have been to tell someone else.
She stayed close to me and she didn’t interrupt while I was talking. And when I had brought the story up to date she still didn’t say anything. We lay together with our bodies almost touching and the room dark around us, seeing nothing but each other and hearing nothing but the cars rushing past on West 85th Street.
“You’ll make it,” she whispered.
“Maybe.”
“You will,” she said. “I know you will.”
I laughed. “You have a helluva lot more faith in me than I do.”
She turned to me. “You’ve got to have faith too, Dan. It’s the only way.”
“Yeah.”
“I mean it,” she said.
“I know. But sometimes it’s tough.”
“The best things are usually tough.”
“Sometimes the best things are pretty tender.” I was holding her breast when I said that and she giggled again. Her giggle was nice — not the brittle quality present in some giggles, but a soft and easy sort of a giggle.
“Kiss me,” she said.
“Is that a command?”
“Of course.”
So I kissed her. And I kissed her again. And...
“Here,” she said. “Kiss me here, Dan.”
I did. She made a little sound that was half-purr and half-moan.
“Do you like that?”
“Mmmmm.”
“You like lots of things, don’t you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You’re a real sexy little thing, huh?”
“Uh-huh.”
I closed my eyes and held her close to me. There was something vaguely unreal about the whole scene from the moment she had walked into my room, and at the same time there was something altogether real, desperately real about it. I felt that if I could hold her there, if I could just have something like her to hold onto and be with, then maybe everything would be all right.
It was funny. I needed her and she needed me, and at the same time neither of us wanted to get deeply involved with the other. The future might be messy.
But the past had been pretty messy itself. And the present was quite perfect.
“Dan?”
“What?”
“Kiss me there again, Dan.”
I kissed her there and I felt the passion rising within her. Her body began to move gently in controlled but perfect rhythm. Her breathing became shorter and harder and her shoulders heaved slightly.
“Is it wrong to make love... like this?”
“Making love can’t be wrong, Marcia.”
“Are you sure?”
“As sure as I am of anything. Nothing that two people do together can be wrong if they want each other. You like it when I do this, don’t you?”
“God, yes!”
“Then it’s good, Marcia.” I stopped talking and began kissing her again and neither of us said anything for a few minutes.
Then, “Dan?”
“Yes, darling?”
She was breathing faster and her thighs were churning and her lips were parted and moving with no words coming out. I kissed her all over that beautiful little body, kissed every square inch of her, and her flesh literally throbbed with animal heat and passion.
“Now!” she said suddenly. The word seemed to explode from her lips.
I took her in my arms and her legs wound around me like twin serpents. Then there was no one in the whole world but the two of us, no one but Marcia and I making love beautifully and violently and completely.
And the world moved.
Chapter Three
It wasn’t awfully hard getting to sleep that night. It wasn’t hard at all, as a matter of fact and it wasn’t particularly hard getting up the next morning either. I was so used to being hungover that I felt damn near lightheaded when my eyes fell open all by themselves and there was no ridge of purple fuzz between my scalp and my skull.
I put on a clean shirt and an almost-clean pair of pants and had burnt toast and lukewarm coffee at a greasy spoon on Columbus Avenue. I must have looked happy — the counterman threw me a dirty look and the counterman’s dog tried to take a bite out of my leg. I felt so good I threw the guy a quarter tip and patted the mutt on his mangy head.
Marcia Banks.
A woman can make all the difference in the world. I stopped dreaming of Allison and didn’t dream at all, or if I did I forgot the dreams before morning. The New York air still tasted good — even the smoke and sweat.
I hopped on the IRT to Times Square and rode the BMT down to Astor Place. The El was gone from Third Avenue and the strip looked better, but down below was still the Bowery and hockshops still lined both sides of Third Avenue.
Each hockshop looked like each other hockshop. They all had the same assortment of knives and guitars and cameras and jewelry in the windows and the same short men in suspenders behind the counter. The third place had a desk model in decent shape — I can’t stand a portable — and he was ready to take my money.