“I can’t take you to Xenia,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Because you’re running away from home. Now if I helped you run away from home, I would be contributing to the delinquency of a minor. You can’t expect me to do that, can you?”
“Then you should have let me take the bus.”
“But then I didn’t know you were running away. I want to talk to you, April. We’ll sit in my living room and drink a drink or two and you’ll tell me why you want to run away. That’s all. Fair enough?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re being silly,” he said. “Look, you’ve said that you like the house. Wouldn’t you like to see how the inside looks?”
He did not wait for an answer. He took her suitcase in one hand and her arm in the other and led her to the door. He shouldered the door open and led her inside, closing the door after her. “There,” he said. “Like it?”
The interior of the house matched the exterior in the sharpness of its contemporary lines. But April would not have believed that such an angular sort of house could seem so warm within. The floors were of highly polished wood, with high-piled rugs placed here and there across the huge living room. The furniture was wood and steel, the wood deeply-grained and the steel black and shiny. In the huge flagstone fireplace at one end of the living room logs were piled, ready for the iron lighter at one side.
“It’s very nice,” she said lamely.
“I’ll get you a drink. Scotch all right?”
“I guess so.”
“Have a seat, April.”
She sat on a couch that turned out to be far more comfortable than it looked, while he went to the bar and poured drinks. He came back, stopping on his way to flick a switch on the wall. Music filtered into the room, coming, it seemed, from all sides. It was modern jazz, penetrating and insistent. He handed her a drink and sat beside her on the couch.
“I suppose you wonder who I am,” he said.
“That’s putting it mildly.”
He laughed again. “My name is Craig,” he said. “Craig Jeffers. I’m very rich, as you’ve probably guessed, and I’m very wild, as you’ve probably guessed, also. I live alone here. My parents lived in Dayton, where my father made an enormous amount of money. I’m not sure just how he made the money, although I suppose he made it by giving some poor slobs the wrong end of the stick. He was that sort of a bastard.”
April said nothing.
“He’s dead now,” Craig went on dispassionately. “I’m not unhappy about it. He killed mother two years ago, then put a bullet through his own brain. You probably read about it. It even made the wire services and of course the local press had an absolute blast with it.”
She remembered, dimly. Headlines had screamed, LOCAL INDUSTRIALIST KILLS SELF, WIFE. She nodded dutifully and took a sip of her drink. She was not used to straight liquor, but this was very smooth and she did not choke on it.
“That’s the story of my life,” he said. “What little there has been of it so far, at any rate. I’m twenty-six. I live here because I want to. I’ve been all over the United States and through most of Europe. I’ve watched bullfights in Spain and I’ve slept with Paris whores. I’ve raced cars in California and I’ve gambled in Miami. I live here, in this horrible section of the horrible state of Ohio.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to, April. Because this is my home, perhaps. I have my house and I have my car. Do you like the car, by the way?”
“Yes.”
“It’s a Mercedes-Benz 300-SL. It handles like a dream and goes like hell. I like it too.”
He tossed off the rest of his drink and set the empty glass on the coffee table. He took out a pack of cigarettes and gave one to her, keeping another for himself. He lighted both of them and they sat side by side smoking. She drank more of her drink. The liquor was making her feel pleasantly lightheaded. She sipped and smoked.
“That’s my story,” Craig said suddenly. “Now it’s time for you to tell me yours.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“Nothing?”
“I live with my parents and go to high school in Antrim. That’s all there is to it.”
He arched his eyebrows. “You were on your way to Xenia,” he said. “From there you were going to take a train to New York, and you weren’t coming back. Now don’t try to tell me there’s nothing more besides the fact that you live at home and go to high school in Antrim. You have to do better than that, April.”
She stared into her glass of scotch, avoiding his eyes. Her story was not the kind you went around telling to people, she thought. But by the same token he was not the sort of person you usually ran across. And there was something about him that made her want to open up, something that somehow inspired her confidence.
“It’s not a pretty story,” she said.
“Few stories are. Not the interesting ones, at any rate.”
“And I’m not as sweet and innocent as I seem.”
“Well,” he said, “thank God for that.”
She laughed. The drink was working now, loosening her up, letting her unwind. And the music, the insistently pulsating jazz, was also working. She looked around the room, deciding that she felt at home here, that she was comfortable. She looked at Craig and decided that he was the most exciting man she had ever met. She could not imagine why he would want to waste his time talking to her. He could have any girl in the world, she told herself. And he could do more than talk to them.
“All right,” she said slowly. “I’ll tell you.”
When she had finished, he stood up from the couch, took her empty glass and carried it to the bar. He dropped two fresh ice cubes into the glass and added a healthy splash of scotch. He made a drink for himself, brought back the two glasses and gave her one.
“To the new April North,” he said.
They touched glasses and she took a drink. She was somehow much calmer now. And glad that she had told him.
“April,” he said, “if you run away to New York you’re a silly damned fool.”
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I just said. Don’t you see what you’ll be doing? You’ll be accepting the judgment of this godforsaken little town, living by its values and tolerating its opinion of you. Antrim thinks you’re a tramp. Right?”
“Right.”
He sighed. “Do you think you’ll change their minds by running away? Do you think you’ll show much backbone by creeping out of town like a thief in the night? That won’t stop them from talking about you, April. It will only reinforce their opinions. God, don’t you see what a stupid thing you’ll be doing?”
She stared at him. She had not thought of it that way at all. Running away had looked like the perfect solution to her. But now, listening to him, she saw that he was right. You could not change things by fleeing from them. You escaped everything but yourself.
“Then — what should I do?”
“Stay here.”
“And sleep with every pimple-faced pig in the senior class? Is that an answer?”
“No,” he said. “That’s not an answer.”
“Then—”
He sighed again. “April,” he said, “you’re a big girl now. You have managed to discover something that few girls realize in the course of their entire fives, and that very few come to realize while they are your age. You’ve found out that most people are narrow-minded fools and that their standards are absurd. Do you feel that you’ve done anything wrong?”
“I don’t know.”
Craig stared hard at her. Then his eyebrows went up a notch to mock her. “Don’t you know? All you did was admit that you were a woman with the desires of a woman. You gave in, you let your desires express themselves. Does that constitute a sin?”
“No,” she said.