“You bastard. I love you, you bastard.”
She went to him with her cheek still smarting from the slaps. Her arms went around him, around the maroon dressing gown, and her mouth sought his feverishly. He kissed her back and her teeth sank hungrily into his lower lip. He bent down and lifted her in his arms, lifting her easily with a strength that surprised her, and carrying her into the bedroom. While he removed the dressing gown and tossed it casually onto a chair, she slipped the jersey dress over her head and dropped it on the floor. His eyes widened in surprise at seeing that she was wearing nothing under the dress.
“Bastard,” she said.
He slapped her again. She repeated the word and he began slapping her again and again, slowly and methodically, slapping her and hitting harder with each slap. She wanted him to hurt her, wanted him to slap her again and again, wanted to force this man to master her completely. Each slap increased her passion until it welled up in her and overflowed.
With a little cry she fell against him. It was all over and she knew it was all over, but now and only for now he was right and only the moment mattered. Tomorrow everything would be past and no longer important, but now all that was important was his hands encircling her breasts and his fingers making music against her thighs.
She whispered his name over and over, the whispers rising in intensity until she was fairly screaming in his ear. Her passion mounted like a house of cards, rising higher and higher until at the final beautiful instant it collapsed and she drifted into a whirlpool of ecstatic and desperate fulfillment.
She could hear nothing, not even the solemn ticking of the clock.
Chapter Eleven
It was all over. She knew this the next day, knew it the moment she woke up and rubbed the sleep from her eyes and headed for the shower. It was over and she would never sleep with Charles again, and it was over despite the perfection of their lovemaking, despite even the final beauty of yesterday afternoon.
It was a time to be sad. But, strangely, she felt no sadness. Outside of a vague emptiness and a sense of finality she felt nothing at all.
It seemed wrong. She told herself she ought to be properly grief-stricken, but there was no grief present whatsoever. And she realized that this was due to the fact that she and Charles had never really loved each other. She had needed Charles, needed him as surely as she needed a cup of black coffee in the morning, but in the final analysis he was no more irreplaceable than that cup of coffee. In fact, the coffee was undoubtedly a good deal more habit-forming.
But she couldn’t eliminate the lump that came to her throat when she went downstairs and saw Lizzie for the first time that day. The mental picture of the girl in bed with Charles was too much for her despite the fact that she and Charles had broken up. It put Lizzie in a new light and transformed the mistress-servant relationship into one of two rivals for a man’s love. It was not easy to see Lizzie in that light.
“Do you remember Mr. Butler?” she asked hesitantly.
“Mr. Butler?”
“Mr. Macon brought him to dinner a while back,” Carla prompted, marveling at the girl’s poise.
“Oh, yes. I remember him.”
“I wonder if he’ll be around again.” Carla realized suddenly that she was on shaky ground. If she let Lizzie know that she knew about her affair with Charles, the girl would realize that Carla had been playing around too.
“He seemed like a nice man,” Lizzie said easily. And Carla let the conversation die right there.
The day passed quickly. Carla relaxed for the first time in weeks and listened to records in the living-room, almost dozing off as she let herself become absorbed by the music. It was so peaceful with nothing to do but curl up in a chair and nothing to worry about, nothing at all. She knew that more problems would come to her when the physical need for a man returned but she was willing to wait until then before worrying about it. One record finished and another dropped into position on the turn-table, and so the afternoon went.
The doorbell jolted her out of her reverie. At first she thought it was a part of the music, but the second ring brought her back into the everyday world. With a sigh she got to her feet. Lizzie was upstairs, so she had to answer the door herself. She padded into the hallway in her stocking feet and opened the door.
It was Danny Rand.
He was inside the door before she could collect herself. “What are you doing here?” she asked. “I thought I told you never to come here again.”
“I know.”
“Then—”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I called you a dozen times but you wouldn’t talk to me. There didn’t seem much point in calling up any more. So I closed up the station and came over.”
“Well, you can just hop in your car and go back and re-open the station,” she said sourly. “I haven’t the slightest interest in seeing you.”
“You don’t?”
“Definitely not.”
“That’s too bad, because you’re going to see me. Dammit, Carla, I’m in love with you!”
She closed her eyes with a sigh and permitted her shoulders to slump. “Please,” she said. “Can’t you take no for an answer?”
“I’m afraid not.” His lips tightened.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to. Because I’m not in love with you, Mr. Rand.” She used his last name purposely to stifle any familiarity between them, and she noticed how he winced at the words.
“I love you.”
She stepped back into the living-room and he followed her. “Just what do you want?” she asked. “Another grease-room scene?”
“No.”
“What, then?”
He swallowed. “I want to marry you, Carla. I want you to divorce that broken-down husband of yours and marry me. I know he’s no husband to you, for God’s sake. You can’t possibly love him.”
“As a matter of fact, I do love him. He’s a wonderful man, good in a way you couldn’t possibly understand. And how come you know so much about my life?”
“It’s natural enough,” he said thinly. “When you think about a woman all day and dream about her all night, you can’t help trying to learn a little about her.”
The words sounded corny, but there was something about the intensity of his speech and the expression on his face that kept her from laughing. She searched for a reply, and then the full humour of the situation struck her. Less than 24 hours ago she had been in this man’s position, trying to talk Charles into marrying her!
This time she couldn’t restrain her laughter. She backed away from Danny, her whole body shaking with laughter and her eyes filling with tears.
“You... want me to marry you!”
“What’s so damned funny?”
“You fool. Oh, you idiot! A starving, grimy gas-pump jockey and you want me to marry you!”
His eyes narrowed to tiny slits. “I’m not a bum,” he said. “I’m not a rich punk like your husband, but I’m no bum. And when I’m finished working I can wash myself as clean as anybody else. Cleaner than some, because with me the dirt’s all on the outside. I don’t get filthy on the inside like some people do.”
She went on laughing.
“And I’m not just a poor slob with a job,” he went on. “I’m saving my money to buy the station from the company, and when I do that I’ll start making some dough of my own. A guy like me can wind up with a whole string of stations if he plays his cards right.”
Finally she managed to control her laughter. “Okay,” she said. “Okay, Mr. Rand. Now you can listen to me for a few minutes.
“I don’t know how much you managed to find out about me, Bright Eyes, but I didn’t grow up on Nottingham Terrace in case you didn’t figure that out for yourself. I grew up in a cold-water walk-up on the East Side and I had to work my tail off to get out of there. I read the right books and learned how to speak decent English and finally managed to hook the right guy. It’s not so easy to marry rich, in case you never thought of it that way.”