“Uh-uh,” she said, and sipped at her drink and kept watching me over the edge of the glass. “What is this?” she asked. “Scotch?”
“Yes, it’s scotch.”
“I was drinking whiskey sours in the bar. Will I get sick?”
“No, you won’t get sick. It doesn’t matter about mixing drinks, that’s a lot of crap.”
“Naughty language,” she said, and smiled. “It is hot in here, though.”
“So take it off,” I said.
“Uh-uh,” she said. She stretched out her legs, and then kicked off her fur-lined boots, first one and then the other. “Mmm,” she said, “that’s better.”
“It’d be even better if you took off the turtleneck,” I said. “I mean, because the room’s so hot and all.”
“Yes, it is,” she said, “but I don’t think it’d be appropriate for me to sit around in just my ski pants.”
“Why not?”
“Well, I wouldn’t want you to get excited, Peter.”
“We’re good friends, Alice. I don’t see anything wrong with you taking off the turtleneck since it’s so hot in the goddamn room.”
“Well it is hot,” she said.
“Well, why don’t you take it off, then?”
“Well, okay, but remember your promise.”
“What promise?”
“Your promise not to rape me,” she said, and put her glass down on the floor, and pulled the turtleneck up over her breasts, but not over her head, sat sprawled in the wingback chair with the shirt bunched up above her breasts, black against white. She picked up the glass, and I got off the bed and walked to where she was sitting with her legs outstretched, and stepped over her legs so that I was standing with my own legs apart, straddling her.
“Let me help you,” I said.
“No, thanks,” she said, “I’m fine this way.”
I pulled the shirt up over her head, and threw it on the floor. She looked up at me, and said nothing, and put her glass down on the floor beside the chair again, and then picked up the shirt and tossed it onto the bed. She lifted the glass, still saying nothing, and sipped from it.
“That’s better,” I said.
“I’m glad you think it’s better,” she said.
I was still standing in front of the chair, staring down at her, my legs apart, her long legs stretched out between them.
“Well?” she said.
“Nice,” I said. “Look at your nipples.”
“I’ve seen them, thanks.”
“Look at them anyway.”
She looked down at her breats and said, “So what?”
“Get up,” I said.
“I’m fine right where I am, thanks. Get me another drink, please.” She extended the glass to me, and I took it from her hand and poured more scotch into it and was starting for the bathroom when she said, “I don’t need water, thanks,” and I brought the glass back to her and she accepted it and said, “I don’t want a scene with you like I had with Robert.”
“Oh?” I said. “Did you take your shirt off for Robert?”
“Of course not, what do you think I am?”
“I seem to remember you had to put on your panties before leaving his room.”
“Who told you that?”
“You did.”
“No, I couldn’t have put on my panties because they were ripped.”
“How’d they get ripped?”
“Robert ripped them.”
“Are you wearing panties now?”
“No, just ski underwear.”
“What color?”
“Red.”
“Why don’t you let me see them?”
“No, I don’t think long johns are very attractive,” she said.
“I feel certain you look magnificent in long johns, especially with that sweet little ass,” I said.
“Naughty language, Peter.”
“Come on, take off the ski pants.”
“It’s too much trouble.”
“I’ll help you.”
“Thanks, I’d rather leave them on. You’ll only get excited. You won’t be able to control yourself.”
I was standing by the dresser and looking at her where she sat sprawled in the chair, lazily sipping at her drink, smiling at me over the glass. I moved to her, gently took the glass from her hand, and reached behind me to put it on the dresser.
“I’ll rip them off,” I said.
“You’d better not try.”
“I’m warning you, Alice.”
“What’s so special about seeing me in my long johns?” she asked, and stood up and unzipped her ski pants at the side, and then lowered them to her knees and sat in the chair again and said, “Help me.” I pulled the elastic bottoms off her feet and then tossed the pants over to the bed, alongside the black jersey shirt.
“Now stand up,” I said.
“What for?”
“I want to see you.”
“You can see me fine just the way I am,” she said. “Give me my drink, please.”
“You’ve had enough to drink.”
“No, I haven’t. Give it to me.”
“Get up,” I said.
“I’ll get up, but only because I want my drink,” she said, and rose immediately. Moving flatfooted to the dresser, resembling a healthy dancer wearing rehearsal tights, she picked up the glass of scotch, and, I knocked it from her hand. She did not appear at all startled. She looked down at the glass and the spilled whiskey on the rug, and then lifted her head and said, “What a waste of good scotch,” and put her hands on her hips and said, “What now?” Her eyes were mocking and challenging and bright, but her lips were trembling.
“You know what now,” I said.
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
“Now you take off the underwear.”
“Now I put on my clothes and get out of here,” she said, and went for her pants and her shirt. I grabbed her wrist and swung her away from the bed. Still holding her wrist tightly, I forced her to her knees and with my free hand unzipped my fly.
“That doesn’t scare me,” she said.
“What doesn’t?”
“That thing.”
“What thing?”
“That.”
“What do you call it?”
“Nothing.”
“What do you call it?” I said.
“Nothing,” she said. “It doesn’t scare me.”
“Then take it,” I said.
There was no difference between her and Rhoda. They were identical. Willing rape victims.
Sandy was right.
Schwartz was the one who started telling doctor jokes after dinner. With his broken leg propped up on a chair (the left one, by the way, and now decorated with a scrawled endorsement from yours truly: Schwartz for President! Signed, R. Nixon) we sat around the acorn fireplace in the small lounge and Schwartz told the old chestnut about the proctologist examining the patient who’d swallowed a glass eye, rearing back (so to speak) in surprise and saying, “I’ve been looking up ass-holes for fourteen years, and this is the first time I’ve ever seen anyone looking back!” Everyone laughed politely, except Foderman, who was apparently hearing the joke for the first time, and who collapsed in gales of uncontrollable mirth. Thus encouraged, Schwartz told another medical story, this one about the immigrant who visits a doctor because his wife has been having so many babies, four or five in as many years, and he doesn’t know how to stop her alarming reproductive rate. The doctor realizes the poor man knows nothing about contraception and explains the use of condoms to him, telling him he must absolutely put one on his organ each and every time he contemplates intercourse. Well, a month later, the immigrant comes back and tells the doctor his wife is pregnant again, and the doctor looks at him in surprise and then chastisingly says, “Did you put the condom on your organ, as I told you to do?” And the immigrant says, “I don’t have no organ in the house, Doc, so I put it on the piano instead.”