“You didn’t call,” she said, her resolve to hang up long dissipated. “I was waiting. You didn’t call.”
“That’s right,” he said pleasantly. “I didn’t.”
“I was waiting. But you didn’t—”
“You sound like a broken record, Nan-O. I’m at the Star Bright Motel on Route 9. How about getting here as quick as you can?”
“Ted—”
“Unit Six,” he went on. “Just come to the door, hurry inside, and pull your panties off. I’m sitting here all ready for you, Nan-O. All ready, kid.”
“Ted—”
“Unit Six at the Star Bright Motel. Don’t forget.”
“Ted, I’m not coming.”
A short and sardonic laugh.
“I’m not. I—”
“Of course you are.”
“Ted, listen to me. Ted, I’m a wife and a mother—”
More laughter. “You’re also a whore and a tramp, Nan-O. I’ll be waiting for you.”
He hung up on her.
She stood there, her hands knotted into fists, her blood pulsing through her system. I’m not going, she told herself. I’m not going, I don’t want to go, I hate the rotten bastard and I’m not going.
She went, of course.
The Star Bright Motel was not a haven for weary travelers. If it had been, the owner might well have starved to death, since his location was hardly ideal in that respect. Travelers heading out of New York would go farther than Westchester before calling it a day, and travelers heading into New York would go all the way in instead of stopping so close to their destination. Still, the Star Bright did a booming business.
In the parlance of the inn-keeper’s trade, the Star Bright was a hot-pillow joint. Its occupants were occasionally married, but never to each other. The place was popular for extramarital affairs, equally popular among the younger set that was sufficiently mature to find the back seats of cars uncomfortable.
Otis Wheeler was the owner. Now one would be hard put to find a more suitable occupation for Otis Wheeler than the one he had. It brought him a good income, and there is certainly nothing wrong with a good income. But there was more to it than that. Otis Wheeler was a voyeur, and there is no place for a voyeur quite so delightful as a hot-pillow joint.
Now it was three on Thursday afternoon, and Otis Wheeler was watching. He was in the little concealed hallway between units five and six, his eyes glued to the piece of one-way glass which was set in the wall of unit six. That had been Otis Wheeler’s own special idea. The occupants of the units saw a mirror, while Otis saw them. Why, one couple who had taken a special sort of delight in making love in front of mirrors had justified the expense of installation all by themselves!
But now...
The tall man with the sandy hair had been sitting alone, waiting. He sat on a straight-backed chair, which was not unusual. What was unusual was the fact that he sat in the chair without any clothes on. He had hung his clothes in the closet.
For awhile Otis thought he was wasting his time watching a lunatic who got his kicks sitting naked in a motel unit. Then the woman came in and Otis knew he was not wasting his time. The woman was blonde, and the woman was pretty, and the woman was stacked like a brick outhouse. Otis liked to watch stacked blondes. He was pleased.
The man sneered, and said something which was probably unpleasant, judging from the expression on his face. The woman cringed. Then, slowly and deliberately, she began to remove her clothes.
Otis watched her. It was not hard to do. The stacked blonde did a slow strip, and from where he was Otis was able to see everything there was to see. Among other things, he was able to determine that the stacked blonde was genuinely stacked.
The man said something else. The stacked blonde then tried to argue. She opened her mouth and talked back, shaking her blonde head prettily. Whereupon the man seemed to lose his temper.
He appeared to curse. Then he asked something which made the blonde go pale all over. She nodded sadly and sank to her knees. The tall man swung his hand and brought it down hard on her shoulders. It left an ugly red mark.
Otis watched, spellbound, while the tall sandy-haired man spanked the stacked blonde on various interesting portions of her anatomy. Then he said something else and the girl obediently crawled around the floor on all fours, performing various imaginative exercises en route.
She returned, finally, and kneeled before the man — Otis watched. His eyes bugged out. He stared.
20
When the city-dweller thinks of the country, he thinks of good weather. He imagines summers with a hot sun in a clear sky and a steady breeze blowing, all in contrast to the sooty horror of summer in New York, where the heat is never relieved by breezes and where the tall buildings hold the heat in close and mix it with smoke and sweat. When he thinks of spring in the country he imagines green things coming into bloom, and when he thinks of winter his mind conjures up images of placid unbroken fields of powdery snow. Fall brings images of colored leaves to his mind, and football weather, and brisk air. Winter in New York, on the other hand, means slush; spring means the melting of the slush, and autumn barely exists.
The country-dweller has a somewhat more accurate understanding of these seasonal images of bucolic serenity. He knows that the summer may bring temperatures of 98 in the shade, and that there may well be no shade. He knows that winter can be more than dismal, that snow is wet and cold and needs to be shoveled, that tires skid in it and cars get stuck, and that you can have a coronary shoveling out your driveway. He knows that spring is when the crab grass begins to flourish, and that snow melts in the country in just as revolting a manner as slush melts in city streets, except that it takes longer in the country and that there is more of it.
He knows too that fall, the most nearly acceptable season, can be rainy. He knows that when it rains it pours, and that there are many autumn days in the country that might better be dispensed with.
Friday in Cheshire Point might better have been dispensed with.
The rain had started coming down before dawn would have broken. But dawn didn’t really break that day anyway. The sun never really rose; there were too many clouds in the way, all of them black, all of them spilling wetness upon Cheshire Point. There was thunder, and there was lightning, but above all there was rain.
It rained cats and dogs. It rained buckets and barrels and pitchforks. But what it rained most of all was water, and it rained an inordinate quantity of it. It rained and it rained and it rained.
No one really liked the rain. There were a few look-on-the-better-side and every-cold-has-a-cardboard-lining types who told one another that the rain was at least good for the farmers, while the poor farmers sat in their leaky farmhouses and watched their crops get washed out of the ground. Because it was that kind of rain. It was not good for anybody.
The multicolored autumn leaves were picked up and carried along by the rain. They blocked the multicolored autumn sewers, and the rain backed up and filled the multicolored autumn streets of the multicolored autumn towns. Cars plowed through deep water and splashed any poor souls unfortunate and/or stupid enough to be out for a walk.
And it went on raining.
Elly Carr sat by her front window and looked at the rain. There was no poetic ritual of listening to the pitter-patter of tiny raindrops on the window pane. In the first place, the raindrops were not tiny. They were huge, monstrous and montizorous, and there is nothing particularly romantic in a montizorous raindrop. In the second place, montizorous raindrops do not go pitter-patter. They go whoosh, sort of, and they don’t fall on a window but lash at it. So Elly Carr sat looking at the rain, and listening to the whoosh of montizorous raindrops against the window pane, and not liking it at all.