But when things went right, then not even rain could spoil the perfection of the day. Then the world was Linc’s oyster and she was his pearl, and God was in his heaven and everything was just fine.
So she did not mind the rain.
Linc would be home soon. She checked her watch, counting minutes, waiting for him. He was going to take the rest of the day off — God knew he deserved some time off after the way he’d plowed through the book and the short story. They were going to have dinner out, maybe at The Gables or some similar restaurant, and then they’d come home for a few drinks and a little of the old togetherness routine.
And he was interested in things now. He’d been talking at breakfast about spending the winter in Mexico, insisting that it wouldn’t be too much more expensive than staying in the States, that they could combine business with pleasure, taking an apartment in Mexico City or a shack in a small fishing village. Linc would write, as usual, and they would have a ball. Besides, travel was tax-deductible for a writer. All he had to do was set a novel in Mexico and they could write off the trip.
That was Linc, she thought. They were broke, advanced to the hilt, and he was planning a trip and justifying it as tax-deductible. She wondered whether or not they would go and hoped that they would. Somehow they would get the money, and somehow they would manage to afford it, and it would be nice. Neither of them had ever been to Mexico. It would be a nice change.
She didn’t mind the rain at all.
She thought back to the slump now, remembering how bad it had been, remembering things which might better have been forgotten. She pictured herself sitting alone in the bathroom playing auto-erotic games like a sex-crazed teenager, but the image did not cause her to blush or to feel ashamed. She smiled to herself.
Slumps were hard times, hard for her and harder still for Linc. But you had to take the bad with the good, the wheat with the chaff, or something like that. It was like the weather — some days you were going to have rain and you had to accept it. The good times made up for the bad times with plenty of room left over.
Some women, she knew, had it easier. Some men — most men, for that matter — were a good deal easier to live with than Linc was. These were the steady men, the plodding men, the men who made no music and dreamed no dreams. They worked steadily and made love on schedule, and their wives lived an easy life.
That was fine for some women. Roz would have died of boredom.
Because those women did not know what they were missing. They couldn’t know the joy that came when your husband cracked through a barrier, when he did something really well and overflowed with satisfaction. They couldn’t look back on times like that surprise movie sale, when the two of them danced around like lunatics, staying up all night drinking to Hollywood and money and the times they were going to have together. They couldn’t imagine what real happiness was.
She felt sorry for them.
She went to the window. No, she thought, I do not mind the rain. Not at all.
The sunshine makes up for it.
22
Elly Carr was the kind of woman who had trouble making decisions. Now she was still at her window, still looking at water and listening to the whoosh of montizorous raindrops against the window, still trying to decide whether to have her cake or eat it, whether to run off with Maggie or stick with Ted.
Alone, she might never have made the decision.
She had help.
She saw the panel truck pull to the curb in front of her house. She tried to read the lettering on its side, but the rain was coming down so thick and so hard that she could not make it out. She saw the man get out of the truck and begin to make the trek through the rain up her driveway to the door. He was halfway to the door before she recognized him. Then her heart skipped a beat.
It was Rudy Gerber.
Rudy Gerber. The brawny and brainless one who delivered for the dry cleaner. But he was not delivering today; his hands were empty. And he was not coming to pick up anything, since this was not the pick-up day.
She shuddered. He was coming to pick up something, all right. He was coming to pick her up. And if there was one thing she did not want, it was the physical embrace of Rudy Gerber.
The thought alone made her nauseous.
She wanted to run, to hide. She heard him ring the doorbell and made no move to answer it, hoping against hope that he would go away and leave her alone. But he did not go away and leave her alone. He stayed precisely where he was, on her door-step, and he went on ringing the damned bell. She thought she was going to go out of her mind.
She thought insanely that she would sit in her chair by the window forever, and that eternity would spin itself out without her answering the door and without his taking a hint and leaving. But finally she stood up on shaky legs and walked to the door. She looked through the little window into his stupid pig eyes. Her hand found the doorknob, turned it, tugged.
The door opened and he came inside.
“I thought I’d give you a break,” he said thickly. “Thought I’d take a little time off work to give you a little pleasure. You had me worried when you didn’t answer the door.”
“Not... today,” she managed.
He went on as though he hadn’t heard her. “Worried,” he said. “I thought maybe you was with somebody else. You know, screwing for some other guy.”
“I—”
“And then I figured I’d have to sit around and wait for sloppy seconds. You know, take up where the other guy left off. But today’s my lucky day, huh? You’re all alone. I guess not many guys would’ve come out in rain like this just for a piece of you. But I’m hungry, Mrs. Carr. I can use a piece of you.”
“Get out,” she said.
“Huh?”
“I want you to get out.”
“I don’t getcha...”
“That’s the whole point,” she said levelly. “You don’t get me. Not today and not ever. You get the hell out of here and you don’t come back. You leave me alone or I call the police.”
He scratched his head, genuinely puzzled. Then his pig eyes assumed a crafty expression.
“You wouldn’t call no cops,” he said. “Not you. I could tell ’em a few things about good old Mrs. Carr that would set ’em on their ears. I could tell the whole town a few things about Mrs. Carr. Nice things. Juicy things. I don’t think you’ll call no cops.”
“Look—”
“And I don’t think I’ll get outta here just like that,” he went on. “You know how that rain’s comin’ down? You know what it’s like out there? I didn’t come through that rain for the hell of it. I came because I figured on taking you to bed. And you know something?”
She stared at him.
“I still figure on taking you to bed, Mrs. Carr.”
“No—”
He did not take her to bed, if one wishes to be precise. He took her, but on the living room couch rather than on the bed. She did not cooperate. She was raped.
She fought, but a girl her size could hardly expect to put up much of a fight against a man the size of Rudy Gerber. She raked his face with her nails, drawing blood, and she aimed a knee at his groin. But when he drew back a ham-sized fist struck her savagely in the stomach, the fight went out of her at once. She sagged and fell forward, and he caught her by the shoulders and led her back to the couch.
And raped her.
It took a long time, and it hurt, and it was awful. When it was over she crawled to the upstairs bathroom and showered. Then she threw up a few times and showered again.
Men were rotten.
Men were vile and evil; she did not want them and could not stand them. Men were like Rudy Gerber — they took you whether you wanted to be taken or not, because they were concerned with nothing other than their own self-satisfaction.