I had a corner room on the sixth floor overlooking Salem Common, and through the trees I could just make out the cupola of the bandstand where I had met the old witch-woman the other day. The room was rather too brown for my taste, brown carpet, brown-and-orange drapes, brown-and-white bedspread, but it felt secure and warm and it was a long way away from Quaker Lane Cottage.
As I lay back on the double-bed with my shoes off, waiting for my fillet medium-rare, I wondered what was happening at the cottage right now. Would Jane appear there, even if I wasn't there to witness her visitation? How much did the appearance of a ghost depend on the people who were being haunted? I could imagine her flickering image wandering from room to room, searching for me; and the whispering voices everywhere.
I thought of something else, too. Supposing I did drown tomorrow, or die in some other way. Would I find myself in that same electrically-charged limbo as Jane? Would I become one of those distorted figures like her, fading from one reality to another, never at rest? Was she conscious of what she was? Was it really her, in the sense that she knew who she once had been?
I was still thinking about Jane when there was a sharp knock at the door, and I involuntarily jumped in fright.
'Right with you,' I said, and padded across the carpet on stockinged feet. I unlocked the door, and opened it; but instead of my fillet medium-rare and my jacket potato, it was Gilly. She was crimson-nosed from the cold, but smiling, and she was carrying a brown-paper bag which looked more than suspiciously like a bottle of wine.
This is a peace-offering for being late,' she said. 'May I come in?'
'Of course. Let me take your coat. You look like you're half-frozen.'
'Actually, I'm half-thawed. I was totally frozen when I was out at Middleton. Those little old spinsters are dedicated believers in doing things the old-fashioned way. If you can't get your house warm enough with your wood-burning stove, then put on another couple of sweaters. Central-heating is the work of the devil, making people soft and complacent and idle.'
'Sit down,' I told her. 'I'm having some steak sent up in a while. Would you like some?'
‘I’m dieting, but I'll nibble at yours.'
'What kind of diet are you on?' I asked her.
'I call it my Pricey Diet. I allow myself to eat anything as long as it costs more than $7 a pound. That takes in caviar, smoked canvasback duck, salmon, finest aged fillet steak. Really expensive food is rarely fattening, and in any case you generally can't eat too much of it.'
We talked for a while about antiques, and the tourist trade. I guess after all we were both shopowners. Then the waiter came up with my steak, and we opened the bottle of wine, Fleurie 1977, and drank a toast to each other. I cut up the steak and we shared it, hardly talking at all while we ate.
'You probably think it's very bold of me, coming up to your room like this,' said Gilly.
I put down my napkin and smiled at her. 'I wondered when you were going to say that.'
She blushed. 'I guess I had to say it at some point. I had to give you your opening for telling me that of course I'm not bold, of course it's perfectly acceptable for a girl to come up to a strange man's hotel room unescorted, and eat half of his dinner.'
I looked at her seriously. 'It seems to me that with Linen & Lace you've shown that you're quite mature enough to do what you want, without seeking any justification from me.'
She thought about that, and then she said, in a higher voice, 'Thank you.'
I pushed the dinner trolley outside into the hallway, and then I came back and lay down on the bed, with my hands behind my head. Gilly stayed where she was, kneeling on the floor.
'You know something,' I said, 'I'm never quite sure how it is that two people meet each other, or how they decide whether they're mutually attracted, or what the ground-rules of their relationship are going to be. All that part of it, the most important part, seems to me to be decided almost instantaneously, and without any discussion at all; and any discussion after that is simply a matter of trimming the sails here and there.'
'Well,' said Gilly, 'you are nautical.'
'It's living here that does it. I haven't got salt in my blood yet, but I've started sprinkling it on my salad.'
She stood up, and looked down at me. Her lips were slightly parted, and there was a thoughtful, erotic look in her eyes which I hadn't seen in a woman since I first met Jane. She said, quietly, 'Do you mind turning out the light?'
I reached over and switched off the bedside lamp. The only light in the room now came from the television; and Gilly was outlined against it. Carefully, slowly, she unbuttoned the cuffs of her blouse, then the lace front placket, and drew it over her head. She was wide-shouldered, but her breasts were bigger than I had thought, warmly cradled in a hand-made lace bra. She unzipped her skirt, and let it fall, and I saw that she was wearing dark gray stockings and a black garter-belt. No panties, though: the light from the television silhouetted the wayward curls of pubic hair.
She unhooked her bra, and her breasts were freed with a soft, complicated little bounce. I held out my hand to her.
'I'm not an easy person to satisfy,' she said, in a husky voice. 'I guess that's one of the reasons I always avoid relationships with men. I need a very great deal, I ask a lot; emotionally and sexually.'
Tor what it's worth,' I said, 'I can give you everything I've got.'
I sat up, and stripped off my shirt, and socks, my pants and my shorts. Gilly lay down beside me, still wearing her stockings and garter belt, and I could feel the softness of her hair against my shoulders, and the heaviness of her wide-nippled breasts against my chest, and the warm slipperiness of nylon against my thighs.
We kissed, tentatively at first, then with increasing passion. Her hands tugged at my hair, caressed my shoulders, gripped at my hip. I held her breast in my hand, arousing the nipple between my fingertips until it stood crinkled and stiff. My erection rose against the shiny tightness of her stocking, and she put her hand down and held it tight in her fist, pressing and massaging it against her pubic hair.
Neither of us needed very much foreplay; neither of us could actually stand it. For different reasons, both of us had been deprived of sexual company for longer than was good for us, and the pressure suddenly rose between us until there was nothing that either of us wanted but forceful, urgent, uncompromising sex.
I thrust myself into her, and she was hot and moist and gasping with every thrust. The inside of my brain felt as if it were blowing up; but the explosion went on and on and on, and she clutched her legs around me so that I could thrust deeper still, and her fingernails dug into the flesh of my back and her teeth bit deeply into the muscle of my shoulder.
'Oh, God, harder, harder, harder,' Gilly urged me, and I grasped her hips in my hands and forced her down on to me until she gasped and yelped and thrashed her head from side to side on the pillow.
I could feel the orgasm begin to tighten and ripple inside her like shockwaves just before an earthquake. She spoke words that I couldn't understand; breathy and high-pitched, almost as if she were cursing and pleading at the same time. Her eyes were squeezed tight shut and her face was congested. Her breasts were flushed and her nipples tight and erect.
It was then, right on the brink of climax, that I opened my eyes and looked down at her, and froze. For superimposed on Gilly's face, as if she were wearing a coldly-glowing mask, was Jane's face, hollow-eyed, emotionless, flickering in that threatening electrical way. And for one hideous instant I didn't know if I was making love to Jane, or Gilly, or to nothing at all but my own hallucinating imagination.
Gilly blinked open her eyes, and they showed through the dark sockets of Jane's electrical mask in fright and surprise.