Dex sat down on the edge of the bed and stared down at Gena.
"Before I go, tell me one thing," Dex said, stroking her fingertips nervously down the length of her pants till she reached the knee. "Does Morton have anything to do with the place? Is she giving you money… or anything?"
A burst of guffawing laughter erupted from Gena. It was the first sign of life that Dex had seen since they had made love. Dex felt her eyelids close beneath the squinting pressure of her anger.
"That one," Gena said. "Since when does she give anything to anybody?"
An unmistakable sound of bitterness rang strongly in Gena's rhetorical question. Bitterness and knowledge.
Gena shut her eyes and turned her head to one side, half-burying it in the pillow. Morton. She could see the woman's eyes, the way they devoured her body at first, only to grow bored when Morton had gotten what she wanted. What she had wanted from Gena had been her virgin mouth. And she'd gotten it. Gena had wanted to cry at first when she saw Dex demanding the same thing. When instead it had made Dex even more passionate towards her; it was even more depressing. Dex should have had the first licks from her tongue on a woman's sex. It might all have been different then. She would never have this gnawing sense that she had been used for cheap satisfaction and then discarded when satisfaction was rendered.
Through her closed eyelids she saw Morton's thighs, the massiveness of them. And then she saw the gaping hungry mouth of her cunt, demanding to be given what it wanted. She could almost smell the woman. She had had a heavy odor like a female animal. Crushing her labia against Gena's lips, she had been total, brutal and selfish. Gena's eyes had watered, she had choked, but the churning, grinding cunt would not stop until it had flushed itself of its need. Morton had clamped her thighs around the girl's head, bulldozing her way to orgasm.
Dex felt her insides contract. She did not have to read Gena's mind now. That last sentence had told her the complete history of her relationship with Morton.
"Come on." Dex shook Gena by the shoulder. "You didn't love her. What do you give a damn about her character?"
"No, I didn't love her," Gena's voice echoed with memories. "And I never will."
"So forget it."
"Only fools love Morton," Gena persisted. "Maybe acid freaks and other assorted nitwits. Not people with half a brain." She stared off at the wall. "And I never gave her the satisfaction of crawling… of trying to make her give me my self respect back… She was the one who taught me all those tricks," Gena added in a quick, nervous voice. The sarcasm took over. "The other tricks I could have learned from her about using people, putting them down, making them crawl… well, now that I think of it, maybe they were catching. Hatred's pretty contagious."
"Shut up, damn you. Shut up." Dex heard her own voice raging out of control. Every word from Gena was a sharp slap in the face. A testament to the fact that Morton had left her mark, indelibly, on the one person that Dex had been able to care about.
As though the mattress were burning coals, she leaped up from it knowing that she had to get away from Gena. Leave her instantly. Leave her forever. There could be nothing but futility in a relationship with someone who kept thinking back to other days and nights with Morton.
Through Gena, Morton would be able to sink her fangs into Dex's spirit. She would be the death of her. Deliberately as if she had poisoned Dex with her own hand.
Dex scowled down at the girl and tried to swallow the harsh lump of revulsion.
"What could you want with her?" Dex rasped. "What did you see in her?"
But Dex knew better than to wait for an answer. There could be no answer, after all. The classic condition of wasted love had hit Gena as hard as it had hit herself through the years with Ryan.
Dex turned on her heel and went from the room, determined not to make a bigger fool out of herself than she had already. She flung herself headlong out the door and kept on moving, taking the steps down two at a time at breakneck speed in case something masochistic inside her tried to convince her to change her mind and go back to try again.
Try again. That was what never worked. Trying. Either you hit the bull's eye or you struck out forever. With love there could be no second chances. No patchwork operation.
Dex reached the street and kept on going as though she were being washed out to sea by an undertow that she had never dreamed existed. It was, in fact, the urge for self-preservation. The force that superceded all rationalizations when the chips were down and she, herself, out.
As Dex prowled the empty streets, she stared, face forward, into the pit of gloom that seemed to have no bottom. It had all happened so fast and so unexpectedly, that there had been no time at all to collect her wits.
With hands thrust deep into her pockets, Dex tried to collect herself now.
Ryan was gone, rubbed out of the picture because their relationship had been doomed since Ryan's first unfaithfulness.
Gena was gone, gone because she had never really existed except in a moment's impulsive dream.
Dex looked up at the sky. For the first time since her very early childhood, she was alone.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The buzzer rang in Robard's apartment. At first it had seemed to be ringing in a dream he was having, until he rolled over in bed and realized it was his front door.
He threw a leg over the edge of the bed, struggling to pull himself out of the first two hours of deep sleep. The bell was ringing incessantly. The urgency of it helped him to find something to wrap around his naked body and make it to the door.
"Yeah, who is it?" he yelled blandly at the door as he staggered into the entry and approached the door.
"It's me, Rob. I'm awfully sorry…" said a female voice. At first he couldn't figure out who it was, then it came in a flash. It was Ryan.
"Is that you, Ryan?" he said sleepily through the door.
"Yes, it's me. Can you…" Robard interrupted her by suddenly opening the door.
"Hi, baby. You're the last person I expected to see at my doorstep at two a.m."
"You're not the only one," said Ryan wearily as she came in and Robard locked the door behind her. He was suddenly wide awake. This was no unpleasant surprise, but it was a surprise. He didn't know quite what to do or say at first. Ryan had never called on him at that hour. In fact, few people did.
Robard was a bachelor with a set pattern. He liked getting up early, liked daylight, and as soon as the sun went down his mind aimed towards sleep. Despite the unexpected lovemaking with Ryan that afternoon, his schedule had not changed much. Friends knew his habits. Robard never had to answer doors or telephones after ten p.m.
"I know this is a crazy inconvenience on my part, Rob. And…" Ryan stood awkwardly between the hall and the living room, not quite sure of which way to move or what to say next.
"Don't be silly. You wouldn't be here if it wasn't important." Rob smiled and came up beside her. He laid his hand on her shoulder and kissed her neck. "Let me put on a light so we can see each other."
The feel of the man's hand on her shoulder had sent a wave of calm through her body. Her physical reaction to Robard was a surprise. She had never felt calmed or reassured by a man before. It had always been Dex. Now, with that in a thousand pieces, Ryan felt marvelously reassured that someone else could work that same magic on her. She breathed deeply and smiled for the first time that evening.
When his hand slipped off her shoulder and Robard went off to put on a light, she felt lost.
"There we are. Sit down, Ry. You look beautiful, even at two in the morning. Sorry I can't say the same for myself. Forgive the towel costume. I'm a sleep-in-the-raw buff myself." Robard grinned, trying to relieve the tension he felt pouring out of Ryan.