“Gimlet,” Karen said. “Double.”
“Two doubles,” Harry said.
The waiter went away. The music was soft and professional. The place was clean, airy, not noisy. Even before the drink came, Harry felt himself starting to relax. After the drink, he was in complete command.
The waiter came again. “Do you wish to order now?”
“No,” Karen said. She pushed aside the menus. “I’ll have another gimlet.”
“Double again?” said the waiter.
“Double,” Karen said.
Harry nodded.
They drank more slowly this time. Their knees were touching. “All right, Karen, let’s have it,” Harry said.
“What?” Karen said.
“‘You’re in terrible trouble, Harry.’” He mimicked her voice and intonation.
“Oh, that,” she said.
“That,” he said.
“I’ll have to start from way back.”
“Go ahead.”
“Would you rather eat first?”
“There’s plenty of time.”
“Funny. A drink is supposed to stimulate the appetite.”
“Maybe two drinks kills it.”
“How about four?”
“Four?”
“Actually, darling, we’re on our fourth. Doubles.”
“Karen, you’re stalling.”
“You bet I am.”
“Why?”
“Trouble isn’t pleasant. You’re in a lot of it. I’m in trouble, too, but not so much, and anyway, I’m used to it.” She smiled crookedly. “I’ve been stalling for weeks now.”
“Well, you can stop right now. What did you mean, Karen?”
She put down the gimlet and reached for a cigarette. He held a match to it.
“Thanks, darling. Well, it starts with a kid going to college in Los Angeles. Me. Father dead, mother working as a waitress. She was an old woman; it had been a late marriage, I was an only child. Well, I was graduated with a B.A. from U.C.L.A. Now what in hell does a girl do with a Bachelor of Arts degree?”
“Any number of things.”
“All of them piddling.”
“What did you want?”
“Money. Real money, and the sooner the better.”
It was Dr. Harry Brown’s turn to smile crookedly.
“We were always just scraping along. Even as a kid I dreamed of living easy and rich, à la Hollywood pipe dreams. How does a girl with a Bachelor of Arts degree make a pipe dream come true? Get right up there in the big money?”
“She marries it, if she’s pretty enough.”
“Do you think I’m pretty enough?”
“You’re beautiful,” he said bitterly.
“I went where the money was. I’d taken stenography and typing, and I got good secretarial jobs in big outfits, with big people. I kept looking for a rich husband, and I struck out. The loaded ones were either already married or gunshy; they all wanted to sleep with me, but without benefit of clergy. Then my mother died. I chucked the whole secretarial bit and became a dancer.”
“Dancer?”
“A stripper.”
“You?” Harry stared at her. “Wasn’t that a waste?”
“Look, Junior. My high I.Q. and my B.A. degree found no customers. I took inventory and decided I had more negotiable assets — what you lechers call a luscious hunk of stuff. And I was twenty-five by then, and time was awastin’.”
“No love?”
“Pardon?”
“Twenty-five, and you hadn’t fallen in love?”
“I thought so, two or three times. They turned out to be jerks. I can’t stand a jerk. I’ve never been in love.”
“Never?”
“Until you, of course, darling.” She leaned over and smiled and squeezed his hand.
After a moment Harry withdrew his hand to light a cigarette. “So you were twenty-five and you became a stripper.”
“With my equipment it was the easiest way in. There’s a lot of money in knowing how to take your clothes off. It’s an art. In fact, there are schools that teach it.”
“I didn’t know that,” said Dr. Brown. “There’s a lot I don’t know.”
“Well, there are. I had some money saved, and I went to the best school I could find.”
“And you learned how to take your clothes off.”
She laughed. “There’s more to it than that. And if you’re any good, they place you after graduation. I was good and they placed me. I did the whole wheel.”
“Wheel?”
“Los Angeles, San Francisco, Reno, Vegas, New Orleans, Detroit, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Miami, New York, Philly. The strip circuit. I earned three, four hundred a week, which gave me the kind of clothes I wanted. And I met well-heeled Johns and hooked them for cars, apartments, furs, jewels, bank accounts — while all the time I kept my line out for the one big fish with the ring in his nose. Pardon me if I brag a little, darling. There were few strippers around with my equipment. I’m not talking about merely body — I’m talking about the I.Q. and the degree, too. I was really a rarity in the profession. A gal who could discuss Renaissance painting and the Angry Young Men as well as bump and grind. Oh, I knocked around, and got knocked around — an educated bum, you might say. But I was a lady, and they all knew it.”
She was silent for a while, and Harry beckoned the waiter. “Another round,” he said. “Make these singles. Go on,” he said to Karen.
“I found myself working in a Philadelphia club. A man named Kurt Gresham showed a great interest in me — he was there very often. I didn’t find out he owned the joint till a long time later.” She laughed again. “He was big, the kind of fish I’d dreamed about, a millionaire. He’d obviously gone overboard for the whole woman — the body, the face, the youth; later I found out that he checked out my background, U.C.L.A. the B.A., everything. I played him very cool, darling; he got the stiff arm all the way. And he flipped. Grabbed hook, line and sinker.”
She picked up the fresh gimlet. “My luck had finally turned. But I knew I had to play Kurt carefully, or he’d get away. He got nowhere with me sexually. I hooked him in the head, where he lived.”
Harry sipped his drink very slowly. He did not want to get drunk. Not yet, anyway.
“He was more than twice my age,” Karen murmured, “and three times married — divorced from his first wife; the other two had died. The more he pitched, the more reserved I got. When he was hot, I was cool. The more physical he got, the more intellectual I got. I think it was the brains that finally landed him. He pulled me off the floor and made me assistant manager of the club. I played along; the salary was good; I knew my fish was hooked and having his run. And then he propositioned me.”
“With what?”
She looked at him coolly. “You know damned well with what.”
“I do?”
“Coyness doesn’t become you, you hairy ape. We’re letting our hair down now, my love.”
“We are?”
“Yes,” she snapped. “For our mutual protection.”
Harry finished his drink. He was fighting the happy feeling. “So?” he said.
“Bit by bit, he sounded me out. Oh, I know him now. He’d done all the checking; he knew money was my weakness. I was his pigeon — just as you are, Harry. Of course, I had one advantage you and the other pigeons don’t have. He wanted to use me, as he’s now using you, but he was also in love with me. Finally, he let me in on the whole story, and I was either in or out. Do you know what out means with Kurt, Harry?”
“What?”
“It means you’re dead.” When he did not reply, Karen said, “Where was I?”
“You had the whole story. You were propositioned.”
“He knew — don’t ever underestimate him, Kurt is a genius — he knew with me, just as he knew with you, that I wouldn’t refuse him. I didn’t.”
“You became manager of the club.” He was tearing a cigarette butt to shreds.