A pretty sweet girl—Sy Daniels had called her that. Also a girl who could spot a damned smooth bottom deal and identify it in card sharp’s code. Who the hell was she? What angle was she working?
I tossed the questions back and forth and made everything but answers. Then the questions faded slowly to black and I fell asleep.
3
Again, the same dream. This time there was a slight variation—I was dealing poker in the same Chicago backroom, there were six of us around a green, felt-topped table, a shaded light bulb hung some eighteen inches above the center of the table, and the room was thick with smoke. I dealt five-card stud. I gave cards to the players—ace of clubs, ace of hearts, ace of diamonds, ace of clubs, ace of hearts, ace of diamonds.
Everyone was staring at me, eyes angry. I took the pack and riffled through it, and every card in the pack was the ace of spades, the death card. Someone drew a knife, and someone else drew a gun, and I ran through cold dark streets with half the world chasing me—
The telephone eventually woke me. Before it did, though, I tried to weave the ringing into the pattern of the dream. The telephone kept on ringing until I came up for air and sat up in bed. I was sweating, and I couldn’t manage to catch my breath as I picked up the instrument.
“Hello?” I said.
Soft laughter, first. Then: “Did I wake you, Bill?”
“Oh,” I said.
“It’s me. Weren’t you expecting me?”
“I suppose I was.”
"You’re a good subway dealer, Bill. How did you wind up last night?”
“Ahead.”
She laughed again. “I want to see you,” she said.
“Where are you?”
“A block from your hotel. Can I come up?”
I took a breath. “Give me ten or fifteen minutes,” I said. “I’m not awake yet.”
I hung up, rubbed my eyes, moved out of bed. My cigarettes were on the dresser. I smoked a butt part way and stubbed it out in the ashtray. Then I picked up the phone and told room service what to send up for breakfast. I grabbed a fast shave, washed up, dressed. I put on a tie and a tweed jacket and tried combing a certain amount of order into my hair.
The doorbell rang. A waiter brought in a tray loaded down with orange juice, corned beef hash, toast and coffee. I signed the tab and slipped him a buck. I was finished with the food and working on the coffee when the phone rang and somebody told me that a Mrs. Rogers was there to see me. I told the voice to send her up.
I finished the coffee, started a cigarette. There was a knock at the door. I opened it and the room became perceptibly warmer.
Joyce wore a tan sweater and a dark brown skirt. Her green eyes were hard and soft at once—emeralds one moment and card-table felt the next. She drew the door shut behind her, then stepped past me and crossed the room to the bed. She sat on it, tucking a long leg beneath herself, while I wished I had taken the time to make up the bed. But she didn’t seem to mind. She had a lot of class, and yet you got the impression she was accustomed to unmade beds.
“You look puzzled,” she said.
“I am.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t know who you are,” I said. “You’re supposed to be Murray Rogers’ devoted wife, young and lovely and sweet. You sat down at the table last night and watched a few hands and spotted some of the smoothest card manipulation anybody’s likely to see anywhere. You called me on it in gambler’s argot without letting anybody know you tipped to me. And you let me take close to three yards out of the game without saying a word. I don’t get it.”
She opened her purse, withdrew a flat silver case. She took out a cork-tipped cigarette and put it between her red lips. Just sitting there, she managed to give off more sexuality than a stripper in Baltimore. I struck a match to give her a light and she took hold of my wrist to steady the flame. Her fingers pressed harder than they had to and her eyes held mine. Something happened, with electricity in it. I couldn’t look away from her.
Joyce said, “Who do you think I am, Bill?”
“I’d like to know.”
“Take a guess.”
I crossed to the dresser and stared at her reflection in the mirror. They say every man has a weakness. They say that for every man there’s a woman somewhere in the world who can make him jump through fiery hoops just by snapping her fingers. They say a man’s lucky if he never meets that woman.
All of a sudden I knew what they meant.
“Bill?”
“I think you used to sleep with a gambler,” I said.
“I used to sleep with lots of men.”
“Maybe.” I turned to face her. “You got out of it. You latched on to Rogers and married him. Evidently you’ve been playing it straight since then. Last night you watched me cheat and didn’t say a word. You could have queered things. You didn’t.”
“Honor among thieves?” she said.
“More.”
“What?”
“You could have just ignored me. You didn’t have to let on that you saw the bottom deal. You sure as hell didn’t have to come here today. You want something.”
“Oh? What do I want, Bill?”
“You tell me.”
Joyce didn’t answer with words. Instead, she stood up, that perfect body unfolding gracefully from the bed. I watched her while she tugged the tan sweater free from the waistband of her skirt, then pulled the sweater over her head and tossed the knit aside. My mouth became dry and my throat knotted up. She took off her skirt and her bra and her slip, her stockings and her panties. She did a sweet little strip and wound up standing there by the side of my bed, bare as the truth, and she smiled like an oversexed version of the Mona Lisa.
With clothes on she had been almost beautiful.
Now, nude, she was a goddess. The tips of her flawless breasts were stiff with preliminary passion. Her hips flared in an obscene invitation to Paradise. Her eyes were all fog and smoke.
“What do I want, Bill?”
Joyce walked toward me. Gears locked within me. I didn’t move toward her or away from her. I stood very still and she came closer. Her breasts jutted out like mortar shells. I could smell her perfume mingling with the hot animal scent of her body. She came closer, and I felt her body heat, and her lips were inches from mine. If I raised her face or lowered mine I could have kissed her. I didn’t.
“Bill—”
Then I did.
At first our lips just touched. Then a few bombs exploded and a few bells rang and all bets were off. I crushed her close, felt her breasts press hard against my chest, tasted her bittersweet mouth. Her arms were about me and I felt her and smelled her and tasted her and ached for her. My hands moved over her flesh. She was soft and sweet and warm.
Somehow I slipped out of my clothes. Somehow we steered ourselves to the bed where I filled my hands with the bounty of her breasts and she made little animal sounds from somewhere deep in her throat. I kissed her and her nails dug into my shoulders and the world took off on a joyride.
I ran my hands all over Joyce’s body like a skeptic searching for a flaw. No flaws, just perfection. I touched her legs, her thighs. I brushed my face over her flat stomach and she took my head in her arms and cradled it between her breasts.
Her voice was far away, husky, deep. “What do you think I want, Bill?”
We answered the question in the unmade bed with the lights on and the shades up. The room was on a high floor, so no one could have seen us, but we never thought about that at the time one way or the other. The lovemaking was too fast, too furious, too compulsive. There was deep need and dark hunger, and flesh merging with flesh, and an orchestral swell out of Tschaikovsky that led to a coda of pure Stravinsky. That vital dissonance was always there. That harsh and bitter beauty that tossed the conventional harmonies out the window…