"Okay, Carol." He reached into his pocket for a cigarette, lit it, and blew the smoke in her direction. "Later."
He went out the door. A blue circle of smoke floated in the air above Carol's head.
CHAPTER XIV
Carol lay in the bed as Harry had left her. The house was quiet. It had been quiet for six days. Phillip stayed carefully out of the room, letting his daughter digest the terrible pain of Harry's disappearance.
But Phillip knew where he was, and Carol knew it too. They were both afraid of the big thing Harry had to do, afraid that somehow his act of defiance was a final act, and he would be forever out of their lives.
Harry wanted a white elephant, and he wanted the Llewellyn jewels as a gesture. When a thief becomes an artist, he is finished. His art has to be tragic art, and he has to be his victim's victim. It was to Carol as if a genius, hardly more than an idea, had slipped through her fingers, had escaped her. But Harry didn't belong to himself. She couldn't have him because he couldn't have himself. He was too big for her, and too small for her, because he really wasn't there. But he had left her and she was depleted, her flesh crying. He had left her hot for a phantom, and emptied by what? By something in her own head. In hers and Phillip's head.
When Wilbur came to the door and knocked gently, she said, "Come in," firmly, wanting her voice to ring in the still room. He entered with a tray of coffee and thin buttered toast. She sat up in the bed, pale and weak.
"How are you feeling today, Miss Carol?" Wilbur said.
"Is Mr. Johns awake?" she asked.
"Oh yes." Wilbur was genuinely perturbed. "He's hardly slept at all since you've been ill."
"I'm much better now," she assured him. "Tell Mr. Johns I'm better."
"Are you sure you won't see a doctor?" His voice was pleading, the prerogative of the oldest slave on the plantation. "It might be that you have a vitamin deficiency."
So that's what the kitchen talk was about. Vitamins. They'd probably read an article about vitamins in one of the issues of Femme.
Get some Park Avenue doctor to talk about B complexes, and all kinds of complexes. The ladies liked to read about complexes.
A clear blue-grey light filled the room. Carol lay back on the pillows, much as Harry had left her, her eyes half open, staring toward the open window.
Phillip walked into the room. He was dressed in robe and pajamas.
He was clean shaven, but his eyes looked haggard, his skin sick and dull. It had been a difficult wait for Carol. Without looking at Phillip she said monotonously, "Where did he come from anyway?"
Phillip walked to the window and looked out at the dense garden.
The light outside was bleak.
"Where he comes from doesn't interest me now," he said softly, a strange softness. "I know where he's gone."
Carol looked directly at him, then looked away.
"Will he come back?"
"I don't know, baby." Phillip stood over the bed, serious and tired.
"Do you want him to come back?"
"I don't know." She was trying to reach out to Phillip. "Maybe I don't want him to come back. Maybe he's done everything to me that can be done. Maybe he's finished and there's no point in his coming back." She started crying. "Maybe that's why he left. Because he finished me, and there was nothing more to be done."
Phillip sat at the edge of the bed and took her delicate wrist between his thumb and forefinger. "He took my gun," he explained, "and the sedan."
She was silent. "Then if he makes it, he'll be back."
Phillip bent his head and kissed the crook of her arm. She trembled in subtle response. "If he makes it."
"I bet he makes it," she said half aloud and half defiantly, fighting for her life.
Phillip's head was down on the pillow, beside hers. It would all go on, wouldn't it, as if another man had never touched her. It would all go on, and nothing would go on.
"Let's hope he makes it," Phillip said in a hollow voice. Carol's body felt mummified. He reached under the covers and began to rub her body, like an exorcist fighting with the devil. He rubbed her belly and thighs, kneading the flesh between his strong fingers.
"You feel wonderful darling," he whispered. "Your flesh is very strong and firm."
She laughed, "Not terribly weak! I've lain sick in this bed for a week, wanting another man, and now you're going to command my cunt. Yes, you're going to fuck me and everything will be back to normal."
"No, baby," he patiently explained, his hand traveling to the naked vagina. "Baby, that's strong. We have to be resilient. We've got to be able to come back to ourselves, always. Harry isn't one of us," he continued. "Harry is possessed. Harry is a genius." His finger moved into the dry crevice. "And we can't fit geniuses into our lives. We'd have to change too much for that."
He ran his mouth over her hair and eyes and neck and soft breathing breasts. "We don't want to change completely. We love the familiar, the comfortable… We're normal people," he further intoned. "We have little time to give to geniuses."
"I want him," Carol said finally. "I want to change. If he comes back, Phillip, if he wants me, I'm his."
"You're mine, Carol," Phillip warned. "I haven't educated you for another man. You can want another man; that just gives you another dimension. But you're mine. You and the other man become mine.
Now I have two of you, Carol — you and your little fantasy that there's something in you separate and apart for Harry. Now I have the part of you I shall always have, and the part you reserve for Harry."
He covered her soft nipple with his mouth. She sank deep into the pillows.
"Harry will save me," she warned. "Harry will take me away from you." His teeth were shaping tiny bites on the tightening, stiffening tit.
His hand wandered to the other breast. He pinched the hungry flesh.
He brushed the hairless mound of her cunt, and then lifted his hot face to look at her. "No disguise," he murmured, tracing her belly and smooth pussy. "No disguise for me, Carol. I always see you. I always see my daughter, my sick little girl, behind all the disguises. You need that, don't you? You need to be seen occasionally.
"Harry doesn't see anything, because Harry doesn't care. He's a dedicated man. He's got a habit. He'd leave you in a second, without a thought, without an idea that there was an alternative act — just for a diamond that glittered on the horizon. He'd leave you again and again to get to the end of his rainbow. And you know where the end is, Carol. You're a smart girl. You know Harry's going to be all alone when he gets there."
She started to answer, to plead, to say anything. She couldn't say, "It isn't true, Phillip. He'll come back and take me with him." And that was the only thing worth saying, the only thing that had meaning for either of them. Phillip brushed the thin nightgown aside, and stuck his hot mouth to her cunt. He sucked deeply, until he had pulled the hidden, tamed clitoris erect into his mouth. Then, when her hips jerked mechanically and uncontrollably, he sank his tongue deep into her musty sex, and ate her.
Harry said, "A hamburger and a black coffee."
The short-order cook threw the raw meat on the grill. "Relish, sir?"
"No." He knew he wasn't going to eat it anyway. He hadn't been able to eat or sleep in the hot little Cuban town, waiting for the Llewellyn garden party. Somehow, Mrs. Llewellyn had overlooked extending an invitation to Harry, but he'd be there. No one had traveled further, or planned more carefully to mingle with the Llewellyn guests.
Then a brief swim in the dry pool, and he'd get back to Carol. But that was so far away. He could only think as far as having the magnificent jewels in his hands.
He took a few bites out of the decorated hamburger, and suddenly impatient, dropped a dollar bill on the counter and walked through the swinging doors. He marched swiftly down the narrow street of the crowded native section of the town. The Keys seemed completely Spanish today, puff-white in an azure sky. There were sounds of folk guitars and rapid sibilant Spanish voices, high and eager. Some shops were boarded up for the four-hour siesta. Harry kept moving till he reached the old piers on the far end of the village.