“This is yours, Nat. You bought it, even when it wasn’t for sale. You’re paying for it. Don’t you want it anymore?”
She held her breasts in her hands, cupping them from below as if offering them for my approval.
“These belong to you now. You didn’t get very much for your money, but they’re yours.” She spread her legs and stroked herself. “So is this. Aren’t you going to use it?”
“Cut it out.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Crowley.”
“Dammit—”
“Anything I can do to arouse you? Any new position you’d like to try? We can do it standing on our heads in a closet if you want, Mr. Crowley. Just say the word.”
I slapped her. I hadn’t meant to hit her that hard and she rubbed the side of her face.
“I’m sorry, Annie.”
“Why? You’ve got the right.”
“Annie...”
She turned from me. “I gather you don’t want me in bed tonight. And that you’re not too taken with my company. I’d like to get dressed and go downstairs and feed a slot machine.”
“There’s one here.”
“I know. I’d like to get dressed and go downstairs and feed a slot machine. Is that all right with you?”
“Whatever you want,” I said.
“And may I have fifty dollars to gamble with, Mr. Crowley?”
I gave her a hundred.
That was the third night. She went downstairs and I stayed where I was and drank myself to sleep. That was the third night, and it was a bad one.
Then there was the fourth night.
It started with her having too much to drink. She had been doing a lot of drinking since we got off the plane but the fourth night was heavier than usual. She was lapping up gin and tonic as though somebody were passing the Volstead Act all over again. We were downstairs in the casino and I was having a good run with the dice. I made a lot of passes — six, I think, which is a long string — and then sevened out on an easy point. I walked away from the table and took a drink away from her.
“Enough,” I said.
“Never enough. You a cop?”
“No. Let’s go upstairs, Annie.”
“Want my drink.”
I took her arm and she pouted at me. “Goddamned gangster. Steal a drink from a girl. You bum, Nat.”
I got her into the elevator. She had a few more choice words on the way up but the kid who ran the elevator was used to it. He managed not to hear a thing. We left the elevator and I took her to our suite, opened a door and led her inside. “C’mon,” I said. “You’re going to bed.” She shook my hand away and took a step backward. Her blue eyes were glassy now. Her lipstick was mostly gone.
“I just don’t get it,” she said.
“Don’t get what?”
“There has to be a line somewhere. You get to a point where you know about things, you understand things, you have this — this awareness. Of what’s going on. But then you wind up tolerating everything. You put up with things the squares couldn’t stomach. You play around with crooks just to prove how hip you are. And you sleep with a rotten mindless killer—”
I slapped her, hard.
She stepped back. Her hand went to her face where I had hit her. The eyes were wide now and the glassy look was gone. She was sober, or close to it.
“You hit me again, Nat.”
I didn’t answer that one.
“I suppose I had it coming,” she said. “I’m supposed to be part of the luggage, right? Something decorative. Something to carry around, something to leave in the bedroom. Not something to talk to or to be decent to. I didn’t stay in my place, Nat, and I had it coming.”
“Annie...”
Her next words came in a low whisper. “I’ll make you sorry, Nat. I’m a person, goddamn it. I don’t have to get stepped on.”
I reached for her. Instead of catching her I caught her hand with my face. Something snapped.
“You damned—”
“I’m a whore, Nat. Nothing more, nothing less. You made me your whore and that’s just what I am.”
“Then strip!”
Her eyes flashed. “You want your money’s worth?”
“I want my money’s worth.”
“Money for the airlines,” she said. “Money for food and money for the hotel. Money to gamble away. Money for clothes and money for gin and gin and gin. I hope you get your money’s worth, Nat.”
She was wearing a black evening gown, simple and attractive. I watched her grip the gown at the top, in front, and rip. The dress was silk and it tore like children shrieking. It ripped all the way down. She stepped out of it and left it on the floor.
There was a bra, which went next. Then a pair of sheer panties. And then she stood in front of me quite naked and quite ridiculous in high-heeled black shoes.
She kicked off the shoes. She kicked hard and they sailed across the room, past me. One of them bounced off a wall. I looked at her again. She very deliberately drew the sheet and covers off the bed, then stretched out upon her back. Her eyes were still furious.
“Come on,” she taunted. “You’re paying for it.”
I got my clothes off and went to her.
It was like that earlier time — all the anger, along with something that verged on hatred. I felt this wild need to possess, this strong urge to dominate. As for her, at first she played the cold machine, the automaton, the hired servant. Then something happened as I worked myself inside her. Something like war and again like murder. Not like love, not at all.
She made the small noises that an animal might make in a steel trap. She screamed once, and once she spoke my name — Crowley’s name — with loathing.
But that doesn’t mean she didn’t respond physically in spite of herself. Her head rolled from side to side. Her body arched in such a way that she became a target I couldn’t possibly miss. I became a sort of automatic revolver whose barrel kept sliding back and forth.
Her breathing was a rasp. Her thighs clenched. For me the sensation was something like being in a cushioned vise. Anne was hoarse and I was hoarse — from calling out gutter names to one another. And at last there was the explosion: the trigger pulled, the chambers emptied.
There were no words when it was over. I rolled away from her, exhausted, maybe a little afraid. My eyes closed by themselves. I listened to her ragged breathing. My back hurt, now, where she had scratched me with her nails. Before I had not even noticed the pain.
I thought I heard her crying quietly, sobbing. And then I didn’t hear anything.
I slept soundly and completely. I hardly dreamed at all.
16
It was Wednesday, around eight in the evening. We’d had a pair of big lobsters at a seafood joint and now we were back at the High Rise. I sat on the edge of the bed listening to the water running in the john. Anne was taking another shower. She took them on the average of three times a day. A clean-living girl.
I picked up the telephone and gave Tony’s number to the kid on the switchboard. I listened some more to Annie’s shower while the switchboard put the call through. Then Tony’s phone rang twice and he answered it
“Nat,” I said. “How’s the weather?”
“Rain. Nothing but rain, you lucky bastard.”
“You’re making me homesick.”
“Having fun, Nat?”
“You could call it that. At least it isn’t raining.”
A pause. “Nothing wrong, is there?”
“Just that it’s boring. Everybody shakes my hand and kisses my butt and points me toward the casino. They hurry to bring drinks to me. They step aside if I go near a crap table.”
“That’s because they love you.”