Her brief excursion with Raymond Griffin was something of an experiment with her. The other men she had known, though widely divergent in physical characteristics, had all possessed an almost animalistic power which glowed like a consuming fire in their eyes.
Griff was not like that at all. There was a quietness about him, an almost shy nature. He was a good-looking man in a quiet way, with a nice smile and a vacillatingly serious and jovial personality. He had not, upon first sight, stirred anything but curiosity in her well-curved bosom. But he had appealed to her. She was devout in her determination to throw off the pattern, and Griff had presented himself to her, and he had taken a place alongside her mother as another symbol of purity. And besides, his proposal had really been quite the cutest she’d ever received. She’d gone out with him.
She had been honestly dismayed by the crowded dance floor that night. Up to now, her body had been her sounding board, but in the new scheme of things, she tried to divorce herself from her body completely, and the crowded dance floor was a slap in the face to her plans. She had pulled away from him hastily, embarrassed by her mixed emotions, more embarrassed when she’d seen his embarrassment. Nor was the evening what she had expected. She was trying to fall in love, really in love, and she was discovering how difficult it was to fabricate emotion. They began drinking, and as she drank she became increasingly aware of the futility of the evening, of the futility of her determination, of the futility of her whole life. And as the alcohol spread to her blood, she suddenly wanted Griff to desire her as other men had desired her, knowing her body was winning out over her mind, but not caring very much any more, hating her body, and hating herself. They danced again, and she could tell he wanted her, and she was pleased with his response until the revulsion came over her again, revulsion at his embarrassment and at her own weakness. She had pulled away from him guiltily, again wondering where it would all end for Cara Knowles, puzzled by the dark road she traveled.
The night had been a dismal failure.
When he left her, she could not sleep. She told herself she had not given him an honest chance, and she decided to try again with him, if only he would ask her out again. So she’d been pleased when he turned up at the Guild Week party, even though he’d seemed very interested in the blonde on McQuade’s arm. When Griff took the blonde home, Cara had been strangely hurt, hurt perhaps for the first time in her life. She began drinking. It was easy to drink at the Guild Week party. There was a man there, and she drifted toward him and was not surprised when he took her home that night.
Jefferson McQuade was bigger but no more frighteningly animalistic than other men she had known. The only frightening thing about McQuade was the inner knowledge of what would eventually happen with him, and the knowledge of what would follow that. She had found a strange contentment in the rut of Julien Kahn, Inc. She did not know if she wanted to leave that rut. But she knew what would happen with McQuade, she was very familiar with the pattern of her life, too familiar with it.
She sat by the window of her bedroom that evening in a half slip and brassiere, reluctant to get into her dress. The heat mushroomed against her window like the recussion blast of an atomic bomb. She breathed with her mouth open, trying to suck in a semblance of air from the hot breath that fumed back at her.
It was no use. Heat and Cara Knowles would never be on more than nodding terms.
She rose abruptly and went into the bathroom. She washed her face and patted it dry, and then she touched a dab of cologne to her elbows and the backs of her ear lobes, and the hollow of her throat where the beauty spot crouched minutely.
From the bathroom, she called, “Time, anyone?”
“Seven forty-five,” her father answered.
“Thank you,” she chimed.
She left the bathroom, went back into her bedroom, and took a white cotton frock from its hanger. She didn’t know what McQuade had in mind for that evening, but she would definitely turn thumbs down on dancing. She carried the frock back to the bathroom, running into Dr. Knowles in the hallway.
“Oops!” the doctor said, turning, and she hastily held up the frock to cover the jutting cones of her brassiere, smiling at his embarrassment, immensely pleased. He was such a little boy, her father.
She put the dress on, and then smoothed it over her hips, wondering if she should wear a belt with it. The small patent leather, perhaps. No, the hell with it. She took the bobbies from her hair and then brushed it out, noticing the effect of its blue-black coloration against the whiteness of the dress. The dress had a yoke neck, and the brown beauty spot showed in the hollow of her throat. Beneath that, her breasts rose, straining against the high uplift of her brassiere, firm white mounds crowding the thin shadowed line between them.
She took her lipstick tube from her purse and then touched her brush to the crimson tip, moving the brush to her lips, carrying it a little beyond the edges of her lip line to increase the size of her mouth. She put the lipstick away and touched her lashes with mascara lightly. She took a last appraising look in the mirror and then went back into the bedroom, barefoot. From her top dresser drawer, she took a pair of nylon peds, slipping into them quickly. She found the Julien Kahn white linen pumps in her shoe bag, put them on, took another look at herself in the full-length mirror behind her closet door, sucked in her breath, and then went to sit by the window, waiting for McQuade.
He arrived at eight on the button. Mrs. Knowles came back to tell Cara her friend had come and Cara, fully dressed and waiting for five minutes, said, “Tell him I’ll be ready in a few minutes.”
Her mother, used to Cara, said nothing, but she secretly, told herself that such tactics were the best insurance you could buy against marriage, and then went to tell McQuade to make himself comfortable.
Morosely, Cara sat by the window, wishing wistfully, and a little sadly, that her escort for tonight were Griff rather than McQuade. Griff was a good guy.
The good guys and the, bad guys. The clichéd television concept caused her to smile. The meek shall inherit… what?
What had Griff inherited? He was a good guy, a nice guy. He’d taken her out, and he’d been embarrassed when she’d pressed her body against his, embarrassed even though he’d flared into excitement for a moment. He was a good guy, and he’d got nothing.
David Brooks, the first. He was really David Brooks III, but in her mind he would always be the first, and with wry amusement she realized she could no longer even remember his face, and the realization was painful. Had Brooks been a good guy? She dimly remembered him bragging about the sweet young freshman co-eds who had dropped their lacy lingerie and their honor at the sight of his virile form. Not a good guy, not a good guy at all, David. Why had she chosen him for the first? Does anyone ever choose anything, really? Things have a way of happening. Things happen when you’re ready for them.
And all the rest? Good guys? None like Griff, and the knowledge was at once exasperating and terribly saddening. She cared not a whit for Griff, really, but there was something somehow unjust about the fact that she had given him nothing, and the others she’d cared even less about got everything. If he had been in the room with her that moment, she would have recklessly seduced him, thrown all of her womanly wiles at him, done for him what she had never done, really given herself, sweetly, warmly, and only because he was good and down deep she knew she herself was rotten.
Not really rotten, Cara, she told herself. But a little moldy in spots.
Reluctantly she went out to greet McQuade.
From the instant she saw his eyes, she knew it would happen that night. The eyes she saw were the eyes of an old friend. She had learned those eyes well. They filled her neither with excitement nor dread. The eyes of an old friend never do.
“You look lovely,” he said, his voice more Southern than usual.
“Thank you,” she said lightly. He was a big man, McQuade, dressed now in a blue tropical suit, the solidity of the color making him appear larger. His blond hair was efficiently, economically combed. There was a smile on his face, and above the smile the gray eyes were ignited with the smoldering inner fire she knew so well.
“Are we ready?” he asked editorially.
“We are,” she said.
“Dancing?”
“Heavens, no. We’d melt.”
“Theater?”
“If you like.”
“Not really. I thought…” He smiled in embarrassment and then shrugged boyishly, contradicting the glow in his eyes. “Well, it’s a silly idea.”
His trick did not fool her. “What?” she asked.
“A drive to Jones Beach,” he said in a rush. “It’s such a hot night, Cara, but wonderful really, more stars than I’ve ever seen in my life. I thought… do you like the beach?”
For a moment, she wanted to shout No, not the beach. Dancing or the theater, someplace crowded, someplace where there are people, people. The rebellion died.
“It sounds good,” she said dully.
“Fine. Then let’s go.”
They said good night to her parents. Dr. Knowles shook hands with McQuade, his liking for the fellow all over his round dentist’s face.
They make a handsome couple together, he was thinking, a mighty handsome couple.