He ignored it; he said, “You’re ass-deep in muck, Carol. With your history it’s far too late for a declaration of independence.”
“Why? What could you prove against me? You can’t use anything you’ve got on me without implicating yourself. You’d hardly do that. You’ve got thousands of feet of infrared film on me, but you’d never use it because you can’t afford to expose the men who appear on the film with me. Besides, who would you show it to? I haven’t got a family. The law wouldn’t care, and even if they did, I’d survive a fifteen-day sentence for prostitution.”
“I admire your guts,” he said. “But you haven’t thought it all the way through. Working for me, you’ve learned too much about too many people. Some of them couldn’t afford to let you off the hook, even if I could. You’re locked in, Carol. There’s never been any way out. You’re a white chip in a no-limit game, and there are too many people in it who wouldn’t care if they had to tie weights on you and drop you off a motor launch in Long Island Sound.”
“You could keep them off my back, if you wanted to. You could convince them I was no danger to them. I’ve built up a complete new identity, false passport and bank accounts-I can fade out of sight and come to the surface in England or on the Riviera with a whole new identity. If you cover for me, the rest of them will never find me.”
“Maybe I could,” he said, turning toward the door, “but I won’t. Not now. Maybe I’ll think about it later. In the meantime, you’ll stay put and do as you’re told.”
She felt exhausted; she had nothing further to say. At the door he paused and said absently, “That lawyer from the SEC who asked you about my shares-have you heard from him again?”
“No.”
“All right,” he said. “Don’t do anything foolish.” He gave her a flat, hard glance with his hooded eyes, and went.
She put on a dress, walked into the living room, and stared at the door he had shut behind him; crossed the room to the stereo and put an album on the turntable. It pushed a slow, soothing beat through the room. She was adjusting the volume when she heard a knock at the door.
Surprised, frowning a little, she walked to the door.
It was Russ Hastings.
He smiled and said, “May I come in? I’m unarmed.”
Not certain how to respond, she stood looking at him. He was dressed in a rumpled seersucker suit, and he had an unassailable amiability on his pleasant, blocky face. He was searching her face with an odd intensity, but his manner was pleasantly abrasive, like a coarse towel after a bath. He said, “What a beauty you are, Carol,” and grinned at her. “Look here-my palms are sweating from the effort of pronouncing your name.”
“Good Lord,” she said. She shook her head in amazement. “The hell with it. I need cheering up-come on in, then.” She stepped back to let him enter; she thought, I’m being a fool.
18. Russell Hastings
She walked away from him into the room, moving slowly, because it was more graceful; all her movements were studied.
Russ Hastings said, shutting the door, “You’re gorgeous.”
“What’s on your mind? I’m not sure I should have let you in.”
“I think I’d like a drink. I don’t mind fixing it myself-have one with me?”
“Why not?”
He went to the bar and watched her settle on one of the sectional pieces, drawing her lovely long legs up under her with a trim display of swelling calves and shapely ankles.
He mixed two drinks, heavy on the Scotch, and said to her, “I have been thinking about you all week. I decided Wednesday that I was in love with you, and Thursday that I wasn’t. Today I’m somewhere in the middle. Maybe I’m not in love with you, but what the hell does it matter? Whatever you want to call it, maybe it’s a way to ease loneliness. I need somebody-I guess that’s all it amounts to.”
He brought the drink across to her. “Very grave,” he judged. “Very self-possessed and cool and competent and bemused by my foolishness. Very beautiful, above all. The trouble is, you see, in my vague fantasies it’s far too easy to see you making a warm, serene home.”
“You’re drunk.”
“Only a little.” He tasted his drink, standing above her. “That piano record makes the room feel emptier, doesn’t it? It’s a good night for blues.”
“I’m sorry you’re so depressed,” she said evenly. “Is it something you want to talk about?”
“Excuse me. I thought I already had.”
“Oh,” she said. “That. I’m ignoring your little speech-hadn’t you noticed?”
“Then I’ll repeat it. I’ve decided I’ve fallen in love with-”
“Horse shit,” she said, smiling up at him. “You’ve decided. Sure you have. A strange bedfellow is better than none-that’s about the extent of it, isn’t it?”
He took his drink to a chair facing her and sat back, taking a long pull and feeling the heat of the whiskey travel his throat and chest. “I suppose you get this sort of thing from drunks all the time. You must have learned to shut your ears off-build a shell of indifference, it’s no good anybody trying to push themselves against it. That right? Okay, let’s see if I can bust it down. What do you do if I ask you flat-out to marry me?”
“Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Proposing marriage to me.”
His grin turned sheepish. “Who knows?”
“Don’t you ever commit yourself to anything, Russ?”
He recoiled. “I guess I asked for that, didn’t I?”
“I hate helping you pour salt in your own wounds, that’s all.”
He took another swallow and slid way down in his chair until he was sitting on the back of his neck. “Marry me. Just like that. How about it?”
“No.”
“No pause for thought? No moment to consider how I could take you away from all this?” He waved his arm around.
She laughed. “You’re funny when you’re drunk.”
He scowled. “I’m not sure it’s altogether a joke.”
“Let’s pretend it was.”
“Looking at you now, I’m absolutely certain of it. I do love you.”
“And how would you feel tomorrow or next week? I recommend a cold bath and aspirin. Anyhow, this dewy-eyed love business repels me. I suppose most women have some sort of atavistic mating instinct for a warm cave and children, but that got washed out of me a long time ago. Domesticity isn’t my thing. A life sentence of dirty dishes and diapers and orthodontists’ bills? Hah.”
“You’re a cruel and heartless wench, verily.”
“You don’t know me at all, Russ-and you’re not going to. Nobody likes a whore for long.”
“Ouch.”
“I’ve got too many fingerprints on me, and they all belong to men who know there’s nothing any of them asks that I won’t give them. Nothing. You understand?”
“Is that your biggest artillery? Because if it is, you’ve just fired a blank. I’m not scared off. This is the age of enlightenment and Aquarius.”
In a rich Kentucky twang she said, “Hawss shee-yit.”
He said, “I was sitting in a bar watching my drink sweat, and suddenly I said to the glass, ‘And here I sit alone with you.’ So I came up here. I haven’t got a lot of money on me. I suppose you wouldn’t be impressed by my wallet. What would you charge to marry me?”
“You’ve beaten that joke to death, Russ.”
He felt a little dizzy; he sat up straighter. It took him a moment to marshal his thoughts. Finally he spoke with slow care. “I am getting very old,” he said. “The world I grew up in seems to have disappeared someplace while I wasn’t looking. I grew up equipped with a sense of how things ought to be. Standards-things that ought to matter, right and wrong. There used to be a point to things, you know? But now everything seems to be beside the point, somehow-I don’t even know what the point is anymore. Look, I’m thinking of tossing it all up and going out West, live in the country someplace and raise dairy cows. How’d you like that?”