The Stand, Page 97

  "I'll tell you what I think," Harold said. "I think it's easier to do a dirty job for yourself than it is to do for somebody else. Some of these guys, it's the first time they ever really worked for themselves in their whole lives."

  "Yeah, there's something in that, I guess. I'll see you tomorrow, Hawk."

  "Eight," Harold confirmed, and drove out Arapahoe to Broadway. To his right a crew comprised mostly of women was at work with a wrecker and a derrick righting a tractor-trailer truck that had jackknifed, partially blocking the street. They had drawn a respectable little crowd. This place is building up, Harold thought. I don't recognize half of those people.

  He went on out toward his house, his mind worrying and gnawing at the problem he thought he had solved long ago. When he got home, there was a small white Vespa parked at the curb. And a woman sitting on his front step.

  She stood up as Harold came up the walk, and put her hand out. She was one of the most striking women Harold had ever seen--he had seen her before, of course, but rarely this close up.

  "I'm Nadine Cross," she said. Her voice was low, close to being husky. Her grip was firm and cool. Harold's eyes dropped involuntarily to her body for a moment, a habit he knew girls hated, but one he seemed powerless to stop. This one did not seem to mind. She was wearing a pair of light cotton twill slacks that clung to her long legs and a sleeveless blouse of some light blue silky material. No bra under it, either. How old was she? Thirty? Thirty-five? Younger, maybe. She was going prematurely gray.

  All over? the endlessly horny (and endlessly virginal, seemingly) part of his mind inquired, and his heart beat a little faster.

  "Harold Lauder," he said, smiling. "You came in with Larry Underwood's party, didn't you?"

  "Yes, that's right."

  "Followed Stu and Frannie and me across the Big Empty, I understand. Larry came to see me last week, brought me a bottle of wine and some candybars." His words had a tinkling, false sound to them, and he was suddenly sure that she knew he had been cataloging her, undressing her in his mind. He fought an urge to lick his lips and won ... at least temporarily. "He's a helluva nice guy."

  "Larry?" She laughed a little, a strange and somehow cryptic sound. "Yes, Larry's a prince."

  They gazed at each other for a moment, and Harold had never been looked at by a woman whose eyes were so frank and speculative. He was again aware of his excitement, and a warm nervousness in his belly.

  "Well," he said. "What can I do for you this afternoon, Miss Cross?"

  "You could call me Nadine, for a start. And you could invite me to stay for supper. That would get us a little further along."

  That sense of nervous excitement began to spread. "Nadine, would you like to stay for supper?"

  "Very much," she said, and smiled. When she laid her hand on his forearm, he felt a tingle like a low-grade electric shock. Her eyes never left his. "Thank you."

  He fumbled his latchkey into its slot, thinking: Now she'll ask me why I lock my door and I'll mumble and stumble around, looking for an answer, and seem like a fool.

  But Nadine never asked.

  He didn't cook dinner; she did.

  Harold had gotten to the point where he considered it impossible to get even a half-decent meal out of cans, but Nadine managed nicely. Suddenly aware of and appalled by what he had spent his day doing, he asked if she could entertain herself for twenty minutes (and she was probably here on some very mundane piece of business, he cautioned himself desperately) while he cleaned up.

  When he came back--having splurged and taken a two-bucket shower--she was bustling around in the kitchen. Water was boiling merrily away on the bottled gas stove. As he came into the kitchen, she dumped half a cup of elbow macaroni into the pot. Something mellow was being simmered in a skillet on the other burner; he got a combined aroma of French onion soup, red wine, and mushrooms. His stomach rumbled. The day's grisly work had suddenly lost its power over his appetite.

  "It smells fantastic," he said. "You shouldn't have, but I'm not complaining. "

  "It's a Stroganoff casserole," she said, turning to smile at him. "Strictly makeshift, I'm afraid. Tinned beef is not one of the recommended ingredients when they make this dish in the world's finer restaurants, but--" She shrugged to indicate the limitations they all labored under.

  "It's nice of you to do it."

  "Not at all." She gave him that speculative glance again, and turned halfway toward him, the silky material of her blouse pulled taut against her left breast, molding it sweetly. He felt a hot flush creeping up his neck and willed himself not to have an erection. He suspected that his willpower would not be equal to the task. He suspected, in fact, that it wouldn't even be close. "We're going to be very good friends," she said.

  "We ... are?"

  "Yes." She turned back to the stove, seeming to close the subject, leaving Harold in a thicket of possibilities.

  After that, their conversation consisted strictly of trivialities ... Free Zone gossip, for the most part. Of this there was already a rich supply. Once, halfway through the meal, he tried again to ask her what had brought her here, but she only smiled and shook her head. "I like to see a man eat."

  For a moment Harold thought she must be talking about someone else and then realized she meant him. And he did eat; he had three helpings of the Stroganoff, and the tinned meat did not detract from the recipe at all, in Harold's opinion. The conversation seemed to make itself, leaving him free to quiet the lion in his belly, and to look at her.

  Striking, had he thought? She was beautiful. Ripe and beautiful. Her hair, which she had pulled back into a casual horsetail in order to cook more easily, was twisted with strands of pure white, not gray as he had first thought. Her eyes were grave and dark, and when they focused unhesitatingly on his, Harold felt giddy. Her voice was low and confidential. The sound of it began to affect him in a way that was both uncomfortable and almost excruciatingly pleasant.

  When the meal was done, he started to get up but she beat him to it. "Coffee or tea?"

  "Really, I could--"

  "You could, but you won't. Coffee, tea ... or me?" She smiled then, not the smile of someone who has offered a remark of minor risqueness ("risky talk," as his dear old mum would have said, her mouth set in a disapproving line), but a slow little smile, rich as the dollop of cream on top of a gooey dessert. And again the speculative look.

  His brain spinning, Harold replied with insane casualness: "The latter two," and was only able to contain a burst of adolescent giggles with a mighty effort.

  "Well, we'll start with tea for two," Nadine said, and went to the stove.

  Hot blood crashed into Harold's head the instant her back was turned, undoubtedly turning his face as purple as a turnip. Some Mr. Suave you are! he hectored himself feverishly. You misinterpreted a perfectly innocent remark like the goddam fool that you are, and you've probably spoiled a very nice occasion. And it serves you right! It serves you damned well right!

  By the time she brought the steaming mugs of tea back to the table, Harold's violent flush had faded somewhat and he had himself under control. Giddiness had turned just as abruptly to despair, and he felt (not for the first time) that his body and mind had been stuffed willy-nilly into the car of a huge roller-coaster made of pure emotion. He hated it but was powerless to get off the ride.

  If she was interested in me at all, he thought (and God knows why she would be, he added gloomily to himself), I have undoubtedly put paid to that by exposing the full range of my sophomoric wit.

  Well, he had done things like that before, and he supposed he could live with the knowledge that he had done it again.

  She looked at him over the rim of her teacup with those disconcertingly frank eyes and smiled again, and the shred of equanimity he had been able to muster up promptly vanished.

  "Can I help you with something?" he asked. It sounded like some lumbering double-entendre, but he had to say something, because she must have had some purpose in coming here. He
felt his own protective smile faltering on his lips in his confusion.

  "Yes," she said, and put her teacup down decisively. "Yes, you can. Maybe we can help each other. Could you come into the living room?"

  "Sure." His hand was shaking; when he set his cup down and rose, some of it spilled. As he followed her into the living room, he noticed how smoothly her slacks (which aren't very slack at all, his mind gibbered) clung to her buttocks. It was the panty line that broke up the smooth look of most women's slacks, he had read that somewhere, maybe in one of the magazines he had kept in the back of his bedroom closet behind the shoeboxes, and the magazine had gone on to say that if a woman really wanted that smooth and seamless look, she should wear a G-string or no panties at all.

  He swallowed; tried to, at least. There seemed to be a huge blockage of some kind in his throat.

  The living room was dim, lit only by the glow that filtered through the drawn shades. It was past six-thirty, and outside the evening was drawing toward dusk. Harold went to one of the windows to run the shade up and let more light in, when she put her hand on his arm. He turned toward her, his mouth dry.

  "No. I like them down. It gives us privacy."

  "Privacy," Harold croaked. His voice was that of an age-rusted parrot.

  "So I can do this," she said, and stepped lightly into his arms.

  Her body was pressed frankly and completely against him, the first time in his life anything of the sort had happened, and his amazement was total. He could feel the soft and individual press of each breast through his white cotton shirt and her silky blue one. Her belly, firm but vulnerable, against his, not shying away from the feel of his erection. There was a sweet smell to her, perfume maybe, or maybe just her own smell, that seemed like a told secret that bursts, revelative, on the listener. His hands found her hair and plunged into it.

  At last the kiss broke but she didn't move away. Her body remained against his like soft fire. She was perhaps three inches shorter, and her face was turned up to his. It occurred to him in a dim sort of way that it was one of the most amusing ironies of his life: When love--or a reasonable facsimile-had finally found him, it was as if he had slipped sideways into the pages of a love story in a glossy women's magazine. The authors of such stories, he had once claimed in an unacknowledged letter to Redbook, were one of the few convincing arguments in favor of enforced eugenics.

  But now her face was turned up to his, her lips were moist and half-parted, her eyes were bright and almost ... almost ... yes, almost starry. The only detail not strictly compatible with a Redbook's-eye view of life was his hard-on, which was truly amazing.

  "Now," she said. "On the couch."

  Somehow they got there, and then they were tangled up there, and her hair had come loose and flowed over her shoulders; her perfume seemed everywhere. His hands were on her breasts and she was not minding; in fact she was twisting and squirming around to allow his hands freer access. He did not caress her; in his frantic need what he did was plunder her.

  "You're a virgin," Nadine said. No question there ... and it was easier not to have to lie. He nodded.

  "Then we do this first. Next time it will be slower. Better."

  She unbuttoned his jeans and they snapped open to the zipper-tab of his fly. She traced a light forefinger across his belly just below the navel. Harold's flesh shuddered and jumped at her touch.

  "Nadine--"

  "Shhh!" Her face was hidden in the fall of her hair, making it impossible to read her expression.

  His fly was pulled down and the Ridiculous Thing, made even more ridiculous by the white cotton in which it was swaddled (thank God he had changed clothes after his shower), popped out like Jack from his box. The Ridiculous Thing was unaware of its own comical appearance, for its business was deadly serious. The business of virgins is always deadly serious--not pleasure but experience.

  "My blouse--"

  "Can I--?"

  "Yes, that's what I want. And then I'll take care of you."

  Take care of you. The words echoed down into his mind like stones flung into a well, and then he was sucking greedily at her breast, tasting the salt and sweet of her.

  She drew in breath. "Harold, that's lovely."

  Take care of you, the words clanged and banged in his mind.

  Her hands slipped inside the waistband of his underpants and his jeans slid down to his ankles in a meaningless jingle of keys.

  "Raise up," she whispered, and he did.

  It took less than a minute. He cried aloud with the strength of his climax, unable to help himself. It was as if someone had touched a match to a whole network of nerves just under his skin, nerves that plunged deep to form the living webwork of his groin. He could understand why so many of the writers made that connection between orgasm and death.

  Then he lay back in the dimness, his head against the sofa, his chest heaving, his mouth open. He was afraid to look down. He felt that quarts of semen must have splattered all over everything.

  Young feller, we've struck oil!

  He looked at her shamefacedly, embarrassed at the hair-trigger way he had gone off. But she was only smiling at him with those calm, dark eyes that seemed to know everything, the eyes of a very young girl in a Victorian painting. A girl who knows too much, perhaps, about her father.

  "I'm sorry," he muttered.

  "Why? For what?" Her eyes never left his face.

  "You didn't get much out of that."

  "Au contraire, I got a great deal of satisfaction." But he didn't think that was exactly what he had meant. Before he had a chance to consider this, she went on: "You're young. We can go as many times as you want to."

  He looked at her without speaking, unable to speak.

  "But you must know one thing." She put a hand lightly on him. "What you told me about being a virgin? Well, I am, too."

  "You--" His expression of astonishment must have been comical, because she threw back her head and laughed.

  "Is there no room for virginity in your philosophy, Horatio?"

  "No ... yes ... but--"

  "I'm a virgin. And I'm going to stay that way. Because it's for someone else to ... to make me not a virgin anymore."

  "Who?"

  "You know who."

  He stared at her, suddenly cold all over. She looked back calmly.

  "Him?"

  She half turned away and nodded.

  "But I can show you things," she said, still not looking at him. "We can do things. Things you've never even ... no, I take that back. Maybe you have dreamed of them, but you never dreamed you'd do them. We can play. We can make ourselves drunk with it. We can wallow in it. We can ..." She trailed off, and then did look at him, a look so sly and sensual that he felt himself stirring again. "We can do anything--everything--but that one little thing. And that one thing really isn't so important, is it?"

  Images whirled giddily in his mind. Silk scarves ... boots ... leather ... rubber. Oh Jesus. Fantasies of a Schoolboy. A weird kind of sexual solitaire. But it was all a kind of dream, wasn't it? A fantasy begotten of fantasy, child of a dark dream. He wanted all those things, wanted her, but he also wanted more.

  The question was, how much would he settle for?

  "You can tell me everything," she said. "I'll be your mother, or your sister, or your whore, or your slave. All you have to do is tell me, Harold."

  How that echoed in his mind! How that intoxicated him!

  He opened his mouth, and the voice that emerged was as tuneless as the chiming of a cracked bell. "But for a price. Isn't that right? For a price. Because nothing is for free. Not even now, when everything is lying around, waiting to be picked up."

  "I want what you want," she said. "I know what's in your heart."

  "No one knows that."

  "What's in your heart is in your ledger. I could read it there--I know where it is--but I don't need to."

  He started and looked at her with a wild guilt.

  "It used to be under that loose st
one there," she said, pointing to the hearth, "but you moved it. Now it's behind the insulation in the attic."

  "How do you know that? How do you know?"

  "I know because he told me. He ... you could say that he wrote me a letter. And what's more important, he told me about you, Harold. How the cowboy took your woman and then kept you off the Free Zone Committee. He wants us to be together, Harold. And he's generous. From now until when we leave here, it's recess for you and me."

  She touched him and smiled.

  "From now until then it's playtime. Do you understand?"

  "I-- "

  "No," she answered, "you don't. Not yet. But you will, Harold. You will."

  Insanely, it came to his mind to tell her to call him Hawk.

  "And later, Nadine? What does he want later?"

  "What you want. And what I want. What you almost did to Redman on the first night you went out hunting for the old woman ... but on a much larger scale. And when that's done, we can go to him, Harold. We can be with him. We can stay with him." Her eyes slipped half-closed in a kind of rapture. Perhaps paradoxically, the fact that she loved the other but would give herself to him--might actually enjoy it--brought his desire up again, hot and close.

  "What if I say no?" His lips felt cold, ashy.

  She shrugged, and the movement made her breasts sway prettily. "Life will go on, won't it, Harold? I'll try to find some way of doing the thing I have to do. You'll go on. Sooner or later you'll find a girl who will do that ... one little thing for you. But that one little thing is very tiresome after a while. Very tiresome."

  "How would you know?" he asked, and grinned crookedly at her.

  "I know because sex is life in small, and life is tiresome--time spent in a variety of waiting rooms. You might have your little glories here, Harold, but to what end? On the whole it will be a humdrum, slipping-down life, and you'll always remember me with my shirt off, and you'll always wonder what I would have looked like with everything off. You'll wonder what it would have been like to hear me talking dirty to you ... or to have me spill honey all over your ... body ... and then lick it off ... and you'll wonder--"

  "Stop it," he said. He was trembling all over.