Candy Read online

  The Boston Liptons have more money than God.

  A good deal more money than God.

  “Secondly,” she went on, “Howard knew I was a lesbian when he married me. If I had not been a lesbian he would never have married me in the first place.”

  I didn’t get it.

  “I don’t get it,” I said, naturally.

  “Howard,” Caroline Christie said, “was a fag.”

  Nice people. Real nice people. A fag and a dyke and my little Candy. The apartment on 53rd Street was beginning to make my stomach crawl.

  She stood up. “I could say it’s been nice, Mr. Flanders. But that wouldn’t be true, would it? It hasn’t been nice at all. It’s been amusing, but amusing and nice are not the same thing and it has most certainly not been nice. You do not like me and I do not like you and I hope we never see each other again.”

  “Wait a minute, Mrs. Christie—”

  “I’ve waited a good many minutes as it is, Mr. Flanders. I let you in here to begin with because I thought you might have something interesting to tell me. Instead you’ve taken up a good bit of my time and you have bored me stiff in the process. Now, if there’s nothing more that you want from me—”

  “But there is.”

  “What?”

  “Candy.”

  “You can’t have her, Mr. Flanders. She’s mine, and this is not merely my decision but Candace’s as well. We’ve discussed you, you know, and we both agreed that there’s no point in Candy wasting her time on you. If you pretend to understand Candy you could see that much yourself. Now it’s time for you to leave. If you were gentleman enough to wear a hat I’d hand it to you. Do you understand what I’m trying to say, Mr. Flanders?”

  “I’m not that thick.”

  “Of course you are,” she said. “That’s irrelevant. Now if you’ll kindly get out of this apartment I’ll appreciate it no end. In an hour or so Candace will be returning and we’ll have a long talk about you. Then Candace and I shall retire to the bedroom where we shall prove quite satisfactorily that we are sexually compatible. Good day, Mr. Flanders. Don’t come again.”

  I was out of the chair and I got almost to the door before I turned around. I don’t know and will probably never know just what kept me from going out that door and down the elevator and away from The House on Fifty-Third Street. But something did.

  I whirled around.

  She was a few feet away from me. If she had looked the least bit surprised or stunned or worried I would undoubtedly have turned once again and walked out that door.

  But she didn’t.

  She was as cool as a pickle. Her steel-blue eyes through the black-rimmed glasses were looking at me with a mixture of humour and contempt.

  And that’s what did it. I had to take care of that amused reserve once and for all, had to show her that she couldn’t laugh or sneer or smirk at me.

  But it was more than that. That breastless chest, those slim hips, that aristocratic face …

  And that twisted psyche.

  Damn it, I wanted her. I hated her and wanted her at once, and I could no more stop what I was about to do than I could hold back the flood by sticking my finger in the dike.

  So I hit her.

  I hit her in the stomach, naturally. If you’re going to be cad enough to hit a woman you might as well hit her below the belt and that is precisely what I did. I hit her as hard as I could and I am not a small man nor am I a weak man. I know how to throw a punch and I threw this one with all my strength.

  She doubled up in pain. Her hands went to her stomach and her knees buckled.

  Her glasses fell off and settled on the carpet. I stepped on them and ground the lenses to dust.

  I tangled my hand in her short hair and jerked her to a standing position. I held her like that with one hand while I slapped the hell out of her with the other, slapped her across the face again and again until her cheeks began to bleed from the force of the blows.

  Then I hit her again.

  In the stomach.

  She puked all over the carpet and it was messy so I hauled her a few feet further into the room. By this point I was getting confused. I didn’t know exactly what to do so I hit her again.

  That did it. She crumpled up and fell on her face and she didn’t move.

  I had to hand it to her. She didn’t utter a sound all the way through, didn’t moan or scream or cry or anything. She was a twenty-four carat bitch and I hated her from hell to breakfast but she had guts, even if I had been trying to kick them out of her.

  I rolled her over onto her back and looked down at her. Her face was contorted in an expression of horrible pain and when she spoke she spoke through clenched teeth.

  She said: “Just what do you propose to do to me, Mr. Flanders?”

  So I told her.

  You have to hand it to her. You really have to give the bitch credit. The old amusement and contempt came back into those steel-blue eyes and the old quiet fury returned to her voice.

  “You may proceed,” she said.

  I ripped the buttons getting the shirt off. But I did get it off and there wasn’t anything underneath it. Candy didn’t need a bra because her breasts were firm enough to get along without one; this bitch didn’t need one because she didn’t have anything to put in one. Her chest was as flat as a flounder.

  I had a tough time with the pants. But I got them off and tore off the panties she was wearing under them. I tore off her tennis shoes and socks as well, although there wasn’t much point in it. They wouldn’t have gotten in the way. But I wanted her completely naked, naked and defenseless.

  When she was naked I got my own clothes off. I hooked my hands under her armpits and pulled her to her feet, and when I let go of her she sagged against me like a rag doll with half the stuffing gone.

  God alone knows where she got the strength, but when she came up off the floor this time she came up fighting. Her hand came at me nails first and her razor-sharp nails lashed my forehead and drew blood. She heaved a knee that would have played havoc with my virility but I swivelled a hip and dodged the blow.

  She called me a nasty name.

  So what the hell.

  I hit her again.

  This time she came off the floor like an irritated rhinoceros and gave me a poke in the jaw that sent me reeling. For a little bundle of fluff she packed a wallop.

  I got a grip on her shoulders, put one foot behind her feet and gave her a shove. She obligingly flopped on her cute little tail and I fell forward and landed right on top of her. She made a nice cushion.

  I almost couldn’t go through with it. She was fighting me, all right, but when you stop to consider the fact that I outweighed her by a good seventy pounds the fight didn’t seem too fair. I almost got up and left, but then I saw the whole incredible picture of her and Candy in bed together and I couldn’t hold myself back.

  I had to even the score.

  It was quite an experience. Technically I suppose it was a vaguely enjoyable ride; at least it was something different. But it was sick and sordid and when I was done I felt like cutting my throat with a rusted razor. I stepped away from her and fumbled my way into my clothing while she lay on the floor like a castaway napkin.

  “You’re okay,” I said, hysterically. “We’ll have to have another go at it one of these days.”

  And for what was possibly the first time in her life, Mrs. Caroline Lipton Christie did not have a snappy answer.

  I didn’t ride the elevator because I didn’t want the operator to get a look at me. Not because he would be able to identify me later—that was one thing I wasn’t going to waste my time worrying about. I knew it was better than rubles-to-rickshaws that Caroline Christie would no sooner call the police than she would call me and beg me to do it again.

  Hell, that much was elementary. Every juvenile delinquent with enough moxie to live up to the garrison belt dangling from his grimy paw knows that the easiest way in the world to pick up a quick buck is to beat u
p a faggot. The juvie picks up on one of the gay boys, leads him anywhere at all and pounds the crap out of him.

  Now who is the fag going to bitch to?

  No one.

  And who was Christie going to bitch to?

  No one.

  No one at all.

  So, among my other remarkable accomplishments, I was now a successful rapist. Somehow I wasn’t particularly proud of myself, and that is why I didn’t want the elevator operator looking at me. Hell, I didn’t even want to look at myself. I felt sick to my stomach.

  At the same time I was not without a small glint of triumph. It was with considerable self-esteem that I wondered idly how long it would take Mrs. Caroline Lipton Christie to wash the blood out of her rug. Yes, blood—because Mrs. Caroline Lipton Christie had been a virgin until I altered her status once and for all.

  Back in my room I washed off my cut face and took an opening slug from the bottle to dull the hate I was building up for myself. What had the afternoon landed me, all things considered?

  Not much.

  Not a hell of a lot at all.

  I had raped a lesbian. Raped a virgin lesbian, to be precise. If nothing else, it was something I had never done before. I had had a virgin—my wife, Lucy—but I had never raped anybody, and I had never had anything horizontal to do with a lesbian.

  It was a great afternoon for firsts.

  But what else?

  I was as far away from Candy as before and I letched for her as violently as ever. It was her face I saw at the peak of passion with little Miss Lesbo, and it was the memory of her that had occasioned the visit and the rape in the first place. So where was I?

  I was up the creek. Not only didn’t I have a paddle, but I also didn’t have a great many other things.

  A job.

  A woman.

  And on top of everything else the canoe had sprung a leak.

  I kicked off my shoes and stretched out on the bed and closed my eyes and thought to myself what a bastard I was. I thought about the woman who was divorcing me, and the other woman who was putting out for the woman I had just gotten finished raping, and there seemed to be more reasons to hate myself than there were stars in the sky.

  I let myself sink into a positive abyss of self-loathing which was masochistically delicious. After awhile I went outside and bought a magazine and went back to the room to read it.

  And, after awhile, the damned phone rang.

  Like a fool I answered it.

  Chapter Nine

  THE VOICE ON THE phone was Candy’s voice, high-pitched and thin, a whisper that was as tense as a bowstring and, to me at least, as loud as a siren. She did not waste words, and I remember now that her speech was pure East 53rd Street without a trace of Gibbsville in it.

  “I have to see you,” she said.

  I started to tell her that I had given her plenty of chances to see me but I didn’t get more than a word out before she interrupted me.

  “Meet me at the Astor Bar,” she said. “Right away and hurry.”

  And before I could say a word, before I could tell her yes, I was coming or no, and to hell with you, before I could mouth a solitary syllable she had hung up and the phone clicked in my ear.

  I looked at the phone, looked at the bottle in my fist, looked at a grease spot on the far wall.

  To hell with her. To hell with the woman who was no woman, the lady who was no lady, the Candy who was not sweet at all. To hell with her—my life was enough of a mess now without any more of her. I could spend the rest of my life trying to forget her and the preliminary step consisted of ignoring this phone call right now.

  The preliminary step.

  And, of course, there would be a lot of steps following that first one. I’d have to get out of New York, get away somewhere where she could never find me and somewhere where I could never run the risk of encountering her again. Out of New York, away from New York, far away from the stinking steaming stench of a city with all its memories. Away from the Kismet and the Somerville, away from 42nd Street and 100th Street and 53rd Street, away from Sweet Lucy and Bitter Candy and Queer Caroline, away from Beverley Finance and all the bars and all the movie houses and all the places where I had spent all my life.

  Far away.

  I even had a place in mind. Somewhere quiet, somewhere devoid of people. I thought about a properly isolated island in the Florida keys where a man could live without working and without thinking and above all without seeing another man or woman or child. You bought a boat and a shack and you ate what you caught with a rod and reel. You picked up a few bucks taking parties of tourists fishing and you were your own man, free and independent, secure with the marvellous and rare security of complete and total solitude.

  I stood up and took a look at myself in the mirror. My body looked as good as ever but I knew better. What used to be muscle was now mostly flab and what used to be flab was now more like butter that had spent too much time under a sunlamp. My complexion looked like the belly of a fish, a very dead fish, and my lungs were soggy with cigarette smoke and my arteries were alternately dilated by alcohol and constricted by tobacco. I held out my hand and tried to make it as steady as the Rock of Gibraltar and I got nervous inside when I saw my fingers shaking involuntarily, trembling so obviously that I wondered for a minute whether or not I was still in the camp of the living.

  I was a mess. No matter how you looked at it I was a mess. It was nothing out of the ordinary—every city dweller is a mess. You ride the subway instead of walking and you eat the wrong things and breathe the foulest air known to modern man. If you stay off the booze you still drink the wrong things—cola drinks that rot out your stomach or coffee that races your heart or lunch-counter fruit juices that poison you with methodical ease.

  You not only eat between meals but you eat instead of meals—poisonous hot dogs at corner ptomaineries and candy bars and hamburgers and ice cream on a stick and all the other useless appurtenances of twentieth century urban civilization. And even if you led the good life and subsisted entirely on carrot juice and raw eggs, even if you slept eight hours every night and walked through the park and breathed deeply and refrained from smoking and drinking and losing your temper, even if you did all these things you still lived in New York and breathed New York air and killed yourself slowly.

  I was a mess.

  Physically I was a mess; emotionally I had Candy on the brain. A to-hell-with-it trip to the Keys, a permanent relocation in a cleaner, greener land could save me.

  And there could be no halfway measures. I had to go whole hog, and I had to go at once. Period. End of report. Tan pronto como posible.

  Will you believe me when I tell you that I was sipping a dry gibson in the Astor Bar roughly twenty minutes after Candy rang off?

  You better believe it.

  That’s how it happened.

  In the bar of the Hotel Astor the waiters speak softly and carry big drinks. I had a big drink in my fist and it was mostly gin. There was a little bourbon in my stomach to begin with, but not enough to bother me, and the gin combined pleasantly with it.

  In the bar of the Hotel Astor the tables are small and chic and set far apart. The tables are made of formica that is made to look as much like marble as is formically possible and the bases of the tables are very heavy. The chairs are also neat and chic with wrought-iron backs and leather-covered seats.

  In the bar of the Hotel Astor the conversation is sophisticated without being subdued. The clientele has money but not an enormous amount of money and not old money. The drinkers in the Astor Bar are partly show people and partly business people, with the business crowd largely in the advertising and public relations fields.

  In the bar of the Hotel Astor there was a small and chic table with two small and chic chairs. In one of the chairs there was a very attractive young woman with blonde hair, a lovely thing encased in a green sheath dress that she seemed quite likely to burst out of. In the other chair across from the blonde young lady th
ere was a dull-witted guy, a clod with two left hands, wearing a shoddy-looking gray flannel suit. His red striped tie was at a slight angle and so was his jaw. He looked stupid and lost.

  He was stupid and lost.

  He was me.

  “I don’t understand it,” Candy was saying. “I don’t see how in the world you could have done a thing like that.”

  “It wasn’t easy.”

  “Don’t make jokes,” she snapped. “It’s no time to make jokes. My God, Jeff, how in the world—”

  “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I went up there to talk to her and—”

  “Talk to her? Why on earth would you want to talk to Caroline? What did you hope to gain from that?”

  I shrugged. “I wanted to convince her to let you go.”

  “She hardly had me lashed to a post, Jeff.”

  I shrugged again and sipped gin. “I don’t know,” I said. “I went there to talk to her and something snapped inside me. I completely lost control of myself. I know that’s a poor excuse but that’s the way it happened. One minute everything was all right and under control, and the next minute I barely knew what I was doing. Call it temporary insanity, if you want—I suppose that’s what it was. I just couldn’t stop myself until I was finished.”

  She looked at me and I tried to read what was blazing gently in her eyes. Whether it was love or hate or fear or whatever was something I couldn’t determine. Her eyes were cool; they were always cool and would always be cool. She was cool and beautiful and I loved her and hated her with an unendurable intensity.

  “You had to come up there,” she said levelly. “You had to find out where I lived. You couldn’t leave well enough alone.”

  She was right.

  “You had to stop me on the street,” she went on. “Couldn’t you understand what I was trying to tell you?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you? Are you even sorry?”