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  “And you’re enjoying it?”

  “I always enjoy it when it goes like this. Hell, I’ve got to make up for lost time.”

  “I know.”

  “And I just got a hell of a notion,” he went on, pausing to sip coffee from the cap of the thermos jug. “Make a good slick yarn, probably go to the Post or McCall’s. As soon as I get this damn book out of the way I’ll run it through the typewriter and see what comes out. I’m glad you brought me a plate of food, honey. I’ve got a feeling this is going to be a long siege. I may be going all night.”

  She arched an eyebrow.

  “Well,” he said, “maybe not all night.”

  She grinned.

  “Because,” he said, “when I’m in a slump, I’m in all the way. And when I come out of a slump—”

  Her grin widened. “I’ll get back to the house now, Linc. I’m keeping you from your work. When should I … expect you?”

  “Any time.”

  “No idea when?”

  “No idea,” he said. “But don’t wear anything under your dress. That way we’ll save a little time.”

  Elly and Maggie ate lunch at the top of the Tishman Building, the glass and steel skyscraper at 666 Fifth Avenue.

  They had dinner in a cellar restaurant on Bleecker Street.

  The decision to stay for dinner had been a pleasant one, suggested by Maggie and agreed to readily enough by Elly. They had had lunch, had shopped for awhile on Fifth Avenue without buying anything, then headed west to Broadway. A Sound Of Distant Drums, the hit drama based on the Westlake kidnaping, was playing at the Cort; for the hell of it, Maggie went to the box office to see if any tickets were available for that evening. There was a pair on hand, front and center in the orchestra.

  “Let’s take them,” Maggie said.

  “But—”

  “Dave won’t mind if I stay in town. Neither will Ted—just give him a ring and ask him to take Pam out for dinner. It’ll be a treat for the kid and a treat for us.”

  Ted wasn’t there, which made it that much simpler. She left a message with his secretary, then waited while Maggie put a call through to Dave Whitcomb. Then more shopping, and a stop for drinks, and a cab down to the simply wonderful little Italian restaurant that Maggie liked, and plates of lasagna with icy chianti. Elly couldn’t remember feeling so completely at ease. Yes, she thought, Maggie’s friendship was going to prove valuable. If anything would ever control her sexual excesses, Maggie would. Now, with Maggie, she felt no need for a phantom lover, no need for a deliveryman or a door-to-door salesman. She was at ease, relaxed, completely at peace with the world and with herself.

  They caught a cab and rode to the Cort. “This is funny,” Elly said. “It feels like … like a date. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Of course we’re hardly dressed for the occasion.”

  “You look fine, Ell.”

  “Thanks. But I look fine for a shopping splurge at Saks, not for an evening on the town. Everybody will stare at us.”

  “They won’t,” Maggie said. “They may think we’re tourists from Peoria, but they won’t stare at us. Besides, who cares if they do?”

  “Not I,” Elly said gaily. “They can stare until their eyes bulge. Whee! We’re on a date, Mag.”

  “Uh-huh. Maybe we should neck in the back seat of the cab.”

  “Wonderful,” Elly said. “After the show we’ll have our cabby drive through Central Park. And we’ll neck like high school kids. Okay?”

  “Fine with me.”

  A Sound Of Distant Drums turned out to be all the critics had said it was. Elly let herself get lost in the play, let herself become absorbed by characters and dialogue. When the final curtain fell she had to shake herself in order to remind herself that she was in a theatre, that the action which had transpired was action on a stage and not the real thing.

  Then they were outside, in the middle of after-the-theatre pedestrian traffic on Broadway. They ducked into a bar for drinks and had two each, enough to get Elly a little bit high again.

  “This is fun,” she said earnestly. “So much fun.”

  “I know it is.”

  “You want to know something? I don’t even want to go home. I want to stay here in Manhattan until hell freezes. Maybe even longer.”

  “That’s a long time.”

  “I know it. Maggie, I don’t even want to call Ted. I just want to stay.”

  “We could stay the night, you know. We could go to a hotel.”

  “Let’s! Oh, it’s an adventure, Mag. I need an adventure.”

  “Well have one,” Maggie promised, her eyes gleaming strangely. “But first call Ted so he doesn’t worry. Then we’ll have our adventure. We’ll go to a night club or two and get stinking drunk and stay over at a hotel. Sound like fun?”

  “Sounds heavenly,” Elly said. “Whee! An adventure!”

  16

  ROZ Barclay sat reading in a comfortable chair. The book in her hand had been written by a fellow with whom Linc had been friendly years ago. When they all lived in Manhattan, the writer and his wife and Linc and Roz were a frequent foursome. Now, while Linc and Roz had moved to northern Westchester, the other writer and his wife had wound up in Bucks County, in Pennsylvania. Both families lived within commuting distance of New York, but in opposite directions. They never saw each other any more.

  The book was a rather moody novel about a disturbed teenager, and only loyalty to a writer who had been a close friend kept Roz from putting the book down unfinished. She plowed onward, hoping at least to be able to save Linc the monumental chore of reading the thing. This way she would finish it herself and tuck it away in the bookcase, and if he ever asked about it, she would tell him how rotten it was.

  Because, for the time being, Linc did not have time to waste reading lousy books. He had his own lousy books to write.

  And he would be coming to her soon. She shuddered in delighted anticipation, knowing that soon he would come to her, taking a break from the book to bring another slump to its end. He had told her not to wear anything under her dress, saying it would save time. And she was not wearing anything under her dress. When he came she could throw the dress over her head and be naked for him, nude for him, ready for him. Then he could take her, quickly and passionately and breathlessly, and the world could pour itself into a deep pit and dash itself to fragments.

  Her eyes were busy with the bad book about a disturbed adolescent. But her mind and her body waited for Linc.

  Elly was having a wonderful time.

  She and Maggie were at a front table in Endsville, a progressive jazz club on the East Side. On the stand, an instrumental quartet was working wild changes on I’ve Got Rhythm. The original melody had disappeared, and the four Negroes were swinging with the basic chord structure, twisting the song through new and wonderful channels.

  Elly listened to the drums, to the bass. The drummer worked the top cymbal, keeping the beat steady, playing on top of the beat. The bassist moved up and down the chord patterns, backing the group. She looked at the pianist, then at the tenor sax. The music was wild and her ears and brain were filled with it.

  “Maggie,” she said, “this is fun.”

  “You’re enjoying yourself?”

  “I’m having a ball.”

  “You like the music?”

  “I love the music. I haven’t had this much fun in … in years. I’m glad we decided to stay in the city. This beats the damn train home and quitting early.”

  Maggie smiled, and Elly noticed again just how beautiful the redhaired girl was. So beautiful, and so good to her, and so good for her, and so much fun to be with.

  “When you’re having a good time,” Maggie said, “there’s no point in stopping early.”

  “I know.”

  “We’ll stay here for another drink or two. Then we’ll find someplace else to go. I already made reservations at the Hasbrouck House. Our room is waiting for us any time we want to go
there. So we don’t have to worry about finding a place to stay. We can paint the town scarlet all night long.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  “It is fun, Ell.”

  She got lost in the music again. The tenor man unwound with a long solo, gutty and bluesy, and she let her mind float along on the ribbon of pure melody, let herself get immersed in the music. When the solo ended she saw Maggie ordering another round of drinks.

  “Not for me, Mag.”

  “Of course for you. I can’t drink them both all by myself, Ell. One’s for me and one’s for you.”

  “I’m pretty well stoned already, Maggie. I don’t want to pass out. I’d make a fool of myself.”

  “No fool like a pretty fool, Ell.”

  “I’m tipsy, Mag—”

  Maggie’s hand moved across the table, caught Elly’s wrist, held it. “Don’t you worry,” she said. “We’re out on the town, sweetie. We’ve got a perfectly good right to get stoned.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “So you just drink your drink, Ell. We’ll stay here until the band takes a break. Then maybe we’ll take a hansom ride through Central Park. You know, one of the old horse cabs.”

  “I’ve never been in one of those, Mag.”

  “They’re fun.”

  She looked at Maggie. Her eyes were bright now, alive. She sipped her drink and studied the redhaired girl over the brim of her glass. She was all keyed up, all excited.

  “And we can neck in the back,” she said, giggling a little. “Like on a date. Can’t we, Maggie?”

  “Of course, sweetie.”

  Something was a little funny, she thought. Something was a little bit out of the ordinary.

  She pushed the thought from her mind and finished her drink.

  It was a Monday night, of course. And, since it was a Monday night, Howard Haskell had brought work home from the office. He’d taken a later train than usual from New York, and he’d hardly said a word through dinner, and now he was locked up in his den with the tentative plans for some advertising campaign or other.

  And Nan was alone.

  The boys were sleeping. Nan ate in front of the television set, which was not even turned on, and felt lonely. Lonely and wretched and unhappy. And, at the same time, alive.

  Ted Carr.

  Ted Carr, and the sordid and cheap affair in which he was her partner, was making a monumental difference in her life. Already, after one horrible and yet somehow wonderful love-bout in the middle of her own living room floor in the middle of the afternoon, the monotony had fled from her existence like bugs from a room sprayed with DDT. She was not just a wife, not just a mother.

  She was a mistress.

  A mistress. The word had a strange and unfamiliar ring to it. It didn’t seem possible that such a word could be properly applied to solid citizen Nan Haskell, mother of two, pillar of Cheshire Point. And yet it was true. She had given herself to Ted, had begged him on her knees to take her, had asked for him in vulgar words, had made a slave out of herself, a slave to his whims and passions.

  And it was not a one-shot arrangement. She knew this, knew it for a fact, knew it as well as she knew her own name. It was autumn in Cheshire Point and she was somewhere in the middle of an illicit affair. In the fall a young wife’s fancies lightly turn to thoughts of sex, she thought. In the fall a young wife starts putting out for a neighbor.

  In the fall—

  It might have been different if Howard had not had a satchel full of work that night. Maybe that was just an excuse, maybe the affair with Ted was destined to run its course no matter what, but she somehow could not help feeling that if Howard had been able to spend time with her that very evening, if he had been more talkative and more … loving, she might have been able to get back on the right track.

  It was a moot point now. She who had been so one-hundred per cent faithful was now unfaithful, and the act of infidelity would be repeated as long as it was valuable to her. She had been bored; she was bored no longer. She had been in a rut; the rut had now turned into a groove. She had been tired, miserable, plodding along without any interruption of what had developed into a less-than-bear-able routine.

  Now all that was changed.

  Ted Carr, sandy-haired, smiling, determined. Not so handsome as Howard, not at all as nice as Howard, not as desirable a mate as Howard, but somehow far more important than Howard could ever be, far more essential to her well-being.

  And she would let the affair run its course. In time it would burn itself out, and she would be Howard Haskell’s faithful wife once more, and everything would be hunky-dory again. But for the time being she would be everything Ted Carr wanted her to be, would do everything he wanted her to do, would lower herself into muck and make herself worse than a whore if he ordered her to do so. He was her excitement, her dynamism, almost her whole life.

  This is wrong, she thought. This is all very wrong, and I should be heartily ashamed of myself. I should hate myself.

  I do hate myself.

  But that was immaterial. She had a need for Ted which she could not deny. She was in a flimsy canoe in rocky waters, but she was also on one hell of a wild boatride.

  17

  THEY found the old-fashioned cab at 59th Street and Fifth Avenue, at the eastern foot of Central Park. The driver, all decked out in livery, spoke softly and charmingly in a mild British accent. His horse was something of a glue factory candidate, but in the moon and star light he was magically transformed into something dashing, into a sleek black stallion with hooves of steel and fiery eyes.

  The same black stallion, Elly thought fleetingly, on which her phantom lover always rode.

  She put the thought out of her mind. The night was young and she felt very beautiful, and now she was sitting beside Maggie Whitcomb in the old hansom while the horse was clip-clopping through pathways in Central Park, while the old liveried driver dozed with the reins in his hands. She smelled the good healthy horse smell, inhaled with it the country fragrance of Central Park. She heard muted traffic sounds in the distance, the sounds of New York by night, sounds which suggested home to her much more strongly and much more convincingly than the cricket chirping you heard in bed at Cheshire Point.

  “Happy, Ell?”

  “Completely happy.”

  “I like Central Park, Ell. An oasis in the middle of the Manhattan desert. It’s peaceful.”

  “Uh-huh.” She leaned back, closing her eyes. Maggie was wearing perfume and the smell was strong now, strong but subtle. She let her head loll back on Maggie’s shoulder. “I lived near the park,” she said. “When I was a kid we lived in the West Seventies just a block from the park. I used to play here all the time.”

  “It must have been fun.”

  “It was.”

  Silence, broken by traffic in the distance, horse hooves in front. Maggie’s arm went around her shoulder, holding her.

  “We’re on a heavy date,” Maggie whispered. “Now we have to neck.”

  “I almost forgot.”

  “Kiss me, Ell.”

  “I’ve never kissed a girl before.”

  “Then let me be the first.”

  Maggie’s lips were wonderfully soft. The kiss started as a peck but grew into something a little more. Elly felt Maggie’s arms around her, holding her close. She tasted the incomparable sweetness of Maggie’s warm mouth.

  “That was … nice, Maggie.”

  “You must have been a wonderful date. I bet all the boys liked to neck with you, Ell.”

  “They did more than that. I was a very easy lay.”

  “You were?”

  Something made her go on. “I would put out for any boy who asked me. I was a tramp, I guess.”

  “Boys take advantage of a girl, Ell.”

  “I know. Oh, I’m tipsy, Maggie. I’m drunk.”

  “You won’t be sick, will you?”

  “No, but I’m drunk. Why don’t you kiss me again, Maggie? I want to be kissed now. I feel all funny i
nside. Please kiss me.”

  Maggie’s mouth came to hers. Maggie’s arms were firmer around her now, and she felt Maggie’s breasts press in close against her own breasts. She opened her mouth automatically and Maggie’s warm tongue stole inside, caressing her lips, making her whole mouth tingle. She suddenly remembered the way Maggie’s bare breasts had looked Friday afternoon, remembered the way the two of them had sat around drinking Scotch with their bosoms showing.

  The memory sent a jolt of inexplicable passion racing through her. She was warm all over, her cheeks warm from all the drinks and her loins warm with rising lust. She tightened her own grip around Maggie, ran her fingers through Maggie’s long red hair. The hair was the texture of spun silk, good to touch, good to run your fingers through. Her own tongue darted forward to meet Maggie’s tongue and the contact was purely electric in its intensity. She was charged up now, stimulated.

  “Maggie—”

  “Hold me, Ell. Hold me close.”

  “This is silly, isn’t it? We’re both girls and we’re necking and kissing and hugging. I like this, though, even if we are silly. I like the way you feel, Maggie. You have the most wonderful breasts.”

  “Do you like them?”

  “I’m going to touch them to show you how much I love them, Maggie. Oh, God, they feel so nice! Is it wrong to touch another woman’s breasts? I never did anything like this before.”

  “It’s not wrong.”

  “Because they feel so nice! I wish I had breasts like yours, Maggie. Big and firm.”

  “Yours are lovely, Ell.”

  “Do you think so?”

  She felt Maggie’s hands moving, finding her own breasts and holding them tenderly. The touch excited Elly. She began to tremble. She did not know what was happening to her but it was something phenomenal, something wonderful. Her body was on fire.

  “When I saw you Friday,” Maggie was saying, “Your breasts. I wanted you to touch me and I wanted to touch you.”