A party of children, who had wedged themselves between Clyde and Grady, jogged and shrieked when the tumult began; but gradually, awed by the swelling tide of it, they grew quiet and clustered closer together. Grady tried to push through them; midway she lost her balloon, and a little girl, silent and evil-eyed, snatched it up and whisked herself off: both robber and robbery escaped almost unnoticed, for Grady, fevered by the lunging loin-deep animal sounds, wanted only to reach Clyde and, as a leaf folds before the wind or a flower bends beneath the leopard’s foot, submit herself to the power of him. There was no need to speak, the tremble of her hand told everything: as, in its answering touch, did his.
In the McNeil apartment it was as if a vast snow had fallen, hushing the great formal rooms and shrouding the furniture in frosty drifts: velvet and needlework, the fine patinas and the perishable gilt, all were spook-white in their coverings against the grime of summer. Somewhere far-off in this gloom of snow and drawn draperies a telephone was ringing.
Grady heard it as she came in. First, before answering it, she led Clyde down a hall so sumptuous that if you at one end had spoken no one at the other would have heard: the door to her own room was the last on a line of many. It was the only room that the housekeeper, in closing the apartment, had left exactly as it was in winter. Originally it had belonged to Apple, but after her marriage Grady had inherited it. Much as she had tried to rid it of Apple’s froufrou a good deal remained: nasty little perfume cabinets, a hassock big as a bed, a bed as big as a cloud. But she had wanted the room anyway, for it had French doors leading onto a balcony with a view over all the park.
Clyde lingered by the door; he had not wanted to come, had said he was not dressed right; and now the ringing telephone seemed to agitate further uncertainties. Grady made him sit down on the hassock. In the center of it there was a phonograph and a stack of records. Sometimes when she was alone she liked to sprawl there playing sluggish songs that nicely accompanied all kinds of queer thoughts. “Play the machine,” she said, and, asking why in God’s name it hadn’t stopped, went to answer the phone.
It was Peter Bell: dinner? Of course she remembered, but not there, and please, not the Plaza, and no, she didn’t want Chinese food; and no, really, she was absolutely alone, what merriment? oh the phonograph—uh huh, Billie Holiday; all right, Pomme Souffle, seven sharp, see you. As Grady put down the receiver she made a wish that Clyde would ask who had called.
It was not to be granted. So, of her own accord, she said, “Isn’t that lovely? I won’t have to eat alone after all: Peter Bell’s going to take me to dinner.”
“Hmm.” Clyde went on shuffling through the records. “Say, you got ‘Red River Valley’?”
“I’ve never heard of it,” she said briskly, and threw open the French doors. He at least could have asked who Peter Bell was. From the balcony she could see steeples and pennants far over the city quivering in a solution of solid afternoon: though even now the sky was growing fragile and soon would crumble into twilight. He might be gone before then; and thinking so, she turned back into the room, expectant, urgent.
He had moved from the hassock to the bed; sitting there on the edge of it, and the bed so big all around him, he looked wistfully small: and apprehensive, as though someone might walk in and catch him here where he had no business being. As if taking protection from her, he put his arms around Grady and rolled her down beside him. “We waited a long time for one of these,” he said, “it ought to be good in a bed, honey.”
The bed was covered in blue and the blue spread before her like depthless sky; but it seemed all unfamiliar, a bed she could’ve sworn she’d never seen: strange lakes of light rippled the silk surface, the bolstered pillows were mountains of unexplored terrain. She’d never been afraid in the car or among the wooded places they’d found across the river and high upon the Palisades: but the bed, with its lakes and skies and mountains, seemed so impressive, so serious, that it frightened her.
“You cold or something?” he said. She strained against him; she wanted to pass clear through him: “It’s a chill, it’s nothing”; and then, pushing a little away: “Say you love me.”
“I said it.”
“No, oh no. You haven’t. I was listening. And you never do.”
“Well, give me time.”
“Please.”
He sat up and glanced at a clock across the room. It was after five. Then decisively he pulled off his windbreaker and began to unlace his shoes.
“Aren’t you going to, Clyde?”
He grinned back at her. “Yeah, I’m going to.”
“I don’t mean that; and what’s more, I don’t like it: you sound as though you were talking to a whore.”
“Come off it, honey. You didn’t drag me up here to tell you about love.”
“You disgust me,” she said.
“Listen to her! She’s sore.”
A silence followed that circulated like an aggrieved bird. Clyde said, “You want to hit me, huh? I kind of like you when you’re sore: that’s the kind of girl you are,” which made Grady light in his arms when he lifted and kissed her. “You still want me to say it?” Her head slumped on his shoulder. “Because I will,” he said, fooling his fingers in her hair. “Take off your clothes—and I’ll tell it to you good.”
In her dressing-room there was a table with a three-way mirror. Grady, unclasping a bracelet chain, could see at the mirror every movement of Clyde’s in the other room. He undressed quickly, leaving his clothes wherever he happened to be; down to his shorts, he lighted a cigarette and stretched himself, the colors of sunset reflecting along his body; then, smiling toward her, he dropped his shorts and stood in the doorway: “You mean that? That I disgust you?” She shook her head slowly; and he said, “You bet you don’t,” while the mirror, jarred by the fall of her chair, shot through the dusk arrows of dazzle.
It was after twelve, and Peter, lifting his voice above the pulsing of a rumba band, ordered from the bartender another scotch; looking across the dance-floor, infinitesimal and so crowded the dancers were one anonymous bulge, he wondered if Grady was coming back. A half-hour before she had excused herself, presumably for the powder-room; it occurred to him now, however, that perhaps she’d gone home: but why?
Simply because he hadn’t applauded when she described, and evasively at that, the glories of romance? She should be grateful he hadn’t told her a few of the things he had a mind to. She was in love; very well, he believed her, though that he must do so exasperated him: still, did she mean to marry whoever-it-was? As to this, he had not dared ask. The possibility she might was insupportable, and his reaction to it had so waked him that after these martinis and uncounted scotches, he felt still painfully sober. For the last five hours he’d known that he was in love with Grady McNeil himself.
It was curious to him that he had not before come to this conclusion from the evidence at hand. The cloud of sandcastles and friendship signed in blood had been allowed to obscure too much: even so, the evidence of something more intense had always been there, like sediment at the bottom of a cup: it was she, after all, with whom he compared every other girl, it was Grady who touched, amused, understood: over and again she had helped him to pass as a man.
And more: part of her he felt was the result of his own tutoring, her elegance and her judgments of taste; the strength of will she so fervently possessed he took no credit for: that, he knew, was much the superior of his own, and indeed, it was her will that frightened him: there was a degree to which he could influence her, after that she would do precisely as she wanted.
God knows, he had nothing to offer, not really. It was possible that he never could make love with her, and if he did probably it would dissolve into the laughter, or the tears, of children playing together: passion between them would be remarkable, even ludicrous, yes, he could see that (though he did not see it squarely): and for a moment he despised her.
But just then, sliding past the entrance rope, she beckoned to him, and he hastened to join her, thinking only, and with an awareness that seemed unique, how lovely she was, with what excellence she dominated over the flashing squadrons of important cockatoos. Her everyway hair was like a rusty chrysanthemum, petals of it loosely falling on her forehead, and her eyes, so startlingly set in her fine unpolished face, caught with wit and green aliveness all atmosphere.
It was Peter who had
