69 Barrow Street

Chapter ten

Ralph lay on his side on the bed. Susan was snuggled up close to him, the top of her head just level with his lips. Without moving he kissed her gently and smiled when she murmured something that he didn’t hear.

He was at peace, completely and totally at rest. It was a peace he had never known before, a compelling and overwhelming peace that left him entirely drained of everything but a monumental love for her.

They were both naked, both wrapped up in each other’s arms. He held her as if he were holding some rare and delicate bird that would die if he held it too tight. Her body was soft and warm against him.

“I love you,” he said.

She murmured again.

“You’re the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me, Susan. You’re… you’re wonderful — that’s all I can say.”

She didn’t answer.

“Susan… Susan, I want you to marry me. You will marry me, won’t you, baby?”

Slowly she raised herself up on one elbow and looked at him with eyes that were brimming over with love.

“Are you sure you want me to?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

“Marriage is a pretty big thing.”

“Marriage is forever,” he said. “To me marriage is something that has to be forever.”

“Forever is a long time.”

“I know it.”

“Are you sure you’ll want me… forever?”

“Positive.”

She pressed her lips to his throat and kissed him, a long, soothing kiss that had no passion to it but an infinite amount of love.

“If you want me,” she said, “I want you.”

He took her face in his hands and kissed her all over it — her eyes, her nose, her ears, her lips and her chin, little sexless kisses all over her face. She smiled up at him.

“I want to stay here tonight,” he said.

“All right.”

“Aren’t you… afraid of me?”

“What do you mean?”

“If I’m here all night, there’s no telling what I might do.”

“I’m not afraid.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course, Ralph. I don’t think I could ever be afraid of you.”

He kissed her. Then they snuggled up close again and she reached up and turned out the light. It was still quite early and they lay together for hours, whispering and touching each other, kissing like schoolchildren and talking about what they would do and where they would live when they were married.

They were both fully relaxed. Neither had to do anything to prove that they were in love, and they rested together as two people can rest only after lovemaking that is completely satisfactory to both parties, lovemaking that is a part of love.

And, hours later, they fell asleep. They slept all night in one position with their bodies close together and their arms around each other.

The wind made noises outside the window. Once, in the middle of the night, the wind managed to blow up a storm with thunder and lightning. The rain poured down for almost an hour and the lightning ignited the sky and the thunder cracked and rumbled.

They never noticed it. They were in love and they were asleep, asleep with each other, and the rain and the thunder and the lightning might just as well never have happened.

Ralph woke up first. The first thing he was aware of, even before he remembered where he was and who he was and that it was morning, was the woman he held in his arms. He tried to get out of bed without waking her, but as soon as he made the first movement her eyes came open and she smiled at him.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Good morning.”

“Did I ever tell you I’m in love with you?”

“Dozens of times.”

“Honest?”

“Sure enough.”

“Well,” she said, sleepily, “I was telling the absolute truth.”

“Good thing you were.”

“Mmmmmmm.”

He smiled to himself and kissed her eyes shut. “Go back to sleep,” he told her. “I’ll be back in a little while.”

“Where are you going?”

“Out.”

“That’s a hell of an answer.”

“You want a better answer?”

“Mmmmmmm.”

“I’m going to the bank,” he said. “I’ve got about a hundred bucks in an account in my name and I want to draw it out.”

“What for?”

“For us to get married on.”

She thought for a minute. “You know,” she said, “I couldn’t possibly think of a better use for the money. As a matter of fact, I couldn’t possibly think of a better reason for you to sneak out of bed and leave me alone.”

“It’s a good reason.”

“A hell of a good reason,” she said. “But hurry back.”

He kissed her and pulled himself out of bed.

He dressed but his clothes were dirty and he stopped downstairs to change them. He made as little noise as possible inside his own apartment in an effort to avoid waking Stella. He changed quickly into a white sport shirt and a pair of cord slacks and left the apartment as quietly as he had entered it.

But he woke Stella.

Stella didn’t move until Ralph was gone from the apartment. She didn’t want to see him any more than he wanted to see her, as it happened. But the moment the door closed and he was gone, she clambered out of bed and put on her clothes, the same polka dot shorts-and-halter set she had been wearing the day before.

She washed and brushed her teeth in a hurry, but didn’t bother about breakfast. There was something she had to do, something that had to be done in a hurry. There was no way to tell how much time she had left.

She put her hand on the back of her head and cursed softly to herself. Susan Rivers swung a mean lamp — there was no question about it. Her head still ached and there was a lump where the blow had landed. She cursed again and sat down for a moment on the couch, thinking.

There was something she had to do. It had to be done and it had to be done in a hurry. Part of her knew that it was something she shouldn’t do, something she should go back to bed and forget about.

But she couldn’t.

No, she had to go through with it. No matter how it turned out, no matter what happened to her, she couldn’t get the notion out of her head. Last night she had tried desperately to take out all of her aggressions on Maria, but all she succeeded in doing was reducing the poor little thing to a mass of quivering, aching flesh. Her own hungers remained unabated; her own lusts stayed just as strong as they had been to begin with.

And so she had to do the Thing. It was a Thing with a capital T by now, because it had grown to assume rather immense proportions in her mind.

The Thing had to be done.

She slipped a pair of sandals onto her feet and walked to the door of the apartment. She opened the door, looked around, walked through it and closed the door behind her. The hallway was empty, the building happily quiet. She walked to the stairway and began mounting the stairs, anxious to do the Thing.

The Thing was very simple.

She was going to rape and murder Susan Rivers.

Susan was still dozing when the knock came on her door. If she had been fully awake things might have been different. Then she would have thought clearly, and if she’d thought clearly she would possibly have refused to open the door. At least she would have asked first who it was.

But, as it happened, she was not fully awake. And it didn’t even enter her mind that the person knocking at the door could be Stella James. For that matter, she didn’t even stop to think that the person knocking at her door could be anyone else in the world but Ralph.

And she wanted to see Ralph.

She pushed the covers back and slipped out of bed. Because she assumed that it was Ralph at the door she didn’t even take the trouble to slip into a robe. Ralph was used to seeing her naked, and certainly there was no point in dressing up now for him.

She padded across the floor to the door. Some reflex made her hesitate for the briefest second with her hand on the doorknob, but the reflex wasn’t enough to keep her from opening the door for Ralph.

Except, of course, that it wasn’t Ralph at the door. Not at all.

It was a woman — a tall blonde dressed in a polka dot halter, polka dot shorts, and a pair of sandals.

It was, naturally, Stella James.

Susan didn’t entirely believe her eyes for a second. But, automatically, she took a quick step backwards.

And this was fortunate; because if she hadn’t done this Stella’s hands would have encircled her neck. As it was Stella lunged forward with her hands outstretched and missed and Susan managed to jump back again and out of the way.

But Stella was inside the door now. And the insane light in the woman’s eyes made Susan want to shriek her lungs out for help.

Now she was awake. Now she was wide awake, wide awake and thoroughly terrified and moving away from Stella into the kitchenette, just trying to get away, trying to put as much distance between the two of them as possible.

She wanted to scream. Oh, God how she wanted to scream. But how did you go about screaming early in the morning? Her mouth opened wide but no sounds came out of it. She tried desperately to launch a scream but only a strangled sob tore forth from her throat.

Stella came closer.

Susan couldn’t run any further. Her back was to the wall of the kitchenette, with cupboards and drawers on one side of her and the sink on the other.

There was, suddenly, no place to go, no way to turn, no one to help her. She wished that Ralph was there.

She might as well have wished for wings.

Again she tried to scream and again she was too petrified to launch the cry. Instead she said, her voice little more than a whisper: “What… what do you want?”

“You.”

“What—”

Stella spaced her words very carefully and enunciated with the utmost precision, and while she talked she stopped moving closer to Susan.

“You led me on,” she said. “You led me on and got me all excited and then you left me. That wasn’t the right thing for you to do. It was wrong, and it is my duty to punish you.”

“Look, you’ve got to understand! It was all a mistake, I didn’t mean—”

“You’ve got to be punished,” Stella said. “First I’m going to have you as I wanted to do yesterday. And then I am going to punish you.”

“Please—”

“Don’t beg,” Stella said.

Susan realized that she was dealing with a madwoman, that nothing she could say or do would change Stella’s mind for her. And Susan had a fairly good idea of what Stella’s concept of punishment would turn out to be.

Stella was going to kill her.

She didn’t want to die. Suddenly she realized just how much she didn’t want to die, just how much she had to live for. All at once the beauty of the life she and Ralph were going to have together hit her full force and the thought of losing all that was too much to bear.

I’ve got to stop her, she thought desperately. I’ve got to find some way to stop her.

She didn’t try to scream anymore. Now that she understood what was happening she realized that a scream would probably provoke Stella to immediate action and cost her her life as a result.

Stella took another step toward her.

“Wait!”

Stella paused.

And then Susan realized something very important. As long as she managed to keep the older woman talking she was all right. A long as she kept the conversation going, no matter how insane the conversation became, Stella wouldn’t attack her.

“Tell me,” she said. “Why do you want me?”

“Because I hate you.” Stella made the words convey the feeling that people only wanted those they hated. The thought alone chilled Susan.

“You hate me?”

“Of course.”

“Why?”

“You must know why.”

“But I don’t know why, Stella. Please tell me.”

The older woman shrugged impatiently. She took another step forward, her eyes blazing. Susan had to say something, had to say something in a hurry. As long as she kept talking, as long as she went on with conversation, any sort of conversation, then—

“Is it because of Ralph?”

“What about Ralph?” Stella seemed interested and Susan pursued the topic.

“Ralph and I are in love. Is that why you hate me?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Ralph and I are in love,” she said again. “We’re going to be married.”

“You’re lying to me.”

“No, Stella. It’s the truth. So help me God it’s the truth.”

“You’re lying to me.”

“Stella, it’s the truth!”

“Tell me about it,” Stella said. “Tell me all about you and Ralph.”

Susan began talking furiously, talking about how she and Ralph had met that first morning, how they went to breakfast together, how he had painted her portrait and how in the interim they fell in love. She told Stella things she didn’t think she would ever tell anybody in her whole life — how she loved Ralph but was afraid of him at the same time, how he loved her, how she tried to save herself from sexual frustration by a visit to Stella’s room, how Ralph had come to her just yesterday and how they slept all night with their arms around each other. She talked as quickly as she could, embellishing everything with a wealth of detail, telling the older woman what they were wearing and what they said and on and on and on, spilling out all the details in an effort to keep Stella’s mind off the murder she was about to commit.

She talked a mile a minute but her mind traveled elsewhere while she talked. It wasn’t necessary for her to concentrate on what she was saying. Everything she said was something that had penetrated so deeply into her own brain that she could rattle it off without even thinking about it.

Her mind was busy with other things. Her mind had to figure out a way for her to escape from Stella once and for all. After a while either she would run out of words or Stella would run out of interest and it would be all over. And she knew that she was no match for Stella in a fight. The big woman was much stronger than she was, and only a lucky accident had enabled her to knock Stella unconscious the day before.

She would need luck now.

Luck, and more than luck. Luck and a plan, luck and a way out of it all.

She needed something. Oh, Christ, if only she had listened to Gloria and bought a gun. It would have been easy enough for her to get a permit, and having a gun around the house would be nice just about now.

It was funny — Gloria advised her to get the gun to protect herself from men. But that was when she worried about men, and now she needed a weapon of some sort to protect herself from a woman! A lesbian’s greatest fear traditionally was getting raped by a man — and now her own greatest worry was getting raped and murdered by a woman.

If only she had a gun. But she didn’t have a gun, and she was going to need something in a hurry. She kept on talking full speed but she could see that Stella’s attention was wandering. The woman was getting impatient. It was only a question of time, only a minute or two before Stella came at her with one desperate lunge and—

A knife.

That might do it. Maybe if she could get a knife from the drawer next to her. But would she be able to do it before Stella realized what she was doing? She had the feeling that if she so much as turned her eyes away from the other woman’s eyes, Stella would make her move.

But she had to do something. And she was running out of things to do.

Her eyes still staring into Stella’s eyes, Susan reached to her right. Her hand fumbled around and found the handle of the kitchen drawer. Oh, God, it had to be the right drawer!

She kept talking. Then, using her right hand only, she began to pull the drawer open a half-inch at a time. It stuck at first as it had a habit of doing and she almost died inside, but she gave another little tug and it came open.

Bit by bit she pulled on the drawer. When it was open almost four inches she let her hand slip inside, fumbling helplessly around for a knife. Accidentally she started to pick up the little paring knife and gripped it by the blade, wincing as the cold steel bit into her hand.

But it was just a nick, just a little cut. She held Stella’s eyes with her own and groped around in the drawer until her fingers fastened around the heavy wooden handle of the breadknife.

The breadknife. Five inches of strong sharp steel. That would do it if anything would. That would save her.

And just as she gripped onto the breadknife she ran out of things to say to Stella.

There was a period of silence that was all of ten seconds long but that seemed to last forever. Stella’s eyes bored into hers and her fingers tightened around the handle of the knife until she thought the wood would split between her fingers. She wanted to lift the knife out of the drawer but she was afraid, afraid that she would attract Stella’s attention to what she was doing before she could get the knife ready for action. How long would it take? The knife was bulky and the drawer was open only a little ways, and her whole body seemed numb with fear. How quickly would she be able to react? How quickly would Stella move?

She didn’t know. She couldn’t take any chances, not until she absolutely had to, not until there was no choice anymore.

Stella said: “The painting.”

For a moment she didn’t realize what the woman was talking about. Then it came to her and she waited for Stella to go on.

“The painting. He painted a picture of you.”

“Yes,” she said desperately. “That’s right, Stella. Ralph painted a picture of me.”

“He painted one of me once.”

“I know. He told me.”

“The one of me was very beautiful.”

“I’m sure it was.”

“Very beautiful.”

“You’re a very beautiful woman,” Susan said.

Stella smiled.

“I want to see the picture,” Stella said.

“Oh — it isn’t finished yet.”

“Show it to me.”

Susan took a deep breath. “It’s over there,” she said, nodding her head in the direction of the easel. When Stella turned to look toward the easel, the girl lifted the knife easily from the drawer and held it at her side. It seemed so easy, so simple.

When Stella turned back to Susan again she was looking directly at the knife.

She smiled. And Susan felt her stomach turning over. The woman was mad, raving, hysterically mad.

“You’re a bad girl,” Stella said. “You shouldn’t play with knives.”

“Get out of here or I’ll kill you.”

“You’d better give me the knife,” Stella suggested. “You’d better give me the knife and stop being such a bad little girl.”

“Stella!”

The woman took a step closer. Susan could reach her now with the knife. All she would have to do was stab out blindly, stab the knife into Stella’s stomach and it would all be over. Then she would be safe.

“I’ll kill you,” she warned. “Do you hear me, Stella?”

Stella smiled again. She took another little step, her right hand reaching out for the knife.

Susan tried. With all her strength she tried to lift the knife and drive it home into Stella’s belly. But something just went wrong somewhere and she couldn’t quite manage it. She couldn’t seem to move at all.

Lazily, easily, Stella’s hand moved and took the knife from the girl’s numb fingers.

It was all over now, all over for her. She knew that, and she stood very still with her eyes on the knife that was now in Stella’s hand, the tip of the blade pointing toward her heart. In another second or so it would be all over forever, and she would never see Ralph again, never feel safe and secure in his arms again, never love him and be loved by him again.

She wanted to cry but she couldn’t cry any more than she could scream or stab. She was numb and frightened, and her heart was beating so fast and her breath coming so quickly that she thought she was going to pass out cold. Well, she might as well faint. She would be just as dead in a moment anyway.

Stella smiled again, the sick smile, the twisted smile, the maniacal smile.

“The picture,” she said. “I want to see the picture.”

She walked all alone to the easel, the knife still in her hand, the insane smile still fixed on her face. She ripped the cloth covering off and stared down at the canvas while Susan cowered against the wall in the kitchenette, too petrified to move.

“The picture is very beautiful,” Stella said.

Susan barely heard her.

“Very beautiful,” Stella repeated. “Too beautiful to live. Too beautiful to go on living.”

Susan was shaking uncontrollably.

“I’m going to kill you,” Stella said.

Susan wanted to shout at her to go ahead and get it all over with. But something made her stop. And suddenly she realized that the woman was no longer paying any attention to her. Stella’s mind was on the picture, and all her interest was focused upon it.

“I’m going to kill you,” she repeated. “Kill you because you’re too beautiful to live.”

But she wasn’t talking to Susan any longer. She was talking to the picture.

She raised the knife. Savagely she slashed away at the canvas. The first stroke of the knife went through Susan’s portrait diagonally, slicing through the left breast and the right side of the stomach.

The next stroke was a stab wound where the heart would have been in the painting. Then another slash across the groin.

Stella kept on wielding the knife, making ribbons out of the canvas. Finally she was through and the knife dropped to the floor with a clatter. She turned from the portrait and walked back to where Susan was huddled against the wall in the kitchenette.

“You’re dead,” she said calmly. “I killed you.”

Susan thought hysterically, Ralph’s going to be upset when he sees what she did to the picture.

“You’re dead,” Stella repeated. “Why don’t you fall down if you’re dead?”

Susan crumpled up, exhausted, and dropped to the floor.