69 Barrow Street

Chapter three

Stella was smiling when he walked into the apartment.

“Well,” she said. “Two-timing me, huh?”

“What do you mean?”

“Just now. With the little brunette.”

“Oh,” he said. “The two of us had breakfast together. She just moved into the building.”

“Sort of a long breakfast, wasn’t it?”

“We were talking for a while,” he said defensively. There was nothing for him to be defensive about, but Stella had the knack of making him feel guilty for no reason whatsoever.

“What’s her name?”

“Susan Rivers.”

“She’s very pretty, Ralph.”

“I know. I’m thinking of doing a painting of her. That’s what we were talking about.”

Stella pouted. “You don’t want to paint me anymore?”

“I just wanted to try something different.”

“That’s all right,” she said quickly. “I don’t really mind. As a matter of fact, I intend to get to know the girl myself.”

He looked at her, puzzled.

“You see,” she went on, “we’ve met before. She’s the one I was telling you about yesterday. The one I intend to take to bed sometime in the very near future. Susan Rivers, you said? I’ll have to remember her name.”

His mouth dropped open but no words came out. Stella looked at him for a moment and suddenly burst out in harsh, strident laughter.

“You mean you didn’t know? You couldn’t tell?”

“You’re crazy!”

“You couldn’t tell!” Her eyes were laughing at him. “My God, Ralph — why, it stands out all over her. She’s so obviously gay I’m amazed you didn’t spot her right away.”

“Stella—”

“You’re a real artist, aren’t you? One look at a person and you can tell things other people wouldn’t notice. But anything that’s perfectly straightforward and obvious sails right past you.”

“Stella,” he said again. “Stella, I don’t want you to bother that girl.”

“Bother her?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Why don’t you say what you mean? There’s a better word than bother for what I had in mind.”

“I want you to leave her alone,” he said. “She doesn’t want you.”

“You’re wrong, Ralph.”

“She doesn’t. And I want you to leave her be. Do you understand me?”

“Of course I understand. That doesn’t mean I’m going to listen to the nonsense you’re spouting. What in the world’s got into you, anyway? Have you fallen for our little Miss Rivers? That won’t matter. You can have a crack at her when I’m done—”

“Shut up!”

She grinned. “You know, I think that’s it. You’re in love with her!”

“Don’t be silly.”

“You must be. You’re a real nut, Ralph — falling in love with a dyke.”

“You’re being ridiculous,” he said, frowning. “I like her, that’s all. Even if she is a lesbian, she’s one hell of a nice person — which is something you’d never understand. And I don’t want you to get your hooks into her, Stella. You ruin people. You turn them all rotten inside.”

She crossed her legs and reached for a cigarette. “Aren’t you being a little too dramatic, dear? Whom did I ever ruin?”

He stared at her.

“Tell me. I’d like to know.”

“Leave me alone, will you?”

She stood up and walked to him, pressing up against him and putting her arms around his neck. He tried to brush her away but she clung to him.

“Come on,” she said. “Tell me who I’ve been ruining.”

“Me,” he said brokenly. “You’ve made a mess out of me. How’s that for a starter?”

He expected her to laugh but this time she didn’t. Instead she released him and took a step backwards. There was a new expression in her eyes, a mixture of pity and contempt.

“You really think I ruined you?”

He nodded, not looking at her.

“No,” she said. “Not me, Ralph. You were a wreck before I ever laid eyes on you.”

Susan Rivers read the same paragraph three times in succession.

The third time around she realized that the paragraph seemed familiar. She closed her eyes for a second and came to the realization that it had taken her twenty minutes to read five pages of the book she held in her hand. And on top of that she could no longer remember anything that had been on any of the five pages.

Disgusted, she closed the book and returned it to the bookshelf. She curled up in the mammoth armchair, the only really nice piece of furniture in the apartment, and tried to force herself to relax.

It didn’t work. It never worked. There were some things you couldn’t force on yourself, and relaxation happened to be one of them.

She closed her eyes once again and thought about Ralph Lambert. It was, all things considered, quite pleasant to think about Ralph Lambert. He was nice company. And she didn’t seem to feel afraid of him.

With most men she was afraid, almost petrified. Not with gay men, of course, and she had been quite friendly with one or two of them from time to time. But a friendship with a male homosexual was never particularly satisfying. It seemed forced, as if the two of them were friends primarily because homosexuality served as a common bond.

Men who were straight generally frightened her. The thought of a man touching her with his coarse hands, forcing her and hurting her, bending her down onto a bed and kissing her, touching all the private parts of her body and then… then…

When she opened her eyes she realized that she had been shivering with fear and disgust.

But with Ralph she felt comfortable, and she hoped that he wouldn’t try to change their friendship into anything sexual. Not only was he a man, but she was fairly certain that the woman he was living with was the woman she had passed the day before on the stoop, the woman she had found so damnably attractive.

Would anything come of her attraction for the woman? Half of her being hoped the two of them would have an affair, if only a brief one. The other half prayed that they would live their separate lives and that their paths would never cross in any manner more intense than an occasional meeting in the hallway. While she wanted the woman, sexual involvement of any sort was one thing she desired desperately to avoid for the time being.

Susan had been a lesbian for almost two years, a relatively short time. In the course of those two years she had made love with six women. The six affairs ranged in duration from five months with Gloria to one night with a girl named Alicia whom she had met in a Village bar. She remembered the first time — it seemed so long ago, and yet it all happened less than two years ago, just a month before her twenty-second birthday. Perhaps she had been a lesbian before that without knowing it; the fact that she had avoided any sexual relationship with men on a deep level suggested that to her. But the first real affair began in September, several months after her graduation from art school.

She had spent the summer as arts and crafts counselor at a summer camp in the Catskills, and when she hit the city she had nothing to do and no place to go. She wanted to get some sort of job that would let her continue with her work in ceramics, but jobs of that type didn’t grow on trees. So she lived with her parents in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, read the Help Wanted ads every morning in the Times, and spent her evenings strolling around Greenwich Village, drinking cafe espresso in the little coffee houses, listening to modern jazz in a dimly lit bar and watching people feeding pigeons in Washington Square.

It was on one of those evenings that she met Sharon. She and Sharon had been in art school together. Sharon was a year or so older and the two of them had never been very friendly, knowing each other well enough to exchange nods in the hallway but not much more than that. But when she met the older girl in the Village, Sharon gave her a heavy welcome and Susan was lonely enough to be grateful.

They went out drinking in a quiet bar; she couldn’t remember anymore which bar it had been. It was a warm evening and they drank dry martinis on the rocks. The drinks were very refreshing and very cool and very effective, and Susan had never been much of a drinker to begin with.

She got quite high in a short amount of time.

Thinking back, she couldn’t remember whether Sharon had told her she was a lesbian before or after they went to the older girl’s apartment. Probably after, because she probably would have refused to go if she had known.

At Sharon’s apartment, a little one-room-with-kitchenette place on Bank Street, everything happened with phenomenal speed. The first part was not fresh anymore in her mind, but she remembered that almost as soon as they were inside the door Sharon was kissing her, covering her mouth with lips that were soft and tender and sweet. And what followed, followed swiftly, with Sharon pressing her down on the bed without even bothering to remove the spread, pressing her down and lying on top of her and grinding her body into hers. It had ended almost before it began.

Then they were lying together on the bed, with Sharon’s long red hair hanging to her waist and contrasting beautifully with her pale, milky skin. Susan was in a state of shock at the time, numb with the liquor and even more numb with the realization of what she had done. And Sharon had explained to her exactly what she was and what they had done, and the sort of life she could expect to lead in the future.

And then the second time. “I want to make it good for you,” Sharon said. “Lie down and be perfectly still and don’t move at all. Don’t even think about anything, darling. Or if you must, tell yourself that you love me.”

She did as she was told. She lay down on her back with her head resting gently on a soft foam-rubber pillow. She closed her eyes and let her mind go completely blank, concentrating entirely on the physical sensations that came to her and letting her whole body respond to them.

Sharon began to kiss her. Her lips touched Susan’s eyelids first, kissing them in turn. The mere touch of the other girl’s lips on her eyelids seemed to relax Susan. She breathed deeply.

Then Sharon’s mouth fastened on her mouth and Sharon’s tongue darted out and slipped between her lips, licking and caressing the inside of her mouth. It was like no kiss she had ever experienced before. The whole inside of her mouth began to tingle and she could sense the blood coursing through her body. Sharon kissed her again. Then her lips darted to Susan’s throat and she kissed her all over her neck, little fast kisses that gave her a warm heady feeling.

Sharon’s fingertips toyed with the younger girl’s breasts. Susan’s first impulse was to shrink away, but the touch was so pleasant, so gentle and delightful, that instead she found herself responding. Then Sharon’s lips moved to the cleft between her breasts while her hands continued their gentle caressing.

Then Sharon put her mouth to each of Susan’s breasts in turn. She covered every square inch of the smooth, lightly tanned flesh with kisses and Susan hadn’t believed that such extraordinarily marvelous sensations existed. Sharon bathed each of her breasts completely with her hot, insistent tongue and Susan began to breathe very quickly. She couldn’t keep her feet still as the passion flooded her brain and her body began to writhe sensuously on the bed.

Sharon continued to kiss her. Her hungry mouth moved lower.

Lower…

It was perfect.

That whole night had been perfect. After they had made love that second time she drifted off to a deep sleep with her head pressed tightly to Sharon’s breast. Then, hours later, she woke up and Sharon cooked breakfast for the two of them.

Then they went back to bed.

The next day she explained to her parents that she had found an apartment in the Village that she was going to share with a girl from school. She moved in with Sharon.

They made love almost constantly for the first few weeks. Sharon had been involved in lesbianism for years, ever since her French teacher had managed to seduce her during her second year in high school. She knew just about everything there was to know about the technical side of lesbianism and the mechanics of it. She told Susan a great deal and showed her even more.

They remained together for three and a half months. Then they drifted apart. They had nothing in common, really, except for their attraction to one another. When the freshness of their love wore off, they separated and Susan found a room of her own on West Tenth Street. About the same time she managed to get work in the ceramics shop where she was still employed. At the beginning she worked behind the counter, but when the man who ran the shop saw the work she was capable of doing he put her in the workroom. At first he designed the objects she was to make; then he began to let her work out some designs on her own.

She was a happy person, all things considered. She enjoyed her work tremendously and enjoyed living in the Village. It was sort of a small town within the larger city, and the free and easy air about it appealed to her.

At times her lesbianism bothered her. She had always been fond of children, for example, and the knowledge that she would never have children of her own was disturbing. While she herself felt that “normal” sex was simply the name given to the sexual practice which happened to be followed by the majority of the world, and that there was no such thing as a perversion, her abnormality periodically annoyed her.

And there were times when she wondered what would have become of her if she hadn’t met Sharon that night. Would she have drifted to lesbianism regardless? Perhaps, but there was also the possibility that it would never have occurred to her. Then what would have happened?

She guessed that she would have lived alone by herself for a long time — several years at least. Then she would have met a man and married him in time. She could picture herself living a normal life without ever suspecting she was abnormal.

But how unhappy she would have been!

She never would have been able to enjoy sex with her husband. That was certain. Even if she could have managed to let him make love to her — a thought which in itself was so terrifying and so repugnant to her that it made her shake — she could never have derived any pleasure from the act. She would have completely missed the pleasure she received from Sharon, and that pleasure alone more than compensated for the occasional feelings of distress over her abnormality.

Her thoughts returned to Ralph Lambert. Except for sex, he was the type of man she might have been able to stand being married to. She certainly didn’t dislike men, the way so many lesbians did. In fact she had always preferred the companionship of men to that of women, except that men frightened her so much.

But she wasn’t afraid of Ralph. It had been a good idea to put it to him right from the beginning — no sex, now or later. And he didn’t seem to take offense, either. He evidently liked her for herself, as a person.

But he appreciated her as a woman, too. She could tell that readily enough. While he never stared at her with naked hunger in his eyes, the admiration of her face and body was easy to recognize. And it was a good deal stronger than the admiration of an artist for a beautiful object. Ralph hadn’t looked at her with the eyes of a lecher, but he hadn’t gazed at her as he might have gazed at a beautiful landscape either.

She hoped they would continue to get along. What would it be like posing for him? She could hardly imagine it. It would certainly be strange, holding a pose while a man tried to reproduce her on a canvas. And even if the man was a man she knew, even if he was Ralph, she wasn’t sure whether she would be able to pose nude for him.

She thought back to their conversation and giggled. At any rate, it was nice to know that her head and body went well together!

Ralph hauled one of the colonial chairs over to the front window and sat down in it. His eyes stared out the window toward Barrow Street but he wasn’t conscious of anything that he saw there.

His mind was elsewhere.

He wondered how much truth was contained in Stella’s last statement. You were a wreck before I ever laid eyes on you, she had said. At first it had sounded to him like a typical statement of hers, defending by attacking. She said things of that nature frequently, as if she could make herself less vile by dragging everybody down to her own level.

But perhaps there was more than a grain of truth in what she had said. Maybe he was no good from the start. Maybe he had made a mess out of his own life, and had only himself to blame for his current state of affairs. Stella was obviously a corrupting influence — hell, a woman like her would exert a corrupting influence on Satan himself. But maybe he was already pretty corrupt when she came into his life.

What had he been like before Stella James?

It was hard to remember. It was hard to visualize any life for himself other than the one he lived now, hard to picture himself in any surroundings other than those of the Village, hard to imagine him living anyplace beside 69 Barrow Street or with anybody but Stella James.

But there had been times before that. What sort of life had he led then?

He forced himself to go over his life briefly. Childhood in Xenia, Ohio — that had been uneventful enough, with nothing and nobody in that little hickish town to excite or stimulate him. The local college where he majored in art. Then two years in the army, and all he could remember about those days was that he hated them — the monotony, the drabness, the regimented life where he had to bow and scrape before authority and do the same boring tasks day after day after day. If he had been a cartoonist or an illustrator it wouldn’t have been so bad; he could have done something fairly interesting during his hitch in the service. As it was he sweated out the time as a clerk in Fort Polk, Louisiana, typing report after report and spending his nights drinking or playing cards or sacked out with one of the local prostitutes.

And then what? Then New York — with no job and nothing to his credit but ambitions. He thought he was a painter, but maybe he was wrong. Maybe he was just a bum who was throwing paint at canvas while he ran his way through his mustering-out pay and the few bucks his folks sent from home.

Maybe Stella had hit the nail on the head. Maybe he was a bum from the word go and living with Stella was just another step down the primrose path to hell, just another step closer to the ultimate in depravity and total and complete degradation.

No, by God, he had been a painter! He had never sold a painting, but his work was good, damned good! For confirmation he stood up and walked to the closet. On the top shelf was the nude he had done of Stella, the only painting he had in New York. The rest he had shipped home to Xenia or destroyed.

He took down the painting and set it up on the couch, stepping back a few paces to look at it. It was done in a mockery of the classic style much as was Manet’s Olympia, a burlesque of the standard picture of Venus. Stella was posed on the couch, the same couch that the painting was propped up on now. She was completely nude. Like Venus, one hand supported her head while the other covered her groin from sight.

At that point the similarity between the two paintings ended. The one of Venus was seductive but pure at the same time; Ralph’s painting attempted to capture the full character of Stella on canvas and succeeded admirably. Evil oozed forth unmistakably from every dab of paint on the canvas.

The smile on Stella’s face was Satanic. There was cruelty shining forth from her eyes, cruelty in the lines at the corners of her mouth. The way she covered herself with her hand served not to conceal the area, as it did in the original painting, but to draw attention to it. Ralph had been very careful to make the area covered by the hand the dominant spot in the picture and he had managed to highlight it perfectly. Stella seemed to be offering herself in the very act of concealment.

Even the pose of her body was obscene. The soft flesh tones he had used to paint her were not only beautiful but tremendously sensual. By a clever use of long brushstrokes on her thighs and calves he had given the illusion of an immense amount of power, evil power, lustful power. Similarly, short and strong brushstrokes around her breasts made the breasts even more prominent than they deserved to be and accentuated the feeling of corruption and dissipation that emanated from the canvas.

He could not look at it without having to catch his breath. It was Stella, to be sure. More than that, it was one hell of a good picture. He had no doubt that he could sell it, but it was the one picture he had ever painted that he wanted to keep for himself, He wouldn’t even hang it on the wall; he wanted to keep it hidden in the closet and take it out from time to time to look at by himself.

No, he hadn’t been a wreck when she met him. He certainly hadn’t arrived at the top or anywhere near the top, but he had the talent to make the grade.

Maybe he could still make it.

He thought about the painting he was going to do of Susan Rivers. She would make a fine model. She was certainly a lovely thing, but beauty itself had little to do with a subject’s suitability. There had to be something else. The features of the model had to reflect something inside, some inner quality which the artist could transpose into color and shadow and line. Otherwise he might just as well take her picture with a camera — a camera certainly did a better job of getting a likeness. A picture had to do more. It had to say something.

Susan Rivers. He wondered if Stella was right and the girl was a lesbian. It was a strong possibility. Stella seldom made mistakes, and if it was true, it would explain the way she emphasized keeping things on a platonic basis. Well, that was all right with him. The girl had a right to live her own life and it was none of his business if she preferred to go to bed with girls.

Still, he hoped to god Stella stayed away from her. Stella was poison to anybody, man or woman. And Susan was such a sweet girl, such a remarkably nice person.

Stella would be bad for her.

When he heard Stella coming toward the room he hastily replaced the painting on the shelf and closed the closet door. She had seen the painting before, of course, but he didn’t want her to see him looking at it. She would just make some wisecrack and they’d be arguing again.

She came into the room and flashed him a smile.

“I’m having a party tonight,” she said.

“What kind of a party?”

“Don’t you know?”

He knew, of course. It would be the kind of party she always had, the kind of party that made a Roman orgy look like a garden party on Long Island by comparison. His stomach turned over at the thought of it.

“Just a small get-together,” she continued. “I’m having an even dozen people. Jimmy is bringing the stuff.”

“Jimmy who and what stuff?”

“Jimmy is Jimmy Henderson. The stuff is marijuana.”

He closed his eyes. “Count me out.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I said count me out. If you think I’m coming to one more of those pot-smoking scenes of yours, you’re out of your head.”

“You’ve enjoyed them before.”

“Only when I’ve been high. When it wore off I realized how sick the whole thing was. I’m not coming.”

“You’re certain?”

“Positive. I’ll go out and find a bar to get quietly drunk in.”

“All right, if that the way you want it.”

“That’s precisely the way I want it.”

“Fine,” she said. “But that’ll leave us one short. I’ll have to ask your little girlfriend.”

“Who?”

“Your girlfriend — the one you ate breakfast with. Susan Rivers, I think you said her name was.”

“Don’t ask her, Stella.” His voice was flat and devoid of emotion.

“But I’ll have to, darling. Otherwise we’ll be one person short. And I’m sure she’ll be delighted to come. She’ll probably have a marvelous time.”

“I don’t want you to ask her, Stella.”

She looked across the room at him, a smile on her face. “You mean you’ll be coming to the party?”

He shut his eyes. Then he opened them again, defeated. “All right,” he said. “I’ll be coming to the party.”