A Strange Kind of Love

Chapter Ten

The minute I saw La Mer I was glad Lincoln House was picking up the tab. It was the kind of restaurant that made you instinctively reach for your collar to make sure your tie was on straight. The waiters looked as though bending over would kill them, and the air smelled of money.

You could smell the money in the air. Honest.

I approached the headwaiter cautiously and revealed who I was and who I wanted.

“Ah!” he said. “This way, please.”

I followed like an obedient puppy and wound up at a postage stamp table across from one of the most beautiful and frightening women I have ever seen in my life.

Beautiful and frightening — that was Madge Clyber. That was the immediate description that popped into my head, and it took less than seven seconds to figure out why Lou called her a bitch. It was all there.

She was blonde, with long blonde hair whipped into a tight and almost severe chignon that sat on the back of her head like an egg on a plate. Her eyes were green — a very light green, and most women with eyes that color would seem soft and submissive. Madge Clyber had soft green eyes that looked straight through a person — hard, almost vicious eyes.

She started talking the minute I sat down. “You’re Dan Larkin,” she said. Her voice was hard, but not brittle the way Lou’s girl’s was. It was precise and very cold.

“That’s right. And you’re—”

“Madge Clyber. But I’m going to call you Dan and you can call me Madge, if it’s all right with you. I hate to eat with someone and call him by his last name. It screws up my digestion.”

I thought that nothing in the world could foul up her digestion. She could probably swallow a cannonball and the acid in her throat would soften it up before it got to her stomach.

But I kept my thoughts to myself.

She turned to the waiter who had magically appeared next to the table, looking at him as though he didn’t really exist. “Martini,” she said. “Very dry, kill the olive.”

“Same,” I said softly. I hate Martinis, but that didn’t seem to matter. It was as though ordering anything else would be insulting.

There’s no way to describe the conversation that went on over the drinks. Both of us studiously avoided mentioning the book, or even that I had written a book, or that she worked for Lincoln House, or anything that had anything at all to do with why we were sitting across the table in La Merin the first place. She looked at me with her little green eyes and babbled trivia about everything from women’s fashions to who should have won the last election, while I looked back with my own eyes and smiled when she smiled and frowned when she frowned and babbled trivia about everything from the ideal odds on the world series to the value of the martini as opposed to the old fashioned.

It was a ridiculous conversation, and it is precisely the sort of conversation authors always have with publishers. It is also the sort of conversation that agents have with movie producers; I remember Lou telling me about one marvelous time when he argued baseball for three solid hours with some minor mogul from Hollywood. Then, when they got their hats from the hatcheck chick, the minor mogul said, “$115,000,” and Lou without batting an eyelash said, “$125,000,” and the mogul said, “Fine.”

And that was that.

The drinks disappeared without my realizing that I had even sipped at mine and the waiter was back with a pad of paper in his hand.

“Lobster salad, coq au vin, stringbeans and coffee,” Madge snapped.

I almost said “Same” but caught myself in time, and when Madge recommended the roast beef I took it as a command and ordered that. The waiter disappeared as silently as he had come.

The meal was excellent, although what it was costing Lincoln House would have fed me quite comfortably for a good ten days. When we finished we had another cup of coffee and lit up cigarettes. It looked like the time for a more serious discussion.

“You’re just the way I pictured you,” she said.

“How’s that?”

She shrugged. “I’ve met a lot of authors,” she said. “I’ve read a lot of books. It’s not hard to get a fair picture of an author after you read his book, unless the book is a hunk of trash. Trash can be phony. An old drunk can reel off touching reams of crap for the love pulps. But with a good book you can figure the novelist.”

“How?” I asked. “His personality or his looks or where he was born or what?”

“Everything,” she said. “I knew who you were the minute you walked in the door.”

“I didn’t know I was that true to type.”

“It’s not a matter of typing you. I could tell you were somewhere between thirty-five and forty, and I could tell you were a New Yorker, and I could tell you were as tough as nails.”

“Am I?”

“Of course,” she said. “Christ, it’s in your book and it’s in your face. It’s in the chin and the eyes and the crooked nose, and in the way you carry yourself when you walk. You never bend over for anybody, do you?”

“Sometimes,” I said.

“But not often. You don’t have money, do you?”

“No.”

“But you did,” she went on. “You were born without it and you got it and you lost it. Right?”

“Right.”

“And now you’re trying to get it back.”

It wasn’t even a question, but I nodded automatically.

“You don’t like women much.” I started to say something but she said, “Hell, I don’t mean you’re a fag. Not that, for Christ’s sake. You’re probably good in bed. But you don’t like women much as people, do you?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t. You’re Tony — you and your lead character are the same person, and I’ll give odds you grew up in a New York slum. Am I right?”

“East Harlem.”

“Sure. Sure, it had to be East Harlem or Hell’s Kitchen or maybe the Lower East Side. But you don’t like women, do you? You need them, and you must go through them pretty fast, but do you like them?”

“I guess not.” It was something I hadn’t thought of before, but it started to make sense. It made a lot of sense,and it began to explain why I reacted the way I did to gals like Allison and Marcia.

For a moment neither of us said anything, and when Madge spoke her voice was different — a little softer and a little more personal.

“You’re like me,” she said. “Dammit, you’re too much like me. I came out of Beacon Hill instead of East Harlem, and I went to Radcliffe instead of quitting school and going to work, but that’s just surface difference. We’re a lot alike inside, aren’t we?

“I’ve had to fight for everything I ever got, Dan. I’ve had to kick people in the face and sometimes I kicked a few between the legs. I’ve stepped on everybody in my way and now I’m right where I belong.

“I’ve got a place in the East Fifties with an expensive Modigliani on the wall and a carpet as thick as the floor underneath it. I’ve got a liquor cabinet with everything in it that the bar at this damned hole has and more. I’ve got a bank account that’ll buy me anything I want, and my boss knows that there’s not a man in the world who can fill my job as well as I can.”

She stopped and sipped at her coffee, but I kept quiet waiting for her to go on.

“And I’m in as lousy shape as you are, Dan. I’m a mess. For a while I went to a psychiatrist five days a week for an hour a day at twenty-five dollars an hour to find out how sick I was. I’m sick, Dan. I’ve got rocks in my head.”

She closed her eyes for a minute. “I hate men,” she said. “The bastards — they’re always in the way, and God I wish I didn’t need them the way I do! I hate them and I use them up the way I use up lipstick and toilet paper and gin. And it’s no damned good.”

“I know,” I said. And I’m not sure why I said it.

“I know you do. You’re the same person I am, Dan. You need women like I need men and you hate them justas much as I do. And you fight like hell to get some place and you can’t help trying to get there, but when you get there it’s not nearly as nice as you thought it would be. Right?”

I nodded.

“All the places are the same,” she said. “None of them are any damned good. We’re the type of people you can’t satisfy, Dan. That’s the reason we get places and that’s the reason why we don’t like them when we get there. We’re the kind of damned fools who keep the world progressing. If it weren’t for us nobody would have invented the wheel — but it doesn’t do us any good. Does it?”

“No,” I said.

“It doesn’t. Dan, what do you want now?”

Automatically I said, “I want to sell a book to Lincoln House.”

“Good,” she said. “I’m glad you had the guts to say it. But it won’t make you happy, Dan. Not for more than a day or so.”

“I know that.”

“But you can’t help wanting it, can you?”

“No — I can’t.”

She shook her head as if to clear it. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”

She signed for the tab and we got her coat from the checkroom and I helped her into it, and out on the street she said, “Let’s go to my place, Dan.”

“I—”

“You don’t want to,” she said. “Hell, I know damn well you don’t want to. You don’t like me, or if you like me you sure as hell don’t want to take me to bed. I know that. You think I’m a bitch and I use tough truck-driver language and I’m not the kind of a woman who’d look good with her hair spread out on a pillow.”

“I think you’re a very beautiful woman,” I said honestly. “But—”

“But you don’t want me. I know all that. If you wanted me I wouldn’t want you, Dan. But you want to sell a book to Lincoln House, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Then you better come to my place, Dan. Because if you don’t, you won’t sell a book to Lincoln House or any place else. I’ll knock you down so far you’ll never get up. I’ll louse you up with every publisher from here to Leningrad and you won’t be able to push slush to the pulps when I’m done with you.”

“You wouldn’t do that.”

“You think not? I could and I would, Dan. I’m a bitch, like I told you. I’m a real bitch from the blonde hair to the little pink toes, and when I want something nobody stops me. Coming?”

I thought about it for ten seconds — no more. I thought about the book and I thought about Madge and I thought about me. I didn’t want to bed down with Madge Clyber any more than I wanted to sack out with a poisonous snake.

But I wanted that book to sell.

“Don’t you like the book, Madge?”

Her lips formed a thin red line as she said, “It’s the best book I’ve read in the last six years. But if you don’t come to my place you can use it to wipe your ass.”

And I looked at her and she looked at me and we got in a cab and rode to her apartment.

Her apartment had a Modigliani on the wall and a carpet on the floor as thick as the floor under it. She wasn’t kidding.

She made us drinks and I swallowed mine right down. I needed more than a drink.

“Come on,” she said. “Damn you, come on.”

I followed her into the bedroom. She unbuttoned her dress and pulled it over her head. She reached her hands behind her and unsnapped her bra and flipped it at the chair in the corner. She stepped out of the panties and left them on the floor, and kicked off her shoes and rolled down her stockings. She stood in front of me with her breasts firm and her thighs golden and every bit of her as beautiful as anything I had ever seen in my life.

“I’m beautiful,” she said. “Tell me how beautiful I am. Tell me I’m the most goddamned beautiful thing you ever saw in your life. Tell me!”

I told her what she wanted to hear.

“Now take off your clothes.”

I did, embarrassed in a strange sort of a way. I undid my necktie and took off my jacket and shirt and stepped out of my pants, hanging them over the back of the chair to keep from losing the crease. It was ridiculous — the whole thing was ridiculous, and when I stood before her I felt more foolish and lost than I had ever felt before.

She was stretched out on the bed now. She had undone her hair and I saw how long it was. It fell almost to her waist, presenting an illusion of femininity that was totally out of place with a woman like her. It was as though she kept her hair long to prevent her from realizing how little of a woman she was.

I wanted to lie down next to her; rather, I felt as though I was supposed to, as though it was part of the routine. But somehow I realized that I wasn’t supposed to do anything just now. The next move was up to her.

My neck itched, but I couldn’t even scratch it. I had to wait for her to tell me what to do.

“Take your belt out of your pants,” she said. Her voice was utterly flat and lacking in any emotion whatsoever. It was as though she was telling me to give her a cigarette or hold her coat for her.

“Wait a minute—”

“Get your belt,” she said. And this time it sounded like a command.

I walked over to the chair and slipped my belt out of my pants. It was heavy, a hunk of hand-tooled leather I picked up in Mexico on one of the side-trips I made when I was working on the coast. I let it swing loosely in my hand and walked back to the bed, and I stood there and let her stare at me.

“You have a beautiful body,” she said.

I suppose I blushed or something.

“I mean it. Don’t you think a man’s body can be beautiful? Of course it can. You’re hard and tough and wiry, and you look beautiful.”

I didn’t say anything.

“What in hell are you waiting for?” She demanded suddenly. I knew what she meant and I half-knew what she wanted me to do, but it hadn’t entirely penetrated to me yet.

“Hit me,” she said levelly. “Hit me, Dan.”

“Wait,” I said. “Look, Madge—”

“Hit me, damn you! Take that belt and beat the living crap out of me!”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Do you think I give a damn what you want? I don’t care! I just want you to hit me, damn it!”

“Are you going out of your mind?” I was shouting, too. All I wanted was to be someplace else. I wanted to get away from her.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Don’t you hate me, Dan? Don’t you want to hurt me?”

“No.”

“You should. You should want to rip me to ribbons.You should want to turn my skin red and make a bloody mess out of me.”

“But I don’t.”

“Why not?”

“I—”

“Don’t say you like me,” she cut in. “You don’t like me any more than I like you. I don’t want you to like me. I want you to hate my guts. I want you to hate me inside and out, and I want you to beat me silly.”

“I don’t understand.” I looked at her, all nude and beautiful and at the same time indescribably ugly, stretched out on the white sheets with the pillow under her head and her whole body golden and perfect. Her breasts were large and pink at the tips and her thighs tapered to rounded calves and slim ankles.

“Don’t you understand?” she asked. “Don’t you? Why the hell do you think I asked you up here.”

“I thought you wanted me to make love to you.”

“To make love? Love? What the hell is love? How could you possibly love me or even put on a good act?”

I looked at the floor, at the carpet on the floor. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the belt hanging limp in my right hand.

For a moment I tried to picture myself raising the belt and bringing it down on all that golden flesh.

“Don’t you hate me, Dan?”

“No.”

“Think about it,” she ordered. “Close your eyes.”

I closed them.

“Now think,” she said. “Think about all the bastards who balled you up. Think about everything that’s gone wrong. Think about all of it.”

I tried to. I tried very hard and I got mad — but I didn’t get mad at her and the thought of beating her couldn’t seem right or natural to me.

“Think about me,” she commanded. “Think about how much you want to sell the book and how I’m standing right in your way. Hate me.”

“I can’t,” I said. “Maybe it’s because I understand how you feel.”

“Maybe,” she said, seeming to calm down for a moment. “Try thinking about the women, Dan. Think about the bad ones, the rotten ones, the ones who loused you up. There must have been one, Dan.”

I opened my eyes and looked at her. And suddenly it didn’t seem to be her on the bed, not any more. She was suddenly younger and smaller and browner, and her hair was dark and it was Marcia on the bed, Marcia with her body beautiful against the white linen sheets, Marcia lying on the linen sheets where she had been lying in Carol’s arms.

I raised the belt.

“Hate me.”

“And it was Marcia’s voice, and I hated and loved the woman on that bed all at once.

And I swung the belt.

I brought the belt down hard across her golden thighs, and when I took the belt away there was a thin red line across her thighs where I struck her. Her face was contorted in a weird expression that was half pleasure and half pain. Her hands were balled up into little fists and there was hate and love in her little green eyes.

“Again,” she said, speaking through tightly clenched teeth. “Harder.”

I lashed her again, across the thighs once more but lower this time and harder. The streak of red where I hit her was darker than before and she moaned in a strange sort of agony under the lash.

“More,” she moaned. “Harder!”

But I didn’t have to be told any more. Everything was pouring out of me now, all the pent up hate and anger and torment and everything, all the agony over Allison and Marcia, all the fury and all the days of pounding a typewriter and the drinking and the puking and the waking up in too many alleys too many times.

I hated her. I hated the whole world, and I was pouring the hate out of me and onto her. I raised the belt time after time, and time after time I brought it down on that cowering flesh.

I whipped her breasts and her belly and her thighs. She rolled over finally and I began lashing her back and her buttocks, swinging the belt harder with each stroke, hurting her more and more with every swing of the heavy Mexican leather.

The moans she made grew to whimpers and finally to soft, animal-like screams. I felt the fury growing in me and I let it all go from me to the belt, from the belt to her, hating myself for what I was doing but unable to stop, not wanting to stop.

She rolled over a second time and stared at me. The expression in her eyes was one I had never encountered before, a brand-new and terrifying expression that combined hate and love and pleasure and pain and fear and admiration and total revulsion.

“You bastard,” she whispered. “God, you bastard!”

The belt fell from my hand and dropped to the rug. My eyes followed it to the floor and watched it silently for several seconds. Then they returned to her, to the soft green eyes and the tight little fists and the beautiful golden body that was covered with red streaks.

“You bastard,” she repeated.

“Bitch,” I said. I hardly recognized my own voice.

“Bitch,” I repeated. “Christ, what a bitch you are!”

And then I fell upon her, fell upon the bed with the white linen sheets, pressing my hard body against her soft and injured body. My arms went around her hard, hurting her, and her arms went around me and I ground my mouth down on hers hard.

I took her, fiercely, angrily, and all I could hear in the world was the sound of her voice screaming in my ears.

Dressing, I couldn’t even look at her. I put on my clothes in a rush, anxious only to get away from her and never come back. I was anxious too to get away from myself, to get away forever from the person I had suddenly discovered myself to be. I winced at the memory of the animal I had become when I swung the belt at her.

When I was finished dressing I turned and looked at her. She was back in her clothes, and she looked just as she looked in the restaurant except that her hair was still down.

And her eyes were different, too. There was no hardness in them any more, nothing at all but relaxation and satisfaction.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

“Like a bastard.”

“Why?”

“I... I never did anything like that before,” I said. “I know that sounds like a line from a virgin in a backseat of a parked car, but—”

“I know,” she said. “But you shouldn’t feel bad at all. It’s nothing to feel bad about.”

I didn’t say anything.

“You wanted to do it,” she said. “Didn’t you?”

“Not at first.”

“But you did afterwards.”

“Yes. Yes, I did.”

“And you liked it. Didn’t you?”

I nodded.

“And you feel better now. I know — you feel as thought here was something wrong in doing it and in wanting to do it. But outside of that you feel better.”

“That’s right,” I admitted. “But why?”

“Sit down.” I sat down next to her on the bed. “Dan, we’re not normal people. It’s all mixed up in what I told you before. We’re people who get places without really getting anywhere, people who are always unsatisfied. And we build up hate, Dan. We hate and we get bitter inside. We have to get rid of that hate.”

“Maybe.”

“That’s the reason,” she went on. She reached for my hand and took it in hers, and her hand was very cool and soft.

“Dan,” she said, “do you remember in your book when Tony beat up the girl?”

“Sure,” I answered her. “But it wasn’t like this.”

“Wasn’t it?”

I thought for a minute.

“It was,” she said. “It wasn’t her he was beating up — not entirely. It was everything he hated, everything he was mad at. See?”

I nodded.

“And you’re like Tony, Dan. You are Tony.”

I nodded again.

We sat there holding hands like teenagers for another five minutes or so. Then she stood up and walked to the bureau. She picked up a piece of paper.

“Here’s the contract,” she said. “In duplicate. Sign them both and keep the top copy.”

I looked for Lou’s initials, saw them, and signed the two contract copies on the dotted lines.

“You got what you came for,” she said. “I knew you would.”

“Yes,” I said. “I knew it too, I suppose.”

“How do you feel now?”

“Rotten.”

“Feel like finishing the book?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t feel like writing another thing again. Ever. I feel like tossing my typewriter out of the window.”

“Of course. But you’ll finish it.”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes — I’ll finish it.”

We walked toward the door. “I know you will,” she said. “You’ll hate it and you’ll hate it when you’re done with it, but you’ll do it. It’s the kind of person you are, Dan.”

I nodded. For the first time I was beginning to get a good idea what kind of person I was, and I wasn’t liking that person very much.

“We won’t see each other again,” she said at the doorway. “This was good, but we won’t want each other again. This was a sort of therapy for both of us, but I won’t ever want to see you again. And you won’t want to see me either, will you?”

“No,” I said. “No, I won’t.”

I walked out the door and down the hallway to the elevator. I didn’t kiss her or tell her good-bye.

I never saw her again.