Carla

Chapter Twelve

She was alone.

That was the first thing she was aware of. She came back to life like a sleeper coming out of a dream, her senses returning to her one at a time. Her mind began remembering the events, one after another, as if the whole scene was re-enacting itself before her eyes. Then she could hear again and the music from the phonograph seemed unbearably loud.

Finally she felt the pain that was present in every organ of her body. She sat up gingerly on the sofa, hardly conscious of her nakedness, and ran her hands over her own injured flesh. Her breasts and thighs were sore to the touch and her arms and legs ached dully when she moved them.

She dressed slowly without noticing the condition of her clothing. Then, seeing how torn and messy her clothes were, she stumbled up the stair-case to her room and changed. The pain was always present, never diminishing in its intensity. She wanted to scream her lungs out, but she didn’t even have the strength for that.

She remembered his face when it was all over — the wide unbelieving eyes and the tortured grimace. He had shaken his head several times, refusing to accept the scene before him, and then he had turned away like a dead man, staggering to the door and leaving without a word.

And now she was alone.

Her mind was racing. She wondered how a woman was supposed to feel after being brutally beaten and raped. Outraged, she supposed. Horrified and sickened and hungry for the death of her assailant.

But she didn’t feel that way.

The bruises on her breasts and belly took on the mystic significance of love-marks. Even the overwhelming indescribable pain was not merely a pain but an intangible badge of love.

He had said he loved her. Now she knew that he had been speaking the truth, and that his love was something big and powerful and important.

He loves me, she thought. He’s strong, very strong, strong enough to beat me and take me by force, but what he wants is love. She remembered the look on his face after he had finished and knew that he was unaccustomed to acting so viciously.

She closed her eyes and pictured his face in her mind. It was a strong face: that was the outstanding thing about it. It was a handsome face as well, but not outstandingly handsome like Charles was. But there was a rigid unbending strength in Danny’s features that she had never found in Charles’ face, not even when he had slapped her.

And then she realized the great difference between the two. Both were good men, and both commanded a part of her love. But there was a world of difference between them.

Silently she added up the qualities which attracted her to Charles Butler in the first place. He was suave, polite, sophisticated, handsome, and intelligent. He was the dream lover, the man who knew women as few men did and who approached them as an art-lover approached a masterpiece. And she had been attracted to Charles, not as a woman attracted to a man, but as a woman desiring a lover and seeking out the perfect representation of that category. She realized in a flash that she had never loved Charles, not in the full sense of the word. She had needed him and he was there, and that was all there was to it.

The realization was disturbing to say the least. A woman is more than upset to discover that she has made a fool out of herself for a man without even loving him in the first place. Suppose Charles had agreed to marry her? For the first time she was glad, extremely glad, that he had possessed the good sense to refuse.

Because marriage to Charles would have grown intolerable. She could see that now, and seeing it she also saw how much more clearly he viewed things. As a lover Charles was superb; as a husband he would grow dull. Repetition would make his skillful caresses and gestures seem commonplace and trivial. Domestication would remove the spirit of adventure from his love and leave only boredom.

Danny Rand.

She murmured his name softly to herself, mouthing the syllables carefully. Danny was so different, so completely different. Danny’s touch had a meaning to it, a deep and exciting meaning. He would never bore her, not in a million years, not so long as he loved her so intensely and passionately. She could visualize herself becoming accustomed to Charles Butler, but Danny Rand would always surprise her.

Was she going mad? A man came into her home, insulted her and beat her and raped her, and here she was falling in love with him! It seemed ridiculous, but a second glance showed that there was good reason for her reaction.

The insults, the beating and the rape were not the acts of a vicious, hateful man. On the contrary they were the acts of a lover, and only a lover who would treat her in such a manner could ever fully possess her. She needed a man who would dominate her, a man who would be the boss and force her to behave.

Once she reached this level of understanding, it was easy for Carla to discover a few basic truths about herself. She sat half-dressed on the edge of her bed, remembering her childhood and seeing how it fit into the total picture. The lack of a father, the absence of a strong man in her life, had left a void in her personality and caused her to seek domination while acting at the same time like a domineering woman. She needed to be mastered and loved simultaneously. She thought of her mother, realizing in a start that the beatings she received from her mother’s hairbrush were more than discipline to her — they were also a sign of love.

She finished dressing hurriedly and lifted the phone, dialing Charles’s number. He answered after two rings.

“Charles? This is Carla.”

“Oh, hello—”

“Charles,” she cut in, “I want you to listen to me. I’m not going to see you again.”

He didn’t answer.

“I’m not angry with you,” she explained. “It’s just—”

“I know. It’s that you’ve found yourself, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Of course,” he said. “I knew it would happen, dear. When I first met you, I thought of you as just another attractive woman to be taken and eventually discarded. But you turned out to be a lot more than that, Carla. You’re a good woman. Do you know what that means?”

“What?”

“A good woman is one you can spend your whole life trying to love. I only wish I could love you properly, Carla. If I were a one-woman man, I couldn’t wish for a better woman than you.”

“I think I’ve found one,” she said softly.

“A one-woman man?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” he said. “I’m happy for both of you, and I’m glad that you wanted to tell me. And I’ll be right here if you ever need me.”

“I know,” she said. “I know you will, Charles.”

Downstairs, she shut off the still-spinning phonograph and wandered from room to room, her mind racing in circles. She felt as though she had crossed a bridge over a wide and deep chasm, and the air was indescribably fresher on the present side of the bridge. Talking to Charles had helped, besides being essential in its own right. She had needed to set things straight, to tell him just how the situation stood. But their conversation had meant more than that. It meant a clean break with his blessings. It strengthened her own convictions that what she was doing was right.

Charles was good, so good. She guessed that some day he might find the right woman for him, a woman important enough to him to conquer his bachelor spirit and tame him. It would take quite a woman.

She remembered his words of the day before. Was he right? Did living in the shadow of the atom bomb, in so insecure a world, mean that men and women should live only for the moment? She didn’t think so.

It seemed to her that the insecurity of everything made it so much more necessary for a person to work for security in his or her personal life. Love was important, and love could make the difference, the important and vital difference.

I am in love, she thought.

She had to see Danny, had to find him at once. He would be upset now over what he had done, and she had to find him and talk to him and make plans with him.

But where did he live? She thumbed through the phonebook but found no listing for him. Perhaps he was at the station; perhaps he had re-opened it for the day. She had to find him, and that was the first place to look.

She picked up her purse and dashed out the door and down the driveway to her car. Driving along, it took a great deal of effort on her part to keep from exceeding the speed limit.

The room felt like a prison cell. The closest Danny had ever been to prison was a night in the guardhouse after an exceptionally successful weekend in New York when he was stationed at Fort Dix. He could barely remember being tossed in the jug, but he could never forget the sensation of waking up the next morning, opening his eyes and staring at a barred window.

He had the same sensation now, sitting on the edge of his cot and staring out his window. The window faced the side of another building, with the effect that daylight never penetrated his room to any appreciable degree. Midnight and noon were identical to him. His window lacked bars, but otherwise there didn’t seem to be much difference between the room and a prison cell.

And why not? he asked himself savagely. He certainly belonged in prison. They ought to lock him up and chuck the key in the middle of Lake Erie, unless they decided he was out of his mind and threw him instead in a padded cell in the loony bin. How could he ever do a thing like that to a woman like Carla?

Was he a sex maniac, a pervert? Christ, he didn’t think so. He wasn’t so hard up that he had to force a woman to spread her legs for him. He wasn’t hard up at all, not after the time he spent with Carla’s maid just a day or two ago.

But he had forced her. He shut his eyes and winced at the memory of his knee sinking into her stomach and his hands hurting her. God, what was the matter with him?

It had to be more than sex. His mind combed over his past life, remembering the parade of women he had known. He remembered the first time, standing around nervously in a cathouse waiting-room while he was still in high school. He went there with his buddies, and when it was his turn he gave the frowzy redhead five dollars and undressed like an automaton.

At first nothing had happened.

“What’s the matter, honey? This your first time?”

He nodded, ashamed.

“Relax,” she commanded. “Come here and let me help you a little...”

From that time on sex had been no problem. There was a parade of girls — girls in the back seat of a car, girls on their own couches while their parents slept upstairs, girls that he seduced and girls that he paid for.

He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it over his head, dropping it carelessly on the floor. The door and window of the room were closed and it was getting stuffy, but he didn’t even feel like bothering to open door or window. He stretched out on the bed and set fire to a cigarette, tossing the burned-out match on the floor.

A car horn sounded in the distance, reminding him of the service station. It was closed now. He should open it for business again, but he just didn’t feel like it.

To hell with the station! Why in the hell should he drive himself fifteen hours a day anyhow? To make more money that he wouldn’t have time to spend?

Or should he be saving up to buy the station? He had a little pile saved already, but there didn’t seem to be any point to it. What good did it do to own his own station? Would it make him happier? It wouldn’t, no matter how successful he was.

But the station could be important. If he had something to work for, some person to love and take care of, his business would mean something to him. If he could come home at night and take her in his arms and tell her his dreams, then all the hours he worked would be well-spent.

Angrily he hurled the cigarette against the far wall. Well, there was no chance of getting her now, none at all. Maybe there never was any chance, but if there had been he had shot it all to hell. Carla wouldn’t look at him now, unless it was on a police line-up with the light shining in his eyes.

And it was all his fault. What was wrong with him, anyway — falling in love with a broad who was out of his class? She had been telling the truth — he was somebody to roll in the hay with and nothing more. And he should have had the brains to realize that instead of falling over his own feet with a bushel of nonsense about love.

Carla didn’t want him. Christ, she made that plain enough! If ever a woman wanted to get rid of a man, Carla was the woman and he was the man. She wouldn’t even talk to him on the phone.

So like a first-class horse’s ass he got his head filled with a lot of garbage about love and figured she was warm for his form. He bothered her and chased her until she got desperate and insulted him just to get rid of him. And then the insult got him mad enough to... to...

He couldn’t even think about it. He lit another cigarette and threw it away after a few puffs. It tasted terrible. Probably everything would taste rotten, with the lousy taste he had in his mouth. His mouth tasted like an armpit, and he knew that all the toothpaste and mouthwash in the world wouldn’t help.

The worst thing of all was that he couldn’t get her out of his system. Dreaming about her was bad enough before, but now it was ridiculous. He didn’t stand the chance of a hemophiliac in a nest of vampires, not after what he had done.

But he still loved her. He loved her more than ever, and he knew that he was not going to be able to stop loving her no matter how hard he tried.

Before he met Carla that afternoon, Danny’s life had been pleasantly dull. He tackled his work every day with genuine vigor, and fifteen hours or more on the job left him tired enough to sleep with no trouble. The station made money, the company was happy, and his bank account grew in a jerky fashion. It hadn’t been the life of Riley, but it was better than subsistence.

He wished now that he could return to that level of existence, with no worries and no woman-trouble. But he knew that things could never be exactly the same again. He remembered a saying he had picked up in high school, something his history teacher had quoted once. It seemed to sum up the situation nicely. How did it go again?

Into the same river you could not step twice, for other and still other waters are flowing.

Yes, that was it. He turned the phrase over in his mind, testing it. It was true. A person could never go back to something he had left. What was done was done, and there was no undoing it.

He could no more get Carla back than a girl could recover a lost maidenhead.

He stared through the window at the brick wall. There didn’t seem to be any point to things, not any more. Time passed, and the more things changed the worse they grew. He wanted Carla but he knew he would never possess her.

Into the same river...

What was the point of it all? He would never get her out of his system. He could go on working forever and he would never be happy again, never be able to get over losing her.

Why go on?

He checked the door and window; both were shut tight. He picked up a pen and a sheet of paper, but decided there didn’t seem to be a hell of a lot of sense in that. He capped the pen and put it down on the table.

He turned on the gas.

He kicked off his shoes and stretched out once again on the old army cot. His eyelids were heavy and he let them drop shot. Soon it would be all over.

He was very tired.