Carla

Chapter Four

Her shower the next morning left Carla refreshed and awake, but she found herself unable to rinse the events of the previous day from her mind. Perhaps it was no more than her imagination, but her hand still seemed to tingle where Charles’ fingers had held it so firmly. He was a new type of man, a man infinitely more sophisticated than any of the boys she had grown up with, yet far more romantic and intense than any of Ronald’s other friends.

Her vow of last night didn’t seem to help matters. Although she knew how fatal it would be to have an affair with Charles, she felt weak and powerless inside. If only there was someone for her to talk things over with! She couldn’t figure everything out by herself, not when so many things were happening so quickly.

She dressed and polished off her breakfast in short order. Thoughtfully, she smoked a cigarette and took a long look out the breakfast-room window. The yard next door was a blaze of color, with roses climbing the sides of the garage and other flowers competing with them for her attention. It was funny, she thought. The people on Nottingham were lucky enough to have gardens and the time to work in them, and they sacrificed that pleasure by hiring a gardener to take care of all the work. It didn’t make much sense.

She wondered vaguely who the neighbors might be. Ronald had told her once but the name didn’t stick in her mind. That was the big trouble. She didn’t really know anyone, not even the people next door.

The cigarette burned down and she ground it out in the red beanbag ashtray. “Lizzie!” she called.

Lizzie hurried into the breakfast-room, looking stunning in her white uniform. Her eyes were very bright, and they held a perpetual expression of wisdom. Perhaps, Carla thought, the girl might be able to give her some help.

“Sit down for a minute, Lizzie.”

Lizzie hesitated for a minute, then took a seat across the table from Carla. “Is anything the matter?” she asked. “Was your breakfast all right, Mrs. Macon?”

“Everything’s fine. I just wanted to talk with you for a minute or two.”

The girl relaxed visibly and smiled.

“Lizzie, I— Do you go out much with boys?”

“Sometimes.”

“Well, do you ever — I mean—”

Lizzie smiled. “Mrs. Macon, are you trying to ask me if I ever sleep with a man?”

“Why, I—”

“That’s all right; I don’t mind talking, Mrs. Macon. I’m not a virgin, if that’s what you mean.”

Carla pulled another cigarette from the pack and lighted it, embarrassed and mildly envious of the ease with which the girl spoke. She tried to put herself in Lizzie’s position, realizing as she did so that she could never talk so freely to an employer.

“That’s not exactly what I meant,” she said, blowing out a cloud of smoke. “I just wondered how you felt about things between a man and woman.”

“About sex?”

“That’s what I mean.”

“I don’t spend too much time thinking about it, Mrs. Macon.”

Carla paused, searching for the right phrase. “How do you feel about it, though?” she asked. “I mean, do you think it’s right sometimes and wrong other times? That sometimes a man and woman have a right to sleep together and other times they shouldn’t?” She paused, expectantly.

Lizzie considered the question for a minute, her eyes narrowing in concentration. “I guess I don’t think much about right and wrong,” she admitted. “If I go out with a man, I just let things happen.”

“Let them happen? How do you mean?”

“Well, if I go out with a man and I have a good time, I’ll go up to his apartment or out parking with him in his car. I let him kiss me, and if I enjoy the way he kisses me I let him go farther. And as long as there’s nothing bothersome about it, I just let it go on.”

“Don’t you ever feel that it’s wrong?”

Lizzie shook her head. “I don’t feel that way about it,” she said. “If I have a good time with a man, how should it be wrong? Neither of us is getting hurt or anything like that. We aren’t hurting anybody else either. I just don’t think anything nice between two people can be wrong, Mrs. Macon.”

“I see. Do you believe in God, Lizzie?”

“Of course, Mrs. Macon.”

“Well, doesn’t that change the way you feel?”

“No — why should it? I just think God wants people to be good to each other, and sleeping with a man isn’t hurting anybody, is it?”

Carla nodded absently, wondering how to say more without giving herself away. She took another long drag on the cigarette and watched the smoke drift lazily to the ceiling.

“Lizzie,” she said finally, “what if one of the persons is married to somebody else? Would that make a difference?”

“I don’t know,” Lizzie said. Slowly a puzzled look came over her face, and Carla thought for a second that the girl had an inkling of the purpose of all the questions. She decided to end the conversation before revealing too much.

“I guess that’s all,” Carla said, standing up from the table. “I didn’t mean to pry, but I just wanted to chat a little. It’s always interesting to find out how different people feel about things,” she added lamely.

The puzzled expression vanished and there was no trace of perception on Lizzie’s face as she said, “Certainly, Mrs. Macon. Any time you want to ask me about anything, just go right ahead.”

Back in her bedroom, Carla went over the conversation in her mind. If only she had Lizzie’s attitude, things would be so much easier. She could imagine how the girl would handle herself in a situation like this one. First of all, she’d be clever enough to avoid getting so desperate that she would have to root around on a grease-room floor like some kind of animal. She’d do the sensible thing and get herself a lover, a man like Charles but not a person her husband knew. She’d be smart about it, and she’d be able to make Ronald a good wife without torturing herself in the process.

She giggled suddenly, getting a mental picture of Ronald’s face if he could know about the affair with the garage mechanic. She tried to guess how he would react to the sight of her writhing on the floor in the man’s embrace, her sweat mingling with his and her lips on his throat.

Oh, what was the matter with her? Maybe she had sex on the brain, just as some people had water on the knee. She wasn’t sex-starved any more, not after yesterday, but she still couldn’t get Charles out of her mind. She imagined being married to Charles instead of to Ronald. Charles was rich too, but he would be able to give her the satisfaction that Ronald couldn’t supply. She would still possess the necessary prestige and security without any of the great disadvantages of being the wife of an older man.

Being married to Charles would solve everything.

But she was dreaming. She wasn’t making any sense at all, getting off on tangents that had nothing to do with the situation. For all she knew, Charles wasn’t even interested in getting her into bed. Maybe she was reading far too much into a glance across the table and the touch of his hand at the door. It might be nothing more than his way of being polite. A man as sophisticated and smooth as Charles could probably order ham-and-eggs in a restaurant and let the waitress think he was propositioning her.

And, she reflected, he would probably be successful with the waitress — when he was just trying to order a plate of ham-and-eggs.

But she couldn’t be wrong. She sensed his desire with the intuition she had developed over the years, a sense of intuition which could spot the hunger in a man with no difficulty. She had never been wrong before. Charles must want her.

She had just finished lunch and returned to her room again when the telephone rang and Lizzie announced that it was for her. She jumped up from the bed, wondering who in the world it would be. It would have to be Ronald, she decided, but he rarely called in the afternoon unless he was going to be home late, and he had said last night that he definitely wouldn’t be working late. She hurried to the phone and held the receiver to her ear.

“Carla?”

“Yes — who is this?”

“This is Charles.”

Charles! Then he did want her, but how come he was calling so soon?

“Charles?”

“That’s right,” he went on, his voice as smooth as silk. “I wanted to talk to you.”

“Why, Ronald isn’t home now—”

“I know. It’s you I want to see.”

“Why?”

“I think you know why, don’t you?”

She didn’t answer. She felt herself going all weak inside and the right words wouldn’t come to her.

“Why don’t you come up to my place, Carla? I’d like to see you this afternoon.”

“I... I couldn’t,” she stammered.

“Of course you could. I’m in Room 715 at the Tiffany, and I’ll be waiting for you. I’d really like very much to see you, dear.”

The last word sounded like a caress. She tried desperately to think of a reply, realizing seconds later that he had hung up and she would be talking to an empty phone. Dimly, she replaced the receiver on the hook and tried to concentrate.

Room 715, Hotel Tiffany. The number stayed with her, something numbers rarely did. She was the type of woman who had to look up phone numbers and addresses again and again. But she knew at once that she wouldn’t forget Charles’ address.

Oh, what was wrong with her? She stormed into the bathroom and stared at herself in the mirror, trying to find some hint of her inner turmoil by staring at the mirror image. She simply couldn’t go to Charles, not today.

Suppose Ronald found out? And he would find out, in fact he couldn’t help it if she played around so close to home. She remembered the time when she was a little girl and a man across the street came home early and surprised his wife in bed with a delivery boy. He almost murdered them both, she recalled, beating the boy with his fists hard enough to send him to the hospital and striking his wife all over her face and body.

Ronald wouldn’t do anything like that. Ronald would never be violent with her, but she could imagine the look of sadness and anger that would come over his face, the tone of his voice when he spoke to her. He would divorce her, of course, and she would be right back where she started from, a little Polish blonde from the East Side with nothing to show for her life but a body for men to amuse themselves with.

All the arguments told her to stay home, to let Charles wait in his room forever. But the arguments weren’t enough. Even as she told herself how wrong the course of action would be, she felt her will power weakening rapidly. She returned to her bedroom and changed her clothes again, dressing in a skirt-and-sweater combination that showed off her figure and made her look girlish and desirable, the skirt clinging to her long legs and the sweater showing off her breasts perfectly.

It was good to feel that there was a purpose in dressing. She liked to put on clothes with the knowledge that a man would appreciate them. Oh, why couldn’t she be a stronger person! She needed somebody to make the decisions for her, somebody who could tell her what to do and keep her from situations like this one. Maybe Charles would be strong. Maybe he would tell her to divorce Ronald and marry him, and after they were married she wouldn’t have to go through hell like this again.

The guidance of a genuinely strong man would make a tremendous amount of difference to her. Even talking with Lizzie was a help to her, but someone who could come right out and say: “This is right” and “This is wrong,” that was the real thing she needed.

Maybe she could find it in Charles.

She told Lizzie she would be back for dinner, noting the expression in the girl’s eyes. Did she know? At least Lizzie would never tell Ronald. Of that she was quite certain. Still, it would be much better if no one knew, if she could keep everything to herself. She climbed behind the wheel of the MG and turned the key in the ignition, racing the little car down Delaware Avenue toward the Tiffany.

“Ah!” Charles said. “I hoped you would come see me. Come right in.”

She followed him into the room, impressed by the furnishing of his apartment. The furniture was all quite modernistic without being too extreme, a blend which seemed to indicate a combination of daring and taste. A pair of Modigliani prints “were hung on the far wall in simple black frames. Charles fit the room perfectly, wearing a pair of gray flannel trousers and an elegant plaid smoking jacket. He led her easily to the couch and sat down next to her.

“May I offer you a drink?”

“No,” she began, then changed her mind. “On second thought, that might be a good idea.”

“Martini all right? I have a shaker mixed.”

“That’ll be fine.”

He rose and disappeared from the room, and she waited nervously on the couch. When he returned with the drinks she sipped hers quickly, hardly listening to what he was saying. On the way down she had toyed with the idea of seeing him without letting him make love to her, but now she knew how impossible that would be. She felt too weak to make even token resistance.

She finished her drink and he set the glasses on the coffee-table. “Carla,” he said, turning to her, “I don’t want to waste either time or words. I think you know why I asked you here, and I think I know why you came. I could proceed more slowly, but that would only be a sham.

“You’re a beautiful woman and one of the most thoroughly attractive ones I’ve ever met. I would like to make love to you.”

She began to breath heavily.

“Carla?”

She looked into his eyes, her own eyes going soft and her lips parting automatically. Her breasts rose and fell with her uneven breathing. For a long moment neither of them moved.

Then he took her in his arms.

His lips on hers were a new experience, half full of fire and half full of ice. There was a passion to his kiss that she had never experienced before, a passion blended with the skill and artistry of the lover to whom love was a true art. Every movement of his mouth on hers and his hands on her back sent little fires coursing through her whole being, burning her up with their feverish intensity. She could think of nothing but the overwhelming desire to merge herself with him, to immerse her whole being in the intensity of his love.

“Come this way,” he said. He took her hand and led her from the living-room through a hallway to the bedroom. The covers were drawn back, waiting for her. She stood like a person in a trance while his deft fingers lifted her sweater over her head and dropped her skirt to the floor. Then, almost without touching her, his hands removed the flimsy bra and slipped the panties over her thighs. His hands brushed her body so gently in the act that she barely felt them. Finally, she stood before him naked.

“You’re incredibly beautiful,” he said in a whisper. “I didn’t realize you were this beautiful.”

He kissed her then, running his tongue tenderly over her lower lip. She responded eagerly to his kiss and pressed her body against his. Then he stepped back once again, taking her arm and leading her to the bed.

“Lie down,” he said. “Lie down and don’t move.”

She obeyed his command.

“Now close your eyes.”

The next thing she knew, his lips were travelling all over her, planting little kisses of fire wherever they stopped.

She moaned his name. His mouth found hers and her arms tightened around him, pressing him to her.

Then there was nothing but her body and his and the clean fresh beauty of the world.