Warm and Willing - Lawrence Block [58]
And so she had let herself be picked up by a customer. He would take her to dinner, and then she would let herself be led to his apartment, and there she would be slept with. This was just experimental. If it worked at all, if it were only merely bearable, then she would be able to make her choice. She could go somewhere—to another city, probably. And she could meet a man who would make her a good husband, and she could get him to marry her, and she could live—well, decently ever after. And even happily.
But tonight—she shrugged, lit a cigarette. Tonight was just a test, of course, and that meant it would probably be a little crude and cheap. More than a little. She didn’t know this man, had never learned his last name, and had already forgotten his first name. He didn’t especially seem like her type, if she had a type, and she didn’t feel anything resembling a flush of rapport with him. But he didn’t have to sweep her off her feet, he only had to make love to her, that was all, and if she could live through it without wanting to throw up—which had never been the case with Tom, sad to say—then she might be able to make the move.
If she still wanted to.
There had to be a better way to live. The thrill of sexual pleasure was wonderful, certainly, but you couldn’t build a life around it. The warmth of Bobbie’s love was great and good, but you couldn’t make a life out of it, either. And the only life she had was one in which day followed day, endlessly and patternlessly and pointlessly, with nothing mattering very damned much.
At five-thirty she hurried home. She showered, made up expertly, dressed in a black sheath that showed off her figure to maximum advantage. Femme up, she told herself. This was no time to look butchy.
He was on time. “You’ll have to excuse the apartment,” she said. “It’s a mess.”
“It looks comfortable. You live here alone?”
“With a girl friend.” Which, she thought, was putting it mildly. “She’s out now.” She didn’t want to tell him that Bobbie was out of town or he might want to come back to her apartment afterward. She wanted to go to his place instead.
“I’d offer you a drink,” she lied, “but there’s nothing around. Shall we go?”
They walked over to Fourteenth Street to catch a cab. On the way, she wondered if anyone might see them together, any of the people who knew her and Bobbie, and she realized suddenly that she didn’t have to worry about Bobbie hearing anything. If her friends saw her with a girl, they might guess that she was cheating on Bobbie. But if they saw her now, with this man, they would automatically assume that he was a gay boy himself.
Dinner was quietly pleasant. He took her to an expensive East Side restaurant, ordered wine with dinner, and talked easily to her about very little. He was in advertising, he said. He was married and separated from his wife, who lived with their two children somewhere in Connecticut. He lived in the East Eighties now, near the river. His wife would probably divorce him within the year, but all of that hadn’t been quite worked out yet.
All at once she found herself talking about her own marriage. She had not counted on this, had meant to keep everything as impersonal as possible. But she let the words come, let him hear everything about her own pointless marriage.
“You had it rough,” he said.
“You live through these things.”
“Uh-huh.” He leaned across the table to light her cigarette. “We’re not kids,” he said. “Are we?”
“No.”
“I’d like to take you to my apartment. I think you’d like to come. Would you?”
“Yes.”
And she thought that this was just as she had hoped it would be. No love and no pretense of love, no feeling of being pursued,