Джо Горес: Come Morning

Plastered beside the brown double doors at the head of the terrazzo steps were various stern warnings on pastel sheets of stiff art paper: NO SITTING ON STEPS (blue); PLEASE KEEP DOORWAY CLEAN (pink); NO VISITORS (yellow); and NO TRESPASSING (red and black). Posted off to one side was one of much heavier caliber, a dated DEMOLITION ORDER APPEAL HEARING.

He paid the pallid rat-faced clerk a week in advance on a room that was second floor back, at the far end of the cross hall next to the fire escape window. It was what you could expect in the Tenderloin for $50 a week: shabby chest of drawers, a sink in the corner with a thin napless towel on the rack, no soap or washcloth, a small hand mirror tacked above the sink partially to mask the brown water stains of an old overflow from the sink upstairs. The single bed had a human-shaped depression in the middle of it.

On the other hand, with the brown roller shade up, sunlight came through the frayed imitation lace curtains to give it a certain spurious golden charm. And it was a room, not a cell; no electrically controlled bar would slide across the door at night to keep him in.

Runyan tossed his gym bag on the dresser and stripped off his shirt. He started to run cold water into the sink to wash away the stink of Q, a need more psychological than physical.

Would she show up again? He’d detected real beauty behind those dark glasses and severe hair, but he couldn’t afford the luxury of believing that she was just a writer after material.

As the sink filled, he thought, On the other hand, who would she belong to? Moyers didn’t need a plant, he knew Runyan probably would turn the diamonds back to him, eventually, for the recovery fee. Unless he had become more rather than less of a man during the past seven years, Cardwell wouldn’t have the guts. There weren’t any other players — unless, and this was his real fear, Jamie’d had partners in the betrayal...

But anybody smart enough to preserve his safety through eight long years of silence was too smart to put himself into the hands of a hired woman. So maybe she was what she said she was.

As he came up whooshing from the cold water, the mirror showed him Louise just coming through the door. He said immediately, without turning, “The insurance company is waiting for me to be a good little doggie and dig up their bone for them.” Blinking, he groped for the towel. “They figure I have the diamonds stashed somewhere.”

She had shut the door and was turning in a complete circle, taking in the room.

“It’s you ,” she said.

Using the towel was like drying off with a cardboard shirt backing. She was pulling down the window shade, making the room a dim cavern where anything might happen. She tossed her sunglasses on the dresser and started shaking out her hair: Her eyes were the most beautiful Runyan had ever seen, wide-set emerald chips glowing with an inner light. He felt an involuntary thickening in the groin, a tightness in the chest, a growing wildness in his mind.

“At that college, didn’t they teach you about leaving the door open when you’re alone in a room with a man?”

“We had coed dorms.”

She pulled out her blouse and started unbuttoning it. Oh Jesus, eight years. He almost ran to open the door, but she stepped right into him, so her face was only inches from his. Through the gauzy bra her already hardening nipples were like tiny hot coals against his naked chest. His arms came up to encircle her. Her hips were shifting against him, bringing him completely erect.

“This... is as far as we can take it and still quit easy,” he said in a harsh voice.

“I didn’t come here to quit,” she said.

Her tongue, tasting very faintly of cinnamon, was hot between his lips. Her buttocks were taut beneath his clutching hands as he lifted her toward the bed with a cresting, almost frenzied urgency.

The three-sided air shaft held trash cans and opened out into the alley. Runyan dropped the edge of the shade and turned back into the dimness of the room, naked. He had a gymnast’s finely muscled body. Louise was pulling the wisp of bra up against her ripe, beautifully shaped breasts.

“Uh... I’m sorry I... uh... started out so rough,” he said. “At first I was afraid that after all this time I might be impotent. Then I just...”

She straightened, buckling the bra, then pulled on her blouse. She winked bawdily at him. “After eight years, you’re entitled to poke a little fun.”

Runyan felt an unexpected surge of sad anger. This had been the fulfillment of every sexual fantasy through seven years of endless nights, and she was acting as if...

“What was this for you? Kicks? Tease the animals?”

There was a hint of wicked laughter in her voice. “I did more than tease the animal. And—”

“What are you after?” He had grabbed her shoulders and was shaking her, all his doubts rushing back. “What do you want?”

She didn’t try to break free; she seemed used to coping with men to whom violence came easily.

“What do you want?”

Runyan’s hands dropped away. He said in a low, angry voice, “I don’t want to go back inside. I don’t want you yelling rape unless I talk to you about the diamonds. I don’t want—”

“But want do you want? ”

He responded with silence; he had no more answer for her than he had for himself. She turned away with an abrupt briskness that made the last hours just another prison-born fantasy, picked up her purse and sunglasses and walked right out of the room without a backward glance.

“Hey!” yelped Runyan, stunned.

He started to follow her, then realized that he was naked. He turned back to snatch up his pants.

The door at the foot of the stairs swept away her reflected image as she went through it: cool, self-contained, sure of herself, almost haughty. Only she had to lean against the front of the building for a moment, she felt so shaky inside.

She started walking, buffeted by inner gales. A Chinese youth wearing a white gauze mask against pollution was unloading canned goods for the grocery store next door. A heavy-faced white man’s eyes gleamed greedily at her from between the stems of a split-leaf philodendron in the window of the Chinese restaurant on the corner. In the parking lot the attendant stripped her with his eyes as he took her money and got the Lynx.

She was shaking so hard she could hardly get the key into the ignition. Her arms ached where Runyan had gripped them. She’d meant to control the situation, control him, control herself; instead, she had seduced herself with his vulnerability. She’d remembered him walking away from the prison like a jaunty, scared little kid, and all of a sudden she’d been out of control, hung out on the cruel edge of passion where she couldn’t get down and it had just kept happening until it almost hurt...

The memory caused a slight involuntary contraction in her pelvis, as if marking the onset of yet another orgasm. She’d lost it, lost it all. He’d gotten what he wanted; what reason for him to come back to her now?

At the entrance of the lot she waited as the light released a burst of rush-hour traffic up Leavenworth; then she eased her foot off the brake. But Runyan came charging across the street, shirtless and barefoot, wearing only his trousers, and she felt a fierce surge of elation. Walking out had been the perfect gambit after all.

Runyan slammed his open hands on the hood as if to stop her, then moved along the flank of the car to her open window like someone gentling a spooked horse. “I thought of a title for your book. Bad Time. A con is pulling bad time when—”

She started to laugh, she couldn’t help it. Relief, but he couldn’t know that. She took her hotel room key from her purse and held it up where he could see it.