Lawrence Sanders - The 1st Deadly Sin

“The voices,” she went on, “the mighty voices that give me the feeling of suppressed power. With some singers I get the impression that there is art and strength there that hasn’t been tapped. I get the feeling that, if they really let themselves go, they could crush eardrums and shatter stained glass windows. Perhaps the best of them, throwing off all restraint, could crush the world. Break it up into brittle pieces and send all the chunks whirling off into space.”

He was made inferior by her soliloquies and made brave by wine and brandy.

“Why the hell are you telling me all this?” he demanded.

She leaned closer, pressed a satin-slicked breast against his arm.

“It’s the same feeling I get from you,” she whispered. “That you have a strength and resolve that could shatter the world.”

He looked at her, beginning to glimpse her intent and his future. He wanted to ask, “Why me?” but found, to his surprise, it wasn’t important.

The Mortons’ party leavened their heavy evening. Florence and Samuel, wearing identical red velvet jumpsuits, met them at the door with the knowing smirks of successful matchmakers.

“Come in!” Flo cried.

“It’s a marvelous party!” Sam cried.

“Two fights already!” Flo laughed.

“And one crying jag!” Sam laughed.

The party had a determined frenzy. He lost Celia in the swirl, and in the next few hours met and listened to a dozen disoriented men and women who floated, bumped against him, drifted away. He had a horrible vision of harbor trash, bobbing and nuzzling, coming in and going out.

Suddenly she was behind him, hand up under his jacket, nails digging into his shirted back.

“Do you know what happens at midnight?” she whispered.

“What?”

“They take off their faces-just like masks. And do you know what’s underneath?”

“What?”

“Their faces. Again. And again.”

She slipped away; he was too confused to hold her. He wanted to be naked in front of a mirror, making sure.

Finally, finally, she reappeared and drew him away. They flapped hands at host and hostess and stepped into the quiet corridor, panting. In the elevator she came into his arms and bit the lobe of his left ear as he said, “Oh,” and the music from wherever was playing “My Old Kentucky Home.” He was sick with lust and conscious that his life was dangerous and absurd. He was teetering, and pitons were not driven nor ice ax in.

There was Valenter to open the door for them, the sweetheart rose wilted. His face had the sheen of a scoured iron pot, and his lips seemed bruised. He served black coffee in front of the tiled fireplace. They sat on the leather couch and stared at blue embers.

“Will that be all, Mith Montfort?”

She nodded; he drifted away. Daniel Blank wouldn’t look at him. What if the man should wink?

Celia went out of the room, came back with two pony glasses and a half-full bottle of marc.

“What is that?” he asked.

“A kind of brandy,” she said. “Burgundian, I think. From the dregs. Very strong.”

She filled a glass, and before handing it to him ran a long, red tongue around the rim, looking at him. He took it, sipped gratefully.

“Yes,” he nodded. “Strong.”

“Those people tonight,” she said. “So inconsequential. Most of them are intelligent, alert, talented. But they don’t have the opportunity. To surrender, I mean. To something important and shaking. They desire it more than they know. To give themselves. To what? Ecology or day-care centers or racial equality? They sense the need for something more, and God is dead. So…the noise and hysteria. If they could find…”

Her voice trailed off. He looked up.

“Find what?” he asked.

“Oh,” she said, her eyes vague, “you know.”

She rose from the couch. When he rose to stand alongside her, she unexpectedly stepped close, reached out, gently drew down the lower lid of his right eye. She stared intently at the exposed eyeball.

“What?” he said, confused.

“You’re not inconsequential,” she said, took him by the hand and led him upward. “Not at all.”

Dazed by drink and wonder, he followed docilely. They climbed the handsome marble staircase to the third floor. There they passed through a tawdry wooden door and climbed two more flights up a splintered wooden stairway flecked with cobwebs that kissed his mouth.

“What is this?” he asked once.

“I live up here,” she answered, turned suddenly and, being above him, reached down, pulled his head forward and pressed his face into the cool satin between belly and thighs.

It was a gesture that transcended obscenity and brought him trembling to his knees there on the dusty stairs.

“Rest a moment,” she said.

“I’m a mountain climber,” he said, and their whispered exchange seemed to him so inane that he gave a short bark of laughter that banged off dull walls and echoed.

“What?” he said again, and all the time he knew.

It was a small room of unpainted plank walls, rough-finished and scarred with white streaks as if some frantic beast had clawed to escape. There was a single metal cot with a flat spring of woven tin straps. On this was thrown a thin mattress, uncovered, the striped grey ticking soiled and burned.

There was one kitchen chair that had been painted fifty times and was now so dented and nicked that a dozen colors showed in bruised blotches. A bare light bulb, orange and dim, hung from a dusty cord.

The floor was patched with linoleum so worn the pattern had disappeared and brown backing showed through. The unframed mirror on the inside of the closed door was tarnished and cracked. The iron ashtray on the floor near the cot overflowed with cold cigarette butts. The room smelled of must, mildew, and old love.

“Beautiful,” Daniel Blank said wonderingly, staring about. “It’s a stage set. Any moment now a wall swings away, and there will be the audience applauding politely. What are my lines?”

“Take off your wig,” she said.

He did, standing by the cot with the hair held foolishly in his two hands, offering her a small, dead animal.

She came close and caressed his shaven skull with both hands.

“Do you like this room?” she asked.

“Well…it’s not exactly my idea of a love nest.”

“Oh it’s more than that. Much more. Lie down.”

Gingerly, with some distaste, he sat on the stained mattress. She softly pressed him back. He stared up at the naked bulb, and there seemed to be a nimbus about it, a glow composed of a million shining particles that pulsed, contracted, expanded until they filled the room.

And then, almost before he knew it had started, she was doing things to him. He could not believe this intelligent, somber, reserved woman was doing those things. He felt a shock of fear, made a few muttered protests. But her voice was soft, soothing. After awhile he just lay there, his eyes closed now, and let her do what she would.

“Scream if you like,” she said. “No one can hear.”

But he clenched his jaws and thought he might die of pleasure.

He opened his eyes and saw her lying naked beside him, her long, white body as limp as a fileted fish. She began undressing him with practiced fingers…opening buttons…sliding down zippers…tugging things away gently, so gently he hardly had to move at all…

Then she was using him, using him, and he began to understand what his fate might be. Fear dissolved in a kind of sexual faint he had never experienced before as her strong hands pulled, her dry tongue rasped over his fevered skin.

“Soon,” she promised. “Soon.”

Once he felt a pain so sharp and sweet he thought she had murdered him. Once he heard her laughing: a thick, burbling sound. Once she wound him about with her smooth, black hair, fashioned a small noose and pulled it tight.