Frank De Felitta: Audrey Rose

Janice felt herself coming. Quickly veered her thoughts to neutral matters. Bridge. Rigoletto. It was too soon. Too soon. They mustn’t let it end. Bill moaned softly and decreased his stroke. He was holding back, too. Good, Bill. Think, Bill, think! Consider. The essence here is not mere sexual gratification. It has a dimension over and above this. It is catharsis. An act of desperate necessity. The antidote to fear. Yes, fear. Think fear, Janice. Think the man. The man.…

She hadn’t told Bill. There hadn’t been the chance. He had come down late. Ivy plagued him with her math. All the morning. There had been no chance.

A pause. A shift of position. The pillow scratches the buttocks. Needlepoint pillow. Tiger-head pillow. Her artwork. Twenty-six dollars the entire set, including silkscreen canvas, varicolored yarns, and directions. It scratches during lovemaking. A statement of pure fact. There had been no time to improve matters. Bill had taken her on the floor at once, beneath the painting, the moment that Ivy left to play with Bettina. It was essential they sate their hungers at once. Both knew it. As birds know. There was no time. No time. Bill in robe, she in smock. No loveplay. No touching. In at once! An emergency operation. By royal decree. A command performance. The will of God!

He was coming. Damn, Damn! His moans were escalating with each deep, penetrating thrust. Yes, he was coming. It would soon be over. The end of sanity. The end.

The telephone rang.

Reprieved! They would stop. He would answer it. But no. Too late. He was past the point of no return. Panting, whistling, urging, pounding … Too late for Bill. Too late for Janice. Too late.

The telephone rang.

Her fingers clutched his skin. Her tongue sought his. Their breaths exploded into each other’s mouths.

The telephone rang.

Shrill, piercing, strident, jangling, jarring, merging, and mingling with their own percussive love sounds, tagging along with them on their swift, sweet leap into heavenly space, keeping them company each pulsating moment of their feather-soft fall back to earth. A cavatina decrescenda with bells.…

The telephone stopped ringing.

The sounds of their breathing dominated the room again. They clung to each other, on the floor, unwilling to concede an inch to the enemy. Bill played with her body. She followed in kind. Each strove to restimulate the other. Afterplay. Recommended by Allen & Martin. But somehow the nerve endings wouldn’t cooperate. They kissed without passion and separated. Bill put on his robe. Janice went upstairs to shower.

He was standing in the far corner of the room, next to the ample autumnal spray. The telephone was at his ear, but he wasn’t speaking. A slant of sunlight heightened the stricken expression on his face.

“What is it?” Janice murmured in a small, quavering voice as she took the last step down into the living room and came to a dead stop.

“There’s no answer at Bettina’s.” Bill spoke the sentence almost dully—a stark statement of simple fact.

“What?” Janice could not quite take in the meaning of what he had said.

“I thought it might have been Ivy calling before. But there’s no answer.”

“That’s impossible. They’ve got to be there.” Janice felt her scalp tightening—the prelude to panic.

“Twelve rings, no answer.”

“Dial again.”

“I did. Get your coat.”

Bill hung up the phone and propelled himself into action, while Janice remained rooted, dazedly watching Bill in rumpled Levi’s and a black turtleneck pullover thread his tennis sneakers onto his feet. She was unable to move or think.

Bill glanced at her and crisply commanded, “Move, Janice!”

The words seemed to work. Somehow Janice found herself going through sensible motions in spite of her pounding heart and the floating watery sensation in her limbs. She was even surprised to find her purse in her hand as they charged down the dimly lit hallway to the elevators.

A sad, retiring widow, Mrs. Carew had resisted all offers of friendship, preferring a life of quiet isolation for herself and her daughter. Standing in the hallway, enveloped by the sound of a slowly ascending elevator, Janice recalled the image of Mrs. Carew’s sweet, gentle face. Now there was a distinct malevolence behind the patient, kindly smile.

“Did you take Ivy down, Dominick?” asked Bill while the door was still in motion.

“Yes, sir,” Dominick replied in his halting English. “Half hour ago. She went out with Mrs. Carew and her daughter.”

Bill gripped Janice’s arm and ushered her into the car.

A bright, warm sun had drawn the autumn chill from the air, bestowing a clear, springlike day on the city. Leaving the building, Bill and Janice hurried toward Central Park West, having agreed on a specific course of action while descending in the elevator. They reasoned that Mrs. Carew would have taken the children to either the park or perhaps the supermarket on Amsterdam Avenue, the only market in the neighborhood open on Sunday. Since the day was so perfect and the park the closest, they decided to look there first.

Waiting for the light to change, Bill began to feel a vague, fluttering vibration emanating from Janice’s arm which he was lightly holding. She was trembling. Guardedly, he glanced at her face in a casual manner. Her eyes were pinpricks of intensity; a light film of sweat accented the pallor of her skin. She was truly terrified. Why? he wondered.

Crossing into the park, they all but ran up the narrow dirt path that led to the children’s playground. The awkward surrealist play forms which had, in a spurt of unthinking generosity from the Estée Lauder company, replaced the swings, seesaws and jungle gyms, were literally dripping with children of all ages and races, gamely attempting to wrest a modicum of fun out of the odd, demented shapes.

Janice and Bill separated at the gate, striking off in different directions in order to increase efficiency. Janice covered the eastern perimeter of the playground while Bill took on the western side. They would eventually join forces somewhere on the northern end unless one lucked in on the objective, at which point he or she would communicate to the other by shouting.

Janice moved through a maze of children-ridden monoliths, her eyes darting swiftly about, focusing, refocusing on, past, around galaxies of screaming, laughing, upright, sideways, upside-down faces, seeking, searching, probing the nightmare world for a telltale sign, an essential clue: vanilla boots, faded jeans, golden hair.… Walking, stumbling, sidling, Janice felt herself drowning as she pushed through wee mad clusters along the western shore of Jabberwocky, hysteria rising, building, surging until screaming became the only possible antidote.…

“Janice!”

“What?”

“Janice! Here!”

It was Bill’s voice, beautiful, powerful, strong, cutting through the mad, cacophonous wall, signaling success, coming to the rescue in the nick o’ time, standing tall, waving to her from the other side of no-man’s-land, and beside him, the smiling head of Mrs. Carew, floating, disembodied like a Dumbo balloon.

Janice collided with a gaggle of running children halfway across the playground and almost fell. Bill bravely ventured forth and collected her.

“Ivy and Bettina went for a walk up the bridle path,” Bill whispered urgently to Janice while maintaining a façade of calm for Mrs. Carew’s benefit. “I’ll go find her.”

Janice found herself shaking uncontrollably as Bill walked quickly away from her, leaving her standing beside Mrs. Carew, who smiled amiably up at her.

“You shouldn’t have taken her out,” Janice admonished in a taut, quavering voice.

“I am sorry, dear,” replied Mrs. Carew. “I had no idea you’d be worried.”