Дональд Джеймс - The House of Eros

An old pick-up truck belonging to the Bronx & Bronx Garage Company swept past her. Two more cars ignored her as she frantically flagged them down. The fourth car stopped. The window wheeled down and a small bald head was stuck out into the rain. ‘You want a lift?’ His eyes twinkled lasciviously.

The Mercedes was out of sight beyond the top of the ramp. She shook her head and turned back, climbed the rail and slid and scrambled down the slope.

Her hair was wet and the knees of her jeans were stained with mud from sliding down the steep bank, as his had been when he made his way to the motel.

Returning to the hire car Nan Luc poured herself a cup of black coffee from the flask and sat, the car door half open, looking towards the Jeep Wagoneer still parked on the crown of the sloping lot. She could not be sure why she was shaking. The sight of her father? That was the easy explanation. But was it fear, anger, hatred or memory that made the paper cup in her hand spill black drops of coffee at her lips to run warm down her chin?

What to do now? She could go into the motel and confront Louise. But why would she tell her anything more than she had told her this morning. To follow her now would be pointless. The man, Stevenson, her father, had gone. Louise would be leaving for home.

The extraordinary acuity of her emotion at seeing her father had muddled her thoughts. But she knew that if Louise were to lead her to him it would have to be another day.

For a last time she looked towards the motel lights sparkling in the thin rain. Feeling sick at her failure, she slammed the car door closed, started the engine and cruised past the lot and the silent Jeep Wagoneer.

Nan Luc sat in a yellow bathrobe in her room in the Greenwich village apartment Kim Hoang had lent her. Across the room she could see herself in the long mirror, her bare legs stretched out before her, her hair tumbled across her shoulders.

Although she could not see it in the reflection across a room lit only by city lights outside, she willed that there was something else visible in that mirror.

She wanted it to be hate.

She stood up quickly, unable to bear the thought that other things showed in her face. Doubt. The doubt that Louise had sown with her story of the five thousand dollars. Was it possible he was not her father? Was it possible she was wrong? She shook off the idea angrily and crossed the room and in the half darkness poured herself some mineral water. Dropping ice and lime into the glass she walked barefoot back to stand in front of the window.

She had arrived home half an hour ago, wet, tired, bitterly angry with herself at the opportunity she had missed. She had taken a shower and put on the lemon yellow bathrobe. Standing at the window she looked out at the lights of the city flickering through floating banks of rain-laden mist.

She turned slowly, still in the half dark, and punched the button to see if Edward had called. She listened to his easy voice, relaxed, asking her to hurry through her business and get back out West. She sipped her mineral water and listened to his voice as he told her Susan and the family were there. ‘So that’s the West Coast news and weather, Nan.’ He paused and she detected a faint change of tone. ‘Yes, one more thing. Max Benning called. Staying at the Chelverton Hotel, West 44th Street. Wants you to get in touch with him there. Hurry back, Nan. I miss you.’

The telephone stood on a low cream coloured table beside her now. She knew she had only to pick up the phone. But she also knew Max, and Max alone, could come between her and her duty. Her duty to Edward. Her duty to herself.

She turned to the mirror and stared at her face. It was moments before she realised she was crying.

She threw herself back into the armchair. Her drink spilled forward between the folds of her robe. She almost cried aloud as the cold liquid rolled down her thigh.

She did not ask herself why he was in New York. At this moment she didn’t care. The simple idea that Max was sitting in a bar or restaurant or hotel room within a mile or two of where she was affected her with such intensity that it was almost enough for the moment.

She let her mind slide back into the past, fuzzing the edges of the images like a waking dream. She knew they shared memories not because she believed he had been affected in the same way by each event in their time together, but because it had been so short a time, there had been so few events.

She drifted with the sampan down the river and felt the extraordinary glow that warmed her body by the knowledge that this one man was watching her every movement. She relived the hypnotic effect of the sunlight through the great overhanging trees. And she felt again that exclusive surrender which she had not allowed herself since Max had left Saigon.

In a fever almost equal to that Max had suffered, she relived the night in bed beside him, his hot, shivering body, the strangeness of his eyes as he slipped back into consciousness and realised she was naked against him. She raised in her mind the shadowed image of his unshaven cheek, the whiteness of his teeth, the smudges below his eyes.

Would she love him when he walked quickly, no longer bowed with fever, across the lobby of a New York hotel and stopped in front of her?

Her body answered her. She could feel that she was trembling slightly and she sat forward and shook her head. She remembered with a smile that Edward had told her that young British and American boys, in the sort of private school he had attended, were recommended a brisk cold shower when thoughts of the opposite sex became too disturbing. She also remembered he said it was very much a short-term solution.

She got up and switched on lights.

She had given Edward her word. He had not bribed her into marriage. She had been totally candid about it. She had told him about Max. Told him that she loved Max. In turn, when he had offered marriage as a solution, he had told her she could take it as a simple facility offered by a friend, one that would enable her to escape from Gulanga. But as soon as they met in Gulanga, even before the marriage had taken place, she had made it clear what she intended. She would not use marriage to him as a device to become an American citizen. She had accepted his offer of marriage and would be a full partner in the marriage. She would share his burdens and successes as he would share hers. She would share his bed. She would stay with him as long as he wanted her.

She took her drink to the window and stood leaning against it, peering down into the half-lit darkness of the street. Did she have the strength to meet Max? Just once more?

The rain, which had been falling in large drops, flickering in the streetlights like a million fireflies, had almost stopped.

Nan Luc turned back to the telephone. She had decided.

Schmidt’s laid no claim to modernity. A long bar faced the entrance; a line of booths ran along both side walls, booths with red plush seats and heavy brass rails from which at one time curtains could be drawn for privacy. The tables were covered with white cloths and the boarded floor had not yet been carpeted or tiled. Germans had always come here, Emil Jannings once, Marlene Dietrich several times. Now young Germans came, diplomatic, business and advertising men and women visiting New York from Hamburg and Frankfurt and Berlin. This year it was one of New York’s in places, to the surprise of its elderly waiters and the third Schmidt in line to have owned it.

Max knew most of the staff from earlier visits to New York and used the restaurant like a club. But he had chosen Schmidt’s for other reasons, reasons attached in some way to the idea of a meeting on emotionally neutral ground. Now that the moment had come to tell her, he felt the pit of his stomach falling away, a fierce turmoil in him that rose in a flush to the face and forehead.