Джон Макдональд - A Key to the Suite

He pried her clasped hands apart and turned toward her. She wore her swim cap, and it made her face look like the face of a young, sensitive boy. She looked impishly at him, snatched the soap from the tray and began to industriously lather his chest. He took the soap away from her. “How did you get in here?”

“I just opened the glass door, darling, and stepped in.”

“How did you get into the room?”

“I asked the maid very politely, and gave her a tip, dear. Did I do something wrong? This is a convention, remember, and the rules are a little different. Oh, I’ve been here a long time. What kept you?”

“Where were you when I came in?”

“Skulking in the back of the closet. I ducked in there when I heard your key in the door. You see, dear, I thought you’d go right back into that stern and righteous routine and make everything as difficult as possible, so I thought this would save a hell of a lot of time, actually. Now you may scrub me sweetly and tenderly, and take me to bed.”

“No, Cory.”

She looked at him with a sly amusement. “No?”

He thrust her hand away. “Any other evidence is meaningless, Cory. The answer is no.”

“Why are you wasting all this sterling character on a hopeless situation?”

He took her by the shoulders, turned her around, and thrust her out into the bathroom. “Go put something on.”

“Yes, dear. Of course, dear. Anything you say, dear.”

The only clothing he had brought into the bathroom were fresh shorts and socks. When he had them on, he went into the bedroom. She had left one lamp on. She had arranged herself with due care to lighting. “I’m trying to look like that Spanish postage stamp, lover. But I don’t have the weapons she has. Come here.”

He put on a white shirt and trousers. As he was buttoning the shirt he moved closer to the bed and looked at her without any expression.

“You do mean it, don’t you?” she asked in quite a different voice, a small and rather wary voice.

“For a while the issue was in doubt. But not any more, Cory. You make it so damn difficult. I’m not trying to say I’m any better than you are. I’m not, for the love of God, saying you aren’t desirable. And I couldn’t ever say that this is an easy thing to do. But I can manage it. I’m fighting for survival, Cory. It’s a strong instinct. If today became another yesterday, I think I’d be destroyed.”

“Am I destroyed?”

“I don’t know. In one sense, possibly. I don’t know enough about you.”

With a sudden smooth economy of movement she slid under the sheet and single blanket and covered herself to the chin.

“Please turn off the light, Floyd.”

“But I’m telling you that it...”

“This is something else. Please. Then come and sit by me, and hold my hand.”

“But...”

“It won’t cost you anything to be kind, will it?”

He turned off the light. Some of the outside lighting made a faint glow on the ceiling. He took her hand when she reached toward him, and he sat on the bed.

“Maybe I can talk to you as a person, Floyd. I don’t know.”

“I like you, Cory. Does that help?”

“Yes. That helps. I was here alone for a long time. I read Jan’s letter.”

He took a deep breath and let it out. “You had no right, you know.”

“I know. She seems very nice. She seems sweet and wise. Wives should be both, I guess, but not overly sweet, and not conspicuously wise. I tried to be that way with Ralph. I was quite good at it, too. Everyone seemed to think so. Even Ralph. I was an adorable little wife, Floyd. I had the constant image of myself being an adorable and adoring little wife, and I relished it. It was a game, I guess. Trying to do as well as the grownups. Do you know?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Ralph was a properly boyish husband, with a good job. We agreed we’d have one year of just each other, and then start a baby. That’s just what we did. The bed part was good, dear. Not like yesterday with us. Sweet and melting. All he had to do was reach out toward me, and my head would get so heavy I couldn’t hold it up. I was very earnest about being everything he could ever want. He’d tell me I was all the women in the world. Isn’t that sweet?”

“I guess it’s supposed to be that way.”

“When I was three months pregnant, he had to go to Havana on a business trip. When he came back, I gave him a loving welcome. Oh, very loving indeed. But the poor dear had picked up a little packet of syphilis from a Cuban whore. By the time there was a sore, he’d infected me. The doctor he went to called me up and had me come in. He was very jolly. It didn’t have to be a tragedy. Not in this day and age. They’d knock it right out with massive doses of penicillin. But I got a bad reaction to the penicillin, and ran a high fever, and later they explained to me that it was the fever, not the infection, which turned my baby into an idiot. The third month is a bad time to have fevers, you know. So I was almost all women to my boyish husband. He needed a Cuban whore to fill out the ranks.”

Her hand tightened convulsively on his, then became inert. The silence was long and clumsy.

“There isn’t much to say, Cory. Bad luck? What can anybody say?”

“Oh, I think you need the rest of it before you make any comments. By the way, I’m a clean girl now. Don’t be alarmed.”

“You didn’t have to say that, you know.”

“I got the fastest divorce on record, dear. The baby is in a place in Maryland. It’s over five years old now. It will never speak or walk or recognize anything or anyone. He pays the freight. Two fifty a month. That’s the only settlement. They say they usually die in their early teens when they’re like that. After the divorce I was trying in an amateur way to prove to every man in the world that I was more useful than every whore in Havana, until a domineering old slob of a woman named Alma Bender took me home and nursed me back into decent physical condition, and taught me the trade.”

“The trade?”

“I’m on call, darling. All night stands only. A bill and a half, split ninety to me and sixty to Alma, because I maintain my own place. I’m twenty-eight years old, darling, and I average eight tricks a month, or a hundred a year, and I’ve had four fine years, and I think I can promise myself another ten or eleven. I take care of myself. Fifteen hundred men would be a nice memorable figure, don’t you think? I’m choosy, you know. Want to know my stipulations?”

“Should I?”

“They have to be reasonably youngish, intelligent, fairly sensitive, married and... there should be a slight boyishness about them, just enough to remind me of Ralph. Then do you know what I do?”

“I think I have a clinical idea.”

“No, darling. Beyond that. What I do is spoil them, so that they’ll spend the rest of their lives knowing they’ll never have it so good again. I clobber them so completely, they’ll be forever wistful as they lie beside their little oatmeal wives and remember how it was.”

“Revenge?”

“Of course. I’m their Havana whore. I’m the sword of justice. I give them the disease no drug can ever cure. I give them the ultimate experiences, lover, so that from that night on, nothing will ever completely satisfy them again. When they’re moaning and shuddering and gibbering, I’m laughing inside. When they want to buy a woman, and they buy me, they never stop paying for it. Sometimes I let myself enjoy them. Like with you. But almost always I fake. I put on a hell of a production, lover. It may even be better than the real thing. When it’s real, I lose track a little.”

“Do you tell all of them this?”

She pulled her hand away. “I’ve never told any of them this. All whores have hearts of gold. Haven’t you heard? Haven’t you met Suzie Wong? I enjoy my work, dear. I despise all you slobs, every one. Even you, lover. But you see, this is just a little different, because you didn’t come waving your money. You’re not technically the sort of customer I’m accustomed to.”