Lawrence Block - Candy

I rolled her over onto her back and looked down at her. Her face was contorted in an expression of horrible pain and when she spoke she spoke through clenched teeth.

She said: “Just what do you propose to do to me, Mr. Flanders?”

So I told her.

You have to hand it to her. You really have to give the bitch credit. The old amusement and contempt came back into those steel-blue eyes and the old quiet fury returned to her voice.

“You may proceed,” she said.

I ripped the buttons getting the shirt off. But I did get it off and there wasn’t anything underneath it. Candy didn’t need a bra because her breasts were firm enough to get along without one; this bitch didn’t need one because she didn’t have anything to put in one. Her chest was as flat as a flounder.

I had a tough time with the pants. But I got them off and tore off the panties she was wearing under them. I tore off her tennis shoes and socks as well, although there wasn’t much point in it. They wouldn’t have gotten in the way. But I wanted her completely naked, naked and defenseless.

When she was naked I got my own clothes off. I hooked my hands under her armpits and pulled her to her feet, and when I let go of her she sagged against me like a rag doll with half the stuffing gone.

God alone knows where she got the strength, but when she came up off the floor this time she came up fighting. Her hand came at me nails first and her razor-sharp nails lashed my forehead and drew blood. She heaved a knee that would have played havoc with my virility but I swivelled a hip and dodged the blow.

She called me a nasty name.

So what the hell.

I hit her again.

This time she came off the floor like an irritated rhinoceros and gave me a poke in the jaw that sent me reeling. For a little bundle of fluff she packed a wallop.

I got a grip on her shoulders, put one foot behind her feet and gave her a shove. She obligingly flopped on her cute little tail and I fell forward and landed right on top of her. She made a nice cushion.

I almost couldn’t go through with it. She was fighting me, all right, but when you stop to consider the fact that I outweighed her by a good seventy pounds the fight didn’t seem too fair. I almost got up and left, but then I saw the whole incredible picture of her and Candy in bed together and I couldn’t hold myself back.

I had to even the score.

It was quite an experience. Technically I suppose it was a vaguely enjoyable ride; at least it was something different. But it was sick and sordid and when I was done I felt like cutting my throat with a rusted razor. I stepped away from her and fumbled my way into my clothing while she lay on the floor like a castaway napkin.

“You’re okay,” I said, hysterically. “We’ll have to have another go at it one of these days.”

And for what was possibly the first time in her life, Mrs. Caroline Lipton Christie did not have a snappy answer.

I didn’t ride the elevator because I didn’t want the operator to get a look at me. Not because he would be able to identify me later—that was one thing I wasn’t going to waste my time worrying about. I knew it was better than rubles-to-rickshaws that Caroline Christie would no sooner call the police than she would call me and beg me to do it again.

Hell, that much was elementary. Every juvenile delinquent with enough moxie to live up to the garrison belt dangling from his grimy paw knows that the easiest way in the world to pick up a quick buck is to beat up a faggot. The juvie picks up on one of the gay boys, leads him anywhere at all and pounds the crap out of him.

Now who is the fag going to bitch to?

No one.

And who was Christie going to bitch to?

No one.

No one at all.

So, among my other remarkable accomplishments, I was now a successful rapist. Somehow I wasn’t particularly proud of myself, and that is why I didn’t want the elevator operator looking at me. Hell, I didn’t even want to look at myself. I felt sick to my stomach.

At the same time I was not without a small glint of triumph. It was with considerable self-esteem that I wondered idly how long it would take Mrs. Caroline Lipton Christie to wash the blood out of her rug. Yes, blood—because Mrs. Caroline Lipton Christie had been a virgin until I altered her status once and for all.

Back in my room I washed off my cut face and took an opening slug from the bottle to dull the hate I was building up for myself. What had the afternoon landed me, all things considered?

Not much.

Not a hell of a lot at all.

I had raped a lesbian. Raped a virgin lesbian, to be precise. If nothing else, it was something I had never done before. I had had a virgin—my wife, Lucy—but I had never raped anybody, and I had never had anything horizontal to do with a lesbian.

It was a great afternoon for firsts.

But what else?

I was as far away from Candy as before and I letched for her as violently as ever. It was her face I saw at the peak of passion with little Miss Lesbo, and it was the memory of her that had occasioned the visit and the rape in the first place. So where was I?

I was up the creek. Not only didn’t I have a paddle, but I also didn’t have a great many other things.

A job.

A woman.

And on top of everything else the canoe had sprung a leak.

I kicked off my shoes and stretched out on the bed and closed my eyes and thought to myself what a bastard I was. I thought about the woman who was divorcing me, and the other woman who was putting out for the woman I had just gotten finished raping, and there seemed to be more reasons to hate myself than there were stars in the sky.

I let myself sink into a positive abyss of self-loathing which was masochistically delicious. After awhile I went outside and bought a magazine and went back to the room to read it.

And, after awhile, the damned phone rang.

Like a fool I answered it.

Chapter Nine

THE VOICE ON THE phone was Candy’s voice, high-pitched and thin, a whisper that was as tense as a bowstring and, to me at least, as loud as a siren. She did not waste words, and I remember now that her speech was pure East 53rd Street without a trace of Gibbsville in it.

“I have to see you,” she said.

I started to tell her that I had given her plenty of chances to see me but I didn’t get more than a word out before she interrupted me.

“Meet me at the Astor Bar,” she said. “Right away and hurry.”

And before I could say a word, before I could tell her yes, I was coming or no, and to hell with you, before I could mouth a solitary syllable she had hung up and the phone clicked in my ear.

I looked at the phone, looked at the bottle in my fist, looked at a grease spot on the far wall.

To hell with her. To hell with the woman who was no woman, the lady who was no lady, the Candy who was not sweet at all. To hell with her—my life was enough of a mess now without any more of her. I could spend the rest of my life trying to forget her and the preliminary step consisted of ignoring this phone call right now.

The preliminary step.

And, of course, there would be a lot of steps following that first one. I’d have to get out of New York, get away somewhere where she could never find me and somewhere where I could never run the risk of encountering her again. Out of New York, away from New York, far away from the stinking steaming stench of a city with all its memories. Away from the Kismet and the Somerville, away from 42nd Street and 100th Street and 53rd Street, away from Sweet Lucy and Bitter Candy and Queer Caroline, away from Beverley Finance and all the bars and all the movie houses and all the places where I had spent all my life.

Far away.

I even had a place in mind. Somewhere quiet, somewhere devoid of people. I thought about a properly isolated island in the Florida keys where a man could live without working and without thinking and above all without seeing another man or woman or child. You bought a boat and a shack and you ate what you caught with a rod and reel. You picked up a few bucks taking parties of tourists fishing and you were your own man, free and independent, secure with the marvellous and rare security of complete and total solitude.