Lawrence Block - Candy

Candy Cain.

That’s what I wanted for Christmas.

Or for Thanksgiving.

Or to help me shoot off firecrackers on the Fourth of July.

Or at any other special occasion.

Or at any ordinary occasion.

Candy Cain.

That utter serenity was fading. By the time I hit 34th Street it was gone. By the time my feet, which were growing steadier by the minute, had carried me west as far as Fifth Avenue, any trace of serenity had long since vanished.

It was late—I had drunk my dinner at Macmahon’s and it was probably nine or a little after by now. I flagged down a cab at the corner of 34th and Fifth and gave the hackie my home address. Then, after we had gone a few blocks, a thought found its way into my empty head and I changed my mind.

“Times Square,” I told him.

He nodded without saying anything and I leaned back in my seat and relaxed. I couldn’t close my eyes without seeing Candy, seeing her dressed or naked, seeing all that beautiful flesh, seeing the two of us in bed, seeing us in the elevator, seeing anything and everything. With my eyes open I didn’t see her. Instead I saw the wart on the back of the cabdriver’s neck. This got to be a bore by the time we hit 38th Street so I turned my attention to the placard next to the meter which told me that the driver’s name was Ignatz Bludge. There was Ignatz’s picture on the placard over his name but I couldn’t tell if it was him. It was a mug shot and I couldn’t see whether or not the guy in the picture had a wart on the back of his neck.

I got off at 42nd Street and 7th, tipped Ignatz a buck to preserve the pecuniary emulation, and drifted around until I found a grubby hotel. I settled on one located at 45th Street and Eighth Avenue, a palatial mansion where the roaches scurried across the register while I was struggling to sign my name. The room had more roaches than the lobby and less space, but it had a bed and a washbowl and that was enough.

I sat down on the bed, set fire to a cigarette and asphyxiated three roaches with a single puff of smoke. Roaches weren’t what they used to be. These little bugs took a deep whiff of the smoke, clawed the air vacantly, and fell from the wall to the floor, where they lay on their backs and wiggled all eighteen legs. I got to feeling sorry for them and stepped on them. Then I remembered that I had taken off my shoes and socks and I got hold of a towel and wiped scrambled roach from my bare feet.

I finished the cigarette and lit another one from the butt of the first. The walk and the ride and the walk had taken the edge off that the Bushmill’s had given me and I just felt tired. I was glad I had decided on a hotel instead of going home. I didn’t feel like facing Lucy. Not that night. Not with Candy clogging my brain and Bushmill’s still swimming around in my bloodstream. Better I should sack out on a lumpy bed in a lumpy hotel and fight the roaches for breathing space.

At least it gave me a chance to think.

I did a lot of thinking. The drinks had loosened me up and now that I was practically sober again I was able to relax, to look at things almost dispassionately. It gave me a fresh outlook on the blonde sexpot who went by the name of Candace Cain.

Candace Cain.

Not a woman. A disease. Something that could kill you as quickly as triple pneumonia. Something that left you dead with a smirk on your fat face.

I had had her, possessed her, had her again and again and still been unable to get enough of her. I had Candy with a Bushmill’s chaser, and this reminded me of Ogden Nash’s little poem that goes—

“ Candy is dandy

but liquor is quicker”

Candace Cain.

I had had her; now I couldn’t have her any more. I wanted her so badly that I even offered to divorce Lucy to marry her, even was ready to give up a woman who loved me, for one who was only interested in money. I thought about Lucy and a little jolt of guilt jabbed me in the navel. It was a physical thing and I felt sick to my stomach about the whole thing.

Oh, I could have Candy. All I had to do was get my hands on something in the approximate neighborhood of one hundred thousand dollars, that’s all. Then we could hop a plane to Acapulco and live together in sin and harmony for the rest of our unnatural lives. Well, maybe not that long. But at least until the money ran out.

Now where in hell was I going to get my hands on a cool hundred grand?

The answer was obvious.

Nowhere.

I lit a third cigarette from the butt of the second, stood up and paced the floor of my humble abode. Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home. And this was no place like home. I paced the grubby floor four times and killed five roaches en route. Then I dropped the cigarette on one of the roach corpses and ground it out. I flopped on the bed and closed my eyes with my dumb head buried face down in the pillow.

I just lay there, not thinking, not moving, with my mind a big continuous void. When I sat up again I could think very clearly. There were, I saw, two possibilities.

Possibility Number One—I could get hold of a hundred thousand dollars and hustle Candy off to Acapulco.

Possibility Number Two—I could live without her. And, because what the two of us had was not love but sex, I figured that I could do it.

Lucy. Lucy was my wife, my woman, a woman who had been mine first and who had never had anybody else. I remembered the first time when neither of us could wait any more, how we registered under phony names in a little hotel, how we went to the room together, how she was shaking with fear and how I was trembling with love for her.

How we undressed with the lights out, how the light filtered in from a street lamp through the window and how beautiful she was, how soft and warm her body was when I pressed myself against her.

How our love grew, swelled up higher and higher with the passion of our two young bodies moving together. How it happened, happened incredibly; first for her and then for me, instants apart, how we lay in each other’s arms and said quiet words to each other. How we slept.

How we were married, married with both of us very young and very much in love, how we found out that it was even better when you were married.

How we lived together.

How the years passed.

There is something wonderful that happens when two people live together for eleven years. There is something very good about knowing one other person inside and out, back and front, knowing how that special person’s mind and body work, knowing what every gesture and every facial expression means. They tell me that married couples who grow old together get so they look alike and this is something which I find it fairly easy to believe. There was a telepathy that had developed between Lucy and me, a different kind of telepathy from that nonsense with Doc Rhine’s ESP cards. She always knew what I was thinking; I could always say the very thought that had just come into her mind before she said it.

We loved each other.

We knew each other.

We had each other.

And I had been ready to throw it away for a sexed-up bitch who wanted to lay for a millionaire! It was hard to believe that Candy had such a great hold on me, but it was a hold I was suddenly determined to break.

What was the difference between them? Candy was good in bed; Lucy was as good. Candy was beautiful; Lucy’s looks were more subtle but no less attractive.

I tossed off my clothes, crawled under the covers and let my head submerge itself in the dumpy pillow. My mind was made up. In the morning I would go home, home to my wife. Somehow, God knows how, I would make it up with her. I would put myself on a diet and there would be no Candy on that diet, none at all.

I thought about it—how good it would be, how life would become sane again and the world would stop turning upside-down and giggling at me like a schizoid hyena. I thought about Lucy, my wife, my love, and my eyes closed and my body relaxed and I slept.