The next day was a Saturday. Brenda awoke on the tumbled, twisted sheets that were dappled with dried cum. Her head ached and her body was stiff and heavy with exhaustion. She sat up, savoring the warm sunlight on her bare skin, like an animal arising from hibernation.
She remembered it all with a sinking feeling of despair. Leo had slept for an hour or so, then woke up with a start in the dark room. He had seemed irritated about something, and jumped up to take a shower, not asking her permission. He stayed in the bathroom a long time, the water dashing for a small eternity through the thumping pipes. It made her feel dirty to think that he was washing for such a long time.
Finally he came out and dressed quickly but carefully, smoothing out his tie and inspecting his shirt for wrinkles that were not there. His eyes kept going to the poster and she was suddenly terrified.
She made a sleepy promise to herself. I'll take that thing down. I can't bear it any longer.
When Leo left he pocketed the vibrator and grinned at her.
"I'll see you again. I can't keep away from you. Can you keep away from me?" he asked slowly. His eyes held her glance. He looked like a cat at a mouse hole.
"No," she said rudely.
When he was gone she felt herself falling rapidly into an exhausted sleep. She fought it, fearing some horrible nightmare about the poster, but she was powerless against the leaden fatigue that gripped her.
She did not dream. It was a black sleep, a vast pit of nothingness that frightened her more than any dream could have done. When she awoke, she was not rested at all.
She got up, noticing that she was unsteady on her feet and lightheaded. She had never had a real hangover but she knew what they were. Now, it seemed that she had one, though she had not even finished the one drink that she had had. The feeling that flooded her was worse than a hangover; it was more like being drugged. As she moved into the kitchen she might have been walking under water, so heavy and slow were her legs.
It's because I'm so satisfied, she told herself. Sex did that; it was supposed to make you feel this way. But something told her it was not that simple. It was as if she were actually drugged, coming down from some sort of high that had removed her from her self. Fear gripped her. She leaned heavily against the stove and fought down the trembling. When she reached for the coffee pot her hands were so unsteady that she knocked over a cup. It smashed to the floor and cause her to cry out, a shrill, high-pitched sound like an epileptic makes.
Leo! What had he done to her? She remembered with vivid despair his sharp black eyes boring into hers. His eyes were like obsidian magnets, locking on her glance and refusing to release her.
It was as if… as if he had somehow hypnotized her!
Was it possible? Or was it something only trained doctors could do? She tried to remember what she had read about hypnotism. There was always a prop, some kind of mechanical thing that the hypnotist used to fix the attention of…
The vibrator. She remembered the steady buzz. It was like the ticking of a watch, something that was rhythmic and rote. It went on and on, deep inside of her, until sound and sensation were one.
There was rhythm in sex itself, the steady throbbing of her cunt in climax, the rocking movements of two bodies slamming into one another, the wet slapping sounds of two crotches going at it in bed. Her whole time with Leo had been a time of rhythm. His nuts slapping against her ass, her tits quivering against his chest… and then the insistent buzz of the vibrator.
It was a spell; he had cast a spell on her, but why? No, no, she was being foolish, it was silly. It sounded like something out of a seance meeting. Wacky, unreal, just plain silly and superstitious. She was being an idiot. He was the sexiest man she had ever met – of course he had cast a spell on her! Why shouldn't he? She was a healthy, normal girl and they had a heavy bed session, that's all. As for being so draggy…
She started to smile, stretching lazily as she stood in the path of the morning sun. Naturally she was tired. What girl wouldn't be after taking what she had taken – and given!
She made a pot of coffee and enjoyed its aroma as it began to perk and waft through the tiny kitchen. It was spring! A beautiful day, and a Saturday. Could anything be better than a weekend in spring after a night such as she had had? It was wonderful to be young and free…
Brenda walked to the window and looked down on the alley at the back. Above the rooftops she could see the white scuttling clouds in the blue sky, but when she looked down, the narrow brick-lined passage reminded her of the pictures of purgatory in Dante's poem. No light reached those dank stones.
Was Ginny in California? It was sunny there… Brenda imagined her lying on a beach, turning a coppery brown like the girls in the sun tan lotion ads. She would have a big floppy hat and raccoon sunglasses and…
What was she like?
She had to find out, she had to. Maybe she could turn up some of Ginny's old friends and find someone who had heard from her. Surely she had sent a few postcards. Any girl with all those friends would have written to somebody. She could get Ginny's new address and drop her a line, tell her how much she liked the apartment, start up a kind of pen-pal relationship. There would be nothing wrong with that; it was the most natural thing in the world to do. Ginny obviously collected people, which meant she liked them. She would probably be completely nonchalant about adding another to her long list.
She had worked in… what was it? She turned the coffee off, poured out a cup and stirred it slowly, trying to remember what Harl had said about some place in the Village where Ginny had…
The dog photo studio on Eighth Street. That was it. She could go in there.
She showered and dressed. As she splashed cologne on her bare skin she paused and touched the collection of bottles, taking a strange comfort in the disorder. She remembered her fear that day, that first day in the apartment when she had bathed in the cold-looking empty bathroom. Now it was hers, undeniably hers, with her scents, her make-up, her stockings hanging up to dry.
Ginny doesn't live here anymore. Brenda lives here. I am Brenda, Brenda Taylor.
"I am Brenda…"
She looked in the mirror, studying her reflection. She did not look like the girl in the poster. Her fingers came up and touched her mouth. It was a different mouth full and sensual, not like the pursed; bee-stung lips of the forest girl. Her eyes were blue, startling and vividly blue, not green. They were large and wide, not slanted in cruel lines. There was no resemblance, none whatsoever.
The girl in the poster is Ginny… I don't look like her so I am not Ginny.
She walked out of the bathroom and picked up her purse, checking for keys before she left. They were not in her bag. Her glance swept around the room, lingering over tables, until she saw them on the cocktail table in front of the sofa. She crossed the room and picked them up, her eyes going to the poster.
I'll take it down right now, she thought. Take it down and rip it up and toss it in the garbage on my way out. She stepped behind the table and reached awkwardly to the wall her knees colliding with the front of the sofa. But she couldn't do it. The poster belonged to Ginny; she couldn't destroy it.
I'll roll it up and put it away.
She kicked off her shoes and stood in the billowing cushions, losing her balance a little as the spongy softness gave with her weight. She steadied herself, palms flat against the wall, and dug her thumb and forefinger under the tack that Leo had replaced the night before.
It was another example of his neat thoroughness. The tack was deep in the wall, its head flat against the plaster. Brenda worked her nails under it, trying to dislodge his efficient repair work.
The neatly filed oval of her thumbnail split and broke off.
"Damn!" she cried out in annoyance, inspecting the damage. There was no saving the nail; it had broken off close to the quick. She peeled the rest of it away, wincing as it cut too close to the flesh. Well that ruined her manicure, she thought irritably. Oh, to hell with the poster! She'd take it down some other time. She did not feel like fooling with a knife or a screw driver now, and risk doing something to the wall that would scatter plaster dust over her clothes. Save it for some other time. She jumped down from the sofa and put on her shoes. There was a thin line of blood on her thumb from the torn nail and she put it in her mouth for a moment, then put her keys in her purse and left the apartment.
The mailman had come. The row of crumbling, corroded boxes threatened to come loose from the cracked plaster and clatter to the tiled floor. Brenda saw a cluster of envelopes in her slot and fished for the key she had just put away. Just below the lock was a fresh white slip of paper with her own name on it. She had affixed it immediately, the first day she had lived in the building, after reading about mail thefts in New York. Sometimes her parents sent her a check and she did not want them left stuck in the wall or tossed on the table in front of the row of boxes.
The sight of her name was reassuring and she looked at it a moment, then opened the box and took out the mail.
A letter from Jim, one from her mother, an announcement of an old girl friend's wedding in a thick creamy envelope. Miss Brenda Taylor… Miss Brenda Taylor… Miss Brenda Taylor.
Then she saw the others. Phone, gas and electric. Miss Virginia Walters.
She dropped them and stepped back, her body stiff and poised in fear, and stared at the fan of envelopes at her feet as she would stare, transfixed, at a roach.
A football behind her made her whirl around. It was Harl on the stairs. The intimate grin on his face froze in perplexity.
"Hi. What's the matter?" he asked, frowning. He looked from her fear-widened eyes to the letters on the floor.
"Your bills can't be that high," he said with a short laugh. "You haven't lived here long enough."
Her voice shook as she answered him. "They're not my bills, they're – they're hers! Ginny's! They were in my mailbox… But she's gone, hasn't she?" Her voice scaled up into a wail of terror. Had blinked in surprise, then, seeming to catch on, he spread his hands in amused resignation.
"So she left you with 'em, hmm? Christ, I can imagine how big the phone bill is. She was probably calling Biafra."
He stooped down to pick up the envelopes and turned them over, looking at the backs for a moment, then up to her face, his frown appearing once more.
"But you haven't even opened them," he said.
She backed away from him. "No, I won't open them! They're not mine, I'm not Ginny! Why should I open her mail? I'm not Ginny!"
Harl sprang up, surveying her twisted features with a mixture of bafflement and humor…
"Take it easy, take it easy. Shh… Somebody'll think I'm a mugger or something. Look, open the damn things before you start screaming fraud, will you? Come on," he urged, handing them to her. "We'll keep it nice and legal. They were in your box so you open them."
He was laughing at her!
"I won't touch them! I told you they weren't mine!"
"What the hell is the matter with you? Come on, baby. Okay, I'll open them for you, don't go into orbit."
His long hard fingers slit the flats and took out the computerized cards. She watched his eyes flicker expertly to the place where the totals were recorded.
"Well, I'll be damned, it's hardly anything at all. See? All your worries for nothing. Only one LD, and that only to Philadelphia. A buck-sixty." He shrugged. "The others aren't much. Ginny never cooked and she burned up more candles than light bulbs."
He shoved the bills at her.
"Pay 'em, it's simpler that way. Take my word for it. Once you start writing letters to the company things get in an awful snarl."
"I won't touch them," she mumbled. "If I pay her bills I'll be… her! I'll be Ginny… Ginny."
"What do you mean you'll be Ginny?" He frowned at her a moment, his eyes appraising. Then he lowered his voice after a quick look behind him.
"Are you turned on?"
She met his eyes and shook her head dumbly.
"I don't take pot. I'm not like her. I know she did, but I don't. I don't do any of the things she did because I'm me."
"That makes a nice testimonial," he said dryly.
"Sounds like show-and-tell at the camp meeting. What are you so uptight about, baby? You weren't this way when I last saw you."
His voice turned suggestive and he stepped closer to her. For a moment she hated him because he had witnessed her stark fear just now over the mail. She had been able to hide it before, but now the haunting spirit of Ginny was closing in, and her nerves were beginning to crack.
She gripped the bills in her fist and stepped back against the wall as Harl drew closer.
"You called me Ginny that first time," she said in a quivering voice. "You started it. That day you came in… You called me Ginny in the hallway and later on, when we were…"
"Oh, for God's sake. Can't you be cool about it? I thought you were a swinging chick, now you're making noises like the girl next door." He chuckled and made a casual move. "Which you practically are, I suppose, but… Come on, baby, let's take it from the top again. I've missed you."
He put his hand on her arm. She looked down at the long sun-browned fingers and remembered them plowing into her body that day. She hesitated a moment, then drew back.
"I want to find her," she whispered. "I've got to. I want to write to her… something." Her voice sounded far off; for a moment the light-headed feeling returned, until she felt part of herself floating away and observing the scene in the lobby, as if she had suddenly become some kind of twin.
Twins… Gemini. And now it was spring, her birthday time. Leo's sharp, watchful face rose in her mind as she stared at Harl.
"Tell me," she said urgently. "Tell me the names of some of her friends. You must know who they were! You were one of them, you have to know who the others were."
His eyes narrowed appraisingly and she saw his mouth quirk at the corners.
"You just have to step out on the street," he said with a shrug. "You're bound to meet one of Ginny's crowd. The law of averages…" He trailed off, then smiled brightly. She was too upset to see the mischief in his expression.
"Why don't you ask Sonya at the dog shop? She was probably Ginny's best friend. Yeah… I almost forgot about Sonya. They were real close."
"Sonya," she murmured. "Is she there today?"
"Should be. If she's not in the shop, look in the bar next door. It's called Sappho's. Little Greek place she hangs out in."
As Brenda hurried out, Harl watched her go with a big grin on his face. It looked as if Brenda were more interested in Ginny than she was in him. He was disappointed; he wanted to ball with her again. He was also mad. If she figured a girl was more interesting than he was… well, then, fine.
He started to laugh. Sonya was the most famous lesbo in the Village, a lethal man-hater with enough sexual know-how to get Jane away from Tarzan. She had had Ginny, lots of times. If he knew Sonya, she wouldn't be able to keep her hands off of Brenda.
He got his mail and went back upstairs, still laughing.