The next morning, a persistent ringing in the room brought her swimming out of a dream in which she had been floating in a pool, flat on her back, her belly facing the sky and swelling, swelling like a carnival balloon until she thought she would burst. Her eyes wandered to the diving board. There, poised as though he would fly rather than dive, was her father. He laughed with his white eyes, and started to float toward her distended belly. She shrieked, and woke up, her screams competing with the blasting of the telephone.
" Yes, yes, yes," she called, as though it were the telephone, not a person soundlessly far from her room, urging her to respond. " Yes," she muttered, and pulled her bruised hips around. She reached out and picked up the receiver. Almost before she could speak, a husky voice said, " Gloria, is that you baby?"
" Yes," she said blindly, still not fully conscious.
" Look, baby, this is me, Paul. Darling, I didn' t sleep all night. I' m so sorry about yesterday. Look, I just had a bit too much to drink. I' m sorry. Are you there?"
" Yes," she answered wearily. Paul and the things he had said, she thought disconnectedly. What was it he said yesterday? What happened with him yesterday? She couldn' t remember. Only something had happened after Paul. What was it? And then the white eyes floated out of her dreams, gripping her stomach, and she was completely, shockingly awake.
" It' s okay, Paul. Really. I guess I deserved what you said."
" No, Gloria. Look, I' m just a conceited ass. If a girl doesn' t sleep with me, I make a whole case study out of it."
She pictured Paul' s dark, gentle eyes, and his fine soft hands.
" A girl should want to sleep with you," she said. " If she doesn' t, then she probably does have a screw missing someplace." And she thought, My God, I really got my screws bolted in place last night. No more loose screws. Except now I' m one big loosened screw. All of me, so no one can hear the rattling.
" Gloria, baby, are you there? Can we just forget about last night? I promise, I won' t say another word about us… I mean that way. It' s a beautiful day, the sun is shining, the winter chill is off. Let' s drive up to Westchester and have some lobster in the Rye Inn."
" That would be great," she said. " Get me out of the city today."
" Gloria, you' re an angel. I don' t think there' s another girl who' d forgive me for last night. I don' t know what got into my head."
Sense, she thought. Last night was the first time you ever sounded like a man… the first time you ever made me feel like a woman. She shook her head, Christ, do I have to be beaten and bullied into being a woman? Well then, beat me, bully me, I have to live. For the first time I want to live.
" I' ll pick you up in an hour. Is that okay?"
" What time is it now Paul? Ten o' clock? Good. Come over for coffee and eggs at eleven, and by twelve we' ll be on our way."
" Great," he said, his voice relaxed and relieved. The husky whisper of the first few seconds of conversation had evaporated. " I' ll pick up some cheese Danish and we' ll have a picnic. I love you, Gloria. I love you even if I am a stupid ass."
Too bad for me. Too bad the stupid asses go for me. And they admit it, too. The stupid asses are always very honest. I wonder if we can make a deal. I turn him into a man and he pays back by turning me into a woman. No, the only thing he could turn me into is a cow – a big, fat, contented, cud- chewing- in- the- green- fields cow.
" In an hour then, baby," Paul sang.
" I' ll be waiting for you," she answered.
When she hung up the phone, she was dreadfully alone again. And she realized that she was afraid. She pulled herself off the bed and kicked off the shoes she had worn all night. Her toes felt stiff and cold. She walked to the window and rolled the bamboo blind up. The windows were dirty on the outside, the way New York windows always were because you weren' t allowed to sit out on the sill and wash them, the way you could in Kansas City. In Kansas City, you lived in a house that had two floors. Two floors of a wooden house, and the windows always glistening and clean. Her eyes filled with hopeless tears. Here she lived on the fourth floor. A wonderful studio with all the light she needed to paint. Of course, artists didn' t really need light anymore, doing their crazy patterns of color. The artists didn' t go out into the sun the way Cezanne had. It didn' t matter how a tree looked with the sun coming through the leaves. Artists were city dwellers now, painting sunless images in sunless rooms.
She opened the window and looked up and down the quiet brownstonelined street. Down below, a car was parked badly. Two girls with short hair and tight jeans passed, touching in their walk and dress and faces that told the world that they were in love… that at night they gripped each other' s short- cropped heads and dug into each other' s hidden sex. They had looks of frozen, corrupted purity.
Small fenced- in trees lined the street. A skinny man with corduroy pants passed, carrying a canvas under his arm. Another sunless artist. Then a hurried young man wearing horn- rimmed glasses, scurrying like the rabbit inAlice in Wonderland, rushed by balancing thick books against his tweed coat. Gloria laughed. Boy oh boy, you' d better read fast. You' ve got lots to learn, my bright young man. Hurry, or you' ll die before you finish St. John' s list of classics.
We' re all insane, reading and painting and blowing tunes. And all the time we want a thick- tongued maniac to grab us in a dark hallway and jam sex into us. All the money I wasted on paint and canvas and school. All the time I was just a cunt. An unused cunt. Those are the biggest cunts of all. Cunts as big as our heads.
She closed the window, suddenly afraid again to be alone in the room. I wonder if he knows my name? I wonder if he' ll look me up in the book and come back? But I must forget about him. I must forget and go on living.
She walked into the bathroom, the pale eyes invisibly following her. She leaned over the bathtub, the gesture bringing a throb of pain to her temples. She turned the hot water tap; soon smoke and splashing water filled the tub.
She walked out into the small kitchen and filled a kettle with water. She set the kettle on the stove and turned the automatic gas jet. A flame shot up and she jumped back, suddenly realizing that she was standing in her kitchen, staring transfixed at the white eyes in the pattern of spots and cracks on the wall. Oh God, I' m trapped. I' m trapped.
Gloria wandered into her studio… the main room of her top floor apartment. The walls were covered with her paintings. An unfinished canvas hung on the wall between the two windows. Her canvasses were too large for her to use an easel. She painted by dipping into brilliantly hued buckets of paint and splashing her frustration and confusion across the white canvas. All the colors of her life leaped at her from the walls and she felt surrounded by mute enemies. She fell across the sofa in the middle of the room. It was covered with an Indian throw. Tiny flowers and men on camels marched along the border of the couch. She reached over to the coffee table that she had made out of wrought iron legs and an old mahogany kitchen table. The first cigarette of the day tasted like blood in her mouth. She smashed it out in her Mexican pottery ashtray and went back into the kitchen. She poured the boiling water through a drip coffeepot and poured a full cup of black steaming coffee. She brought the cup into the bathroom, putting it down on the closed toilet seat and unzipping her black dress. The rapist, the white- eyed devil, hadn' t bothered to take her dress off. Just pulled it above her knees. Didn' t care that she had full, nipple tipped breasts. Didn' t care that her white back exposed the long slim line of her spine. Didn' t care that the musk of her body lay hidden in her armpits, that her hips curved out from a smallsculpted waist. Only wanted to get to her cunt. No other part of her existed for him. Not her head, or her heart, or her round, throbbing, blue- veined breasts. Only one place his prick wanted to go… only one thing he cared about, his prick. His prick and her cunt and they could fly to the moon.
She lowered herself into the tub and the water turned pink with her clotted blood. She grew faint. The water rushed into her cunt, settling hot in her moss- covered cavity. It brought the memory of him back to her with painful immediacy. I must find him. He' s got to come back to me. Does every vagina feel the same to him? Didn' t he feel, inside me, that he' d come home? Will he want another woman tomorrow? Is he with another woman now, shoving his magnificent prick into her pink, hot flesh? The thought brought tears of rage and jealousy to her eyes.
She took a soft sponge and soaped her body – her thighs, and the blood coating them, her slightly muscled calves, her arms and breasts, and her tear- stained face. Her body felt the prickly sensation he had left in it. A blind glutting desire. She remembered the Greek fable about Io. Io had wandered between heaven and earth, a gnat biting at her, leaving her no peace… torturing her with its persistency.
I' m just as damned. He' s left a scar in my cunt. An itching, burning scar. And only his prick can heal it. He' s got to come back to me. He can' t leave me to wander the earth like Io. She started to cry.
But I' m an artist. I' ve won a drawer full of prizes. I' ve been shown in the Whitney exhibition. He can' t have ruined me. He can' t have left me with nothing to live for but his enormous cock. Just thinking of the rigid boned flesh that had jutted from beneath his hard stomach made her tremble with excitement. I' m lost… lost.
She pulled herself out of the tub and dried her body with the big Cannon towel. She wiped herself gently, with rhythmic concern. When she put the towel between her legs, her thighs pulled tightly together, as if her secret need had its own secret will. Her fingers wandered to her hot vagina. She separated the taut lips with her fingertips, exploring the smooth inner membranes that were the color of conch. She felt the throbbing clitoris. It jumped at her heated prodding. " I can' t," she murmured. She knew that if she flung herself across the bed and induced her own pulsating orgasm, she would be left with a hotter desire. Only the white eyes could save her. She walked into her bedroom, feeling the cruel urge between her legs. Her eyes reflected torture. I' m going crazy. I am crazy.
The green tweed suit, the fawn cashmere sweater, the thick handcrafted belt, the mascara, powder and lipstick, the stockings, garters and thin- heeled shoes were all draped and painted expertly on her when the doorbell buzzed. Only the urgent itch inside of her didn' t change with her cool, fresh- looking exterior. Her secret, hot, hidden desire laughed at her allegiance to civilization. She could put on fourteen sweaters and twenty- two strings of beads, and she' d still be naked and hungry inside.
She opened the door gaily for Paul. " All is forgiven," she announced before he could speak, fearing a drawn- out apology. " Let' s just forget it and not even mention it again. Especially today."
He put a bouquet of tulips and lilacs into her hands, and dared to kiss her timorously.
" You look beautiful," he said, his eyes admiring her fine shoulder- length black hair, cut in straight bangs across her forehead. Her mouth was painted a fashionable orange.
" You are the coolest lady in New York," he said.
Very cool, she thought, even as the furnace raged in her groin.
" Well, let' s scramble the eggs. I' m starving. Something about not sleeping all night must give you more time to be hungry."
She was afraid he' d apologize again. " You should have taken a pill. It' s too much of a bore to toss all night."
He followed her lead. " Next time I don' t sleep, I will. But," he slipped in an oblique apology, " if it' s for the same reason, I' ll just blow my brains out."
Brains, she thought with contempt. Who gives a fuck about his brains?
Gloria pulled eggs, butter, bacon and cream out of the small refrigerator next to the stove and oven. She took a bowl from the cupboard and cracked four eggs into it. Beating them, she felt almost normal. Paul powdered salt and pepper into the bowl.
" You always forget the spice, honey."
She laughed. " I don' t believe in spice."
He put his arm around her. " Is it really hopeless for me?"
" Is what hopeless?"
" Am I going to love you all my life as if you' re a distant statue, a marble goddess?"
" Why not? I am a goddess, you know. I' m Io. Ever met her?"
" No," he said, sensing the desperation behind the humor.
" Io is the only goddess who had an itch. A real terrific itch."
He didn' t answer her.
" This itch," she continued, " drove Io all over the damn earth – across the Caucasus, to the shores of Exxine, across the Macotic Strait, into the arms of the Amazons, out of Europe, to the continent of Asia…" Her voice droned on incoherently.
Paul took her by both shoulders and shook her gently. " Baby, what' s got you? You sound miserable. Really beat."
" It' s nothing, Paul. Nothing. I' ve just got a long trip in front of me, that' s all." Then suddenly, and inexplicably for him, she said, " Have you ever seen a man with white eyes?"
He answered her tone instead of her words. " Maybe you' d better lie down for a few minutes, Gloria. I' ll bring the breakfast in when it' s finished. You' ve got deep shadows under your eyes. Honey, if you don' t feel well, if I hurt you more last night than you' ll admit, we don' t have to go anywhere. There' s a Mozart concert on WQXR. We can just sit here and listen to it. Then we can have an early dinner and make a short day of it."
" Yes," she said, feeling dizzy with the need inside her. " I' ll lie down, but don' t try to get out of that drive to Westchester. It' s just what I need for my artistic nerves."
She kicked off her shoes and stretched lengthwise across the bed. In fifteen minutes, Paul was beside her with a full breakfast tray – coffee, toast, bacon, soft scrambled eggs, and a gorgeous cheese Danish. He put the tray on her night table and sat on the bed beside her.
" Can you tell me what' s wrong?"
" Nothing is wrong. I just didn' t sleep too well. I' m a bit tired. Maybe a little manic, or depressed. Darling, do you think I' m a manic- depressive?"
Paul placed his hand on her back. She wanted to grab it and shove it between her legs.
" What I said last night really upset you Gloria. I' m a pig to speak to a sensitive girl like that."
" It was true yesterday, Paul," she said, looking into his gentle eyes with a mixture of loathing and insatiable desire. " But it' s not true today."
" What do you mean?" he said, his voice hopeful.
" I mean last night I was a frigid bitch. And rotten to you."
His disappointment showed in his voice. " Oh."
" But today," she reawakened his hope, " I' m not frigid."
" Gloria, what are you saying?"
" Make love to me. Make love to me now."
" Baby," he implored, almost killing her desire with his comically serious face, " I didn' t mean what I said yesterday. I want you. Oh God, how I want you. But only when you' re ready."
" I' m ready, Paul. I' m ready. Do I have to get down on my knees and… and… unzip your pants?"
There was a shocked silence. Paul winced. He was used to the ceremony, the eager asking and the grudging permission before he made love. He was not prepared for this dry, toneless command. Sex was a game for him, played in a very prescribed way.
" Have something to eat first," he hesitated to regain his composure. Sure he' d fuck her, but she had to play the game.
In frustrated rage, Gloria picked up the parsley- sprinkled eggs and flung them across the room. They fell in a disgustingly mushy yellow heap. " Fuck me!" she screamed. " Fuck me for chrissake! You do know how? You have a prick, don' t you?"
His face grew black with rage and fear. His anger aroused him until Gloria saw a bulge swell in his pants. Eagerly she labored with his belt buckle and unzipped his sober pinstriped trousers and found his prick decorously pressed against his left leg. He wore Brooks Brothers pink underpants. She reached into the slit in his shorts and freed the stiff, hot flesh. It stood wondrously firm before her eyes. The head was wide and hot and throbbing. She caressed the entire veined shaft, not seeing Paul' s eager frightened face above her. She saw nothing but his taut rod, and felt nothing but the draining emptiness inside of her. She put her mouth eagerly against the cap of his prick and sucked it with long intakes of breath. She swirled her tongue around the velvet helmet, then ran it down the length of his lance. She licked around the base, sucking his balls into her mouth one at a time. She worked back up to the head, pausing only a second before swallowing the entire cock, burying it in her throat until her nose brushed the thick hair at his root. She felt his legs tremble and released him. " Put it in me Paul; put it in me quick."
He was silent with tension. " Take off your clothes," he commanded.
" No, no," she screamed. " No time! Just ram it in me."
He ripped at her cashmere sweater, pulling it up around her neck and pushing her methodical head away from his prick at the same time. He tugged at the pink brassiere beneath the sweater, but his nervous fingers couldn' t find the hooks. Instead, he pulled it up so that it cut her under the arms. At last, his mouth found her taut nipples. She felt a shiver of hot lust as his tongue wandered over them.
" They' re stiff like your prick. I have two pricks." Then she pulled his head away from her because the need to have him inside of her was becoming unbearable.
" Fuck me, Paul," she pleaded looking at his gentle, dark eyes. They brought him humanly close to her and she felt her body grow chill. " Close your eyes. Don' t look at me, just fuck."
" Gloria," he implored. " Gloria."
She knew his humanizing of it had killed it for her. Her nipples grew soft. She lowered her hand to touch his prick. It was still stiff, and he was breathing hard. But it was not the thick, cruel prick of last night' s lover. This one felt hard and thin, hopelessly thin to her touch. Disgusted, she turned on her side. And at that moment, from behind her, Paul' s prick found its way between her legs and into the hot cavity of her desire. She thought it was too late, but his firm cock, moving in and out of her with a crazy, excited rhythm, was suddenly filling her with fire. Maybe? She pressed hard against him.
She grew dizzy with the intensity of her need.
" Harder, Paul harder. Give it to me! Give me a prick of hate, not of love! Give me a prick of hate!"
Her throaty, insane demand freed Paul' s orgasm. It rushed trembling all the way from his shoulders, throbbing down his breast and stomach and groin and emptied groaning into her cunt.
" Not yet," she spat in fury. " I need more! Fuck me! Fuck me!" She continued to thrust her hips against him, fighting to regain the sensation.
But Paul had grown soft inside her. She pulled away from him, her cunt wet with his sperm and the soothing liquids that had started to flow in her. She picked up his lax cock and balanced it in her palm. " I could crush it, you weak bastard. I hate you." She burst into tears of frustration, her fingers pinching her hungry clitoris.
" You' re crazy," Paul hissed. But he lowered his head to her cunt, and pushed her hand away. " Let me," he said gently.
He covered her emptiness with his mouth. She leaned her head against the pillow and thought, as long as he doesn' t take his mouth away, I can live. His tongue was inside her, gently licking her enraged clit. She felt a trembling, exhausted calm. She touched his dark head. " Thank you, darling," she said weakly. " Thank you." But even while sobbing her thanks… even as his tongue and teeth in her cunt calmed her insatiable need… she knew it would not bring the blasting, blinding release she had known under the stairs. It took a cock of contempt to do that. She felt as though a slave was salving her hot, tired insides.
She arched her body sensuously against him. But it would take a master to cut the chords of her nerves. At the urgings of his mouth, she felt the liquids flow gently down her body. The slow, tenuous pulsations of the orgasm began. Cheated and relaxed. Fulfilled, and yet hungrier from the entranced, controlled throbbing of her cunt, she lay back among the pillows and tasted her tears.