The Brownstone, page 12
Taking her in his arms, Justin’s chest met her softness. He began to kiss her eyes and mouth. He smiled, slipping down to kiss her breasts. Her hips moved closer to him in anticipation. Justin moved slowly, enjoying her completely, until he finally entered her.
“I love you, honey,” he whispered. Their bodies moved together, damp with sweat.
“Oh, Justin.” She pulled him to her hard.
Eyes closed, Chandal clung to the back of Justin’s neck. “Yes,” she whispered, “yes.”
He was holding her buttocks firmly now, raising them. In this position, Justin felt bigger, penetrated deeper; her pleasure increased, feeling as though he were puncturing her deepest, innermost walls, and she moved with him with almost total abandonment to pleasure. She shuddered as she imagined his penis growing larger, thought how incredibly good Justin had become as a lover. Her whole body heaved with pleasure. Suddenly she became self-conscious. A pain rippled through her vagina, then another. Justin was pushing too hard now. Something was wrong. Frightened, she opened her eyes.
The bell hung in midair over Justin’s shoulder.
“Yes. yes,” Justin moaned.
“Justin!”
“Take it easy,” he said.
Her nails ripped into his back. All she could feel was pain.
“Take it easy!”
The bell shook violently—challenging her, the tremors of sound running through her body.
“Honey,” Justin sighed.
“Justin!”
“Yes!” Justin’s body stiffened in a long release, and fell limp.
Chandal gasped for air, trying to breathe, trying to move his huge body.
The bell was still there.
Chandal couldn’t breathe; she was suffocating. She opened her mouth. “No—No!”
Justin looked up. “What’s the matter, Del?”
“There! Behind you!”
Justin turned, pulling the covers quickly over the lower part of his naked body. “What?” he asked.
The bell was gone.
Chandal let her body go limp. Sweat ran from her forehead, down into her eyes, across her lips. “Oh, God—God.”
Justin reached for her. “Honey, are you all right?”
Justin’s face, sweating and handsome, his short-cropped hair tossed casually back. Thank God he was there. She threw her arms around him. “Justin—hold me!”
He took her thin frame in his arms, crushing her close to his chest. “Baby, baby—it’s all right. Everything will be all right.”
Slowly, she relaxed.
“I love you, Del.” He could feel her heart pounding. He ran his hands through her hair. His fingers played with her ears, her throat, her cheeks.
“Thank God for you,” she whispered, gripping him with all her strength, her mouth closed on his. She closed her eyes, felt Justin run his hands along her bare arms, felt his hand slip along her back. Nothing mattered now and they became lost in each other’s arms, until Chandal had reached a fulfillment that consumed her like a deep and wild ocean. Then quiet. Loving quiet. Then sleep.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THEY SAT ON THE PARK BENCH AND FED THE PIGEONS. Dowdy, proud, scrawny, fat-breasted—the pigeons pleased Chandal very much, taking the popcorn from her hand the way they did.
The snow had stopped sometime during the evening, leaving mounds of smooth, unmarked white powder over most of Central Park. The sun had replaced the dark clouds and everything sparkled.
“Lord, what a day. What a day!” Justin suddenly scooped up a handful of snow, frightening the poor pigeons half to death. En masse, they rose off the ground, wings fluttering like sheets hung to dry in the wind, and put considerable distance between themselves and the crazy man.
“Justin, now look what you’ve done!”
“So what? They were eating all of my popcorn!” He grabbed her wildly and kissed her. She pulled away.
“Justin, people are looking at us!”
“So what? Can’t a guy kiss his wife if he wants to?” He turned to the nearest person, a whiskery old man sitting at the opposite end of the bench, and repeated the question. “Shouldn’t I have the right to kiss my own wife? Shouldn’t I?” Like the pigeons, the old man quickly put distance between himself and Justin. Chandal couldn’t help but laugh.
“Let’s do something, honey,” said Justin.
And she said, “Like what?”
“It’s Saturday. Come on, think. What do people do on Saturdays?”
She thought. “Their laundry?”
He smiled, dropped to one knee, and snapped her picture.
“Justin, don’t—I haven’t any makeup on!”
He took another picture.
“Cut that out!” She kicked snow in his direction.
The camera kept clicking.
“All right, Justin, you asked for it!” She jumped on top of him, driving him back into the snow.
“Honey, the camera.”
“Too bad—shithead!” She sat across his chest scooping handfuls of snow into his face.
“Help—rape!” he shouted.
Chandal stopped and stared down at him. “OhmyGod!”
“Honey, what is it?” He sat up. Chandal looked dazed.
“Lois Yates,” she muttered.
“Where?”
“I just remembered. She stopped by yesterday. I forgot all about it. She wanted you to call Mr. Bender. She said he’s got people crawling through the building and making obscene phone calls at all hours of the day and night, harassing her. She said tell him she’s willing to be fair. She’ll settle. Justin, will you call him?”
“Sure, as soon as you get off my chest.”
They both brushed the snow from their coats. “Is the camera all right?” she asked.
He pointed it at her. “Let’s see...” She smiled for him. “It seems to be okay.”
They walked a little way through the open baseball diamonds. If it had been summer, there would have been six baseball games going at one time. They stopped to watch a New York crazy dressed in jogging attire trying to get his kite in the air. They moved past the pond, which was frozen over, and around to the other side, where they climbed the snow-covered steps to the weather station.
“Do you realize that Mom hasn’t stopped by to see our new place?” Chandal plucked a twig from a tree and stuck it into her mouth like a toothpick. “She hasn’t even suggested it.” She sat on the wall. “That’s kind of odd, don’t you think?”
“I’ve always thought that your mother was odd.” He closed the camera into its brown leather carrying case, smiling.
“Up yours!” she said lightly.
“She told you she was sick, remember?” He slung the case over his shoulder.
“But you don’t believe she is, though, do you? I mean really?”
“No, honey. I don’t think so. I think your mother is just fine.”
Chandal frowned. Her mother’s apparent hypochondria was starting to cause her concern. When had it really begun: the headaches, the pains in the back, the long, drawn-out nights without sleep? Just after Justin and she were married. Was that it? Were her constant ailments simply a way of getting attention? Chandal really hadn’t been spending much time with her. Not much time at all.
She had always held a picture in her mind of her mother as a younger, healthier woman. Remembered home life orderly and secure because her mother had kept it that way. If voices were raised, her mother always saw to it that it was behind closed doors. Most evenings as a little girl, Chandal knelt with her mother in front of the television, while her father read the evening paper. Sometimes she’d fall asleep with her head in her mother’s lap.
Then there were the street fairs and the movies her mother had taken her to. Some Saturdays, during the time her father worked on Wall Street, they all came into the city together and went to the zoo, or for a ride on the Staten Island Ferry. In the summer months, there were all-day outings at Far Rockaway.
Chandal never forgot those outings with her mother, and the boundless energy that she had displayed. But now, she led a lonely life.
“Hey!” Justin exclaimed, snapping her out of it. “She’s fine. She’s fine.” He grabbed her hand. “Come on.”
But if she was fine, that brought Chandal full cycle, back to her original question. Why hadn’t her mother come to visit them at the brownstone?
They spent the rest of the afternoon at the skating rink, where the rumbling of the skates on the ice filled the air. Men in tight ski sweaters did tricks, each believing himself surrounded by empty space. Near the mechanical organ, a woman huddled to keep warm. It was her job to change the music rolls. Banners and brightly colored streamers were used for decoration.
Chandal drank hot coffee, happy to be standing on the sidelines. One hand held the cup, the other clung to the metal railing.
“Come on—try it!” shouted Justin, swooping by, his sharp blades cutting the ice.
Chandal hurriedly finished her coffee, sure that she would be able to skate. It was something that she’d always known, that her feet would glide smoothly, sure of their control. She stepped hesitantly onto the ice and immediately her ankles collapsed and her feet lay flat against the ice as she hobbled to the middle of the rink. She glared down at them. It was the damn rented skates! Halfway around the rink, Justin skated gracefully backward and motioned her to join him.
“I can’t!” she screamed.
He grinned back at her and held his hands up to his ears, shrugging.
“I can’t!” she bellowed again, and people close to her turned and looked, which sent the blood rushing to her cheeks. Walking on her ankles, she began to make her way back to the railing and fell directly into the path of an oncoming skater who leaped into the air, clearing her by inches.
“Watch out, lady!” yelled the man over his rapidly disappearing shoulder. She crawled the rest of the way to the rail on all fours and hauled herself up.
“Never do that,” said the attendant. “If you crawl on your hands like that, a skate could take a finger off just like that!” He snapped his mittened fingers and left her to shudder, hanging limply over the rail.
Justin passed her with a disapproving frown on his face. “You’re not quitting?”
“My ankles are killing me,” she snapped.
But he never heard her. Already he was cutting a fancy figure, heading for the center of the rink to join the better skaters.
Suddenly she heard it. The sound of the bell.
All other sounds faded from her ears. She was alone in deadly silence. The sky dimmed while she watched. Her legs gave way, pitching her forward.
Instinct saved her. Her arms reached for the railing. Her fingers wound themselves around hard metal and she hung there gasping, faceless skaters weaving around her. She saw them darkly, waiting, listening for the summons. The summons, she thought, in another part of her mind. What kind of summons? The rink came alive with sounds of laughter. It came at her from all directions. People laughing at her.
“Justin?” she murmured, a pocket of chilled air caught midway in her lungs. Her eyes started to clear. The faceless people began to have wide, smiling mouths. She took deep, cold breaths and waited for the round, staring eyes to form above the mouths. Light began to come back to the sky.
She steadied herself, the cold sweat rolling down from her neck, focusing, looking for Justin. The skaters were only skaters again. Not laughing at her at all. Justin, she thought, still staring, where was he?
And then she saw them—the silver-belled tassels on a little girl’s white skates.
Chandal’s breath released sharply. The little girl cut circles before her, floating easily, her tiny body gracefully maneuvering in space, the bells on her skates gently ringing.
Chandal began to laugh, the sound choking in her throat.
She turned; the little girl was gone.
The next morning, the sun rose like a huge orange coin and cast its light on the Hudson River. Houdini had done it. Justin flapped the window shade open. Sunday. Fragments from the past. He dared to resurrect the little attic he slept in on Spring Street when he was a kid. The tiny window above his bed. He would lie there on Sundays for hours just listening to faint voices filter up from the rooms below. They were muffled; he couldn’t tell who they belonged to. It was peaceful and eventually he would fall asleep. Outside the window there was a church with stained-glass windows that caught the sun just right. He went over there one day; he was maybe six or seven. “Hey, is anyone home?” The church had been empty except for an old derelict asleep in a pew.
Justin dressed and left the bedroom.
Chandal shivered and drew the covers over her shoulders. She nestled into the pillow to sleep again, but couldn’t. Raising her head, she glanced at the alarm clock, moaned, and returned to the pillow.
The traffic outside sounded far away as she fell half-asleep. As time passed, she could lie comfortably only on her side, the weight of her breasts against her thin frame causing a pressure that had become more annoying in recent days. Face pushed deep beneath the pillow, her breathing became shallow, slow, almost nonexistent. Her breath, which by now should have frightened her, had a hypnotic effect upon her; a delicate glaze formed over her lips, her face, masking her like a spider’s web.
Thinly veiled, she floated through the silence of the room on two separate planes, each plane having its own special sound, a special silence, not total and complete, but composed of elements beyond her control. The first plane was more conscious, more familiar, where the sound of the electric clock hummed, street noises filtered in from the window, the TV going in the living room. These sounds were the familiar, and needed no special attention.
The second plane was more imposing: it was the deliberate silence caused by someone else in the room with her. Watching her. There. She could feel the subtle shifting of body weight. Not Justin. Lighter, quicker. Slithering.
Chandal had let her body relax past the point of readiness. She would be unable to respond with split-second awareness. Time passed slowly. Her body lay comfortably suspended, yet she dozed uneasily. Her eyes kept trying to open, the sound slipped nearer, slid under her bed. Her eyes shot open. She awoke completely.
She crawled from the bed naked. Uneasily, she slipped on her bra and panties and dressed in blue jeans and a jersey. She moved into the bathroom, brushed her teeth, combed her hair so that one curl fell carelessly over her forehead. Moving swiftly through the bedroom, she smoothed and straightened, collecting water glasses from beside the bed. At the doorway, she gave the room one last glance, like a night clerk checking a motel room.
In the kitchen, Chandal fixed waffles for breakfast and orange juice in cold frosty mugs, but Justin would not smile. There was a bleak look in his eyes, and she felt that he had shifted moods again. He changed so rapidly, so completely, from one moment to the next. Chandal watched him move around the table, preoccupied in setting up a model for a still-life photography shot. He had placed an open Bible on the table. Beside it lay a half-melted candle and a glass of red wine.
“That’s pretty,” she said, pouring the orange juice.
“Pretty?” Justin gave a sharp bark of laughter. “Everyone to his own taste.” His face was set in a tense expression and gave no indication that he was aware she was there in the room. He backed away from the table, squinted, then leaned forward and slowly moved the glass of wine to the right of the Bible.
“You know what would look good—right in the middle of that open Bible?” said Chandal, inspired. “A withered rose.”
“That’s what’s wrong with your acting,” said Justin. “You overstate things.” But he saw that she was hurt and told himself to calm down. He took an interest in Mintz and started to follow her about the apartment, snapping pictures. The cat couldn’t find a single space to call her own. Peeved, she hid under the couch, where she finally fell asleep.
Justin wasted no time in developing the pictures. The red light above the kitchen door flashed on and the apartment fell silent. Chandal was growing to hate the red light. She was even jealous. It represented time spent alone.
She drifted around the apartment looking for something to do. She watered the plants and sprayed them. They weren’t doing well. Not enough light, she thought. She ran the vacuum and dusted. Finally, she decided to call her mother. Her mother picked up the telephone on the first ring—not a good sign. After exchanging hellos, Chandal’s mother explained in a husky voice that her flu had gotten worse.
“I’ve never had anything like it, Chandal.” Her voice went on like a flood released, and Chandal sighed and sat down to listen.
“...a ringing in my ears. Like bells. I told Alicia... did you meet Alicia, Chandal? I can’t remember whether—”
“What kind of ringing in your ears?” asked Chandal, gripping the phone. “Did you say bells?”
“Like bells,” said her mother firmly. “It made me just sick. I was shaking like a leaf. Alicia said she heard the same thing once when she had an inner-ear infection. But I don’t think it—”
“Was it more than one bell?” asked Chandal tensely.
Her mother paused. “I think it was only the one bell.” Her voice sounded pleased. Chandal was taking such an interest. “Yes, it was one bell and not such a large one. I could almost see it in my mind. A fairly small bell. It was—”
“Silver,” said Chandal softly.
“Why, yes. How did you—”
“I just—guessed, Mom. You get some sleep, okay? I have to go now....”
“That was just wonderful the way you guessed that, Chandal. Just wonderful. I can’t wait to tell Alicia....”
“Good-bye, Mom. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” Chandal hung up the receiver. I’m rundown, she thought. I’m putting meaning to things that don’t have meanings. People’s ears ring. So what else is new? Her head was hot and her hands clammy. She took three aspirins and lay down on the couch. Every few minutes, she got up, looked into the kitchen—the red light was still on. She decided to start dinner, but discovered that there wasn’t anything in the house to eat.
