Never Love a Stranger (37 page)
But I wouldn’t know how Marianne felt until I would see her again.
July passed, and August was drawing to a close. I had about three more weeks to work, and then I would go back to New York. Everything seemed safe: there hadn’t been the furore made over the fight in the square that I thought there would be. I was ready to go back to New York as soon as the job folded.
It was about eleven o’clock in the morning. I wondered if she would be at home. I began to feel silly and was about to hang up when a voice answered: “Hello.” It was clear, warm, musical.
I almost stuttered in my eagerness to speak. “M—Marianne?”
“Frank!” she cried out in surprise. “Oh, darling! Where are you? I was beginning to think you would never return.”
I was happy over the feeling I could hear in her voice. “I’m in Atlantic City. I’ve been working here. I had to call and find out how you were.”
“I’m all right,” she answered. “Are you all right?” “Just fine,” I replied.
“When are you coming back?” she asked.
“In about three weeks,” I told her, “when my job here is finished.”
“Can’t you make it sooner?” she asked. “I want to see you. There are so many things…” She left the sentence unfinished.
“I’d like to,” I said, “but I can’t. I promised to stay here until the close of the season.” I changed the subject. “Is everything all right there?”
She knew what I referred to. “Everything’s normal around here,” she replied. “Darling, can’t I go down there to see you? We could spend a few days together. I don’t want to wait here any more.”
“I don’t know,” I said hesitantly. “I work from three in the afternoon until one in the morning, and we wouldn’t have much time together.”
“We’ll be able to squeeze out a few minutes, and I need the rest. I’ve been working very hard the last few months. There were a lot of things I had to straighten out in my own mind.”
“You too?” I smiled into the telephone. “I’ve done a lot of thinking about us the last few weeks.”
“You see?” she said. “I’ve got to see you. I’ve got to know if you feel as I do. I’m going to go down there. Where are you staying?”
I told her.
“I’ll drive down there tonight,” she said. “I’ll leave in a few hours as soon as I pack a few things.”
“I’ll be at work until one,” I said. “Maybe you’d better come to the fountain. It’s on the boardwalk in the Victoria Hotel.”
“I’ll be there tonight,” she told me. “O.K.,” I said, “I’ll see you then. So long.” “Darling, I love you,” she said.
For a moment I was still, the words ringing around in my ears. “Marianne,” I said, “Marianne.”
“Yes,” she said softly. “Do you love me, Frank?”
“You know I do,” I said.
“I knew it,” she whispered. “From the moment I first saw you in my room, from the first kiss, I knew it. It wasn’t fair. It was wicked. But I knew it, and you knew it, and there was nothing we could do about it.” She seemed to sigh through the phone. “I’ll see you tonight, darling. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” I said. I hung up and went back to the beach.
At twelve o’clock midnight, by the time I had started to clean up the fountain, she still hadn’t arrived. I had given her up, thinking she would be down in the morning. Charlie, the boss, was working the far end of the fountain, and I was cleaning the end nearest the door. I was washing the syrup pumps, and we were talking. There weren’t any customers in the place.
Charlie had kidded me several times in the past about not going out with any of the dames here, and I never bothered to explain to him. Business after this week would begin to drop off. Labour Day week-end was the high point of the year. He had a place in Miami Beach where he planned to go when he had closed up here. His partner ran that in the summer while he ran this one.
I finished with the pumps, stacked all the glasses neatly on the shelf, and glanced up at the clock. It was twelve-thirty.
“Want to get off early, Frank?” He grinned. “Got something lined up?” I shook my head.
One o’clock came and we closed up. I waited a few minutes outside the store for her to show up, but she wasn’t there. I walked over to the edge of the boardwalk, sat down on one of the benches, and lit a cigarette. I guessed she couldn’t make it. The boardwalk was nearly empty; only a few people were out walking. I looked out at the ocean. A ship was way out there, its lights blazing gaily across the water. It looked like a Mallory boat going to Florida. Maybe she was only talking, I thought. Maybe she won’t come down at all.
A pair of hands covered my eyes. A soft voice whispered in my ear: “Guess who?”
I knew who it was; I could feel it. It was a sort of knowing, an awareness of person. I played the game. “Jane?” I said.
“No,” Marianne answered.
“Helen? Mary? Edna?” I began to laugh.
“I’ll give you one more guess,” Marianne said. “If you’re not right I’m going home.
Maybe I shouldn’t have come down in the first place. You seem pretty well occupied.”
I reached up and took her hands down from my eyes, kissed her open palms, and then rubbed them along my cheek. I turned and drew her around the bench and down beside me. “Marianne,” I said, “I thought you’d never come!”
She smiled, her white teeth beautifully even, her soft reddish hair shining in the moonlight. “I couldn’t stay away once I knew where you were, darling, even if I had wanted to.”
I kissed her. It was soft, tender, warm, and passionate, all at once. It was as if the moon and all the stars had come down and started to whirl me around from one to the other. It was like floating on air, like walking on clouds. I was a little boy again and a
man full-grown and complete all thrown into one. I was gay and there was a little catch in my throat and I couldn’t speak.
I looked into her eyes, and they were soft and swimming in tears. I held her close to me and felt the pounding of her heart against me. I kissed her again. It was like magic, with the world fading away from eyes, its sound fading from ears. That soaring ecstatic feeling!
“See what I meant when I spoke over the phone?” she whispered. “It’s us, our feelings
—they’re one and the same. You can’t escape it by running away. Gerro told me a lot about you. I know you ran away from a home. I thought you might do that again and run away from me. But now I know. You can’t run away any more.”
“Marianne, I love you. You’re all the things the world has ever offered. You’re everything in everything to me. Marianne, I love you.”
She put her head on my shoulder. “I wanted you to say it. I love you. I love you. I love you.”
We arose from the bench and began to walk down the boardwalk. We went down on the sand and spoke about a million things and then we walked and talked. And as we walked and talked, we had our arms about each other’s waist, or our hands would touch and glances meet.
And later, when the moon was far in the sky to the west and we stood near the window of my room and looked out at the sea and smoked a cigarette, I suddenly realized that time had caught up with me. I had made love this night, and the difference was in giving, not taking.
And in the early dawn when I suddenly awoke, aware of her sleeping at my side, I was overcome with wonder that I could possess all this beauty and passion. She must have felt my gaze for she half awoke and, putting her arm around me, whispered: “Don’t ever leave me, Frank. Never!”
“I’ll never leave you, Marianne,” I answered, sure of myself for all of time.
W
E
went swimming the next morning. She had a beautiful new bathing suit, and she looked good enough to eat. She was the kind of girl that looked as well in little or no clothes as she did when fully dressed. She had a slim, rounded figure and long, well- shaped legs. She was graceful of movement and had a quick, alert look about her. She looked wonderfully and vividly alive, and I was proud to be with her. I could see the looks that men gave her, and boy! I felt good as I thought of their envy.
And she knew how she looked. She knew she was dynamite in a white bathing suit. She fished artfully and shamelessly for compliments, and would smile at me happily when I told her how beautiful I thought she was.
After swimming we lolled around the beach and lay on the sand and laughed and were happy. The feeling of completeness that I felt when I was with her was something I had never known before, and I gave myself up to it completely.
About noon I bought some hot dogs and brought them out on the sand to eat. While we were eating I asked her about New York. It was the same old town, she said. About herself—she had just completed two commissions and was so exhausted. I had just called at the right time because she didn’t know what she was going to do next. She was so glad to be here, so glad to be with me, so glad just to be alive.
I took her hand and we lay back quietly. After a while I asked her if she had gone to Gerro’s funeral.
She answered slowly: “No.” “Why?” I asked.
She spoke quietly, candidly. “Because I’m a coward. Because I couldn’t bear to see what was being done to him. Because I didn’t want to think of him gone and me still alive and enjoying life. Because of you, and the way I felt about the two of you. I loved you both and didn’t know who I wanted most. Because I loved you for one set of reasons and him for another. Because you two were so far apart and yet so close together. I couldn’t bear to go.”
“He was a great guy,” I said. “It’s too bad he had to go. There aren’t enough people like him.”
She looked at me strangely. “Do you really mean that, Frank? Honestly, deep inside of you, aren’t you a little bit glad over what happened?—secretly I mean, for if it never happened there wouldn’t have been … us.”
I never thought of it in just that way. Maybe she was right. If she was, that was why I had gone to see her before I left town and not for what I thought was the reason. I felt a little confused. I looked at her. She was stretched out on the sand, lying on her back, her hair glowing like fire around her head, her firm, rounded breasts swelling against her suit, her little stomach flat and melting into the softness of her hips and thighs. I looked at her and wanted her, and then I began to understand my feelings.
I spoke rather slowly; I wanted to think out clearly what I said and say it articulately
and definitively. “No. That’s not what I feel. I am what I am. I want what I want. But I want it for myself and not at the expense of other people, no matter how much I want something. I feel that you and I were going to be what we are now. The fact that circumstance made it possible doesn’t alter the fact that I still am sorry about Gerro. You and I would have found a way even if Gerro were still here.”
She looked at me wickedly. “Not from the way you were acting. Not from the way you avoided me. It never would have happened, and look what you would have missed!” She gave a small wave of her hand. “All this. And you and I. Perfection and rhythm and harmony and happiness. Some people were just made for one another, physically and mentally and (she laughed a little) morally. You and I, we’re cut from the same die. We’re predatory, we’re selfish, we’re spoiled. I don’t mean in the sense that you got everything you ever wanted merely for the asking in the same manner I did. But in your own cute way you are spoiled, in the way you have had only yourself to consider and so always aimed directly for what you wanted. You know we’re wicked, don’t you? You know what we’re doing is considered wrong by most people. And yet you don’t care. You go right ahead and do it anyway. You’re an animal: you walk like one, you act like one, you think like one—in terms of black and white. There are no intermediate shadings about you. And that’s what I love about you. You’re an odd contradictory mixture, and I love every crazy little facet of your personality. Plus which you’re not too hard to look at with that gorgeous tan. I just bet the girls couldn’t leave you alone.”
I laughed at that last remark. Not many of them had bothered with me. “I had to fight them off every minute,” I said. “They just wouldn’t leave me alone.”
“You’re mean,” she said, rolling over against me. I put my arm around her and kissed her.
“Nice work if you can get it,” I heard a voice exclaim. I looked up and saw my boss, Charlie. He had just come in from the water and was dripping wet and looking down at us. I grinned up at him.
“Hi, Charlie,” I said.
“Hi! Frank,” he retorted, sitting himself down beside us. I had to introduce them. I was a little sore because he had run into us, but there was nothing I could do about it. This was a public beach.
“Marianne, this is Charlie,” I said.
They said hello. Marianne was smart. The minute I explained he was my boss she went to work on him.
“I don’t know why Frank has to finish off the season if things slow down after the holiday,” she said to him. “He ought to take a few weeks off to rest before he goes back to New York.”
Charlie looked at me cagily. “It’s up to Frank,” he said. “He can do what he wants after Monday.”
That was the fastest swindle I ever got into, I thought, looking at Marianne with a new respect. She certainly knows what she wants, and she doesn’t want me to work while she’s down here.
“We’ll talk about it later,” I said, putting off the answer and getting to my feet. “Come
on, darling, I’ve got to go and get dressed. It’s almost time to be at work and the boss’ll be sore if I’m late.”
I pulled Marianne to her feet, and Charlie got up. He was grinning: he could see the game between us. “See you later,” he said, walking off.
When I came out of the shower she was already dressed and combing her hair in front of the dresser mirror. I had the towel wrapped around my middle, and walked across the room towards her. “What’s the idea pulling that stuff on Charlie?” I demanded, half smiling.