Naked Came the Stranger

Naked Came the Stranger - By Penelope Ashe


BILLY AND GILLY

Screwed. It was, Gillian realized, an obscene word. But it was the word that came to mind. Screwed. It had been, after all, an obscene act. She tried not to think about it. She was driving, floating actually, toward her new house, floating past the freshly butchered lawns dotted with the twisted golden butts that were the year's first fallen leaves, past the homes built low and the swimming pools and the kempt hedges and all the trappings that went into the unincorporated village of King's Neck.

Screwed. The word kept coming back to Gillian Blake. Small wonder. For on that bright first Friday morning of October, Gillian had discovered through relatively traditional methods – specifically through the good offices of the Ace-High Private Investigators, Inc. – that her husband had been spending his every weekday afternoon in an apartment leased by one Phyllis Sammis, a twenty-two-year-old Vassar graduate with stringy hair, gapped teeth, horn-rimmed glasses and peculiarly upright breasts. Gillian Blake had paid the Ace-High people six hundred and seventy-five dollars (including expenses) to learn that William – or Billy, as he was known to the rest of the world, or at least that portion of the world described in certain circles as the Metropolitan Listening Area – had been leaving his office every afternoon at 2:45, taking a taxicab to the northeast corner of Seventh Avenue and 23rd Street, walking a half block south, climbing two flights of stairs and entering the apartment rented by Phyllis Sammis, recently hired production assistent on The Billy & Gilly Show.

Now Gillian was floating slowly past the road signs (Stop and Hidden Driveway and Slow Children and Yield and Stop again). Floating. It was this floating feeling that had drawn her to King's Neck in the first place. King's Neck, a boomerang of land twisting out from the mainland into the waters of Long Island Sound. Floating, floating toward the three-bedroom, two-bath, two-car house that was, as the man said, within easy commuting distance (forty-one minutes) of Manhattan and within sight (nine miles, through leaves) of the Connecticut shoreline.

Screwed. It was not so much that William Blake had cheated on Gillian Blake. Nor even that Billy had cheated on Gilly. In a sense, a quite real sense, he had cheated on that portion of the world known as the Metropolitan Listening Area. For William Blake was half of The Billy & Gilly Show, fifty per cent of "New York's Sweethearts of the Air," part of a radio team that five times a week dispensed a blend of controversy, information and … love. The show, so the announcer said every weekday morning at five seconds past nine, provided "a frank and open look into the reality of marriage in the crucible of modern living."

What held the show together (every poll indicated) was the quality of the marriage, the fact that this was a meeting of minds as well as bodies. The fact that every woman listening (the listenership was eighty-four per cent female) sensed that this was the way marriage should be. In cheating on Gilly, Billy had cheated on an audience that regularly numbered over eight hundred thousand – or at least he had cheated on eighty-four per cent of that audience. It was, when you considered it, an act of breathtaking infidelity.

Floating then into the circular driveway, mashed gravel, one and a half acres, imitation Tudor, water view, $85,000. There were several possibilities. She could, and the thought seemed strangely appealing at the moment, put arsenic in William's morning coffee. She could sue for divorce in any state in the Union and get it, along with a fair share of William Blake's not inconsiderable inheritance. These alternatives were considered, savored, ultimately discarded. The difficulty was that either course of action would mean the demise of The Billy & Gilly Show. And the show was what kept Gilly alive.

The car was parked. The keys were in her purse. Still, Gillian Blake did not move. There was yet another possibility. Gillian Blake could even the score. Absurd? Well, why not? King's Neck could be her laboratory, her testing ground. She could, with the cool detachment of a scientist, gather all the raw data necessary to determine how other marriages were faring "in the crucible of modern living." In the process, Billy would be screwed. Good and screwed.

She stepped from the car then, walked over fresh slate to the front door, past the bogus pillars, through the twin front doors. The clock showed it to be three in the afternoon. William was, if the pattern of the past week held true, mounting the down elevator from his office, mounting the downtown taxi, mounting a mousy twenty-two-year-old girl with remarkable breasts. Damn Billy! Damn him anyway! But why all this outrage? Gillian realized it was not simply that William Blake had made a mockery of her marriage. Even worse he had made a mockery of her radio show. The show had started as a cliché, patterned after a formula that was perfected in the thirties. The thing that had kept it alive was Gillian Blake. And vice versa. It was what defined her, fulfilled her. It was what had saved her marriage this long, and it had quite possibly saved her life.

Gillian did not take full credit for the success of the show, even in her thoughts. It was, after all, a smooth division of labor. Gillian had proved adept at dragooning the squadrons of sociologists, the marriage counselors, the new authors, the broad spectrum of human engineers, onto the show. A few of the guests were clients of William's youthful public relations firm. Billy clarified, condensed, summed up – seldom departing from the role of straight man. Gilly stimulated, interpreted, played devil's advocate.

It had become so much more than a radio program. It had become, in time, an ideal marriage placed on display every morning for eight years, a model marriage that had been celebrated in three national magazines (one cover), a sophisticated blend of two disparate personalities.

Marriage … show – it had been a curious relationship. When the show had begun, marriage was new. As the show took on a life of its own, the marriage became somehow less alive. Now, Gillian reflected, it was almost as though the relationship had been parasitic, as though the show had begun to suck the life juices from the marriage it honored. It was the show that ate up long hours with a new book; it was the show that had at first determined there would be no children (until William's sterility had been medically established); it was the show that had required the presence of the twenty-two-year-old recent graduate of Vassar. It was the show that prevented Gillian from contemplating such eminently logical solutions as murder or divorce.

Screwed. Gillian let her clothes fall on the dressing-room carpet and studied the mirrored full-length portrait of herself. She understood her value to men, had felt their reaction often enough. Guests on the show, construction workers, taxi drivers – they all reacted. And why shouldn't they?

Her skin, the color of India tea at summer's end, flowed nicely over a slender frame. The breasts were small but she wore them well at age twenty-nine. Her legs were superbly designed. The hips, though trim, were deceptively full. Gïllian advanced on the mirror, appraised the close-up image. Her long hair was light and now sun-streaked, gathered in a mist around her shoulders. If her lips were a trifle small, they nonetheless served to accentuate the perfectly straight line of her nose. The total effect was a blend of the aristocratic and the sensual.

Gillian turned from the mirror. The mirror, after all, couldn't reflect the most essential attribute of them all. Gillian walked to the bar, made herself a pitcher of martinis, sat drinking, naked in the Eames chair – cold leather against skin, nice. The major quality was something reactive, a chameleon quality that somehow enabled her to transform herself in the eyes of any man. She could become – and she had felt the process often enough to know its validity – pale of skin, full-breasted, intellectual, sexy, aloof. She could be whatever the man happened to be looking for at the moment. She could become any man's dream woman, and somehow accomplish it without relinquishing her own identity.

William had noticed this, had noticed it but never understood it. He had somehow confused it with coquettishness. Whenever a male guest would challenge Gillian, would display an intellectual vigor or simple male virility, Gillian would, as William put it so inadequately, "flutter her fan." William claimed to have developed an emotional radar to his wife's vibrations, but William so often missed the point, mislabeled the process. It was a process of becoming. It existed not in mechanical tricks but in acute sensitivity; it took place not in her physical alterations but in the eye of the beholder.

Hers was a talent that ought to be intensively exploited, thought Gillian, before she fell asleep. It was a deep but disturbed sleep, a heavy buzzing sleep that ended shortly after eight o'clock with the arrival of an unfaithful husband.

"For chrissake, look at yourself," he said. "It's past eight for chrissake."

"That's cute," she said. "Do you do the weather too?"

"I mean it, it's eight-damn-o'clock."

"So it's eight o'clock," she said. "So what?"

"Don't tell me you don't remember. The damn party begins at 8:30. Oh no you don't, don't give me one of those looks. This wasn't my idea. You were the one who told me about it, an end-of-summer blast, remember? Two houses over and one down. The wops. Remember now?"

The details returned to Gillian – of course, the party – and she stood up. Not until that instant did she realize she was still naked. She walked over to William, brushed meaningfully against him, then noticed the fresh lipstick prints on his collar. Those slight red smudges – was it carelessness, stupidity, a Freudian reflection of guilt? – irritated her almost as much as the thought of his infidelity. That bastard.

"We don't have to go to the party," she teased. "We could stay home and… oh… christen the new house properly. It's been a long time, Billy."

"We've got to get a move on…"

"But isn't there anything you'd rather do?" she said.

"Any little thing I might do for you?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact there is," he said. "One little thing you could do for me is hurry-the-hell-up and get into something decent. It's bad enough we've got to go through this thing. Let's not make it any more complicated than we have to."

But it was complicated, extremely complicated. For at that moment Gillian was settling finally on her plan of action. As she selected her dress for the party – emerald green, high in front, low in back – Gillian found herself shivering. In anticipation.

The only uncomfortable moment of the evening came when their hosts – Mario and Donna Marie Vella – greeted them at the door. Donna Marie was short, stout and faintly mustachioed; she looked as though she might faint dead away at the thought of having the Billy and Gilly in her home. And Mario's introductory act, his welcoming gesture, was to hand William his business card, embossed, indicating that he was the executive officer of both the Bella Mia Olive Oil Company and the Fort Sorrento Construction Company.

"Charmed, I'm sure," William said, as only he could say it.

"We certainly appreciate," Gillian said, stepping on his line, "your inviting us newcomers to your home."

After that, needless to say, matters improved. There was, as Gillian had anticipated, a wide selection of men. Fat, thin, short, tall, introverted, extroverted, dumpy, dashing – the full assortment. She mentally resolved not to rush things. At first she contented herself with remaining beside William, allowing him to squeeze her hand and pat her cheek – doing what he had always done, putting the model marriage on public display. Oh, you electronic lovebird, she thought. William was, in fact, the first subject, the first of the adult males residing in King's Neck to come under Gillian's scrutiny that evening.

He was, she decided, the best looking man in the room. Best looking, in the conventional sense. William had been told in his youth that some day he would be able to serve as a stand-in for Prince Philip. Now, approaching his middle years, he more closely resembled the well-dressed dummies in the Brooks Brothers windows. Bland. But he was still trim (regular workouts at the New York Athletic Club), polished (Princeton), at ease with the mighty (scion of the banking Blakes) and an asset to any gathering. The one apparent flaw was a jawline that lacked definition. Oh, say it – a weak chin.

Before beginning his second drink, William had managed to surround himself with those few people of King's Neck who might qualify as resident intellectuals – such people as Rabbi Joshua Turnbull and lawyer Melvin Corby. There was, too, an outer concentric circle of women, the kind of women who always basked in that invisible light cast by certifiable celebrities.

"And I'll maintain," William was saying, "that without parties such as these, suburbia, per se, would disintegrate before our eyes. These are, after all, not merely social gatherings. They are, in the psychological sense, encounters – they're what we have instead of group therapy. It's my sincere feeling that if everyone in the country would go to just one suburban party a week, psychoanalysis would soon go out of vogue." Gillian's shrug turned into a shudder. William was doing his Hugh Downs imitation – locating his con- versation on the right side of pompous and the wrong side of stuffy. His voice – a narcissistic and mellifluent instrument of torture – was professionally resonant, overwhelmingly smooth, always able to intimidate lesser voices and superior intellects in any gathering. The immediate conversation was more than passingly familiar to Gillian; it was a replay of last Tuesday's radio show. Gillian edged slowly away from the group and her space was filled by a plump and matronly woman with eyes that were devouring William.

Working her way toward the bar in an adjacent room, Gillian paused to take note of the décor. Fake beams that had been scarred by an ineptly wielded claw hammer; tapestried walls; lampshades with fringes; gaudy oil paintings of watery sunsets and Italian hill villages; everything overstuffed and red and silk. Expensive and atrocious.

On her way she met the Goodmans – Marvin and Helene. She walked unannounced into what seemed to be a family quarrel of some duration. Marvin Goodman's voice was raised, and tiny bubbles of perspiration were bursting on his forehead: "Ernie Miklos's wife says she can get by on thirty-five dollars a week – - thirty-five dollars a week for food and car." By way of response, Helene Goodman calmly and methodically unbuttoned the top two buttons of her blouse. Gillian noted a strange phenomenon – as her husband's voice rose, so did her bustline. It led to a lowering of his eyes, a lowering of his voice and finally an end to the discussion.

Then she encountered her next-door neighbors, the Earbrows – Morton and Gloria. Morton's fingernails carried the residue of his day's labors, a colorful mixture of green paint and grease. He was sound asleep. His young wife, Gloria, was holding the attention of a small male audience by explaining precisely how one scraped paint from cement walls, the proper way of cleaning a paint brush, the relative advantages of a Black and Decker five-eighths-inch drill, what steps should be taken to prepare a lawn for a fall seeding – all of this while her husband snored his way into an ever-deepening sleep.

Gillian turned to meet Willoughby Martin and his friend, Hank. Willoughby was saying, "We really must take a drive soon; the foliage in Maine is already changing and before too long it will all just be… oh… a riot of color."

And Hank said, "Yes, in a few weeks it should be simply breathtaking."

Then Gillian was introduced to the Madigans – Agnes and Paddy. "Paddy Madigan, the fighter?" she said.

"That's right, dear," Agnes said. "Many think the finest left-handed fighter ever to contend for the light-heavyweight championship of the world."

Gillian then complimented Paddy Madigan on his remarkable physical condition. Paddy said nothing and Agnes did the responding: "Thank you, dear, we still manage to do our morning workouts, summer or winter, makes no difference." Gillian then asked Paddy what business he had entered since his retirement. Again Agnes answered for her husband: "Oh, we just putter around the house these days, doing the gardening and so forth."

At this point, what Gillian wanted was another drink. Before she could reach the bar, Mario Vella, the host for the evening, was standing up on a stool, calling for everyone's attention.

"Quiet, please," Mario said. "Please now, ladies and gentlemen, quiet down now. Tonight, by way of a little entertainment, we have a very special surprise for our neighbors at King's Neck. I have persuaded my very good friend, Johnny Alonga, to come here and favor us with a few of his hit songs."

Gillian was momentarily surprised. Johnny Alonga was a rising young singing star, reportedly Mafia-sponsored, who had sung a song, "A Dying Love," that had been on the charts for over a year. There had not yet been a second hit record. Possibly because Johnny Alonga's syrupy voice made Jerry Vale's seem crisp by comparison.

As all the lights except one were extinguished, two men in tuxedos entered from the bedroom. The black man sat at the piano and quickly picked out the opening notes of Johnny Alonga's one hit record. And the singer began to sing.

You come to me in all my dreams,

You touch my lips, or so it seems,

Your love is but a kiss away

If only I could make you stay

A dying love,

A dying love is what we share…

In the darkened room, now thirstier than ever, Gillian was suddenly aware of the presence beside her of Mario Vella. He had allowed his left elbow to brush gently against her. In any other surroundings, in any other circumstances, Gillian Blake would have gracefully withdrawn. She didn't. She held her ground and his elbow became more persistent.

"You like?" he said.

"Very much," she said in return. "That's quite a thing, having Johnny Alonga come to your house to sing."

"I own him," he said.

"You own him?"

"Forty per cent," Mario said. "That's how much I own. And you want to know what I think about that song?"

"What's that?"

"It makes me sick to my stomach," he said. "It makes me want to puke."

"Oh?" she said, silently agreeing.

There might be something there, she thought. There was an appealing unreal quality to Mario Vella; he was a fabrication, the creation of someone or something else. Beneath the razor cut and the tailored clothes and the scent of expensive cologne there was something threatening to break out of the mold. It was, carried to the extreme, as though someone had put Brooks Brothers clothes on a gorilla.

Then the song ended and Mario disengaged his elbow and walked back up to the piano.

Before Johnny Alonga could launch his next number –

"Be My Love," no less – Gillian slipped into the adjoining room, the den, the bar, the oasis. It was all but deserted in honor of Johnny Alonga.

It was then that she met the Franhops – Arthur and Raina. Arthur, the boy, was wearing his hair twisted and curled in the style popularized by Bob Dylan. Beneath his gold-buttoned, double-breasted blazer he wore no shirt. Raina, the girl, was seated in a far corner of the room staring at an unblemished white wall with wide-open Little Orphan Annie eyes.

"Don't mind her," Arthur said. "She's on acid."

"LSD?" Gillian said.

"Yeah, like acid," Arthur said. "We were all set to play a new game tonight and then she has to go and suck on a cube and ruin it all."

"What kind of game?" Gillian asked.

"Time Machine," Arthur said. "We thought we'd go back in time, all the way back here to the seventeenth century, and see what the cats were doing back then. Then she goes and sucks a cube and ruins the game."

"You mean you think most of the people here live in the seventeenth century?"

"Where else?" he said. "Not you, though, you're something else. Outasight. Hey, do you groove?"

"I'm not sure," Gillian said. "Do you speak English?"

"Hey, later," he said.

That was Arthur Franhop's exit line. Without another word he was gone. He paused just long enough to take his blind-eyed Raina with him, and moments later the quiet suburban night was rent by the sound of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle being fired up.

"Shit!" The expletive came from the last man in the room, the bartender. This was Ernie Miklos, a man who had once tended bar in his youth and willingly played the role at most of the King's Neck parties. For one thing, it gave him an excuse to stay away from his wife Laverne.

"I beg your pardon," Gillian said.

"Shit," he repeated. "That kid, he's shit. What're you drinking?"

"Martini-very-dry."

"That's shit too," Ernie Miklos said. "Burn your guts out."

"That's the way I started the day," Gillian said, "And I guess that's the way I better end it."

There was something about Ernie Miklos that Gillian found vaguely intimidating. Possibly his eyes. Ernie's eyes met her own head-on and then insolently surveyed her from top to bottom. Possibly it was the hair on the back of his hands – so thick and luxurious a growth of hair that it seemed more like fur than hair, more like a paw than a hand. The two open shirt buttons above the loosely knotted tie revealed still another thick stand of hair.

"Where's your wife?" Gillian asked.

"The last time I saw Laverne," Ernie said, "she was drooling all over your husband. Not that I personally give a shit. How do you like it?"

"Very good," Gillian said. "You make a nice martini." She took another sip. It was a nice martini. A nice martini and an odd moment. They stood there, the only people in the room, and they didn't say a word for three, maybe four moments. What to say anyway? Gillian knew that she had nothing at all to say to Ernie Miklos, and quite probably he had nothing at all to say to her. But was she sure? She had, after all, spent twenty-nine years on this planet without ever attempting a conversation with an Ernie Miklos or anyone, for that matter, who remotely resembled him. Finally it was Ernie Miklos who broke the silence with an eminently logical question.

"What are you doing here anyway?" he said. "Why is a broad like you wasting time with someone like me?"

"Maybe it's because you make a nice martini."

"Yeah and maybe it's because I look like Richard Burton," he said. "But that ain't the reason either."

"Maybe you can figure it out for yourself."

"I am doing that," Ernie said. "That is exactly what I am doing. I am figuring it out for myself and about the only way I can figure it is that you want something from me."

"What would I want from you?" Gillian said.

"Maybe you would want to step outside for a while and find out," Ernie said.

"Maybe," Gillian said.

"You want to step outside for some fresh air or what?" he said.

"Yes," she said.

Yes – Gillian heard herself saying the word. It seemed so unnatural, so contrived, that she had the feeling she had shouted it through a megaphone. Ernie Miklos didn't say any more. He dried his hands on his bartender's apron, took off the apron and walked over to the plate glass doors that opened onto the patio. He had clearly had too much to drink, and the latch gave him a moment's difficulty. Wordlessly, floating again, Gillian followed Ernie Miklos out beyond the reach of the patio lights. A strange feeling. Gillian had the eerie sensation that she was not actually a participant in the small silent tableau. She was an observer, audience for an unreal drama, a spectator at the theater of the absurd.

Gillian offered no resistance. She allowed herself to be coaxed down onto the lawn beside a stranger named Ernie Miklos. She felt removed, alienated, singularly unexcited. Through the nearby living-room windows she could see the silhouetted figure of Johnny Alonga as he sang to all the other strangers. She could feel the softness of the still warm grass beneath her. And she could feel the lips of Ernie Miklos against her throat, feel the lips and then the hand as it reached through the side of her low-backed dress and snared her left breast.

Gillian didn't move, didn't dare breathe. His lips had now moved up to her own and his hand had for some unknown reason switched breasts. She could feel all of him leaning against her now – his teeth against her lips, his hands on her breasts, his body thrusting hard against her own. There was at first fear, fear and revulsion, but she refused to protest, fought the impulse to pull away from him.

And then she began to feel the beginning of a response. The feeling was foreign to her and quite involuntary. But it was there and it soothed her. Gillian moved her weight slightly to accommodate Ernie Miklos and then she reached out to him and pulled him closer against her. And from the far reaches of her throat she felt the start of a low pleading moan.

Thus was the matter decided. It would be Ernie Miklos. Yes, it would be a stranger and neighbor named Ernie Miklos. For starters.



EXCERPT FROM "THE BILLY & GILLY SHOW", OCTOBER 3RD

Billy: Wasn't it lovely driving in today, Gilly?

Gilly: It certainly was, Billy. You know, I've always thought that october is the loveliest month. And that's especially true in the suburbs. It's the whole marvelous cliché of Indian summer.

Billy: The golden autumn. Gilly: The tang in the air. Billy: The falling leaves.

Gilly: The ripening pumpkins. Billy: The fresh apple cider.

Gilly: The grand finale of the chrysanthemums.

Billy: The Saturday afternoons in front of the television set.

Gilly: The what?

Billy: The Saturday afternoons in front of the television set.

Gilly: I guess it's my slow day.

Billy: I'm surprised at you, dear. Football. The college football games on Saturday afternoons.

Gilly: I am slow, today. Of course,… football. The game with all the numbers. I just love those announcers. "Now the Giants are in a three-four-five with an X-Y-Z and a split disc." Ridiculous!

Billy: A split end. Gilly: Come again?

Billy: A split end, not a split disc.

Gilly: Well, I knew something was split.

Billy: A can of beer, a color TV, and Army against Notre Dame. Like tomorrow. Now that's living!

Gilly: It's stupid, wasting a Saturday afternoon that way. Billy: Oh come on. What's wrong with sports?

Gilly: I think games are for playing. I mean there's something so absolutely dreary about a man lying around in an old T-shirt or something, watching a football game all day.

Billy: He works hard, he deserves a little rest.

Gilly: Sure. But what women hate is that everything has to stop while his highness watches the quarterback go in the whatchamacallit.

Billy: In the pocket.

Gilly: Well, whatever he goes in. I mean, it's all supposed to be so important.

Billy: It is. You just don't disturb a man when he's watching football.

Gilly: Phooey. Billy: No, really.

Gilly: I think the best thing you can do for a man is disturb him.

Billy: Ouch.

Gilly: Okay girls, let's all get out there tomorrow afternoon and make him pay attention to us.

Billy: Hold, fast to your couches, men – your way of life is at stake.



ERNIE MIKLOS

The old champ on the TV was telling the rookie to steer clear of the greasy kid stuff. Ernie Miklos sat back and pressed his chunky fingers against his forehead. Oh. For Ernie it was a small hangover, a band of numbness stretched across the temples, and that wasn't bad, not for Ernie. Usually he bombed himself out at those neighborhood bashes. Last night, for some reason, the bar wasn't the center of attraction for him. He kept thinking about the way she had moved inside that dress.

He turned again to the TV and put the cold can of beer against his forehead. A former football "great" on the pregame show was employing stop-action to demonstrate how the guard pulled out of the line to block for the halfback.

"Another great effort by an all-time great," the former great said. "That's why Fuzzy's so… great."

Ernie glanced around the room, his room, done in cherrywood paneling that had run 45 cents a foot. He started at the pictures – his high school football team and the photo of seventeen men wearing Marine Corps uniforms. "Iron Man Ernie Miklos" was what he was called in those days, and to Ernie things had never changed. He was the same man despite forty-one years, thinning hair and expanding girth. Beside him were the weights and the exercise bench. He'd spend thirty minutes lying on the bench pushing metal in the morning. The thought of it today, though, forced him to rest his head back on the head rest and prop both feet on the red leather ottoman. The pregame show was ending, and it seemed pretty certain now that the rookie had switched from the greasy kid stuff.

Ernie had reached that point in life where his Saturday afternoon football game was more than welcome respite, it was his raison d'être. This Saturday afternoon there was a small bonus. Laverne had packed up the kids and retreated to her mother's apartment in the city. He was left alone with his six-pack, his Fritos, his memories. The garbage – the lawn, the leaves, the yelling, the kids – that was locked out on this Saturday afternoon. And for the moment he forgot about that woman in the dress and concentrated on the game.

The phone rang. It took only one ring, mainly because Ernie's head couldn't take more.

"Hello there."

Ernie waited for the voice to give him the weather – it was that kind of voice, soft but mechanically so.

"Huh?"

"It's Gillian, remember?"

"You'll have to do better than that."

"You must have been more smashed than I thought," she said. "And that doesn't seem possible. The party last night. You said you wanted to drink beer from my… bra."

Oh yes. The one in the dress. Gillian? All he could remember at the moment was that he had seen her at the Plaza West with some woman, and that she had a sweet-working rump, and he hoped he'd see her again, but didn't until he saw her at the party.

"Yeah," Ernie said, chewing off the rest of a mouthful of Fritos. Army had just kicked off. "What's–"

"I have your cuff links," the voice said. "Or one of them anyway, the one you lost outside."

"Cuff links?"

"In the garden," she said. "Remember? You were doing a lot of talking. I think you were complimenting me in a sort of, well, basic way."

"If the old man is upset," Ernie said, "tell him I was bombed out, smashed, you know…."

"It's not that." Gillian looked across the room at Bill. He was reading. "It's just I thought you might want it back. I mean it looks like it might be something special, as though it were made specially for you."

Ernie wished the lady would get to the point. Notre Dame was on Army's fourteen-yard line and he had no idea how they got there.

"If you want to know the truth," he said, "I took it off a dead nigger in Hempstead."

"That's just fine," Gillian said – a wince her only reaction. "When would you like me to bring it over? I mean when would be the best time?"

"My wife's in New York now," Ernie said.

"Now it is then," she said.

Bill hadn't looked up from his reading. Gillian brought her fingertips to her mouth, blocked a manufactured yawn, went upstairs to change. The pink slacks, the halter with the white ruffies, yes. The pony tail as is. When she left, Bill was making a gimlet in what he would probably always call the rumpus room. And while all this was happening, Ernie Miklos was looking into a dead telephone receiver. He didn't even see Notre Dame make the game's first extra point.

"Aren't you going to offer a good Samaritan a drink?" Gillan was saying.

"It's over there."

On any other occasion the tailored pink slacks would have been at least distracting. But Ernie had the head. And the Irish were leading ten-zip. The bar was done in Early American. Laverne liked it and Ernie hated it. The only bar in the Western Hemisphere that Ernie couldn't stand. Who ever heard of an Early American bar? Ernie often thought he would like to take an Early American match and destroy it. Right up to the Early American refrigerator with the golden eagle.

"You could drink it up here," Ernie said. Ernie sighted in on the sweet-working rump. "That is, if you like football."

"Only football players," she said, thinking, even as she said it, that it was almost as trite as it was untrue.

"You could bring the olives with you," Ernie said. "Or do you take onions?"

"A twist ordinarily," she said, "but an olive will do." Ernie did the mixing. He spilled the Vermouth when Harvey Jones dropped the pass deep in Notre Dame territory. That son of a bitch. Gillian accepted the dripping glass and dropped into the overstuffed chair. She pulled her legs up under her, tucked them in. Army was punting and Ernie slammed his fist into the armrest of her chair.

Laverne would never have come into the room while he was watching a big game. Maybe it was that. Maybe it was the hangover. Whatever the reason, Ernie was having trouble focusing on the set. It was like that time one of the curtains was flapping in the wind – it was a distraction without being an interruption. He could feel her eyes. What in the hell was she up to anyway? The first commercial he turned quickly to meet her look. Too quickly. The pain came back.

"Oh God," he said.

Gillian went to the ice bucket and picked up an ice cube. She walked back to Ernie and held it against his forehead. Ernie began to feel his breath quickening.

That damn ice cube. Had he said anything about ice cubes last night? No. He couldn't have. The cube in Gillian's hand was melting, sending small rivulets of water into the edges of his eyes. Ernie's pulse was throbbing now, and what happened next was more instinct than design.

Army was driving and Ernie was too. His eyes went to the TV and then back to Gillian. A Christian Scientist with appendicitis. Gillian watched it as it happened. She knew she had aroused the creature in the torn paint-spattered T-shirt. Well, she told herself, that's what you wanted, wasn't it? That's what you wanted. She saw the Marine Corps tattoo barely visible beneath the sleeve on his right arm. So what did you expect, she asked herself, candlelight?

Ernie didn't bother to talk. He merely grabbed out for Gillian, pulled her across the armrest into his lap and bit into her neck.

"No marks," she squealed. "Don't leave marks."

"Don't give me any of that shit," Ernie said.

"All right, armchair quarterbacks," the voice on the television was saying, "what would you do? Go through that same hole again or try for the end?"

Gillian began to fight back, stiffly, ineffectually. She felt her fingernails gouge through the flesh of his back. He didn't seem to feel it. If he did, it only increased his ardor. Her body went limp then, and as their mouths met and then their tongues she gave it up and began to play the game Ernie's way.

"He's in there; he's in there!" The voice from the TV seemed to come from another world. "And, fans, it's all knotted up."

Sixty-eight thousand fans were screaming in the stadium. But on Barnacle Drive in King's Neck at the home of Ernie Miklos there was only quiet. Gillian had disengaged herself, risen. She looked at Ernie and reached down to touch him gently. He didn't stir. So that's it, Gillian thought. It's over in less than a minute and already it is as though nothing had happened. Ernie didn't acknowledge her presence in any way. He was watching the set again, watching Army kick off to Notre Dame.

Ernie was dozing when Laverne called from downstairs.

"Isn't it over yet?" she said.

Ernie rubbed his eyes, and all he could see was the face of Walter Cronkite. His hangover was gone and so was Gillian. He could hear kids running across the kitchen floor and the sound of the dishwasher being activated.

"You couldn't even wash the goddam dishes." Laverne was yelling.

He came downstairs then and she asked him whether the game had gone into extra innings. Laverne never knew when the baseball season ended and the football season began and Ernie never bothered to explain it to her. What was the use? What in goddam hell was the use? He returned to complete consciousness as he went back upstairs, and wondered vaguely what had happened to Gillian. His T-shirt was on the floor. The only trace of his visitor was the empty cocktail glass. He shoved it into his desk drawer and went into the bathroom. His eyes were puffy. He turned around to look at Gillian's brand on his back. Goddam broads who scratch. They should all be declawed.

"I'll be right down," he shouted from the bathroom door. He turned on the shower.

When Ernie finally crawled into bed, he was played out. Still, sleep came hard. Laverne was suspicious when he put on pajama tops. Ernie never wore pajama tops, even in winter. In fact, the only reason he wore pajama bottoms was that Laverne had made it a condition for sharing the same bed. Sometimes now he wondered why he had ever wanted to share the same bed. They'd been married fifteen years but sometimes, on nights like this one, Ernie felt he had been born married. Born married. He remembered his father used to say something like that – exactly that, as a matter of fact, whenever he got high on boilermakers. That had been his father's salvation, those boilermakers on payday at the bar across the street from the paymaster's shack at the zinc works. Ernie sometimes thought about Donita, Pennsylvania, and how far he had come from that. It was only four hundred miles but it was a whole other world.

Donita was one of those mill towns that edge the Monongahela River on its flow to Pittsburgh. Like all those towns, it was dirty and its people were poor, not so much in money as in spirit. The mill did it to the town. Its people were a potpourri of Polish immigrants, Irish and Negroes. The parents worked, got drunk, reproduced, died young, figured on the same life for their children, only hoping it might happen somewhere else than Donita.

The Donita football teams were the terror of the state, and Ernie Miklos was the terror of the team and this was his salvation. Lying there late at night, listening to the snores of the stranger who shared his bed, Ernie liked to think back and remember those days, the days of his escape. It was about the only time all day anyone would let him think.

Ernie's father had liked to sing; he had never forgotten his father's voice, especially when he'd had one or two. He had the soul of a poet, Ernie felt. But the mill in those days was the beginning and the end. The town was built around the mill and had never been broken up into sections for slums or ethnic groups. The money people, the mill owners, lived eighteen miles beyond town limits and everyone else lived in town. Ernie's house was just a spot somewhere midway between abject poverty and blind hope. There were nine children in that house and Ernie had always been the favorite. He was the second of two sons; the older boy had died of consumption.

Ernie never disappointed his father, and that was important to him. Those days after the football games and his father hitting him across his back and the girls waiting for him to come by. Ernie had gotten laid when he was thirteen, by Sonia, who f*cked for three cents. Three cents. God, what she would have done for a dime. The boys used to save milk bottles for the refunds and it was always a big day when you could carry three of them over to Jake Rubenstein's. Everybody hated old Jake. Not because he always kidded about them bringing in three milk bottles. But because he was a Jew. Ernie delighted in tormenting Jake's son, Harvey, but Ernie never started a fight. It would have been no fight and Ernie was never that much of a bully when he was in high school.

Ernie had picked the University of Indiana. It had been a tough choice because there were forty-six schools competing for the pleasure of educating him. He picked Indiana for a simple reason: They paid more than anyone else. Still, Ernie would have flunked out after that last season if he hadn't joined the Marines before exams.

The war was the best thing that ever happened to Ernie Miklos. Better than the football games and better than getting laid by a cheerleader named Donah. Once, knee-deep in mud at Cape Gloucester, sharing his foxhole with six dead land crabs, he said to himself – and Ernie always spoke the truth when he spoke to himself – "There are days when I'm sorry this war has to end."

Ernie loved that war and he loved what his drill instructor at Parris Island had told him: "Boy, I'm gonna make a paid f*cking killer out of you." And the sergeant would have been proud. Ernie won the Silver Star at Bougainville by wiping out three Japanese strong points with a handful of grenades and a BAR. He was wounded twice and his face still bore the scar of a jap bayonet. But when Ernie was telling war stories, that wasn't the one he liked to tell. He liked to tell about the time he broke into a hut and found a Japanese lieutenant about to commit hara-kiri. Ernie helped him along, but he performed the ceremony by inserting the knife eleven inches into the lieutenant's rectum.

Ernie's wounds on Bougainville got him returned to Honolulu – something he considered worse than a Section 8. It was in Honolulu that Ernie got the scar that no one saw, the scar he carried on his brain. It was in a slop jar off Hotel Street that Ernie found his absolution. The whores had been thick along Hotel Street that night; but they always were. It was like Piccadilly in London or Pigalle in Paris except that the women sat in bars instead of under street lamps or in doorways. Whores, Ernie discovered, were wonderful when you felt the need of dying quickly with the reasonable assurance you'd rise again from a quick grave. Ernie didn't actually survive that night, not wholly. He had really been buried, and so he still felt, forever. And his executioner was a half-caste little girl with bad teeth, a girl who couldn't have been more than eighteen. In a way Ernie felt it was retribution for what he had done to the Jap lieutenant. He'd known that was wrong, but he couldn't help himself. And while the lieutenant had been fortunate enough to look forward to his Imperial Heaven, Ernie would spend the rest of his life looking forward to absolutely nothing.

Even now he sometimes woke up screaming. Laverne assumed it was the sound of guns and the calls of dying men that echoed through his sleep. But Ernie heard only his own screams – his screams and the sound of water falling on a bare wooden floor in a dingy room in Honolulu.

The perspiration even now was rolling off Ernie's forehead. He hoped his shuddering there in the dark night would not awaken Laverne. Laverne. Ernie had married her because she was one of the few women he could remember saying no to him. Maybe, he reflected, it was because she was one of the few women he had ever bothered to ask. "Not until you marry me," she had said. Ernie didn't believe her, not at first, but he soon learned that Laverne was a threshold girl, able to stop repeatedly just this side of fulfillment. He couldn't stand it any more and, out of curiosity, agreed to marry her.

She wasn't bad looking then and not much worse now. She had maintained through two births a pair of breasts that Ernie counted among the finest in Christendom. She was an Italian-Irish mixture who had somehow managed to capture the worst characteristics of both nationalities. She didn't like to drink and she didn't like to stay up late and she always chastised Ernie when he did either.

The best thing about Laverne had been a father old-fashioned enough to believe in a dowry, which meant a partnership in a construction company specializing in swimming pools. And when suburbanites found they could dig themselves even deeper into debt with a pool, Ernie and his father-in-law were there to help with the digging. Ernie was vice president in charge of pools, which had made him affluent enough to settle in King's Neck rather than Levittown or Huntington. Ernie had been happy in a Bayside apartment with a breakfast balcony. But Laverne wanted to become part of a community – to have roots, as she put it. So Ernie bought a waterfront lot with a seven-bedroom, split-level ranch. They still had no roots, but now they had a mortgage that would grow old with them. The one thing they owned free and clear was the pool.

From the beginning Laverne had never been anything less than a dutiful wife. And not much more. Ernie realized, of course, that Honolulu was a tough act to follow. It could be said of Ernie and Laverne that their marriage started off in low gear and then bogged down. Ernie's feelings about most of his neighbors were generally expressed in simple terms. "Pushy goddam Jews" – that was one of his favorite appraisals. He took great delight in padding his neighbors' bills when they came to him for a pool on the erroneous assumption that geographical proximity might save them a few dollars.

The Civic Association, the Save Our Schools Committee, the Republican Club, the Young Americans for Freedom – the only thing that meant a good goddam to Ernie was a party. Last night's blast was one of the best. Gillian had been standing beside the pool when he first saw her. She was wearing that low-backed green dress with high heels to match. He was talking to someone, Melvin Corby it was, and he'd just said, "Show me the guy who doesn't eat it and I'll steal his girl," when Gillian walked across his line of vision. Corby had told him that everyone on King's Neck wanted a slice of that butt – only those weren't the words Corby had used (pushy goddam Jew) – Ernie could understand why. Then, later, she had come on with him at the bar.

It was hard for Ernie to believe he had scored with her so quickly. She was class. But it all confirmed what he had always maintained, a broad is a broad.

Ernie fell asleep then. And less than an hour later Laverne woke up to hear him screaming. He woke up screaming something about ice cubes, and when she tried to wipe the perspiration from his brow he begged her not to touch him.

Ernie didn't see Gillian until the following Friday. He was at the Plaza having a sandwich and Gillian was having a late afternoon martini. Apparently she was not having her husband because Bill was sitting at another table talking to several men in business suits. The Plaza was next to the King's Neck Railroad Station and, unlike most restaurants near railroad stations, it was reasonably sanguine. At night there was a darky piano player, and it was known as the launching pad for those who planned to swap mates for the evening. This, to Ernie, made excellent sense, but it also made excellent sense never to broach the subject to Laverne. In the afternoon it was reasonably quiet and Ernie, a man who always looked out of place in a white collar, would sometimes stop off between checks on his work crews. He had been scoring for eight months with one of the waitresses who had to quit when her husband changed jobs.

"Hello there." Gillian carried her martini to the bar and took the stool to his left. Her hair was up. Ernie put his notebook away and took a long look.

"Like another one?" he said.

"Why not?"

Ernie had been debating which stop to make next. Seeing Gillian again, he knew which one he wanted to make. He excused himself and telephoned his foreman. He said there would be no need to check the Freeport job unless there were problems. No sweat, no sweat at all. He went back to Gillian. She was at the table again. Her husband hadn't seemed to notice anything. Ernie had once played against a quarterback who looked like Bill – no chin at all – Michigan, it was – and he got hit once and that was it for the afternoon.

"Would you join me in one?" Gillian was asking.

Ernie didn't like martinis. He didn't trust them. Anything that looks like water and tastes like fire – he knew he couldn't handle them. But that was the challenge and he nodded assent. He watched the new waitress as she walked away. Maybe there was something there, too, he thought as he watched her posterior stretching the white nylon skirt. Ernie was always working on the next one, even when he was in the middle of drumming up action. He had never discovered that man has relatively little to say about it.

"We just got in from New York," Gillian was saying. "Do you ever listen to our show? I don't blame you – it's basically for women anyway."

When the martinis arrived they were on the rocks. Gillian jiggled the glass and noticed the expression in Ernie's eyes. She jiggled the glass again and again it happened. It was as though his eyes had turned to ice. It was the same look she had seen Saturday before he turned into a raging animal. Gillian had minored in psychology at Bard, but the psychology she relied on now was something she had been born with.

"The ice cubes look nice, don't they?" she said. "Nice, just floating in the glass."

Ernie could feel the dampness on his forehead. He reached for his glass and took it in a single burning swallow. Better, better now. Gillian watched the small scene with mounting academic interest, as though once again she were observing from a concealed vantage point. She said that it might be wise to go slow on the martinis, particularly if he were not used to them.

"I'll drink what I f*cking please," Ernie snarled at her.

"I was drinking when you were still using candles on yourself."

Gillian knew then she should get up and leave. She looked over at her husband's table – the men had all disappeared. She felt uneasy then, but didn't protest when Ernie ordered the last round of martinis.

"Do you want to tell me about it?" she said.

"Where's your husband?" Ernie said. "Where's old shithead off to now?"

"Is there anything you want to tell me, Ernie?"

"Why did you marry a shithead like that?" Ernie said.

"You've got to have a screw loose, marrying a shithead like that."

"Go ahead," Gillian said.

"Broads," he said. "I've f*cked more broads than the sultan of Baghdad or somewhere. And I've f*cked your kind before. You broads who think your ass is made of gold because you went to college."

Gillian took a drink from the fresh martini. She opened her compact and studied her lips. She knew it was time to go but, even as she thought it, she chided herself. Chicken. What can happen now?

"I've had things with broads," Ernie was saying, "things you wouldn't believe."

"How do you know, Ernie?" Gentle now. "How do you know unless you tell me?"

"I had a thing with a broad in Honolulu…." He stopped and looked around. The main room of the Plaza was all but deserted. The waitress with the nice ass was polishing glasses at the bar, laughing at something Benny the bartender was saying.

"You were telling me about Honolulu," she said.

"Mind your own f*cking business," Ernie said. "You want to know what they're gonna put on my tombstone. Here lies Ernie Miklos, yes sir, here lies Ernie Miklos, he got his in Honolulu."

"Tell me about the ice cubes, Ernie," she said.

"Up my ass," he said. "That's right. That little cunt shoved it right up my ass just as I was blowing my load. She took a chunk of ice and jammed it there. She took me, all of me, and I came for it seemed like three days. 1Ithought my teeth were going to be sucked right through my prick. Oh God…."

Ernie slammed his head down against the table. The bartender and the waitress stopped the giggling and looked around as Ernie screamed again, "Oh my sweet God!" His head fell back against the wall and his eyes were closed tight. Gillian was unprepared for this display and her purse slipped off her lap onto the floor.

She reached down, and the dregs of her drink spilled down the front of her gray suit.

"Right up my ass," Ernie said softly. "What do you think of that, huh, bitch? Right up my ass with the ice cube."

"Are you all right, Ernie?" she said.

"Are you all right, Mr. Miklos?" the bartender called.

"You want someone should take you home?"

"Is he some kind of a nut?" the waitress whispered.

"It's all right, Benny," Gillian called back. "I live near Mr. Miklos and I'll see him home."

Ernie felt her hand on his arm, felt himself being led toward the door.

"Yeah," he was saying, "right up my ass."

It was a patio but it wasn't his patio. Next to him there was a cold Bud and he reached for the can. He could see the Sound through the trees. He could see the umbrella. He could see Gillian sitting in the next chaise.

"Drink it," she said, "you'll feel better."

"Why did you let me drink that shit at the Plaza?" he said.

"I didn't know what would happen," she said.

"Well, aren't you the hot shit," he said, drinking the beer. "You know it all now."

"Yes," she said, "even about the Japanese lieutenant."

"F*ck you," he said.

Ernie threw the empty beer can onto the patio and listened to it clatter. Gillian moved over toward him and sat on the ground beside the chaise.

"It might be more comfortable in the bedroom," she said.

"I'm too smashed," he said. "I'm bombed out."

"Not for me," she said. "Not for what's waiting for you." Ernie felt himself coming apart. He could feel the martinis in his stomach like hot coals. He followed her through the plate glass doors to the poolside bedroom. Unglued. He fell onto the bed and managed to reach up for her. Her hair was still up. Like some goddam Egyptian princess. Like Liz Taylor in that movie. She wasn't even looking at him as she reached down and began stroking him. He could feel it happening again, even this drunk, goddam!

Ernie Miklos was beyond effort and he made no effort. He just lay there and let it happen to him. And as it was happening, it was different, lazy. He didn't know it could be that way, goddam.

"I'm going to come," he said.

"Come on," she said. "Come on all the way home, Ernie."

"Oh, God, no, no," he was screaming again.

He knew what was happening, knew somehow that it was going to happen. And then Ernie felt it. She shoved the ice in, the big rock candy mountain, the f*cking iceberg, and then his scream died and his whole being oozed forth and he felt he would drown in what was happening.

"Oh my God!"

Together, like garden snakes, they contorted, moaned, gasped, clenched and throbbed. F*cking eternity, Ernie thought, f*cking-A eternity! Ernie found what Cervantes and Milton had only sought. He thought the fillings in his teeth would melt. And even afterward, the throbbing went on.

"Are you all right?"

"God, God, God," he said.

"Ernie…."

"Get me home," he pleaded. "Get me home."

"Are you sure you're all right?"

"Home," he said.

Gillian managed to dress both of them, managed to half-carry him to the car. It was only three blocks. Ernie felt the fire burning from his stomach to his head. He stumbled from the car and watched Gillian pull away. He staggered to the back of the house, fell blindly against the portable bar. He heard the bottles crack against the brickwork and the sound of the ice bucket hitting. The fire burned in his chest and he felt he was falling.

Laverne heard the splash and turned on the pool lights. She saw the bar turned over and the broken glass, and then she saw Ernie floating face down in the deep end of the pool. From that distance she didn't notice the ice cubes floating in the water beside him.