Blind Date (29 page)

Perhaps the disease was already in a more advanced but quiescent stage, invading his spinal fluid and the tissues of his brain and nervous system. Maybe it was just about to manifest itself: headaches, slight lack of concentration, barely perceivable loss of memory, occasional vertigo. Going about the business of life unconcerned, he might soon start to go into an extreme depression, show hesitancy in speech, exhibit poorly coordinated movements. Then there would be euphoria; he would become reckless, impulsive,
and aggressive. He would start to forget details of recent events while recalling the past with vivid detail.

One day, he imagines, he is in the bathroom, washing his face, his eyes shut. Suddenly his body starts swaying, even when he stands with his feet wide apart, and his hands seem to float about him. He opens his eyes and sees in the mirror that his pupils remain dilated, that they are not contracting in the light.

In the hospital, his disintegration follows quickly. Terrified by death, he sits for hours huddled in a corner of the psychiatric ward, making no attempt to change position, constantly recalling the inscription —
EVERY HOUR WOUNDS, THE LAST KILLS
— on the antique sundial at the swimming pool of his Beverly Hills house, but unable to concentrate long enough to know what the phrase means.

He was close to the brightly lit house and Serena. Now that the night had turned chilly, he was anxious to be indoors. His past was a matter of regret, his future was haunted by premonitions; only the present still gave value to time.

Serena was in the living room and had already started the fire. As he moved toward her, he saw himself in the large mirror. Covered with splotches of blood, pale and perspiring, he looked sinister.

She greeted him eagerly, saying she was relieved that he was back. Dried blood covered her right hand, and her blouse and skirt were smeared. She ran her fingers through his hair, then brought the bloody fingers to her lips, and, hesitating at first, tasted the blood on them. She began to nuzzle his hair, mussing it with her lips. Soon the blood covered her face, and when he kissed her he could feel it on his lips. His face became pasty with the dead man's blood, and she kept licking it off as she kissed him.

Her excitement mounted, and he also felt aroused, giving himself over to her mood of freedom and abandon. She drew him down onto the floor, by the fireplace, hurriedly undressing herself and tugging at his clothes. Her bare skin glowed pale orange in the light of the fire. She stretched out on the carpet and began to roll over his bloody pants and blood-soaked shirt, pressing them into her
breasts, squeezing them between her thighs; the blood smeared her skin, and her movements quickened. She pulled Levanter onto the pile of soiled clothes and, hunching over him, weighing him down, she put him inside her and threw her body over his. She grabbed his shoulders and started to shake him. Her tense limbs slowly loosened; she began to moan and cry, as if she were being ripped apart. Staring at him with glassy eyes, she moved up and down, opening and constricting, relentlessly groping for her release as if her flesh were pouring away. She inched deeper onto him. All at once, the tightly wound chain inside her seemed to snap. Suddenly still, she slid down beside him on the floor.

Like a child ready to be lulled to sleep, she curled up on the carpet. As she lay watching him, Levanter stood up, gathered their blood-soiled clothing, and threw it, piece by piece, into the fire. After his clothes had burned, he emptied Serena's dress bag and suitcase, both of which were stained with blood. There were at least a dozen outfits, crumpled negligees, several pairs of shoes, evening bags, and a jewelry case. He was about to place the suitcase on the fire when Serena stopped him. From under the lining she pulled out a concealed bulky envelope bound with two thick rubber bands. Putting it into her handbag, she joked that she refused to burn her money, even if there was someone's blood on it. Then she gave Levanter the comb; he threw it into the fire, and they watched it blacken in the flames.

In the morning, Levanter removed the remaining blood spots from the living-room carpet and mixed the fireplace ashes with the garden fertilizer. In order to be alone with Serena, he telephoned the part-time maid and gardener and gave them the day off.

The sun had reached the swimming pool. Levanter had just set up a breakfast table at the pool when Serena came out. Her satiny black tank suit contrasted with the whiteness of her skin. Standing in the shadow, lit by sunshine reflected off the water, she looked luminous. She sat down at the table across from Levanter. For a moment they just looked at each other.

“You were right last night,” said Levanter. “No jury would
believe that I could have known you for any length of time without knowing anything about you. And anyone would wonder why you even called me that first time.” He stopped. “Come to think of it, Serena, why did you? And what made you keep coming back?”

“I liked your act: your stories and games.”

Levanter turned his face toward the sun. “On our second or third date,” he said, “when you were in the bathroom, I looked into your handbag, hoping to find something — a driver's license, a credit card, a check — with your name or address. Instead, I found about eight hundred dollars in cash.” He paused. “And so I thought you were the spoiled daughter of well-to-do parents.” He turned back to her.

She laughed. “If it was only eight hundred, I must have cut my workday short for you,” she said.

Levanter returned to his sunbathing. “Who are your customers?” he asked.

“I go out with anyone in a decent business suit. As long as he's not drunk or sick or too creepy.”

“How do you meet them?”

“Hotels. Bars. Conventions. Any city that planes fly to, I fly there too.”

“Do you keep all the money?”

“Why do you want to know? Thinking of investing it for me?”

“What do you do with it?” he asked, not allowing himself to be provoked by her remark.

“I keep most of it,” she said. “One day I might buy my way into a regular business.”

“How do you feel about getting arrested?”

The glare was making her squint; she put on her sunglasses. “It doesn't happen too often. My only curse is that my brother is a cop. He and his buddies hate my guts and give me a hard time every chance they get.”

They both watched a self-propelling skimmer as it noiselessly scooped up leaves and dead insects from the surface of the pool.

“You may be infected,” said Levanter, breaking the silence.

“I take pretty good care of myself,” she said.

“Still, any customer you've had since your last blood test might have infected you.”

“So what?”

“So, by now, you might have infected me too.”

She fidgeted, apparently annoyed. “I might have. But so might anyone else you sleep with. Any customer of mine could be a lover of one of your women.”

She had finished her breakfast. Two police cars passed by on the other side of the hedges, their sirens blaring. Levanter thought of the burnt-out wreck down in the ravine. The police could not possibly connect it to him, a respectable tenant in this peaceful estate, lounging at poolside, accompanied by a delicate, charming, young woman. He was about to doze off when Serena took off her glasses, then removed her swimsuit. Naked, she dragged a mattress to the edge of the pool and lay down on her back. He was aroused and wanted her, but now he was reluctant to show it.

“There was once this lawyer,” she said, “a widower who put up the bail when I was arrested.” She spoke in a quiet, offhand manner. “To keep up his interest, I went out with him a few times. Then I had had enough. But he had gotten involved. He started to pester me to stay with him. He tried following me, and when I managed to lose myself, he bribed some detectives to trace me. Finally I'd had it.”

She appeared to be losing herself in her recollections. When she went on, she was talking more to herself than to Levanter.

“One evening, up at his place, he was all sex and so was I. When we finished, he started filling a bubble bath for himself, with his whirlpool ready to be plugged in. I got dressed, then said I had to go to the toilet, and he left the bathroom. I took out my rat-tail comb and split the thick electric cord of the whirlpool machine, peeling back the rubber until all the wires were exposed in the water. The foam of the bubble bath covered the split. I came out and he kissed me good-by, letting me out of his apartment and locking the door.”

She paused. Her voice sounded almost weary when she spoke next.

“They say that when a prisoner gets the chair, all the lights in the building dim as the electric current flows through the body. I walked down the hall and pressed the elevator button. As I waited, the lights in the corridor flickered. Later in the week, I read his obituary.”

She turned sideways, and he could see her profile. She seemed fresher and more girlish than the first time he had seen her. As he listened to her, he was thinking that she could have been a coed griping about her exams and term papers.

“One of my regulars is an older man,” Serena said, her tone slightly sharper. “He's been around for years and sees me often. As long as I've known him, he has always wanted the same stuff, but each time he gives it a different name or describes it in a new way or has another reason for wanting it. And each time I do it to him, his need for it gets deeper and deeper. He can't live without it.”

Levanter expected her to tell him what it was the man wanted, but she went on with her story.

“One night, he was getting tired, but he couldn't get enough. When he was right above me, I looked up at him and saw him straining. And then his eye — I guess from stress — his eye popped out and slid out of its socket! It rolled out, like a freshly laid egg, hanging by its slimy root. It stopped midway down his cheek, dangling like a yo-yo. His eyelid sank into the empty socket and, when he opened it, a black hole gaped at me. I jumped away, screaming. The old man bent over, the eye nestling in the palm of his hand beside the socket, and screamed for me to help him squeeze it back in. But I just stood there, afraid to touch him, afraid even to look at him.”

Serena rose from the mattress and slowly came to Levanter. He felt powerless and defeated, teased by her nearness. The feeling grew stronger and his mood shifted. He saw himself knocking her off her feet with one blow of his head, gripping her by her hair,
forcing her to the ground, and shoving himself into her, smashing her again and again onto the cement until her face turned into a pulpy mass. But he did not move. She seemed to know she had defeated him and she stepped away.

“What if I were to open a three-year trust which would support you in luxury on the condition that you spend at least six months of each year with me? Would you agree to such an arrangement?” he asked.

“I can earn as much money as I want, no strings attached,” she said. “You'd have to be a millionaire to buy me out.”

She turned and glanced at the sundial. “Don't invest in your vice,” she said, after a moment's reflection. “It's a losing business. Of course, if you marry really rich, maybe then you can afford to own me.”

Another siren sounded in the distance. The spinning light on a police wrecker flashed behind the hedges.

She picked up her swimsuit and started to walk toward the house. He knew she was going to leave him for the last time. He made no move to stop her.

Levanter's article on the role of chance in creative investment, first published in
Investor's Quarterly,
had been condensed and reprinted by various newspapers and magazines. He received a number of responses from readers. One letter, on elegant stationery from the Hôtel Ritz in Paris, was sent by a Mrs. Mary-Jane Kirkland. The subject of his study interested her greatly, she wrote, and she referred to several innovative investors she had known. She collected privately published case studies and suggested that Levanter might like to peruse them in the library of her New York apartment. Mrs. Kirkland explained that she was not planning to return to New York for two more months, but she could instruct the guard to allow him to use her library.

Levanter was considering a follow-up to the article in
Investor's Quarterly
and was anxious to review the case studies, which in many instances were otherwise inaccessible. He wrote to Mrs. Kirkland, thanking her for her invitation and accepting it.

Her apartment was in one of the oldest cooperative apartment houses on Park Avenue. The doorman looked Levanter over carefully, and the elevator operator waited until he identified himself to the armed guard at Mrs. Kirkland's door.

The guard led Levanter into a white-marble hall with a wide,
curving staircase and a crystal chandelier. They walked through a set of double doors into the library, a large room paneled in wood and lined with shelves of leather-bound books. A life-size portrait of an elderly gray-haired man hung above a marble fireplace.

“Who is that?” asked Levanter, pointing to the painting.

The guard stepped back and gave the portrait a respectful look. “That is Mr. William Tenet Kirkland,” he exclaimed, “founder of Kirkland Industries.” He appeared surprised that Levanter, a guest in the house, did not recognize it. “Mrs. Kirkland's late husband,” he added. “A very fine gentleman.”

Levanter examined the portrait. “How old was he when he died?” he asked.

“Mr. Kirkland passed away two years ago, sir,” said the guard. “It was just days after his eighty-fourth birthday.” He opened the cabinet that contained the case studies Levanter had come to read and left the library, closing the door behind him.

Levanter settled in to work. The studies provided him with some valuable information and insight, and he returned every day for the next three weeks to pore over the firsthand reports, memoirs, and diaries of a wide range of investors and their associates. When Levanter was finished he wrote Mrs. Kirkland to tell her how much his new study would owe her, and he wired a bouquet of flowers to her in Paris.