Flash and Filigree (15 page)

“But I don’t have
anything,
” she announced, “
for my head
!”

Now, in the cloth top above Babs there was a small hole, and before Ralph could take up her last complaint, drops of water began falling on the girl, and it soon became apparent that there was nothing for it but to get at once into the back seat. Ralph made an opening between the seats by pulling his own forward toward the steering wheel, and when Babs—cautious in attempting to negotiate it with the drink in her hand—started to hand the cup to him, he quickly urged her to finish it up, which could have, as an emergency measure, seemed feasible enough, for the boy had both hands occupied himself—one pulling back the seat, the other holding his own cup—and so, she did it. She downed it in one grimaced-draft, but seemed quite pleased and happy with herself at once, as though it were, under the circumstances, a justifiable lark. And a minute later they were snugly together in the back seat, where everything was darker and somehow suggestive of absolute seclusion; and, as Ralph prepared their drinks again,
Wuthering Heights
opened on the far screen ahead, its images broken, like those in a dream, by the rivulets of rain that cut a patternless crisscross over the windshield, while much closer at hand, the soft-glowing radio played “Mood Indigo.”

“Do you like to dance?” asked Ralph, ignoring the film.

“Um. Love it,” said Babs softly, looking straight ahead.

He took her hand and held it gingerly. She seemed to accept this as part of seeing the movie, but then she looked at him once, briefly, smiling some sort of insinuating reproach, and nodded toward the screen.

Ralph, his eyes never leaving her face, put his other arm on the seat behind her and, in a moment, leaned over to kiss her mouth, but the girl turned away and drew back a little, so he kissed her cheek instead, which she allowed him to do, lightly. “I love you,” he said tenderly, and she turned her great eyes toward him with their expression of slow amazement.

And when Ralph looked into the eyes it
was
almost lovingly. Then, with violent abruptness, he dropped his arm around her shoulders like a vise and pulled the girl to him, taking her chin in his left hand and kissing her mouth so hard and surely that she could only whimper through clenched teeth. Babs struck out in genuine terror at the hand holding her face, but Ralph, using the arm that encircled her, seized the defending hand from behind and held it fast by the wrist.

By the sudden initial movement, Ralph had pinioned the girl’s left arm between them, so that; with both arms restrained and her face held tightly, Babs was utterly helpless. Her mouth went vibrantly rigid beneath his and her whole frame shuddered against him like someone convulsing in a straight-jacket: she was able to do nothing but writhe and kick with her knees, which she did, in savage desperation, but only for a moment, then she fell limp in hopeless exhaustion as the boy kissed her long and hard, moving his mouth around over hers, probingly, working his fingers into her cheeks, trying to unlock the teeth, as one might to give a kitten medicine.

Ralph’s right arm was around Babs’ neck and shoulders and with that hand he held her own right back by the wrist, holding it next to her head while, with the fingers he fondled her ear and hair-line. But she would not part the teeth, and yet her eyes were closed now—almost serenely it would seem—which Ralph, no doubt, may have taken as a good sign, for he pursued the kiss with relentless, mounting fervor, biting her lips gently the while, until at last, with a great near-tearful sigh, she did yield, and more, opening her mouth to him fully, as he, in turn, relaxed his grip on her wrist, and then, in confidence, released it, and the girl unhesitatingly threw that arm around his neck, thrusting herself to him, as if with a so much fiercer need than his own, that he at once dropped his other hand from her face to her nearest breast. Babs twisted her face sharply away, at the same time withdrawing her arm from around him to grasp the terrible hand.

“Please,” she begged and turned to look at the boy imploringly, but he immediately regained the former advantage, seizing her face and hand, kissing her mouth deeply for a full minute, and when she responded this time and he lowered his hand to her blouse, he did not release the wrist, and the only thing she could do was tear her mouth from him again.

“Ralph, please.
Please.
You’re hurting my arm!” She sounded on the verge of panic and tears, and—her face being turned away—the boy kissed her neck and ears, whispering mournfully, “Babs, I love you so,” undoing, as he spoke, the central six buttons of her blouse, wherein he entered his hand caressingly.

“
No.
No, no,” she pleaded, and the convulsions began anew, struggling to get her impossible left arm from between them, accompanied by fearful sobs now that her mouth was uncovered. But Ralph held fast, and by gradually closing the arm that encircled her, brought her head toward his own, and managed to slowly turn the face with her own hand, which as we know, he held vise-like at the wrist against her cheek. Babs exerted her fullest to prevent this, and, for a moment, actually seemed to forget her anxiety in the sheer contest of physical power it appeared to be—
appeared,
because the boy managed it so slowly, as though strategically prolonging the drain of strength and energy as might otherwise stand her in good stead at the later, more crucial stages of thwarting their love. During this tedious maneuver, of narrowing the space between their heads, Babs’ face contorted grotesquely with strains and grimaces of hopeful effort, but for the last few inches it became all hushed and closed-eyed again, as, in the illusion of having had a chance, she had once more exhausted herself completely, and honorably lost, was again buried in kisses.

Meanwhile, Ralph’s other hand had not been idle, though it only lay carefully inside the blouse, over the lace-wrought bosom, which he caressed gently, almost soothingly, as if not to frighten the dear sparrow-thing huddled there, waiting until his mouth covered hers again before attempting the filigreed nest itself—which he did, at last, with steely tenderness. This new effort, however, was met with an outburst of actual tears, even though, or perhaps because, it succeeded. The girl sobbed up through the kisses wet and piteously, her body going limp and lifeless again, except for the mouth with tremored softly as she cried, while Ralph kissed her—her cheeks and her eyes—with great, real lovingness.

“Ralph . . . please don’t. Oh, please, please, please . . .”

“Don’t cry, Babs,” he whispered. “Please don’t cry. I love you so much.” And he continued to kiss her face all over, her throat and ears, fondling her bare nipple the while, until the girl seemed on the brink of hysteria.

“Oh PLEASE
stop,
Ralph, please stop. Oh stop, please stop, please, please, please.”

“Kiss me, Babs, please kiss me. I love you so.”

She shook her head blindly, sobbing. “No! No, no!”

“Please, darling, I love you so much.”

“No, I can’t, I can’t. Please STOP . . .”

But when he kissed her again, violently on the mouth, and released both of her arms, she flung them around his neck, and it was as if she wanted to do nothing so much as eat him alive. She pressed against him furiously, and Ralph, very gradually, gave way, even pulling a little, until their bodies were leaning at something like a 45° angle to the seat, completely off balance, in favor of reclining, at which point he allowed them to fall, though slowly, at the same time turning Babs clockwise by the shoulders, so that she was, at the end of this maneuver, on the inside of the seat, with her back to its wall, so to speak.

This was a transition of which Babs, lost in kisses, seemed fervidly oblivious—until Ralph’s left hand abandoned the bosom for the pelvic region, a move that touched off, like a hair-triggered device, a phase of unparalleled outrage and frantic defense. But the girl was even more securely bridled than before, under the additional handicap now of Ralph’s partial weight upon her. And except that their embrace was now more or less horizontal, their positions had remained exactly the same, with Babs’ left arm being half under and on the other side of him, and, of course, hopelessly out of it, while her right was still locked at the wrist by his own right, which encircled her shoulders and held her fast against him.

Writhing and convulsing, she sobbed great pleas up through the kisses, and seemed so on the verge of some sort of internal explosion, that Ralph released, almost as a gift, her right hand, which immediately seized his own left and tried desperately to undo its maddening design, whereupon Ralph’s right hand was at once lowered into the shattered arrow of Babs’ dress-front, and the girl was able to wrench her mouth from his, crying, “Ralph, oh please, Ralph please, oh Ralph.”

And he, woefully: “Oh Babs, I love you so much. Babs, I love you so.”

But Babs was too near hysteria for romantic talk. She suddenly made her voice perversely calm, trying to sound reasonable, yet with a good deal of warmth and promise, too. “Ralph, let’s stop for a few minutes, please, just for a minute, please, darling, please . . .” at which point he kissed her deeply in the ear, and along the neck; and she, almost as in a fit, snatched the hand at her breast and tried to bite it, at the same time bursting into tears again.

Ralph withdrew his hand from her bosom and returned it to her face, which he held again for kissing; and then he raised the pelvic hand as well, using it now to stroke her hair and face as he kissed her, soothingly, saying: “Don’t be afraid, darling. I love you so much, please don’t be afraid,” and he put both arms around her in gentle closeness, calming her wondrously, as he allowed his left hand to go lovingly down her side and over to her knees, under the dress, and as high as the top of her stockings before the girl awakened again, as by apoplexy, closing her legs frantically tight on his hand, trapping it.

“NO!” she said. It was almost a scream.
“No, no, no, no, no, no, no,”
but he covered her mouth so fully with his own, as the hand slowly inched forward, that Babs could only writhe and shudder, until the hand did reach the point where she burst into tears as if now and never really before her heart-of-hearts was surely broken. But the hand was there, so searchingly, findingly, undeniably there. “Oh no Ralph darling please no Ralph please I love you so, please don’t Ralph oh please stop please oh please please please please PLEASE STOP Ralph please oh please Ralph God please stop please God make him stop I can’t stand it RALPH oh please oh
I’m going to scream
! Ralph I will oh please I will scream Ralph I will! I will!”

And Ralph did stop, moaning, “Please, Babs, please, darling, kiss me, Babs, I love you so much.” And she kissed him insanely, half in gratitude for his having stopped, and half in raging hunger, as he, left hand resting quietly on the top part of her leg, gently undid the stocking-hooks.

“Please don’t be afraid, Babs, darling,” he said, returning his hand inside, and easing one knee between her own. “You know I love you so much, Babs, please, I love you so.”

“No, Ralph, not any more, please, not now, Ralph, please listen, Ralph, not here, please, let’s wait, really, Ralph, darling, please, no really please, oh Ralph I love you please don’t, really don’t please Ralph I can’t darling I love you please, oh Ralph, please, I can’t Ralph you don’t know please I’d rather the please God oh please God Ralph you’re hurting me please oh no please oh no oh please no . . .”

During the final crucial assault, Babs, let it be said for the darling girl, comported herself like a thing possessed, creature-like, threatening to bite and scratch the boy, and though, never actually going quite so far as that, did fight with an otherwise frenetic desperation until the last lace-edged line of defense was breached aside, and even then, when all strength had deserted her and she was incapable of further effort, she still imagined herself, for a time, to be resisting.

Finally, however, she felt herself yielding to rest, as though one part of her were outside, disinterestedly watching, while another part of her stayed in so far inside herself that everything was in a sort of soft-focus blur where the only reality was a gnawing want and, finally, a pain. And then she clasped him and the tearing pain to her viciously, as though this had suddenly become the last, or first, touch with dear life; and as she felt the proverbial wings of the great moth spread upward flexing within, her, carrying the myth of reality and a part of awareness up and away, the moth grew to the size of some great winged bird, chained to the bottom of a vat of champagne, moving his wings with powerful, majestic slowness, and the bubbles rose on every side, streaming in deathless, thrilling flights to nowhere.

“Oh Ralph,” she breathed, worshipfully,
“Ralph.”

B
ACK AT THE
M
AYFAIR,
Dr. Eichner shakily fell in again with Jean-baby, and on the hope of restoring his composure, quickly downed a double-brandy neat.

“How was it, Doc?” asked the girl as soon as they were seated in the booth.

“What’s that!” said Eichner crossly. A searing ache had moved in behind his eyes, making it difficult for him to focus his attention, and he had suddenly become so suspicious of his surroundings, that he felt a desperate want of time.

“Well, the broadcast, how was it? Where’s Marty?”

The Doctor took his head in both hands. “Why do you ask?”

Jean-baby didn’t bother to reply. “You’re cute,” she said a second later, and gave his wrist a pinch that made him start.

“I can’t discuss it with you now,” said Eichner, ignoring her gesture momentarily, but then shrugged his shoulders helplessly. “My—my head hurts.” This note of childlike apology may have struck some remote maternal device inside the girl, for she laughed with soft embarrassment and touched his temple slightly.

“Too much hemp,” said the Doctor vaguely, trying to explain. “Too-much-hemp.”

“Yes,” she keened, not comprehending, “yes, yes,” stroking his bent head. And, in less than a minute, he was asleep and slowly easing his head down to the table and forward on cradling arms.