“Please, Mason. Don’t. You’d be wasting your time, and I’d rather not disappoint you.”
“I’ll take that chance. I’ve always-”
“Damn it, what I have to tell you is difficult enough without your impatience. I’m no good in bed. Do you understand?”
Her eyes went wide; her breath stopped in her throat.
Mason Villiers said, “Do you think I can’t arouse you?”
“Mason, please, for heaven’s sake. Do you know how hard this is for me?”
She lifted her hands and pushed his arms away, and backed up against the door, feeling the hot rush of blood to her face. “Please,” she whispered, shaking her head.
He nodded slowly. “All right.” His voice was gentle enough, but his face had closed up. He turned to the elevator and pushed the button.
She clutched her arms and stared at his wide, flat back in miserable silence. He didn’t stir. The elevator came, the doors slid open, and he stepped in.
She took a pace forward. “Mason?”
He turned to regard her with a calm air of cold, arrogant disdain.
She said in a small voice, “Go ahead and start the arrangements to incorporate.”
He nodded his head an inch. “Thank you,” he said with precise courtesy, and watched her, unblinking, while the elevator doors slid shut, cutting him off from her view.
She went through the apartment turning on lights, and sat down on the living-room couch with a cigarette. She had a sudden impulse to run from the empty apartment and rush into one of the crowded bars on Second Avenue.
She was halfway to the door before she stopped and went slowly back to the couch. She could just see herself sitting in a bar, trying not to look like a pickup, fighting off men who knew of no other reason why a woman alone should come into a bar. In her strong moments she was fully capable of turning a slow burning stare on a man that would send him hurrying away, shaking his head defensively; but right now she didn’t have the courage to look a man in the face.
She said sternly, aloud, “I am not going to crack up. I absolutely refuse to crack up. It’s ridiculous-it’s absurd. I won’t!”
She went into the bedroom, drew the blinds and draperies, and removed her clothes, putting them away with care. She sat down naked at the dressing table and fluffed her hair, watching critically in the mirror.
Lamplight on the pale blue walls depressed her; she resolved to have the room repainted. She went into the bathroom and turned on the tub faucets, and walked through the apartment to the bar, where she poured half a tumbler of straight gin over two ice cubes; carrying the drink, she went around switching off lights, checked the bolt at the front door, and came back to the bathroom in time to shut off the water. She closed the bathroom door, glanced at her expressionless face in the mirror, and stepped into the steaming tub; she took a long swallow of gin, set the glass on the rim of the tub, and lay back in the hot water, thinking about nothing in particular; and then she slowly became aware of the tingling in her breasts, the vaginal tautness, the generation of hidden excitement that made her feel shamed and sick with loathing, knowing she would spend a little while pretending it wasn’t there, and a little while more hoping it would go away, and a little while more massaging her hardened nipples while a protective cloak of serenity would seem to descend around her, and in the end she would promise she would never let it happen again, but she would begin to rub herself with her fingers until she reached that terrible guilty, lonely climax.
12. Mason Villiers
The limousine turned up Third Avenue from Forty-seventh Street and cruised slowly with the lights. Taxis darted past, jumping the traffic lights, and along the window-lit sidewalks male prostitutes cruised with brazen, casual arrogance. In the back seat of the limousine Villiers became irritated with the bedraggled whine of Tod Sanders’ complaining voice and said, “I’m sick of hearing about your mother. Shut up.”
Sanders didn’t say another word until he eased the big car in at the curb in front of Villiers’ hotel. Then, blank-faced, Sanders turned in his seat and said, “You want a girl? You want me to send for a girl?”
“No, to hell with it. You go on home and sit up with your sick mother.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Tod Sanders was perpetually nodding, nervously pretending agreement before he could possibly know what he was going to be agreeing with; he was like a student-there was one in every classroom-whose head bobbed up and down the whole hour long.
“I’ll need you here at nine in the morning with the ear.”
“Yes, sir.”
The doorman had the limousine door open; Villiers stepped out and went into the hotel lobby. He glanced at the row of elevators but went on to the cocktail lounge. Drunk businessmen were crowded loud at the bar. As he moved past them, he saw a slim attractive woman sitting alone; her glance touched him, direct and interested. He sized her up as an easy lay.
She had a warm, slow smile.
He sat down and spoke: “Staying here in the hotel?”
“Yes.”
“In town long?”
“I live here.” She was still smiling.
“Work here?”
“Well, I’m sort of between jobs, you know. I do a little dancing, and I model a little. I’m just sort of-around, you know?”
He nodded. “Expensive?”
“Some gentlemen don’t think I am.”
“Go on,” he said.
“Two hundred.”
He laughed quietly and gave her his room number and walked out to the lobby.
At nine-thirty in the morning he entered the offices of Hackman and Greene and went back through the corridor without waiting for the English receptionist to announce him. He found Sidney Isher in Hackman’s office; the broker himself was nowhere in sight. Isher said, “George must be stuck in the traffic. It’s murder out there in this Goddamned heat. You want a cup of coffee?”
“No.” Villiers settled on a chair in the cool blast of the air-conditioner.
The red-haired lawyer coughed; his eye tic winked steadily. “I swear the pavements are starting to melt out there.”
Villiers said, “Take a pill or something-you’re nervous.”
“I guess I am. We’ve got a problem.”
“I’m listening.”
“It goes by the name of Arthur Rademacher. He’s James Melbard’s brother-in-law-this’ll take a minute to explain. You see, Melbard Chemical has about one and a half million shares of capital stock. As you know, there’s only about a hundred thousand shares outstanding on the open market-the rest belong to the Melbard family and a few insiders, and the twenty-three percent that NCI and Elliot Judd own together. The idea, as I understood it from you, was to tender an offer to Melbard to get a controlling interest from the Melbard family, in an exchange-of- stocks deal with Nuart Galleries. This was supposed to-”
“I’m losing interest,” Villiers snapped. “Get to the point.”
“I’m trying to.” Isher kept crossing and uncrossing his legs. “You want to buy a controlling interest in Melbard, right? The only way to do it is to buy eight hundred thousand shares of Melbard stock, right? And the only place you can buy that many shares is from Melbard’s family, because nobody else owns that much. But what I’m trying to tell you is, there’s a hitch we didn’t foresee. It seems this old bastard Rademacher owns a quarter of a million shares in his wife’s name-she’s James Melbard’s sister-and he’s also got options on another quarter of a million shares which James Melbard owns at the moment. You get the picture now? James Melbard can’t sell his
