The Woman Aroused

and some loud-mouthed friends of Joe's. I returned to my place at two in the morning: the radio was on and Lee was sitting in the exact position I'd left her. We washed up and went to bed. In a sense it was a relief to have a girl who didn't talk or demand explanations.

     On Sunday, after a leisurely breakfast, I dressed Lee in her new clothes, asked if she wanted to go to church. She said no, and we walked along 5th Avenue, and Lee looked like any of the other tall, smartly dressed women strolling along—showing off their clothes.

     The new clothes made things work out smoothly. Every night I'd rush home, have Lee bathe and dress, and then we'd go out on the town. We went to the different restaurants about New York—the Jewish ones on the lower East Side, ate Italian food in little Italy, Spanish dishes in Lower Harlem, Swedish, East Indian, Russian, and French food. I bought her several evening gowns and long gloves—to cover the tattoo on her arm—and we made the rounds of the night clubs. Lee held her liquor well, even though I tried several times to get her drunk, and her dancing had improved to the point where I enjoyed dancing with her. Since money wasn't any object, we were a perfect couple: rarely talking, never arguing about price, and having a good time. At least I did.

     The one odd experience was the time I took her to a German restaurant in Yorkville. She became very nervous as we entered, kept watching everybody in the place, and was so upset she refused to eat. Muttering something to herself in German, she rushed out of the place. I threw some money on the table, ran after her. Of course it was useless to ask her what was wrong, she sat in the cab in stony silence, ignoring me. Time and again I'd plead with her, tried to be tender and endearing, asked to be a part of her life, attempted to dig beneath her surface of absolute indifference to everything. I told her I loved her, begged her to talk, tell me about herself. All I ever got was either silence or her tiny odd smile as she said, “Lee is not bright.”

     In my own way I tried playing detective. I took her to every foreign movie in town, and while she never talked, I knew she understood German, Italian, and French. For a time I thought she must have had more of an education than I imagined. Then one day I realized what a fool I'd been: Hank had taken her overseas with him, and of course that was where she had picked up the languages.

     Aside from trying to get her real drunk, without success, I set all sorts of absurd traps for her: I put thread across the door, arranged my shoes around the bed—to see if she ever moved from her bed, or went out of the house while I was at the office. She never left the house and on most days never got out of bed it seemed—not even to go to the bathroom. Also, from Henderson's questions now and then, I knew he'd only seen her with me, for being such a busybody he would have rushed to tell me if she had any visitors.

     She was an absolute slob, yet once I returned to find the place spotless, she had moved everything, cleaned, dusted, and waxed the floors. When I asked her why, she said, “Lee work.”

     Another puzzling feature was the money. Every Tuesday I gave her a hundred dollars. (It had started out as fifty, but I doubled it once to see her face light up, and it had remained a hundred a week after that. I was extremely generous—with her money), but what she did with the money was a mystery. Once I gave her the money I never saw it again, although she never carried any money—even change—on her. The pocket-book she had taken from her 29th Street place was also hidden. Somewheres around the house she was hiding the money, like an animal storing up food.

     September was a cool month and I found she loved heat. I kept the oil burner up, for she wanted the house warm enough to walk about in the nude. At night when I insisted on keeping the windows open, she piled blankets on the bed till it was uncomfortably warm, and I'd have to fold the blankets so they were only on her.

     Living with Lee was dull, crazy, comfortable, and sometimes wildly ethereal. Sometimes I had a sense of esoteric power that bordered on the insane—it seemed to me Lee's sole purpose on earth was for my pleasure, a kind of sex machine I owned outright. I admit such thoughts frightened me—later—but they also gave me a queer sort of satisfaction.

     On the first of September when Henderson paid his rent, I sent the money to Flo without a note. We hadn't seen each other since Southampton, and I suppose Flo was getting a bit frantic. The possibility of her coming to the house, using her key, slipped my mind—in fact I had hardly thought about her. One night as I was coming home from the office, thinking I'd take Lee to the Petitpas on 29th Street for a good French supper, Henderson called out from his window that I'd better come upstairs.

     I thought Lee had either raised some kind of hell, or even blown her top, and I ran up the stairs, brushed past Henderson as he opened the door. Flo was sitting there, crying hysterically.

     She had on a very colorful strapless summer dress that looked like an evening gown, and the contrast was something—for her nose was bloody and she had the damnedest black eyes I've ever seen. Both her eyes were actually swollen and turning blue and purple. Her lipstick was a red smudge against her pale face.

     I didn't have to ask what had happened. I put my hand on her shoulder, said, “Flo—I'm sorry.”

     “You!” she screamed, jumping to her feet. “You and your fine manners, the great gentleman—keeping a goddamn slut, a she-cat in my house!” She was so mad she tried to kick me in the groin and very happily only hit my thigh.

     I backed away and she put a dainty handkerchief, now blood-stained, to her battered nose, yelled, “I'll divorce you! We're done—I'll never speak to you again. You... you... bastard!”

     “Flo, we are divorced,” I said gently, knowing just what she meant. For some people a marriage certificate is merely a formality, a scrap of paper: they are married whether they have the paper or not. With us, our divorce paper was like that, a meaningless legal document. This was the first time Flo had ever seen me with another woman.

     She fell into a chair, sobbing and cursing me. Henderson motioned for me to leave but I went over to Flo, put my arms around her—careful to stand behind her—pinning her to the chair. She struggled and screamed and I said, “Slow down, baby. Listen to me. Flo, we've had our ins and outs, if that's the correct phrase, or maybe it's a pun. But I think we've always loved each other, in our own odd way. Maybe we didn't know how to love enough, maybe we aren't capable of real love. What I'm trying to say is, I still love you. This girl downstairs... I'm mixed up with her... accidentally. It's a sort of mess, not that I couldn't have escaped it, but... Well, understand that.” I didn't know exactly what I wanted to say, and I certainly wasn't saying anything that made sense.

     Flo's sobbing was quieter now, and as I let go of her she held her head in her hands. I bent over and kissed her neck. “I am sorry, Flo. And I still love you. This is, well, really, one of those things.”

     I still wasn't making sense and Henderson kept motioning me to leave. I walked to the door, and the old man stepped out into the hallway with me, said, “Leave her alone. She'll get over it, time and all that. Quite a bad shock, and her nose may be broken. God knows what happened. I saw her go in—before I could call out to her—and then she came running out, all within a few seconds, her face bloody.

     “Poor dear Flo,” I said, sincerely feeling sorry for her and at the same time realizing what a bastard I was, for I also had a tiny, smug feeling of elation. In all our petty battles, our small victories and defeats, I had at least finally scored the big crushing victory.

     I went downstairs, unlocked my door. Lee was sitting in the big chair, nude as usual, and I could picture the nightmare Flo had walked into... seeing this naked giant who probably went at poor Flo without a word of warning.

     Poor Flo, if her nose hadn't been hurt, I would have burst out laughing.

     Lee had that small smile on her face instead of a blank look. I sat down beside her and she took my hand. I asked, “What happened?”

     She didn't answer. I asked, “Tell me, did you have a fight?”

     “Fight?” she repeated.

     I knew it wasn't any use, and besides, she wasn't at fault. “Get dressed and we'll eat. Are you hungry?”

     “Lee sure hungry as all stuff,” she drawled, grinning at me.

     I witnessed three other demonstrations of Lee's fighting prowess. (The third time I was her opponent.) I don't know if she had a lot of man in her, or what, but she was a solid 180 pounds, packed a real punch.

     One evening, about two weeks after she had kayoed Flo, we were walking in the park after supper. It was a warm night, and as we strolled along, I stopped to watch a squirrel scamper up a tree. Lee kept walking, was about 200 feet ahead of me, walking with long, strong, graceful steps.

     A young fellow in a polo shirt was sitting on a bench and I suppose he thought she was walking by herself. He whistled at Lee, started to follow her. I ran up feeling quite alarmed—I never was much of a brawler, even though dancing has kept me in shape. The fellow came alongside Lee, made some joking remark. Lee suddenly turned and swung... actually swung her fist in an overhand punch. There wasn't anything feminine about the blow. It hit the young man flush on the face, staggered him. Before he could fall, Lee grabbed him and threw him into the bushes lining the walk. I ran up and took her arm and we kept walking—fast. There wasn't any expression on her face, except her eyes had narrowed a little. When I looked back the young man still hadn't got on his feet.

     Lee never said a word about it and I was too amazed to speak.

     Harlem was the locale when Lee next swung into action.

     Now and then I went up to the Apollo Theatre on 125th Street, where they still have vaudeville, and