The Woman Aroused

Stella. “You wait here, doll.”

     “I haven't any place to go,” she said, yawning. She had quite a few gold fillings, and her teeth looked old.

     “Okay, everybody stays pat till poppa returns,” Joe said, putting on his coat. When his back was to Stella, he winked at me.

     When he left Stella said, “A big kid, lot of noise and wind.”

     “One way of looking at him,” I said.

     She was sprawled on a big leather chair Flo had bought in a second-hand store on 53rd Street for twenty dollars, and paid three hundred to have repaired and recovered. I had an idea it wouldn't take much coaxing to get Stella back in the bedroom, but I wasn't up to that. And with seven grand in my pocket I certainly wasn't fooling with any strays. She kept staring at me, an amused smile on her sensual lips. I asked if she wanted more beer and she said she did. When I bent over her to pick up her glass, she said, “George—you don't mind if I call you George?”

     “Of course not.”

     “You're handsome. Not really pretty but... well, distinctive. Yes, you're tall and lean and your face is long and thin, and that gray at the edge of your hair. You know, you look like a writer.”

     I laughed and brought two glasses of beer. This was a great day for writers, it seemed, and the afternoon wasn't going to be too dull after all.

     “What do you write about? I mean, are you working on a book?” she asked after a sip of beer. “Big mouth said you're the editor of the magazine his company puts out.”

     “That's about all I write,” I said, surprised at Joe's carelessness. I got out a few copies of the Sun I had about and gave them to her. We went in for a lot of good photography—full-page pictures that not only gave the mag a touch of class and beauty, but also took up a good deal of space.

     She glanced through the magazines quickly. “They're beautiful. Ever sell anything to the movies? I work for Warners—merely a typist. Five days a week I pound a damn typewriter and go to sleep early. Some week-ends I go on a merry-go-round, let off steam.”

     “I haven't published much, the magazine keeps me on my toes,” I lied. “Had a few stories in the pulps, a yarn in Story magazine.”

     “You must be good,” Stella said, impressed. The only time I ever actually struck Flo was when she reminded me during one of our spats that my published yarns had been ghosted. I never could decide if they were—the ideas and rough had been mine, but why bother with polishing when you could get a rewrite done for a few dollars? At the time I actually had been busy covering a convention, or at least that was my excuse.

     Stella said, “Why don't you write a book, something with a young psychiatrist and a big-busted gal—sure sale to the movies. Big upstairs like me,” she added, without smiling.

     I let that invitation pass. “I have been outlining a novel, working on it for several years. A fantasy—we awake one day to find all the alcohol in the world has turned to water.”

     “You're ribbing me.”

     “I'm serious. You can see the dramatic complications; first the effect on industry and medicine... that's the secondary theme. Real idea is to show how much we drug our lives with liquor, what happens when that disappears.”

     She finished her beer. “You a Prohibitionist?”

     “Me? I'm almost a lush. It's a big idea—I have a whole file full of notes.” And I really had. All my book ideas were big, so big I never started writing them.

     She thought about it for a moment. “That would be something, a Lost Weekend in reverse. What happens?”

     “I don't know, exactly. Some sort of mass suicide, world revolution, I suppose. Then after a few weeks with everybody taking a forced cure, the world settles down—and k's a much better world. Such a thing would be more effective than the atomic bomb.”—

     “And all from a lousy shot of whiskey?”

     “Alcohol is our number one escape valve, only once you get in the habit of escaping, it no longer becomes an escape, it becomes a chain,” I said, wondering why I was making all this polite talk.

     She was silent for a while, stroking Slob. Every now and then when she bent over to scratch his head, I could see the rise of her heavy breasts, and from the way she had her legs, a good deal of long plump thigh was visible. Of course she knew all that. What she didn't know was I could see the brief line where her panties ended on her thigh through her dress, and that was getting me excited. Not too excited—in my own way, as the famous line goes, I was faithful to Flo. It was sort of an unwritten law between us, mostly because we were too set in our ways, and too lazy, to become involved with anybody else.

     Stella said, “George, I like you. I don't know what you think of me, coming here like this with Joe, but I...”

     “I'm most understanding... and a little hungry,” I cut in, not wanting to hear the story of her life. “Ham and eggs interest you?”

     She nodded, held out her hand. I got up pulled her to her feet. Slob tumbled to the floor, landing on his back. For a cat his reflexes were lousy. He stretched and walked off with stiff dignity.

     As we walked into the kitchen Stella squeezed my hand, said, “Thanks.”

     I didn't quite get that, but I squeezed her hand back. As I opened the ice-box, she said, “Here, let me do that.”

     She made ham and eggs and coffee, moving about the little kitchen with easy efficiency. We ate and smoked a few cigarettes without much talk, then she washed the dishes and I dried.

     Back in the living room I sat on the couch and she stared at me oddly, and for a second I thought she was going to cry. “What's the matter?”

     “Matter?” she repeated, her voice full of forced cheerfulness. “Nothing is the matter. Wonderful little domestic scene we just had.” She went over to the radio, opened it, said, “Oh God, a Capehart! How do you work this?”

     “What do you want to hear—radio or records?” I asked, going over before she threw things out of whack.

     “Records—jazz.”

     I put on a few Ellingtons, and some Artie Shaw and Stan Kenton. Stella held out her arms. I hesitated for a split second, thinking of the money in my pocket, then we danced. At first she leaned her weight all over me, but when she forgot the rub-down, gave in to the rhythm, she wasn't too awkward or slow for a big woman.

     When the record changed we stopped and she was puffing a little. “Say, I thought I was a good dancer, but you're something.”

     “Used to make my living at it,” I said, pleased at the lie.

     “Well now,” she said, looking at me with new respect. I still had my arms around her and I felt bad, acting the tease, but Stella had troubles and I spent my life avoiding other people's problems.

     We finished the records and I kicked the rugs back into place. She fell into a chair, sighed, “I'm pooped.” There were dark blotches of sweat on her dress under her armpits, and I could feel the sweat running down my back, but I wasn't taking off my coat. Even then, at the very start, the money was beginning to be a liability... but nothing like it damn soon became.

     Stella looked at me through half-closed eyes, said, “I feel tired and so wonderfully sleepy.”

     “Why don't you lie down, get some sleep?” I said, aware of how comical and silly it all sounded.

     She got up and walked to the bedroom door, turned and gave me a puzzled look, or maybe it was a hurt look, then stretched out on the bed. I wondered if she had removed her shoes.

     It was nearly two and Joe wasn't back. I considered whether he was dumping Stella on me, and what I should do, although giving a girl to another guy, no matter what she looked like, was strictly not in keeping with Joe's conception of the SOP of “romance.”

     I put on more records, tuned them down low. I could hear her snoring softly in the bedroom and I had to fight to keep dozing off myself. I wanted Joe to return and take Stella, let roe change the linen and get some sleep.

     Joe would return.

     Joe, the big I am, proud as punch he was a “department head.” Joe, who could get on a tearful drunk telling about his wife who died in childbirth, or about his boy who was now completing three years of occupation duty in Germany. When Sky Oil had a small building over on East 38th Street, Joe was a slum kid roaming the streets there. According to him, he once chased a ball into the lobby of the building only to have a guard boot him out. I usually heard this story every time he hit a horse and went on a good binge. He swore then, if you could believe him, that he would become a part of the company. When he left high-school he took a job in the mailroom, “worked his way up” to head of the maintenance department, which meant he was a sort of glorified janitor in charge of the company's offices, and the two small buildings and tanks we had in the Bronx. According to Joe, he never forgot the guard and finally had him fired, though of course the guard didn't remember him. The fellow was a year away from the two-bit pension the company handed out, so Joe, in a fit of righteous forgiveness, rehired him and became the old man's savior.

     He was paid seventy-five per week, spent about a hundred, and was fairly amusing with his great lies and big talk, his absolute worship of his job and complete satisfaction with his own “success,” his tremendous energy and ego, his great vulgarity. But he also had certain loyal, earthy qualities I envied—in my snobbish way. He actually burst into tears—cold sober—when we wrote him up as the “executive of the month,” an apple-polishing job I did every month in the Sun.

     And in my own way I was nearly as content with my job as was Joe. I had a good deal—I suppose “racket” might be a better word. I put out a neat, slick little mag every month—very