“Like what?”
“I don’t know.”
He dropped his cigarette and stepped on it. A small boy stopped and asked Joe if he wanted his shoes shined. Joe pointed to his tennis sneakers and laughed easily. The boy frowned, laughed and left them to bother somebody else.
“We could go to the coast,” he said. “North Beach or something. Everybody goes to the coast. It’s like the thing to do.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I mean, if you’re hung up on New York—”
“Not New York. Not New York, not the park, I don’t know. Just hung up in general, I suppose. Just bored and tired. I don’t know.”
“A change of scene might help.”
“I’m a leopard, Joe.”
He stared, feeling disoriented. “A leper? I don’t get it, baby. I—”
“Not a leper. A leopard. Like an animal. Leopards can’t change their spots. Remember?”
“Oh,” he said.
“Allee samee under the skin. New York or Chicago or San Francisco or…I don’t know. Portugal. Wherever you run it’s the same person running. Can’t run out of yourself. Doesn’t work.”
He said nothing.
“I think I’m going back to the pad,” she said.
“Want me to come?”
Anita shook her head no. “I just have eyes to walk. I’m going to buy a big cup of Italian ice from the cat on the corner of Thompson, the funny one with the wagon. And I’m going to walk all the way home eating the ice. Then I’ll sit around and wait for you.”
Joe shrugged.
“A nice long walk,” she said. “In the lovable afternoon. I’ll make dinner. Paella, I think. A pot of rice and some seafood. It’s cheap and it tastes good. Spanish. I made it last week.”
He remembered. “Shank may be around,” he said.
“I hope not.”
“You really put him down, don’t you? He’s a good cat. He’s making nice bread and giving us our share.”
“He’s making too much bread.”
“Huh?”
“I don’t like it,” she said. “That’s a lot of money from peddling pot. I think he’s doing something else. Muggings, hold-ups, I don’t know.”
“He wouldn’t do that.”
“He’d do anything,” she told him. “My God, you don’t know him at all. He’s a rotten son of a bitch, Joe. He really is. He’s a snake.”
He remained silent, having no great drive to spring to Shank’s defense. “He never did anything to you,” he managed after a few moments.
“I know.”
“So why the noise? There’s lots of studs I can live without. But I don’t go screaming on ‘em all the time.” She smiled. It was a strange smile. Then she stood up.
“Later,” she said. “Fall up around six or so for dinner. It’s okay to reheat it, you can keep the pot on the stove for a week. But it’s best the first day.”
He watched her walk away until she was out of sight and he wondered what was wrong. She was a leopard and she couldn’t change her spots. Solid. But why all the fuss? He thought about Shank. Somehow he couldn’t see Shank as a stick-up man. The picture did not add up. But there was no way to get around the fact that Shank had changed visibly. He was less talkative than ever. He didn’t seem to have any time for casual conversation. He rarely hung around the pad, rarely went out with them during the evenings. A few nights back a whole mob of them headed out around midnight, caught a late show in Times Square, then bought a few bottles of wine and went to Central Park. They stayed there all night long, singing at the top of their lungs, balling on occasion, making a major scene. But Shank hadn’t wanted to come along. He had said he had things to do. But what kind of things? And how come he never talked about them? A problem. But Joe Milani knew how to deal with problems. He had carefully cultivated a method over the days and weeks and months. He simply ignored the problem. From a pocket he took a paper-bound copy of Henry Miller’s
After Anita left Joe she did more or less as she had told him she would. She bought the paper cup of Italian ice from the man with the wagon on Thompson Street. Then she walked east on Fourth Street, stopping at a few stores along the way to shop. She angled up First Avenue to Saint Marks Place and the apartment, where she unpacked what she had bought. She put the kettle on the stove, filled it with water, put the rice into it. She let the rice boil for a while, then started to add the mussels and the chopped-up eel. She dropped other ingredients into the pot—some left-over chicken, two crabs, and miscellaneous seafood. Then she covered the pot, wondering if it were all right to watch it. A watched pot, they said, never boiled. That seemed physically illogical. Did watched pots boil? Did a pot burn when you watched it? Many things to think about. She sat down on the edge of the bed and tried to concentrate. She picked up a book and tried to read. Unable to concentrate, she gave up, tossing the book carelessly on the other bed. She stared across the room, waiting for something. For dinner to cook. For something, damn it. She was sitting on the bed when Shank entered. Anita did not greet him, nor did Shank greet her. He walked to the stove, lifted the lid off the pot and sniffed like a comic-strip husband. He sauntered to his bed, picked up the book she had tossed there and looked through it. He threw it on the floor. Then he turned his gaze on her. She felt there was something obscene in his expression. He kept staring at her till she flushed and turned away. When she looked back he was still staring at her in precisely the same way. She wanted to tell him to stop it but she did not know what to say. She wished again he would go away, so she and Joe could live alone. She would get a job—it would be worth it if she and Joe could have a place of their own. Shank still stared at her. She returned his glance now. She searched his eyes, trying to figure out what was hidden there.
Then he told her. “Strip,” he said. Her eyes widened. “Strip. Get your clothes off and get ‘em off fast. Strip!”
“What are you—”
His dead eyes blazed in his pale face. His mouth was smiling terribly. His voice was flat and deadly. “I am going to do what I please with you. And you don’t have a thing to say about it. Nothing. What I do to you is up to me. So get those clothes off fast.”
“You’re crazy!” His hand slipped into his pocket and reappeared with a knife. She watched in morbid fascination as his fingers curled around the handle of the knife. He pressed the catch and the blade snickered out. She stared at it, watched light glinting on the carefully polished face of the blade that appeared to be very sharp. “Strip,” he repeated. She was numb. “You’ve got a choice,” he told her. “You can take your clothes off or I can cut ‘em off. It’s up to you. I don’t care one way or the other.”
“Joe,” she said. “Any minute. He’s coming home. He’s coming and—” He turned and locked the door.
“Thanks for putting me wise,” he said. “Now the clothes. I’ll cut ‘em off of you if I have to. And I’ll cut you up while I’m at it.” He was telling the truth, he would make good his threat if he had to. And there was nothing for her to do…Finally, when she kicked off her tennis shoes, she was naked. Now, his eyes were worse than ever. She felt as if she had taken off her skin and he was staring at her insides. Shank approached the girl and held out the knife. She stared at the blade as a bird would at a snake. Then, after a long moment, she tried to move away. But the bed was behind her and the distance between them remained the same.
“Don’t move,” he advised her. “Not yet. You could get hurt. And Joe might not like you after I got through.” He was insane, Anita knew. He would kill her. She wanted to scream but she was too scared.
“Now undress me,” Shank said. When she hesitated, he repeated the command and backed it up by touching the knife to her and raising a tiny bead of blood. Anita undressed him. His grin widened and his eyes became steadily more insane. She was terrified. Then, casually, he folded up the knife and tossed it on his bed. He did this without taking his eyes from her. Then, as if he had all the time in the world, he drove his fist into the pit of her
