Heat of Night Read online

  “Don’t talk like that, Dolores. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “I do know,” she cried. “I want to love you. I want to love you with all of me that there is, every way there is. It’s all I want.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  She bit her lip, lay back on the divan. Her eyes glistened with tears. “Is that what’s the matter, Mal?”

  “What?”

  “Because I’m a virgin, you don’t want me.”

  There was no sense trying to stand there, his legs would not support him anyhow. The sounds of the storm were lost to him, there was no music, there was nothing but her body, lush and young and hot and the way he wanted her.

  He sank to the divan beside her. She caught his hands, pulled them over her heart, pressed them tightly against her.

  “It doesn’t matter, Mal,” she whispered. “I’m a virgin only because I can’t help it. They tried. There were boys who tried. I should have, I guess. Now, I wish I had. I’d be so much smarter for you. But I just couldn’t … because I didn’t want them.”

  “It’s all right.” His throat was closing.

  “You don’t mind?”

  He dragged the back of his hand across his eyes. His vision was impaired. “No. I don’t mind. I’m glad.”

  “I tried to, Mal. I thought — I ought to know. But I couldn’t. All my life I knew how wonderful Mama and Papa were together. My mama loved nobody but Papa. He was crazy in love with her. Only the two of them, it was so right — with any one else it would be wrong. Do you see? So I wanted to find the one man I would be so wonderful for — just for him — only I was afraid if I — did it with anyone else. When I used to have a bad dream — that I had done it with the wrong man — I would cry. And I felt I wouldn’t want to live if this happened to me.”

  “All right.”

  “Why do you say that? All right. In such a way? What do you mean?”

  “Never mind, Dolores. It’s only that I don’t know how to talk to virgins. I haven’t known very many.”

  She stared into his face, intently. “No. Why did you say all right — such a final sound?”

  “Only that I’ll keep my hands off you. Somehow. I’m damned if I know how. I will.”

  “Why? If you don’t love me, then I’m never loved. If you don’t touch me, no one will. I couldn’t stand someone putting his — hands on me — not since I’ve known you. Not since the first time I saw you.”

  “Dolores, don’t talk like this.”

  “The truth? Why not?” She bit her lip. “You don’t love me? You don’t want me? What a fool I’ve been.”

  “No. I want you. Don’t pretend you don’t know.”

  Her secret smile ripped at him. “I know. But how must I get you to say it?”

  His hands closed on her, the firmness, the heat, the trembling sense of excitement. “I want to spend all my life telling you how much I love you.”

  She pressed closer under his hands, murmuring. “You have to remember that. Don’t say it and not mean it.”

  “I mean it.”

  “Yes. But tell me, tell me all the time. I never doubt you, only myself.”

  He got up, strode over to the hi-fi, snapped it off.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “It’s going to rain. Got to get you out of here. Come on. I’ll take you home.”

  She burst into tears. “You don’t love me.”

  He fell beside her on the couch, gathered her so fiercely in his arms that neither of them could breathe.

  “Shut up, you hear me?” he whispered, yelling in hoarse whispers. “Don’t ever say that. Nobody ever loved the way I love you. Don’t you forget it. Damn you. Don’t you forget it.”

  She laughed through her tears. “Then damn you. Stop talking about taking me home.”

  “I’ve got to, Dolores.”

  She moved her fevered hands over him. He touched her and found her body was liquid fire, there had never been such white-hot fire. He’d touched her, he could never stop touching her.

  “Oh God, Mal.”

  “Please listen to me.”

  “Don’t stop.”

  He hurled himself away from her and she sprawled back, clothing disarrayed, legs awry as if she were a rag doll or didn’t give a damn how she looked. She lay there chewing at her mouth, staring at the ceiling.

  “Mal.”

  He stood above her, looking at her and she was lovelier than his wildest fantasy ever promised. If it killed him he had something to say, and he realized the fool who talked when he should keep his mouth shut deserved the frustrated memories he would carry with him to hell. “Will you listen to me?”

  “Can’t you hold me while you talk? Soothe me if you must talk? Hold me. I don’t care what you say.”

  He sank to the couch beside her, gathered her to him, found her more liquid, more fiery than ever. Her legs were hot against his hands.

  “You know what I’ll be in nineteen years?”

  “You’ll be my love. Always my love.”

  “I’ll be fifty-five years old.”

  “We’ll have to be so careful with you, my angel.”

  “Stop it. You’ll be as old as I am now.”

  “Yes. To think, when I’m as old as you are, I’ll have had nineteen years of loving you. Nineteen years … All the years I’ve lived to this moment and they’ll all be filled with the way I love you.”

  “All right. There’s this. I didn’t intend to marry you when I brought you here — ”

  “Of course not. You had so much on your mind. You didn’t know yet.”

  “Well, God help me, I know now. And this I know. Nobody’s going to like the idea. They’re going to hate it.”

  “How could they? I love you — and only you.”

  “But I’m divorced, twice your age, everything wrong for you.”

  “I love only you.”

  “God, how I wish it were that simple. But it isn’t. Your family will do everything — ”

  She kissed his fingers, moving her lips over them in a hungry, sucking way. “Then we’ll listen to them, and nod. It’s so easy to get along with them — and for such a little while. How long? Until we get a license, until we can get married.”

  “I hope you feel this way the rest of your life.”

  “I don’t.” She writhed under his hand. “It would kill me.”

  “Well, kill you or not, tonight I’m leaving you just as I found you — ”

  “You wouldn’t be so cruel.”

  “We’ll have trouble enough, without giving them real reason to oppose us. Juan hates me. I’m sorry, but it’s true. Somehow — I’ve got to show him you mean more to me even than you do to him.”

  She pressed her mouth hard against his hand.

  “I’ll get a license in the morning. We’ll rip out every piece of red tape we can, and as soon as possible, we’ll be married. Until then — if it kills me, or kills you — we’re waiting.”

  She clung to him. “All right. If you promise to hurry — I’ll wait.”

  “Then come on, we’re getting out of here while we can.”

  She clung to him for a long time. He closed his eyes tightly against her, didn’t breathe, clenched his fists. She kissed his face, his eyes, the tip of his nose.

  He moved away then and thunder rumbled back into his consciousness. The storm was much nearer.

  She pushed her feet into her slippers, found her cardigan, trailed it after her, walking sleepily. Nothing had happened to her but she sure as hell looked as if it had.

  If Juan saw her like this, he might not live long enough to buy a marriage license.

  He watched her going ahead of him, still unable to believe the magic of her loving him, knowing hell was worth it. Come on you bastards, make your trouble, I’m ready for you. She’s worth the worst you can do.

  In his car, she snuggled close against him. Great round drops of rain smashed violently against the windshield. Lightning ill
umined the world, then plunged it into thundering darkness that shook the car on the road. Palms and pines bent under the force of the gale. He smiled. This storm was nothing compared to the one he’d weathered back there in that patio with Dolores.

  He drove along the shell road and pulled over at Juan’s house. It was dark. “You better run,” he told her. “Once this rain starts, it may never stop.”

  She clung to him, mouth parted and hot. She was breathless. “I never loved anybody but you,” he said.

  “I don’t care if you did.”

  “But I didn’t.”

  “It won’t matter. It won’t be the same anyhow. You’ll see.”

  “It already isn’t the same.”

  But she’d slipped out of the car and was running across the yard. Lightning sent sheets of white fire dancing around her. Paralyzed, he sat watching until she disappeared around a corner of the house. He turned the car then, driving slowly away, chilled without her. The storm was almost upon them.

  Dolores ran up the steps. She would never go to sleep but how pleasant it was going to be to snuggle under her covers in this storm and dream of what had happened, of what was ahead.

  She heard movement on the darkened porch and she paused, catching her breath.

  “Dolores.”

  His voice was flat with his misery. It was Ric.

  12

  RIC.“ DOLORES WAS BREATHLESS, feeling the night wind at her back, riffling her hair, chilling her. “What are you doing here?”

  A sudden flare of lightning showed his face an ash gray. Whether she wanted to or not, she saw into his tormented eyes. She clenched her own eyes tightly shut and only partly because of the glare of lightning. She did not want to see what was in Ric’s face.

  “I was waiting for you.”

  “I’m sorry, Ric.”

  She saw him straighten in the shadows. “It’s all right…. I haven’t been here long.” His tone implied a meaning to these words but she missed it. They were hard and sarcastic, flung at her but she didn’t understand anything except that he wanted to hurt her because he was hurt.

  “I am sorry, Ric.”

  “I want to talk to you.”

  She bit her lip, flung her gaze about the porch helplessly, feeling trapped. “Oh, Ric. It’s so late.”

  “I know how late it is. I still want to talk to you.”

  She protested even when it was fruitless to protest. “Everybody is asleep.”

  “Nobody is asleep around here. They’re all awake. Don’t think they’re not. All awake — all worried about you and that old man.”

  She felt empty and futile, it pleased Ric to call Mal old man — it was the easiest way to express his bitter hatred: cursing him wouldn’t do half as well. Nothing could point up the differences between Mal and herself better than the difference in age. This made Mal a fool to pursue her, made of her something worse and lower to allow it.

  She exhaled. “Oh, Ric.”

  “I want to talk to you. You hear?”

  She shook her head. “It’s late, Ric. So chilly out here. It’s going to rain. Besides, we’ll only keep everybody awake.”

  He stared down at her. “We can talk in my car. It’s out back of the house.”

  She frowned. “I didn’t see it.”

  “You didn’t see anything but that guy. That boss.”

  “Ric. I don’t want to fight with you.”

  “Too tired to fight, eh?” His voice was bitter but misery made it quiver.

  “I just don’t want to fight with you.”

  “We won’t fight…. I want to talk. Come on.”

  She glanced about helplessly. What was there to talk about? Anything to say between them had already been said a thousand summers ago — those faraway lost autumn evenings when he was the school hero and she was his love — when they were children. Oh, why couldn’t Ric see that? What was there to say to him? She was sorry for him but he didn’t want her pity. She didn’t love him any more — she hadn’t truly loved him, ever. A schoolgirl crush on the high school hero. It was as though it had happened to somebody else. She wasn’t even that same person — any more than he was what he had been then. They were both different people. Why didn’t he leave her alone? She didn’t want to say this to him, either. She didn’t want to hurt him any more.

  “Oh, Ric. Please. Not tonight.”

  “Tonight.” He growled it at her. “I know you’re all tired out. I know why. God help me, I know why. But this you better know. Either you talk to me — or I go talk to your fine boss. You make up your mind. Which you want?”

  “He’s nothing to you, Ric.”

  “He’s something to me, all right. He’s twice your age. A rotten old man, playing around with the girl I love. You’re too good for him, too decent … I’d think of something to say, all right.”

  “Please, Ric. Stop.”

  “Come on out to the car.”

  She sighed and nodded. He went ahead of her down the steps, shoulders braced, hands shoved into slack pockets. She glanced toward the bay. The rain was somehow held suspended, a few raindrops were blown in on gusts and then there was only the charged silence.

  They went around the house and across the yard, Ric striding ahead and Dolores trotting to stay at his heels. As she moved she tried to think of something that would send him away for good, but she could think of nothing. Even if she told him that she didn’t love him, had never loved him, he wouldn’t believe her. People never believed that truth. It would only rouse his anger more.

  Ric pulled open the door of his three-year-old Ford. She glanced at him but his face was cold, set against her. She got in the car, struck by pungent odors of gun oil and whisky.

  “Ric, you’ve been drinking.”

  “I been waiting for you. What should I do?”

  “Oh, Ric, you’ve got to stop this.”

  He laughed, a savage sound in the closed car. “Stop what? Stop loving you? How do I stop loving you, Dolores? How do I turn it off?”

  She shook her head, knotting her fists in her lap. “Ric. This is no good.”

  “What’s no good? You mean I got no right to wait here for you when you’re out laying with that fine boss?”

  “Ric!”

  “Well, it’s the truth, ain’t it?” He spoke in helpless savagery; before he’d always been so careful with her. Now he’d lost her, he knew he’d lost her, it didn’t matter what he said, what he did: he was lost anyhow.

  “No.”

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  Her voice was cold. “Ric, I wouldn’t lie to you about anything. I would tell you the truth. About this, I certainly would. But it’s not true.”

  He wasn’t tortured enough, he had to twist the knife in himself. “Do you love him?”

  “Stop tormenting yourself.”

  “Do you?” He crushed her arms in his hands, hurting.

  “I think so. All right. Yes. I love him.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Ric, I didn’t want to hurt you. But you’ve got to know the truth.”

  “The truth. That you love that stinking rich bastard? Jesus, Dolores. I don’t know how to tell you, you’re all I got left. The last thing in Christ’s world. They’ve taken everything else from me. He can’t have you. I won’t let him.”

  “Ric. He didn’t. I don’t love you.”

  He didn’t even hear her. “If I ain’t got you, I got nothing.”

  “Ric, it would be better if we stopped seeing each other. So much better. For both of us.”

  “For both of us?” He heard this, and snarled at her. “You don’t care about both of us — you just want me out of the way for a while so you can play around with this guy — and then come back when you’re tired of him — ”

  “No, Ric. No.”

  “You want me to stay away so you can lay that old guy — ” He laughed at her, a choked sound. “He’s been married once — a dame he couldn’t satisfy, couldn’t keep. God knows, I know plenty about her.
If he was no good for her, what does he want with another one? He couldn’t keep her — so now he comes smelling around, messing you up.”

  “Ric, this isn’t helping anything.”

  “What’s the matter? Can’t you take the truth? That son-of-a-bitch cattin’ around! And what does that make you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I can tell you what it makes you.”

  “I don’t want you to.”

  “Well, you might as well get used to hearing it. It makes you his slut.”

  She reached for the doorhandle. “Goodbye, Ric.”

  He caught her shoulders and jerked her around to face him. “Where you think you’re going, slut?”

  “Ric.” She shook her head, eyes brimmed with tears. “You got no right to talk to me like this.”

  “Why not? What else are you? Catting around with a man old enough to be your father. What about us?”

  “I told you, Ric. Oh, I tried to tell you.”

  His fingers closed on her shoulders, bruising her. He shook her. He didn’t want to hear the truth. He closed his ears and his mind against it.

  He pressed his face close to hers. She was aware of the heat and smell of whisky on his breath. She felt nauseated and tried to pull away. He wouldn’t let her move. Lightning snapped, thunder rattled outside the closed car. They were not aware of it. Gusts of wind shook the car on its frame and they didn’t notice. Sudden rain slapped at the windows. Dolores could think only that she had to get away from him. She’d tried to be nice to him, that didn’t help, wasn’t any good. If she got away from him now she’d never see him again. She owed him nothing, she’d tried to tell him but until now, tonight, she’d never actually hated and despised him.

  And Ric could think only that he could not let her go. She was the last thing he had in the world and he could not lose her. If he lost her he wouldn’t even want to go on living. He wouldn’t lose her, he wouldn’t let her go. Somehow, he’d make her come to her senses, if he had to beat some sense into her. She loved him, she’d always loved him, she was all he had left.

  His face was twisted. His voice shook. “What’s he got, Dolores? What’s he got that’s so wonderful?”

  “I don’t know.”