Pulling A Train Read online

  “Adam was much fatter than you.” She replied, a pixie grin replacing the smile. “And besides, I think I can trust you. Any man who can afford a Leica doesn’t have to pick up girls in the Park.”

  I was surprised that she recognized my camera, and even more surprised at her logic which, crazy as it was in an era when you can buy a hot Hasselblad on most street corners for sixty bucks, sounded logical. Nuts, but logical.

  So we were off. In a little while most of my tongue-tootled attitude wore off, and I found I could speak almost coherently. I posed her in front of a statue of Pulaski; I posed her on a bench with her skirt up a bit; I posed her playing with two little children and their bastard-hound; I must have taken ten rolls of color on her before she took my hand and led me out of the Park.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, feeling foolish as hell. A man is supposed to be master of these situations, and I felt like a Pekingese on a leash.

  “You have a studio, don’t you?” she inquired demurely.

  I guess I bobbed my head stupidly in agreement, because the next time I took a breath, we were leaving the cab in front of my building, downtown, and the doorman was holding open the door for us, staring at her, just staring, staring.

  The minute she got inside the door to my studio, the first thing she said was, “My name is Nedra. May I take off my clothes?”

  What the hell do you say? Sure you can take off your clothes.

  So she did. Or started to, anyhow. “Let me take some snaps of you undressing,” I said, knowing damned well few girls who aren’t pro models will let you shoot that kind of thing; don’t ask me why; maybe because they’re the sexiest shots in the world.

  “Okay,” she said, and started in.

  She stepped up onto the model’s pedestal I have in the studio, and began taking off that pale blue poorboy jersey. Now, hold it a second.

  You’d better understand this.

  She wasn’t doing a strip. None of that chubby housewife trying to hold onto her fat-assed hubby by learning to belly dance or excite him with “imaginative sex” fantasies bullshit.

  She was doing it for me, of course; I’d asked her if I could take the shots, for God’s sake! But she wasn’t trying to do it to me; do you know what I’m saying here? There’s nothing more cornball than some female trying to pull a Theda Bara, batting her eyelashes and all turkey-flapping with what “family-programmed” television and sexploitation films have conned her into believing is a turn-on. Jesus, it’s a puker.

  No, there wasn’t any of that going down. She was just doing it…for me…at me…but not purposely to me…

  Click!

  The sweater was stuck in the top of her skirt. She yanked at it, and it came loose, dragging up the top of her black lace panties, too. My eyes had trouble focusing on the camera. She pulled the sweater off, letting her arms go back and her breasts jut out at me, and the sweater fell down behind her, off the pedestal, onto the floor. Her breasts were just as I’d imagined them in the sweater.

  Click!

  They were large and round, and they stayed where they were. But then, they must have been where they were all the time, because, you see, she didn’t have on a brassiere. Then she unfastened the catch on the side of the skirt.

  Click!

  I watched her, and the thought that this girl was going a lot further than was expected for just a little modeling hit me right in the head. Was she a nympho, who let every guy pick her up? Was she a psycho? What was the score?

  To hell with Click!

  I dumped the camera and moved toward her. She stood there, naked but for the black lace panties, and her breath was coming with difficulty, rasping in and out faintly. Her hands were quivering. Then I was beside her, and I slid my arms around her. She was on the pedestal, and I locked hands behind her, the smooth curve of her strange and wonderful to me. I let my hands slide up to the small of her back, down to the indentations where her legs joined her trunk. Was this girl real? Was all this happening to me? Then she bent, and she kissed me.

  Then she bit my lip. She bit me right where I’d bitten myself, and I felt the trickle of salty warmth, and her tongue smoothed over it, and I felt her shudder.

  I stood up, from where I’d slumped against the pedestal, and let my hand slide under her legs at the knees, the other behind her back, turning her to me, lifting her, cradling her in my arms.

  Then we were in the bedroom, and she was on the white sheets, whiter than they could ever hope to be, with that flame hair and those hell-green eyes staring at me.

  Without movement, without time, without the feeling of penetration, it was done, her voice dying stillborn, and her hands scraping terribly at my back.

  My God! It was unbelievable.

  Neither one of us thought about rest, or food, or anything else, much less photography, till an hour ago. I woke up and looked across at her. Even after the passion-effort I’d expended, and the fatigue coursing through me, she still looked untouched and magnificent; her hair an amber aurora sprayed out across the rumpled pillow, her eyes closed, and her breath shallow. I felt weak in every muscle, every joint. My back was ripped from the sharpness of her nails, and my lips were raw. It had been so unlike any other thing I knew, I couldn’t let her go. I had to have Nedra around all the time.

  I lay there for a few minutes, and then the excitement of those films I’d taken earlier sent me out of bed. I grabbed my bathrobe and got the rolls of film from my case, flipped the last one out of the camera, and made for the darkroom.

  They developed nicely, and they were clear as hell. Some of the best shots I’d ever taken. I’m standing here looking at them now.

  There’s just one thing wrong with them. It must be a trick of the light or something…or something…

  But here are the pictures I took in the Park. Here’s the fountain, and the two children with the hound, and the bench, and the trees and the sky and the river and the grass, and everything…

  But no Nedra.

  Yeah. That’s right. Everything else in perfect focus but there isn’t a sign of her in any of the shots. I’ve got the pedestal, and the backdrop and the apartment and the shadows, but no shadow of Nedra. In fact, no Nedra at all.

  But she’s no figment of my imagination. That’s for sure. A girl with a horizontal mind like that couldn’t be imaginary. I just don’t believe in anything like that.

  Well, when she wakes up, I’ll go in and just ask her what she’s…oh, hi!

  I was just coming in to wake you. Say, look at these crazy pix I shot of you today. Aren’t they screwy? You just didn’t photograph. You know, I was thinking all sorts of crazy stuff, and listen to this, this is the craziest thing yet.

  I started to think, and the only kind of person I could think of who doesn’t reflect in a mirror, or who won’t show up on a photo…now I know it’s crazy, it must have been the light or something, but…

  Nedra!

  The Bohemia of Arthur Archer

  (as by “Cordwainer Bird”)

  STANDING OUTSIDE THE DOOR of the Greenwich Village cold-water flat, Arthur Archer—blond and tall—turned to Burt Simmons—short and sweaty—and asked: “How’re chances of getting laid tonight?”

  From inside the apartment could be heard the mingled mangling of party voices. Bert let the corner of his mouth curl, and he said: “Five to one, Artie boy. If there’s five girls here tonight…you’ll get one.

  “The odds go up proportionately; nine-to-two, thirteen-to-three, hell, you understand.”

  Arthur grinned his which-way-is-the-meat grin, and nodded. “I understand.” Bert knocked on the door.

  It slid open of its own weight, unlocked, and Arthur Archer got his first look at a Bohemian party in the Village.

  It was straight out of Dante. Or perhaps Lewis Carroll. Or someplace, anyhow. Arthur stopped just inside the door, as Bert brushed past screaming, “Deidre, baaaby!” He let the dull-faced girl with the poodle-cut take his summer hat, and he stared.

 
; It was a wild mixing of color and sound. There were at least a hundred people crammed into the apartment, and more, Arthur was sure, were in the other rooms. Bert had told him earlier: “This was an old hotel, but they divided it up into apartments. Deidre’s place has eight bedrooms, so if you latch onto something good, don’t wait till the end of the evening to drag her back to bed…because they usually pair off and seek solitude about two, three o’clock in the A.M.”

  And Arthur, fresh from college and home for the summer with his fraternity brother Bert, wanted very much to latch onto a girl.

  So he let his gaze slide around the room, taking in all the confusion and madness of the party. One fellow, with hair that hadn’t been cut, obviously, since Barbara Fritchie hung her flag out the window, was doing an involved African war-step in the middle-center of the dimly lit room. He was going, “Hoo ha, hoo ha, ugga, ugga, ugga!” and mincing about on his toes, arms flailing wildly.

  A second joker was perched cross-legged atop the tv, a bath towel wrapped around his head, swami-fashion, and telling the fortunes of three gigglingly attentive girls—all buck-toothed or wearing horn-rimmed glasses. These are girls? These are people? Arthur thought in amazement.

  A girl with a twitch, and a ponytail nestling in the small of her back, was sitting in the center of a group of people, reading from the works of Edith Sitwell, in a deep and emphatic voice, each word laced with significance.

  Arthur found all this hard to believe. He was a college man, he was reasonably mature, and he was sure he had winnowed the chaff of fable from the wheat of life’s reality. But here was a cliché coming true. He’d heard of Bohemian parties, but this seemed to be a tourist’s dream. Abruptly, he felt Bert’s hand on his bicep, and turned. Bert had a young girl in tow—one with lips that were so thin they looked as though an artist had lined them in with charcoal; glasses black and forbidding; a chest that was the nearest thing to inverted he had ever seen on a woman; eyes that bugged so, they looked as though they were attempting to leave her head, just to say hello.

  “Art, this is Deidre…this is her place. She threw the party.”

  The goggle-eyed goblin extended a hand, grabbed Art’s own, and crushed it systematically. “Individualist!” she said, much too loudly.

  “Pardon?” Art asked.

  “Said individualist! Want you to be individualist! Make self at home. Worry about nothing. Leave everything to me. Be gay. Have fun. Read you later.”

  And she was gone, lost in the maze of flesh, sound and scent.

  Arthur felt as though he had left his head in a cocktail shaker for a while. “Does, uh, does she always talk in telegram-talk that way?” he demanded of Bert, confusedly.

  Bert grinned fatuously. They were fraternity brothers, and he had seen things come so easy to the tall, blond Archer, he was inwardly pleased when someone or something confused him. “Uh-uh. Last year it was epigrams. She’d wander up when you came in, and say, ‘What is it that an old man watches, that a young girl can have, that a koala bear cannot understand?’”

  “Well, what’s the answer?”

  Bert spread his hands. “A good time. That’s what she told me—like I was dumb or something—just a good time. Then she says, ‘Have one,’ and walks away to her other guests.”

  “This makes sense to you?”

  “C’est ca,” Bert replied, grinning wider still. “Look, brother Arthur, we got into this party only because I used to run with some of the artists from the Village before I went off to State to become buddy-buddy with you. So take what you see at face value, don’t question, and hope you wind up with a face that has some value.” He wandered away looking for the bar. Or the jug. Or the sneaky pete. Or anybody who had wet lips.

  Arthur watched the mad goings-on in the living room for a few more minutes, and then decided to see what was happening in the other eight rooms of the monstrous apartment.

  Several doors were closed, and when he attempted to open one—obviously a bedroom—he was greeted by a shout of, “Shut the goddam door…we’re busy!”

  He smiled hopelessly, wishing he were busy, and went down the long hall, in the direction of noise, music and whistles.

  It was a dining room, but the table had been cleared to the side, where people sat and stood on it. The crowd was even larger here and he immediately saw why.

  A girl was dancing in the center of the room. The lights were down to one wall-bracket, casting a yellow glow, and someone had turned on a calypso record. The girl was moving slowly, sensually, to the beat of the drums, the sound of the fife, the plunk of the guitar.

  She was obviously looped to the ears, but on her—it looked just the other side of wonderful.

  All the rest of these characters had seemed like maniacs, Bohemians or not. (And he was quite certain he despised Bohemianism!) They had seemed like oddball, pointless crap.

  But this one wasn’t pointless.

  Uh-uh! She was pointy as a hound-dog.

  He stared at her open-eyed. She was almost as tall as he, with hair tied into the usual ponytail. But hair that was a starkly inviting blue-black, and ponytail twisted painstakingly into a spiral. It hung to her narrow shoulders, and set off the tan of her face beautifully. She wore a tight black sweater that threatened to burst its seams at any instant, a white skirt that swirled as she stepped, lifting high to reveal slim legs and white thighs above the tightly-gartered stocking-tops, and high heels. He ran back up from the feet to the head, stopping for a long moment at the chest.

  This for the entire summer! Arthur thought tightly.

  He shoved his way through the crowd, watching her flashing legs, her gorgeous body. He came to the front edge of the group of stamping, whistling, chortling Bohemians and watched her face as she moved. She seemed almost unaware anyone was in the room with her. Looped, yes, but something more. Her eyes were the deepest black he’d ever seen. Slanted just a bit—Eurasian parents?—and the cheekbones were high. Her mouth was a full, subtle, hungry-looking thing, and she wore that rarity, light purple lipstick—and wore it well.

  “Who is she?” Arthur inquired of a dumpy, curlyheaded boy next to him.

  “That’s Christie Mayland,” he answered, as though the serf had just asked who the King was.

  He turned away from the curlyhead, continued watching her. Christie, when drunk, was an only slightly less appealing entity than when sober. And to Arthur, she was more appealing. Her eyes had acquired—with the liquor—a sheen, a depth, a more irresistible hunger than before. She had the unconscious habit of running her pink, pink tongue-tip over her full lips. Christie was moving sinuously, her hands live things, exploring her body, motioning and beckoning. Her small feet moved in involved steps, and her hair bobbed like a caged reptile in its ponytail binding.

  “Man, she is great!” Arthur murmured.

  “Yeah. She’s a stripper in a club down here in the Village,” the dumpy curlyhead inserted.

  Arthur tossed him a fast glance, not wanting to take his eyes from the rounded mounds of her breasts. “It figures.”

  The beat of the music swelled, and Arthur remembered a scene like this at a fraternity stag party one night, when they had gotten a stripper drunk, and hot, and they’d clamored for Arthur to dance with her. “Sock it to her, Artie! Dance, Artie! Go, go, go, go!” And Artie, slightly tight himself, had danced with the stripper till they were both nude.

  This was the same thing. With a roomful of Bohemians. But still…

  The guitars beat over and over in repetition, and Arthur stood at the edge of the crowd, hardly realizing he was inching into the cleared space where the beautiful Christie Mayland danced. Christie moved carefully—still stoney drunk!—arching her back, switching her full hips. She had a close, tight walk, and the skirt swirled with every movement, till she grasped it and pulled it tight to her legs, sheathing them, so every muscular ripple shivered the material.

  She was getting set to pull it up over her head, start her strip routine, and then Arthur stepped in
, took her in his arms, and whirled her in traditional dance-steps.

  Everyone in the room groaned. They had thought they were going to see more of Christie’s bare flesh. Now her dance had been cut short right at the hot part. Arthur wasn’t quite sure why he had done it; somehow he couldn’t see her revealing all that loveliness to a roomful of schnooks.

  That stuff is for me only, he thought, spinning the suddenly limp Christie in his arms.

  “Come on, let her finish!” one fellow yelled, but Arthur gripped her all the closer, feeling the rounded firmness of her warm breasts pressing through his shirt.

  Then, Christie began to struggle. She squirmed for release, and finding it more difficult than she had thought, brought her high-heeled foot down on Arthur’s foot. He howled and stepped back.

  “Goddam conformisht!” she yelled, her beautiful mouth opening to show white, even teeth. “You aren’t even a li’l bit Bohemyun! Goddam conformisht, breakin’ up my act!”

  She stepped toward him, her slap formed and ready to be delivered. Arthur took a half-step backward, and grabbed her as she swung. She tumbled into his arms, cold faint, and limp as an old shoestring.

  “Which way is an empty bedroom, where I can toss her to sleep?” Arthur demanded. Nobody answered. They glared at him unhappily.

  Exasperated, Arthur shoved through the crowd, back down the long hall, till he came to an open door. It was one of the many bedrooms—and empty. He kicked it open, angled inside with Christie still inert in his arms, kicked it shut, and fumbled in the darkness along the wall for a light switch. When he found it, he clicked light into the room, and tossed Christie unceremoniously on the bed. Her skirt billowed as she bounced on the mattress, and settled about her hips, the long, delicious legs revealed in their nylon sheaths.

  Arthur locked the door and flopped into a chair.

  Here was a problem of the first magnitude.

  As if to accentuate it, Christie sat up blearily, her arms straight back behind her in support, and mumbled, “I wouldn’ do it with you if you were the onny guy in thish whole worl’…goddam conformisht!” And flopped back dead-asleep.