A Kiss Before Loving Page 10

  What was it the newspaperman had said tonight at the Four Flushers? Oh, yeah. “Hell, he’s not drunk, I just saw him move.”

  What he meant was, the proof was right before his eyes — he couldn’t be drunk, otherwise he couldn’t have got this here key in the lock. There. That’s proof, isn’t it? There’s proof for you.

  Brother, did those characters at the Four Flushers pour it down. Newspapermen. And those diplomats. Ha, diplomats. He’d have to work something into Bobby about diplomats. No wonder they fouled up the world the way they did. Who wouldn’t with the kinda hangovers those boozers must have?

  The door swung open.

  The apartment was but dimly lit. Old Shell, good old Shell, must have gone to bed. Well, this was one night he’d got along without his good old seeing-eye dog, Shell. Got back to the hotel all by hisself, didn’t he?

  He wove into the living room. He deserved a drink. Gave a brilliant talk to the boys tonight. Had them all sick to the stomach laffing so hard. Glad he stuck to cognac. Now, no hangover in the morning. Good old Jerry Whatever-his-name-was, in Philly, had told him about cognac. No hangover. Trouble was, he usually forgot to stick to it after he’d had a few. But tonight he had. He’d told the bartender at the Four Flushers not to give him anything but cognac, no matter what he ordered.

  He stared at the couch.

  “Be damned,” Biggy muttered. He nudged the other. Shell snored on, his mouth slack. “Out like a light,” Bigelow muttered. “Don’t believe I ever saw old Shell really stoned before.”

  He shrugged and headed for the sideboard, feeling strangely lifted that he was still on his feet while Shell was out.

  A voice from the bedroom pulled him up sharp.

  “I’m ready, darling.”

  Bigelow blinked.

  He looked back at the collapsed figure of his friend on the couch, then at the bedroom door.

  Then he grumbled inner laughter. Old Shell had picked himself up one of those Left Bank semipros, most likely, and brought her back to the suite. Bigelow wondered how he’d ever managed to smuggle her past the desk. The George Fifth was touchy about such.

  “Darling,” the voice slurred from the inner room. “I’m ready.”

  Lord, she sounded ready. She sounded as though she’d put away a few herself. Probably not an out-and-out professional, just one of those ultra-loose-living friends of Shell’s.

  Bigelow came to a sudden decision, chuckling. He slipped out of his coat and tossed it aside. He noted Shell had already discarded his tie and that his shirt was unbuttoned halfway down. Biggy did the same.

  Then he went toward the bedroom door. He hoped the light had been turned off inside, otherwise it would never work.

  It was off, all right, and Connie, without even a nightgown in the way of protection, had regained a portion of her fears.

  As she felt his weight settle to the side of the bed, she murmured, “Oh, darling, be … be gentle.”

  “Ummm,” he said, reaching for her.”

  She realized briefly, faintly, that it shouldn’t have been this way, that they should never have decided upon this while they had been drinking. It was such a shame — the first time — to have been drinking.

  But she was ready for him. She needed him so badly. So many years to wait for what your body wanted, demanded for its fulfillment.

  He buried his face in her neck, and she could feel him nibble gently. She could feel his hands going everywhere, everywhere over her body. She wondered now if she shouldn’t have left some faint light on. But no, it would have been too embarrassing.

  In the back of her mind was a faint, faint disturbing thought. Shell seemed so large. She must really be drunk because she had thought earlier that he’d lost weight. But he seemed so big, so masculine. She smiled faintly to herself. She had nothing to compare this experience to — it was the first time she’d ever been in bed with a man.

  And she was enjoying it — no, that was too mild a word — she was loving it, loving it, loving it …

  She felt the strong hands taking up the manipulation of her breasts, she felt the mouth encircling a nipple and she sighed deeply, remembering that that’s where they had left off before — before she had broken away to prepare herself for this first time, this wedding night … the honeymoon.

  Now she knew that she had missed a great deal.

  A hand moved to her thigh, kneading, building a fire within her.

  “Oh, yes … yes …” she murmured and, involuntarily, her hand moved to encourage further and bolder intrusion. Her other hand sought her lover — oh, Shell, Shell — and she thrilled with her inordinate boldness.

  There was a sudden shifting of bodies, a protest from the bedsprings and she had a moment of returning panic.

  And then the sharp pain came, and she forgot about everything, particularly when the pain fell away in such a brief moment and she arched her hips up, receiving, and all was movement and straining.

  Vaguely, at the last moment, she thought, Shell should really take off some weight. Appearances are certainly deceiving.

  • • •

  Bigelow Warren awoke first in the morning. In fact, he had slept no more than two or three hours. When Bigelow was on the sauce he took his sleep, as he did his eating, philosophically. One time he’d sleep twenty hours through, again he’d go for forty-eight without touching a bed.

  He lay for a moment, staring up at the ceiling, not fully tight but still with alcohol’s grasp upon him. He tried to orient himself in time and location. He was drunk, so he must be in Paris. Yeah, but what was the time? — or the date, for that matter?

  He was conscious of a girl beside him, and part of the evening before came back to him. He was in his George Fifth suite and he’d pulled a joke on old Shell, laying the tart Shell had brought up to the suite.

  The room, its shades pulled, was still murkily dark. Moving as carefully as possible, he rolled from the bed. Behind him, the girl stirred in her sleep. The big cartoonist grinned and, taking up his clothes, tiptoed to the door and into the living room.

  Shell was still out like a light.

  Bigelow, highly amused by the situation, dressed silently and, still tiptoeing, went to the door and let himself out. He had a picture in his mind of Shell and the girl awakening later, and the girl demanding her pay while Shell denied he’d run up a bill.

  • • •

  Connie shook him.

  “Shell. Shell darling, what are you doing out here?”

  He came awake blearily and squinted up at her. She was completely dressed in her clothes of the day before.

  He shook his head for clarity, swung his feet around and to the floor. His head was pounding.

  He looked up at her again, pursing his lips. “Wow, I feel awful.”

  She seemed embarrassed for some reason or another. As though to cover up, she put a hand to her forehead and said, “And me! I’ve never, never drunk so much in all my life.”

  “I’ll have them send up some coffee and tomato juice,” Shell offered. He stood and walked over to the phone, moaning complaints.

  Connie said, hurriedly, “But … but what will they think? I mean, my spending the night here?”

  He picked up the phone. “Oh, did you? Didn’t you get to your room at all? Wow. I’ve done some drinking in my time, but I don’t ever remember going this far. I spent the whole night there on the couch.”

  She stared at him. “But, darling — ”

  “Oh, don’t worry about the service,” he continued, unaware of her reaction to his truthful statement. “For one thing, this is Paris, and they couldn’t care less. For another, you’re completely dressed — they have no way of knowing.”

  Into the phone he said, “Breakfast for two, please. Lots of tomato juice.”

  Her eyes were wide. “But darling …”

  He frowned at her. “What’s the matter, Connie?”

  “But … well, last night.”

  “What about last night? Admittedly
we overdid, but — ”

  “But, darling … you and me.”

  Now he was staring. Frankly, he couldn’t remember going to sleep, nor the details of their last moments together. “What’s the matter, Connie?”

  She was aghast. “But darling, we — ” Suddenly she had slumped to the couch he had occupied a moment before and her head was in her hands. “Now you don’t want me,” she said. “I … I shouldn’t have let you. Now you don’t want me. Now you’ll never marry me.”

  He didn’t get it. He didn’t begin to get it. He shook his head and said, “Wait a minute, honey. Let me throw some cold water on my face.”

  He went into the bedroom she’d occupied the night before and headed for the bath. But he got no further than halfway through the room before his eyes hit the rumpled condition of the bed. He stopped abruptly, did a double-take and understanding flooded over him. The meaning of Connie’s confusion hit him.

  There was no question about Connie Lockwood having been a virgin.

  He stumbled on into the bath, turned on the cold water and splashed his face repeatedly, his mind churning. He couldn’t remember it at all. Not at all. He couldn’t remember anything about it.

  Shell looked at himself in the mirror. His face was whiter than the aftereffects of the night before warranted. This really tore it.

  When he got back to the living room, Connie was sitting in one of the great chairs, her hands in her lap and her expression drawn. Her eyes were blinking, as though she were keeping tears back at considerable effort.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” Shell told her.

  “Sorry,” she said blankly.

  “I mean. Well, when I first awoke, I had forgotten. I guess I was pretty tight.”

  “But Shelley,” she said in a rush. “I … I don’t know much about such things … but, aren’t you supposed to do something … or me? I mean — ” Her face was flaming now and she put both hands to it. “A baby …” she wailed.

  Oh, good grief. He sat on the arm of her chair and put an arm around her. “Now honey …”

  “Shelley, Shelley, we can’t put it off any longer now. We … we will be married, won’t we?”

  She wasn’t able to see his face, so he allowed himself to cast his eyes upward in defeat.

  Married! He, Shell Halliday, married? Why, he was in no more position to be married than — than what? He couldn’t think of a comparison. It was just out, out of the question. Damn it, he needed time to think. What had got into him last night? Was he so stupid as not to realize that with girls like Connie these things were dead serious and for keeps? Not just a roll in the hay to be forgotten the day after.

  Married? Why, even given everything else, given a job, given a life worth the sharing, given everything that Connie needed to be happy in a marriage — how about him? Sure, as a high school kid, even during his college years, it was all Connie. But he wasn’t a student any more, he wasn’t a New Elba pseudo-artist any longer. He was the product of almost five years of hard living in the most cynically sophisticated city in the world. Was he interested in marriage to anyone at all? And, if so, was Connie the one?

  He didn’t know. He simply didn’t know.

  Meanwhile, her overly obvious distress, her real grief and fear was tearing him down. He wasn’t a heel, he told himself; he’d never been a heel.

  He got only part of what she was saying between sobs. If she’d only stop for a moment and let him get his bearings.

  He patted her shoulder uncomfortably, “Sure, Connie, of course. Don’t cry.”

  “You mean … you mean you did plan to marry me?”

  Oh Lord, what had he said?

  Well, was he a heel, or wasn’t he? The chips were down.

  He patted her shoulder. “Sure, honey, of course.”

  The emotional storm passed away magically. She was suddenly radiant and enthusiastic. “Oh, darling, how in the world can we announce our engagement over here? I don’t know anybody.”

  He licked dry lips. He wished Bigelow was around to advise him again. What had he gotten into? It was far, far too late now. He had to have time to think. To make some sort of plan. He had to get out of this situation.

  While his mind raced, seeking an avenue of escape that didn’t present itself, he was saying soothingly, “Bigelow Warren and I have been planning a special party for you, honey. Lots of my friends.”

  She was as pleased as a child, he thought glumly. If she’d suddenly begun clapping her hands and jumping up and down, he wouldn’t have been too surprised. That patina of sophistication she’d worn yesterday hadn’t proved to go very deep.

  “When? Oh, Shelley, I’ll have to buy a special dress.”

  “They have a few here in Paris,” he said wryly.

  She was on her feet now, radiant. The fears and tears of a moment before were gone as the snows of yesteryear. “When is it to be?”

  “Oh, we were waiting for you to show up. Tomorrow night, I suppose. We can arrange it for tomorrow.”

  Chapter Six

  HE HAD TO FIND BIGELOW. First of all, he had to talk to somebody and Bigelow Warren was the only friend he could think of. Besides wanting advice on his present situation with Connie, Shell was worried about the burly cartoonist. The idea had been that the other was to return immediately to the George Fifth after the Four Flushers Club banquet.

  He’d expected Bigelow to do some drinking at the affair, but the other had assured him that he’d return to the suite before taking off for any further rounds of the town. And you could usually trust Bigelow, even when drinking, to abide by a promise.

  The trouble probably was that the big man had gotten mixed up again in time and location. He probably figured it was a week earlier than reality — or even a week later. After a certain point, Biggy could manage to lose track of what year it was.

  Connie was gone. Off to the Champs Elysées shops to find a party dress, one suitable for announcing their engagement in. There was a double element in the distress he felt about her. He could hardly admit it to himself, but somehow the feeling for Connie wasn’t the same. The years had done something to the relationship. Attractive she was, more than ever, but … well, something seemed gone.

  It was pushing toward noon. He and Connie had slept late after the heavy drinking and late hours of the night before.

  He racked his brains. Where would Bigelow be this time of day? He had no idea if the cartoonist had been drinking steadily since the night before, or if he’d holed up somewhere, either with a friend, one of the new contacts he’d made at the Four Flushers Club last evening, or with some streetwalker. Shell well knew that after a few days of drinking, Bigelow Warren would often develop a taste for a woman — and by Shell’s standards, his taste wasn’t very good.

  That was one of the things Shell had often wondered about in his cartoonist friend. Bigelow seemed to have little, if any, interest in the charms of the women he came in contact with in either his business or his social life. Oh, he was courteous enough, charming enough — everybody liked Biggy — but even those women who made the most obvious plays for the big man, never seemed to get anywhere.

  Not that there seemed to be anything wrong in that department. He operated lustily enough with the professionals you could pick up around Pigalle at night or in the vicinity of the Madeleine in the afternoon.

  But the question now was, where in the devil was the man?

  It was a question which had presented itself before, all too often, and Shell went into his routine. He phoned those bars where he knew the help was acquainted with Warren — and drew a blank. That was bad. He was hoping the other was at Harry’s New York Bar, Fred Payne’s in Montmartre, or possibly the Flore or the Deux Magots in the St. Germain des Prés section.

  He snapped his fingers. That’s where Bigelow might be. At the Lipp, right across the street from the Deux Magots. It was an Alsatian bar-restaurant with some of the best brew in town. The idea was to order a sérieux, a gigantic glass of beer, and to sit at a
table on the sidewalk and watch the world go by. By nursing, you could drag out a sérieux for the whole afternoon. Not that Bigelow was ever the nursing type drinker, but it was a hot afternoon and this was the one time of day Biggy drank beer.

  No use phoning the Lipp, it wasn’t the kind of place where the manager was apt to know a customer by name. The American celebrity would be just one more tourist.

  Shell went up to the Franklin D. Roosevelt station on the Pont Neuilly-Vincennes metro line and took the subway to the Chatelet station, where he transferred to the Porte d’Orléans line, finally getting off at St. Germain des Prés in front of the Abbey.

  He crossed the street, nodded at a couple of acquaintances sunning themselves before the Deux Magots, and then crossed St. Germain to the Lipp.

  Shell had hit it on the button. There was Bigelow, weaving slightly in his chair, an amiable grin on his face, a half empty glass of dark Alsatian beer before him. He was seated at a table nearest to the passers-by and one of the waiters was eying him sadly. Biggy was obviously completely soused and no advertisement for the Lipp.

  Shell slipped into a chair across from him. “Hi, Biggy,” he said.

  “Shell, old boy,” Bigelow Warren said. “Where you been? I knew I was in Paris, all right, all right, because I’m drunk and I haven’t got drunk anywhere but in Paris in the past five years. This is Paris, isn’t it? They got sidewalk cafés in Rome, too, you know. Yep, it must be Paris because you live in Paris. What’s the date, Shell?”

  Shell told him. It didn’t seem to make much of an impression on the big cartoonist.

  “Look, Bigelow, remember I told you about my girl coming?” Shell asked.

  “Yep. We sure fixed that, didn’t we?”

  “Not yet, Biggy. We’re going to fix it,” Shell said patiently.

  The other looked at him apologetically. “I guess I’m mixed up, Shell. I thought we handled that a month or so ago.”

  “Come on, Biggy, we’re going to the sauna,” Shell told him.

  The other was hurt. “You mean that overgrown steam bath where the female wrestler comes in while you’re stark naked and beats the bejazus out of you with a bundle of thorns?”