A Kiss Before Loving Read online

  Bigelow was carried away. He stopped pacing and pointed his finger at Shell. “You’ll move in here with me, but we’ll tell it the other way. We’ll pretend I’m a guest of yours. Does she know who I am? Do they run the Bobby strip in your home-town paper?”

  “We read the Cincinnati papers. They run it there. She knows who you are, all right.”

  “Fine. I can be one of your celebrity friends.”

  “We’d never get away with it.”

  “Sure we would. You haven’t heard all of it. We’ll round up a bunch of the Left Bank crowd — artists, poets, a few of those titled refugees who haven’t got a pot to plant a flower in but do have real titles, real manners and accents. We’ll throw a party to end all parties. I doubt if this Connie girl friend of yours knows the names of any French artists except, perhaps, Picasso and we can tell her he’s out of town. We’ll fake a telegram saying he’s sorry he can’t come and meet your girl.”

  As the idea grew with the telling, Bigelow Warren became more and more happy with it.

  “Yeah, fine,” Shell resisted. “But sooner or later it comes to an end. You might think it was fun for a while, but you’re not going to carry my load for the rest of all eternity.”

  “No, this is our out. After the big party, you’ll get a telegram. From, say, the government Senegal, down in Dakar. They’re opening up a new a stration building and want you to do a tremendous mural for them. You can’t afford to miss the honor and prestige, so you sadly tell Connie you can’t possibly take her to such a dangerous place as Africa and send her packing home.”

  “Good grief,” Shell said. “She’d have the time of her life, wouldn’t she?”

  Bigelow tossed up his hands as though it were all solved. “Sure, she would,” he agreed. “And then you could break it all off later, someway or other. You’d be over this temporary emergency, at least.”

  Shell said, licking his lower lip nervously, “I’d have to cable her immediately, giving this address.”

  “Yep. And I’ll inform the desk about the change in name. I’ll tell them I want to register under the pseudonym Shelley Halliday, so I won’t be bothered by newspaper reporters and celebrity hunters.”

  “Biggy, I think it might work,” Shell said, enthusiastic at last.

  “Sure it’d work. It’s a cinch.”

  Shell was suddenly deflated. “But I can’t ask you to do anything like this. It’d louse up your whole trip.”

  “Look who’s beginning to develop a conscience after all these years,” Bigelow laughed.

  Shell flushed.

  The big man put a hand on his shoulder. “Take it easy, fella. I came over here to have a good time. Fine. This comes under that heading as far as I’m concerned. You living in this suite with me isn’t going to cramp my style. In fact, I was considering asking you to move in for the duration of my stay, anyway. Much easier for you to keep your eye on me when I get stoned.”

  Shell stood up and took his turn at the pacing. “It’d probably work,” he said.

  “That’s what I tell you,” Bigelow said plaintively. “Now go send your cable to her. We’ll do some serious drinking until she arrives.”

  “You know, Biggy,” Shell said slowly, “you aren’t the worst bastard in the world.”

  “That’s what I keep telling people,” Bigelow laughed. “But nobody believes me. Now go get your cable off. You don’t want her coming to the wrong address.”

  Shell walked toward the door and then turned back. He said, “How come you never got married, Biggy? You’ve got everything to give a woman.”

  The other’s laugh didn’t quite come off. He said, “Once I was going with a girl and one night I said to her, ‘Kate, let’s get married,’ and she said, ‘It’s a great idea, Biggy, but who’d have either of us?’”

  “Very funny,” Shell said.

  • • •

  After the other had gone, Bigelow Warren looked sourly at the door. How come he’d never married? That was a good question.

  He went back to the bar and took up the bottle of Scotch. No, damn it, he was going to stick to brandy, French cognac. He took up a bottle of Courvoisier and stared at the label. V.S.O.P. Twenty years old. Okay, we’ll see if this winds up with a hangover.

  How come he’d never got married? That was a laugh.

  He opened the bottle, tossed the cork into a corner, selected a snifter glass and made his way back to the divan.

  He poured a couple ounces and, instead of savoring the bouquet or flavor, tossed it back over his palate. The blood, sweat and tears of the French vintners who had produced the elegant beverage was not being appreciated at the moment. Biggy was only interested in the dulling effect their product would produce.

  Shell had probably thought he was joking, but Bigelow Warren hadn’t been. Who’d have him as a husband? Certainly no woman with normal desires and needs. Sure, he could find a thousand bitches who’d marry him for the money Bobby brought in, stay with him for a year or so, and then retire on the alimony. And there’d be no doubt about that. Any court in the land would grant a divorce to the wife of Bigelow Warren. Incompatibility.

  He poured another slug of the cognac.

  That Shell Halliday boy was in a bad way. Shell was a better man than he himself realized. He was becoming increasingly cynical about the hand-to-mouth ways he’d worked out to keep himself going but, fundamentally, Shell’s instincts were good. He was simply going through an agonizing period of his life, caught up in a situation not actually of his own making. He’d get through it, one way or another, Bigelow was sure. Given good instinct, you got over the rough stretches, somehow.

  He knocked the brandy back and poured still another. He was really beginning to feel the day’s drinks by now.

  What was it Shell had said? How come he, Bigelow, had never married? He had everything to give a woman.

  Bigelow grunted. He had nothing to give a woman. That was the point.

  He wished he had some cashew nuts. For some reason, he felt like sitting here, drinking Napoleon brandy and nibbling cashew nuts until the fog rolled in.

  Why hadn’t he ever married? He bet some of his friends figured he was as queer as a three-dollar bill.

  The snifter glass was empty. He hadn’t remembered drinking the last slug he’d poured. He decided, owlishly, that there was no use just sitting here and pouring a short snort at a time. He filled the big glass nearly to the brim.

  When had it first happened? He could remember perfectly well, as clearly as though it had been last week instead of when he’d been a high school boy of fifteen or sixteen. Fifteen, not sixteen …

  Laurie must have been at least a couple of years older, and a millennium older when it came to know-how. Up until then, Bigelow’s experience had been limited to frantic necking and to wrestling with girls of his own age for the privilege of a hastily squeezed budding breast, or a hot moist hand run up under a disarranged dress to the pantieline. But Laurie? Laurie must have lost that thing most women prize when she was no older than twelve or thirteen, and Laurie had never missed it.

  The only reason she’d come out with him at all was that, even at fifteen, Bigelow had the use of the family sedan and a comfortable allowance from his sales executive father. She’d been scornful of his age, but Bigelow had persisted. His contemporaries had plenty to say about Laurie, and he wanted to give it a try.

  Yes, how easily it came back to him now.

  After the movie, they sat in the back of the car, parked down in the Lake Hill district, far into the shade of the trees.

  He’d never been with a girl who didn’t protest every step he took, every kiss granted, and he was surprised when Laurie made no protest over his fumblings. Laurie was different. If anything, she was the aggressor, and he was nonplused.

  She didn’t mind having her blouse unbuttoned and then actually removed. His hands were moist as he fingered her hard-tipped breasts. He’d heard the more experienced say that the thing to do was play with a girl’s
breasts a little. Made her want it.

  She stirred impatiently, her tongue darting into his mouth. He’d never had a girl do that before. But he’d heard about it. A soul kiss. He drew back a moment. He didn’t know if he liked it or not. Kind of sloppy. At fifteen, Bigelow Warren was only a year removed from that period when he had sneered at association with girls.

  “What’s the matter?” she said impatiently.

  “Nothing.” He fumbled with her breasts some more.

  “Well . .?” she said.

  He didn’t know what was the matter with her, but her obvious impatience made him nervous.

  He ran his hand up her skirt, expecting the usual playful objections, and planned on being more firm than he would have with Rachel or, say, Diana Perry.

  There was no need for being firm, for wrestling or coaxing. And, to his shock, Laurie wore nothing beneath the skirt, nothing whatsoever.

  That stopped him for a moment. He’d been planning his campaign, figuring on how to get her panties off, and here she wore none.

  She said, all but bitterly now, “What’re you waiting for?”

  “Eh?” he said.

  “We can’t take all night.”

  He swallowed. “Okay,” he said, tentatively and timidly lifting her skirt.

  “Here,” she said, and her voice was dripping with scorn now.

  He hated himself for being so obviously inadequate. He imagined all the other guys must know exactly what to do under these circumstances. But, doggonnit, you had to start sometime.

  She began fiddling with his clothes. That came as another shock. Always with Rachel, Rita and the others he’d been the aggressor, they the defenders of the fortress. But Laurie reached and found him wanting. She relaxed suddenly and slumped back, saying bitterly, “I should’ve known better.”

  “What’s the matter, Laurie?” His voice was shaky.

  “Oh, shut up,” she said. “I shoulda known better than to rob the cradle.”

  His throat closed up. “What’s the matter?” he asked hoarsely.

  “Oh, go on home, little boy,” she snapped. “And don’t come around grown people till you learn how to follow through.”

  A chill went through his body.

  That’s as far as memory went. Bigelow Warren didn’t remember the trip home. He couldn’t remember if he’d driven her home or if she’d walked, or what. All he remembered was his shame and disgrace.

  That was the end of that memory of inadequacy, but there were others.

  His second chance had been with a divorcee of possibly thirty years, a woman with four children, aged from three to ten. And it had taken place when Bigelow was seventeen and already large for his age.

  She’d been a little wisp of a woman, and very nervous about what they were doing. The encounter took place in her small home, and she was terrified that one of the children might come in. She was also afraid of possible pregnancy and insisted that he go to the drugstore for equipment.

  By the time he returned, he had lost the passion they’d built up necking in the front room. However, she took him to her bedroom and there began stripping, still murmuring unhappily about the children. Without clothing, and particularly without brassiere and girdle, she was suddenly metamorphosed into a physical something entirely outside of Bigelow’s experience. Four children and undisciplined eating habits hadn’t done her body a great deal of good.

  Bigelow’s experience with the female form had been confined to the photographs and pin-up girls in such magazines as Esquire, to statues in the museums, to girls in one-piece bathing suits on the beach. He’d never seen a fully matured woman nude before.

  Something went out of him. He just couldn’t.

  She had been kind enough about it. She was mature enough to understand. Possibly she’d had failures before. Bigelow had stumbled from the house, his face flaming with embarrassment.

  The next chance? Had that been the time he was with Rita? At any rate, that, too, was a failure. As soon as the girl was convinced and ready for his advance, he’d thought about his two previous failures and a cold sweat broke out on him. He became completely inadequate. The two of them covered it over, pretending they hadn’t planned completion at all. They necked a little more, desultorily now, and then he took her home.

  And that night he had lain in bed, staring at the ceiling and feeling the chill of inadequacy go through him. It was then he realized that he wasn’t quite a man, that he couldn’t perform with a woman. He was — what was the term? — sterile. No, that wasn’t it. He was … impotent. The way old men got, when they were about seventy, or maybe not until as old as ninety. He’d read somewhere about some old duffer who gave his wife a baby at the age of ninety. And here he was, Bigelow Warren, impotent at only eighteen.

  The next memory came at the age of twenty, in the college years. The gang was celebrating something or other, probably a football victory, because Bigelow had been on the second team. At any rate, it was a celebration and they’d bought several gallons of bootleg applejack.

  One thing led to another. Parades, drinking, college songs, more drinking, a mad dash to escape pursuing cops — and, finally, a visit to a brothel.

  Bigelow had probably dragged his heels at that point, but he didn’t remember now. All that he remembered was that he was portioned out to a frowzy, flabby bottle-blonde who had efficiently conducted him to her cubicle-sized room and just as efficiently got him into bed and performed with him that act that thus far in life had been impossible for him. She performed it not once but thrice, and Bigelow remained until morning.

  Oh Lord, she had looked horrible in the morning. Disgusting, revolting, stomach-churningly repulsive, but he’d been able to function normally with her.

  And that had set the pattern. Drunk and with a professional, Bigelow Warren, no matter how disgusted he might be with himself, could enjoy a woman as well as the next man. Sober and with a girl who was willing to make love with him for his own sake, his own self, and he simply could not operate. It amounted to a mental block. It had been years now since he’d even tried. The embarrassment was too acute. To get a girl into bed, stark nude, and then find himself impotent and have to apologize to her, that was more than he was willing to try again.

  He realized that his problem should have been taken to a psychiatrist, but somehow he couldn’t face the requirement that he explain it all — his inadequacy, his fears of impotence which only brought on the very situation he dreaded. He just couldn’t have told anyone, not even a doctor.

  But that was how it stood. With what he considered a decent woman, Bigelow Warren was impotent. With a professional, he was as other men. So, obviously, marriage wasn’t for him. Under the surface of his sophistication, Bigelow Warren had a high regard for women and for the act of love, an almost sophomoric regard. He wouldn’t dream of getting drunk and going to bed with a woman he truly loved, and he knew that it was the only possible way he could satisfy his potential wife …

  The fog was beginning to roll in. Bigelow Warren closed one eye, the better to focus, and estimated the amount of cognac remaining in his bottle. One good slug. He poured it into his glass and, stiff-wristed, downed it.

  Let’s see. Now where was he?

  He was swacked, that was for sure. And that meant he was probably in Paris. He seldom went off the wagon except when he came to Paris.

  Well, if he was in Paris, where was Shell? He never got swacked in Paris without old Shell to watch over him. Wasn’t safe. Not the way he got swacked and lost all sense of time or vicinity.

  Which reminded him. How long had he been in Paris? He considered that for a moment, then got up and lurched to the sideboard. What he needed was a drink — and some cashew nuts. He had an appetite for cashew nuts and now that he thought about it, it seemed he’d had this appetite for a long time. The only bottle that was open was one of Scotch. He poured some into the snifter glass and regarded it accusingly. For some reason he couldn’t remember he’d sworn off Scotch. Well, h
e could figure it out later.

  He wondered where Shell was. Damn it, he shouldn’t be going out without his companion-guide-bodyguard. But he needed some cashew nuts, didn’t he? He tossed back the whiskey and made his way toward the door.

  It was at this point that the fog rolled in.

  Chapter Four

  BY THE TIME Shell Halliday got back to the George Fifth after sending his cable to Connie and collecting the more presentable of his things as well as his easel and other artistic trappings from his Left Bank hotel, it was getting well on into evening. He had no difficulty getting past the desk and into Bigelow Warren’s suite, although there was no answer to the phone. The management of the George Fifth was used to the cartoonist’s eccentricities. A guest moving in was not untoward.

  He had figured, when the phone wasn’t answered, that the big man had fallen asleep after Shell left. He was taken aback when he found the other had obviously gone out.

  It wasn’t safe for Bigelow Warren to be on the streets when in his cups — not even the streets of Paris. He could accumulate trouble without even trying.

  When Shell had first met the periodic alcoholic, it had been bad enough. Almost invariably the cartoonist would go on a several-day toot and wind up in the French equivalent of the drunk tank. French drunk tanks aren’t the best, especially when foreigners are involved. It usually took the assistance of the American Consulate and a French lawyer or two before Biggy was free to leave — and start in on a new binge.

  In fact, there had been some question at the time Shell had first met Bigelow whether or not the French were going to declare his passport invalid for their country. He’d been in too many drink-inspired escapades for even their tolerance.

  Yes, it had been bad enough three years ago, when Bigelow Warren had first met Shell. Now it was worse. At least at that time, the comic-strip artist had tried to place some limits upon himself, knowing that if he didn’t he’d wind up paying off the hard way. But now, since he’d found Shell to act as a combination guide, bodyguard, apologist and baby-sitter, Biggy had given up all restraints. On the town, and tight, he let the unruffled Shell take over responsibility, knowing the other could usually get him through the tight spots and back to the hotel and to bed when the time came.