A Kiss Before Loving Page 9

  Shell checked his wallet quickly. He was in abnormally good financial shape. Bigelow made a point each evening, before they started out, of handing Shell a couple of hundred francs for reserve money so that his companion could pay part of the bills and avoid appearing to be a free-loader. Biggy was thoughtful about such things. Besides that, Shell had few expenses living here at the George Fifth and taking his meals with the cartoonist or merely putting them on the hotel’s tab. He even still had some of the money that he’d got that evening he took Sissy on her pub crawl.

  His mind raced. This wasn’t going to be as simple as Bigelow had contended. Shell had a double problem. He’d have to keep watch on the cartoonist and at the same time he’d have to spend time with Connie. He was going to be hard put to keep the girl from wondering why he didn’t spend all his hours with her, instead of pub-crawling with Bigelow.

  He snapped his fingers. With Bigelow accounted for at the Four Flushers Club, he could safely take the time to escort her out for dinner. Bigelow would be out until late and Shell would even have time for a few night spots. He’d better do it tonight, while he had the chance.

  Connie returned, her face fresher, her make-up new. She said, “Did you say Bigelow Warren?”

  “That’s right,” Shell said.

  “You mean the man who does Bobby?”

  Shell poured himself another drink, handed her hers. “Yeah, that’s Biggy,” he said casually.

  Connie was impressed. “And he’s staying here with you?”

  “That’s right. Look, Connie, have you eaten?”

  “On the plane.”

  “Economy class? Terrible. Let’s go out and have a bite. You’re not too tired, are you? We could have the hotel send up something.”

  “Oh, Shell, let’s go to one of those bistros you’re always writing about.” All of a sudden it all seemed to come home to her. She was with Shell again. She was in Paris. Paris! — where everything was allegedly beautiful, sparkling and young. Where there were no troubles and humanity’s grossness sloughed away, snake-skin-like.

  He struck a pose. “A bistro it is. We’ll find the most wonderful bistro in Paris! For Connie Lockwood’s first meal in the city of gourmets!”

  She took up his spirit. Arm in arm they marched from the suite and, ignoring the elevators, down the curved stairway, through the ornate lobby — to a salute of grins from both hotel employees and guests at their obvious joy in life — and to the street.

  “A cab, Monsieur Halliday?” Nicolas said, dead pan. The former Cossack had seen joie de vivre sail forth into the sea of Paris before, usually returning in the wee hours in the form of a hangover.

  “A cab, Nicolas? Fie on you. On such a glorious night?” Shell demanded loftily.

  Connie giggled. Oh, this was Paris, all right.

  They swept on.

  • • •

  In a fashion, it was a duplication of the evening he’d spent not too long ago with Sissy Patterson and Mike Brett-James. It hadn’t started off that way. He’d had in mind an excellent but unostentatious meal in one of the spots he truly appreciated, one of the minor restaurants untouched by the expensive tourist finger, possibly in the Halles district, or the Sorbonne section where the food and wine would be good and the atmosphere conducive to murmured conversation.

  It hadn’t started that way, but Shell got caught up in the driving need to prove himself. To prove himself in the eyes of a girl who needed no proof? No. Face it. His need was to prove himself to Shell Halliday. Somehow to make him feel that he was important, that he deserved the shine in Connie Lockwood’s eyes.

  Possibly Nicolas the doorman had started it with his courtly bow and his air of deference to Monsieur Halliday. Nicolas, who greeted kings and presidents, oil millionaires and movie stars, sultans from Arabia and industrial tycoons from West Germany, and headline politicians from the world over. Yes, possibly Nicolas had started it all.

  Hardly had they got out of earshot of that weary doorman, who couldn’t have cared less, than Connie looked up at her escort. “How in the world can he possibly remember the names of the guests at such a big hotel?”

  Shell laughed at her and squeezed her arm. “Darling, you’re an innocent. He couldn’t begin to. Only … only the names of us old-timers. I’ve been coming to the George Fifth, off and on, for years now.” Which was true enough. Bigelow Warren invariably stayed at the ultra-swank hotel and many a time had Shell brought him home in the early hours, to be helped by Nicolas in the final stages of getting Biggy safely to the elevator and to his suite.

  So instead of the little bistro in the Halles district, they wound up in one of the currently popular tourist traps and, as always where Shell had his contacts, he was given the red carpet treatment. The doorman bowed, the headwaiter simpered, a captain came arunning. Pavillon Paris might not boast the food quality of some, but the Pavillon did have service.

  Connie was properly impressed. She was impressed by Shell’s royal greeting, by his conference with Marcel pertaining to the evening’s repast and the gobbledygook palaver with the wine steward. Nor did she notice when the bill came that the headwaiter raised his eyebrows to Shell in question before handing the check to him rather than to her.

  She was doubly impressed in a Montparnasse club afterwards when the entertainers spoke to Shell and the chanteuse stopped long enough for a drink at their table.

  The town knew Shell, all right, and the fact that most of them snickered behind the scenes could hardly be known to Connie. Shell had another sucker on the string. Build him up, play the game. When Shell found a live one, you could depend on getting away with padding the bill, on high tips, and on the good chance that the tourist would return again, often with friends.

  It was a hilarious time. With his pencil, on the tablecloth, Shell did snide, cruel, hilariously funny caricatures of the entertainers, the waiters, and the other habitués of the club. Connie could hardly refrain from screaming laughter. Ah, but this was Paris!

  It was in the intimacy of the tiny Vieux Caveau, over early-morning champagne, and to the strains of Vietnamese music accompanying the tiny Indo-Chinese stripper that Connie decided what she must do.

  She looked at Shell pensively. He was watching the tiny, delicate Oriental dancer with obvious lack of interest. The art of disrobing, which originated so long ago in the bump-and-grind school of American burlesque, had been raised to pinnacles in the work of such competent performers as this. But it was obviously old hat to Shell.

  Connie, who had seen one or two of the more discreet strippers in the Cincinnati night spots and those across the river in Newport, Kentucky, was surprised at his obvious disinterest. The girl was surpassingly exotic, her curves so dainty as to be doll-like. Connie couldn’t conceive of any man not being aroused by the provocative sweetness of the dancer’s display. The tiny, coral-tipped breasts, so small but so perfect; the gentle swell of hips, the tiny, tiny waist.

  Connie gasped suddenly. “Why — why, is she going to take everything off?”

  Shell stifled a yawn and grinned at her. “Probably,” he said. “About once a week, if there are no police around, Pierre allows Li to shoot the works. Keeps the customers coming back. Cute little trick, isn’t she?”

  Just at that moment, the cute little trick paraded arrogantly past their table. She winked an Oriental eye at them and said, low in her throat, “’Allo, Shell,” and passed on. The last time Shell had been in the Vieux Caveau he’d brought three heavy-spending, expense-account executives and one of them had stuffed a hundred-dollar bill in the rear elastic of her ultra-abbreviated G-string. It hadn’t felt particularly comfortable there but Li was willing to put up with a degree of discomfort for the sake of that much money.

  Had Shell known it, Li’s greeting sent his prestige to its zenith for that evening.

  Connie reached her moment of truth.

  She had wondered these past years why Shell hadn’t returned for her. Or, at least, why he hadn’t sent for her. As his suc
cess, as reported in his letters, had grown and grown again, as he began to move in the circles of the great, his letters had fallen off and something, well, intimate had gone out of them.

  Frankly, Connie had regretted that she hadn’t yielded that last night in the car when Shell had pressed her so hard. That night when she had almost — but not quite. Had she permitted him the ultimate favor, surely he would have been bound to her.

  Yes, this was her moment of truth.

  Of course, the drinks helped. The two Cuba Libras she’d had at the suite before they started out, the several types of wine at the restaurant and the after-dinner liqueur. Then the champagne they’d had in one nightery after the other. Connie was no prude and no teetotaler, but she’d never been more than moderately tipsy in her life. Yes, the alcohol helped.

  Reality flooded her. Why, her Shell could have any woman in the place, including that slinky little Chinese — or whatever she was — strip-teaser.

  Shell, who had once been pleased with the bounty of Connie’s kisses, an occasionally fondled breast, a moist nervous palm pressed mometarily over her knee, had probably known a dozen women since then. Possibly even more, many more, in these past four years.

  And Connie? What was the word? Square? No, that was passé now. Corny, they used to say when she was a little girl, and then square, and now they had one of these new beatnik words, but she was too fuzzy to remember. She took another defiant gulp of her bubbling wine.

  In a way it was Shell’s fault. She’d kept herself for him. Not just her body, but her self. Possibly she’d overdone it. Possibly it would have been better had she seen a little more of life, got to know other men. She felt almost ridiculous. She had prided herself on maintaining her virginity, saving her body for Shell. But now the question arose — did he want it? Had she been a fool to preserve something undesired? Perhaps, in his new sophistication, Shell was contemptuous of the old values, such as a woman’s virginity at marriage. Just what purpose did it serve?

  Connie took another long pull at her champagne.

  Oh, she’d been out a few times, not only with the gang and on double dates, but alone with men. She’d even done a certain amount of necking, but everybody in her circle knew she was Shell’s and saving herself for Shell. And after a time, most of her male acquaintances had given her up as a lost cause. It hadn’t helped her popularity.

  She looked at him from the side of her eyes. And now he seemed a stranger, she thought. Had the waiting been worth it? She forced down her momentary feeling of doubt. Don’t be a fool, Constance Lockwood, this is the man you’ve wanted since you were a teen-ager. Of course, there were some changes in him. The trouble is, there aren’t enough changes in you, she told herself. Here, while he was accumulating experiences, growing in sophistication, you were becoming an old maid in New Elba. Face it, Constance Lockwood. You’re downright old-fashioned.

  Unconsciously, Connie ran a hand down over her right breast and as far as the hip and thigh, as though checking her natural attributes. She wasn’t dismayed. Connie was normally vain, normally curious and normally conscious of her sex values. The full-length mirror in her room at home had told her that she had little to fear in the competition between womankind for the tribute of the male.

  She took another gulp of the wine and let Shell fill her glass again.

  He looked at her narrowly. Actually, Shell himself, relieved of the tension of riding herd on Bigelow Warren, and building himself up in the eyes of Connie, had been hitting the bottle considerably more than was his wont. In fact, he hadn’t let himself go this far for a long time, he realized. It was time he got them both back to the hotel.

  Connie wet her lips and eyed him strangely.

  “What’s the matter, Connie?” he asked.

  Connie Lockwood cleared her throat. She said abruptly, “Let’s go back to the hotel, Shelley.”

  There was something in her voice that Shell couldn’t quite put his finger on, but he shrugged inwardly. He’d been thinking the same thing himself, that it was time to go. Among other things, he was just about flat broke. He poured the balance of the champagne into their glasses.

  “To us!” he toasted.

  She held up her glass in silent repetition of the toast, and there was grim determination in her eyes as they looked into his.

  Connie had decided to give her all.

  • • •

  It isn’t that easy for a girl to yield herself to a man who for long years has thought of her as untouchable, who respects her and expects to make her his wife.

  In a way, Connie had a problem on her hands. One doesn’t just come out and say, “Dear, we’ve been going together since high school and now we’re in our late twenties. I’ve decided to give you what you’ve wanted all these years.”

  No, you couldn’t exactly put it that way.

  What you could do is accept the nightcap he gave you and lean back on the couch while he phoned the desk for a room which you were supposedly going to occupy. You could work yourself into as advantageous a position as occurred to you — advantageous, that is, so far as exploiting your more desirable attributes. You could lower your lashes in a manner most successfully exploited on the screen by Miss Sophia Loren and wait.

  She realized that she should put the drink aside, that she’d had plenty, but she needed the excuse not to go to her own room. And she needed the courage it gave her.

  The room secured, Shell rejoined her, his own nightcap in hand.

  He grinned at Connie. “Have a good time?”

  “Oh, wonderful. I was just sitting here laughing at those silly drawings of yours. That one you did of the fat master of ceremonies.”

  Her mouth was comfortably available for kissing. He kissed her. At this stage, Shell Halliday could never have admitted it, not even to himself, but something had gone out of kissing Connie. It wasn’t what it had once been in New Elba. Why, he didn’t even think to analyze, but actually Connie’s fears were justified. Shell had developed a taste for sophistication in his love-making.

  But they kissed, and kissed again, and no man is as strong as all that. Somehow her skirt was above her knees by the time he got up to refreshen their glasses. He turned the light low before returning. They each half emptied their drinks before going back to where they’d left off. The skirt had not been readjusted.

  About this time, in his liquor-loosened mind, Shell realized that tonight Connie would be his. In spite of her earlier protests when she’d thought he expected her to share this suite with him, Connie was his for the taking. Had he been more sober, he would have been more surprised. As it was, he accepted the new state of affairs without too much examination. He was too far gone in liquor to appraise anything too clearly.

  Her jacket was off now, and her blouse unbuttoned. He gently tugged away the garment beneath and Connie’s breasts, almost forgotten in the years between, were his to appreciate, with his eyes and his hands. Her head was back, her face pale, her eyes closed, as he toyed with her — expertly.

  His experience took control, over the alcohol-bewildered self-censor. Shell bent his head and placed his mouth to a nipple. She drew her breath in sharply and muttered a meaningless negation.

  She was beyond control now. Connie, for a decade and more, had been capable of the act of love and desirous of it. And Connie was that now rarely met item, a beautiful woman who has passed her mid-twenties, a virgin. Nature boiled uncontrollably within her.

  She sat suddenly erect, taking his head in her hands. She was trembling. “Oh no, don’t do that. Don’t do that any more.”

  He looked up at her, his eyes dreamily sloe.

  She said, “Wait. Wait just a moment. I … I’ll call you, darling.”

  Somewhere she’d read that, the way to do it on the first night — on the wedding night, the honeymoon. The bride went into the bedroom and promised to call when she was ready.

  Connie came to her feet and made her way to the nearest of the two bedrooms. She stopped at the door and
looked back, her face flaming in embarrassment. “I’ll call you when I’m ready,” she promised again.

  He stared after her, then shook his head to achieve clarity. He’d drunk considerably more than he’d thought.

  But what he needed now, desperately, was another drink. The stuff was dying in him. He needed another good stiff one to bring him around. There definitely was something missing in the situation and he hoped to find out what after one more drink.

  He wavered his way to the sideboard, took up the bottle of Metaxa, the Greek brandy, and poured himself a stiff one. It would have been jolt enough had it been the comparatively low proof French cognac, but Metaxa is distilled with heroes in mind. He tossed it back, stared down into the glass in approval, and poured another double shot to carry back to the couch with him.

  Heavens to Betsy, after all these years it was going to be Connie. He and Connie, the first girl who’d really made him conscious of the world of relationship between men and women. Connie, who even at the age of fifteen had been capable of stirring him to the point where he’d lay in bed at night, staring at the ceiling, with beads of sweat on his face as his body demanded hers.

  Well, tonight Connie, at long last, was to be his.

  He could hear her stirring in the next room. He tossed back the Metaxa. That was Connie in there, his Connie, at long last.

  He wished he wasn’t so tired. If he’d known this was coming up, he wouldn’t have hit the bottle so hard.

  He let his head fall to the soft back of the couch and closed his eyes — for a moment. So at last it was going to be Connie.

  • • •

  Bigelow Warren shut one eye and zeroed in on the keyhole of the door. The elevator boy had offered to see him to his suite but Biggy had denied his assistance with considerable dignity. He didn’t consider himself drunk — not by Bigelow Warren’s standards. He was just, say, pleasantly fuzzy. Yep, that was the word. Pleasantly fuzzy.