April North

3

For a long moment she could only stand, stunned. She watched as he leaned easily across the front seat to open the door for her. The door swung free and she looked at the open door, at the empty bucket seat, and at the man who was still eyeing her appreciatively.

“Get in,” he said. “I won’t bite. Not unless you want me to, at any rate.”

“I was going to Xenia,” she said finally.

“I’ll drive you there.”

“I was waiting for the bus.”

“The bus costs forty cents,” he said agreeably. “I don’t have a meter in this thing yet, so I’ll drive you free of charge. Besides, I drive much faster than buses.”

“But—”

“Hop in, girl.”

“Where do I put my suitcase?”

“On your pretty dimpled knees,” he said. Come on.”

She seemed to have no will of her own. Automatically she climbed into the car, sat in the comfortable bucket seat, propped her suitcase up on her lap and closed the door. The man behind the wheel slammed the sports car into gear, let out the clutch and put the accelerator on the floor. The car leaped forward and she felt herself thrown forcibly against the back of her seat. The car picked up speed and the wind played with her hair, tossing it around recklessly.

She wondered who he was, where he lived, how old he might be. He was obviously several years older than the crowd she went around with, probably in his early or middle twenties, yet there was a distinctly youthful air about him. Well, she thought, it really didn’t matter. He was giving her a ride to Xenia and that was all. She would probably never see him again.

“You’re going to Xenia,” he said. “Right?”

“That’s right.”

“Why? What’s in Xenia?”

“A railroad station.”

“Going on a trip?”

“To New York.”

He nodded slowly. “When will you be back?”

She didn’t even think of lying to him. “I won’t be back,” she said. “I’m going to stay in New York.”

“Why?”

Was he going to ask her questions forever? “Because I don’t like Antrim.”

“God above. Does anybody like Antrim?”

“Some people may.”

“So you’re running away from home. That’s what it amounts to, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so.”

“God above,” he said again. He turned to look at her and she avoided the intensity of his gaze. “What’s your name, girl?”

“April.”

“Is that all?”

“April North.”

“April North,” he repeated. “A good name. I like it.”

“Thanks. I’ll keep it.”

He laughed, loud clear laughter that rang above the throbbing of the car’s engine. When he turned to look at her again she felt his eyes rubbing over her breasts like friendly hands. Her breathing speeded up and her hands trembled in her lap. She had never felt like this before. Just by looking at her he could set her nerves on edge.

And she did not even know his name.

Abruptly he swung the wheel, pulling the sports car off onto an asphalt road. He pressed harder on the accelerator and the car took up the challenge, racing along the black pavement like an angry demon. She saw the speedometer needle hover for an instant at eighty, move onward past ninety, close to one hundred. She had never gone so fast before. The thought occurred to her that she ought to be frightened, but somehow she was not scared at all. She felt intuitively that he knew what he was doing, that he was a good driver and nothing would happen to them.

She said, “This isn’t the way to Xenia.”

“It’s a short cut”

She knew he was lying but did not want to argue with him. She leaned back in her seat, enjoying the ride, abandoning herself to the tug of the wind at her hair and the excitement of speed. The low-slung car hugged the ground — this was far more exciting than riding in a regular car, far more exhilarating. She looked at his hands on the wheel, saw how he concentrated on the act of driving with all his being. It was as though he and the car were two parts of a single mechanism, she thought.

When he turned from the asphalt road and onto a gravel road, she knew beyond any possible doubt that they were not going to Xenia. He was probably going to take her somewhere in the country and seduce her, she decided. Maybe he would rape her if she refused, or else toss her out of the car to walk home. Well, he had no need to worry. She would give in, if that was what he wanted. If she could give in to Bill Piersall, she could just as easily give in to this man. At least he looked as if he had a better idea of what to do than Bill did.

Besides, she admitted, she was excited. Evidently the boys in Antrim were right, because she was excited and ready for sex. It was ridiculous — she didn’t even know this man. But she knew that she would do whatever he wanted her to do.

The car stopped with a screech of rubber. “We’re here,” he announced. “Get out of the car, April.”

“Where are we?”

“At my house. Do you like it?”

She stared. The house was set back some fifty yards from the road at the peak of a sharp hill, and it was unlike any house she had ever seen in Antrim. The architectural style was dramatically contemporary, somewhat in the manner of Frank Lloyd Wright, and no one else in the area had a house remotely like it April had seen similar homes in the movies and on television. But shoddy one-floor ranch homes were as close as Antrim permitted itself to come to the twentieth century.

This house was startlingly but pleasantly different. Sharp planes of brick and glass thrust themselves at odd angles. A circular courtyard made a mouth out of the house’s front entrance. The landscaping was precisely suited to the house and strengthened the impression that the structure had grown from the ground itself.

“Well? Do you like it?”

“Yes,” she said honestly. “I like it very much.”

“It’s my home,” he said. “The architect who designed it was a classmate of mine at Chicago. Before I was thrown out, that is. I’m glad you like it”

“Do you live with your parents?”

“My parents are dead.”

“Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he told her. “I’m not. I didn’t like them. Come on inside, April.”

On the flagstone path leading to the front door, she remembered for the first time that she had been on her way to Xenia. She mentioned this.

“I can’t take you to Xenia,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because you’re running away from home. Now if I helped you run away from home, I would be contributing to the delinquency of a minor. You can’t expect me to do that, can you?”

“Then you should have let me take the bus.”

“But then I didn’t know you were running away. I want to talk to you, April. We’ll sit in my living room and drink a drink or two and you’ll tell me why you want to run away. That’s all. Fair enough?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re being silly,” he said. “Look, you’ve said that you like the house. Wouldn’t you like to see how the inside looks?”

He did not wait for an answer. He took her suitcase in one hand and her arm in the other and led her to the door. He shouldered the door open and led her inside, closing the door after her. “There,” he said. “Like it?”

The interior of the house matched the exterior in the sharpness of its contemporary lines. But April would not have believed that such an angular sort of house could seem so warm within. The floors were of highly polished wood, with high-piled rugs placed here and there across the huge living room. The furniture was wood and steel, the wood deeply-grained and the steel black and shiny. In the huge flagstone fireplace at one end of the living room logs were piled, ready for the iron lighter at one side.

“It’s very nice,” she said lamely.

“I’ll get you a drink. Scotch all right?”

“I guess so.”

“Have a seat, April.”

She sat on a couch that turned out to be far more comfortable than it looked, while he went to the bar and poured drinks. He came back, stopping on his way to flick a switch on the wall. Music filtered into the room, coming, it seemed, from all sides. It was modern jazz, penetrating and insistent. He handed her a drink and sat beside her on the couch.

“I suppose you wonder who I am,” he said.

“That’s putting it mildly.”

He laughed again. “My name is Craig,” he said. “Craig Jeffers. I’m very rich, as you’ve probably guessed, and I’m very wild, as you’ve probably guessed, also. I live alone here. My parents lived in Dayton, where my father made an enormous amount of money. I’m not sure just how he made the money, although I suppose he made it by giving some poor slobs the wrong end of the stick. He was that sort of a bastard.”

April said nothing.

“He’s dead now,” Craig went on dispassionately. “I’m not unhappy about it. He killed mother two years ago, then put a bullet through his own brain. You probably read about it. It even made the wire services and of course the local press had an absolute blast with it.”

She remembered, dimly. Headlines had screamed, LOCAL INDUSTRIALIST KILLS SELF, WIFE. She nodded dutifully and took a sip of her drink. She was not used to straight liquor, but this was very smooth and she did not choke on it.

“That’s the story of my life,” he said. “What little there has been of it so far, at any rate. I’m twenty-six. I live here because I want to. I’ve been all over the United States and through most of Europe. I’ve watched bullfights in Spain and I’ve slept with Paris whores. I’ve raced cars in California and I’ve gambled in Miami. I live here, in this horrible section of the horrible state of Ohio.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to, April. Because this is my home, perhaps. I have my house and I have my car. Do you like the car, by the way?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a Mercedes-Benz 300-SL. It handles like a dream and goes like hell. I like it too.”

He tossed off the rest of his drink and set the empty glass on the coffee table. He took out a pack of cigarettes and gave one to her, keeping another for himself. He lighted both of them and they sat side by side smoking. She drank more of her drink. The liquor was making her feel pleasantly lightheaded. She sipped and smoked.

“That’s my story,” Craig said suddenly. “Now it’s time for you to tell me yours.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“Nothing?”

“I live with my parents and go to high school in Antrim. That’s all there is to it.”

He arched his eyebrows. “You were on your way to Xenia,” he said. “From there you were going to take a train to New York, and you weren’t coming back. Now don’t try to tell me there’s nothing more besides the fact that you live at home and go to high school in Antrim. You have to do better than that, April.”

She stared into her glass of scotch, avoiding his eyes. Her story was not the kind you went around telling to people, she thought. But by the same token he was not the sort of person you usually ran across. And there was something about him that made her want to open up, something that somehow inspired her confidence.

“It’s not a pretty story,” she said.

“Few stories are. Not the interesting ones, at any rate.”

“And I’m not as sweet and innocent as I seem.”

“Well,” he said, “thank God for that.”

She laughed. The drink was working now, loosening her up, letting her unwind. And the music, the insistently pulsating jazz, was also working. She looked around the room, deciding that she felt at home here, that she was comfortable. She looked at Craig and decided that he was the most exciting man she had ever met. She could not imagine why he would want to waste his time talking to her. He could have any girl in the world, she told herself. And he could do more than talk to them.

“All right,” she said slowly. “I’ll tell you.”

When she had finished, he stood up from the couch, took her empty glass and carried it to the bar. He dropped two fresh ice cubes into the glass and added a healthy splash of scotch. He made a drink for himself, brought back the two glasses and gave her one.

“To the new April North,” he said.

They touched glasses and she took a drink. She was somehow much calmer now. And glad that she had told him.

“April,” he said, “if you run away to New York you’re a silly damned fool.”

“What do you mean?”

“Exactly what I just said. Don’t you see what you’ll be doing? You’ll be accepting the judgment of this godforsaken little town, living by its values and tolerating its opinion of you. Antrim thinks you’re a tramp. Right?”

“Right.”

He sighed. “Do you think you’ll change their minds by running away? Do you think you’ll show much backbone by creeping out of town like a thief in the night? That won’t stop them from talking about you, April. It will only reinforce their opinions. God, don’t you see what a stupid thing you’ll be doing?”

She stared at him. She had not thought of it that way at all. Running away had looked like the perfect solution to her. But now, listening to him, she saw that he was right. You could not change things by fleeing from them. You escaped everything but yourself.

“Then — what should I do?”

“Stay here.”

“And sleep with every pimple-faced pig in the senior class? Is that an answer?”

“No,” he said. “That’s not an answer.”

“Then—”

He sighed again. “April,” he said, “you’re a big girl now. You have managed to discover something that few girls realize in the course of their entire fives, and that very few come to realize while they are your age. You’ve found out that most people are narrow-minded fools and that their standards are absurd. Do you feel that you’ve done anything wrong?”

“I don’t know.”

Craig stared hard at her. Then his eyebrows went up a notch to mock her. “Don’t you know? All you did was admit that you were a woman with the desires of a woman. You gave in, you let your desires express themselves. Does that constitute a sin?”

“No,” she said.

“Then did you do anything wrong?”

“No.”

He sighed. “If you run away,” he said gently, “you’ll be admitting that you’ve done something wrong. You’ll be running away from Antrim and from the ideals of Antrim.”

“Then what should I do?”

“Stay here.”

“But I hate it here.”

“Do you?” He grinned. “I thought you liked my house, April.”

“I mean that I hate Antrim. And—”

“Stay here,” he said firmly. “Stay in Antrim. But don’t stay as a child — that’s as bad as running away like a child. Grow up, April. Grow into yourself. You can’t act like a little girl because you’re not a little girl any longer. You’ve given up the right to be a little girl. You’re a woman now.”

He was silent. She sipped some of the scotch, thinking about what he had told her. Despite her earlier feelings, she knew that Craig Jeffers was right. She could not run away. To run was to give up, and to give up was wrong.

But how could she stay in Antrim? If she went on with the life she had been leading, she would only manage to serve as the butt of every off-color joke told in the Antrim High locker rooms until the day she graduated. The boys were absolutists, she knew. Give in to one of them and you were a tramp and nothing more. There were no shades of moralistic gray. Everything was either black or white.

“What can I do, Craig?”

He picked up his glass, swung it in a little circle so that the ice cubes bounced against one another. He took a quick sip of the scotch and put the glass down again. “You’ll go on living at home,” he said. “You’ll continue to go to high school, unless they throw you out or something like that.”

“And?”

“And you’ll have nothing to do with the boys and girls in your classes. You’ll cut them dead. They’re just children, April. You don’t need them.”

It was so easy to say. “What will I do, then?”

“You’ll be with me.”

“With you?”

He stood up and began to walk across the room. He turned suddenly and held his arms out. “There’s a whole wonderful world that you don’t know a thing about,” he said. “Do you think I’m the only person in the state of Ohio who knows how to live? I’m not, April. There are other men and women like me, mature people who’ve managed to grow up without getting stuffy. Fellows who drive fast cars and girls who have come to realize that a bed is more comfortable than the back seat of a car. April, you may not go to the senior prom, but I’ll take you to parties that your friend Danny Duncan would give his left testicle to attend. You may not ride around in hotrods, but you’ll find out what a 300-SL can do on a straight track. You won’t drink warm beer at the beach — instead you’ll get high on good scotch with soft music cooking in the background.”

He took a breath. “I sound like a preacher describing heaven, don’t I? Sometimes I get a bit carried away with myself, April. But I mean what I’ve said. You don’t have to feel deprived because you can’t be a baby any more. Instead you have to learn to be a woman.”

“I don’t know if I’m ready.”

“You’re ready.”

She studied the floor. In a low voice she said, “I’m not very smart or sophisticated. I don’t know the right things to say. Your friends would laugh at me.”

“No one will laugh at you.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. April, you’re smarter than you think you are. And as far as sophistication goes, it’s not something a person is born with. It’s developed, when you’re ready for it.”

“And you think I’m ready?”

“I know you’re ready.”

She finished her drink. The liquor was working and she could feel its effects, yet she did not feel all. Instead it was as though the liquor mar clearer and more vivid, as though she co now as they really were. Craig was right, was absolutely right

She finished her drink. The liquor was working and she could feel its effects, yet she did not feel drunk at all. Instead it was as though the liquor made everything clearer and more vivid, as though she could, see things now as they really were. Craig was right, she decided. He was absolutely right.

She stood up. Craig had a mustache, she thought. In Antrim only a few old men had mustaches what was the mater with him. But Craig looked good with his, she knew It made him look dashing and exciting. She decided that he was the only really exciting person she had ever met.

“April—”

She looked at him. He was standing straight as a ramrod now, his eyes beckoning to her. She walked over to him like a person in a hypnotic trance. Her whole body tingled with life. She moved closer, wishing he would take hold of her, and when his arms reached for her she threw herself against him, her heart racing.”

He kissed her. His lips were tender at first, incredibly tender, and then he was holding her tightly and his tongue was a flaming sword that burned the inside of her mouth. She felt her breasts drawn hard against his chest, felt desire building up in her loins and spreading through her body like a raging forest fire. Her knees were shaking and she could barely breathe.

Suddenly he released her. She floundered for a moment, then regained her balance and stepped backward slightly. She wondered what he was going to do next

He said, “You’re sweet, April.”

She was silent.

“Very sweet,” he said. “Do you want to go to bed with me, April.”

She nodded.

“And I want to go to bed with you, April. But not now. Tomorrow night, April. When we have all the time that we need.”

He laughed. “Come on,” he said. “I’m going to take you April.”

She went with him.