April North by Lawrence Block
Everything, starting with an evening of heavy drinking and sophisticated small talk. Then Craig playing orgy-master with that redheaded Maynor bitch. Then throwing up in the john, going to bed with Craig, getting drunk as a skunk and playing lesbian games with Margo Long on the chaise in the back yard. And waking up.
And now she was sitting alone in the living room and wanting only to go home, where she belonged. She ground out the second cigarette and walked through the house looking for Craig. She tried one room, and there were two sleeping bodies on the bed, but Craig was not one of them. Frank Evans was, and so was Sue Maynor. She had to laugh—suave and polished Frank, the deep-talking pipe-smoker, was just as human as anyone else. He had taken his turn with Slutty Sue like every other man at the party.
She left the room quietly, closing the door. She tried another room, the bedroom where she and Craig had made love so many times. And this time she found him. He was lying on his back, mouth open, eyes closed. He was snoring, and all at once he did not look romantic or debonair at all. He looked like a bum, a drunken bum sleeping off a wine binge in a pig sty. For there was a pig with him.
A blonde pig with big breasts and smeared lipstick. April glanced from one to the other. I loved him, she thought. I actually loved the rotten son of a bitch. And she wondered what he and the blonde pig had done, and how many times, and—
She left the room.
She could not talk to Craig, obviously. Not now and not ever, as far as she was concerned. He was rotten and filthy and she would be damned a dozen times before she would try to wake him from his sleep with the blonde bitch to take her home.
But she could not walk, either. Home was too far away. So just what could she do, damn it?
Cars were parked in front. She went from one to the other and finally found a blue Pontiac with Dayton plates and keys in the ignition. She wondered who had been dumb enough to leave the keys, and silently thanked whoever it was for his or her stupidity. She climbed into the car, got behind the wheel, and sat.
She would have to go home. She did not expect a brass band at seven in the morning, but they would have to take her in and they would have to leave her alone. She could make up some sort of story—a car accident, trouble of one sort or another, anything that would placate them for a little while.
She turned the key in the ignition, stepped on the gas and started home. She knew the route. She had driven it often enough in Craig’s Mercedes.
Craig—Craig Jeffers. She had loved him, she knew, and she did not love him any more. She could not understand it—he had always wanted her so much, had spent such a great deal of time with her, had seemed to love her so deeply. And yet he had been able to toss her over and go to bed with other girls. With Sue Maynor, and with the blonde tramp, and with God knew how many others.
Why?
Not because she was no good. She could not believe that. She knew that he had told her repeatedly how good she was, knew how wondrously exhausted she could make him. She remembered how he had cried out one time at the crucial instant, his nails digging into her shoulder, his face contorted in a mixed expression of pleasure and pain. There was nothing Sue Maynor could give him that she could not give him as well or better.
Why, then?
She sighed. She needed a cigarette but there was none around. She kept her mind on her driving, heading toward town and home.
They did not believe her.
When she went through the door her mother was standing with her hands on her hips and a fierce expression on her face. Her father’s face was drawn with worry and anger in more or less equal proportions.
This will have to be good, she thought.
“All right,” her mother said. “Start talking, April.”
She made up her story as she went along, an unlikely story about Craig having a malaria attack and how she had to nurse him through the night and pile him up with blankets and put hot compresses on his feverish head.
“He caught it in Italy,” she explained. “He was there one winter and he caught malaria and he still gets attacks now and then. They say you never get over it. You can be cured and still get terrible attacks years later.”
“And you couldn’t even call April?”
“Well, Mom—”
“We were up all night waiting for you,” he father cut in. “You could have called us, April.”
“Well, Dad—”
“April,” her mother said, “I don’t believe you.”
“What?”
“I said I don’t believe you. This story about malaria. I think you’ve been telling us stories all along. Why, I met Judy Liverpool’s mother the other day and mentioned how nice it was of her to have you over for dinner and she said you hadn’t been there at all. Where were you that night, April?”
“At Judy’s,” she said desperately. “Look, maybe Judy’s mother forgot. I mean, it was over a week ago, and—”
“April.” Her mother stopped, then sighed. “I don’t want to discuss it now. Not today, not on the Lord’s day. Are you coming to church with us, April?”
If you lie, she thought, you have to stick to it “I can’t,” she said angrily. “I was up all night and didn’t so much as close my eyes. The fever broke finally but it was horrible. Around three in the morning Craig was having horrible hallucinations and everything. I never saw anything like it. Now I’m exhausted. I think I’ll go to bed for awhile, if you don’t mind.”
They said they did not mind, but obviously they did mind. They did not believe her. Once their belief was shattered in one respect, they would question every single thing she told them from then on.
This was going to be bad.
They trooped off to church. April took a succession of hot baths and ate a full breakfast. When they came home she was sleeping soundly, and they let her sleep until dinner time. Dinner was an ordeal, with a good deal of cross-questioning and a generally unhappy atmosphere. The only thing to do, she decided, was to brazen it out.
“I’d better get back to him,” she said after dinner. “I’ll have to take the Pontiac. If he feels okay he can drive me back.”
Her father offered to run her over but she managed to brush the offer aside. She left the house, dressed comfortably now in jeans and a sweater, and drove the Pontiac to Craig’s home.
10
THE Pontiac was big and bulky. Cars, she thought, taking the turn off onto the narrow road that led to Craig’s house. You could tell the whole story in terms of cars. A green Oldsmobile a year old, where Dan Duncan had claimed her virginity in the back seat on a Saturday night When was that? Two weeks ago. Just two weeks ago.
And the Mercedes-Benz, the sleek 300-SL that had stopped for her when she had been on her way to Xenia and from there to New York. Craig’s car. And the hot rod—Bill Piersall’s car. And now the bulky Pontiac. And she did not even know to whom it belonged.
If I stayed out of cars, she thought oddly, I might stay out of trouble. But if I stayed out of trouble I wouldn’t be April North, because April North seems to be nothing but a brainless blob who has one ever-loving hell of a knack for getting into trouble, not out.
Well, she was going to get out of trouble. She had made some mistakes, and Danny Duncan had been the first one, and Craig Jeffers had been an even worse one. For a while—a week, not much longer than that—she had thought herself in love with him. But any feeling she might have had for him was over. He had killed it.
Love? Not love, she knew. Sex, more than anything else. He had made her hear bells ring and rockets whistle, but the bells and the rockets were not signs of love. They were the fruits of sex. He was an expert, polished and accomplished, and he was able to lead her to heights of which she had never even dreamed.
But this hardly made them soulmates. Frank Evans had told her that sooner or later she would find out that Craig was a failure himself, just like everyone else at the party. And Frank Evans was right. Craig was dissipated and depraved, the same as Ken Rutherford who drank too
She rolled down the Pontiac’s window and filled her lungs with night air. Tonight, she thought, she was getting rid of him forever. She was going to return the Pontiac and she was going to explain that she did not want to see him again, that she knew him for what he was and that obviously he was not for her. He probably would not mind too much, as far as it went. She was just a toy as far as he was concerned, that he had had his fun with. Probably he would be almost as glad to get rid of her as she was to get rid of him.
And after that? Nothing too glamorous, she thought. She’d already messed herself up by trying to turn herself into a glamor gal, darling of the suave set. And it had not worked at all. Deep down inside she was little April North, the daughter of an Antrim druggist. A month ago she’d been a virgin. And, while she could hardly grow back her virginity, she could do the next best thing. She could start being April North again.
She would live at home, with parents and brother. She would go to school, study diligently, and get the best grades she could possibly get. And she would live out the remainder of her senior year at Antrim High in a sort of social cocoon, turning down dates, avoiding other girls, and keeping to herself. She did not want to trade sex with Craig and his friends for sex with boys like Dan Duncan and Bill Piersall and Jim Bregger—that was no solution. She wanted to renounce sex entirely and start being a good girl all over again.
The rest of the year would be tough to get through.
She had a reputation, of course but the reputation would atrophy in time. And she could ignore the knowing glances easily enough, much as she had been ignoring them all week in school. After while they would tire of making remarks and passes.
And once she had graduated, everything would be simpler. She would go away to school—either land a scholarship or convince her father to spend an outrageous sum for her education. A bad reputation would not follow her across state lines.
College would give her a fresh start. She would still have a family to come home to, and this would be much better than her original idea of running away to New York. She would have a chance to mature at her natural pace, a chance to meet the right kind of guy and marry him and move to the right kind of town and have kids and be a good person.
She sighed. Craig’s house was on her right, a few lights on downstairs. His Mercedes was parked in front. The other cars which had lain dormant there when she had left were gone. She pulled the Pontiac over to the side of the road, cut the engine, hauled on the emergency brake and got out of the car.
She rang Craig’s doorbell and he let her in.
“Well,” he said. “The little auto thief has returned.”
“I didn’t steal the car. I borrowed it.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Ah, my dear. Do I detect a note of hostility in your words?”
“You’re very perceptive.”
“Is something wrong?”
“Something’s wrong,” she said. “Last night was just a little too much for me, Craig. Maybe I’m not as smooth and sophisticated as the girls you’re used to. I don’t care.”
He slapped his hand to his brow in mock horror. “April,” he said. “April, April April. Come in, girl. Seat yourself, relax. You’re all unnerved.”
“I’m mad.”
“Sit down, whatever you are. Would you like a drink?”
“No.”
“A cigarette?”
“No.”
“A session in bed?”’
She colored. “No,” she said firmly.
“Then what do you want, April? Other than to return Sue’s car. Frank Evans had to drive the poor lass home, and she wants her car back as soon as possible. Rather uncouth of you to take it, wouldn’t you say?”
“I had to get home.”
“You could have asked for a ride.”
“You were sleeping,” she said. “I didn’t want to wake you.”
“I wouldn’t have minded.”
“You were sleeping with a blonde. I didn’t even want to stay in the same room with the two of you.”
He laughed happily. “Wonderful! You’re jealous, little girl. A rather bourgeois sentiment, but not without its own sort of merit. Actually you don’t have to be jealous. The girl is unimportant enough. But she has the largest breasts I ever saw in my life. I simply had to find out what it was like to make love to a cow.”
She drew a breath. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“How was it?”
“Interesting,” he said.
“I’m glad you had an interesting time, Craig. And I’m not jealous. Not jealous of your blonde cow and not jealous of Sue Maynor.”
She was angry, now, angry at him for what he was and at herself for not seeing through him sooner, for being blind to all the rotten streaks in the man. He was depraved and rotten from top to bottom, and she was sick at herself for ever having anything whatsoever to do with him.
“I’m not jealous,” she went on. “I suppose I was, for a little while. But now I’m only revolted. I’m sick of you, Craig. You’ve got carloads of money and plenty of sophistication and you’re nothing but a bum underneath it all.”
“Really, April. A bum?”
“A bum. A horrible person—that’s all you ever have been and all you ever will be. And I’m through with you, Craig. I’m through with this whole little life you and your friends have. It’s not for me, not ever.”
He stood up, walked to the wall, flicked a switch. Mood music filtered through the room. More props, she thought. Like the car and the house and the oh-so-dashing mustache. If you took away his props he was nothing at all.
“What life is for you, April?”
“A normal life.”
“And what does that mean, pray tell?”
“A decent life,” she snapped. “A life at home with my parents. Oh, you would call it a dull life, but it’s the right way, Craig. I’ll finish school at Antrim and I’ll stay decent and I’ll go away to college. It may sound commonplace but it’s what I want.”
He sighed. “You know,” he said thoughtfully, “I thought you might feel something along these lines. And the thought of you going home to mama is more offensive than I can possibly tell you. So I’ve ruled out that course of action, girl.”
“What are you talking about?”
He shrugged. “It should be clear enough,” he said. “I mean exactly what I’ve just finished saying. You can’t go home to the bosom of your revolting family. They’ll throw you out on your ear.”
“Why should they?”
“Because you’re a slut,” he said dispassionately. “Mind you, I’m not making a value judgment. Those are not my values, not by any means. But, in the eyes of your fatheaded father and your moronic mother, you are a slut.”
She got to her feet. “I don’t get it, Craig. Say what you mean.”
“I’ll do better than that. I’ll show you.”
She stood in her tracks while he walked across the room to a table. He opened a drawer and drew forth an envelope. Then he crossed the room again and presented the envelope to her with a flourish.
“Here you are,” he said. “See for yourself.”
She opened the envelope and nearly fell to the floor. As it was she took two steps backward and sat down again on the couch, her mouth open and her eyes wide.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Look them over. Some of them are works of art, girl.”
They were pictures. A dozen pictures, all told, and not one of them printable. And in each picture a young girl was plainly visible.
The girl was April North.
“How did you—”
“Take the pictures?” He grinned. “It was easy enough, my dear. Long ago I realized the advantage of candid photography. I’ve taken the trouble to install a camera or two in the walls of my bedroom. The expense was considerable,
They were magnificent. A shot of her and Craig, she lying on her back, Craig between her white thighs. A shot of herself leaning face-down over the bed, feet on the floor, with Craig standing behind her.
A shot that showed only her face, catching her in an act which Craig had assured her was “perfectly natural,” and which now made her want to vomit.
Another shot.
And more.
And, finally, a picture that had been taken the night before, in the garden. A picture of two female bodies intertwined on a terrycloth-covered chaise. One was the body of April North.
“Yes,” he said, indicating the picture, “that one was rather a surprise. I was wandering in the garden and came upon you two, you and the redoubtable Margo. You were too excited to take notice of me, I’m afraid. So I scurried off for my camera and rendered the moment immortal. You know, you’ve rather a nerve to criticize me. You were having quite a time with Margo, girl.”
“I was drunk.”
“But hardly too drunk to enjoy yourself. Don’t moralize in my direction, April. On the one hand you try to call yourself a free spirit, a sinless wonder. And on the other hand you castigate me for a lack of fidelity to you. A rather illogical position, wouldn’t you say?”
She said nothing. He grinned again, pointing to the pictures. “And now you want to leave me, to flee to your family and five the good life again. Fortunately, you cannot do this. I’ve protected you from that, April.”
“How?”
“With those pictures,” he said. “Those art studies. Do you think your parents will welcome you when they’ve seen them?”
“They won’t see them.”
“But they will, dear.”
She snatched the photographs, shredded them viciously. She tore each one in half and tore the halves in half while he watched her with a gleam in his eye.