Ed Lacy - The Woman Aroused

In my own way I tried playing detective. I took her to every foreign movie in town, and while she never talked, I knew she understood German, Italian, and French. For a time I thought she must have had more of an education than I imagined. Then one day I realized what a fool I'd been: Hank had taken her overseas with him, and of course that was where she had picked up the languages.

Aside from trying to get her real drunk, without success, I set all sorts of absurd traps for her: I put thread across the door, arranged my shoes around the bed—to see if she ever moved from her bed, or went out of the house while I was at the office. She never left the house and on most days never got out of bed it seemed—not even to go to the bathroom. Also, from Henderson's questions now and then, I knew he'd only seen her with me, for being such a busybody he would have rushed to tell me if she had any visitors.

She was an absolute slob, yet once I returned to find the place spotless, she had moved everything, cleaned, dusted, and waxed the floors. When I asked her why, she said, “Lee work.”

Another puzzling feature was the money. Every Tuesday I gave her a hundred dollars. (It had started out as fifty, but I doubled it once to see her face light up, and it had remained a hundred a week after that. I was extremely generous—with her money), but what she did with the money was a mystery. Once I gave her the money I never saw it again, although she never carried any money—even change—on her. The pocket-book she had taken from her 29th Street place was also hidden. Somewheres around the house she was hiding the money, like an animal storing up food.

September was a cool month and I found she loved heat. I kept the oil burner up, for she wanted the house warm enough to walk about in the nude. At night when I insisted on keeping the windows open, she piled blankets on the bed till it was uncomfortably warm, and I'd have to fold the blankets so they were only on her.

Living with Lee was dull, crazy, comfortable, and sometimes wildly ethereal. Sometimes I had a sense of esoteric power that bordered on the insane—it seemed to me Lee's sole purpose on earth was for my pleasure, a kind of sex machine I owned outright. I admit such thoughts frightened me—later—but they also gave me a queer sort of satisfaction.

On the first of September when Henderson paid his rent, I sent the money to Flo without a note. We hadn't seen each other since Southampton, and I suppose Flo was getting a bit frantic. The possibility of her coming to the house, using her key, slipped my mind—in fact I had hardly thought about her. One night as I was coming home from the office, thinking I'd take Lee to the Petitpas on 29th Street for a good French supper, Henderson called out from his window that I'd better come upstairs.

I thought Lee had either raised some kind of hell, or even blown her top, and I ran up the stairs, brushed past Henderson as he opened the door. Flo was sitting there, crying hysterically.

She had on a very colorful strapless summer dress that looked like an evening gown, and the contrast was something—for her nose was bloody and she had the damnedest black eyes I've ever seen. Both her eyes were actually swollen and turning blue and purple. Her lipstick was a red smudge against her pale face.

I didn't have to ask what had happened. I put my hand on her shoulder, said, “Flo—I'm sorry.”

“You!” she screamed, jumping to her feet. “You and your fine manners, the great gentleman—keeping a goddamn slut, a she-cat in my house!” She was so mad she tried to kick me in the groin and very happily only hit my thigh.

I backed away and she put a dainty handkerchief, now blood-stained, to her battered nose, yelled, “I'll divorce you! We're done—I'll never speak to you again. You... you... bastard!”

“Flo, we are divorced,” I said gently, knowing just what she meant. For some people a marriage certificate is merely a formality, a scrap of paper: they are married whether they have the paper or not. With us, our divorce paper was like that, a meaningless legal document. This was the first time Flo had ever seen me with another woman.

She fell into a chair, sobbing and cursing me. Henderson motioned for me to leave but I went over to Flo, put my arms around her—careful to stand behind her—pinning her to the chair. She struggled and screamed and I said, “Slow down, baby. Listen to me. Flo, we've had our ins and outs, if that's the correct phrase, or maybe it's a pun. But I think we've always loved each other, in our own odd way. Maybe we didn't know how to love enough, maybe we aren't capable of real love. What I'm trying to say is, I still love you. This girl downstairs... I'm mixed up with her... accidentally. It's a sort of mess, not that I couldn't have escaped it, but... Well, understand that.” I didn't know exactly what I wanted to say, and I certainly wasn't saying anything that made sense.

Flo's sobbing was quieter now, and as I let go of her she held her head in her hands. I bent over and kissed her neck. “I am sorry, Flo. And I still love you. This is, well, really, one of those things.”

I still wasn't making sense and Henderson kept motioning me to leave. I walked to the door, and the old man stepped out into the hallway with me, said, “Leave her alone. She'll get over it, time and all that. Quite a bad shock, and her nose may be broken. God knows what happened. I saw her go in—before I could call out to her—and then she came running out, all within a few seconds, her face bloody.

“Poor dear Flo,” I said, sincerely feeling sorry for her and at the same time realizing what a bastard I was, for I also had a tiny, smug feeling of elation. In all our petty battles, our small victories and defeats, I had at least finally scored the big crushing victory.

I went downstairs, unlocked my door. Lee was sitting in the big chair, nude as usual, and I could picture the nightmare Flo had walked into... seeing this naked giant who probably went at poor Flo without a word of warning.

Poor Flo, if her nose hadn't been hurt, I would have burst out laughing.

Lee had that small smile on her face instead of a blank look. I sat down beside her and she took my hand. I asked, “What happened?”

She didn't answer. I asked, “Tell me, did you have a fight?”

“Fight?” she repeated.

I knew it wasn't any use, and besides, she wasn't at fault. “Get dressed and we'll eat. Are you hungry?”

“Lee sure hungry as all stuff,” she drawled, grinning at me.

I witnessed three other demonstrations of Lee's fighting prowess. (The third time I was her opponent.) I don't know if she had a lot of man in her, or what, but she was a solid 180 pounds, packed a real punch.

One evening, about two weeks after she had kayoed Flo, we were walking in the park after supper. It was a warm night, and as we strolled along, I stopped to watch a squirrel scamper up a tree. Lee kept walking, was about 200 feet ahead of me, walking with long, strong, graceful steps.

A young fellow in a polo shirt was sitting on a bench and I suppose he thought she was walking by herself. He whistled at Lee, started to follow her. I ran up feeling quite alarmed—I never was much of a brawler, even though dancing has kept me in shape. The fellow came alongside Lee, made some joking remark. Lee suddenly turned and swung... actually swung her fist in an overhand punch. There wasn't anything feminine about the blow. It hit the young man flush on the face, staggered him. Before he could fall, Lee grabbed him and threw him into the bushes lining the walk. I ran up and took her arm and we kept walking—fast. There wasn't any expression on her face, except her eyes had narrowed a little. When I looked back the young man still hadn't got on his feet.

Lee never said a word about it and I was too amazed to speak.

Harlem was the locale when Lee next swung into action.

Now and then I went up to the Apollo Theatre on 125th Street, where they still have vaudeville, and some of the best (and almost unknown) Negro dancers, especially tap dancers. One Friday night I took in the show and Lee was with me. With her drawl I was curious to see what her reaction would be to Negroes. She didn't show any reaction, being neither interested nor resentful at being with colored people—which was probably the only normal reaction she ever had. We ate in Frank's, a restaurant I like, near St. Nicholas Avenue and 125th Street, and then took in the show at the Apollo, which wasn't too good. The dance act consisted of three vigorous tap dancers who went through standard routines with a great deal of sweating and energy, and the band was much too loud and brassy. This was followed by a corny stage skit which would have been assailed (and rightfully so) as horribly chauvinistic if it had played in any downtown theatre. We left before the movie and I decided to walk across 125th Street to Madison Avenue, take the bus down.

It was about ten o'clock and the street was fairly deserted. Somewhere between Lenox and Fifth Avenues we passed one of the many bars that dot Harlem (and any other poor neighborhood) and a couple of colored men were hanging around in front of it. At the time I didn't notice them, but one of them—a slender, dark-skinned man in a worn sport jacket and slacks—stared at Lee as we passed. I didn't think anything of it, her height and size caused many men—and women—to glance at Lee. But this fellow broke away from the others, said to Lee, “Pardon but...” and then broke into some foreign language.

Lee kept walking but I stopped, and as she was holding my arm, she had to stop. She was staring at this man without showing any signs of recognition, and I was about to ask what he wanted, when he spoke again. He seemed to be friendly and I think he was speaking Italian. A strange look of intense anger flooded her big face and she yanked her arm out of mine and hit him across the face. The blow knocked him against the wall of a building and before he knew what was happening, Lee started punching and kicking him like a maniac.

For a split second his friends and I were taken by surprise, then we stared at each other for another split second—a suspicious look—only natural in a land where the colored man is a second-class citizen. I finally grabbed Lee, had trouble holding on to her arm. One of the Negro men grabbed her other arm and said, “Lee! Lee, stop it!”

The fellow was still against the wall, his face bleeding, looking bewildered and ready to pass out. The man holding her other arm said to me, “For God's sake, mister, get her out of here before the cops come and whip everybody's head!”

Lee had calmed down a little, had stopped struggling with me, but the way she stared at the beaten man gave me the shivers. I said, “Get me a cab while I hold her.”

Another man stopped a cab as a small crowd quickly gathered. Lee let me walk her to the cab and I told the driver to take us to 90th Street and Fifth Avenue. Lee sat back in the cab, refused to answer my questions except to say, “That bad man.”

“But who is he? What did he say?”

“All bad, bad,” she said fiercely, then shut up. At 90th Street I waited till the cab was out of sight, took another one down to the house. I don't know why I changed cabs; maybe I was conditioned by the movies I've seen.

Lee was upset. I wanted to dance when we got home but she refused, lay across the bed, paying no attention to me. Except for the strange language I would have thought it was her southern blood acting up, or maybe she'd seen the man in the South someplace. It was too big a puzzle for me.

She was still staring at the ceiling when I finished dancing, had my bath and dried off under the sun-lamp. I undressed her and when we went to bed, for the first time she didn't drop right off to sleep.