The Insiders (29 page)

"I don't know! I don't really know why I'm marrying Brant, except that he wants me to, and I—maybe I'm finally ready for marriage!"

"Huh!" Marti said sourly. She started folding Eve's clothes neatly in little piles on the bed, and she didn't say much more after that, although her disapproval was palpable.

In the end, Eve took just two cases with her. She left Marti a check for her share of the rent for the next two months, and the keys to the apartment. Somehow, that seemed to make everything so
final;
she felt as if she had put herself in Brant's custody, and the feeling made her quiet and withdrawn. She had the sudden impression of being on a roller-coaster that was out of control and racing toward destruction. Would he end up destroying her?

At the town house
, like a bad omen, Jerry Harmon was waiting, leaning up against the weathered brick exterior, his eyes watching them both. Somehow, just
se
eing him standing there made Eve sickly afraid— unreasoningly so, because, after all, it had been
Brant
and not Jerry who had started it all that night. Brant who...

She felt quite suddenly as if she couldn't get out of the car, didn't want to, but Brant's firm, strong fingers grasped both her hand
s, pulling her upward and onto h
er feet, moving her forward. Jerry ignored her, and she felt a kind of relief at that.

"Hey, Brant! I've been trying to get in touch all day, man—figured that if you'd gone sailing, you wouldn't lie out
too
late." His glance flicked over Eve at last, and she wanted to cringe under it.

"Partying all alone, huh? Well, how's about joining the crowd tonight at my place? Got some new faces coming in from the southland, man, and they all love lo ball. I came all the way up here just so I'd be sure to catch you."

Brant kept smiling his cold, polite smile, but he was shaking his head, and Eve felt relief flood through her. For a few horrible seconds, she had been afraid that he'd want to go and would force her to go along with him.

"Sorry, Jer. No more playing for me for a while, and I guess you might just as well pass the word around that I'm leaving town again tomorrow. Eve and I are getting married."

He'd said it easily, conversationally, but Eve could see Jerry's eyes bug, his mouth open and then close, as if he were having difficulty finding words.

Finally he said slowly, "Man, you have got to be kidding! This is all a big put-on. Go on, tell me that and I'll laugh. Because, Brant baby, it's not your
bag,
man. I mean, you're cool, sweetheart. Just a little crazy, maybe, like the rest of us, but not that crazy. Come on, now, tell old Jer you were fooling—the sun got to you, maybe "

Inexplicably, Eve found that she, too, was watching Brant, waiting for his laugh, waiting for him to shrug and tell Jerry that he wasn't serious at all, it was a put-on.

But instead, here he was telling Jerry something quite different.

"Sorry, Jer, but I
am
serious—finally. Maybe everything just got to be a drag—you know? Anyhow, why don't I just let you think up some story wild enough to tell the gang. I'm going to be too damned busy to make any announcements myself."

Jerry stood there shaking his head for a long time after they had gone in the house—Eve still silent, and Brant explaining casually that they had a lot of packing to do.

"You're eloping?"

"Guess you could call it that. We haven't decided
where
yet, or when, exactly. Just soon. We're leaving in the morning, so be a sweetheart and keep everybody away, huh?"

Jerry had agreed, his expression still stunned, but now he found himself wondering if Brant weren't, after all, playing some monstrous kind of trick. On the girl, on him, on them all. Brant could be a kind of weirdo sometimes—he was as difficult as hell to figure out at all times.

But to marry Eve Mason, of all pe
ople? Everyone knew she was cra
zy about that lawyer guy, Francie's brother. And then there had been all die publicity about her going to New York to take Babs Barrie's place on the biggie morning show—what about that? Hell, he thought, only a week or so ago, Brant had invited everyone at his party to screw the broad—had even helped. To think that he, Jerry, had actually thought he knew Brant Newcomb better than most people did! That was a laugh because did you ever really get to know anyone as rich as Brant, or as self-contained as he was, even if you'd been stationed at the same base in 'Nam?

Brant Newcomb was a loner even when he was the center of a crowd, the laugh of the party. There'd always been women in his life, of course, and even an occasional man if it was an orgy scene with everyone doing it to everyone else. But Brant, unlike most guys, had never had a special friend (unless you could call
him
one, and Brant had sure as hell shown him different, hadn't he?) nor kept a mistress. Not even when he lived in Europe, where it added a certain cachet to a rich man's reputation as a lover to keep a well-known movie star or an opera singer.

Brant, with his looks and his millions, could have had his pick of the women; instead he would use them— fuck them and forget them. He genuinely didn't give a damn about anyone. Some jealous women, their vanity hurt when he'd picked them up and dropped them just as quickly, had even tried to start rumors that Brant was a closet queen, but nobody really believed that because Brant balled too many women—some of them too publicly—and took too much enjoyment in the doing of it. He was as horny and ready as often as an eighteen-year-old.

So what in hell did Brant think he had found in Eve Mason? She was beautiful, but beauty was cheap and easy to come by these days. She was a product of middle-class suburbia, nothing special, and had had the usual quota of men on the way up. What had Brant discovered that was so special—there had to be
something,
only Jerry hadn't figured it out yet. Oh, well, they said a leopard couldn't change its spots, and Brant couldn't change overnight. He was human, too, like everyone else, and he'd be back in circulation after a while, with or without his bride.

Jerry had been walking back to where he'd parked his car, deep in thought. Brant's sudden announcement had shaken him more than he wanted to admit, even to himself. After all, they'd been buddies since Vietnam, and Brant hadn't even asked him in the house this time, the cold bastard!

Suddenly, as a thought struck him, Jerry's footsteps quickened. Hell, why hadn't he thought of it before? He had the juiciest piece of gossip in the city right now —he knew something no one else knew. City, hell! This piece of gossip was
news
—international, wire-service type. It was a goddam scoop, and if there was money to be made, Jerry baby was going to make it. Maybe his old pal Brant would let him take some pictures at the wedding? All he had to do now was get on the phone to Evalyn Adams in Los Angeles, and she'd jump at the chance to be the first to run the story—she always paid well, too. Bread. He could use some. Parties were expensive.

Eve thought that the thing that frightened her most about Brant was his cruelty. It wasn't a conscious,
considered
cruelty most of the time, perhaps, but it was all the more frightening because it seemed instinctive and thoughtless. After seeing Jerry Harmon, the fear that had returned to haunt her hadn't gone away yet, and since they'd been back, she felt they were farther apart than ever.

There was nothing for her to do here—every thing was being taken care of, even her final packing. If she needed anything else, all she had to do was ring for Jamison and tell him, and he'd see to it. She wondered nervously what Jamison thought of all this, his employer's latest whim—did he think at all, or was he merely a robot? Was that what you had to be to survive around the man who was going to be her husband?

She'd paced around the rooms on the first floor of the house until Brant, looking up from the telephone, had offered her a tranquilizer. She'd refused, and he'd shrugged and gone back to his telephone calls. Now Eve wondered whom he was calling—he'd been on the phone for what seemed like hours, making one call after another.

"I have to take care of a few things before we leave tomorrow," he'd said. Well, of course she wasn't his wife yet and she didn't have the right to ask questions, but would she ever feel secure enough with him to do so?

At last, Eve came upstairs to lie on the big bed and flick the switches that would bring her music again. Bach—cool, measured, soothing sounds. But they couldn't stop her thoughts. She wondered if she should have taken the tranquilizer—it might have helped, after all.

Oh, God. What's going to happen to me in the end? Do I really
want
this? I'll have the money, of course, but he'll have
me.
I'm afraid of him. And everything's moving so damned
fast!
When he's making love to mo, he's all there and it's good, and for a little while then I'm not afraid. But the rest of the time, he's too
con
trolled, too carefully remote. I can't read Mm; I can't understand him.

She had closed her eyes, but his voice cut sharply
th
rough her thoughts.

"Eve, don't go to sleep yet—we have to call your mother, remember?"

She remembered. And wondered all over again what she was going to say. Her mother would be shocked, of course. She was old-fashioned enough to jump to the conclusion that Eve was pregnant. But Mom wouldn't ask that question. Poor Mom!

"Brant, can I cop out and have
you
talk to her first? She's going to think—"

"That you're pregnant. Well, baby, maybe we ought to get you that way in a hurry."

"Brant!"

"You sounded just like a wife when you said that. Better watch it."

He sat on the bed beside her and smiled at her, and she realized suddenly that he very seldom smiled at all.

"I wonder if I'll ever understand you?" The words slipped out quite accidentally; she had only meant to think them.

He raised his eyebrows at her, his face composed again.

"That's hard for me to say. Sometimes I don't even understand myself, but that could be because I gave up wondering a long time ago. The only thing I learned from three years of analysis was to accept myself as I am."

His hand touched her unconsciously clenched fist, which lay between them.

"Relax, Eve. You're going to have to learn to stop being so scared and tense around me."

"Brant—"

"Yes, I know. You have reason to be."

"It's not just that." She sat upright, so that she faced
him. "It's just that I have this feeling that being cruel is an instinctive thing with you—that you don't really care about people unless—unless they're necessary to you, for whatever purpose you have in mind."

After she'd said it, she wondered nervously if she'd gone too far, but he merely looked thoughtful, as if he were considering her impulsive speech.

"I suppose you're right," he said at last. "Ever since— well, ever since I was young, I've known that there was no one but me to watch out for me. And I figured that everyone else could learn the same thing for themselves. If you play a game, you'd better know the rules. I learned that, too. So if I'm cruel, or someone gets hurt, I never gave it a second thought. Guess I've never really thought of other people as
people,
if you know what I mean. Just convenient adjuncts to the way of life I'd chosen."

"You mean the kicks circuit? But why that? You could have become a—a
monk
and thought about it all in some monastery or ashram, or—or done anything else you wanted to that the world has to offer!"

He laughed suddenly, a short, mirthless sound.

"A monk! Yes, funnily enough, I did think about that once, but it seemed too much of a drag, living by rules— all that crap about obedience and chastity, with no real reasons
why.
And at the time I didn't want to be alone too much. I had my reasons. But you want to know why the life I lead now, don't you? The theory behind it— sensualism, hedonism as the pure flame, consume the body with excesses rather than fasting in order to set the mind free. Something like the old ascetic monks believed in, the desert-livers, the hermits who insisted on seeking their own path to salvation—only my way offers much more scope. I've turned on with pot and coke and acid and speed—you name it, I've tried it at least once. Sometimes drugs help intensify the feeling of
feeling,
you know? But then after a while nothing's new, and sometimes the walls close in on you and you're alone and so damned scared because you're not in control any longer. Having a crowd around helps, but only at first. After a while..."

His eyes had looked blank and opaque while he'd been talking, but suddenly, for one fleeting moment, they looked directly into hers, and Eve thought she could actually see
in
them. Something that was almost pity made her reach out to him and touch him.

"Don't—I didn't mean to pry, I just want to
understand,
you see."

"Understanding takes time, baby. Lots of time and learning to care, which is something I'm not used to. You'll have to help me. I'm a moody bastard sometimes, and I'm going to have to learn to give instead of taking all the time. But dammit—"

"Be careful," she said shakily, "you're letting too much of yourself show. And I might—I might end up liking you, you know—would that bore you?"

He put both his hands on her shoulders, his eyes searching her face.

"Maybe that's what I need—to have to work at persuading someone to like me. And maybe you interest me enough to dig deeper under your soft-seeming sex-kitten surface, just to see what I'll discover."

She half-expected him to push her backward onto the bed, but instead he kissed her chastely on the forehead.