The Love Machine (2 page)

Robin Stone had exploded into her life at a charity ball. She had been chosen along with five other top models to appear in a fashion show for a charity ball at the Waldorf. Seats cost one hundred dollars. There was the usual dancing and entertainment in the Grand Ballroom; all the best people came. But there was one factor that set this ball apart from all the other similar glittering charity events: Mrs. Gregory Austin was head of the committee. Mrs. Gregory Austin’s ball not only made all the newspapers, it also received television coverage on the local IBC station. And why not? Mr. Austin owned the IBC network.

The Grand Ballroom at the Waldorf was packed. Amanda and the other models were accorded the courtesy of “paying guests,” since they were donating their time. Along with the five other girls, she sat at a table and nibbled at the dinner. IBC had placed six minor executives at the table as escorts for the girls. The men were attractive and bland. In the beginning, they made stabs at small talk, but gradually they fell into discussions of ratings and cancelations among themselves. Amanda barely listened. She covertly studied the table where Mrs. Gregory Austin sat with her friends. She recognized Judith Austin from her newspaper
pictures and was secretly elated that Mrs. Austin’s hair was tinted the exact color as her own. Amanda judged Judith Austin to be about forty, but she was very beautiful—small, elegant and perfectly understated. It was women like Mrs. Austin whom Amanda had tried to emulate in the early stages of learning how to dress—of course she still couldn’t afford clothes like Mrs. Austin’s, but she could get the copies.

After dinner she went to the dressing room to prepare for the fashion show. The IBC cameras were set up. The show would go on live for the local eleven o’clock news. She was sitting with the other models when there was a light knock on the door. Robin Stone came in.

The girls gave him their names. When she simply said, “Amanda,” he wrote it down and waited. She smiled. “Just Amanda—that’s all there is,” she said. Their eyes met and he smiled. She stared at him as he went around the room, writing down the names of the other girls. He was very tall, and she liked the way he moved. She had caught him a few times on the local news before switching over to CBS and the late movie. Somewhere in the recesses of her mind she recalled he had once won a Pulitzer Prize as a newspaper reporter. Television certainly didn’t do him justice. His hair was dark and thick, just beginning to tinge with gray. But it was his eyes. They suddenly caught her own, held them—almost as if he was appraising her. Then he flashed an easy grin and left the room.

She decided he was probably married to someone who looked like Mrs. Austin. By the time the show was over, Amanda had even pictured two small children who looked exactly like him.

She was completely dressed when he knocked on the door. “Hello, Miss One Name,” he said with a grin. “Is there a Mr. One Name waiting for you at home or are you free to have a beer with me?”

She went to P.J.’s with Robin, toyed with a Coke and watched him in amazement as he drank five vodkas and remained absolutely sober. And she followed him back to his apartment without a spoken word or suggestion on his part. The pressure of his hand carried the message, as if it was mutually understood.

It was almost as if she had been under hypnosis. She entered
his apartment without any sense of apprehension, stood before him and undressed without giving a thought to her bosom. And when she hesitated with her bra, he walked over and removed it himself.

“Are you disappointed?” she asked.

He tossed the padded bra across the room. “Only cows need boobs!” Then he took her in his arms and gently leaned down and kissed her breasts. He was the only man who had ever done this. She held his head and trembled… .

That first night he had taken her gently and wordlessly, then when both their bodies were moist with exhaustion, he had held her close. “Want to be my girl?” he asked. Her answer came in the darkness as she clung to him with more fervor. He broke the embrace, and those clear blue eyes searched her face. His lips smiled, but the eyes were serious. “No strings, no promises, no questions—on
both
sides. Okay?”

She nodded mutely. Then he reached out and made love to her again, with a peculiar combination of violence and tenderness. At last they lay back, exhausted and fulfilled. She caught a glance at the clock on his night table. Three o’clock! She slid out of bed. He reached out and grabbed her wrist. “Where are you going!”

“Home… .”

He twisted her wrist and she cried out in pain. He said, “When you sleep with me, you
stay!
You don’t leave!”

“But I have to. I’m wearing an evening dress!”

Without a word, he released her and got up and began to dress. “Then I’ll spend the night at your place.”

She smiled. “Afraid to sleep alone?”

His eyes went dark. “Don’t ever say that! I sleep alone. But when I go to bed with a girl, I
sleep
with her!”

They went to her apartment, and he made love to her again. And as she fell asleep in his arms she was filled with a happiness so acute that she felt sympathy for every woman in the world because they would never know Robin Stone.

Now, after three months, even her Siamese cat, Slugger, had accepted Robin and snuggled against his feet at night.

Robin didn’t make very much money, and he was away many
weekends, doing lectures to augment his income. Amanda didn’t mind not going to the Colony or “21.” She liked P.J.’s, the Lancer Bar, the Piccolo Italia, Robin’s hangouts. She loved double features, and she was trying desperately to learn the difference between a Democrat and a Republican. Sometimes she would sit in the Lancer Bar for hours, while Robin discussed politics with Jerry Moss. Jerry lived in Greenwich and his agency handled the Alwayso cosmetics account. It was Robin’s friendship with Jerry that had landed her the color layouts for Alwayso.

She stood before the mirror in the bathroom of the Plaza, slipped into her woolen dress and walked into the living room of the suite.

The makeshift dining table had been removed. The photographer was packing his equipment. His name was Ivan Green-berg, and he was a good friend. She waved to him and the people repacking the dresses and left the suite, a golden image, her long hair flying, the singer’s burnished mink rippling as she ran down the hall.

She went to the phone in the lobby and checked with her exchange. No word from Robin. She dialed his number—it rang tonelessly, the kind of a ring that tells you no one is home. She hung up.

It was almost noon. Where on earth was he?

TWO

H
E WAS IN A SUITE
at the Bellevue Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia.

He awoke slowly with the knowledge that the morning was all but gone. He heard pigeons murmuring on the ledge of the window. He opened his eyes and knew exactly where he was. Sometimes when he awoke in a motel he wasn’t sure. Every motel room looked the same and he had to stop and recall the city, or even the name of the girl who slept beside him. But he was alone this morning, and this was not a motel. Good old Philadelphia and their Man of the Year dinner. They had sprung for a real suite.

He reached for his cigarettes on the night table. The pack was empty. There wasn’t even a decent-sized butt in the ashtray. Then he saw the ashtray on the other side of the bed—long butts with orange lipstick on the tips.

He reached for the phone and ordered a double orange juice, coffee and two packs of cigarettes. He scrounged for the least damaged butt, scraped off the dead ash and lit it. There were longer butts in the other ashtray, with orange lipstick. He didn’t take one. He got up and spilled the contents of that tray into the toilet. He watched them disappear, feeling he was also exorcising the girl. Damn it, he would have sworn she was single. He usually could spot them right away, the married women out for a secret thrill. This one had really fooled him, maybe because she was a cut above the average. Well, they were all one-night stands. Let their husbands worry. He grinned and looked at his watch—almost noon. He’d catch the two o’clock train back to New York.

Tonight he and Amanda would celebrate and drink a toast to Gregory Austin, the man who was taking him away from all this. It still seemed unreal, as hard to believe as the personal phone call from Austin himself at nine o’clock on Saturday morning. At first Robin had thought it was a gag—the chairman of the board of IBC calling a local newsman! Gregory laughed and told him to call him back on the IBC number to verify it. Robin did exactly that and Austin picked up the telephone on the first ring. Could Robin Stone come directly to his office? He was in Gregory Austin’s office ten minutes later, his suitcase with him. He had to catch the noon train to Baltimore.

Austin was alone in his massive office. He came to the point immediately. How would Robin like to be the Head of Network News? He would also want Robin to bring in ideas for expanding the news department, and form his own team to cover the conventions in the summer. Robin liked the idea very much. But “Head of Network News”? The title was enigmatic. Morgan White was
President
of Network News. Randolph Lester was Vice-President. What, Robin asked, did “Head of Network News”
mean
? Well, it meant fifty thousand a year, more than double his present salary. And, as Austin put it, in answer to his question about the title, “Let’s leave it this way for starters, shall we?”

It was one hell of a start. And when Austin learned Robin still had another year to go with his lecture contract, he simply made two phone calls, one to the lecture agency, the other to his lawyer, instructing him to buy out Robin’s lecture contract. It had been as simple as that—simple and secretive. Robin was to stay away from IBC for a week. He was also to keep his mouth shut about the assignment. On the following Monday he was to come in and take over in the new job. Gregory Austin himself would handle the announcement his own way… .

He poured his coffee and lit a fresh cigarette. The weak wintry sun streamed through the hotel windows. A week from today he would be reporting at IBC for the new job. He took a long drag
of his cigarette. Some of his good mood filtered away with the smoke. He ground out the cigarette. It conjured up the image of the girl with the orange lipstick. What was her name? Peggy? Betsy? Neither name hit a spark of recognition. But her name ended like that: Billie? Mollie? Lillie? The hell with it! It wasn’t important. He sat back and pushed the coffee away. Once when he had come to New York for a weekend while he was still at Harvard, he had seen a show,
Lady in the Dark
. There was something about a girl hearing part of a tune—she could never get past the first few bars. The same thing occasionally happened to him. Only it wasn’t a tune, it was a memory, a vision … He could never quite see it, but he sensed it. It was like being on the verge of an important recollection, and it left him with a sense of musky warmth, of happiness ending in panic. It didn’t happen often, but it had happened last night, in one fast flash—no,
twice!
The first time had been when the girl had slipped into bed with him. The feel of her body, vibrant and soft—her breasts were magnificent. He didn’t usually pay much attention to breasts—there was something childish to him about sucking a full breast. Why did men think of it as a sex act? It was a longing for Mama. There was something
weak
about a man who wanted to lay his head against a woman with big breasts. Robin dug blondes, clean and bright, slim and hard. There was a symmetry to their bodies that he found exciting.

But the girl last night had been a brunette, with beautiful full breasts. Oddly enough he had found himself excited. It was coming back to him now. He had shouted something when he hit the climax. But what was it? He never shouted ordinarily, not with Amanda, or any girl he stayed with. Yet he
knew
he had shouted something, just as he knew there had been other times when he had shouted and could not remember his words afterwards.

He lit a fresh cigarette and intentionally turned his thoughts to the new future that awaited him. This was a time for celebration. He had an entire week off.

He picked up the Philadelphia paper that had arrived with his breakfast. On page three he saw his picture with the man who had been honored, a balding corpulent judge. The caption read:
ROBIN STONE, PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING NEWSMAN, TELEVISION PERSONALITY AND LECTURER, CAME TO PHILADELPHIA TO SPEAK AND HONOR JUDGE GARRISON B. OAKES
, 1960
MAN OF THE YEAR
.

He poured himself some fresh coffee and grinned. Sure he had come to honor the judge, a man he had never heard of. He had come because they paid Universal Lecture Agency five hundred bucks.

He sipped his coffee, cheerful in the knowledge that he would never have to lecture again. It had sounded so easy in the beginning. He had been doing the local IBC news for about a year when Clyde Watson, head of the Universal Lecture Agency, sent for him. The agency occupied an entire floor in a new building on Lexington Avenue. And Clyde Watson, sitting behind the massive walnut desk, looked like a trusted stockbroker. Everything was designed to put the victim at ease, even the paternal smile. “Mr. Stone, why should a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist wind up doing a local news show?”

“Because I quit the Northern Press Association.”