Contrary Pleasure by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online Page B

dollars in his pocket. It would buy a pair of bus tickets. The
old man could wait around the dean’s office for a long long time. They would get out of this crummy city. Take a new name. Call themselves
husband and wife. Get jobs. In a few years this would all seem far away.
    He set the suitcases down and he had his hand lifted in order to knock
when he realized that a strange noise was coming from inside the room. For a
moment he could not identify it, and then he realized that it was the familiar
and hideous sound of the springs on the ancient studio couch, a rhythmic surge
and creaking, too well known to him, too well remembered. “Elise!” he yelled.
“Elise!” and his voice cracked on her name, the way it used to long ago when
his voice was changing.
    There was a sudden silence in the room. And he thought of other answers.
Someone else was in there. Or she was doing some kind of exercises. Or her
husband had come back. The silence continued. He put his ear against the door
and thought he heard whispering. He banged on the door. There was no answer.
And he remembered something he had seen in a movie. He backed up a little and
swung his leg up and stamped his heel hard against the door, just above the
lock. Wood ripped and the door went open so easily that he lost his balance and
fell to his hands and knees, just inside the doorway. He raised his head
stupidly and looked at them there. It was like a dirty picture that had been
passed around in high school a long time ago. It was Elise, and it was a squat,
brutal man he had seen several times on the stairs in the building, or standing
in front. He had always nodded at Elise, and Elise had told Brock that the man
drove a taxi. It was all gone in that moment. It was just a dirty picture of
somebody he had never known. The woman made a thin sniggling sound. The man
yelled at him to get the hell out. He pulled the door shut. He felt a great
calmness. He picked up his suitcases and the two coats and went down the stairs
with even, methodical tread. Down in the lower hallway he had difficulty
opening the door. One of the suitcases banged against a doorframe. It spilled
open and everything fell out. He knelt and repacked it carefully. He saw that
they had put his dirty laundry right in with his fresh clothing. He felt calm
and far away and it shocked and surprised him to feel tears running down his
face, to stick his tongue out the corner of his mouth and taste the salt.
    He checked in at a small hotel near the campus. It was still afternoon.
He undressed and went to bed. When he woke up, it was daylight. He did not know
if he had slept an hour or a week. He phoned the desk. They said it was a
little after nine in the morning. After his shower, he shaved. It seemed wrong
that he should still be wearing a Delevan face, a face bearing the clan
resemblance, eyes that tilted down at the outside corners, shelving brow, the
high-bridged nose, the heavy mouth, an expression elusively whimsical.
    He got to the dean’s office at precisely ten. His father was there. The
old man said evenly, “Hello, Brock.”
    “Hello, Dad.”
    “Wait in the hall, Brock.”
    “Okay.”
    He waited in the hall a long time. The old man came out. He didn’t look
at Brock and he said nothing. Brock fell in step beside him. Once they were out
of the building the old man said, “Where’s your stuff?”
    “In a hotel room. The Cardinal Hotel. Three blocks up Thompson.”
    “I know where it is.”
    The old man did one strange thing. He stopped short near the quadrangle.
He stopped and just stood there and looked at the kids walking by. Classes were
changing. Girls with one arm hugged around a stack of books. Sweaters with
letters. The old man stood and gaped at them as though he had never seen
college kids before. Then he started walking again. They went up to the room.
The old man said, “I left Greenshine’s money with the
dean. Do you owe any money?”
    Brock had the list in a small notebook. The