The waiter had taken the dishes away, and Ron had paid the cheque. He looked at her, but Catherine couldn’t move.
‘Do you want anything else?’ Ron asked.
Do I? Oh, yes! I want to be on a slow boat to China. I want to be in a cannibal’s kettle being boiled for dinner. I want my mother!
Ron was watching her, waiting, Catherine took a deep breath. ‘I – I can’t think of anything.’
‘Good.’ He drew the syllable out, long and lastingly so that it seemed to put a bed on the table between them. ‘Let’s go.’ He stood up and Catherine followed. The euphoric feeling from the drinks had completely vanished and her legs began to tremble.
They were outside in the warm night air when a sudden thought hit Catherine and filled her with relief. He’s not going to take me to bed tonight. Men never do that with a girl on the first date. He’s going to ask me out to dinner again and next time we’ll go to Henrici’s and we’ll get to know each other better. Really know each other. And we’ll probably fall in love – madly – and he’ll take me to meet his parents and then everything will be all right … and I won’t feel this stupid panic.
‘Do you have any preference in motels?’ Ron asked.
Catherine stared up at him, speechless. Gone were the dreams of a genteel musicale evening with his mother and father. The bastard was planning to take her to bed in a motel! Well, that was what she wanted, wasn’t it? Wasn’t that the reason she had written that insane note?
Ron’s hand was on Catherine’s shoulder now, sliding down her arm. She felt a warm sensation in her groin. She swallowed and said, ‘If you’ve seen one motel, you’ve seen them all.’
Ron looked at her strangely. But all he said was, ‘OK. Let’s go.’
They got into his car and started driving west. Catherine’s body had turned into a block of ice, but her mind was racing at a feverish pitch. The last time she had stayed in a motel was when she was eight and was driving across country with her mother and father. Now she was going to one to go to bed with a man who was a total stranger. What did she know about him anyway? Only that he was handsome, popular and knew an easy lay when he saw one.
Ron reached over and took her hand. ‘Your hands are cold,’ he said.
‘Cold hands, hot legs.’ Oh, Christ, she thought. There I go again. For some reason, the lyrics of ‘Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life’ started to go through Catherine’s head. Well she was about to solve it. She was on her way to finding out what everything was all about. The books, the sexy advertisements, the thinly veiled love lyrics – ‘Rock Me in the Cradle of Love,’ ‘Do It Again,’ ‘Birds Do It.’ OK, she thought. Now Catherine is going to do it.
Ron turned south onto Clark Street.
Ahead on both sides of the street were huge blinking red eyes, neon signs that were alive in the night, screaming out their offers of cheap and temporary havens for impatient young lovers. ‘EASY REST MOTEL.’ ‘OVERNIGHT MOTEL,’ ‘COME INN,’ (Now that had to be Freudian!) ‘TRAVELLER’S REST.’ The paucity of imagination was staggering, but on the other hand the owners of these places were probably too busy bustling fornicating young couples in and out of bed to worry about being literary.
‘This is about the best of them,’ Ron said, pointing to a sign ahead.
‘PARADISE INN – VACANCY.’
It was a symbol. There was a vacancy in Paradise, and she, Catherine Alexander, was going to fill it.
Ron swung the car into the courtyard next to a small white-washed office with a sign that read: RING BELL AND ENTER. The courtyard consisted of about two dozen numbered wooden bungalows.
‘How does this look?’ Ron asked.
Like Dante’s Inferno. Like the Colosseum in Rome when the Christians were about to be thrown to the lions. Like the Temple of Delphi when a Vestal Virgin was about to get hers.
Catherine felt that excited feeling in her groin again. ‘Terrific,’ she said. ‘Just terrific.’
Ron smiled knowingly. ‘I’ll be right back.’ He put his hand on Catherine’s knee, sliding it up towards her thigh, gave her a quick, impersonal kiss and swung out of the car and went into the office. She sat there, looking after him, trying to make her mind blank.
She heard the wail of a siren in the distance. Oh, my God, she thought wildly, it’s a raid! They’re always raiding these places!
The door to the manager’s office opened and Ron came out. He was carrying a key and apparently was deaf to the siren which was coming closer and closer. He walked over to Catherine’s side of the car and opened the door.
‘All set,’ he said. The siren was a screaming banshee moving in on them. Could the police arrest them for merely being in the courtyard?
‘Come on,’ Ron said.
‘Don’t you hear that?’
‘Hear what?’
The siren passed them and went ululating down the street away from them, receding into the distance. Damn! ‘The birds,’ she said weakly.
There was a look of impatience on Ron’s face.
‘If there’s anything wrong –’ he said.
‘No, no,’ Catherine cut in quickly. ‘I’m coming.’ She got out of the car and they moved towards one of the bungalows. ‘I hope you got my lucky number,’ she said brightly.
‘What did you say?’
Catherine looked up at him and suddenly realized no words had come out. Her mouth was completely dry. ‘Nothing,’ she croaked.
They reached the door and it said number thirteen. It was exactly what she deserved. It was a sign from heaven that she was going to get pregnant, that God was out to punish Saint Catherine.
Ron unlocked the door and held it open for her. He flicked on the light switch and Catherine stepped inside. She could not believe it. The room seemed to consist of one enormous bed. The only other furniture was an uncomfortable-looking easy chair in a corner, a small dressing table with a mirror over it, and next to the bed, a battered radio with a slot for feeding it quarters. No one would ever walk in here and mistake this room for anything but what it was: a place where a boy brought a girl to screw her. You couldn’t say, Well, here we are in the ski lodge, or the war games room, or the bridal suite at the Ambassador. No. What this was was a cheap love nest. Catherine turned to see what Ron was doing and he was throwing the bolt on the door. Good. If the Vice Squad wanted them, they’d have to break down the door first. She could see herself being carried out in the nude by two policemen while a photographer snapped her picture for the front page of the Chicago Daily News.
Ron moved up to Catherine and put his arms around her. ‘Are you nervous?’ he asked.
She looked up at him and forced a laugh that would have made Margaret Sullavan proud. ‘Nervous? Ron, don’t be silly.’
He was still studying her, unsure. ‘You’ve done this before, haven’t you, Cathy?’
‘I don’t keep a scorecard.’
‘I’ve had a strange feeling about you all evening.’
Here it comes. He was going to throw her out on her virgin ass and tell her to get lost in a cold shower. Well, she wasn’t going to let that happen. Not tonight. ‘What kind of feeling?’
‘I don’t know.’ Ron’s voice was perplexed. ‘One minute you’re kind of sexy and, you know, with it, and the next minute your mind is way off somewhere and