Pleasure Thieves

"Well, I mean for once you've noticed me, instead of looking at me like so much equipment."

Harry laughed. All right, for a change he'd play it her way. "Oh, come on, you know there are those who 'also serve.'"

"Do I?" she asked softly.

"Are you serious? Phillip would be paralyzed without you."

"And you?" She looked straight ahead, driving fast and expertly.

"I work with Phillip."

"You mean you were working with Phillip. It's all over, you know."

"Because of you?" he asked bluntly. "We'll get over that."

She glared at the road, more insulted by his calm than his ugliness at dinner. "Phillip isn't a pig, that's why. Phillip wants to live, for life, for pleasure. He isn't some stupid little boy playing Indian and creeping into other people's windows." She added abstractly, "It's all over."

"You could be wrong," he warned. "It's not so easy to drop off, just like that. You get hooked. It's like some kind of drug habit." He stopped, unwilling to reveal himself to her, making the obvious effort Anonymous The Pleasure Thieves Page 92

not to unburden himself. "And what would you do for excitement, daughter of Phillip?"

"Don't be funny," she said mildly, her face stiffening, contradicting the tone. "He's not like that. Things don't use him, he uses things."

"Like you."

"Don't misunderstand," she said sharply. "Don't draw some convenient portrait about how Phillip's plundered and ruined me. It's not that way. It's never really been that way."

She started suddenly, surprisingly, to cry. Harry felt furious desire for her. Then the feeling changed to sympathy and curiosity.

"I want Phillip. I've always wanted Phillip, since I was a little girl.

To be near him, to listen to him, to love him…"

"Well, you have him," Harry said coldly.

"He's not enough now." She was revealing herself now, telling him what he knew, but had never admitted.

"How did you get into this?"

She tried to respond on his terms. Yes, he wanted form, contours, as much as Phillip. She spoke quietly and sincerely. "Like father, like daughter, you know, that sort of thing. We just naturally like the same things."

"Phillip?"

"Phillip loves me."

"Then why has he let you get involved in everything. Pushing that jewelry can be dangerous, little girl."

"I made him let me. I fought for it. Years ago, when other little girls were discovering the birds and bees, I discovered that my daddy was a jewel thief. Do you know what? I loved the idea … I loved it."

Harry watched her intently as she added, "I overheard a conversation."

"That must have been an interesting scene, when he found out,"

Harry said, looking away from her intent face.

"I didn't tell him until years later, as a matter of fact," she explained pensively.

"But weren't you at school when all this was going on?"

"Yes, I had to go to school," she said softly. "Schools I hated, filled with people who bored me unforgivably." She paused a second, and continued, "When I didn't see Phillip, nothing seemed right."

"Were you with him much?"

"No, not very much then. During vacations I would be left here with the servants. Sometimes he would be here, and those were wonderful times. He would read to me, or explain paintings, talk to me about traveling together when I grew up. Then he would be gone, as quickly as he'd arrived, and I was alone again.

"I started to work myself, on the magazine, that career girl's nightmare, instead of running away or going to schools forever … to be near Phillip I guess. Anyway, he couldn't shake me, so he decided to use me."

Harry watched the side of her face as she spoke. He waited, waited for the rest that she would have to tell him tonight. Waited for the secret he could sense was burning inside her.

"It's really worked out rather well, wouldn't you say … as smooth as a perfect…" Her face became suddenly tense, but somehow beautiful.

She wanted him to take her in his arms, to comfort the rest of the terrible story out of her. He waited still beside her, and Carol realized that it was more important for her to tell the story than for Harry to hear it. Also she knew that his objectivity, his distance enabled her to go on.

She had revealed her secret to no one but Phillip, who was a part of her, and the dirty little man in the tenement shop. Harry was outside all this, she knew.

"You see," her voice was tight as taut rubber again, "it's not that Phillip has perverted me, has made me into some kind of slave. He's made my life possible. Without him, I wouldn't have wanted to live."

Then her voice lost its emotion and became flat, like a bored instructor giving a familiar lecture.

"When I was thirteen, I had diphtheria. The doctors, as usual, didn't know if I could live. But Phillip knew, because Phillip cared. Mother was dead then, and he sat vigil at my bed. He didn't," her words cracked and parted, "he didn't touch me then."

Harry watched the marble shoulders. The pain on her face was reaching him, deeply, from some place far back before his childhood.