DUKE

Chapter Nine: Vivien and Brenda

Chapter Nine: Vivien and Brenda

In the Caboot mansion, inside a basement where there is dim nighttime lighting, still in her jumpsuit but her head free of her mask, Brenda ends up tied in a chair, at a discarded dining room table, within this rather spacious basement. The floor is tiled and clean, and the walls are painted a bright bluish white.

Only Vivien is present with Brenda, strutting back and forth across the floor, fumbling a bit as she lights a cigarette.

Brenda squirms and strains against the ropes. She is not gagged. She keeps glancing apprehensively in Vivien's direction.

The basement is cluttered with boxes, discarded miscellaneous furniture, an old piano, a pingpong table, cue sticks in a rack on the wall, and similar things. A pot of hot coffee and three cups, all ceramic, stand on the table.

Brenda once more strains against the ropes while speaking.

"Can't you untie me? I won't run away. Hardly. Hardly.---You can at least be decent."

Vivien takes a few more turns pacing, without any reply.

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Then after a little while, she struts up to Brenda's side and stands, looking down on the captive. She takes a drag on her cigarette, which she has placed in a thin ebony holder.

"So I've got somebody so precious in Duke's eyes that he'll do absolutely anything to retrieve her."

"You can be nailed for kidnapping me!"

"Us nailed? You're the burglar."

With one hand Vivien seizes Brenda by the hair and pulls her head back. She stands very close to Brenda's side and stiffens her legs, making enormous thigh muscles bulge out.

And she boasts, in a hissing tone of voice.

"Just look how powerful my legs are. I could kill you with one good kick!"

A moment of deathly stillness follows this comment. Then Vivien releases her grip on Brenda's hair. She speaks while putting and keeping her cigarette holder between her teeth and deftly untying Brenda's arms.

"But I suppose I won't. My aunt would kill you, so you had better get on my good side. Are you more comfortable now?"

Brenda mutely nods her head.

Vivien walks around the table, places her cigarette in its holder on an ashtray and pours some coffee into two of the cups. The brew is steaming hot. Brenda watches silently, rubbing her stiffened arms.

"You play that overgrown fiddle in the orchestra..." Vivien remarks.

Brenda replies, very icily.

"A violoncello."

Vivien pulls up a couch from the side to the table and drops into it, casually kicking up her legs and crossing them upon the table surface, reaching for her cigarette again. She lets her skirt fall back, and her legs, covered with black meshwork stockings, are indeed superb.

And Brenda looks at Vivien, from across the table.

Vivien reclines on the couch, her legs up and crossed over the table, looking straight at Brenda with a rather amused smile, taking another drag on the cigarette through the holder and exhaling a couple of rings of smoke. Then she runs a hand up and down one of her legs.

"They're just intriguingly beautiful, aren't they? The stuff of all men's dreams."

A short pause follows, as Vivien awaits a reply.

Brenda sits at the table. Her expression is tense, and her lips are tight.

She says, "Duke would sooner look at someone's goodness...first."

She keeps looking at Vivien, laid back as before.

A wry and skeptical expression crosses Vivien's face.

"What is this you mean by 'goodness'? What is good?"

She looks at Brenda, who presses her hands on the table and leans forward.

Brenda, hushed but intense, responds.

"Goodness is when nobody opposes you. Insofar no one hates you, fears you or goes against you, then you are really a good person.---I guess none of us are really good."

Brenda looks at Vivien, who is giving a long hard look straight at Brenda. Then she takes a final drag on the cigarette and blows the smoke across the table straight at Brenda's face.

But she does this amiably, without a trace of anger, and something of a smile crosses her lips as she crushes the cigarette on the ashtray, swings her legs off the table, and then rises.

Without a word, Vivien struts around the table and past Brenda.

Vivien walks to the basement exit, opens the door, goes out, while simultaneously Studs slips inside and stands by the doorway, arms folded across his chest, keeping a watchful eye on Brenda.

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