He was big all over, so big that she was suddenly frightened.
He whispered, "Little darling, I'll never harm you."
She burrowed deeper into his embrace. His kisses moved below her breasts, down her body. Her stomach tingled. Her hips wanted to jump. She found she was breathing hard. He set her middle on fire with his kisses, made her open like a flower in the morning sun.
She clung with both hands as he cut off the sunshine from her.
Her hips and thighs twitched, catching a rhythm of his designing. Deep within her a new hunger wanted fulfillment, fought with her lingering fear. She throbbed in alternating hurt and ecstasy.
He whispered, "Too much?"
A wild singing was in her ears. "I'm all right."
The fire began in earnest. She no longer cared about hurt. She cried out from the depths of her body in a voice she had never heard before-a woman's voice....
A ... is for Adultery
SHAWN HARRIS shared his office couch with his secretary. Her name was Lorna Kovo. She had hair like flames and spark streamers shooting out of a blast furnace, full white breasts with stiff probing nipples. Her lips opened like the scarlet edges of a wound. Her thighs were clamped on him strongly. The time was three in the afternoon and their clothes were on the floor.
Not quite three. Five minutes to three.
Shawn kept his eyes shut against all clocks and watches and their hands that clicked inexorably toward three. His left wrist was under Lorna's back, his wrist watch ticking but hidden. Lorna's tiny watch ticked at his ear as she combed her slender fingers through his hair.
They could not quite rid themselves of time. They had tossed away their clothes but their watches still ticked on. An electric clock whirred on his gleaming mahogany desk. The bell-tower chimes in the high school across the street would soon strike three. The corner bank would ring its buzzer for closing. The steel mill would whistle the hour. He could close his eyes but time ticked on in his heart and paced the pounding of his and Lorna's bodies.
Lorna whispered, "I've lost you, darling." Yes, she had lost him. And he had lost her too, no matter how hard he fought to forget the oncoming hour-three. He levered himself upward. Lorna's ringers reached to join them again. She asked, "Tired."
"No, damn it," he exploded.
Not tired. Just running across the street to three o'clock. Soon Lorna would weep on finding that he had nothing left to make love with. She would blame herself. This blooming girl with white-and-peach flesh, with hair the same red and gold that spewed from the blast furnaces of the city, with breasts like mounds of cherry-tipped ice cream, would think that her passion had been worthless, that his failure was her fault.
Whatever opinion he deserved, Shawn appeared to Lorna as a decent and generous boss, a kind and considerate lover. She had often told him so, would take the blame where no blame existed, unless it belonged across the street to the tower clock scanning three.
He wrested his hand from beneath her back. His eyes betrayed him. He looked at the face of the watch. Three minutes more to three.
With a gasp as of pain he drove himself at Lorna. She wound tenderly about him, matching the heavings of his body with her own strivings. Lorna was warm, dewy, generous in her love, enclosing him in a clasp as gentle as a breath but also backed with firm young muscularity. She was a sweetheart of a mistress and secretary, worth any man's cheating on his wife, even a fine wife like Beth. She was worth misusing the working day of a rising young lawyer whose phone had rung five times in five minutes, forcing the answering service to earn its fee and more.
Lorna cried softly, "Try, darling. Please."
He tried, forbidding his eyes and hearing to mark the time. He tried to squeeze himself into the world that was Lorna Kovo's body, a moist, heaving world on a couch somewhat too wide for clients to sit on. He must forget the outside world, must think only of this moment with Lorna. He failed.
She kissed his cheek. Her limbs fell away from him. She whispered, "It's all right, darling. I know that being unfaithful to your wife tears you."
She was kind. He wished she were also right in her diagnosis. He felt an agony of inadequacy.
She went on, "Why don't you light a cigarette? After a moment you'll be all right again. I'm sure you will."
He had counted seconds compulsively through the aborted love act. The time now would be one minute to three.
Lorna was making light of his failure. "I'm almost glad because sometimes you're so big and strong, darling, too much for me. But after a minute, after a cigarette, everything will be better. Let me get the cigarettes."
They parted. He took cigarettes from a coat pocket, out of the tumble of clothes that they had torn off and dropped on the floor so hurriedly only a dozen minutes ago. He had thought that with Lorna's help he could defeat the crisis of three o'clock. She had been taking dictation. He had tried to concentrate on the gape of her blouse, the swell of her breasts. Her skirt was short. Her knees had been slightly parted so that her thighs had seemed to invite him. He had come around the desk, torn the steno pad from her hands, flipped back her skirt. He had plunged his hands between her thighs.
But his efforts had proved useless.
He lit their cigarettes. He and she sat on the couch, nude, side by side. The telephone rang until the answering service cut off its sound.
Shawn looked at Lorna's white breasts that turned up at the tips to rosy points. His gaze moved to her generous thighs, to the inner triangle of tangled copper. She was lovely, willing, clever in dealing with his wife. She never showed jealousy of Beth. Loma was wonderful.
Her slim hand fell to his thigh. Her cherry fingernails furrowed through short hairs. With tender playfulness she flicked aside his limp uselessness.
She said, "Shawn, darling, in a moment you'll be yourself. You'll get your strength back."
The high-school bell rang.-
The sound made hair prickle on the back of his neck. He fought for control but his body obeyed its instincts. He rose, faced the yellow glow of the closed Venetian blinds, against which the late spring sun beat with afternoon fury. He saw the pile of work on his desk. Corporation work, most of it. He handled local tax matters for the local steel company. The steel account was a plum, providing a steady income to which a lively young lawyer could add the income taxes and wills and damage suits of his individual clients and come up with thirty thousand a year. He had a lovely home, two new cars, a darling wife, a life membership at the country club, a gorgeous red-headed secretary and mistress, a future as wide open as the blue sky above.
Shawn Harris knew he was sick.
He went to his private washroom and closed the door behind him. The washroom also faced the street. Its blind matched the ones in the office. The entire suite had been decorated by Shawn's wife, Beth.
He dragged on his cigarette, willing himself not to lift the blind. He knew he was cheating no one but himself.
Hating his own weakness, he lifted a slat of the blind and looked into the sunlight. The street below was boulevard-wide, part of the city's new periphery that separated the older factory sections from the suburbs. The high school facing Shawn's office was set well back from walk and roadway. Broad stone steps, flanked by terraces of lawn, led to the white concrete pillars of the school's main entrance.
Down the steps now came a river of youth, spilling toward the street gates. The hour was past three, the day one of the last of the school year. Sweaters, slacks and skirts of all colors, loafers and tennis shoes, bobbing heads thatched with blond and red and black, came jiggling and jumping and tumbling in a last group-identified moment before dispersion.
Somewhere in the river of youth was a girl named Tippie Parish. A girl? A child.
Shawn hoped he would not see her. But his gaze betrayed him, searching avidly for a blond head and spindly shanks, socks dangling over flat shoes. Her thin jaw would be rolling on a wad of bubble gum, which at times would balloon out to a nasty pink bulge that would hide her mouth and snub nose. Her blue eyes would pop above the pink balloon as she glared at the world and its shortcomings. She would be clad in a cockeyed skirt and a sloppy sweater that hid her undersized breasts. She lived next door to Shawn.
This disreputable-looking teenager was tearing apart the life of the brightest young lawyer around.
Shawn waited for the spill of youth to pass. Whether or not he had a glimpse of Tippie-when the school steps and the street were emptied he could go back to Lorna. She was still in the office, his flame-haired, lush-bosomed, totally nude secretary.
The voices from the school gates came beating at him, i a rock-and-roll babble made more chaotic by a thousand pocket transistor radios, by slapping rubber soles and girlish giggles and the guffaws of boys whose voices , sometimes squeaked.
Tippie seemed to float above the river of kids. The actual sight of her erased the gum-chewing image in his mind. Her first casual jiggle destroyed a vision he had created in order to wall her away from him. She was not chewing gum. The popping blue eyes were in reality slants of hazy blue, as warm and innocent as a summer pond. The spindly legs were in fact slim and pretty. Tippie's hair was a halo of raw silk, innocent of artifice in color or shape. Her teeth were pearly, tiny, like a puppy's. Her breasts pointed sharply at her sweater, little cones that a finger's touch would bruise. Tippie now seemed to him the essence of woman, as fresh as dew, the glorious femaleness that was smothered within Lorna's too-lush flesh.
He saw the flick of her skirt, a roguish ripple of material. He could imagine the slim little thighs swinging beneath, marked at their joining by a silky blond wisp.
Shawn looked down at his own body. His maleness had risen, red and arrogant. He was again available for stud.
He could no longer hide from the truth about himself. At first, when he had found he was noticing her, he had laughed at the chance that the gum-chewing under-age Tippie could become the object of his passion. Tippie lived next door to his house on Cobbler's Hill. He had told himself that he was bored with his wife, that he and Beth, though as alike as brother and sister, simply lacked the spark of love, or had burned it out through familiarity. His hunger for Tippie, he had assumed, had been merely a desire for a change of bedroom diet.
Following that line of reasoning, he had hired Lorna Kovo and shortly had seduced her. Lorna was gorgeous, passionate, full of wit and vitality. When she walked down the street with breasts and hips swaying, men stopped and stared.
But now Shawn knew a sickness was within him, its cause deeper than his marriage. Tippie, a teenager whose body was not developed, could rouse him to manhood, while the lush Lorna could not.
If he went to Lorna now-would he be man enough to satisfy her?
He tore his gaze from Tippie, dropped the washroom blind and returned to his office. Lorna, her shoulders bowed in dejection, had not moved from the couch. Her amber eyes were moist with tears.
But when she saw Shawn's condition her face broke into a smile.
She cried, half-rising, "Darling Shawn, it's happened. Come here, please, quickly."
He went to her and they rolled together and joined gleefully, Shawn thrusting heavily into her and Lorna crying with pleasure that he was again hers. He was bringing her all she could wish for.
What he brought her, in a way, was a gift from a girl named Tippie Parrish, a girl who was only a child.
* * *
Tippie had a problem. She lacked panties.
She had been snipping a coupon from a newspaper advertisement, the previous evening. The ad said in three days the balloon method would make anybody's bosom look like a pair of grapefruit. She had worked on her bed which, as usual, had been Uttered with things she had not put in drawers. In cutting out the ad she had not only snipped big holes in two pairs of panties that had been underneath the paper but she had gashed the bed coverlet as well.
This morning she had been able to find only one pair of whole panties-but they were aged and had a rotted elastic waistband. The waistband had just parted and the panties had been at her ankles before she realized that she had a problem. She had damn near tripped and broken her head on the washbasin.
She kicked the panties away in anger.
Suddenly it occurred to her that she could use the panties in school, whether or not she wore them. Mr. Mendham, the math teacher, was going to flunk her. Maybe she could flunk him first.
She carried her worn-out panties concealed through the day until the end of math class. Mr. Mendham's raincoat hung in the corner. She brushed past the coat as she left the room and thrust the old panties deep in a raincoat pocket in hopes that Mr. Mendham's wife found them before he did.
Her original problem remained when the school day ended. She strolled down the wide steps to the street, wondering how she would get new panties. Her allowance was gone except for fifty cents. She dared not admit to Edith, her foster-mother, that she had accidentally cut up two pairs last night and gotten rid of another pair today.
She carried an armful of books and her purse. The books were to convince Edith that she was at least trying hard. She opened the purse and found fifty cents, a surprise penny and the cigarette fighter that Jacko Kurtz had been showing off with. She had pretended to throw the fighter away at the tennis court beside the school. In her purse there was also a love note from Henry Burton, who had pimples. Henry had written an English paper for her the other night out of wet-eyed love but he might change. Then the love letter would be needed for blackmail.
Tippie paused on the sidewalk and glanced up at the second story of the building across the street. The Professional Building was new and shiny, of chrome and glass. It made the high school seem a million years old, which it smelled anyhow. She saw the letters that spelled Shawn Harris, attorney-at-law in gold leaf on the windows. Mr. Harris lived next door to Tippie. He drove a convertible that was a real bomb. Edith primped her hair when Mr. Harris was around. She called him, That handsome dog of a lawyer. Men's looks did not impress Tippie. Neither did boys' looks-unless they had pimples, which put them in Zeroville. She would have liked a ride in Mr. Harris's bomb but he had never offered. He had hot eyes.
Her chief interest in Mr. Harris's office was Lorna Kovo, his secretary, who had the best curves in town, who walked with a swing that displayed her shape in a way that Tippie found worthy of imitation. Tippie had experimented with dying her hair red. Edith had made her regret the effort. Lorna had cool eyes. They were not her prettiest feature, being more yellow than anything, but they were the eyes of somebody who knew what she was after. Tippie could tell from the secretary's clothes that Lorna hunted successfully. Tippie knew what things cost.
She knew that fifty-one cents would not buy panties that would pass Edith's inspection when hung to dry.
The Professional Building formed part of a block of offices and stores. Tippie joined the flow of students crossing the street, intending to window-shop in search of a panty solution. She walked with each step placed in front of the last, as Lorna did. She felt her hips switch. She lifted her chin. Nothing, however, made her breasts jump-they were too damn small. High heels might have helped. Lorna always wore spikes.
Tippie walked, swaying, ignoring the other students, who were prattling about the baseball team and the soph hop, to which she was not going because it was a drag, especially if she went with Jacko Kurtz, the dope. Anyhow, school would be over next week. Then she would get a season ticket to the pool. Edith had better get her a ticket to the pool. She had better get one, or else!
The first store at the crossing was run by old Mr. Wetzel, who smoked cigars and flashed his false-toothed grin when he knew you had money. He knew right away when you were broke. Then his face made a blank circle around his cigar. Tippie passed his window after a mere glance at a padded bra. Pads were from Phoneyville. She had tried them. She had felt as silly wearing pads as if she had stuck a pencil in her panties and pretended she was a boy. She had no great faith in the balloon method, either. To avoid investing heavily in an un-likely thing she had stolen a nickel stamp from Edith to cover mailing costs for an advertised "growth plan."
Beyond Mr. Wetzel's store was a boys' store and after that the five-and-dime, which had panties good enough to pass Edith-but they were not sold for fifty-one cents. Mirrors shone all over the five-and-dime, big round mirrors aimed at the counters. Somewhere in the back of the store a detective was supposed to be watching. Tippie had gotten plenty of lipsticks and hairpins free before the mirrors had been installed.
She could still put her books down on a plastic package of panties but her prize would probably not be the right size anyway or of good enough quality. Last week some boys had been caught snitching at the five-and-dime and taken to the cops. Their parents had been called and all that.
The five-and-dime panties-even the best-were awful-looking, anyway, she decided.
She walked past the drugstore, forgetting to imitate Lorna Kovo. She paused at cosmetics, where she looked at lipsticks and rubbed an itch on her shin with the heel of her shoe. She would steal one of Edith's longest gold lipsticks if she went to the soph hop. But she would not go with Jacko, the dope.
What about Miss Claire's? Elvira said that at Miss Claire's some girls could get things very cheap. Tippie had a hunch that Elvira was one of the girls. Miss Claire's was for teens and young women-but not many teens went there. The clothes were expensive. The shop was around the corner. Tippie left-faced with a frown and a pouting under lip. She guessed that if she screamed Miss Claire would cause no trouble because everybody knew what jailbait meant.
Workmen were jackhammering holes in the street Tippie had entered. She reflected that if she screamed nobody would hear her. The street was shady. Miss Claire's storefront was kind of refined-dark and uninviting.
Tippie stubbornly set her mouth and stopped to look in the window.
She saw two summer-wear mannequins and a leather donkey as big as a collie.
The donkey was holding a pair of red panties in his teeth.
B ... is for Bad
TIPPIE'S MOUTH dragged open. The panties were cut bikini-style and made of lace. They were as red as a fire engine. They were strictly from Wildville. Tippie found herself entering.
The store was kind of dark inside, with light fixtures concealed under counters. The floor was carpeted. Miss Claire stood among her shadows and goods. She was as straight as always. Her dress was freshly ironed. Her face was freshly made up and her bluish hair looked stamped in a mold. She had no other customers at the moment Her tight smile was all for Tippie. Her eyes were dark and shining. She held her hands at her waist as her mannequins did in the window.
She said, "Good afternoon, miss. May I show you something?"
Tippie did not meet her eyes. Miss Claire's eyes were part of some squirmy animal, the kind that thrashed around in bushes. Yet her voice had a tremor and her hands had stiffened and become nervous. She was acting the way Edith did when Sam visited. Edith called Sam her "man friend."
Tippie sensed her advantage. She figured she might get the upper hand over Miss Claire.
She said, "Those panties in the window, the red ones. You got them in my size?"
Miss Claire's hands knuckled and nailed at each other. "The red bikinis? I don't know. Really, in a way, they're a joke. Some ladies think it amusing to wear such things. Wouldn't you like something in powder-blue, lemon, pink-no, you would not want pink."
"Can I see the red ones?"
Miss Claire smiled uncertainly. But she went to the showcase and removed the red lace panties from the donkey's teeth.
She handed Tippie the piece of red lace. Tippie put her books and purse on a counter and held the panties against her loins. They were far too big.
Tippie asked, "Don't they make small sizes for mannequins? I mean, like sizes too small for women?"
Miss Claire opened drawers and brought out blue and yellow and white panties.
She said, "In teen sizes, most panties are practical, nothing so gaudy as red lace. You know, mothers want their daughters to have pretty but simple garments. Do you like these?"
Tippie shook her head. She wanted red panties. She knew she needed something practical for Edith to see but her heart had gone for red.
The woman asked, "How much did you want to spend?"
"I haven't got much. What do the red ones cost?"
"Five dollars and ninety-eight cents."
Tippie scowled. Even if Miss Claire let her pay off a half-dollar a week, nearly six dollars was still a lot of money.
She said, "The ones they use for modeling in windows are marked down, aren't they?"
Miss Claire smiled her stiff smile. Her eyes slipped away from Tippie's. Her cheeks seemed to gain color.
She said, "These blue ones are on sale. They're very reasonable. How much do you want to spend?"
"All I have is fifty cents cash. But I could pay the rest from my allowance. My elastic broke-so I got no panties on."
Miss Claire blushed slowly and deeply. Her gaze became wobbly, sliding up and down and all over Tippie. "None at all?" she asked.
Tippie shook her head. "Are you sure you've got no red ones?"
"Not in your size. I'm sure." She spoke firmly. Tippie demanded, "Can you dye some red? White ones maybe?"
"Perhaps. Perhaps I could. In the meantime, try on these blue ones. You can't go around naked."
"How much are they?" She was reconciled now to covering herself with something Edith could see. She picked up the powder-blue pair and looked at them with distaste.
Miss Claire patted her shoulder and smiled. "We'll worry later about the price. Come into the dressing room and try them on. I'm not sure about the size."
Tippie said, "They'll be all right. I can tell."
"Not until you try them on." Miss Claire nudged her to a doorway. Tippie found herself in an octagonal room. A light went on and she saw that she was surrounded by full-length mirrors.
Miss Claire's breathing was audible and harsh. "Darling, just try these on. We'll see. They must fit just right."
Tippie stepped into the panties and tugged them into place under her skirt. "They're okay," she said.
"We must be sure. Let me look now, darling. Here, I'll help you with your skirt."
Tippie's skirt and petticoat were quickly lifted waist-high. She saw herself repeated in all the mirrors around her, Miss Claire at every angle holding the skirt and petticoat. Tippie felt the woman's hands adjusting and pulling the panties. They seemed to take an awful lot of adjustment.
When Miss Claire spoke she used one word at a time, as though she were biting off pieces of thought from a long, somehow chewable bar.
"Tight. Yes. Tight. My. Goodness. Precious little figure. Can't see. Here. You hold it up." She pushed the skirt and petticoat higher. Tippie saw her own white stomach and half her navel in the mirrors. The blue panties were snug. Miss Claire's white fingers danced all about them. Miss Claire even touched her lightly between the legs.
Tippie had experienced something of that with Elvira, who lived across the street. But Elvira was Tippie's age. Tippie was surprised that a grown-up woman had the same ideas as a kid. She looked down. Miss Claire's bluish hair was close to her thigh. If a grown-up did something under the skirt that a kid did not like, the kid could yell jailbait and the grown-up would be scared.
But Tippie was now full of curiosity. Miss Claire still kneeled on the floor and adjusted the panties, a thousand times more than any panties needed.
Miss Claire apologized. "I can't seem to get them just right, darling. Do you mind?"
"I don't mind," Tippie said.
She liked having an adult kneeling while she stood tall, having her clothing meticulously adjusted, being the center of attention of eight mirrors and Miss Claire.
The woman said, "I don't take such pains with most of my clients. But a girl with a really good figure-that's different."
"I'm too skinny. I haven't even got a figure."
"Oh, darling, you have the most precious body. Don't all the boys say that."
"No."
"Well, it's just adorable. And your skin is like satin." Miss Claire's fingers trailed down the inside of Tippie's thigh. "So tender, so delicate. Darling, I want you to take the panties off and try another size."
"These are all right," Tippie said.
"No, dear. Never settle for just all right. A girl like you must be dressed impeccably. Besides, maybe I can give you two pairs for the price of one." Miss Claire rose. She paused at the dressing-room door, turned back, smiled, patted Tippie lightly on the cheek. She left the door open behind her.
Tippie climbed out of the panties and stood among mirrors, waiting. She heard a loud click from the front of the store. It sounded like the bolt of a lock. She guessed that Miss Claire had locked up so nobody would walk in and think about jailbait. She was not afraid. She knew she had the whip hand over Miss Claire.
Shortly the woman returned, carrying a handful of panties, yellow, blue and white. She again patted Tippie's cheek.
She said, "Now, up with your skirt and I'll put these on right, the way they should be."
She kneeled on the darkly carpeted floor. Tippie could have all the panties she wanted, she knew suddenly. And Miss Claire would have some dyed red for her, if Tippie asked once more.
"Up with your foot," Miss Claire said.
Tippie lifted one foot, then the other, not raising her skirt, to allow Miss Claire to try the yellow panties.
Miss Claire said, "Raise the skirt now."
Tippie lifted her skirt and petticoat a scant inch. She had the thing figured. She would make the game a little hard for Miss Claire.
She asked, "How much do they cost? Say, three pairs?"
"Oh, darling, don't worry about that. Fifty cents will do to start. Then we can see about payment. Up with the skirt now."
Eyeing the multicolored pile of panties with greed, Tippie slowly pulled up her skirt. Miss Claire raised the panties to Tippie's knees. Her breasts were heaving, her face was turning red. Tippie grew bored with teasing. Again full of curiosity, she drew the skirt up to her crotch.
Miss Claire said impatiently, "Darling, I can't do anything like that. Pull it up where it was before."
Tippie shrugged and drew the skirt to her waist. She was not particularly shy. Edith always made a fuss about Tippie's pulling her skirt down and not showing her panties. Perhaps in rebellion, Tippie did not mind being partly naked. She saw what she was used to seeing in the mirror at home-just a mound, nothing that showed like a boy's, just a blond cleft mound.
The panties were halfway up her thighs when Miss Claire paused.
She said, "Darling, the truth is-it's a pity to cover you. Your skin is such a lovely color." Her fingertips brushed Tippie's hip and stomach. "like silk." Her fingers dropped to the mound and moved under the curve. "You don't mind, darling?"
Tippie did not answer.
"Darling, I have watched you going home from school so many times. I have thought, What a precious girt. What a dainty figure ... I hope you like my thinking so."
Tippie said nothing. Fingertips were dancing lightly about her thighs and hips. The woman suddenly bent her head and kissed Tippie's thigh. Tippie watched her and the reflections in the mirrors. Another kiss, another, one on her stomach. The fingertips butterflied, changed to a regular stroking. Tippie felt warmth in her middle. The warmth was pleasant.
Elvira had tried something like this. But the effect had been off-and-on, maybe because Elvira had been scared and unsure. Tippie had become bored with Elvira. Now the ripple of sensation was continuous and delicate, without any disturbing interruptions or knifing fingernails.
Tippie pegged her petticoat and skirt to the school pin on her sweater to hold them out of Miss Claire's way. She braced her hands on her hips and felt important, looking about at the eight mirrors and Miss Claire kneeling, at the multicolored heap of panties that would soon be hers. The flush in Tippie's face marked no fear of the unknown. Her body heat seemed to glow upward from her middle.
Miss Claire kept whispering, "Darling, darling-"
Tippie stood with elbows at an angle and grinned.
Her grin faded and she saw her own eyelids jerk as the woman's fingers delicately parted and a slick tongue stroked a ribbon of fire through her.
Tippie said, "Hey!"
Miss Claire looked up, asked, "Darling, don't you want me to go on?"
Tippie, past surprise, was curious again. She looked at herself in the many mirrors and frowned. Evidently Miss Claire took the frown for assent. The caresses started again. Tippie found her insides were reacting on their own, rippling and twisting. Her knees were bending and shaking. Finally she thought she was going to fall.
Miss Claire noticed.
She said, "I'll get you a chair, darling."
She darted to the front of the store and returned with a straight-backed chair that was cushioned in blue velvet. She sat Tippie down and, for a moment, hovered close.
The woman asked, "Could I have just one little lass, dear?"
"No," Tippie said. She scowled.
Miss Claire knelt again, hiding her face against Tippie's flesh. Tippie's nerve-ends went so wild that she became frightened. The whole world was spinning around like a top and the point of the top burned. The mirrors flew crazily, containing Tippie on her chair, her petticoat hooked on her school pin, and Miss Claire's black-clad bent rear that was marked with girdle lines.
She opened her mouth to scream but her throat was choked and only hoarse gasps came out. Her eyes in the whirling mirrors bugged like oversized marbles.
It was as though the velvet bottom had fallen out of the chair and she had flopped through the basement
* * *
Miss Claire tried to kiss her again. Tippie snarled at her, put on the first pair of panties she could grab and fled the dressing room, hot and confused and wanting to be a million miles away. Miss Claire followed her, carrying the silky mass of panties.
She said in a low voice, "I don't think a kiss is much to ask for."
Tippie scratched an itching shin with the toe of her shoe. She looked belligerently at the red-faced woman and the panties.
Miss Claire said, "I'll order the red panties for you. Maybe when they arrive youll give me a kiss."
Tippie saw no reason to answer such stupidity. She watched the woman put a blue, a yellow and a white pair of panties into a bag. Miss Claire was getting stingy, now that she had had what she wanted. Well, she would not get the fifty cents.
Miss Claire's face suddenly went ghastly pale. Tippie turned and saw the looming blue-clad form of a policeman. He stood on the sidewalk outside, his arms behind his back, looking at something in the window, the leather donkey most-likely. He was big. Tippie needed a moment to remember that she was not playing hookey or shopping free at the five-and-dime. She was right now jailbait.
She turned to Miss Claire and said loudly, "I'll take all of them."
The woman looked bleak. She slowly stuffed the whole wad of panties into the bag.
Tippie snatched the bag, gathered her books and purse and barged to the door. Just as she figured, the door was locked. She turned the bolt and went out. The cop was looking at the window display.
Tippie said to him, "Some donkey, huh?"
"Yeah. It's too imagine for a kid's toy. I guess it's not good for anything."
Tippie ran off. She would like to have the leather donkey in her room. Next time maybe she would get the donkey along with the red lace panties.
C ... is for Child's Play
BETH, SHAWN HARRIS' wife, had much to be grateful for. In fact, counting her attainments and expectations at twenty-four, she came close to envying herself. The person who would answer to Beth's description was someone apart, somehow, from the one who foolishly wept into green-tinted contact lenses, alone in a bedroom built for two.
She said aloud, firmly and softly, "Self-pity is rubbish." She swatted at her tears, plucked a cigarette from a rosewood box and lit it with an angry snap of a gold lighter.
She was dressing for a tentative afternoon of bridge. The bedroom was clothed in natural monk's-cloth drapes and bedspread, the rough textures counterpoised against the empire gilt. Beth had chosen her colors with care.
She wore a lemon-colored strapless bra and matching half-slip that went with the room. On Shawn's night table were a pipe, a marble tobacco humidor that she had bought him in Venice on their honeymoon, a detective novel. On the opposite side of the bed, Beth's table held a weighty collection of books, including Sartre in French and a treatise on Hittite archeological studies. Maybe, Beth thought despairingly, she was an overeducated female.
She rose abruptly, tiring of her vanity bench and her face in the mirror. She had been trying to dramatize her looks with green contact lenses. She wore a pair of pendant emerald earrings that she had thought would accentuate the lenses, creating a new and interesting effect. Now she was unsure of the results.
Her hair was mouse-brown in daylight and at night, under artificial light, was darkened to what she called dirty-rat.
But she refused to bottle-color her hair, Lorna Kovo or no Lorna Kovo.
With a gingerly gesture she removed the green contacts and put them in their box. She slapped on her old hornrims and hung her cigarette in the corner of her mouth. Postponing further adornment for this afternoon's bridge game, she snatched up one of her French-language books on the realities of female life. She spilled the book open at the turned-down corner and scanned it as she walked to the living room.
But in the living room she turned her book face down. She poured a glass of sherry and looked through the immense window, fifteen feet long and five feet high, at the lawn and her favorite sycamore. The tree was a giant with two trunks that held a cool umbrella far above the house.
The lawn had contours derived from a century of rolling and mowing what had once been a cow pasture. Two years ago, when she and Shawn had been newlyweds, they had torn down the original house, a gray neo-Gothic horror whose turret had crowded the sycamore. They had built this handsome brick rancher, with its fifteen feet of airspace between the roof and the tree's umbrella.
She had truly fine possessions. She had brains, a master's degree, a husband who was deadly handsome and earned buckets of money, who was from one of the best families and who had gone to the best schools.
Beth sipped her sherry, remembered her book and glanced over a page concerned with penis envy, a subject the lady author regarded not as a necessarily neurotic symptom, but as woman's simple envy of man's ability to act in a positive manner. An example was the pleasure that many women took in using a garden hose. They had discovered as little girls that boys could simply walk behind a tree and take care of wearisome bladder needs as women, they still were jealous. The garden hose was fulfillment of a sort
A small figure was moving along the walk in front of the house-Tippie from next door. Tippie's route lay on the edge of the curb and she walked as though on a tightrope. She held an armload of appurtenances, mostly books. Her skirt was awry, her sweater out of shape.
Beth had no love for Tippie. Tippie was sneaky, demanding, superior or obsequious, according to what pose seemed most-likely to benefit her at the moment. One ought to forgive the child. Her parents were divorced and living far apart not only from one another but also from Tippie.
Tippie was being raised by Edith Bascombe, a widow according to her story, who was a partner in a real estate office that seemed to make a good deal of money. Yet she added the stipend for Tippie's care to her income, an unusual arrangement, Beth thought, for a woman in business. Tippie seemed to receive the necessary discipline, although Beth guessed that little love was provided. She had tried to befriend the girl. But Tippie had fangs.
The phone rang.
Beth draped herself over an armchair like an unreconstructed teenager, one elbow into the chair back, phone perched on one knee. Julie Gray had called to talk about the bridge game. "Beth, you must come or else not come for sure. It's got to be either three tables or four."
"I have a splitting headache." Beth made the excuse at once and instinctively, her mind made up for her by the other woman's insistence.
Beth had always had trouble in defining femaleness and in accepting her woman's status. She had asked Pops at the age of twelve if he wished she were a boy.
Pops had said, I couldn't kiss a boy....
She had asked him later, Why should I learn things? A girl doesn't have to know much to get married ... Pops had said, You must learn so you can talk to me intelligently....
Beth still had a view of Tippie, who now was cutting across lawns toward Edith's house, having concluded the curb edge part of her journey. She now walked with her behind switching, perhaps in imitation of some movie star. Beth wondered about Tippie's fantasies while Julie kept chatting on the phone.
Beth loved to play bridge when men were present to prevent inattention to the game. Her bids were coldly scientific and daring, her play ruthless. She wished Shawn cared enough about bridge for them to have entered tournaments. Was she secretly competitive, resentful of men?
Julie was saying that Sally might be late from the hairdresser's.
Beth's phone cord stretched enough for her to reach her sherry and the book she had been reading. She returned to the chair, hands full of phone and book and sherry. Again she draped herself in place, the book open on her thigh, phone caught between hunched bare shoulder and ear, cigarette dropping ashes, sherry faintly warm and tangy to the taste.
Beth's authoress described in French a young girl's agony on discovering herself not only bereft of a boy's appendage but also cleft, a fact that added insult to injury.
Julie on the phone, said she was making hot hors doeuvres-stuffed mushrooms. She had forgotten to salt the stuffing. Did it matter?
As far as Beth was concerned, the stuffing did not matter. Her thoughts were elsewhere. She decided that her own childhood experiences must have been vastly different from those of the authoress. She had always accepted the gender of her body. If she had suddenly discovered an appendage growing on the smooth curve between her legs she would hardly have been pleased. Perhaps some women felt otherwise. The book was leading up to a special point-that women like Beth's friend Julie were featherbrained not because they were female but because of society.
Julie was wondering aloud if another guest, Deedie Smith, would be properly dressed for the afternoon. Would Deedie once more show up in an outmoded skirt length that veiled her knees? "She's not a bad person," Julie complained, "only disorganized."
The prattle on the phone was a background music of sorts. Beth tired of it.
She said, "Julie, the coffee is boiling over and the gas-meter reader is here and I am naked. I'll call you back."
She hung up, wondering how many thousands of times she had mentioned the gas-meter reader to Julie, who should know by now that she had an electric stove and oil heating.
She carried her sherry, the book and cigarette back to the bedroom. She had decided to skip out on Julie's bridge.
She dressed quickly-tweed skirt, sweater and pearls, patent leather pumps with matching purse. She knew that unless she hurried out of the house, someone would trap her again on the phone.
Shawn drove to work in the morning in whichever car was nearer in the garage, whether it was Beth's sedate sedan or his own rakish sports compact. Beth found the sports car in the garage. The top was down. She backed out, wondering where she would go. She could not face the all-woman bridge party at Julie's. She had had her hair done yesterday. She had no particular need to buy anything.
Her thoughts strayed to the old tale about the beans and the bottle. The bottle stood, in the story, on the newlywed's bedside table. The couple dropped a bean in the bottle to mark each love time for a year. After that first year they began taking beans out. The story had it that in a lifetime they would not empty the bottle of beans.
Beth's bean bottle was far from full and was emptying at a snail's pace.
She and Shawn had not made love in a week.
She suspected that his secretary, Lorna, who walked like a snake, was the cause of this domestic abstinence. Lorna was as nice as ice cream to look at unless you were a woman and saw the greed and ambition in those amber-yellow eyes. Lorna's attractiveness could hurt, especially when one could pit against it only brown hair, brown eyes and freckles.
Beth heard her name called. She halted in the driveway and glanced to the right. Tippie was running toward her from Edith's house next door. The girl came up to the car.
She pushed pale-gold hair away from her eyes and said, "Hey, Beth, I was thinking."
Beth wondered what con game Tippie had in mind. She was aware of Tippie's loneliness. Edith's house was a gray horror like the one she and Shawn had torn down. The yard was big but uncared-for and uninviting. Tippie seemed to have few friends.
The poor little conniving monkey was pretty enough in a year or so, she would draw boys. She had pale, almost translucent skin, a well-shaped face and body, lovely hair that she treated as an annoyance. Her eyes might be too pale a blue and too prominent. Her brows and lashes were fairer than her skin. But in a few years mascara could help make a beauty out of Tippie. Meanwhile her lot was far from gay and Beth was sorry for her.
Tippie went on, "What I've been thinking is, I've got to go downtown." The pale lashes flicked. Tippie seemed to decide that candor might be the bait that Beth would bite on. "I'd like to ride in that crazy bomb of yours."
Beth laughed. "Get in. I'm supposed to go play bridge."
Tippie climbed in and banged down in the bucket seat.
Beth said, "It's too nice a day for bridge."
Tippie grinned at her-an expression so guilelessly evil that it was beautiful.
"A day like crazy," Tippie said.
Beth backed out and drove slowly toward the city. This suburban section where she lived had been built up first in the days of the early fortunes. Many of the old splendors remained. Lawns were still spacious and quiet, houses were well-preserved and tended toward the cupola style of another century. Costly new ranchers had been added to the area in the last decade. The barons had left the land to professional men and junior executives on the way up. Shawn and Beth fitted the pattern but Edith Bascombe did not quite belong. She was simply sitting on a valuable piece of ground waiting for the best offer. Since she was in the real-estate business she would presumably recognize the offer when it came.
Beth realized that Tippie was studying her. Her own left arm was rested over the door. Tippie had hung her right arm on the passenger side in imitation. The low bucket seat, the operation of brake and gas pedals had combined to slide Beth's heavy tweed skirt up near her lap. Tippie's legs were propped so her skirt would fall-likewise.
Tippie was searching frantically for a model to copy, whether she knew it or not. Rejected by her parents, apparently not accepting Edith Bascombe, the girl could be influenced by the most casual saying or gesture, perhaps for life. Beth knew an awesome sense of responsibility. Nor could Beth shrug it off with the thought that millions of kids were going through the agony of growing up. Tippie was only one among many. But all the others were concepts. Tippie was present in the flesh.
Beth said, "Let's go up the mountain road. Okay?"
Tippie nodded. She was combing back her hair with her fingers, after covert glances at Beth's tidy hair.
The car topped a ridge. Industrial plants were in operation in the valley beyond, some topped with shooting fire, others new and slender, clean as polished silver, their power drawn from electronics rather than coal or steel.
Beth was glad of Shawn's connection with the old corporations, for both practical and romantic reasons. She had watched the broad-backed working men, clad to the waist only in sweat and grime, during her college years. She had felt for them something very like lust. But her lust had been easily sublimated. She had been surrounded by positive evidence that clean fingernails on desk tops scratched the richest lodes from the earth. She had transferred her girlish admiration for strong grimy men to those who paid their wages. In attaching herself to Shawn, who was related to everyone in the valley who had prospered for three generations, she had seemed to take the best of both worlds.
The car passed the community swimming pool. Tippie turned to look, both hands clamped on the car door.
She chattered, 'Tool's opening Saturday for the season. Do you swim there much? I didn't see you last year."
Beth did her swimming at the country-club pool, a parade ground for new bathing-suit fashions. She found the place a bore.
She said, "I don't swim much-" forbearing to mention the club.
She disliked sounding snobbish. Besides, Tippie might pester her to death for a visit to the club. "What do you do if you don't swim?" Tippie persisted. "I read books."
"That's why you wear glasses. What good do books do you?"
"Not much, I'm afraid." Shawn had been impressed by her brain in the days of their dating. Maybe books had helped her to land Shawn. Now she had him-or at least title to him. Lorna seemed to own the corporeal part. The marriage was stalled. Their doctor had tested both Shawn and Beth and had found no lack of fertility in either. He had said their problem was the matter of striking the precise time of month and their best bet was the scattergun method-which meant nightly beans popping out of the bean bottle.
I want children, Beth thought fiercely.
She asked, "Don't you read much, Tippie?"
"Sometimes. Teachers always yak about reading but what good does it do them? You ever see a teacher with a new dress? I'd rather wiggle."
"Wiggle?"
"You know, the way some women wiggle."
Beth thought of Lorna wiggling about Shawn's office.
Tippie demanded, "Before you got married-" She cut off as though realizing she had overstepped conversational limits. "I mean, you don't seem like a wiggly type."
Beth laughed. "Maybe I should have been the wiggly type. I might be making out better."
"Oh, he's all right, your husband is. I mean, you've got two cars and he has a secretary and all." She paused thoughtfully.
The talk was cutting too deep for Beth's liking. She knew what Tippie meant. Sometimes Beth felt as wiggly as any woman. Shawn had occasionally remarked on the phenomenon, which tended to occur especially after good love. Beth at such times could feel her hips move as though oiled and could look smugly at the world from beneath low, satisfied lashes.
Could a girl like Loma feel satisfied all the time? The answer did not seem to be in books, even in the French ones on sex.
Beth drove through the valley and over the next ridge to a pleasant green plateau where dairy cattle grazed. The grass was so lush here that Beth wanted to roll naked in it downhill. She let her mind take a measure of healing from the countryside. She forgot her friend Julie and bridge, put aside her agonized fears about Shawn's snake-hipped secretary.
Tippie was also intent, staring with hard blue eyes at cows and barns and tractors. Perhaps she, too, was willing to let life, for the moment, stay behind. Beth pushed down the accelerator and kept driving northward.
D . . .is for Daring
SHAWN HARRIS was in conference with a man he envied. Joe Quinn, a robust fellow with no nerves, had a bawdy turn of speech and a laugh that shook the office. Joe's father had been a manual laborer and Joe had done the same kind of work to put himself through college. Now he had beaten the game, kicked off his copper-toed boots for good. He wore a blue executive suit, a silk necktie. He was chief engineer for Shawn's best industrial client
Comparing himself with Joe Quinn made Shawn feel frail and sick.
The hour was nearly six. The two men were shaking the forfeit clauses out of a refused shipment of seamless tubing. Shawn was the legal specialist but Joe Quinn's probing questions cut at the heart of the matter. Joe's queries were interspersed with speculations as to the possibilities tomorrow for the Yankees, Dodgers, Red Sox and Giants.
Shawn had occasion to ask Lorna for a file. He used the intercom.
Joe Quinn said, "I want another look at that redheaded piece of meat. Is all of it hers."
"I suppose so."
Lorna brought the file. She walked primly. Her pastel dress was buttoned to the throat but hid nothing. Her bosom bounced and her hips slithered. Joe Quinn missed not a single sway or lurch of flesh. Shawn knew that Lorna always looked better after he had made love to her. Today her color was bright and her eyes sparkled.
Lorna left them. Joe turned in his chair and watched the sidewise sway of her hips. He grinned at Shawn after the door had closed.
He asked, "Is she attached to anybody?"
"Not that I know of," Shawn said.
"I might just give her a try. I always did like tangling with tigers."
Shawn smiled. "Tiger? Lorna? Nowadays you can't take red hair for fire. Color comes in bottles."
"Her eyes. They're natural. They see men as step-ladders. I've seen stepladder eyes before."
"You're judging her body, not her eyes," Shawn commented. He had had similar conversations with other visitors to his office. If Lorna were as they said-she would be trying to get more from her boss than a good paycheck. Shawn had provided her with generous Christmas and birthday gifts. But so did many other bosses who were not sleeping with their secretaries.
Joe looked at his watch, announced, "I close shop when the cocktails are being served. How about inviting your tiger girl to drinks at Freddy's Bar? Maybe I can arrange supper with her. Any objections?"
Shawn had no objections to drinks with or without Loma. Tonight he would drink hard in any case, to slake his disgraceful fever for Tippie. When he looked out of his house toward her lighted bedroom window he would be unable to see more than a formless blur of movement as she passed. His eyes would be hazy after the drinking he planned.
* * *
Lorna had few delusions about Joe Quinn. He was out for what he could get for free. In the nature of things he would consider Lorna stupid. She came from a family of honest, thick-headed Europeans who worked sternly and did not laugh until Saturday night. Her mother had told her in detail about the perfidy of handsome young men with good jobs.
The two men sat her on a barstool. They stood flanking her on each side, teasing and joking. She acted the expected part, laughing and titillating them with flirtatious glances. She knew that she looked well in the pale dress Shawn had bought for her. By concealing, the dress emphasized the lush curves of her breasts. Joe Quinn's forearm kept rubbing at her thigh. He would take her to dinner. He would make a heavy play. She would eventually deflate him by saying that a diamond on the third finger, left hand, was what really made a girl feel sexy.
Joe Quinn had no diamonds in mind. People raised in the valley knew that marriage was business. Lorna's mother had told her about the immigrants grinding their guts out in the mines and factories while the wealthy on the hillside drank tea in cool shade. The rough days were past. Now all valley people went to the same schools and spoke the same language. Many workmen earned more than men who sat at desks. In the old sense, however, Joe Quinn was ambitious. He was aiming for those sheltered and shady lawns. So was Lorna Kovo. They would not arrive together and both knew it. Joe would want to many someone like Shawn's wife, Beth. Lorna would want to marry someone like Shawn.
Your chances were always better if you married into the right family. Life in the valley had its special truths. The road up was easy with help, all but impossible if you tried to go it alone.
If she slept with Joe, no matter how careful she was, she might become pregnant-and Joe was the kind who might not lift a finger for her. Shawn was a gentleman. He would see her through with any child by him. He might even divorce Beth and marry her, not out of love-she did not think Shawn loved her-but out of his sense of obligation.
What a strange man Shawn was. Full of kindness, always apologizing for his tempers, so often brooding, indrawn. Lorna wondered if she would ever understand him. In one way he was comprehensible, like the others. Lorna's body and face made men's knees wobble. Her mother had told her a thousand times that her body and her built-in sexiness were worth a rich husband. Shawn was rich and he had succumbed. Unfortunately, he was married.
She studied him. He stood at ease, one hand in his pocket. He slouched gracefully. His dark short hair had a recent and expert cut.
The same barber might have botched Joe Quinn's haircut. Joe had too many raw edges for a barber to make him sleek.
What was worrying Shawn? She had asked him after today's lovemaking in his office if he felt guilty about cheating on his wife. A thousand times no, he had said. Nevertheless, he said, something was mixed up inside him, something wrong beyond discussion. Was Beth jealous, throwing suspicions at him, making him miserable? No. Beth was sweet and fine.
She had heard Joe politely ask Shawn how Mrs. Harris was these days. Joe would not call her Beth. She was part of the community on the hill. Up the hill was for marrying, not for first-naming people. First names would come later.
Shawn had confided to Lorna that Beth needed a vacation as much as he did. But he and Lorna were lovers. Shawn told Joe Quinn that Beth was fine-whatever that meant.
So Lorna sat enthroned between two of the city's rising young men, an enviable position for a working girl. She smiled and laughed while inwardly calculating and surmising. She liked being a pretty girl between two well-dressed men.
But what future could be worked out of this cocktail hour?
Some day when she was old and rich, Lorna thought, she would do little kindnesses for people. She intended to be a truly good person when she could afford the luxury. Now she had better settle for being good and sexy.
* * *
Shawn drove home feeling no better for three martinis. The hour of three had haunted the early part of his work day. His homecoming represented another crisis. Involuntary excitement possessed him as he came close, not to his own house but to the one next door.
He tried to shame himself out of his obsession. He told himself, You're a pervert, a man driven by criminal desire. You don't want Tippie's friendship. You don't intend to furnish a father-figure to make a lonely child happy. You want her immature body so much that the sight of her at a distance fills you to bursting with lust....
Other teenagers had caught his attention in the past. Each had been special. A thousand girls could walk down the high-school steps and be mere children in his eyes. But sooner or later one would come who was a little different from the others, with breasts like a pair of small lemons, chewing gum or kicking at a stone. The girl would swirl in his vision into a dream-like figure. The rest of the world would be dead.
Now such an enchantress lived next door.
He had used Lorna to exorcise his demon. Wild as the hope might be, he had expected the guilt of infidelity to preempt all other problems in his mind. But the original problem was growing worse. He could not be a man to ' Lorna or to Beth without thinking of Tippie.
His torment had started with Jennifer, a pale blond wraith some two or three years younger than he, on a long-ago summer by the sea.
Jennifer had been a second cousin, unloaded upon Shawn and his mother that summer because of a death in the family and the disruption that followed. His mother had ordered Shawn to help her forget her bereavement.
He had liked fishing. Jennifer had hated it. He had liked swimming in the breakers. Jennifer had preferred sunbathing. He had liked playing pool and ski-ball at the amusement pier but Jennifer had liked dancing. He had quickly come to hate the girl. She had as quickly used sex to chain him.
Daily the strap of her bathing suit would drop, revealing a rose-tipped little breast. When she knew his mother was out she would come into his room, wearing only panties and bra. When they danced she would straddle his thigh and rub her little mound against it. Her kisses were flickering butterfly touches of hp and tongue tip. Sometimes she would grasp him between the legs and then dart away, leaving him blushing.
His previous experiences with girls had included nothing more stimulating than post office at well-chaperoned parties. Within a few weeks Jennifer had made Shawn a slave of love. He had given up fishing, pool and ski-ball to follow the ripples of her skirt. She had learned to tease him. Sometimes she had appeared in the doorway of his room stark naked to ask an innocent question in a tone loud enough for his mother to overhear. He had had no choice but to answer in like tones, while Jennifer had grinned at his blushes.
In the middle of August Jennifer had suddenly been called home. He had been left with the hollow remains of summer, without friends, without the girl. The next year she had gone to the mountains with another branch of the family. He had met her again a year later. The older Jennifer had been full-breasted, her lithe body lost beneath lush pounds of flesh that drew men to her like flies. Shawn's playmate had vanished.
She had dismissed the past by saying matter-of-factly, What naughty kids we were. I'm glad to be grown up.. .
She had kissed him in sisterly fashion which had been all the kiss he had wanted from the new and stuffy Jennifer. She had matured. Shawn had still been a gangling adolescent. And the girl he wanted to love-call it his puppy love-had been wiped from the face of the earth.
Shawn drove into his garage, parked his car and went out to his driveway, trying to orient himself. He looked at his pleasant house under the towering sycamore that Beth loved. Deceptively unpretentious, the house was bigger than most and its walls were expensive brick instead of cheap clapboard. Shawn's home was a fitting one for a successful young lawyer of good background, a lean and handsome young man in tailor-made dark suit, ten-dollar shirt and ten-dollar necktie. A bright and pretty wife was waiting for him.
He looked to the right, at the awkward gray hulk of Edith Bascombe's house. The curtained dining room showed lights. So did one uncurtained upstairs window-
Tippie's room. A shiver went through him. He sucked hard on his cigarette, willed himself to go where he belonged. He could not leave the driveway. If only once he had thrown Jennifer down on the beach and thrust his young manhood into her, would he now be free? Would he have killed his demon? Or would the sickness within him have taken a different, perhaps uglier form?
However achieved, he was sure that freedom from his weakness would have made him more successful as a human being. Even now, without his family connections he might be no more than a struggling mediocrity, chasing ambulances and flirting with ward politics. Shawn was a clean and honest lawyer because he could afford to be so.
* * *
At last he forced himself to plod across his lawn and enter his house. Beth came to greet him, hurriedly whipping off her apron and adjusting her hair. She would put on the apron again to serve dinner but she did not like to wear it at the moment of his arrival. She wanted him to love her.
She pecked him on the cheek and straightened his necktie. He saw that her face was wind-burned.
He said, "You've gotten a tan today. Have you been golfing?"
"No. I ducked afternoon bridge at Julie's and went driving up north. Tippie went with me."
"Tippie?"
"Yes. She's impossible, of course, but she's human. She came up to the car as I was leaving and made me feel like a rat for not sharing your convertible with her. By the way, she calls your convertible a bomb."
"How do the two of you get along?"
"No problem. Tippie repays-favors with conversation.
I find her a change from my friends. She managed some impertinent questions, cloaked in obsequiousness. It's not her fault-but her personality is terrible, poor kid."
Shawn went to the drink cabinet to avoid Beth's eyes. His teeth were grinding. Beth's light-hearted criticism of Tippie was unbearable to him. He poured a stiff whiskey and sipped it before turning.
Beth continued to be bright and amusing on the subject of Tippie.
He finally interrupted. "Didn't Julie need you as a fourth at bridge?"
Beth looked surprised. He displayed little interest in Julie or her bridge parties as a rule.
"Julie phoned me about it. She had fourteen players in all-three tables plus two. She reproached me for not showing up. She couldn't figure that I would have been the third woman sitting out. Julie is not a genius."
"She's pretty, though," Shawn said.
Beth smiled archly. "Starting to go for Julie?" she asked. She slipped an arm around his waist. Shawn's abhorrence of Julie's feather-brained gabble was no secret. Beth could tease him with safety on the subject of Julie.
He gave her a friendly answering hug and helped put dinner on the table. He stole no furtive glances toward the gray house next door.
* * *
Two days after acquiring panties from Miss Claire without cash, Tippie spent her last fifty cents to enter the pool. She was sunburned that evening. The best she could do with her stiffened hair was to rake it back, secure the ends with a rubber band and consider the style a ponytail. She sat at supper with an air of affected elegance, imitating Edith Bascombe.
Edith was a handsome woman with firm features and deliberately blond hair. Tippie knew she had been placed with Edith to be disciplined. She had been received gladly. Tippie's father paid well.
Sam Zellner was present. He came to supper every Saturday. After supper he and Edith would go out. He came on other nights too but Saturday night was sure to bring him.
Tonight Sam's thinning hair was freshly trimmed. He wore a snow-white collar too small for his bulging neck. His face was red. He had small pale eyes.
Sam seemed pleased with his relationship to Edith. Tippie had overheard him mention a wife from whom he was separated and who was somewhere in the south. Since he was not divorced he could not marry Edith. They quietly made the best of it. Only the thump of a man's heavy shoe in Edith's bedroom, late at night, told Tippie what went on.
Sam, on the long side of the table, did not sit as straight-backed as Edith and Tippie, although he tried. Edith regularly clipped the hair out of Sam's ears and nostrils.
Sam sometimes affected rural sayings like, I was never properly curried until Edith got at me....
Tippie thought Sam's rusticisms were not entirely put on. This past year his neckties had become more subdued in color and his suits seemed better cut. Edith was determined to make something out of Sam Zellner.
Sam, his mouth full of mashed potatoes, asked Tippie, "Lots of kids at the pool?"
"A bunch."
Edith raised an eyebrow. "Tippie, the proper answer is, "Yes, sir.. "
"Yes, sir," Tippie said. "Water cold?"
"Not if you swim like crazy." She gave Sam a speculative glance. "It's the best pool in town but it costs a lot."
Sam was even tighter with a dollar than Edith. He shoveled in mashed potatoes and made no comment.
Tippie persisted. "I can save a lot of dough if I buy a season ticket. I could pay the price back out of my allowance. But if I pay admission I've got no allowance left and I don't get to swim so often."
Sam turned his attention to the pork chops.
Edith looked at Tippie with unconcealed displeasure. She saw through the attempt to con Sam.
She said, "Tippie, if you had saved your money when you sold your bicycle, you would have a pool ticket today."
"I needed ice skates."
Sam said, "When I was a kid and needed money I worked for it."
"I baby-sit sometimes." But Tippie was not often called to baby-sit. She had once mixed a pitcher of martinis while baby-sitting at Mrs. Gray's, imbibing the entire contents out of curiosity. She had been sick all over Mrs. Gray's new rug. Now only stingy people asked her to baby-sit-and only when they could get no one else.
Coffee and liqueurs were served after dinner. Tippie was released after the formal, "May I please be excused?"
She carefully folded her napkin, disentangled herself noiselessly from the chair.
She turned on the living-room TV and climbed into the armchair Edith and Sam could not see from the table. She sat on her feet, knees up, arms locked around her shins. Edith and Sam would sit and talk like stuffed shirts for twenty minutes and then do dishes. Tippie got out of kitchen duty when Sam came to supper.
She watched a cartoon show, her thoughts on money. Scratching herself, she felt the sleek nylon of her panties and remembered how she had gotten them from Miss Claire. Maybe some of them could be sold. They were worth at least a buck each. Maybe two bucks.
She would phone Elvira when Edith and Sam were gone.
E ... is for Envy
TIPPIE TOOK her usual bedtime shower, although her body was already clean as a whistle after the day's swimming. She heard Edith and Sam getting ready to go out.
Edith called up some instructions about being in bed early and not letting anyone into the house. Tippie went out to the upstairs hall, dripping wet, to answer her. When she heard the door close she promptly phoned Elvira.
Elvira said she would be right over. Water rolled down Tippie's legs and soaked into the rug. The rug changed color as it dampened so that Tippie stood in a wet, vivid circle next to the phone. Curious, she stepped away and made another bright circle.
She heard the shower still spattering away, decided she had better turn it off sometime soon. First she went to he on her bedspread, which was furry with candle-wick tufts. She rolled on the spread to finish drying herself. Still planning to turn off the shower in a little while, she put on her nicest pair of Miss Claire panties to show
Elvira. She threw those she had worn today into the laundry hamper. Five pairs had not yet been worn. She laid out her merchandise on the bedspread. Two blues, a yellow, a nasty pink, one white pair-if she gave Elvira the nasty pink for free, maybe selling the others would be easy.
She heard the front door slam. Elvira called, "Upstairs?" Tippie answered, "Yeah."
Elvira, dark-haired and sullen, not quite grown out of her baby fat, thrust herself into the room. She took Tippie's one armchair, dangled puffy legs over the armrest She was chewing gum. She pointed at Tippie's display of new underwear.
"What ya got?"
"My aunt sent them to me. I don't know what to do with them, I've got so many. Here, I'll give you one." She picked up the nasty pink and threw it to Elvira. Waiting for a reaction, she plopped on the bed, her back against the headboard, her forearms around her knees.
Elvira's eyes went wide. "Gee. Golly. Thanks."
"You got more gum?"
Elvira shook her head. "But I've got a cigarette."
"Yeah?" Tippie slid off the bed. She took a paper of matches from her bedside table drawer. Elvira fished a bent filter-tip from her pocket. They lit up. Tippie sat on the arm of the chair as they took turns puffing Elvira's unclean treasure. Elvira kept looking at the panties still on the bed.
Tippie said casually, "They're worth ten bucks. The price tags were on 'em."
"Yeah?"
Tippie got down to facts. "How much you got?" she asked.
"A half a buck. I'll give you a half a buck."
"Which one you want?"
"Which one? All of 'em, what else?"
Tippie hooted. But a few moments later, pretending to soften, she offered two for the half buck. She saw the cunning look in Elvira's eyes and stalled about the sale. Elvira finally admitted having seventy-five cents. Tippie demanded to see the money. Four quarters shook out of Elvira's pocket. Tippie seized them and gave Elvira all the panties.
Elvira stuffed her purchase under her sweater.
She said, "I didn't know you had an aunt sending you things."
"There's a lot you don't know." Tippie had no intention of revealing her business secrets.
* * *
Elvira's dollar was a meager start toward a season ticket at the pool. After Elvira left, Tippie lay on her bed scowling, limbs akimbo, still wearing only blue panties. She looked at her small breasts and idly stroked a rosy tip with her finger. The tip pointed and rose. She wondered about Miss Claire's excited kisses.
Tippie understood the mechanics of sex-certain things felt good but scary. Some people, though, seemed to have queer ways of getting excited. Their nuttiness was none of her business, except that they had to pay. If they wanted to pay her to make them feel excited, let them.
She jumped off the bed, whipped on a double-A cup bra, a clean white sweater and skirt. She stepped into moccasins, stamping her heels in place as she hurried out to the hall.
Later, when she returned, she would turn off the darned shower-right now she was busy.
She raided the kitchen cookie jar on her way out of the house. The summer night was a thing of purple velvet, dewy grass glazed by the street lights and night birds murmuring in the trees. Tippie's pace slowed as she planned an excuse for busting in on the neighbors. The car-that was it. She would offer to wash the bomb in payment for her recent ride with Beth.
She rang the front doorbell. Beth answered the ring.
Beth wore glasses with blue rims tonight. She seemed surprised to see Tippie. But her smile was a schooled one that erased the surprise.
She said, "Why, come in, Tippie. You're sunburned. Been swimming?"
"Pool opened today." She remembered to say, as Edith had instructed her, "Ma'am."
Beth took Tippie's hand and led her into the living room. Shawn was slouched in an armchair, magazine in hand. He uncoiled gracefully to his feet, gave Tippie a hint of a bow. Although she was only a kid, he stood up to greet her.
Tippie suddenly realized that good manners in this house were aged in the wood. Shawn was a gentleman. Beth was what they called a lady. Edith thought you had to put on more airs to be a lady. Beth, retiring to a couch, curling her legs beneath her, her back straight but not stiff, smiling easily, was a lady all the time without even trying.
Tippie was pleased. Sooner or later her knowledge could be turned to profit-although she did not know when or how.
Shawn asked, "Would you like a coke, Tippie? I was about to have a beer."
Tippie guessed he had not been about to have a beer, that his saying so was only politeness.
She hesitated. Shawn smiled and went into the kitchen. Beth invited her to sit on the couch. Tippie placed herself beside Beth, knees together, skirt as far down as it would reach.
Shawn brought beer and a soft drink on a tray. He put the tray on a coffee table in front of Beth and Tippie.
Tippie said, Thank you." She turned to Beth. "I've got nothing to do tomorrow. You want me to wash your car? The bomb? Since you gave me a ride the other day, well, I thought I ought to do something."
"Why, how nice of you, Tippie. Do you often wash people's cars?" Beth asked.
"No. Nobody else has a bomb. You remember when we went up the mountain? Edith has to shift to second there."
Shawn said nothing.
Beth protested: "Tippie, our ride was for fun. You don't owe me anything. If you wash the car you'll be paid. I'm sure you have ways of getting rid of your allowance, don't you?"
Tippie sighed. She picked up the coke. "I'm broke. I've got to have a season ticket to the pool. Otherwise they charge you fifty cents a throw and I spent my last today. For fifteen bucks you get a season ticket. With that you can go swimming a hundred times."
Tippie was growing aware of Shawn's eyes boring into her. He made her feel funny. She wished he would say something, not leave the talking to Beth.
"We do need the car washed, Tippie, but tomorrow at dawn well be off fishing. Up past the hills to the river."
Tippie said, "Oh. I see."
She sipped her coke, hunting inspiration.
Beth continued, "Mr. Harris has been working too hard. A fishing trip may help him. Trout fishing, beating the river with silly little featherweight flies and hooks. You know."
Tippie asked Beth, "You fish?"
"I watch. And take naps in the sun. And swim. And picnic, of course."
Tippie nodded. She glanced toward Shawn, who was sipping his beer and gazing at them. Suddenly he asked, "Do you like fishing, Tippie?" She shrugged. "I swim."
He thought that over. When he spoke his voice had a catch in it. "I was thinking, perhaps you could keep Beth company. Beth loves swimming."
Tippie caught the hint that she might go along. She glanced sharply at Beth, looking for a sign of resentment. Lots of people did not want kids dragging along.
But you could not catch Beth off balance. She was a lady. Beth fielded the hint.
"I'd love to have someone to swim with-if Tippie would like to come. Of course, you would need Mrs. Bascombe's approval, Tippie."
Tippie nodded.
Beth asked, "Is Edith at home now? I could phone her and ask."
"She's out with Sam. She leaves the phone number of where she's going beside the downstairs phone. I'll call her and she can call you."
She finished her coke and got up to go. Beth did not rise. Shawn saw her to the door as though she were somebody. Tippie figured she would not forget how politely they had treated her. If you were Beth you would sound and look like a lady even if you said "hell" when you felt like it.
She telephoned Edith and told her about the fishing trip. She added: "I can wake you up at four o'clock in the morning. You can see Beth then. She'll be up to go fishing."
Edith was at a party. Tippie could hear people laughing and music in the background. Edith protested that she must not be wakened at four o'clock. Because Sam would be in her room? Edith said she would call Beth Harris right now.
Tippie remembered to turn the shower off before she went to bed. The water was running cold.
* * *
The bomb raced toward the dawn at seventy miles an hour. Tippie sat sidewise on the jump seat with a hamper of lunch, a freezer chest, plaid blankets and fishing tackle. Shawn drove fast. His knuckles were white on the wheel Beth kept glancing worriedly at him, especially when they took sharp corners. But Beth, made no outcry.
Tippie took a step toward putting Beth in debt.
She protested, over the scream of wind, "You scared me, Mr. Harris. That last turn was something."
Shawn abruptly eased up on the accelerator. "I guess I was pushing a little too hard."
Beth said, "This car runs away with you."
She gave Tippie a glance of thanks.
Tippie knew that Shawn drove too fast for some special reason. Cars, even bombs, never ran away on their own. He sure was nervous. Beth was worried about him. She looked at him now and then, a thin line creasing her forehead-like he was sick and Beth knew it.
They dipped in and out of valleys, past cow pastures and fields of knee-high corn. They drove through hilltop forests, down again into valleys, while the morning brightened about them. Tippie paid only the slightest attention to the scenery. She kept trying to figure out why Shawn had been driving too fast. Was he in a crazy hurry to get somewhere-or to get away from somewhere?
They left the paved road and, for a half-hour, bounced over two longitudinal ruts with a mound of dead leaves between. They ducked branches in some places and Tippie got her arm scratched. They came to a narrow reedy lake while she was rubbing the wound. The lake narrowed at the neck of a small woodland river that ran away from the lake. Shawn stopped the car.
They all got out. Shawn explained that the lake water was warm enough for swimming. The stream, farther down, was ice-cold and full of trout.
Tippie saw several rickety-looking summer cabins on the lake shore. All were closed and boarded up, either because summer had barely started or because they had fallen into disuse.
The three travelers hauled their gear to a sagging sun-touched dock and had a quick breakfast of cold chicken, rolls and coffee from a thermos. Shawn put on hip boots, slung a creel over his shoulder, opened his rod.
Beth said, "Shawn, take along cold cream. Otherwise your nose will burn."
He patted the creel, "Everything's right here. The result of painstaking foresight."
He put on an old felt hat with feathered fishhooks in its band. He gave them a grin and a mock salute and went off downstream.
Tippie had the distinct impression that his glance had lingered on her.
She lay on her back on the dock, enjoying the sun, while Beth smoked a cigarette. Tippie knew you could not ask a woman like Beth what was wrong with her husband. Make more sense to get the answer straight from Shawn. Later on Tippie would manage to be alone with him and would satisfy her curiosity about the funny glances he kept giving her.
Beth said, "The silence is almost frightening, isn't it?"
"Does anybody else come here?"
"Not much. The fishing is better in other places. Shawn's folks had a summer place here when he was a kid. He-likes to come back because he knows every turn in the streams. He claims he can catch fish here where other men can't."
"Sure is deserted. You could go swimming naked here." The sun got to her and she drowsed. She had missed several hours of sleep.
The sun became hotter. At some point shade came over Tippie's face, but she did not awake enough to find its source. She slept until she felt pain in her back as though somebody had hit her. The hardness of the dock had beaten through to her bones. She sat up, found herself under a blanket tied to the dock posts.
Beth was sitting on the shore, leaning against the trunk of a tree and smiling.
Tippie asked, "Did you put up the blanket?"
"You'd have burned to a crisp if I hadn't."
Tippie nodded, yawned and remembered to say Thanks."
She decided that Beth was pretty swell. Maybe ladies hid their feelings. But Beth was real okay beneath those good manners.
"How about a swim?" Beth asked.
The lake, splotched with lily pads and clumps of reeds, was shimmering in the sun.
Tippie said, "Sure. The most."
"Let's swim naked-as you suggested. No one's around for miles. Shawn will shout when he comes near."
Tippie looked about at the deafeningly silent woods and empty lake. "Where do we undress?"
"Bight here, of course." Beth was unbuttoning her shirt. Tippie was surprised. Edith's ideal lady would not undress around anybody. Or say hell, either. Beth got rid of her shirt and dungarees. She wore lemon-colored undies. She undressed slowly.
Beth stripped off her undies and hung them on a bush. She took off her glasses last. Tippie, having visualized Beth as a lady, having nailed her down as a lady, now saw her naked, with full breasts and big darkish nipples and a dark spread beneath her stomach. Funny to find a lady so womanly, with a body that seemed in the business of being sexy. Edith's ideal of a lady was a sexless skinny thing.
Beth walked beside the dock until the water reached her knees.
"The water's fine," she said encouragingly to Tippie.
She immersed the rest of herself and splashed away.
Tippie undressed with her back to the lake, ruefully surveying her little white breasts with their baby-pink and undersized nipples. Below, her thin silky blond stuff hardly covered anything. Look at her skinny legs. Maybe she could eat a lot and put on weight. But she did not want a big stomach and puffy cheeks like Elvira's.
She felt all right as soon as she got into the water. She and Beth had fun splashing and horsing around. They set out to swim across the lake. Beth could swim faster because she had a smoother stroke. Beth sure did things right.
F ... is for Frenzy
SHAWN STOOD knee-deep in white water, in the racing heart of the current. He had chosen the spot in hopes that the struggle would soothe his nerves.
The river was shadowy except for breaks in the trees. Where it could, sunshine splashed through with eye-shattering impact. The trout were striking at everything, sometimes nipping out of the water in iridescent arcs, then vanishing. He could not hold them. He whipped the river savagely, abandoning all his fly-fisherman's pillow-gentle touch. He kept hooking trout that would not stay hooked.
Why had he invited Tippie to come with them? Had he been seeking torment? Was this insane passion masochistic, a way of ripping hooks through his own flesh, to make himself come alive through pain? He could not catch trout, he could not be a man even when poised over Lorna's lovely flesh, he could do nothing for his wife but make her unhappy. His office work moved at an even tenor-but no special demands had been placed upon him lately. What if he had to face a tough job, a court case?
He reflected that for months he had turned his court work over to Blodgett and Smith. After all, they specialized in court cases. How much of his judgment had been based in fear?
He hooked a trout, a big one that shot out of water and did a figure-eight in the air. The fish fought him for a full minute as he teased it toward the net. He touched the fish with his net and it was gone.
He could not net a trout.
He told himself he would have better luck with the next fish. He knew better. He had failed.
He clambered out of the stream, sat on the bank. His hands and knees were shaking. He needed a drink.
A drink? Here in the woods at this hour of morning?
Yesterday he had had three martinis at lunch. His left hand was now cupped to fit the shape of a glass.
Shawn Harris was frightened.
He jumped to his feet and hurried toward the junction of lake and stream, fleeing the site of his fear. Was he hurrying to Tippie-or to tell Beth his troubles? Who and what had he become?
Pride would not allow him to lean on Beth, he realized A Harris could not cry on a woman's shoulder. Anyhow, his perversion would be past her understanding.
He crossed a rise that was cushioned with hemlock needles. Even in his cumbersome boots and gear he walked in dead silence. He heard feminine laughter and paused. Tippie's high-pitched voice sent a shiver through his loins. But he could not harm Tippie with Beth present. Beth would be his shield.
He pressed onward. The trail became a tunnel through brush and bramble, water poplar and willow. He stopped in the quiet green-gray dimness to listen to the girls' bright laughter.
Now he was close enough to shout. He never entered a room without coughing to let Beth know he was coming. They shared a horror of awkward entrances. His throat was tight. He did not shout. He saw the car through the trees and, shortly afterward, the dock, where a plaid blanket had been rigged to form an awning. Picnic stuff was scattered about and yellow undies decorated a bush. He felt an accentuated guilt. He was a prowler, threatening his own party.
He saw his wife and Tippie break out of the water. They were near the dock. Beth was throwing a handful of sand at Tippie. Tippie squealed. She danced like a nymph, glistening with the water that streamed off her body. She pranced as loose-jointedly as a spring lamb.
He had not at first realized that she was nude. Now his eye traced the unbroken fine from tiny ankle, to slight swell of the calf, to slim thigh to bumps of buttocks. Her little white breasts tipped to heartbreaking youthful points. All of her was in motion, stooping and seizing wet sand from the water's edge. She pitched the sand at Beth. Tippie's charming childish jerking and jumps seemed as natural, in this sylvan Eden, as her nakedness. She danced like a streak of sunlight, innocent but bold, prancing so lightly that she seemed not to touch the ground.
Beth, with handfuls of her own, came plowing toward Tippie through knee-deep water. Beth looked leaden in comparison, burdened by her own weight, by the heaviness of her bosom and the bulky thickness of her middle, the ponderous and hammy sluggishness of her thighs. Her big nipples seemed gross, the dark thatch beneath her belly bespoke the hiding place of evil.
In a moment of sanity he remembered someone saying-a week or so ago at the club tennis court-that Beth was the most graceful player the club had ever had.
Was this the same woman?
Beth's thighs rose in heavy columns from the water, inverted tree trunks, broadening immensely to bulbous hips. Her head and shoulders were small. She was weighted by her torso, made clumsy and stumbling. Tippie escaped her, fleeing into a cluster of lily pads. She jumped straight and golden out of the water, twisted, dove back in with a flip like a trout's. She swam, ran and danced circles around clumsy Beth. Shawn smiled, watching his golden sprite of a darling, his female little David winding up her sling against a dark Goliath of her sex. Beth had suddenly become an enemy. She stood between Shawn and his golden girl, achieving only the taking up of space, holding a position as wife that blocked him from his dainty love.
Girl and woman swam out to deeper water where their bodies were submerged. He could hear the echoes of their talk and sometimes a silvery giggle from Tippie.
At last he heard Beth clearly say, "Let's get dressed. Shawn may be along for lunch."
He turned and retraced his route through the tunnel of brush and bramble.
* * *
Tippie was wrapped in a huge bath towel that Beth had brought along, rubbing herself dry, when Shawn hallooed from the forest.
She flung the towel to Beth, snatched up her clothes and ran behind the car to dress. She found she had left her undies at the dock. Her mood was too exuberant for worry over such a trifle. She climbed into her dungarees and shirt.
She watched Beth, envying the older woman's sleekly curved hips and round breasts capped with strong nipples. Chilled to sharpness, Beth's nipples had form that gave them meaning. Tippie deplored her own, which were mere coloring to mark the centers of her breasts. Beth's waist was small, which made her hips curve out abruptly, forming just the right angle for wearing skirts. Tippie envied the broad middle darkness, concealing and yet boldly announcing Beth's femaleness.
But envy did not lessen Tippie's new affection for Beth. Beth was someone to admire as well as imitate. Never before had Tippie played, really played, with a grownup. She had learned a lot. Beneath a lady's exterior there could be an earthy woman who was still a lady. Beth was the greatest.
Beth was wearing faded dungarees and blouse when Shawn came tramping out of the forest in his hip boots. Beth waved, her face glowing with serenity and sunlight.
Tippie ached with approval of her new friend.
* * *
Shawn was twitchy. His bland pleasantness did not conceal the jerk of a muscle in his cheek, a tremor in his hands. He opened a beer from the portable fridge but before even tasting it he reached into the hamper and pulled out a pint of whiskey.
Beth, surprised, asked, "Did you put that in the basket?"
He grinned. "I made the most meticulous preparations for this safari. Last night I thought of you sunbathing and me sloshing waist-deep through icy water in damp shade. I supplied us accordingly."
Tippie watched with fascination as he unscrewed the cap and poured a cup half full of whiskey. Yes, his hand was shaking. And his eyes were too bright. He gulped down half the whiskey and let out a sigh.
He said, "That'll melt the ice in your bones."
A knife-edge frown formed in Beth's forehead. But she made no fuss.
She took the cup from him.
"Cheers."
She took a long swallow before handing the cup back
Tippie, watching with hard eyes, knew Beth was worried about Shawn's drinking. She had overheard Edith say that liquor was the cause of Tippie's parents' divorce. She had kept a sharp eye on drinkers ever since.
Howie Burt, who had been Sam's predecessor as Edith's man friend, had sometimes trembled before taking a drink. He had had the same fixed brightness in his eyes as Shawn did now. Howie had suddenly disappeared. Tippie had regretted Howie's leaving because he had often slipped half-dollars into her palm.
The whiskey seemed to do Shawn good. He became very funny, telling about the big fish that got away. They laughed and told him they had swum naked. Beth said it felt so good that she would never again wear a bathing suit, not even at the club pool.
Shawn said, "At the club pool? You wouldn't cause much stir naked. I think the girls go there only to show their latest model suits. They don't see mere flesh."
Tippie said, "They'd see my flesh. Nobody would look at my raunchy old bathing suit. I had a better one but I sat on a nail and tore my bottom."
"The bathing suit bottom?" Shawn asked. "Or yours?"
The question, she could tell, was not meant to be funny. Shawn seemed concerned about Tippie's having been hurt.
"Bathing suit," she replied.
She bit into a ham sandwich. Beth made good sandwiches-nothing imagine, just lots of ham and mustard and sweet butter. The bread, in fact, was hand-cut, rough rye, not pre-sliced. Edith served sandwiches with the crusts cut off and sometimes with scalloped edges.
Beth was sitting cross-legged without slouching. Her shirt was unbuttoned down to the bra. When she reached for a sandwich or her can of beer, the shirt opened and you could see the dark V between the white swell of her breasts. Tippie sneaked a couple of buttons open on her own shirt. She wore no bra beneath-but Beth showed more that did not fit in her bra than Tippie had altogether. When she sat cross-legged like Beth, Tippie found that her back kept bowing, that sitting straight could hurt. She fought the pain proudly. Your bosom stuck out if you were straight, disappeared if you slouched. Tippie wanted to be like Beth, who could lean forward and grab a sandwich without either bending or looking stiff.
Shawn was wiping his hands on a paper napkin. Beth urged him to have another sandwich. He had eaten only one while drinking the whiskey and two beers.
He said, "If I eat more I'll fall asleep fishing and drown." He rose and gathered his equipment. Before turning away, he asked, "Anybody want to come along?"
Beth said, "Not me. I'm going to stuff my gut and then nap. Tippie, you napped. Why not go watch the great man at play?"
"If I can take along a sandwich."
"Take two," Beth suggested.
Tippie stuck one sandwich in her dungaree pocket, bit into another while Shawn waited for her. She scrambled to her feet and trotted after him toward the stream.
He led her through a dense forest trail. Tippie followed, eating her sandwich and dancing away from sharp briars. She wished she had worn shoes.
Shawn called back to her conversationally, "What kind of bathing suit have you got?"
"Oh, like I said, a raunchy old one-piecer, all faded."
"You should have a pretty suit."
Tippie said, "I have a clothing budget. Edith says it's used up this month. Besides, I shouldn't have torn the bottom out of my good one last year."
"Just the same, pretty girls should have pretty suits.
Maybe a two-piecer with polka dots. How about red with white dots?"
The way he spoke, maybe he was thinking of buying her what she needed. But she could not work Shawn as she worked others. She had to be careful because of Beth. She would die if Beth thought she was using either of the Harrises.
Although Shawn had buckets of money.
She said, "I could sure go for a two-piecer."
She and Shawn had come through the worst of the thicket, were no longer walking single file. Shawn had let her catch up to him. She saw his eyes. He was afraid of something. What a funny guy. He and Beth fitted each other so well in that lady-and-gentleman way of theirs, fitted their house and his being a lawyer and their belonging to the club. But something was sure darned funny.
She remembered Miss Claire. If a woman like Miss Claire could get hot and bothered over a kid, maybe a man could also. Maybe that was why Shawn talked about a bathing suit. Some people were nuts.
As Tippie saw sex, little kids played doctor to find why girls wore skirts and boys wore pants. Later they played post office at parties. Seniors in high school used each other's bodies about like grownups did. Sex had its age groups, like school did. Why did some grownups want to get into the kids' classes? Couldn't they hold their own in the upper grades?
Once more, Shawn strode ahead of her, clumping his boots, loaded with fishing gear, his hat bright with trout lures. The shadowy woods had a chill that Tippie liked Shawn's strides were long. The effort of keeping up with him had her good and warm.
They came to his stream. The water made white bubbles where it broke around rocks. The current must be pretty swift, she guessed. Farther along, a row of rocks made a crude natural bridge, breaking the stream into rivulets.
Shawn said, "I think you can cross here without getting your feet wet."
"I don't care if they're wet."
"It's cold."
He continued to lead, stepping carefully on the rounded rocks. Tippie jumped across the first rivulet
He turned and said, "Give me your hand."
She placed her hand in his. He pulled her from rock to rock.
She had always been sure-footed. His holding her hand was silly unless, she realized, he wanted to hold her hand.
Suddenly he slipped. His hand gave hers a great jerking heave. He tried to pull her back. Tippie landed bottom down in the water. Her behind was instantly iced. She uttered a yell that was cut off when the current bumped her against a rock and the rest of her went under.
Shawn dragged her upright, led her to the bank. Half-dazed, chilled through and dripping wet, she stood shivering while Shawn apologized.
"It was all my fault, Tippie," she heard him say.
"Heck, I'm not sugar or salt," she managed.
But she was tremblingly close to crying. Her shirt and blue jeans clung like icy rubber gloves. Looking down at herself she saw, for the first time in her life, that her nipples were visible through her shirt. They had been hardened by the chill and the shirt was old and thin and plastered against her. Her hands and feet were blue.
Shawn had dropped his creel, was removing his checked wool shirt. He said, "Put this on."
She shook her head. "No use, I'd still be wet inside your shirt."
'Take the shirt back in the bushes. Peel off your wet clothes and then put the shirt on."
She went as he told her into the brush. She was glad to get out of her wet shirt and jeans. She hugged herself into the dry, warm shirt, which reached down to her knees. When her fingers thawed, she buttoned the shirt and felt better. She took her wet clothes out to the stream and wrung them out.
Shawn said, "Well find a sunny place upstream. Come on." Again she followed his lead, snuggling inside his shirt. The fabric smelled faintly and pleasantly of tobacco, whiskey, man.
She felt pretty naked underneath, Tippie realized. The bottom button was missing on the shirt. The lowest one that closed was at her waist.
They came to a place where a great tree had fallen, its roots sticking up in a kind of circular wall against which sunlight played.
Shawn seated himself on the fallen trunk. Tippie hunched down with her back to the roots and earth, pulling the shirttails down like a skirt. Shawn had worn a T-shirt under the heavier garment.
He drew cigarettes from his pocket and asked, "Do you ever smoke, Tippie?"
She nodded. "But they're hard to get. Minors can't buy them. Edith doesn't smoke."
"Want one?"
She reached out her hand. He gave her a cigarette and passed his lighter. She was getting better at lighting up now and succeeded at the first try. She looked at him sharply and asked, "You really don't mind if I smoke?"
"When I was your age we smoked behind the school. How do you feel?"
"Okay. Warm. My hair's wet, though."
"We'll stay in the sun until it dries."
G ... is for Girlhood
SHAWN SAT on the log, smoking his cigarette, knowing a wild moment of peace.
We are alone, a million miles from nowhere. Jennifer, I am twice as old and triply clever. Tough of beard and heavier of body, coarser of skin. But beneath I am a gangling youth, at the shore for the summer, being made a fool of by a girl with silky hair. I am here and you sit against the roots in my plaid wool shirt. My chaperoning mother is not present. Here we are, Jennifer, you and I.. .
He had seen Tippie's little nipples through her wet shirt. He now saw the cream-soft skin and the white thighs beneath the shirttails. As Tippie concentrated on smoking the cigarette the shirttails fell apart, revealing a thin wedge of her silken mound. All of her was slim and tender, fine-boned and jerkily quivering with impatient youth.
The gestures with the cigarette had a beautiful ineptness. The blue eyes hardened with attention on this object and that, now on the glowing end of the cigarette, then on her shirttails, which she shoved together. Her lips were pink rolled petals of opening roses. Her lashes were pale, her eyebrows transparent silk.
Beth had said many times, "That little scamp is always working people for something."
Shawn now said, "Tippie, about that bathing suit. I think that since I dunked you in the stream I owe you a suit."
"Oh? Why?" The blue eyes were sharply surprised. In later years, at Lorna's age, she would be quicker to accept the pretenses under which women were given things. But when Tippie was Lorna's age he would not know her. This elfin child would have vanished into thick female flesh.
He answered her question. "You won't be too busy this summer to help keep my cars washed, will you? And the lawns trimmed?"
"What about your gardener, old Mr. Ferrari?"
"He's getting old. You can also work out the fifteen dollars for the pool, if you want"
And I will give you the bomb of a convertible and castles in Spain and rare perfumes and spices from the East, my lovely. . .
She started to clap her hands with joy but her cigarette was in the way.
She cried, "It's a deal."
"A deal. Shake on it." He put out his hand, willing to trade an armful of bathing suits for a touch of her down-soft fingers. He closed her hand in his.
Tippie darted forward and kissed him on the cheek, then retreated against the tree roots, pulling her shirttails together.
His head was spinning, his cheek burned by the touch of her lips. Some caution still restrained him.
He said, "You seal a bargain with a kiss, eh? Then lean this way and point your forehead at me."
She leaned toward him. He touched his lips to her warm forehead. He was seized by a sudden fear that he would harm her, that if she became frightened he would seize her neck and strangle or twist and bend. Was this how sex killings happened? His hands fell lightly on her thin shoulders. His lips, seemingly of their own accord, moved down her brow to her cheek. Explosively, as a sheet of flame went ripping through his body, his mouth touched hers.
He waited through a day-long instant of white fear. She would jerk away. She would cry out. She would laugh.
But her lips remained passive beneath his.
After a long and glorious moment, full of fear, he found she was kissing him in return. From dead quiet her lips seemed to swell, to accept, to moisten and open. Her mouth was so tiny and delicate, that he feared his roughness would tear it. She made a fluttering movement. To his unbounded delight a tongue tip sneaked out and touched his.
Shawn moved down from the log and folded her in his arms. She sat holding her shirttails, her body seemingly boneless, fitting itself to the curve of his arms. His hand closed on the fabric over her little right breast. She made no move. Her lips once more parted. She received a dart of his tongue, returned the gesture. He kneaded the small breast gently. She pushed herself more firmly against him. She liked him. He could barely believe his luck.
Emboldened, he unbuttoned her shirt and reached in to touch her warm, tender flesh, as gently as though she were fashioned of soap bubbles. The brushing of his fingers raised her nipple to a tiny point. She squirmed against him. He unbuttoned the shirt all the way. Her hands fell away from the closure. The shirt lay open and her pale body was exposed to his gaze.
He thought in sudden agony that he was a great coarse man, with a throbbing giant manhood. He looked at her dainty cleft. Half his lifetime ago his boy's body would have matched this girl's.
He thought, I can kiss and fondle. But can I make a woman of this child?
* * *
To Tippie the new two-piece bathing suit with red polka dots and the season pass to the pool were already realities.
Unless Shawn came through she could holler, Jail-bait....
She hoped he would make no trouble, though. She wanted to keep Beth's friendship. If she hollered, everything between her and Beth would bust up. Maybe Edith would send her away. Still, a weapon was in her hands.
She felt in Shawn's arms like a puppy in a basket. Immense hard arms had scooped her up. A huge male body, exuding heat, had dwarfed her with its power. She was content to remain close, to smell the tobacco and whiskey, taste the hard tongue. Her own lips and tongue tip were like bits of butter being consumed. She had no need to struggle. She had gone through a momentary spasm of fear for her loins and had gripped the shirttails tightly.
But the fierce dependability of Shawn's arms, his stem ribbed chest and muscular lips, had quelled her fears. like a pet who has found a master, she squirmed against his body heat, trying to come nearer.
When he first clasped her breast she thought that he was foolish. He could as easily have had Beth's proud spheres, something worth handling. Then flattery consumed her. He opened the shirt and took her bare breast in his hand. She knew a tingling pleasure and was happy. Her nipple sharpened against his palm almost to the point of hurt. She turned to force the breast flatter against his hand.
Miss Claire's caresses had brought liquid heat into Tippie's loins even though Miss Claire was a woman and a nasty one. Now she had that heat again, a thing apart from the warm puppy-in-a-basket security of Shawn's arms.
His lips slipped to her throat.
He murmured, "Darling, little darling," and held her with iron tenderness.
Years fell away. Tippie remembered her father's rare affectionate hugs, long, long ago. The bristle of Shawn's beard rasped her cheek, delighting her. He kissed her shoulder and touched his lips to her breast. His lips closed gently on the nipple. Her eyes wide, she stared up at gray-green foliage above, a glaring blue sky. She heard the distant twitter of a bird.
She felt her nipple drawn as though her heart must be pulled out through it. Her excitement resolved to a warmth that rolled this way and that through her body, even between her legs. She shifted, snuggled closer, wiggled her bottom about. Her thighs fell apart. Shawn's hand stroked her side, kind but heavy, not like Miss Claire's slithering, fussy feminine hands.
His hand closed on her thigh and her heart stopped. The hand was big and he was big all over, so big that she was suddenly frightened. Boys had sometimes tried to get fresh with her, to show her what they had. They had given her some idea of relative sizes. But Shawn was a man, a great strong man. She understood how sex worked. But she was too small for Shawn, she knew from her past inquisitive fingerings of herself. Sex would not work out for Shawn and Tippie.
But Shawn was so gentle-was whispering such nice things-whether or not she believed him, he intended to make her happy. Could anyone be so kind and hurt her?
She was parted by his fingers. She felt a sudden spasm of heat, then fear that made her want to tangle her legs together for protection. But his lips on her nipple drew at the current in her body, so that soon she parted her legs willingly to his touch.
He whispered, "Little darling, I'll never harm you."
She burrowed deeper into his embrace, her free hand clasping the neck of his T-shirt and tugging it down. Her knuckles brushed the curly hair of his chest. A thrill moved through her hand and arm. His hand turned between her thighs.
The kisses moved below her breasts, down her body. Her stomach tingled. Her hips wanted to jump. She found she was breathing hard. She stopped remembering Miss Claire. She had not been held by Miss Claire, had not clung to a T-shirt and knuckled wiry male hair. She had been a body worshipped and kissed and fussed about. Now she was a partner.
But fear came back.
She whispered, "I'm scared." She was surprised at the hoarseness of her voice.
"I could not hurt you," he promised once more. And he set her middle on fire with his kisses, made her open like a flower in the morning sun. She clung with both hands to his T-shirt, eyes closed to his bulk and his shadow alike, as he cut off the sunshine from her.
She felt him, but touching with delicacy, probing. His hands lifted her slightly. She liked being held in his big hands. He moved against her. She had thought she would be dry. That was how Elvira said it was, like being butted, but Elvira had been talking about the boy around the corner.
Tippie's joining with Shawn was slippery, yet burning. Her hips and her thighs twitched, catching a rhythm of his designing. Deep within her a new hunger wanted fulfillment, fought with her lingering fear. She throbbed in alternating hurt and ecstasy.
He whispered, "Too much?"
The question racketed in her brain. Yes, too big and too much. Her teeth caught on her lip. A wild singing was in her ears. Leaves rustled above and dead leaves crunched beneath her. She was trying to defend herself but her strength had turned to water. Shawn's fingers lightly steered her knees and her knees grabbed at his ribs.
She said, "I'm all right." But her teeth gritted.
The fire began in earnest. She no longer cared about hurt. She cried out in a voice from the depths of her body that she had never heard before, a woman's voice. Her whole body quivered and heaved on the dry leaves. He made a laughing noise, but he too was changing, growing to overfill her a hundred times so that she was swollen to bursting.
The world went red. She was spinning, turning end over end, the fallen tree standing up against the sky within her, the fallen tree upright again and mightily trumpeting at the wind that had blown it down.
After a long while the tree settled again to earth and she could hear herself panting.
* * *
Tippie had not cried since the last time she saw her father. Her tears back then had run in rivers. The rivers had emptied, leaving her dry as a sponge in the noonday sun.
Now she held her hands to her face and cried between her fingers. The scene about her came into focus through dribblings and shimmerings of tears. A big wading boot hung over the fallen tree trunk. Shawn's trousers were under the log. She saw her own small body and Shawn crouching over her, his eyes tender, his legs long and muscular. His manhood was reddish, tremendous, unbelievable. The impossible had happened.
He stroked her shoulder. She was too confused, too shocked, to be comforted. Because he had been the force outside herself, she blamed him. She pulled away and scrambled toward the stream, the red-checked shirt dangling from one shoulder. At the stream edge her anger turned to rubber and she kneeled helplessly beside the water. She looked down at the torrent of foam, wishing she could be dissolved in it and washed downstream.
She could not stop weeping. Shawn's shadow came between her and the sun.
He bent beside her, asked, "Did I hurt you, Tippie?"
Beneath the roots of the giant fallen tree, a spring long buried within her had broken free and the tears of many seasons had been released. Shawn hovered close to her, not understanding. He kept asking if he had hurt her and at last she shook her head, seeing him through a film of tears. His hands dangled, as though he dared not touch her. His manhood was now wilted. She grasped the fact and suddenly burst into laughter.
He said worriedly, "Tippie, don't get hysterical."
He seized her shoulders. He seemed about to shake her. She fell into his arms. He cuddled her. She felt better and better as she continued to laugh and cry at once. The joining had really happened-he had achieved his ends and she hers and now she was a woman. She was sure she had not absorbed all his strength. But she laughed and cried because he was small now and she had made him big.
He asked, "Are you really all right?"
"Uh-huh."
He said, "I love you, Tippie."
She started to cry again. He held her away, studied her face with a worried frown. She pawed back into his arms. She wanted to stay close.
He asked, "Do you like me, Tippie? Do you love me?"
What was love? She could not believe in the squishy love she saw on TV. The actresses and actors said they loved each other but what did they mean? The question was too sudden. More important, a voice inside her said it was a good idea not to tell somebody you loved him. Even if you did. Whatever it meant to love.
Her cheek against his shoulder and throat, Tippie knew a brief contentment. Her face must look awful, she thought-swollen and red.
The moment passed. She squirmed away, leaving the plaid shirt in Shawn's hands. She found a deep place in the stream, where the current was slower than in the shallows. She lowered herself, seat first. The cold made her cry out. She submerged herself nevertheless, splashed her face with the icy water, then climbed out in a hurry. She hoped the cold water would reduce the swelling of her eyes.
Shawn had remained on the bank, watching her with puzzlement and worry. He still held a sleeve of the plaid shirt.
She walked up to him, not caring now that she was naked. "Dry me," she said.
He grinned happily, flung the dry warm shirt about her, started drying her.
H ... is for Hate
TIPPIE'S SHIRT and jeans were still not fully dried when she and Shawn started back to the swimming site. But Shawn's shirt was warm about her shoulders.
He said, more to himself than to her, "We're early. We've got to tell Beth something."
'Tell her I fell into the river-so we had to come back."
They reached a hemlock grove on the rise above the picnic spot. Beth and Tippie had swum naked here not so long ago, back in Tippie's childhood.
Beth was near the dock sitting cross-legged against a tree and reading a book. Her glasses were midway down her nose. Shawn hallooed. Beth looked up, smiled and waved. Beth dog-eared the book, closed it and rose to greet her husband and Tippie.
Tippie studied her with narrowed eyes. Beth's, big breasts seemed to butt straight out at her shirt. You could see the shapes of the nipple points right where the shirt was tightest. Beth stood with her feet a bit apart, tight jeans outlining the swell of hips and thighs. Her body was strong and full. Just what a man should want. She could probably get as close to a man as human bodies allowed.
She cried out, "Tippie, you're all wet. What happened?"
Tippie suddenly hated Beth.
Tonight Beth would clothe her lush body in a filmy nightgown. She and Shawn would go to bed together. Tippie's gaze disintegrated Beth's clothing and she saw the big nipples and the arc of her hips and waist as Shawn would see them tonight. He would forget Tippie's skinny body and her breasts like lemons.
But why had he made love to her beside the stream?
She looked at him. Was he blushing-or were they all getting red-faced from the sun? He had called her darling and he had said crazy things about loving her. Why?
Shawn said, "I was helping Tippie across the stream and I slipped. We both plopped but she fell bottom-first. I hardly got splashed."
Beth said, "Come sit in the sun, Tippie. Where's your sweater?"
"It's in the car. I'm all right."
Tippie sat on the dock. The sun was no longer hot but she quickly shed the plaid shirt. She was hot enough inside. Why did Shawn want her when he had Beth?
He wanted her, that was all. He had given her love that was strong but gentle, not a blunt butting as Elvira had said but slick and lightly sliding to a precise careful depth. She had heard that you got larger. She hoped she would grow fast. She was still sore. But now she felt kind of proud. She remembered feeling like a puppy in a basket, in Shawn's arms. A glow spread within her. She looked at him, saw the dark growing beard and the clean profile, the glistening eyes as he told Beth a fish story, hands showing the length of the fish.
Did he love Beth?
What was love? The word was fish-slippery. Tippie could not get hold of it.
* * *
They drove back in late afternoon. Tippie was in the back seat, huddled in a sweatered ball, half-asleep, telling herself that Beth was fun and was a lady. But Beth was Shawn's wife and she had big breasts.
Tippie knew she would have to con Beth.
Beth turned back to her and asked, "We had fun, didn't we, Tippie?"
"The best time in my whole life," Tippie agreed.
She smiled to herself in sleepy pleasure. She was already conning Beth, saying what she had said, which would mean one thing to Beth and another to Shawn.
But Beth was smart. Would she catch on? Beth had the brains and the time to figure things out.
Suddenly Tippie remembered Lorna Kovo, Shawn's secretary. A cord in her chest drew tight and hard. Lorna-that wild red head, those swinging breasts and rolling hips made Beth look like a bespectacled mouse. Lorna worked with Shawn all day long. If Lorna loved him and Beth loved him what room was there left?
Tippie cried a little inside.
* * *
Shawn drove back to the valley, talking calmly to Beth and occasionally glancing at Tippie. His mood was exuberant. He had been afraid of frightening Tippie or hurting her. He had feared disgust with himself, possible disappointment.
But none of the fears had materialized. Tippie had gone through fear to return to his arms. She had been hurt a little, as was natural, but she had forgiven him.
The experience had been glorious, a complete erasure of his frustration with Jennifer half a lifetime ago.
More had happened than the mere wiping out of memory. He had projected himself into the present, had been a complete man. He had entered and used the small body with controlled gentleness, to achieve the greatest sexual thrill of his life. The necessary delicacy of the act had been its own reward.
Tippie had become quite rowdy. He had smiled with pleasure at her abandon, while himself remaining meticulously careful. In his legal work, he might search with similar care for a loophole in a tax situation. He had not made one move or gesture that could be called rough or uncouth.
An entire Titan's burden of fear had gone from his shoulder. He could not feel guilty toward Beth. His love for Tippie had nothing to do with his wife, as long as Beth stayed away from the world he shared with the girl. He remembered how gross and clumsy Beth's naked body had seemed by comparison with Tippie's.
He wished Beth had a child with whom to occupy herself. The doctor had told them frankly that pregnancies sometimes required nightly love in order to come about.
But every moment in bed with Beth would be an hour of yearning for Tippie. Just as an hour with Tippie-or a day, or a year-would pass like a swift dream.
* * *
Lorna Kovo left her car in the municipal parking lot on Monday morning and turned toward her job. The lot had filled early and she was parked at the far end. She decided to walk by way of the street instead of through the lot. She was early enough to glance at shop windows.
She tried to walk primly. This was the first day warm enough for coatlessness. Lorna felt uncomfortably on display. She was self-conscious about her figure, compensated with a pretense of boldness.
Friends had remarked, Lorna, when you swing your hips it's as though you were asking what to do with all that sex....
For years her mom had said, Your shape is your fortune, honey....
Today, in a sleek green dress and white spike-heeled shoes she knew she was displaying a fortune that she did not quite control. Shawn had made remarks, some laughing, some irritated, about women who trussed themselves into girdles and skyhook bras. To please him, Lorna wore a bra more comfortable than uplifting, panties with garters in place of a girdle. Neither garment did much to inhibit a body too lush for a sunlit street on a business day in summer.
Men whistled at her, fit fingers instead of cigarettes, stopped cars with quick squeals of brakes. Part of Lorna loved the attention. The rest of her hated the invasion of her privacy. Gawking guys saw her fortune for free, insulted her, begged for dates that would get her nowhere. Lump them all with Joe Quinn and file them under F for fakes-big talk and big spend, a bounce in bed and bye-bye-honey. Then back to their wives or their ambitions. The other night Joe Quinn had eaten her with his eyes, had told her that when an Irishman fell it was like a building collapsing.
Then collapse," she had said.
She had thought, drop dead or else make an honest woman of me....
Joe Quinn had wined her and dined her, bought her carnations from the flower girl and spewed syrupy talk about how fiery hair like that must have Irish behind it, which was supposed to be flattery, making her as good as he was.
She had told him that blarney cut no ice in a Slovak family that would not let a daughter marry Irish anyhow. He had responded with a stupidly empty look. The truth was, her family would believe in him when they saw the diamond on her finger and had cut glass with it. Mom had said Joe Quinn would be a fine catch for a girl. He was already somebody and he might come out big. Play it strictly virgin with Joe Quinn, was mom's advice-as though Lorna needed any telling. Joe had gotten a kiss on the cheek for his troubles. She had hurried into the house after answering his suggestion of another date.
Ring the office....
She was more than a little in love with Shawn Harris. Bedding with one man at a time was all she could enjoy and all the pregnancy risk she would take.
Thoughts of Shawn made her pace quicken. She slowed only when she came to the window of a ladies' store. She had no real hope of a future with Shawn. She had once thought that he and his wife might not be hitting it off well.
Now she wondered more about herself and Shawn.
On the office couch with Lorna he often seemed absent, maybe yearning for his wife. Or somebody. He had really made her blue the day he had thoroughly failed her until he went to the washroom to be alone. He had come back strong and rampaging, but why?
She passed the window of Miss Claire's, saw a leather donkey holding a pair of livid red lace panties in its teeth. Lorna was embarrassed at the sight. A girl would have to be awful to wear those for a guy. Anyhow, imagine undies were for girls with dubious flesh to pretty up. Loma needed no help.
She spied Miss Claire beyond the show window backdrop, dark eyes fixed on Loma.
She thought, you lousy lesbian....
She turned abruptly and swung down the street. She did not like queer people. The normal world was complicated enough without perverts.
* * *
Shawn Harris was in his office, standing at the window with the blinds open, by the time the river of students flowed up the steps to the high school. He was trying to devise a plan for communicating with Tippie. Direct means would be suicidal. The sound of a young girl's voice on his office phone would be noticed at the switchboard after a call or two. Nor could he phone Tippie or send her notes.
They must have a private letterbox, a hollow tree or a culvert. A post-office box? Could the child take out a box in her own name without questions being asked of Edith? No good. He could take no third person into his confidence. This was no mere infidelity or indiscretion. Shawn had committed a crime in the eyes of the law.
Where could a girl-child meet a man twice her age without causing tongues to wag? Perhaps only beside shady forest streams.
The intercom buzzer rang. He pushed his button.
Lorna's voice came through, "Do you want anything, Mr. Harris?"
"Yes, Come in."
Lorna came into his office smiling and jiggling. He scanned her. She looked delicious. But within her bouncing and jiggling curves he saw the meager form of Tippie, smothered, dead and buried in flesh.
He said, "Good morning, Lorna. What a pretty dress."
She patted her hair. "Thank you, Mr. Harris. It's just an old dress. Will there be dictation?"
"Yes."
She seated herself at her corner of the desk with her steno pad on her knee. He picked up letters he had to answer. He turned his back to Lorna, watched the high school through the open blinds. He began to dictate. He searched the crowd in a wistful hope of seeing Tippie. Silly, in all that mob. But he persisted. Something beyond the ordinary, some mechanism like radar, seemed to be at his disposal, because he soon picked Tippie's shining head out of the crowd.
She was on the first flight of steps. She stopped. The crowd eddied past her. She raised her sunburned face and looked directly at his window, waved her hand in brief greeting and merged again with the mob of faceless youth.
I ... is for Intimacy
THE PROBLEM of commutations had entered Tip-pie's busy mind as well as Shawn's. She had pondered the matter during a lonely Sunday. Telephoning Shawn's office would be impossible. Maybe she could leave notes behind his garage-maybe under a rock. But Beth might find them. During the day, when Tippie and Shawn were on opposite sides of a busy street, they might as well be miles apart.
She remembered a TV spy story in which the FBI used phone booths.
She had looked up the number of the drugstore in the Professional Building. Three listings were given. She had waited until Edith and Sam went out before she hurried to Edith's portable typewriter. She addressed an envelope to Mr. Shawn Harris, Professional Building. The note read:
12:15 a.m. Smith's Drug ring pay phone number.
She had stolen a stamp from Edith's stationery box and had taken the letter all the way to the post office to be sure of delivery in the morning mail.
Her noon hour began at twelve sharp. She hurried out of the school, down the steps and across the street. She ducked into Smith's. The place was jammed with high-school kids out for lunch. Among them a few grownups were buying newspapers and cigarettes. A man was using one of the three public phones in the back of the store. She squeezed through the crowd to the first booth.
She slipped into the booth, held the receiver to her ear and dialed without a coin. She sat watching the mob of kids, listening to the mechanical silence of the phone. She took her sandwich from her purse, peeled back its wrapping and began eating her lunch. Through the glass door she could see the store clock.
At twelve-fifteen Shawn Harris came pushing through the crowd. He wore a fight tan suit and a dark tie. He was handsome, Tippie thought. He did a good spy job, first buying a newspaper, looking at the headlines as he glanced toward the phone booths. He saw Tippie with no sign of recognition. He went to the only empty booth.
Tippie was delighted with her own cleverness. They each had a good reason to be in the store. If anyone questioned her answering the ring of a public phone she could say that Edith had told her to wait for a call around noon. Shawn, if questioned, could say he dropped in to buy a paper, had suddenly remembered a business call he had to make.
She almost forgot to put the phone on the hook so his ring could come through.
She had just jammed the phone in place when the first ring came, a screech that could be heard throughout the store. She jerked off the receiver. She looked out at the proprietor. Mr. Smith was too busy to worry about ringing phones.
Shawn said, cautiously, "Who is this?"
"Me. Who do you think it is?"
"Oh. I had to make sure I had the right number."
"Did you ass my note?"
"Yes."
"Crumble the ashes? Detectives can read them if they're not crumbled to a powder."
He laughed. "Nobody is detectiving us. How are you, darling?"
"All right."
"Were you-I mean, not uncomfortable-last evening? I mean, yesterday."
"I was all right."
He paused. He said, "These drugstore phones seem like a good system. I dropped in earlier and copied down ah three numbers."
"There are only three more days of school before vacation. Then I'll work out something with the pool phone."
He asked, "Yesterday-you weren't-hurt? I mean, did I do anything that hurt you?"
She studied her half-eaten sandwich, thought over a reply. She bit off a piece of bread and ham.
She said while chewing, "I'm all right, I guess."
His voice became excited. "But did I-hurt you?"
"A little." She bit off another comer, planning to eat around the edge until only a circle was left
"I'm sorry. I'm so terribly sorry."
She said, "I can take it"
There was silence for a moment. The phone clicked and the operator said, "Your three minutes are up. Will you please deposit another ten cents?"
The coins ran in a stream into his phone. He must have put in a handful.
He said, "Darling, could we meet somewhere? This afternoon?"
"No. Not in daylight."
"At dusk?"
She paused. "Maybe. I dunno."
"Please?"
"Maybe. Where?"
He suggested his garage after dark. He said that he loved her and asked if she was still short of funds for the polka-dot suit and the season pool ticket. Before she could answer he said he was leaving his newspaper in the phone booth with money in it. He now had to hurry to meet a client
She waited until he had gone, ducked into the booth he had left. She found two twenty-dollar bills folded inside the second section of his newspaper.
* * *
Suddenly Tippie was rich. She went after school to Miss Claire's to flaunt her independence. The mannequins in the window had been dressed differently since Tippie's last visit but the leather donkey still held red lace panties in its teeth. Tippie looked with contempt at the red panties. She could hardly remember having wanted them.
The door was open because of the day's warmth. Miss Claire came to the doorway, her hair in stiff waves and frosted with spray to the texture of steel wool. Her face was hidden beneath a layer of paint, powder and lacquer. Kids from school were milling past. Miss Claire dared not speak but her eyes sent sharp little pleas to Tippie.
Tippie turned away. She glanced back and saw Miss Claire's mouth open, as though she were about to cry out in pain.
Tippie went off to hunt for polka-dot bathing suits in other stores.
The forty dollars had seemed like a fortune until she saw the price of bathing suits. Nor did she find many with polka dots. She kept twenty dollars aside for the season ticket and a rented locker at the pool. Edith must never see the polka-dot suit at home and ask questions. Besides, if you had a locker you were somebody.
At last Tippie found a blue polka-dot suit for eighteen dollars. She took her purchase to the pool by bus, bought her season ticket and hired a locker. She had six dollars left. That was a lot of money when you had the summer paid for. If Edith asked about the ticket she could say the pool man had let her buy it on installments out of her allowance. The six dollars burned no hole in her pocket. She was thinking now of Shawn and tonight and she no longer cared about buying things, except for a half-dollar stock of chewing gum at three-for-ten in the supermarket.
Sam was in for supper again. The hair was freshly clipped out of his ears and nose. Edith bestowed benign glances upon him except when he used his knife to push food on his fork. At that point a warning hiss would come into Edith's voice.
Sam wanted to go to a movie. Edith objected.
"We've been leaving Tippie alone too much. And she can't come along. The movie is for adults only."
Tippie said quickly, "I have to study for exams."
"Exams? I thought they had abolished term exams."
"Marking-period exams. I've got two tomorrow."
Sam said, "If the girl has to study, she has to study. We might as well take in the show."
In the end Edith agreed. She and Sam went to the seven-thirty movie.
Dusk was still an hour away. Tippie went upstairs and sat at her window, looking at the house next door. She saw Shawn come out to the front lawn and her heart leaped.
He wore a sports shirt and had his hands in his pockets. He strolled about the yard, looking at flower beds. He glanced up once at Tippie's window. He could not see her, though-she had not turned on her light.
Beth joined him on the lawn, leaning against one of the trunks of the double sycamore tree. She held a book, one finger marking her place. Shawn stood beside her. They talked. Tippie could hear only the murmur of their voices.
How would he get away from Beth?
She broke open three sticks of gum and nervously chewed them all at once until her jaw ached.
When the street lights blinked on she made a sudden dash downstairs. At the kitchen door she saw that the lawns were still bright. Her palms were sweating. She rubbed them on her skirt. She wore a denim wrap-around skirt, a fresh white shirt. She realized too late that her shirt would be conspicuous in the dark. She was too excited to go upstairs and change. She willed darkness with all her heart but she could still see the shapes of Shawn's and Beth's cars through the garage windows. The first bat zipped erratically over the lawns. Swallows like boomerangs scudded across the sky, dashing at insects.
A light flicked on in the Harris kitchen. Tippie saw a tall male form in the doorway. The door opened.
She heard Shawn say in a clear voice, "I'll drive over and see him."
Beth's reply was muffled.
Shawn said, I'll go alone. After all, it's business."
Again his voice seemed loud. Tippie knew she was supposed to overhear him. Shawn and Beth spoke softly as a rule.
Tippie opened the kitchen door and looked out. Still too light? Despite the trees with their thick foliage, dozens of windows with yellow eyes were staring watchfully at her. She chewed gum until her teeth hurt, spat out the gum and still Shawn lingered in the doorway, talking to Beth.
Maybe he was having a hard time keeping Beth inside.
Tippie headed for the garage. Her knees were shaking. The garage smelled of gasoline and dampness.
Footsteps crackled on the gravel outside. Shawn opened the side door.
Tippie asked, "Which car?"
He whispered, "The big one."
Tippie seemed to know exactly what to do. She hid herself on the floor in the rear of Beth's sedan. Shawn took the driver's seat. He backed out to the street.
* * *
She asked, "Can I sit in front soon."
"Not yet."
She waited a few minutes and lifted her head. They were climbing the mountain road.
"Can I get in front now?" she asked again.
"No, please. Listen, if we stop at a red light and people see you with me-too many people know me."
"There're no more red lights on this road," she said
They moved into darkness and she climbed into the front seat.
Shawn seemed badly upset. He said, "Tippie, suppose we have to stop? A policeman might stop us. Suppose there were an accident?"
"Scairdy cat," she muttered.
She slid down beside him, glad this was the big car because in the bomb the bucket seats would have kept them apart with its four-on-the-floor gearshift. She looked at his strong hands on the wheel as he tooled the big car around the curves, his gaze intent on the road. While driving he had power. He directed their small dark world in great curves through the hills. She moved closer to him.
He said, "It's still not a good idea for you to be in the front seat."
"Don't you want me here."
"Of course I do. But-"
She wiggled nearer until she was touching him, touching the power, the control, the owner of this gleaming vehicle, the man who could leave forty dollars in a newspaper, who could he to his wife for her, who could leave his brainy wife with her big breasts and her ladyhood just to be with Tippie. Above all Tippie liked his hands on the steering wheel and his foot on the gas, the feeling of big strength about rum. She snuggled under his arm.
He slowed the car.
She asked, "Why are you slowing?"
"I told Beth I'm going to see Ed Martin, a client of mine. I will have to phone Ed and say I have a flat tire."
She thought for a while.
"That's a pretty lame excuse."
"I know."
"You could tell him you can't make it tonight, you met a friend on the street and you're playing poker. Then if Beth phones him, he doesn't know the friend's name."
He glanced at her, grinned. "You seem to have more experience at lying than I do."
"I live with Edith."
"Anyhow, I don't play poker and Beth knows it."
"Bridge."
"That's no good either. But I can tell Ed that I've got to see another client in a hurry, that I can't see him until morning." He drove to a gas station, hurried inside. Tippie watched him through the big glass windows. He stepped into a phone booth inside. The gas station blazed with light. Tippie shrank in her seat, below the glare.
Soon Shawn came running back. He squeezed her hand and they drove away. Shortly he turned off on a rutty dark country road. Tippie, chin on his shoulder, felt his power over the car through her entire body. She had to move away a couple of times to free his arm as he hauled around sharp corners. Finally he turned off the road and cut his lights to dim. Tippie could make out trees in orderly rows and guessed they were in an orchard. Moonlight gleamed above. The car stopped Shawn turned off his lights.
They sat in silence until he asked, "Did you find a bathing suit?"
"Uh-huh. Blue polka dots. I didn't like the red."
"Is it cute?"
"Yeah. It's skimpy. But I haven't got much to cover." She thought some more and asked, "What's the matter with Beth?"
"Nothing. What do you mean?"
"Why do you like me?"
He hesitated. "I guess I don't know. People are what they are."
But Beth is grown up, with big bosoms and all. I mean, she's like you are."
He did not answer. He took a cigarette from his breast pocket and lit it. Tippie watched with narrowed eyes. His hand was shaking. He continued, "I can't explain. If you love somebody-you just do."
She was weary of that kind of no-answer. She dropped the subject and concentrated on his driving a powerful car and having arms that held her like a puppy in a basket.
He asked, "Want a smoke?"
"No." She wanted him to hold her. He glanced at her, eyes bright in the soft moonlight. He put the cigarette in the dash tray and turned. She raised herself to his lips with a quick pecking kiss, not the land Elvira had explained to her but the kind she had used with Shawn beside the fallen tree. His lips were open. She pecked again, letting her tongue dart. His arms closed about her. She brushed her cheek along his beard-prickly jaw.
He whispered, 'Tippie, are you sure I didn't hurt you yesterday?"
"I'm here, aren't I?"
He breathed, "Yes. You're here, my little darling, my precious."
She found his necktie, pulled it loose and unbuttoned his collar. She felt his hot flesh with the rough hair. She opened more buttons, lifted his T-shirt to get at his chest. He had nipples the size of hers-but his were different. They had muscle underneath.
She felt his hands exploring her wrap-around skirt.
Finally he asked, "What kind of funny arrangement is this?"
"It unties."
She let go of his chest, pulled the bow knot on her skirt and unsnapped the fastener. The skirt fell away. Enough light filtered into the car to show her thighs shining white. He put his hands to the top of her panties and pulled them gently down. She lifted her hips, allowing him to bare her.
Her knee butted his thigh and her elbow hit the steering wheel. She said, "It's land of crowded here."
"Let's get out of the car."
He opened his door. The dome light flicked on. He put his thumb on a button and the light was doused. She slid out after him.
The ground was covered with deep grass, the air faintly winey with last year's apples. Tippie kicked off her shoes and ran. In a moonlit space between apple trees she jumped up and down.
The moon was looking at her, the soft night air was washing her always hidden parts. Laughter filled her and she danced to the laughter's rhythm as though to music. She pulled her shirttails up to her breasts, spun about with her naked body flashing white in the moonlight. The grass danced back, yielding and springing under her feet. Life seemed to pour into her from the soil. She turned her face to the sky and laughed at the moon. She pulled off her shirt and dropped it.
Shawn, too, was laughing as he came to join her. He turned her around and unhooked her narrow bra. She left it in his hands and danced off, whirling and jumping, her breasts jiggling with laughter and motion.
She remembered Shawn, stopped dancing and looked about. He stood in the shadows, holding her bra and shirt.
He said, "You're a poem." She laughed scornfully. "Poetry."
But she liked his saying what he had said. She whirled until she fell to the ground. She sat on the cold and crushed grass and looked up at Shawn.
She said, "I'm dizzy."
"Not half as dizzy as I am." He bent down and kissed her. "I adore you, my precious."
"Wouldn't you rather have me bigger, like Beth."
"Don't grow up. Please don't."
J ... is for Joy
SHE SIGHED. She would never understand his preferring her to Beth. She might as well quit asking him about it.
Abruptly she said, "Get undressed."
He took off his clothes while she watched intently. After he had removed his undershorts she turned her face away in brief embarrassment. But she wanted to see him. He stood in profile to her, so big that she could not believe he and she belonged together.
Yesterday's slippery joining must have been a dream. She wanted to reach out and touch him but lacked the nerve. Her hands wrestled with each other.
He crouched beside her. This way was easier for them, she sensed. Her touch found surprising softness in him, velvety softness, although his skin everywhere else was tough.
The heat surprised her and she drew back her hand....
* * *
Shawn sat on his heels, smiling at Tippie. The moonlight through the apple trees made leaf shapes on her flesh. He smelled the moist earth, crushed grass, the fresh warm odor of her skin and hair.
The years vanished. He became a boy again, crouching beside a seated and nude girl. He was big and dark beside her pale shining blondness. His possessions were gone like shadows-law practice, secretary and wife, his two cars, his closetful of clothes. The bank accounts, investments, deeds and safe deposit boxes belonged to someone else who would not be along for years to come. Shawn was naked and free and young. He was with a girl who loved him, not as a useful playmate and escort and whipping boy, but for his strength and his rigid manhood. His new world was this slender and moon-white woman-child, her eyes sometimes embarrassed, sometimes sharply penetrating, sometimes mischievous.
He said, "Dance for me, darling."
She laughed and sprang to her feet. An instant later she was gone among the apple trees. When she came back, spiraling slowly toward him, stray shadows tried to clothe her, giving her one moment a bra-the next, textured hose or a dark fig leaf briefly applied and quickly stripped away.
The last spiral dropped her tumbling into his arms.
He fell laughing. Her lips opened like petals and snared his. A tiny tongue tip explored with jerky indecision. Her arms fell beside her.
Her passiveness made him all the more sure of himself, more certain that, having shed the impedimenta of office, home and dependents, he was all man, loved only for himself. He kissed the tips of her breasts. She whimpered and he became more gentle. His hand moved between her thighs. She responded to his touch. Her breath shortened. He carefully excited her tiny womanliness. His fingers trembled with eagerness.
She whispered, "Now?"
"Oh, no, not until you're all ready."
Her fingernails dug into his arm. She had no more patience. He kissed her all over. She was hungry for him. She sprawled beneath him, her limbs fringed by grass.
He probed with utmost gentleness, as he had done the day before. Her knees lifted to contain him. Her arms seemed to have no strength.
She whispered, "More."
He had heard that some women liked to be hurt.
But this was his beloved, not entirely here in bodily form. Some of her existed only in his mind, a callahly trumpet of exquisite delicacy, terribly vulnerable. He moved with gentle caution while she struggled ever deeper, muscles cording throughout her body, calves crossing and hardening as she pulled herself upon his slippery teasing.
He said, "Careful, sweetheart."
She insisted, "More."
The flowery girl in his mind was too delicate to bear more of his lust. Studiously he assayed the mental image, slipping cautiously at the start of a slanting path. The slightest choking sound from her made him draw back. He recoiled before each of her now-angry thrusts.
Finally he backed away, saying, "Wait, sweetheart. It takes time. Patience."
She rolled on the ground, hugging her knees to her chest. He bent down and kissed her again. For some moments she lay limp beneath his ministrations. Then she rolled away and pushed herself upright. She came at him with a rush, bowled him over and jumped on top of him. She spraddled him and seized him, plunged herself upon him. She cried out in pain but she persisted.
He said, "Careful, sweetheart. Careful-"
She was frenzied, plunging down on him, holding him in place. Her breath rasped and he felt the heat of her cheek against his.
She said, "You see what I mean?"
Then she fell away from him. He rolled over and did as she ordered, unleashing all the passion at his command. Whenever he tried to temper his thrust she kneed his thighs, clawed at his shoulders, heeled his spine. Shortly they were racing. He fought vainly to preserve the image of the calla-lily trumpet in his mind as they surged toward completion.
* * *
They lay at right angles on the grass, her head on his chest, his forearm across her body, his hand cupping her small breast.
She said, "We're going to get home late."
He said, "Let's not worry about time."
"Beth will."
He sighed. Beth had to be faced-frowning Beth, hurt, wondering Beth. Tippie reached a hand to his thigh and rubbed the back of her hand against his skin. Her fingers walked up his thigh until she found him. She began to explore, lifting and tugging, tweaking playfully.
She asked, "Will I always get sore?"
"No. In a week it should be over. If we have plenty of time together."
"Will we?"
"No, I'm afraid we won't. We have to be terribly careful. Listen, Tippie, you must become friendly with Beth. That's absolutely necessary, if we're to get together. We can phone every day at noon at the drugstore and make plans."
"I figured out the pool angle. I'll phone that same number at Smith's at, say, twelve-thirty. If the line is busy that means you are not in the booth. I'll keep phoning until whoever is in the booth gets out and you get in."
He smiled, amused at her capacity for intrigue.
She asked, "How about tomorrow night?"
Tomorrow was his and Beth's regular bridge night. And one night this week they had guests coming for dinner. Wednesday? In any case, the vision of happy evenings with Tippie was at the moment black-clouded.
But he still had her here and now. With all his senses he was absorbing the silken weight of Tippie's head on his chest, the incredibly soft skin of her breast in his hand, the roving of her fingers over his body. He stroked her ribs, her warm stomach. As his hand approached, her thighs parted to make space for his touch.
* * *
Shawn gave her his pack of cigarettes when they parted. In her bedroom Tippie scattered the cigarettes throughout her drawers. Edith might find one but she would not find them all.
Edith and Sam were late coming home. Tippie smoked a cigarette while walking nude in the darkness of her room. She practiced a new kind of walking, derived from the slippery feeling inside her, which she used as a fulcrum for a loose swaying of hips. She liked the walk, which differed from Lorna Kovo's heavy rolling, or Beth's dignified perkiness. The step was both new and Tippie's own.
She heard Sam and Edith. Unseen, she stuck out her tongue at them, deposited the cigarette in the toilet, walked in her new loose-hipped way to bed.
She bore her inner soreness like a prize she had won.
* * *
Joe Quinn's pride had been hurt by Lorna's rebuff. Plenty of girls thought they were lucky to date Joe Quinn. Why not? He had an attractive appearance, was generous with his money, had achieved success at his work. He had become fevered dancing with Lorna, her breasts crushed tantalizingly against his chest, the silken thrusts of her lush loins touching his now and again. He had been insulted by her good-night kiss on the cheek.
On Tuesday morning he suddenly laughed at his own pomposity. What in hell had he expected? He had told Shawn that the girl was a tiger, a yellow-eyed ruthless huntress, on the make for the big deal. He had been a conceited fool to think that the tiger girl would melt on touching his biceps.
Chalk it up to profit and loss. To discipline himself, he turned to a project that he had been developing for some time.
He learned with a few phone calls that on Tuesday noon Beth Harris would be playing tennis at the country club. He arranged his schedule to give himself two free hours at lunchtime. As the noon whistle blew he was driving over the hills. Some months ago he had wangled a club membership through better-born subordinates who were dependent on him for promotions. Since his means of entry smacked of blackmail, he had been cautious about pushing himself.
The clubhouse was a rectangle of brick, fronted by two-story pillars, with a splendid view of the golf course and the residential hills beyond. In the dirty distance were the blast furnaces that had financed the club.
The club's tennis courts were green-painted concrete under huge green cages. On a weekday the courts were populated by women and a handful of extremely well-established men.
Joe removed his necktie and unbuttoned his convertible collar at the throat-he was now dressed for sport. He passed women and young girls on the benches along the sidelines. Their faces were bland and reserved. They knew that Joe Quinn was an outsider, not properly sponsored. Nor would he ever be properly sponsored until he married into the club.
He knew their plans. They would allow him to marry a girl who was not pretty and who had less wealth than family background. She would bestow upon him the club aura which might admit him to the top management circle, the board of directors, at the plant. Of course, he might get there on his own, but the odds were poor.
He saw Beth.
She wore a white blouse and tennis sldrt. A white scarf held her hair. She was volleying with another girl, moving effortlessly from one side of the court to the other, her racket describing fluid arcs that only looked easy. Beth had had expert coaching.
Beth's tennis, like her way of serving drinks or wearing clothes, was part of her social know-how. Joe was too smart to pretend to anyone else's birthright. He sat on a bench, watching the scene and waiting. He had accepted the fact that he was an outsider. He could not fool these people. He had gotten up the ladder by not faking, by delivering what goods were within his capacity, by letting himself be considered a diamond in the rough.
Beth's racket picked a ball off her court's far corner. Her return was a smooth diagonal sweep that cleared the net and passed her opponent to end the rally. Joe was filled with admiration.
As Beth ran for the next serve her skirt flipped to show white matching briefs with lace hems, practical but feminine. Her hips and buttocks were prettily rounded. Beth had everything-health, beauty, the grace of good breeding, the dainty frivolity of the lace. Beth was precisely what he sought. But Beth was a prize already taken by Shawn Harris, who was her exact male counterpart in the world of club society.
The game ended. Beth's opponent remained on the court, waiting for another player. Beth went to the net post, picked up a powder-blue sweater and came toward the benches.
He noted the lift of her breasts as she drew the sweater about her shoulders, the knees-together, hip-swaying walk. Beth was even sexy. Some men had all the luck.
He would not allow a hopeless yearning to get in the way of ambition. He stood as Beth approached, greeted her warmly.
"Why, Joe Quinn." Her smile was cordial, the smile she would give to any acquaintance because she was a nice person. "Day off?"
"Not altogether. Say, was that pro tennis I was watching?"
"Me? Don't be silly."
The truth was, her tennis had nothing to do with pro, which was viciously hard and fast, instead of social and gracious. Beth played for the sake of playing, rather than to win.
He said, "I want to talk to you in private. Could we have a cup of coffee at the club?"
"Certainly." She surveyed him with some alarm. "Is this something about Shawn?"
He reassured her quickly. "Nothing to do with Shawn. I want to have a selfish conversation with you about a very interesting person, namely me."
She laughed, picked up her racket cover and frame and walked with him to the club house. Her presence soothed him. Beth was a lovely being.
At the club entrance she said, "I really should shower and take off my contacts. They're so annoying-but practical for tennis. Do you mind waiting?"
"Go ahead."
He entered the lounge, a place of dark leather and bright oriental rugs. Immense windows overlooked the golf course. The room was sparsely populated. Joe felt less lonely here than usual because he was waiting for someone.
He told the steward, I won't order until the lady comes."
The words felt good as he said them.
Beth came toward him in a lemon-colored sheath dress. She wore plastic-rimmed glasses now and her hair was brushed in waves. The sheath dress was right for her figure.
She said flatteringly, "I'm dying of curiosity, Joe. Not many people openly say they want to talk about themselves."
He helped her to a seat. "I'm a blunt fellow."
She smiled wryly. "I believe I've heard that before. Didn't Mark Anthony say he was blunt and knew no tricks, just before he soft-sold the mob into mutiny?"
Joe smiled. He could also quote Shakespeare. He had gone to school. But quoting classics did not fit a diamond-in-the-rough.
He said, "I want you to help me, Beth. I'm a club member but I haven't been really accepted and we both know it. Aren't there some girls who'd like to meet a guy like me?"
For a moment he was afraid she would laugh at him. Instead she became quite earnest. "As a member, Joe, you can introduce yourself to anyone who interests you-your initial acceptance by the committee is a proper and tacit introduction to all other members.
"I know that," he said, hiding his impatience.
The steward came and Joe offered coffee for two.
"What you really want," she continued, "is a guided tour among these protected little club girls, all round-eyed with innocence, unschooled in the wiles of men."
"Are they?"
She laughed, "No. They're hard-boiled and determined to get what they're after."
"As I am."
Her eyes twinkled. "You said it, not I. Anyhow, except for a few who fall in love with the right guy-as I did-most girls are obliged to be predators. The fit isn't always hand-in-glove. There's always a man-shortage, Joe."
He nodded. "You mean, they're snobs only when they can afford to be."
"Isn't everyone?"
"Yes, I suppose." He thought of Lorna, who could afford not to go to bed with him.
"If you wish, I'll steer you into the rat race-with a warning that the game is played for blood. Do you play bridge?"
He could play bridge and dance and hold his liquor, could participate in all the club activities, even with the rough edges of the diamond showing.
"Yes," he said simply.
"Then come to my house tonight for bridge. I'll mix some unmarrieds with the regular young married set I'm so bored with them-this should be fun, I think. You must give me a conspiratorial wink once in a while, Joe."
He laughed. What a damn shame that Beth had already met and married the right guy.
K ... is for Kookie
JOE WORE a dark business suit to Beth's house. He knew that the other men would dress in tweeds and the women in pastels. His business suit would be a come-on. He knew that women loved to polish rough diamonds.
He had judged correctly. The men wore plaid suits and herringbone jackets, the women simple dresses. Some had on sweaters. Everybody was first-name and comfortable, including Joe.
However, some said to him, "Joe-" and paused as though they needed more identification.
Beth carefully supplied it.
There were eighteen present, five couples plus a wife whose husband was off on business, four bachelors and three single girls, none of whom wore engagement rings.
He studied the girls. Mary Peters was pretty but flat-chested and too well bred to wear pads-or, he suspected, to let any man know she liked him. Life with Mary would be chilly in every room in the house, from bedroom to kitchen. Jean Easton was plump, with squinty eyes and a thousand-dollar cultured-pearl necklace. Ann-
Ellen Baxter, dark, pretty, well-shaped, had a resentful and twitching brow above glinting eyes that bespoke possible nuttiness.
Joe sighed. Add the three together and you did not have one Beth. Or a Lorna, for that matter. Still, dating one of them might lead to something better. He liked the looks of Jean Easton's pearl necklace. He could endure the plumpness. She seemed stupid-but human.
He was first partnered with Jean. He got good cards, pushed the bidding up to a little slam. Halfway through the play he realized that he could make the bid with ease. He needed a finesse and knew which way it would work
He became cautious. It would not do for Joe Quinn to make a slam in the first deal. He took the finesse the wrong way and lost-let the club set retain their air of superiority.
He was making friends. He told a few careful stories, chosen from his best-but not stories as sharply pointed as those he used in business. He tried not to outshine anyone. He was rewarded by pleased glances from some of the women. He had taken the first steps well, he thought He paid little attention to Shawn and Beth. One of them was always out of the game serving drinks. Later in the evening when his glass went dry he found that nobody was serving drinks. He counted heads. Shawn was missing.
Nor did Shawn appear when the party was breaking up. Someone asked his whereabouts.
Beth said, "He's gone out looking for aspirin. He had a dreadful headache."
Joe, on the point of leaving, was shaking hands with Beth when she whispered, "Stay. I want to talk."
He made himself a drink as the others departed, sat at one of the card tables, waiting for Beth to finish her goodbyes. When she came toward him he noticed that she was pale.
She sat down at the table and fingered a deck of cards. "Did I start you off well?" she asked. "Just great Quiet no trouble. You got me in like a shoehorn."
"Good. So you owe me a favor."
He grinned. "Fair enough. I've never gotten anything free, Beth."
"Then tell me the truth. Has Shawn another women?"
He suddenly realized why Shawn was absent. No headache. Shawn had not gone for aspirin. Joe frowned. He knew of absolutely no scandal about Shawn.
He asked, "Have you been finding lipstick on his collar-the classic kind of thing?"
Beth shook her head, kept staring at the cards.
"He's hiding something. Sunday night he went off on business that sounded thin. Tonight he just walked out. I would rather know the truth than be left hanging. Joe, will you tell me?"
He glanced at her.
She said, "I know that men cover up for other men."
He pressed her hand. "For business reasons I don't dare get in a tangle with Shawn. But I owe him no loyalty." He thought of Lorna. A man could be driven to foolishness in the same office as the tiger girl. He said, "Let me use a phone."
She indicated the instrument in the foyer. He rang Lorna's house. Lorna's mother said that Lorna had just gone to bed. They had been watching TV all evening. Right in the middle of a good show Lorna had said she was sick of TV. She was not in bed yet but she was showering. The splashes could be heard She was singing in the shower.
Joe said he would call Lorna tomorrow at her office.
He went back to Beth. She was seated again at the card table, straight-backed, composed-but worrying enough to show it.
Joe said, "Shawn has a luscious secretary, as I guess you know. Well, he's not with her. Her mamalikes me and she gave me the details of Lorna's evening. If Shawn has a girl she's not Lorna."
Beth sighed. "I'm worried, Joe."
"You mean, maybe he had a few too many drinks and shouldn't be driving?"
"He's not driving. The drive was blocked by the guests' cars. Both of our cars are in the garage."
"That's funny. He couldn't get anywhere on foot."
They sat and waited, frowning and wondering.
* * *
The former Erikson estate, a large area some distance behind Shawn's property, was being cut up for building lots. The old house had been partially torn down, leaving an unwalled first floor surrounded by overgrown trees. The floor of the house was a patchwork of parquet floors, saw tooth edges of plaster and broken studs that marked out former rooms. Half the floor space was darkly shaded by the trees. The rest was a field of moonlight.
Shawn stood in the light, naked, knuckles on his hips, looking at the distant necklaces of street and house fights that festooned the valley walls.
Tippie whispered from the darkness, "Somebody will see you."
Shawn laughed. Having walked out of Beth's bridge party, abandoning his wife to the speculations of her friends, he might as well be seen naked in the moonlight.
Tippie was safe. She had been given permission to go to a teen movie with Elvira, who would cover up what Elvira supposed was a date with a high-school boy.
He said, "Throw me a cigarette."
Tippie's pale limbs moved in the darkness. He caught the cigarette and the silver-glinting lighter that followed. He used and tossed back the lighter. Shortly he heard it snap again. Flame lit Tippie's face and threw a rosy hue on her small breasts. The light went out. The end of her cigarette glowed in the darkness.
Shawn laughed in joy.
He had escaped. He had gone, like Alice, through the looking glass. What was in the looking glass except yourself? Exactly. He had escaped into himself, leaving the world behind. For him a world of alarm clocks, a sexy-looking secretary of the land that bosses slept with because they were bosses, whether they really wanted the girl or not. A wife who was dutiful and socially apt, two new cars that he drove because if your name was Harris your car was always new. He had been blessed by heritage and inheritance, by family and environment. Perhaps any twentieth-century American was born in fortunate happenstance as the world and history went-but Shawn Harris was among the luckiest one percent of his fortunate fellow countrymen.
Luck and more luck-the path laid out to follow without risk-and where did that leave a man's innermost self?
Here he had it, standing knuckles on hips, cigarette between his lips, naked in the moonlight, proudly and triumphantly erect. He was all naked man with no help from a doting mother or father who had been willing to reward every effort tenfold. This great proud standout was he, was the essence of the person who was clothed, housed, transported and presented to the world as Shawn Harris.
Tippie said softly, "Every time I watch you, I think, It can't work. I mean, you're so big and I'm so little. But it works. How?"
His chest swelled with pride. He turned to her.
"Do you think much about love, Tippie?" Her cigarette glowed in darkness, reddening her cheekbones.
Finally she said, "Well, on TV I see them kiss and say I love you. A man falls in love with a girl and just kisses her and you'd think he'd won a million dollars."
"You mean their love is just kisses? That they don't go to bed together?"
She shook her head. "I don't know. In life you want to get something, don't you? Edith does. People don't just love because they want to love. They love because they want something."
He crouched beside her on his heels. "You asked why it works-with me so big and you so little. The answer is love."
She was sitting cross-legged. She leaned forward and rested her cheek on his knee. When she spoke he felt the motion of her face against his leg.
"I don't know. Everybody talks about love. But I haven't seen much of it. I think the reason it works with you and me is-well-you're so careful and sure of yourself. Is that supposed to be love?"
He mused, "Did you ever read Alice in Wonderland?"
"Yes. It's stupid. It doesn't make sense."
"It's just life turned inside out. Life is better that way."
"It's nuts."
Nuts? Was her verdict a word of wisdom from the mouth of a child? He, dissatisfied because he had been given everything, was he nuts? If so, he liked being nuts. He stroked the hair down tight on Tippie's little head His fingers trailed over a shell-like ear, down the thin line of her jaw. She kissed the heel of his hand, her lips nibbling.
But the greatest wonder was seeing in shadowy outline his rigid strength pointing like a lance. He was armed fully, weaponed as though iron-stemmed-and utterly controlled. His joy was almost narcissistic, delighting as much in his own rampant manliness as in Tippie, the object of his affections, Again, in the looking glass you saw yourself. Or found yourself?
* * *
Tippie rubbed her jaw against Shawn's knee. Why did he talk so much about love and nonsense like going through looking glasses? Sitting cross-legged with the night air washing her body, the oak floor exuding the day's warmth against her bottom, her jaw touching Shawn, Tippie was pleased with the moment and saw no need to analyze it.
She had constructed many lives for herself. This was a good one. Because her mother was only a vague memory, because greed made Edith so unattractive, Tippie had not been able to live an imitative life. There had been no woman of whom she could be an echo. Now she had learned to live through her own loins.
She had discovered the axis of the world. It did not exist in TV shows and movies. It was mentioned only obliquely in giggling girl-talk, and adults seemed to have no nouns or adjectives or verbs with which to define it. But this was what counted. With her jaw against Shawn's knee Tippie saw it straight and strong before her gaze.
A girl could do nothing. Only it could do. In the school encyclopedia she had read of great columns in ancient templed grounds where women prayed for fertility. The people were pictured as primitive but Tippie now knew that they had discovered real truth, something hushed over and hidden, maybe even lost in modern times. People no longer knew what was the axis of the universe.
She stared at the hooded lance as though to imprint the image in her mind. Love did not matter, even if it existed.
This was power and money. A woman had to build her life around it.
Shawn said, "Your cigarette is out."
She fumbled about for the lighter between her crossed legs. She realized that she now sat cross-legged a great deal, her thighs winging out. The position was somewhat uncomfortable and made her back bend and ache. She guessed she liked to show herself to Shawn. Abruptly she put down the lighter and threw away her cigarette. She ran her hands caressingly over Shawn's thighs, nibbled with sharp teeth at the edge of his kneecap. She felt hot in her middle.
He kissed her cheek.
She said, "Not too much kissing. I mean, don't kiss me all over like I'm a baby."
"I'm only trying to make it easier for you."
"I don't need it easier. I'm bigger now."
He chuckled. "In three days?"
"You have to be a woman to understand."
"Woman." He ran his thumb and forefinger down her backbone, rubbing a knuckle against each vertebral bump. "You're a girl. Not a woman."
"I'm a woman now."
"No. Women are fat."
They were back on that subject. She frowned, irritated. He called Beth's lovely breasts fat. She would give a million dollars for them.
She said, "I don't like being skinny."
"But I like your being what you are and I love you. That's how things are and how they'll remain." He put his hand on her cheek, tilted her head back. He kissed her lips and put his tongue deep into her mouth. She forgot the argument because her loins went moist and began to throb. She put both arms around his knee and hugged it to her. His hand slipped down her cheek to her throat
He fingered her breast until it became a tingling bulge. Then he stroked her thigh.
After a moment he whispered, "I guess you're right. You seem to need less kissing than you did."
She knew she was right. She pulled herself between his thighs and got her arms around him, hugged him until her face was against his chest.
He picked her up, carried her over the threshold of this house with no roof or walls, to a grassy place outside. She went limp in his arms and let him initiate everything. Cool grass at her back, eyes closed, arms and legs wide, she reveled in his kisses despite having told him she needed no such preparation. When the moment came she smiled with confidence that he would be surprised. She felt no soreness, no sense of being stabbed. The slide was quick, easy. She immediately had more of him within her than ever before.
Gloating, she said, "More, please."
Still he was gentle and cautious as she begged in his ear to be treated as a woman, not as a child. When he still held off she heeled his spine and tugged at him, until at last he pressed on. Her lips quirked with pain. She firmed them. In a second the hurt was over. She pulled until she knew she had consumed him. She laughed sharply.
Now it was his turn to say, "It doesn't seem possible."
She smiled smugly. Her whole body was rippling with crazy racing rolls. The heat started with the axis he offered and spread out to her very toes and temples, to her tingling fingertips, to the points of her nipples, making them burn. He was harsher than he had been before, exciting her to a frenzy akin to hallucination. She was on a board swing, suspended from an impossibly high branch, rising to a horizontal at the end of each swing arc.
Now she was going higher than the suspension point. Somehow, far above, a bath of warm oil awaited her.
Into it she must plunge, leaving her body behind. She strained to go higher in the swing.
Faster. Higher. She could see over the edge and into the warm well. The surface was pink. It reflected her face. When she went into the well she would be going into herself. She would fly off the swing and over the top of the well and would hang suspended, waiting for Shawn.
She was in midair, eternally poised in a moment of waiting, looking back between winged white thighs, watching him arrive.
* * *
Joe Quinn finally left. He and Beth had sat for an hour making embarrassed small talk that rang so emptily as to be nerve-shattering.
Alone, Beth poured a straight whiskey and drank it like water. She looked at the empty glass, decided not to refill it. She knew that something more was wrong than mere infidelity on Shawn's part. Shawn was a clever man who could easily have concealed an affair. She knew how skillfully and convincingly he could present a case even when his client's rights were dubious. She had observed his adroit white lies when they had to refuse an invitation or cancel one.
But tonight he had simply walked out of the bridge party. Last night he had made the most casual of evasions. His eyes had been mocking as though he were challenging her to pry loose his secret.
Much later, already in bed, Beth heard her husband come in. She kept her face in the pillow as he entered the bedroom. He was whistling noisily, perhaps trying to arouse her to demand an explanation.
Her spirit was too crushed for demands. He settled heavily into bed. Almost immediately his breathing became slow and regular-he was asleep as though he had not a problem in the world.
Beth thought again of drinking another shot of whiskey. Tomorrow, she promised herself, she would do something, take action-something must be done.
L ... is for Looking
WEDNESDAY WAS the last day of school. The day's activities consisted only of report cards and a ceremony. Tippie was in the girls' locker room at the pool by noon.
Light streamed through the pebbled-glass window. The weather was sultry. She felt warm, heavy-lidded. Her movements were languorous as she took off her clothes and hung them in her private locker, looking with scorn at girls who were stuffing their things into canvas bags to be checked with the lady at the desk.
Tippie put on the bra of her polka-dot bikini, sauntered around with hands on nude hips. She had an urge to display her lower body. She was proud of it. She had once figured that her blond silkiness hid nothing and nothing was about all that she had to hide.
She had now changed her mind.
Treasure ... was Shawn's word.
She had tried to explain that she wanted to be bigger. But at last she had come to realize that her young-girlishness was what made him love her. She valued herself as she was today, not for what she might one day be. The moment had become everything. Every drop of juice must be extracted, every sweetness rolled on the tongue.
Still nude except for her polka-dotted bra, she took her new transistor radio from the locker shelf and turned it on full blast, loosing a torrent of teen-music. Shawn had given her more money last night. Today she had bought things after school. Her new possessions would exist only here at the pool.
She put on her bikini bottom, slung a towel over her shoulder and picked up her wettable pool bag. She paused before a mirror and took a pink lipstick from the bag. She smeared her under lip, combed her hair and looked into her drowsy eyes. Using her new oiled walk, slow and hip-heavy, she went out to the pool.
She opened her handbag, took out a cigarette and lipped it. The cigarette jarred as she walked, looking for an empty space on the lawn beside the pool. When she found what she wanted, she put on her new sunglasses and lay down on her stomach.
Supported on her elbows, she looked about at the kid world.
The pool swarmed with naked limbs, jerking and twisting and twitching, bursting into spasms of speed that ended in belly flop splashes. She saw fish-belly white arms and scarlet ones from yesterday's sunburn, the golden bodies of girls who had done ritual sunning.
Boys who had gone out for track had leathery legs and white feet, ruddy arms with milky shoulders and chests. Baseball players had brown hands and forearms, brown faces up to the forehead. They were all noisy on this first day of summer, awkward in their freedom. The girls were too coy and the boys too loud. At times their eyes raked each other's bodies, searching out the change a year had brought, inflated breasts or bulging trunks.
Tippie's attention was fixed on the boys. Many seemed quite adult, hardened by chill water and the excitement. Tippie now saw the whole teenage bacchanalia as a form of incomplete sex. They all wanted sex and were dancing jerkily about in search of it. The boys were rewarded with a glimpse down a bathing suit top, the girls with a rough heave into the pool. Tippie felt naturally superior. How could girls pretend not to see how hard the boys were when it showed right through their trunks?
But since the whole adult world pretended that the instruments of passion were the lips, that kisses were the final rewards, what other views could you expect from kids?
But Tippie knew the truth.
She lit her cigarette and puffed with growing expertness. Sometimes the cigarette hung too far forward on her hp and drooped if she made the wrong movement. Sometimes she choked and sometimes the cigarette went out. Still, she was improving. She would get handier with a lipstick, too.
Elvira appeared, bumbling along awkwardly, her bones longer this year but still hung with baby fat. She had brown arms and legs because she played tennis. Her feet were white and her shoulders and chest were sunburned. She wore a faded last-year's one-piece suit that had fitted her fatter shape but now dragged lengthwise. She had fleshy breasts but, Tippie knew, the nipples were tiny and flat, like crushed strawberries with the juice dried out.
Elvira asked, "Gimme a drag?" She dropped with a heavy slump on the grass beside Tippie.
"Give you a whole one." Tippie extracted the pack from her purse, tossed Elvira a cigarette and Shawn's silver lighter.
Elvira snatched the lighter. "Gee, where'd you get it?" The lighter was engraved with Shawn's initials. Tippie said, "I snitched it. Any of your business?" Elvira studied the lettering. "S.H. I bet that's Mr. Harris. Did you snitch it when you went fishing with them Sunday?"
"Sure." She watched with amused contempt as Elvira failed to fight her cigarette on the second try. Tippie decided to give back the lighter and have Shawn get her a plain one. Or one with her own initials. His monogram might cause trouble.
She said to Elvira, "Move aside. You're blocking my sun."
Elvira's gaze was on the transistor. "Where'd you get that?"
"My father sent it. He made a big business deal."
"And the bathing suit?"
Tippie had foreseen this questioning. The suit bore the label of the local store where she had bought it.
She said, "He wrapped the transistor in a hundred-dollar check."
"A hundred dollars?" Elvira shrieked. "A whole hundred? You going to get a new bike?"
"Bike?" Tippie spat. "Me ride a bike? That's kid stuff."
"The sunglasses? They're glamorous."
"Uh-huh."
"My old man is too damn stingy."
Tippie said, "Mine isn't. If it weren't for his new wife I'd have lots of things. She's a bitch."
"Yeah," Elvira said, eating up the polka-dot bikini, the transistor, the fighter, the almost-full pack of cigarettes, the glasses and the locker key attached to the new nylon waterproof purse. She shifted her weight until she was beside Tippie, close enough to touch Tippie's new things.
Chin balanced on her hands, through the concealing darkness of her glasses, Tippie studied the boys around the pool. She could see from their jerky actions that getting sexy with one of them would be foolish and awkward. She watched one of the bigger boys who sat on the edge of the pool trying to conceal the rigid lift of his trunks. Embarrassed, he was looking at the girls around him to see if any had noticed his untimely lift
A girl would have to be the teacher with a kid like that. A girl should not have to teach.
She remembered the great pendulum swing last night. Until that moment she had thought of herself as a partner. Suddenly she had known that she was the well, Shawn the probe, the aggressor. That was why one of these boys would only make her laugh.
Thinking about last night made her lift one foot over the ankle of the other and squeeze, tightening her legs and drawing her buttocks to enclose the heat of memory in a thread of scalding space.
Elvira asked, "Whom did you go out with last night when you were supposed to be at the movies with me? Jacko Kurtz?"
Tippie snorted. "Him? Nuts to Jacko. Another guy. You don't know him. Different school."
"Who?"
"Edith doesn't like him-so I won't tell you."
"I won't tell anybody."
"I don't trust you."
"Is he fast? I mean-did he kiss you?"
Tippie said, "Yeah. Sure. He kissed me."
Elvira left to flop into the pool. A couple of kids were dancing on the lawn nearby to the music of Tippie's transistor.
A boy came over, the one she had watched on the edge of the pool. He was tall and brown-haired. His skin was dark on the lower forearms, neck and jaw. A baseball player. He dropped to a squat beside her.
He said, "That's a pretty hot radio."
"It's all right." She glanced at him through her glasses. At least he had no pimples. But he was just a kid her age. She was glad she was on her stomach, hiding the smallness of her breasts. She preferred that he see her fanny, which had some shape.
He asked, "Do you ever go to the pool dances, Saturday nights?"
"They haven't started yet."
"This Saturday."
"I know."
"You like dancing?"
She shrugged. "It's all right." If she went to the Saturday-night dance she would need a new dress. Shawn would buy her one. She would also get shoes with high heels and keep them in the locker.
He asked, "You got a date for Saturday night?"
With sure instinct she said, "Of course I've got a date. Why would you think I haven't got a date?"
"I just asked."
She offered him a cigarette.
He shook his head.
He said, "I guess I'll go stag Saturday night. Dance with you maybe."
"Maybe."
"What's your name?"
"Tippie." She was watching his trunks with covert glances. Was she doing anything to him? Nothing. She decided to have Jacko take her to the Saturday dance, even though he was a dope. If you went alone you were nobody. Next week she might go with this guy.
He said, "My name is Harry."
"I guess everybody has to have a name."
His eyes narrowed.
He snapped, 'Tippie sounds like what you call a puppy dog."
She grinned at him to show off her teeth and to display her lipstick. He said, "So we dance on Saturday night."
"What have I got to lose?"
He gave a grant, stood up. "Okay, Saturday night."
He left her in three great strides and plunged into the pool.
* * *
Beth started her day sober. A hangover, she thought, would have felt no worse. The torn emptiness in her had come from weeping to exhaustion, not from liquor. What was the difference?
Schooled as she was in the social arts, trained to present charm and ease under any circumstances, she doubted that she could maintain her facade much longer. Her husband had rejected her femininity. She felt valueless, robbed.
She tried to bathe away her poverty, to cover it with paint. She sprinkled a full tub of warm water with perfumed bath salts. She bathed and dried herself with fake loving care, surveyed her face in the bathroom mirror. She mixed a boric acid solution and, with an eyecup, washed the worst of the puffiness from her eyes.
The corners of her mouth wore sharp lines of bitterness.
Shawn's rejection of her body was beyond her understanding. She looked in the mirror at the white swells of her breasts, the abrupt outward flare of her hips, the arc underlining her stomach. Was this the part of her he did not like? When she was covered with unassuming tweeds and judiciously selected colors, stockings always straight, modestly jeweled, a perfect fit in the company they kept, apparently he liked her.
But he despised the body beneath. She knew that women often despised their own bodies and those of other women, caring for only the covering and embellishment, appreciating flattery only on those adornments, judging other women not by their flesh but by the art applied to camouflaging flesh. Beth had never thought of her covering as a prize. To be rejected for what was beneath was to have nothing.
She thought of Joe Quinn and telephoned her hairdresser for an appointment.
At the hairdresser's she gave impatient, vacillating orders to the cutter, emerged with hair much shortened, its field-mouse color brightened to a reddish glow.
She lunched with her friend, Julie. As soon as they were seated together in the restaurant, Julie asked, "What really happened to Shawn last night?"
"I think he has an ulcer."
"What a shame-he's too young."
"Nerves. He's a bundle of nerves. And drinking doesn't help his stomach."
"You poor dear."
Yes, Vm a poor dear, Beth thought driving home. I have everything a lady could ask for, and nothing that a woman needs.
At home she made a highball. She tried to read but only the highball was real. The day was warm. She hung away her luncheon dress and saw her body in bra and petticoat, unused and unwanted. She began to cry.
Was the woman really Lorna Kovo? What was the difference between her body and Lorna's? A few pounds? Or what Lorna did with those extra pounds? But Beth's body was well-formed, in good condition from tennis, firm enough to do away with the need of a girdle. She was strong-breasted enough not to wear a bra for lift-only to prevent jiggling that might seem sexy in her circle of friends.
She thought of Joe Quinn and his quest for a club girl to marry. He had not been enthusiastic over those she had presented last night. He was probably accustomed to sleeping with better. Maybe he slept with Loma. He said
Lorna's mother liked him. Why not? Joe would be a catch for Lorna.
She went about the house with her book and highball, glancing at the hieroglyphics in one, the oblivion in the other. Her gaze fixed itself on the foyer phone. She picked it up, cradled it with the book and drink. She needed a cigarette. She found one and lit it. Thus encumbered, she hunted Joe Quinn's office number in the directory.
The receptionist asked, "Who shall I say is calling?"
Beth said, "A friend. This is a personal call."
Bundling phone, book, drink and cigarette into a familiar pattern she placed herself across an armchair. Balanced delicately, hiking up her petticoat, she waited for Joe.
Finally she heard, "Quinn speaking." The voice was sharp and business-like. "Joe, about that favor you owe me."
"Who is calling?"
"If you don't know the sound of my voice, I'll hang up."
There was a pause. When he spoke again his voice was low, the business tone gone.
"Yes, of course. The favor?"
"Can anyone listen in on this conversation?"
"No. I can see the receptionist's booth. She just went somewhere."
"Fine. Joe, I'm desperate. I have hundreds of friends and no one to turn to. Except, for some reason, you. Will you meet me after work at the shopping center parking lot? I'll park at the western end where there's plenty of room. You park beside me and I'll get into your car. Think of some place where we can have a drink together without being interrupted."
After a moment he said, "Beth, I have a date with Lorna tonight."
Beth sipped her drink. She hunched forward on the chair like a jockey on the neck of a horse. She sucked in breath in preparation for a leap.
She said, "Joe, I would like you to break that date."
After a while he said, "I'll try to, Beth."
"If you don't phone back I'll know it's all right."
She hung up, unashamed of her sudden female bitchery. If Lorna was Shawn's mistress, tonight's broken date with Joe should hardly matter to her. If not, she could have Joe back.
Beth had no real plan of action. She was behaving by instinct, out of hurt. She might lose her dignity but nothing was beneath her dignity any more.
Not even being slightly, refinedly, irrevocably drunk.
M ... is for Mating
BETH CHOSE a featherweight wool cocktail dress cut low on the bosom. Beneath it she wore a half-bra with tight straps. This pouty-breasted effect was too exuberant for the sedate Mrs. Shawn Harris to show at a club dance. But tonight she was not the wife of a respected lawyer. She was a reject bent on feeling like a woman.
At six o'clock she drove toward the shopping center, wearing dark glasses, a gold scarf and double her normal thickness of lipstick. Joe Quinn had not called back, which meant he had broken his date with Lorna.
She smiled and jabbed the accelerator. Soon Shawn would come home to find a neatly printed note.
I won't be home until late tonight.
She drove around the edges of the shopping-center lot until she saw a compact car with a big man at the driver's window. How nice of Joe to be early. Had she kept him waiting long? She hoped so.
She drove up on his left and braked. Joe recognized her and smiled. His smile told her he liked her.
She took her keys and climbed out of the car. Her skirt was tight and short. Somewhat knee-hobbled, she got into Joe's car and seated herself beside him. He looked at her knees and her pouty bosom.
She said, "Let's go. Don't spare the horses. Joe, I hurt. Drive too fast, please."
He drove off in understanding silence, his speed normal. Seated beside him, she realized how big a man Joe was, broad of chest and shoulder. His hands on the wheel were blunt-fingered and square.
She asked, "What did Lorna say?"
"She said she'd been about to phone me. She had forgotten to tell me that she already had another date."
"She lied," Beth laughed.
"Yes. She advised me to give her more warning the next time I want a date."
"Clever girl."
"I think her body is cleverer than her mind. Shapelier, anyhow."
"I listen to the voice of experience."
His blue eyes glinted wickedly. "You think I know how they all looked naked?"
"I've heard you're lecherous." She laughed. "No, really I haven't. I think Shawn once said you are much admired by the ladies. Or maybe he was talking about somebody else."
She laughed again.
"Under Lorna's fine feathers may lurk a skin like leather for all I know. I'm a mile from first base with Lorna."
"Maybe she's after your mind, not your body."
"Wrong. She sees me as a gilt-edged hunk of manhood. She's ambitious."
Beth murmured, "We're all ambitious-all out for something we don't have. You, me, Shawn-"
Joe said earnestly, "You're wrong about Shawn. Beth, whatever the trouble is, you've got to believe that Shawn is lucky and knows it. I hate to see you sad-"
She shook her head in impatience. "Let's not talk about Shawn just yet. How about your ambitions? Which did you like best of the damsels I offered you? Mary? Jean? Ann-Ellen?"
He made a wry face. "Which one is dumb and plump and wears gorgeous pearls?"
"Jean. How clever of you to notice the pearls. Men usually see nothing but diamonds as big as baseballs. Yes, Jean has oodles of money. Her grandfather was one of the robber barons. Her mother's father. Albright."
"Albright? Bloody Albright who broke the strikes with hired goons?"
"Let's not fight the class war, Joe. Anyway, Jean wasn't born at the time. She just inherited the money. What do you think of her?"
"Not very bright, is she?"
"Money can't buy brains, Joe. She does her best."
He made no comment. He was driving down the highway on the valley's edge. They were still in the sooty lowlands. Without preamble or discussion he abruptly turned left and stopped in front of a fake log-cabin roadhouse. A few other parked cars were shining in the evening sun.
Joe wheeled around to the back where a sign over the door said, family entrance.
As she left his car-an awkward accomplishment in her tight skirt-Beth asked, "What does family entrance mean?"
"There's a wall between the family room and the bar. They serve drinks in the family room by a pass-through in the wall. I guess in the old days the boys in the bar were kind of hairy. The women stayed in the family room to avoid rough language and flying furniture. Nowadays they keep the division for atmosphere."
"You mean that miners and steelworkers have better manners nowadays?"
"Or ladies are tougher. Let's find out."
They went through the family entrance. The only other customers were a boy and girl holding hands at a booth in the far corner. The room was large and dim, holding many tables and chairs, a juke box, a pinball machine.
A waiter appeared for their order. He had been tooth-picking. He put the toothpick in the breast pocket of his jacket while waiting for Joe's instructions.
Beth noticed red-and-white checkered curtains at the windows. They seemed pleasantly homely. Behind her dark glasses and with the scarf about her head she felt well disguised, even from herself. She was an unattached woman with a pouty bosom and a very short skirt, about to drink cocktails with a broad-shouldered man in a blue business suit. The Harris name and social position had not entered this place with her.
Joe ordered old-fashioneds.
He said, "I wish you wouldn't hide behind those-glasses. You have pretty eyes."
"But I like peeping without being seen. Anyhow, I've provided a bosom for you to look at."
Joe laughed. "Am I permitted to comment on your bosom?"
"The dress invites comment, I think."
"A man never knows. I warn you, your bosom makes me forget Mary, Ann-Ellen-and what was her name? The one with the pearls?"
"Jean."
"And Jean."
"Joe, I like comments on my bosom. Bosoms are not discussed at the club and Shawn never notices mine."
"I thought you weren't going to talk about Shawn."
"I've changed my mind. We're going to talk about Shawn, who keeps me practically a virgin."
"Oh?" Joe's eyebrow rose in surprise. He signaled her to be quiet because the waiter was corning. The drinks were served.
The waiter left
Beth said, "I'm going to get drunk, Joe. Perhaps what I mean is drunker. I've had a start."
"Getting drunk is good for the soul. It dissolves the trash we worry about so much. Every man deserves to get drunk on Saturday night."
"And every woman too. But I prefer Wednesday. Today is Wednesday. One Wednesday will do me for a dozen Saturday nights."
With that she took an inch off her old-fashioned. She set down the glass, took cigarettes from her purse and leaned forward to Joe's lighter.
She said, "Please tell me nice things, Joe, even lies. About me. Me, you understand, not about the bright and sophisticated Mrs. Shawn Harris. I am bright, you know. And sophisticated-I know how and why the world turns. But I am also me."
He said, "The best parts of Mary, Jean and Ann-Ellen would not add up to one Beth, not even with Lorna Kovo thrown in for good measure."
"I like that part about Lorna Kovo, Joe. Say it again."
"Not even with Lorna Kovo thrown in. Even with the surplus weight peeled off her."
Beth laughed, delighted. "How sweet of you to say that May I have another drink?"
Joe put his hand on hers, preventing her from lifting her glass.
"Later. Right now you're glowing enough."
"Whenever you say, then," she agreed. "I'm having a nice time. I don't hurt any more. Joe Quinn, you're a nice man."
"Keep it a secret," he suggested. "You know what they say about nice guys."
The sun fell behind the hills. The roadhouse windows were red in the afterglow. Candles were lit, the minimal compromise between romance and darkness. People began to fill the empty tables, young couples holding hands.
Beth heard Joe say, "This is pleasant, Beth. And instructive. I'm drinking with a pretty woman, learning the ground rules of the club set, hearing intimate gossip and confessions. This is a useful and enjoyable way for me to spend an evening."
She looked at him sharply. "There's another angle, Joe. You're also on a date with a girl."
He was smiling but his jaw was stiff. "Since you're being blunt about it-I'm with a girl who shows her breasts but not her eyes, who saves the smiling eyes for her upper-class friends. The guy from the valley can't gripe because her breasts are pretty. But doesn't he have a right to feel insulted?"
"No, he doesn't," she protested. "I need somebody to notice my body. Even to want my body."
His voice was low. "I want your body, Beth. But I can't have it. You're playing with me because I'm from the valley."
"Maybe so."
"Do you want to leave? To go home."
"No."
"Then what do you want?"
She started to say that she wanted to feel good, to stop being hurt. But she saw from the set of his jaw that Joe was now the person feeling hurt. She had intended no harm. She had wanted the attention and company of a man. Maybe she had chosen Joe because he was from the valley-but the choice had been far from an insult She could not have borne, not tonight, the manners, polite replies of some member of her set. She looked at Joe's broad hands, his big shoulders, the strength of his chin. Did she want a man who had stoked the great furnaces? Did she want the sweat and soot, as penitence for a life of too-cool detachment from the world's grief and turmoil? Her suppressed sexual urge for workers with calloused hands when she was in college-had it stemmed from guilt over her clean and perfumed private life? She was capable of more than arranging bridge parties for friends-for good or evil, she had had to break the pattern.
Her thoughts churned in her head. She could not express them. She stared into Joe's eyes, searching for the mischievous twinkle that now was hidden by resentment.
Finally she asked, "Why don't you slap my face, Joe?"
He toyed with his drink. "Why are we here, Beth? Are you taking vengeance on Shawn? If so, I can't complain. I owe you a debt. But tell me truly-are you after something else?"
"To tell you truly, I don't know. Did I hope you would take charge? Perhaps seduce me? Honestly, I don't know. My eyes have suddenly opened. Perhaps I'm a little baffled by what I see. Have patience. I see you, for instance, fighting your way from the furnaces, yet willing to marry a girl for her family connections. At first you charmed me and I thought it would be fun to help you with your ambition. Why should you marry Lorna? Her beauty is useful only to herself-or to someone who might love her. You'd be so much smarter to marry Jean, Bloody Albright's granddaughter. But the name makes valley people grit their teeth after all these years. What will the valley people think of you if you marry Jean? She isn't pretty and-yes, Jean is stupid."
His voice was soft, possibly with rage.
"When a guy is on the make he doesn't care what people think. That's how Bloody Albright got there. Maybe your folks too. Maybe they didn't care about the people they left behind."
"But I care what people think of you." She stopped, surprised at herself. What she had admitted to him was something that she herself had not known until she heard the words. But she cared and she had said so. She was now committed. She leaned toward him, her hands white-knuckled. "Joe, are you going to betray yourself? Sell out?"
He laughed. "You're being sentimental. The valley can't afford sentiment. It's dog eat dog. If I marry Jean the valley will say that Mrs. Quinn has a smart boy."
Beth pounded the table. She said, "I think I hate you."
"Beth, I'm sorry. I thought you wanted frankness. I have a dream, you see. I want to be president of the company. There you are, a crazy ambition for a former manual laborer. Obviously, I need all the help I can get. Jean Albright would be a step in the right direction."
Beth dug her fingernails into her palms. "I think I'm going to cry," she said. She looked into her third drink and finished it off. "Would you order another round while I'm in the ladies'? "
An unshaded bulb gave harsh light above the washroom mirror. Beth lifted her dark glasses and studied her half-bared bosom. She tried to think honestly. Had she put her breasts on display because Joe was from the valley? Would she have done the same for an older acquaintance? Yes, she had insulted him, implying that he lacked the finesse to see the more subtle sex in her smiling eyes. She had put on double lipstick. She was competing directly with Lorna Kovo. Yes, she had liked saying that Jean Albright was stupid, though Jean was merely dulL Beth had wanted to destroy Jean and her expensive necklace and her bushel of shares in the company.
Why?
Because this big-shouldered brute from the valley was all man, that was why. The truth faced, she carefully repaired her makeup and tightened her bra straps another half inch, lifting her breasts until her nipples were damn near high enough to peep out and stare at him.
She would have to use broader hints. He was still afraid of Mrs. Shawn Harris.
N ... for Needing
JOE SAT with a pair of fresh old-fashioneds. He rose as Beth approached, his gaze politely shifted away from her breasts.
He said, "If we drink another of these well walk out on our knees."
"We could eat a sandwich for blotting paper, Joe."
"I was thinking of dinner."
"That takes too long."
He frowned. "Too long for what?"
She hesitated. She wanted his respect. But she wanted something else much more.
She said, "I want you to take me to a motel, Joe."
He fell back in his seat as though the breath had been knocked out of him.
* * *
Shawn found Beth's note and wondered why she would be out late. And why had she left no telephone number where he could reach her?
Suddenly he realized that he would be free for the entire evening. He stopped thinking of Beth and glanced at the front windows. The daylight was still bright. He and Tippie were to meet behind his garage at dusk.
The past few nights had sharpened his powers of intrigue. He did not dare to signal Tippie's house but he might catch her attention. He went outdoors and opened the garage to show that Beth's car was gone. Then he got the gardener's hoe and began vigorously to work the flower bed that circled the sycamore tree. To add a further hint he went into the house for his fishing hat and wore it while hoeing. A passerby would see nothing strange in Shawn Harris' wearing a hat while hoeing flowers. But Tippie would know.
Soon she came across the lawn. He watched her walk. How she had changed. She was no longer a gangling, jerkily-moving teenager. The tiny hips that he loved now rolled softly as though on bearings. Her chin was up. She wore a tight sweater against which the tips of her breasts poked like pencil points. Her eyelids were lower, perhaps more modest than before.
She stopped on her side of the driveway and called, "Mr. Harris, are you looking for worms?"
"No, just tending flowers. Come over. I'll cut you some for Edith." He spoke loudly, as she had done, to be sure that people heard a proper interchange between neighbors.
She came to within ten feet of him and stopped, her fingers locked together below her waist. She asked, "Got a knife to cut the flowers?" Shawn whispered, "Beth has gone out for the evening."
"She has? What for?"
It doesn't matter. Is Edith watching, do you think?"
"Edith went over to show a property to a chent. We ate early. She said she might call Sam-so she won't be home until late."
Shawn resumed his hoeing. He was bursting inside with joy. They would not have to wait.
He said, "We're in luck tonight."
"It's not night yet. Not for an hour."
"Who cares? We're alone, aren't we?"
"Yeah-but I don't know. It's not dark. People watch."
"Well do nothing to cause attention. Go into my house. Bring a vase and a sharp knife from the kitchen."
She seemed reluctant. She frowned, rubbed the toe of one moccasin against her shin. But finally she went into Shawn's house. She came back with a knife and a green vase.
He said, "You cut the flowers. I'll watch for the right moment When nobody's in sight you can go back into the house. Even if somebody happens to watch from a window-they won't notice if you come out again or not."
She frowned dubiously. But she sat on her heels and cut flowers indiscriminately, the first that came to hand.
She said, "I don't like it"
"Don't cut all in one place. Beth will ask why I chopped her flower bed to pieces." He went on hoeing, watching the street and the porches of the houses. People passed, came out for the late papers, looked about at the summer evening, went in again.
Shawn said, "Now. Go into the house. Walk naturally, as though you were doing an errand for me."
"I haven't got enough flowers. And when will I get them into my own house? Suppose somebody tells Edith-"
"Do as I say." He was getting nervous, expecting neighbors to pop out of houses or kids to flit past on bicycles. She cut more flowers and went toward his house. He kept hoeing, seeing nobody but wanting to drag out the time sequence so that a watcher from a window might get bored and go away. A minute crawled by. He put the hoe on his shoulder and went slowly but with quivering knees to the garage. On the way back to the kitchen door he felt his manhood stir with expectation.
He went through the kitchen. Tippie stood against the living-room doorjamb, in near-darkness because the drapes were drawn. He lifted her chin with his knuckle, kissed her lips. She closed her eyes but her lips remained lifeless.
She said, "I don't like it. Suppose Beth comes back."
"Who cares."
"I care."
He put his arm around her and guided her into the living room. He made a sweeping gesture with his hand.
Tonight it's all yours. Everything I have."
She said, sullenly, "I don't know about that." Her body was hard in the curve of his arm.
He changed the subject, "Did you buy your transistor?"
"Yes."
"Did anybody ask about it?"
"Elvira. I told her a yarn. Oh, about your lighter. I'll give it back to you. It's got your initials."
"I don't care."
"I do. It's dangerous." She looked up, her head at an angle, her eyes studious. "Don't you really care? Aren't you scared at all?"
"No."
"I'm jailbait."
"All the better. It makes my love that much more exciting. Do you love me?"
She made a pout with her mouth. "Maybe."
"Let's go in here." He steered her toward the bedroom. At the door Tippie held back.
She said, "But it's Beth's room. Besides, if she comes home-"
"I'll take care of that." He closed the door behind them and locked it. He unhooked the window screen. "See, you can leave by the window if you have to. It's only three feet to the ground." He pulled the drapes and the bedroom was dark except for the muted light from the open bathroom door.
Tippie asked, "Can a person get in from the bath?"
"No. This is the only door." He tried to take her in his arms. Her little body came grudgingly to his, still hard with doubt. He sat on the bed and placed her on his knee. She sat stiffly at first, then moved one leg and reached between their bodies. She touched him.
She asked, "Already?"
"Whenever you come within a hundred yards, it happens."
Her smile was noncommittal. "Just like I'm crazy sexy."
"Just like."
She pulled her sweater tight against her breasts, looked down at the little points. She sniffed.
She said, "I don't see what's so sexy."
He laughed and slid his hand under her skirt. She smiled her half-smile again, sagged against his shoulder. He parted her thighs with the flat of his hand, lifted her skirt. He saw lemon-colored panties.
He asked, "Where did you get those?
She hesitated. "I bought em."
"With my money?"
"Before."
He began to caress her. She sighed and her head fell on his shoulder. Her breathing came softly against his throat. He tugged at her panties, making her stand so he could take them off. He lifted her skirt and kissed her.
Her voice was reedy. "We're still in Beth's room. I can even smell her perfume."
For answer he took her hands and put them on his thighs. She quickly found him. Her lips came nibbling down his cheek. He darted his tongue between her teeth.
She did not let go of his manhood as they kissed. She held him with both hands as though clinging to life itself.
* * *
The motel room was equipped with the necessary bed and rugs and prints on the walls. The curtains were already drawn. Beth, feeling feminine and wanted, personalized the place by draping her spring coat over a chair instead of hanging it up. She dropped her scarf on the bed to mark possession, balanced a pack of cigarettes at the edge of the night table, put her purse on a window-sill and sat in a chair that felt like half a barrel.
She sat with ankles crossed and knees to one side, tugging the skirt knee-ward in order to have made the gesture of concealment.
Joe stood at the window, ill at ease. Perhaps he wished he, too, had dark glasses behind which to hide. For him this taut moment seemed one of embarrassment.
He asked, "Would you like a drink?"
"I'd love one. A highball, I think."
He moved toward the door.
Beth said, "Probably we can phone for service."
He shook his head and left her alone. Beth smiled. He wanted to be in darkness, not seeing her face. He had yet to learn that all women, even those with social graces, had hungers of the flesh. Joe must see his ambitions more clearly to avoid disappointment in Ann-Ellen or Jean or Mary-whichever he married.
Silly to deceive herself, to pretend that she was here just to educate Joe. This assignation was for Beth, for hungry Beth. She rose, retrieved her purse and went into the bathroom. She combed her hair, smoothed her skirt.
Joe returned with a bottle of whiskey, glasses, a bucket of ice on a tray. She stood in the bathroom doorway and watched him make their drinks. He was still embarrassed, the darling.
She said, "I have a feeling Joe, that if I were Loma you'd have thrown me down by now."
He started to smile but the smile never formed. He kept his gaze on the drinks.
He said, "Maybe there's another factor, Beth. Maybe I'm in love with you."
Beth blushed. Her cheeks burned. She went to the night table to escape his gaze. She picked up her cigarettes.
She said softly, "How terribly sweet of you to say that-even if you don't mean it. A girl floats heavenward when she hears it. Thank you, Joe."
"I mean it, Beth."
She lit her cigarette, keeping her face away from him. "What a pity that I'm not Ann-Ellen or Jean or Mary. I'd be so useful to you. Besides, I'm prettier than all of them."
His voice was gruff. "Beth, I said love. And I don't mean lust, either."
She had a feeling that she might have to reap a whirlwind. In a futile effort to escape the unknown, she turned on him and snapped, "You Irish are all puritanical. You plant your love on a girl's sweet smiling virginal face. You don't want to see her breasts. You want the illusion of purity. Illusions, that's all you want. Poetry without flesh. But you marry for money."
He cried, "I'm no damned poet-and I'm not yet married."
"You will be soon."
But no matter how she protested she was touched inside, all aflame inside, glancing covertly at him from behind her dark glasses. A new and frightening world had suddenly opened up.
"At bridge the other night I would look at you, then at Jean. All I could see were her pearls and how fat she is.
If you hadn't been there-she might not have seemed as fat."
"As I said, I'm prettier than Jean. Some girls are prettier than she and some aren't."
He turned from the drinks and ordered "Take off your glasses. I can't see your eyes. You're hiding."
"I can't see without them."
"You have clear glasses in your purse. Anyhow, you don't need to see."
"I have glasses and four kinds of contacts, natural and brown-tinted and blue-tinted and green-tinted all in my purse but I won't use them. I like dark glasses."
He strode toward her and snatched away her glasses. Her eyes held tears. He stared angrily, helplessly. She stared back, seeing him perfectly because he was within her near-sighted range of vision.
"You brought me here with your breasts half out of your dress to insult us both, didn't you? All I get is your body. Is that it?"
She blinked back the tears.
He said, "I ought to slap you."
"You couldn't. You're not that crude."
His lips were flat and hard. "Are you losing your nerve? Is that why the argument? You wanted a big strong man but you've lost your nerve?"
She did not speak.
He seized her arms, shook her. "Answer me, do you hear?"
Beth began to cry. His grip slackened. He had moved so far into her range of vision that now his face was blurred. Besides, her eyes were filmed with tears. She hunted for a hankie but even her purse was a blur. Joe gave her his breast-pocket handkerchief. She sagged on the edge of the bed.
He said more calmly, "Beth, let's get it straight. I won't be made a fool of. Being in love with you, I'm doubly hurt. But I'll cut off my right arm before I'll let any woman, even you, treat me as a toy."
She managed to dry her tears. She said, "You're in love with Mrs. Shawn Harris. It's Beth who needs love, Beth who tried to attract you to the woman under the clothes."
He sat on the bed beside her. "What a hell of a way to fall in love," he said.
Beth considered the phrase. Maybe this was a hell of a way for love to happen. But still it was love. Her tears dried. She rubbed her nose with his handkerchief, suddenly thinking she must look awful. She hurried to the bathroom, where she patted cold water on her eyes and cheeks. She repaired her lipstick, and tugged at her bodice to give her breasts better exposure.
Joe came to the bathroom doorway.
Beth snapped, "Never spy on a woman who is busy with a mirror."
"You wanted a drink."
She fluffed her hair, accepted the drink and sailed into the other room. He was still afraid of her, afraid of her married status and of where she lived. He could not believe he was in a motel room with a flesh-and-blood woman.
More than sexual desire was churning at her breast. A vision was still unfolding. Dead fires had been stirred. Purpose flamed within her. His mention of the valley's bloody conflicts, fifty and more years ago, had reminded her of a half-forgotten project, to research and write a local history with guts. She was a trained historian who had been wasting her time with aimless reading. Now she was bursting with energy, ready to go to work, to have babies, to five.
"You dope," she said to Joe.
He asked, "Why am I a dope?"
"For not petting a woman when she cries. For just standing there." She stood with her back to him, looking in the general direction of the drawn drapes.
"Beth, I never imagined you could get so excited. You've always seemed poised, at ease."
"My grandfather worked in the mill, Joe. That is, he tried. He was too runty to keep up with the others, so they made him a bookkeeper. He worked his way to the top of the company. If more valley men were runtier, they might do better."
He came up behind her, laughing. "Do you mind that I'm not runty?"
By taking a step backward as she turned, Beth managed to put herself in his arms. She needed to do no more. He closed his arms about her, a great bear clamping, kissed her hard and thoroughly. He took off her glasses and kissed her eyes. He shoved her dress down, kissed her throat. The shoulders of her dress held her arms tight to her sides. She had no strength to move.
He said, "I ask too many questions."
"Irish talk too much."
He unzipped her dress, peeled it down to her waist. At that point the dress lodged tightly against the flare of her hips, would go no farther down. While thinking about the problem he removed her bra. Beth whispered, "The skirt must go over my head."
"Oh. I'm not very bright, am I."
"Not very."
O ... is for Over
IN BED JOE showed signs of previous experience in motel rooms, perhaps with many girls. Beth was glad. She wanted no fumbling boy. She did not resent the women before her as long as she was the last.
He entered her sturdily, waited the right length of time. When they were completely together they made no movement. A long silent moment of adjustment was needed, of breath-catching realization that Joe and Beth were making love.
She whispered, "Darling-" Her voice trailed off. She smiled against his cheek.
He said, "Beth, don't make a fool of me. Don't throw words around as though they were popcorn."
"I mean it. Darling. Joe, I'm not a liar."
They stopped speaking. Their bodies had caught fire. Beth clung to a broad back about which her arms barely reached, her hands flat and her fingertips touching his spine, holding tightly because she had to cling to this world that filled her, that silenced her livery tongue.
She hooked her legs on his, bracing against the big hard-muscled calves with their thrilling rough hair. His muscles corded against her thighs. The storm, so long pent-up, came bursting and scalding. He was fast but she could match him. Because she was part of him, because he had filled her body with command, matching him was part of being his body.
When passion ebbed, she curled in his arms with her lips at his throat.
He murmured, "It's nerves that made me so fast. Buildup. But how could you keep up? Women can't, usually."
"I was part of you."
He said, "The best part."
"Darling."
"What?"
"Just darling. Again just darling. But now that I have said it I have thought of something more to say. Joe, I think I'm in love with you."
"Don't say things you don't mean, Beth."
"I'll know for sure after you make love to me again."
"Don't you have to go home some time?" he asked.
"I am home, Joe."
* * *
Tippie said, "I'm scared." She stood between Shawn's spread thighs, her arms on his shoulders, her chin on his head. She felt his lips moving against her breast. The action did not reassure her. Everything was too goofy. She usually did not think at all when they were naked and his arms were around her. But she was thinking now. In the living room a clock ticked. On the street she heard some boys yell in passing, probably on bikes. In the back yard birds were talking. The room was gray with light from the open bathroom door. Her head was full of thoughts even though her body tingled as Shawn caressed and kissed it.
This was Beth's room. On Sunday she had decided that she would be like Beth. What if she lost Beth?
That boy at the pool with dark hair and white teeth, Harry. He popped into her thoughts.
She said, "I need a new dance dress. And high heels."
Shawn murmured agreement.
She would go to the dance with Jacko. She would dump Jacko if Harry could dance well.
If Beth came in and caught them, she would tell Edith. Edith would send her to a reform school.
What would happen to her locker at the pool, the transistor and the polka-dot suit, the pack of cigarettes almost full, the dark glasses?
Again she heard the boys yelling on the street, maybe coasting down the big hill with their feet on the handlebars.
Shawn smelled of tobacco and whiskey. He was getting like crazy. He didn't care that she was jailbait.
Shawn put her on the bed. She was limp. Spraddled out, she made no move as he kissed the length of her body. She felt herself opening to him. The lovemaldng worked all right, as slippery as ever, easy now she was used to him. But she lay slack, not responding.
He asked, "What's the matter?"
"Nothing."
She felt him go on and on. She wanted to burst inwardly or outwardly. Suddenly she was hurt. What had gone wrong? She shifted, tried to lift herself. He pressed her down, hurt her again.
She cried, "Leave me alone."
Astonished, he moved slowly away from her. Tippie sat up. She heard the boys in the street again. She pictured them on bikes, riding hard and sweating, racing downhill with feet on the handlebars. Maybe she could trade the transistor for a bike. She could pay one of the boys a dollar to ride his bike. She had money now.
She could zoom downhill with the air sweeping past, blowing her brains right out.
Shawn asked, "Did I hurt you?"
"Yeah." She crossed her thighs and folded her arms across her breasts, avoiding his eyes. Her skirt lay on the floor, her blouse on a chair with her bra through one of the sleeves. She jumped off the bed and seized her bra and thrust her arms through the straps.
"Tippie, you're not going?"
"Edith is coming home."
"Not yet, she isn't coming home yet-"
"Yeah, she is." Tippie struggled into her blouse and then her skirt. The zipper got caught in a thread. She fastened the skirt button and let the zipper gape. In the near darkness she found only one sock and her panties. She tucked the sock in her skirt pocket and walked into the panties.
"Tippie, you mustn't go. Why? Why are you running?"
Pulling up the panties, she lunged toward the window, wrenched her skirt around, pushed her hair back with her arm. She took no time to look at him, except for a glimpse. His face scared her. She climbed on the window-sill and pushed out the screen he had unlocked.
He said, 'Tippie, you can go out the front door, if you must go-"
"Don't want to take any chances." She slid down the wall into some evergreen bushes. The screen clanged shut. Shawn's face came to the window.
He said, whispering frantically, "You can't go. Where are you going?"
"Got things to do," she said, hurrying through the bushes.
She stopped at the comer of the house, her back to the brick wall. She still heard distant yells. She slipped to her side of the drive and breathed a sigh of relief.
She adjusted her panties, straightened her bra, smoothed her blouse. Her feet felt good inside cool leather without socks. No need for socks in the summertime.
She had gotten away clean.
She pulled the single sock from her pocket in search of gum, found a lone stick in a loose wrapper. She stuck it into her mouth and chewed. Her pocket also held a worn quarter. The street was darker now. Lights were on, dotting the dusk, and curving down the slope of the hill. Pretty soon the boys came up the hill, standing on their pedals. She counted three of them, all younger than she was. She knew their faces but not their names.
"Hey," she called them all.
Two veered toward her. The third did not seem to hear. He went tearing off on the level street.
She picked the newer bike and the smaller boy. He had a round red sweaty face.
She said, "I'll give you a quarter to ride on your bike."
"How long a ride?"
She began to bargain. "An hour."
"I gotta be home pretty soon."
She turned to the other boy. "A half-hour?"
The first one said, "I'll give you three times down the hill. Then I got to go home."
The second boy's bike looked rusty. She settled for three-times-down-the-hill, gave the kid the quarter and swung into the seat. She was wearing a skirt but who cared? She pulled the skirt to her hips and pedaled toward the crest.
On the first downhill the pedals began whirring and air whizzed by her face, flagging her hair, ripping speed tears from her eyes. She swung her feet to the handlebars and her skirt ballooned around her.
Tomorrow maybe Harry would be at the pool again. She would trade the transistor for a summer party dress to wear to dances. Or trade it for a bike.
The hill fell away more sharply and the bike hurtled with Tippie whooping. At the bottom she was going so fast that she flew almost all the way up the rise on the other side, without pedaling.
Shawn watched Tippie riding frantically back and forth, heard her yowling to the small boys who owned the bikes.
He was sick to the point of nausea.
He put on his trousers as though about to go out. But first he lay down on his bed, looking at emptiness. He had held a bar of gold that had turned suddenly to sand and run through his fingers.
Tippie had cast him off for another toy.
A bicycle ride.
He could not laugh. Jilted for a bicycle. What had she said about wanting a party dress? Dancing. Kid-dancing, frantic jerky body-shaking dancing. He rubbed his hand over his chin, felt his sandpaper evening beard. He was old, too old. For the second time in his life he had been ill-used by a teenage girl.
He went to the living room and made a drink. Beth knew nothing of his affair. His ife would go on as before, the same pretty wife, the same lush mistress-secretary, plenty of money, and the community's respect....
Why had he fallen in love with Tippie? To recapture the one trophy that life had not handed him? To escape a too-easy reality in the demands of a dream?
He wandered back to the bedroom.
One of Tippie's socks lay alone on the floor, twisted, empty, lifeless.
If he left it, Beth would see it. The sock would smash apart his too-comfortable world.
He sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the key to his future. The sock could speak for him, could destroy Shawn Harris.
But life with Beth was even less than survival. She made him feel like a well-oiled machine gear, turned and turning, initiating nothing.
He lay back on the bed. He drowsed.
* * *
Shawn was awakened by the crunching of car tires on gravel. He half-opened his eyes. Doors slammed briskly open and he heard high heels. The bedroom-hall light flooded into his vision. Beth stood in the light. She came toward him gaily.
Wondering what had changed her, Shawn smiled in greeting. His madness with Tippie could be forgotten, a shameful but unknown secret. He had a lovely wife who looked happier than he had seen her in years. He was lucky. Why search for something else when life had endowed him so richly? His nap seemed to have brought him to his senses.
Beth adjusted her glasses. Her eyebrows rose.
Looking at Shawn, she opened her purse, pulled out a filmy nylon. The sheer full-length stocking dropped at her feet.
He frowned, glanced at her legs. They were bare.
Next she pulled a white lace garter belt from the purse. A stocking was still attached. She tossed both aside.
Shawn's throat felt dry with fear. He said, "Anyhow, I guess you wore your panties home."
She pulled a pair of panties from the purse, let them flutter in his direction.
Shawn sat up.
Beth lit a cigarette, glanced down at her underclothing. She gave the pile a light kick with her toe. She said, "Under my dress I am naked."
Shawn rubbed his eyes, unable to believe that this proud and beautiful woman was his mousy wife Beth.
Her jaw tightened. She snapped, "Also, I have just been laid."
He backed, driven by the vulgarity of her speech. With as much bravado as he could muster, he countered, "Did you also carry home the contraceptive gadget?"
She breathed out a thin stream of smoke. "We didn't use any."
The situation was so upside-down that he suspected a poor joke. He said, "Girls get pregnant that way."
"I hope so. Thanks to you I have had little experience at getting pregnant. That's changed. My new man is like a stallion. Is my language coarse enough to reach you? Do I get through to you and the woman you prefer to me?"
He covered his face with his hands. She was not joking. But she was married to him. She was Mrs. Shawn Harris. Even if she were pregnant, the child would bear his name. Her bawdy talk was meaningless in the larger view of life. Nothing basic had changed. He was still safe, still Shawn Harris, lawyer and club member.
Beth was silent for too long a time. He heard her heel click on the floor beside him.
He glanced at her.
She had stooped down. She rose, holding in her hand a limp cotton bobby sock.
Beth's face was whiter than the sock
She turned and walked slowly out of the room.
Shawn stood on shaking legs and followed. She had slumped into a chair by the window. The bobby sock lay on the living-room rug where she had dropped it.
She said, "I didn't know you were sick, Shawn." She stared through the window at the twin trunks of the sycamore, outlined by the street lights.
He said, "Now you know."
At last Beth cried, "I don't know what to say. A child, a little girl. Does anyone know about this."
"No."
"Shawn, I feel dreadful now about flaunting my affair. I thought you were involved with your secretary Lorna. But you're sick. I'll get you to a doctor. I'll take care of you." She rose from the armchair suddenly, hurried to his side. She seized his arm. "I won't let you down. You'll be well again, Shawn."
He drew away from her and slowly he shook his head. What was the use? Even when his perversion was exposed someone was ready to protect him, care for him, hide him from the world, forgive him. Could he escape into a bottle? He poured a hooker of bourbon. Not even exposure of his perversion could destroy him.
He put the glass to his lips.
Beth was saying, "After you've been analyzed, Shawn, you'll know what drove you to this dreadful thing. You'll be yourself again, with nothing to worry about."
He sniffed the bourbon. Beth was at his elbow, still wonderfully pretty, her unbound body swaying, eyes bright, lips slightly swollen.
She would forget her love affair. She would return to the role of his bookish mouse, taking off her apron when she heard his car in the drive.
He asked, "Who is the man, Beth?"
"You are not to worry about such things. Your health is all that counts."
"Are you in love with him?"
"Shawn, please, none of that is important. My duty is to take care of you. Perhaps we can go on a cruise, a long restful cruise. We will get the best doctor-"
A cruise. Ideas popped into his head. He put down his glass and went to the bedroom for a jacket, car keys, wallet and checkbook. Beth was beside him still, trying to grasp his arm and comfort him. The air had become too thick to breathe. He gave her a hard glance as a warning, brushed past her and ran to the front door.
He turned at the doorway, said, "Beth, I'm going to pop out of the womb, whether anyone-likes it or not. I'm going on a cruise for my health, as you suggested. Maybe I can get a job slinging hash under the name of Smith, carrying trays of food to seasick passengers. Maybe I can prove I'm worth my wages."
"Shawn, don't you love me?"
His mind was no longer with her. He saw himself with a duffel bag on his shoulder, striding up the gangway of a great gray ship.
But the manners bred into him said, "I love you too much to stay here, Beth. I would only make you miserable. I'll send you a letter admitting my adulteries so you can get a divorce."
He ran to his garage and backed out the convertible. Tippie's bedroom was dark, Tippie who had toyed with him. Once he was on the street he did not look back. He drove eastward toward the sea.
The memory of Tippie's dark window pulled at his heart for a mile or so. The fresh night air raced past his face, quickened his spirits. He had actually escaped. Cowardly? Was it cowardly to escape a prison?
Tippie had jilted him for a bicycle.
He began to laugh. His manhood, his proud strong manhood, traded for a bicycle seat.
He drove toward the rising moon, toward the sea and some waiting ship, straining at its hawser and impatient.
