As Eve Banner took off her robe and stepped up on the posing platform it was obvious that she was a natural blonde. She turned slightly, facing the long expanse of windows that admitted the northern light into the classroom. As she felt the heat of the sun on her body she knew that the triangle of buff-colored hair at the top of her thighs was being turned into a bright, glistening gold.
The professor, in a paint-spattered robe whose stains seemed deliberate and over-arty, spoke to the drawing class.
"We'll start with thirty-second action poses." He glanced with determined casualness at Eve, as though trying to prove to himself that he really did not see her perfect, womanly form. "Will you time yourself, Miss Banner, I've forgotten my watch."
Eve smiled knowingly as she let herself hold his eye for an overlong moment. She enjoyed the quickly downcast expression on his face; he looked like a little boy caught with dirty postcards.
"Certainly, sir," she replied demurely.
She took a step across the carpet-covered model's stand and leaned on the stool, bending over so that her blossoming hips stuck out in the professor's direction. Conscious of his presence behind her, she wriggled slightly, finding the pose that she wanted, then raised one foot and put it on the rung of the stool. She spread her knee to the side, so that the class would have something to draw besides the foreshortened view of her creamy buttocks. Eve knew they were an enchanting sight, but she had been an artist's model long enough to know something about drawing. A protruding limb added a third dimension to her body and gave the students an angle to work with.
It gave Eve an angle, too....
Her head ducked down, away from the class, she smiled broadly. Her eyes closed for a moment as she savored the unrestricted feeling that rose up in her groin as she separated her legs. Her downy female parts opened as she assumed the straddling position. There! The throbbing began, slowly at first, merely a titillating sensation of mild pleasure. She began to count out the time of the pose-one ... two ... three ... four....
She liked the thirty-second poses best. Not only were they the easiest to hold, but she could look forward to the next one and wonder what it would be. Images flashed through her mind, images that were as exciting as the knowledge that she was exposing her most intimate parts to a roomful of men and women. Her mind was filled with pictures of herself, her creamy flesh and rippling muscles; she saw herself as she would be at the end of the class period, when a line of sweat formed down her spine and between her breasts. How exciting her glistening skin was....She had seen the students glancing covertly at her at such times.
There was something animalistic about a beautiful woman covered with sweat, and Eve knew it. She knew a lot of things about her own body.... It was the thing above all else that fascinated her the most.
What would she do next? Eighteen....nineteen.
... twenty....Should she raise one leg high in the air? Do a split? Stoop down and hold her breasts out to the class? Stretch out across the stool on her back?
There were so many things she could do, and they all gave her pleasure. Modeling was a continual sexual act for her, not painful drudgery as it was for the other models. All you needed to do was dispense with modesty, she thought, smiling. Modesty was something totally foreign to her now. Eve was contemptuous of the other women who posed for the university's art department. How dull they were! They never inspired the classes-or themselves-as she did because they were so modest.
She was the only woman who assumed poses that required the legs to be separated. She often watched them, coming to work early so that she could peer into the other classrooms. They stood with their legs clamped together as though they were about to be gang-raped. A favorite and boring pose for them was the September Morn stance-doubled over with hands crossed across the stomach to hide their femaleness. The students had to draw it over and over again because the models wouldn't dare do much else that was different or daring.
Eve breathed sharply as she felt the moisture collect in her cloven womanhood. It was starting now ... this promised to be an especially good day at work!
She always felt sorry for all the people who hated their jobs and had to drag themselves to work every day, and then spend hours watching the clock. It was a joy to go to work as far as Eve was concerned; work was a ritual honoring her body, and that was all the religion she needed, too. She watched a clock in a way, but it was a stopwatch; an instrument to signal her to change from one vision of delight to a different one.
Twenty-eight, twenty-nine "Time." Her voice rang out with authority. That was another thing she liked about posing; she was the boss here. The professor gave out the grades, and instructed the students, but without her there would be nothing to grade because there would be nothing to draw except a stupid pot of flowers!
Eve immediately assumed another pose, shifting and swaying for a moment in order to find the exact position she wanted. The students rattled their drawing pads and dusted charcoal-laden fingers on their smocks. The room smelled of turpentine from the painting class that had used it the hour before. It was a sexy aroma to Eve; by now, it reminded her of nakedness-her own nakedness.
As she moved her legs. Eve felt the puddle of womanly honey between her legs. It inspired her, and she pushed the tall stool away and sank down on the carpeted platform. She stretched one leg out straight behind her and sank slowly down until the heel of her other foot sank into her soft, moist private parts. Her hands found a restful position on her sharply acclivated hips as she settled into the carefully balanced dip.
She faced the class now. There was a trick to watching people who were busy drawing, their brows puckered with concentration. She could not stare directly at any one of them; if she did, they would tense and adopt an objective, artistic air, as though they did not see her, only a form to be copied. Eve could not bear that.
Instead, she lifted her chin slightly and let her eyelids droop, gazing at the chosen student through what appeared to be an opaque disregard mingled with model's fatigue. If they thought she was stiff and aching, she became, in their minds, what they wanted her to be-a collection of bone and muscle. Then Eve saw what she wanted to see: the struggle of the artist trying not to look at a beautiful woman with no clothes on.
How intellectual and sophisticated they thought they were! The art major crowd always put on the dog; so did the music majors, for that matter. But it was hard for the arts; they had a lot of naked bodies to contend with, and for all their determined avant garde cosmopolitanism, they were still college kids and most of them had hot pants most of the time.
Eve watched Rolfe Jagger, the instructor, as he made the rounds of the class, pausing here and there to whisper something to a student having difficulty. Occasionally, he took a piece of charcoal and improved the drawing on the student's easel. He was very good-looking, Eve thought, and of course he knew it. He always wore a white chemist's coat instead of a standard art smock, probably to show his contempt for cold science. Eve was ready to bet anything that he took the coat home and carefully stroked it with his paint brushes until it sported every color on his palette. After five years as a model, she knew that paint just didn't get spilled and smeared with such linear perfection.
Rolfe paused now behind a freshman who was nervously blinking through goggle-like horn rims at Eve while he sketched madly, trying to beat the second count.
The instructor spoke, looking at Eve and smiling slightly.
"Prentiss, your proportions are off again. You've drawn her too voluptuously. She's not that big. Look at her, she's a thoroughbred, not a percheron."
He raised his hand and signaled to Eve to continue the post past the thirty-second limit. The student blushed and shuffled his feet in typical freshman agony. Everyone turned to look at him.
Rolfe Jagger began to explain the drawing's faults in a voice that was lecture-loud. The student grew more and more miserable.
"Look at the subject, Prentiss. Study her carefully. She's what the romantics would call a porcelain beauty. Pink and gold, an aristocrat, not a peasant woman. She's fragile; look at those tiny bones, the long neck, the narrow ribcage. You've made her into a wet nurse, Prentiss."
The class tittered and Rolfe looked pleased with himself. He looked quickly up at Eve before he went on.
"Even if she were that size, she would make you forget it. There is no sensuality there, only sensuousness."
The student blinked. "What's the difference? I thought they both meant the same thing."
Rolfe cleared his throat importantly. "Milton described great poetry as 'simple, sensuous and passionate.' Literary critics have credited him with the first use of sensuous to differentiate it from the notion of undue indulgence in the ... er, grosser pleasures that is conveyed by sensual. You've drawn the subject as you saw her, Prentiss, not as she really is. Do you understand?"
The silence that came over the class was more telling than a guilty snicker, Eve thought. The student had just been told that he was horny, and the rest of them knew that they were, too.
Rolfe looked up at the platform and gave her his Artist-Above-It-AU nod. "Let's have another pose, please, Miss Banner, if you will."
She almost laughed in his face. He was the horniest male in the class, whether he knew it or not. Eve knew it....
How he was fighting her! It wouldn't be long now. She would have him soon. She knew he was in the stage of trying to think of her as mere equipment for the study of art; he was determined to think of her as an inanimate object, something he used, like a brush or a palette knife. She would soon show him-she would use him!
Eve sat down on the platform, turning her body toward the chastised student. She raised one knee until it pressed against her breast, flattening the perfect globe against her chest. She spread the other leg and drew the foot far back, until it supported her hips. There....that would certainly give him a good view of her. As she glanced covertly down at her body she saw the pink lips of her genitals exposed.
As she counted out the time, Eve forgot about the student. Suddenly, the game did not seem important. She had played it so often ... picking out one particular boy, usually a very young one, and deliberately tormenting him. But now, it was as though a dark cloud had settled over the bright glee she usually knew at such times.
The numbers that she spoke to herself seemed like years slipping away. One....two....three....four....It reminded her of the corny way Hollywood used to show the passage of time in a movie. Pages of a calendar appeared on the screen of her mind and began to flutter, turning backwards until "That's the devil's pool of temptation!"
Her mother had grabbed the tiny, cheap compact she had bought at the dime store and smashed it on the floor, crushing the broken glass under her foot until there was nothing left of it but a piece of twisted plastic and a pile of gritty, ground-up dust that had once been a mirror.
The woman's eyes were over-bright and frightening as she shook her finger in her daughter's face.
"You know what your father and I told you, Evelyn! There'll be no mirrors in this house! They're the work of Satan. Vanity is a sin that leads to even worse offenses against Christ!"
"Mother, I-"
"Get down on your knees! Pray for strength against your temptations, Evelyn. Pray, pray, pray!"
The mother forced the girl to the floor and began a honking invocation of forgiveness. "Deliver us from the sins of the flesh, oh Lord.
Lead us down the paths of righteousness to our home in Eternity with Thee."
She began to rock back and forth on her knees, her body swaying in time to the rhythm of her chanting speech. Eve struggled against the tight grip, shivering with disgust as she felt the iron-like, girdled hip collide with her. Corsets, her mother called those elasticized vises she wore. She ordered them from a catalog that was full of pictures of women just like her-'stylish stout' the ads called it. The corsets laced up the front like huge pink shoes. They were prisons that bound flesh into obedient, motionless bundles. Now, as her mother swayed violently against her, Eve thought about the stiff, heavy feel of death. She remembered the dead cat, how hard his body had felt to the touch. Her mother's body felt that way now.
"Women are running around naked nowadays," the mother said contemptuously. "Bouncing and swaying like hussies walking the streets swinging their pocketbooks."
Pocketbook swinger....How often her mother used that expression. Any woman who did not live a totally pure religious life was called a pocketbook swinger. When Eve was old enough to need one her mother cautioned her about carrying it on the crook of her arm.
"Hold it down at your side, Evelyn."
Eve soon found out why this was so important to her mother. When a woman carries her pocketbook on her forearm she walks differently; the small act of balance leads to a swaying of the hips. She tried it once, in her room when her parents were out of the house. Instantly, she had felt the difference in her walk. It became easier, more fluid and much more feminine. Hands held at the sides was a military posture, a structuring of the body that looked stiff and unyielding.
Like her mother laced into her corset....
Eve held the bag over her arm and placed her hand on her hip. Her heart beat faster as she saw her shadow on the wall of the mirror-less room. She moved slowly forward, walking sinuously. The shadow swayed to and fro. She reached out to it and saw the long line of her arm on the sun-drenched wall.
It was not long before Eve found out that 'pocketbook swinger' was a synonym for prostitute. After that, she practiced the new way of walking in her room, taking a tremulous pleasure from the sight of her undulating shadow.
One day, before she could toss the purse aside and grab up a schoolbook, her mother entered without knocking. They stared at each other for a moment, and Eve watched the small eyes grow even smaller with hate and fear. The woman's mouth twitched as she began to speak.
"What are you doing?" she said slowly, in a hoarse whisper. "Do you know what you look like? What are you doing!"
She shook Eve and slapped her repeatedly until the girl's head bobbed back and forth like a buoy.
"Posing! Posing like a tart under a lamplight!" she screamed. Then she looked up at the bright sunlight streaming into the room, and whirled about to see their two shadows on the opposite wall. With a harsh cry of frustration, she ran to the shade and pulled it down until the room was shrouded in darkness.
Eve cried out sharply. It was suddenly so dark, like a tomb. It was as though she had gone blind in an instant. Horror welled in her and she began to scream.
"Stop that!" the mother cried, and slapped her again.
"It's dark! Pull up the shade, please! I won't look at the shadows again!" Eve pleaded.
The mother looked suddenly pleased. Her voice calmed to a singsong of satisfaction. "See? You're afraid of darkness. All sinners are because the darkness is the spirit of the devil waiting for your soul. Fear doesn't live in those who keep the spirit of Christ within themselves."
Throughout her teens, Eve was never allowed to use any makeup at all. She could not sneak it at school because the principal was a member of her parents' church and she knew he would tell them if she appeared "painted." The parents' religion forbade any decoration on the body. No jewelry, no bright colors, no fringes or lace or bordering of any kind.
"You don't have to wear anything to hide yourself under if the soul underneath is pure," her mother said. "The soul should stand ready to be covered before Jesus when He calls. The more decoration you wear, the more sin you're trying to cover up. You look at these women with all their necklaces and rings and bracelets. There's a sin for every jewel they wear, you mark my words."
There were no mirrors anywhere in the house except for a small glass on a stand that Eve's father had to use when he shaved. He always locked it away when he was finished with it. She knew he regretted having to keep it, but he excused his lapse from grace on the grounds of safety. "It's not for vanity but necessity," he intoned morosely. "A man needs a mirror but a woman doesn't. If I even catch you with it I'll not spare the rod, Evelyn."
Her mother did not need a mirror, that was true enough. Her face was clean and her thin hair pulled back into a net. Both of these grooming tasks required only a sense of touch.
There were no movies, no television, no radio, or any other kind of entertainment. Her father read a daily paper, intoning aloud the major pieces of news that he censored as he went along. After he was through with the paper, he tossed it in the trash. Comic strips were a form of levity and in some cases, blasphemy. Since the Bible enjoined, "Thou shalt have no other God before Me" Eve's father took offense at Snoopy's Head Beagle and Lucy's five-cent psychiatric services. Dagwood, too, bit the dust, since God made Man to have dominion over everything, including woman. Comic strips were therefore the Devil's work.
The only outings the family had besides church and church suppers were walks in the woods. Nature was God's work.
It was in one of God's endeavors that Eve saw her own reflection. They stopped beside a pool and she looked down at her image in the water. She had seen herself in mirrors at school, in the homes of her few friends, and in plate glass windows. But this was somehow perfection.
She knelt down, pretending prayer, but really gazing at herself. She was eighteen, and beautiful. Her hair was the color of corn silk; her eyes were almost the exact gray-green of the water that reflected them. And her body....
The curve of her hip as she knelt on her folded thighs fascinated her. It was round and soft-looking, so different from her mother's rigid shanks. She would never let that change. She would keep them soft and free like this. Eve began to smile. She was beautiful ... beautiful! Nothing bad could happen to her if she possessed such loveliness. As bad as things were now, at home, they wouldn't last. When she finished school, she planned to go away and never see them again. She would support herself, no matter what she had to do.
A surge of power covered her. She could do it! A beautiful woman never need worry. She would use her beauty ... that's it. Her heart beat faster. Yes ... her beauty. Somehow, she would use that to let the light shine into her drab life. She would reflect life and love and beauty, just as this pool was reflecting her.
She leaned further forward. Her hand slipped and a rock on the bank came loose and tumbled into the water. She was startled, and drew back. The rock sent broad ripples through her reflection until it was distorted and ugly. Eve looked down at the mud spreading through the water.
Ugly ... dirty ... hard.
Eve worked grimly through high school, waiting for the day when she could escape. Her only pleasure, when things got too bad, was the contemplation of her get-away. She knew where her father hid money in the house. He did not believe in using banks. That, too, was part of the religion that he had so successfully twisted.
He belonged to a political group called "American Crusade." In the pamphlets the group handed out were innumerable references to "international Jewish bankers" and "godless international communist conspiracy."
As a result of this educational material, the father adopted a cash-and-carry arrangement. "I'll not let those communist Christ-killers play with my money," he said.
Eve was going to steal the money and leave home the day after graduation.
The plan made her think a great deal about the subject of money. One day a joke went around the school when, in the senior year, everyone was talking about what he would do for a living alter school was out. One of the boys sneered at a girl student's ambition to be a lawyer. "Why do you have to go to all that trouble? A girl doesn't have to worry-you're all straddling a gold mine."
That night in bed, Eve thought about the remark. Her hand crept down under the covers and found her sex. She reached into the band of her pajamas and caressed the tufted mass of curls. She shivered as a warm feeling stole through her back and legs. It was gold ... bright gleaming gold. She switched on the light and looked down at herself. The glistening mound rose up in a gentle curve below her flat belly. She was proud of that pretty, yellowish mass. No other girl had one like it. She had looked at the others in gym class, in the showers. Even the other blondes were darker down there; none had this lustrous mass to match their hair as she did.
She had heard about harlots all her life; there were more in the Bible than there were in night court. They weren't called harlots anymore ... they were call girls. Could she be one? She frowned, staring up at the ceiling. It felt very strange, planning to be one. From all she had heard, nobody ever actually decided to go into such a business. You just went from bad to worse and sort of descended to it.
A recalcitrant distaste welled up in her. She could not do that. She could not descend into anything. She remembered the day at the pool in the forest ... how the rock had fallen into the water and ravaged her image. The mud in the water oozing over her face and body.
Dirty ... ugly ... hard.
She did not want anyone touching her beauty; she merely wanted them to look at it, as she enjoyed looking at it. But how? Who would pay to do that, and that alone?
She did not want anyone to touch her at all, in any way. If she could only remain, always, as she had been that day in the pool in the woods. A perfect vision. What was touch compared to that? Touch was the rock that spoiled everything.
She began to rub her fingers over her femaleness, dipping into the coral lips and caressing the sensitive folds. A gasp escaped from her lips; her eyes closed and a tight grimace of pleasure stretched her mouth. Her legs stiffened and her back arched as the tingling delight became more intense. What was she doing to herself? Her legs spread out on the mattress; the primitive excitement made her grip her toes as though over an imaginary branch. No such thing as evolution, huh?
As Eve continued to stimulate the bud of womanliness she was increasingly aware of her internal parts stretching with desire. With her other hand, she sought her sex cavern but then drew back, afraid. It began to hurt, she could not enter herself. She would just do this ... up top, where it felt so good and didn't hurt at all. Where there was nothing to shatter or break.
She rubbed harder, using the base of her palm, straining up against the pressure. Suddenly, an explosion of nerve endings spiraled out into her entrails, throbbing into the small of her back and down into her bowels.
The next morning in church, she listened to the preacher read from the Book of Genesis...." and they saw that they were naked, and they were afraid. They covered themselves with fig leaves."
Eve smiled to herself, her head bent low into the prayer book. She knew why they were afraid now. They had done what she had done last night, and the new delight had been so intense as to be awesome and terrible in a lovely way. Eve, the first woman, had felt the very same thing that she herself had felt.
She stirred, frowning. It was the first time in her life that she had ever identified with anyone or anything in the Bible. She was sick of the Bible, had been for a long time. But now, as she listened to the story of Adam and Eve, she felt a pleasant empathy.
Eve had felt that same tingling thrill. Had Adam as well? Was it the same for a man? She gave an internal shrug. What did she care what men felt? She rubbed her hand down her soft thigh; pressed the prayer book close to her body and felt the rounded curves of her breasts. Her body ... her beautiful body. Just like Eve's. Men seemed quite unimportant then. She could only think seriously about someone who looked like her.
She pictured the Garden of Eden, and saw Eve, long hair streaming down her naked back. There was a picture in the children's Bible stories. She reached forward and took it out of the rack at the back of the pew. Her mother glanced at her, approving.
She opened the book and stared at the colored drawing. Yes ... Eve looked just like her. Blonde and naked. She put the book back, smiling as she thought of the strategically placed trees and shrubs that hid the couple's genitals.
The preacher's voice sounded. "....the woman did give me, and I did eat of the fruit."
Eve, the temptress....the naked temptress.
After that, when her parents called her "Evelyn" she was hard put to answer immediately. Already, she thought of herself as Eve. That would be her name when she left home.
That year, one of the girls in her class got pregnant. She decided to stick it out until June, her fifth month. She showed early and grew very fat. Eve stared at her with a kind of pity. How awful to grow fat like that....to have her body become sloppy and undesirable. Yet because she had been desirable once, she was fat now.
What women did with men led to pregnancy, and pregnancy led to fat. Eve shuddered. She did not want that for herself. She did not want anyone except....
Except who?
There was no one except her own body in the darkness, nothing except her own adroit hand giving pleasure.
She had a vague feeling that she should feel guilty. She had heard so much about guilt and contrition and punishment, but it all seemed far removed from her and what she did to herself on those nights alone in her room.
Then, one day in the library, she found an answer in a beautiful story. The book she read was one on Greek mythology. She turned to the story of Narcissus, the handsome boy who stared at his image in the water until, in his delight, he leaned too far over and fell. In the place where he drowned there grew a beautiful flower that was ever afterwards called by his name.
She read it over and over until she knew it by heart. She saw. herself, leaning over and looking into the water. It was right and good and completely sinless. Herself, alone, and her beauty.
A month later, she took three hundred dollars from her father's strongbox and left. She went far away from the town and never saw her parents again.
"All right. We'll take a ten-minute break."
Eve looked up, startled. She had posed mechanically for almost half an hour. The class lingered a moment; the students began putting away their material. Some of them were glancing covertly at her as she stepped down and put on her robe.
Let them look, she thought to herself. That's all they can do.
Eve Banner, at the age of twenty-six, was a virgin.
CHAPTER 2
When Eve went home that evening she paused, as always, on the threshold of her apartment and surveyed the neat, attractively furnished living room.
She was very proud of her home, and of her housekeeping. She did it all herself, each week, and the rooms always shone with cleanliness and care. To her, living in a messy apartment was the same as wearing a dirty dress or an unironed blouse. Her clothes-when she wore them-were perfection, and so was her home. Both were accessories to her body and her beauty.
A jewel must have a perfect setting....
She put down the plastic beach bag that contained the robe she had worn that week at work. It was time to launder it. She had a dozen or more robes and changed them often. They needed it; chalk dust flew in the air in art classrooms, and the acrid smell of turpentine seemed to seep into everything. She was always very careful not to get paint on her robes; on the few occasions when she had, the robe was tossed out. She would not wear anything stained. To her, it was not arty; just sloppy.
The other models had slovenly habits. They looked like slatterns in their grimy wrappers and those damn rubbery thong sandals that sold for thirty-nine cents at a bin in the supermarket. The inner soles always got black from the bare feet that grew quickly dirty on the dusty models' platforms. There was nothing Eve could do about that; her feet got dirty too, and she couldn't very well run out and wash them after every class. Instead, she wore cordovan leather sandals made in Mexico. These she polished every evening. She had two pairs, identical, and continually switched them. She wiped out the part that her feet touched with spray cleaner.
She washed out the nylon tricot robe and hung it carefully on a plastic hanger to dry, pulling out the folds and creases until the garment was perfectly smooth. Then she dampened a cloth and wiped the plastic satchel in which she carried the robe and slippers.
Now....Pleasant anticipation covered her. It was time for dinner. She was very hungry, a common state of being for her. Eve remained on a perpetual semi-diet She warmed some leftover pot roast and cooked a box of frozen asparagus. She could eat the whole box; it wasn't fattening. Instead of butter, she covered the vegetable with vinegar. While the food warmed, she poured herself a glass of Madeira. On rare occasions, she would have a highball, but she worried so about it afterwards that it was not worth it. She made the wine last; she only allowed herself one glass. It would have been a pleasure to drink, if only to get even with her teetotaling parents, but whiskey was fattening.
The warm, shiny kitchen was pleasing to her.
She had a lovely home....She always likened it to the four-pronged, empty ring base she had seen in a jewelers. She had stood outside the window, staring at her reflection in the highly polished store front, when she had noticed the empty ring. Just then, a clerk had reached into the display and removed it. Peering into the store, Eve saw him discussing something with a customer. They were fitting some kind of stone into the ring.
She had furnished the apartment with exquisite and expensive furniture, choosing everything herself. Often, Eve wondered if people were aware of what a high-paying job modeling was. It had to be-so few women were willing to go into it because of modesty. There was always a great shortage of models, and most of the available women were difficult to deal with.
There were two types: the hippie, out to shock; and the near-skids, as Eve called the ex-waitresses and mentally slow types who, a hundred years ago, would have been scullery maids. The latter were tired and defeated; they simply wanted a job in which they got paid well for sitting absolutely still and doing absolutely nothing.
Both types were undependable and often did not show up, due to drug abuse and arrests, in the case of the hippies. The skids invariably attracted the dismal crises to which women of their class were prone-beatings by boy friends, husbands disappearing and returning, evictions, and hangovers. They had little imagination and no knowledge of art, and they couldn't have cared less about the subject. They were all right for painting classes, in which the model had to sit in the same position for an hour. For drawing, requiring quick changes and esthetic sense, they were terrible. Eve had often seen them stumped, at a loss for what to do next. As a result, she had been given all of the drawing students.
She would say one thing for the sad sacks, though; their lumpy, ruined bodies were much more of a challenge to an artist. It was far more difficult to draw them than to draw a perfect, healthy and slender form.
There was only one exception to Eve's observations on other models. That was an old black woman in the university department. She was so black that the painting students had to use purple to get her proper skin tones. She and Eve often received calls from the various private art schools in the city, to fill in for a missing model. Between the two of them, they held the university department together, and made more house calls than a doctor.
So, at a fixed rate of four dollars an hour, and often working more than forty hours a week, Eve had plenty of money.
And it all came from people looking at her body....
She was glad that they didn't use her in the painting classes. Often, they wanted a robed figure. At first, she had sat through a painting class, totally miserable and swathed in filmy muslin and a sun bonnet, covered from head to foot to simulate a Joshua Reynolds paragon of Victorian virtue. She was supposed to be a young mother in Kensington Gardens, and that was the day she almost quit.
To make matters worse, they only paid three dollars an hour for draped subjects.
That particular painting class was full of Wednesday matinee housewives, the sort of whom Edith Wharton said: "They are so afraid of encountering culture that they have to hunt it in packs."
The women, trying to convince themselves that all was right with the world, cooed over Eve's gold-and-blue aristocratic looks. "She's so sweet. She looks as if she's just stepped out of a Botticelli."
Eve took heart at that; at least Venus was bare assed. But as things turned out, the women so cowed the instructor that she ended up with seven hours of Pinky, doing nothing more daring than arranging the streamers on her leghorn bonnet.
Finally, one day when two hippies absented themselves to attend their preliminary hearing, the chairman of the art department approached her, stroking his chin and refusing to meet her eyes.
"Miss Banner, would you mind very much posing in the nude?"
"Why, no! Of course not! I mean-I wouldn't mind."
Eve took a shower after dinner and watched TV for a little while, until she began to notice a feeling of swollen discomfort in her stomach.
Oh, no....
She glanced at the calendar with an air of resignation. Oh, hell! That would mean four days of wearing pants to work. She got up and took a shower, scrubbing herself vigorously until her skin tingled.
Dirty ... ugly ... nasty ... filth, filth, filth!
She didn't mind it for physical reasons because she suffered only a modicum of discomfort. She didn't care about the question of delicacy; the students knew that she was a young woman and she didn't mind their seeing what she had to wear a few days out of each month.
She minded because she would have to be partially clothed.
There was never any question about it. She refused to insert anything inside her body. She could not ... and did not.
Her woman's body was something that sullied her body. She remembered the muddy rock falling off the bank of the pond and making an ugly, disconnected whirlpool out of her reflection. Ugliness was destruction. There was destruction going on inside her body right now; the walls of her womb were breaking down.
She was losing part of herself!
Eve wondered why she did not have pain at these times. She hated it so much that it would have been natural enough for her to fight it, in her mind, so that severe cramps would have resulted. But her job entailed almost perpetual exercise. She supposed all the moving and stretching had helped her.
She arranged the sanitary accoutrements carefully. The belt was new and white; she used a fresh one every month, throwing the other away. She could not bear to put the same one on her body after ... after this!
She lowered it down on her hips until it would be even with the waistband of the bikini pants she wore. At least she could show her stomach; regular pants would have hid that, too.
She wished she could have an operation to stop it all. Stop the ugliness, stop this prison harness that hid her lovely hips. They could remove her uterus and leave her ovaries, so that she would retain the beautifying benefits of her female hormonal secretions. She had looked into the matter, but the shocked doctor had called it "destructive surgery." There was actually a law against it.
How angry he had been with her! He had sputtered, "But menstruation makes you feel like a woman! It's proof of your femininity!"
"I don't need such hideous proof," she answered tersely, hating him. "I already know it. Stuck pigs bleed but don't!"
He had surveyed her with bitter acrimony. "Suppose men went around having themselves castrated?" he challenged.
Eve rose and pulled on her gloves. "I think that would be perfectly lovely."
He never sent her a bill.
She lay in bed, one knee raised, her hand lying lightly on her stomach as though to hide what was going on inside it. A night light burned on the table beside the bed. She always kept it burning, because of the mirrors. What good was it to have all those mirrors if the room were dark?
There were four of them, and they were enormous. They hung on the walls at such a level as to enable Eve to see herself as she lay in bed. The one that hung over the bed reflected the images in the one that was mounted on the opposite wall. She wished she had one in the ceiling, but it entailed too much work. Besides, the three girls who lived upstairs were always dancing.
The first thing she had bought for herself, years ago when she left home, was a big mirror. She had had no chairs to sit on, no bed to sleep in, but she had to have that mirror. Because of the mirrors in her bedroom, she had done what she had done with various men.
She had never permitted intercourse, but she had done everything else. Always, she looked beyond the red, sweating face of her partner and stared into the mirror at their bodies straining on the bed. She liked to watch her legs, so white and slim, wrapping around the thickness of a male. The contrast was so lovely ... that shimmering band of white cutting across that darker, puissant form.
That's all they were to her; masculine forms.
She loved the expression on their faces the first time they saw her naked. They all looked like a calf waiting for the butcher ... pitiful, afraid, fascinated and trapped.
She loved what they invariably said: "God, you're beautiful ... God...." Sometimes, it was as if a needle had gotten stuck on a record, but Eve never tired of it.
She wanted only one thing from them, and that was something they were always willing and eager to give her. She wanted their mouths. Not their bodies, not their roughly probing fingers that might spoil her, but simply their mouths.
At first, she was amazed how easy it was to get what she wanted. After a few of the men told her the same anecdote, she arrived at a conclusion.
They all told her, eventually, more or less the same thing, but one man had put it more bluntly than the rest.
"You're eating pussy, you know that?"
She had laughed. "What do you mean?"
"Well, a man will lay anything that's warm and moving if he's horny enough, but he won't eat every woman that comes along."
It reinforced Eve's already impenetrable phalanx of self-love. She deduced that his attitude was, whether he knew it or not, a relic from what was really a not-too-distant past when only upperclass, well-to-do women had bathrooms and tubs in their homes. A woman who made it into the oral category was therefore superior in every way-the cream of the cream. The earthy compliment made her feel more pristine and desirable than ever.
It also explained that slurping noise that men so often made when she walked past them on the street. In the entire repertoire of male public silliness, that was the one gurgle she had never been quite able to interpret.
It was not difficult to keep her virginity and have fun, too. In the first place, working in a university setting, Eve met a better type of man; refined, more polished-in other words, gentlemen. Such men were not inclined to beat or rape, especially professors who did not have tenure as yet. She made it a point to stick to the Liberal Arts field, since it included the men who were so sensitive she often wondered how they managed to feed themselves without the aid of an eyedropper.
She also picked the ones who were involved in some way with the civil rights movement. Such professors were men of fairness and feeling and inquiring perspective; they were already suffused with white guilt. Eve decided that they may as well have some male guilt to go with it. It was only one short step from one to the other, so her task was very easy.
When she hit them with the fact of her virginity, fairness and consideration poured out of them-after they recovered from the initial shock. She worked mainly on instinct; she did not keep up much with current events but she figured that oppression was oppression whichever way you sliced it, and guilt favored females. The only thing the men forced on her were lectures on mental health. They were scared to death of virgins, she found out. She could understand why-the man who introduced a woman to sex might be responsible for her entire attitude on the subject, ever after, for the rest of her life. They were all fascinated, but nobody seemed to want to bell the cat. One of them had actually said to her: "I wouldn't touch a virgin with a ten-foot pole."
Under the circumstances of his physical endowment, he needn't have worried.
Whenever things got difficult, she could always burst into hysterical tears.
She avoided as a plague the military and sports types. Especially with the former, you could read the meanness on their faces. She picked only men she could handle, and her woman's instinct told her who they were. As she grew older, she picked some students, checking carefully to eliminate the beer-bust fraternity men. Fortunately nowadays, there weren't many of those left anyhow.
One of her lovers, more argumentative than the rest, had accused her of being a man-hater. He began his probe with a Socratic dialogue.
"What do you think of men?"
"I don't think of men," Eve replied.
It was true. She did not hate them; she merely thought it was a little odd that they weren't women. She could not imagine not being a woman. Men seemed like creatures from another planet, a kind of guest in the world. They really ought to have a seat at the U.N.
The barrier reef that loomed between her and the opposite sex was a simple one to her mind: men did not look like her. Their bodies were so different, and, she thought, it was rather sad. She could not understand the Freudian theory of penis envy, but she supposed that since Freud had been a man, he was waving the flag for his side. To Eve, a woman did not lack something; it was the man who had something extra. The male models at work were proof of that. They never posed nude. They couldn't, because it would interfere with the drawings. The male private parts covered some very important muscles in the inner thigh area that students must master, and learn how to draw. The male models had to wear jock straps.
The male parts were, to Eve, a growth. A growth was a goiter. She shivered.
Goiters were ugly.
CHAPTER 3
"Okay, you can take an art course if you want, as long as it doesn't take you away from the house too much."
Vivian Lawler looked at her husband, who had just spoken. How kind of him! The great, domineering male! He had graciously granted her permission to do what she had been doing at the time she met him and started spawning his brats.
"Why darling," she purred, "how sweet of you. I wouldn't dream of letting anything interfere with the great responsibility of helping you feed your face. Don't worry; dinner will be ready per usual-unless I have something better to do."
He slammed down his cuff links on the bureau and whirled to face her. One of the links rolled onto the floor. His thick features collected into an enraged, ursine scowl.
"What the hell is the matter with you lately? Every time I open my mouth you come out with some bitchy crack. You sound just like those goddamn broads in that national man-hater group."
Vivian laughed. "You mean W.I.T.C.H.? Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell."
Timothy Lawler made a snorting sound of disgust.
"Oh, now genteel," his wife commented, wrinkling her nose. "Your catarrh again?"
They eyed each other for a moment in a mettlesome silence. She held his glance until finally, with a look that mingled sheepishness with brutal contempt, he looked away.
She waited; she knew it would come because he knew what he had done to her and he was compelled to make amends in spite of himself.
He spoke again, more softly. "Look, Vivian, I know what's eating you."
"Really? Who?"
He yelled again. "You know, you're developing a filthy mouth, you know that?"
"And do you know," she said slowly, "that you are a Puritan, and always have been?" She tossed her hairbrush aside and attacked him with a shaking voice, hating herself for losing her temper.
"The great crusading editor with political ambitions. Speaking out against X-rated movies and topless dancers, a one-man censorship juggernaut who wants to ride the crest of righteousness that's infected this whole damn area. Anthony Comstock Lawler, the great would-be book burner.
Yes, I have a filthy mouth, and a filthy mind, too. It's a natural reaction after twenty years of bigamy with the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost"
She saw his hand twitch, as though he wanted to ball his fist and strike her. "You know, you're jealous," he said. "Jealous because I'm running for the state legislature and because I'm successful. That's what's wrong with all of you damn women. You're dissatisfied-dissatisfied with what Nature gave you. You're not content to raise your children and keep a nice home. You've got to horn in on men's affairs and run everything."
She regained her temper. "Why don't you hit me with that hammy fist you're flapping?" she asked, glancing at his side. "Then you could write one of those great headlines of yours: Pusillanimous Pugilist Punches Presumptuous Prick-Tease."
He waved her down with a jerky, back-handed gesture of disgust and stalked out of the bedroom. At the door, he turned.
"No wonder the country's in such a mess today, with women turning into W.I.T.C.H.'s and God knows what else. You know what's wrong with you babe? You're going into the change of life," he shouted triumphantly. "You're not a woman anymore. You've turned into a whirling dervish."
"And you, darling, are a spiral agony."
Vivian stood smiling, listening to the door of the den slam shut. Then she shrugged and finished dressing.
She had him good ... oh did she ever! For the first time since her marriage, life was an unobstructed toboggan ride, and she intended to make the most of it. He wouldn't dare stop her, either-he couldn't. As long as she did the honors at his various political dinners, keeping her claws sheathed and playing the loving, devoted wife, she could do whatever she damned pleased.
And she just about had....
They had made a bargain the day her private detective provided her with those letters Tim had written to that woman. They were now in a safety deposit box, the key to which was in her lawyer's possession.
"You want to make it in politics, and I want to have fun," she told him. "Is it a deal?"
He had agreed. After that, Vivian embarked on a series of affairs, and Tim hadn't been able to do a thing about it. The two children-a boy and a girl-were both far away in college. The field was clear.
Swift Spunky Spouse Spites Shithead....
She remembered those letters he had written. They had contained all the four-letter words he had under-lined in a best-selling novel when he had spoken on decent literature before the city council. Tim had followed up the speech-duly reported by one of his own writers in the news section-with an editorial.
"....The author of such a book would make a good guest of honor at a necktie party," he had written.
Vivian brushed her ash-brown hair, admiring its chestnut lights. There was no gray yet, even though she was forty years old last month. Her age didn't Worry her; the heart-shaped face with its huge, luminous brown eyes looked like a girl's. She could match any twenty-year-old in anything.
And she damn well outdistanced them in the sack....
She left the house, hearing the clack of Tim's typewriter from the den as she walked down the hall. Another alliterative masterpiece was cooking under those keys.
She drove to a small, out-of-the-way motel a few miles off the cloverleaf beltline. Next to the motel was a drive-in eatery with a sprawling parking lot. Vivian pulled into it and saw the car she sought. A smile stretched over her mouth as she saw the man in it open the door and get out.
She parked her own car and slid into the seat beside the black-haired, swarthy man. His hair and small, pointed goatee were salted with gray, so that he looked like the original Don Juan-which he was. His name was Louis Jory.
He was also a good lawyer and Keeper of the Key.
"God, I've missed you, Viv," he said softly. "It's been a long time."
"Too long," she murmured. It was true enough. It was two weeks since they had met. It was a good thing she had more than one lover.
They drove immediately out of the lot and into the motel.
"What are you telling the darling little man who runs this place, anyhow?" she asked.
Lou smiled. "That I'm writing a novel and I have to isolate myself from my lively family of six children."
"Oh, come on!" she laughed. "No lawyer would gild the lily like that."
"Course not. I'm not telling him anything. There's an honor among men, you know, darling? They stick together about things like this."
"Yea, verily," she replied drily.
They got out of the car and scurried into the brightly lacquered red door. How apt, she thought, as she glanced at the pulsating crimson.
When they were inside, Lou pulled her to him and clutched the soft twin mounds of her buttocks. He pressed his hips into hers and strained against her, panting. She felt his sex pushing into the top of her thighs, demanding and rock-hard.
Quickly, she pulled away and reached for her zipper. They undressed in a frenzy of heat, their eyes on each other. When they were both naked, she let her eyes trail down to the dark pink cock that stood ready to plow into her.
Lou grinned. "Big enough for you?"
"You must have had to turn sideways to pass the bar."
He came toward her, grinning. "Sarcastic as usual, huh? I'll teach you."
He pushed her down on the bed and knelt over her, holding her hands locked above her head while his mouth came down on her turgid nipples. His lips pinched the stiff peaks until Vivian's back arched up against him, thrusting her breasts into his face. His hips relaxed as he let his erect prick trail through the thick brown mass of her mound, pushing enticingly against her rapidly swelling sex lips.
He barely touched her, but the insistent grazing had its effect. He chuckled softly as he felt her rise and push against him, her whole body a trembling hint of what she wanted him to do to her.
Goddamn him and his triumphant chuckle! Goddamn them all! They all did that; she had never seen it fail. As if they were laughing at a woman for responding. It was enough to make her so mad that she'd never hand out another piece again as long as she lived!
Laughing in victory, because they had "made" you. ... That expression, "make." I made her, they were always saying. It implied that the woman had been taken against her will; that she had no will, even.
Ugly rage soared in her. Oh, damn! Damn, damn, damn! Why do I do this? Why can't I stop? I enjoy it while it's going on, but it doesn't mean anything afterwards. It's like eating dinner....
He ground against her, pushing her legs wide apart. She felt his heavy weight on her thighs as he pressed against her, ramming himself into her body with a hoarse grunt of delight. His eyes were closed and the tendons in his neck stood out like ropes.
Her hot, wet cunt opened under his onslaught and drew him in deeply. Vivian groaned against the impact of his prick and began to clutch the muscles in her buttocks. Her torso wriggled and squirmed as she heaved against him, rubbing like a cat and grasping him with her flailing legs. He moved in deep, hard-thrusting pulls in and out of her, until the bed began to collide rhythmically into the wall.
Suddenly, in the midst of her heat, an eerie sensation of detachment struck her. Ii was as if she were two people, or two halves of the same person-one here, with him, and the other far off, observing the bucking spider of arms and legs on the bed.
What did the English call it? A four-legged frolic. ... That's what it felt like. As though her body had come apart, divided at the waist. On the bed, the lower half of her was a crawling mass of lust and sinuous intensity.
But the upper half. ... The part that contained her heart and her brain. Where was that part of her? One half of her was mindless, gelatinous, capable of nothing except automatic response. She would keep on dividing into halves until there was nothing left of her!
Nothing left! Why was she like that? As much as she liked sex, liked the admiration her body stirred in men, liked the tactile sensations of cuddling up to another warm body-even her husband's, at least in the early days of their marriage, and even those bodies of her two children--liked coming to orgasm, oh she liked that best of all, and who didn't? Still, there were things she hated about sex, and this was one of them-the feeling of becoming helpless, of her body pulling away from her mind and going off into realms of its own.
"You love it, baby, don't you?" Lou panted in the midst of his exertions, in the midst of his pushing and shoving at her like a huge animal. She wasn't sure what sort of an animal he reminded her of-perhaps a pony, or just a huge furry St. Bernard, but some dense thick-pawed creature, incapable of any subtlety of movement.
"Oh ... oh...." she cried.
"I know you love it," Lou said. His voice was low, almost a growl. Perhaps, she thought, he is more like a brown bear....
Still, despite the far-away racing progress of her mind, her body was reacting to his insistent fucking. In and in and in and in....His cock battered her cunt and his big strong muscular legs held her prisoner. His hands were gripping her so hard she couldn't move and when she tried to struggle a little it excited him even more and he writhed with pleasure, squirming and humping all the harder.
"Lou ... Lou ... Lou...." she cried out. She didn't know what she wanted him to say, really, but something. She knew something was missing, lacking. There was something more she wanted out of sex, and something Lou wasn't giving her.
"You are such a sexy bitch," he said. "I love to fuck you!"
She felt herself withdraw even further. Whatever she had wanted to hear, at least in her mind, that wasn't it....She felt worse than before, more split apart, more fragmented, and more alone.
How long had she been feeling this way, she wondered. It wasn't a new feeling and if she'd thought that sex would make it better, she'd been wrong. Sex was making it worse.
Lou grunted and more than ever, he reminded her of an animal. He was so strong ... most men were so much stronger than women ... really, it was frightening, in a way. She was helpless, she was trapped here, under the hot sweating body of a male animal in heat, and she was bound to take any punishment he dished out.
He was beginning to hurt her. His cock was so big and forceful that it was slamming against the very depths of her cunt, ramming against her soft, sensitive walls. When fucking was sc hard as this, she couldn't really enjoy it. Fear mounted in her, instinctive fear, and it blocked out her usual anticipation of climax.
"So good...." Lou moaned.
She was horrified. How could they be so out of synch?
"Are you ready?" Lou asked. "Can you come with me, baby?"
"Ummmmm-" she murmured, to avoid answering. She squirmed, trying to get a bit away from his weight. He was solidly planted in her, their pelvic bones were almost locked together. She felt more helpless than ever, and more alone.
She cried out, staring wide-eyed into the twilight gloom of the unlighted room.
"You feeling it, aren't you, baby?" he panted.
"No., no...."
"Yes! Come on, now! Now!"
Suddenly she felt nothing. Her pulsating sex went numb, and she lost it. The excitement that had almost peaked seconds before now vanished.
He pulled her legs back and churned against her upturned parts; the room was filled with the slapping sound of culminating sex. His teeth were bared ... like a beast's.
He spilled into her, his rhythmic pulls changing into sporadic jerks. In a moment, he was heavy on top of her.
"What's the matter?" he said at last. "You didn't come, did you?"
"No." She sighed and turned away from him. "Mood, I guess."
Again, that confident chuckle. "You women. Moods."
His words isolated her. How alone she felt! Why must he emphasize their difference it a time like this?
He lay quietly for a moment. Vivian could tell that he was getting ready to say something and searching for the right words.
"That never happened to you before, darling. I can't stand to think that I've left a woman unsatisfied."
She squeezed her eyes tightly shut. He couldn't care less whether she enjoyed it or not! It was his reputation as a lover that he cared about.
He pulled her legs apart and sought her entrance with his fingers. "Here-"
"No!"
She sat up, shrinking away from him. "What-?"
"Nothing," she muttered. "Just-don't do that. It's not important. Don't worry about it."
They lay back down. She knew he would want to stay a couple of hours, and make love a second or even a third time. But she couldn't stand it! The room ... it was so dark, and yet it wasn't dark, not outside. It was that depressing time of night impending, more lonely than night itself could ever be.
She felt helpless as the thoughts came to her. The memories came back, as the beginnings of a bad dream attack a helpless sleeper.
Oh, no! Not after twenty years and two grown children!
CHAPTER 4
Later that night, Vivian could not sleep. She lay in the twin bed listening to Tim's snuffling, phlegm-filled snores trying to interpret what had happened to her that evening in the motel. If you understood something, you had it half-licked, so psychiatry said. You might not be able to "cure" it, but it could be coped with if you just brought it out into the open.
But if I think about it and remember it, the last twenty years of my life will have been a stupid waste!
She thought about her other lovers. There were two besides Lou Jory; her former private detective and the man who was running against Tim in the primary next month. She particularly enjoyed sex with the latter, it gave her a great thrill to sleep with her husband's political rival. She often dreamed of ruining them both, preferably on a local TV program the night before election, and then leaving town. If only the children were of age she would do it. She would have to wait just a little bit longer....
But suddenly, being on her own did not seem so appealing as it used to. She was afraid of what it might lead to.
The thought of taking the art course at the university frightened her now, too, although she had been looking forward to it so much.
It frightened her because it would put her in the same position she had been in when the world had been at first a bright dream, and then a lurid nightmare....
It was hard enough to get the money together for college tuition without being an art major to boot. Art majors had to spend more; supplies cost money, especially oil paints and big sheets of canvas. But she had to go; she had to.
Vivian had been drawing long before she set foot in any school at all. The first time she remembered drawing a picture was on a bitter cold day when the radiators had steamed up the windows in the house. She was three yers old. She had climbed up on a chair and drawn a dog with her finger on the window pane.
Creating shapes was so important to her. Once, she carved up her mother's laundry soap, making lions and dogs and rabbits with long pointed ears. Her mother had been upset-soap cost money.
The parents were good people, stolid and slow and puzzled by the dazzling talent evinced by their youngest child and only daughter. She seemed not to belong to the family. The boys were lumbering, good-natured oafs who worked as delivery men and plumbers' assistants. On Saturday nights, they slicked down their hair and put on black shirts and white ties-which they thought were the last word in "class." They went out with girls who wore Evening in Paris, chewed gum, and got pregnant in the first month of marriage.
Her father would carefully wipe his black, mechanic's hands before he picked up her latest drawing and gazed at it, furrowing his brow like a patient dog. He seemed pleased and oddly embarrassed.
"The child can draw," he said reverently.
Her talent became known in the family as "it," as if no one dared become too familiar with such a magical, lofty thing.
"I don't know where she gets it....She doesn't get it from my side....it's a wonderful thing, isn't it?"
Even state university costs required a sacrifice but somehow the money was saved, borrowed, and worked overtime for until there was enough. There was no question of going to a private school; the university had to do.
Vivian arrived at school. Clothes didn't matter; she wore smocks to art classes, cut down from her mother's old dresses. As for the other classes, they didn't matter at all. She just had to take them to satisfy the school, and she didn't care how she looked in them. She didn't even buy the textbooks for English and history and science, getting by on her lecture notes alone and spending the book money on tablets and charcoal pencils. Vivian got a part-time job as telephone girl at the dormitory desk which provided her with a free room.
Art was everything. She did not date, or care about it. She did not compare herself to the other girls. They were well-dressed in sweaters, pearls and high heels but she did not notice their sleekness or her own perpetual grubbiness. Her fingers were always smudged with charcoal, and sometimes her face as well. Other students occasionally laughed at her as some kind of campus oddity or grind, but she didn't care. After a while, her dreamy indifference caused them to leave her alone.
Then one day in the campus coffee shop as she lunched on toast and coffee, someone came in who made Vivian painfully conscious of her blackened fingers and smeared sleeves.
It was an older girl, a woman, in a crisp, starched white lab coat. She had short dark red hair clipped close at the neck and a bridge of freckles across her patrician nose. The freckles lent insouciance to an otherwise remote, lofty face.
Vivian stared, not knowing why she was doing so. Suddenly she thought of her father and brothers, and their perpetually dirty hands, with black half-moons under the fingernails. Automatically, she hid her own similar ones in her lap and twisted the napkin in sudden agony.
The woman, with her redhead's pale skin, looked as if she had just been scrubbed. Her nose was shiny and unpowdered, and the lab coat was expertly laundered; there wasn't a crease in the long expanse of glistening white.
How different she was from Pop and the boys!
The woman, by contrast, seemed to remove the whole painful past of grease and poverty from Vivian's mind. She represented the polar opposite of the thing that Vivian feared most-the trap of babies and domestic monotony that had captured her parents and her brothers.
It was crowded in the coffee shop. The woman stepped up to the cashier, handed her some change, and stood looking about for an empty table as she held a cup of coffee and a doughnut.
Her eyes met the wide-staring gaze of the younger girl. They smiled tentatively at each other; Vivian nodded to the chair beside her. It was piled with a portfolio and a box of paints which she hastened to move.
The woman approached, smiling. "May I join you? It's packed at this time of day." She glanced over the assembled students and wrinkled her nose as she saw a group of crew-cut frat boys laughing raucously at a nearby table.
"The draft beer and double entendre set has vacated the premises," she added dryly.
Vivian laughed. It was the perfect description for the type of students who had made fun of her at the beginning of the year.
The woman sat down, apparently appreciative of the response to her quip. She smiled across at Vivian as she stirred her coffee, then glanced at the things the younger girl was piling on the floor.
"You look like an art major. They're always loaded down."
"Yes, I am. And we are, always." Vivian's voice caught hoarsely and she cleared her throat, blushing.
"My name's Louise Fuller. What's yours?" Vivian told her. "What do you do? Are you a science major?" She nodded at the white coat. "I was. I'm in first-year med now."
"Oh...." Vivian's voice was filled with awe. The woman seemed more capable and efficient than ever to her now. She was at a loss for something to say for a moment, then she nodded once again at the coat.
"I love that," she said quickly. "It looks so ... so clean and sharp. It-it fits you." She realized the obvious misinterpretation and hurried to explain her intended meaning. "I mean it suits you."
Louise smiled, nodding in a tactful way. "Thank you. They keep me clean, at any rate."
She tilted her head and surveyed Vivian. "That's one of your problems, too, isn't it? Would you like me to get you a lab coat? They'd make good coveralls for a painter."
For a second, Vivian wanted to cry. It was somehow so touching. For a horrible instant, she thought the tears would come.
"Oh ... would you? I could use it."
"I'll bring it around to your dorm. Where do you live?"
"Harper Hall."
Louise's face darkened, and a look of fear came into her slate-blue eyes. "Old lady Webster's domain, hm? She's a prince among housemothers, as I recall."
"Oh, she's awful, but I don't have any trouble with her because I never go out. She has a hate going for all the girls who date a lot, but...." Vivian laughed nervously and shrugged.
Louise raised a thick, cinnamon-colored eyebrow. "Oh? You don't date?"
"No. I-I don't know why. I just don't want to.
Besides, nobody's asked me anyhow, so...." She shrugged again.
Louise held her glance for an instant, her eyes narrowing. Then she looked away quickly, noticing the portfolio once more.
"Would you mind showing me some of your drawings? Or paintings?"
"Drawings," Vivian said. "The paintings are tacked onto frames. We have to leave those at the studio."
She untied the tapes and picked out her favorite pieces of work. All were nude female models. She watched Louise's face flicker as she looked at them.
"Why, they're lovely. You're good, you know that?"
Vivian warmed to the compliment. It was sincere but casual, lacking the awesome wonder of her parents' appraisals. The feeling she had always had in the family circle, that she was a changeling, different from the rest of them, vanished now. She felt comfortable and equal to the woman who had spoken. Suddenly, she was ashamed of her family's ignorance and low-class origins. How far above them this ... this doctor seemed.
Louise handed back the sketches and drained her coffee, looking apprehensively at her watch. It was a man's, with a thick black leather strap.
"I have to go watch an autopsy, of all things," she said, rising. "I'll bring the coat around to your room tomorrow afternoon. Is that all right?"
They verified a time, and she left.
Vivian stared after her retreating figure, watching the full womanly hips undulate beneath the starched material. The contrast of softness under stiffness fascinated her.
The next afternoon, she brushed her hair vigorously and scrubbed her face until it tingled. She wished she had some perfume, and then stopped, towel held motionless to her cheek for a moment as she wondered why She contented herself with an application of seldom-used lipstick and then began to pace the floor. It seemed somehow like a familiar ritual, but she did not know why it should.
Then it came to her.
This was the way the other girls in the dorm behaved when they were getting ready for dates. Primping in the mirror, and then the nervous waiting....
Fear washed over her, and with it came a delicious sensation, a chill, as though someone had blown softly into her ear.
She jumped at the knock on the door. She stood paralyzed for a moment, then went to open it.
Louise walked in, smiling. She wore a gray skirt and white blouse. Over her arm was the folded coat in a cellophane wrapper from the campus laundry.
"Here you are. Wear it in good health," she said, handing Vivian the package.
Eagerly, Vivian opened the wrapper and slipped the coat on. She admired herself in the mirror with shining eyes, catching the reflection of Louise's pleased face behind her.
"Thank you ... very much. How-how much do I owe you?"
Louise made a deprecating gesture. "Forget it. I have plenty of them. I insist. It's a gift."
Vivian was pleasantly embarrassed for a moment, then nodded her assent. "Thank you." She hesitated, then opened the bureau drawer.
"I got us some wine," she said, carefully removing the bottle. She had spent two dollars on it, and bought two pretty glasses at the dime store. She had exactly five dollars to eat on for the rest of the week.
A look of compassion and tenderness sprang into Louise's eyes. "Wonderful, I'd love some."
"I'm sorry it's not cold."
"That's okay."
They were silent and stiff as they took the first ceremonious sip. Something awkward seemed to capture them both. As though to break the silence, Louise reached over and patted Vivian's arm. She let her palm rest there for an overlong moment, then drew away.
"It's fun to drink under Mother Webster's roof, isn't it?" Louise said with a short laugh. "I used to do it when I lived here."
"-did you?" Vivian said, her voice cracking.
They stared at each other for a moment, then Louise leaned forward, her eyes bright.
"You're such a sweet little thing, you know that?"
Vivian shook as the bridge of freckles grew closer, until she could no longer see them. Her eyes closed; then she tasted the sweetish wine from Louise's opened lips.
"Oh, no...." Louise muttered against her mouth. "Oh, no-not again."
But Vivian stopped the words with a fierce kiss. She moaned with release, a harsh whining sound like a spring that has been suddenly released. Her tongue shot into the woman's mouth and moved in frantic search.
Louise held back for a moment, then put her glass down on the bedside table. She reached for the other one in Vivian's fingers and took it away.
"Wait! My coat!" Vivian cried, struggling out of the woman's arms. The gift was precious, an extension of Louise; she could not muss it. Quickly, she took it off and hung it carefully over the back of the closet door. When she looked back, Louise was stepping out of her skirt.
They stood naked, staring at each other. For a brief instant, Vivian's eye automatically saw light and shadow, line and color, then it all merged into sumptuous white flesh. She sprang forward.
"Lock the door," Louise whispered. Vivian obeyed as Louise reached out and closed the blinds. The room was gray with late winter afternoon as the remaining light fought vainly against the gathering shadows.
They fell down on the bed, their legs entwining like writhing snakes. A firm, insistent knee pressed into the apex of Vivian's thighs.
"You're wet," Louise whispered, her mouth curving into a smile as her eyes closed. She pushed her thigh into the downy valley, moaning softly.
Then Vivian felt herself being forced on her back as Louise's mouth and fingers began to do things to her, shocking, delicious things that she had never dreamed could feel as they did. Her nipples were tweaked and sucked until they stood up like the erasers on a pencil. She felt them, stiff and tingling, red and hard like unripe berries.
There was a swishing sound as Louise moved down the mattress. Her tongue dipped into Vivian's navel and pressed hard, swabbing rhythmically until the excitment spiraled out into her entrails. It was as though the tongue had incised her stomach.
The long, capable fingers that she had stared at when they had been curved about the stem of the wine glass now found their way to the soft flesh of her inner thigh. Louise stroked her, moving closer and closer to the swollen lips of her intimate parts.
Vivian's hips began to move in swiveling circles, rising off the bed, reaching for the hand that was so tantalizingly close.
"Yes ... I know," Louise murmured against her belly.
The fingers dipped into the womanliness and drew a path of shimmering delight through the cloven flesh. Vivian's whole body jerked with unbearable pleasure.
"Oh, right there," she moaned. "Up top ... there."
"I know where," Louise said in a husky whisper. "I won't go inside you-I don't need to, do I? Just right here...."
She touched the erect clitoris, pressing it back into its hooded nest, then revolving the pad of her finger over it in rhythmic swirlings. "The big girl's little prick," Louise said, laughing softly. "That's where it feels good, isn't it?"
She continued the languid manipulation until Vivian's body was heaving violently on the bed and her head tossing from side to side as she groaned out her pleasure.
"Now...." Louise murmured.
Her mouth moved down. She licked the trembling legs, then moved to the crease that was the juncture of thigh and torso. Finally, her tongue touched the weeping coral lips.
"Oh! Oh, my God!"
Vivian twisted; her legs stiffened as she thrust her body up to meet the exploring lingual caress. She felt as though she had been bisected by a live wire. She began to pump vigorously as a wave of current burned through her. The tongue was barely touching her, and yet it was driving her mad.
Then it happened. It felt as though the small of her back had caved in and her hips had turned to jelly.
She jerked and shivered, pressing her knuckles into her mouth to stifle her moans of pleasure. But her violent movements of completion could not escape the insistent mouth. Louise held her thighs tightly, her arms locked about them as her lips clung to the throbbing cunt until Vivian at last collapsed in a tremor.
They lay like that for several minutes. Finally, Louise rose slowly and pressed her wet mouth into Vivian's waist. Her breasts trailed against the girl's stomach, warm cones whose hard tips Vivian savored as they brushed against her flesh.
She struggled up and grasped the peaks in her hands. "Now you," she whispered. "Let me do it to you."
"You don't have to," Louise murmured, her voice weak and tremulous.
"But I want to! Don't you want me to?"
"Yes. Oh, God, yes!"
She rolled to her back and stretched her arms above her head. Her mouth curved into a reluctant grimace of oncoming delight as Vivian rose over her.
They became lovers after that. The only thing that marred their happiness was the tense feeling of insecurity at the idea of being in a dormitory.
Louise was the nervous one. "I lived in Harper Hall as an undergraduate, and I know old lady Webster only too well. She-"
She broke off and looked away for a moment "There was a girl in my sophomore year," she went on more quietly. "She's the one who brought me out into lesbianism. She kind of looked the part.
Not mannish, just boyish," Louise said with a slight smile of reminiscence.
Vivian knew a pang of jealousy which she forced away.
"What happened? Did Webster catch you?"
Louise shook her head. "No, but she suspected. I know she did. She had no reason to; we were very careful. It was just a shot in the dark, but Webster's very good at that sort of thing. The ... other girl was a tomboyish phys ed major, so of course Webster, with her foul and ready mind, assumed that she was gay. Even the Websters of this world are occasionally right, you know," she finished wryly.
As time went on, Vivian noticed that Louise had an unreasoning fear and hatred for the housemother.
"But she likes me," Vivian reassured. "Because I'm always in my room."
"Yes, darling, but if she only knew what you do when you're in your room."
"Well, she thinks I'm studying ... drawing. She approves of drawing," Vivian said, a little helplessly.
"Um-hm," Louise grunted sarcastically. "Based on the theory that no girl was ever seduced by a pencil-though some of them have undoubtedly tried to make do with one when nothing better was available."
"Well, I helped things along the other day," Vivian said. "Her daughter brought the grandchildren around and I sketched the little boy. She's going to frame it. She thinks I'm the greatest thing since night baseball."
"You see? It's starting already," Louise said with disgust, shaking her head.
"What's starting?'
"The process. Girls come Here as freshmen with fairly decent characters, and then they spend four years conning and outwitting the housemothers. They graduate as cunning, deceitful liars. Oh, I don't mean to belittle your drawing of the kid. That's just a thoughtful kind of thing to do for somebody under ordinary conditions, and under ordinary conditions you'd do it in that spirit, I know. What irritates me is that people like Webster make you do nice things for ulterior motives."
Vivian considered this. "I guess, in the back of my mind, I was thinking it would put me on the good side of her."
"Exactly. You see what I mean?"
Vivian frowned. "Why does this subject upset you so?"
"Because the world is full of Websters; they're in the majority, and they hold an awful lot of lives in the palm of their holier-than-thou hands. She's the kind of person who ends up on a jury, you know? This is scary when you're someone who goes against the grain of society-like us, or some other kind of rebel."
"How do they end up on juries?" Vivian asked.
"Because they love to judge people, so they don't try to weasel out of jury duty," Louise sighed. "They're also the only people I've ever met who brag about how dumb they are. Ever notice how she's always saying that she never went beyond high school? And the way she smirks when she says it? How would you like to be judged by somebody who's proud of his ignorance?"
"I guess I know the type you're talking about," Vivian grinned. "There's the story of the lady who went to buy a print of the "Blue Boy" for her grand daughter's room and asked if it came in pink."
"Amen. We understand each other."
Louise posed for her in the nude one day, right after they finished making love.
"It's still damp," Vivian said, pointing to the dark tuft of love hair.
"I can't imagine why."
Vivian looked at the curly triangle. It was a deep brown; out of range of a light, it looked black.
"You're a redhead, but you're dark down there. I wonder why?"
Louise laughed. "That's because it's always darker than the hair on your head-no sun ever gets to it to lighten it." She pointed to herself. "This is the true color of a person's hair. The hair on your head has been bleached by natural causes."
As the year passed, a change came over Vivian. For the first time in her life, she felt a sense of belonging. She had never really belonged to her family; she had been the different one among them for so long. Now, she felt akin to the world she had entered-the world of homosexual women.
She had her hair cut very short, and took to wearing long-sleeved tailored blouses. She had her high school ring made smaller and wore it on her little finger.
Louise noticed the difference and was disturbed by it. "What's with you? Why advertise it? It's not like winning your Brownie pin, you know."
"Your hair is short," Vivian countered.
"It's not shingled. When sure you getting the other things?"
"What other things?"
"The lesbian lunchbox, thermos bottle, book bag, lapel button-oh, and don't forget to learn the secret handshake." Louise spread her palms in a gesture of supplication. "Must you beat the drums?"
"Why not?" Vivian wanted to know. "Why don't you?"
"Because I'm a person who happens to be a homosexual, not a homosexual who happens to be a person. This life is not an isolated cult. There are other parts of me-my work, for example. One of these days I'll be a doctor who happens to be a homosexual. First things first. People who think they're born to screw are also born to lose."
The conversation bothered Vivian. Lately, her interest in art, which she thought nothing could replace, had lessened. Not entirely by any means, but the old intense fire had been banked a little.
One evening near the end of the year they were in Vivian's room. The night was balmy; a sugary smell came through the windows from the new leaves and fresh grass outside.
Vivian rubbed her hand over the full hips as Louise lay stretched out on her stomach. At the touch, the older girl wriggled lazily and moaned.
"You're on my favorite erogenous zone," she murmured.
Vivian continued the caress, tracing the division of the creamy buttocks with her finger. She inserted it into the plump valley and savored the hot skin. Louise's legs opened and spread wide, urging the touch into probing intensity. Her hands gripped the bed spokes as she rose on her knees and jutted her hips in the air.
"Yes. Do it. Go ahead."
Breathing hard, Vivian knelt between the widespread thighs and entered the hot, tight cunt. She felt the clutch of Louise's body as it locked about the invader.
Just then there was a loud knock at the door, an angry pounding that made them freeze in terror, unable to move. What followed was a farrago of shock, panic and hysteria. The housemother's face was a mixture of glee and revenge. A girl in the hall looked into the room for a second and clapped her hand over her mouth.
CHAPTER 5
The Dean of Women surveyed them in confusion for a moment before she folded her hands over her blotter and took on an official air.
"I have decided on what I hope is the fairest thing I can do under the circumstances," she began. "As you no doubt know, Mrs. Webster is hysterical and has told everyone of this situation, thereby making it impossible for you to remain on the campus. If that hadn't happened, I think we probably could have arranged something that would have allowed you both to remain in school."
She looked rather disgusted, Vivian thought. The Dean was young, married, and well-trained; she had a doctorate in clinical psychology. Her impatience with unglued housemothers was not successfully concealed.
The Dean picked up two transcripts and studied them with a rather sad air. "You're both excellent students," she sighed. "You'll have no trouble transfering to another institution, and I have written letters of recommendation for you both."
She handed them an envelope apiece. "There will be nothing on record to suggest an expulsion," she said. "The one thing I can't in conscience do is to recommend you for security clearances, and I'll tell you that right now. However, that's rather far-flung, with your respective career aims. Just don't ever work for the government. Since it's so close to the end of the school year, you may remain in class for the next two weeks. I have found rooms for you both in the town with married faculty members whom you will find congenial, I'm sure. Vivian, you may exchange services as a babysitter for your rent if necessary."
Vivian did not see Louise alone after that day. The older girl refused to have anything to do with her. She was not angry; she was simply crushed and shocked.
Their last conversation occurred in the hallway after the Dean had dismissed them.
"It's no good, this life, no good," Louise whispered, shaking her head. "Look what's happened already! Imagine a whole life like this. Afraid, stealthy, sneaking around-"
"You don't want to get married, do you?" Vivian cried. The thought of Louise with a man was hideous to her.
"No, I just want my work. I want to be a doctor. To hell with everything else!"
She rushed away. Vivian watched her hurry through the door. She was gone. Louise was gone....the only person who had ever made her feel that she belonged.
They caught glimpses of each other on campus during that final two weeks. Each time, Louise locked away, her face unbearably sad.
Vivian moved woodenly through exams, miserable and full of self-hatred. It had been her fault. Why hadn't she locked the door? She had, all those other times. Why...?
Had she secretly wanted to be found out? She thought about the changes in herself that had upset Louise-the haircut, the shirts, the ring. Had she been advertising herself? Had she wanted people to know? Lesbianism had become her identity; what good was an identity if people were not aware of it? Had her mind been working, unconsciously, in that direction?
She thought she had locked the door; she could swear she had. Yet obviously, she had not.
She was miserable without Louise, and more miserable in her guilt. It was her fault. Louise's career had been hurt, and it was her fault....
What would she tell her parents? She would have to tell them something. She could not come back to State, and there was no money to go to a private school. Her own career was finished, and her parents had worked so hard and sacrificed so much to keep her in school.
She could not bear to face them. When school ended, she wrote and told them she was not returning in the fall, nor would she come home. She went to San Francisco and got a dull job in an office, which she quickly came to hate. Sometimes, she sent for art school catalogs, read them, and thought vaguely about going back....someday.
But art school would be a reward, a pleasure, and she did not deserve such things. Everything that had happened was her fault, and she had to punish herself. She did not draw; she threw out, eventually, the work she had brought away from school.
Her identity as an artist was gone; she hated the meaningless job she had. There was only one identity left.
There were plenty of gay bars, and she found them. Each Saturday night she went to one, and she never returned home alone. The bars were always packed full of people who had done the same thing she had done, the thing that had gotten her and Louise thrown out of school. She did not feel guilty when she was in the bars.
After while, she began going to the bars on week nights as well. By the time she had been in San Francisco for a year, she was going every night. She spent all her money on two things-her bar bill and boys' clothes. Vivian was tall, slender and young; she could wear pants made for a teenage boy, and wear them very well. She kept her hair short and became a butch. She was feminine in spirit, but being a butch was more of an identity because there was more of a noticeable external look about it. Louise was gone, art was gone, her family was gone; she had to attach herself to something, so she chose flagrant dykehood.
The weekend hangover became the daily hangover. She found that she could not stop drinking. Human nature reacts to guilt in a perverse way. Instead of saying: I was bad; I will be good, she said: I was bad; I will be worse.
One day, without having slept at all the night before, she went to work still drunk. She was fired on the spot. She took an odd pleasure from the disaster; it proved to her that she was as bad as she had intended to be.
The shortly pressing problem was money. She wanted to be broke, to do without, to live in a dumpy room. It all seemed somehow right and actually appealing. She had fleeting daydreams about Spartan surroundings, imagining a monk's cell for herself. There was pleasure to be gained from the idea of not owning anything: a barren external life symbolized a barren emotional life. If there were nothing and no one around, there would be nothing and no one to hurt.
She took on an almost hypnotic interest in the dried beans at the grocery store. They were terribly cheap; what poor people ate. Another fleeting fantasy-pleasurable, agreeable, even exciting-of herself, cooking those beans on a hot plate.
It was all punishment-exactly what she wanted.
The idea of part-time work had its charms. In the first place, she would have more free time-in which to do nothing. Secondly, it would mean less money. She did not consciously think of these things beforehand; rather, she experienced them after the fact. She gained a sense of uselessness from the first and deprivation from ;he second.
The job happened to be on a newspaper. She went to the personnel office with a typing job in mind, but when they saw that she had had a year as an art major, they sent her to the art department. She worked twenty hours a week doing simple page layout for the society department.
Her hair began to grow long again for the simple reason that she could not afford to have it cut. As she began to look more feminine she attracted the attention of a young sports writer named Timothy Lawler, who began to take her with him to various ball games.
He had a square, unyielding face, an Irish Agrippa. His outlook was Draconian in the extreme. He was ready to re-shape the country according to the eternal truths, the Ten Commandments, and Edgar Guest. At the first game they attended together, Timothy caused a scene by pulling to his feet a man who remained seated during the singing of "God Bless America."
He began a great many of his sentences with the phrase: "If it were up to me...."
If it had been up to Timothy, he would have: put picketers in detention camps, cancelled Social Security, outlawed labor unions, cut off immigration, impeached Earl Warren, armed everybody who agreed with him and investigated everyone who did not.
When Vivian married him, it was a form of punishment-exactly what she wanted Now, twenty years later, she lay awake listening to him snore. Vivian now knew a number of things she hadn't known then. At the time of their marriage, she had been just this side of a pitiful waif and therefore no threat to him. Now, coiffed, well-dressed, sophisticated and possessing the allure that only a woman of forty can have, she was a threat, and had been for several years.
She knew, too, what was the matter with herself. When a woman hits the forties she begins to get an eleventh-hour urge. She becomes either a sexpot or a culture-vulture. Vivian had had a go-around with the former, and was now going into the latter. The thought of studying art again should have been satisfying and exciting to her. Indeed, it had been until tonight.
Why did she have to remember Louise and her past now, after all this time?
She tossed restlessly. Art in her mind, was all tied up with lesbianism and guilt. She was afraid that in taking up the one, she might also take up the other, too.
Maybe, she thought, that's what was wrong in the motel tonight. How depressed and frightened she had become in the dusk-darkened room-it had been just the same time of day when she first slept with Louise. That, plus the knowledge that she would start her art classes tomorrow, had reminded her of too much.
CHAPTER 6
The hallway resounded with banging locker doors. Vivian opened her own, put away her coat and the new box of oils she had just bought at the student supply store, then picked up her drawing tablet. She glanced at her schedule card, found the classroom number, and walked down the hall to the room.
A pang of nostalgia struck her as she smelled the turpentine and saw the model's platform. It was all just as she remembered it. Her fears of the previous night vanished and she felt very young and happy all of a sudden. Several of the people in the class were her age or older, she noticed. She opened her tablet to a clean page and attached it to the stand with a clothespin. There was a tall stool at her place and she sat down, adjusting herself to the height and hooking her heels over the rungs.
The professor walked in. Vivian stiffened a little. He was wearing a white lab coat. She looked down at her smock and tightened her lips. It was one of her old maternity coats, saved for God knows what reason. Hatred and frustration welled so strongly in her that she wanted to scream. At that moment, she would have gladly sliced up her husband with a palette knife. Why did I get married, why! If I only had it to do over....Oh, how I hate him.
The professor's lab coat was motley with paint. It offended Vivian to see it like that. It should be white, gleaming white. Virginal....
She remembered the crisp, freshly laundered coat that Louise had given her that day; the glissading sound of her hand brushing down the starched material was clear to her now, after all these years. That coat-it was such a symbol to her. Of purity and girlhood and the shimmering newness and strangeness of love. The crusty splashes on the professor's coat reminded her of what the nurse had wrapped up and thrown a way in the delivery room.
For an instant, she thought of buying another lab coat for herself but the idea brought her close to a wracking sob. You can't bring it back with a coat....
Wherever you are, Louise, I hope you got a medical school, she thought tiredly. A shuddering sigh passed through her; the student next to her regarded her curiously.
Just then, Eve Banner made her grand entrance, her trailing robe sweeping behind her.
In one glance, Vivian took in the gleaming blonde hair, the proud tilt of the head on the elegantly long neck, and the sinuous walk. The model stepped daintily around the splotches of paint on the floor, looking as though she fully expected someone to cover them with a cloak and kneel at her feet.
And she's so beautiful, Vivian thought. She was amazed at herself and her reaction, and she made an effort to intellectualize it at once. There was nothing sexual about it, Vivian told herself. The woman was beautiful. Her body was perfect-she could have modeled for a Greek statue-a Classical Greek marble statue of Venus, even.
As an artist, Vivian told herself, and as a sensitive person with an artistically appreciative eye, she could see that the woman was beautiful and could appreciate it as such.
Really, she was surprised that a small art class in a small school such as this had attracted such a high-calibre model. Whatever she was being paid, this woman was worth it, and more. She could be making a lot of money modeling for a photographer, Vivian thought. Not that she knew anything about the photography business, and maybe the woman wasn't interested in money. Maybe she was a student, dedicated to her own work and only did this for a few hours a week--perhaps, Vivian thought, she was a medical student. For some reason, seeing her had reminded Vivian of Louise, her old college friend, though there was no physical resemblance to speak of. It was because she had thought of Louise last night, of course. That was why.
And still ... Something nagged at Vivian's mind. She started. All this time she had been staring at the model, unable to put pencil to paper. She flushed. Had anyone else noticed? She looked around. All the other students were scratching at their pads and raising and lowering their heads to fix the model's qualities in their minds.
I wonder if she's a regular model for this class, Vivian thought.
"We'll start with a five-minute sketch," the i professor said.
Eve untied the belt of her robe and carefully draped the garment over a chair. Her perfect breasts, cone-shaped and jutting forward with no suggestion of rounded undersides, quivered as she stepped onto the platform.
My God, thought Vivian, she could pass the pencil test....
A column run by Tim's insipid woman's editor had promulgated the pre-requisite trial-by-tit for J women who wanted to indulge in the new no-bra look. "Place a pencil under the breasts. If it falls you're eligible, but if you can hold it there, keep j buying bras."
The woman's editor, Vivian thought darkly, could hold it there and edit copy with it.
She watched as the model found her pose, shifting her perky bottom around on the wooden captain's chair until it had apparently settled where she wanted it to settle. Then, to Vivian's amazement, she bent her knee, lifted it high, and draped it over the arm of the chair like a student flopping down to read an assignment.
The pose exposed a veritable throughway of genitalia that was aimed straight at Vivian. She swallowed, unable to keep from staring. Next to her, a boy with glasses was gripping a pencil so tightly that his knuckles showed white. Vivian stared at him. He was obviously a freshman, and even more obviously distracted. She saw that he was trembling.
She couldn't much blame him; she had never seen a model do such a thing. But it was a terrific pose, artistically. The girl had knees and elbows jutting out in all directions, it seemed. There was plenty to draw; the angles and shadows were challenging.
She began.
But where she began was another matter.
The succulent, spread thighs appeared on her tablet first. The pencil was like a sex organ as it began just above the knees and traveled up into that juncture between the soft flesh.
Vivian stopped, looked at what she had done, then quickly turned to a new page. Now, her own hands were shaking. How could she forget to block the figure in first-the entire figure? She hadn't forgotten that much about drawing....
She looked up at the platform and straight into the open pink lips and blonde fuzz. A pulse began beating in her throat. She rememered Louise's words: It's always darker than the hair on your head." In this case, Louise was dead wrong.
She drew quickly, distractedly, and was not finished when the pose was called. Another five-minute sketch was ordered, and she watched the model shift position.
Oh, no ... She wouldn't. But she did.
The girl put one knee in the seat of the chair, balanced herself on the arm with her hands, and raised her other leg until her foot was touching her neck. A pair of very round, very white and very separated buttocks lined with more of the same blonde fuzz appeared before Vivian's line of vision.
Again, a beautiful pose, and the girl held perfectly still throughout what must have been extreme discomfort. A wonderful pose.
Then why am I shocked and fascinated?
Suddenly, Vivian's chemistry answered the question for her. As she looked into the billowing twin globes her mouth actually began to water. She saw not an artist's task but a banquet before her.
The bespeckled boy beside her was drawing the creamy hills and nothing else. There were no legs, no arms, no trunk, in his drawing. Just huge, detached buttocks. Vivian felt a surge of contempt for him, then realized that she was projecting her own helpless lechery onto him. It was obvious that he was already over-supplied.
Vivian stiffened as the professor drew near. She watched him ease his way behind the hapless boy, who now trembled more than ever at the man's approach. The teacher bent down and whispered to him, but it was loud enough for Vivian to catch.
"Proctology hath its charms, Prentiss, but the lady hath appendages."
The boy nearly dropped his pencil case when the time was called once more. "Let's have a two-minute series, Miss Banner."
The man glanced casually at Vivian's board, apparently satisfied or at least not displeased, and walked on. What would the girl do next, she wondered? She would not have been surprised had Eve stood on her head.
Which is exactly what she did.
Effortlessly. The legs wrapped about one another as a pigtail. At least, thought Vivian, she's got them together for a change. She hated to think what would have happened to a more pendulous pair of breasts in an upside-down position. But the model's looked the same as they had before. No wonder they were firm-the girl was an acrobat.
The rest of the session was a dazzling tour de force on Eve's part. Vivian drew frantically, trying to ignore the amber triangle to which her eyes were helplessly drawn. She kept telling herself, the female genitals do not exist for the artist. There is nothing to see, nothing to look at. They form a natural sloping line between the stomach and the legs. They do not obtrude.
But they did. At last, when the break was announced, she put down her charcoal with an unsteady hand. In the hall, she went to the water fountain and drank deeply. She felt as though she had chalk dust in her throat. She was sweating in spite of the cold day. She told herself it was because the room had to be overheated for the sake of the model. All life classes had to be well-heated-she told herself. , Her nose felt shiny. She took out her compact and powdered it. Suddenly, there were two faces in the mirror; her own and Eve Banner's.
CHAPTER 7
Eve had gotten to the point of being a virtual mind-reader of art students. She had noticed the new student, the older woman next to the luckless Prentiss. As she put on her robe she smiled. The woman had rushed out of the class as though it had been raided the moment the break had been given. Eve had seen the agitation on her face, especially during the first pose. A churning excitement covered her.
This was something new....
The revealing positions had been for Prentiss's benefit. Not that she wanted to seduce him-he was rather ghastly looking. She did it because she enjoyed pitting the boy's lust against that of the instructor, who constantly projected his own selfrage against the student. If there were one thing more enjoyable than making one man miserable it was making two men miserable.
But she had not bargained on the woman standing next to Prentiss, who obviously had enjoyed the gynecological exhibition as much as he had.
Yes, this was something new....
Her smile broadened as she walked out into the hall and sought the woman amid the crowd of coffee-drinking students.
Suddenly, Eve stopped and stared'.
She was beside the water fountain, looking with a mixture of pique and vanity, into a mirror.
She was slender and youthful, though she must be fortyish. Her hips were narrow but feminine, and the soft roundness in the back, where her flesh had bounced as she left the classroom, proved that she wore no girdle.
Eve looked at the dark smooth hair. It was thick and fluffed out at the crown and came forward in fishhook curls under her chin. As she powdered her nose, she held her purse over her arm.
Eve felt herself being drawn forward to meet the woman. Her legs moved stiffly as she came up behind the turned figure.
As she approached, the woman whirled about.
"Hello," Eve murmured. As soon as she had spoken and heard her uncertain, nervous voice she knew that for some reason, her cool, aloof demeanor had collapsed.
The woman smiled warmly; it was reassuring. Eve was angry that she needed reassurance. "I wanted to tell you what a wonderful model you are.
"Thank you." Eve found herself standing on one foot, like a child....
"That's such a pretty compact," she said slowly. "You use loose powder?" she asked, surprised.
Vivian nodded, then said with some wryness, "In my day, that's whet we had, and I've never gotten out of the habit. It's not so hard-you don't spill much when you're filling it."
"Well," Eve went on, "It certainly gives you a chance to own a nice compact-a real one, not these plastic things."
Vivian held the compact out to her. On it was a Fraggonard scene of milkmaids and foppish young men in knee breeches.
"It's ... so pretty," Eve said, swallowing. She felt a perfect fool, a tongue-tied little girl. There was a strange kind of silence, then the woman introduced herself, and Eve replied in kind. The end of the break came and they returned to class.
Both women were relieved to be back in the classroom situation where definite rules of conduct existed to be followed. Eve regained the model's platform and Vivian went slowly back to her seat next to the wretched young Prentiss.
The rest of the class time passed as a dream, for both of them. Eve enjoyed herself immeasurably. She took pose after pose, never hesitating before adopting a stance, not tiring within a pose. Yet, all the time she was standing and stretching and balancing and holding, her mind was a million miles away.
How old was the new student, she wondered. Her remark about the compact being typical of her day made her seem much older than she looked. She had a young body, but a mature, cool, very self-possessed air. She seemed like a woman with a past, a woman who had experienced a lot and-somehow-taken from all she had experienced.
And yet, and she wondered why she was asking herself even as she posed the question-was she happy? Somehow she didn't seem like a happy person.
Vivian, on her part, was totally absorbed in admiration and contemplation of Eve's body. The other students, the white-coated instructor, the room, the time, everything slipped out of her mind. She was alone with Eve's body and her own fingers. Her fingers themselves were still out of practice and she could tell that it would take a while to limber them up again, but even that didn't spoil Vivian's pleasure.
For her eye was satisfied by what it saw. If her fingers were slow to meet the eye's demand, too bad, but the eye was satisfied. Such purity of line, Vivian thought, such symmetry, such easy grace. She was mesmerized, fascinated, transported, and ... she wanted more.
That night, Eve had a rare highball and sat staring into space, listening to records. She forgot about Prentiss, the instructor, and the other men she had been considering as candidates for her net. She could only think of Vivian.
Vivian....what a lovely name. Soft, like her hips. Vivian ... vivacity. Were the words related? If so, Vivian meant "life."
That night she dreamed that her mother had just smashed the cheap compact she had bought that day long ago. She saw her room as it had been, and her mother as she had been: hair in a net, body encased in a rubberized prison, her face innocent of makeup. Her dream-self was not the child she had been, but the woman she was now. She stooped, grabbed up a piece of broken glass, and slashed her mother's throat.
The woman fell heavily. The body lay there, motionless and even uglier in death. Then, to Eve's horror, she rose up. This time she wore lipstick and powder, a teased coiffure, and held a purse over her arm.
Eve gasped in the dream and woke to find herself sitting up in bed, breathing in deep, painful gulps.
Marriage, Vivian thought with desperation, would outlast the pyramids. In spite of the hatred between them, Tim still wanted to sleep with her. Not often, but once in awhile.
And the sonofabitch had to pick this night to do it.
Vivian planned to escape into their bedroom early, hoping to avoid any sort of sexual encounter with Tim, hoping, in fact, to avoid Tim altogether. Tim had had a few drinks too many after dinner. There was nothing unusual about that-he usually had a few drinks too many, to relax, he said. Vivian wondered if it wasn't to anaesthetize himself against his life.
She would have liked to do the same thing, but she couldn't, out of concern for her figure. She prided herself on looking far younger than she really was, and alcohol really added to her daily calories. It was too bad. It meant she had to face Tim cold sober.
She could always tell when it was one of those nights when her husband was going to want to have sex. He was just like a bar-room lecher, really. He winked at her and grinned, reached out and patted her fanny when she got up to change the channel on the television. He was so transparent it added to her disgust with him when he'd had a few drinks.
Nobody else knows Timothy Lawler the way I do, Vivian thought to herself, as she had so many times before. They all think he's the great, liberal crusading editor who selflessly gives himself to others, even offering himself for public office. Hah! To me he's a sweaty middle-aged man, going a bit soft around the gut, reeking of Jack Daniels at bedtime.
It made her so mad and fed up that she almost felt like crying. She was getting too emotional lately, Vivian reminded herself. Emotion led to facial wrinkles and facial wrinkles make a woman look old. Usually, she never let Tim get to her, no matter what he tried. But somehow, since meeting Eve Banner, in fact, she had felt all her emotions on the surface, raw, exposed. She had to do something about it-had to toughen up-and fast, or Tim could make hamburger out of her.
"You know," he said to her in the living room, just before she made her getaway, "I really am very proud of my wife."
"Oh, really, is that so?"
"Yesh, yesh I am. I'm very proud of you, honey. And do you know why?"
"No, tell me. Why?"
"'Cause you are a piece of ass!"
"Oh, Tim. What a thing to say to me."
"You like it. You know you like it. And it's true. Especially for a broad your age. You're no spring chicken any more, Vivian...."
Damn him, Vivian swore under her breath. Did he have to remind her? She was aware of her age, thank you, well aware. And she felt old, sometimes. Talking to that lovely young model Eve today, she had been very conscious of her age. She was probably old enough to be that girl's mother. But Tim, that was another matter. She didn't have to take any gaff from him.
"I never wanted to be a chicken," she said sweetly to Tim. "And speaking of getting on in years, my dear, is that an inner tube you have wrapped around your middle? Or is it perhaps a gun belt? Tim Lawler, hard-hitting, fast-shooting, tough on the trigger?"
She had meant it to be insulting, but unfortunately, her husband thought she was being funny, very funny. He burst into guffaws.
"Very good, dear! Very good. That's another reason I love you, doll. You're damn smart. Damn smart, but not so smart that it gets into the way of your main appeal-which is your sex. Women shouldn't deny their sexuality, d'you think, honey? I mean, if you've got it, flaunt it! Right? Haha-ha!"
Vivian winced. She hated to hear Tim laugh when he was high. It really brought out all the crudeness in his personality. He was in rare form tonight. As time went on, she was less and less sure that she was going to be able to avoid having sex with him. She could tell very well that was what he had in mind. The only hope was to get him so drunk that he forgot about her, forgot about satisfying his bodily urges. She had done it before, but she wasn't sure she could manage tonight. Of course, it was worth a try.
"Can I refill your drink, dear?" she asked.
"Sure, why not. Hey! Aren't you keeping me company tonight, sweetie?"
"Well, if you mean am I your domestic companion, then, yes, I suppose I am keeping you company. But if you mean, am I drinking with you, then the answer is no. I don't care to and I won't."
Again, Vivian was trying to be annoying, and again she failed. "Ha-ha-ha! Very funny, dear!
Domestic companion, eh? I could go for a little of that, as a matter-of-fact."
"A little more bourbon?"
"Sure. And also, a little more pussy, if you don't mind my putting it to you straight."
"You can put it to me any way you want to, I don't care."
"Straight, then, straight and hard. See? See that? I've gotten hard just talking to you. You are a sexy bitch!"
Vivian stepped over his outstretched legs and ignored him, picking up his highball glass from the glass-topped coffee table and taking it to the bar for a refill. The bar was a former butler's pantry converted by Tim in the early days of their marriage when he had made an effort to do things around the house to please her. She plunked a couple of ice cubes into the glass and drowned them in Kentucky's finest.
"Here, dear," she said to Tim, handing him the drink she hoped would knock him out, but completely.
"Thanks, love."
"Bottoms up!"
"Ha-ha-ha! Bottom's up, is it? I'll get your bottom up!"
"Please. Tim."
"What's this please Tim bit, anyway, Vivian?"
"Oh, nothing."
"Shit! Turn up the TV, while you're up."
Vivian obeyed. He was watching a late-night rerun of a second rate movie starring Clint Eastwood. And to think that among the citizens of the community, her husband had the reputation of being a bit of an intellectual. The thought made her smile. Sometimes the absurdity of life was just too absurd.
"I think," she told her husband when she could see that he had settled back onto the sofa and had taken a long gulp of his drink, "that I'll retire now."
"Huh? Why?"
"I'm not being stimulated either by this television show or by your scintillating conversation, that's why. Besides, isn't it late?"
"It's eleven o'clock."
"Well, that's late enough for me. I had a stimulating day and I want to get a lot of sleep. I have a million things to do tomorrow."
"So you're going to bed at eleven o'clock?" Tim Asked
"Well, I think I'll take a bath first," Vivian said.
"Sure, why not. Enjoy yourself. I'll just finish my drink and catch up with you in the bedroom."
Vivian's eyes rolled back a bit, involuntarily. So that was it. There was no escaping it. He wanted to have sex. And when Tim wanted to have sex, what she wanted had very little to do with it. For a moment she felt a rush of anger. She ... women ... really were helpless to stop men. Tim was a drunken brute ... she hated him ... hated sex with him ... no, none of these things were entirely true, but they were all partly true, and the mood she was in, she felt both angry and resigned. It was too much trouble to fight him, she knew that. Too much trouble to give him some excuse about not feeling well, too much trouble to enter into a discussion about why she didn't like his assuming that she was ready whenever he was. She'd tried it all before, and it was definitely too much trouble.
After all, they were married, weren't they? She was accepting Tim's room and board and in return, he had bought and paid for certain rights to her body. It was as simple as that, really. She had to put up with it just as generations of women before her had. That was life.
Without turning, without speaking, she left the living room, still hearing the sound of gunfire behind her.
"See you soon, dear...." Tim called out.
She ignored him. In her bathroom, she had a moment of truth in front of her mirror. Smooth, heart-shaped face, no visible wrinkles. Shiny, well-trimmed brown hair in a flattering style, no gray. She pulled off her clothes and let them lie where they had fallen. Her body was okay, too, her lovers said more than okay. She was soft, rounded, yet firm. Tim was full of shit with his spring chicken stuff. Where did he get that crap? She was her own sternest critic, and she had to admit that she looked almost exactly the same as before she'd had two children, better, maybe, because in those days she hadn't played much tennis and tennis had given her very attractive muscles in her shoulders and arms.
And so, satisfied, Vivian poured some forest-scented Vitabath into the tub and turned the water on full blast. Why did she let Tim get her goat like that? They had an agreement, didn't they, and she knew who had come out on top-she had. She could do whatever she liked, as long as she didn't endanger his reputation and she stood by him on all political occasions. So he was just grousing at her out of weakness.
Vivian smiled and stepped into the tub. Before she sank into the suds, she thought of something. She reached into the medicine cabinet and took a white pill from the bottle Dr. Stein had given her. It was a Percodan, a pain killer and muscle relaxant that she knew would make it easy to take Tim's sexual advances.
And then she settled into the tub, scrubbing herself carefully all over, paying special attention to the bottoms of her feet and letting her fingers play around her labia and clitoris. Mmmmmmmmm, she thought. If only I could drift off to sleep, right here, cuddled by warmth, give myself a little orgasm, breathe in all this lovely steam....
She was tired, she realized. Yawning, she finished washing herself and stood up, letting the water stream off her sleek body before she reached for a fluffy pink towel.
"Finished in there?" Tim called from the living room.
"No!" Vivian called out. Damn him, couldn't she even enjoy a bath in peace?
"Think I'll have a nightcap, then," he said and she could hear him banging around. It sounded as if he were already completely blasted. Oh, well. Let him face tomorrow's hangover.
Humming some old song she couldn't remember the words to, Vivian dried herself carefully and wrapped herself up in a terrycloth robe. The humidity had turned up the ends of her hair and she saw in the mirror that her skin had taken on a rosy glow.
What a waste, she thought as she settled herself in bed.
"All washed up, dear?" Tim asked, coming into the bedroom with another bourbon in his hand. "Uh-huh," Vivian said.
Tim came over and sat on the side of the bed. "You look good, baby," he said.
Vivian slid down under the sheet. Her hand found her clitoris and she tweaked it. An answering throb, an involuntary tremor of excitement.
Maybe she'd pretend Tim was Lou Jory....or even that model. But no, to think of her gold and white pureness at a time like this was unthinkable.
Tim leaned forward and clamped his mouth on hers. It was like having a drink, his breath was so saturated with booze. She wriggled a little, turning away, but that excited him further.
"I'm going to fuck you," Tim said.
"Take off your clothes before you come to bed."
"I want to eat you out," he said. "First I want to eat you out, and then I want to fuck you till you scream."
Little chance of that, Vivian thought, little enough chance of that. But she slid her body over in the bed to make room for him and he stripped off his shirt, pants, undershorts. His cock was stubby but thick and it was already hardened into an erection.
"See that?" Tim gloated. "I'm going to shove it into you!"
Laughing, he crawled onto the bed and burrowed his head between her legs. Ho gripped the fleshy balls of her buttocks in each hand and wrenched them apart. Vivian groaned.
"What a pretty clean little pussy you have!"
Vivian squirmed.
"All the better to eat it up!" His mouth opened and sucked in a great mouthful of her labia and all the soft dark hairs that fringed it. He sucked and nibbled and nipped. Despite herself, Vivian enjoyed this part.
She closed her eyes and concentrated on the feeling, trying to forget who was doing it to her.
His lips were soft and his jaw was tireless. He made slurping sounds and she felt them sucking on her most sensitive flesh, teasing and pleasing her.
"Ohhhhhhh...." she cried out.
"Getting to you, baby, am I?"
She raised her legs a bit and stretched her arms up over her head, flexing her muscles, stretching the cords of her neck by rolling her head from side to side. He nibbled with increasing speed and dedication.
"Don't stop," she ordered.
"Hell, no," he said. "Mmmmph...."
He was unintelligible, but whatever he said, it didn't matter to Vivian. She wished she'd taken the pill earlier. It just didn't seem like she was going to be able to come, damn it. Tim just wasn't such a good lover, not these days anyway, not when he was drunk.
She writhed, thrusting her clitoris forcefully up into his face. There, there, there. It felt so good. Maybe she would be able to come, after all.
Tim's whole face was wet and he was wheezing and gasping for breath. "Oh, baby ... mmphhhh...." he gasped.
Vivian shoved her pelvic bones up and up. His fingers held her thighs apart and dug into her soft flesh like steel spikes. She knew he would leave bruises....
"I'm going to fuck you, now," he announced, and slid his body up over hers without any further sucking. She felt the trail of his spittle and her juices all up her belly, stomach, and then he was taking her breasts into his mouth, one at a time, sucking on her nipples just as he had been on her pussy. Her nipples were hard and extremely sensitive and she cried out.
His cock was thrusting and poking at her now. Vivian spread her legs wider, as wide as she could reach. Tim was all over her, sucking and licking her breasts, her shoulders, her neck. She slipped her hands up his back, stroking the smooth skin, feeling the thatch of curly hair, feeling that he was breaking out in a sweat.
Tim moved so that the tip of his erect cock was rubbing against Vivian's moist slit. She writhed in excitement.
"I'm big," he said.
She knew that if she didn't answer, he'd repeat the statement until she did, so she gave in at once.
"Big and hard," she agreed.
"Can you take me, now?"
"I hope so. You are big."
"Feel that?" He thrust his cock up against her slit so the tip of it almost went inside, maybe it did go inside just the littlest bit.
"I feel it," she whispered.
"Are you ready to be fucked?"
"Yes," she said in a low, odd voice. It sounded to her as if someone else were doing the talking. This wasn't her, Vivian, in bed. It couldn't be. "Yes," she repeated, "I'm ready for it, I'm ready to take your cock inside my pussy, I'm ready to get fucked."
Tim thrust and the first inch or so of his prick penetrated her. She stiffened. "Relax," he said.
She willed herself to relax. What did she fear, at the moment of penetration, what was it anyway?
Tim began thrusting in deeper. He lifted his body up on his elbows and looked down at the angle of their bodies.
"Sexy bitch," he said.
She looked down to see his cock, surrounded by the thicket of his pubic hair, to see it slammed up against her mound of Venus, see the cock disappearing inside.
She tensed her vaginal muscles and he groaned in response.
"More?" he asked. "D'you want more?"
"If you've got it," she said.
Tim was pumping now, trying to set up a regular rhythm, a steady in and out. She felt her whole body being rocked under his weight.
Vivian's hands clawed at his shoulders and back. She wiggled her ass against the smooth sheets and enjoyed the feeling of vibrating flesh. He kept pumping, gently but firmly, steady.
Their lips met. Again, Vivian winced at the strong liquor taste, but his mouth was open, insistent, and she was taken in by the kiss, taken and carried away. Tim's tongue forced its way into her mouth to touch hers, then to explore the back of her throat. She nibbled on his lips the way he liked it.
She moved her legs out to the side and he grunted. "In deeper, baby," he said, "You're letting me in so deep...."
"Touch my breasts," she begged.
And so he did, cupping them in each hand and squeezing the soft flesh. It felt to Vivian as if he were milking them, as if juices would shoot out of the nipples, as if he could pinch her into ecstasy there, in just another minute. It was so nasty, and yet such an overwhelming feeling that she couldn't quite believe herself.
"What a hot cunt," he said, "Hot pussy...."
He was pounding against her groin now with all the strength of his leg and thigh muscles. She sensed that it wouldn't be long until he came, but something had turned the corner for her. She was almost numb. She couldn't feel him inside her at all any more. He was lost in there, and it was almost as if he was inside someone else, someone else was lying in this bed, someone else was getting fucked.
But Tim didn't notice her withdrawal. He was getting into his top stride, now.
"In a minute, baby," he whispered, as if she cared, "I'm going to shoot."
She turned her head and closed her eyes and thought of how crazy it all was.
It was during their occasional fucks that odd thoughts had a habit of popping into her head. It occurred to her now that when you had sex with someone you cared about you never thought about how really ridiculous the necessary positions were. With almost every possible posture, however arcane, the woman had to have her legs spread and preferably up, thus looking and feeling like a trapped, overturned beetle.
But with someone who meant something to you, you never thought about it. Then, you still felt graceful and lovely.
But I only felt graceful and lovely with women! Always. Never with any of the men....
Now he started his dirty-talk stage. Scatological, the psych books called it. A man who uses obscene language in bed so as to render the woman into a whore. How fitting for Tim-the crusading editor who was hand-in-glove with the vice squad.
"Gettin' fucked? Huh? Gettin' fucked?" he panted. He seemed to doubt it; as well he might.
"Yes, I'm getting fucked. Is there anything else you'd like to have cleared up?"
He heard her and he didn't; he was too far gone to care and she knew it. She hated him for his lack of pride.
Vivian thought of something she had read about how pigs are castrated. They used a pincers, and just went snip! Of course it must hurt terribly.
The poor pig....
When he was finished, she rose and went to the bathroom, feeling nastily moist. She returned, wearing a gown, and got into her own bed. She lay thinking about Eve Banner.
There had been something so touching about that compact business. She had wanted to give it to the girl but she didn't know how. Strange....
Louise had given her the coat, and now she wanted to give this girl something that she had admired.
Oh, my God, I want her.
CHAPTER 8
From the day she met Vivian, Eve lost interest in the art instructor, Rolfe Jagger, and the stringy freshman in the drawing class. The game was no longer something she looked forward to each day.
Instead, she looked forward to seeing Vivian Lawler. Now, it was Eve who stared at someone. She arranged her poses so that she would face Vivian as much as possible, until at last, someone on the other side of the room raised an embarrassed hand and asked Jagger: "Could she turn around, please?"
Stacked behind the complaining student were half a dozen drawings of Eve's rear end. Reluctantly, she switched her position, her face burning. It was the first time in her entire career as a model that anyone had complained about her work.
She stopped her subtle flirting with Jagger, who, in turn, stopped tormenting Prentiss. The tense undercurrents that had existed in the class previously, deliberately created by Eve, now receded. A rather drab peacefulness settled over the group, something that would have annoyed Eve ordinarily. But now, she savored it, as though a painful era in her own life had come to an end.
She found herself talking to Vivian during each break. The other students and the instructor, long used to Eve's almost royal disdain, eyed them curiously.
One night, the model for a painting class did not show up and Eve was asked to pose. It was the other class that Vivian had enrolled in. When she entered the class, Vivian stared feverishly at her as she made her way to the model stand. It was a nude pose except for the robe that Eve was asked to drape about her shoulders. She lay on the couch, a languid odalisque, while the instructor arranged the folds of her robe and placed bits of cloth around her that the students used for color guides.
As he busied himself, Vivian moved her easel so as to be directly in front of Eve.
The work began. Eve settled back into the mass of pillows behind her, leaning on one elbow. Painting classes were child's play, she thought to herself. Occasionally the model could even read; it was a favorite pose of the students interested in the modern French school-the young lady with a book. Eve knew how to turn the pages without seeming to move her hands.
With the present pose, it would have been a simple matter to snatch a little sleep, which she had done in the past, but she would not do it tonight.
Her eyes met Vivian's and they smiled slowly at each other.
From Eve's perspective, Vivian's face was directly in the middle of her bare, raised knees. Looking straight down in front of her, it seemed that the woman's head was resting there. A shimmering excitement spun through Eve ... if she could move, and open her legs, Vivian's head would be It was not until this precise moment that the full realization came to her. She wondered, dazed, why she hadn't thought of it before. It was so obvious.
I want to go to bed with her....
What fools these mortals be, she thought tiredly. With her recent dreams and oddly excited sensations upon seeing the older woman, the fact might as well have been carved on her forehead, but she didn't know it till now.
Yet she felt no homosexual panic. It seemed right ... and much more sensible than her former behavior. What did she need of men, what had she ever needed of them? Men were....
She drew a blank. What were men? To her? The answer was a kind of gray void in her mind. She could not even say that men were nothing to her because nothing was still something, if you considered that it was a violent negative. Nothing was uncompromising blackness, whereas she felt only this gray Umbo that came to her when she thought of the male sex.
It was abstraction in the extreme, difficult and frustrating to think about. All she knew was that she had never done anything with men in bed that she could not have done with another woman.
So she did not feel homosexual panic; after all, when you really looked at it, she had been a lesbian all her life.
Eve sat perfectly still through this moment of internal personal realization. It was strange, almost funny, to be immobile during an emotional turning point. This was supposed to be a time for walking up and down the floor, wringing one's hands and perhaps working on the first draft of a suicide note. Instead, here she sat-or rather, reclined-stark naked and stony as a statue.
It was really damned funny when you thought of it.
Her mouth began to twitch. She tried holding her breath, imagining herself lying in a coffin, but nothing helped. Her belly began to shake, then her breasts followed suit. The well-draped couch on which she lay was an old folding cot and it began to creak. The sound made another paroxysm of silent giggles sweep over her. As she tried to gulp them down, the room suddenly resounded with a very loud and very unlady-like snort.
The teacher glanced up, his face perplexed. "Are you ill, Miss Banner?"
That did it....
"No. ... I'm. ... Ha-ha-ha-ha!"
Everyone looked up from his easel, smiling benignly and looking helpless. A bleating titter joined her unrestrained mirth, then grew until the whole class was yelping with her. The professor, grinning, shrugged and looked at his watch.
"Let's take a break."
Eve struggled up, weak as a kitten, trying to gather the folds of her robe about her. The class, used to her regal, nose-in-the-air demeanor, wore the collective expression someone who has just walked into a dark house on his birthday to hear a crowd of friends scream, "Surprise!"
Eve rose, red-faced, to find that her arm had gone to sleep. She twisted it stiffly into the sleeve of her robe and stepped warily off the platform. Everyone was grinning at her. A woman, headed for the coffee machine in the hall, said:
"That happened to me at my wedding."
An older businessman-student, a Sunday painter who kept his sanity by switching to a 1930's form of Bohemianism, joined the confessional.
"I remember the day the IRS audited my tax, my wife wrecked the car, and my kid was arrested on a dope charge. And what did I do? Laughed like hell. Come on, honey, I'll buy you a cup of coffee."
Eve turned and looked at Vivian. They held each other's glance for a long moment, then the whole group walked into the hall.
When the man handed her the paper cup, she found that her numbed arm was trembling violently. She could not hold the cup, spilled some of the contents, and then switched it clumsily to her left hand.
She felt relaxed, warm, and happy in a simple way. She even enjoyed the clumsiness. She felt as though she had just escaped a rigid, smothering shell.
"I'm used to drawing classes," she explained. "Sitting still for so long...."
"Here," said Vivian. She took the arm and rubbed it vigorously but with a paradoxically tender touch. The others drifted off, leaving them alone.
Suddenly, Eve's mirth vanished. She stared at Vivian, thinking, she's taking care of me. She's making the pain go away....As the older woman continued the massaging. Eve looked down and saw that her handbag was looped over her arm.
Silent tears began oozing down Eve's cheeks. The sobs suddenly became as uncontrollable as the laughter had been only moments before.
"What is it?" Vivian asked, alarm spreading over her face.
Eve made a violent effort at control, wishing that she could scream and cry for hours. She wiped her face on her sleeve and gulped the coffee.
"Would you ... like to come home with me after class?" Eve whispered hoarsely. She was shaking.
Vivian's eyes widened. She did not speak for a moment. At last she said, "Yes. Yes...."
CHAPTER 9
They entered the apartment. Eve, dressed in slacks and a cotton shirt, tossed her satchel into a corner and turned to Vivian.
"Would you like a drink?"
"No." She swallowed and added, "Thank you."
Eve went forward to her. With a groan, they locked together in a fierce kiss. Eve dug her fingers into the thick hair and moulded her pelvis against the older woman's, and soon they were writhing together in a gasping attempt to touch excitement with excitement. Vivian thrust a knee between the girl's legs and rubbed it up and down between the hot thighs until Eve sank down on it, straddling her and pushing her pelvis against the firm line. Vivian could feel the hot, eager groin under the material that separated their bodies.
"Where's the bedroom?" she gasped.
They went into the darkened room. Eve switched on the night light and Vivian looked about at the mirrors.
"Take it off," she ordered, gesturing at Eve's clothes. Her own fingers pulled at the buttons of her blouse. Suddenly, she wanted nothing more than to see Eve naked at that moment, though she had seen her many times. It was new, in spite of the familiarity. In the dim light, as they stood before each other completely nude, Vivian stared at the golden hairs on Eve's groin. Then she reached out and thrust her hand into the curling mass. Her eyes closed, and her fingers dug under the downy triangle and probed between the girl's legs. She was burning down there, and moist, engorged, with desire.
They fell onto the mattress. At last, Vivian thought. At last....It was so strange to feel silken skin once more; to feel such delicate bones, after Tim's burliness. Such smoothness ... it made her hate hair-except the wedge-shaped collection of it that was wrapped about her fingers now.
Eve spread her legs wide, so wide that her thighs were almost on a straight line one with the other. She lay back with a deep, happy sigh, her hands over her head.
Vivian trailed her fingers over the swollen pink lips, coming to rest on the stiff bud of the clitoris at the top of the oval of flesh. Eve shivered, her hips rising off the bed.
"Eve ... Eve, you're so wet. I want to kiss you there."
"Do something else first." The voice was weak and trembling.
She sounded afraid, Vivian thought. "What?"
"I'm a virgin. Change me. Please."
Vivian rose up on an elbow and looked down with incredulity at the flushed face. "Are you serious?"
"Yes."
"How old are you?"
"Twenty-six."
Vivian suddenly felt a thrill that was power and pride and a kind of victory that she could not understand.
Her hand trailed down and found the place. As soon as her finger began to probe the opening, Eve stiffened and cried out. Her body went rigid.
"Do it," she panted. "Do it quick."
"Relax."
"I ... can't. I'm trying."
When Vivian touched the place again, she found that the claim was all too true. An irrelevant recollection went through her mind. She thought of those damned plastic bags that bread came in nowadays, with twisted wire at the top. Once, she couldn't untangle the wire tape and lost her temper, stabbing the bag with her forefinger to make an opening. That's what Eve's body felt like now. As though there were a thick disc of plastic at her cunt's entrance.
Now, the inchoate sensation of victory became clear. A twenty-six-year-old virgin, a real, honest-to-God tight-as-a-drum virgin! What sonofabitching man wouldn't envy her now!
"Lift up, come on."
She put her arm under the rigid hips and raised them off the bed. With her shoulders, she pressed back on Eve's legs until she was almost up-ended. The legs wrapped instinctively around her as she loomed over the supine girl.
Her hand separated the lips once more and sought the prize. She pushed-and none too gently.
Eve grunted in pain and put her fist to her mouth. "Don't stop," she pleaded. "Don't.
How tight she was; it was unbelievable. Vivian thought of the many other girls she had done this to, remembered how the female parts flowered open with throbbing delight, begging for more, those limitless caverns of experienced women. But this was like ... a little girl. So this was why Eve had appeared that day in class with underpants on, and the tell-tale bulge beneath.
Vivian compared what she was feeling now to her own faked muscle-clutching on her wedding night. Now that she knew what the real thing was like, she wondered if Tim had believed her.
Suddenly, she felt the hot walls enclose her. Eve shook as she bore down against the invasion, her hand still clapped over her mouth. Vivian wondered if she were going to be sick. That happened sometimes, she had heard. Would it happen now? Again, the feeling of triumph and power surged over her.
"More," Eve gasped. "Another one."
This time it was easier. Vivian felt the flesh answer her with a voluptuous throb. She sought the protruding neck of the uterus and revolved her finger over it until Eve's hips began to wriggle in answer.
"Yes. Now ... three."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes! I want it. I want it to hurt. Let me feel it."
Now it was as if she were sinking into a dewy rose and going down, deep down, into the stem. Her fingers moved like trapped snakes in the molten cavern, prodding, massaging, thrusting hard.
"Now. Do it!" Eve commanded.
Vivian drew back and began to shoot her arm forward like a piston, pounding deep in the squirming body. Eve's legs rose higher and higher until her feet were parallel with the ceiling. Her hands tore at the pillows and gripped the bed spokes. The sound of her nails raking the wood could be heard amid the slippery rhythm of violent sex.
Vivian grabbed the slender waist and held it tightly while she pummeled unmercifully. A long, unbroken moan escaped Eve's lips, like an animal in a trap or a dog baying at the moon. The words "Yes ... yes ... yes ... yes" sounded over and over as the vise of flesh burst into a throbbing maw of completion.
"Oh! That's it! Oh, it's happening!" Eve screamed.
This, Vivian thought, her mind whirling, is a climax and a half....
Eve fell back in exhaustion. The satisfied cavern tightened abruptly around Vivian's fingers. She withdrew them and knelt on the bed, looking at them.
"You bled," she said in a stunned voice.
Eve nodded slowly, a smile on her lips. "Yes. I wanted to. I'm so happy now."
She put out a weak arm and patted Vivian's knee. "On the shelf, under the night table," she murmured.
Vivian found the box of tissues. "Here," she said, taking one and leaning over Eve's body. "Open. Let me fix."
The legs spread obediently. Eve laughed softly.
"It's been a long time since anybody did that for me.
Vivian stared at the face in the dim light, her eyes widening. She's twenty-six ... I'm fourteen years older than she. It came as a shock to realize that, biologically if not socially, she was old enough to be Eve's mother.
Then she thought of her own daughter. Eighteen ... and very blonde, like Tim. Like No ... oh, no. Something shocking, yet highly pleasant, seared through her veins. Quickly, she put it out of her mind. How foolish. More than that, she and her daughter had never been close. She wasn't close with either of her children. She just wasn't cut out to be a mother.
Stop it. Don't be silly. The whole goddamn world is going Freudian. Don't you start.
Aloud, she said, "There. All well."
Christ, did she have to talk like that? It sounded all coo-y.
But she couldn't stop being a mother just then, because Eve started to sob. Deep, gulping sounds that shortly mixed with choking laughter.
She shook the girl, then wrapped her arms tightly around the quivering shoulders. "There, there. You're hysterical. Stop ... calm yourself. Come on, now."
At last, Eve was still and limp with spent emotion. She started to talk, a rambling, disconnected story of her early life, her parents, her escape from the rigid home. Vivian listened, shuddering at the descriptions.
She knew Eve was in no condition to make love to her. It was quite late, and she got up, dressed and prepared to go home.
"Soon again?" Eve asked in a pleading voice.
"Yes, of course."
"After the drawing class. I don't have anything after that until late in the afternoon."
"Yes, that's fine."
"I'll make it up to you," Eve promised feverishly. "I'll make love to you, too."
"I know, I know. I have to get home now."
The next day, Vivian had no classes. She stayed in the house all day, thinking about what had transpired. Now, in the light of day, it did not seem so serious. The thought that had kept her awake the previous night: I've taken a baby to raise, now became: I've got a girl.
She smiled a crafty smile. What a wonderful way to cuckold a husband! Not with another man-that was old-hat. But with a woman. What else could so thoroughly qualify as insult piled on injury?
If only she weren't so dependent on me!
Again, the nervous feeling captured her. Of course Eve had an awful life, but ... Must she cling like that?
She thought of how Eve had been at first; regal, detached, aloof. That was her appeal, and now it was gone. The challenge of that aloofness had been the thing that won Vivian, that fascinated her.
Mingled with these doubts was the feeling of victory that she had first had the night before. Would you believe it? I copped a cherry! That's more than Tim got when he married me.
But why couldn't Eve just enjoy the sex without getting so damned involved!
Vivian had a drink, and then another. It was just enough alcohol to bring clarity instead of muddled thinking. Suddenly, the entire explanation spread itself out in front of her as though it had been an official report from some unknown keeper of her soul.
1. Long ago you chose to be a butch, imitating the worse qualities of men in your attempt to become a man. The worst qualities are the most male qualities, after all. Love 'em and leave 'em, that was your motto, in those days when you forced yourself to smoke cigars in that bar.
2. Your ambition, which you fulfilled, was to have a different girl every night. No emotional involvements, just fun. Some Don Juan, weren't you?
3. As if you hadn't brutalized yourself enough, you had to go and marry Tim, who has finished the job for you. He was just the kind of man you yourself were trying to be back then. Now you're both a couple of General Pattons.
4. Now you're smug because you "copped a cherry." You're no lesbian; you belong in a locker room. They don't allow women in locker rooms.
The sudden inventory of motives was too painful. Vivian had a third drink, and then a fourth. When she finished, the clarity had vanished. By the time she had the fifth and final drink, she had forgotten the whole business.
Eve, she thought, excitement welling through her. Tomorrow, tomorrow....They would go to bed again tomorrow.
CHAPTER 10
Eve touched Vivian's full, slightly pendulous breasts in wonder, then she fell down on them and began to feast. They were big, much bigger than her own, globe-like as the older woman lay back, supine. They did not flatten out in this position as many women's breasts did, but protruded boldly and swelled with succulence and longing.
Eve rolled her tongue over the nipples, taking in their slight roughness. She felt them grow diamond-hard in her mouth and drew harder on their engorged points.
Her hand trailed down the belly and kneaded the pulse that was throbbing there, pressing into it with vigor and eagerness. Finally, her fingers thrust themselves into the bushy triangle and separated the coral portals.
Vivian's legs opened like scissors and spread out across the bed. Eve was a rough lover but a good one. Her heavy touch and panting enthusiasm were accompanied by a perpetual fluttery groan, as though she herself were being caressed, instead of doing the caressing.
Now, her face trailed away from the breasts and down the twisting body in a lingual caress. She did not dab or diddle or tongue gently and perceptively-she simply licked, like a cat washing its kittens. Finesse was lost in intensity, newness, and emotional capitulation. She loved Vivian, she knew she did, and technique vanished in the desire to devour.
Yesterday had been torture for her. Vivian had had no classes, and for the first time in her life, Eve did not enjoy being at work. Something was missing; it did not seem important to be up there on the platform, nude and stared at by dozens of people. She could only think of one person, and that person wasn't there.
A new feeling for Eve, to care about somebody else. What she was about to do to Vivian now would also be new. Instinct guided her frantic mouth and tongue. This had been done to her, many times. Surely ... surely she would know how to do it to another woman, do it so that Vivian would enjoy it?
Surely....
Fear of failure passed over her for a split second, and then was gone.
She fell between the opened legs and grasped the thighs, locking them with her elbows, as her own had been locked in many other pairs of elbows. She looked down into the curly dark mass and stared at the enlarged, turgid lips-open and inviting. She could see the moisture running off of them.
Her mouth lowered.
At first the hair was a shock. Neither pleasant nor repulsive; simply a shock. There seemed so much, much more than there had been when she merely looked at Vivian standing naked across the room. For a moment she had the sensation that she was buried in it, she, a little girl, crouching in the grass. Yet the grass was sweet and sugary, and the earth was warm.
She was conscious of folds. There were so many folds that she had never realized were there. It was much more than the divided oval she had seen when examining herself in a mirror, as all young girls do at one time or another. How strange ... this was a mirror image of her own body, and yet it seemed different all the while it was the same. She was knowing herself through difference tempered with obvious similarity.
The hard bud that her tongue now found was not a hard bud at all, but a little nun, swathed in folds and more folds. She probed for it. It was tiny when she finally uncovered it.
Vivian's hips rose off the bed and stiffened; her thighs bulged with suddenly clamped muscles.
"Yes, right there. That's it."
Eve's tongue swabbed up and down the rainy valley, tasting salt that wasn't briny and sugar that wasn't sweet. She found the opening at the bottom of the valley and thrust her tongue into it, forcing her face into the crotch until her lungs grew tight and she had to draw away to breathe. If only she could stay there!
The taste of the opening was different-pungent, biting, even a little vinegary. It was a strange taste; neither good nor bad but merely expected. A womanly taste that seemed to encompass the caprice of the whole sex: honied yet tangy; bitter yet cloying; bold yet elusive.
The body under Eve became a demon of movement, swiveling hips and kicking legs. The room filled with shrieks of fulfillment. The body almost escaped her as it heaved to and fro on the bed but she held fast to the locked legs and followed the gyrating pelvis with her mouth, holding it hostage.
"Oh, I'm coming! Eve ... oh, God! I'm getting it!"
When it was over, Eve rose up and fell heavily on Vivian, her wet mouth burying itself into the woman's throat. They lay like that until Eve's own body demanded satisfaction. The giving had excited the getting. She knelt over Vivian's face and lowered her pelvis over her mouth, straining forward and clutching the bedstead. She pushed against the mouth, her woman's parts a sea that threatened to cut off the breathing of the pleasure-giver.
Vivian's fingers dug into the two openings of her body that were so close together she could feel the digital invasions meet inside of her. The intensity of the collision was unbearable. She made a sound; a low, grating screech, each time thumb and forefinger were pressed together within her body. That, with the feverish tongue on her woman's lips, rendered her hips into a curvaceous dervish that would not stop its violent writhings.
Balanced on her hands and knees, Eve flung herself violently to and fro, her mouth twisted into a grimace of delight. At last the furor started and swept her into a whirlpool of sex, sex and more sex; a paradise of sex that was at the same time a hell, because she knew that it would have to stop.
Two days later, as the drawing class ended, Eve rushed over to Vivian and whispered to her.
"Let's have lunch together. I don't want to eat alone."
Vivian looked at the pleading greenish-gray eyes. "Fine," she answered, not knowing what else to say or do.
Again, the trapped feeling came over her. Trapped. As much as she hated to empathize with the male sex, she began to understand how a man feels when a girl is chasing him, bound and determined to catch the prey for keeps.
And like a man, she immediately thought of the warm and responsive body that was the reward for the entrapment. She put her charcoals away, folded her tablet and left the room with the younger woman. Eve went to the model's dressing room while Vivian put her things away in the locker. Well, she thought, I have to eat lunch. I always eat in the school cafeteria-why not with Eve?
Why do people have to eat together simply because they have sex together!
The cafeteria was a cacophony of steady sound and a splash of garish color from the various posters and announcements that lined the walls. It was a little quieter in the "staff section where Eve was entitled to eat. A number of people, mostly males, glanced at the younger woman as they carried their trays to their table, as if to say: "That's her."
A group of boys all looked up in unison, their mouths open and their eyes hungry and reticent at the same time.
Vivian saw that Eve glared at them with the old aristocratic, you're-dirt-under-my-feet look. Seeing the aloofness, Vivian felt more relaxed. "Friend of yours?"
"They're the crew that was standing on top of the frat house with the binoculars, looking into the art department. They got hauled up before the Dean."
They sat down and began to eat. Halfway through the meal, Vivian saw a flash of white pass by the table. She looked up. Her eyes widened and her hand rose slowly to her throat.
The woman who stared back at her was Louise.
CHAPTER 11
She held a tray. Her reddish hair was lightly peppered with a few strands of gray, arranged as though deliberate; a perfect patch at each temple that on a man would be called "distinguished." It looked exactly that on Louise, too.
She wore a white lab coat.
Eve looked from one woman to the other, a frown on her forehead. Her eyes were stark with sudden, instinctive fear.
Louise was the first to move from the tableau of shock that had held them both. She approached the table, balancing the tray with too much caution, as though she were concentrating on the simple task to avoid confusion and panic.
"Vivian Bennett," she said slowly.
"Louise...."
She was causing a traffic jam in the crowded thoroughfare. "Sit down," Vivian said. She did. The three of them sat there like chess figures that had been lined up anew, waiting for a hand to move them as the game began.
Then Vivian and Louise both looked down-at each other's left hands. Louise wore no rings.
"Well, you're not Vivian Bennett anymore, I suppose." This time, Louise smiled very slightly.
"Fowler," Louise said, pronouncing her maiden name with a definitive firmness. There was a look of confusion in her eyes as she glanced at Eve. Vivian introduced them.
"Eve Banner ... Louise Fowler."
Eve surveyed the woman curiously. "Aren't you the new infirmary head? I saw something in the school paper."
"Yes, I am."
Vivian's stiff body relaxed a little. "You made it," she said softly. "I'm glad."
Louise inclined her head. "Yes, I made it." She smiled briefly at Eve; it was polite, noncommittal smile, as though she were merely doing the correct thing. "We were in college together," she explained.
They fell silent; everybody began to eat with an air of utter lack of appetite. Louise was uncomfortable; Vivian trance-like; and Eve distraught.
"What are you doing around here?" Louise asked at last.
"I'm taking a couple of art courses. Just part time," she added. She felt second-best. Louise had done what she set out to do, but she had not.
"Eve models at the art department," she added.
"Oh, I see."
Again, it was noncommittal. Everything was noncommittal. Vivian's hands tightened on her lap.
"Is your husband on the faculty?" Louise asked with a frown. "There's a Lawler in history."
"No, he's the editor of the local paper."
Louise's eyes showed amusement and a touch of hostility. She had obviously read Tim's rabid editorials.
"Have you been in the area long? When did you come here?"
"Just a couple of weeks ago. I've been getting settled."
"Where ... do you live?"
Louise hesitated, throwing up a silent wall. "In the faculty houses," she said slowly. She pushed the half-eaten lunch away. "Well, I have to hurry back. It's been nice talking to you." She rose, smiled tightly at Eve, nodded at Vivian, and left.
"Vivian."
She looked at Eve. The girl was trembling. She seemed to have shrunk in the chair; she looked smaller.
"Is she the one?"
"Yes."
"You want her again, don't you? I can see it in your face." The voice did not accuse; it was a plaintive whimper.
"I don't-"
"Vivian, don't leave. Don't leave me."
"Stop it! Come on, let's get out of here."
They drove back to the art department in Vivian's car. As they wove their way down the wooded copse, Eve cried silently. Vivian ground the car to a halt.
"Listen! Get off my back! Do you think you own me?"
"Vivian!"
"Get out. Go on, get out!"
Eve shrank back against the door, her face white and stricken. She gave a broken cry and flung herself out of the car.
She drove aimlessly. It seemed as though twenty years had fallen away. It was still the same; nothing had changed. The magic of the first lover....There was no one quite like the first. She wondered if everyone, deep down inside, felt the same way.
She shook as she thought about Louise. The figure, the marvelously sensual yet slim figure had not gained an ounce. The lofty, somewhat closed face had aged only a little bit, and the hair ... that rich cinnamon color that she had never forgotten. No redhead she had ever met since had had quite that shade of hair. It was brunette because it was dark, and yet fair because it was red.
But she had been so cold! Suppose she doesn't want to see me again, suppose she doesn't want anything to do with me? Did she have someone else? Was she living with another woman?
Or was there now a man...? She must have met many men in the medical field. Suppose But somehow, Vivian knew this was not true.
The thought of Eve burned out her memories like a splash of acid. The girl had become as maddening as a bevy of gnats about her head. She wanted, literally, to slap her away.
How ironic it all was. Eve wanted a mother in her, and twenty years ago, she herself had wanted a mother in Louise. Was that the name of this game-mother and daughter? It sounded like look-a-like dresses.
But no. Vivian knew what it was that made her want Louise and not Eve. Louise was unattainable; even though she had had her, there was still that detachment, that self-possession, that made her so appealing, while Eve was....
An easy make.
Suddenly she remembered one of Tim's editorials that had brought fury of the press association and a national magazine down on his head. There had been talk of libel suits, apologies and retractions before it finally died down. The subject of the piece had been a famous movie star who had become embroiled in still another international romance. "The queen of the silver screen is nothing but an easy make," he had written.
The words, just like a man popped into her head, but she quickly forced them away.
CHAPTER 12
Louise sat in her living room, her fingers moving slowly across her forehead. Why! After all this time, after she thought it was all finished....now this had to happen.
She was afraid, afraid of the threat to her career, and of the treachery of her own body. Things had been so peaceful; lonely, yes, but peaceful. Peace had become the touchstone of her life, and now that peace had been tampered with.
She was tempted to have a drink but she knew it would only make her headache worse. She had migraines now. Age, she thought, a shuddering sigh coursing through her. The part of her that was a woman had been wasted. It was a thought she never allowed herself, except on nights when she vas very tired, too tired to sleep. Then, regret would attack relentlessly, and she could not do a thing about it.
She lay back with her eyes closed. She may have dosed off; she could not tell. For a moment, the doorbell seemed to be ringing in a dream. Then she sat up with a jerk and realized that there was someone at her front door.
She stood up quickly and saw the shadow of a form through the curtains. It was a woman. Louise shrank back, wishing she could run and hide but the doctor in her was too strong! She had never refused to answer a knock or a ring-she could not.
She opened the door and saw Vivian gazing at her with a pleading, wide-eyed expression on her face. They looked at each other for a few seconds without speaking, then Louise's shoulders lowered in a gesture of reluctant assent.
"All right," she sighed. "Come in."
She preceded Vivian in to the living room and motioned to a chair, remaining standing herself, leaning back against the mantle and hugging her arms together as though she were shivering in the cold.
Vivian sat down. "I had to come. I knew you didn't want me to, but I had to." Her voice grew panicky. "I've never forgotten you, Louise. You can't have forgotten me, I know it!"
"No, I haven't forgotten. I haven't forgotten anything about the whole mess."
"Mess? Is that what it means to you?"
"Yes, I'm afraid it does. It's all a symbol of near-disaster to me, and you're part of the symbol, Vivian. It could have wrecked me."
"But it didn't!" Vivian cried. "You're a doctor now. You got what you wanted."
"True, but I still have nightmares about people opening bedroom doors. Then I dream that I'm falling, down, down, into some kind of black pit. I wake up in a cold sweat. You're part of that scene, Vivian. Whether it's fair of me or not is beside the point. The fact remains that you're all tied up with the thing that scared me to death. You're tied up with failure in my mind, with the wreck of my career. With waste and shame and despair and with exposure."
Vivian was nonplussed. She shifted uncomfortably. "Well, I didn't realize I had such farreaching influence. After all, I just came by to say hello."
Louise's eyes glinted with wry amusement. "Did you? We said hello this afternoon."
Vivian's mouth tightened. "Do you want me to leave?" she asked abruptly.
The word yes! screamed silently through Louise's brain but she could not bring herself to utter it. She shifted her steady glance. Something about standing there, looking at Vivian, reminded her of gazing into a fire. It was dangerous and destructive, but it was beautiful, too, and fascinating in a primitive way.
This time, it was Vivian's turn to smile sardonically as she noted the older woman's hesitation. The moment had passed; Louise could not tell her to get out now. She watched as Vivian leaned back in the chair.
"Well, let's bring each other up to date," Vivian began. "What happened to you after ... we left the university?"
Louise suddenly felt exhausted. She sank down into a chair. "I went to another med school in the Midwest. Then I made friends with another woman doctor in a little town in Iowa. She was getting old, and she took me on. When she retired, I took over her practice for her. I stayed there for many years but I didn't want to spend the rest of my life buried in the country. I decided to go into institutional medicine."
She made a gesture that seemed to say: so here I am. "And you?"
"Married, as you know. Two kids, both in college. I don't particularly care for either of them. Does that make me an abnormal mother?"
"I didn't specialize in psychiatry, I'm just an old-fashioned GP," Louise said curtly.
The pleading look returned to Vivian's eyes. "I hate him! I should never have married anybody."
She launched into a disjointed story of her marriage to Tim, her affairs. She did not mention Eve. Louise let her talk until at last, she tapered off with a ragged sigh.
"So now-what do you think of that?" she challenged.
"I think," Louise began, "that it's a self-destructive pattern, if you'll pardon my sounding like the psychiatrist I'm not. And it proves that my way of life was the wiser choice, doesn't it?"
"I can't answer that. I still don't know what your way of life has been, Louiee."
"At the risk of sounding melodramatic, I've been a celibate."
Vivian blinked in surprise. "All this time?"
"All this time."
"Does that include women and men both?"
"Both. I've never been one of these people who rationalizes lesbianism by saying that it's not really sex. If a woman wants to do anything of importance in this world, she has to steer clear of sex," Louse said, her voice ringing with passionate conviction. To her own ears, it suddenly sounded a little shrill, like a political fanatic-like Tim Lawler's editorials, for that matter.
"Oh, come on!" Vivian burst out.
"I mean it. Sex destroys. It almost destroyed me, and it has destroyed you. You never finished your work. What about your art?"
"I'm taking courses now-"
"But you're forty years old now."
Vivian sat back, stung. "Well, you're older than that," she said irrelevantly. It was almost a grumble.
"I'm forty-three," Louise sighed. The figures rose in her mind as though they had suddenly been put there with a branding iron. Without warning, her glance strayed to Vivian's long slender legs, neatly crossed and encased in sheer stockings. It was hard for her to believe that the chic woman opposite her had been the grubby little girl she had known so many years ago. She's much better-looking at forty than she was back then. As if to defend herself against her thoughts, she rushed into pontifical speech once more.
"I've had so many women come to me with all kinds of weird complaints, mental und physical both. But it's always the same diagnosis: they had no work that they loved. They simply lived all their lives as sexual beings. They have nervous breakdowns, they turn into shrews, drink, take pills, have affairs-anything to prove their worth or become the center of attention. You've done that, too, Vivian, but I haven't. And I don't want to!"
Vivian smiled knowingly. "Then why are you shouting?"
At that moment, with warning, Louise broke down. The accumulated years of loneliness tore off the mask and left her naked. Her face paled and grew pinched with emotional pain as she walked slowly towards the smiling woman. She moved woodenly, like a toy soldier someone had just wound up.
Vivian stood up, her face triumphant. "Would you like to specialize in gynecology?" she asked softly.
With a moan of release, Louise grabbed her and felt the immediate yielding fluidity of the soft body as it moulded itself to her. She was conscious of the alluring plumpness slightly parted female thighs take on when they are pressed close to another body.
Then, with a sensation akin to shock and, if the truth be told, primness, she felt her skirt being lifted as Vivian's hand crept up her legs and dug into the crotch of her pants. Somehow, running a hand up a woman's dress was decidedly masculine action. As the fingers pulled at her clothing she thought of the expression: getting into her pants.
In another second she did not think of anything at all because she became mindless.
They sank to the floor, their hands pulling at buttons and hooks, until they were naked. Vivian let her eyes trail over the pale flesh. "You don't change, do you?" she whispered.
"Neither do you."
Vivian fell over her, forcing her to the floor on her back. She cupped Louise's generous breasts that were still firm, firmer than her own. Her fingers tweaked the nipples, pinching them hard, until Louise cried out in pain and pleasure.
Vivian loomed over her, panting. "I can feel your nipples throbbing," she whispered, tightening her thumb and forefinger around the turgid points.
"Take them in your mouth, please ... oh!"
Louise's back arched as the hot, wet mouth descended. As the eager tongue rolled over the tips of her breasts she was wracked with shivers that spiraled down to her armpits and ribs. She worked her shoulder forward, forcing the breast deeper into the hungry mouth.
Vivian's smaller, shorter body lay on top of her, light in weight but dominant in its aggressive writhings. Their mounds touched; Louise felt the scrape of rough hair on her legs and stomach, then moaned as Vivian found the matching triangle and pressed forward. They twisted and rubbed against each other. Louise cried out in frustration.
"Here," Vivian gasped, "let's get them together right?" She reached down and separated Louise's cunt with one hand as the other reached out and grabbed a pillow from the sofa. She shoved it under Louise's hips. "Draw your knees up ... way up," she commanded. "Spread wide."
As Louise obeyed she looked down and saw Vivian now holding open her own oval of sex. She pressed it into the up-turned cleavage of femaleness. Pink flesh met pink flesh; exposed, laid open, wet with longing.
The touch was like an electrical shock. Louise's body arched and twisted under the slippery insistence of delight that Vivian urged upon her. It was obvious that Vivian's past experience had taught her something about female anatomy that Louise had not learned in medical school. She had never had sex with a woman in this manner; she had not thought it possible to join the female parts so adroitly.
"Darling, it feels so good," Vivian breathed. She had never felt such immediate ecstasy. It was the sort of feeling that sometimes came over her after having sex with a man, but only afterwards, after hard fucking and laborious manual manipulation. This was completely different. This was immediate and instinctive, this was fueled by a feeling far higher and more rarified than ordinary.
"I have never...." Louise gasped.
"Oh, Louise, I missed you so!" Vivian cried out. "I have thought of you every day of my life, and it has been so long."
"So long-" Louise echoed.
Their bodies, joined only externally, writhed and wriggled together, in perfect rhythm, in easy communion. It was as if they were doing a sort of a dance which both knew but had not known that they knew.
Their mouths met and held in a kiss. Louise was so sweet, so delicious, Vivian realized. So unlike a man, so unlike nasty-tasting Tim. She remembered the last time he had fucked her and she shuddered.
"What's wrong, darling?" Louise asked, pulling back her head in alarm.
"Nothing ... nothing to do with you. I just remembered something I don't like to think of."
"Kiss me and don't think ... for a while."
Every inch of her body where it was touched by Vivian's body was on fire, but it was a slow, sweet fire. Louise had never felt such closeness-such physical closeness-to another adult human being.
And Vivian knew that she was about to come. She was already coming, in fact, with an orgasm that rolled up her body and set her soul on fire.
"Vivian ... Vivian, I'm coming," she moaned. She looked up and saw the tumbled mass of chestnut hair half-shielding the red face and knew that her ecstasy was being shared. Their bodies went rigid, then began to shake as climax overwhelmed them.
They lay sprawled over each other on the floor. Louise ran her tongue over her dry lips. The sound was one of crackling paper to her. When she swallowed, it sounded like a small explosion. Those little noises after sex ... it seemed a million years ago that she had last heard them. They had an intimacy all their own, because they were so suggestive of what had just passed. The dry lips, made that way because of the mouth that was held open in smiling ecstasy. And that inevitable swallow, to ease the throat that had been choked with groans and sighs.
And now, the sine qua non of human closeness: her stomach growled, and they both heard it.
Louise was ready to smile, to say something, one of those humorous, affectionately bawdy things that lovers say to each other after pleasure, but Vivian spoke first.
What she said ruined the moment.
"I knew I could get you."
Louise looked into the glittering eyes: they were full of cockiness and assurance. It was like being with a man; the feeling that she had been captured, like some kind of animal or bird. It made her cease feeling human at all.
The joy went out of her. She rose and tossed the pillow back onto the sofa. Her eye followed it and she grimaced with distaste as she saw a wet spot on its cover. That would not have bothered her a moment ago. She felt isolated, totally alone, as though she had masturbated on that pillow and soiled it during a wild, helpless moment of solitary abuse.
"I'm on duty at the infirmary tonight," she said. "I must hurry."
Vivian shook out a stocking, then rolled it down to put it on. "When can I see you again?"
Louise blinked. Again, it was like being with a man. She had had a few dates in the past, on occasions that required an escort. Several times, the man had gotten interested in her. Each time, they had asked that same question: When can I see you again? It had always given Louise a sticky feeling, especially when it was accompanied by that lusty glitter that she now saw in Vivian's eyes.
"I don't know. I have to be careful. Everybody in these houses is married but me. I've attracted some attention already. You know how people are. When a woman's a doctor they figure she's half-man already. I....I'll have to see."
Why didn't she just tell Vivian that she did not want anything more to do with her? What was holding her back!
Vivian finished dressing and picked up her purse. "I'll call you," she said.
It was uncanny, Louise thought. I'll call you, baby....She watched Vivian go out the door, then, after a moment, when she was sure the car was well away from the house, she too left.
Eve was posing for a sculpture class. As she reclined, motionless, on the platform, her mind whirled with agonizing thoughts, disjointed and elusive, like bits of paper and leaves swirling in a strong wind.
On her way to the art department, she had seen Vivian drive through the campus, turning down the road that led to the faculty houses.
She knew what she was going there for. She hated the woman, Dr. Fowler, with a desperate hatred. Why must she take Vivian from her? To Eve, the doctor seemed powerful, like a goddess who could send thunderbolts into other people's lives.
She has so much, why must she take Vivian?
The words knelled dully through her mind. She has so much ... she has so much. What did that have to do with it, she wondered? It was Vivian that counted. But somehow, this thought seemed to be the crux of the issue.
Eve glanced about the classroom. It was a night class, and the lights were bright and hot above her. She felt vulnerable and exposed, not because she was nude, there in the middle of the room, but because she suddenly felt weak, insignificant.
She has so much....
Was that why Vivian wanted her, preferred her over me, she wondered? Suddenly it came to her that she did not have much to offer anyone except a beautiful body and a classically lovely face. She had never doubted her own omnipotence before, but now she found herself wondering what kind of companion she made. Did people like her? It never seemed very important before, because she had loved herself so much.
Was she interesting? That had never mattered before either, when she was occupied totally in absorbing self-interest.
Eve experienced a withering flash of insight. She had wanted Vivian because the woman was an extension of her own physical self. Model and artist, one and inseparable. Apart, they were helpless; together they could form a whole-a whole painting, a whole drawing, a whole sculpture.
Or a whole Eve....
She looked about at the class. She needed these people desperately; they gave her the only possible opportunity to form an identity. They formed heron paper, on canvas, in clay. She wondered how many hundreds of times, even thousands, her body and face had been reproduced. But it was always a two-dimensional reproduction. Where was the third dimension?
Where am I? Who am J? her mind cried. She became panicky though she remained perfectly still. For a moment, she thought the contrast of internal versus external would drive her mad.
The doctor had a third dimension. She had done something with herself, and she gave to other people. What have I ever given to anybody else? Sure, they draw me, they need me in a way, but if they didn't draw me they would draw something. If people wanted badly enough to draw, they would draw. Nothing could stop them.
She felt useless, filled with self-disgust.
"May we turn the model?" someone asked the instructor.
Eve stiffened. The model....Not Eve Banner, just the model. Again the question pummeled her brain: Who am I? Where am I? I can't find me!
The instructor nodded and moved the circular platform. It was used solely for sculpture. Every ten minutes or so it was turned, so that students who had been working on a frontal view could get another perspective. As Eve spun slowly about, the students moved the wet clay replicas of her, turning the small statues about to work on the part of Eve that now faced them.
They stood in a circle about her. She watched the terra cotta Eve Banners being moved about on the tall tables at which the students worked.
They picked her up and turned her around, shuffled her here and there, wherever and whatever they desired. She felt like two dozen puppets, motivated solely by someone else's will.
Something she had never bothered to think about now plagued her.
What would happen when she got old? Would she still be modeling? She could, of course. Age didn't matter; a figure to be drawn was a figure to be drawn; it did not have to be young and beautiful. But what would it be like to look back and think that she had spent a lifetime sitting still and doing nothing?
Her mind replied with last-ditch arguments. I can keep my figure ... you don't have to get fat and sloppy....I can watch my diet, eat health foods, exercise....
What could she do besides model? She had finished high school, which meant next to nothing nowadays. What little business education she had had she had long since forgotten. She was sure she couldn't type fast anymore. What else could she do? Work in a store?
Suddenly, she remembered lying in bed as a teenager and planning coldly and calmly to be a prostitute. Now, it filled her with dread; she began to tremble. How could she have been so calm about it back then? But it could happen ... she had been selling her naked body for a long time. How much of a difference would prostitution really be? Was the step such a small one in her case that she might very easily slip into it?
She remembered the basic law of gravity: things tend to go down, not up. "Pose change, please."
The turnstile began to move. Eve was not thinking of it. Suddenly it tilted violently to one side. Her mind engrossed, she did not catch herself in time. She heard the surprised gasps of the students, then the crash of the heavy circular table. She twisted about, her hand grabbing at air. A tearing wrench went through the small of her back, like a knife slashing across her muscles.
The instructor ran to her and moved to pull her to her feet, but she cried out.
"Don't! Don't move me! My back...."
She could not move. Each time she tried to raise herself, the pain pulled with excruciating intensity. Someone covered her with her robe.
"Get her to the infirmary," someone else said.
"Keep her flat. Find something to carry her on."
"A door, or a table, something hard."
They found a long, low coffee table in one of the painting classes. A still life was arranged on it. Hurriedly, they removed the vases of flowers and carried the table back to where Eve lay.
She grimaced in agony as they lifted her and placed her flat on it. She was immobile. It took five men, each with their hands under her body, to keep her horizontal while they eased her onto the makeshift litter.
"I don't want to go to the infirmary," she moaned. "She.:.."
"You've got to. You may have slipped a disc," said the teacher.
They made their way out the front door and down the darkened road to the infirmary. One of the men stumbled on a rock and nearly fell. The jolt made Eve cry out. It felt as if she were breaking in half with pain.
"Goddamn! Why don't they light these roads?" said one of the men.
Each step they took, out of rhythm and jogging, made the pain come again. She could not move her legs at all. The words, paralyzed from the waist down, sent terror through her. What would happen to her? Suppose she was crippled? What would she do then?
At last they came to the infirmary. One of the men kicked the door with his foot until it was opened. Eve looked up and saw Louise Fowler, dressed in a white coat and peering worriedly down at the burden.
"What's happened?" she asked.
"She had a fall, twisted her back. She can't move."
Louise led the way into the examining room. "Now," she ordered, 'lift the table up level with the cot and roll her off. Just turn her over, keeping her straight. Put her on her stomach."
Two of the men held the table while the others turned Eve onto the cot. It was like turning a page in a book. She lay on her stomach, hor robe under her, her body exposed.
Louise glanced at the five men. All of them wore beards, beads, and artists' smocks.
"Why is she unclothed?" she asked icily.
"She's the model in the art department. She fell off the platform while she was posing."
"Oh," Louise said. Then she looked more closely at the girl and recognized her. "I see. I'll keep her here. I'm on duty tonight."
They left, and Louise turned to Eve. "Hello there, I didn't notice who you were at first. Your name is ... Eve, isn't it?"
Eve was grateful not to be "the model" once again. She explained exactly what had happened as Louise questioned her. When she finished, the doctor nodded.
"It sounds like a muscle spasm. There's a way to find out. I'm going to prick you lightly with a pin in the area where the pain is. If the pinpricks feel numb there, and sharp on the unaffected areas, that means it's the muscle and not the bone."
Eve twitched as the pin jabbed along her upper back, but when it lowered to the coccyx area, the point could hardly be felt.
"That's good," Louise said with a relieved sigh. "No disc problems. I'm going to give you an injection of muscle relaxant."
She explained carefully exactly what the medicine was, how long it would take to make itself felt, and what Eve should expect to feel.
She smiled and patted the girl's shoulder. "It'll affect all of your skeletal muscles. You'll be weak as a kitten. Won't even be able to make a fist," she added lightly, patting again. "Now, you'll really be better off on your back. Here, let me turn you."
She flipped Eve over with expertise and surprising strength. They looked at each other for a moment and exchanged a warm smile.
Louise swabbed the bend of the elbow with alcohol, preparatory to giving the shot. "What gorgeous veins," she murmured. "Nice and prominent. You have to dig for some of them, you know?"
Eve laughed carefully, conscious of every movement. She had never been complimented on her veins before. Everything else, but never her veins. It was oddly refreshing and cheering.
The needle jabbed. As the shot ended, the pressure made Eve wince. "There," Louise soothed. "All over." She glanced at her watch.
"In about twenty minutes you ought to be as spineless as a jelly fish. In the meantime, would you like some coffee?"
"Yes, please."
"Me, too."
Louise brought the cups back and put her arm under Eve's head, lifting her up so that she could drink. "Atta girl," she said. She propped a back rest under the shoulders and handed her the cup, then took up her own.
Their eyes met over the rims of the cups. For the first time since she had been in the infirmary, Eve was conscious of being naked. She tugged fruitlessly at the folds of her trapped robe.
"Here," Louise said, spreading a sheet over her. Eve saw a faint blush appear on her cheeks. 'Tell me, if you don't mind," she began. "I've always been curious. Doesn't it bother you to pose nude? Do you feel ... embarrassed?"
Eve smiled. She had been asked that many times. Everyone was curious about it. "You get used to it," she said noncommittally. "You're probably used to looking at sights that would make most people faint, aren't you?"
"True enough," Louise nodded. The explanation seemed to satisfy her. She appeared to weigh the thought for a moment, then spoke again. "But somehow, you just don't seem like the type."
Eve's eyes widened. "I don't?" she murmured slowly.
Louise shrugged. "No."
"Why?" Eve pursued.
Louise's eyes narrowed with speculation. "Because you seem capable of more than that. You have an intelligent face. There's a certain ... oh, dumb animal stare in women who make their living by displaying themselves. You don't have it. You also have a lady-like air about you."
"I do?"
Again Louise shrugged. "Yes. Don't you know it?"
"I don't know ... whether I do or not," Eve replied in wonderment.
"Well ... look in the mirror," Louise said simply.
CHAPTER 13
Timothy Lawler sat with the chief of the local vice squad.
"I've gotten sheaves of letters about that lesbian bar, Ed. The place is notorious. And the name! The Tanned Hide," he said with disgust.
Chief Edward Huskey smiled. "They got some tough babes in that place, all right. It's all decked out like a man's leather bar, with saddles and belts and all. God help any man who walks in that little den."
"But you have women detectives," Tim said quietly.
He watched the slow comprehension dawn on the chiefs face. Ed Huskey owed him several favors, and he had plenty of interesting information on the vice chief. He knew that Huskey was in his debt; Tim was a member of the City Council and had a good deal to say about appropriations for the police department-and raises for the personnel.
"The people around here are fed up with this sort of thing," Tim went on. In his mind he saw a landslide victory for himself in the forthcoming legislative elections. He already had the headline written:
LAWLER LANDSLIDE LEVELS LUST PANDERERS
Chief Huskey stroked his chin. "I don't know how we would stand legally. The state statute reads: unnatural intercourse. That's all it says. That technically refers to sodomy and bestiality. Only a male can commit intercourse."
"True," said Tim. "But intercourse can be interpreted to mean a completed sex act-going all the way, in other words. Lesbians go all the way, in their fashion, don't they? I think we could test the law on that basis. If we win, fine. If we don't still fine, because the climate of public opinion around here now is such that the law could be changed to read more specifically."
He saw himself in the state legislature, introducing the new bill. Any non-procreative sexual act....He frowned. That might be inclusive of married couples who depended on the pill. He altered the wording: Any sexual act between two people of the same sex. Yes, that was better.
"Who's your best-looking hen cop?" he asked Huskey.
The chief grinned. "Barbara Quentin, who else?
But she'll have a stroke when I tell her what she's going to have to do. She's all-woman all right. One hundred percent."
The next day, one-hundred-percent-all-woman Miss Quentin sat in the office with the two men. The air was thick with a sultry perfume that was distinctly Arabic or Turkish. Her nails were batter called talons, being over an inch long. She was possibly the city's best decoy. Much of her work entailed sitting alone in movies waiting for a man to sit down beside her so she could arrest him. She was thirty-six, unmarried, and lived with her widowed father, the retired chief of the vice squad, whom she adored. Entrapment ran in the family.
"Every time I think of a woman just touching me I could just die!" she exclaimed. "Lesbians make me physically ill. I just can't understand why any woman would want to be a lesbian." She shivered and wrinkled her nose.
"Well, you'd better take some sedative before you go to The Tanned Hide," Tim said, shaking his head.
Det. Quentin straightened her lace cuffs and rattled her bangled bracelets, all six of them. "I just really don't know what women do together. It's always puzzled me. Why would a woman want to go to bed with a woman when she can go to bed with a man?" she mused.
"Bunch of goddamn degenerates," Tim said darkly. "This country's going to go the way of the Roman Empire if things don't change. All these rotten apples...."
Huskey spoke up. "A woman is built for a man-"
Tim snapped his fingers. "That's it! That's how we could skirt the wording of the law. A dildo! If somebody could be caught using a dildo, that would be intercourse, pure and simple."
"I would die if a woman came near me with a dildo-"
"It wouldn't have to be you, Babs," Huskey said. "If you witnessed it, that would be enough."
She turned to him. "But I thought you said I'd have to let somebody do something to me!"
"Whichever way we can work it. Well just have to play it by ear."
"Ugh! What do they do with their ears?" She rolled her eyes at the ceiling and shook her head.
Huskey crossed his legs, looked down at them for a second, then uncrossed them. "Okay, here's the plan. Babs, you'll go there as a customer. You'll pretend to be a femme."
"Well, I should hope so," she interrupted. "I'm not cutting my hair for anything."
"And wear a dress and heels," Tim put in.
"I never wear anything else. I don't own a single pantsuit. I just don't feel right in them."
As she listened to the briefing, she absentmindedly ran her forefinger over her eyebrow. It seemed, Tim thought, to be a habit, the way some people pull at an ear lobe. Suddenly she looked at her finger and saw the brow-makeup smeared on it. She opened her purse and began rooting for something. She took out her revolver, her badge, and finally found her compact.
After she had repaired the damage, she planted her hands firmly in her lap, but it wasn't long before she started to fidget again. She fingered the jacket of her suit, running her hand up and down its unbuttoned edge. When Tim looked at her once again, she was poking her finger absent-mindedly in and out of a buttonhole.
CHAPTER 14
The medicine had begun to take effect. Eve felt boneless, as Louise had predicted. She tried to clench her fingers together but they were limp and useless. Louise, at her desk writing a report, looked up.
"Let's see how we're doing," she said, rising and coming over to the cot.
The sheet was spread over Eve's supine body. Louise pulled it up from the bottom, exposing the legs to the hips. Carefully, she tucked the white cloth between Eve's thighs, covering the private parts and leaving one leg exposed. This leg she grasped by the ankle and lifted it slowly, her eyes on Eve's face.
"Does that hurt your back?"
"A little ... but not much."
"Now the other one."
Eve watched as Louise re-covered the first leg, bunched the sheet over the genitals, and exposed the other leg for the test. It was a thoughtful kind of modesty, even for a male doctor to observe. With two women it was totally unnecessary. Yet Eve felt gratitude; it seemed the epitome of dignity and refinement, the subtlest of proprieties. Ironic, in her case, she thought. It was so odd to have someone else care so much about her modesty, when she had never cared about it herself. It was a topsy-turvy situation; like having someone else eat and sleep for her, a kind of spiritual lady-in-waiting. Sudden sadness overwhelmed her. Her mouth tightened into a thin line and her brows knitted together in confused thought.
"Hurt?" Louise said anxiously.
"No. No, it's much better."
The woman went to a metal cabinet. "I'm going to put you in a back brace. I want you to wear it for about a week. It's kind of like an old-fashioned corset."
At the word corset Eve stiffened. Tears came without warning, and automatically she tried to turn over and hide her face in the pillow, but the pain shot up at her abrupt, careless movement and she cried out.
"What is it?" Louise rushed to her. The brace was in her hand; it had laces and eyelets, and it did look like an old-fashioned stay.
"I don't want that thing!"
"I don't care whether you want it or not," Louise said calmly but adamantly. "You have to wear it. Eve-what's the matter!"
"I hate it! My mother wore...." She sobbed and choked, instinctively twisting away from the hand that held the hideous garment, as she had once twisted out of her mother's grasp. The pain immobilized her once more. She lay on her back, hands at her sides, perfectly straight, as she cried frenzied tears. Would she always have to be stiff and unmoving on the outside when she hurt so badly on the inside, she wondered? It seemed to have become a curse.
She saw Louise's face come close to hers as the Woman grasped her shoulders. Then, in a flash, she felt a sharp, quick lash of fingers on her cheek.
"Stop it. Stop it." The voice was even and calm but command was calcified in every syllable. Eve swallowed repeatedly and tapered off into a weak whimper.
"Here. Take this." Louise handed her a capsule and lifted her head so that she could drink the cup of water that she had fetched from a cooler.
"Now. That won't put you to sleep, it'll just calm you down. What is it, baby girl? Tell me all about it."
As Louise sat beside her on the cot, listening and nodding, Eve poured out the whole story once again, just as she had Vivian. As she finished, she understood something.
Lost one mother. Please return to Eve Banner. Reward..,.
But somehow it was different from the night she had told Vivian. That time, they had been in bed, naked. They had just made love. But now, Louise sat, starched and crisp, warm yet remote and in charge. Most of all, Louise had covered her nakedness. The only person who ever had-including myself.
"Tell me something," she said, gazing up at the woman.
"If I can," Louise answered.
"Vivian...."
Louise stiffened. "What about her?"
"You were lovers in school, weren't you? She told me you were."
"Yes, we were. And you?"
Eve nodded. She saw Louise's mouth clamp into an angry line.
"You don't have to be jealous," Eve said. "I won't take her away from you. It's you who're taking her away from me. She wants you, not me."
Louise shook her head. "That's not what I was thinking. What occurred to me was...." She hesitated, then went on." ... was that we both need Vivian like we need another thumb. You in particular. You're in no emotional condition to cope with her."
"You mean I've ... had a nervous breakdown?"
Amusement flickered in Louise's eyes. "In a way. I don't like the wording, however. Nervous breakdowns conjure up screaming women lying in fcur-posters, with the shutters drawn, and lots of tongue-clicking female relatives standing around blaming it on an early change of saying 'poor thing, she's just run down'. No, not that kind of nervous breakdown. That .suggests," Louise said intently, locking on Eve's eyes, "that there is an innate weakness and helplessness in women. You have not had anything like that."
Her voice and gaze were firm. It was as if she had said: If you die I'll kill you.
Eve felt a kind of strength seep into her. "What kind, then?"
"The kind that people often have, many times in their lives. People are constantly changing and maturing, dropping false fronts and protective colorations and shells of one kind and another.
There's an interim period when you've lost a defense, yet you've not had time to replace it with anything else. It's then that you have a kind of mini breakdown."
She paused, grinning. "That's why it's been so quiet in here tonight, with just the two of us. But the psychiatric service does a roaring business, especially in a college, and especially at this hour. The night has a thousand eyes; the day but one. People break more precedents than they do legs."
A thoughtful frown was on Eve's face. She smiled and nodded slowly. "You know, I admire you. A little while ago I hated you. I wish I could be more like you."
Louise opened her mouth, then closed it abruptly. "How about getting some sleep? You've had a rough day. I think I'll doze myself. I'm on duty till morning. If you want me, I'll be in the next room."
"Goodnight," Eve said.
Louise did not sleep. Instead, she lay looking up at the ceiling. I shouldn't make speeches, she thought wryly. Here lam changing and maturing, dropping false fronts and protective colorations and shells of one kind and another.
She had met many attractive women over the years, but she had never permitted herself to think of them. Now, though, the speculations came very easily and painlessly. She felt quite free.
She's twenty-six and I'm forty-three. Seventeen years....Is it too much? Will it work? I'm old enough to be her mother, but hell, she wants a mother, she needs one. And I need a child. There's nothing wrong with neuroses. Without them, there would be ho books to read and no music to listen to because there would be no unbearable grains of sand around which the oyster builds a pearl.
Louise had no patience with psychiatry. She recalled something she had read somewhere, about an English major who had written a short story, then told her professor: "Don't worry. I'm going to go back and put in the symbols."
As far as she was concerned, the best therapy consisted of common sense, grit, hard work that one enjoyed, and above all, a sense of humor. It all boiled down to reality, yet there were countless socially acceptable and even socially required ways of making oneself sick, all of them unrealistic.
Eve's worship and exploitation of the female form was one. Beautiful women were expected to be sex objects; it was not surprising that they so often followed through and became just that.
Belief in immortality was another sure-fire way to go crackers. The cornerstone of that particular self-deception was a denial of death. How many funerals took place at which the mourners insisted upon saying of the corpse: "He looks just like he's sleeping?" Did people sleep fully clothed, with carnations in their buttonholes? In thousand-dollar boxes?
Louise sighed in the darkness as she thought of Eve's story of her childhood. If all church property could be confiscated and donated to medical research, people might end up so healthy they'd live forever anyhow.
The name of the game, Louise thought, was to have neuroses while making sure that the neuroses don't have you.
She had been about to suggest to Eve that she get out of the posing racket, but then changed her mind. It has to come from her, be her own decision, not mine, she told herself. That was one technique of psychiatry that she approved of.
Why did it have to be Eve she wanted. It really made no sense. Maybe that was why she was so sure of it.
The problem was going to be Vivian. Of that she was positive. Hell hath no fury like a man who loses both women.
CHAPTER 15
Louise went home in the morning when the other doctor came on. They moved Eve to the infirmary ward for girls. She was the only patient there.
She left her with a breakfast tray and another injection of medicine. "I'll come back this afternoon to see how you're getting along."
When she got home, she finally got some sleep, but it was fitful and full of meaningless but frightening dreams. A pall seemed to hang over her. As she entered the infirmary in the afternoon, she had a feeling that something unpleasant was going to happen very soon.
Eve, at least, looked much better. She gazed up at Louise with a happy smile as she entered.
"I got up," she announed. "It was a little hard, but I made it. I feel a little wobbly, though."
Louise made another pinprick test. This time, the affected area was as sensitive as the rest of the back.
"Okay, but will you please wear the brace?"
Eve nodded without hesitation; the implications of the garment seemed unimportant now.
"Stay put. I'll strap it on you. No point in getting up if you don't have to."
Louise pulled down the sheet and lifted the hospital gown. The gleaming white hips were sinuous and inviting; now that Eve was not in pain, she could think about the body in another way. A hot flush stole over her as she looked down into the tangled golden triangle. She's really a blonde's blonde....
"Keep straight, I'll lift you."
She reached under and cupped the firm buttocks with one hand as she slid the brace under the small of the back. She was conscious of the closeness of the velvety flesh as she raised the torso. As she laced the belt, her hand brushed against Eve's cunt.
"There." She sat down on the bed, tucking the sheet about Eve.
Just then, the nurse opened the door. "Dr. Fowler, there's someone to see you." As the woman retreated from the door, Vivian walked in.
"Well, this looks cozy. I see you two have met," she said sarcastically. "I should have known better than to introduce you in the first place."
Louise stood up. "What do you want?" she burst out, her temper flaring.
"I believe we all have the same desires, don't we?" Vivian looked from Louise to Eve, then indicated herself with a feathery palm on her chest. "All three of us-Adam and Eve and Pinch Me-Tight."
"Listen, this is my hospital and this is a patient," Louise began, her face darkening.
"What're you doing, an abortion? Which one of us is the happy father?"
"Shut up and get out!"
Vivian looked her up and down, a smirk on her lips. "My, aren't we protective of our sweet young thing. Our is right, isn't it?"
"You bet I'm protective of her. She happens to be sick and she's in my charge."
The words made two bright red spots appear on Vivian's cheeks. She pushed past Louise and stalked over to the bed. "You little bitch-"
She grabbed Eve's arm and jerked hard, trying to pull her up. The girl grimaced and emitted a renting groan. Louise sprang at Vivian and whirled her about, slapping her hard.
"Goddamn you...." she breathed, close to tears.
"Goddamn you! She's had a fall-"
Vivian, her hand to her cheek, stepped back. "What happened? Did she fall off her pedestal?"
"As a matter-of-fact, I did," Eve panted, easing herself back against the pillow.
"Get out of here, Vivian, or so help me God I'll put you in a cast."
The two women stared in silent wrath at each other, then Vivian turned and slammed out the door.
Louise sank down on the bed, wondering how much the nurse had heard. Oh, God, she almost ruined me once, and she didn't mean to then....What's she going to do now!
"I wouldn't put anything past her," she mumbled, numbed by the scene that had just passed.
"Louise...." Eve put out her hand. "What can she do without hurting herself as well?"
"That's just it. She wants to hurt herself."
CHAPTER 16
For the rest of that day, Vivian's rage boiled steadily until it had reached the stage of violent lashing-out. She wanted to do something to get back at both of them. She cut her class and stayed at home, reviewing the violent scene in her mind. They had been talking about her when she walked in, she was sure of it. Snuggled up on the bed, their heads together, talking about her! Laughing about her...?
Frustrated anger grew into another kind of frustration. A compulsive desire rose in her. She wanted a woman, any woman, just to show them-Show them.
Slowly, she began to smile, her eyes narrowing. God Bless Tiny Tim Lawler....
He had been writing about that bar lately. He didn't mention it by name but she knew what his ringing allusions meant by this time. She knew all the code words by this time: unnatural lust ... an affront to the community, and things about the Greeks and the Romans.
She had heard a few vague things about the bar called The Tanned Hide but she never would have remembered much about it had it not been for her husband's latest campaign. One of his phrases-"debasement of womanhood"-she had thought pertained to a male homosexual bar at first. But now, as she mulled over his current prose, it became clear. The two male bars had already been closed; the only one left he could possibly be referring to was the lesbain hangout.
God bless us every one....
Vivian parked the car in a lot two blocks away from the bar. As she walked down to the street, her excitement rose. She had not been to one of these places since before she was married. Suddenly, she missed it; the raucous, beer-slinging conviviality, the tension that came from the mass cruising that went on, and most of all, the atmosphere of acceptance.
Her mouth tightened as she thought of Eve and Louise. They had rejected her, but she would show them.
She opened the door and stepped into the dimness. The little bit of light in the place came from red kerosene lanterns placed over the bar and on each table. The bar itself had a thick leather border enclosing an incredibly scarred surface on which hundreds of initials had been carved. When she sat down she saw that the carving had been done professionally; it was meant to resemble an old wild West saloon bar. There were even some simulated bullet-gougings in it. An enormous pair of steer's horns hung over the cash register. Other mementoes of the mayhem of manifest destiny and mass slaughter included holsters, saddles, bridles, Colt revolvers, cavalry swords and haversacks and a gigantic wagon wheel.
A nest of close-cropped heads turned as Vivian sat down. She stared back, fascinated, remembering herself as she had been years before. She gave her order to a grinning, appreciative barmaid who wore sleeve garters on her upper arms. The girl's hair was combed duck-tail style in the back, and she lumbered with a splay-footed gait.
Suddenly she felt self-conscious, inferior. It was almost like being the only woman in a straight bar, surrounded by staring men. She regretted her attractive pantsuit, the ruffled cuffs on her shirt, and the puffy hairdo that came forward softly about her chin.
"Here you go, hon," the bartender said, putting down the drink in front of her.
Hon....That was what men called women who sat alone in bars. Automatically, as though it were her given name. Hon....Nothing could be more callously affectionate than that appellation.
That's what I used to call girls I met in bars ... the femmes I used to pick up, she thought. Another wave of insignificance passed over her. In a flash, she saw herself as she used to be, and wondered what would happen if she made herself look like that again.
The plan sprang into her mind, seemingly unaided by conscious thought. Suppose she were to do it? What could he do? How perfect it would be, a few days before the election, to appear at one of those damn rallies with a butch haircut and a severely tailored pantsuits, no makeup....She saw herself, hands shoved into pockets, one foot on a chair rung, charming the voters. She could see Tim's face now. He would try to pass it over, but he would go to pieces, of that she was sure.
She would have to spring it on him as a surprise ... wait until a few days before. There was a banquet scheduled by the party at that time; he had already told her to buy a new dress for it.
She could ruin him for good. She could leave him then, be free of him, with the knowledge that she had wrecked him good and proper first. That was much more satisfying than simply leaving him. Divorced men got themselves elected nowadays, that wouldn't hurt him enough. But if she pulled the pillars down before she decamped ... how much better that would be!
She could set herself up for the finale beforehand-starting tonight! She would let herself be seen here, at the bar. Someone could see her going in or coming out.
The next time, I'll park the car out front, she decided. Then what? What could she do that would be subtle but gossip-worthy? She didn't want him to get wind of the situation before the night of the banquet.
Not to worry, she told herself, sipping her drink. The husband is the last to know.
In the powder room of The Tanned Hide Barbara Quentin was putting the finishing touches on a repair job of her makeup. She wore a bright pink dress with a brocaded jacket. She was redolent from a dosing of bath oil, splash freshener, dusting powder, toilet water, cologne and perfume, all in the same fragrance-her favorite. Forever Feline.
The task completed, she put her makeup kit back into her purse, along with her revolver, her badge, her switchblade, a pair of handcuffs and two packs of Virginia Slims.
This was undoubtedly the most difficult assignment she had ever undertaken. She still didn't think it would work, but Daddy had been ecstatic at the idea, and she couldn't let him down. He'd be so proud of her if she carried it off, she told herself. It was a nice thought, to have a Daddy proud of her. That would show him that he didn't need a son to carry on his work. Nothing Daddy had ever done in thirty years on the Urinal Beat would top this job.
She walked out of the ladies room and moved to take a seat near the gang of pop-eyed butches when she saw the woman at the end of the bar. Carefully, she did not let her face change with the recognition she experienced. Slowly and sinuously she walked toward the newcomer.
Barbara slipped onto a stood beside Vivian. "Hi," she whispered. "I recognized you. You're Vivian Lawler, aren't you? Tim's wife. I saw you on TV and at that political rally. Are you part of this, too?"
Vivian grinned at her. "I've been part of it for a long time. How about you?"
"This is my beat, honey. But I never expected to see you here. Imagine that Tim-boy, I bet he thinks he's real cool. I've never heard a word about you. But you know, Vivian, we'd better not talk about it or we might let something slip in front of the wrong people." She glanced in the direction of the hutches. "You know the old cop saying: three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead. We'll just play it straight, okay?"
Vivian winked. "You mean gay."
Barbara laughed. "Yeah, that's for sure. God....Look, I'm going to work the other end for awhile. See if you get anything worthwhile up here."
She jumped off the stool, then turned back to whisper. "I think we ought to keep separate, Justin case. You know," she hissed. "I'm expecting a couple of buddies later on. You'll know them when you see them," she added, nodding conspiratorial ly.
Vivian watched her wiggle away. She frowned in confusion. What an oddball ... I wonder if she works at the paper? She smiled to herself. If this girl had recognized her from political ads on TV, then other people would, too.
CHAPTER 17
Roy Prentiss sat in his room in the dorm staring at the pictures he had drawn of Eve Banner. His breath tightened until he could not breath more deeply than a quivering, shallow gasp. His loins stirred into life and swelled against the confines of his trousers.
He looked down at the lump, rubbing his hand over it. Nothing wrong with that! No sir!
No ma'am Eve rose in his mind as he pushed harder against .his turgid flesh. He imagined her here, on his bed, on her back, her legs spread out. She was naked....
Naked.
So what? The fantasy did nothing for him. He had seen her naked, with her legs spread, so many times. Some other girl he could undress in his mind and enjoy it, but Eve....
He needed more than the imagined sight of her bare flesh. He didn't have to imagine that, not now.
He tightened his fist and banged it on the desk top, tears of frustration coming into his eyes. In a moment, his glasses were wet and steamed. He took them off and cleaned them on his shirttail. He squinted painfully at the drawings; he could barely see them now, his eyes were so weak.
Everything about him was weak except His hand touched the magic of his maleness. His lips parted as his tongue darted over them.
He put his glasses on again. The drawings sharpened and changed from fuzzy gray to defined black. The clarity was unbearable because he knew he had no talent. He could not draw; he never had been able to. He just took the art course so that he could see a naked woman, a real woman with no clothes on, instead of the pictures in magazines that he had been buying since he was eighteen.
His mother had found them once. He could still hear her screaming, taunting, horrified voice. "You're a beast, a nasty little snot! A filthy, dirty monster!"
He looked into the mirror on the back of the closet door. I am a beasi, a nasty little snot, a filthy dirty monster....
Prentiss sprang from the chair, knocking it over, and stood in front of the long mirror. I hate them! I hate girls! They hate me-why shouldn't I hate them?
He was so small and thin; he still looked about sixteen, even if he were a freshman in college. They had made fun of him, always. Ever since he started kindergarten. At first he thought it was his glasses; he had always worn them. When he was a little boy they had to be strapped on so he wouldn't lose them as he toddled about in a clumsy, childish gait. Before they finally discovered that his sight was so poor, his parents had thought he was mentally retarded because he kept bumping into things and had no curiosity. He gazed at things dully, with no interest. He couldn't even Prentiss shuddered with rage as he heard his father's voice, disgusted, disappointed, jeering:
"He's so dumb he can't even piss! Look, he missed it again."
The glasses were only one problem as time went on. It wasn't so bad in the lower grades, when everyone was little, but later on all the rest of them grew so tall-except him.
Then the girls began to hate him with a ferocity they did not bother to hide. "There's no room at the tables. So? Eat your lunch off of Roy's head!"
He would go to the football games in high school to look at the cheerleaders. The game didn't interest him; it only made him feel worse because he wasn't big and strong enough to play. But, miraculously, there was one part of him that was big; damn big. That much he knew from the locker room in gym class. Of course, he was excused from gym because of his eyes and the effects of the rheumatic fever he had had as a child. But he kept score and took care of the equipment, and so he dressed in a sweat suit along with the other boys.
It was not until then that he realized what he had, compared to them. They realized it, too, but they admitted it in a jeering way.
"Hey, cock! Where're you goin' with that boy?"
Prentiss knew for a fact that the captain of the football team had a dong no bigger than a girl's thumb. That was why he liked to go to the games and stare at the cheerleaders. What if they had known of the disparity?
He watched them, their jiggling breasts that were always moving under their heavy sweaters. When they squatted and jumped, which was perpetually, you could see way up their skirts. They wore tights, but you could see the crotch. The girls did mid-air splits. Each time the milky legs opened, he imagined they were wrapping around him. He saw himself planted between them, throwing it in hard. He wasn't sure of the place ... he knew there was supposed to be an opening but he didn't know where it was. From his pictures, he couldn't tell. It was just a patch of hair, shaped like a triangle. Did you just ram it into the hair? Did it all open up when you did it to a girl? If the girl had never done it before, you had to break through something ... but what? Where? Did it mean that after you did it to her, she would have a bald place there in the triangle?
The thought pleased him. Right in the gut! That would fix them, that would pay them back for laughing at him.
The confusion stayed with him until the day he followed one of the cheerleaders home from school. At first, he didn't consciously plan it. He just wanted to watch her bottom bounce, but then it bounced so much that he couldn't stand it any longer. He had to get in there and feel it, that soft flesh that always looked plump, no matter how thin the girl was. He didn't want to hurt her ... he couldn't stick his dong in her because that would be a crime and they'd send him to jail. He just wanted to feel her, put his hand up there and find out where that place was, and touch it, maybe put his finger in it.
Just to see ... he wouldn't hurt her. He just wanted to know, to feel....He had to know.
When she passed a small park he ran up to her, panting. "Hi! How-how are you?" he stammered.
Her mouth twisted in disgust. "Oh, it's you."
"You ... want to sit in the park for awhile?" His voice shook; he felt a pounding in his throat and in the back of his head.
"No, thanks," the girl said in a snippy voice.
He stepped closer. It was a wonderful feeling to see that look of terror come into her eyes. They widened, just like ripples in a pond when you throw stones in. Widening ... ever widening.
"Hey-stop!"
He clamped a hand over her mouth and pulled her into the bushes. For some reason, he was strong, stronger than she, even though he was shorter. His hand shot up her skirt and dug into the crotch of her pants. He felt the hair, lots of it, and then something else.
The skin parted, and then it was like having a finger inside a mouth. It felt the same ... slippery, moist, just like gums.
She struggled away and screamed hysterically, crawling on her hands and knees over the wet, muddy grass.
Someone in a car stopped. An older couple got out, horrified. She ran to them, pointing back at the bushes where he lay, crying. What would his mother say now? What would she call him?
There were angry, hysterical meetings between the police, the juvenile authorities, the school counselor, the school psychiatrist, and both sets of parents. They made him go to therapy three times a week, and took him out of school. A-tutor had to finish out the senior year for him. In exchange for agreeing to this, Roy's parents were assured that there would be nothing on record that would keep him from getting into college.
Yet he still hated women, too, for what they had done to him. There was a book he read; its title was one short word: She. It's author was H. Rider Haggard. Roy couldn't concentrate on the story because of the title. It was like something lurking behind him as he read. The word was awful. It sounded viscious; it sounded tike shriek, screech, scream. It sounded like something that had claws. He imagined an animal called a she. It would have slanting eyes, sleek hair, long pointed teeth; it would move with stealth and grace, silent and undulating toward its prey.
Of course, there was no such animal. Yet, there actually was; the big cats. The circus came to town and he went. As he was watching the lion tamer he stiffened. Afterwards, when everyone was talking about it, he wanted to tell them that he had known it was going to happen, but they would just laugh, as they always laughed at him.
The cats moved in sulky but timid obedience. The whip cracked, the cats cringed and performed, climbing up on little colored drums and sitting docilely on their hind legs. The spectators applauded, and the tamer turned around to take a bow....
A lunge. A hoarse, hideous scream. Panic. Fascinated horror as the sand in the cage grew red.
Roy sat staring at the gore. A man behind him hollered, "Oh, no ... no ... the goddamn fool. They'll turn on you every time.
She....
"Cats don't like to be tamed," people said, reading the papers the next day. "They're too independent. Even a little house cat."
The circus incident occurred the summer before Roy started college. One day, he saw a cat walking in the alley. She....People called all cats she whether they were male or female. It didn't seem to matter: they were always she or her.
As with the girl he had assaulted, he didn't plan to do it. The idea birthed itself in a labor apart from the workings of his conscious mind. He picked up a can of lighter fluid and some matches and went out the door.
"Here, kitty, kitty, kitty."
The cat stared at him with slanting green eyes. How coolly mocking they were! She....How he hated that cat. He went forward slowly, crouching down and holding out his hand.
Suddenly, unable to wait any longer, he grabbed at the fur ruff. The cat squalled and spat, turning into a raging ball of fury as it began to shred the flesh of his arm. Roy cried out in pain and dropped the animal, watching it race away from him.
It was as though he had just awakened from sleep. He shook his head, dazed, and looked at his arm. The blood was coursing down it from four deep cuts. It looked like the tines of a huge red fork.
When he entered college and took the drawing class, he became obsessed with Eve. There she sat, on that little stool, with her slanting eyes and that thick mane of tawny hair. Watching ... always watching something or somebody carefully, even though she never really looked at anything.
She had answered his question for him. She spread her legs so wide sometimes, or bent over with her back towards him, so that he at last understood where the opening was. It was down at the bottom of that divided oval. A couple of times, he could practically see it open.
Now, he stood in front of the mirror in the dormitory room, opening his pants. There! Wouldn't she like that? What girl wouldn't? He arched his back and beat the palm of his hand hard over the stiffened rod. Goddamn her ... her ... she ... her ... she.
But abruptly, he stopped his solitary pleasure. No, not this way. There was a better way. The detached sensation came over him once again.
He walked to his desk and searched for the piece of paper. He hadn't planned to follow her home; he wasn't going to bother her, he just wanted to see where she lived. Somehow, seeing the most intimate parts of her had made him want to know other things about her-insignificant things.
Like where she lived.
He picked up the slip of paper. On it was written: She: 144 West Street, Apt. 7.
He fastened his pants, put the paper in his pocket, and left the dormitory. It was dark as he walked across the quadrangle. He saw the bus coming and ran for it, taking a short-cut through a clump of bushes. They made him think of the cheerleader. As he pushed them open and jumped through them they made a scratchy sound against his jacket that seemed to be the word: She.
CHAPTER 18
Vivian watched the sexy girl dance with one butch after another, her body pressed close to those of the masculine girls and her arm held tightly around their shoulders. She wanted her, but she didn't even know her name. The girl hadn't been near her since their brief talk earlier in the evening.
Now, Vivian was well-nigh drunk. She stared at the girl, wondering what the body under that pink dress looked like. As she continued to stare, she wondered just how drunk she was, because now she was seeing part of that body-very clearly.
A very big, very round breast emerged from the bodice of the low-cut dress. Whether it popped out accidentally or whether it was released by its owner or grabbed by her partner she did not know.
All she knew was that it was there, and that it was promptly tongued by a strapping diesel while the others cheered.
Then, rather irrelevantly, Vivian thought, the sexy girl twisted her arm around into what must have been a painful position under the circumstances, and looked at her watch.
Vivian's mouth watered as she stared at the succulent tits. God, they were big! She climbed unsteadily off the stool and started down the aisle.
Just then the door opened. Two tough-looking women in slacks entered, but she paid them no mind until she saw the two dark-suited men on their heels.
The girl pulled away from the butch, grabbed her purse, opened it and took something out.
"You're under arrest," she announced, flipping open a wallet with one hand as she tucked herself back into her dress with the other.
The quartet that had just entered began collaring the butches as some of the girls nearer the door went rushing out.
"Hey-"
"Let 'em go, we got enough. Come on, girls."
"You sonofabitch, get your fuckin' hands off me!"
One of the tough women grabbed Vivian, but the girl in pink stopped her. "She's with us, let her go.
Vivian blinked and stared open-mouthed, about to speak, but just then a bevy of blue-suited policewomen entered. Pandemonium broke lose. She was carried on the crest of the struggling crowd as it moved toward the entrance.
A fight broke out on the sidewalk. There were flashes of arms and legs, yells and curses, and a few shutter-quick exhibitions of judo. Vivian saw it all through alcoholic shock; it looked like a film running at top speed. The girls were hustled into some waiting cars and carted away.
"They're going to lock it up. Come on in the squad car with me," the girl said, taking Vivian's arm. She saw some male policemen going inside the bar, turning off lights. One of them waited outside with a paper in his hand.
"I had to do it on lewd acts in public," the girl went on. 'Tim was all fired up about a dildo but I knew they weren't going to go that far in there, and I'll be damned if I was going to be alone with any of them. Besides, it was the bar we were after, not one individual."
Vivian shook her head. "What? What do you-"
"Here's the car. Come on."
She kept up a steady, seemingly compulsive stream of chatter with the male pair in front all the way to the station.
"God, it was awful, I could throw up. Imagine a woman wanting to put her mitts all over another woman! My flesh is still crawling. And the way they dance-God, I never had a man do some of the things to me on the dance floor that they did-God! And one of them told me what else she'd like to do to me-honestly, Frank, I never even heard of it! Oh, I feel sick...."
When they walked into the station, the first person she saw was Tim. He was eyeing the crew of girls, a small smirk on his face. Then he turned and saw her.
Vivian smiled at him. The script was already written, and she planned to follow it-for awhile, anyway. And he had no choice, as usual.
"You're a sly fox," the girl said to him, punching him companionably in the ribs. "You didn't tell me your wife was going to come in with us."
"Yeah," he grunted.
"I'm afraid I didn't do much," Vivian said modestly. "I'm sorry, darling, but she's so efficient...." She nodded in the direction of the girl. What the hell was her name?
He swallowed. "What did you get, Babs?"
"First, what they were doing to me." She pointed to her jutting breast and made a slurping noise. "They were also doing it to several others. I witnessed that, and also there's an underage girl in the pack. I could swear she's under twenty-one. They were passing around pot. Here it is," she said, producing two reefers from her pocket. "Oh! There's the kid!" she exclaimed, pointing to a young girl. "Frank! Check her age. That's the one."
Vice Squad Chief Huskey joined the trio. "Ed, did Tim tell you he was putting his wife on this job?" Barbara Quentin said coyly, coming forth with another one of her ole' buddy punches.
Huskey looked dumbly at Vivian. Tim spoke quickly. "Yeah ... I thought I'd plant her there, just in case we needed another witness."
Huskey's eyes widened. "Are you nuts? They'll be screaming about citizen vigilantes, conspiracy-"
"I got that figured out. It's for the paper," he said, winking broadly. "You know-wife replaces editor. I couldn't very well go in there for a story. They wouldn't let me in the place."
Huskey shook his head. "Jesus, Tim...."
Vivian laid a light hand on his arm. "Don't worry. You can bill me as Molly Pitcher."
The girls were booked, phone calls were made, and people started arriving. The young girl turned out to be eighteen. Her parents came in, and she ran sobbing into her father's arms.
Huskey smiled brightly. "Eighteen, huh! Great. That'll do it. That and the pot are the best things we've got."
He tuerned to Barbara Quentin. "Was she drinking?"
"Beer," she answered. "Terrific! There goes their license."
"What about the sex, though?" she asked, frowning.
"The point is to close 'em up. Tim can handle the irate community from his side."
She grabbed him by the arm. "But can't I testify about what they did to me?"
"We might not need it." He motioned to the girl, and then held the reefers up, winking at her. "Good job, Babs."
They drifted off, leaving Vivian and Tim alone. Someone had handed them some coffee. She felt almost sober now. She looked stonily at him.
"Okay, you win," she said evenly. "I'll go along with it-I'll have to, won't I? But on one condition."
"What's that?"
"I'll stick by you until the election. Then, when things settle down, I want a quiet, dignified divorce."
He looked steadily at her for a long moment. "Okay. It's a deal." Then: "You dyke bitch!"
"You're not up on your gay vocabulary. You're supposed to call me a filthy muff diver."
"I think I could call you just about anything without going wide of the mark. You're not getting near the kids."
"Good, I don't want them. They're all yours. I'll take five hundred a month, though. Remember, I still have those sizzling love letters you wrote, plus a few other choice bits of miscellaneous information."
The story of the raid broke the next morning, but it was shoved out of the top left-hand corner by another much more serious crime.
CHAPTER 19
Roy Prentiss got off the bus and walked two blocks to Eve's apartment. Just as he approached the front door, a car pulled up on front of the building. Two women were in the front seat.
Quickly, he stepped back behind a thick tree. One of the women got out of the car. It was Eve. She bent down stiffly to say something to the driver, then the car pulled off. In the glow from the street lamp, Roy saw that there was a caduceus on the license tag.
He stepped soundlessly into the lobby after she had had a chance to start up the stairwell. She moved slowly, he saw. The stairs were dark. He waited until he heard her open a corridor door. She had only climbed one flight; she must live on the second floor.
He rushed up the stairs and opened the door. She was only about four feet from him; her apartment faced the door that led to the stairs. Her key was in the lock. It turned. The door opened, and she paused a moment as she reached around the jamb to switch on the foyer light.
He sprang forward, grabbing her from behind and forcing her through the door, kicking it shut with his foot. His hand covered her mouth as he fell on top of her.
He pulled her over on her back and straddled her, his hands on her throat. "All right, you little piece. I'm gonna get some of that cunt you've been shovin' in my face. You little bitch, I'm gonna fuck you, I'm gonna give you some, I'm gonna stick somethin; in you!"
He expected begging, pleading, terror-huge eyes. And struggle. He wanted her to struggle and kick, twist and squirm. That would make it better!
But instead her eyes were squeezed shut, and her mouth twisted in a grimace, so that she looked like someone who had had a stroke. It seemed to him that all of her features were on only one side of her face.
CHAPTER 20
"Did you see him leave?"
"No," Eve replied. "I fainted."
"What did you do when you came to?" prosecutor asked.
"I crawled to the phone and called Dr. Fowler.
"Why did you not call the police first?"
"Because I needed a doctor first."
The district attorney nodded. "Thank you, Banner."
Prentiss's lawyer stood up. "Miss Banner, you pose in the nude?"
"Yes "
"All of the time?"
"No."
"Most of the time?"
"Yes."
"Have you posed in the nude in the class which the defendant is enrolled in?"
"Yes."
"All of the time?"
"Yes. It's a drawing class."
The defense counsel glanced at the jury. "Well, I don't know what that has to do with it, but then I'm not very arty."
"Objection, your honor. This case has nothing to do with my colleague's leisure-time pursuits."
"Sustained," said the judge.
Eve saw in a flash what the lawyer was trying to do. Whether or not his remark were stricken from the record, it would remain implanted in the jury's mind. It would get them on his side, because they weren't very arty, either. She suppressed a shudder as she looked at them. Their eyes were calcified with hatred as they met hers. There were five men and seven women, the latter all old and fat. Their mouths were clamped into thin lines; they were American Gothic, she thought dully.
To her surprise, the lawyer let her go. She stepped carefully down from the stand and walked very straight to a seat in the courtroom.
"The prosecution calls Dr. Louise Fowler."
Eve forced the adoration from her eyes as Louise passed her. She was sworn, and took the witness seat. She was quickly qualified, then led into the story of Eve's fall in class and the consequent treatment. Then came the questioning of the night of the attack.
"I called the police and an ambulance, then accompanied her to the city hospital, where I admitted her and treated her for shock, and examined her for evidence of rape."
"Did you find such evidence?"
"I did. There was sperm in the vaginal tract and on the pubic area."
"What did you do then?"
"I gave her a D and C, in case she had been impregnated."
The judge stopped the questioning. "I would like to inform the jury at this point that such a procedure is legal according to the laws of this state. The physician was within her rights to do such."
Louise glanced at one of the women in the jury box and saw her shake her head dolefully.
"Did you do anything else, doctor?"
"Yes. It was necessary to put her in traction for her back. The original sprain had been aggravated by the attack. I called in a bone specialist who examined her. He agreed with me that the traction was necessary."
"Thank you, doctor."
The defense shot up out of his seat. "Dr. Fowler, did you find any signs of struggle in Miss Banner's apartment when you arrived?"
"She was unable to move-"
"That's not a sign of struggle. Did you see anything broken, torn? Were tables overturned, chairs?"
"No! She couldn't put up any struggle! She couldn't move!"
He shook a finger in her face. "You can't testify that she couldn't put up a struggle-you weren't there during the attack. Answer my question, please."
"No," Louise said quietly.
He glanced at the jury. "Uh-huh. No signs of struggle. Now, one more question."
He smiled and shot another covert look at the twelve people in the box.
"As a woman doctor, can you honestly say that you feel no special sympathy for a member of your sex?"
"Objection!" the prosecutor thundered. "Your honor, really!"
"Strike that," said the judge. He nodded curtly to Louise. "If the defense has no more questions, as he said, you may step down."
Eve watched Louise take a seat on the other side of the courtroom. They had agreed not to sit together.
Prentiss's mother was called. As soon as she sat down in the witness chair she burst into tears.
"Now, now," said the defense. "I only have a few brief questions. Was your son ever in trouble with the police?"
"Never. He never gave me a bit of trouble. He was a joy to raise." She gulped, ducked her head, and looked up again, her chin quivering. "Except for his health."
"Can you describe his medical history briefly?"
"Well, he had rheumatic fever when he was seven. His eyesight is very bad. When he was a little boy, he thought trees were covered with green fuzz....he couldn't see the leaves separately."
She sobbed again. "Uh-huh. Now, Mrs. Prentiss, can you verify for me the fact that your son is approximately five-feet-five and weighs onetwenty-five?"
"Your honor," said the district attorney, "he knows that's hearsay. If he wants the boy's height and weight, let him put his client on the stand!"
"Sustained."
The defense made no move to call Prentiss. "That's all, ma'am."
"Is that it?" the judge asked him curtly. 'The defense rests."
"Your honor...."
"Mr. Prosecutor?"
"I would like to call Dr. Fowler for rebuttal."
The defense smirked. "Your Honor, Dr. Fowler has just testified. Has my colleague forgotten to ask her something?"
The judge gave him a measured stare, then turned to the other man. "What is the purpose of this?"
"My colleague has made several sly allusions to Miss Banner's morals. Dr. Fowler has evidence to refute them."
"I object to the rebuttal witness," said the defense.
"This is a rape charge, sir," the judge said. "The morals of the plaintiff are pertinent. Call your witness."
Louise took the stand again. "You're still sworn," the prosecutor said. She nodded.
"When Miss Banner was first injured, in the fall in class, did you treat her in the college infirmary?"
"I did."
"At that time, you examined her back thoroughly, did you not?"
"Yes, I did."
"Did you do anything else besides treat the back injury?"
"I gave her a standard physical examination, a routine procedure.
"Did you examine her internally?"
"Yes "
"Why?"
"Because a back injury can be aggravated by female disorders."
"What did you discover during the internal examination?"
"That Miss Banner was a virgin."
The courtroom filled with a gasp. The jury looked at one another.
"Order," said the judge. "Go on."
"Are you sure of that?"
"Yes," said Louise. "She was a virgin."
The defense rose, red-faced. "Misser, excuse me. Doctor Fowler, in this day and age, how many twenty-six-year-old virgins are there running around?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. Do you?"
The audience burst into laughter. The judge's mouth twitched as he rapped for order.
The court recessed for lunch. In the corridor, Eve and Louise stopped and spoke.
Eve looked about carefully. "Thank you. You committed perjury for me," she said wonderingly.
"Not perjury, just hearsay. You told me the truth and I believe you. That's all there is to it. You were a virgin as far as men are concerned. That's what they're interested in.
The jury did not stay out long. Louise had not expected them to, after hearing the summation of the defense. Only one line in it had affected them, she was sure: "Would you want your daughter to pose in the nude?"
She knew what was going to happen, in spite of the judge's charge, which was heavily in favor of conviction, and in spite of the evidence she had given in rebuttal. She looked at the faces of the jury and thought of the housemother, Mrs. Webster, who had cared for her and Vivian twenty years before. Any of the women might have been she.
There were two indictments against Prentiss; the first was assault and the second, rape.
"How do you find the defendant on the first indictment?"
"Guilty."
"Guilty."
"How do you find the defendant on the second indictment?"
"Not guilty."
That evening, Louise and Eve sat together in the doctor's house. The woman held the girl's hand to her cheek. They were silent a long moment, then Eve spoke.
"I don't want to go back to my job."
"Good. I've been waiting for you to decide that. I have an idea for you, and for me, too."
"What?"
"Would you like to go to nursing school?" When Eve did not reply, she went on. "I'll take care of it, and of you. Afterwards, you could help me in return. I'm not as crazy about university medicine as I thought I'd be.I don't want to go back to the sticks but I'd like a private practice somewhere. I'd need a nurse."
Eve smiled. "I think I'd like that, too."
CHAPTER 21
Vivian sat on the platform beside Tim. It was the night before election, and the occasion was a meeting of the Society for the Return of Decency.
He finished his speech, a tortured convulution in which she had counted two hundred and forty-six adjectives. He had been interrupted by applause twenty-seven times. As she looked over the crowd she saw one of the members of the now-famous jury that had tried Eve's case. She no longer cared that Eve and Louise had become lovers. She felt no jealousy, no envy, no ... nothing.
The dull feeling inside of her would not go away, and yet paradoxically, she felt better than she had for a long time. She had attended the trial. She did not know if Eve and Louise had seen her or not. If so, they had pretended not to. All during the proceedings, and tonight, during Tim's speech, she had heard Louise's voice in her mind. "That's the kind of people who end up on juries. They hue to judge people, so they don't weasel out of duty."
She had lived with one of them for too long, but tonight would be their last together. She would go away, tonight, and never see him again, before it was too late...."and now, I'd like you to meet my wife, Vivian. Darling, say a few words to these fine people."
She rose, smiled, and walked forward. She kept on walking, across the platform, down the steps, up the aisle and out of the door.
It was the hardest thing she had ever done in her life. The faces bobbing up at her in astonishment were like so many pale balloons. This was much better than her original plan. She knew that nothing she could do or say would equal what they would undoubtedly think.
