It was a frustrating moment for Dr. Roger Harper. Duty called, and so did the half-nude body of Susan Crisp, the new and utterly sexual student nurse who was on duty in the gynecology ward.
"Come on, Rog, for Crissakes, don't leave me like this," Susan cried.
Roger looked at where she was already settled on the examining table and marveled at her quickness, at the way she had scampered to the table and braced herself upon it by the time he had closed and locked the door.
"Come on," Susan said again, a note of urgency in her tone.
Roger walked to the foot of the table. He glanced at the full length of Susan Crisp and thought of the scores of female patients he had examined on this very table. And Susan was braced like the patients, too. She had kicked off shoes and stockings and was naked from her waist down. Her gray and white striped student nurse's uniform was crinkled and billowed above her waist as if it were an inner tube securing a non-swimmer. But above the jam of starched uniform, Susan's breasts still showed the protrusion they made against the tight fitting top. They were very large. They pushed dramatically, causing the material to mound in perfect moulds that did not show, but hinted, at hard nipples that were placed perfectly in the centers. And above that there was her auburn hair, her green, cat-quick and sensual eyes, and her wide, red, and very wicked mouth. And below, wav below, there was her white and wanton-looking flesh. Her knees were braced high, made that wav by the jam of her feet where they locked within the stirrups of the examination table. Her thighs trembled as she tensed her body in a way that made her open and ready for Roger Harper's desire.
When Susan shifted slightly on the table and brought her hips nearer the end, Roger sighed, took another step forward, looked down at her, paused, fumbled at the front of his white intern's uniform, took another step closer to the girl's body, drew his hips backwards, preparing for the forward lash of his mighty, manly strength.
And then the public address system issued its frustrating command once again.
"Dr. Harper-I-3, please-Dr. Harper-I-3," the dronesome female voice called.
Roger paused at the very font of Susan's lust. "Godamn-why don't they go away."
"Don't go baby-come," Susan said. Her voice had turned to a low, throaty, anxious plea.
The public address system called his name again, beckoning him to the third floor where the problems of Internal Medicine awaited his attention.
"Susan-look, I'd better go," Roger said, saying it like an apology.
"The hell you're goin'-I said you were going to do the opposite," Susan shot at him, the words quick and mounting in volume.
"But--. "
"But nothing," she interrupted.
She wiggled her bare buttocks against the smoothness of the table, pressing and pulsating even closer to the pose of him that was physically ready but emotionally detached.
"Besides, darling," Susan continued. "This won't take long-I already told you that."
"But-, " he stammered again.
"But you're the goddamndest intern I've ever known," she blurted. "So stop the 'buts' and--. "
Now he interrupted with, "But, what the hell Susan, won't you ever realize that we're in medicine-that we're doctor and nurse and supposed to be devoted to our duty."
"Yeah, and isn't it great," she said, smiling broadly. "You're a doctor, I'm a nurse, and here we are in an examination room with the door locked. So, baby, give."
The public address system again intruded upon them.
"Who could want me in Internal Medicine," Roger said, questioning himself.
"Some fuzzy old matron that probably wants you to feel her belly," Susan said. "Well, I'm not a matron-and I don't even need to be felt."
Roger smiled, then, in a voice that was low and secretive, said, "Susan-are you really a nymphomaniac? Some of the guys say you are. What about it, eh?"
"Please, no analysis," she said, her voice going into a tired, bored tone. "And, yes, at this very moment I am a nympho, so come on, stop playing Dr. Casey and give to your little ole' mama."
"How old are you, Susan?"
"For Crissakes, will you please stop it!"
Roger grinned. It was more than even a smile could do for his attractiveness, for he was very dark, both in complexion and curly, short-cut hair, and the wav he grinned with his mouth turning diagonally had the effect of lightening him, making him seem fairer than he really was. And the grin made him seem less foreboding, for usually he wore a frown and his broad shoulders were constantly stooped a bit, reducing him considerably from his six foot, two inch height.
The public address system cackled its incessant call again.
This time Roger ignored it. He readjusted his position. Hunched over a bit, smiled at Susan, then, very carefully, with much the same grace as he would use with a patient, he sneaked his hands beneath her bare buttocks and jerked her toward him as he lashed all of his strength forward.
"Ahhhh-h-h-h-h," Susan whimpered, arching, lowering, then arching again even before Roger had drawn back.
Roger gripped the flesh of her buttocks hard. He liked feeling of it. It was like security. And, strangely, it seemed less a part of sexual pleasure than it did some other force within him; some call that sought pain, or cure, or a combination of the two.
Roger lurched forward again, captured her and continued his own entrapment by her body during the long, hard drive that he made. He paused. He felt the rumbling growth of himself, felt it bubble and cram together in its anxiety for release. He felt Susan arch, carrying him upward with her movement. He looked at her face and saw the now narrow-slitted eyes, the mouth partially open as if it were preparing for a scream. And then she lowered and it was his signal to move again, to draw back, lunge forward, withdraw, move close again, then thump all of his energy in a series of harsh, telling thrusts to her body.
Susan met all his strength, even surpassed it as her toes curled around the leather of the gynecological stirrups and she pushed upward, trying, it seemed, for even closer contact when the ultimate in closeness had already been achieved.
The moment soon came when Roger had driven himself to his endurance's end, when he, as all men find, had reached that point that promised the remarkable end for all of his physical endeavors. And, as Roger looked at her, he knew that the next few moments would also mark the end of sexual journey for Susan, for she was strained and ready, breathing hard, quivering at stomach and thighs and calves, tense at every part of her body as it readied for unleashing and the peace that would follow. But it was then that she bid Roger pause a moment for reflection and promises.
"Wait-wait-just for a second, Rog," Susan whispered.
He had just completed a mighty lunge to her body, one that gave evidence that he was closer to climax than he had yet been with the pretty student nurse. And here-very close to her, so close that the pulsation of their muscles seemed like those of only one being-he paused and looked into her eyes.
"Do you like it, Rog?" she asked. "Am I good for you, baby?"
"Yes," he answered. His tone was strained, showing by sound the silent strain of his body.
"And do you like me, too, Rog?" Susan asked. "Really like me for myself."
"Yes," he said again.
"And are you going to make love to me again?" she asked, the quiver of a cry making the words sharper than they should have been.
"I hope so," Roger said.
"Hope so?" she questioned. She tensed her lower body, making him so' terribly aware of her that he could barely speak. Then she said, "Only hope so? That's not very good. Say you will for sure."
"What-what the hell are you doing, anyway?" he said. "This is hardly the-the--. "
"Promise me," she interrupted. "Promise that you'll make love to me again. All the time. And different ways. Please promise, because-because I'm stuck on you, Rog, really gone, I mean, and
I couldn't stand it if you wouldn't again. This is the first time, but promise that there'll be more."
"You're crazy," he said, half-amused in spite of the close joining of their bodies that was maintained.
"Yeah-crazy. But so are you. And I'm more crazy than you think, but in a way that you can't help liking, Rog, honest, so, please, prom--. "
Once again, the public address announcement for the presence of Dr. Roger Harper in the Internal Medicine ward, split through the cool, polished, examination room.
Susan seemed not to have heard it. Roger, this time, was more urgently aware of it, and the call it made, than at any time since he and the girl had entered the room for the sole purpose of making love.
He shot his hips backward, then lashed forward. So rapidly did he move that it seemed like a single motion. And Susan, the askance of a promise still on her lips and her eyes imploring at the handsome intern, could not help but react, could not help but forget words and promises and crazy, during-sex-talk, for Roger's new movement rippled all of her to a new, high pitch of readiness.
She thrashed herself to him. So hard and high did she arch that her buttocks left Roger's grip, shot above the smoothly polished table and stayed suspended above it as she continued to lurch and spin and grind herself to Roger's forward movement in perfect timing with his rhythm, in the exact, body-slapping-together motion that drew from him the very last of his resistance and endurance. And the words she called to him as he tore to and away from her body, were like an aphrodisiac that forced him to relinquish that which she yearned for and nearly had achieved.
"Now, Rog-Rog, baby, baby, baby-you're so good-so strong-ready-everything! Ohhhhhh, R-o-g-e-r! Now! Let's go it, b-a-b-y, go it now!
He had not paused as she cried the words of her passion to him and he did not pause now. He thrashed and spun and ripped and tore and backed off, then pivoted from side to side as he brought the final volley of his passion to her, as his own emotions soared and spun above his head like demons intent upon driving him insane-like demons and angels and devils and monsters and all those things that had cascaded him high and now released him in searing orgasm.
And Susan erupted with a short cry, a near scream that she stifled by jamming her fist into her mouth and biting down hard, so hard that blood trickled from the corners of her mouth, making Roger view her with awe, with that remembrance of pain and cure and the perplexities of the two that lately had plagued him at every turn of his life. But he forgot it-it and everything as he worked out the denouement of sex with Susan's still lurching, but erupting and quieting body, as his motion slowed and finally ceased.
He wheezed a long sigh, pushed backward, then collapsed the upper half of his body across Susan's stretched and sated thighs. She relaxed too. They remained quiet for a few moments but then the silence of their surroundings moved them to push away from each other, to part, for Susan to climb from the table and reassemble her clothing as Roger did the same to his.
Within a minute they were at the door, preparing to leave the examining room that had been the setting for their first sexual engagement. Roger unlocked the door, gripped the door knob and carefully began to turn it and release them both back into the world of the hospital.
Susan slid her arm through Roger's free one. Even now, so recently gratified, she cuddled her breast to the intern's arm, pressing it in toward him with the same fervor she had used in order to entice him to the examination room in the first place.
Roger felt the touch. He felt the entire outline of her breast and for the barest moment he thought he could also discern the pressure of her nipple, that he could feel it even though it had underclothes and starched uniform as a bulwark against that sign of her extreme sexuality. But Roger did not react to it. He could not. And he wondered why he had even become involved with the young nurse in the first place, why he had allowed her to lure him from the duty that was his life, why he had traded the devotion of his calling for a few minutes of lust. Then he joshed himself for such thoughts. He was being overly dramatic, acting, as Susan had said, like a Dr. Kildare. It had only been a few minutes. Even the call to report to Internal Medicine could not be serious. There were no patients there who were in danger. That ward was quiet. After all, he reminded himself, joshing the seriousness from himself once again, it was not Emergency. At least the call had not been for that section of the hospital that brought near-death in by th carloads. The Emergency Room was a different story. He would have answered the call of that sad place despite Susan Crisp, despite her half-naked body, despite everything.
"When will I see you again?" Susan asked, turning her green eyes up to him and smiling.
"I-I don't know," he answered.
"Well, I'm around. Anytime for you, Rog. Anytime at all, on duty, or off. Just ring me, eh?"
"Yeah. Sure, you bet," he said, feeling a bit self-conscious. "Now you stand back while I give a look down the corridor. Give me a couple of minutes, then you can get the devil out of here, too."
"Sure, Rog," she said. She released her hold on his arm and stepped back.
Roger turned the door knob fully to one side, then he inched open the door. He paused. He pulled it further apart and pressed his face against the opening. Then he opened it fully and stepped into the corridor with a confident stride. He shut the door behind him, then headed for the end of the corridor and the elevator that would lift him to the Internal Medicine Department on the third floor.
Roger Harper did not pass any of the other hospital personnel until he was near the elevator and well away from the incriminating examination room. And, he was nearly ready to pause in front of the elevator before he was stopped by a fellow-intern. Rog smiled when he saw his roommate, Jack Belton, approaching with a busy wave of his hand.
"Where the hell have you been?" Jack asked, stopping in front of Roger.
"Out for a breath of air. Guess they been calling me, eh?"
"Calling you ? " Jack said. "Man-that's no word for it. And now that they've stopped, that's even more ominous in this crummy place."
Roger smiled, looking down at the shorter man, thinking, as he always did when in the presence of Jack Belton, of the odd, un-doctor-like people who were, nevertheless, in the profession. "You going up to I-3 now?" Jack asked. "Yeah. They called."
"Bet you the old man and that goddamn snippy niece of his are up there acting like the Mayo brothers already. What the hell, why do they have to run to every department on every goddamn call that comes over the intercom?"
"I don't know," Roger said. "But I'll remind you, old boy, that at the last staff meeting there were some pretty harsh words from Dr. Amos Fiken about anybody who might be so rude as to refer to him as the 'old man'. "
Jack grinned a crooked smile and said, "Sorry I missed it. What did he say about the niece ? Maybe that we shouldn't refer to her as the bitch she is?"
"He skipped her this time," Roger said. "But you can bet that it figures."
"Yeah. What a creepy pair. Man, when I was in med school I was all starry eyed with dreams, then I come to this cruddy Riverdale Hospital and find a couple of creeps running the place-Huh, what a laugh, Amos, the superintendent and his niece supervisor of nurses. And her just out of training and neither one of them competent enough to work with poodles."
"Bear up, old buddy," Roger said. "We only got nine months to go and we'll be out of here."
"Yeah, and I think I'd rather carry a baby for those nine months," Jack said.
Roger pushed the elevator button then glanced to the hand that indicated that the machine was lowering to him.
"Hey, listen, what are you doing Saturday night?" Jack asked, glancing suspiciously from side to side and lowering his voice.
"Not much," Roger said. "On my money-and with the books I have to finish-I'll probably be in my room all night."
"Not if I can help it," Jack said. He looked up and down the tiled corridor again, then leaned closer in a confidential manner and said, "Listen, do you remember that Dorry Glenn broad who was up in plastic surgery?"
Rog cocked his head in a thoughtful pose, then shook it negatively.
"She was the one who had the scars on her rear repaired," Jack explained. "Hell, you should remember the rear if nothing else."
"Afraid not"
"Well anyway, she called the other day and she wants us all to come to a party out at her estate-yes, I said estate, friend, and that means wine, food, women-the works, and it might even mean a hell of a lot more seeing as how it's ole' Dorry who's throwing the brawl."
"Why a party?" Roger asked. "And why in the devil would she invite anybody from River-dale?"
"Appreciation, Rog, appreciation," Jack said, making the words sound lurid. "Ole' Dorry is so happy with her new rear end that she wants to reward everybody in the joint with a party."
"Appreciation, eh?"
"Yeah. She says that we really fixed her up-that the rear's working better than ever."
The steady hum of the descending elevator ceased and in a moment the doors glided open smoothly.
"I don't know, Jack," Rog said. "We'll see. Saturday's a long ways away yet. But I'll let you know. Okay?"
"Yeah, sure. But you've got to make it. Hell, you've been working too hard or something 'cause you've been moving around this place like an undertaker who heard about death being on a holiday."
"I'll try." Roger stepped into the elevator, hit the button indicating the third floor, then looked up and winked at Jack Belton as the doors glided shut.
In a moment, he was being lifted to the third floor. He stared straight ahead, but his mind would not quite from its restlessness. He thought of Susan Crisp, her wanton desire and the rumor that she was a nymphomaniac, and he thought of Amos Fiken and his niece, Mona Fiken, the twenty year old, recently graduated nurse who immediately became a superintendent. And Roger also thought of all the others at Riverdale Hospital personnel and patients alike, all of those who in one fashion or another would determine the making of his career. Why was everyone in a hospital so odd? he asked himself. Was it because the intimacy of illness, the hundreds of beds with night-dressed patients in them, made people more prone to sex ? Was it because a hospital dealt with life and death? Was this the reason that everyone he knew, young and old, patient and doctor and nurse, seemed vulnerable to sex and its temptations, its oddities, its pleasure and its doom? '
The elevator halted at the third floor. The doors opened. Roger stepped out of the small cubicle and into the corridor of the Internal Medicine Department, a corridor that was a duplicate of the others with its tiled floors, white-painted and scrubbed walls and ceiling, its overhead lights that tinted a hint of green from beneath their shades. The hospital-all of it-gave Roger Harper a feeling of sameness. It was a feeling that he did not like. It was as if it relegated him to a cabbage-row existence, alike to those in front of him and those who followed. Rog didn't like the feeling a bit. It added to the sensations of doom and boredom and hopelessness that had been developing within him for months. And it were these combined feelings that had converged upon him and made him the sexual victim of Susan Crisp less than ten minutes ago. If they could do that to him, what might they still do to work against him, he wondered.
As if he were retreating from the thoughts that plagued him, Roger quickened his step and moved quickly to the desk at the center of the floor. There, the middle-aged nurse who was on duty informed him that he was wanted in a nearby, private room. Rog nodded and moved to that room immediately.
He was ready to push the door inward, when he heard the voices from within. Unmistakably, they belonged to Dr. Amos Fiken and his niece, Mona. And there was a third voice, too, that of the patient, Roger assumed. He listened to the buzz of conversation for a moment. The third voice sounded very nice, he decided. It was feminine and young and had a fresh lilt to it that seemed incongruous to the surroundings. For a moment, it made him feel very good. Then he tapped twice on the door, pushed it inward and stepped into the room.
The tableau that greeted him was hospital academic; nurse on one side of the bed, doctor on the other, and the patient propped high on several pillows. But the patient was different and more enchanting than any Roger had ever seen in a hospital. She seemed about fifteen years old and her beauty was so exquisite that it made Rog think of museums and rare, immensely valued paintings. She was angel-hair blonde. It curled and glittered where it bounced at her ears. Her eyes were blue, but not of the conventional variety. Instead, they shined like skies that had the heat of the sun within them. And the girl's body, fully in view from the waist upward because of the bed-coverings that pulled flatly across her thighs, was exceptional, too. An expensive nightgown adorned her figure, the usual hospital nightshirt affair obviously having been rejected by the girl. The shoulder straps were ribbon-thin and stood wide apart in a V that descended to her navel miraculous showing the girl's rather large breasts off to full advantage, showing, too, the nipples as they pressed hard and brazenly against the frail material. And as he looked at her. Roger imagined that the rest of the girl-child was just as fetching as all of that that could be seen, that her legs would have to be long and lean and shapely, that her thighs were undoubtedly firm, that the feet would be small with the toes constantly curling like those of a playful kitten. All this he knew-all this he observed-before the mood of observance was broken by the crisp words of Dr. Amos Fiken.
"You've been a long time getting up here, Dr. Harper," Fiken said.
"Yes. Sorry I missed the call."
"Were you involved elsewhere?" Mona Fiken asked, burning her dark-chestnut eyes into Roger's.
"No. I was getting a breath of fresh air in the parking lot."
"The parking lot?" Mona Fiken exclaimed.
Roger stared at her, wondering how one who was so young, so attractive, could, so consistently, sound like a shrew.
"The parking lot's hardly the place for a doctor who is on duty until six tonight," Mona continued, shooting the words like BB's from a gun.
Roger glanced at the patient, then to Amos Fiken, then back to Mona, hoping that his action notified her of his distaste for such discussions in the presence of a patient.
If Mona did not catch Roger's inference, Amos did. He smiled and said, "Well, no harm done, and now that you're here, we're all settled again."
Roger nodded. Then he looked at the patient and gave her an affectionate smile as he said, "And what do we have here? Who, and what?"
"This is Patty Pen," Amos Fiken said. He uttered the name in an impressed, almost reverent tone.
Roger nodded and smiled at the girl.
She smiled back and Roger had the impression of being blessed or touched by sudden happiness for the girl's smile was bright and very personal, much as if it was an original smile, one that she had just created for him alone.
And after the smile there was her voice which also seemed newly created, brought from the depths of her breasts to say, "How-do-you-do, Dr. Harper. Pve been waiting to meet you."
"Yes. And now, what is it that brings you to Riverdale."
Mona cast a quick, nervous look at her uncle then looked away. Roger looked at Mona, thinking how odd it was that she did not immediately answer as was her custom.
"Fatigue, is my diagnosis, Dr. Harper," Amos Fiken said. "Patty needs a good rest-a rest, perhaps some B-12 intravenously-you know, everything we can do to relieve her fatigue, to put some pep into her again."
Roger looked at the girl and wondered why, or how, energy should be a requirement of a girl so young.
"How old are you, Patty?" Roger asked.
"Fifteen," she replied, saying it demurely.
"That's pretty young to be suffering from fatigue," Roger said seriously, moving a little closer to the bed.
"That may be," Mona Fiken said, "But nevertheless that is Amos' diagnosis, Dr. Harper."
"Umph, yes," Dr. Fiken mumbled, then, moving toward the door, added, "Well, we'll be moving along now that you're here, Doctor. You can take some time to get better acquainted with Patty-Miss Pen." He shot Roger a look that said the name should mean something to him. It didn't.
Mona Fiken smiled at Patty, then turned and joined her uncle at the door of the room.
"Umh, Dr. Harper, could I see you for just a moment, please?" Amos Fiken said from the door.
Roger turned and joined the couple. The three of them moved through the door and closed it behind them.
"Roger, surely you know who Patty Pen is, don't you?" Amos said very quickly, irritation sharpening his words.
Afraid not, Dr. Fiken," he replied.
"Well you should know," Mona added. "Every intern should also be aware of the politics that concerns a hospital."
"Politics?" Roger questioned. He looked into Mona's eyes and again wondered at the strangeness of her, at the crisp exterior of her that must, he was sure, conceal some very interesting things.
"Well, we don't have to say it quite that crudely," Amos Fiken said. "But, Patty Pen is the daughter of Elmer Pen, the State Commissioner of Hospitals. You know-the commissioner-hospital accreditation-all those problems we sometimes have here at Riverdale?"
"Oh. I see," Roger said.
"You're so quick," Mona said sarcastically.
"Yes, of course, I see," Roger said. "So, all of us are to make a very good impression on little Patty, eh?"
"Something like that," Amos replied. "It's-well, accreditation is coming up again soon and we had a miserable time getting acceptance from the Hospital Board the last time."
Roger nodded. The lines of his mouth turned very firm. Then he said, "But what the hell is this fatigue business? Hell, she's only fifteen. Fatigue-it's absurd."
"Well, let's call it that anyway," Mona said.
"Yes," her uncle agreed. "You see, Patty's father wants her out of action-no, that's not the way to say it-he wants her removed from society for a little while."
"He does?" Roger said, confused.
"Yes. You see, Roger, little Patty there has made some pretty fierce enemies. Quite recently, as a matter-of-fact, a suitor tried to kill her. So, as protection-and to--. " Amos glanced embarrassedly to the floor, letting his sentence die.
"Yes, go on," Roger urged.
"Patty is completely promiscuous," Mona Fiken said quickly. "Her father wants to keep her away from boys and men for awhile. He gave us the job. No one knows she's here-no one is to know. We're going to treat her, give her the things that are needed to reduce her sexual urge, and I'm sure you know what I mean, Dr. Harper. And while we're doing it she'll be safe from a few people who would like to cut her into little ribbons."
"But only fifteen," Roger said, amazed. "And we can't fail, Roger," Amos Fiken said. "This means everything to her father and we certainly want to accommodate him. This-this will mean a lot to Riverdale, too."
"Yes, I see," Roger said.
Amos slapped him on the shoulder. "So, don't fail us, boy. Now, go in and get better acquainted with your patient."
"But why me ? " Roger asked. "Why in the world did you give her to me?"
Amos Fiken's eyes fluttered, then lowered to stare at the tiled squares of the floor.
Mona's eyes did not lower, however. She looked straight and nastily at Roger and said, "Because that little brat asked that you take care of her. Seems she's heard about you from some friends. So, Daddy insisted that you be on the case. So now, Dr. Harper, you're a public relations man for Riverdale Hospital. And you had better not fail-not if you want the right kind of references for the residency you want. Do I make myself clear?"
"Too clear."
"Good." Mona glanced at her uncle, then, after a nod to Roger, Amos turned and with his niece moved down the corridor.
Roger turned and faced the closed door of the private room. He felt the pinpricks of anxiety and doom run their course up and down his spine. Then, very slowly, looking like a man moving toward the gallows, he turned the door handle and entered the room to confront the fifteen year old, Patty Pen.
CHAPTER 2
For perhaps the twentieth time during the restless hour, the blonde head of Patty Pen bobbed up from where it was lying on the pillow. She poked the pillow with her small fist, then cuddled her cheek to it again. But within a minute she sat straight up in bed and sighed a low moan of frustration.
It was dark outside the window and as Patty looked in that direction, seeing the fuzzy glare of a distant street light, she felt an urge to join that night, to become a part of it as she had always been a part of the night and the exciting things that occurred at night. And then she thought of Dr. Roger Harper and silently cursed him. Why had he been so indifferent, so rude to her, she wondered. Why had he not been enchanted with her as all other men were enchanted with her? She smashed her fist hard against the hospital bed, expressing her anger while at the same time she felt a heat and pulsation at her thighs that did not come from anger at all.
Patty brushed at her hair. It was damp. She pushed it back from her ears and looked restlessly around the room again. The motion caused the thin strap of her nightie to lower over her forearm, exposing one large, very full and firm breast. She made no move to recover this sudden nudity. Instead, she raised one hand to cup her breast. She held it gently and noted that it was hot, hotter than anytime she could remember. Then, for a few minutes, as she held her breast and tenderly kneaded it, she remembered the numerous, almost uncountable times of her life that were concerned with heat and sex and men and erotic laboring with them. She remembered that, and thought also of the responses she had always known, of the way she had tried to make every experience more supreme than the one before it. She smiled, remembering that on a single day not too long ago she had engaged with nine men and boys, had nine times reached the ultimate in sexual gratification, and had, from the first of the nine, tried to make eight varying and more intense orgasms for her self. And she had succeeded. She sighed. It was sad to remember it now that she was stuck away in a hospital and out of circulation. Very sad. Very unhealthy, too, she decided, for she knew the symptoms of her body better than a whole crew of doctors. And the symptoms said that she needed an outlet-at once.
Darn Daddy, anyway, she thought. And darn that cute Dr. Harper for not immediately succumbing to her beauty, to her body which she had brazenly offered to him the very first time she had met him. Maybe it was because the Superintendent and Supervisor of Nurses had just left the room, she thought hopefully. Maybe that was why she had not succeeded. Darn it, anyway. Well, she would just have to try again. Try, try, try again, they always told her at school.
Patty stopped kneading her breast. She paused. Then she moved thumb and forefinger to the nipple and pulled it away from the flesh. She held it extended a moment, then let it snap back. Then she hit her hand against the hard bed again, expressing her anger and frustration. Then, as if she were boiling, had to bring a cooling to her body, she gripped the bottom of her shortie nightie and jerked it over her head and tossed it on the floor at the side of the bed.
Patty twisted and faced the partially open window. She breathed deeply, trying to take in as much as possible of the soft, cool breeze that only faintly touched at her naked body. Then she flopped back down on the bed, stretching her nakedness long and tense, curling and uncurling her toes toward the end of the bed as she attempted to make herself as taut as possible-like a spring preparing to unleash.
The tight position of her body did not suffice. It did not lessen the gathering of excitement at her loins. It did not reduce the hardness that had come to her nipples. It did not purge her mind of the fantasies of sex and love, of men who roamed their tongues over her body, of other men to whom she bequested the same excitement, of men who had taken her surely and strongly, of boys who had hesitated until she had shown them the way. She could not keep from thinking of every sexual interlude she had known during her fifteen years. And the thoughts made her yearn for a new encounter.
Patty relaxed her body. Then, very quickly, she concealed herself within the bed clothes. Then she raised, pushed the blankets to the foot of the bed and pulled only a single sheet over her naked body. She pulled it all the way up to her chin. Then she pushed the signal button at the side of the bed and waited for her call to be answered.
After a few minutes, the overhead lights clicked on and a nurse entered the room. This was one Patty had not yet seen. The nurse was small and very pretty. She had auburn hair and her eyes appeared to be green. Her body was astoundingly sexual, Patty decided, and it made her a little jealous, for the girl didn't look much older than herself, at best only a few years.
"Everything all right here?" the nurse asked, approaching the bed.
"No," Patty exclaimed, feigning a hurt expression.
"What's the problem?"
"I don't know. I-I just kind of-of hurt."
"Where?"
"In my belly."
The nurse cocked her head quizzically, then said, "I just came back to duty from my day off." She said it like an apology for not having previously met the patient.
"I knew I hadn't seen you before. What's your name?" Patty asked.
"Miss Crisp-Susan Crisp," she answered. "That's a nice name."
"Thank you."
Susan moved to the end of the bed and lifted the clip board that held Patty's medical record. Her eyes ran down the various lines of information; date of admission, diagnosis, medication-at this, Susan's eyes grew wide and she looked at Patty.
"Anything wrong?" Patty asked.
"No. Of course not. I just wanted to see if you're listed for sleeping pills." Susan paused, then said, "You're not."
"But I don't need sleep, Miss Crisp," Patty said. "I hurt. Is-is Dr. Harper around, maybe?"
Susan Crisp shot the girl another expression. This one was different. It looked cautious and a little resentful.
"Dr. Harper?" Susan said, lifting her eyebrows.
"Yes. Could I see him, maybe."
"Why Dr. Harper?"
"Because he was assigned to my case by Dr. Fiken-And Mona Fiken said I was to call Dr. Harper whenever I wanted."
"Oh."
"Could I seen him, please."
"He's off duty-not in the hospital," Susan explained.
"Oh, darn." Patty frowned a pout, then brightened a bit and said, "Well, couldn't I see some doctor-I really hurt bad."
Susan Crisp considered it. Then she asked, "Have you been taking your medicine regularly."
"You mean that awful bitter, salty tasting stuff. I've been taking it and I feel as parched as a dried up prune." Susan smiled at this.
"Is that a depressant of some kind?" Patty asked, lilting her voice in a way that she hoped would make her sound knowledgeable about the things of medicine.
"It's a depressant, all right," Susan said, unable, it seemed, to keep from laughing.
"What does it depress?"
"You, honey," Susan said.
"Me?"
"Yep."
"What part of me?" Patty asked.
"Well, let's say it depresses your lively spirit," Susan said, holding back a new laugh.
"Could I see the doctor?" Patty asked, bringing both her hands to her belly and placing them there in an easy, about-to-hurt manner.
"Yes, I guess so," Susan said. "Especially if you've been taking your medicine, I guess it would be all right for you to see the doctor."
"Oh, thank you," she said gratefully, smiling, hoping that it did not show too brightly.
"Yes, I'll let you see the doctor just so long as you're telling me the truth about the medicine," Susan said. "Just so long as you've really been taking it."
"Oh, I have," Patty exclaimed.
Susan glanced over the outline of the girl's body as it was revealed by the impression of the white sheet, as it showed the bulges and womanly lines and hints of crevices that looked like those of a rare statue that was being witheld from public view.
Susan turned and walked to the door. Then she faced Patty again and asked, "Do you want the light out?"
"Yes, please," Patty answered, then added, "What doctor is on duty tonight?"
"Dr. Belton?" Susan replied.
"Sounds nice," Patty said.
"Oh, Jack's all right," Susan told her. "A little unprofessional sometimes, but really quite nice."
"Goodie," Patty could not help declaring.
Susan looked at her skeptically, then turned, clicked off the overhead lights and left the room.
Patty remained very still for a moment. She felt the flutter of excitement sweep over her body, tickling at her breasts and ribs and thighs, especially there where it mixed with heat. She breathed deeply and felt her breasts and their nipples lift the sheet upward, hold it there a second, then lower it as she exhaled the deep breath she had taken. And, as her breasts lowered the sheet she felt it float gently upon her belly, upon that place that she had indicated as the area of her pain. She smiled. Then she thought, Who knows, maybe the good Dr. Belton will really find something there, something to cure. And she did need a cure. Immediately! Then she remembered the rejection she had suffered from Roger Harper and she felt a moment's apprehension. Maybe all doctors were like him. Maybe all of them adhered to the hospital rule that prohibited fraternization with the patients. Maybe they really did abide by rules. And wouldn't that be awful ? Patty thought.
But then she remembered Dr. Harper's eyes when he had left her, when he had almost forcefully pulled himself away from attendance at her bedside, she was sure, and she felt a little better for the thought. Given more time, under a little different circumstances, Patty was sure that she could manage a seduction of the strange and serious young intern. And again she wondered what it was that made him seem different from the other men she had known. Then she smiled and decided that she would find out, that, allowed one rejection, Roger Harper would not be allowed another, not so long as her name was Pen, not so long as Amos and Mona Fiken ran the hospital and needed influence. Patty almost laughed when she remembered the solicitous attitude they had both demonstrated, the way they had fussed and patted and oozed sweetness to her when she had entered the hospital.
Patty cut off her thoughts quickly when she heard the soft scuff of rubber-soled shoes approaching her room. In a sudden dither, she patted at her blonde curls, twisted a bit on her side, raised one leg slightly while she lengthened the other, and made sure that the sheet fully covered her body to give no hint of her complete nakedness. Then she coaxed a painful, sad, rather lost expression to her face and waited for the appearance of Dr. Jack Belton.
He entered the room quickly. Although his manner and his step was quick and professional, his words were light and friendly as he said, "Hi, there. What's with the belly ache? Too much junk from the hospital goody kitchen?"
Patty smiled her best fluttering-eyelid look at him and said, "I don't know what it is, Doctor. I just feel awful."
Jack nodded, then pulled a straight chair up to the edge of the bed. He sat down upon it.
"Roll over on your back please," he said.
Patty rolled over. She turned her head and looked into his face, observing at once that there was a look of the devil in his, eyes, that they were light and merry and seemed to go very well with his blonde hair and straight nose, the chin that protruded in a hint of audaciousness. Then she glanced over the rest of his white-starched appearance and could not help but wish that he were larger, broader in the shoulders, taller, huskier and stronger looking, more like Roger Harper.
"Well, we'll just lower this sheet a bit and see what the problem is," Jack said. Patty smiled.
Jack's expression indicated that he thought it odd that she should be smiling when in such pain, but he gently gripped the top of the sheet and pulled it downward, unveiling all of her naked body as he brought the sheet all the way to the end of the bed.
He gulped and leaned a little closer to his patient.
"I was warm," Patty explained in a little-girl voice that seemed to have nothing to do with the curvaceous figure.
"Umm. Umph, yes, I see. Or rather, I don't."
Jack drew back a bit, then turned and clicked on the strong, goose-necked lamp that rested on the night table. He adjusted it so that its upside down V of light struck an anatomical V that was, at least from his view, upside down.
Ummmm, yes, indeed," Jack muttered while he stared directly at a place directly beneath that area of discomfort which was Patty's complaint.
"It hurts just awful, Dr. Belton," Patty said.
"Ummm. Shouldn't. At least I don't see anything that--. "
He stopped abruptly. Then he turned to the portable table at his left and took from it a tongue depressor.
"Open your mouth," Jack said.
"My mouth?"
"Uh huh."
"But I haven't got a sore throat."
"Not yet," Jack said. "But we never know, it might be a spreading infection of some kind."
"What kind?"
"I don't know-that's why I'm looking. Open up your pretty little mouth now."
Patty smiled. She opened her pretty little mouth. But when Jack brought the wooden tongue-depressor against her tongue she giggled and turned away.
"That tickles," she said.
"Come on now, be serious like a patient should be."
Again she opened her mouth and the pink of it as it was revealed in the light looked very fresh, very young, very, very attractive.
Jack brought the depressor in contact with Patty's tongue, pressuring slightly so that he could see beyond it. But Patty wouldn't permit it. Upon contact from the depressor, her tongue sharpened and flicked back and forth against the wooden stick in a terrible teasing manner.
"Come on now," Jack said, unable to keep laughter from blurring the words.
Patty wiggled her tongue frantically against the depressor, at the same time making her eyes narrow in an erotic expression of wanton hunger.
Jack, his own eyes narrower now and his mouth in a firm line of restraint, withdrew the depressor and dropped it in the waste basket.
"Well, no trouble there," he said.
"Naturally not," Patty purred. "It's my stomach."
"I thought you said 'belly'. "
"It's the same, stupid-Dr. Belton."
"Not quite." He leaned forward again, brought his face directly over Patty's navel, then said, "Umm, let's see now."
"You can hardly see what's wrong," Patty said indulgently. At least from that viewpoint. Maybe if you kind of patted, or something, I could tell you right where it hurts."
"Great idea, Doctor-oh, excuse me, I mean, Miss Pen."
Jack brought both of his hands above Patty's stomach. He lowered them. He spread all ten fingers until they covered the entire area of her naked flesh from just below her breasts to a place that was dramatically beneath her navel. Then he pressed his fingers lightly into her flesh like an organist beginning the first, full chord of a heavy prelude. He even straightened and leaned his head back a bit which was also reminiscent of a serious musician playing his talent upon the instrument of his greatest skill.
"Oh, there. That's where it hurts," Patty exclaimed, making the words sound pained.
"Where?" Jack asked quickly.
"By the little finger of your right hand."
Jack raised the little finger of his left hand, the one that was nearest her breasts. "Here-is that it?"
"No, stup-, of course not, I said the right hand."
"Oh, sorry about that," Jack said seriously. "Always have gotten that mixed up."
Very slowly, Jack pressured with the little finger of his right hand, indenting it deeply into the flesh at a point that seemed exactly between the ending of her soft, womanly circle of stomach and the hardness of bone.
"Oh, yes-that's it," Patty whimpered.
"Ummmmm."
Jack pressured again.
"Oh, yes, that's nearly exactly the place that hurts."
"Very interesting," Jack said, withdrawing his hands. "Quite a problem here, I guess."
"You guess!"
"Oh, we all do, sometimes."
Patty curled on her side and faced him. The light now cast a larger frame for her naked body, emphasizing vividly the alternate sharp and soft lines of her body, orienting all of her to a better view for Jack Belton's eyes.
As soon as he withdrew his hands from her body, his eyes turned busy. They hurried over the length of her, then climbed from feet to thighs where they paused and concentrated before moving onward and upward to her breasts, one of which low hung down and cuddled softly into the white sheet while its mate remained erect and hard, led by a blazing nipple that jutted up at Jack like a sassy child.
"Dr. Belton," Patty said softly.
"Hummm?"
"It hurts here too." She shifted a shoulder to indicate her left breast.
"Oh, does it now," he said. "Uh huh."
He started to bend toward her, then stopped. But his forward motion was revitalized when Patty reached out, cupped her hand around his head, and urged him toward her.
"Maybe if you just kiss it, it'll get better," she said, mumbling the words as if a sigh followed and punctuated each word.
"Highly un-medical," he said.
"Yes, isn't it."
Patty pulled him toward her and at the same time rolled to her back. Immediately, she felt Jack's mouth upon her breast, kissing wildly, burrowing, cuddling, nuzzling deep, then withdrawing, then going close again. And then she felt a pause. For the barest second her breast felt cold and she knew that it was caused by the moisture from Jack's mouth that now met air because of the brief separation.
The separation was very brief, indeed. With a hungry growl, Jack was upon her again, consuming all of her breast, nipping it with his teeth, moving his head from side to side like an animal knawing on the remains of a favorite morsel. And soon, he began a new action, one of dynamic taking and releasing her breast, one that dived him to her, then shot him away, then dived him close once again.
Patty responded to the doctor's treatment. She mumbled soft, sweet sounds. She arched her breasts for him. She cried out sharp, but suppressed words of pleasure-hurt when he lightly bit with his teeth. And finally, she stretched one long, bare arm out in the direction of his waist. Her fingers wiggled. Jack rose from the chair, lurched his hips forward and allowed himself to be grasped by the girl's anxious fingers as he continued to delight in her breasts, as he continued to give her a semblance of the thrill he was achieving.
Patty gasped when she closed her fingers tightly around his manhood, bursting with thoughts of strength, feeling triumphant that she had found this in a man who was physically small by other standards. And she exalted in it. She clenched and unclenched her fingers, each stroke tightening each movement extracting greater hardness and more and more of him for her urgent grip.
"Ahhhh, Grisssssakessss," she cried stifling i by new, faster exertion from her hands; the one that held his head to her breasts, the other tha manipulated him.
And then, suddenly, she nearly burst for the want of an oral expression of her own. She initiated it by bringing both her hands to Jack's face and raising it to meet her parted lips.
Their teeth clicked sharply when they kissed. And then they patched the quarrel of their teeth and healed it with their tongues. Softly, sweetly, they gave of their tongues to each other, trading caresses, taking turns with the hard, sharp-pointed plunges they made deeply within each other's mouth. And each slid their tongue to the undersides of the other's lips, but this only excited Patty Pen all the more and she just had to grasp Jack's upper-lip with her teeth and pressure a small bite. And then both of them felt compelled to bring their hands into action again. They did. They could not help but do so. Jack brought one hand to Patty's breast, the one that had been neglected by his mouth. He apologized to it with caresses, touches, by pulling the nipple outward and spinning it, then releasing it, then grasping all the flesh and knotting it in the hard grip of his palm. And while his hand worked, its mate trailed down her body, moved from her ribs to her belly and from there to the down between her closed thighs. They made a welcome and Jack touched deeper, then gave that up for higher ground that offered a new plateau of sensation for Patty. She bit harder on his lip, plunged her tongue deeper within his mouth. She arched on her heels, lifting her body upward to make Jack's light touch stronger. But he would not do it. He forced his caress to remain light and stimulating, not releasing, but constantly spinning in a small circle that promised the giant thrills that were still to come.
Patty gave up her hold on Jack's mouth. She cried, whimpering, arching all the time, then burying her mouth into his neck and raising it so that she could kiss at his ear. And then she had to return the joy of the touch she knew from him. She lowered her hand between the press of their bodies. She brushed it against the hardness of his groin but did not take it. Instead, she deftly raised her fingers to the top of his trousers and from there descended the zipper.
Jack's body jolted as she brought him from concealment. Then it shook with tremors of incredible reaction as Patty brought her lips from his ear, lowered her head, then pressed her lips to all that her hand brought forward.
Jack stretched closer to her bobbing head. Then, nearly flinging himself in the opposite direction, he brought his hand away from her thighs just as he gasped a sound then stifled it by burying his searching mouth to the womanliness of her.
Patty sighed a sound from the gurgle of her incessant effort. Then she increased that effort, changed its pace, made it long and teasing, then faster and more threatening an end before slowing again, teasing again, playing and loving him as if there was nothing in the world that gave her so much joy. And Jack matched his pace to her, caught her rhythm and even tried to elaborate upon it, tried to tease more than he was teased, tried to threaten eruption more than his own was threatened, tried to raise her to heights that he had himself not yet reached. And he succeeded. But so did she. And soon they blubbered and gurgled and chanted the sensual call of their remarkable combat of love, of sex, of gathering sex storms that would soon split open and drench them with their intensity, submerge them within the bath of immense erotic achievement.
It was Patty who halted their endeavors while they were still able to stop. She drew away from Jack, cried out, then rolled her lower body away from his insane attention. She flopped to her back. She stretched her arms out toward the end of the bed and in a moment Jack was between them, being hugged to her body, being assisted to it by the arch of her hips, by her anxious fingers clawing for his quivering maleness, finding him, then directing it to an entrance she needed, wanted, would die if she did not know.
She knew it immediately. Jack plunged himself into her with the fury of a man flinging himself over the side of a burning ship. And then he drew back and lashed again.
"Eeeee!", Patty cried, choking in her effort to subdue this sound of her fantastic delight. But she could not deny the verbalizations of her approaching end. She could not hold them back until Jack shifted her pillow, then jammed it over her mouth as he continued to pump all the energy of himself to her writhing body. And then her sounds became muffled and soft and all the more fierce because of their prohibition.
Their end was like life and death, like man and woman meeting, like lust and conflict and the resolution of it all through the efforts of their pounding bodies. They felt their joined completion in their toes, at the back of their necks, throughout their ribs and bellies and loins: They felt it in every part of their bodies. And their throats felt it too as Jack dived forward to share the pillow that subdued Patty's cries in order to use it to smother his own involuntary yelps and pleas of gross sexual feeling.
Jack looked ruffled when he was ready to leave the room. And the usual humor in his eyes was gone, was now blurred from the fatigue that he knew, from the apprehension that he now felt for this fifteen year old girl who would stop at nothing to gain her satisfaction.
But, while Jack looked ruffled, Patty did not. She had re-propped herself on the pillows. The sheet was again pulled over her naked body, ending at her shoulders where it made a sharp, well-folded line that made her seem the very epitome of the young and innocent girl who had so unfortunately suffered an unwanted hospitalization. But her words to Jack were neither young or innocent.
"Thanks loads-that was a good first treatment."
"Yeah, sure," he answered, embarrassment furring around his words.
"But if you see Dr. Roger Harper, send him in, will you?"
"Rog?"
"Yes."
"Sure, but why?"
"Because he's my doctor, stupid," she said. "And I need a cure, not a treatment."
CHAPTER 3
Roger Harper closed the textbook and placed it on the small table next to his bed. Then he clicked off the bed lamp. He sighed, hoping that sleep, which he badly needed, might come to him now. He stretched his long, hard, naked body, then relaxed it and locked his hands behind his head. There was only darkness in the intern's room that he shared with Jack Belton. Only darkness, and the deeper darkness of his own thoughts.
Immediately after finishing the duty shift that ended at midnight, Roger had gone to his room. He had tried to sleep. It was impossible. Then he had read for hours, shifting his interest to a variety of books, all of which concerned medicine, a few of which teased his mind toward a decision on the specialization he would pursue. But this, as most of his life had been lately, was undecided, in limbo, it seemed, until he had tasted more of the various departments of an intern's training.
Rog lifted one bare foot. He curled his toes around the sheet that lay rumpled at the foot of his bed, then he carefully drew it upward until he could grasp it with his hand and adjust it over his waist. Now, he was only partially nude, he thought, not raw and open to every temptation, every inducement of the many that were always available in a hospital. Now he thought about that, about temptations and what they meant to his career as a doctor. He didn't like the thoughts. Always, they were in too much conflict with the other things of himself, the things of life and living that he, like a priest taking his vows, had cast aside in order to face his chosen profession.
But it didn't have to be that way, he thought. It wasn't for the others, not Jack Belton or any of the interns he knew. Why him? Why this devotion to duty? Was it phony, meant to cover up something of his life that needed hiding? Was it? What about that?
No, Rog decided, it was not this or any of these things. It was a simple matter of energy. He didn't have enough of it for both a life of personal living and a life of medical service. And this was why the restlessness had been with him from the beginning of his internship, the restlessness that was a natural occurrence after years of college and medical school, after study and examinations and waiting for results, after sleepless nights and sleep-drugged days, after the constant struggle for tuition and fees and laboratory charges.
Yet, it was natural to feel restless and letdown he told himself. And if it affected him more than others, if he bounded back from fatigue slower than the others, well, that was his problem, it had nothing to do with medicine.
Or did it? he corrected his thought. Was medicine concerned with the way he had been feeling, for the restlessness and flightiness, the tiredness and not give-a-damness-anymore that he had been experiencing? Then he was sure that it was this.
Roger sighed and remembered his enthusiasm when he had started his internship. But enthusiasm, for him, for many of the others, had been short-lived when they found Amos Fiken and his niece, Mona, in charge of a hospital which was in turn charged with the health responsibilities of thousands. They were too odd for medicine, for hospitals, for the care of infants and the aged and for all those in between who might be sick or hurt or hopeless. They seemed too secretive, too politically alert, too concerned with each other to allow them concern for the strangers who filled the wards.
Rog held this thought for a long time. From it, bad as it was, he found a little hope and felt better for having found it. Everyone, and all the hospitals, were not like Riverdale and its personnel, he decided. But then he chided himself for rationalizing and was reminded of his own harsh principles that demanded that no hospital should be like Riverdale, that no administrators should be like Amos and Mona Fiken.
The darkness of the night seemed to close around him as he continued to stare straight ahead through the darkened room. But there, very suddenly, it was no longer dark. A flash of light sliced its way through the room as the door opened a bit and closed quickly and silently.
For a moment, Roger thought that he had been dreaming, that he had finally drifted off, but just as quickly as he thought of it he banished it from his mind. It had been too quick. He had not been sleeping. Or dreaming. He had been thinking.
"That you, Jack?" Rog called.
There was no answer. But there was the very decided shuffle of movement and it headed in the direction of his bed. And with it there was the scent of hospital and perfume, that combination of seduction and antiseptic that seemed a part of every female who had anything to do with a hospital.
"Hey, what the hell?" he called, and started to push up from the bed.
"Shhhhhh," a soft, feminine voice cautioned.
Roger would not be shushed. He pushed up and was just reaching for the switch of the bed lamp when the crush of a starched, crinkly uniform pressed against his bare chest.
Then he lay back on the bed. Then he knew who it was that had broken the solitude of his lonely room.
There was a giggle, then the soft words and sweet breath of Susan Crisp whispering an inch from his mouth.
"Hi," she said. "Surprised?"
"I'm always surprised by things that happen around this damn place," he answered gruffly.
She giggled again, then said, "and to think you thought I was Jack."
"Haven't you ever heard of knocking on a man's door, before you enter."
"Never."
"Well, get some manners."
"Jeeps, what a grouch tonight." she said. "And it's not very flattering, Dr. Harper. Heavens, after the other day in the exam room I figured you'd be over all this crab you've had on lately."
"I'm not."
"So I see."
Roger turned toward her but could not see her clearly in the darkness. But he felt her presence, the reality of the contact her body made with his, and the sense of its outline so close to him. He breathed deeply, taking in the scent of her and enjoying it even as he questioned his own responses to her sudden appearance in his room. And again he wondered about the confused matters of his life; again he wondered why he should restrain himself from anyone, or anything, because of medicine or anything else in the world. Then he turned and faced the darkened outline of Susan's face.
The form moved close and he felt her lips search, then find his. He responded to it, even raised one hand and stretched the fingers around her head in order to pressure her kiss closer and hotter to his lips.
But the kiss lasted less than a second. Then Susan drew back, sighed, and the rustle of her uniform became a little distant from him.
"Just a sec, darling," she said, the words strained from her heavy and quickened breathing. "I want to check the door."
Roger felt the form draw further away, then rise, then turn and move across the room. He heard the lock click then click again as it was tried. Then he heard the rustle of starched cloth again, but this time it did not come close to him. It seemed to remain by the door, pausing, perhaps looking in his direction. It seemed eerie.
"Susan," he called.
There was no answer.
"Susan, what the hell, why don't you answer?"
"I'm right here, darling," she said a little breathlessly.
"What the devil are you doing anyway?"
"Just-waiting. Enjoying waiting for a moment."
Roger pushed more upright in the bed. He strained his eyes to see across the pitch dark room, but he could not. And again he had a sense of mystery, the feeling that there was something more peculiar about Susan Crisp than her racing promiscuity.
The spell was broken bv the sound of rustling material again. It was different, but still unmistakably that of Susan's uniform. And it did not come near him. Instead, it remained by the door. But then, suddenly, at exactly the same time that Susan sighed, the sound moved near him, still different and lighter sounding.
When Susan reached the side of Roger's bed, he knew that she had undressed, that she had carried her clothing across the room. And then the sound ceased altogether when he heard it fall to the floor, crinkle a last time, then go silent. And then he was not concerned with noises, with mysteries. Then he was aware only that Susan Crisp was again kneeling at the side of his bed. He felt the jolt of his aroused masculinity beneath the sheet that covered him. It shocked him a little. He was tired, disinclined for Susan, or anyone, detached even from the sex she offered. But still he had reacted immediately and hotly to her presence.
Susan's hand reached out and cupped his cheek.
"Darling," she softly breathed. "Turn to me, darling." He did.
"Now let me have your mouth, darling," she whispered. "Come close and give me your mouth-everything-as much as you can give me of every part of you."
It seemed strange to be kissing her in the dark, Roger thought. Strange, and more stimulating than when he had blazed his manhood into her in the cool and clinical examination room. Maybe that was why he seemed more ready for her now. Perhaps it was because here in the darkness she could be removed from his profession, set aside from pain and sorrow.
Susan gave a little cry and pulled her mouth away from Roger's. Then she moved up from where she was kneeling at the side of the bed. In a second, Roger knew the impact of her naked body as it lowered next to him on the bed, as it lengthened, remained apart from him for an instant-an instant that intensified his desire for her-then crushed close to all of his flesh.
"Ummmm, that's good, darling," Susan whispered. "It's so good to be close to you-to feel your body close to mine-to be able to have all of you like this."
She turned her face toward him. There was a moment's confusion when their readjusted kiss missed lips, but they recovered quickly and crushed their mouths together. And then, for Roger, there was the sensation of her body burrowing against him, nuzzling and busy in its effort to make contact with every part of him, all at the same time. Roger felt her breasts crushing against his chest, her round belly rippling against his, and he felt her thighs-her anxious, wanton thighs, coming close to him until that throbbing strength of him soared and probed and touched at her at that downy apex.
Susan's body began to shake with anxiety. Her tongue began to shoot deeper into his mouth. Her hands went around his back and began to massage at the small of it. touching him at places that he didn't know existed, at places that charged him with the fluidity of energy which seemed meant for extraction. And Rog found his arms around Susan too as they pressed their bodies close together. He touched at her back, then lowered his hands and gripped her buttocks. He pinched and kneaded them and rotated them in opposite directions, in circles that seemed to excite her very much, that caused her to writhe and torture her body even closer to him.
When their mouths again parted, Roger felt Susan's right hand come away from his back, creep over his hip, then squeeze its way between their bodies. It paused. The fingers tapped a little movement, then darted low, paused, and finally reached out and grasped his now-frenzied masculinity.
"Ummmm!" Rog could not help replying to her touch.
"Do you like that, darling?" Susan asked, whispering still, saying it as if she had no concern for herself but wanted only to please him.
"Yes," he sighed.
"And this, do you like this, too, Rog?" She circled him for a moment, then paused and squeezed hard, biting her fingernails into his flesh, then holding them there.
He did not answer her with words. Instead, he brought his own hand from her back and worked it over her breasts, first one, then the other, kneading each of them, pinching a bit, too, and brushing against the nipples until they grew hard and very hot and seemed to throb in identical unity with the rest of her body.
As their hands played and their mouths re-met for new kisses and the sweep of tongues they implored to each other, as Roger felt himself gripped and caressed and stimulated at the same time that he sought to draw the optimum of thrill for Susan by his play upon her breasts, he had a semi-awareness of the things outside their small world of darkness and thrill. He heard the public address system cackle its announcements. He heard the movement of bodies as they passed outside the door. He heard the soft roll of emergency stretchers as wheels moved to the speed of the orderly who pushed them. Occasionally, there was a voice, or sometimes laughter, and very often the muted conversation of several people. And all of it transferred an attitude of activity, rush, intense interest and response to the call of the sick and injured and hopeless.
Susan sneaked her hand higher upon Roger. She stopped at the very base of him, then stretched her fingers long and caught him in a longer, full-fisted grip. He returned the touch, moved his hand from her breasts to her belly to her thighs where they delayed while she moved, then darted within her womanly softness.
Susan moaned. The sound was heady and far away although her mouth was clamped to Roger's as she breathed it. And immediately, she began a new, stretching motion upon his body, one that he answered at once by a quick flutter of fingers that delicately indented at the same time that they circled upon a higher, more intense plateau of feminine response.
But Roger could not keep the rest of the world away from their room, from the darkness, from the thrill of their hands moving, their bodies pressing together, their mouths trading tongue-kisses their teeth occasionally clicking as they moved to a new position of giving. He could not keep the world, or the hospital world, out of his room, his mind, or even clear of the contact his body made with Susan's. And it seemed cruel and unfair. It seemed a conspiracy by the world to thwart his attempts at satisfaction and excitement.
And then he made a mighty and harsh effort to subdue all the rest to know the individuality of Susan Crisp. He growled a mean sound, pulled his mouth away from hers, then with a hunger and anger that had never before been a part of him, he forced her to her back. Her arms shot around his neck. He raised a bit. He shifted. He knocked his knees against hers in the scramble that their legs made as they fought for the adjustment that was necessary for greater closeness, ultimate unity of their bodies. And then, as if by magic, as if he had traveled through a period of no-feeling, he was there, above her, touching, finding, adjusting again, feeling her own adjustment, feeling the quiver of her thighs as they sought both to hold him and free him for movement, hearing her harsh, anxious breathing, thinking that it was different, that it had changed, then realizing that this was not so, that the changed sound was only his own exerted breathing sounds mixing with those of Susan's.
Susan's hands shifted to his hips. They were gentle, but firm for guiding. And then he was drawing back, pausing, then slowly lowering, descending, moving closer and closer and closer to that warm, comforting cradle of femininity that Susan raised to meet him. And then, miraculously, it seemed to Roger, they were touching, pausing a moment to know the ignited thrill of contact before a greater, more thorough, and dynamically descending contact was made. Then he was making it, touching and beginning to lower, feeling the clutch of her moist warmth that held him fully, that caressed every part of him as they came together. Sudden joy ripped through Roger's body and for that scant instant the world and the hospital blacked-out of his being. But then, tragically, it was returned to him again as a scrape and click sounded at the door.
Their bodies tensed, then shot away from each other as a slice of hall light split the room.
Roger caught only a glimpse of his roommate's face. It was enough to reveal the shock that coursed through all of Jack Belton's body. The young intern's body stiffened. The keys he held froze midway in their downward path to his pocket. His mouth hung open. His eyes darted from Susan to Roger, then smiled at their naked bodies.
"Well I'll be goddamned," Jack whispered.
Then he closed the door and Roger knew that he was moving toward Susan and himself. And then there was his friend's voice again, closer this time.
"Why, Rog, you old son-of-a-gun, I wouldn't have believed it. Of this little chick here, yes, but you-man-never. But I'm glad to see it-honest I am-glad as all get out."
Roger wanted to reply to his roommate's words, but he could not. He was beyond words, too far gone along the path of erotic endeavor to find any words that might answer the things his mind wanted to shout. He felt lost and hopeless and a little frightened. Not of Jack Belton, but of himself, frightened of the quick change that had come over him, of that switch that had been so easily made between two opposite poles. Roger had become afraid of himself, for within seconds he had lost principles, shunned conscientiousness, laughed at conventions and morality and had traded them all for the things of the flesh.
Jack laughed softly. Then there was the noise that Roger had heard when Susan had entered the room; the sound of starched uniform being removed. He didn't care now. He even welcomed it with a new tremor of thrill that shot throughout his body.
"Well, ole' buddy," Jack said. "If you don't mind-and if little ole' Susan here doesn't mind, I just think I might avail myself of this fifteen minute break I'm on."
Roger straightened in the bed. Then he heard himself saying words that were foreign and not a part of himself, words that had somehow become a part of him.
"Sure, Jack, join the grab, what the hell, there's enough for everybody."
Roger felt Susan alert next to him. He sensed her head turning to look at him, to express the shock she felt. And at the same time Rog sensed Jack staring at him with a new expression of awe. And then, in the very next second, he knew that both Susan and Jack had relaxed their expressions, that they had turned hapny and gay and had accepted the changed Roger Harper with enthusiasm.
In a moment, Jack, too, was nude. He moved around the bed and climbed in on the side next to Susan, placing her in the middle of the interns, like meat in a sandwich.
"Hey, what the hell, this is going to be more complicated than I thought," Jack said.
"No it isn't," Roger assured him, the words still sounding foreign.
"Of course not," Susan said, suddenly coming to life, speaking for the first time since Jack had entered the room.
There was a pause. There was silence. Then there was the sound and feeling of movement as Susan turned her back to Roger, scooted down in the bed a bit, jutted her hips upward to him as she dipped her head toward the prone Jack Belton.
"I'll be goddamned," Jack said. "Man-am I ever goddamned."
"Me too," Roger said as he gripped Susan's buttocks, raised her, lurched forward, attained her and continued his onward drive at the exact time that the front of her bobbed in oral giving to the other intern.
CHAPTER 4
"Can you guess what's going to happen to us if we don't get that financial grant?" Amos Fiken said to his niece, Mona.
"It'll be bad-very bad," she answered.
"That's hardly an expression for it," Fiken said. "It's so simple that it's horrible. If we don't get the grant we can't cover up our-well, umph, our manipulation of hospital funds."
"Our theft, go ahead and say it, I don't mind," Mona said.
"All right-our theft. And when we can't cover it up, we'll go to jail."
"We'll go to jail?"
He did not answer her. He only stared, but it was sufficient to make Mona blink, then-lower her eyes to the carpeted floor. Amos Fiken's expression was severe. It seemed almost to create a physical strain within him, for beads of perspiration suddenly appeared on his bald head and there was even a glisten upon his pink, closely-shaved cheeks. And his body seemed strained, too, causing an erectness of his posture that seemed unnatural, almost as unnatural, it seemed, as the fifty years he carried as his own, for he looked to be a much younger man.
Mona raised her eyes. They changed in expression, turned sweet and loving. And then they smiled just the moment before her full lips opened to show her small, white teeth.
"Let's not start a quarrel again, Amos," she said.
"Of course not. Let's just decide what should be done."
"You decide," she said. "That's the way it's always been-that's the way it should be now."
Amos Fiken nodded as Mona, with a swish of the long negligee she was wearing, turned and walked to the window of the living room.
Fiken turned, too. He watched her for a moment, remembering how many years it had been that Mona had shared his home, his thoughts and emotions and his hopes and dreams. It seemed forever, and he had to remind himself that it had been only eight years, only since his brother's death had left Mona an orphan. And then, and forever after that time, she had shared everything with him, especially love.
Suddenly, Mona turned from the window and said, "What are we going to do, Uncle?"
"Just as we are, I guess," he said. "There's really only one person who might stand in our way.
"Dr. Roger Harper," Mona said, saying the words less sharply than if she were before him or in the presence of any of the hospital people.
"Right." Fiken paused, then walked over to the window where Mona was standing. He looked out at the wide sweep of lawn, crinkling his forehead in a meditative manner. Then he said, "It really boils down to a few simple principles. Elmer Pen will approve us for the grant just so long as that little snip of a Patty doesn't run home from the hospital and snitch on some of the things she might see. Or even some things she doesn't see. Then, we get the grant, we cover our-our embezzlement, never do it again and live happily ever after."
"Then Patty Pen's the problem?" Mona said, both stating and questioning her words. "No."
Mona jerked her head toward her uncle. Her eyebrows raised in a double question.
"No," Fiken said, turning to his niece. "Patty won't be a problem just so long as she has things the way she wants them in the hospital. You see, I know why she's really at Riverdale."
"So do I," Mona said. "She's promiscuous, a regular little bitch and there are a lot of people who'd like to hurt her. So, daddy says for us to take her in the hospital, hide her awhile, and at the same time treat her for that restless sexuality she's got-subdue it with drugs, anything to keep her from making it with every man in town."
"That's partly right," Amos Fiken said, staring straight ahead out the window. "Only partly?"
"Yes. All that you said is true. But, I happen to know Elmer Pen and I know damn well that he told that miserable child of his to look us over-see how we operate-to notice things, especially little things. Then, when she reports to him-as she always does about anything that takes her imagine-he'll decide whether we get the grant or not."
"So, we'd better please Patty, eh?"
"Yes. And just how do we please Patty?"
Mona smiled, then said, "I don't really have to tell you, do I?"
"No. But let me hear your thoughts."
"All we have to do is let little Patty have every man she wants in the hospital. She's just intrigued with hospitals-especially the interns in them."
"And the interns?" he asked.
"Well, naturally, they're intrigued with her."
"Except for Roger Harper, if my observations are correct," he said.
Mona nodded and said, "Yes. Thus far he's resisted her advances." Mona's smile widened as if the thought of Roger rejecting Patty delighted her no end.
"God damn him, anyway," Amos Fiken said. "He's the one who's apt to louse us up. He's always been so damn noble and devoted and acting like Dr. Scweitzer all the time-even when he's preparing to do nothing more than a hemorrhoidectomy."
Mona laughed.
"It's not funny," Fiken said.
"No, of course it isn't," Mona agreed.
"So we've got to change Harper's mind about Patty-about all of us. He's either going to queer us for the grant with Pen because of Patty, or because of his own miserable devotion to duty. And we've got to change that. Change him, if necessary."
"Maybe we could pressure him by threatening to withhold our recommendation for his residency," she suggested.
"Don't be absurd," Fiken said. "He's the best man in the hospital-it sticks out like a sore thumb."
Suddenly, Mona felt very tired of the conversation. It was early morning and already she had been up for hours, pacing the floor with her uncle, worrying and wondering about what to do about the problems that confronted them. And she was tired of it. Dreadfully tired.
"Tell you what," Fiken said. "I'm going to give him to you, Mona. Make him your problem. You're a woman-a beautiful one-hell, he can't be immune to all women. Maybe it's just that jailbait brat that he's afraid of."
A sudden flush pinkened both her cheeks. She shook her head, then said, "Won't work, Amos. He-he hates me. You and me, but especially me, I think."
"Well, you change all that," Amos said. "Soften him up-and, maybe you can arrange something. Maybe you can even get him to attend our little Patty when she starts to raise a fuss."
"She's already started," Mona said dejectedly.
"Huh?"
"She's been raising hell because Roger won't answer her calls-says she just needs rest. So, instead of Roger, Patty's been getting Jack Belton."
"Good man, that Belton. Bet he services her."
"He does. But Patty's tired of him. She screams for Roger, wants him, nobody but him and just last night she threatened to call her Daddy and tell him that we were neglecting her."
"Goddamn that Harper," Fiken said, frowning and bringing his hand to his chin to rub it in contemplation of his problem.
"What are we going to do?"
Fiken sighed, then said, "Just the best we can, that's all. Carry on as we are."
"I have a thought," Mona said.
"What?"
"There's going to be a party this Saturday night. That bitch, Dorry Glenn, is going to celebrate the removal of her stitches by throwing a party for the whole hospital."
"So?"
"So, I imagine Roger will go because Jack Belton is pressuring him like mad. So, as long as I've been invited-nobody really thinks I'll go-I'll attend the party, too, and see what I can do about getting better acquainted with young Dr. Harper."
"That's reasonable."
"And, there's something else. What would you think about inviting Patty?"
"What the hell-she's a patient!"
"Surely, but we can tell her that she seems so much a part of the hospital and since she's not really too sick that we'd like to have her join us."
"Ummmm, that's interesting."
"It'll be more interesting if I can get Roger and Patty together that night-that'll just about take care of everything for us."
Amos Finken snapped his fingers. His eyes brightened. Then he said, "By God, I think it'll work, I really do."
"We can try, that's all," Mona said. "I'll take Patty to the party myself-you know, personal nurse for the night and all that sort of thing."
"We'll do it," he said. "As a matter-of-fact, it's about our only chance. So zero in on that damn party with all you've got, Mona.
"I will."
He cocked his head and looked at her strangely.
Mona stared back, then looked to one side as she felt the burn of his eyes traveling over her body. Despite herself, she reacted to his look, even felt the burn through her breasts and at her belly and within her thighs. She wondered why she continued to react to her uncle, why, after all these years, she was still without will or resistance before his desires. Then she knew why she was this way. She remembered her shock when her father had died only a year after her mother had been killed in an automobile accident. She remembered her shock and fear and convulsion of loneliness that had converged upon her like an army of hated enemies. And then she remembered the hope she had found and the gratitude she had felt when Amos Fiken took her to raise as his own, to bring his niece within the realm of his wealth and authority. Within the realm of his sexual lust, too. But that was a small thing, she had thought at the time. That was the least that she could do for a loving uncle.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" Mona asked.
"Just don't you get too carried away this Roger Harper."
"Don't be silly."
"I'm not. I know you pretty well, Mona. And I see things in you that you don't know that I see. Given just a little push, you'd be very much like Harper himself."
"That's absurd."
"I wish it was. But it's not." He paused and again roamed his eyes over all her body, stopping them at the place where her bodice parted enough to show that she wore nothing beneath the gown. "No, it's not absurd. It's all too possible. And that's what constantly worries me."
"Don't worry, Uncle," Mona said sweetly, taking a step closer to him.
He held his arms out, then said, "All right. Keep me from worrying, my dear. Show me how not to worry. Make me forget all of my problems."
Mona hesitated. The step toward him that had been intended as the mark of true concern for a loving niece had been misinterpreted. Lately Amos misinterpreted everything about her, she recalled. And as he did, his need and lust for her had increased to such a degree that it put a lie to his age.
Mona looked away from her uncle and glanced at the large clock on the library wall. Then she turned and said, "It's late. We should be at the hospital now."
"To hell with it." There was a note of savagery in his tone.
He took a step toward her and there was a quick swish from the dressing gown he wore. Then there was the swish of Mona's as she turned and walked toward the door.
"Not here, Amos," she said. "You know we can't do what you want here."
"No, of course we can't" he said, smiling.
Mona waited at the door. When Amos Fiken reached her, they smiled at each other, exited the room, walked through the foyer, and then ascended the thickly carpeted stairs of the old farmhouse.
The room that they entered after walking down the long, second floor corridor was strangely ornate for the simplicity of the rest of the house. The room was large, too, as if it had once been an upstairs living room or place for special occasion entertaining.
As if their pattern was well-set, Mona and Amos crossed the room and paused in front of a full-wall cabinet which had been made out of dark, mahogany wood. Amos smiled at her, then opened the doors of the first cabinet. Mona took a step away from him.
When Amos turned, he held a whip in his hand. It was black and very long with ugly tentacles shimmering out the end. He held it before him, then in a half-questioning motion, extended it toward her.
Mona shrugged, obviously unimpressed by the whip, unafraid of it, too.
Amos lowered the whip and laughed. "I was only considering it. Really, it's much too early in the morning for this, my sweet. Much too early. And besides, when I burn with problems and anger, well, then I want to touch you, to be tender and loving and find comfort in your body." His words were dramatic, almost poetic, and the change that had come over him gave the impression that he did indeed use Mona as solace for his discomfort.
Mona smiled at him, then raised her hands to where a single button held her negligee closed. She loosened it and waited, the smile leaving her face to be replaced by seriousness and concentration, a concentration that seemed more directed to her own feelings than those she was creating within her uncle.
Amos turned back to the cabinet. He replaced the whip. Then he withdrew two large jars from the cabinet, turned and placed them on a small table near where Mona stood. Then he raised and looked at his niece.
Mona took it as a signal to pull her gown apart, shrug it to the back of her white shoulders, then let it slip to the floor.
Amos gasped at the sight of her naked body. The sound was not reminiscent of any sound that one might expect to issue from the middle-aged man. Yet, at the same time, the low, guttural gasp seemed like one he made anew at every first sight of his niece's divine body.
It was divine. Mona's breasts were large, yet did not give the impression of over-heaviness or weight, instead, they appeared active, as if firmness and vitality were their qualities rather than largeness. And the nipple-studs of them were hard like large brick-chips; almost the same color, too. Her ribs showed through flesh that did not donate thinness. Rather-like her breasts-they told of strength and activity. Her belly looked hard, much as if it exercised frequently by harsh, panted breathing that indented and distended like the stammer of choked crying. Her thighs were full and firm and when they were together, as they now were as she faced Amos, they made a straight, dark line all the way to her knees, as if they were an extension of womanhood itself. Her knees were dimpled, her calves, solid, her feet small, but made to look longer looking by the blazing orange toenail polish that she wore.
When Amos' eyes had feasted their fill upon Mona's nude body, he slipped his dressing gown off and faced her, matching her nudity with his. There was a slight bloat at his waist, but other than that he was a hard, strong man, strong enough for a man a decade younger. But, there was no sign of virility that issued from his strong body.
Mona glanced over his body for an indifferent second, then, as if she acted obediently, she raised on her toes and stretched her arms high above her head, clasping her hands together and entwining the fingers as if she were fettered to some unseen manacle above.
Amos bent to the jars on the table. He unscrewed the lid of each. Then he dipped his right hand into the largest jar and withdrew a huge gob of white cream. It rested on his palm like a giant swirl of whipped cream that had been placed there by a vacuum-can dispenser.
Mona glanced at the white puff of cream. Then she stretched her head high and bent it a little, causing a strain to appear at her neck cords.
Amos walked directly in front of her. He hesitated a second, then smashed the cream upon Mona's right breast. '
"Ahhhhhh," he breathed as his hand circled, smearing the cream over all of her breast.
He massaged carefully, working the cream into her flesh, rubbing, rubbing, endlessly rubbing it seemed until the white of the cream disappeared and it took on the appearance of oil. Then he took a new gob of cream and massaged Mona's other breast with it.
The cold smashing against the heat of her body felt very good, Mona could not help reflecting. And then she tried to separate the two feelings, that of the cream and that of her uncle's caressing hand. She could not determine which gave her the excited feeling at every part of her body. It was not unusual. She could never tell which of the two sensations gave her thrill, or if indeed it was a combination of the two. And then she had another thought: Perhaps it was her uncle's pleasure that thrilled her-perhaps it was her ability to show gratitude and love to him by this sexually devious means that made her excited, that pleased her so much? She did not know. She did not care, for now Amos was rubbing the cream into each of her nipples, taking turns with them, moving the slippery ends between his fingers, catching, losing, and recatching them as they scampered from his touch.
Amos was breathing hard now. He caused. He looked at his creation of flesh and cream. His eyes glinted excitedly; his body stammered. And, almost as if by magic, virility came to him.
Mona glanced at his body. She saw the sign of his excitement and it was for her as it had always been: She became more excited herself, made that way because of this gift that she alone had given him.
Amos moved to the small table again. Now, his movements were hurried. He dipped the last of the cream from the jar, picked up the other jar with his free hand, then approached his niece once again.
Silently, he handed her the full jar. He waited as she unscrewed the top of it and Mona dipped her hand into the jar and withdrew a yellow, thick substance that appeared to be a combination of honey and motor oil, one of the two, or a combination of both. It hung in long, thick, clinging droplets from her hand, not falling but just hanging, moving lower and lower while the substance remained a part of its base in her hand.
Amos shivered delightedly at the sight of the yellow oil. Then he smashed the last of the white cream against the exact middle of Mona's belly. He bent over and smeared it around the soft circle of flesh, widening the circle as he moved, touching as high as her breasts again and as low as the hard roll of flesh beneath her navel. And then he went lower, slapped the last of the cream at the coarse vee between her thighs.
Excitement crept over Mona like an endless army of ants. And again she reflected on the sensation and tried to differentiate between the giving of the cream and her uncle's hand-which gave it. She could not determine the cause of her excitement. She only knew that it had always been a part of her life with Amos Fiken.
Amos dropped his hand away from Mona's thighs. He stepped back. He looked at her. His body hardened even more, responding anew to the sight of his cream-smeared niece. He trembled a bit. His mouth gaped open, as if awe-stricken. And then he glued his eyes upon the jar that Mona held. He straightened.
Mona, holding the gob of sticky oil before her as if it were a worshiped jewel, took a step closer to her uncle. He straightened and put his hands on his hips, tensing his body like a little boy who seeks to look taller.
Mona paused. She looked at her uncle's body, thought how good it was for a man of his age, then very carefully pressed the oil against his chest.
"Ahhhhhhhh," Amos responded to the contact.
Mona worked the oil over his body. She lowered the sweep of her working hand as she brought it far below his navel, then brought it lower still.
"Ohhhh," Amos whimpered as she lengthened the stroke of her hand to bring the oily substance to the hard bloat of his manhood.
She worked slowly, circling at his waist, then dropping her hand to pull, withdraw, and pull again, working the oil into his body, making his flesh slippery and bright with the oil.
And then, very suddenly, Amos could stand no more of it.
"Enough, for Crissakes, enough," he panted.
Mona dropped her hand from his body. Then she raised both of her arms as her uncle leaped forward, took her in his arms and caught her young mouth in a savage kiss.
Mona felt the slippery, sticky, oil contact of their bodies, felt her breasts crushing to his chest and sliding against him. Then she felt her own hips lurch forward and meet the contact of his hardness, which struck out like a saber that had been dipped in oil. And, she felt the knock of their knees and the closeness of their thighs as Amos' tongue shot through the soft wall of her lips. She caught it and drew upon it as she murmured soft sounds of love and excitement and lust.
With a groan and a backward step, Amos broke away from his niece's body. It was a very brief parting. Immediately, he lowered to the floor and stretched on his back.
Mona waited a second. She looked down at him. Then, like a beautiful statue crumbling, she, too, lowered to the floor next to her uncle.
Amos, flat on his back, stretched his arms out. His body glistened beneath the lights, pinpointing his erectness as if it were centered by a stage spotlight. He trembled.
Mona cried out and moved to his side. Then she half-climbed over him to fasten her knees on either side of his hips. And then she raised and came over him, causing her breasts to hang down, almost flicking at his chest. But neither of them had time for response to the erotic pose for Mona reached, touched her uncle, straightened and adjusted him, then raised, held her high-hipped position a moment, then crashed downward, making him her prisoner, capturing his pulsing lance in her cavern of love.
She rode him hard, without feeling or desire for finesse. When his hands found her hips and held her and guided her, she moved faster. The oils of their bodies merged, making their contact difficult even as it was more exciting because of the glide and depth their bodies attained.
Mona, riding high, her black hair bobbing around her ears, felt the machine-gun rapid contact she was making. She felt the glide of her uncle as she descended upon him. Then she felt the parting she made as she rose, paused a second, then crunched downward once again.
Soon, Amos' hips were snapping up and down in a frantic effort to compete with her hurried motions. Together, they seemed like inmates of insanity trying to crush the life out of an evil serpent that had come between them. And, they did crush it, subdue it, make it helpless, until at last, with an eerie scream from Mona and a short, hot gasp from Amos, they crushed the life from it, they both climaxed, making it die a quick death by taking all of its venom from its life.
Their bodies remained collapsed together for a long time. Mona cuddled her head into her uncle's chest as she went limp atop him. Amos, arms wound around her, comforting her as if she were a child. And soon their breathing evened and calmed.
But for the first time, Mona felt no real calming within her body. She felt disturbed and afraid as she considered all that was ahead of her, as she considered Roger Harper and the new interest she now had in him. It frightened her. It was nothing that she had considered possible, not she, nor Amos. Still, it was there, bubbling within her, knowledgeable of her life and reprimanding her for that life. It made her very, very afraid.
CHAPTER 5
For the first time that Dr. Roger Harper could remember he did not feel like an outcast at a party. For the first time, he was almost the life of it. The liquor helped a lot. So did the sight of beautiful female bodies flitting back and forth amid the many rooms of Dorry Glenn's lavish home. Some of the bodies were nearly nude, for all the merrymakers were very, very drunk. Then, too, even without drunkenness as an excuse, many of them would be without parts of their clothing anyway. It was the way things were with people who worked in hospitals.
Roger sat on the floor in a corner of one of Dorry Glenn's three libraries. His back was braced against the wall, a nearly empty glass in his hand. His eyes were bleary, and they tried for more acute focusing every time someone passed him, especially when that someone was a girl.
He finished his drink and sat the glass on the carpet next to him. He looked around, wondering where Susan Crisp had disappeared to. Where, and with whom. He grinned foolishly, thinking that his revolt had begun with Susan, that somewhere during the time that he thrust to her jutting buttocks as she bobbed in orality to his friend, Jack Belton, he had been fed the seed of revolt. It had taken hold, too. With Susan and Jack, all things had converged upon him to change him. Hospital work, the fatigue of internship, the confusion of Riverdale, and his disdain for its administrators, all grouped and formed an attack to corrupt him. And it had worked. During a single act of crazy perversity, his principles, hopes, and idealism had been quickly dissipated, and he, like most of his peers, turned to the moment, the pleasure of it, the intensity of thrill that the moment could bring.
Some of the crowd had disappeared from the room. A few couples still remained in corners, on couches, in chairs, boldly caressing and kissing without regard for their exhibitions, perhaps even taking a little pleasure from it. Roger looked around and smiled. He wanted another drink. He looked at the bar, one of several scattered throughout the house, that sat in the corner of the room. He wanted to go to it and make a new drink. But he could not. He was too tired and unsteady. And, he was much too satisfied and comfortable right where he was.
Soon, his vision blurred again for a second. Then it quickly cleared as the scent of a light perfume and the rustle of a dress started to move past him. He looked up. It was Dorry Glenn, grateful former patient of Riverdale, radiant and wanton hostess of the party.
"Hey, there, hold it," Roger said, reaching his hand up and catching Dorry by the wrist.
"Why, Roger Harper, whatever are you all doing down there on the floor?" she said, the slight hint of a southern accent furring her words.
"Why, I'm just a-sittin' here and a-waitin' for you all, honey-chile," Roger said, the words slurring as they tried to mimic her.
Dorry laughed, then said, "Now I know my party's a success. Why, you-all didn't even pay any attention to me when I was in that awful hospital for that terrible operation. And now, why, honey, now you're all sprawled out all over my floor as drunk as all of us."
"Yeahhhhhh," he breathed, winking at her.
He jerked on her wrist to bring her down beside him. Dorry needed very little encouragement. She went immediately to her knees at his side, tossed the glass she had been carrying to the carpet, then caught his face in both her hands and raised his mouth to know the hot sting of her lips and tongue.
Roger held her very tight. His head spun crazily as Dorry swamped him with her tongue, as her hand wandered from his cheek to his shirt where it paused, undid a button, sneaked inside, then touched at all of his hard, bare chest. Dorry drew her tongue back, rested a moment, but kept her hand busy inside his shirt, moving, moving, constantly moving, dipping downward, too, coming always nearer the waistband of his trousers. Roger opened his eyes and saw her closed eyes as her lips continued to press against his. It was very interesting watching parts of his own kissing episode, he decided. He could see a blur of Dorry's nose as it moved in and out of his vision as she moaned and moved her head gently from side to side, adding excitement and vitality to her lips. And Roger could see strands of her platinum hair as it whisked in front of his face. It was very exciting for him. It stirred him greatly, especially when he remembered the full vision of Dorry Glenn, as he recalled the short, emerald-green cocktail dress that she wore and the way the front swooped downward in a wide vee that did not finally end until it was well beneath her navel. He remembered the shortness of the mini-dress, too, the way it flared out in a bell-shape many inches above her knees, showing hints of her thighs and all of her long, lean, and very shapely legs. Roger remembered their bareness, sound evidence of the absence of underclothing.
Roger closed his eyes and intensified his hold around Dorry's waist. Now, he did not need memories of her body as stimulation. It was not necessary. Nothing was, for he could feel the crush of her large breasts, feel her hand at his waist trying to sneak down beneath the restriction of his belt, and he could feel the lower half of her body pressing, pushing, insisting upon a positioning that would bring her closer into contact with his loins where the effect of her closeness was overwhelmingly evident.
Roger groaned, brought both his hands from
Dorry's back to her buttocks, then boosted her atop him as he rolled to his back.
Dorry whimpered a happy sound. One hand went from Roger's neck up quickly to entwine fingers into his tight, black curly hair. She gripped him hard and as their kiss resumed, Dorry shot her tongue deeply into Rog's mouth and he took it to draw upon it. He felt the slow withdrawal of her other hand that could not creep inside his belt. He missed its touch. But only for a moment. Then he knew it again as it moved between their bodies, cupped the hard tent that the strain of his masculinity had caused and squeezed hard.
Rog gurgled a throaty sound into his mouth. Dorry answered it with a sweet-scented breath carrying a hum. Then she released her fingers and locked them upon him again. Now, sounds from both their throats met together within the channel of their locked mouths. And in a moment, the sounds got wilder as Dorry worked her hand feverishly, then suddenly stopped to lift her fingers to the top of his zipper tab.
But Roger was not at this moment to know the thrill of a woman withdrawing him for loving. He was not to know it because at that very moment a voice from above sounded, causing interruption. They both turned and looked at their intruder.
It was Dorry's husband.
Wayne Glenn was very drunk. He stood above his wife and Roger, looking down at them, smiling, not the least upset at the tangle of their bodies, not at all perturbed by the position of Dorry's fingers that still rested on the intern's zipper tab. Nor did Wayne seem to have any husbandly concern for her breasts, both of which were two-thirds exposed with one even showing the hard point of its end. Wayne seemed not to mind at all, and Roger, looking at him through newly blurred vision and feeling even more drunk than before because of the interruption, thought that Wayne seemed like the jolliest person in the world. He was short and rather stocky and there was a sense of wealth about him that made people think him more attractive than was rightfully his due. Wayne's smile interested Roger, too. It was as if the man always smiled. It was as if his grin would have widened had his wife continued her involvement with Roger right down to the very end.
"Cripes, I'm sorry to disturb you, honey," Wayne said to his wife. "But there's one hell of a piece of entertainment going on and everybody's been asking for you."
"Of course, Wayne," Dorry said. "I just stopped with Rog here for a second to see how he's getting along."
"And how is he getting along?" Wayne asked, glancing at Roger.
"Oh, he's all a-makin' it just fine, honey." she said. "He's a-coming along longer and longer and--. "
Wayne Glenn laughed hard. His body giggled, rippling creases at each side of his tight fitting dinner jacket.
Roger pushed up to a sitting position. He grinned up at Wayne Glenn and asked, "Did you say something about entertainment?"
"Yes. Seems that one of your medical men is exploiting his chosen-specialty?"
"Huh?" Rog said, cocking his head to one" side. "That big fellow-Cory what-ever-his-name-is-hell, he's got the place swinging."
The drunken fog cleared sufficiently for Roger to recognize the description of Cory Matthew, a fellow-intern who hoped to become a psychiatrist.
"Ole' Cory," Rog said. "He's the guy who can do it, too. What's he up to-playing head-shrinker."
"Yes. And with demonstrations," Wayne answered, smiling luridly.
"Man-I all just have to see this little ole' thing," Dorry said, scrambling to her feet, then extending her hand toward Rog and adding, "Come on, honey, mama'll give you a boost."
Rog clutched the offered hand and half-pushed, half was pulled, up to his feet. He grinned inanely at Wayne, looking down at him for Roger towered at least a half-foot taller. And for a moment, as Wayne looked up at the intern, it appeared that the shorter man had become aware of the contrast between them, especially that contrast that emphasized Roger's dark, handsome looks, the olive-brown-ruddiness of his complexion split by a flashing white smile, and the black, curly hair. But, if Wayne Glenn felt any remorse for the comparison he had made, he did not show it.
Dorry gripped Roger's arm and cuddled close. "Come on," she said. "I'm just all a-flutter to see what's going on."
"You two go ahead," Wayne suggested. "I have some drinks to make for some people. See you later-maybe. That is, if I don't see one or both of you before that goddamn audience that this Cory character's gotten into the act."
Dorry giggled. Roger smiled. Wayne laughed, then turned from them and moved toward the bar at the other end of the room.
Pressing her breast hard against his arm, Dorry led Roger out of the room, through several others, and finally guided him expertly into the large living room where it seemed that most of the guests had gathered in a large circle. Most of them were sitting on the floor. Many stood behind the sitters. And in the middle of the circle there was Cory Matthew, psychiatry-aspirant, sitting in nothing but his undershorts on a straight backed chair.
Dorry and Roger halted at the outside of the rim of people. She glanced around, smiled at many who nodded or called to her, then cuddled tighter against Roger, so tight that he could feel the hot jab of her excited nipples.
"All right now," Cory Matthew called out. "We're just about to go into a new phase of psychiatric development-a phase that's called 'acting out'. "
"Acting out?" a girl's voice called from the crowd. "Just what are we going to act out, baby ? "
"You'll see," Cory told her. "What we in psychiatry want is that everyone should feel perfectly at ease in acting out their repressed fears and desires."
"I'll act mine out right now," one of the interns exclaimed. In a moment there was the shuffle of bodies and the excited giggle of a nurse who was sitting next to him as he tried to force her flat on the floor.
"All right, all right," Cory said patiently. "Now, let's start." He paused, shifted his eyes around the circle until they touched on everyone. Then he said, "This is a medical crowd, so we can be perfectly frank with each other. And we know that all of us are just filled with all kinds of repressed sexual desires-I repeat, sexual desires, whether they appear to you that way or not."
"Now just what in the hell does that mean?" a girl from the crowd wanted to know.
"It means that no matter what you think of, it's somehow connected with sex."
"That's stupid," cried the girl. "It's stupid because right this very moment I had a flashing thought of a rough, turkish towel and I'd like to know how the hell that's connected with sex!"
Dr. Cory Matthew leaped to his feet. He jumped up and down like a madman, crying, "It worked it worked-it worked free association, it worked, I'll be a sonofagun, it worked and I'm going to make Freud look like a punk."
"Man-I know what's working for you," a male voice shouted. "It's the bughouse!"
"No, no, no," Cory exclaimed. "Where's that young lady-the one who had the fantasy about the towel."
"Right here," a young, female voice said.
Roger looked in the direction of the voice. In a moment, he saw one of the first session student nurses stand up. She looked incredibly young, probably only seventeen, Roger decided, then he thought how funny it was that a girl of seventeen-undoubtedly one who had been so superior through high school that she was accepted for nurses' training at the very minimum age-how odd it was that she should be the first to present herself as Cory Matthew's obvious subject of experimentation. Then Roger looked closer and knew the motivation behind the young girl's precociousness. She was very drunk, even a bit more drunk, Rog guessed, than anyone in the room. And the little student nurse showed the signs of what that drunkenness had already cost her. She wore what had once been an expensive dress, kind of a best dress for a dressed-up high school girl. It was torn at the bodice. One of her bare breasts, large and round and extremely firm, it seemed to Rog, was partly revealed while the nipple was fully revealed through a rip, giving it the impression of an evil window-peeper. The dress was ripped at its hem, too, practically sheared from her body as the rip ran diagonally up her from below her right knee to her left hip. Only flesh flashed from beneath it, making it obvious that undergarments had either not been worn, or more-likely, had been worn, then removed from her body for awhile before the dress had been donned once again. Her lips were without lipstick, yet the stain of it was still there. Her blonde hair was a mess-an erotic mess as if it had known the tangle of male fingers. The girl's eyes looked watery and quite far away. She wore a smile, a bit faded, but very curious, and it appeared that she was very pleased with the attention for herself that she had created.
"Will you step up here, dear?" Cory Matthew said, his voice going deep as he continued to play the role of psychiatrist.
"Sure, watch me," the girl replied.
She moved forward from the crowd, swayed a bit, nearly fell, then, when an outstretched hand righted her, she moved forward, still swaying and looking rather small and helpless.
"Ahhh, fine," Cory said, greeting the girl as she stepped in front of him.
"What do you want with me, Doctor?" she asked.
"Hum, silly child," Cory answered, raising his eyebrows in a comic way.
The girl swayed dizzily and Cory caught her by the forearm. Then he said, "All right, little girl. I'm going to show you that it's not at all silly that there are sexual associations to the towel you thought of, even show you that a towel itself is very sexual."
"Come on, let's get with it, head-shrinker," somebody called out.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah-I'm gettin', " Cory answered. "All right, somebody toss me a towel up here."
"Is the one I'm wearing all right?" a girl asked.
Roger looked at the girl. So did the rest of the audience. She was, indeed, wearing a large, turkish towel-that and nothing more.
"That one will do very nicely," Cory said.
The girl undid the tuck of the towel that she had made at the side. She whipped it from her body, then tossed the towel to Cory. There were sounds of approval for her naked body. She smiled, then giggled, and then with a very minimum of embarrassment, rejoined the man with whom she had been standing.
Cory handed the little student nurse the towel. She took it, looked at the intern, then shrugged her shoulders.
"So, we've already seen one example of the sexual relationship of a towel-it was being used by that young lady as a sarong," Cory explained. "Now, you take the towel and do what you want with it."
The nurse took the towel. She looked around at the crowd, then to Cory said, "Well, when I think of a towel I always think of stepping out of a shower."
"Fine. Step out of a shower, my dear."
"Right here?"
"Of course. We're all friends. And this is a dramatic session of psycho-drama, and in such a psychiatric demonstration most of us lose our inhibitions. So-lose yours, eh?"
"Well-all right."
Cory grinned. The audience grew silent. Roger felt Dorry Glenn's hand sneak around his waist. Then he felt her hug him to her body. And then she was whispering into his ear.
"Does it excite you, darling?" Dorry asked.
"Everything excites me," he answered.
"Ummmmm, good. Maybe later you'll let me really show you some excitement."
"You better believe it," he said.
The girl with the towel looked perplexed for a moment. Then inspiration lighted her eyes. First, she raised the rough, turkish towel to her cheek, then she rubbed it there, cuddled her cheek to it like a child snuggling up to a favorite stuffed toy. Then she brought the towel down. Then she raised her other hand and very quickly pulled upon her dress, making a final tear of its hold upon her as a ripping sound echoed throughout the room. She dropped the remnants of her dress to the floor and to Roger it looked like the relinquishing of childhood for, nude, the girl looked even younger. For a moment, the girl paraded back and forth in front of Cory, seeming less drunk now, yet filled with some new excitement for the naked, daring picture she made for the others. She stopped and faced the audience, standing next to Cory. Then she lifted her head high, strained it back a bit, and brought the towel up to her neck where she gently rubbed.
Roger saw the young girl tremble when the first contact of towel to flesh was made. And strangely, crazily, he felt a reaction run throughout his own body. He wondered if it came from the sight of the girl or because of the nearness of Dorry Glenn. Then he watched as the girl lowered the towel and in turn rubbed it over each of her breasts. Then he knew that his excitement was surely caused by the display of the student nurse, that, all that he now felt was a result of the things that had been building within him for weeks, that he had joined all the others, had become a part of corruption and gross sexual drives, that he was now public and no longer private. And he didn't give a damn, couldn't care less as he considered that life was really easier when it wasn't encumbered with principles and stupid idealism.
The student nurse lowered the turkish towel from her breasts to her small, white stomach. She circled it there in an ever-widening sweep, raising the towel to her breasts, then lowering it to the very topmost parts of her thighs. Around and around and around she played the towel upon her body. And her face showed the effects of her massage. With her head still strained backwards, the girl's eyes half-closed and her puffy-lips parted, showing the tiniest bit of white teeth through them. And lines of strain furrowed on her forehead, giving the impression of immense concentration. Her stomach muscles tightened and furrowed in almost the same pattern that her forehead showed. Her thighs started trembling. Her dimpled knees knocked together for a second, paused, then knocked again. And then she lowered the towel and rubbed it at a place that, despite her nudity-despite the luridness of the party-brought an erotic gasp from the audience.
Roger's body alerted. So did Dorry next to him. Her hand kneaded at the flesh of his waist. And he swung his arm around her and cuddled her close, much as if he needed the support of her nearness for the things that were to follow. What immediately followed, was unexpected.
With a heavy sigh, the girl stopped her action and let the hand that held the towel drop to her side.
"It's no good, head-shrinker," she said. "The towel doesn't do a thing for me-not a thing except to get me excited."
"Uh huh," Cory Matthew said, lilting the words enthusiastically. "That's good."
"Good?"
"Of course," he continued. "It shows me the way to your responses."
"It does," she said dumbly.
"Yep. You see, by you banishing the towel, giving it up, and starting to talk about it, you've demonstrated by association that you are highly oral-very oral, indeed, and that you will respond to certain perversions where a towel is used. Now I say perversions reservedly. To psychiatry there are no sexual perversions-everything's normal."
"Yippeeeee," a girl shouted. "Now I don't have to worry about being in love with Audrey anymore."
"As if you ever did," a man laughed at her.
"All right, children, quiet down now," the pretend-psychiatrist, Cory said. Then, to the student nurse he said, "Now, my dear, if you'll just lie down on the floor here as if it were my couch."
"Man-now this psycho-drama bit's getting worthwhile," a girl giggled.
The student nurse smiled rather blankly out into the audience. Then, as if presenting herself as an actress in a skit, she turned in a small circle, displaying her naked body in a more wanton pose, shimmering her buttocks, letting her bare breasts bounce happily, even showing the rub of her thighs as they kissed together as she walked in an exaggerated way. Then she moved in front of Cory and stretched on her back upon the floor, assuming a position that placed her head near where he sat, much like that of a psychoanalytic patient prone before her therapist.
"The towel please," Cory said.
The girl raised her arm and reached the towel behind her.
Cory took it. He looked down at the naked girl. There was a hush and lull amid the audience that gave the impression that they had identified with Cory, that each of them by transference had placed themself in Cory's position of dominance over the beautiful young girl.
Roger felt it, too. He felt that stir of his manhood strengthen again and he recognized that he was very tense, very much a part of the proceedings and especially a part of the next moment.
The next moment presented Cory with the towel, twisting it into a loose length as he looked down at the girl's partially opened mouth. He moved off the chair where he had been sitting. Roger saw that the intern had become excited. His arousal pressed against the thin material of his shorts. A slight quiver was discernible in the hand that held the towel.
Cory kneeled next to the girl on the side of her that was furthest from the audience. Again, he glanced at all of her naked body. Then his right hand trailed a path down all that his eyes had viewed, touching at her neck and shoulders, at her breasts and belly and finally at her thighs where he lingered a moment, gently cupping and un-cupping his hand over her love mound. Then he brought that hand up to her hair. He wound his fingers into the thick blondeness of her hair. Gently, he tugged her head back a bit. Then he raised the towel with the other hand and brought it to her lips. The girl shot him a frightened look, but it quickly faded. She looked away from him, stared straight ahead, then opened her mouth.
A sound like a gasp rose and fell from the audience as Cory stuffed the end of the towel into the student nurse's mouth. Then it was silent except for the exerted breathing that began to issue from Cory's throat. He worked a little faster. He stuffed more of the towel into her mouth, then crammed it deeper until he paused, gathered more of the rough turkish material into a ball, and crammed again. Gurgling, choking noises sputtered from the girl's throat and mouth but she made no move to turn away from the constant descent of the towel.
A part of Roger Harper wanted him to turn away from the evil scene. But another, new, part of himself forbade it. He stared straight ahead, still feeling the effects of drunkenness, still feeling the closeness of Dorry Glenn beside him, yet finding neither delight or repulsion in the scene of the seventeen year old girl's gagging.
Cory made a mighty twist with his hand, jamming most of the towel deep into the girl's throat. Her eyes rolled. Her breasts heaved and her stomach stammered. But when a flush scorched at her cheeks, Cory, brutally, jerked the towel from her mouth.
The girl's head raised with it, then snapped back to the floor. She continued to stare straight ahead and her mouth remained open, almost anxiously open, it seemed.
Working faster now, Cory stuffed the towel into the girl's mouth, gathering the material quickly with his fingers, balling it together, then crashing it within her. And again, after most of the towel had been concealed in her mouth, Cory waited a second, then jerked it clear.
He repeated the action again and again. And with every withdrawal of the towel, the girl seemed to react with increasing excitement. It was as if the stuffing and its release, so that she could breath again, was some mad replica of the act of love itself. And as her eyes rolled in response, so did her body begin tiny, convulsive movements that were indisputably those movements of mounting thrill. Her nipples hardened. Her flesh at thighs and belly quivered madly. Her toes pointed and her hips began to bounce lightly upon the carpeted floor. And, as if there was a sharing of the same thrill, Cory began to react too. Perspiration dotted his forehead. The bulge at his shorts became immense. And his efforts became enormous as he stuffed, crammed, jammed, pushed, clogged and twisted, then released the towel, then did it all over again in constantly mounting sequence. And very soon it was like a single motion that gave, then took away the rough towel.
Roger was sure that everyone in the audience, himself included, had never experienced such a dryness in their own throats. And he was sure that they, like himself, felt that the girl could stand little more of the rough gagging. And finally, when it appeared that she would surely suffocate, she emitted a tiny, dry cry and struck her arm out to the side.
The student nurse's hand closed upon the protrusion of Cory Matthew's shorts. His body nearly convulsed because of the touch. And it was the signal for the finale, for his last jamming efforts with the towel. He crunched all of the towel into her mouth, let it remain there while he jammed his hand atop it and tried to force a swallow, a complete, impossible taking of the towel. And while he held it deeply in her throat, the girl's hand moved, bunched man and cloth together in her own crunching manipulation of his body. Suddenly, while Cory nearly slumped from exhaustion and from the thrill of the girl's moving hand, he jerked the towel from her mouth a final time.
All of the girl's body arched as the towel was extracted from her throat. She bent like an Indian bow even as her body convulsed, as her hips spun and pounded in this lower response to the climax of the gagging. She shook as if she had been terror-struck. Her hand moved as if life itself depended upon it. And from its movement, Cory knew his own orgasm, his own finale to the scene he had invented and played until it could be played no more.
When Cory pitched forward and fell to the floor next to the girl; panting, mumbling; his sounds mixing with the heavy, exerted, after-sounds-of-love that she muttered, the audience sighed as if every one of them had played a major, even if subconscious, role in the drama that had taken place. And then it was deathly quiet and remained that way until Cory finally rose from the floor, straightened his soggy shorts, and turned to face the audience again.
He glanced back and forth across the first row of the audience. He did not smile. He looked very serious and his voice was deep and serious too when he said, "I guess we'll never stop being astounded by the emotions that are in us-the emotions that yearn for expression."
The words had extra meaning for Roger. Lately, he had learned for himself of the very personal emotions that sought, often demanded, expression. And he knew that they could change a life, divert it from seriousness of purpose to a squander of energy and talent. But at least in the squandering of these things, he thought, there is the joy of a few minutes forgetfulness for all that was wrong and sick in the world.
"Now," said Cory, a little strength and confidence returning to his voice. "We have just demonstrated the purpose and execution of this particular phase of what we call 'psycho-drama'-that is, the acting out of our repressed wishes. So, now, is there anyone else who would like to step up here and demonstrate their own secret wishes ? Anything goes-anyone and everyone can play the game because repression of sexual yearnings is a part of every man, woman, and child in all the world."
Cory stopped and again slowly turned, letting his eyes touch at every face in the room.
When Cory had turned so that he faced directly at Dorry and Roger, Rog felt the girl's body stiffen. Then he sensed, but did not see, the quick glance that she tossed at him. The grip of her hand upon his waist slackened a bit as if undecided about something. And still Cory Matthew stared at the platinum-haired hostess making Roger think that there passed between them some signal of experience each had for the other. In a moment, Dorry's hand dropped from Roger's waist altogether. Then she stepped a pace away from him.
Roger turned and looked into Dorry Glenn's eyes. They were filled with some slowly-creeping emotion that Rog placed someplace in the middle of fear and desire, or, better put, as fear of a desire, he thought.
"Who would like to act out their repressions?"
Cory Matthew stated flatly, looking straight at Dorry.
There was a pause. The audience's hush continued. And then it was broken.
"I will," said Dorry Glenn.
All eyes turned to her. She hesitated a moment, then breathed deeply and hurried through the crowd to stop before Cory Matthew.
Cory smiled. "Thank you-or perhaps, you should thank us." Cory made a deep bow, holding his hand out to the audience in the manner of a master of ceremonies presenting an act. Then he stepped back.
Dorry turned and faced the audience.
She cleared her throat once, then said, "This may sound a little absurd-it sounds that way to me, too, when I put it into words-but, Iwell, ever since I was about ten-I'm twenty-nine now, so that makes it nineteen years-anyway, ever since I was a small girl, I've-liked to be-to be beaten."
She paused. There was a nervous cough from the audience but other than that it remained quiet in the room.
"You see, it's a little different for me, however," Dorry continued. "You see, I like all sorts of things-and I'm different than other terribly repressed people too because I pretty damn well act out most of my desires."
There was a murmur of amusement from the crowd, killing the silence, returning everyone a little closer to a party-mood.
"So, it's that simple. I like to be beaten. I get a real charge out of it. Then, when the scars get too bad, I take a little visit to a hospital and have the damage repaired. I'm repaired now, so if there is anyone here who-who-likes to be on the other end of a thrashing, well-I'm-I'm willing-willing and available."
She stepped back a pace as if making room for a partner who would soon appear.
For perhaps three full minutes, no one moved. Then there was a slight commotion from one end of the room and a tall, very young looking intern, stood up and began to weave through the people seated on the floor.
Rog looked at the boy. He knew him well. His name was Lane and Roger reflected, as he often did, on the professional data concerning this particular intern. Roger recalled that Lane was considered a brilliant medical student, perhaps only second in the hospital to himself. He remembered too that both Lane's father and grandfather had been doctors. Lane's interest in specialization was intense. Orthopedics was to be his field. Roger shifted his position uneasily and watched as Lane, staggering considerably, finally stopped before Dorry Glenn and gave her a sick smile. Rog flinched, thinking of bones and orthopedics and the obvious sadism that had moved Lane to the front of the audience. Then he flinched more severely as he fantasized some future that might find a man such as Lane setting, or re-setting, or re-breaking a bone of a helpless patient, perhaps even doing so without the benefit of anesthesia.
"Welcome," Dorry said to Lane. "I'm-I'm at your service and I guess you're at mine too."
Lane blinked, smiled, then said, "Yeah, it kind of looks that way doesn't it." Roger observed that Lane was very, very drunk.
It seemed that he could hardly remain upright, yet he did. And it seemed that Lane, with his innocent look, the baby blue eyes and blonde hair that seemed not yet to have departed from childhood, was hardly the type one would expect to come forward to express sadistic tendencies.
Before the thought had left Roger's mind, he was jolted to alertness for Lane, suddenly lashing out, crushed a hard fist into the middle of Dorry Glenn's stomach. She gasped and bent over as her face turned sheet-white. But even before the sick sound had died, Lane struck her again, this time with his other fist and fully on her right breast. Dorry straightened, gasped again, then slumped to the floor.
Lane started to breath hard. He stood above Dorry, looking down at her, contempt crossing his face and sending the innocent look scampering. Then he reached down with both hands and jerked her to her feet. He took a pace backwards and paused. Dorry swayed. Her face was still as white as death but she made no move to leave the scene of her beating.
Suddenly, Lane uttered a mad cry and leaped at her again. This time he shot both his hands to her breasts. He held them for a moment, then crunched them hard. Dorry stammered a cry. But it was nothing compared to the one that issued from here when Lane, as if he were turning giant knobs, brutally twisted her breasts, each in an opposite direction.
Roger heard excited breathing near him. He turned. There was nothing to indicate its source. Then he listened very hard and discovered that the breathing was his own, that he panted hard, much as if the exertion that Lane displayed, that and the pain Dorry received, was a part of himself.
Lane released his hold upon Dorry's breasts. He stepped back.
Dorry, gasping now, straightened and faced her tormentor. Her chin lifted high and her mouth opened slightly. Then she straightened and thrust her hurt breasts forward like defiant moons.
Lane approached her. Now, he moved more slowly. But the expression on his face had turned more evil. He stepped close to her, then, very carefully reached one hand out, locked it within the bodice of her frock and gave it a terrifying jerk.
Dorry was flung forward with the tearing dress. She crashed against Lane's body, then stumbled a pace away from him as her cocktail dress split from her body and fell on the floor. She straightened. She looked like some irresistible she-devil as she faced Lane, completely nude except for the high, spikeheeled shoes that she wore. They glistened from the lights of the room. They looked very smooth and were apparently made of some type of extremely smooth leather. They, like the banished dress, were an emerald-green color.
Roger's eyes raced over Dorry's body. He saw a cruel bruise at the pit of her stomach and at the side of one breast. He could not help reflecting that she probably already suffered a fractured rib or two.
Dorry, as if she were suddenly proud of her nudity and the various scars, new and healed, that it revealed, began to strut in a small circle in front of the intern, Lane. He watched her, smiling. She looked very tall, very desirable, for her breasts bounced as if they had not been molested, and her buttocks rippled wickedly. Her skin was very white and it was difficult to determine if it was emphasized this way because of her platinum hair, or if the hair had that angel-fluff cast to it because of her complexion.
Dorry paused and faced Lane. He took a step nearer her. He paused. Dorry smiled and breathed deeply, kind of presenting a longer stretch of herself for his inspection. His eyes traveled her body, then held directly at her thighs. His smile widened. He raised both hands and hooked the fingers inside his belt at the front, looping them over a vicious looking, metal belt buckle. Then his smile faded. He began to fondle his belt, then, abruptly stopped when a man's cry issued from the audience.
Roger looked to the other side of the room. Then he saw a young intern, dressed only in shorts and still uttering weird sounds from his throat, rush forward, half-falling, staggering, nearly collapsing but always righting himself until at last he reached the front and stopped in front of Dorry.
His body trembled madly. His eyes watered and stared at Dorry with the most intense pleading that Roger had ever seen. Then, with another, kind of final cry, the man fell to his knees in front of Dorry and lowered his mouth to her right shoe.
A mumble of confused, very soft conversation started among the audience. Then it stopped as the man worked his mouth over Dorry's high-heeled shoe, kissing at all the smooth leather, mouthing at it, then drawing back a bit in order to allow his sharp, moving tongue to loll over the toe. It worked feverishly. It flicked at the toe of the shoe. It rolled around the sides. It ran up and down the long heel, even touched beneath the heel and beneath the sole, always working, constantly moving, never stopping, flicking around all the leather again and again. And as his tongue caressed the shoe, as his hands gently lifted it and reverently held it, he seemed unaware of the long, white flesh that Dorry raised in order to make all of the shoe available to him. And soon, he paused. He groaned and glanced up at Dorry, proclaiming his gratitude to her with his doe-like eyes. Then he lowered her foot and switched to the other shoe. He lifted it and held it as he had the other. Then he imparted new, hotter kisses to the shoe, working his tongue over the leather as if it were a small, searching serpent following an unceasing path throughout its life.
After the intern had covered the shoe with his tongue several times, after he had licked and mouthed and whisked at every part of it, his body began to stammer convulsively. From his bent position over the shoe, the stretch of his masculinity was easily seen. Suddenly, with a new cry, he mouthed the entire toe of the shoe and began a violent sucking motion upon it, moving forward and back at the same time that he brought one hand down to grip himself. His fingers squeezed in a clasping motion and very quickly, with utter finality, he mouthed the toe of the leather shoe a final time and gripped himself even harder in climax.
His gurgled cry of release was eerie. But when it ended, he simply lowered Dorry's shoe to the floor, then rose, glanced at the audience before him and quickly returned to his place among them.
There was a buzz of whispers. There was silence.
Dorry smiled out at the audience, but made no comment. Nor did Lane who was still facing her and fondling his thick, heavy-buckled, leather belt.
The smile returned to Lane's face as he unhooked the buckle of his belt and slowly drew it through the belt hoops and free of his body.
Dorry raised her chin a bit higher. It trembled. But it was from excitement, not fear. Lane grasped the end of the belt and drew it back. The heavy buckle made a dull thud on the carpeting. Then in a lightening motion he drew it back and lashed it forward. The buckle caught Dorry on the side of her left breast. An ugly welt immediately arose. Then Lane withdrew the belt and lashed it forward again, striking Dorry again and again, driving her back with its fury as it sliced at her belly and breasts, cutting deep into flesh, making blood ooze and dribble down her bare body.
Lane stopped his beating for a moment. Dorry straightened her body, retaining erectness from the slumped position she had assumed. Lane was breathing very hard. His excitement was enormous and so was the sign of that excitement which bulged at his trousers. Belt in hand, he approached Dorry. She looked into his eyes, smiled, then turned to the side and bent far over, jutting her buttocks upward, centering them in a position before him that left no doubt as to what was intended for them.
Roger leaned forward, staring hard at Dorry's buttocks. He saw the outlines of fierce scars that were crisscrossed with the marks of repairable plastic surgery, with the tiny, network of lines that, to him at least, represented years of struggle and work, more years of internship and residency training, then still more years of surgery for some able doctor, years of standing beneath hot lights, years that made legs ache from weariness, years that made unsure hands steady and grow skilled, years that turned hesitancy into sureness and confidence. All this Roger saw and felt as he looked at Dorry's jutting buttocks as they glistened beneath the light.
The intern, Lane, looked at them too. Then he stepped back a pace and gave them a terrific whack with the belt buckle. Dorry, bending over, her breasts hanging toward the carpeting, jolted. But she maintained her position as Lane brought the belt crashing to her buttocks again and again. But then he suddenly stopped. He looked at her. Then, as if taken with an entirely new, much more brutal desire, he moved toward her.
He paused directly behind her. He doubled the belt up as if momentarily putting it to rest. Then with a lunge he leaped at Dorry, caught her left wrist with his right hand and jerked it behind her in a kind of arm-lock. Her eyes widened as Lane yanked the arm upward, relaxed it, then yanked again. Her mouth shot open and her eyes bugged, but she offered no resistance to this new pain that was brought to her. She seemed to welcome it. Lane yanked brutally again, then let the arm drop limply to Dorry's side. The arm dangled. She remained bent over.
Now, Lane seemed to become very excited. He took a short grip upon the belt, doubling the strength of the leather in a way that offered more heaviness and strength to the metal buckle. Then he drew it back and gave a vicious slice against Dorry's buttocks. A new welt arose and when Lane struck her in the same place again, it burst open and blood seeped, then streaked down her body. And then he hit her again and again in a violent attack upon the very places of her buttocks that had been surgically repaired. Old cuts reopened, puffed and turned blue-black, and oozed with new blood. And Dorry seemed to love it. Her buttocks could not be vanquished: They jutted even more audaciously. Her eyes narrowed and her tongue pinked out from her lips as if it had been plopped there by her hard breathing Her breasts, hanging downward, were heavy and appeared to be growing, taking new heat and passion within them. They were topped by nipples that looked close to bursting, like hard cherries a day late for picking. But it was in her face that the true effects of her beating showed: It was there that all the signs pointed to her approaching climax.
Roger looked closely at her expression. Then he shifted his eyes to the blood-smeared buttocks. He felt sick: not because of the sight, nor even because of the beating that marred her. He felt the clutch of nausea because of the careful surgical work that had, within moments, been undone. He felt a stammer in his body that was even more pronounced than that which either Dorry or
Lane knew. He felt filled with resentment-a strong violence of his own, a hate and force of his own that he did not understand, an urge for the expression of all the things that bubbled within him. His fists clenched. He felt a jamming sting in his chest, a cramp at his stomach, a tenseness of all his muscles. He felt, too, the new surge that his manhood made. It was as if this alone offered him the way of expression for the things he felt; for his sorrow at surgical work defeated, for his anger and for the strange confusion that had possessed him for so many weeks.
Lane crashed the belt again and again to Dorry's buttocks. The hard, metal buckle struck and cut her again and again until all of the white of her had become a smear of blood. And still he besieged her with blows from the belt, still he persisted in his brutality. And still Dorry seemed to desire it for her thighs quivered and her stomach muscles rippled in a new sign of increased passion, a signal of its approaching outlet.
And suddenly, Roger Harper could stand it no longer. He yelped a cry that seemed a mixture of vengeance and sorrow. He leaped forward, pushed through those people who were in front of him until he arrived in front of Dorry and Lane.
Shock, plainly showing on their faces, Dorry and Lane looked up at Roger. Lane let the belt lengthen loosely as he dropped his hand to the side. Dorry glanced at him. Then her eyes made a plea. He could not tell what she asked. Nor did he care. He was too filled with the confusion of his own thoughts to make any determination of her desires, whether they had changed, or whether they remained the same.
Lane's face poured sweat. It glistened when he smiled and held out the belt to Roger, offering as a surgeon would to his fellow.
Roger slapped it from his hand. Then, when Lane's expression changed and he stepped forward, Roger struck his hand out in a rough stiff-arm, catching Lane at the chest and sending him reeling backwards. He stumbled in front of the chair, then sprawled amid its splintering wood.
Dorry started to straighten, but Roger slapped one hand to the middle of her back and returned her to her bent, subservient position. Then, with the other hand, he fumbled at the front of his trousers. And suddenly he was free, free and driving forward, pouring all of his strength to her, oblivious of the audience, oblivious of everything except the wounds before him, the blood, and his intense will to heal them through an expression of love. It was as if his manhood was both a killer and a healer, as if the two were confused and might remain confused forever. And, it was as if he deemed to try to alleviate one of the two impulses, as if the one must be subdued before the other could be fulfilled.
Roger steamed all of his strength to Dorry Glenn, lurching violently, pouring it to her, hurting her yet loving her as he caused the hurt.
And Dorry seemed to catch hold of some new emotion within herself. She began to mumble soft words of desire and love. She seemed somehow, as if by medical magic, to have broken through her threshold of pain-oriented pleasure, to have broken through it in order to know the more exhilarating thrill of man's crushing lust.
Roger yelled a mad, orgasmic call and lurched to her a final time. Dorry duplicated his yell, even surpassed it with a mystery-shriek of some insane delight. And then the sound from both their throats slowed and softened as their bodies went weak and soft and quiet and they rolled to the floor together.
For a long time, there was only the sound of their mixed breathing. And then, suddenly, as if it had come from hell, there was another sound, the sound of a faint, feminine, but greatly hated voice.
"Well, Dr. Harper, how amusing you are," the voice said.
Roger raised his head, then jerked to a sitting position when he recognized the soft, purring voice-the voice that was usually crisp and mean-the voice of Mona Fiken.
Roger looked at her and although she appeared differently than he had ever seen her, he hated her voice, the slur of her words that indicated that she now had a hold upon him.
"Did you really cause all that, Doctor?" Mona asked, glancing toward Dorry's bloodied buttocks, and, at the same time indicating that she had only now arrived upon the scene.
Roger did not answer.
Mona smiled, then said, "Well, it doesn't matter, Dr. Harper. We've come to the party for pleasure. And-under the circumstances, I'm sure you'll be delighted with the little guest I've brought you."
Roger didn't understand her meaning until Mona turned, made a beckoning motion, then stood aside as Patty Pen stepped forward. Her eyes bubbled with excitement. Her body quivered in expectancy. And Roger, shifting his eyes from the teenaged girl to the supervisor of nurses, knew that he had become entrapped, that he had suddenly been made a partner in something that was against everything he had once cherished.
CHAPTER 6
The moment during which Roger stood facing Patty Pen and Mona Fiken seemed suspended between them like a thick fog that could be cut with a knife, or even a sharp word. The three of them-and all the crowd who were still gathered in a circle-were silent.
Patty, looking at Rog, seeing his disrupted clothing and the stain of blood upon it, felt her desire for him intensify. Yet, within her, there was a certain shyness for having found him in such a way. It was so different for him, so "far-out" when he was not at all a far-out person. And, maybe that was why she was so attracted to him, wanted him so very much, she considered.
"I'll just toddle along and leave you two to entertain each other," Mona said to Roger, then glancing at Patty. "I doubt you'll have any trouble trying to decide what to do."
Mona turned and walked away. It seemed like a signal for the rest of the crowd to disperse, which they did amid much new, relieved noise.
Patty smiled at Roger, hoping that he noticed the dress that she wore, especially the way her body was revealed so enchantingly through its light material. He did glance at her body and Patty felt a new tremble of excitement. He was so strong, so sure, so-so everything that she simply had to have.
"Well, are you going to get me a drink?" she asked.
"No," he replied.
"Well, you old grouch," she pouted. "I said I wanted a drink."
"You're under-aged."
"Tough."
"Yes, for you."
"For you, too, if you don't get me one," Patty said.
Roger looked helpless for a moment, then he shrugged and started to walk toward the exit of the room, saying, "Oh, what the hell should I care-come on."
She did: with a giggle and a quick bouncing movement from her breasts and hips as she hurried to catch up with the distance his long strides had placed between them.
When she was next to him, she hooked her arm through his, cuddled her breast hard against him and said, "Wow, did you ever surprise me. And to think I always thought you were a square-a nice square, but one nevertheless."
Roger glanced at her but did not answer.
"Just what was that little game anyway?" she asked.
"It wasn't a game-it's a sickness that came over this party."
"And what were you? That was called exhibitionism, I think. At least that's what my psychiatrist said once way back when I was going to him."
Roger paled a bit, halted and glanced at his front as if to reassure himself that his jacket, only recently donned, covered the marks of his recent depravity. Then he looked dourly at Patty and said, "A psychiatrist? At fifteen? Exhibitionism? What is all this, anyway?"
"Nothing much-just a normal life, I guess," she said indifferently.
"Normal? My God-has everyone gone insane?" He said it as if to himself, and loudly enough for the words to carry as deeply within him as necessary to shake him from the nightmare of his recent feelings-his irresponsibility.
They had reached a bar in the corner of the room. They were the only ones who seemed to want a drink at the particular nook. Roger went behind the bar as Patty leaned her elbows on the bar top.
"What do you drink, brat?" he asked.
"Bourbon. Double. Straight," she answered coldly.
Patty watched Roger as he made their drinks. She felt disturbed, more uneasy than she ever had felt. But it's because Roger Harper is so near, she thought. She leaned a little further across the bar, causing her breasts to peek from the bodice of her gown.
Patty remembered her surprise when Mona Fiken had invited her to the party. She had been very flattered, after all, a patient being invited to a hospital party....! And being allowed out of the hospital to attend it....!
Patty smiled as Roger filled a tall glass nearly a third full with liquor, then added water, and she recalled how Mona Fiken herself had told her that Roger Harper would be at the party. Mona had even hinted that he would be available, that she, Mona, was inviting Patty to the party as a kind of date for Intern Harper. Patty felt amused by the solicitude that Mona and Amos Fiken had extended to her. They were so patronizing. And, Patty knew the reason why. Apparently her father knew what he was talking about when he asked her to keep an eye open while in the hospital, Patty mused. She had kept an eye open. There was plenty to observe for later report to her father-plenty to report, that is, she decided, unless she could have her way about things. And what she wanted her way about was Roger Harper-and she wanted it soon.
"Hurry on with that drink, eh?" she said.
Roger shoved a shot glass filled with amber liquor across the bar to her. Then he lifted his own tall glass and gulped down nearly half of it.
Patty sipped her Bourbon. She smiled at Roger and was nearly ready to demand that he sit next to her when a commotion arose at the far end of the big room. She and Roger both looked in that direction.
Another small circle of guests had formed on the floor and in the middle of the circle, moving to the tune of some unseen bongo drum, a girl moved in a wickedly sensual dance that was less that than an exhibition of herself. Patty looked closer and saw that the girl was young, auburn-haired Susan Crisp. She burned with resentment that a girl only a couple of years older than herself should be receiving such attention.
Patty glanced at Roger and saw that he had finished his drink, had made another, and was staring straight ahead at Susan.
The girl moved slowly, swinging her body from side to side while her feet were planted wide apart on the floor. Her hips undulated. Her breasts, fully revealed because of her dress which was open down the front, swayed and rippled and moved. Patty, looking at them, felt a little self-conscious. Susan's breasts looked vibrant and wild.
Patty heard the movement of Roger's hand raising the new drink to his lips. She turned and watched as he downed it. She could almost tell when its heat thumped in his stomach for his eyes watered and he grimaced.
Patty turned her eyes back to Susan and saw that a young man had joined her dance. The beat of the drum was faster and the couple moved sensually, swinging their hips in a wide circle in perfect unity as if they were making love. Their waists seemed glued together and the man and Susan whirled madly.
When Patty again glanced at Roger, she wondered if he had been newly stimulated, if the wicked dance by Susan Crisp had served to re-strengthen him from his own recent sexual ordeal.
She hoped so-it seemed very important to her that Roger should want her now, that she should prevail over any dance by any girl.
Roger made another new drink for himself. He downed it immediately. Then he grinned at Susan.
"Come on, Rog, let's get out of here," she said quickly. "That old dance's nothing. Nothing around here is anything that I can't top."
"You don't think so, eh?"
"I know it."
"Good for you," he said indifferently. He lifted his eyes back to the dance of Susan Crisp.
Susan felt a moment's frustration, then she moved around the bar and pressed her body very close to him.
"Come on-let's find a room of our own," she whispered.
"My God but you're insistent.
"Sure." She slid her arm beneath his and cuddled her breast against him. "Please, Rog."
He frowned at her, then said, "Go away, will you, please."
Patty felt as if she had been slapped. But she did not retreat. She grew more aggressive. Gently, she pressed her thighs against Roger's.
"Will you please stop that," he said, moving his leg away.
Patty felt the strong sting of rejection, a kind of adult rejection that she often encountered. But she would not lessen the contact of her body to Roger's. Instead, she increased it. Turning to face him, she deliberately widened the contact of her thigh against his leg, half-opening it in a wanton way.
"Please, child, run along, will you," he said.
"Not unless you run with me."
"I don't intend to move from this spot," he said. "And if you don't, I'll see that you do."
Patty withdrew the contact of her thighs. She turned. She pounded a small fist on the bar top and said, "This is supposed to be a 'anything goes' party, so what the hell's the matter with me-with you and me together. It's not as if I'm exactly repulsive, you know."
"Isn't it?"
She was silent.
Then he said, "You're repulsive, Patty Pen, very, very repulsive to me."
The heat of embarrassment flushed at her cheeks.
Roger looked at her, then he said, "You're repulsive to me, Patty, because you're sick. Because you're a little kid who should be home doing something little girls do-because you shouldn't be at a party like this in the first place, because you shouldn't be trying to put the blitz on me or any man-so please, just go away and leave me alone."
"Huh," she exploded. "Listen to who's talking-and after the way we found you when we came in here."
"It doesn't matter-just go away. Now. Fast."
She moved a step backwards as if she had been struck across the face again. Her fists clinched and for a minute it looked as if she were going to break into hysterical sobs. But she did not. Her body tightened, she felt its tenseness and she knew that she had to relieve that tenseness, relieve it in order to regain confidence, to feel again like the sensual being she was.
"I'll-I'll give you just one chance, Roger Harper," she said. "One chance to change your mind."
He stared straight ahead.
"And-and you'll-everyone'll be sorry if you-if you don't come with me right now."
"If you don't leave me alone this very second I'll turn you over my knee and give you the spanking you should have had years ago," he said in a monotone, still without looking at her.
Patty knew that he meant it. It did not lessen her anger and frustration, but it made her hiss an oath, clinch her hands tighter, then turn from Roger Harper and move across the room.
Patty was without a destination or a thought of one except that it should lead her to a man-any man. When she reached the center of the room, she paused and looked at the dancers and the crowd that circled them. Then she tensed again and turned, heading for the exit of the room.
The foyer was empty, but there was the noise of activity in the room beyond it. She headed in that direction and had just attained the entrance way when she bumped directly into Wayne Glenn, host of the party, whose glazed eyes brightened upon sight of the fifteen year old girl.
"Ho, ho, young lady, where do you think you're going?" Wayne exclaimed.
"In there-anywhere-anywhere there's a little excitement," she said sourly, unable to keep from flitting her eyes over the middle-aged man's body.
"You'll hardly find it in there, my dear," he said."
"In there you have only girls-girls with girls that is, and I'm very sure that's not the kind of excitement a girl like you wants."
Her eyes widened. "No, I'm not the least bit interested in girls."
"I thought not," he said. Wayne paused for a second, looking all the time at Patty's body. Then he said, "Why don't you let me show you my game room upstairs?"
"Game room? Wild game?"
"It is wild, precious."
She tilted her chin upwards and said, "Fine-I'd like that, I think."
"I'm sure you will," he answered.
Wayne Glenn hooked his arm around Patty's waist and turned her toward the stairs. Then they ascended them.
As they moved, the embarrassment and frustration of Roger Harper's rejection of her, lessened. She knew why. A man's arm was around her, obviously leading her to what would be a sexual encounter. It resurrected her confidence. The attentions of a man was the best balm for rejection suffered by a man, she sensed.
When they reached the second floor, Wayne led Patty down the long corridor. He opened the door at the end and stood aside for her to enter the room.
The room was large and, true to its name, it did contain many different types of animal heads, mostly big game obviously acquired in Africa. The room was carpeted. There was little furniture. There were several plain tables, much like those that might be used for massages.
Patty glanced up at Wayne Glenn and hoped that he would not waste time-she hated preliminaries with one to whom she was not especially attracted. Then she decided that she would keep him from wasting time.
With a little twirl, Patty moved in front of Wayne, made a small circle, then faced him. "I'm glad you brought me up here, Mr. Glenn."
"Wayne, please."
"All right. Wayne. I'm glad you brought me up here." She took the steps necessary to bring her into breast-touching closeness to him. Then she brought one small hand up to his chest. She felt the heat of his body through his shirt and dinner jacket. Then she felt his hands snap behind her and jerk her to him.
His kiss tasted odd, Patty thought as she opened her lips to receive his tongue. And his tongue tasted odd, too, she decided, then she recalled that Wayne Glenn was probably the oldest man she had ever kissed so wildly. As if to intensify this truth, she wiggled her tongue madly within his mouth. She thrust her waist forward to him, too. She felt a bit disappointed that there was no immediate hardness to touch at her. Then she deemed to make it true. She brought one hand down from the back of his neck where she had been playing her fingers against his skin. Then she dropped it between them and probed for that which she sought. Disappointment continued to reign. There still was no hardness that was yet ready to greet her anxious fingers.
Patty brought her hand back up to Wayne Glenn's neck but before she could again fingertip play there, he groaned and swooped his hands to her buttocks. He jerked her close. Then he groaned again and pushed her a bit away from him. But the separation was very brief. With a new groan, a kind of desperate cry, Wayne stooped, then lifted Patty off her feet.
Playing seductress in a lover's arms, Patty let her head fall way back. The action caused her breasts to loom up at Wayne. As he paused, then turned, Patty was surprised that he seemed so strong. Actually, he was very strong, she decided and she thought that it was such a shame that it was concealed amid an unattractive appearance.
Strongly, Wayne carried Patty across the room. He paused at a white table. Then he lowered her to it.
Patty looked around. Then she looked into Wayne's eyes. They were wild looking, much as if he had just taken a drug. But he had not. Patty knew that she was the drug, that it was her youthful body that filled the man with new vigor and wild, wild desire.
Pretending helplessness, looking the same way, Patty looked up at him and said, "What-what are you going to do to me?"
"Love you," he said. "Love you in my own particular way. You don't mind, do you?"
"No," she said softly, trying to keep the little-girl innocence in her tone. "No, I like to be loved-I have to be loved."
"Oh, good," he said enthusiastically.
Wayne's hands moved to the full length zipper at the side of her dress. He lowered it. Then, as if he were indeed assisting a child out of her clothing, he raised her and lifted the dress over her head. She stayed upright as he let the dress drop to the floor. She even arched a little so that her naked breasts and bikini-panties made a slight offering.
Wayne Glenn's eyes were busy-busy, busy, busy working over all her body. But then he could stand it no more and he quickly removed the panties. He stepped back, his eyes bugging, harsh sounds issuing from his throat, and then he bent to her stockings, garter-belt and shoes.
Patty reclined on the table as soon as she was nude. She did not know what Wayne Glenn intended for her, nor did she care. Her anger and resentment for Roger Harper was still strong. All that she could hope for that it might be reduced by some gift of love from the rotund little man who seemed so odd.
Wayne bent over Patty's body. He kissed her lips, her throat and breasts, her belly, thighs, calves, and even her feet. Then he stepped away from her.
Patty turned her head to look at him just as his head dipped out of view beneath the table. She heard the sound of a drawer opening and she knew that he was busy in the cabinet space that was built beneath the table. She moved to her back again and waited. In a moment, Wayne was looking down at her again. She turned and felt a moment's fear.
The rope that Wayne Glenn held in his right hand seemed very rough. It had thousands of harsh tufts sticking out from it. It was an inch thick and looked extremely strong.
"This won't hurt, darling," Wayne hissed at Patty. "Really it won't. You might even like it-I'll try to make you like it. This-this is a peculiarity of mine-but, you won't mind, really you won't."
"I don't mind anything," she said sternly, looking away from him and waiting.
Wayne looped the rough rope over her throat. Then he pulled it through an opening that was available under the table top and above the cabinets. He pulled the rope hard across her body. It rubbed, turning Patty's skin pink and giving it a brushed look. He looped the rope again, this time over the girl's breasts. When he pulled it tight this time, her flesh indented in the middle, flattening it while two, bloating rolls of flesh lumped at either side of the rope. And this time Wayne's tightening jerk upon the rope was such as to cut into Patty's flesh, tearing it open a bit and making blood ooze. He tied her at the waist, then at the hips, pulling the rope so tight that she was flattened to the table in a way that cramped her back. All of her body stung. It felt bruised and beaten and cut wide open. But Patty seemed oblivious to it all.
Wayne Glenn breathed hard. He stepped back a half pace and inspected his work. His eyes glistened. Patty was fettered from her neck to her hips. Only her thighs and legs were free. She waited for the rope to be brought into contact with them, too, but it did not happen. Instead, miraculously, the middle-aged man brought a touch of gentleness to her thighs. He touched her there, then cupped his hand over the vee of her femininity.
Patty felt excitement began to course throughout her body. She felt hot and anxious and very curious about Wayne's next move. His next move was another act of gentleness. He made a slight separation of her thighs, then a miniature plunge.
Patty's body stiffened beneath her ropes. She raised her legs and braced her feet on the end of the table. She tried to arch her hips, but could not for the ropes held her tightly. But the pulsation of her loins was free and unfettered. She felt herself throb against Wayne's hand.
Suddenly, he stopped the slight plunging action. He became even more delicate. He made a wider separation then moved to higher ground where he began A tender, very light, circling.
Again, Patty thrust upward, trying to increase the pressure of his caress. She could not increase it. Yet, she began to react to the strange love that Wayne Glenn was bestowing upon her body. She tensed her thighs, then relaxed them, then did it again and again. Wayne's hand sped. Patty tensed more frequently, at the same time feeling the frustration of the ropes that held her, feeling the rub of them against her nipples and navel, at her ribs and across her hips, feeling it and liking it because it seemed like a restraint upon life itself-a restraint that made her helpless before the desires of another.
And Wayne Glenn's desires were immense. And teasing; and, passion producing. When he had spun madly to an optimum speed, he slowed, then halted and did not resume the caress until Patty's body made hard, lurching motions against the ropes while she arched her quivering thighs as high as possible. Only then did he resume his caress, only then did his hand speed again.
Finally, and very abruptly, Wayne halted the action. He did not renew it until after he had fumbled at the front of his trousers and bared himself. Then, both his hands became busy, one upon Patty, the other with himself. And he matched their movements, matched their speed as he bequeathed a growing pleasure to Patty that matched that which he knew for himself and of himself.
He was gasping very hard at the end-so hard that Patty thought he would surely collapse. He bent over her, breathing the harsh breath of his exertion into her face. She returned it in a minor form, breathing hard herself but not coming close to duplicating the pant of Wayne.
Patty was looking directly into Wayne's face when the end occurred. He groaned, both hands whirling, and, while froth slobbered at the corners of his mouth, Patty tried to intensify feeling within herself, tried to react as her strange paramour was reacting, but she could not.
Wayne yelped, speeded, burst into climax, then halted all his action as he collapsed across Patty's fettered body. She lurched her hips madly, trying to capture that which had been close but was denied her. She writhed against her bindings. She flapped her thighs madly, churned and thrust and writhed and cried dry, hard sobs of passion unfulfilled. And as her body quieted, as she knew that she was denied the thrill that she had sought as antidote for Roger's rejection, a new anger burned within her-an anger that she meant to remedy as soon as she was free.
Wayne Glenn was still breathing hard as he lay across Patty when she thought of Roger Harper, when she hated him for his rejection, that which had sent her to Wayne who only left her ungratified. She thought of Roger very intently, creating an image of him, making him the subject of both her hate and her desire.
Suddenly, she felt an impatience for the ropes that held her, and impatience for Wayne Glenn's body across hers. She wanted to be free-she wanted Roger Harper-only he would do. And, she meant to find him. She wondered what he was doing.
* * *
What Roger Harper was doing as Patty Pen strained against her fetters and thought of him, was standing in the darkness of the outdoor patio and watching the red glow of a cigarette a hundred yards away.
Roger felt very drunk. Even being outside and beneath the star-studded sky didn't help much, but it did allow him respite from the party inside the house. Then he saw the cigarette and knew that another had also exited the party, had, no doubt, sought the outdoors as comfort against the gross party-capers.
The cigarette lifted, glowed bright red, faded, then was lowered. And then Roger had to find out who it was who stood alone in the darkness, who had felt as he had felt and followed his own pattern of seeking the outdoors. Whoever it was, Roger felt a kinship with that person. He wanted to see him, talk to him and tell him of that kinship.
As the cigarette was raised and glowed red again, Roger moved toward it. He stepped down from the patio and moved along the flagstone walk that trailed through the garden. Sweet scent of early summer were heavy in the night. He breathed deeply. Although pleasant to his lungs, it did not refresh him. Liquor had been too frequent and too heavy to allow any real return to sobriety for a long time.
When Roger rounded a huge bush, he paused. The silent smoker was only a few yards ahead of him. He took another step forward, then halted when he saw the dark outline of a head turn toward him, startled. The cigarette was raised and puffed again, then Roger saw it spiraling through the darkness of the night, making a high arch as it was flipped away.
He waited another second, then moved ahead. Then he stopped dead in his tracks as the moon freed itself of a cloud to cast its golden light across the face of Mona Fiken.
"Don't sneak up on me like that, Roger," she said. "I don't know but what you might have a knife in your hand."
The use of his first name jarred him a bit. He couldn't recall Mona Fiken having ever used it before. He felt strangely flattered. The kinship he had felt with the figure before identity became clear, did not die either and this added to the confusion of his drunkeness.
He smiled, then said, "No knife, I promise." He held both his hands outward.
"Then proceed," Mona said rather pleasantly, more pleasantly than Roger had ever heard it.
He approached then stopped beside her.
The moon had shaken off the cloud completely now and for the first time that evening, Roger viewed Mona closely. He was surprised that she was so pretty. Then he decided that it had to be because of the change in her voice-that the softening of that had made her seem more attractive, not even that, but really quite beautiful.
Roger turned so that he faced Mona directly from the front. Surprised, she took a step backward and jarred her back against a thick tree. She jerked forward a bit, then slackened against the tree.
A sweep of intoxication swept over Roger, making him feel quite drunk and carefree again. He grinned a funny expression, then stepped up to Mona and placed his hands on either side of her face, bracing them against the rough bark of the tree. He looked into her eyes. They were as dark as the night but glinted from the reflections of the moon.
"What is this, Dr. Harper," she asked. "An imprisonment?"
"If you like."
"I don't," she said.
"Tough," he answered roughly and leaned his face a little closer to hers.
Mona tilted her chin upward and said, "Really-you surprise me, Dr. Harper."
"Don't call me that," he said gruffly.
"Oh."
"Call me Roger like you did when you first saw me," he said in a jumble of hurrying words. "All right."
"Say it," he demanded.
"Roger Harper."
"No, just the first, please."
"You're drunk," she said. She smiled slightly and the expression was not necessarily one of criticism.
"Very good observation, Mona," he said. "Now, come join, say my name. Please."
Mona laughed and gave a gentle push against his forearm which would not budge. Then she said, "Ah, Roger, quit it, you're terribly drunk."
"There, you said it-it wasn't so hard to do, was it?"
"No," she admitted.
Lowering to her face, his elbows working outward as if he were descending in a first phase of push-ups, Rog brought his face so close to Mona's that he could feel her breath. Then he said, "Why are you such a bitch?"
"I didn't know that I was," she answered quickly.
"You are."
"Well, sorry."
"Don't be," he said, "Some girls just can't help it-they're naturally bitches."
"I suppose that's true," she said softly. "And of course, you should know-you've become quite a specialist in girls who are also bitches, I understand."
"A doctor's got to have some kind of specialty," he said.
"Yes, I suppose so," she answered.
"Mona, why are you so miserable all the time?" he asked seriously. "Honest, you make the shrew seem untameable."
She smiled at this and said, "I have many responsibilities, Roger. I take them seriously. So, I'm a shrew-or, if you like, a bitch."
"Now some bitches I like pretty well," he said, the words slurring from a new sweep of drunkenness.
"Good for you." She looked to each side. then stared into Roger's face again. "Let me go, please."
"Where you going?"
"I don't know."
"Good girl," he said jubilantly. "Nobody in this cruddy world knows where they're going so that makes you just like the rest of us."
"Not quite," she answered, turning her eyes away from his.
"Yes, you are," he insisted. "And you know, I'm mighty happy to find that you're damn near human."
She looked straight at him again. "Am I? Am I really human-just like everyone else."
"Sure."
"How do you know? You don't know anything about me; only what you see at the hospital."
"True. But I know that you're human anyway."
She did not speak. And for the barest second it seemed that she moved a fraction closer to his face.
Roger sensed her movement. He dropped his hands and laced them around her back. Then he yanked her against his body.
Mona did not give the kiss that Roger expected. Her head shook from side to side, warding him off, burying her mouth into his shoulder, trying to deny him her lips. But Roger released one hand from her back and brought it to her chin. He held it firmly, then brought his mouth down hard upon hers.
For perhaps a full minute there was still the strain of her resistance. Her head continued to move from side to side, but Roger maintained his grasp upon her mouth. And suddenly, as if resolution had taken her, the squirming of her body stopped. She arched her thighs directly at the hard bulge that stuck out from his trousers. Her lips softened and opened and then curled about his tongue as he plunged it to her.
She drew upon him violently. Rog's head buzzed with wonder and mystery and confusion. All that seemed real was the scent of the garden, the night, the girl-body pressing against him and the great, passionate things she conveyed to him with her kiss. And it conveyed energy to him, too. He gripped her hard at the back again, placing his hands on her buttocks so that he could undulate her back and forth against the hard, desiring point of him. She did not resist it, seemed even to welcome it for Roger had the impression that if his hands did not guide her, she would move of her own accord against him.
Mona Fiken did not create a new struggle until Roger thrust his knee between her thighs, then attempted to pull her down to the ground. Then she fought. Hard at first, but constantly diminishing in power until at last Rog had his way-had her squirming upon the damp, garden ground.
As if he were pouncing upon a fumble, Rog made a leap and landed atop Mona. Her fighting quieted. She looked into his eyes.
"What do you want of me?" she asked. "Do you try to make love to all the women you hate?"
"I don't hate you," he said solemnly.
"You hate me and you hate my uncle. You hate Riverdale but you don't have the guts to say it-or to even do anything about it."
Her words cut. He stopped them by reclamping his mouth on hers. And as he lay atop hr, he began again that inward-outward push of himself against her thighs. Soon, the touch was returned as Mona, digging her heels into the ground, raised and lowered to his rhythm. Her arms went around his neck; her breasts raised to crush against his chest; her tongue convulsed in his mouth.
And Roger became incensed at her touch, to the feel of her, to the love-hate aspects of his closeness to the girl he had always loathed. He fought his hands to her skirt, grabbed the hem, pushed it upward and was delightedly in awe when he found that she was without underclothing-it was so unlike her, so wild and hopeful and passionate. He grasped hard at her thighs and when they offered new resistance, he pressed hard, separating them, making them go nearly flat upon the ground. Then he boosted himself a bit and was moving forward, pausing to liberate himself then moving forward again, closer to the mad prize of Mona Fiken. And then it had nearly been accomplished: He was touching at warmth and steeling himself for the thrill of her total giving. But it was never realized.
Mona cried out, gave a mighty twist and scooted from beneath Roger's descending strength. He fell forward into the cool earth, groaned, rolled over and knew that he could not get up, that he could not move, knew that drinking and confusion and the sudden awareness and difference of Mona Friken, had been too much, had been more than any man could stand. He could only give himself to unconsciousness-he could only slupp-he knew that this was all he could do.
He groaned once more, then sagged into the exhaustion of heavy sleep. As he drifted off, he felt very alone.
Had Roger Harper remained conscious even another few seconds, he would have been amazed to find that Mona cried, then sobbed softly as she gathered his head into her lap and gently stroked his brow, stroked it with a touch of love and gentleness and concern, as if she were comforting a truly loved being, one who had never known the sharp sting of her hate.
CHAPTER 7
Patty Pen waited no longer than it took Wayne Glenn to depart the upstairs room to decide that she was leaving the party. Her body still stammered in sexual frustration, her mind still seethed with anger for Roger Harper, and her motivation was one meant for hurt and revenge when Patty redressed, slowly moved down the stairs, and left the Glenn residence through a back door.
When she had circled the house, Patty saw the black car Mona Fiken had driven to the party. Patty moved to it, opened the door, and climbed inside. The keys were in the ignition. Patty felt exhilarated. She boosted herself behind the wheel. Then she merely sat there, her destination uncertain. Then she thought about driving immediately to her father with an expose on the hospital. This would be fine revenge against Roger, she decided, against him and all the others. But she delayed moving along the path of that decision. Then she decided to return to the hospital where she might gain something more to give her father, something more incriminating than rumors and her own tall tales. Patty-zoomed the car into action and bolted it away from the driveway.
Patty parked the car in the visitors' parking lot. It was very early in the morning and the cars that were present were parked at distorted angles to the yellow lines as if they had stopped hurriedly as the occupants answered the sad call of the hospital that told them of a loved one's worsening.
Patty entered the hospital at a back entrance. She paused in the hall and looked around. It was quiet. She climbed the stairs to the first floor and moved close to the double swinging door. An intern and two nurses talked at a desk. An orderly pushed an empty stretcher past them. There was no break in the conversation between the intern and the nurses. Patty pushed away from the door and breathed deeply, still undecided as to her purpose or her destination. Then she thought of the basement, that a basement was always a good place to discover evil and that this one perhaps contained some tangible evidence that she could give to her father. She turned and descended the stairs that she had just climbed. She did not stop until she faced the gray doors that led to the basement.
A slight tremble of fear coursed up Patty's spine. She shivered. Her nipples grew taut against her party dress. But she did not hesitate to push open the doors and step into the basement.
Everything' was gray and cement, even the floor. The quiet was as sure as death. Patty looked down the corridor. A red exit light burned at the door at the end. And between it and her there were white signs protruding at various doors indicating the laundry room, the stock room, medical supplies, kitchen supplies, and several other purposes of the rooms that Patty could not make out.
Slowly, she walked down the cement floored hallway. At each door Patty paused and tried it. They were all locked. And then she tried another door and it opened. She stepped back and looked up at this sign that she had not read. It was labeled the morgue. Patty jumped away from the partially opened door.
Now, her step was quicker and she longed to reach the end of the hallway and depart the eerie feeling that prevailed all through the basement. New chills ran up her back; new tautness came to her nipples and at her thighs there was a cramp.
Patty stopped in front of the door. She put her hand on the knob. It was cold. She waited, then she turned it. It creaked a bit. She turned it fully and put her right shoulder against its heaviness, preparatory to pushing her way out of the basement. And then she halted again. She was sure she heard a noise. She loosened her grip on the door knob and looked back down the length of hallway she had traveled. There was nothing, yet she was swamped with the feeling of the presence of another. She gasped a short cry, then turned the door knob and had opened it fully and taken a quick step forward when she bumped head long into the form of Amos Fiken.
"Well, my dear, this is a strange place to find one of our patients," he said slowly, smiling a bit, looking very evil.
"Oh, I-well, I was--. "
"Creeping around," he said, offering it to her as the end of her sentence.
"No. I was just coming back to the hospital from that stupid party your sister invited me to-I was just coming back and decided to-to--. "
"To look around and see what you might find, perhaps ? "
"Umh, no-I was just curious about what a hospital basement looked like."
"Did you like what you saw?" he asked.
"No. I didn't look at anything. I just walked from that door to this one and I was just leaving when you stopped me."
"What a shame. You really do need a guide in this part of Riverdale. And, Patty, allow me to be your guide."
"Oh, no, that's all right. I'll just go along to my room now," she said, backing away from him a bit.
Amos Fiken shook his head and took a step closer to her, allowing the heavy door to snap shut behind him. "No, indeed, it's no trouble for me at all, Patty. I want to show you everything that's down here."
Patty did not retreat another step. She held her ground. She breathed deeply, suddenly feeling defiant and strong, feeling the confidence of her father's authority with hospitals and with Amos Fiken especially.
"Come, I'll just show you one little room," Fiken said.
"No, goddamn it," Patty blurted. "I don't want to see it. I don't want to and if you keep coming closer to me like this I'm going to-to tell my father everything that's going on around this place."
Fiken's face paled. "Everything that's going on? What do you know about what's going on?"
"Enough," she said, sensing that she had struck upon more than she had anticipated, knowing that her vagueness had been taken as something definite by Fiken.
Fiken leaped forward and with a speed that gave credit to a much younger man, he lashed his hand out and caught Patty by the front of her dress.
"What do you know, you little bitch?" he hissed, knotting the material tightly at her breasts.
"Enough," she repeated.
"What?" he shouted. His voice was choked with near-hysterics.
"Enough-enough to get you kicked out-tosend you to jail."
Fiken breathed a harsh breath, tightened his hold upon her, loosened it as he flung her away from him. Patty stumbled backward several steps until she sprawled upon the cold cement floor.
Fiken was above her in an instant. He gripped her hair and yanked her to her feet. Then he turned her and forced her ahead of him as he moved her toward one of the doors.
Patty glanced up and read the sign when he stopped, in front of the door. When she saw it was the morgue, she cried out, "Oh, no. God no, don't take me in there. Please-no!"
Fiken did not answer her. He just maintained his grip upon her hair and pushed her ahead of him. He opened the door and shoved her inside.
Patty skidded across the cement floor. And then she struck against something hard and there was a rattle. When she righted herself she screamed for she had bumped against one of the iron drawers of the morgue. It was open. It held the white shrouded form of a body.
The door clicked behind Fiken. Patty looked into his eyes. They were filled with as much fear as was contained in her own. But his fear looked different, she decided. His fear looked like one that had increased its burden upon him daily until at last he had reached a breaking point. Patty didn't doubt that she was to be the subject of this cumulative fear that seemed now to shake Amos Fiken to near-insanity.
Smiling sickly, Amos Fiken approached her. Patty took another step backwards, but turned to make sure that she would not again bump into the cadaver upon the tray. It was when her head turned that Fiken leaped upon her again. He grabbed her by the shoulders and jolted her close to him.
"You're such a goddamn smart little bitch," he panted. "So smart-so pretty-so goddamn intent about everything that goes on. Well, we'll see if I can change all that for you."
"Leave me alone," she said. She did not look at him as she spoke.
"Oh, I'll leave you alone all right," !he said. "Soon. Very soon, I'll leave you all alone. More alone than you've ever been-alone for the rest of your--. " He stopped and started to laugh.
It became nearly a womanly giggle of hysteria. When it subsided, he said, "I was about to say 'alone for the rest of your life,' then I realized how silly that description was."
Patty strained against his hold upon her shoulders. Then she relaxed for a moment and tried to bring her foot against his shin, but he sidestepped and jammed her body close to his, inhibiting any further adventure for freedom. Then, with one hand, again holding her by the hair, he moved toward the cadaver on the tray. He gripped the end of the tray with one hand and gave it a hard push. The tray glided into the ice-box vault. Fiken slammed the door shut behind it.
Patty felt relief sweep over her. But it was only momentary and entirely unjustified. Amos Fiken gripped the handle of another tray that was resting within the vault. He jerked it, and all seven feet of it came out with a tinny clang. It was empty.
The smell of formaldehyde stung at her nostrils. Her eyes stung too. She felt sick at the pit of her stomach and she had the feeling of being trapped with a madman from whom she could not escape. Then Fiken forced her onto the tray, holding her flat with one strong hand against her chest as he jammed her right wrist into a strap at the side of the tray. Then he did the same to her left hand, and finally, after defeating her vicious kick, at both her feet.
Patty stared up at Fiken. His face was now lined and he looked suddenly decades older. Patty had the feeling of watching a horror movie, one in which she had been cast as the murdered heroine.
"Ah, very nice, very nice, indeed," Fiken said, rubbing his hands together above her body. "Such an absolutely delectable body-such a delightful specimen for science."
"For science?" she exclaimed. "Yes. For my particular science," he said. "I've been working on a gynecological procedure for years."
Patty turned away. She did not speak.
"Yes, indeed," he continued. "For many years now I've been sure that we could remove the fallopian tubes of a woman without major surgery." He paused and giggled madly, then added, "And without anesthetic either."
Patty's throat crammed as a bile taste of fear rose and clogged there. Finally, she swallowed. The bile taste remained.
"Well, we might as well proceed immediately," Fiken said, still rubbing his hands together and looking around.
Patty strained against the leather straps that held her. She could arch, but could not cause the slightest hint of freedom.
"Ah, yes," Fiken said, looking at her. "That's a good beginning. I can see that you feel cramped with clothing and want to be free of them."
"Just free, you bastard," she could not help yelling even as it frightened her and hurt her throat.
"Someday we'll all be free, my dear," he answered seriously. "And you'll be freer sooner than the rest of us." '
With that he unbuttoned the top button of her dress. But by the time it was loose from its fastenings, he had become impatient with buttons and zippers and clutched her dress and tore it from her body, ripping it down the front and making it fall apart from its middle as if it were a body that had been sliced open. Fiken made short work of Patty's shoes and stockings and skimpy bikini panties.
When she was naked, he stepped back a half-pace and looked at her.
"Delightful," he mumbled. "Completely delightful tissue turgor."
"What?" Patty said, suddenly thinking that her only hope for freedom rested in her ability to delay him.
"Tissue turgor, my dear," Fiken explained. "That's the texture and substance of your skin. Your's is divine."
"Thank you," she said, realizing how silly the words were but recognizing that these, too, helped delay the madman from his mission. Then she was struck with new inspiration and said, "Tell me something, Dr. Fiken, how did you know I was down in the basement?"
"Fate gave me that opportunity, my dear."
"Fate?"
"Yes, indeed. Fate. I believe in it, you know."
"Fate?" she questioned again, racing her mind to find words to add to it in order to cause further delay.
"Yes, you see I was standing by the medical library window when you drove into the parking lot. I recognized my sister's car, then saw you. And when you didn't appear at either of the two corridors above where you entered, well, it had to mean that you had come to the basement."
Her throat clogged tighter and she could not think of anything else to say that would further delay the intentions of Amos Fiken.
And, Fiken was beyond further delay, for he dropped his hands to the side and said, "And now we must proceed-proceed at once."
He turned from Patty and walked across the room. Then, from a space beneath a cupboard, he pulled out a small table on wheels. It had a white cloth on top. And on top of the cloth were the various surgical instruments that were used in this room by the pathologists who sought the cause of those who had died. Fiken rolled the table before him and adjusted it before Patty and to his side, a place that placed the instruments in close proximity to his reach.
Patty glanced at the table. Her eyes bugged when she saw the gleaming scalpels and forceps, the balls of cotton, the bottles of alcohol and other bottles of other tinctures. Then she looked directly at Fiken and screamed.
He only smiled at her. Patty, looking at him, saw the heavy door and knew that no sound could pierce it. Then she glanced to the ceiling and saw the perforations that marked the room as soundproof. Then she strained against the leather straps, shaking her head from side to side as if this alone might free her. But it did not. She relaxed her back to the table and began to sob.
"There, there, my dear," Fiken said as if he were calming an excited patient. "This won't take long, but we'll be very careful to go slowly." At this, he giggled again.
His giggled stopped abruptly. He turned from Patty to the surgical table from which he picked up a scalpel. He held it delicately in his right hand. Then he leaned over her body.
Patty looked at the scalpel that quivered slightly above her thighs. Then she remembered delay and said, "I thought you said you developed this procedure without surgery."
"That's true, my dear," he said. "The scalpel isn't for the operation-it's for a little etching work first."
"Etching?"
"Yes, my dear. Upon your body."
He moved his left hand forward and between the thumb and forefinger of it, lifted the nipple of her left breast high, stretching it away from its base of flesh. He lowered the surgical knife and brought its cutting edge close to the nipple. Then he paused.
"This will hardly be felt," he said, breathing excitedly again.
"Nor Patty cried.
"Oh, but yes," Fiken said. "You see, I'm so tired-I've had so many, many things upon my mind. I've been so tired-tired, tired, all the time. And my burdens are so heavy, so very heavy. And I must relieve them-and I can-by keeping you from telling your father about the hospital-about me-me and Mona-well, I'll be able to prevent the tiredness and burdens that I carry."
He said the words in a vague, sing-song manner that made Patty aware again of his madness. And she felt her helplessness even more intently.
The scalpel quivered in Fiken's hand. He brought it forward and touched its cold steel against the nipple. Then he paused. Then he lowered the scalpel to the table next to Patty.
"Oh, my, this can wait a moment-for just a moment--. "
He moved his hands over Patty's body. He touched lovingly at her breasts and she wondered how they could feel so filled with love when they were already committed to her disfigurement. Then she knew that it was only possible because of the twisted ambivalence of the insane. But she took hope from his caresses upon her body, realizing that they offered the delay she sought.
Fiken trailed all ten of his fingers over her body. He touched her from her breasts to her stomach and back again. Then he touched at her thighs. For a moment, he grew very excited, but then, as if thinking better of the impulse, he brought his hands away from her body. "You're very beautiful," he said. She looked straight ahead and did not answer.
Then, as if he were bidding her farewell, he bent over her and kissed her on the lips.
Patty sparked with hope-perhaps sex alone could delay her mutilation. She opened her mouth and waited for Fiken to plunge his tongue within it. When he did, she drew upon it wildly, moving her head from side to side and faking little animal sounds of pleasure. Then, she heard sounds coming from Fiken's throat, too. And very quickly she felt his hands upon her body again; one at her breasts, the other at her thighs. And then she felt the hand leave her breasts as hi; mouth pulled away from her lips and descended to her breasts, touching with his tongue the very same places where his hands had played.
Patty wished that she could grasp Fiken's head and force his face closer to her body, conveying by this means her excitement and yearning, faked, of course, but vital to her life, to the delay she hoped to impose. But she could not grasp his head: She could not entice him by any extra means. Only her naked body was available to tempt him.
For awhile, Fiken was very excited and it seemed to Patty that he might be persuaded to give up his plan to mutilate her. When he bent lower and kissed at her thighs, burrowing deeply, she arched as high as she could. But her motion had an opposite effect. It did not make him captive of her sexuality. Instead, it returned the madman to those thoughts with which he was first possessed.
Fiken raised and looked into her face. Then he said, "And now, back to business."
Patty's eyes pleaded, but she did not speak.
Fiken picked up the scalpel again. He raised the full meat of her left breast, then, beneath it, began a gentle sawing as Patty screamed.
CHAPTER 8
When the cricket sounds grew intense, Roger awakened to find that his head was in Mona's lap. He looked up at her. She returned the look and her expression was softer than he had ever seen it. It seemed that he was still involved in a dream. But, he didn't want to awaken from it for a feeling of peace and comfort and, strangely, love, coursed through all his being. And, even more strangely, he knew that Mona had caused the feeling, had made love pass from him to her.
Her eyes told him that she felt the same thing. They told him, too, that she was as bewildered as he was. But then they came closer and blurred as they descended upon him. And then it didn't matter.
Their kiss was very soft, very tentative and experimental at first, but then it changed and grew desperate in their desire for each other. Roger raised upward, being careful not to cause any motion that might frighten Mona's lips from their tight clamp upon his. Then he took her in his arms and he realized the thrill of her breasts pushing solidly against his chest, driving, burrowing, loving, rubbing against him as they heated and pulsated and as the nipples grew large and bloating. And then he had to know more of them-the bareness of them.
Rog broke their kiss. He pushed back a bit, then, very expertly, he undid the front of her dress and slid it off her shoulders. He had expected resistance. There was none. Only Mona's eyes looking at him, smiling a bit even before her mouth lifted in a smile. And then she was on her back and he was over her, kneading her breasts with his hands, at first, then bending and kissing her there, lolling his tongue over all her flesh, tongue-nipping at the nipples, kissing them, taking them in his lips and rolling them endlessly while Mona whimpered sounds of her delight.
After a long time-a time that found Roger's chest bared, too, and made the subject of Mona's kisses-they were finally lying together to the side of the walk, shielded by bushes and with the damp grass beneath the mattress they had made of their clothes. They were on their sides, their bodies pressed together. Their lips were resting from their raging kisses. It was then that Mona started to sob.
She cried for a very long time. Roger merely held her. He did not pry, he did not question, he did nothing but offer the comfort of his arms around her naked body.
But finally the crying subsided. Mona's chest ceased its heavy panting, allowing the words to come. And they came in a torrent of emotion, in a stream of truth that could not shock Roger because of their sincerity, their realness, and the plea that they held that she wished things were different. She told him of her relationship with her uncle; of their conspiracy against the hospital, against their fear of him, Roger Harper, a dedicated intern. And she told him of the plot to involve him with Patty Pen-the plot that had not worked because of his rejection of the fifteen year old girl. Then Mona confessed that she was glad about that;-that she was even amused that Roger, despite his drunkeness, had rejected the sensual child.
Mona was silent for a moment. Then she started to speak again but Roger silenced her with a new kiss, one that was stronger and more driving and more conveying of his feelings, his forgiveness and his love.
He rolled her to her back. He crowded atop her. They kissed again and their tongues were fierce fighters as each tried to subdue the other, as each tried to prove that their love was surer and stronger and more everlasting.
"It's crazy, crazy, crazy," Roger said, drawing his lips away from hers. "It's crazy but I'm in love with you."
"I know," she said.
"That it's crazy?" he asked.
"Yes," she laughed. "That it's crazy and just as crazy for me because I love you, too. Perhaps I've always loved you. Maybe everything else had just been a bad dream-a terrible one-everything-Amos and me, and the way I've hated you, the way I've been a shrew with you-with everyone."
"Stop talking about it," he said.
"I'm glad I talked about it." She paused, then looked very seriously at him and said, "But what are we going to do, Roger? What am I going to do?"
"I don't know," he said, shaking his head. "We'll have to figure it out as we go along."
"I'm frightened."
"Don't be."
"But I can't help it."
"I can help it," he said, smiling.
She smiled back but did not speak. Then it was not necessary for their bodies were close again and Roger had bowed his mouth to her body. He kissed her neck and shoulders and lingered at her breasts again. Then he kissed below them, running his tongue over her rib cage until he moved lower and kissed at her navel.
Mona's body began to stammer and arch. Her thighs quivered and it seemed that they were beckoning, calling to Roger for attention, the great attention that only he could now give to bring them quietness. He kissed lower. The thighs locked tightly to him and Mona whimpered softly, so soft that her sound seemed made of the night and the crickets and of everything of the out-of-doors and not at all from herself. And then her thighs began a slight motion, a tiny arching that crushed him tighter to her as his kisses took on new imagination, greater depth, more intense heat. Then, suddenly, she was shifting her position, scampering to descend upon him in a similar, loving fashion. And then she was at his feet, raising, looking at his spear of Apollo that she lowered to meet. She met it-brilliantly, with love of such intensity that Roger was sure he could not long stand it. Nor did it seem possible that Mona could stand the love that he gave for her hips lurched madly now, even as her thighs held him hard to the prize, stern in their determination that she should know all that he had to give at the same time that she was giving all that she knew how to convey in the way of love. Each to the other, they conveyed it.
When they were both near the breaking point of their self-control and containment, they pulled apart. Both of them uttered small cries of unhappiness for their parting. Then they shifted their position again and their bodies smacked hard as Roger fought himself atop her. Then there was the instant cradle of her thighs and him going to it, lowering, moving with love but with a strength from his hips such as he had never known before. And then there was the contact of their bodies: Roger entering her deeply, moving from side to side; Mona arching to receive him, moving with him, pulsating against the throb that was his. They held together for a long time. It made their new parting all the more thrilling. Their speed increased. Their bounce became harder. Their pulsation quicker, their joining more constant, the grip of their bodies to each other tighter and more loving and more irresistible, more enchanting, more binding of their bodies and minds and souls-more reassuring of their future. They pumped and lurched and shouted calls to each other-calls that were made of the obscenity of love.
"Oh, Rog, darling," Mona suddenly wailed.
He charged to her again and again, then paused.
"Oh, yes," she cried. "I like that. Stay close to me, darling, don't let me go, not ever."
"Never, never, never," he mumbled.
But he did leave her. He raised his hips, then charged forward again. Mona met his onslaught. She ground against him until he again departed her body, raised, and plunged forward once again.
Now, there was no stopping them. They came together with the speed of lightening. They ground together as if they were crushing stone. They fought lost and helpless before the giant feeling that invaded their bodies, that carried them, clawing constantly upward toward culmination, high, high, high, so high that they lost their breath, had to slacken their pace for a few seconds before they renewed their climb. But renew it, they did. And then it was unceasing, constantly moving them upward until at last, amid their mixed cries of love and pleasure, they ruptured that highest cloud of feeling, broke through it to orgasm, and quaked as they thumped to earth and to the reality of their wet and spent bodies.
It was a long time before they stirred from each other's arms. When they did it was only to pull back and look into each other's eyes.
"I'm not afraid anymore," Mona said.
"Good," Roger told her.
"I don't think I'll ever be afraid if I'm close to you."
"You'll always be close to me, darling," he told her.
"Roger?" she asked in a small voice. "What, sweet?"
"Why did we hate each other so much? How can it be that we hated each other and now we don't?"
"Maybe because we knew that we'd fall in love if we didn't defend ourselves with hate," he said.
"That's complex," she laughed.
"Very," he agreed, also laughing.
They were quiet then for another long time. The kisses that they traded were soft, not at all violent or passionate, except passionate in the way that kisses can be after other kisses have had their dreams fulfilled.
They dressed clumsily, each of them laughing at the other as they stumbled in the darkness. But they finally managed to dress and were ready to leave the garden, ready to leave it and face the problems of their love that remained. It was only then that they grew somber again.
"Rog-Rog, I think we better get back to the hospital right away."
"All right."
"Hurry, please," she said.
"Why? What's the matter?"
"I don't know," she said. "I've just-just got a terrible feeling, that's all."
He nodded, noting that her words had brought him a feeling of anxiety, too, that now he also felt the desire to hurry, to return to the hospital where their problems were centered.
They did not speak when they left the garden. Not bothering to re-enter the house, indifferent about good-byes or thanks to host and hostess, too, they skirted the house and moved to where Mona's car had been parked in the driveway. It was missing.
"Rog-my car's gone."
"Sure you parked it here, darling?" he asked.
"Positive. When I brought Patty Pen here I--. "
He looked at her curiously. "What's wrong?"
"Patty. Maybe she took my car. I left the keys in the ignition."
"So, if she did, there's no harm done."
"Rog, I don't like it. There's something wrong. The car missing-everything. Something's wrong. I know it!"
"All right," he said. "Come on-we'll take Jack's. From the looks of him when I last saw him, he won't be using it."
They had a little trouble finding Jack Belton's car. They had trouble starting it however, for it was old and unstable. But finally the motor jerked alive, sputtered a bit, blew fumes and coughed and finally achieved an even pace.
Roger jerked the car into gear and moved it away from the house that had been the scene of both his utmost humiliation, his emergence from it, and into love with Mona Fiken.
CHAPTER 9
Patty Pen heard her scream as if it were coming from someone else. It seemed very far away. Then she heard its ending shrill as she slipped into unconsciousness again.
Amos Fiken kept his hands posed above her body for another few seconds. They trembled violently and the scalpel that he held in his right hand set off reflections because of the overhead lights.
Fiken stepped back and looked at the unconscious girl. Her body, still nude, was streaked with blood. Her one breast had been partially severed. It hung flat and the nipple was bent as if it had died. Blood streaked to the side of her ribs. The stream trickled from her breast.
Fiken laughed madly when he observe?! her breast and its lifelessness. Then he turned his view to Patty's thighs. They, too, were streaked with blood. A gob of it was in the middle. But the blood there seemed to have gathered from the results of two slices, half-moon shaped, that had been made on the inner-sides of her thighs.
Patty stirred and moaned. Fiken stepped back a pace. She moaned again, louder and blinked her eyes. Then they held steady and stared directly into the doctor's eyes.
"There, there, child," he said patiently. "It'll soon be over."
Patty's lips trembled and they looked ready to form a word. But then they failed. They closed. Her eyes, did, too.
Fiken sighed and stepped close to the table again. He lifted the scalpel once more and brought it close to the breast that was still unmarred. He lifted the flesh by its tip. He brought the scalpel against it, then paused as Patty's eyelids fluttered open.
She looked at him. Now, words formed.
"Why?" she said faintly. "Why, why, why?"
"Because we must pursue this surgical form of therapy as far as possible," he said. "It's the only way, my dear-the only way that we may be purged of the evil that is within us."
Patty's eyes closed. Her breathing slowed.
Fiken, looking very professional, lowered the scalpel long enough to grip Patty's pulse. Then he lowered it and raised the knife again.
Just before he began a new slice upon Patty's nonbloodied breast, he became distracted. He looked at her thighs. The blood oozed badly there and apparently it bothered him for he reached to the surgical table, took up several puffs of cotton, then lowered them to her thighs where he daubed and tenderly wiped the blood clear of her body. He dropped them on the floor. Then he brought the knife up to her breast, but again he became distracted. Suddenly, the middle of Patty's belly seemed to intrigue him. He brought the scalpel to it and made a tiny slice down the middle, a mere scratch that, although it bled, only pierced the surface of her white skin. Fiken watched the blood trickle from it. Then he laughed. And suddenly he was laughing very hard, almost uncontrollably, higher and higher to a hysterical pitch. All of his body trembled. His eyes bugged at the girl's body, at the blood upon it, at all the length of it, its curves and crevices and indentations and lovely bloats and postures of skin. And he laughed madly, on and on and on.
Patty fought through her unconsciousness. Her eyes opened. Her ears keened. But there was only laughter, Fiken's laughter, and she knew that she was better off asleep, unconscious, for then she would have no awareness of the final treachery to her body that was bound to be done. Her eyes closed. She fell into the deep black of that unearthly place where one must rest before finding their eternal sleep.
Fiken stopped laughing abruptly. Now, his expression turned to one of determination and finality. He raised the scalpel up crisply. He plucked the nipple of her breast up just as crisply, brought the scalpel to it and had just moved it forward to begin the backward draw that would sever it from her body when the sudden opening of the door behind him made him jerk around.
"Hold it, Fiken," Roger shouted. "Hold it right there."
"You," Fiken hissed.
"Amos, please, put that scalpel down," Mona pleaded.
Fiken's eyes shifted to her. They glared hate and confusion and a kind of insane misunderstanding of everything around him.
Roger took a step forward but when Fiken did not drop the scalpel, Roger paused. Then he said, "Look, you're a doctor, for Crissakes, don't be a fool. Maybe-maybe we can still save that poor kid you've butchered."
"Kid? Butchered?" Fiken said in a tone of awe.
"Put the knife down, Fiken," Roger ordered.
Mona took a step forward. Her voice pleaded as she said, "Amos-stop it. Nothing's this bad. Stop it and we'll start getting things straight. Roger will help us-everyone will help you, but please, put that scalpel down and stand away from that girl."
"Scalpel? Girl? Roger? Help me?"
"Yes," Roger said.
"Please, Amos," Mona said.
"Scalpel," Fiken said again. His hand quivered.
"Put it down, goddamn it," Roger shouted.
"Scalpel," Fiken said again.
"Yes, scalpel," Roger said, fighting for control of his voice.
"Yes, the scalpel," Fiken said in a different tone of voice, one that was stronger.
Roger moved a step forward, then halted as Fiken said the word again, raised the scalpel, looked at it, then very quickly brought it to his throat, and made a huge slice. His head dropped, hanging by mere cords as he sagged to the floor.
Mona screamed, clinching her fists, balling them before her face and squeezing them against her mouth that would not stifle her cry of horror.
Roger leaped forward, glanced once at Amos Fiken upon the floor, then looked at Patty Pen while he lifted her wrist in his hand.
Mona dived forward. She was starting to bend downward to her brother when Roger stopped her.
"It's no good-he's finished, Mona," Roger said.
She succeeded in stifling a new scream, but she continued to stare downward in a kind of fascination at her brother's dead form.
"Come on-snap out of it," Roger shouted. "You're a nurse-get moving. Get the O.R. ready and maybe we can save this one."
Mona raised her eyes from her dead brother and stared at Roger. Then she turned and hurried out of the room as Roger stuffed cotton on Patty's bleeding cuts.
* * *
Roger and Mona walked out of the operating room together. Both of them were in surgical garb and the masks across their faces gave them an other-worldly look. When they removed them, their eyes still told of the ordeal that they had endured.
"Will she-, " Mona started to ask, then could not.
"She'll be all right," he said. "Apparently, she stalled for time, or maybe he-he couldn't work himself up to it."
"I hope that's it-that he couldn't," she said sadly.
"It's over for Amos, Mona," Roger said sympathetically.
"Me, too, probably," she said.
"I don't think so. From the things you've told me, well, I imagine everything will straighten out very well for you."
"For me?" she asked, a bit startled.
"For us, darling," he said, smiling, putting his arm around her waist.
They stripped themselves of their white garments, washed briskly, then left the wash area of the operating room and stepped through the swinging doors and into the tiled corridor. They faced each other and were about to speak when the doors behind them opened again and a wheeled-stretcher, bearing Patty Pen, was rolled into the corridor by a nurse.
Roger and Mona stepped back. The nurse halted the stretcher before them.
Roger looked into Patty's face and smiled when he saw that she had regained consciousness, that, except for the white sheet pulled high to her neck, she did not look very much different from the bright-eyed girl who had been at a party only a few hours earlier. Mona moved to Roger's side and smiled down at Patty too.
"Hi, there," Rog said. "Feeling all right?"
"Fine," she said faintly, her voice very small and little-girlish.
"That's good," Rog said. "We're glad."
Patty glanced from Roger to Mona, then back to the intern again.
"I want to-to say thanks," Patty said.
"Forget it."
"And I want to tell you both that I'll-that this wasn't Mona's fault-that when I see my dad, I'll--. "
"Shhhhh," Mona cautioned. "Don't talk about it now."
"Yes, just get some rest," Roger said.
"I want to," Patty said. "I've got a lot of things to do when I get out of here."
Roger and Mona glanced at each other, trading a worried expression.
Patty laughed and said, "I don't mean those kinds of things. I mean school and-and, well, you know, the things that a kid my age usually does."
"I'm glad to hear that," Roger said.
"I am too," Mona told her.
Patty was quiet a moment, then, after again glancing from Roger to Mona and back again, she said, "Are you two-well, are you-are you in--. " Her voice sounded very tired and she was unable to finish the sentence.
Roger leaned very close to Patty, then said, "Yes, we are-but it's a secret."
Patty smiled. She presented it to both Roger and Mona in turn, then closed her eyes.
Roger nodded to the nurse and she wheeled Patty Pen down the corridor.
"That changed her," Mona said.
"Yes. Good thing, too. I guess everyone can change."
"I know they can," Mona said. She sighed, then gave a small smile to Roger.
"Come on-let's go where we can talk-where we can make plans and get ready."
"Ready? For what?"
"For love, darling, for love."
Roger Harper hooked his arm around Mona's waist. Very slowly, they walked down the long tiled corridor, aware of the problems that were before them, yet strengthened in their love and their closeness, knowing that this would prevail over everything.
