Sometime in early puberty, Joanne Joslyn had discovered that she was cursed with an unquenchable thirst for debate, on any subject, from any side, at any time. But Joanne was a bright girl, a self-analytical girl, and when the awareness of her argumentative streak became acute, she quite the high school debating team, without debate, to become a cheerleader. Ever a self-improver, she'd taken up baton-twirling, forthwith, had become the strutting focus of a thousand erections as a drum majorette, and had learned unequivocally that it doesn't pay to argue: with linebackers with tight ends, with offensive tackles, or with quarterbacks, especially not with quarterbacks, who are not only strong and agile but are thinkers, too.
When Joanne won the "Miss Rahway" title--won it in a walk, but she had a lot more than the walk going for her-she was sixteen. She was also pregnant. And not about twenty minutes pregnant, as one of the judges had later suggested, with a snide and envious smirk She was considerably pregnant: she'd bypassed the curse at least twice. By the time she got to the national finals in Atlantic City, she was noticeably in a family way. Anyway, noticeably to two or three of the judges, and they disqualified her. How can you have a pregnant Miss America, for Christ's sake? On prime time?
The judges were deeply regretful, but they had their duty to do, the American public to protect. One of them said, wistfully:
"That girl could win the goddamn title if she was eight months and twenty-eight days pregnant. She makes every other broad in the country look like "Whistler's Mother."
"Those gams," another judge said. "Jesus Christ."
"Those tits," another one said. "Pointed heavenward." He happened to be a lay minister of some obscure sect in East Rutherford.
"That delicious little ass," the first judge said. "Suffering Jesus, how I'd like to make a lamp out of that."
Beauty contest judges, you see, are not necessarily totally objective. Among them, as among all men, you find tit men, and leg men, and ass men. Many of them ultimately wind up profiting from their hobby. They carve careers as personnel men in major corporations.
The other contestants, an envious bunch of grown-up kittens, were overjoyed at the disqualification, and offered to buy Joanne champagne. She told them what to do with their champagne, and went home to South Rahway.
She wanted to name the baby Troy, or Trojan, after the flawed prophylactic that had enabled him to be, but thought better of it. She had always liked alliteration, so she wound up naming the baby Paul; it was a euphonious fit with the last name of the proxy parent she'd married for the boy's sake, and her folks' sake, and the sake of the neighbors in South Rahway. Evan Porteus, his name was, a much older man, well-fixed, a practical choice of a father for her baby, but she didn't like the name Porteus, and when she divorced him two years after the wedding, she debated about changing back to her maiden, pardon the expression, name. But for the sake of young Paul, she stayed with the married name, and the face that graced the magazine covers in the years that followed was known as the face of Joanne Porteus.
The face that launched untold millions of impulse-purchases at newsstands everywhere.
The face that had launched a thousand first downs.
During the last half hour of the flight from Chicago to New York, Joanne Porteus indulged in a high-level debate with herself, trying to decide whether to make the trip to the ladies' room while on the plane or wait till she got to Kennedy. She was by nature a shy girl and she disliked stirring up male unrest, group male unrest particularly, except at the right time and in the right place. And an airliner in flight was not the right time or place.
But some minutes before the time she knew the Seat Belt lights would go on for landing, she lost the debate. She knew she'd never make it to the ground. She took a deep breath, which was a mistake right at the start, and stood up and walked back down the long center aisle, between the lifting, turning male heads and widening eyes. Even as she walked, she knew her trip back would create an even more violent, maybe even an audible, stir. There was something about the view of her from the rear that erased the 'gentle' in gentlemen. Oh, well. She couldn't help the way she walked.
On her way back up the aisle she was aware of the stir and rustle and deep sighs behind her, but she was almost to her seat before anyone touched her. Lightly. On the wrist.
She turned, frowning. But the man looked harmless enough. Middle aged. Balding. Wearing glasses. You never slap a man wearing glasses, not if you're a lady. You kick him in the balls, is what you do. If he's standing up.
"I beg your pardon," the man said. "I know this is an awfully trite line, but don't I know you from someplace?"
"If you say 'Atlantic City,' I'll hit you over the head with the stewardess." But she smiled when she said it. His eyes looked so defenseless, almost pleading, behind those big glasses.
"That's it. It was Atlantic City. I judged some beauty contests there."
"Never been in Atlantic City in my life."
"I could swear it," he said. "You were Miss New Hampshire, or Miss New Mexico, or something, in the Miss America contest of. . . . " He stopped. He was being polite.
Miss 'New' nothing, she thought. Miss Slightly Used, she had been.
"Not me," she said. "But it's very nattering that you think so."
"It was some years ago. You're just being modest. You should have won."
"Thank you," she said. "I've never been in a Miss Anything contest. Not even for Caraway Seed Week."
"I still think it was you," he said. "As I say, it was some time back, but you haven't changed a bit. You could still win."
"Well, thank you," she said, and smiled at him again, turning toward her seat. There was a distended throbbing in evidence down the man's left trouser leg, and she had a quick impulse to reach out and give it an affectionate squeeze for old times' sake, but thought better of it.
She stayed in her seat while the other passengers de-planed, waiting for Mr. Atlantic City to leave. He did, finally, after casting a few yearning backward glances at her. She finished her cigarette before she pulled her bag out from under the seat, gathered up her raincoat, and headed up the empty aisle.
Mac was waiting for her at the gate. When she'd sent him the wire that morning she'd known he would be, even though today was a weekday and he'd have to take off from the office. She'd known Mac only a few weeks, but he had such an advanced case of the hots for her that he'd have been there to meet the plane if she had landed in Algiers.
"Haven't you got any more luggage that this?" he asked, taking the bag from her hand.
"Sure," she said. "We can get it later, when it comes through on that belt thing. But we have time for a drink first."
"That's the second-best idea to come my way today," he said, dropping behind her with the bag as she swung down the long corridor toward the terminal main.
"Second best? What was the best?"
"That we take advantage of your luggage and register at a good motel. There's one only a few minutes from here."
"I wish I could do something to derail that one-track mind of yours."
"Why?"
"Why do you have to walk three steps behind me?" she asked, turning her head. "You act like a gun bearer.'"
"I like to look at you from behind. At your legs."
"You're so sentimental."
"Also at your ass," he said. "Have I told you lately that you have the most magnificent ass in the Western Hemisphere?"
"And so gallant," she said. He caught up with her and looked down. He was quite tall.
"Why do you change the subject all the time?" he asked. "I was talking about a motel."
"I heard you."
"Listen," he said, "you know it's really your mind I admire, but how are we ever going to have any meaningful meeting of the minds if we don't ever join up at the hips?"
"Oh, Mac," she said, trying to sound exasperated, "can't you get it through your skull that I'm a matron-type? With a son who'll be sixteen in three months? With a house in Pelham that'll be about a hundred and sixteen in three months? All that sex business is way behind me."
"Bullshit," Mac said.
He was so right, but she was careful not to say anything.
"As for your sixteen-year-old son," he said, "you don't look much older than that yourself."
"Ho," she said. "Aren't you sweet? I have a wrinkle, for God's sake."
"Yes? Where? Whereabouts do you have a wrinkle?"
"Never mind." Joanne hated herself for going through this phony hat dance with Mac, but she had to. She had plans for Mac.
He groaned. There was nothing phony or forced about his groan. He meant every agonized tremor of it.
"Well, shit," he said. "All right. I'll drop the subject for now."
"Good."
He took her by the elbow and steered her to the left.
"I guess the Lisbon Lounge is as good a place as any to get a drink." he said. "We can watch all the pretty airplanes."
"Oh, stop it," she said.
On the drive home to Pelham through the hot, squint-bright afternoon, she kept twisting and turning on the low seat of the Jaguar, and the hem of her miniskirt rose higher every time she moved. Mac kept glancing over at the display of her spectacular legs, then looking back at the road, muttering to himself. Once, while they were on the Whitestone Bridge, he put his hand over her left knee, and gently caressed the soft, warm swell just above. She wanted him to keep stroking the smooth skin, sensitive to his touch, and as his hand moved gradually up between her thighs, she let her legs fall apart, for just a second, wanting that insistent hand to touch her where she needed it most, on the warm, swelling, wanting lips.
But she made herself clamp her legs together, stopping the advance. Good God, she thought, if he feels how damp I am down there, he'll stop the car and lay me on the grass just beyond the toll station.
"The Parkway Authority would never stand for it," she said aloud.
"Stand for what?"
"Oh, nothing." He should know. The man at the toll booth was looking into the car and grinning. She wriggled and pulled at the hem of her skirt.
"Forget it, Mac," she said. "Even if I broke down and said yes, Paul is home."
"Paul?"
"My boy." Paul wasn't home, but she had to keep Mac at arm's length, especially the way she was feeling now. Paul was away, visiting a friend whose folks had a summer place in Vermont; and she'd given the housekeeper a few weeks off. Joanne struggled hard to get herself under control. Think pure thoughts, she told herself. For now, anyway.
Mac didn't speak to her after that, except to ask for directions once they were off the parkway. When he eased the Jaguar to the curb in front of her house, he didn't even turn off the ignition, but left the engine running while he got her baggage out of the trunk and set it out on the lawn. When he got back into the car, she was still sitting there, waiting for him. She looked over as he settled himself in the driver's seat, staring straight ahead over the steering wheel, and then she glanced down. The left leg of his trousers, almost halfway to the knee, it seemed to her, was stretched taut over what looked like the lower limb of an oak tree. Oh, mother, she thought. She'd never realized before the enormity of what she'd been missing. God, how she'd love to have him sliding that thing into her, right now. She could straddle him, here in the car. Or out on the lawn. In the middle of the street. Anywhere at all. She squeezed her legs tightly together.
"I want to tell you something," he said soberly, looking at her. "You give me a shooting pain in the ass."
"I do not," she said, and leaned over to kiss him on the mouth. Then, with the tip of her tongue, she tickled his earlobe. "What I give you is a howling hard-on, is all!"
She opened the door and got out of the car swiftly and ran up the flagstone walk, not even turning when she heard the car snarl away up the silent street.
After the Jaguar had turned the corner, she retraced her steps, bringing her luggage up onto the side porch. She wasn't at all annoyed with Mac for not lugging the bags inside. She didn't blame him a bit. He'd have looked so silly, trying to walk with that tree-size erection fighting him every step of the way. And mad, besides. She felt very guilty about the whole thing. And damp, too. God, she was sopping between her legs.
Once inside the house, she stretched out in a reclining chair in a corner of the living room, near the piano. She lay quite limp, trying to relax, to enjoy the cool quiet twilight in the big shaded room after the tense drive in the relentless sunlight. She felt her nerves quieting, her dampness drying.
She loved this big old room, this big old house. She had lived in it since Paul had been six months old, when a doting, childless, widowed granduncle had given it to her after the grand-uncle had retired and moved to Arizona. He was long dead now, the granduncle, and she had gotten rid of her husband, but she had kept the house. Everybody had told her how impractical it was for her, just a girl with a baby son in that big old house, but Joanne had always been stubborn, and fanatically independent.
The taxes alone on the place amounted to more than an apartment in New York City would have cost her, but she never had money problems, even in the beginning. She was always in demand, legitimately, as a photographer's model. She'd once been on the cover of four national magazines during the same month, that fresh, ingenuous gamin's face smiling out at people as if she wouldn't say "balls" if she had a mouthful.
And men were good to her, where money was concerned. They didn't actually give her money, but they always showed her ways, found connections for her, so she could make more.
She'd been able to afford the services of domestics, and as soon as Paul was old enough, she'd packed him off to a succession of private schools. She saw little of him as he grew up. But Paul was bright, intuitive, and supremely flexible in any surroundings. He seemed to adjust well to the lack of parental guidance, and now, as he approached his sixteenth birthday, he had the same defiance and independence of spirit that she'd always had. She was tremendously proud of him and enjoyed every minute they spent together. But she didn't really know him very well, she had to admit. Something about the way he carried himself now made her almost afraid to know him better.
Sighing, she slid out of the recliner and started toward the stairs. On the way up, she became suddenly aware of the sound of a shower running in one of the bathrooms on the second floor.
"Paul," she called, overjoyed, and ran up the steps to the landing, where she called again. Then she realized that he couldn't hear her, with the shower running full blast. She opened the door from the hall into the bathroom between her room and Paul's, and called his name once more.
The shower curtain was not drawn and the lean, tanned wet back under the spray was unfamiliar to her. So was the startled boy's face that turned to look at her. The shock of dripping hair was bright blond, even when wet. Paul's hair was jet black, like her own.
"Mrs. Porteus?" She noticed that the boy kept his back toward her and spoke over his shoulder.
"That's right," she said. She hated the name Porteus, especially with the Mrs. in front of it. Friends never used it.
"I'm a friend of Paul's," the boy said, and apparently became aware that he was shouting. He reached out and turned off the water, still keeping his back to her. "My name is Mike Patehens. Paul lent me the key to your house and told me to bunk here till he got home. He didn't think you'd be back so soon."
"I am early," she said. "But it's fine. You're more than welcome. I'm glad you've come." She caught herself starting to say, "Any friend of Paul's is a friend of mine," and stopped in time. How straight can you get? She didn't want kids thinking of her as Aunt Tillie from Toledo.
"Go ahead with your shower," she said. On impulse, she moved to the far end of the big old-fashioned bathroom, and sat down on the cover of the toilet. The boy, his whole frame seeming to relax in a long curving slump, started to turn toward where she sat, but seeing her sitting there he turned away again, awkwardly, slipping and almost falling in the tub. She had to laugh. His modesty could have killed him.
"Don't be so shy. So modest," she said. "I sit here lots of times and talk to Paul when he's in the shower."
"Yes ma'am," the boy said, running soap over his ribs, still keeping his back toward her. "I just got back from a camping trip in Vermont, near where Paul's staying. He said he'd be home in a couple of days."
"I didn't see any of your baggage when I came in."
"I put all my stuff in Paul's room."
"Here," she said, standing. "I'll soap your back." She took the soap from him and rubbed it in small circles down his back, running it over the long bumpy ridge of his spine, the snaky sinewy muscles along the sides of his rib cage, and lower, around the concave areas of his buttocks. The boy was tensed as if ready to do a standing broad jump.
Joanne was starting to feel as horny as she'd felt in the car. Christ, this is terrible, she thought. This boy can't be a day over seventeen. She leaned, careful to stay out of the spray, slipped the soap back into its dish, and went back and sat down again, watching the boy rinsing himself. There was something frighteningly young, frighteningly vulnerable, in the naked sliding shoulder blades. When he turned unexpectedly to look at her, she covered her sudden embarrassment by leaning forward and putting her cigarette out in an ashtray on the floor.
She was wearing a summer dress cut very low, straight across the front, and when she leaned the white upper slopes of her tantalizing breasts bloomed into clear view. When she sat up again and looked at the boy, he was staring at her, half turned in profile, and in the fraction of a second before he turned away she saw that he had an uncontrollable erection. Suddenly she felt very much at ease again-in her natural habitat.
"You mustn't ever be ashamed of your body," she said, and laughed. "I think bodies were meant to be seen. Don't you think so?"
He turned halfway around and looked at her again. Her legs were crossed at the knees, and the hem of her skirt was around her hips.
"Damn right I do," he said, with more than a trace of boldness, and he grinned. "I most surely do, Mrs. Porteus."
She laughed once more.
"Why don't you let me dry you?" she asked, and without waiting for an answer took a bath towel from the rack as the boy stepped from the tub, still keeping his back toward her. She stood behind him, and dried his head first, rubbing with rough vigor. Just the way his own mother would, she thought, but the thought was fleeting. When he stood straight, the boy was a shade taller than she was in heels, and she was over five-seven. She worked her way down the slim taut young body, drying his back, his buttocks, his legs.
"Now turn around," she said. She sat down again, holding the damp towel in front of her.
He hesitated for a long moment, then turned around toward her, very slowly.
His proud young spear stood out stiffly from the curly bush of blond hair, poked out at a forty-five degree angle above the horizontal. It was really quite long, Joanne thought, appraisingly, and rather slender. The tensed hard shaft looked bridal-gown white, right up to the collar of soft skin below the head, which was a deep pink, and incredibly tender-looking. It was much larger in diameter than the long slim shaft.
When the boy had turned around completely toward her, his erect member was pointing up directly toward her face. The slitted vertical eye in the center of the broad head seemed to wink at her.
"You have to know I can't help it, Mrs. Porteus," the boy said.
"I know that, Mike," she said, reaching up with the towel to dry his chest. "You don't have to be ashamed of it, you know. Anything but." , She tried to stay calm as she dried his chest and belly, but it was no use. The scene in the car with Mac had unsettled her too much. Now who has the one-track mind, she thought? She was almost trembling as she touched the towel to the eager, upward-twitching shaft. Mike, she thought, how I'd love to have that happy young pecker of yours pumping into me now. But she knew too well what would happen. The boy might be good for four or five ecstatic, frantic strokes before he exploded. If he even managed to get all the way in before his excitement peaked. But Joanne knew instinctively what to do about that. Knew absolutely, right this minute, what to do.
Slowly, gently, lovingly, she dried his stiff prick with the towel; then she looked up at him. He was completely immobile. Looking steadily down at her, and his eyes showed white all around the pupils. He didn't back away. He was beginning to tremble.
"Do you think you might like it if I kissed it?" she asked him, smiling tenderly up at him.
"Oh, Jesus," he said, breathing out expressively, fervently, almost prayerfully. "Would you do that?"
She raised her left hand and placed it behind his right hip, drawing him closer. She positioned her left thumb lightly under his cock, at the base, and applied very slight pressure, so it poked almost straight upward. With the tip of her tongue, she touched the soft wrinkling of skin at the neck of the shaft, just beneath the swollen head, then gathered the yielding, sliding folds between her lips with tiny sucking kisses. She was conscious of the drip of the shower and the sound of his breathing, rapid and irregular, as if he were in intense pain. She removed the pressure of her thumb from the base of his shaft and let his throbber pulse straight out, then took the head lovingly into her mouth and ran her tongue down under the shaft, licking, first back and forth, then sideways.
With both her hands behind his hips, urging him forward, she took as much of the slender white shaft as would fit comfortably into her mouth, the tender hardness of the swollen-to-bursting head against the back of her palate, and began sucking, moving her head back and forth.
Her lips were soft but tight around him, her tongue licking and smothering his sensitive under-part. His hips thrust forward, spasmodically.
Then, with an uncontrollable series of shudders, he came, trembling against her hands on his hips, his warm fluid spurting against the roof of her mouth, back into her throat. She swallowed, then swallowed again, and kept on sucking thirstily, until he was sucked dry and she tasted nothing, felt nothing but the slack limp little sated member between her lips.
She sat upright, looked up at him, and smiled.
He seemed to be staring at the ceiling.
"Wouldn't you like to he down for a while?" she asked. "In Paul's room, while I jump into a shower."
He turned and left the bathroom without another word. Modestly, he hitched a dry bath towel around his waist as he went out the door.
After she'd showered and rubbed herself dry she stepped back into her high-heeled mules, thought about walking in on young Mike completely nude, but decided against it. Too much of a shock to the boy's nervous system. From a row of atomizers on a shelf, she picked out a fragrance and delicately perfumed the furred crevice between her thighs. You never know about the teenage generation, she thought. They keep springing surprises.
She took a transparent wisp of a short negligee from a hanger behind the door, and tied it at the waist. The hem reached to mid-thigh, and the thin nylon concealed nothing. The darkness of her pubic hair showed through, and she noticed that proud rose nipples of her still young breasts were vibrantly erect, pushing out against the light cloth.
She hoped that young Mike would be coming to life soon. And she was certain that he would. The seventeen-year-olds she had been familiar with as a girl, she remembered, had always made very fast comebacks. Or come-ups.
She moved soundlessly to the open door of Paul's room Mike lay on his back, sound asleep. The bath towel had fallen open and his young pecker, sad and small, lay in the soft cradle of his scrotum.
Joanne tiptoed to the side of the bed, leaned over the sleeping boy, and kissed him wetly on the mouth. His eyes popped open.
"Want to sleep some more?" she asked him, smiling broadly.
"No, ma'am," he said, and propped himself up on an elbow to drink in the sight of her. "No, indeed, I don't."
"Then come on into my room, where we can talk." She preceded him, letting her hips sway. In the doorway to her room she stopped, and Mike bumped softly into her. But not that softly.
"I beg your pardon," he said, then put one hand flat under the back hem of her wisp of a garment and let his palm run down and across the smooth soft mounds.
"Christ," the boy whispered. She felt the tip, at the ready again, brush one cheek. He had left the towel on the bed.
She walked over to her wide bed and placed pillows against the headboard, then sat on the edge of the bed and leaned back. Slowly, lazily. teasingly, she raised one leg, bending it at the knee, and put her foot on the edge of the bed. She moved the bent knee back and forth in a slow arc, and watched the boy's face as he stared, wide-eyed, at the furry confluence of her upper thighs.
Rays of golden late-afternoon sunlight slanted through the window directly on the lower part of her white luminous body, accentuating, she knew, the gleaming jet-blackness of her silky pubic bush, the bright pinkness of the lips of her pussy peeping through. Mike was staring hard, the whites in evidence again in his widened eyes, his cheeks bright red under his tan. His eager cock was pulsing and twitching upward. And Joanne saw what she had half-hoped to see: his tongue crept out, furtively, to lick his lips.
"It's all right, Mike," she said. "Anything you want to do is all right. It's just between the two of us, and anything you do, anything at all that comes into your head, I'll like. I'll like it very much."
His tongue, apparently without his knowing it, was still licking his lips. She pushed herself to the edge of the bed and lay back with her legs apart and her knees raised.
"Come on, Mike," she said. "It's all yours. Kiss it."
He was on his knees then, beside the bed, his still-damp blond head between her welcoming thighs. Hospitable, she thought. She felt the tip of his tongue touch her, tentatively, on a tender pink fold peeking out from between her pouting outer lips.
"Go ahead and lick it," she said, feeling her excitement mounting. The boy was so young. She was sure this was the first time he'd ever gone down on a woman-unless things had changed since she was a girl.
He began to lick then, almost hungrily, groaning in his excitement. She urged him to lick deeper, harder, nudging him gently with her heels behind his back. She knew that her juices were flowing freely-every time he drew his mouth away for a second to take a breath, his lips were gleaming wet. Her pussy seemed on fire, as her hips pushed the whole concentration of feeling forward to meet every thrust of his tongue, every sucking demand of his mouth. Finally, she could stand it no longer.
"I want you in me now," she said. "Please. Put it in there now."
She bounced back onto the middle of the bed with her legs spread as Mike knelt between her thighs. She reached for his straining rigid weapon and took it between her thumb and forefinger, holding it at the neck, just below the pink swollen head, and guided it to her thirsting lips. She moved it slowly up and down in the gasping entrance, wetting it, lubricating it for the plunge, then guided it between the embracing outer lips, into the waiting inner lips and the channel of ecstasy inside.
Mike drove the entire slender length of his prick in, with one delirious thrust, and she held him there, imbedded, her ankles crossed behind him, the base of his plunger jammed against her mound, grinding it against him in small tight circles.
Then she gradually released the pressure of her legs around his back
"Slowly, Mike, slowly, now," she said. "Do it slow. Slow. Slow."
He withdrew until only the head remained inside her, and she tightened the grip of her inner lips around the neck of his member, once, twice, three times. She was even better at that now, she thought inanely, than she'd been when she was in high school, when she'd been naturally tight.
"Oh, Jesus," he moaned, and began to pump his spear into her, slowly at first. But only for the first few strokes. Then the strokes came faster and faster. For a long minute, she wasn't in her own bed, in her own room; she was somewhere else, in time and in place. She was a fourteen-year-old again, flat on her back in the rough sun-fragrant grass between the blueberry bushes, watching a white cloud move slowly across a clear blue September sky. The wide, eager spread of her legs then was the spread of her legs now, and the hard, pumping young instrument plunging into her now was the same hard, pumping young instrument that had been plunging so delightedly into her then.
She had even reached orgasm, she remembered, that very first time. Even the first thrust hadn't hurt, and it had certainly never hurt since, and it certainly wasn't hurting now. But Mike had forgotten that she'd told him to go slow, or else he couldn't help himself. But she didn't care now. Her hips rose joyfully to meet every thrust of his shaft, and she found that she was panting and gasping in unison with the sensation-crazed boy. Then she felt her climax starting, way deep, and she held him to her and opened her mouth in a silent scream as he pumped and pounded. At the peak of her orgasm, she felt her fingers digging cruelly into his back; but Mike didn't feel it, she knew at once. She could feel him spurting inside her.
When she woke up, some time later, he was lying on his side, watching her.
"You're pretty wonderful, Mrs. Porteus," he said.
"You're putting me on," she said, looking at him, but he didn't smile. "Can't you bring yourself to call me Joanne?"
"Joanne."
"That's better. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's fucking formality." He smiled, then. And he rolled toward her.
CHAPTER TWO
A lesser car than Mac's Jaguar would have taken the corner on two wheels. Mac was in a grinding rage. A teaser, he kept muttering to himself, a damn cockteaser. When he found himself totally lost somewhere in the No Man's Land of the East Bronx, he was ready for the violent ward.
The careful directions of a friendly native calmed him somewhat, and by the time he was on the Buckner Expressway, headed for the Tri-boro Bridge, he was able to smile about the whole thing. I might have known, he told himself. She's been that way since the beginning. He remembered the beginning, all too well.
He had stood for a long moment in front of the door to the Jacobsons' apartment, listening to the sound of laughter and ice cubes. Then he had sighed, and put his thumb on the bell. He hadn't wanted to be there. Other guests would expect him to make little witties, and he was not feeling a bit jocular that night. People always seemed to expect comedy writers to make jokes, practically all people (except other comedy writers) who sat around saloons showing your snapshots of their gruesome kids and talking about crabgrass and the Long Island Railroad.
Alice Jacobson opened the door for him.
"Mac!" she said, and gave the appearance of being both surprised and pleased. "Ted told me he didn't think you'd make it."
"My friendly local tavern is closed up on account of a prostitution charge," Mac said, "and I was feeling lonely and a little wistful."
Alice stood tall to kiss him on the cheek, and started to lead him by the hand toward a bar at the far end of the crowded room.
"I don't need any Judas goat to lead me to the whiskey," Mac said. "And how come I'm the kind of guy other men's wives always kiss on the cheek?"
"Maybe you ought to take on a wife of your own."
"I tried that scene once, many years ago. Right after I gave up on the mandolin."
"You never mentioned it before," Alice said, handing him a glass of Scotch on-the-rocks. "Don't you think maybe you give up on things too easy?" She smiled when she said it, but Mac looked at her in open annoyance. She was a tall, candid, self-improving actress-type girl with the kind of hips that would swallow a man. She played an imaginative game of bridge, very badly. Ted Jacobson, Mac's friend, had told her once in a rare show of open rebellion that she looked just like a movie star.
"Who?" she'd asked, pleased.
"John Wayne," Ted had told her, and had come to live with Mac for three days.
"I thought," Alice said uneasily, as Mac looked at her, "I thought you said once that the cocktail party was as obsolete as chastity and the harpsichord."
"Maybe I did. But I hear that chastity is coming back."
"Not with you around," Alice said archly, "from what I've heard." She turned away from him to answer the door.
"You were far better for me than any analyst could have been," the girl in front of him was saying, looking up at him. It was now much later in the evening, it was too warm in the room. Mac felt trapped. He tried to bring his attention back to the girl, concentrating on her face in the blur of faces and feverish chatter all around them. He remembered hearing the exact words before, blurred and muffled by a pillow or a sheet, but he couldn't remember if this was the girl who had said them. It could have been any of three or four girls in the room right now. Anyway, the whole scene with this one had been two years before, at least, and Mac had forgotten it until now. He wished that she would too. Why did women always have to get so emotionally involved, so hung up?
But she moved closer to him, holding her drink in front of her like some kind of breast shield, and he retreated to a wall. She didn't intimidate him, he told himself. He just didn't like being spilled on.
"It took me a long time to get over you," she said, and Mac looked curiously at the earnest, faintly myopic eyes in the once-familiar face, and he wondered how many drinks she'd had.
"It took me a long time to get over you," the girl said again, frowning.
"Me, too," Mac said, shifting his weight and his glance.
"Hell," she said, "you don't carry any scars. Not one. I don't believe you've ever been hurt by anyone in your whole life. Or anything."
"I came back from Korea with a galloping case of benign jock itch," Mac said, hoping it would end the exchange. This girl made him uneasy. With all her flailing around, she sometimes came close to hitting a nerve. She had a point: women never got to him, not really, never really reached him where he lived. Mac had learned at an early age that he carried a certain lean and haphazard charm for women, and he had learned at the same time that the less he cared about them, or the less he showed it, the more eager they were to climb into bed with him. Especially, he discovered early, if he could keep them laughing.
Mac brightened abruptly, and slid almost imperceptibly sideways along the wall.
"Don't wriggle around just because I'm telling the truth," the girl said, but she had misunderstood his sideway move. Mac had improved his vantage point to get a better look at a tall, startling brunette with dancer's legs who had just crossed the room to the bar. There was an indefinable quality of confidence, of inner riches, in the way she walked. She had that serene composure and calm assurance that usually meant Bronxville or Old Greenwich and Bryn Mawr and Daddy. Usually that's what that look meant, and you knew instinctively that her husband would never have to face any major dental bills for her as long as she lived. It had something to do with the early diet. Usually, the way this girl looked meant all those things. But with this one, the way she moved, that look had a different quality. Her composure seemed to come from internally rather than externally.
She was holding a glass in her left hand and from where Mac stood there was no sign of a wedding ring. I wonder, Mac caught himself thinking, and he smiled at his own adolescence. A throwback, that's me, he thought. "I wonder how long it'll take me," was the full question. Very early, in college and before, the question had started "I wonder if." It was a good twenty years since Mac had dropped the "if."
He wrested his gaze away, back to the girl in front of him.
"You said something before about an analyst," he said. "From what you've been trying to tell me, it looks like you're getting to be quite a lay analyst yourself. And I beg your pardon."
"What do you mean? Oh, Christ. You and your shitty little jokes. It happens I'm seeing a great deal of a man who's a psychiatrist these days. He's a wonderful guy and I like him a lot, and I'm thinking of marrying him, after his divorce."
"You marrying a psychiatrist would be like a woman marrying the manager of the local Gristedes because she likes to give dinner parties. Will you excuse me?" The girl turned with him and saw where Mac was looking.
"Oh, hot dog," she said. "Bye-bye, blackbird." She sang it.
The tall brunette was standing with her back to him, having the volunteer behind the bar fix her a drink, as Mac moved across the room. She hadn't been at the party long enough to get into conversation with any of the men, Mac reasoned, or someone certainly would be getting the drink for her. He wondered as he walked what he was going to say, but then he was close to her and he knew.
"You have the loveliest ass in all Christendom," he said, close to her ear. She turned around in easy deliberation and looked at him. There was a sort of glow in her dark eyes.
"Thank you," she said. "Do I know you?"
"You should. Mac Welsh."
"I've heard your name. I'm Joanne Porteus, but I'm not sure I like your back-door approach."
"That was no approach," Mac said. "That was an old-fashioned thing known as honest, open admiration. But I'll apologize, if you think I should."
"No, don't," she said. "I think I like it."
"All right, maybe it was an approach, but I had to say something. You know what I was really thinking?"
"That would be refreshing."
"You have what used to be known as a fresh-scrubbed and shiny look, especially in this crowd. I was thinking you're the nicest-looking girl to come down my street in a long time." Jesus, Mac thought. I sound like a kid in a haystack.
"Maybe that's what you should have said right off the bat," Joanne said.
Some time later, with the noise level in the room rising steadily, Mac found that he was having trouble making conversation.
"Have you ever been to a Jacobson party before?" he asked, to fill a silence.
"Alice has asked me, quite often, but this is the first time I've made the scene."
The first time she hadn't had something better to do, Mac was sure. It was just possible that she'd come alone tonight. Of course she had come alone. No man in his right mind would stay away from her this long. Except possibly a husband, and she wasn't wearing a wedding ring. He could see that for sure now.
"It's a screwed-up group," he said. "All ages. What Alice likes to think of as a cross-section. You'll see. Pretty soon they'll start playing records, and you're likely to hear anything from Hindemuth to Horace Heidt. From Jelly Roll Morton to Ramsey Lewis." He took her glass from her and had it refilled, along with his own.
"I know the kind of party," she said. "After they stop hearing the music, the talker will take over. In little knots. There'll be a well-fed little group over in one corner talking about buying on margin, and a mixed group sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor talking about . . . urn . . . multiple orgasms." She lowered her lids and brought them up again, with delicate and exquisite timing. Mac was a master at delivering lines himself, and he admired good work from others. Practically any kind of good work.
"You sure you've never been here before?" he asked, and found himself laughing with her. Laughing comfortably. "Do you want to stay here any longer?"
"Do you?" It was plainly a rhetorical question.
"A clarinet player in Hurley's today told me that Vic Dickenson is sitting in at Ryan's tonight." She raised her face and her lips parted. Mac thought of a sunrise. He was sorry for a second that he didn't have a clearer recollection of sunrises.
"Oh, boy," she said wonderingly. "You never should have told me that. I have a firm belief that there have been just three great men in this century. Albert Schweitzer, Albert Einstein, and Vic Dickenson."
Mac felt pretty much the same way. The trombone was his favorite instrument, and Vic Dickenson was his favorite trombone player. He grinned at her, and raised his wrist to look at his watch.
"If we get out of here in a hurry," he said, "we can make the nine-thirty set."
"It'll be rude."
"Yes."
They left silently without saying goodbye to anybody. The only one who noticed their leaving was Mac's ex-girlfriend. She had been crying earlier and now she started crying again. She stopped crying when someone put a fresh drink in her hand.
"That fickle fucking son of a bitch," she said demurely.
When they left Ryan's around two the band was finishing a set with "Royal Garden Blues," and they were laughing. They were still laughing when they found that Mac's car, parked down the street, was fresh out of gas. Two stoned Samaritans who had left Ryan's at the same time and were getting into a Volvo parked behind them offered to let Mac siphon some gas from their tank. In the process, Mac swallowed a large mouthful. Joanne told him she was staying with a friend in town, and on the drive down to the apartment on Nineteenth Street, Mac kept breathing hard against the back of his hand, then recoiling from the fumes. I've drunk some bad booze in my life, he thought, but Jesus . . . never gasoline.
Joanne stopped at the door to the apartment while she got out a loose key. After she'd opened the door she stood in the doorway and kissed him, with her mouth open and ler legs apart. Mac drew her against him, but she drew back swiftly.
"Holy mackerel," she said. "Lips that have touched Blue Sunoco shall never touch mine."
Mac went down in the elevator still laughing. Frustrated and horny, but laughing. Tomorrow, he figured, was another day.
But frustration was the key word for weeks. Mac found himself launched on the strangest, most fruitless campaign in his long and dedicated career.
Joanne had looked like a natural from the beginning. After her divorce long before she had never remarried, and it was apparent that she liked men. She seemed to know an awful lot of them.
Mac had never believed in seduction, in the classic sense, the campaign building to a horizontal climax in a wash of vintage wines and the music of ersatz gypsy fiddlers. He told her as much.
"There's no such thing as seduction in this enlightened age," he said. "A guy doesn't really do anything. When a girl gets to like him, or builds up a lust for him, or whatever the hell it is that motivates her, she manages to let him know, one way or another."
"I bet you've had a lot of success with that line," Joanne said, and Mac looked around for a waiter, feeling minutely defeated.
But he found her fun to be with, and he was patient. Patient, but carrying what seemed like a perpetual erection.
Once, after an evasive evening that had left Mac feeling like a schoolboy in heat, he had asked her in a voice that almost shook:
"Will you please tell me why in Christ's name you won't go to bed with me?"
"I don't know why I should," she had said coolly. Then, politely, like a girl in pigtails turning down an invitation to somebody's birthday party, she had said:
"But thanks for asking me."
Mac had managed to get himself out of the club without kicking the headwaiter in the crotch, or punching a cop outside.
At night he lay awake for hours, thinking, the girl's got to be sleeping with someone. All God's chillun got to sleep with someone. And especially all God's divorced chillun. Joanne had been divorced since she was in her teens. Count the years. Count sheep, count peckers, count pussies. Count her male friends. Mac recalled a Kinsey statistic, and he writhed between the sheets: three out of four divorced women continued to have an active sex life in their single lives. Leaping Jesus, what must the fourth one look like? Probably ninety years old, and fat to boot.
He'd start to think about where she was, what she was doing, right this minute-and his mind would flash a series of pictures on a screen, pictures of Joanne in a variety of positions, with a variety of men. She'd be laughing or enraptured. Then he'd get out of bed and pad to the bathroom in bare feet, looking for the Seconal.
"You'd know what you are?" he'd say to his face in the mirror. "You're just plain jealous, you simple son of a bitch."
Jealousy was a brand-new emotion for Mac
Now, deep in his painful recollections, he found himself driving north on southbound lower Fifth Avenue. Horns were honking all around him.
By the time he got back to his apartment he was ready to rape a goat. No special goat, either. Any old goat.
CHAPTER THREE
It was twilight in the room when Joanne woke to the sound of the phone ringing. The ringing woke Mike, too. He rolled over, opening his eyes and frowning. Joanne noticed that a sheet was covering them both. Mike must have covered them. Good upbringing, she thought. She propped herself against the pillows and reached for the phone.
It was Mac. If she'd thought, she'd have known.
"On the way home today," he said, "I took an oath that I'd never call you again."
"Then I'd have had to call you," she said.
"It looks as if I'm kind of short on willpower."
"You're a growing boy." She took a deep breath to clear the cobwebs of sleep, and saw Mike smiling, looking at the swelling pout of her breasts. Speaking of growing boys. She switched the phone to her left hand, and let her right arm fall to the bed. Mike slid over and leaned forward.
"Is your son Paul home?" Mac asked.
"Yes," she lied. Mike's tongue was teasing her near nipple, and she could see the soft bud tightening. She cupped her breast, lifted it. Give the boy some encouragement, she thought. He sucked thoughtfully, tickling with his tongue. His hand caressed her other breast, his thumb playing games with the pinkness, darkening now to red.
Mac was talking, but she was having trouble concentrating on what he had to say.
"What was that, Mac?" she asked. "I've got a bad connection here."
Mike's hand had moved down. His forefinger explored her navel.
"I can hear you fine," Mac said. "I said I'd like to take you and Paul out to dinner tonight."
"Thank you, but Paul has a date and I'm kind of tired."
Mike's finger was moving back and forth on the bud of her clitoris. She spread her legs.
"We don't have to go far," Mac said. "We can find a lobster place up along the Shore Road. I'll take you right home afterward."
She raised her right knee, shoving the sheet down with her other foot. Mike slid lower and moved his hips under her upraised thigh. His thighs sandwiched her left leg and the head of his stiffened staff touched her moist opening.
"All right, Mac," she said, "as long as you promise to get me home early. I'm really bushed."
She could feel Mike moving his swollen greeting up and down, lubricating everything for the plunge. Indian style, she thought. So that's what they learn at camp.
"I'll pick you up at eight," Mac was saying.
Then she felt the long, marble-hard shaft sliding up inside her, all the way. Mike's hands gripped her shoulders as he lay on his side, and his hips held the hard bone of his pelvis tight against her.
"Around eight," Mac said. "Can you hear me?"
"I heard you . . . fine," she heard herself saying, as her hips started to undulate. "I have a much better, ah, connection, ooh . . . now."
"See you later," Mac said, and hung up. She did too.
As she was lying back lighting a cigarette, she realized that Mike hadn't spoken a word to her all through the festivities. He was propped on one elbow, looking at her in silence.
"What's wrong, Mike?"
"Who was that on the phone?" Mike asked.
Well, I'll be, she thought. The boy's jealous.
"A very old friend," she said.
"You're going out with him?" His voice was distinctly pained.
"I'm having dinner with him. I've been having lunches with him, and dinners, for a long time now."
"Oh, sure," Mike said.
"And that's all. He's a friend." She laughed and leaned forward to give the soft diminished head of the boy's tired cock a moist sucking kiss.
"I doubt if Mac can get that up any more," she said, crossing her fingers behind her in a girlish negation of the he. "And I never will know. He's been like a father."
Some father, she thought, remembering Mac's animated trouser leg.
"I'll fix you something to eat," Joanne said, getting out of bed.
"I'll go out and eat," Mike said. He was sulking.
"Don't be a nut." She almost said 'adolescent.' "I'll be home early."
"Wake me," Mike said, "whatever time it is. I'll be in Paul's room. There's the television."
"It won't be late but if you're asleep I'll wake you," Joanne said, and winked.
Mac seemed quiet and subdued when he picked her up. Joanne knew she sould feel some small glow of triumph, but all she felt was guilty. He acted, she thought, like a puppy right after he's had his nose rubbed in his own puddle. He spoke hardly a word until they'd found a place she liked and had the first martini in front of them.
"We can't go on like this," Mac said. "I can't, anyway."
"It's all in your mind."
"The hell it is," Mac said. He took her hand under the table and pulled it toward him. She freed her hand with a quick tug.
"Stop it, Mac."
"Then stop telling me it's just in my mind."
"Lots of people have fine, adult relationships," she said, "without ever climbing into bed together."
"Name a pair," Mac said. "Well, you don't have to behave as if you were in heat every damn waking minute."
"Well, I am," Mac said. "Every damn sleeping minute, too."
"Me, too," she nearly said. How long could she keep up this phony act? And what was even more delicate, how long would Mac stand for it? It was like walking on a tightrope, without a net. What a high wire act that would make, she thought, screwing in mid-air. The yokels would come from miles around. She had to laugh.
"What's so funny?" Mac wanted to know. "Sex is something to laugh about afterwards. It's pretty serious business, before." He had to smile, himself.
"But it's not tragic," Joanne said. "Let's not make a tragedy out of a little friendly celibacy. It's supposed to be healthy."
"So are cold showers and green, leafy vegetables," Mac said. "I never indulged in any of them."
"I can't explain. Maybe it's just that I like you so much."
"Now, there's an original line," Mac said. "That ranks with, 'you'll hate me afterwards.'"
"I do so like you," she said, defensively, and it was the closest she'd come to the truth with Mac yet.
"Don't tell me it's just you want what every young mother wants."
"What?"
"A plain gold wedding ring."
"Oh, balls," she said, closing her eyes. "That tired old business. Not that I have anything against marriage. I'm just neutral on the subject. But it has worked, for some people."
She looked up as a slender redhead walked by, followed by a tall young man in a seersucker suit, then looked again. Sure enough, it was
Heather, Heather Dell, or Clancy, her name was now. That had to be her husband with her. Joanne knew because she'd been matron of honor at the wedding, had gotten smashed on champagne and had laid the best man in a closet at the reception. Heather didn't know about that.
Joanne slid out from the table.
"It does work for some people," she said again. "Like those people there." She nodded toward Heather and her husband, who had reached the door. Mac turned and looked.
"Excuse me."
Heather's husband was holding the door open when Joanne got to them. Heather looked back. She didn't look any older than she had as a nineteen-year-old, when Joanne had helped her get into the modeling scene.
"Joanne!" Heather said. She was openly pleased. "It's been so long."
"Seems that way," Joanne said. "You look marvelous."
"You too. Too marvelous. You remember Sam?'
"Sure I remember Sam. He had an erection all through the whole solemn ceremony, right up through 'till death do us part!'"
"I hope even death doesn't part it from me," Sam said. He was looking at Joanne, drinking her in.
"You're boasting, Sam," Heather said. "But we do have two kids."
"Where do you live these days?" Joanne asked her.
"In Old Greenwich," Heather said. "We have one of those dismal slum houses, with no swimming pool." She was a startlingly lovely girl, with delicate features and white, almost translucent skin that flushed easily. Her body was slender with high budding breasts and long, slim, exquisitely formed legs. It was difficult to picture her doing anything as indelicate as spreading those legs, even for Sam. And she was a bright, funny girl, and had been a lot of fun to be with.
"Why don't you and Sam come see me some time?" she asked suddenly. "I still have the big old house in Pelham, and I'm rattling around in it by myself most of the time."
"Why," Heather said, and looked at her husband, "that's a wonderful idea. Sam's going to be away next week, and he's leaving the kids with his folks. I can drive down to see you any time. We've got a lot of catching up."
"Call me any time at all," Joanne said. "I'm in the phone book. And you come some other time, Sam."
"I'll drop in some time when Heather is away," he said, grinning, opening the door again.
"Oh no you won't," Heather said and smiled quickly at Joanne. "So long till next week."
"Good night," Joanne said, and walked back to the table, feeling suddenly cheerful.
"The redhead is an old friend of mine," Joanne said to Mac when she was sitting down. "Heather Clancy, now. That was her husband, the man with her."
"How quaint," Mac said.
"Delightful girl."
"I know," Mac said. "I knew her long ago, when she was Heather Dell."
"Why didn't you come over and say hello, for God's sake?"
"Her husband doesn't exactly like me."
"How do you know? Have you ever met him before?"
"Only twice, before they were married."
"Then how come you think he doesn't like you?"
"I don't actually know. I just have a feeling he doesn't."
She gave him a long look, and he dropped his eyes to his empty glass and turned to motion to the waiter.
"Mac," she said, "I think you're probably a terrible bastard."
"Well," Mac said, "I was young once, you know."
They each had three martinis before they ate, and a chilled bottle of Chablis with the lobster, and two stingers instead of coffee. In the car Mac put his arms around her and his open mouth over hers. She kissed him back, her tongue darting, and then she got a grip on herself.
"Please, Mac," she said, "just get me home."
In front of the house there was a re-run of the scene, only this time Mac got a hand behind her and unhooked her bra. He lifted one white globe to his lips and kissed the rising nipple, teasing it more erect with his tongue. One hand slid under her skirt, but she clamped her legs together on his hand and opened the car door. She knew that she was once again sopping wet in the crotch, and if Mac once touched that telltale saturation, she'd never be able to stop him.
"Let's go on inside," he said. "Please, for God's sake."
She looked up and saw the shaft of light slanting from Paul's bedroom-the room with
Mike waiting in it, but Mac would never know that.
"My son's still up, Mac," she said. "I've got to go in right now."
She tore herself away and ran up the walk, hearing the car roar away from the curb behind her. Everything was just as it had been this afternoon, only it was dark now, and she was homier, much hornier, with the liquor inside her, and when for the last three hours she'd been wanting Mac inside her so much it hurt. She dropped her key once and had trouble with the lock, then ran up the stairs inside and raised her skirt, dropping her pants to the floor on the first landing.
The door to her son's room was ajar, throwing light into the hall. She pushed the door wide and stood in the doorway, looking in. The TV was on but the sound was off. Mike was asleep, on his back with a sheet covering him from the navel down. It was a warm night, but Joanne was far warmer than the weather. Screwing with Mike that afternoon had only made her want more.
She went over to the bed and put the tip of her tongue in the boy's navel. She felt him stir, but he didn't open his eyes. She flung the sheet to the foot of the bed and looked down at his cock, hanging loose and long between his legs. She lifted it and rested it on its back, up along his stomach, and bent and ran her open mouth up and down the length of it, tickling the soft underskin with the tip of her tongue.
"Wha?" she heard Mike say. His pecker stirred and started to swell, then rolled and started to raise up.
It didn't come up quite fast enough to suit Joanne. She was almost frantic in her need, and had not even removed her dress, or her shoes, or anything else except the pants she'd discarded on her way up the stairs. She lay down beside Mike and rubbed his belly, then reached down and felt his responding prick. It was alive at last -stiff and hard as a bone, standing at military attention.
"Are you still sleepy?" she asked.
"A little," he said drowsily. "You smell as if you've been drinking."
"Certainly, at dinner. Don't you ever drink?"
"Mostly beer," he said. "Boy, I was knocked out asleep."
"Lie still," Joanne told him. "You don't have to do anything."
She reached down and cupped his balls in her palm, in a tender, maternal gesture, then got to her knees, lifted the light summer dress off over her head, and straddled Mike at the hips.
She lowered herself gently until the head of Mike's straining prick poked against the open wet outer lips of her twat. She let herself down slightly, carefully, not touching his rigid shaft with her hands, until the whole head was inside her, extending her inner lips. Then, inch by inch, she lowered herself on the impaling rod until it was all the way up, deep inside her. She raised herself then, until her inner lips were at the neck of his cock, and squeezed.
"Oh wow," Mike said. His eyes were closed, and he started to raise at the hips, to arch himself deeper into her.
"Just lie still," she said.
She let herself down, so the hard knob of the head of his prick was deep up inside her again. Then she began to fuck him, ever so slowly, lifting herself away from him almost imperceptibly, so her vulva clung to his shaft, like the lips of a mouth, sucking. Then she'd lower herself again, slowly, until he was fully imbedded in her. God, it felt wonderful, that stiff, alive young cock inside her. Delicious. She could practically taste it.
She kept up the motion a long time, sliding up and down slowly, stopping every once in while to squeeze with little contractions of her inner lips. She saw Mike's eyes begin to close, and then she noticed that his limb had lost some of its hardness.
Quickly, she wetted the middle finger of her right hand in her mouth, and reached down behind her. She probed beneath Mike's balls, found the tight tiny entrance between the cheeks, and pushed. Her finger slid in, to the middle knuckle. Mike's eyes popped open, and she could feel his prick become hard as granite again in her slippery lower embrace.
"Now, Mike!" she asked.
She moved her finger deeper and began working it in and out, at the same time sliding up and down his shaft, faster and faster. Mike's hips began to arch, and he pumped upwards, meeting her.
"You know what, Joanne?" Mike said. "I've never been fucked like this before."
"Do you like it?" His hips were pumping. He spoke through clenched teeth.
"I love it," he groaned. "But then I'd love to fuck you every way. Underwater, for instance. Or hanging from a chandelier."
"I'll look for a chandelier," she said. She found that she too was talking through clenched teeth.
She began to ride her hips back and forth then, as well as up and down, and his staunch prick took a terrible beating. His hips kept pumping at her, his prick demanding more, driving deeper. Her clitoris was grinding against the hard mound at the base of his cock, her inner lips contracting, grasping, holding the sliding shaft, and a quivering groan started deep in her throat. She heard Mike groaning too. Their symphony was mounting in a crescendo of inner sound and sensation.
Then she felt herself coming, and it was the best one yet with Mike. Her twat kept tightening and squeezing spasmodically, and her climax went on in a sort of clenching delirium, in waves, over and over. She could hear herself moaning in her agony of delight, but couldn't help herself.
She didn't even know that Mike had come until she lifted up and away from him, and his limp cock made a tiny wet plopping sound as her lips released it.
He moved over and she lay flat beside him, calm at last. The liquor was wearing off, and she felt tired.
"I'll go to my room in a minute," she said. "Sleep now, Mike. You've put in a hard day's work."
"Best I've had to do," Mike said. "What courses do I have to take to make a career of it?"
"You're taking them now," Joanne said. "A little summer tutoring always helps."
"I'll never be a dropout."
CHAPTER FOUR
When she got home late the next afternoon there was a small foreign convertible at the curb in front of the house. While she was going up the walk, looking backward trying to figure out what kind of car it was, she heard the door to the side porch open, and turned to look.
Paul was coming out to greet her. She ran up the steps and hugged him as he put his arms around her and squeezed very hard. Paul was usually about as demonstrative as a bus driver.
"How you makin' it, Mom?-you look groovy."
Joanne was elated. In her memory, Paul had never said a word about how she looked.
"When did you get here?" she asked, and held him away, looking at him.
"Maybe half an hour ago."
"In that car?" She nodded backward toward the little car parked out front.
"Yes."
"How did you get it? You aren't supposed to be driving until you get your junior license."
"It's Penny's. She drove me down here."
"Who is Peggy."
"I told you. She drove me home."
"Oh," Joanne said.
"Don't mention birthdays or anything like that to her. She has an idea that I'm eighteen. I drove most of the trip."
"What made her think you're eighteen?"
"I didn't tell her I was eighteen, not exactly, but she's seventeen, and you know."
She looked at him carefully, seeing all of him. He had to be close to six feet tall now. He was deeply tanned, and his coal-black hair was combed, for a change. His features were calm, almost classic, his skin unblemished. His shoulders were wide, sloping and he was muscular. He might pass for eighteen, or even more, very easily. Joanne felt a twinge of uneasiness about this assured young stranger.
"I guess I understand," she said. "Let's go inside."
"Another thing," Paul said, "can Penny stay here tonight?"
"Certainly; she can sleep in Myrtle's room."
"I thought that would be the best place," Paul said. "She's up there now taking a shower."
"Right now?" Joanne said, shocked. "Alone in this house with you and Mike and taking a shower?"
"Don't be so Victorian," Paul said.
Penny turned out to be something. When she first saw Joanne, she tripped, missing a step but she regained herself easily. She sized Joanne up quickly, not quite hiding her spontaneous envy.
She was a slim, open-faced, blue-eyed blonde -right off the cover of Seventeen, Joanne thought, if one didn't look too closely. She had nice legs and a round little ass. Her breasts were remarkable-buoyant and un-bra'd.
She bent down a lot, Joanne noticed. She was wearing a cotton dress cut low and straight across the front, and when she bent, her breasts swelled into view.
Paul looked, unabashed.
CHAPTER FIVE
Paul began as he sat down alone to breakfast. He had come downstairs long after Mike, and then Penny, had finished eating. "Mom, I have to ask a favor."
"What is it?" she asked warily. With Paul she had learned never to commit herself in advance. He might want her to buy him a hockey team. Or maybe the Rockettes, from what she had heard last night.
"Mike and I need the station wagon." She was acutely aware that he didn't say 'your' station wagon. 'The' made it 'their' property, in Paul's mind.
"Nope," she said, firmly.
"How're we going to get to Westhampton?" Paul asked, plaintively.
"There's Penny's car."
"She has to go home. Christ, what do you think she is, anyway?"
That was a good question, Joanne thought. She'd never seen a girl with so much well-fucked contentment all over her face as Penny had had that morning. She was almost smug about it, and Joanne was furious.
"You're not even old enough to have a driver's license," Joanne said. "I don't want you to drive the station wagon." Paul hunched his shoulders and grimaced when she mentioned his age, and Joanne remembered that he was eighteen, as far as Penny was concerned. Penny. That little bitch of a cradle-snatcher.
"She can't hear," Joanne said. "She's back upstairs."
"Anyway, who said anything about me driving? Mike's a good driver."
"And how am I supposed to do the shopping?" Joanne asked him.
"Gin doesn't take up much room," Paul said unkindly. "You have the Volkswagen."
"Oh, all right," Joanne said. She got her handbag and handed her car keys to Paul. "Don't wrinkle it," she said.
"We thank you," Paul said, and stood up from the table, straddling his chair and stepping over the back of it. He was getting cockier all the time. She wondered if the noisy night upstairs, bouncing in that big old bed with Penny, had anything to do with it.
Now, early in the afternoon, with the kids gone, Joanne was starting to feel lonely. The hell with all there was to do around the house; she'd drop over to the club.
She was a member of the club but not a frequent visitor. She was practically the only single female member under sixty, and the other women did nothing to make her feel welcome.
She got along well with the men, exchanging what used to be known as "good-natured banter," in the Rover Boy books. When they were without their wives, anyway, she got along fine with them. When their wives were with them, the men acted tense, and gave the impression that they wanted to be somewhere else.
So Joanne didn't go to the club often. But today, in her solitude she felt like it. She could just take a dip and soak up some sun, by herself.
She walked slowly in the sun toward the pool, carrying a beach towel over one arm. Joanne's snug white suit was cut high at the hipbones, slashed deep in front. She didn't like bikinis, thought they were indecent, in fact.
There were three conveys of women along the sunny side of the pool. Their conversation stopped when Joanne sauntered past, then started up again, in a different key. Not one of them uttered a word of greeting. Joanne was glad, and even gladder that all the beach chairs on that side of the pool were occupied.
There was an empty chair at one end, near the diving board, and Joanne ambled toward it, passing two men off to one side at the corner of the pool. There was a tiny table between them, supporting tall drinks. The drinks looked good, awfully good. She knew one of the men, Tim something, but the other was new. She passed without speaking.
"That's what I want for Christmas," Tim said, very audibly, as she passed. She liked Tim. He could be funny as all hell.
"How would you like it wrapped?" his friend asked, just as loud.
"Wouldn't," Tim said.
She turned and smiled at him.
"Is your Christmas tree up," she asked, "this time of year?"
"My tree is perpetually up," Tim said. He had a way of laughing at himself, deep in his throat.
"It must be an evergreen," Joanne said, laughing at him. "I might have known, you and your four kids."
"It's ever green for you, sweetheart," Tim said. "Won't you join us?" He dragged up a recliner. She stretched out beside them, smiling.
"You're so gallant," she said. "Could those be Tom Collinses you're drinking?"
"Yes," Tim said. "George is from St. Paul and they go for thinks like that in the provinces."
She smiled her greeting to George.
"I'll have a rickey, if you can find the waiter."
"I think I'll have a rickey, too--It's time to be civilized."
Joanne was still amused by the idea of Tim and his Christmas tree, as the drinks arrived. Tim was a thin youthful man with a sort of boyish joy about him, and she was pleased to be able to talk to him without his wife. George was tall and mild-looking in rimless glasses, and smiled gently but said almost nothing.
"I have trouble with the stand on mine," Joanne said. "Every year, the damn thing tilts further."
"What stand? On what?" Tim asked her. "Christmas tree. Remember."
"Mine doesn't need a stand."
"It stands up straight, all by itself."
"Not exactly straight," Tim said. "It hooks slightly to the left, ever since I had it tattooed."
"Your very own Christmas tree?"
"Call it anything you want."
Joanne laughed happily. The idea of a tattooed pecker pleased her enormously.
"You're such a sentimental soul," she said, "having it tattooed. I bet you blubber when they sing Danny Boy."
"Sure I do," Tim said. "But what's so sentimental about a tattoo?"
"A girl's name, that's what," Joanne said. She looked at him. "like Lil. Or Min. Or maybe Jo."
"You're kidding. If I wanted to use the space, Elizabeth-Esmerelda. Penelope-Lewelyn," he added expansively, and settled back in his chair, motioning the waiter for another round of drinks.
"Then it isn't a name?" Joanne's curiosity about the hypothetical tattoo was unquenched.
"Not at all. I was born on the lower West Side, and all my feelings are for old Gotham."
"Then what's your tattoo?" Joanne persisted.
"New York harbor, naturally. With two Staten Island ferries, one coming in and one going out."
"I admire a man who thinks big," Joanne said.
"On clear days you can see Sandy Hook," Tim said.
Joanne had nothing more to say. She lay back in her chair, smiling, thinking about Sandy Hook.
"I had a tattoo once upon a time," George said, gently. Joanne looked at him for the first time, and realized that he had been humming quietly all through the conversation. He had the same faint bemused smile she had first seen, and his rimless glasses seemed slightly fogged.
"What kind of tattoo, George?" Joanne asked. "Pike's Peak, maybe?"
"Nothing so ostentatious," George said. "A simple seascape, that was all."
"Was? What became of it?"
"It wore off."
Joanne couldn't remember when she's had such a good time. After her fourth drink she got up, walked to the board, and plunged into the pool. She swam to the shallow end and back three times and pulled herself out onto the ledge of the pool without using the ladder. She was pleased she could still do that. When she stood up, her translucent suit glued to her, she noticed the women staring, and tossed her head defiantly. She knew her pussy showed through the suit, and that her nipples were pinkly defined.
Tim and George watched her as she walked back to them and sat down.
"This waiter's awful slow," Tim said, clearing his throat. "Why don't we go home to my place, where the drinks are always on the house?"
"Superb idea," George said.
Joanne had always been careful never to get involved with any of the men at the club, but today she didn't care. She was having a marvelous time.
"I think it's a fine idea, too," Joanne said. "Don't you two want a dip before we leave?"
"Might make my tattoo run," Tim said.
"I never fool around with water," George said, finishing his drink.
"I'll go back to the club first and change," Joanne said.
"Fine. If we all leave together, you can't tell what the neighbors there will think." Tim nodded in the direction of the women stealing glances at them.
"Fuck the neighbors," Joanne said cheerfully.
"What a grisly thought," George said.
Joanne was waiting, dressed in her short cotton shift and high-heeled pumps and nothing else, when they came out on the veranda, looking for her.
"The thought just occurred to me," Joanne said to Tim. "What about your family?"
"They're out in the Hamptons for a couple of weeks."
"My son's out that way, too," Joanne said, standing up. "You have a boy?" Tim said. "You've met him, Paul. Tall. Dark-haired."
"Oh, sure."
"I don't believe it," George said.
Tim's house was a low ranch-type structure set well back from the road. He led them downstairs, to a large, pine-paneled room with a ping-pong table at one end and a bar at the other.
"A room for all generations," Tim said, motioning to the two ends of the room. "Which suits you best?"
"I'm not much for games with tables and balls," Joanne said.
"You don't have to talk dirty," Tim said. "You're a guest in my house." He went behind the bar and started making drinks. Joanne settled herself in a deep leather chair.
"I could settle down for a week in a room like this " she said.
"That's the best idea yet," Tim said. "My wife won't be back till a week from Wednesday."
"I have to fly back to St. Paul tomorrow," George said sadly.
"I wouldn't think of delaying you," Tim said.
"Boys, boys." Joanne took the drink Tim handed her, and sipped. It was stronger than the drinks at poolside.
Two drinks later George was sitting on the carpet in front of her chair, stroking her calves, touching the softness above the inner bend of her knees. Watching them, Tim suddenly put his drink down on the bar and walked behind her. Tentatively, he slipped both hands inside her dress. She didn't try to stop him. He cupped both breasts in his hands and ran his fingers up over the nipples. She could feel them tightening, coming erect.
"You have marvelous legs," George said, and bent forward to kiss one knee.
"Would you like to see more?" Joanne asked. It was a pointless question. The hem of her shift was near the tops of her thighs.
George didn't answer. He looked at her, still smiling that benign smile.
Slowly, winking at him, she raised one knee, swinging her foot from side to side. She raised the knee higher, and moved her leg over until it rested over the arm of the chair. Her skirt rode back toward her hips.
George gazed down the smooth soft inner swell of her thighs to where the soft, dusky-pink lips parted slightly. Joanne slid forward and raised her other leg over the other arm of the chair, opening herself completely to him-pouting, pink, moist.
He began kissing his way up her inner thighs while Tim's hands worked on her breasts, squeezing and kneading, pinching the hard buds of her nipples. Before she had slid forward, Joanne had felt the hard demand of his cock against the back of her neck.
George got to his knees between her legs. The tip of his tongue touched the soft petals of her vulva, and a thrill started through her, the thrill she'd been building toward all afternoon. He reached his hands up around her thighs and opened her further with his fingers. His mouth covered her whole pussy, his tongue probed, and he began to suck. She moaned. Without interrupting him she closed her thighs around his head, and urged his mouth and tongue deeper, pressing her heels against his back.
"Jesus," Tim said, "can't you do something for me?"
She unzipped his fly, and a magnificent cock popped out, long and thick. There was no trace of a tattoo, Joanne noticed. But it definitely did hook to the left. She opened her mouth and began to lick.
Her hips were grinding, her whole being palpitating with joy, but she wanted more. She wanted the sensation to reach deeper, much deeper.
"Tim?" she said, smiling at him with wet lips.
"Don't stop."
"I want it inside me."
Without speaking, Tim nodded at George. They could see only the top of his head and his forehead.
"I can take care of you both at the same time," Joanne said.
"You can show me."
"Is there a double bed upstairs."
"The widest for miles around."
"Let's go."
Joanne put her fingers gently against George's forehead, and he raised his head. His eyes had trouble focusing, without the glasses, and his open mouth was glistening wet.
He smiled, but this time, questioningly.
"We're going upstairs," she said. "I have something in mind for you."
"Sure," George said. He got to his feet. He was still fully dressed, and his seersucker jacket looked so incongruous that Joanne almost laughed aloud.
"The front bedroom?" George said to Tim, and when Tim nodded he turned to the stairs.
"They used to call me the Pathfinder," he said.
He bounded up the stairs.
Joanne followed slowly, leading Tim with her hand around his cock. His finger was exploring her warm wet pussy, when they got to the bedroom.
George stood by the side of the wide bed. He had thrown the spread down, and stood completely naked, his long cock standing out, with a slight curve upwards. It was slim, compared to Tim's thick shaft.
"Find some Vaseline, George," she said.
He was back in moments with a jar of Vaseline. His prick was smeared but unbowed. Joanne pulled off her shift and dropped it to the floor, kicked off her shoes, and got up on the bed on her hands and knees, her lovely white ass elevated.
She was conscious of Tim standing by the far side of the bed, his cock looking angry with the waiting.
"Just one minute, Tim," she said.
George was mounting her. She felt his cock sliding up and down the crevice between her buttocks, seeking an entrance. She reached around with one hand and guided the eager head to her welcoming hole. George pushed, and the head slid inside. Then, with one strong thrust, he imbedded his spear deep, far up inside her, his stomach flat against her cheeks, his balls bumping the soft underfolds of her cunt. She groaned in pleasure.
"Hold it right there, George," she said. George didn't have to be told. His hands at her hips held the connection tight.
Together, they rolled over on their sides, and Joanne raised her top leg, opening her cunt for Tim. He lay on his side, and guided the head of his long cock to the swollen, open warm lips. They seemed to engulf it. She felt the huge prick slide up into her, bearing against the stiffness of George's staff, with only a thin wall of membrane between the two parallel sliding shafts.
When Tim was imbedded to the hilt, he and George started to withdraw slowly, in unison, until only the heads remained inside her-Tim's held by the inner lips of her insatiable cunt, George's by the tight constriction of her stretched asshole. Then they plunged, simultaneously, driving deeply inside her.
For a quivering moment, Joanne thought she was going to faint.
"More," was ah she could groan.
They gave her more, driving into her with a slow rhythm that made her think wildly of waves breaking on a beach. Again, again, again, they pounded up into her, in exquisite unison, their balls making slapping sounds against each other and against the tiny pink stretch of flesh between her open orifices.
She didn't want it to end, not ever. She reached the edge of orgasm once, came off it in shuddering spasms, and came again, and again, and then found herself in one perpetual, open-end orgasm. She heard the sound of groans and screams but was not conscious of making the sounds herself. Along with the slow rhythm of waves, she had the sensation of being underwater.
"Now, George?" she heard Tim say, from way of. The rhythm increased, and she clenched her jaws to keep from screaming out her agony of delight.
Even the new rhythm was kept up for a long time, with Joanne staying at a plateau of orgasm-and when they did come, shooting their juices inside her simultaneously, she came too. She shuddered, again and again, as the inner spasms kept up, tearing at her insides.
They stayed inside her, as little by little the spasms subsided. When she was completely limp, they withdrew, slowly, gently, lovingly.
"Oh, my," Tim said, rolling over on his back.
"I'm late for choir rehearsal," Joanne said, with her eyes closed.
"St. Paul," George said, "was never like this."
It was a memorable night for Joanne. For Tim and George, too.
George looked weary when he left to catch the plane to St. Paul in the morning.
But his smile was as benign as ever.
CHAPTER SIX
On Saturday morning, Mac called. She had been worrying about Mac. She thought she might have tried his patience beyond the breaking point.
"I am so glad you called," she said. "I thought maybe something had happened."
"Nothing happens to me," Mac said. "Did I get you out of bed?"
"I've been up since dawn. I'm hip deep in housework." She wasn't, but she would be. Any minute now.
"Can you have dinner with me Monday night?"
Monday? She thought for a moment. "Love to."
"See you at Mario's. Around sk-thirty."
She had a better thought.
"Mac?"
"Still here."
"Why don't you drive out here for dinner? We can broil a steak out back, and sit around and listen to jazz records. You've never heard my collector's items."
"You're right," Mac said. "I never have."
"Get here early, while it's light. We can have a leisurely cocktail hour. A leisurely, al fresco cocktail hour."
"All al fresco means to me is grass stains on the elbows," Mac said.
"There you go," she said, "you and your one-track mind. Anyway, there's no need for grass stains."
"You're sounding much better," Mac said. "But I thought you said Paul was home."
"He was, for one night. But he's away now. I don't expect him home for a few days."
"Good," Mac said.
"I don't know if it is so good. I never know where he is, or what's going on in his head."
"Who does, with kids? They turn out all right."
"That isn't all," Joanne said. "He has a girl."
"You mean you think he's getting laid."
"I know it."
"What's so wrong about that?"
"Well," Joanne said, "he isn't sixteen yet."
"When you were going on sixteen . . . "
"Never mind," Joanne said. "That's different."
"I know. Because you were a girl."
"I was older at his age."
"Sure," Mac said.
"Anyway, I wish you'd talk to him, sometime."
"About screwing?"
"Not that, you jackass," she said. "But I think it's time a man talked with him. He doesn't tell me a thing."
"This is the first time anyone ever thought of me as an advisor to the young," he said. "It chokes me up."
"You know something, Mac?"
"No, what?"
"I think maybe I love you."
"I'll be a son of a bitch," Mac said.
Sunday night Joanne had one of her infrequent attacks of insomnia, and smoked and read all through the night. It was almost dawn when she fell asleep.
She was in a deep sleep when the phone by her bedside awakened her. She glared at the clock. It was a quarter to eleven. She had a vague notion that she ought to be somewhere, but she couldn't think where. She lifted the phone.
"Salvation Army," she said. "Joanne?" a female voice said. "This is Heather."
"Well," Joanne said, still foggy. "How's everything?"
"I'm fine. And free as a lark. I just packed Sam and the kids off to his folks."
"That makes both of us," Joanne said, feeling for cigarettes. "Free as two larks."
"We talked about a visit, remember? I thought I'd take a drive down this afternoon."
"Marvelous," Joanne said, holding the phone to her ear as she put her head back on the pillow. "Get here this afternoon and we'll go out to the club." She went back to sleep.
It was around one when she woke again. She padded downstairs in a bathrobe and while she was making coffee she happened to glance at a calendar on the kitchen wall, and realized suddenly what day it was. Monday. Mac was coming to dinner.
She ran to the phone but had to get Heather's number through information. When the call finally went through, she started counting the rings. She hung up after fourteen. Heather was on her way and there was nothing she could do about it.
She could call Mac at the office. No, he'd be out to lunch now, she knew, and what was she going to say to him, anyway? Don't come, because I've been a bubble-headed idiot and an old girlfriend is going to be here for a few days? An old girlfriend of Mac's, too, she was sure. They'd make a happy trio during the cocktail hour--Mac with the hots for her, and her with the hots for Mac, and Heather sitting there, the old friend, the suburban matron. Suburban matrons undoubtedly had the hots, too, Joanne thought gloomily, with their husbands away. A mess she'd cooked up. Whatever she came up with, she'd sure messed up her plans for Mac that evening. And Mac's plans for her. How long would he put up with the frustration?
She had her coffee, took a shower and was reasonably composed by the time Heather drove up.
Heather looked wonderful, Joanne had to admit, as she watched the redhead slide out of the car. She was mostly legs, like a colt. Her bright hair shone in the sun, making the whiteness of her skin the more startling.
"We're having a small dinner party tonight," she told Heather, as she helped her get the bags out of the trunk. "On account of my confusion with calendars."
"What do you mean?" Heather asked.
"Instead of you and I have a tete-a-tete tonight it's going to be a tete-a-tete-a-tete. A few days ago I invited Mac Corby to come out here for dinner. Monday, I said-and just a little while ago I realized that today is Monday."
Joanne saw a look of stark shock, then confusion, on Heather's mannequin features. But the girl recovered quickly.
"Don't let me get in the way," she said. "It's easy enough for me to drive back to Old Greenwich. I can drop down later in the week."
"Don't be silly," Joanne said. "We'll have a fine time. Don't you want to see Mac again?"
"Yes, but it's been such a long time."
"There's nothing like an intimate little triangle of friends," Joanne said.
They had a lot of talking to do, and Joanne forgot about the evening ahead during the ride to the club. But when they were walking along the edge of the swimming pool, she spotted the solution to the puzzle.
Tim was sitting in his usual chair, alone. He looked up as they approached, eyed the redhead walking at Joanne's side, and leered.
"This is too much for a fella with a weak heart," Tim said.
"This is my mother," Joanne said. With that skin and that leggy form, Heather looked about eighteen. "Her name is Heather. Heather, meet Tim."
"I'm going right in for a dip," Heather said. She headed for the diving board, and Tim got up and dragged over two more beach chairs.
"A lesser girl than you would be jealous," Tim said. "She's really lovely."
"How's your Christmas tree?" Joanne asked.
"The needles are dropping off."
"Tim, you can help me out of an awkward situation, if you will."
"Anything," he said.
"Come over and join us for dinner tonight."
"Can't think of anything better," Tim said. "What's awkward?"
"When I asked Heather to come down today I forgot that I'd invited a man friend for dinner."
"So?" Tim said.
"He happens to have been a boyfriend of Heather's, way back. She's married now, naturally.
"Naturally," Tim said.
"So you'd make it a party if you came."
"I'll be Heather's date, the lucky girl."
"You get the idea. And, Tim?"
"Yes?"
"This is a polite suburban patio party. Nothing horizontal, you understand."
"Certainly I understand. On normal social occasions I am the almost-perfect gentleman. Fats Fauntleroy, they call me."
Joanne had to laugh. Tim was probably the skinniest man she'd ever seen.
Heather came up to them from the pool, sleek and glistening in her flesh-colored suit.
"You know something?" Tim said, "you're enough to make me go back on my vows."
"What vows?" Heather asked, reaching for a towel.
"Any damn vows," Tim said. Home from the club, Joanne tried to call Mac at the office, but it was too late; he'd already left for the day. Joanne had just finished showering and dressing when she saw Mac's Jaguar pulling in to the curb. She ran downstairs and outside to meet him.
He was carrying a dozen long-stemmed roses. Joanne took them and smelled them.
"They're lovely," she said. "Mac?" She made no move to start inside.
"What's the matter?"
"I made a mess," she said. "When I asked you out I forgot I'd invited Heather Dell to spend a few days. She's here."
"Heather?" Mac said. She had expected him to be angry but he seemed to be amused.
"I invited a neighbor to join us, so you won't have two girls on your hands."
"I don't mind," Mac said. "I'm in favor of neighbors, too."
Heather was coming down the stairs as they came in the door. Joanne had elected to wear skin-tight slacks and a blouse as appropriate for outdoor drinking and cooking. Heather had chosen to wear a dress-a short, summer dress that make her look like a teenager. At least she isn't wearing a ribbon in her hair, Joanne thought. Her skin was dazzlingly white against the bright burnished copper of her hair. She was incredibly lovely, Joanne had to admit. Mac was staring at her. The bitch, Joanne thought.
Heather hesitated at the foot of the stairs, then took two swift steps and put her arms around Mac. He leaned and kissed her on the cheek.
"It's been a long time," she said, looking up at him.
"A few moons," he said. "You're prettier than ever."
"I'm going to get a vase for these roses," Joanne said. "And stir us a martini."
"A wonderful bit of thinking," Mac said. "If there's anything I like it's a practical girl."
"I'll practical-girl him," Joanne thought.
When she came back to the living room, carrying a tray with the tall pitcher of martinis, they were sitting across from each other, not talking. After all those years, Joanne thought, they ought to have something to say. She put the tray down on the coffee table. When they'd gotten back from the club, she'd put the glasses in the freezing compartment, and now a frost had formed on the crystal stemware. Joanne thought that she'd never seen glasses that looked so inviting.
"You pour, Mac, she said. "I hate to spoil good gin."
"I bet you never spilled a drop in your life," he said. "But HI pour."
He came over to the coffee table and poured the martinis lovingly, holding the ice back in the pitcher with the stirring rod. He handed a brimful glass to Heather without spilling a drop, another to Joanne, and held his own at eye level, looking at it with deep affection.
"To old times," he said, glancing at Heather.
"I'm not sure I want to drink to that," Joanne said, pretending to smile.
"To tomorrow, then."
"That's better," Joanne said, and took a long sip.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Tim arrived, carrying a bottle of gin, while they were still on the first martini.
"A gift that gurgles," he said, handing Joanne the brown-wrapped package.
"You shouldn't have," she said.
"I have a sick fear of running out of gin. I always carry a bottle with me, wherever I go."
"You've met Heather."
"I sure have," Tim said, and smiled at her. Joanne noticed that he couldn't help glancing at Heather's legs.
"This is Mac Corby. Tim Hammond."
Mac stood up to shake hands.
Joanne went to the kitchen, brought back another chilled glass, and poured it full.
"It's nothing but ice water," Joanne said. "I'll stir up a fresh batch."
"Nourishing ice water," Tim said, sipping. He sat down on the couch alongside Heather.
"How are you at charcoal-broiling steaks?" Joanne asked him. "I can do them but for some reason men don't like to see women cooking over charcoal. It emasculates them, or something."
"I feel the other way," Mac said. "I'm afraid of standing too close."
"You wouldn't have to stand so close," Heather said.
Mac just looked at her. So did Joanne. She was furious. Heather never had been able to handle much liquor, but now she'd had only half a martini.
"I don't react that way when I'm cooking steak," Tim said. "And I don't like to brag, but people come from miles around."
"You're appointed," Joanne said.
"I'm glad that's settled," Mac said, getting up. "HI make the drinks."
Heather became more animated by her second drink, and started telling stories about her stint as a model. Joanne was glad she didn't start some dreary domestic ritual, about husband and children; it would have spoiled the mood. Joanne had forgotten how funny Heather could be when she wanted to, and her annoyance with her disappeared. So Heather and Mac had done a little friendly fucking, years ago. So? It was going to be her turn very soon.
Heather's long, slim legs seemed to be flashing all the time, as she crossed and re-crossed them, but every time Joanne was near Mac his hand stroked the roundness of the globes under the tight slacks. Once, when no one was looking, his hand slid up between her legs and pushed briefly. She didn't move away.
On the third martini, they went outside and Tim started the charcoal going. Joanne would have been happy to put off eating indefinitely, but she was afraid Heather would be out like a burned-out bulb for the evening.
They had one more martini while Tim was broiling the steak, and then they ate, helping everything along with burgundy.
When they'd finished eating, they lay back in their chairs, content.
'Til make coffee," Joanne said, getting up.
"Not for me," Mac said. "I don't want to spoil the way I feel right now."
Joanne had a flash. A brilliant flash. The martinis were still singing in her veins.
"Who'd like a stinger?" she said.
"Great," Heather said, out of the darkness.
"Christ," Mac said.
"I'm all for it." Tim was for anything.
Mac went inside with her. She had an unopened bottle of Marten's she'd been saving, and she knew there was a half-full bottle of white cr�me de menthe in the back of a lower shelf.
"Heather will wind up on her ass," Mac said.
"Maybe not. She used to have remarkable recuperative powers."
"The hell with her. Tim looks like he can take care of her."
"I'm sure of it," Joanne said, measuring the cognac into a shaker. Mac put his arms around her from behind and cupped her breasts in his hands. She felt her nipples rising, and leaned back. She became acutely aware of a great hardness growing against the swell of her ass. She heard the back door open.
"Heather decided," Tim said, from the doorway, "that stingers should be an indoor drink."
"Heather is right," Joanne said, and led the way into the living room, carrying the shaker.
She turned and started to shake the drinks. Tim and Mac stood still, smiling, watching her breasts bobbing up and down under her thin blouse.
Heather sat down at one end of the couch, letting her legs sprawl. At her crotch, curling out from under the black strip of her panties, was a wisp of silken hair. Tim had seen it, too, Joanne was sure. He sat on the floor by the couch and put a hand on Heather's slender ankle.
Mac got glasses from the kitchen and they finished their first stingers quickly. Much too quickly. Nobody was saying anything and there was a distinct tension in the air. When Joanne came back with the second batch of drinks, Tim's hands were on Heather's calves, and he was kissing the inside of one knee.
Joanne could stand it no longer.
"Since stingers are an indoor drink," she said, "I'm going to climb into some indoor clothes."
She ran up the stairs and stripped off her slacks, blouse, and bra. She wore no pants. She got a summer minidress from the closet and slipped it over her head, with nothing underneath. In her red pumps, she walked slowly downstairs.
When she entered the living room Tim and Mac stared at her, hard. The dress came halfway to her knees but they both knew that there was nothing underneath. My incandescent cunt, she mused happily. It gets to them every time.
Mac had never even seen it. She went over to the couch and sat down beside Heather, her skirt high on her thighs, her knees together.
Mac was sitting on a hassock, directly in front of her. Leaning forward to pick up her stinger, she let her knees come apart. When she leaned back she lifted one foot up to the coffee table, her knee high, giving Mac an unobstructed view. He licked his lips. She moved her knee back and forth slowly, closing and opening her cunt for Mac to admire.
"See anything you like, Mac?" she asked.
"Upstairs," he said thickly.
"What's wrong with here?"
He dropped to his knees in front of her, reached under her, and gathered the whole soft mass of her cunt into his hungry mouth. As his tongue dug deep into her, Joanne twisted away from him and got to her feet. She was suddenly frantic to have him inside her. After all this time, she wanted him immediately, this second, right now.
Mac was staring at her in astonishment.
"Upstairs, Mac, where we can do this right. I want you inside me. Jesus, how I want you inside me."
She was tugging his hand as she led him toward the stairs. She was dimly aware of the spread of Heather's long white legs and the back of Tim's brown head bobbing between them, but she couldn't have cared.
They stumbled up the stairs, and got to her bedroom somehow. Joanne turned on the lamp by the bed, kicked off her shoes, and pulled her dress off. She dropped it, jumped into the middle of the big bed, and lay impatiently with her head on the pillow, watching Mac get out of his clothes.
He was undressing as fast as possible; it took him only a few seconds, but it was an eternity to Joanne. Still wearing shorts, with the left leg bulging, he rolled onto the bed beside her.
When he leaned over her, she opened her mouth hungrily, and her tongue sprang to meet his. His hands roamed the tender surface of her back, feasted on the warm swell of her buttocks, teased and caressed the back of her legs, her inner thighs. He unglued his mouth from hers, tongued the inside of her ears, biting the lobe. He kissed the side of her neck, her throat, while his hands kept moving over the whole quivering surface of her body, caressing, squeezing, stroking, pinching. His mouth moved down to the waiting globes of her breasts, and his lips caught first one hard nipple, then the other.
Without taking his mouth from her breast, he rolled slightly, raised his hips, and with one hand shoved his shorts down to his feet and kicked them off.
Joanne looked down. Her eyes widened, like the eyes of a little girl on her first roller coaster ride.
His cock was immense. Joanne pushed against Mac's shoulder, getting him to He flat on his back, so she could feast her eyes on his tremendous balls. She leaned over on one elbow, to study them closely, to tease herself with the sight of the mammoth instrument that would soon torment her. She reached out and put one hand around the base of the shaft, as far as her fingers reached. It was far thicker than her wrist. She put her other hand around it, like kids choosing sides around the handle of a baseball bat. The entire neck of the shaft, with its collar of soft skin, was still exposed above her gripping hands, and above that, the giant head swelled upwards, the eye in the center staring unwinkingly at the ceiling. The head was as big, as smooth, as hard, as shiny as an apple.
She was filled with a pounding excitement.
Any woman in her right mind, she thought, would be scared out of her wits the first time she saw that giant, but Joanne was anything but frightened. In all that thirsting wetness of the chasm between her thighs, the way she felt now, she could easily engulf it.
Mac's middle finger was slipping back and forth across the swollen tenderness of her clitoris, and her legs spread wider, all by themselves, it seemed, as her hips began to undulate.
"Now?" Mac asked.
"Now," Joanne said. "Now, please."
He got to his knees between the wide V of her legs, and she reached out to take the hard shiny head between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand, guiding the great rocket toward the waiting lips of her cunt. With the head firmly lodged in the soft embrace of her outer twat, she removed her guiding fingers, and Mac took over.
He launched the massive rocket slowly, with an almost imperceptible forward thrust of his hips. She groaned as the great prick slid along inside her deep slippery channel of sensation, widening the walls. When the shaft was imbedded half way, Joanne felt full, stuffed, complete, and Mac stopped his forward progress.
"Do you want any more?" he asked. He was leaning over her with his weight on his elbows, his face over hers. He looked concerned and she realized that he wasn't simply teasing. From the outside, she knew, her pussy still had that young, dewy, delicate appearance that had fooled so many men.
"I want all of it, Mac," she said, looking up into his eyes. "Every long, thick, hard, juicy fucking inch."
Mac's shaft continued its deepening journey.
Joanne raised her knees to spread them wide with her hands. Mac made one long, plunging downward thrust, the pelvic bone at the base of his cock ground to a halt in her tangled wet hair, and the entire hardness was deep inside her. The head, she thought, had to be up past her ribs somewhere. Her throat seemed all clogged up. She couldn't have talked if she'd wanted to.
She embraced his hips with her legs, her feet hooked tightly behind him. Slowly, he slid the shaft out until only the head remained between her clutching inner lips, held it there for a long moment, then sank it deep into her again in one long, sure stroke. She gasped, and her hips rose to push her tight against the base of his shaft.
"Fuck me hard, Mac," she said through clenched teeth. "Fuck me a way I've never been fucked before."
Mac began to fuck her then with a slow, steady rhythm, driving the entire length of his giant cock deep into her with every stroke, and her hips joined his timing, bringing her up to greet his every in-stroke, grasping and holding and clutching wetly at the thick shaft with his out-strokes. His hand found its way under her lifting buttocks, and his middle finger slid into her asshole. Her sphincter muscle loosed, and his finger penetrated to the hilt, sliding back and forth against the outer wall of her vagina, tickling through the wall of membrane at the bottom of his own invading organ.
They fucked in exquisite harmony for a long, long time-Joanne could not have guessed whether it was five minutes or five hours or five days-and she wanted it to go on forever, but she could not keep her excitement from climbing steadily toward a peak. She knew Mac was controlling himself, and would wait for her orgasm before he let himself explode.
Gradually, Mac started to pick up the stroke, not shortening the thrust, but making it swifter, harder, more demanding. Soon she was in a crazed frenzy, crying out so endlessly. Then she screamed, and her body went rigid as she came once, twice, again, as Mac's juices spurted inside her. Her eyes were closed, but she saw skyrockets, then a great wall of red, as the spasms hammered in diminishing waves at her insides.
Mac waited until she was completely limp before he pulled out. His slackened prick made a soft, plopping sound, like a wet cork being pulled out of the neck of a bottle. She got cigarettes from the bedside table and lighted one for each of them. Mac smoked in silence, and she was almost through her cigarette before she said anything.
"When I think," she said, "that I've been stalling you all these weeks."
"Why did you? I could have wound up in a padded cell."
"I told you once, and it sounded childish. I like you much too much. 'Like' isn't the word I mean."
"I still don't understand."
"I figured once you'd made it you'd lose interest. I'd come to the sad day when I knew I'd never see you again."
"You're nuts. I could no more stop being with you than I could stop breathing."
"I love to hear that."
"It's the truth."
Gently, she squeezed the limp shaft between his legs.
"You mean that first time isn't the last time?" 'Not by a few thousand times," he said.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Everybody went home in the morning. Heather, Tom and, regretfully, Mac. She had a full schedule of appointments in town, at studios and on a beach location, and didn't see Mac. She was in a state of delirium, anyway.
It was three-thirty in the afternoon on Wednesday when she got back to the house. Paul's Gladstone bag stood at the foot of the stairs, in an ideal place to be tripped over. She shoved it against the wall with her foot. At last he's home, she thought. Thank heaven for that. She climbed the stairs swiftly.
The door to his room was ajar, and she glanced in. He was stretched out nude on the bed, lying on his side, facing the windows, his back toward her. She thought he was asleep, but he had heard her coming up the stairs.
"Is that you, Mom?" he said, without rolling over.
"In person," she said, pushing the door wide and going into the room. She sat down on the edge of the bed, looking at his smooth tanned back.
She reached out and traced the line of his spine with one finger. His skin twitched at her touch.
"That feels funny," he said.
She began making small circles on his back, lightly, with the tips of the fingers of both hands. She hadn't done that to him since he was a little boy.
"That tickles," he complained.
She kept it up, savoring the texture of his satiny bronzed skin against her fingertips. "Don't do that, hey, Mom."
"I used to do this to you, when you were little."
"But I'm not little any more."
She kept up the stroking, with the tips of her fingers, but somehow the motion had become more of a caress.
"Please," Paul said, "cut it out."
"What for?" she said.
"Oh, for Pete's sake," Paul said, and suddenly rolled over onto his back.
Joanne gasped. His penis, stiff as a hammer handle, stood straight up. Her little boy, she thought, good God. It was long and thick. A vein running up one side pulsed.
She tried to get her voice under control, to speak, but she couldn't. She found herself staring into Paul's eyes. He didn't break the stare.
"Well," he said, "see what you've done?"
"I do," she said. She was still staring into his eyes, but even as she stared she could see his stiff, throbbing organ pulsing upward toward the ceiling.
"Well?" he said. This time, a question.
Without thinking, without a will of her own, as if in a dream, Joanne felt herself lifting her shift up over her head, slipping out of her pants. She was wearing no bra.
Paul dropped his eyes to her body. She was astride him now, on her knees.
"Jesus, you're beautiful," Paul said.
Without a second's hesitation, then, she took the straining hard head of his cock and inserted it between the warm wet open lips of her burning twat. Slowly, keeping her mind a blank, her body receptive only to sensation, she slid down the whole length of his rigid shaft, until it was imbedded in her to the hilt. Then she leaned forward until her breasts were mashed against his hard chest, and brought her legs together, between his, closing her cunt around his straining prick, capturing it, making it her own.
Now, with her whole weight on him, her lower lips imprisoning his rod at an angle almost parallel to his own body, Paul began to drive it up into her, thrusting with a fury she had never felt before. She felt her own hips responding, in some insane rhythm that seemed to match Paul's crazed plunging.
She heard him gasping with every stroke, and she got her fingernails behind his shoulders, scratching, tearing, but it was nothing to the tearing that she felt at her insides.
There was no telling how long it went on, but suddenly she was screaming, and then crying, and her orgasm was pounding her insides apart. Then she felt Paul coming, in a series of blasting gushes, and then he lay very still.
Minutes later, she rolled away from him and left the room. She didn't say a word. Neither did Paul
CHAPTER NINE
In her own room, Joanne closed the door and lay face down on her bed, waiting for the pounding of her insides to subside. She lay very still, trying to stay numb, trying not to think, but the pounding diminished very slowly. It seemed to have a number of resources for its pitiless pulse. Pure physical excitement, emotional turmoil, and something very much like nausea.
When her inner torment had finally stilled, Joanne reached for the phone. She was grateful to find that she could dial without the handicap of a palsied hand. She was aware that she was very close to going all to pieces.
Mac answered on the first ring. Thank God, Joanne thought. I'd wind up in a sobbing heap if I had to go through a playful conversation with one of those bright young secretaries.
"I've got to see you, Mac," she said.
"Something wrong?"
"I can't tell you right now. I'm all mixed up. And please don't ask me to tell you, right off, when I see you."
"I won't ask you anything."
"When I'm ready, I'll tell you." She hoped she could postpone that time forever.
"When do you want to get together?"
"Right away, quick. As fast as I can get that car into town."
"I'll be in Mario's in an hour."
"Not Mario's. At your apartment."
"Anything you say." He told her the address, enunciating carefully.
"I should be there around six," she said, "if the traffic isn't too heavy."
"You shouldn't even drive, the way you sound."
"Don't worry. I'll get there in one piece."
"That's better," Mac said. 'Til be waiting."
When Mac opened the door for her, she stepped inside, pushed the door shut with her back, and put her arms around him swiftly, clasping her hands together behind him. She squeezed herself to him in a frenzy of rehef.
"Hold me, Mac," she said. "Just hold me tight."
He held her, pressing her close, her breasts mashed against his rib cage. She knew he could feel her heart pounding. When the pounding slowed, he touched her chin, lifted her head up, and kissed her gently.
"What's the trouble?" he asked.
"I can't tell you, right now." She took her arms away from around his back and clutched his hand, tugging him toward the open door of what had to be the bedroom.
"Just come with me," she said. "To bed. Right this minute."
It was a double bed. Of course Mac would have a double bed. She pulled her dress off, stepped out of her slip and pants in one motion, discarded her bra. She saw Mac watching her. He was not undressing.
"You're lovely," he said. She was standing naked. Her breasts felt swollen, the nipples darkening and pointing upward.
"Please, Mac," she said. "Right away."
"It's rape," Mac said. Then she saw by the look on his face that he knew it was not the time for jokes. He undressed swiftly. When he was completely nude Joanne was still standing at the side of the wide bed.
"Lie down," Joanne said. "On your back, please."
He stretched out, looking at her. His penis, long even in repose, lay inert like a garden hose.
She knelt on the bed beside him and kissed him on the mouth, her own mouth open, her tongue darting in to find his. Their tongues met, entwined, wrestled wetly until Joanne broke the embrace to insinuate her tongue into his ear. She began to kiss and lick her way down his body, kissing and licking at his chin, his neck, the hollow of his collarbone, the stiffening puckered dark skin of his nipples. She reamed his navel with her tongue, and drew a thin, moist line down the middle of his belly, using her tongue as an artist does his brush.
Her cheek bumped into something hard, like a tree trunk. She turned her head and looked up, her heart pumping faster. At the top of the great shaft was the rocklike knob, the big shiny red apple, the apple of her eye.
She changed her position, getting to her knees between his legs, and began to lick her way up the soft skin that sheathed the underside of his granite-hard cock, wetting it with broad loving strokes of her tongue. Mac lay very still, and she could feel his eyes on her, watching the workings of her tongue, her mouth.
When she got to the head, she hesitated for a second. She opened her mouth wide and enclosed the whole gleaming head. Mac sighed gently, as her tongue tickled his satiny under-folds.
Joanne had gone as far as she could, she knew, or her pussy would drown in its own juices. She got to her knees, straddling his legs, and moved forward up his body.
She raised one leg, as if mounting a horse, and fitted the prick into the wet folds of her cunt. She held herself erect, then, and rode down the entire length of the oaken shaft.
It filled her completely. Reamed her. Cleansed her. All at once, every lingering whisper of Paul's young invasion was driven away.
"Ah, Mac," she said, and began her long, perpendicular, shuttling trip to paradise. Up and down, up and down. Mac clasped his hands behind his head and smiled.
There was no way for her to measure time, no way to count the thousands of trips she made, but it was getting dusk outside when she knew the time had come. Mac was miraculous. His monument was as upright as it had been at the beginning.
"Now?" Joanne said. "Can you come."
"Sure, can you?"
"I can not," she moaned, and as she said it, Mac's warm juices were spurting inside her, and she was coming, and coming, and coming.. .
When she woke it was dark in the room, but there was a light slanting through the open door. Mac was not in bed. She got up and found him sitting in a leather chair in the living room, naked, smoking a cigarette.
"I woke up a minute ago," he said, "and had to get up to make sure I was still alive."
"You damn near killed me," she said tiredly. She let herself down onto the arm of his chair.
"You almost killed me," Mac said. "But it is the only way to die."
He lit her cigarette for her.
"Mac?"
"Urn."
"I want to go to California with you. You told me you were thinking of taking a job out there."
He looked at her for a long moment.
"The only thing that's been keeping me here is you."
"Can I find work out there?"
"If you want to work, but what about Paul?"
She stood up, walked to the window, and looked out without seeing anything.
"He's going back to school next week," she said. "I can send him the money he'll need. He's old enough now to take care of himself."
"How about your house?"
"I'll put it up for sale, with a real estate agent."
"Well," Mac said, "I can be ready to go by the end of the week."
"So can I."
"We'll take the Jaguar."
She turned and grinned at him.
"You might get arrested."
"What for?"
"Remember the Mann Act?"
"Balls," Mac said. He put out his cigarette in an ashtray, taking a long time in the act.
"You know something?" he said. "We could even stop somewhere, like in Maryland, and make the whole trip legal."
She looked out the window again, without seeing anything. She took a long while to answer him, and kept her back to him when she did. There was nothing sadder-looking on a girl than runny eye makeup.
"There's an old-fashioned word for you, Mac," she said at last.
"What's that?"
"Corny."
"That's me," Mac said. "Corny."
He got up to stand at the window beside her.
BOOK TWO
CHAPTER TEN
"Would you like to sleep with my roommate?" Vivian asked.
It should have been a rhetorical question, Paul Porteus knew, but it wasn't. Not from Vivian, it wasn't. She was a bundle of surprises, especially when he was driving. They were on their way back from a Saturday afternoon football game and he was aware that Vi would like nothing better than for him to have a small lapse at the wheel and dent his gleaming, flawless 1941 Buick Phaeton, his mother's profound gift to him on his eighteenth birthday. Paul Porteus kept his cool. He also kept his eye straight ahead on the road. Vi had a hatful of distracting tricks she could do with that lithe, leggy body.
"Minette?" Paul asked, looking ahead at the line of swiftly moving traffic.
"Of course, Minette. She's the only roommate I have."
"Why do you ask?"
"Because she'd like to sleep with you."
"You can talk clearer than that."
"Minette would like to fuck you," Vi said. Paul kept his eyes on the road. His hands were steady on the steering wheel.
"I'm flattered," he said. "How come you know?" He was stalling, feeling his way, not quite sure what to say next. Minette looked to him like the liveliest, most mouth-watering little cunt in the whole sorority house. Outside of Vivian. But there was nothing little about Vi.
"She said so," Vi said. "Any time, any where."
"Would you like it if I did?"
"I wouldn't like it," Vi said. "I wouldn't like it if you just sneaked off someplace and did it. But if I could be there, it would be kind of exciting to watch."
He was passing a red MG with the top down, and for once felt no sense of gratification at the look of open envy in the eyes of the driver.
"Fucking never was a spectator sport," he said.
"Who said anything about being a spectator?" Vi said, moving closer to him on the wide green leather seat. "You could do me with your mouth or something while you were fucking her."
"Jesus," he said. "You've been mulling this over in your mind, haven't you?"
"Yes," Vi said.
He felt her hand moving onto his lap.
"Your roommate, Minette," Paul said, trying to concentrate on the traffic, "sounds like she's out of her whole head. Is she some kind of virgin?"
"What's that word mean, virgin?" Vi asked.
"You don't have to talk Middle Ages just because you drive this mint-condition stagecoach."
He tried to move away from her hand but it was too late. Her fingers touched the hardness of his swelling shaft.
"Ho," she said. "The Porteus pecker is ready again." The tips of her fingers drummed a loving beat up and down the side of it, against the stretched trouser leg. He squirmed, fitting his back more firmly against the seat. Goddamn this Vi. Goddamn this screwed-up traffic.
He pushed her hand away, diplomatically. She put her hand right back.
"Listen," he said, hoping to change the subject, "don't knock this car."
"Why shouldn't I? It's handsome, all right, and it smells nice and leathery inside, but it's as conspicuous as a nun in a whorehouse. Besides, it was at least ten years old when you were born, for God's sake."
"You know about as much about automobiles as you know about nuns. Or cathouses." Her hand still touched his rigid limb. Not moving, not clutching, just there. "My mother knew what she was doing when she got me this car." He wondered where she'd been able to find it. Nobody had to give him a snapshot of what she'd probably done to get it.
"How do you mean, she knew what she was doing?"
"Well." Jesus, this girl had to have everything explained. "Did you see that couple in the MG we passed a while ago? And all the couples in the Mustangs and Cougars and Triumphs and every other little bucket-seat modern monstrosity?"
"Well?" There was some enlightenment in her tone but her hand stayed where it was.
"What do you suppose they do when they get a case of the hurry hots?"
"You mean if they can't go to a motel?"
"Yes."
"Hand job, I suppose," she said. "But most of them probably get off the road into the woods, this time of year."
"Damn right," Paul said. "Right this minute they're pounding the fall foliage flat all the way from here to Northampton."
"Now I understand," she said. "In this lovely, wonderful 1812 Buick, with these great big wide uninterrupted seats, we've got a motel all our own, just you and me. On wheels."
"You got it," Paul said.
"Just you and me," she said, and took her hand away from his pecker. "Or just you and whoever you happen to be with."
"Vi, for Christ's sake," he said.
After a moment, she moved over and leaned her head against his shoulder, and the clean smell of her long, tawny-blonde hair filled his nostrils. Her hand reached out again and started moving in a slow caress along the entire length of the stiff prisoner.
"Can't we do anything?"
"As soon as I find an exit."
"Slide the seat all the way back," she said. He felt her free hand fumbling with the top of his zipper.
"Christ," he said. "Don't. As soon as I find an exit we'll find a back road somewhere."
They found a back road. Just in time, or the Buick would have wrapped itself around a telephone pole.
Vivian was very relaxed dining the rest of the trip, not saying much, smiling to herself a lot. She looked almost demure, Paul thought, looking over at her as she sat quietly.
They decided to have dinner at Al and Andy's, a hangout in Vivian's college town. In the parking lot outside the restaurant, Vi turned to him and smiled.
"This is quite a hangout of Minette's," she said. "Suppose she's here?"
"Suppose she is?"
"What shall I tell her?"
"About what?"
"Don't be dense."
"Oh. Tell her yes. Tell her I'm honored, and we'll cross swords at dawn."
The pink tip of Vivian's tongue appeared between her lips, moistening them, and then she smiled broadly, lewdly, looking into his eyes.
"Dawn's not a good time," she said. "But I'll sure tell her."
The place was crowded, and they had to wait a long time at the bar, drinking beer and talking with the animated bunch there, before getting a table.
It seemed like hours before the food was before them. They ate almost without talking. Paul had just ordered coffee when he saw Minette come through the door, followed by a faceless date. Vivian and Paul were in a booth, with Paul on the side facing the outside door, and Minette saw him right away. She stopped and looked at him, her dark eyes sparkling, her cheeks bright from the autumn air. Then she smiled and looked away, pulling her date by one hand toward the bar.
"Your roommate just got here," Paul said, his eyes following her across the room. Vivian turned and looked too.
From the rear, Minette was a petite brunette with a trim figure, a rounded buoyant little ass, and exquisite legs. From where he sat across the room, Paul had an overwhelming impulse to kiss the dimpled backs of her knees, above where her lower legs swelled out of sight into her boots.
"What do you think of her?" Vivian asked. With an effort, Paul looked at her. She was grinning at him.
"I've met her before," Paul said, evasively.
"You didn't pay her such close attention. And you haven't answered my question."
"I can only see her from the back."
"You'll see her from all sides," Vivian promised. "All there is of her."
Paul could not control the swelling erection that had throbbed to life under the table. Vivian, looking into his eyes, sensed something and reached under the table and ran her hand along its rigid length. She laughed.
"Shall we try to fix up something for tonight?" she asked.
"If you want to," he said. "If she wants to." Jesus, he was horny. He should have had better sense than to settle for one quick one with Vivian before coming here.
"I'll talk to her," Vivian said, starting to slide out from the booth.
"Don't," Paul said, putting his hand out to stop her. He needed a chance to settle down and think coolly. You got in trouble, he'd learned, going off half-cocked. He couldn't picture the back seat of the Buick for the scene that he had half-formed in his mind.
But Minette came over to the booth, alone, leaving her date with a beer and a worried look at the bar. Her breasts, swaying under a snug purple caslimere sweater, looked even larger than they were because of her diminutive size. They were precisely at the level of Paul's eyes, where he sat, and he made a feeble attempt at looking away. The hell with it, he thought. He looked then, in open admiration, and smiled.
"We've met before," he said.
"Yes."
"That's enough, now," Vivian said. Minette looked at her roommate. There was a question in her eyes.
"He says yes," Vivian said. "We talked it over."
"Oh?"
"You knew what his answer would be."
"When?"
"Tonight, if we can figure something."
"Oh, balls," Minette said. She made an almost imperceptible backward motion of her head, toward her date, who was leaning against the bar, pretending not to be watching them.
"We can't talk here," Vivian said. She slid out of the booth and the two roommates headed for the lounge, picking their way through the smoky crowded room.
Paul watched them go. So did the curious boy at the bar.
They were gone for a long time, it seemed to Paul, but women in pairs in a ladies' room always took a long time. He tried to think of something else, and gradually his hard-on subsided. By the time Vivian got back to the table, alone, he was able to hold a cigarette without shaking.
"Well," Vivian said, sliding back into the booth, "there's nothing civilized she can do about getting rid of her date before he takes her back to the sorority house. And he knows the witching hour is one o'clock, on Saturdays, as well as you do."
"What the hell," Paul said, trying to appear as if she'd just told him they had no pistachio ice cream, would vanilla do? "Another time."
"However," Vivian said. His heart leapt. More than just his heart.
"However what?" he said. "You girls will shinny down the drain pipe?"
"No. You'll shinny up it."
A memory started forming in his mind.
"You remember that time Minette was in the infirmary with the flu?"
"Sure. I didn't leave your room till dawn's early light. But I almost walked into the arms of some insomniac biology instructor."
"How do you know it was a biology instructor?"
"She was wearing sensible shoes."
"You can leave a little earlier this time."
It had really been quite simple. The room was in the rear of the sorority house, on the second floor, with the fire escape running right by the window. All you had to do was get a short run, leap for the bottom rung, and haul yourself up. You didn't have to be Tarzan, all you needed was to be in fair shape, and have balls. Paul qualified.
They'd been fairly quiet, he remembered. Then he thought of something that started to worry him.
"That was a weekday night," he said. "Thursday."
"It was Wednesday," she said. "But Saturday's not any different. The girls come in noisier and talk longer, is all."
"It's different," Paul said. "There'll be the two of you."
"You getting chicken?"
"No, it's just that I don't like that business of not being able to lock the door."
"I told you, we hang a bra on the outside doorknob. Nobody would ever walk through a bra'd door."
Paul took a deep breath and let it out. Too good to be true, it was. Minette and Vivian both, tonight. A little risky, maybe, but it was worth it. A hundred times over, it was worth it.
"All right," he said. "Great. When do we start?"
"Minette will get her date to take her home a little early, and you do the same with me."
"Then what do I do? After I take you back to the sorority?"
"Go out and kill some time, have a beer or something. And then, after the witching hour, trot around back and up the fire escape. Don't knock at the window. It'll be open. So will everything else."
He waved for the check.
"What's the hurry?"
"I thought we'd spend a while in the old Buick, just you and I," he said. "For old times' sake." His zipper was under a terrible strain.
"Oh, shit," she said. "Can't you just wait?"
"No."
"Take a look at your watch."
He looked. It was a quarter after twelve.
"I'll be damned," he said. "How about just a quickie?"
"Save it, pretty poppa," Vivian said.
Paul stayed close to the building, out of the leaves, and made no noise. He was sure no one had seen him coming around the side. There was some moonlight, and he could make out a shadowy growth on the back of the sorority house. He took a closer look. It was ivy. Well, I'll be a son of a bitch, he thought. That's pushing tradition too far.
He looked at the luminous dial of his watch, which didn't show in the moonlight. Fuck James Bond, he thought, and flicked on his lighter. One-twenty. Time for the fire escape.
He caught the lowest rung on his first jump; swung up and got a heel hooked. Change fell out of a pocket and fell to the ground, tinkling. Shit, he muttered. He struggled out on the first platform, thinking, I wonder how may second-story men work with hard-ons?
He climbed, his rubber-soled shoes silent on the metal rungs. Sure enough, the window was raised, and there was a light from a lamp inside.
He stuck his head in the window and they were sprawled on the twin beds, grinning at him. He raised the window further, carefully. Thank Christ it didn't stick.
He stepped inside clumsily, almost knocking over the lamp, and closed the window behind him.
He turned.
He had lost most of his erection during his exertions but when he looked at Minette it rose again, rigid at once.
She was standing at the foot of one bed, smiling at him, in a white transparent thing that stopped just below the hips. It had a demure little ribbon at the throat and the ribbon was the only thing he couldn't see through. The deep-blushing nipples crowning her high swelling breasts were already erect, in the light from the one lamp by the window, and the wisp of garment seemed to be suspended from them. Her hips flared from a tiny waist, and clearly visible beneath the transparency of the filmy gown, starting on the lower curve of her belly, was a truly magnificent bush, jet-black, luxuriant. Paul reached for her.
She backed away.
"Please, get undressed first," she said.
"She's been asking how you're hung," Vivian said casually from the other bed. She was propped against the pillows smoking a cigarette, wearing pajama tops. Her long white legs, moving lazily, made no attempt to conceal the pink dusky lips of her pussy in its shimmering blonde halo.
Paul undressed in a hurry, tossing his sports jacket over the back of a chair, then his tie, then his shirt. He had to sit down in a chair to get his shoes off; and Minette sat on the bed and watched him in some odd sort of fascination-as if the whole operation gave her some curious excitement. Her lips were parted, and she licked them occasionally. Like she's waiting to see the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, Paul thought. I'll give her her rainbow.
Once out of his shoes, he stood up and dropped his trousers, and Minette's eyes and mouth both opened wider. The left leg of his blue shorts stood straight out, stretching to hold the up-thrust straining prick.
He peeled off his T-shirt and thought he might get some flicker of admiration for his chest and shoulders and biceps from the girl, but she never lifted her eyes from down below. He bent to peel off his socks, then straightened again, wearing only his shorts, with his enormous erection making the garment nothing less than ludicrous. Minette still sat there on the bed, staring, with her filmy short negligee still held kittenish by the ribbon at her throat.
"Aren't you going to take those off?" she said. "Your shorts?"
"While you sit fully clothed?" Paul said. "You think I'm immodest?"
From the other bed, Vivian laughed.
"Oh, mother," she said. "What a tender scene."
Minette stood up, fumbled at her throat, and the white wisp fluttered to the floor. She kicked it deftly aside, and Paul got a glimpse of a small red orifice opening and closing in the thick rich clutch of black hairs. She turned completely around, then, for him to see. Her small body was perfectly formed, the contrast between her tiny waist and the sudden flaring of her hips and her pouting round ass, breathtaking. She sat down suddenly on the bed.
"Come here," she whispered. "Please."
Tentatively, Paul took a step toward her, then looked over at Vivian. She was smiling broadly, one raised knee moving slowly back and forth. One hand was on her stomach and Paul noticed that the middle finger was very close to the opening of her pussy.
"Go right ahead," she said. "This is Minette's party."
He walked over then and stood directly in front of Minette, seated on the edge of the bed. She reached up to his hips on either side, tucked her fingers inside the elastic of his shorts, and slowly brought them down. She pulled the elastic out in front, then, her eyes widening, managed shakily to get Paul's shorts the rest of the way down. He stepped completely out of them. Minette had lost her cool!
"Oh, my good God," she said. "It's magnificent. Vi, you never told me."
"I told you," Vivian said, from the other bed.
"Not the whole truth," Minette said. "You never told me exactly how big it was."
"I told you it was pretty big," Vivian said. Paul's back was to her and he didn't turn around. She sounded almost smug.
"You know damn well it's a lot more than just pretty big," Minette said. "It's stupendous."
Paul looked down. His rock-hard cock, at an angle above the horizontal, looked squarely into Minette's face. From where he stood, it was just long and broad and very hard. The skin was coppery in color, except for the head, which was dark red and swollen and glistening, the tender skin stretched tight, as if it were ready to burst. Under the skin along the shaft a blue vein ran a meandering course. A pearl of come was deliriously oozing out.
"It's so magnificent," Minette said again, still staring. The aureoles of her breasts had puckered so that the nipples stood out.
"Well, that much I did tell you," Vivian said, behind him. He heard her weight shift on the bed.
"Are you girls going to leave me standing here like an usher while you talk all night?" he said plaintively, putting his weight on the other foot. It was Minette's move. It was her party, Vivian had said.
Minette reached up slowly; deliberately, not taking her eyes away from the object of her immediate adoration, and put her thumb under the base of his cock, pushing gently upwards. The angle of erection increased abruptly, exposing the soft underside. Minette leaned forward, the tip of her tongue appeared, and she licked his cock, barely touching it with the tip of her tongue, from the base up to the wrinkled shawl of soft skin around the neck. There she lingered, licking tenderly.
He shivered. Jesus, this Minette. Phi Beta Kappa material for sure.
She drew her tongue in, and he saw her open her mouth wide as she released the pressure of her thumb. His limb resumed its normal angle and the whole head disappeared in her mouth. It was quite a strain, but she made it. Her eyes rolled up, looking at him.
"Hey," Vivian said, from the other bed.
Minette drew her mouth away, her lips lingering wetly at the tip.
"I only wanted to kiss it hello," Minette said.
Paul could stand no more, and he could stand upright no longer. He sank to the side of the bed, scooping up the little brunette and lifting her to deposit her on her back in the middle of the bed. He leaned over her and covered her open mouth with his own.
Her quick darting tongue vibrated in his mouth. His free hand kneaded the firm proud hills of her breasts; squeezing the jutting nipples. His hand moved down over the gentle swell of her belly, around the delight of her hips, and cupped and squeezed the white globes of her buttocks. His little finger, exploring, touched the bottom of the tender lower lips of her vulva, and came away wet. She was as ready as she'd ever be.
He moved his hand and his middle finger found her clitoris, swollen, slippery, evasive as a tiny eel. He arched over her, his weight on his elbows, and she reached out and guided the bursting head of his cock to her eager wet entrance. She placed it squarely in the soft embrace of her welcoming outer lips, and Paul began to ease it into her, slowly.
"Jesus!" she whispered, and her legs spread wide, then locked behind his hips.
Christ, she was tight, Paul thought. When his shaft was halfway in, he stopped to let her get accustomed to the thick stiffness, but her butterfly hips beat on the bed as the giant prick impaled her further. When he had buried it to the hilt, she was squirming, and writhing, and gyrating, all at once. He withdrew it to the head, then plunged it deep again.
"You've forgotten something," he heard Vivian saying, from somewhere.
He'd completely forgotten about Vivian.
Driving his rod firmly home, holding the base of it squashed tight against Minette's squirming love-mouth, he hooked an arm under her waist and swung her out from under him, turning as he did so, holding his rod jammed tightly into her. When she was on top of him and he was flat on his back, she got the message, set her knees astraddle, and began joy-riding up and down the length of his shaft, gasping and groaning.
Vivian, standing beside the bed, smiled down at him.
"You're so ingenious," she said, and raised one leg and stepped up on the bed. Carefully, she positioned one knee beside his head on the pillow, the other knee on the other side. He found himself looking straight up into the moist warm valley between the pink swollen outer lips of her twat. She let it down slowly; his tongue extended to meet it, and then his tongue, his mouth, his face, were buried in her wet velvet cunt.
He sucked and licked while Vivian shuttled her hips and groaned. His own hips were pumping and thrusting up to meet the squirming descents of Minette's tight, clutching pussy. Licking, fucking, fighting for his breath, he felt as if he were thrashing about in a great sea of quivering cunt. Drowning.
The bed was bouncing and groaning. Vivian was gasping now, on the verge of coming, and he heard Minette scream aloud as she went into a series of orgasms. He wanted to tell her to be quieter, but his mouth was full. Anyway he was coming himself, exploding like a giant rocket into the hysterical Minette.
He was taking one final fond lick at Vivian when he heard the door open.
He made one convulsive move to rise, then lay back, knowing how futile it was. Vivian raised herself from his face and stood up at the side of the bed, trying inanely to cover herself with her hands.
Mrs. Naylor, the housemother he had charmed so assiduously, stood in the doorway. She had turned on the ceiling light. He had never seen such a rapidly shifting set of emotions register on a face. Dismay. Joy. Envy.
He grinned at her, wetly.
"Mr. Porteus," Mrs. Naylor said, looking quickly away from him as if he were a bad traffic accident. "How nice of you to pay us a visit."
She backed out of the room, closing the door firmly behind her.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Faculty Advisor whose duty it was to kick him out of school was not a bad sort at all.
"She was pretty graphic, that Mrs. Naylor," the Faculty Advisor said.
"Must be her imagination," Paul said. At that point he had a wistful notion that he might bluff his way through the whole thing.
"Hell of a vivid imagination, for a New England lady," the Faculty Advisor said.
"It's that Puritan background," Paul said. "It distorts their minds. You know, witch-burning and all that jazz."
He saw that the Faculty Advisor was trying not to laugh, and he stopped.
"Well, shit," Paul said.
"You know, there was an undercurrent of venom in everything that woman said. Almost jealousy, or envy. I think she felt neglected. Everything would probably have been all right if you'd just invited her to join the festivities."
"Don't talk like that," Paul said. "I have a weak stomach."
The Faculty Advisor laughed. Maybe he enjoys kicking guys out of school, Paul thought. Or maybe I'm just an enjoyable one to kick out.
"You know, we might have been able to kill this thing if you'd been with just one girl in that room. And had been indulging in a more conventional act."
"Nothing wrong with a little neighborly cunnilingus between friends. Among friends."
"Well, that enters into it," the Faculty Advisor said. "What with the Puritan mind and all that jazz. But two girls, at the same time."
"Well, hell," Paul said, and uncrossed his legs and started searching his pockets for a cigarette. He was embarrassed for the first time. When he finally got a cigarette into his mouth, the Faculty Advisor leaned across the desk to light it for him.
"My boy," he said, "I do admire you. Just don't tell anybody I said that."
"I won't," Paul said. Pretty nice guy, he thought. He might be a bitch on a double date.
"It could probably be forgotten, still," the Faculty Advisor said. "Except that the two schools have always enjoyed a close relationship."
"I was enjoying a very, very close relationship."
The Faculty Advisor laughed once again.
"I meant the Boards of Directors," he said. "And don't forget the faculties."
"Don't you suppose they go in for this sort ol thing? In an intramural sort of way?"
"Maybe, but they don't live in sorority houses."
"You have a point," Paul said.
"Anyway, as you've gathered, it's been decided that you've got to leave school, and the sooner you get out the more comfortable it will be."
. "I can leave today," Paul said. "I'm practically packed now."
"How about transportation? Can I have this office arrange for a plane or train reservation?"
"Thanks," Paul said. "I have a car. What about the tuition?"
"I'll do anything I can. You should get a partial refund."
"You have my mailing address," Paul said, "in your records." He stood to leave.
The Faculty Advisor stood too, and walked around the desk to shake hands.
"When you make application to other schools," he said, "use my name as a reference. I won't be as graphic as Mrs. Naylor."
"I don't think I'll be going to any other college," Paul said.
For the first time the Faculty Advisor seemed shocked.
"Why? You're too bright to be a drop-out at this stage."
"I'm too bright not to be," Paul said, and left the office, closing the door behind him.
He was packed in an hour. He left his textbooks for his roommate to return, he threw his papers into a wastebasket, and aside from his tennis racket and his jock strap, there was very little personal stuff to pack.
He was totally without feeling as he closed the trunk lid of the Buick. All he could think was, what a terrible waste of space. I could move a farm family of eight in this thing.
On impulse, he took the Stamford exit off the Merritt Parkway, found an afternoon-deserted bar, got himself a bottle of beer, and put in a call to his mother in Beverly Hills. He didn't expect to reach her, although she'd be up by now, it was almost noon in California. But he felt like talking to somebody, and he and his mother had been on speaking terms ever since she'd gotten him the Buick.
Strangely enough, she was home, and answered the phone herself.
"Paul," she said. "For Pete's sake, don't tell me, let me guess. You've just found out you're going to be a father."
"You're a sentimental old nanny," he said. His mother had just turned thirty-four. "I just got kicked out of school."
On the other end, his mother was quiet for a moment.
"I'm sorry, Paul," she said.
"Well, I'm not."
"Why did they kick you out of school."
"Got caught in a room in a sorority house."
"That's a very minor infraction to get kicked out of school for. What about the girl."
"I suppose they got kicked out, too."
"They?"
"It was sort of a compound infraction."
"I see," his mother said. "Paul, I don't know what I'm going to do about you."
"You're not going to do a damn thing about me," he said. "You never have."
"Do you need any money?"
"Not right now."
"What college will you try for now? You ought to be able to catch the Spring semester."
"No more college. I think I'll take a job."
"Paul, you're making a mistake."
"No, I am not. I'm up to here with school and I'd like to do something."
"I'm going to get on the plane tonight, with Mac. I think Mac ought to talk to you."
"What the hell do I want to talk to Mac for? He'd just tell me to do whatever I wanted to do."
His mother was quiet for another moment. "I guess he would," she said. "What kind of job do you want to get?"
"Maybe some kind of job in advertising."
"No. Not that."
"Yes. That."
"Why that silly business."
"I hear they make a lot of money."
"Don't be foolish. Money isn't everything."
"Christ," Paul said. "You get cornier all the time."
"Well, that isn't corny," his mother said stubbornly. "What makes it a cliche^ is, it's the truth. Money really isn't everything."
"Only people who have money ever say that," Paul said. "I bet when you were my age you were as money-hungry-well, I hate to think about it."
"Then don't," his mother said.
"Anyway, I want to get a job in advertising and I thought you might know somebody for me to call."
He could almost hear his mother thinking.
"Call Harry Pemberton," she said. "He's at Kane, Sisler and Rossi. At least he was a few months ago."
"What's the number?"
For the first time since she'd picked up the phone, he heard her getting mad. She sounded so natural, at last, that it made him feel right inside.
"You talk like a man with a paper asshole," she said. "It's in the phone book. You'll go a long way in that racket if you can't even look up a phone number."
"Sure I will," Paul said, happy that she'd blown up at last.
"Call us if you want or need anything."
"Us" she had said, Paul noticed. That meant that she and Mac were still getting along together. Very good.
"I probably will," he said.
"And, Paul?"
"Yes?"
"Stop that two-girls-at-a-time stuff. You're just a growing boy. You've got to conserve your strength."
"HI be a monk," Paul said, "baking bread."
"Make brandy," she said. "See you."
"So long," Paul said, and hung up. Good old Mother, he thought, as American as apple pie.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Paul got home around four, and had to let himself in with his key. There was no one at the house. The Abernathys lived frugally with their two girls away at college; they had fired the maid, and the cleaning woman came only twice a week. Molly Abernathy would be off playing bridge somewhere and Ralph would be knocking his brains out down on Wall Street, or wherever he knocked his brains out. They were sure as hell knocked out by the time he got home at night.
"Home" to Paul, since his mother had gone to California two years before, had been the spare bedroom upstairs at the Abernathys where he kept his books and his records and his out-of-season clothes. For nine months of the year he was away at school-or had been-and for the other three months he usually managed to visit somewhere else. Ralph Abernathy, about ten years older than his mother, was her second cousin-"Dear Cousin Ralph" his mother would say, talking about him, and laugh in that odd, lewdly amused way she had. He'd had to call him "Uncle Ralph" until he was about six, when he'd kicked the habit. His mother had something on Cousin Ralph; so he had a mailing address and a place to keep his things and a place to stay, when there was absolutely no other place to go.
He liked Ralph all right, but Molly was a pure pain in the ass. She hated Paul's mother, for one thing-maybe she knew what it was his mother had on Ralph-and she let it show in the way she behaved toward Paul. He couldn't care less and spent as little time as possible at the house in Squaresdale.
After he'd gotten his luggage out of the trunk of the Buick and brought it up to his room, he found a Manhattan phone book in the hallway downstairs. He found the "Kane, Sisler" number without any trouble, and Harry Pemberton was in, although he had some trouble with his secretary, had to give his name three times before Harry Pemberton got on the phone.
"Paul Porteus?" he said. "Joanne Porteus's boy?"
"That's me," Paul said.
"Why," Harry Pemberton said, "I met you out at your house when you were about fourteen. You were getting around on crutches. Broke your leg playing football. Sure, we've met."
"I remember," Paul said. He didn't, but it wouldn't matter. And he hadn't broken the leg playing football, he'd broken it jumping out a bedroom window when a neighborhood mother had come upstairs unexpectedly. That didn't matter now, either.
"How is your mother?"
"Fine. She's in California, you know."
"I know," Pemberton said. "She went off and married some bastard."
"He's a pretty nice guy," Paul said.
"I didn't mean anything by that," Pemberton said. "It's just the idea of your mother marrying anyone that makes him a bastard to me."
"I see," Paul said.
"I hope not," Pemberton said. "Anyway, is there something I can do for you?"
"I talked to Mom on the phone a while ago and she told me to give you call. I'm hoping to get a job."
"Aren't you in school?"
"I was," Paul said. "Until yesterday."
"Whatever happened?"
"I'll tell you when I talk to you."
"Fair enough," Pemberton said. "How about tomorrow, around nine-thirty?"
"Fine."
"Know the address."
"Yes."
"Eleventh floor," Pemberton said. "See you tomorrow."
Maybe I'm going to learn to like that business, Paul thought, putting the phone in its cradle. For a guy in the bullshit business, there didn't seem to be much bullshit about Pemberton. But then, he was a friend of Mom's-and she wouldn't spend two minutes with a phony.
He caught the 8:36 in the morning, and didn't like one minute of it. When ol' Charlie and Bill said hello or good morning it sounded more like congratulations, and the well-fed atmosphere on the smoker reeked of satisfaction. He'd be moving out of Screwsdale soon, he decided.
The train was ten minutes late getting into Grand Central but it was only a few minutes after nine-thirty when he walked into the Kane, Sisler reception room. The walls were lined with framed full-color ads. The girl at the reception desk was a Katherine Hepburn with tits. She put on horn-rimmed glasses to look at him through when he stopped in front of her. She had a smile as warm as cellophane.
"Mr. Pemberton?" she said. "Do you have an appointment?"
"Yep," he said. She frowned. He walked over to one wall to look at the advertisements. They were for cosmetics of one kind or another. Peachy.
"His secretary will be out," the receptionist said to his back, and he nodded without answering.
The secretary came out, a little redhead with a genuine smile.
"Mr. Porteus?" she said, cocking her head to one side. He was the only one in the reception room, for God's sake. He looked around, as if searching.
"I must be," he said. The redhead laughed. "Enough," she said. "Just follow me."
"Happy to," he said.
She had a jaunty little strut. I'd like to work in this place, he thought, just for the fringe benefits.
At a comer office she stopped and pointed to the open door.
"In there," she said.
Harry Pemberton was a big man, gray at the temples, and he stood up and came around his desk when Paul came through the door. He looked to be in pretty good shape, like a man who'd rowed stroke on a crew once. Around Pearl Harbor times. A lot of gin had passed under the bridge since.
"Any son of Joanne Porteus' is a friend of mine," he said, and put out his hand. Paul shook it. Corny son of a bitch, he thought.
"Now," Pemberton said, indicating a chair for Paul and going around his desk to sit down, "exactly what happened that you're out of college?"
"I'm a drop-out," Paul said. "By special request."
"Just like that?"
"Not exactly," Paul said, and told him what had happened, all of it, right up to and through Mrs. Naylor.
Harry Pemberton looked at him steadily for a long time after he'd finished. Paul re-crossed his legs, his discomfort mounting. He'd thought that candor would go a long way, but maybe he'd let it go too far.
Then Pemberton laughed. He laughed for a long while, and there was nothing phony about the laugh.
"Joanne Porteus' very own son," he said. "I'm a son of a bitch."
Paul didn't say anything. Talk about your heritage and family tradition, he thought. It looked as if he had it, in spades.
"Lots of imagination and lots of balls," Pemberton said. "That's what we need around this place."
"I've got only two of them," Paul said.
"You're one up on most of these guys," Pemberton said. "How old are you, Paul?"
"You probably know, so I won't lie to you," Paul said. "I'm eighteen."
"You could be twenty-one, easy," Pemberton said, musing. He seemed to be talking to himself.
"Black hair, black eyes," Pemberton said, still talking to himself. "Hell of a good-looking young fella." Paul squirmed in his seat.
"How tall are you?" Pemberton asked suddenly. "Six-one?"
"Maybe a shade under." Paul was suddenly annoyed. "What the hell has that got to do with doing a job?"
Pemberton laughed.
"Nothing, just thinking. We could use you around this place."
Paul felt a sudden surge of elation. Fuck Mrs. Naylor, he thought.
"We could use you," Pemberton said. "And I don't mean as some kind of half-assed trainee. We could use you in client contact."
"What's that?" Paul asked.
"Never mind," Pemberton said. "You'll learn all you need to learn to begin with, in about three days."
"Well, thanks," Paul said. "I'm happy you think so."
"You've got a good voice. Talent's good to have, and brains, but they don't mean a damn unless you have a good voice. A good voice wins 'em all."
"I'll sing like a son of a bitch," Paul said. "Skip the jokes, son." Paul shut up.
"Now, about this cussed honesty of yours,"
Pemberton said. "Honesty's good, in its place, but there's no point in pushing it too far. Tell the truth, by all means, whenever it looks necessary. Make sure everything you say is the truth, under special circumstances. But just tell the section of the truth that'll do you the most good."
"I think I understand," Paul said.
"Sure you do. Now, I have to tell you, I can't hire you myself."
Paul felt himself starting to sink in the chair, and pulled himself erect.
"Or I can, but I won't," Pemberton said.
"Why not?" Paul asked.
"Because in this business you never make a decision all by yourself; not if you can help it. You get somebody else to say yes or no along with you, and that way there's somebody else to blame if anything goes wrong."
"I think I see," Paul said.
"So you'll have to see Joe Rossi. He'll do the final hiring."
"Who's Joe Rossi?"
"He's the president of the agency. I'm called the executive vice-president."
"What happened to Kane and Sisler?"
"Beats me," Pemberton said.
"When should I see Mr. Rossi?"
"Can you come in right after lunch? About quarter to three?"
"Sure," Paul said.
"I know he has no appointment then. He called a meeting for three o'clock. He'll be loaded when you meet him, but he'll remember that he hired you. I'll go in and talk to him after you leave."
"Anything else you want to tell me?"
"Yes," Pemberton said. "You're twenty-two years old, not eighteen any more. You have a year of college to finish but you just missed the start of the semester because you had a bad attack of, let's see, pleurisy. He doesn't know what the hell that is and neither do I but it's good enough. You want to go back and finish school next fall if he'll be good enough to grant you a leave of absence, and then come back and work for us, providing all the admiration is mutual. That'll confuse the shit out of him but he'll go for it. You got it?"
"Yep," Paul said. It was simple enough.
"You'll have to work as assistant account executive under Sam Howard. He's a jackass but you won't be working for him long, I have a feeling."
Paul got up and started for the door.
"You'll meet Joe Rossi this afternoon and you may not see him again for months, but whenever you're with him, keep one thing in mind."
"What's that?" Paul said.
"He's a fuckin' idiot," Pemberton said.
"I'll stop in and see you after I've talked to him," Paul said.
"Please do."
At the door, Paul stopped and turned. "See you later," he said. "And thank you, Mr. Pemberton."
"Call me Harry," Pemberton said.
He walked into Joe Rossi's office that afternoon feeling totally relaxed and filled with confidence. If Rossi was loaded, as Harry Pemberton had predicted, it didn't show, except maybe a little around the eyes. Rossi, like Pemberton, was a big man, but older, and softer. His hair was pure silver; Paul wondered if he had it touched up. He looked superficially distinguished, but there was a cruel toughness balancing the weakness in his features. He'd never make it in politics, Paul thought. Nobody over twenty-one would trust him.
But he was jovial when he got up and came around the desk to shake hands.
"Harry Pemberton is damn impressed with you, Paul," he said. "Knows your family, but he says he never knew you'd turned out so well."
"He knows my mother," Paul said. "Or did know her."
"That figures," Rossi said, and looked out the window. "How old are you, Paul? Harry didn't say."
"Twenty-two," he said casually. He knew damn well Harry didn't say.
"Um," Rossi said, and looked out the window again. "You're a robust-looking specimen, I'll say that for you."
"Too much clean living," Paul said.
"We'll put an end to that," Rossi said, looking back at him and smiling. He could be a charmer when he smiled, Paul noticed.
"Does that mean I'm going to work for you?" Paul asked.
"Yes. You look as if you can carry the ball for us."
"Great," Paul said, and he meant it. He thought of all those fringe benefits he'd seen, bouncing around the place.
"You'll be working with Sam Howard for a while, at least until you learn your way around. He's a good man. You'll get along very well."
"Mr. Pemberton mentioned him," Paul said.
"You'll have a lot to do with Harry Pemberton, too. And you'll get along with him, as long as you stay aware of his one outstanding trait."
"What's that?"
"Harry's a fuckin' idiot."
"I'll try to remember," Paul said.
They talked about salary, and Paul hadn't the faintest idea how much to ask for. But Rossi took him off the hook, and when he told Paul what he thought would be a reasonable salary for him, just for openers, Paul was more than just pleased.
"When would you like to start?"
Paul hadn't thought about that, either.
"Monday," he said, after a moment.
"Fine," Rossi said, and they shook hands. "See you next week."
He headed straight for Harry Pemberton's office, and stuck his head in the door. Pemberton was behind his desk, staring straight ahead at nothing. He looked as loaded as he'd predicted Rossi would be.
"I start Monday," Paul said. Pemberton focused on him, then got up and came around the desk, motioning Paul inside.
"Good," he said. "Rossi say anything about carrying the ball for us?"
"He did."
"Fuckin' idiot," Pemberton said. "He seemed to be a nice guy."
"He always does, first time you meet him. Paul."
"What?"
Pemberton lowered his voice.
"Around the office," he said, "keep it in your pants, will you? Anyway, during working hours."
"I'll take some vows."
"No need to overdo it," Pemberton said. "I'm due at Rossi's goddamn meeting."
Pemberton's little redheaded secretary looked up when he came out of the office, and beamed at him.
"I'm starting to work here Monday," he told her.
"Good," she said. "You'll like it here."
"Will you have a drink with me after work some time soon? A sort of celebration drink?" She thought a minute. "Sure," she said.
On the way to the elevators, he became aware that he was whistling, "I've Got the World on a String" was the tune.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Saturday morning the Abernathy girls came home for the weekend. Paul had never had much to do with them when they were small, and had seen very little of them since; and the few times he had seen them over the past couple of years, he'd paid them little attention.
But Saturday morning he had nothing to do with himself, and since both the girls were coming out from Grand Central on the same train, he volunteered to pick them up, as much to shock Molly as for any other reason. He was repaid for his gesture by a look of numb disbelief on her face.
They were surprised to see him when they got off the train. Not especially pleased, he was sure, but they were polite enough about it. He took their bags on the walk to the car.
They were blondes, both of them. Tess, the younger sister, was the lighter of the two, but in color only. She had always had a tendency toward plumpness, and that tendency had become more manifest, if anything, during her year at college. She had a disposition like her mother's, except when she was pounding out what sounded like hymns at the piano, when it was worse.
Sue, the older sister, who had a year on Paul, had always struck him as the lean, scholarly, cave-chested type, but he noticed with awakening interest that she wasn't cave-chested any more, or lean either. She didn't have large tits, exactly, but she did definitely have tits. And her legs had filled out, in long, tapered, athletic lines. She had a firm round ass and a springy way of moving. Paul wondered. It wouldn't be incest, at ah; they were only about second cousins or something.
They sat three in the front on the short drive up from the station, with Sue in the middle. Every time he reached for the Buick's gear shift he became acutely conscious of the generous view of Sue's smooth tanned legs afforded by her miniskirt.
"This is a great old car," Sue said, making polite conversation. Without her glasses, he found, she'd turned out to be a hell of a good-looking girl.
"If it happened to be three years older," Paul said, "it would have a floor shift. Wonderful car for a natural-born knee-squeezer like me. Aren't you glad it isn't three years older?"
"Not especially," Sue said. "I have nothing against a little knee-squeezing on occasion."
"You're awful," Tess said, frowning sideways.
Just like her mother, Paul thought. An all-purpose pain in the ass.
But by the time they got back to the house, the relationship between Paul and Sue was so easy, so relaxed and pleasant, that an atmosphere of congeniality carried right into the living room. Even Molly must have been aware of it; he had forgotten the girls' bags in the trunk of the Buick, went back out to get them, and when he came into the living room again, Molly gave him a long, faintly confused look, and actually smiled.
"You'll have dinner with us tonight, won't you, Paul?" she asked.
It was Paul's turn to be confused. When he'd first established squatter's rights on the room upstairs, they'd usually asked him to eat with them as a matter of course, but he'd accepted the invitation so seldom that they'd long ago given up asking him.
"Sure," he said. "I'd like to."
"We're having a party this evening for a few friends," Ralph said. "Will you stay for that?"
Paul knew about those parties for a few friends. They were awful. If you weren't a drunk already they'd make one out of you. He hesitated for a second.
"Say yes," Sue said. "If nothing else, you can be my bodyguard. Otherwise Dad's friends will be asking me to dance the Lindy or the Charleston with them, or whatever it is they do to that throw-away-your-truss music. They tromp all over a girl. And they have more hands than an octopus, as the evening goes along."
"Sue!" her mother said.
"Do all the girls at your school talk that way?" Tess asked.
They made quite a pair, Molly and Tess, Pam. thought. A double pain in the ass.
"Sure, I'd like to," he heard himself saying. "And I like that throw-away-your-truss music. My mother brought me up on some of those old records, stuff that was old even before her time."
He looked at Molly defiantly when he mentioned his mother, waiting for her reaction, but he saw none. Instead, Molly turned and smiled at Ralph, and he smiled back. It was almost as if they were both pleased to have him around, and it was the first time he'd seen them in agreement about anything.
Sue must have said something nice about him while he was getting the bags out of the car, he decided. Imaginative girl, that Sue. Well worth exploring.
Dinner was pleasant. Miraculously, Ralph and even Molly were sober, that late on a Saturday. Not cold sober, but sober enough. It was probably the responsibility of hosting the impending party. Parties were a serious business in Screws-dale and the hosts usually did stay sober with the press of preparations, until the party started. Paul could never figure out why they went to all that effort, because invariably they were the only ones sober at the party's beginning, and they caught up with the guests' condition with remarkable swiftness.
He went upstairs to shower and change to his J. Press suit. He'd picked up two new suits in White Plains that afternoon, but couldn't very well wear either one of them. Nothing would be more gauche than to appear at a party in a brand new suit.
After he'd stripped down to his shorts he looked in the mirror, debated with himself, and lost. He needed a shave. He got out his electric razor and worked his face over with care, humming all the while through the buzz of the razor. He was quite cheerful. Even the dismal prospect of the party about to start downstairs didn't depress him. He could ignore the old farts and spend his time with Sue. He could enjoy himself with Sue, he was sure. Too bad the surroundings and the old people were so confining.
After he'd shaved and put his razor away, he put on a terry cloth robe and slippers and walked to the bathroom he used, two doors down from his room at the end of the hall.
The door was ajar. He pushed through and closed it behind him. When he turned around Sue was just stepping around the shower curtain, dripping wet. She had a lovely body.
She stared at him for a second, stunned, and then laughed. She reached unhurriedly for a towel and held it in front of her with one hand. One pink nipple peeked out at him.
"I should have at least closed the door," she said. "I guess I'm not used to the idea of having you here."
"Please don't apologize," he said. "Believe me, the pleasure's all mine." He made no move to leave.
"I think you best get out of here," she said, still smiling. "We'll scandalize the family."
"Well," he said, looking at the exposed white globe with its pink eye, at the long gradual curve of hip into thigh, at the swelling graceful lines of her legs.
"If I snap your picture, then will you go?" she asked. She seemed quite cheerful about the scene.
"Snap my what?" he asked, feeling dumb.
"Your picture. It's kind of euphemistic expression the kids have at the sorority house."
"Well, sure," he said. "Snap away." The words "sorority house" made him uncomfortable, but what the hell.
She placed one foot up on the edge of the toilet bowl.
"Now, say 'cheese'! "
"Cheese," he said obediently, and while he was saying it she dropped the towel and swung her upraised knee outward and back again, opening and closing the lips of her pussy like a cloudy-day exposure with a camera shutter.
"Click," she murmured.
He stumbled out through the door and shut it behind him.
She had the merriest-looking cunt he'd ever seen.
After the bathroom had been vacated; he took his shower, then loafed around his room for a long time, reading and listening to the music on WQXR. Classical music-anything on WQRX, for that matter,-had a serene, calming effect on him, especially noticeable after an episode like the encounter with Sue in the bathroom When he'd gotten back to his room, his organ had been turgid, tense, like a tiger ready to spring. No stripes, no teeth, no claws, but a tiger just the same. The music had calmed him, and his serenity spread slowly downward to the vicinity of his balls. Alone in his room, thinking about it, he shrugged his shoulders philosophically. He'd cross the bridge when he got to it. Damn his foolish commitment, anyway, to this party of middle-aged squares. Squares? He added a dimension. Cubes, they were. His private little joke pleased him, and he stood up and started to dress.
Sue had preceded him downstairs and was talking and laughing with three grayed, paunchy men with drinks in their hands. She appeared to be quite animated, quite cheerful and just after he entered the room she said something that made the three men bend in a sudden burst of laughter. She glanced at him quickly and away; almost furtively, and then raised and waved two secret fingers in a private hello.
Feeling elated, Paul made his way through the shifting knots of noise and laughter, through the archway to the dining room, where the congestion was thickest, around the small bar that had been moved away from the wall for the occasion. Behind the bar was a perspiring, unsmiling bartender in a white coat. Paul managed to get a drink from him. A few friends, shit, Paul, thought, looking around. There had to be twenty to thirty people in the place. He was certain the Abernathys didn't have that many friends. Not a tenth that many.
Molly came up to him, in the first high flush of bourbon and good will, and, with a smile that looked paste on, she tugged him around the room and introduced him to people. He didn't remember one name a minute later.
He found himself with his back against a wall near where Sue stood in the precise center of a knot of laughing men. As the knot untied and tied itself again, he had an occasional rear view of her, wearing a very short dress, snug at the hips, flaring at the hem. In the condition he found himself in, with QXR to soothe him, he found that even the backs of her knees were unbearably stimulating.
He didn't see her look his way, but she must have sensed that he was there. She disengaged herself somehow and came over to stand beside him, looking out into the room at the flushed, determined faces, the prideful paunches, the ostentatious Brooks Brothers sports jackets. Ralph, Paul knew, was ten years older than his mother, but a lot of the people at the party were even older.
"Aren't they awful?" Sue said, without looking at him. He didn't answer the question.
"You seemed to be enjoying yourself."
"I know them all. I get with the ones who really do enjoy themselves."
"You help them. You light them up."
"Well, thank you."
"Wherever you happen to be," he said, "that's the middle of the room." He glanced down, and found that she was looking at him, steadily, not smiling.
"When the dancing starts, any minute now," she said, "I don't want to dance with anyone but you."
"That's simple self-preservation," Paul said, and laughed. "Toe preservation."
"It's more," she said. "But you'll see."
And as she said it, Paul saw Ralph heading for the massive console record player at the far end of the room. Sue sure knew her Squaresdale, Paul thought. For some strange reason, since that afternoon he'd felt a bond between them, a warmth that had grown and blossomed in a few short hours, in the time between the drive up from town and now. Yet he'd known her his whole life, couldn't remember not knowing her. He'd seen her often, when she was a very small girl and dear Cousin Ralph had been a frequent visitor at the house. And now, all in a wash, he began to feel as if he'd known her all his life. He almost knew what she was going to say before she spoke. Maybe it had some connection with being cousins. He dismissed the thought immediately.
Sure enough, Ralph started up the record player with the old Glenn Miller record of "A String of Pearls." On LP, from the sound of it. Recorded maybe ten years before he was born, but his mother had it, even though it was before her time, too.
"He's starting it off quietly enough," Sue said.
"I guess the throw-away-your-truss music follows."
"As the night the day," Sue said.
Two couples got up and started dancing, their arms about each other in some ancient ritual. From the way they held each other, Paul surmised that they were all married to someone else.
"Looks obscene, doesn't it?" he said.
"Sure does. Grabbing each other. Pushing up against each other."
"So you noticed," he said.
"When the truss-away sound starts, some of them here will start doing the Charleston and something called the Bunny Hug and the Black Bottom. Lord save us."
"What they're doing now is the fox trot. At least, that's what they seem to think they're doing."
"I know," Sue said. "My father taught me now to do it when I was young."
"Can you still."
"Sure."
"Me, too. My mother. Christ knows who taught her. She's some kind of anachronism."
"I always liked your mother."
"I like her too," he said, "sometimes."
"My mother doesn't like her a bit."
"No kidding."
She looked at him, and then laughed. "My mother's pretty impossible," she said. "You're being too polite."
"My mother gives me a pain in the ass."
"That's much better," he said. "You took the words out of my mouth." She laughed again. "You want to try."
"Try what."
"Fox trot."
"Only when necessary. To keep you from being trampled."
She looked hurt, somehow.
"You don't seem to understand," he said. "It's going to be a long evening, and I don't think I could stand it, dancing with you that way, all the time."
She moved around in front, and brushed against him lightly.
"I see," she said.
"Does it actually show?" he asked, worried.
"I don't trust myself to take a look."
"Anyway, you understand why I don't want to start dancing with you now."
"I understand, now," she said. "I feel the same."
They did start dancing though, much earlier than Paul wanted to. A tall balding man in tweeds approached, smiling at Sue, during the opening bars of the Tommy Dorsey record of "Marie."
"This is it," she said, and squeezed his hand. They moved out to the space where the rug had been rolled back for dancing. The tall man stopped smiling, shrugged his shoulders, and smiled again. He moved toward the bar. Good sport, Paul thought. Horny old goat.
She fitted very nicely when they started to dance. Much too nicely. Before the Dorsey arrangement got as far as the vocal, his rampant erection was prodding her belly, poking between her legs whenever he took a backward step. She kept her body pressed close to his.
"Christ," he said, "do you think anybody's noticing?"
"No. They all dance this way."
"With one big difference."
"I don't know about that difference. You notice that not one of the men is dancing with his own wife? You'd be surprised how many hard-ons this room can produce."
"But you know?"
"I've danced with all of these men."
"Bastards." But he looked around with new respect.
"Aren't they?" she said.
"You remember one of the old bands, I think it was Guy Lombardo, had a slogan. Or maybe it was Hal Kemp. Or Eddie Duchin. My mother told me about the slogan."
"Well, what was the slogan?"
"Somebody and his makes-you-want-to-dance music."
"I've heard it."
"You know what you'd call this music?"
"Makes-you-want-to-fuck music," she whispered in his ear.
"That's my girl," he said, and squeezed her tighter.
"Probably any kind of music would do that to you," she said, pushing closer. "Even like 'Rock of Ages'. "
"I never had an erection to that," he said. "That's because you were never exposed to 'Rock of Ages'. "
"You're right, and speaking of rocks.. . " The number ended.
"Yes, isn't it just awful?" she said. "Let's sit down someplace."
They managed to sit out a number of dances, but Paul had to lead her out to the floor every time they saw a gallant paunch approach. It was agonizing.
After about an hour, Ralph started what Sue had called the throw-away-that-truss music, with Benny Goodman's long record of "Sing, Sing, Sing." Sue stood up suddenly.
"Excuse me," she said, and started for the bathroom in the downstairs hall. She had trouble threading her way through four couples who were trying to do the Lindy.
She was gone quite a long time. So long that "Sing, Sing, Sing" was over by the time she got back, and Goodman's "Savoy" was playing.
"I had an idea," she said, reaching for his hand. "Let's dance on the sun porch."
"Won't they notice?" he said, standing.
"There's nobody there," she said. "They're scared of the dark. And nobody in this room will notice. They're drunk."
Paul looked around. She was so right. Hand in hand, they walked to the porch, two steps down, and into the semi-darkness. Paul looked into all the corners but there was no one else there.
He put his arms out and they started to dance in the private dark.
"You know something?"
"No, what?"
"I took off my pants."
He dropped one hand to the hem of her skirt in back, and reached up underneath. The palm of his hand lingered on the smooth naked globes of her ass.
"Christ," he breathed into her ear.
She drew away slightly. He felt her hand at the front of his trousers, and before he could stop her, she'd zipped him down.
"Put it there between my legs," she said. "We can dance that way."
"Jesus," he said. "You want me to get thrown out on my head?"
"Even if anybody comes out to the porch," she said, "they won't see anything. We're just dancing close, and it's dark."
His cock, with a will of its own, had poked its way out of his pants and under the front of her short skirt. She stopped dancing for a second and fitted it between the soft spots at the top of her thighs, the top of his cock pushing up into hair and moisture.
They began to dance, moving very little. "Savoy" was still on. The song started with two lingering notes, the second one higher than the first. She started to sing with the record, but instead of singing "Sa-voy" as the first word, she substituted her own lyric.
"Let's-fuck," she sang softly into his ear. "Da-da-da-da. Let's.. . " She had a lilting voice.
He stopped dancing and held her still. He was afraid he was going to ejaculate ah over the inside of her skirt.
"Enough of this high-school agony," he said. "We've just got to do something."
"You tell me just what."
It hurt him to look into her face. She was hurting as much as he was.
"I'll go to my room. You join me. As you said, everybody's drunk."
"My mother may be drunk, but she is one sharp bitch."
"You found the right word," he said.
"I know what. Tell them you're going out for cigarettes, and come around the house and in the side door and on upstairs. Nobody will notice you coming back in."
"On the way out," he said, "what do I do, make a public announcement about cigarettes?"
"Yes, something like that."
His erection had slackened somewhat. He put it back in and zipped himself up.
"You know what will happen? Some son of a bitch will say he has lots of cigarettes, and offer me his."
"But say you smoke a crazy brand and that you'd prefer them."
"You're thinking very well."
"And to make this thing look natural, your announcing that you're going out for cigarettes, ask if anybody else needs cigarettes. Or anything."
"Like from the comer drug store."
"That's it. All because you're such a considerate fella."
"I am, you know that?"
"Oh, shut up."
"Suppose some silly bastard does want something?"
"He'll forget."
He started up the steps from the sun porch, then came back.
"One more item," he said. "What?"
"You sister Tess."
"She's up in her room. She hates these parties."
"That's what I meant. She's right there. She might just hear us."
"She won't," Sue said. "Anyway, she wouldn't go near your room with wild horses dragging her."
"There's only your mother to worry about, then," he said. "How come she's watching you?"
"It isn't me, if s you. That's why."
"You think she doesn't trust me?"
"It might be something like that."
"I wonder where she got that notion?" Paul said.
"It has something to do with your mother. I never found out what."
"Neither did I," Paul said. "But I think I could guess."
"Tell me," she said. "But not right now."
She pressed against him. His organ swelled against the insistent mound of her pelvis through the thin fabric of her dress.
"Anyway," he said, "what will you tell your mother? Why are you going upstairs?"
"I'll tell her I'm starting the curse."
He looked at her, startled.
"Are you?"
"Hell, no," she said.
"Come up in three or four minutes," Paul said.
He went out into the confusion of the living room, waded through it, and made his statement about going out for cigarettes, did anyone need anything, in a random sort of way to the people closest to the front door. Molly, he saw with satisfaction, was among them.
Nobody needed a thing. Nobody even heard him, as far as he could tell, except Molly.
"Hurry back," Molly said. She smiled fuzzily at him as he gave her a quick wave and went out the front door.
He was naked under the robe when Sue pushed the door open and slid silently into his room, closing the door quietly behind her. She turned and all at once was in his arms. Her open mouth fused with his.
"Oh, Christ," she said, breaking away. "This is going to be terrible."
"That's a hell of a thing to say." His swollen cock stood out arrogantly from the opening of his robe.
She stared. She seemed to have forgotten what she was about to say. The tip of her tongue came out, and circled her mouth, moistening her lips.
"What's going to be terrible?" he asked her, kissing her under the ear. His hands cupped the tender mounds of her buttocks.
"We have so little time," she said. "No time for anything, hardly."
"Why not?"
"My mother. She has a calendar for a brain, and she knows I'm not due to get the curse. I said I'd lost count, it must be a headache then."
"Isn't that good enough?"
"Not for her, it isn't. I said I'd take an aspirin and he down, and she said she'd come up in a little while and see how I was. I told her not to bother, I'd probably feel better and come back down in twenty minutes or so. But I can't trust her. She's loaded."
Nothing was going to stop Paul now. He could have hung a suitcase on the end of his crowbar and it wouldn't have bowed. He took her by the hand, led her to the bed, and started to lift her dress off.
She slipped away and lay down on his bed, flat on her back, her knees in the air, her short skirt up around the soft gentle curve of her naked hips.
"There's no time to get undressed," she said. "No time for any foreplay. Tomorrow we'll find a place, and take some time."
She spread her legs, the knees elevated. Her open twat smiled up at him. He felt his lips going dry. There was a lump in his throat.
"Jesus," he heard himself say, in a strained voice. "You're too lovely."
"Please, right now, Paul," she said. "I'm as ready as I can be. Do it now."
He dropped his robe and mounted between her legs. He guided the listening purple head of his cock to her wet welcoming cunt-lips, and held it there, between them, filling her eager entrance.
"Ooooh," Sue said.
"All-American girl," Paul said. "Wants to just plain fuck."
"Just plain-fuck," she moaned, her hips rising, her cunt seeming to gulp in more of his shaft all by itself. He sank all the way in then, to the wide, bone-hard base.
"Ooooh," she said again. It was close to a whimper.
For one awful moment he thought he was going to come immediately. Please, God, no, he said to himself. This was a hell of a time to get religion, he thought, and the thought saved him. He clenched his jaws, and was under control again.
He began to fuck her then with long, deliberate strokes, and she responded, with exquisite timing, to every stroke, pasting her pussy tight against his pubis with every in-stroke, holding the very tip of his cock lingeringly in her lips at every withdrawal.
He quickened his stroke, and she met every move with perfect timing. It was as if they had invented fucking, he thought, for just the two of them.
As the speed increased, he found himself pounding his prick into her with fury. Her hips and hungry twat pounded back with a fury that matched his own. They were groaning together, gasping, squirming, until he knew he could not stand it a second longer. This was it, but please, oh, please, one more second.
Then he heard the breathless screams in her throat, felt the spasmodic clutching of her inner lips, the uncontrollable quivering deep inside her warm wet cave and he came with her, spurting, in a great mutual explosion.
And as they lay together, panting, he heard the door open, and he closed his eyes. "Oh, Jesus," he muttered.
When he opened his eyes he half expected to see Mrs. Naylor standing in the doorway, and when he saw who it was, he would have welcomed Mrs. Naylor. It was Molly.
She was drunk, but there was nothing wrong with her eyes. Or her voice.
"Paul Porteus!" It was a harsh scream. "Get out of this house!"
Even in his shock and despair, he had time to hate her. Corny old bitch.
"Tomorrow morning," he said.
"Now. I'll give you ten minutes to dress and pack. Ralph will want to shoot you."
He got to his feet, his back to Molly, and put on his robe. Sue still lay on the bed, on her back, a look of shock on her face. Her skirt was still up around her hips.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly, and reached out a hand. She took it dazedly and got to her feet, and walked from the room, passing her mother as if she didn't exist.
"No-good fucking bastard," Molly said, and spat at him. She lurched out, slamming the door behind her.
Numbly, as if sleepwalking, Paul got his bags out of the closet. Two Saturdays in a row, he-mused. First he'd screwed himself out of school, then out of a place to live.
I'll have to give up screwing on Saturday, he thought.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Fortunately, Paul was able to find a vacancy at a hotel, even at that hour on a Saturday night. It was an old residential hotel on lower Madison Avenue, where he'd once shacked up on spring vacation with an Easter bunny.
By Monday morning, back in the office, he was all business. He had coffee with Harry Pemberton, and when they'd finished coffee, Harry stood up.
"We might as well get it over with," he said. "You got to meet the people. We'll start with Sam Howard."
"All right," Paul said, standing up. "But who is Sam Howard?"
"Sam Howard is the account executive on Trenner. Trenner makes Huggable Cosmetics and the whole Huggable fine. It isn't the biggest account the agency has, but it's the biggest pain in the ass, by far. They ought to have a sister line called Fuckable Fragrances."
Sam Howard, when Paul shook hands with him, did not appear to be the all-around jackass that Pemberton had described. He was a tall, affable man, soft around the middle but not noticeably so in the head. As the days went by, however, Paul studied him closely, trying to find out what made him tick. Howard had an ingenuous smile and talked clear, unabashed Brooklyn. He acted as if he were constantly all fucked up and didn't know what he was doing. That was the essence of his charm, his act, his shtick. And very soon Paul found out that his act was not an act at all. He was, genuinely, all fucked up, and rarely had the foggiest notion what he was doing.
He was the senior account executive on the Huggable account. Paul was his back-up man, or junior account executive. Pemberton, Paul found, was the account supervisor.
Sam Howard took him to lunch and siphoned off Martinis while "briefing" Paul, he said, on the Huggable account. Ah Howard talked about was a woman named Marilyn Nester-Mrs. Marilyn Nester, divorced-who sounded like a combination of the Dragon Lady and a vampire bat. Marilyn Nester was vice-president and advertising director of Huggable and Howard swore she stood up to pee.
"What'd she ever do to you?" Paul asked.
"Not a thing. But nothing is any good as far as she's concerned. There's no way to please her."
"How does the agency hang onto the account?"
"That's a good question," Sam Howard said morosely. "That's one damn good question."
He ordered himself another straight-up Martini.
After lunch, Howard has his secretary supply Paul with a stack of large black books containing proofs of Huggable advertisements, past and present.
Paul leafed lazily through them, all through the afternoon, and when Howard stuck his head into Paul's office a little after five, he was still going through his act with the proof books.
"Why don't you close up for the night?" Howard asked.
"I'm in no hurry," Paul told him. "Some fascinating stuff here." Fascinating, bullshit.
The hotel switchboard let him oversleep the next morning and by the time Paul got to the office it was around a quarter to ten. Nobody seemed to notice. They had something more important to worry about. Around Sam Howard's office, especially, there was a gloomy air of impending tragedy.
"Looks like the honeymoon is over," Howard said when he saw Paul come in. Paul had never seen such a frightened man. Like a puppet with all his strings out.
"What's gone wrong?"
"Marilyn Nester is what's wrong. Miss Huggable."
"You told me about her yesterday."
"Did I tell you about the new Spring campaign?"
"No, you didn't."
"Well, I was meaning to. Every time I start thinking about that woman I gulp my Martinis, and when I do that I forget what it was I started out to say."
"What about this campaign?"
"We gave it to her Friday to look over, over the weekend. With her helpers, naturally. She takes a whole retinue up to her place in Connecticut some weekends. She just got back to the office this morning, and she called here at nine-thirty."
"So?"
"She doesn't like it," Howard said. Like news of a death in the family, Paul thought.
"What doesn't she like?" he asked.
"Everything. Mostly she doesn't like us."
"What do we do now?"
"We go up and see her. Me, and Harry Pemberton, maybe even Joe Rossi, I don't know. You might just as well come along. It might be the last chance you'll get to meet the lady, and I wouldn't want you to miss that."
"What time?"
"Half-past three this afternoon."
"Why that late? Why not now?"
"Because she's a sadist, is why," Howard snapped. " T would like to see you gentlemen in my office at three-thirty this afternoon, if you can spare the time,' she says. The bitch."
"How you talk," Paul murmured.
"Ah, shit," Howard said, and stalked into his office. Paul followed him.
"What's the Spring campaign look like?"
"Like the others."
"Then what makes it a new Spring campaign?"
"Brand new copy, introducing a new line of cosmetics that makes a broad glow in the dark or some goddamn thing."
"May I see the campaign?"
"She's got it, up at Huggable. All we've got is stats."
"I'd like to look at those."
"What for?" Howard asked, looking at him. In his nervous agony, Paul was just another aggravation.
"If I'm going up there with you, I'd like to know what it's all about, instead of standing around with my thumb up my ass."
Howard shrugged.
"Okay." He turned to the secretary. "Get the stats of the new Huggable campaign and give them to Paul, will you, Betty?"
Howard's secretary brought the stats into Paul's office and he leafed through them. Howard was right. It did look like the other campaigns. Same kind of layout. Same dismal girls. If the models weren't the same models, they looked the same. Maybe Marilyn Nester had a point, he thought, although he knew enough already not to say that to anyone in the office.
Well, it was no skin off his ass. Or was it, after all? If they lost the account, that could mean his job.
He started to stew, and stewed through the rest of the day. You silly bastard, he told himself. You have the symptoms already.
At ten minutes after three, Howard stuck his head into Paul's office, and the two of them walked over to Pemberton's. Pemberton was ready to go.
They took a cab to one of the newer buildings on Third Avenue. Paul noticed that Pemberton let Howard dig around in his pockets and pay the driver.
They walked past the receptionist and down the hall and directly into Marilyn Nester's office. It was a bigger office than Pemberton's office, much bigger. She was standing behind her desk, talking to two men who were evidently asistants of some kind, from the way they listened. She was a tall woman, as tall as Paul, with jet black hair, in her middle thirties. A beautiful woman, Paul thought, and then she turned to look at them. Her eyes came to rest on Paul, the stranger in the trio. She had the coldest, hardest eyes he'd ever seen. Green, they were, ice green.
"Marilyn," Harry Pemberton said, all warmth and charm, "we've got some new blood on the account. Meet Paul Porteus."
She held out her hand and Paul took it. She kept her eyes on him, and he felt goose bumps on his back.
"Delighted," she said. "But it may be a little too late for a transfusion."
She motioned them to sit. The two men she'd been talking to ranged themselves on the low table running the length of the windows on one side of the office. Paul sat at one end of a long couch, near an ashtray. Sam Howard and Harry Pemberton took chairs in front of her desk.
"This Spring campaign of yours," Marilyn Nester said, and waved her hand at the two men along the windows. They stood up and propped six stiff-backed comprehensives against the windows. The advertisements were the ones Paul had seen the stats of that morning. They looked a little better in color, Paul thought, but not much. Same sad broads. Everybody's sister. Who wants a sister?
"Wild Watermelon," Marilyn Nester said. "Cherry Cheek. Plum Delightful. That isn't a campaign. It's a fucking fruit salad."
Nobody said a word. Not Howard. Not Pembertson. Certainly not Paul.
"Early Peach. What's the surface of a peach?"
Nobody said anything.
"Yellow and fuzzy, is what. You, Paul, you're a young man." She leveled cold green eyes on him. It didn't bother him now. Things looked lousy but what the hell. He'd regained his cool after the handshake. "You're a young man," Marilyn Nester repeated. "Do you like girls yellow and fuzzy?"
"I might, for kicks," he said, reaching for a cigarette. "I never met many."
Pemberton laughed.
"Paul's on our side, Marilyn," he said.
"You need all the help you can get," she said. She waved at the next layout against the window.
"Cherries in the Snow," she said, pointing. "Sounds like a gang-bag in a snow bank. Maybe the Queen of the Winter Carnival, herself. You go to Dartmouth, Paul?"
She was looking hard at him. He discovered that he was enjoying the whole scene.
"No," he said, looking her in the eye, "but I've been laid in snow banks."
Pemberton laughed again. Marilyn Nester almost smiled.
"Stop trying to rattle the help, Marilyn."
"He doesn't rattle so easily," she said.
"He doesn't. That's one of the reasons he's working for us."
"As I said before, Harry, I think your new blood got here too late." She was leveling the green eyes on the big, gray-haired man now. He took it well, Paul noticed. "I think the time's past for a transfusion."
"What're you trying to tell me, Marilyn?"
"I think Kane, Sisler and Huggable are on the verge of a parting."
"You don't mean it, not after all these years."
Paul looked at Howard. He was shaking. He looked ready to cry any second.
"That's just it, all these years," Marilyn Nester said. "The stuff you're doing looks tired. Tired in concept, in approach, and in execution."
"I think we ought to take another swing at this one," Pemberton said. He indicated, with his thumb, the layouts against the window.
"Go ahead, if you want. What I'm telling you isn't final, and there's no hurry. We have plenty of time to get this campaign into the works."
"Thanks," Pemberton said.
"But I ought to warn you, Scott and Steinberg has been nosing around. They'd like to have the Huggable account. To round out their image."
Paul thought "nosing around" was a bad choice of words on Marilyn Nester's part. The analogy made her a bitch in heat, and she looked like anything else but.
There was silence in the big office. Any second now, Paul thought, looking at Howard, he's going to break up all this nice quiet. He's going to begin sobbing.
"Well," Marilyn Nester said, "hasn't anyone anything to say?"
Shut up, Paul told himself. It's none of your business. But it was his business, now, damn it. Anyhow, what did he have to lose? What did any of them have to lose, him, Howard, Pemberton?
"Mrs. Nester," he said, "it occurred to me that maybe you've been looking at these damn campaigns too long."
She leveled the green ice on him.
"Call me Marilyn," she said. "Everybody calls me Marilyn."
"All right, Marilyn," he said, hooking up with her stare. "I think you've been looking at these damn things too long."
"What makes you think so?"
"You know when you don't like something, but you don't know what it is that you don't like."
"You have to realize, Marilyn," Pemberton said, apologizing, "that Paul's awful new in this business."
"Shut up, Harry."
"Like this campaign," Paul said, indicating the windows with his thumb as Pemberton had done. "I think you're quite right not to like it. I don't like it either."
"You're refreshing already," Marilyn Nester said.
Paul got out a cigarette and lighted it.
"The copy doesn't bug me. I don't think it bugs you either, really. What do you care about cherries and snow banks?"
She was still looking at him, but at least the cigarette had broken the stare.
"What does bug you?" Marilyn Nester asked.
"The damn models." Everybody in the room looked over toward the windows. "The lovely, dean, wholesome."
"What about the models? They're lovely girls."
"Sure. But they all look like my own dear sister, and I haven't even got a sister!"
For the first time, Marilyn Nester smiled. Her whole face changed completely. She had a wonderful smile, Paul thought. She was a beautiful woman.
"Go on," she said.
"Well, Jesus, who needs a sister? The girls you're trying to sell don't want to look like anybody's sister. They say there's nothing wrong with a little incest as long as you keep it in the family, but I don't think the public is ready to accept incest yet."
"Really?" Marilyn Nester asked.
"The lay public, I mean. If you'll pardon the expression."
"What do you have in mind?"
"I think the models should be girls who look like they could be laid once in a while. Lake, maybe right after choir practice."
Marilyn Nester smiled again, and some of the ice went out of her eyes.
She stood up and the meeting was over. Everybody else got to his feet. Marilyn Nester was still smiling when she looked over at Paul.
"I'll think it over, your suggestions about the models," she said. "Meanwhile, Harry, if you want to take another swing at this campaign, go ahead. But I do have to tell you, things don't look good for your agency."
They were at the door when Marilyn Nester spoke again.
"Paul," she said, "wait a second, will you?"
He came back to her desk while the others moved out. She was looking at her calendar.
"Can you come up and see me at five o'clock Thursday? Just you, alone. I want to talk with you." She did not look directly at him.
"Sure," he said, and turned away.
"Good night," she called, as he was going out the door.
"Good night," he said.
Harry Pemberton and Sam Howard were waiting for him by the elevators.
"What're you try to do to us, for God's sake?" Howard asked.
"Up your ass," Paul said.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
At the office on Thursday Paul spent most of the day going through proof books of Huggable campaigns, both present and past, and making detailed notes about what he thought was wrong with them and what could be done to make them right. In the cab on the way up to Marilyn Nester's office, just before five, he realized that he'd left his notes on his desk. The hell with them. He'd never paid much attention to his notes, anyway, even in his public speaking courses.
Marilyn Nester appeared glad to see him, in a cool sort of way. Not icy. Just cool.
"I've thought over what you said about the models," she said, when he'd settled into a chair in front of her desk. "I hate to admit it, but I think you're probably right."
Paul didn't say anything. He was going through his ritual of digging for a cigarette.
"Do you think you could pick the right kind of models for us."
"Sure."
"It might not be as easy as you seem to think."
"Why?"
"Most models just look that way. Kind of antiseptic. Virginal."
"That's the second time this week I've heard that word," Paul said. "Christ, what a week."
"Suppose you couldn't find models who looked the way you think they should look?"
"I'd go out and look for some. Non-models. Amateurs. Some girls who still put out for cups and medals."
"That sounds like quite an assignment you just dreamed up for yourself," she said, smiling.
"Yes, it scares me a little."
"I bet it does," she said.
"It could get pretty expensive."
"Company funds. The agency's, and Huggable's."
"I was really talking in the subjunctive," he said. "There're probably plenty of professional models who'd be just right for us."
"But there aren't any," she said. "You're undoubtedly trying to carve out a little piece of heaven for yourself, right here on Madison Avenue. All in the subjunctive, of course."
"Third Avenue, not Madison."
"You'd be doing your operating on Madison. And operating is the right word for it."
He didn't say a word. This woman was too bright.
She leaned back.
"Why don't you tell me something about yourself, Paul?"
"There isn't much to tell,"' he said. He felt faintly uncomfortable. "But I have an idea."
"What?"
"Have you any more appointments this afternoon?' "Not a one."
"Why don't we have a drink, over at the Drake? It's a good place." He'd been there last time his mother had been in town. It was a nice, dark place.
"Sure it's a good place," she said. "But I was thinking of asking you over to my apartment so we could talk. The maid can make us a drink."
"Well, thanks," he said. "I'd like to, later. But right now I'm still on company time, and I think I'd feel more comfortable talking to you at the Drake. It's more like neutral territory."
She smiled.
"You feel as if you're on enemy grounds here."
"Kind of."
"Well, you're not. Maybe others from your agency are, but you're not. You know, I think you're a remarkable young man."
"Thanks," Paul said. Remarkable was a good word. She should talk to Mrs. Naylor. Or the man who kicked him out of school. Or Molly. Molly. There was a reference.
"All right," she said, and stood. "Let's go over to the Drake."
Once they were settled in the Drake lounge, he ordered a martini, straight-up, to keep her company. That's what she'd ordered, and what the hell, he thought, he was hip-deep in this thing now. He might as well go all the way.
"You were going to tell me something about yourself."
"I wasn't," he said, "but I guess I have to."
He told her much the same story Pemberton had told him to feed Joe Rossi. He'd been sick late in the summer and couldn't go back to finish his last year at school. He intended to, if the agency granted him a leave of absence. Marilyn Nester let it all go without comment, and then started delving deeper. He didn't realize it at first, but after half an hour he knew suddenly that he'd told her a lot about himself. He felt tired.
"That's enough interviewing, for now," he said. "Can't we just have one more drink?"
"Of course," she said, and he motioned the waiter. It would be only their second and he didn't feel a thing.
"Why don't you tell me a little about yourself?" he asked. "Till now, this whole conversation has been a one-way street."
"Like what, for instance?"
"Oh, like, for instance, what's your proudest accomplishment?"
She thought for a long moment. The waiter set the glasses down. Paul sipped. These could be habit-forming, very easily, he thought.
"Well," she said, "I can install a new distributor in a car, all by myself."
"That's some hell of a practical accomplishment, for a pretty girl," he said.
"You think it's impractical? Why?"
"Because if you can get a new distributor, wherever you get it, there's somebody there who can install it for you."
"I never thought about that," she said.
"It's about as practical as having two Spanish guitars in the house just in case a couple of Spaniards drop in."
She was laughing, bent over. It was the first time he'd heard her laugh. It gave him a different sort of goose bumps on his back Her eyes were actually warm.
"As soon as we finish this drink," she said, "let's go up to my place."
"Fine," he said.
Her apartment building was in the East Sixties, way over near the river. In the elevator going up he remembered Howard saying something about her house in Wilton.
"I thought somebody said you lived in Connecticut."
"Wilton. I have a house in Wilton. But I can't stand the commuting."
"I understand a lot of people do, from Wilton and Westport, places like that. I couldn't even make it from Scarsdale."
"That I understand. On the New Haven line it's a different kind of nausea. It's the boola-boola on the bar cars that gets to me."
He grinned.
"There're probably people who make the trip without ever going near the bar car."
"You mean there are other cars?" she asked, widening her eyes. She was quite cheerful. The drinks, or being out of the office, or something, seemed to have melted all the ice. Maybe she had two personalities, Paul thought-her office personality and her at-home personality. What was that word? Schizoid.
"Anyway, I keep this little place in town. I come into the office from Connecticut on Monday mornings and go out again Friday nights, so I'm here just four nights a week."
The elevator doors opened and they walked down a long, carpeted hall, past 4-N, 4-0, 4-P. At apartment 4-Q she stopped and started digging in her handbag for her keys. There's an apartment for you, Paul thought. 4-Q.
"It's just a small place," she said, opening the door, "but it's all I need. And it sure beats commuting."
The apartment was anything but small. The living room was big, and doors at the far end opened onto a terrace. He walked to the doors and looked out at the boats on the river and the lights of Queens-he supposed it was Queens, anyway-but he didn't open the doors and go out. It was quite cold for October.
When he turned, a tall angular woman with her hair dyed bright red, wearing a blue dress, had entered the room, apparently from the kitchen.
"Can I fix a drink or something, Mrs. Nester?" she asked.
"If it's a martini," Paul said, "I'll be glad to make them. I've had plenty of practice. I've got an overdeveloped right arm from stirring the things." He almost added, "For my mother," but choked it back in time.
"That'll be wonderful," Marilyn Nester said. "Why don't you call it a day, Eleanor? I can fix us a little something to eat later."
"Why, thank you, Mrs. Nester," the woman said. She looked at Paul briefly, disappeared, then reappeared, shrugging into her coat, and was gone.
So that's the way it is, Paul thought. Talk about your fringe benefits.
As Paul stirred the third martini in the apartment, he had forgotten all about Pemberton and Howard and Huggable. He thought Marilyn Nester was the most desirable woman he'd ever met. She had the longest, loveliest legs he'd ever seen, like Juliet Prowse only more so, and even under her suit her body looked more than just promising. But it was her mouth that really got to him. He brought the drinks into the room, set them down on the low coffee table by the couch, sat down beside her, and looked at her mouth again. His eyes had been mostly on her mouth for the last fifteen minutes. It was entirely different from her taut, controlled office mouth. It was wide and warm, the lips full and moist, parted a little even when she was not smiling. At one point she had gone to the bathroom and wiped off her lipstick, but it had hardly made any difference in the redness of her lips. They welcomed warmth.
He wanted to kiss that mouth more than anything, and, for the first time in his memory, he didn't know how.
"What are you thinking about, Paul?" she said, and the tip of her tongue appeared fleetingly between her parted lips.
Paul controlled his voice.
"You must have an idea," he said. "You're driving me straight up the wall."
"I wouldn't want that ever to happen," she said. "I wouldn't want you to have anything to do with anything vertical."
She leaned forward, toward him. At least she seemed to lean toward him. He put his right hand on the back of her neck, and, at last, kissed her, deeply. Icy, he remembered. Icy as a furnace. She melted into him, and in the warm cave of her mouth her tongue licked his, lazily, lingeringly. His cock swelled, pumped itself rigid, strained against his trouser leg.
Her hand brushed over it, casually, as if accidentally, and abruptly as he took her mouth way from his.
"I'm going to get into something comfortable," she said. "Why don't you do the same?" She was looking deep into his eyes, not smiling.
She got up from the couch and left, her hips swaying. Why don't you do what? he thought. Get into something comfortable? He took off his coat and tie, hung them over a chair, and went back to the couch.
She came slowly back into the room walking in high-heeled fleecy mules. She wore nothing else. God, she was beautiful, every inch of her. Her proud high breasts, still young, jiggling slightly when she moved, were tipped with scarlet, startling against the whiteness of her skin. Her hips flared gently, then slimmed, flowing into the endless, softly swelling line of her flawless legs. The long gradual curve of her belly disappeared in the blackness of her incredibly neat heart-shaped bush.
"I thought you were going to get more comfortable, too," she said smiling. She stood erect, her breasts jutting, the nipples, like little scarlet rigid pricks, pointing in a slant toward the ceiling. She was very proud of her body. That changing of distributors was a lot of horseshit, Paul thought.
"Two minutes," Paul said, and stood up, unbuttoning his shirt.
"Leave your clothes in the other room, if you like."
It took him less than a minute to get undressed. He sauntered barefooted back into the living room. His long thick prick preceded him into the room, swinging, stiff.
"Good God," she said.
"What's wrong, Marilyn?" he said.
"Oh, nothing. Everything's absolutely all right. Just bring that over here. Please bring it right over here."
She was sitting on the couch, her eyes never leaving the enormity of his prick as he moved slowly toward her across the room.
As he approached, she spread her legs to let him get closer. His awesome spear, above the horizontal now, pointed straight into her face. The squinted eye in the swollen head, he knew, would be looking her square in the eyes.
"Oh, God," she said again, and opened her lips wide.
Her soft mouth enveloped the entire head, effortlessly, and her moist lips embraced it around the neck. Her deft tongue slipped along the underside of the vibrant shaft, encouraging him to enter her mouth more deeply. He put his hands around the back of her head and slid his cock forward gently, until he could feel the tip touching the soft palate above her throat.
Her eyes rolled up to meet his, and she seemed to be smiling, even though her mouth was a horizontal red around his thick cock. Her head shuttled back and forth as she licked and sucked simultaneously, combining joyous abandon with skill.
The girl's enjoying her work, Paul thought. No matter what her work happened to be at the moment, evidently she believed in maximum effort.
He didn't want her efforts to end, but he could feel his hips beginning to pump involuntarily, and he didn't want to be selfish. Not with this lady. It looked like a long night ahead.
"You're wonderful," he said, taking his hands away from her head. "But that's enough of that for now."
She kept sucking and licking, her mouth making slurping sounds now, one hand squeezing and jerking at the base of his shaft. Christ, he thought, he didn't want to come this way, not just yet. He had a thought, a completely unselfish thought.
"Please stop now. There's something I want to do for you."
Her woman's curiosity got the better of her, and with one last lingering suck, her lips came together and terminated their trip at the pointing tip of his prick.
"What?" she asked, and smiled up at him. She let the tip of her tongue protrude from between her wet lips, stiffened it, and moved it up and down.
"I think you get the idea." He dropped to his knees on the carpet in front of her.
She spread her legs apart, slowly, and inched her hips forward toward the edge of the couch. Paul looked up the inviting soft V of her thighs, from the open end of the V.
He had never seen a more perfectly formed pussy.
Her long, generous lips swelled toward the center, like the calves of a dancer's legs. They glowed dusky-pink in the lamplight, with an aura of buoyant good health. The lips were parted only slightly, but the deep glistening pinkness between them seemed infinitely capable of both giving and receiving enormous enjoyment.
He kissed his way up her thighs as she spread her legs wider, then reached his arms up and around her legs, reaching down again with his fingers to spread the soft perfection of her cunt. With the tip of his stiffened tongue, he touched her swelling clitoris, then moved his tongue to and fro across it in a series of swift fluttering strokes. He heard a sigh escape from her throat, and extended his whole tongue and began to lick softly up and down the entire moist opening.
"That's the way," she said. "That's just lovely."
He probed deeply into her then, licking and sucking simultaneously. Her lips began to undulate slowly, as her inner lips began a series of gentle squeezes on his probing tongue.
She threw her knees wide apart and elevated the angle of her twat so his tongue was plunging downward. Her heels pressed against the back of his neck, urging him. He probed deeper, extending his tongue to its full length. Then he withdrew his tongue from its penetration and began licking up and down in her wet gorge of pleasure, sucking her firm swollen clitoris at the termination of each long lick.
"Oh, Lord," she said, "I've got to have you inside me, right this second."
She rolled away from his mouth, stood up, and ran swiftly into the bedroom. He followed, slowed by his swinging cock, and when they got into the bedroom she lay on her back, her legs spread wide, in the middle of a mammoth double bed.
"It's the size of a tennis court," he said, getting into position between her legs.
"You play a game with balls on it," she gasped, "but not tennis." Her heart was not in making little jokes. With both hands, she was guiding the apple-hard head of his prick to the welcoming lips of her hungry cunt.
His weapon imbedded itself and made the whole long trip to her depths in one delicious plunging stroke. She was quivering as he withdrew the entire length of the shaft and plunged it home again.
"You're just too much," she said through her teeth. "Just too good to be true." Her hips rose, she hooked her heels behind his, and rose rhythmically to meet his plunging strokes.
After he'd fucked her for only a dozen or so strokes, her hips broke rhythm, thrashing and fluttering erratically, and he saw from her contorted mouth that she was reaching orgasm, too quickly, much too quickly. He drove deep into the ecstatic anguish of her cunt, and held still, while she thrashed and fluttered, impaled. Her mouth opened in a series of short, shuddering screams, and then she lay back, her head rolling on the pillow, breathing deeply and exhaling in long, quivering, interrupted gasps.
"You are too much, Paul," she said finally, "for a poor working girl. I couldn't control myself."
"It's still inside you, you know." His pelvis was jammed tight against her hairy crotch, his surging cock pulsing impatiently in the warm clutching cave.
"I know it," she said. "Oh, boy, do I know it."
Her breathing was regular now, as her lips started squeezing the shaft of his cock and her hips started to move, almost imperceptibly. This is going to be a long one, he thought. He'd make sure it was a long one. He put a hand under one of her ankles and raised her leg up over his head as he leaned over and lay on his side, pumping his cock into her with long, slow strokes.
He fucked her for a long time that way, and she came twice more, each time with mounting intensity, a kind of delirium. When he heard her starting to gasp and scream for the fourth time, he pounded his cock home and came along with her, spurting agonizingly into the warm depths of her ecstasy, her shuddering screams loud in his ears. As the waves of sensation subsided, he went to sleep, lying on his side, his slippery prick dozing inside her, held in place by the soft warm embrace of her clutching sex.
When they woke up, an hour later, he fucked her again, a long, lingering fuck, and again she came three or four times before he let himself go into orgasm. Afterwards they took a shower and she scrambled eggs and made coffee. They ate, completely nude, in the kitchen, saying little. She smiled at him often, a warm, gentle, loving smile. He found it hard to believe this was the same woman he'd first met behind a desk in her own office. After they'd eaten they went directly back to bed, leaving the dirty dishes for the maid in the morning.
By daybreak, he'd fucked her three more times-three times to his orgasm, that is. She'd reached a peak of shuddering, screaming enjoyment at least a dozen more times.
This woman, he thought, watching the early sunlight slant into the room, is liable to kill me. Or maybe die in the attempt.
But she didn't look anywhere near death. She was lying on her back, sound asleep, a look of total serenity on her face. Even in sleep, she was smiling.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
He stopped at his hotel, shaved, showered and got into fresh clothes. He should have been exhausted, but he wasn't. He felt wonderful. Then he began to think about the early part of the evening, about meeting Marilyn first in her office and starting to talk business, and he recalled that, after the drinks at the Drake, she hadn't once mentioned his agency or his job or her company and her job; and he started to fret. You could never know about women. Maybe all he was to her was an evening's roll in the hay.
It was after ten when he got to the office. On his desk was a note from Pemberton.
"Please see me, soon as you get in. Harry."
Oh, shit, he thought. I'm about to get chewed out for being late.
But when he walked through the door into Pemberton's office, Pemberton stood up and extended his hand. Sam Howard brushed past him and left. There was a tentative look on his face, as if he were ready to cry. He always looked as if he were about to cry, Paul thought. He ought to try a different line of work.
"Congratulations," Pemberton said.
He shook Pemberton's hand, wondering.
"Marilyn Nester called around nine-thirty," Pemberton said.
Paul dropped his hand. Oh, Jesus, that was the end of this job. One week, fired, just like from school. The handshake was all a put-on. He didn't say a thing. What could he say?
"We're keeping the Huggable account. Marilyn Nestor's ready to sign up for another year. With one proviso."
"What proviso?"
"That you're the senior account executive."
"I'll be a son of a bitch," Paul said.
"No, the senior account executive on Huggable. At triple your present salary. Effective right now. And you'll move into Howard's office. We're moving him across the hall."
"What happens to him, besides moving?"
"He's off Huggable, of course. He has two other accounts, and we're giving him another small one."
"What's that?"
"Dr. Ainsley's T-W."
"That's a patent remedy for rectal itch." These guys had no mercy.
"Perfect account for him," Pemberton said. "He's had his thumb up his ass most of his life."
"I don't know what to say," Paul said.
"Don't say a thing. Joe Rossi will be in here in a minute and he'll have plenty to say. He's liable to start blubbering." He looked at Paul sideways. "I'd say you made quite an impression on Marilyn Nester."
"Must have," Paul said. He did not meet Pemberton's eyes.
"You son of a bitch," Pemberton said slowly, emphasizing each word, as if savoring the phrase. Paul looked at him quickly. The big man was smiling warmly. He put a hand on Paul's shoulder.
Paul began to remember his first interview with Pemberton. "How tall are you?" Pemberton had asked. "Good-looking guy." Paul could almost hear the words.
Pemberton, he thought. And he'd had him figured as a simple sort of jackass.
Joe Rossi came into the office, beaming, his silver hair shining, and pumped Paul's hand.
"We knew you'd carry the ball for us," he said, "but nobody expected you to score the winning touchdown so soon. But then, nobody expected this to be the last minute of the last quarter, either."
"He scored, all right," Pemberton said.
Paul looked at him. Pemberton looked out the window.
"You ought to have an apartment in town, with this new job," Joe Rossi said.
Tm looking for one," Paul told him.
"We'll foot the bill," Joe Rossi said. "The agency owes you a great deal. You might as well know it, you may well have saved a four-million-dollar account, single-handed."
Single-handed, Paul thought. That was a nice way to phrase it.
"I don't think you'll be moving into a new place this weekend, though," Pemberton said. "I forgot to tell you, Marilyn Nester wants you to come out to her place in Connecticut for the weekend. Talk about the new campaign. She asked me to tell you to call her."
"I've got a sort of date this weekend."
"I'm afraid you better break it. It wouldn't be wise to cross Marilyn Nester now."
"I suppose so," Paul said, resigned. What the hell was he going to tell Sue when he found her? And where, in the months ahead, was he going to get the strength to keep his job, taking care of Marilyn?
"You'll break your date, and make it out to Connecticut?" Pemberton asked.
"I don't want to much, but I will."
"That's good. I know it's rough, but he who lives by the sword.. . " His voice trailed off.
