An inadvertent shudder ran the length of her body as she sat there, in the armchair, in the languorous pose he had compelled her to assume-her skirt drawn high above the gartered expanse of thigh, her legs widespread to reveal her panties. Manya attempted to avoid his gaze, but despite herself, despite every ounce of will she could muster, she found herself returning to those scarcely perceptible glacial gray eyes veiled by the weary droop of heavy lids. Eyes as deep cleft in the granite face as those in a piece of Greek statuary of antiquity, the shadow of the brow obscuring all but the reflected gleam of light that made the pupils appear almost feverishly aware of every action, gesture, movement. She strained to bring her legs together, but she had earlier been forewarned by the demoniacal ruthlessness of his temper when he had pressed a bared blade against Ned's chest to compel him to have intercourse with the nymphomaniacal brunette who now sat observing the ritual with a glittering anticipation. Ned had cautioned his wife, as soon as these two had burst into their attractive suburban household to take refuge from the pursuing police, "Just do as they say. They don't look very rational to me". And, again, when they were prepared, hours later, to leave, announcing that Manya would have to come along as a hostage until they cleared the environs to the town. "No mock heroics for the sake of virtue, Manya," he had said. There was an underlying implication of something deeper in their own relationship, and from the hint of the twisted lip of her captor, Manya realized he had not missed the nuance.
Link, as the brunette called the captor, now arose from the edge of the bed, smoking one cigarette after another, and fixating his gaze between her legs. His step was toward Manya, and the gaudily made-up brunette, who was a theatrical stereotype of a stripper, leaned forward in her chair with an unconcealed relish. "Take her, Link, take her," she said, with quickening excitement in her voice, but his sudden darting glance reacted upon her as a physical blow, and she quickly fell silent. Manya could feel the thudding in her chest and the stab of fear that almost totally overcame her stinging mortification at her exposure. Raised by grandparents in an atmosphere of aristocratic wealth and the most formal of proprieties, and later sent to a convent school, Manya had rationalized that part of her nature as a necessary evil and cast over her womanly attributes an aloof and patrician coldness. Before their marriage, Ned, a widower in his early forties with a teenage daughter, affectionately called Manya his swan. After marriage, the endearing expression had become, "my virtuous white swan." An inadvertent glimpse of cleavage in a d'collet' gown would bring the color to her face and the exposure of knees in exiting from cars or taxicabs brought her moments of obvious discomfiture. "This man knows that. He sensed it from the first moment he saw me", Manya realized.
Link, loose-gaited and in his characteristic slouch, positioned himself before her. He drew her up to a standing position with a gesture, and Manya wondered at her own permissiveness, attributing it as an afterthought to her resolve to maintain her composure at whatever cost, not to give him the satisfaction of a struggling, demeaning, pleading resistance. His hand reached over her shoulder and drew down the zipper in back of her dress in one, even downward stroke. Manya steeled herself for her ordeal, determined to show him unmistakably that she could be violated but not possessed. She felt a revulsion against the recollected phrase-Ned had used it-and she suddenly felt herself hating her husband for allowing the events to transpire without any show of resistance. "You don't strike at a lethal weapon and you don't reason with insanity," was his admonition. Manya wondered at her own sudden hostility. After all, these were the qualities she was attracted to and chose to live by in fulfilling the role of a young, patrician beauty to the manor born.
The hard ends of his fingers drew the dress down over her shoulders, and without bothering to disengage the hooks of her brassiere from behind, he pulled the garment down to reveal her breasts. He made no overt move to touch the finely contoured symmetry, but her skin, delicately white and flawless from three-times-weekly massage and sauna treatments, prickled at his expressionless gaze, her roseate nipples stiffening into deepening crimson darts. The dress dropped to the floor and the slip followed, and now his hands were scaling the panties down over her hips, leaving her before him in the pink garter belt holding to the sheen of nylon over her long, well-formed limbs of a hosiery mannequin, tapering to fashionable ankle and instep encased in custom-fitted pumps with three-inch heels. Manya had once refused to return to the country club following an incident in which she had overheard a man pointedly refer to her, in an aside, as having "gorgeous legs with the get-up of a high-price call girl." Ned had only laughed and tried to dismiss the entire episode.
Link stepped back slightly, his face still impassive. His fingers began to undo the tight black belt drawn through his trousers. Manya heard the sound of the undone zipper and forced herself to look away from the fumbling hands that were drawing out his sex. "Now," she thought, "now." After the several stops in assorted hotels and motels along the way, in which he had perversely tormented her by forcing her to adopt embarrassing attitudes of exposure, she would rid herself of his cloying attentions. She discovered instead of fear, she was beset with determination to demonstrate her invulnerability, even in the most intimate encounter. He removed his trousers and his jockey shorts. The nymphomaniacal brunette, now unable to contain herself, exposed herself to the waist and was thrusting her hand over her femininity with quickening insistence. Manya felt the pressure of Link's hands on her shoulders pressing her down and backward on the bed. She allowed herself to fall back un-resistant, and she endured the stroking of his hands on the smooth globes of her buttocks as he raised her legs. Then she felt the hot impress of his body, the remotest contact of his masculinity at the threshold of her loins. Manya tensed for the lancing thrust that was not to come. He remained there for several seconds until her still averted gaze darted back to scan his face, an act he had obviously been awaiting. And with an unmasked contempt, he straightened up and allowed her legs to fall. With one hand, he seized her behind her neck, and in a gesture of brusque command, began to bring her forward and down until she found herself kneeling on the floor for him at the level of his waist. Although she was twenty-seven years of age and married for four, the only mature, nude male she had seen was her own husband. And this, invariably, under the deliberate cover of darkness which served as a shield to cast over the act an aura of impersonality which made contact only with her defensive outer self. Here, the light of the room was bright, garish, fluorescent, and she found herself in such close proximity to him that his body seemed like some massive independent plant sprouting its lurid, ripe fruits amid thick, matted foliage. The pungent, sweet-sweat man-smell acted like a soporific on her senses, and she imagined her head and face suddenly disembodied in this unbelievable encounter. Her mouth seemed as a raw, gaping wound. She gasped, pressed back by the weight of his body against the cushioning mattress side of the bed. She lost all perspective now, all sense of present, engulfed somewhere in a cavernous pit between his large, straining thighs at the mercy of his hunger, threatening to asphyxiate her in its greed. . . .
Inundated by the blackness of her senses, momentarily cast backward in time to the point where three days before, that lean, grim, unshaven figure had stepped into their home with the showgirl brunette close behind him. Manya had just seated herself, and reaching over to turn on the reading lamp, had found herself startlingly confronted by the intruder. There was little formidable about his seemingly modest frame and medium proportions. About five feet ten inches tall and deceptively slim, wearing nondescript dark trousers and his shirt open at the collar beneath the loose fitting black leather jacket. When Ned, sitting at the opposite end of the room reading his newspaper, suddenly rose up at this unexpected presence, his large expansive figure seemed to tower above that of the night visitor. Manya's first reaction was that of annoyance at this sudden intrusion. Angered by Ned's puzzling inaction, she demanded angrily, "Get out of here or I'll call the police!"
Link came up to her, and pressing his fingers against her chest, forced her back into the chair from which she had indignantly arisen. It was not until then that she noted his dead impassivity, the frigid opacity that admitted no sign of human emotion.
"What are you after?" Ned had asked, making no move to attack Link for the crude physical gesture imposed on his wife.
"We're just going to hang around here for a couple of hours," Link said in a rasping monotone.
"Until the cops-" Estelle began to interject until Link's glowering rebuke cut her off.
"As long as everybody relaxes," Link said, "we'll go like we come, with no problems. Is there anyone else--? " he started to say as Diane, their sixteen-year-old daughter by Ned's first marriage, came bounding into the room, with her customarily brash and aggressive manner. Link's hand moved with serpentilian swiftness, producing a snub-nosed revolver. "Oh, look at him-Steve McQueen!" exclaimed Diane, in a characteristically provocative air, and she continued approaching the center of the room even as Link's armed hand bade her to hold her steps. With the same incredibly rapid motion, the sound of hand against flesh resounding before the awareness of the action, Link had backhanded her across the face. She cried out and pitched backward against the wall. Ned still made no move against Link but instead went to Diane and helped her to her feet, urging her at the same time to make no untoward moves or remarks. "Check the rooms, Stell," Link instructed his superabundantly developed female companion. Estelle started walking across the room and deliberately made a wide sweep to move past Ned with exaggerated hip-swinging movements, which threatened to dislodge the swelling mounds of her backside from the figure-hugging lines of her black jersey dress. She returned with a suggestive smile and stepped cross the threshold into another room.
They had made their unannounced appearance at 9:20 pm. Close to midnight, they remained in the same room, their positions hardly changed. Ned had attempted to engage Link in conversation, an effort which had been not only ignored but even unacknowledged. Drawing up an armchair toward one of the corners of the room from which he could observe all of the occupants, Link remained slouched down in it, the weapon loosely gripped in one of his hands and lying on his lap. He seemed thoughtfully withdrawn, but Manya noted that the slightest gesture from anyone in the room elicited from him an instant flicker of response. Diane had remained for some time, sullen and indecisive following Link's attack. Twice within the period of the passing hours, she began to move about restlessly and appeared as if she were going to address Link with her usual bravado, but her father had managed to dissuade her and return her, once again, quietly to her place. But now she leaped to her feet in unfeigned disgust. "Geez!-I can't stand this morgue. Let's turn on the TV-do something!" She pulled from Ned's grasp and strode across the room to the television set, staring challengingly at Link. He made no move as she turned on the set, and finding nothing at video of interest, switched to a rock 'n' roll station on the FM. She stepped back, snapping her fingers and jerking her shoulders in a motion that drew attention to the unencumbered movements of her well-formed breasts not encased by any brassiere, beneath a diaphanous peignoir. "Diane-" her father said, curtly, as he came toward her. But she evaded him and whirled to face Link brazenly. "I'm not afraid of you and that cigar-store-Indian expression." She came directly up to him, her position, hands on hips, her face twisted into a derisive smile, deliberately provocative. "If you're in trouble and the cops are after you," she shrugged, "I'm not on the cops' side. You can come and go and we won't give you a hard time. So why don't you just loosen up and we can talk and have some fun while you're waiting. Come on," she urged, extending her hands and picking up the beat of the music, "we can even dance." Link regarded her with no change of expression. Diane broke into a wild, frenetic twist, throwing her young, supple body into attitudes of abandon, her mocking eyes never leaving Link's face. Manya leaped to her feet and shouted at Diane, in shocked dismay, "Come over here and sit down this very minute!"
Diane, without breaking the rhythmic beat, flung out her derision. "Come on, Mother Superior--Join me and we'll give the sexy man some real entertainment." She whirled about, thrusting her hip out and kicking to the side to reveal a full expanse of an exposed thigh and something more. Ned came up and grabbed her firmly by the shoulders and brought her, struggling, back to her former position in the room. Angrily, as soon as he released her, she broke away from him again. "Don't try to treat me like Mother Superior," she said, and turning to Link, added, "I know what to do with a man-man, don't I, dear father?" she asked, sarcastically. "Why don't you tell the wooden Indian here how I've been knocked up by a real man-man and had to have a little abortion to save the family and old Mother Superior here from a positively shattering scandal." At which point, she suddenly dashed across the room toward Link, and peignoir high above her head, exposing herself in complete nudity. "Now, does that look like an itty bitty girl who needs to be protected?"
Manya came at her and began struggling with her to pull her garment down and conceal her nakedness, but Diane tore and scratched and bit at her until Ned came up again to lend his support. Link stood up and the quiet command of his voice cut through the melee. "That'll be enough of this chicken shit. You can all play Peyton Place some other time." Diane, her peignoir ripped in shreds, took advantage of her release and flung herself against Link, her arms about his neck. "Take me with you," she pleaded. "Just get me away from here-from her. You can do anything you want to me." And she ground her pelvis against him for emphasis.
Estelle, who had been smoking steadily while reclining drowsily on the couch, her skirt above her thighs, now underwent a dramatic transition. The sight of the lissome, shapely nymphet, stripped and urging herself against Link, excited her to a state of intense arousal. She sat up quickly, the forgotten cigarette dropping from her fingers, as Link pried the precociously developed teenager off him. Rejected, Diane lurched away from him, ran toward her room. Link made no attempt to prevent her. The large brunette came up to him, a startling change in her move--merits which were now extremely nervous and constrained. In the same action of backing up against him, she had raised her skirt above her hips to expose her nakedness from the waist down except for the black, theatrically tasseled garter belt. Her hand moving behind her, she reached for the zipper on Link's trousers. He raised his knee and she stumbled awkwardly forward, falling upon her hands and momentarily exposing a lurid glimpse of her totally unshielded sex. She raised herself to her feet, her face twisted in agitation. "Please, Link-you know what it is for me when I get like this. Help me-"
"Knock it off, Stell," Link said. There was an ominous edge to his voice that made her step back, and she stood there for a moment, indecisively, casting her eyes about the room. When she saw Ned, she went directly up to him. He was seated on the divan, and standing before him, she revealed the lush mounds of her womanhood. Ned thrust his hand forward to fend her off as she attempted to plant her knees on either side of him. She struggled to maintain her position, tugging, at the same time, at his trousers, and she turned to Link, this time her expression imploring. Unaccountably, he stood up, took several steps forward and raised his weapon in Ned's direction. His voice carried an unmistakable note of command. "Relax, buddy-just relax." Ned blinked his eyes in puzzlement. He offered no further opposition as Estelle stroked him to arousal and now leaned forward to bring forward the full weight of her plenteously endowed body against him. She joined with him quickly and enveloped him wholly with an anguished moan and a deep, submissive sigh. For a long instant after that, she made no movement, and then she began slow undulations like the awakening currents of a smooth sea stirred to a quickening stormy wrath. Ned felt himself engulfed, helplessly at the mercy of a now driving, seething, twisting, heaving mound of insatiable flesh. Stark disbelief rimmed Manya's eyes. A strange tumble of conflicting thoughts and emotions possessed her, and then she discovered Link's eyes upon her. And even as this was taking place, she found herself reading Link's expression with a troubled urgency. Was it scorn?-or desire? No, something else, something subtle and evasive. Something, at that instant, that she had to know.
Estelle's shrill outcry suddenly broke off her thoughts. Manya saw the intruder's companion pummeling at Ned, crying out, frustratedly, and then pulling away, still feverishly aroused. Eyes glazed with desire, the flesh of her thighs and belly still quivering from the contact, Estelle reached down between her legs and began to writhe and twist upon her own hand. Link came up against her from behind without warning and jack-knifed her with a hard, downward thrust of his hand upon her back and effected a hard, forceful blow that almost up-ended her. Then seizing her with one hand encompassing her waist, while with the other he maintained a firm grip upon the revolver pointed in the direction of those he wished to restrain, he commenced a steady, grinding, brutish flagellation. A whimpering outcry with each battering thrust cut through Manya with an indescribable agony. She wanted to cry out herself, to bury her head, but she found herself frozen in stupefaction, able only to follow the independent move of her own eyes which were upon Link-as his, even as he drew the passion-obsessed Estelle to a rising, rousing, fiery climax which left her heaped upon the floor, were on Manya. . . .
Except for the moaning and soft sobbing of the woman who remained on the floor in a tangle of bared and twitching limbs, a stunned silence pervaded the room. The disbelief of the events which had transpired clearly marked the faces of Ned, the incredulous Manya, and Diane, who had dropped her feigned air of superciliousness and now remained, hand half raised to her mouth, her eyes wide with astonishment. And there was a meaning beyond Link's obscene exposure, his still distended male instrument, at the same time that his hand clutched the revolver, but its implication eluded her in the emotional rapids which swept over her. Manya was aware that in the interval of several hours of this grotesque intercession in their lives, a change had been wrought. But she did not understand in what way. The silence was sustained until Estelle, composing herself, adjusted her garments and seemed strangely restored, as if nothing untoward had occurred at all. "When are we going to get out of here, Link?" she asked. "This place is a drag."
Link shrugged and drew a deep breath. "Now's a good a time as any, I guess."
"Where are we going?" Estelle asked.
Link's silence was characteristic, as he reached for and slipped into his leather jacket. He looked up and said to Ned, "I'm going to have to take one of the women with me, just until we get clear of town." Link turned in Diane's direction. Her eyes brightened and she leaped to her feet. Manya burst out, surprised by the boldness and rage of her own voice. "You won't leave this house with that child."
Link turned about slowly to face her. "Well, I guess you'll have to come along."
Diane cried out, "No, I'm going! I'm going with him!" She ran toward Link, and Ned grabbed her by the waist to restrain her. She kicked and flailed her arms and turned, in the full fury of her assault, to Manya, as Link grabbed her by the arm and led her to the front door. "You bitch, you bitch, you mind your own damned business! No, you can't take her, take me-take me!" But the door closed behind them, as the three of them started for the car, and they could still hear the cries of Diane's outraged protest.
CHAPTER TWO
The sting of his hot spend snapped her back to the lurid and brutal reality of his demeaning assault. Manya discovered herself kneeling in humiliating abasement, the skin of her knees rubbed raw against the hard floor. The events of the past leading up to the circumstance of her ordeal as hostage had unreeled during the brief period of his crude molestation. Link pulled away from her now, and Manya, staggered by her revulsion at an act in which she had never engaged, remained momentarily immobilized, the cascade of his warm fluid staining her like molten wax. Estelle came up to her and extended a towel. When Manya hesitated, Estelle helped her to her feet and began to wipe her face, her neck, her breasts with the dampened terry cloth towel.
"Come on, doll," she said, not unkindly. "That ain't gonna do you no bad at all. My old lady used to say that a little juice waters the roses in a woman's cheeks." Then she inquired gently, with undisguised amazement, "You never done that before with no man?"
Manya shook her head.
"The first time that I did," Estelle said, "it was some old cat hound who was drilling my ma, and he got to me when she was all washed up and deep in the hay. I was seven years old, and I thought my eyeballs was gonna pop out." Estelle laughed. "But whatever he done, he straightened me out so I never had no trouble with no man, ever since."
Link remained naked from the waist down, now seated on a sofa chair facing a television set. He took a deep swallow from a pocket flask and showed no interest in the conversation of the two women. Manya resisted the urge to look his way, and Estelle, as if divining her thoughts, said, "He's a lot of man, that one, ain't he?"
"That's not a man," Manya said, deliberately raising her voice so that he might overhear her, "he's a sick animal."
Estelle countered with surprise. Link reached over to switch a channel, as if he had not heard. His pointed unresponsiveness infuriated Manya. To use her was bad enough, but to fail to acknowledge her presence any more than that of some inanimate object, a chair, a table, was insufferable. If she could at that moment, she would have gladly driven a blade into his flesh and ground it into the wound to intensify the agony.
"You had no right to do that," she screamed at him, suddenly unable to control herself. "No right to take a woman and drag her down to your slimy, filthy level." Driven by her unvented frustration, she reached out to rake his face with her bared fingernails, but he caught both her hands in his one, and held her there before him, still wordless but now appraising the full length of her stripped figure, the deep cleft ravine between her breasts, the slight fleshy undulation of her belly. Impelled by blind anger, Manya had forgotten the state of her undress. She now made a frantic effort to gain her release. That same infuriating downward turn of his mouth was followed by a gesture not only of her release, but a forward thrust that sent her stumbling backwards against the bedside table and overturning the lamp. She saw Estelle drawing a slip and dress over her head and then bearing down upon him across the sofa chair where he had reassumed his former position. His hand upon her back signified his acceptance of her overture. Manya sank down upon the bed, her face in her hands, too weary, too sick to make the gesture that would clothe her nakedness. The sounds of Estelle's groaning passions assailed her ears, no matter how hard she tried to shut them out. Link's face faded and was replaced by that of her father's, handsomely aquiline in his graying refinement. How attractive a man he had been, right up until the end when a sudden fatal heart attack had put an end to their idyllic existence. Herself, her dad, and her dad's close friend, Raymond Archer, a partner and fellow designer, in the magnificent, manorial home they had furnished to suit their impeccable taste in each detail of every corner. Her mother had passed away many years before, and she was the attended-to queen of the roost, considered far too precious by her father for exposure to the manner, habits and attitudes of other children her own age. "I'm raising you to recognize the wonder of your own individuality, to grow to develop and realize your full potential as a person, not merely as a female." Her father's words came back to her from the past. How often he had repeated them, and insisted, "You are not to be raised for the boorish, sexual service of some inept ape or to slavishly wear yourself into a drudge by raising a brood of demanding, suckling brats." No wonder she had been content to isolate herself from the world in the stage-set existence of books and music and the cultivation of the more rarefied social graces. It was not until her father's death that the emptiness of the huge house prompted her to offer her services as a volunteer librarian at the local university in which research facilities she had made the acquaintance of Ned, the architect who had designed it and returned often with clients to show them the structure. Whatever his intent was originally, he had learned quickly to "respect her as a person first, not simply a female". How bitterly ironic, Manya thought. What a cruel conspirator was fate. One moment her life was moving along the course of its long preconceived design, and the next, with the sudden open thrust of a door, the orderly pattern exploded into a wild and meaningless disarray. If her father could only see her now, Manya thought. She was roused by a sharp slap across her bare buttocks, and she jolted to a sitting position, attempting to conceal her nudity with her hands. "Okay, Mother Superior," Link said, "get your dress on. We're getting out of here." Manya was puzzled. They had been driving for many hours and had engaged the motel room, she assumed, to get a full night's sleep. But they had remained there less than three or four hours, and it was still the deep part of the night.
"Where are we going?" Manya asked Estelle, in a hushed aside. "What was the sense of the motel if we aren't going to sleep?"
Estelle looked at her blankly. None of this had occurred to her. The faculty of judgment had been one which she had surrendered entirely to Link. She followed him unquestioningly. Now, as Link started up the car and turned onto the highway, he answered Manya's questions, which he had overheard. He addressed her directly for the first time. "Everything that people do is supposed to follow some kind of a plan. One and one has always got to make two, don't you know? If the cops are after you, they've got to make sense of what you're up to so they can track you down. They live by shifts, they stay awake and sleep by shifts, give chase by shifts." His chuckle sounded ironical. "People love by shifts, study, learn, marry and die by shifts. If someone is nuts and they go to some psychiatrist, he's got to first figure out just what plan, what pattern his nuttiness follows before he thinks he can help him out. But it's a big laugh on all of them, because that's not the way it works at all. It all goes on like a bunch of marbles that scatter where they fall. Every damn thing you do, makes a lie out of everything that ever happened to you before."
After this uncharacteristically long discourse, since Manya had never heard him more than mutter monosyllabically, he took refuge once again in his customary silence. His remarks were doubly disturbing for Manya, not only because of their unexpected depth but because he had seemed to touch upon the same ideas which had occupied her in the motel moments before. Estelle, sitting between them in the front seat, remained entirely oblivious to the talk. Manya was taken aback to discover that what now occupied Estelle were her fingered manipulations, even as he continued driving. She turned to look out of the window at the blur of passing foliage and maintained her interest there, but casual side glances disclosed that Estelle had freed his member from the confines of his trousers and was rubbing it continuously, with some lubricant on her palm which made it glisten in its rigidity like some oddly inanimate porcelain form. She was seized by some kind of terrible inner fear.
"When are you going to release me?" she cried out. "You were only going to hold me with you until you left our town." It was a question she had formed on her lips many times before but, for a reason she herself could not fathom, had not pronounced it. She explained it to herself, as a rationale, that it would not only provoke him but would not hasten his release of her one way or the other. But the circumstance of this simple but perverse gesture, and his casual response as though nothing untoward were occurring, made Manya feel that she had stumbled, by her captivity, into another sphere of existence, where' every action was beheld in distortion, as if through a madhouse mirror. She was suddenly terrified that if she did not gain her release, the sanity of her own vision might not be restored. For a long moment, Link said nothing. He seemed fully absorbed in the purely physical actions of driving and the pleasure sensations which he now assisted by shifting undulations of his hips, counter movements to Estelle's stroking ministrations. But at last, Link responded to Manya's question. He asked, "Why do you want to go back there for, anyway? They only hate your guts."
Manya's eyes flashed in anger. "Just exactly what are you talking about? What would you know about a normal, decent kind of life, the problems of marriage and raising children?"
Link's voice was almost condescending. "You know all about it, don't you? That's why that kid would like to shove a shiv up your virgin can," adding sarcastically, "it is virgin, isn't it?"
Estelle was still maintaining a hold on his sex but now also involved in manipulating her own, her skirt drawn, unselfconsciously up to her hips. The incongruity of the situation overwhelmed Manya and rendered her speechless. "You must be utterly mad to engage in any conversation about my personal life with him, and while all this is going on right in front of me," she said to herself. But Link continued his monologue. "I can see you're too young to have a kid that age, so that must be his kid. I'm glad he didn't realize when he married you that he was setting up a convent. He looks like a pretty regular Joe."
Manya brought her hands up to her ears to shut out his words, that struck at her like stones flung at her most vulnerable parts. Everything about this man was so offensive to her in a way that was infuriating--the grossness of his animal responses, his taunting, intimidating expressions, his presumptive interjection into her personal affairs. The car rumbled on, and the shattering reverberations from the wheels on the uneven back roads soon drew her into a wearying torpor, and Manya fell asleep.
When she awakened, it seemed to be mid-morning from the position of the sun. They were parked somewhere in the thick of foliage alongside what appeared to be a small lake in a remote, backwoods rural area. Manya saw Estelle sitting half outside the back seat, the door thrust open, while with a wet towel, she was washing her legs and thighs. Estelle turned at the sound of Manya's movements and broke into a smile which, for all of her excessively theatrical makeup, was guileless and child-like. "Did you sleep good, doll?" She noted Manya's puzzlement at Link's absence. "He's down at the lake taking a swim for himself," she volunteered. "See, there-" she said, pointing for Manya to look out the side. Manya chose not to obey the urge to look, and Estelle offered her the towel. "Want to wash up?" Manya accepted the towel, removed her shoes and walked over to the lakeside to dampen it, in time to see Link stepping out of the water, stark naked. She whirled away quickly, the color rising in her face. She removed herself to a vantage point behind thick brush and began to attend to herself. She saw Link stretch himself out on the grass at the lake's edge, facing the flooding warmth of the morning sun. She wanted to remove her clothes and wash herself thoroughly, but her nudity in the naked presence of that man, despite the fact that he was not aware of her place in the foliage behind him, was too disturbing a prospect. She applied herself to do the job as best as she could, by raising and rearranging her garments. It was then that she heard the sound of frivolous laughter from off to the side, and looked to see two young girls, apparently of Diane's age, in a rowboat. As they came into view, they had spotted Link, who made no move to conceal himself or change his position of flagrant exposure, his legs widespread in the direction of the lake. One of the girls wore a bikini bathing suit with a life vest around her shoulders. She was standing and urging the girl applying herself to the oars to move closer toward Link's direction. When they were approximately twenty or twenty-five yards off the shore and looking brazenly at Link's bared body, the girl in the bikini shouted at him to get his attention, "Hey, Tarzan! Hey, Tarzan!-Me Jane!" And they both burst into a fit of laughter. Link, who had been sunbathing with his eyes closed and face upturned to the sun, now rose slowly to his feet, facing the girls. The girl in the bikini called out, "Do you want to go swinging together, Tarzan?" and she reached down and teasingly began to lower the swim-trunk portion of her abbreviated bathing suit. Link stood there, facing them, his hands on his hips, his legs widespread, offering no encouragement and making no effort to conceal himself or reject them.
The girl in the bikini accepted his casualness as a challenge to carry her boldness even further, and she suddenly pulled her bikini bottom down to her knees and then stepped out of it entirely. Her girlfriend, completely overcome by fits of laughter, slid down into the boat and gave up all her attempts at working the oars. Link now took several steps in the direction of the water. Then he raised his hand and beckoned the girl who afforded this unencumbered view. As he leaned forward to dive, the lithe, white female body struck the crystalline surface with a resounding splash. Two naked figures, swimming toward each other, inexorably closed the distance until the water surged in the clash of their meeting, and they disappeared momentarily, returning to the surface in the spinning, tumbling choreograph of mating. Then Link was holding her, stroking powerfully for the shore, to come up finally, her body clinging to him. He struck the ground, the full weight of his body straining against her, even as he was enveloped deep within her vitals. Manya suspended all thought. All seemed totally subjugated to the magnetic fascination with the visual. The wild contortions of flesh that followed its furies with the single-mindedness of brush fire gone wild. Nor did Manya's eye lose sight of the boat drawing closer to shore with its single occupant now stepping out and wriggling out of her jeans to reveal a compact figure developed far beyond her years. The girl beneath Link released a piercing cry of anguish that seemed to carry clear across the lake. Now she was weeping, as Link drew away from her, and clutching her legs together and rolling agonizingly from side to side. Link rolled off her, lying back. The second girl stood over him, and he reached out with his hands to draw her down to him. From behind them, Manya saw his body as some fierce bird of prey, assaulting to conquer yet another nesting place. Youthfully small proportioned, she could not first accept him. Link clasped her to him, but her incapacity kept him poised at the threshold of her consummation. When Link flipped her over on her back and applied his knee to her thigh, spread-eagleing her to widen the mark of acceptance, a horrified Manya burst from her vantage point of concealment and flung herself at him, and beating him with her fists. "Stop it! Stop it, you fiend! You'll tear her apart." Link flung her to his side with his arm, and when she continued to kick and pummel him, transferred his knee from the girl's thigh to Manya's chest to subdue her. "Run," Manya yelled to the girl, "Pull away from him." But the girl, instead of making an attempt to bolt, grabbed him with her hand and tortuously skewered herself, grinding the full span of it into her straining body. Helpless,, her chest painfully constricted, Manya was forced to remain in that position, inches away from the scene of the supreme erotic engagement. How much Manya detested this girl, detested womankind for the sordid drive to sexual self-debasement at the hands of the rapacious man. Pinned beneath his leg, Manya imagined such femininity as a greedy mouth, over-engorged and straining to the bursting point but unwilling to expel its prodigious burden. The girl plunged headlong into her release, as one falling over a precipice. Her leg flexed out, striking Manya against the side of the temple, sending her senses reeling. The young girl's ecstatic overflow seeming to open some subterranean spring, poured forth with an amazing super-fluidity. In the mental ache of her confusion, it struck Manya with a sense of awe and wonder, at a state which she had never personally experienced.
CHAPTER THREE
Presently, Link raised her to her feet and guided her in the direction of the car. "You kind of favor playing the role of Mother Superior, no matter who's involved, don't you?" he commented snidely. He prodded her obscenely from behind, but she was too weary and shaken to protest. She entered the car and remained docilely seated, encouraging the numbness of her own senses. Link examined one of the tires that seemed to be losing air and announced that it looked to him like the wheel had a split rim, which was something that should be attended to before they went too far along the way. As he drove around the other side of the lake, he said to Estelle, "Keep your eyes open for some farmhouse or some place where I might be able to pick up another rim from some old heap." The area seemed to be devoid of any habitation, but at the extreme southwest tip of the lake, Estelle called attention to a large barn, and beyond that, a neat, gray frame house. As Link swung around into its gravel road, a big, raw-boned farm worker type in coveralls straining at his girth, came in their direction. Link stepped out to engage him in conversation, pointing to the wheel. The man, tall and beefily broad, seemed to dwarf Link by comparison. "Sure, I think
I can fix you up with a rim," Manya heard him say, and then he insisted, "Why don't you come into the house and have yourself a drink first?" Link nodded and opened the car door, motioning to Estelle and Manya to follow him. All three trailed after the heavy-set field worker and went up the short flight of steps into the gray frame house. As soon as they crossed the threshold, Manya recognized the young girl huddled on the couch in the corner as one of the girls in the rowboat, the second one that Link had had sexual contact with. "This the fella?" the farm worker looked toward her questioningly. She nodded, her eyes darting uncertainly to Link's face. At once, the large man seemed transformed from his slow, idle moving ways. He spun about with surprising quickness, and without warning, raised a massive arm and clubbed Link across the side of the face with his closed fist. Caught unexpectedly, Link stumbled back and slammed against the wall behind him. Before he could recover, the farmer came up to him again and lashed at him with one fist and then the other. Blood trickled down from Link's nose and the corner of his mouth. But he did not cry out nor show evidence of pain or fear. And the unchanging, stony coldness of his expression remained. Then a strange thing occurred. Even as the larger man struck at him again, it was Link who, his balance now recovered, was advancing in the face of the man's physical punishment. The unexpectedness of this action seemed to throw the larger man into a confusion that was immobilizing. He held his hands up but he appeared uncertain what his next move should be, and Link stepped up to him and pumped piston-like jabs into his lower gut, folding the man over until his full weight seemed to be held up by Link. But the leaner man did not relent and maintained his punishing attack to the groin until a spray of gall poured from the man's lips. Link stepped aside and let him drop to his knees with the weight of a sodden sack. He pitched forward on his face, regurgitating in spasms and lying in his own swill. The girl who had been sitting on the couch ran up to Link. "I didn't want him to do you no harm," she said. "He could see someone done me bad when I came in, and I was afraid to lie when he asked if it was you. But I ain't sore at you. I got over $300 and I'll give it to you if you'll take me with you, away from this old bastard."
Manya looked with eyes that could not fathom the events they had witnessed. Through this girl, flinging herself at Link, inviting God knows what kind of debauchery and slothfulness, Manya saw her stepdaughter, Diane. The same mystifying moth-like plunge into the flame. The same disregard of parent, family. She regarded the child-like submissiveness of Estelle and considered how right her father had been to raise her as he had, to destroy in her any vestige of desire for female bondage under the yoke of male domination. Link searched about the room. "What do you want?" the girl asked him anxiously. "Just tell me what it is and I'll help you."
"Where are the keys to that Chevy alongside the house?"
The girl went to a hook on the wall, removed the keys, and handed them to Link. He started out the door, nudging Estelle and Manya before him. The younger girl called after him. "Can I go along?"
"Some other time, kid," Link said in the way of curt dismissal.
"I'll be better with this bleeding tomorrow, maybe even tonight," she said. "And then you can do me all over again, any time you want."
Link got in the car, started up the engine, and as she held open the door, he shoved her away with his hand, and she fell back on the ground. The car swung around and started in the direction of the gravel road. She ran alongside, screaming and cursing-"I'll get you, you son of a bitch! I'll turn the cops on you for stealing the car and raping me."
Estelle laughed aloud. "I think we ought to get her pulled in for raping you" she said to Link.
Link was quietly serious. "That little squirt can spring the lid. She'll be on the phone before we're clear of this county."
"What are you going to do?"
Link bypassed a paved road for a rock-strewn, dirt cut-through. He rode on silently for a while until several miles further on, he realized it would be un-negotiable and was forced to retrace his way to the paved road which he took with expressed misgivings. "This is a bad bit. This car is liable to be spotted for sure." He pulled up abruptly and ran the car off the side of the road into some concealing foliage. Then he got out and announced to the two, "We're going to get out and walk a ways. It shouldn't be too much further into some little town around here. I'll get a better idea of which way to snake through. We can come back and pick up the car towards evening."
As they walked for a mile or two, Manya was forced to consider several alternates. Was this her opportunity to alert some bystanders when they came to the town proper? There were also other questions which required rationalization. For example, why hadn't she made an attempt to break away when he had parked and gone swimming and sunbathing along the lakeside? She told herself she had no idea of her surroundings and might easily have been lost in the woods. But how about when she entered the house of the farmer, who had attacked Link? Wasn't that another opportunity to effect her release? Perhaps, she told herself, that is exactly what would have happened if the latter man had overcome Link. It was easy to consider in retrospect that her object in waiting around was an expectation of that outcome. In the final analysis, there was always the thought that Link was a dangerous and merciless man. An unsuccessful attempt to break free might so infuriate him that she would expose herself to fatal crippling, even death. Wasn't this what Ned would advise her to do? Not to try to strike out against irrationality, but simply to wait without provoking it until it went by? Nagging, ill-defined doubts cast a troubled pall over her nightmare circumstance, the tender balancing upon a high wire that threatened to end in disaster at any instant. Even as she moved in cadence with her two unwanted companions, she had the strange sensation that she might awaken at any moment and discover all of what she had encountered as fragments of an outlandish dream. As they approached the outskirts of the town, they came upon a busy cluster of many cars and milling people and the sounds of brassy, hurdy-gurdy music in the background. Somewhat further up they saw the source of this agglomeration, a noisy, festive county fair. Link nodded. "Okay," he said, "this is just what we need. Come on, we'll get lost in here and kill some time until dark. I should be able to get one of the cars bunched up back there started, and then we can take off."
Estelle seemed as gladdened by the presence of the fair as a kid playing truant for a special event. "I used to work in a carny that used to play hick spots like this," she said. "I never told you about that, did I, Link?" Despite his lack of response, she maintained a running monologue, seeming mentally to provide his reactions. "But you don't want to hear about anything I ever done, do you? But it was a ball, really it was, Link. The guy I worked for had five or six setups. We used to play different county fairs. It was like one of those striptease shows. Not any real burlesque. Just two girls, sometimes three, playing each fair. We had a pretty big tent all to ourselves and a stage right out in the middle of it, with a curtain just like in a theatre. But there wasn't any seats. The people-just the gents was allowed-used to walk in and stand up and watch the show, and then we'd get another batch coming in and another. The money wasn't too bad 'cause we used to get five percent of the business we did on top of thirty bucks. But the real money was when the guy did the barking and ticket collecting used to fix us up with some of the local hicks after the show. You know, Link, that one night, outside of Memphis, I laid over thirty guys in less than two hours. I swear."
The presence of all the sounds, talk and excitement seemed to act as a stimulus for Estelle, and she kept up her one-way stream of conversation as a droning background, to which neither Link nor Manya, each absorbed in their own thoughts, paid any attention.
Link led them from one game concession to another, participating mechanically and joylessly. Only Estelle maintained her animation, avidly searching out associations with the past. When she spotted, before one of the sideshow-type concessions, a young woman out front on one of the wooden podiums, provocatively attired in a heavy jeweled girdle tightly constricting her hips to accentuate her bared waist and belly, which she undulated enticingly to a recording of Persian music. Estelle went up to her, ignoring the scowling, disapproving looks of the sideshow barker who kept up his running patter in an effort to induce some of the ogling males to pay the price of a dollar. She engaged the young woman billed as "Princess Casmah, the Belly Dancer", in avid conversation. When she returned to Link, she said, "Come on, I got something going. Like what I was telling you about. It's a tent set up at the other end of the field where they steer the boys looking for nooky." Link waved his hand and made a wry expression, but Estelle prevailed upon him, "Please, Link, we're just killing time anyway." Link shrugged and permitted himself to be led by Estelle, with Manya submissively in tow. Both women stumbled awkwardly in their heels over the uneven ground in the dim light before the outline of the tent in the distance indicated their objective. A hunched-over bear of a man appraised them warily until Estelle mentioned the belly dancer and asked Link to give him $30, $10 for each of them. Then he raised up the flap of the tent and admitted them into a dimly lit, smoke-clogged area with thirty to forty, raucously laughing and commenting men seated upon folded wood-back chairs before a large stand-up motion picture screen upon which a projector cast a one-reel pornographic film. Link felt Manya tense alongside him. The images on the screen showed three women kneeling before an equal number of men in the form of a competitive exhibition. One of the female performers, all of them stripped and exposed in the immediate foreground, roused the clamorous audience to spasms of raucous laughter as she worked, manipulated, stroked and frantically mouthed her male partner in a zealous effort to outdo all competition. "Go get her, Blackie!"
"Coming down to home stretch!"
"There's $20 that says the gal on the first big white pony comes in first."
The camera closed in as each male performer was brought to full satisfaction. The extreme close-up gave to the spectacle a strangely abstract aspect which struck Manya as that of coiled and skinned serpents spastically striking.
Manya, who had remained up to this point in a state of trance-like fixation which characterized her response to all the sexuality she had encountered from the moment of her captivity, and which afforded her a refuge from its threateningly disorienting effects, suddenly was bereft of her defenses. She buried her face in her hands, as she thought, "I must be going mad. What am I doing here? Why am I remaining so close to this insanity?" Spurred to action by this awakening, she thrust herself between several of the men standing behind her and burst through the tent opening into the cool night air. Which way to go, did not matter-simply to get away, to step back over the moat from this hellish Dantean perversion back into the sane, secure mold of her former existence. She started across the darkened field that separated the tent from the carnival area proper. But then she heard someone behind her and turned to see two men emerging from the tent, one of them pointing in her direction and the other calling to her. Her first reaction was to go to them, explain that she was in need of help and ask that she be taken to the police. But their expressions, as they drew abreast of her, served to alarm her still further. The stocky man, the shorter of the two, immediately ran his hand down her back, feeling her body beneath the gray, tightly drawn skirt. "How about taking on the both of us for twenty?" he asked. Manya pulled away. "No, you don't understand."
"-thirty", the lean, taller man offered with a lascivious leer. "We'll show you a good time."
Manya broke away and began to run across the field. But when she realized they were after her, she turned in the direction of what appeared to be a large area of parked cars off to the right and perhaps fifty yards away, less than half the distance of the carnival area. Here she thought she might elude her pursuers by concealing herself behind a car or stepping into one and locking the doors. But her haste and the un-evenness of the ground caused her to stumble and fall several times, and they were upon her even before she reached the parking area. As they took hold of her from either side, moving her in the direction of the cars, she pleaded with them and attempted to distinguish herself from the common prostitute type which they apparently assumed she was.
"Sure," one of them said sarcastically, "that's the kind of place for a lady to hang around in to get educated."
"And what about that brunette piece with you?"
They pulled open a car door and pressed her, head to waist, down on the seat with the back of her hanging over the side and outside of the car. She tried to cry out, but a hand was forcing her down from behind, muffling her cries with her mouth into the upholstery. Frantic hands pulled her skirt up and pulled her panties down. Strong hands parted her, in a place which had remained, until that time, inviolate. The sensation was that of an incising blade, dividing her parts. She moaned, cried out, dug her nails into the leather of the car seat. The sensation was that of a displacement of her vitals as each lancing incision further extended the minute mark of the initial thrust. She felt the painful tear of the flesh as her assailant dug his fingers into her sides, in the throes of his shuddering experience. Before she could recover in the instant of the suspension of his body weight, she was seized once again from this vantage point and forced to accept the assault of her second attacker. But he had no more than effected entry when he heard the hard edge of a familiar voice. Her assailant released her and turned to face Link. Evidently discovering her absence, he had come put to find out. Manya raised herself, trembling, from the seat.
"You, buddies, go on and chase your tail," Link said, with a quiet, menacing authority. But the taller man suddenly pulled a knife and slashed Link, catching him across the upper arm. Almost in the same action with his reflexive side step, he came up with his revolver and smashed the butt end directly into the face of the knife wielder. There was a sickening crunch of bone and cartilage and the hot spill of blood and teeth as the man struck the ground like a dead weight. His stocky companion spun about at once and began to run across the field. Manya, steadying herself against the car door, suddenly dropped into Link's arms, clutching him tightly, sobs racking her body. For an instant, they remained there unmoving, then his arms went up and held her with surprising comforting gentleness. "You-you'll be going back real soon," he said, the words coming out with quick awkwardness. And then catching himself, as if out of resentment for an uncharacteristic display of emotion, he drew abruptly away from her and began to lead her back to the tent. "You don't have to go inside," he said. "I'm just going to get Estelle." Manya, still frightened by the surroundings and shakened by her experience, clung to his arm. Still, she was upset by the sense of security his presence gave her. She knew she should detest him for the way he had, in this brief period of time, splintered the pattern of her life. Somehow, even then, she sensed that that was exactly what had happened. No matter what happened, she knew that these few days would not simply be expunged by time according to the measure of the interval they encompassed. Manya shuddered involuntarily as she clung to him; in some unseemly way, beyond the grossness of the sexual experience, she was aware that she had changed, but she was afraid to dwell on the thought any further or examine the nature of the change. It was then that she felt the dampness of his arm and drew back in alarm when she noticed that his arm was bleeding where the knife had slashed him. She wanted to do something to help him, but the expression on his face precluded any such move on her part. It was something that he wished to disregard. She could see that. And he was not one who appreciated any undue attentiveness. When they came to the tent, instead of waiting outside as she had intended, Manya went in after him to avoid being left alone and hazard any further undesirable encounters. The activities inside were even more openly orgiastic than before, and Estelle, who had gone out of control, was now bent over a man in boots and jeans driving himself compulsively against her smooth, rotund expanse, while at the same time she occupied a dapper, unctuous man with too sleek hair and an ornately checked suit jacket, at her warm, moistened, heavily rouged lips. Manya did not turn away now, and had the peculiar sensation that she had proceeded beyond some mental barrier that abstracted the shock value of sexual engagement. She saw Link push through those around him, retrieving Estelle's dress and slip. These in hand, he walked up to her, and pulled her away from those locked with her in intimate embrace. His action came so suddenly that it left the men interrupted in the midst of their passion in a state which provoked hilarity from the raucous audience. The man in the boots raised his hand threateningly against Link but arrested the blow in mid-air at the sight of Link's grim, dead-level expression and blood smeared sleeve. Link pressed the naked Estelle through the flap at the rear side of the tent, and Manya hastily exited from the front and went around to meet them. Even as Link was helping Estelle pull her garments over her head, she remonstrated with him, "Please, Link, help me out. Please don't turn it off for me." She repeated herself, pleading with him all the way to the parking lot, where he tried one car and then another until he was able to get the ignition in one to turn over. Then he slid out from under the wheel and asked Manya, "Can you drive?"
"I can," she said, noting that he seemed pale and drained, a condition she attributed to his bleeding arm. She assumed, when he stepped into the rear seat of the car, that he was going to rest and attend to his arm.
"I'll direct you," he said to Manya as she started to pull the car out of the parking lot. "No, don't go out the way they all come in. Cut directly across the field ahead of you and turn left until you hit the road."
She crawled slowly, hardly able to make out the level of the ground ahead of her, because he would permit her only the parking lights to guide her. But at last, after some considerable strain, she made the road with much relief and headed West as he instructed her. She realized that Link's request to have her drive was for a purpose far different than what she had imagined. It was Estelle's fast, muffled breathing punctuated with intermittent gasps that drew her eyes to the rear view mirror. There she saw Estelle clinging to accept the hard, implacable impact of his determined thrusts. Manya's hands closed tighter around the steering wheel, her knuckles showing white. The same loathing which she had temporarily disavowed, was now restored to its full intensity. How much she detested him for this display of carnal bestiality that rode roughshod over time, place and every human consideration.
CHAPTER FOUR
Manya's nerves were drawn taut and pressed to the breaking point as the interval extended over a period of several hours, and the tangled bodies in the rear seat still remained coiled in their terrible compulsive writhing. Intermittently, without pause or secession in his erotic ministrations, Link would raise his voice to give her directions, slow down, speed up, or switch to another road. When it seemed to her that another few moments would surely snap the last brittle thread of her reserve, Estelle cried out like a woman in labor and delivered herself in one horrendous upsurge, and drove her feet in a kicking staccato up against the car ceiling, of the stifled burden of her passion. For a long time after that, she clung to Link, weeping, and grateful for the release of her enslaving desire.
Presently, she sat up, wiping her face, which now shone with a strange innocence like that of a well-scrubbed child's. She leaned over the back seat alongside Manya, and she smiled. "How you doing?"
Manya, still sullen, disdained an answer. Unperturbed, Estelle continued, "Gee, you were a doll to take over and let Link do me like that. If he didn't, I would just about have died. You know, nobody in my life has ever been able to get me to come off except for Link," she said. "I'll bet you can't believe that. I mean, I'll bet I've had at least five thousand guys work me over since I was a kid. Gee, I'll bet it was twice that. I've been jabbed ever since I was eight, and I'm twenty-four now."
Manya continued listening without response, but her interest was sharpened now by Estelle's surprising admission. Manya had never given any thought to her failure to achieve a climax in her previous sexual experience, which was limited to her marital relations with Ned. These were of a casual, never intense, nature, the instances becoming increasingly fewer and farther between as she made evident her discomfiture to Ned at what she had always felt an undesirable personal invasion. But she had witnessed, since her abduction as a hostage, the wild desire and driving intensity of sexual desire in others, the supreme ecstasy, and the fertile profusiveness, and this gave her cause to consider her own responses comparatively. Her father had always told her, even before puberty, as she recalled, that, "Some people are of a passionate physical nature which is really quite animalistic and vulgar and, I believe, a retardation in development. And some are of a more refined character with pious sensibilities, such as our family, you, Manya, myself. And people like Raymond Archer. Sexuality in a woman is really very common and a bore." Words repeated so many times over the years resounded in her inner ear. Even now, his presence at her elbow, long after he had died, had prompted her always to keep her eyes shielded from the grosser side of human passions. That Estelle, apparently the most oversexed of creatures, which Manya knew enough to associate with the condition of nymphomania, was unable to satisfy her desires with the thousands of men whom she had known, except for Link-one man among many thousands-struck her as strangely anomalous. She found herself wanting to learn more of this particular response or failure of response, which they seemed to have in common. But Manya did not dare voice her interest in Link's presence. She kept silent until Estelle remarked, "I'm glad he stretched out and went to sleep. He hurt himself back there somehow, you know, and he didn't look too good to me." It was then that Manya glanced back and saw that Link was indeed out-stretched and in a deep sleep.
"Why do you think that of all the men you've been with," Manya now ventured, "that he has been the only one to make you feel like that?"
"You mean, come loose?"
Manya nodded.
"Link helped me figure that out once," Estelle said. "Isn't it amazing how he knows just about every damn thing? I guess it's from all that reading he's always doing."
Manya registered surprise, and Estelle explained, "Not while we're on the road like this, I don't mean. I mean, that's when he gets some money together by knocking over gas stations, supermarkets, out-of-the-way movie theatres, places like that. Then, we go somewhere and hole up for months. Last time, it was almost a whole year. We got a great place, a whole house. It was in Nova Scotia, right on the water. He practically filled that place up with books. That's about all he'd do-reading all the time and going for long walks or swimming a lot or boating. We got us a neat boat. We lived like that, just the three of us, until the money ran out."
"Three?"
"Oh, you wouldn't know about that. I mean, Ma, Link's ma was with us. He always takes her along. That's where we'll be going now, to get her, before we find another place to hole up at. Then he'll start reading all them books again. But I don't mind. He treats me good and keeps me happy so I'm not going out of my head half the time like you've been seeing, when we move around like this."
The puzzling enigma that was Link became even more inscrutable in Estelle's ingenuous descriptions. "What did he explain to you about . . . making you come?" Manya returned to the same disturbing question.
"Oh, you would have to know something about that bastard of an old man who raised me up. There was six of us, six kids, my four brothers, Mike, Grey, Charlie and Steve. Steve was my oldest brother and the only decent one of the lot. There was two girls, me and my sister Rose, but she was next to the oldest, and I was the youngest. I was like a little kid compared to her. She really was a knockout. All the guys chasing her tail around the house as long as I can remember. And my old man like near busted a gut each time he'd catch her making out with any guy. Him and my brothers would gang up on him and like to kill him. That just about happened to Gus. He was running with my sister. Lots of times I would see them. I would push open the door a little bit and watch him, or sometimes I'd hide in the closet and get a good look. It made me real hot, and I used to rub myself like the dickens while watching them. Then my sister Rose got knocked up, and boy, what happened when my old man found out about that. You know, we come from Pennsy and I grew up in coal mining towns. My father and brothers always worked the mines. That's where they'd be during the day when Rose and Gus were making out.
"Gus was a real sharp character. I mean, he was always up somebody's skirts, but he and Rose had something going together. Then this one night, my father had a look at her little belly, grabbed her and shook the hell out of her until she admitted that she was knocked up and that it was Gus that did it but that she wanted to have the baby. Well," Estelle said, grimly, compressing her lips, "you would of had to have seen my old man to believe it. When he lost his temper, he was like somebody out of his head. He just began slapping Rose until she fell down and then he was hollering that he wasn't going to have any bastards dropped in his house, and then he whipped the bitch right out of her. And then while she was laying there, he kicked her right in the middle. She was bent over double, screaming, moaning and everything. I was just a kid, and I remember how my ma went at him, cursing and beating at him and then trying to help Rose. But he wouldn't let her. He just slapped her around and blamed it all on her that Rose was so quick and easy. It was true that my ma would be cheating on him every time she got a chance. Especially when she did a lot of ginning herself, and then some trade people or insurance men or salesmen would come to the door. She'd be walking around half the time with one of them wrap-arounds that she was always wearing, with nothing underneath. I don't ever remember her looking young or pretty, you know, in the face I mean. But she sure had a sexy shape with big boobs that weren't sloppy and real neat legs that she was always shaving and rubbing cold cream on. She'd do the nails on her feet some bright color and then put on those showy mules with spikes and then it was just a question of who happened to ring the doorbell first. She knew she had a gorgeous body. She couldn't wait to show it. She made a big thing out of standing there in front of whoever the guy was and just letting that wraparound drop off her. She'd stand there, watching their eyes pop. I remember one time that some salesman-I think he was one of those fellows who works in a crew selling magazine subscriptions, he was young, a college type. Well, he was in there jabbing Ma for maybe a half hour, and after he left, he came back no more than fifteen minutes later. He had two other guys with him, and all he did was ask Ma to drop her wrap-around so they could have a look. He told them what a great body she had and he just wanted them to see it for themselves. Ma, she was beaming like crazy, and turning this way and that way, showing herself like some model. That's all they did, believe it or not. For a long time after they left, Ma stood up before one of those full-length mirrors that was on the inside of her closet door, naked, and admiring herself. She didn't give a damn if I saw what was going on. She used to say that sex ended up never killing any woman. But many is the one who's gotten dried up as a stalk from not having those feelings. She used to tell me that the sooner I learned to do a man, the better off I was going to be and the more enjoyment out of life I would get. That's how come she would just carry on with my being around, and later on getting me to go down on them. By the time I was ten or eleven, I could do that so good that she used to brag about it and have me do it just to show them. When I got them all sticking up high enough to raise a flag, she'd take over."
Estelle, taken up in her narrative, raced on animatedly, with details of the past, bringing a wide diversity of expressions to her face-amusement, sadness, pained recollection. The emotions of her still young lifetime, flowing through her. "My ma sounds like a real pig in the trough, doesn't she? My old man used to call her that. But really, she was a great person. People liked her right off. Women, old ladies, kids. And she wasn't lazy or anything like that. She kept the house clean and had meals on time, and that kind of thing, no matter how much she would ball around during the day." Estelle drew a deep sigh and considered the next comment thoughtfully. "Even with all of the things he said and the way he slugged her around, my old man had feelings for her. One day, he came in the house and caught her bouncing away on top of some guy in the bedroom, and he-he hit her in the head, I think it was with an ashtray he'd picked up from the table. She was never the same after that. She'd just go blank and sit there for hours, not moving or even seeing anything around her. Finally, he had to put her away. But like clockwork, every Saturday, he would go up to this institution to see her, sometimes bring her something. I don't think the old bastard ever got over it. But he was such a damned hypocrite. All the time he'd be using that word 'decent' and be screaming about whory women catting around. But it'd be okay for him to be going around ripping off panties and balling around every time he got the chance. Lots of times he and the boys, I mean my brothers, would go up to the cat house in town. Then they'd come back grinning and nudging each other like a bunch of butting goats. But to Rose and me, small as I was, that kind of doings was 'dragging yourselves straight down to hell.' And any neighborhood gossip that involved some girl who got herself a bellyful, was lashed at the edge of their acid tongues about 'the little bastard that was going to pollute her life'. It seemed we were never going to hear the end of it. But if I'd get to look like I was too shook up, my ma would step in and tell him to come around with his sermons when he was ready to follow his own preaching. Then he would turn on her right in front of us, calling her foul names. She would just stand up to him and say that she had to know she was still living and breathing in this world for some reason. It was only when he looked like he was going to blow his stack that she would just take me into the other room and close the door. But all that talk about getting knocked up used to scare the hell out of me, but my ma told me there was ways of looking out for that. It was when I was almost twelve, about three months short of it. I had started having my period when I was eleven. I was developed and all. I mean I had something to tuck in a bra. I muzzled around with the kids in the neighborhood and would let them stick their fingers up, but I was afraid to do any more. Of course, I knew what it was all about. I told you that my ma used to make a big show of me taking full-grown men, but always with my mouth. It was one day when I stayed home from school because I had a cold and my ma kept me in bed, that it happened for the first time. Some kid, he was about nineteen but he was no kid to my ma, came to the door selling brushes and things like that. As soon as she brought him into the house, I looked out the bedroom door and saw that he was cute and everything. I kept on watching, hoping she would get him undressed and all. I wanted to see-well, you know what I mean," Estelle said, her eyes bright with desire, even now that she recalled a sexual episode dating back to her childhood. "It didn't take her long before she was standing before him all naked and taking his hands and putting them on her breasts and bringing them down. I wanted to go out into the room and show myself in the chance that she would start bragging to him about what an expert I was and all that, and get me to show him, just for kicks. But I didn't because she was usually ginned up to the gills when she'd get me to do that. But now she was sober. That's why I was surprised when she called my name and told me to come in the room. Fie was standing there in front of her and he had his clothes on, still, but you could see him standing there like it was going to bust through his pants. 'Pull your pajamas off, Estelle,' she said, 'and show this handsome boy how pretty you are everywhere.' I could see he was all nervous and tense and everything, not knowing what was going on. She had him so hot and bothered that she could have done anything to him. He had red-brown hair all combed nice and a real straight nose and a sharp suit. I didn't need any coaxing. I just took the top of my pajamas off, just letting it slip off my shoulders, the way I'd often seen my ma do it. And then pulling the strings of my pajama pants. They slid off my hips and down over my belly. He didn't try to stop her when she pulled his clothes off. I got real nervous when she began stroking him and took my hand and put it on his body. It was like she was leading us every step of the way. 'Isn't he handsome, Estelle?' she was saying. 'Isn't he just meant for pleasing the girls?' I bent down over him, expecting it to be like all the other times. But Ma said to me, 'No, Stell, not this time. Go over on the couch.' I sure wanted to do that, but I was terrified about getting a baby. But Ma, she knew that by the tense way I was acting. 'I'm going to show you how to pleasure yourself without having any fears of getting in trouble. It's only when the juices get mixed that a woman can get herself in a family way'.
"That's just the way she done it," Estelle said, somewhat wonderingly, "stroking him and talking all the while just like she was giving a lesson in school.
"She warned me how it was easy to get excited and forget about protecting yourself, and when my sister Rose got her belly, I figured that's what she and Gus had done. Anyway, what I started to tell you my sister went to the hospital and she lost the baby. But she never come home after that. My pa, he blamed the whole thing on Gus, and he and the boys went out and they done him in. They beat him up something terrible and they did something worse than that, but I didn't know just what it was until a long time after, about two years, maybe three. I was sexy as hell by then. The boys in the streets would whistle and stop and go the route when I'd go by shaking up my can, in skirts so tight you could see the line right down the middle. I used to put on a lot of the clothes that Rose had left, black stockings and them nifty high spikes and blouses open down to so where you could see my boobs bunching up. My ma was in the institution by then and so I used to have my fun during the day, banging away like sixty even though at night when my old man was home, I had to do the chores, cook dinner and watch my step. But after my ma was sent away, I didn't have anything to do with any grown men, just kid stuff around the neighborhood, until one day Gus got onto me. I was in the street and he came alongside me in one of them white convertibles with red plush upholstery. He was always a real sharp guy. He used to gamble a lot, and he'd always be winning money at cards even when he was going with Rose. But later on, he became sort of a professional, setting up games, poker, craps. He stopped the car alongside me and told me to get in. He wanted to talk to me. When he looked me up and down, he stuck his tongue out like wetting his lips. I laughed, like I felt real complimented you know. You'd often see Gus around town with real gorgeous dolls, like real actresses and models. They weren't even from our town. He told me he wanted me to come up to his place for a little talk. Then when we got there, he poured me a big slug of scotch and then sat down alongside me to tell me how gorgeous I was, just as sexy as Rose, even sexier, and he started unbuttoning my blouse as he kept on talking. 'Let's see if you got the nips that she had,' he said and reached out to unsnap my bra. I always wanted to grow up to be just as beautiful as Rose, and it meant a lot to me to hear him saying things like that. He traced little circles with his fingers on the nipples of my boobs until they stuck out like two little corks about to pop off the top of me. Then he put his mouth on them, nibbling at them with just the slightest edge of his teeth, with his hand coming down my belly and slipping down under the elastic band on my silk panties at the same time. His fingers, like a lot of little dancing toes, pressing into my warm, moist folds, lingering there. I tried to unzip him, but he grabbed my hands hard, and I thought he wasn't going to go no further, but he did it by himself. I thought it was kind of crazy that he didn't take any of his clothes off, all dressed up and pumping away at me like that. I found out after that that was always his way. He never took his clothes off. Anyway, when we took a break to light up and finish our drinks, he went all sad and didn't say anything for a while. At first, I thought he was disappointed, but he said, 'You're every bit as good a lay, kid. It's just that, you know the way it was with me and Rose.' The muscles worked in his jaw, and then the words came out, 'We decided we really wanted to have that kid. Your old man-' His face darkened with anger. He turned around and never finished his thought. And he never talked to me about Rose or my old man after that first time, even though I began to see him all the time. That's when I found out the reason that he had those gorgeous dolls around him. He wasn't only gambling, but he was pimping too, and he told me that I was such a great piece that we could make out real good in a strictly business deal, fifty-fifty. He would fix me up with the guys. He said I could make myself easy $150 a week and I could get wild clothes, a car of my own, and have a ball at the same time. I wanted to do it all right, but the thing of it was, that we didn't have that big a town. I was afraid that my old man would find out what I was doing and just about kill me. But Gus told me that he wasn't about to have my old man on his back himself. 'I work four other towns in this county and I'll make sure I keep you balling in the right spots.' The way it was," Estelle said, "he really had a neat thing going. He had deals with all the clubs, not the nightclubs and that kind of thing. Organizations-you know, men's clubs. He would arrange a gambling and get a piece out of that and have several girls going on the side in the back, for guys who wanted to take a break from the gambling tables. With small groups, each guy would get a girl and go through the whole routine for twenty bucks. But for special membership events, when there were thirty, fifty, sometimes a hundred guys, Gus would work a deal called Blind Man's Bluff. He put a couple of us on cots in a room with the lights out and every guy gets five minutes, the tab only five bucks. In that deal, the guys couldn't pick or choose or anything. In and out, that was the whole bit. But it worked out for five bucks because each girl could handle a dozen guys an hour, and these things would go two, three hours, sometimes four."
Estelle's voice dropped, softly saddened. "It was one of those Blind Man's Bluff deals that really loused me up, but good. I didn't know just how much Gus had it in for my old man. I shouldn't of been so stupid when one time I found out what my old man and brothers did to Gus. I told you that every time he came to me, he always wore his clothes. Well, this one time, after a big night at one of the clubs, he took me back to his place. He was half crocked at that point, and when we got to his apartment, he had about six or seven shots and he flaked out on the bed, dead to the world. I stripped down and crawled in beside him and began to feel him around. That's the way it was with me. Besides, now that he'd conked out, I had a chance to strip him down and I was curious, I guess, because he'd never let me. Well, I got his pants and jockey shorts down to his knees and I saw something weird right off. There was nothing wrong with his masculinity, but he had some kind of contraption, made of black leather, that held up the rest of him. At least, that's what I thought when I first looked at it. I figured maybe he had some kind of rupture. But then, when I got a closer look, I could see that it wasn't holding up anything. It was just a couple of balls of leather hitched up with a few straps." Estelle gasped at the horrified disclosure. "My old man and brothers had slashed them off. That was the last time in his life he was ever going to knock anybody up. I remember I-I got sick to my stomach and I went into the John and spilled out my guts. I pulled his pants back up and I never let him know what I had seen. I wondered after that that he didn't mention my old man out of hate for him. It seemed impossible to believe that it was the type of thing he could just put out of his mind. Well, as it turned our, he hadn't. When he picked me up and banged my pants, he was getting back at my old man. When he go me to agree to peddle, he was getting back at my o' man. I think he planned the whole damn thing from the minute he spotted me. You see, what happened was this: one night, he told me he wanted me for a Blind Man's Bluff deal at one of the clubs. Usually, there was two, sometimes three girls, you know, that kind of routine. This time, he got me in the room, took my clothes when I stripped, and fixed me up on a cot and put the lights out. He told me the other girls he had booked had conked out on him and couldn't get another one, so I'd have to handle the whole bit. I didn't say anything because this way it wasn't bad since I'd make double take. I pulled a tube of jelly out of my purse and stretched out, ready to go. It didn't really make any difference, another twenty guys or so, if you kept yourself from drying up inside. It's only then that you get the soreness.
"So he started letting them into the dark room, one at a time. And then he yanked the door open in five minutes when it was time for one Joe to leave and another to jump in the saddle. I don't know how many I had. It seemed like a hell of a lot because it was a lousy cot and my can was getting awful sore from bouncing around. Then I got somebody going on me when, all of a sudden, the lights go on-and there is my old man. He looked at me as if somebody had jammed a shiv into his craw. He stumbled back, like he couldn't believe his own eyes. Then he let out this cry and went for Gus's throat. Gus shoved a gun into his belly and pulled the trigger. I saw my old man drop to his knees, blood spurting from his mouth and nose. The whole place went into an uproar. My brothers got into it, and there were more shots. I didn't wait to find out what had happened. I grabbed my clothes. I didn't even take time to put them on. I just went right out one of the back fire exits, chasing down those stairs like as naked as a jaybird. Downstairs, in one of the back alleys, I slipped into my things, hailed a cab out on the street and rode straight out of town, And I haven't been back since."
CHAPTER FIVE
It had begun to rain, and even with windshield wipers going, Manya found the visibility poor in the going on roads with which she was unfamiliar, and hazardous. She slowed down and literally crawled along. Link was still fast asleep on the rear seat, and Estelle continued to draw together the multiple threads of her past life with an almost obsessive need, now that she had started it, to relate to another person all that had brought her to this time, place and condition. And Manya, for her own purposes, was drawn to her every word.
"I didn't have a dime with me when I ran out. There was about twenty bucks in my purse, but in the excitement, I even left that behind. So I went down on the cab driver and I balled with the desk clerk at one of the hotels for a room. From that time on, I made whatever dough I needed the only way I knew how. I peddled my pod. I was sixteen. No, not even sixteen yet. But it was almost as big as I am now and I worked it every which way. Street hooker, bunk in a hotel room, and tie-ins with bellhops, on the road, in the carnies, and then the cat houses. It was in one of those joints in New Orleans that I met Link.
"He had knocked over a couple of places and gone a long way, I don't know how far, and he came into the place all dragged out. He had a lot of money with him, and he stuck around, sleeping in this place three or four nights. He didn't go out for anything. He had meals and cigarettes and his liquor brought in. He wasn't paying attention to any of the girls, either. Then this one night, I think it was his third night there, we had a real blow-out. There was some kind of convention in town, and I'm telling you, the woman that ran that joint also owned the hotel that booked the convention, and had the girls going in shifts till they were so flagged out, I swear they couldn't stand up on their two feet or see straight. But I kept on taking everybody he could throw at me. But you know the way I am. I told you. The more I get, once I get all wound up like that, I feel like I'm going to go crazy once I stop. I just have to keep on feeling. So when it quiets down, Ruby Red-that's what they call this madam because she's fat as a house with her cheeks rouged so red you could see them like traffic lights a block away-takes me by the arm and leads me up to one of the rooms where Link is. She starts bragging about me, about how many guys I took on and how I'm the greatest nymph she's ever had. Link had given her several hundred dollars and hadn't used any of the girls, and now she had brought me upstairs as a favor. 'Go on, loosen up,' she said to him, 'and have yourself a good time.' Then she left me in the room with him. I was really on fire and I wanted him to take me. He could see what I was going through, like I was suffering. And that's what it's like too. I could see at first that he wanted to get rid of me, and then he asked me to sit down. 'Relax,' he said, and shoved a bottle over to me. 'Take yourself a couple of drinks.' I did, but all I could do was keep my eyes fastened on him.
"To begin with, all I had on was this red garter belt with black lace, black stockings and blood-red shoes. That's what Ruby Red liked the girls to wear around the place. He tried to talk to me and I listened to him for about five minutes, but then I couldn't control myself anymore. That's when he stood up, and real slow, he took his pants off, then his shorts. He doesn't have any great fantastic build, so when I found out what a man he was, it was a surprise. You know what I mean," Estelle said to Manya. "You've seen it. And it wasn't just the look of him. He came at me nice and slow, not rushing anything. He held me for maybe a couple of minutes, not even moving. Then he began to move with me, with that same, slow, easy slide. I didn't know what the hell was going on. I started to get impatient with him and I began kicking at him and trying to get hold of his hips to buck against him. But he dug his fingers into my arms until I felt them just go dead at my sides. He was so damned strong. It wasn't until about fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, after a steady build-up, when he began to get stronger with every stroke, that I realized I had me a stud, you know, one of those guys made a special way just to please a woman. And he kept me there for a couple of hours at least, and then raising me up, setting me on edge, each jolt like he was going to shake me loose in my insides." Estelle's eyes were closed now, a look of blissful distraction commanding her features at the erotic reminiscence. Manya's body tensed at the sudden piercing pulse between her legs, an unfamiliar lancing throb in her loins, terminating all other sensory response. It was the most intense sensual sensation she had ever experienced in her life, and it frightened her.
The momentary blinding glare of a truck's bright lights, coming on from the other direction, startled them and snapped Estelle out of her ecstatic reverie. "Well, anyway, he stayed with me like that until I had quieted down a lot. I don't mean that I came off right then. It didn't happen like that. It took some time. But when Link left, I went with him. He wasn't anxious to have me or anything. But he didn't try to stop me. He just said, 'Maybe for a while until you get clear of sewers like this.'
"I didn't know what he meant at first, but then he began to talk to me, a little more all the time, asking me about, you know, the kind of things I've been telling you. And he let me do about anything I wanted, I mean, like catting around or working over any of the guys I came into contact with even when I was like, you know, supposed to be his. Once I told him I was sorry for being like that, and he got real mad at me. He said I wasn't supposed to be sorry for the way I was. There was just nothing that I did that he considered, you know-bad or twisted up, like my old man was always saying. Then, for the first time in my life, I lost that tight feeling I always had inside me, just under my chest. Like a stone was lying there. It had to do with, you know, back home, what happened to my ma, what I did when I was just a kid, the way my old man kicked my sister Rose in the belly and the way-Gus blasted a hole in his gut . . . Things, I don't know-they just all of a sudden opened up and took me inside. It was then that the deep pleasure started coming. The first time, well, I just can't tell you in words. It's a feeling no other words can ever get near. One minute he was with me, and I lost track of where I ended and he began. Then the lid just blew off. It was just an-an explosion inside me. From that time, it comes on every time he takes me. But no matter how I get wound up with anybody, with him I just break free and clear."
The rain had stopped now and Manya shut off the windshield wipers. A sudden, deep weariness seemed to course through her, as if she had herself experienced and lived through the horrendous ordeal of Estelle's. Only a matter of an hour or two before Estelle had begun to talk, she realized she had regarded her as some debauched freak of nature, and now the woman who leaned across the seat so close to her, the same woman who only hours before had attempted to be mounted by an animal and had given herself to an uncontrollable orgiastic revel, seemed only fraily human and no more irreparably degraded by life than -herself.
"The way Link explained it all to me, the reason I started to tell you all this-I couldn't have any real feeling because I had closed off a part of me. I needed to take and feel things I couldn't give back. Link said that I had cut off the flow of my juices. Everything my old man said made me do that-all the warnings of getting knocked up, what happened to my own sister when she did. I had to stop the mixing of my juices with a man, and that's the way it went every time I would get laid, Link said, all the time the juices gathering up inside me but never able to come out. And the more I got banged, the more they would build up and drive me nuts." Estelle drew a deep and relieved breath and looked up to Manya with a smile of unbelievably child-like innocence. "But with Link, because to him I wasn't bad or sick or anything, no matter what I did, I could open up and give." She chuckled, now suggestive and mischievous. "Of course, you got to be lucky and find ourselves a real stud who can stay with you all the way without folding like a mushroom." Estelle continued in this vein but, by now, Manya had wandered in among the labyrinths of her own thoughts and was no longer listening. Manya was thinking about her growing up, the admonitions of her own father which would have prompted the holding back, the blockage of her own juices. Where Estelle had been able to reach for the feeling, go through the ritual of sensual sensation easily and with excitement, Manya realized that even that part had been turned off inside her. Of course, she considered that hers was a far different background and, indeed, a fortunate one. Her father was a wonderful person, a human being of delicate sensibilities. He was good, not evil. Not mean. His sole interest to keep her from the groveling of women before the demanding evil of brutish, callous, self-centered men. He wished to protect her from a sensation that might take her with it, drag her after, with a total disregard for all other impulses and sense of reason. Manya's eyes flickered mistily. She wondered what such a sensation would be. Whether she could know it . . . and her eye glanced up at the rear view mirror back to the figure lying, just now stirring on the seat. As he pushed himself drowsily to a seating position, all Manya's thoughts which seemed to her disturbingly forbidden, dropped about her like shattered glass. Link blinked his eyes open, looking about him in troubled consternation.
"How long have I been asleep?" he asked Estelle.
"Gee, honey, for hours."
He frowned. "You should have woke me." He winced and moaned inadvertently, as he moved his blood-encrusted arm with the knife wound.
"Gee, hon, that's bad," Estelle said. "How'd you get it?"
Link grunted, fending off her question. "Got to get to some place where I can clean it up and get a good night's sleep. Let's keep an eye out for some place where we can spend the night." Now he addressed himself to Manya with a strained though noticeably softened tone. "I-thanks for sparing me at the wheel." The few words of a commonplace-enough comment, and yet why did they stir her so much, bring on the strange thudding in her chest?
Manya made a determined effort to seal off her thoughts. She nodded to acknowledge Link's words. She felt the searching intentness of his eyes on her face through the rear view mirror, and she fought to resist the temptation to meet his piercing look.
The occasional crude road signs in the densely wooded surround indicated that they were in a vacation area. The dismal, uninhabited look amid the absence of light or life, was explained by the fact that it was several months out of season. When Link caught sight of a group of summer-cottages-to-rent placards nailed up on the road and pointing to a dirt road, he instructed Manya to stop and pull over to the side. He followed the dirt road on foot, a flashlight in his hand, and in about ten minutes returned to lead them on in with the car, guiding the way as they walked alongside. There were several boarded-up cottages, and Link managed to rip off enough of the nailed planks to gain entry to one of them through a rear door. Inside, he found a cast iron stove with wood alongside it and started up a fire. Under the glow of the firelight, he located a kerosene lamp and a tin of fuel on the shelf. There was no evidence of internal plumbing, but Link took up a large metal bucket alongside the stove and managed, after several minutes of scouting around outside, to locate a well pump. Estelle began to remove her clothes, soiled and clammy with dampness. Manya proceeded to do the same. Presently, her abundant nakedness gleaming in the firelight, Estelle knelt beside the bucket and began to wash herself. Manya, retaining her brassiere and panties, followed suit. She caught Link's derisive expression at the relative state of her semi-undress. In an impulse, she yanked off her panties with the pretext of setting about to wash her under things, which she realized after the fact, did require such an attention. Then she turned to unfasten her brassiere, shakily aware that this was the first time in her adult life that she had removed all of her clothes in the presence of a man. Encounters with her husband Ned only occurred in the dark in a state of partial undress. The effect of Link's gaze was a physical one, tracing the intimate curvatures, the sensation of probing fingers. She could feel the throbbing and the erectile stiffening of her breasts, the electric tingling in the nestling auburn grove bordering the satiny smooth skin of her under-belly. When she felt her eyes draw with an irresistible tug to that part of Link which now dangled in open exposure over his thighs, Manya drew in her breath and spun away from him. His chuckle was mocking and recalled to her his reaction when Diane had denounced her as "Mother Superior".
"Gosh, hon, that looks just terrible!" Estelle exclaimed at the sight of Link's now uncovered wound. Her exclamation instantly fragmented the mood. Link was making an awkward effort to remove the encrusted blood with a dampened handkerchief. Estelle's reaction was a shattering grimace, and she quickly turned away. Manya went up to Link, took the dampened cloth from his hand, and soaked it well before reapplying it. She reapplied it several times, permitting the water to cut in and soften the wound's encrustation. Link remained impassive and unresisting. She could feel from his nakedness in such close proximity to her own, distinct emanations of bodily heat which struck at her with a dizzying giddiness. When her thigh inadvertently made contact with the coarse hairs of his leg, she literally leaped back. He turned his head away with an expression of cruel mockery, and Manya detested herself for her timidity of her reaction, as she wanted to fling back into his face those two humiliatingly intimidating words, "Mother Superior".
After the ritual of having his wound cleansed and bound, Link restored the upright mattress from its position against the wall to its proper place over the bedsprings of the large brass bed. He immediately stretched himself out across the wide side to allow room for the others, and turned over on his side. Estelle unhesitatingly did the same, and Manya's hesitance overcome by a deep, bone-tired weariness, she lay down alongside Estelle. Exhausted as she was, her consciousness of Link's close-by nakedness was too unsettling for sleep. Unbidden images crept into her mind. Her lips tingled in recollection of the moment when he had put her head down between his legs. Manya's hand asserted an independent will, and moving over her thighs, searched out with its fingers that nub of excruciating desire. Surreptitious, fearful of creating movements that would make the others turn, Manya lulled herself to sleep.
Somewhere, sleep had drawn her into its warm and torpid enclave. Nightmarish caverns of monstrous rock opened to admit her and closed around her, its great boulders and rock-like sludges of flesh. She ran through a passageway to flee and discovered its skin walls shuddering, pulsating, constricting around her, pressing her face into the flesh, engorging her eyes, her ears, her nostrils-her mouth. She jerked convulsively awake several times, once closing her eyes to discover herself assaulted again by the rapists in the fair's parking lot.
As she forced herself to close her eyes once again, suspended on this border of troubled consciousness, she became aware of an excruciatingly sweet and flowing warmth that pervaded her limbs and gradually suffused her whole body. The sweetness deepened and became more intense, and Manya moaned inwardly. Now the sensation was sharpening, centering itself, and she found herself undulating, coming up to receive it. She opened her eyes then and saw Estelle. She found that it required the gathering up of all the deepest resources of will to pull away. Estelle looked up in puzzlement with an expression of shock. "What's the matter, sweetie? Doesn't it feel good? Don't you want me to love you?" Estelle said. Manya was about to kick her legs clear when she saw Link drowsily looking on, his mouth twisted in disdain as if awaiting her answer to Estelle's question. It was in that single instant that she was forced to examine the ambiguity of the situation. Did she like it? Did she want Estelle to continue? The answer seemed to come somewhere from the agony of desire that still seized her body and whispered to her brain, "Yes-yes!" Manya closed her eyes and slowly sank back in the mattress, allowing her legs to go limp. She was unable to stifle her moan as Estelle re-engaged her innermost parts with passionate tongue-probing soul kisses. Manya's arms shot up to grasp Estelle's head and press her closer as the girdle of her hips strained and rose off the bed. Manya did not open her eyes, but she imagined the sudden change on Link's face, a triumphant satisfaction.
"The way you were twisting around in your sleep," Estelle said, between her passionate ministering, "I could see how bad you needed me."
"Yes, oh yes, please yes!" cried Manya. "I need, I need, I need, I need . . . "
CHAPTER SIX
Estelle was already awake when Manya opened her eyes. Her face was marked with anxiety. "I can't wake him up," she said to Manya, indicating Link's deeply enslumbered figure. "I think there's something wrong with him." Manya roused herself, got out of bed and went around to the other side, where she put her hand down on Link's forehead. "He's running a fever," she said. Then she dampened a handkerchief in the water bucket and returned to press it to his face. Presently, his eyes blinked open and he strained to peer through a lingering haze of sleep. He made an effort to raise himself to his elbows, but upon making contact with the injured arm, winced in pain and let himself fall back on the bed again. Manya noted the increase in swelling and discoloration around the edges of the wound. "It's infected," she said to Link. "You're going to need the attentions of a doctor." Link grabbed the brass bedstead and pulled himself to a sitting position. He examined the wound carefully and then he nodded in concurrence. Estelle helped him on with his clothes and Manya, standing by, felt helplessly bereft until Link said to her, "I'll have to depend on you to do the driving."
Manya, her energy strangely renewed, splashed water on her face and began to get into her clothes. As they passed through the outskirts of a modest-sized town, they kept their eyes open for signs hung in front of the houses denoting the presence of a physician. Manya spotted one and instantly drew the car up alongside the curb in front of it. All three got out, and Manya and Estelle assisted Link as he made his way shakily up the flight of wooden steps out front.
They followed the instructions above the bell, "Ring and enter", and found themselves confronted within a minute or two, in a small anteroom, by a stocky, florid gray-haired man with a taciturn look. "My sister, my wife and myself were in a car accident yesterday," Link said. "A broken window slashed my arm. I didn't realize how bad it was." The man nodded and led them into an examination room. Estelle and Manya followed. Inside, the doctor examined the wound under a brilliant light and announced, "I'll have to lance and drain that and get some penicillin inside you." He reached into a linen closet and handed Link what appeared to be a hospital-type gown. "This is going to be kind of messy. So you better take your clothes off and put this on until I'm through." Then he stepped across the room and opened the door to an adjacent room. "Step in here and lay down on the table when you're through. That's where I'll work on you." Link removed his clothes and stepped into the other room, Estelle and Manya still with him. They waited for close to ten minutes. Link looked distressed and told Estelle, "Take a peek out there and see what he's doing. I didn't like the way he looked at us. And he's taking a long time to get started." Estelle had barely left the room when she rushed back in and closed the door behind her and made the announcement, "Link, we've got to get out of here. There are cops snooping around the car downstairs, and one of them's coming up the steps."
Link cursed at his own lack of caution and yanked open a window to the fire escape outside it that was on the side of the building. He pushed the girls through first and then started down himself. "This way, fast," Link beckoned them and moved toward the backyard which connected rows of an entire block of houses. They stepped over several small picket fences, and Link ducked into a garage at the end of a driveway adjacent to a large, gray wooden house with freshly painted blue shutters. There was a car inside it and Link motioned to them to get into it. All three crouched down out of sight behind the seat. "I left my clothes and my wallet and my pants with all that dough." Link let loose a string of expletives. "If I weren't so god damned groggy, I would have been smart enough to know what the hell that bastard was up to. He probably called in the license plate on the car. They'd have a stolen car alarm on it by now."
"I've got about $65," Estelle said, reaching into her bra. "I got it from some of the boys back at that carny."
"That's good, Stell," Link said. "Now, what I've got to do is this. First, get this car we're in started, somehow. And then get some antibiotics from some druggist along the way. Now for clothes-". He raised his head and scanned the interior of the garage and presently, still crouching, stepped out of the car. He returned with a pair of grease-smeared overalls in place of the white surgical gown. He looked toward Manya who was still crouched in the rear seat. "Get in here behind the wheel. I'll get underneath the hood and get this thing going. Estelle and me will stay crouched down in the back. Just back her out nice and easy, just as if nothing's happened. Unless someone sticks his head out a window and starts hollering up a storm. Then hit it!"
Link managed to get the car started, and Manya, sitting stiffly at the wheel without glancing right or left, concentrated on controlling the trembling of her hands on the steering wheel. But she backed out of the driveway slowly as instructed, without event, and drove down the street. "Get right into the main drag of the town as soon as possible," Link said, and Manya cut across several intersections until she came to a wide thoroughfare and followed it in the direction of the town. They drove on through and went about thirty miles until they reached the next town, where Manya parked before a drugstore in their quest for antibiotics. Link told Estelle, "You go in and see if you can sweet talk him into selling you some of the stuff over the counter without a prescription." When Estelle was unsuccessful at two attempts at different establishments, Manya took some money from her hand at the next stop and said, "You had better let me go in this time."
Manya entered the store, as its sole customer was just leaving. The pharmacist was a large, hefty man with the loud-mouthed joviality of a road salesman. He eyed Manya's wrinkled and somewhat disarrayed state, obviously impressed by her stunning figure. Though something in the elegance of her manner put him off until she dropped her voice and smiled with the obvious softening overture of someone requesting special favors. "My brother, he hurt himself the other day, and it's bothering him now. Nothing serious, and we'd like to save the time of visiting a doctor because we're traveling to meet my-"
"Hold it, beautiful. Relax now. I've been around for a while and you don't have to be afraid to level with me." He came around the counter to stand before her, grinning into her face. "I can see you're in some kind of trouble. But what kind, isn't any of my business. If I can help out a cute little lady in distress, it's no skin off my teeth, now is it?" He rubbed his hands. "Now, tell me what you want."
Manya described Link's condition and then requested the antibiotics. The druggist looked toward the door, and seeing no one in sight, raised his hand and pressed it against Manya's breasts. Instinctively, she began to pull away, but then arresting the action, forced herself to hold her ground, talking quickly and proffering the money for the antibiotics as he ran his hands along the length of her body. "Boy, you really got something there, haven't you?" he exclaimed, with ogling appreciation. He brought his hand to his chin musingly. "Now, you know that kind of an infection needs a lot of antibiotics if they're going to be taken orally. Now that's expensive," and as she extended the money, he added, "and you know, I'd be taking quite a chance letting you have them without a prescription." Manya looked up anxiously, imploring. "Well now," he said, and he drew her by the wrist in the direction of the partition that blocked off the back of the store over which was hung the sign, Prescriptions, "Why don't you and I have a little private tete-a-tete to see what we can do about this?" Once he had her in the back, he came up against her and encircled her with his arms. She could feel the stolid impress of him insinuating itself into her, against the promontory of her sex totally outlined beneath her skirt. His hand reached down to trace his finger along the line of her curvaceous buttocks. His breathing was heavy and quick. "Well, will you give me the antibiotics?" Manya was saying. "Will you?" She clung to the words, concentrating on them, trying to seal off her mind from the sensation of her thighs beneath the progressive raising of her skirt. She received the hot, impatient fingers coming up beneath her panties, which, with fumbling fingers, he awkwardly attempted to draw aside in order to effect the intimate entry. "Yes, yes," he almost gasped the words. "I'll give you the antibiotics." Unable to gain his objective through his initial fumbling tactic, he jerked back and drew her panties down to below her knees, completely baring the desired target. But in his greedy haste, he began to spill his desire prematurely, and seizing her about the hips, drew her against him so that his masculinity was pinned against the silken contours of her thighs, throbbing.
Several minutes later, an inordinately pale Manya opened the car door and resumed her position behind the wheel.
"Did you get the medicine?" Estelle blurted out hurriedly.
Manya nodded. Manya felt the pressure of Link's fingers against her back, just for the slightest instant. "Thanks," he said. The impress of his fingers burned into Manya's skin for a long time after he had removed his hand.
Manya drove outside of the town and turned off the road where Link told her to. Here, he took the bag of medicinals from the drugstore. Having minored in biology at the junior college which she'd attended, participating later on as a suburban housewife in Red Cross first aid courses, Manya knew what had to be done. She had prepared for it accordingly by taking the necessary bandages, antiseptic, and a razor blade in addition to the antibiotic capsules. Sitting in back alongside Link, as he washed down the wound with alcohol, she made the fine incision along its festering border and kept up the pressure with her fingers to remove its putrescence. Then, adequately, anti-septicized and gauzed for further draining, she bandaged the wound and gave Link the first considerable starting dosage of the antibiotic. Link maintained a stoic demeanor throughout, but when she was through, he allowed himself to sink back on the seat, exhausted by the ordeal. Within a matter of minutes after, he gave Manya road travel directions, and sank back into an enfevered sleep.
"I had to give that bastard at the drugstore $30," Manya said, surprised by her own uncharacteristic use of profanity. "That leaves us just about enough for a motel. I think that's what we'd better find right now so he can get a decent bed to sleep in. The traveling can come later."
Estelle's vigorous assent was admiring. "Gee, I'm sure glad you've come along with us, Manya." Manya smiled for the first time since she had stepped across the threshold of her own home, which seemed whole lifetimes ago.
Once settled in a small, twelve-unit motel, Link undressed and got under the covers. Manya delimited the whole compass of her life to the single-minded purpose of nursing this man who was now inert and defenseless in her presence. There was no longer any way to rationalize her continued captivity. She looked up at the door. It was only a matter of a dozen footsteps and she could be out of his grasp. Even Estelle was gone, having vaguely muttered something about getting them some eating money. But even as he lay there on the pillow, his face aquiline, bonily handsome with a thick, blue-black stubble accentuating the prominence of the cheekbones and the bold, square-cut chin with the slightest suggestion of a cleft, Manya knew she was still his hostage. In some unfathomable way, he seemed to hold the key to some quest in her life she had never known previously existed, that demanded a solution before she could leave him. It was senseless and irrational to contemplate. The utter insipidity of her position appalled and angered her. She resolved that entirely with the thought that whatever he had been previously, he was now reduced to the role of a suffering human being and she could at least remain with him until his fever broke. Who was she to be his judge anyway? was Manya's thought. In some obscure way, he seemed to be already receiving his punishment. Then, as always in those moments of crisis in her life, she thought of her father. When she was fourteen years old, they were in their summer place near Apanacko Bay. Her father called her to tell her that he had hired a heavy, brutishly muscular man as a handyman on the grounds, and both his aspect and manner were frightening to Manya. When she found out from the housekeeper that this man was an ex-convict, Manya was even more disturbed and took her fears to her father. He quieted them and reassured her. But an incident occurred soon after which was terrifying. Her father went out into the greenhouse one morning where the handyman was working alone, and somehow they had gotten into an altercation and he began beating her father. Manya heard her father's cries and ran out to see the handyman going after him. She screamed, but then she saw the man stumble and fall. He lay there on the ground, the prongs of a rake having pierced his rib cage, and he was bleeding profusely. Her father knelt to attend him, and she recalled distinctly with how much tenderness he managed to bring him back to the house, and when he passed out, how painstakingly he undressed him, removed every last garment from that massively muscular and hairy torso. How he washed him, stayed with him in the same room, administered to all his needs for the two weeks until the man was back on his feet. And when Manya asked how he could deal with him so after the man had virtually attempted to kill him, her father had said, "Oh, my dear, what he tried to do is past now. There is enough grief and meanness in this world without our contributing to it. It's just a matter now of someone sick and needing attendance and someone healthy and well who can help him. It's so little a thing to do. Would you have me deny him this?"
Manya, having drawn her parallel, was now satisfied to blunder on in her dark and more complex quest. Through what other unforeseen labyrinths it would lead her, became evident when Estelle returned several hours later, in the company of two men.
Both were well groomed and expensively tailored. Although there was a difference, of perhaps fifteen years in their ages, the older man, about fifty, was vigorous, bright-eyed and in as good a physical condition as the younger man. He carried himself with the stride of an athlete, and as Manya was to discover, he was, in fact, a professional golfer. The younger man was as strikingly handsome as a Hollywood actor. If anything, his appearance suffered from an over-perfection of features, of a slightly feminine cast. "I met these gentlemen at the bar up the road," Estelle said, introducing them to Manya. "I told them to bring a bottle back here and maybe we could have a little fun," adding with a mischievous look of a naughty high school sophomore, "for a price. I told them my girlfriend was real beautiful and they wanted to see for themselves."
Manya stiffened, taken aback at the implication. The older man came alongside her, his look undisguisedly admiring. "I certainly must agree with you. She's beautiful indeed."
"-and quite chic," the younger man added.
Manya turned abruptly and walked into the bathroom. Estelle came up hastily behind her and managed to get in before she closed the door. Manya's annoyance was obvious.
"Gee, don't be mad at me, will you? You know, I think you're just terrific. I just thought we might have a little fun and get enough money to keep us going. You know, with Link sick like that and all, we may be needing more medicine."
Manya remained unmollified. Estelle put her hand on her arm. "I'll tell you what. You know, I don't care what I do to help Link. And to be honest, I'm just a hooker at heart. I love to do it. I'll take care of the both of them and get enough money for all of us. Just come in and like play along, have a couple of drinks, and talk. When it starts to get like, you know what, I'll just tell them that you're sick." Estelle smiled guilelessly, as if she were struck with an inspiration, and she drew Manya by the arm. Despite her annoyance, Manya found herself returning her smile.
Both men had removed their jackets and were pouring themselves a drink. They were not in the least perturbed by the sleeping presence of Link, and presently Manya discovered it was because Estelle had told them, "My brother's in there with us and he's so stoned, he won't wake up for a week." The older man offered Manya a drink and she had no desire to reject it because she felt the need for it to steady herself after the ordeal she had been through. The warming contents coursing through her was comforting.
The alcohol dulled the knife edge of tension and Manya accepted the drink offerings which followed as an anesthetizing relief from the stinging crossfire of doubt that assailed her in between the shifting scene of events. Action, terrible as it was, seemed preferable to inaction, and suspension as nerve wracking as the last brief poise on suicidal abyss. Movement, participation, brought with it a total absorption in the act of survival. Manya sighed deeply and leaned back in the heavily encushioned chair. The suggestive repartee about her passed by her ears as so much unintelligible murmurings. Her eyes viewed the setting and characters before her with the unidimensionality of movie images. It was only when Estelle rose abruptly and stood up before both men, setting down her highball glass, and beginning to sway lasciviously, that Manya found a focus of attentiveness. Still, it was as a spectator separated from but pressed to a self-conscious awareness of the filmed pornography.
"Sure, I was a professional stripper, really I was," Estelle insisted. "I could do those grinds and bumps and move my-ah, muscles-", at which point she burst into laughter, "all over." She was raising her skirt now, inching it up to her thighs and swaying her body and hips. "This was the routine I had. I mean, it was sort of worked out just for me by one of the guys who booked strip shows."
Estelle, enjoying every moment of her inane performance, laughed as loud as the appreciative males of her audience who, despite their appearance of sophistication, were not a little taken aback by her complete state of exposure by the time she was through. The younger one's excitement showed in a flushed face and desiring glazed eyes, and he offered no resistance as Estelle carried her ridiculous games further. She knelt, unzipped his fly, and her teasing fingers traced his contours with a professional expertise that at once began to show results in throbbing, rosy rigidity and the restless movements of his hips. But throughout this little byplay, the attention of the more mature man directed solely at Manya. She saw his eyes appraising her limbs, ankles, calves, her knees, and then moving upward to envision tracings of the hidden contours. "I can see where you wouldn't need any kind of an act at all," he said, and reached out his hand to touch her thigh. Manya leaned forward as if to arise, but she caught Estelle's expression, frantic, pleading, casting her eyes over to Link's inert form in the bed, recalling their little tete-a-tete in the John before, and Estelle's assurance that she would handle the more crucial and ultimate details of the transaction. Manya forced herself to lean back in her chair once again. Both the disinhibiting effect of the liquor and the blatant state of arousal of the younger man had a more excitatory influence than Manya realized. The warmth of his hand sent an involuntary quiver through her thighs, as he dipped under the skirt, moving it upward by slow degrees and the insinuating probing of his fingers. He made no hasty attempt to break apart the adamancy of her knees. She felt the electric touch of his fingers stroking, stroking along the line of her tightly compressed thighs. Inching, impressing, gently downward, one finger in between, downward and then upward again, a little higher each time, a little closer to that pulsing part of her which now caused her to stir uneasily. She sighed and let her lids drop, gradually slipping into the recollection of Estelle's lips, the moist dartings of fire. The last inner chords of tautness began slowly to go slack, accompanied by a deep exhalation. Almost imperceptibly, her knees parted and his hands moved all along the length of her inner thigh. There, the panting tug of his fingers caught her by surprise. The resistance was still there but slipping slightly out of reach. "Don't worry, I'll take care of the both of them when it comes to that." Estelle's assurance sounded in her inner ear and permitted her to acquiesce just a little further . . . she moaned as her body absorbed the first reach of his searching fingers. Her loins, awakened now, were making their own demand, and Manya's hands were reaching out, tugging at his trousers, grasping at his naked hips and urging the full weight of his body forward-forward. A cry was rent from her throat at the sudden prodding. She was losing her arms now and her lower limbs; her upper torso dissolving. All was subordinated, all centered now on that volcanic femininity that undulated in its deepest recess from somewhere in the belly of the earth. And her motions and movements, her grinding contortions, were of the earth, the tidal waters and the enveloping rhythms of all the heavens. "Give it to me-give it to me--more -more-MORE!" The words lashed her own throat, whipped by the frenzy of the long-stifled and now fully awakened female need. She felt his shuddering jolt simultaneously with his hoarse outcry, and at the height of her aroused passion, she experienced the cold shock of sudden withdrawal. Her eyes, startled, blinked open as she slipped down in the chair, her legs upraised and parted, she writhed at the mercy of her womb fire. Her erstwhile lover, fallen to the side, his hands pressing his groin, frozen in the contorted grimace of his spending body. Just behind him and just to the left, Manya saw his companion standing, hips thrust forward, his distended manhood in Estelle's plying hands. Manya's hands beckoned to him, her back arching forward with wild, jolting thrusts of her inflamed vitals. He came to her instantly. He seized her hips. She arched forward, almost completely backward, receiving him with a swift succession of convulsive drives. He staggered under the fierce impact and lost his seat, fumblingly unable to regain it in the face of an unnerving experience. Manya bounded off the chair, her eyes ablaze and venomous contempt contorting her face. But before she could find words, she saw Link sitting up in his bed, an alert witness, and she whirled and ran into the bathroom, slamming the door.
She remained there for some considerable time and then, some time later, opened the door slowly, tentatively. Her eyes caught Link's, sitting up, reclining against the bedstead, smoking. "Come on out," he said evenly. "They're not here. I told Stell to take them to one of their rooms to finish the entertainment." Manya hesitated, suffering a queasiness in her mid-section, but his face was calmly noncommittal, and she moved forward into the room. Link tossed a pack of cigarettes over toward the bed. "Here, have one. It'll do you good." Manya felt an inward rush of relief. The simple gesture seemed to convey an underlying significance that Manya desperately sought for in this moment of deep confusion. She sat on the edge of the bed and shakily lit a cigarette. She inhaled deeply, keeping her eyes still downcast. She started, as she saw her own nakedness, to begin to rise in the objective of getting a garment, but his words kept her in her place. "Relax, will you? What's the point of that routine now? You know what you're like," and quickly added with a quietly, softened tone, "it's human. You're alive and you're a lot of woman. A lot of woman has got a lot of need. I saw you go through that whole bit with those guys, and you don't look any different to me. That Mother Superior bit is a fraud. You can't tell yourself any different now. And why should you, even if you could? Look at Estelle. She's had maybe five, ten thousand guys."
Manya raised her eyes to meet his. Tears welled, and she fought them back. "I'm not like Estelle," she said. "You don't understand. The way I was raised by my father-the beauty and the sensitivity that he poured into my life." Somewhere from the deepest recesses of her being, the words formed, coming up to bridge the years. Her earliest childhood, the home she grew up in, and the memorable episodes that bound together the skin of her life. She had to talk. She had to let him know, to know herself all that made her what she was, up to that day, that hour when he had stepped into her home out of the night.
CHAPTER SEVEN
He sat there silently, smoking cigarette after cigarette, his eyes drawing out so much that was inside her, so much that no other human being in her entire life had ever heard. She had never had the desire or the need to tell it, until now. Not even to Ned. The only human being in her entire life that she had ever talked to on such intimate terms about her feelings had been her father. Here he sat, a thief, a rapist, an unconscionable man of violence, with a callousness that had terrified her-the complete antithesis of that most dear of all men, her father, and still she continued. Nor did she stop until all she had remembered had been said.
For some time after that, he remained silent, regarding her with studied thoughtfulness, as if he were weighing the wisdom of voicing what seemed to him so obvious. Now he ground out the light of his cigarette and said to Manya, "You said before that you weren't Estelle when I mentioned all the guys she had--. "
"I didn't mean that in a disparaging way against her," Manya interjected. "She's told me all about herself and the kind of life I was reared for, prepared for, is so different. My father-"
Link's face hardened, and the words slashed his lips like a blade: "Your father was a damned faggot!"
Manya blinked her eyes, startled at his vehemence, and uncomprehending because of her unfamiliarity with the word.
"A faggot. A fairy-a homosexual!" Link said, shouting the words.
She recoiled against them as if struck with a whip. He continued the assault, with a vitriolic outpouring, while she was too stunned, too numbed to react.
"What do you think all that horseshit was all about -that stuff about sensitivity and delicacy stuffed down your craw. The vulgarity of a woman's sex with a man, the ugliness and the degradation of it, that image of untouchable purity that was supposed to save you, keep you like some kind of butterfly from dirtying your wings and getting sucked up in the mud. All that coziness with his buddy he lived with, that was all right. But what a woman could give when she spread her legs, that was ugly and vulgar. He had to get you to forget what you had between your legs, to close them and keep them closed because for the faggot, every woman's snatch is a threat. You talk about Stell's old man," he said. "That old bastard was at least a man!"
Suddenly jolted from her transfixion, Manya lashed out and struck Link across the face. Reflexively, he grabbed her arm. A taut muscle quivered in the hard set of his jaw. Then he relaxed and flung her away from him. Manya grabbed up her under things and her dress. Near the door, she pulled them on hastily and then slammed out into the night. Hatred and resentment was a bitter gall she could hardly contain. She found herself walking quickly, stumbling, and then running, directionless, away from the motel, away from him. She was moving along a dimly lit, deserted road with no awareness of her surroundings, all of her thoughts still drawn inward of the immensely monstrous accusation. But even as she cursed him, unwanted images dredged up from dark corridors of the past. Forgotten instances, disconnected episodes, which were reordering themselves into comprehensible contexts. Her father's hand holding affection with Raymond Archer when they walked together around the grounds. The kissing when they greeted each other, and the point that her father had always made about praising the wonderful demonstrative affection of the Latin and the Slavic men with each other. Their open, outgoing kisses and embraces. The showers and the baths they would take together, scrubbing each other. The succession of swift images superimposed themselves on each other, and frantically, Manya quickened her pace as if to escape them. The time when her father was nursing the handyman who had attacked him and she had walked into the room to discover her father washing and fondling his sex organ. How startled he was, and then, how he made a point of likening his gesture with that of Christ, who found it not beneath him to wash the soiled feet of his disciples. Manya cried out, a stabbing pain in her chest, and stood still struggling to regain her breath. In that instant, the revelation was complete and irrefutable. There was that shrill, raging argument between her father and Raymond Archer, which her father had tried to dismiss as "a business argument". But she recalled the words, from inside the library, where they had shut themselves off. "Jealous. You're jealous because he finds me attractive," Raymond Archer had said. And other words: "unfaithful", "embrace", and then as the doors of the library were flung open with Raymond Archer angrily striding out, almost spitting the words, "You're too old physically, too old to love."
Manya stood in the middle of the road, grief draining away all anger and bringing the onset of deep fatigue. She felt for an instant as if she wanted to drop down on the road where she stood. She looked around and realized that she was in utter darkness and didn't know how far it might be before she arrived at a town. She began sobbing in despair. Then she turned around and started to retrace her steps in the direction of the motel. She thought, "I'll stay in the car. I'll rest there until morning, and then-"
Once inside the car, she let herself fall back on the seat. She lay there in the darkness, now beginning to shudder in the coldness of the night air. Bitter tears continued to spill. She realized now that Link had told her the truth. Recalling Estelle's earlier talk with her, she understood in some ways, despite all the differences in their backgrounds, they were quite alike. Estelle's father had closed off a part of her when he frightened her about having an illegitimate child, that had crippled in her the capacity to experience orgasm, until Link . . . Manya now understood the measure of the crime perpetrated upon her. Her father had not only crippled that capacity in her but virtually closed off the entire fount of her womanhood. He had avoided all contact with women, constantly referred to them as "females". In his own daughter, he could not tolerate female sexuality and tried to render her sexless.
She sat up. Wasn't that what Link had tried to tell her? Cold, miserable, bewildered, she did not know what her next action should be. With all the past suddenly wrenched away from her like a mask, it seemed to her that her entire life, her home, her marriage with Ned, was part of a long deception. The recollection of her willing intimacy with the two strange men earlier, her yielding response to Estelle's perverse overture, her exposure to the most bizarre orgiastic behavior and her repeated violation since she was taken from her home, dragged her down like a weighted stone. She felt suddenly that she could never rise again. Now, where should she go? It seemed that only the door ahead lay open to her, the room that led to Link and Estelle.
The stark beam of light turned on her face was blinding. She leaped with a start and flung her hand up to shield her eyes. She heard the car door open and found herself staring into the face of a wizened man holding a flashlight, his skin drawn into leathery folds. "My missus told me she saw someone crawling into the back of one of the cars. You're one of the girls from No. 7, aren't you?" Manya nodded numbly, though not without relief to discover that it was the motel keeper, an elderly, hobbling man. "My missus knows the way you and your friend were carrying on with those two men," he said. "She's been after me to get the cops on you. We don't run no whore house around here. What kind of trouble are you up to, huddling up in the car like that?" He swung the car door open wide beckoning for Manya to come out. "I think maybe she's right. We don't want no trouble around here."
"There's no trouble," Manya stammered. "I-I just had an argument with my-husband and decided to sleep in the car."
He grinned with uneven tobacco-stained teeth. "Husband, huh? Pimp's more like it, I'd say." Then eyeing Manya as she stepped out into the open, he appeared surprised. "You're mighty pretty. Not one of them doggy prostitoots. If I could still get myself up, I'd have a go at you," he chuckled asthmatic-ally. And quickly he made a half turn, squinted in the direction of the motel office, and then spun back to lean over against Manya with a conspiratorial tone. "But if you show my brother Dib a good time, I'll forget all about the cops." He clutched her by the arm and glanced back again over his shoulder hastily. "If my old lady caught us, there'd be hell to pay. She hates Dib's guts anyway, always after me to get rid of him." He kept up a running patter and led Manya in the direction of the motel without awaiting her response. "I keep Dib in Room 10; that's only three down from your own." In this way, happenstance seemed to have taken control and Manya allowed herself to be led.
Perhaps this is the way it was intended to be, Manya thought bitterly. "Now, Dib, he ain't right up here," i the motel keeper continued, tapping his forehead : with his finger. "He was in a construction accident seven years ago. A big plank almost knocked his head ; off. But he's harmless enough. It's just that my old missus hates him, says that he eats enough for three and scares the customers off. That's why I keep him in most of the time. It'd be nice for him to have a little real woman company. It might perk him up some," he chuckled, breaking into a hacking cough. As he inserted a key into the lock and pushed the door open, Manya felt a sudden onrush of panic. She felt she had to go to Link. The man felt the tug of her arm and looked up at Manya, his grin now threatening. "You want me to get the cops on the whole lot of you?" Her decision was decisive. The door slammed behind her. She was in the motel room.
The figure, back to them, seated on a chair amid a littered debris of empty beer cans, seemed immense. "Dib-Dib," the motel keeper repeated several times before the man stirred and stumbled to his feet. Manya ! stared on, awe-struck. He was easily six feet in height, but it was his massive girth that gave him a fearsome aspect of a man swollen like a balloon to abnormal dimension. His hands and feet, too, were inordinately large, even for his size.
"Look, Dib-what I brung you. You ain't had yourself a woman since Fat Marie died." The expression on the face of the one addressed as ; Dib was dull, apparently barely comprehending.
Manya felt a bony hand on her back thrusting her forward before the massive form, easily exceeding four hundred pounds in weight. His head, normally proportioned, was oddly small for the rest of him, devoid of any of the sledges of fat elsewhere prominent and retaining a boyishness of indeterminate years. The old man shoved her suddenly, and Manya stumbled against the large man.
"Give it to her, Dib, the way you used to bomb old Fat Marie." His voice was shrill, trembling with excitement.
The effect of the large hands closing over her shoulders had the effect of piercing that translucent shield that Manya had imposed to dim her consciousness, and she burst into a sudden frantic kicking and struggling protest, which action, instead of warding off her offender, seemed to animate him and make his moves more purposeful. The largeness of his hands literally clamped her arms to her torso, and the forward weight of him made a farce of her resistance. The motel keeper rushed forward nervously at the sounds of her outcries and stuffed a handkerchief in her mouth, exclaiming, "I don't want Hilda to know what the dickens is going on here." Manya was lifted easily and placed down on the edge of the bed, her legs upraised and pressed forcefully forward until her knees ground painfully into her breasts. Looking down in horror from this vantage point, she saw then his incredible prodigiousness. He rubbed, stirred, pressed himself against her exposed buttocks (her undergarments having been hastily torn away) in frantic efforts to bring himself to a state of rigidity. Her flesh quivered against his enevered body. Manya had turned her head away and shut her eyes in an attempt to seal off her mind, but the near-hysteric exclamation of the motel keeper drew her attention against her will. "Geesus, Dib, that is really something! You're still as good as a damned bull in heat." The sight that met Manya's eyes caused her whole body to recoil, with a wild desperation that made him lose his grasp of her, and she slid off the side of the bed against his legs. His body, like some huge quagmire of flesh, seemed to sprout his manhood-thick as an arm-an independent, deeply enveined limb dominating his total person. Manya scrambled at his feet, broke loose and darted for the door.
"Get her, Dib," the motel keeper shouted and ran up to block her way at the door. Manya kicked and scratched him, almost overcoming him before the hard, sinewed hands closed over her from behind and yanked her, this time with a fierce rage of suspended passion, and slammed her down on the bed, alongside of which he stolidly implanted himself, one hand guiding himself to his mark on the threshold of her vitals. Manya leaped back, and he attempted to follow, those trunks of knees driving the mattress close to the floor. He grabbed her now again, hands girding her shanks, and pulled her roughly back to the edge of the bed, where he wrapped one great arm under the small of her back and held her while he probed, pressed, at the bank of that narrow, delicate, unyielding ravine. His entire face and character underwent a grotesque transformation. The dull features quivered to life. Teeth grinding, mouth and eyes straining, showing the dilation of blood vessels, he attempted to overcome with sheer force the improbability of unmatched proportions. With a branding agony, Manya unleashed a piercing, bloodletting scream. Her nails found his eyes, and as he recoiled, she broke free again, screaming still, as she stumbled toward the door. Before she reached it, it burst open. The harridan face of the motel keeper's wife, raging, hurtling obscene oaths, and shaking her fists, appeared. Behind her, the horrified faces of two women, occupants of an adjacent room. And then-Estelle's face, and Link's!
"Dib! Dib!" The motel keeper was now frantically attempting to control his Cretan brother who had seized Manya again, raising her up against him as he stood, mid-room, her legs spread-eagled. Link, still pale and sallow from an enfeebling fever, flung himself into the room, knocking over the motel keeper's wildly gesticulating wife. He came up alongside Manya's attacker and axed the gargantuan hulk of a man across the exposed tendons of the neck with the side of his open hand. The released Manya struck the floor with the impact of a dead weight, but her assailant turned with a hoarse outcry and faced Link. The leaner man shifted to the side of the bullying figure, drove an elbow into his windpipe, followed a hard knee thrust to the groin. The massive hulk stumbled forward, smashing Link against the wall. Momentarily dazed, he made an effort to drag himself clear from the massive arm which struck with a closed sledge fist. Link's head snapped, and he felt a warm outpouring from his nose and mouth. Rising to unsteady knees, another blow caught him across the side of the head and sent him tumbling backward. The room spun about him. Somewhere above, he made out multiple shades of the hulking figure, a crushing leg upraised. Link fumbled in his trouser pocket and closed his palm over the hard wedge of steel and squeezed off six shots. The figure above him swayed, and stark red rivulets burst forth where the hot metal had punctured the ballooned flesh. All in the belly and below, they had struck. The formidable weapon now shreds of mutilated flesh and spilling entrails. His face met the floor squarely. Fie was dead before he hit the ground. Link shook his head to clear it. In the milling chaos about him. The desiccated motel keeper flung himself to his knees beside the fallen man, wailing his despair and crying out his name to arouse him, while his own wife tore at his own back, lashing him still with shrill outcries. "He's dead. Good riddance. That pig-faced mongoloid. Now get up, you bastard! Get up! And get the cops to lock up these whores."
Estelle was assisting Manya to her feet, and with a child's queasiness at the sight of blood, averted her face from the flow between Manya's thighs.
"Come on, we've got to get the hell out of here," Link said to them. And noting Manya's condition, he told Estelle, "Grab some towels and get the ice trays from the refrigerator in our room." He brandished his weapon to keep the motel keeper and his wife from leaving the room. Then he made an effort to lead
Manya out of the room, but when she slumped against him, he lifted her and backed through the doorway. He deposited Manya in the front seat alongside him as he got in behind the wheel. He started up the ignition and called to Estelle-"Come on, Stell, shake your ass!" She came running out immediately, stumbling on her heels across the gravel roadbed, her arms burdened with the ice trays and towels. The vehicle was moving before Estelle slammed the back door, inside which she had settled herself. He floored the gas pedal, but at the first sign of a side dirt road, he turned off it, went several hundred yards and then killed the lights.
"Give me some of that ice and a towel, Stell, quick."
Then he flicked open the glove compartment, and working by this illumination, separated Manya's legs to examine the extent of the bleeding. Manya moaned and winced at his ministering fingers. She was hemorrhaging steadily, and it was not until he pressed the blood flow for a minute or two and then removed the pressure, that he was able to determine her condition. It was a laceration in the outer lip; there was no indication of internal damage. "Nothing is going to happen to you," he said to Manya, evenly. "You're going to be all right." Manya bound herself around the steady directness of his eyes and clung to it, as if it were the only light in the world. He told Estelle to come around to the front seat and then lifted Manya and settled her, full length, in the back of the car.
He started up the car and continued at a snail's pace, with his parking lights, exploring somewhat further the turn in the road he had taken, When he came to a hard topped road, he turned right, following his general rule of going back in the direction of the area from which he had come, a useful tactic he had long ago discovered that seemed to befuddle or temporarily delay pursuit.
"They'll dragnet the county," he said aloud. "Homicide is no small deal out here in the sticks. It's their big chance to play cops and robbers." Link knew that his immediate task was to switch vehicles. They would be out looking for a car of this description and they would have the license plate number. Link forced himself to concentrate. His face, his head still ached from the mauling he had taken, and the dull, throbbing ache deep in the tissues of his arm informed him that he still had that infection to contend with.
"Link-" He heard her voice calling him weakly, and he turned to Manya to ask what she wanted. "Nothing," she said. "Nothing."
The slight, upward curve broke the straight line of his mouth.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Link drove with his parking lights dampened and at a pace that was almost walking, watching out for plants at intersections and hopefully awaiting the presence of another passing vehicle. But since it was sometime after 3:00 AM and they were following a back road in a predominantly farming region, there were no encounters for a period of two and a half hours. During this time, periodically, he pulled over to the side and stopped to pack a fresh towel around the rapidly dwindling ice cubes to replace those soaking and encrimsoned between Manya's legs. Manya lay back, overcome by a draining giddiness that gave her a strangely euphoric feeling. To her, it seemed that time had magnified itself, become so vast that all inside it was suspended, pinned in its action like some museum piece awaiting the inspection of a spectator. Dream-awake, only Link's face and occasionally his administering hands played a role in the movements about her. And he, too, seemed suspended. "Link, I hear a car!" Estelle said, "Listen-" Somewhere up ahead the faint reverberations of an oncoming vehicle deepened in its approach. Link quickly yanked the wheel and brought the car into a position across the road. He cut the engine, stepped outside and threw back the hood to establish the appearance that they were stalled. He went back to talk to Estelle through the partly open window as he remained poised in readiness for the approach of the car, which was still not in sight. He squinted up at the early streaks of dawn. "Just in time," he said. "As soon as it gets to be light, we'll be sticking out like a sore thumb. Let's just hope this car coming isn't some rattle trap, although it doesn't sound like it."
The car that was going at a fairly rapid clip, kicking up dust in the road, slammed on its brakes to slow its speed while still some fifty or sixty yards away and then rolled up slowly to the car barring its trespass. A large, raw-boned, rustic type, sandy haired and obviously sodden with drink, stepped out to confront Link. His store-bought, ill fitting suit and the intoxicated laughter of the two men and a woman in the car gave testimony to a little shindig or a night on the town.
"Can't get started, huh?" he commented morosely. But as soon as Estelle stepped out of the car, his eyes brightened. She smoothed her wrinkled dress with a distracted intentness on tidiness, although the slow passage of her open, slightly cupped hands down over her breasts and over the hipline was unmistakably suggestive. Her appearance was not missed by the other two male occupants of the car who presently materialized at his side; one short and exceedingly stocky, and the other a remarkably close facsimile of the driver, evidently a brother. The driver, his eyes still fixed to Estelle, who was liberal with an entirely unreticent smile, said, "Maybe we can straighten you out and push you down to our place, my brother Wendell's and mine. It's about four miles down the road." His counterpart nodded dumbly in agreement and, under the influence of alcohol, continued nodding for some time as if his head had detached itself from the rest of him. Then a young woman, the remaining occupant of the car, in her early twenties, with a thin face, made thinner by an immensely teased peroxide-blonde hairdo, swayed slightly and tittered at her companion's marathon nod. But her reaction to Estelle's pronounced curvaceousness was even more exaggerated than that of her friends. She ogled her with open admiration, and when the line of her vision descended to the flare of Estelle's Gay 90 style hips, blurted out, "What I wouldn't give for a pair of steam rollers like that!" A comment which brought an uproariously loud laughter with the nodder bent over double in a braying cacophony. Link, his right hand in his pocket, pressing the metallic mold against his side, considered the alternates of an immediate or a delayed action. The car was a good one, a '64 Olds. But a temporary hiatus to get them off the road during the first zealous hours of the local law's cat-and-mouse ubiquity, seemed like a good idea. Also, they all required a change of clothes and a substantial meal. He decided on the latter and returned to the car with Estelle. "We'll tell them we've been in an accident," he turned to Manya, "and that will explain a lot of things--. " He added thoughtfully, "We won't start out again until dark. The local pork chops will figure we slipped through their dragnet last night."
Within about ten minutes, they made a turnoff, proceeded about a quarter mile, and then parked the vehicles before a large, neglected frame farmhouse, badly in need of paint and repair. When they were settled inside, Manya, having been carried in by Link and placed on a couch, their host, addressed as Clement by his friends, reached for the phone. "I'll see if I can get Frank at the gas station to have a look at your car."
Link was quickly on his feet. "Never mind," he said. "I'm something of a car mechanic myself, and if you've got all the tools around here and you don't mind our-spending several hours until I fix her up-" He caught the man's quickened look of interest in Estelle's direction.
"No, don't mind at all. Not at all. Just make yourselves right to home."
Estelle moved over to him in the loose-limbed, ambling gait of the professional prostitute. "Say, hon, you wouldn't have an extra dress hung up in a closet somewhere that I could put on my-sister-in-law, would you?"
Clement turned to face the thin blonde. "Do you have one to fix her up with?" he asked, explaining to Estelle, "This here is our new housekeeper."
"I got one for her okay," she said, and then addressing Estelle, "but I couldn't help you out any." She giggled. "Not unless we cut out great big holes--and you know where-to make it fit!"
Wendell, sitting on a wood-back chair alongside the smaller man and intently looking on, once again burst into loud guffaws to the accompanying claps of his heavy hand down on the table. The contagion of his laughter was carried to the others, all of it turning off as abruptly as the flow of water from a stopped faucet when Estelle reached down and began pulling her dress over her head. "I don't need one," she said. "Show me where I can rinse out this one." Her active wriggles in removing the dress had unsettled the skimpy bra and one of her breasts escaped its meager confination. The dark, roseate nipple seemed to stare out at them with a large, coquettish eye, a detail which Estelle casually ignored. "If someone will hand me a large towel or something, and if you don't mind, I'd like to rinse out my unmentionables while I'm at it." The stocky little man leaped up as though ejected by a coiled spring and came back with a towel of a dimension with unpromising coverage. Clem, his brother Wendell, the thin blonde, and the towel provider, all remained, leaning forward in silence, attending Estelle's every move as if she were the figure in a private floor show, an atmosphere she deliberately sought to establish. That she might have decorously retired to one of the other rooms apparently never occurred to her, nor were her spectators about to volunteer such a suggestion. She tucked in the towel, busied herself with her hands, unsnapped the bra which she managed without event. But as she bent forward to peel away the panties, the towel lost its hold and dropped away, leaving her with her lone undergarment somewhere over her thighs. As she bent down to retrieve it, the massive spectacle of her haunches rendered the men pop-eyed and speechless. "Oh, excuse me," Estelle said with a faint modesty that carried the entire charade to its most ridiculous extreme. "Here, give me a hand, will you, doll?" she asked Bess, who in contrast to the reticence of the others, took no pains to conceal her excitement. She made herself instantly available. "I'll give you two hands," she tittered. "Just show me where to put them."
Link ignored the travesty, taking advantage of their distraction to attend to Manya and his own physical condition. His arm had lost its swelling and the wound had hardened into an uninflamed scab. He washed up, found a razor with which he shaved, antisepticised the cut on the inside of his lip, and applied Vaseline to his nostrils to heal the soreness from the face blow he had suffered. He signalled Estelle to continue her entertainments while he moved about unobtrusively to examine the rooms of the house and open several drawers from which he redeemed a map of the area, two $20 bills, and from among the assorted boxes of cartridges on a closet shelf, an entirely unused ration of that caliber he required. He returned to the room with the others, to find Manya deep asleep and Estelle, now entirely disrobed except for the high heels which she customarily retained in all her erotic interludes. She placed the hands of the fluttery blonde, fingers extended, directly upon the nipples of her breasts. "Now watch me move just the tips of them, the way they trained me when I was a stripper, so I could twirl them little tassels without moving the rest of me."
"She's doing it! She's doing it!" the blonde squealed, and she removed her fingers, lost in the admiration of the objects of Estelle's feat of theatrical muscle control. "They're so beautiful-more beautiful than any I've ever seen," she exclaimed. "I could just-kiss them!" The words which came of their own volition and gave voice to her forbidden thoughts, surprised the blonde, and she seemed dismayed until Estelle, with a gay laugh, proffered her abundant prizes for the salute of eager lips. The blonde's excitement was almost uncontainable and oblivious to the gawking expressions of the room's other occupants, gave herself over totally to the impulses of her desire. She kissed, tugged, mouthed the breasts with an undiminished ardor until Estelle, wearying of the awkwardness of her standing position, began to move backwards in the direction of an unoccupied sofa chair. The blonde, like some rabbit led haplessly on by the succulent carrot, trailed after her, not once losing her hold on the savoring object. Estelle sank into the chair, the spare figure falling forward directly upon her, and between the smooth thighs. Her quickened breathing now audible to all, the blonde extended the field of her avid affections. Down to the smooth concavity of her waist and then over the urgently heaving, undulent line of the cushioning belly, and finally, with a moan which measured the full depths of her desire, in between the jellied curves of the most delicate and delectable of flesh. Estelle pulled her head back and raised her arms, sliding down in the chair, her legs widening, straining for the succor of the honeyed mouth. Without forewarning, the blonde withdrew and leaped to her feet.
Estelle remained in that same, yielding position of total compromise, her eyes closed and the full widespread, incomparable garden showing all of its ripest and most ravishing blooms. But so stunned were the blonde's companions, having never previously witnessed the intimate engagement of two females, that they remained rooted to their chairs, anxiously awaiting the adventities to follow.
If they were dumbfounded by the circumstances up to that point, the appearance of the blonde brought stupefaction. Her nakedness was not, in itself, for them an occasion for any great surprise. But her slim boyish figure, the meager lily cups of breasts, suddenly assumed in that critical center-point where her thin limbs joined her torso, a most bizarre and awesome an aspect. "Holy cow!" the small man cried out, an exclamation which ruptured the silence. "That sure ain't no cow," Clement hollered and immediately tumbled into his uncontrollable spasms. Estelle's eyes blinked open and centered upon the approaching blonde with an awakening interest. She reached out at once to seize and to guide the girl to those most vaunted of all gates. The blonde, almost beside herself with anticipatory pleasure, had difficulty applying pressure of sufficient directness and Estelle seized her by the hips, came further forward, and raised up those large, columbular thighs in an anxious effort. They writhed together, the moth in flame, until Estelle cried out. "Vaseline, grease, anything!" Estelle's powerful bucking thrusts sent the blonde into clumsy movements that threatened to throw her off her feet. She was herself engaged, at the same time, her hand pressed against the summit of her own mount of Venus, in a frenzy of rubbing contortions. With her legs jerking spasmodically, all of this gave her the comical aspect of a grasshopper caught up in the toils of some monstrous consuming plant. Her action, despite the state of arousal which the entire spectacle induced, drove the others to laughter and all manner of bawdy comments. "The cricket climbed over the mountain-, " sang the little man.
"Stop twitching that little can so we can see what's going on," Clem remarked, and his brother stood up at once, crying out, "I'll pin the tail of that little donkey!" He went immediately to the blonde. He seized her from the rear, separating her cheeks, and closed within her, immediately finding the mark. She began beating at him, with her fists striking behind him, angered by this divided state of arousal, each of which, her plyings with Estelle, the fingerings of her own hand, and her grinding rearward movements, had an independent rhythm which upset all the others. The result was a complete ineptness which Estelle, unwilling to endure, solved by wrenching away.
And the comments and laughter, intermingled, continued to the point of hysteria. Until Estelle, driver, to the fever pitch of desire and unable to clear her , passion's barrier, stood up. "Come on, you sons of bitches, rouse yourselves!" She went toward them, drawing out with annoyance this unvital simulacrum. She swung her leg over and came down upon Clement, pressing her belly against him and accepting him as she would a lamb brought to pasture. She gyrated hotly, appearing from the rear to be performing all the most titillating moves of the stripper in the process of engaging her audience and which indeed she appeared to be doing because of her crouching, semi-standing position, as he retained his place on a chair, facing her. He held to the seat briefly, and then kicking up his legs under the stress of his oncoming I ejaculation, threw the chair off balance, with them I both rolling on the floor. She made short shrift of the I smaller man. Driven now more by despair at her own I plight rather than by disgust at their incapacity, Estelle ignored the last of the triumverate who was still I heaving between the angular rudders of the pinned I but disaffected blonde. Estelle went to Link, carrying I to him, as usual, the enfevered body drawn on the I rack of an unremitting passion. His face showed annoyance and then signs of an inward rage as he shoved I Estelle's head downward over the deep sofa chair I where the blonde had joined with her. A vicious stinging slap across her bare behind commanded her to I drop knee-deep into the chair and present herself for I her ritual crucifixion. Silently, steadily with the punishing in-fighting of a professional boxer, he plied I himself, carrying her with him up to one plateau, and I on to the next, each time setting himself more determinedly for the rise just ahead. Only the sound of the impact of their bodies could be heard. The perspiration gathered in rivulets that overflowed the nape of his neck, beneath his armpits, following the sharply etched continuous line of his hard driving back. Now it poured out of him, cascading down and exploding into the air with droplets at each convulsive thrust. Now, from somewhere deep inside her, the whimpering began, bordering between that of an aching woman and a little-girl-lost-desolation. She was not so active as in her encounters before where all of her sexual cravings burst outward like the clamor of a drum, pounding, pounding, pounding. The scene had changed, and the music too, which came from somewhere labyrinthian, deep and sombre, where life meets death. And there, the opposite ends of her being drawn together closer, closer, met as two nerve ends, entwined in the entire circuitry of her system, exploded in a storm of fiery, searing impulses. But her ultimate wave rising up over all burst with a galvanic voice and broke the back of the tempest. She shuddered now, maintaining her crouching, crushing posture as if in obeisance, as if in prayer. Rivulets were flowing now, outward, one on top of the other, out of the pith of her vitals, along the length of her arms and legs, and outward.
He withdrew as abruptly as he had entered and retaining her position on the sofa chair, she sank down as if the fire which had engaged her total being had been drawn out. Link backed up slowly and then turned away, his manhood now deeply reddened in the aspect of a warrior's fierceness. It was then that he saw Manya, awakened, her eyes holding him fixedly in focus. He turned away and adjusted his trousers.
CHAPTER NINE
The remaining hours of their stay wherein the more drastic actions of switching the cars and subduing the occupants of the house in order that the authorities could not immediately be notified, was surprisingly uneventful. Estelle's performance which had triggered the day-long debauchery and the continued drinking reduced the probable opposition to sodden heaps, slumped ineffectually on the couch and stairs and floor. Link bound them hand and foot while they were in this state, and only the smaller man-and he, not until he was securely bound-drowsily awakened. Noting Estelle's presence, he seemed to consider it merely another phase in their orgiastic revels, and smiling quite unperturbed, he surrendered once again to an intoxicated slumber. This time, with the advantage of having studied the road map of the region in detail, Link was able to choose and seek out the subordinate roads with less uncertainty. It was dusk when they started out, and after an hour on the road, the complete blackness typifying remote areas of inhabitation, closed in. There was no sign of police activity, though Link maintained the precaution of dousing his brights and approaching signed indications of intersections at a slow-rolling rate, a tactic which presently proved itself. Edging around a bend in the road, Link saw the unmistakable presence of a parked police vehicle at the intersection several hundred yards ahead, the identifying red light stabbing at the darkness. Link instantly killed his lights.
"Quick, Stell, you get up here in front of the wheel. I'm going to duck into the woods off the road here with Manya." He had already hurdled the seat and was lifting Manya and opening the rear door. "They would have spotted my killing of the lights, and they'll be right here. Tell them the car's been conking out on you. We'll go along the border of the road in the woods and meet you about half a mile past the road block. They'll be looking for three people, one of the women hurt. They won't suspect you."
He ducked into the bordering foliage, and within a matter of seconds, the police car, approaching with a tentative caution, stopped alongside Estelle. She was pleased to discover that it was one police officer, and a youthful and attractive one at that.
"What's wrong, lady?" he asked her.
"Oh, my car's been conking out on me all day like this. But after I give her several minutes, she just starts up again."
"Well," he volunteered, "if you can get it started again, Matero's garage is about six miles up if you make a left on 32B." And then appraising her closely, he asked, "You're not from around this way, are you?"
"Not me," Estelle laughed. "I'm chasing my tail after a carney," she improvised. "I had an argument a couple of days ago and pulled out, and now I changed my mind and am trying to catch up with them." She anticipated his response of quickened interest. Good-looking girls in carnies were an association frequently used to pursue the subject that was her special forte. He toppled for the bait.
"What do you do with the carny?"
Estelle laughed. "Nothing any police officer would approve of-I'm a stripper."
He joined her in laughter. "Well, maybe not approve of-in the line of duty," was his retort.
"Say, what is a cute cop like you doing way out here in the middle of nowhere at this hour. Chasing a big-time bank robber just like in the movies?" Estelle kidded him.
He accepted it good-naturedly, adding wryly, "You're not so far off. Some guy and two women killed somebody at a motel, and I'm supposed to be part of a road block. A one-man road block tucked off in these back roads," he said derisively. "Can you imagine anyone who doesn't know back country like this trying to make a quick get-away on this Indian path?"
Estelle heard the rustling of the brush and immediately reached out with her hand to hold his attention by fingering his police shield. She looked up into his face, screwing up her mouth and eyeing him from lowered lids. "I've always had a crush on uniforms and medals and badges and stuff. Especially when the right kind of people wear them."
"Now, what-, " he asked, with a chuckle, "is the right kind?"
"Oh, not the deadheads who take themselves too serious. They don't know how to unbend and have some fun when it comes their way."
"You're quite a teaser, aren't you? You must have picked it up at the carny, that come-on. Okay lady, go ahead."
She crossed the intersection, went a ways, and then began to slow down, straining her eyes in the darkness for fear that she would miss them. She almost did, for she had gone several yards past Link and then caught sight of them in the corner of her eye, rushing into the road. She hit the brakes hard. Link pulled open the door and then ran back into the woods for Manya. She came out, half stumbling and moaning. He lifted her, put her into position on the seat, and then exchanged positions with Estelle.
"She had to duck down and go on her own steam across the intersection area, and it opened her up again."
Link hit the floorboard hard and when, in about ten minutes, they made it across the state line, he diverted himself from his east-to-west direction and began to look for a motel.
"Should we stop around here?" Estelle asked him, uncertainly. "We haven't actually covered too much ground."
The assignment of locating a motel was not a simple one, since they found themselves in an area of lavish estates. After cutting back and forth in various directions for several hours without success, Link was disturbed about delaying treatment for Manya. The continuous jarring motions of the vehicle acted against the body's natural clotting powers as well. In desperation, Link pulled up alongside a small house, a rather decorative cottage, and knocked at the door. His objective was to borrow some ice and get specific information in regard to where they might stay; perhaps one of the large homes had boarding privileges, a dubious possibility but the only alternate was sleeping in the car, an eventuality which would be serious in Manya's condition. The response to his knock was rather long delayed, and he was about to leave when someone opened the door. It was a graying man, slightly hunched over but seemingly quite vigorous with a quietly attentive face. When Link mentioned something about his "wife being ill", the man at once opened the door wide and suggested that he bring her in. "There just isn't any such thing as a motel or any boarding or tourist accommodations around here," the man said. "Ordinances out this way wouldn't permit it. You have stumbled, young man, upon the feudal estates of the privileged class." He made the statement in obvious ridicule. He caught the nuance in Link's questioning eyes and he laughed. "Oh, this place, it's just the gardener's cottage. Come on and bring your wife, and we can do our talking after you attend to her."
"But I have my sister-in-law with me as well--. "
The man waved his hand impatiently. "Bring them in. There's room enough. I live here alone."
His host introduced himself as George Ostrakhan and turned out to be a most unusual man, with Link and he hitting it off immediately. A native Greek, an Athenian, and a most cosmopolitan man, he had been a soldier and a socialist and "something of a man of letters" in his young years. After Link had treated Manya and managed to staunch the blood flow and get her to sleep with the aid of a sedative which the elderly man administered, Link and he did quite a bit of talking.
"By the time I got to be forty," he said to Link, "I frankly considered all of my ideals useless because they were impractical. Impractical in the sense that I was convinced that the nature and character of Man, in his present state of development, would never allow him to participate in a sane and rational form of government. Every personal human relationship I personally encountered or observed from afar was flawed with greed, with self-indulgence, with a lack of reasonable proportions or just plain stupidity. Around me, men, great or small, seemed subject to these same frailties. So I threw it all up. I wandered around Europe, and in England I discovered that the part of the gardener was my role in life. It's a solitary one. It's a life among the simple, always fresh, natural beauties of the earth, without too back-breaking a labor demand, which left me alone a long part of the day for the pleasures of reading. I've been on this estate for four years. When I become restless, I look about for a while and change estates."
George Ostrakhan was simpatico with the Link-type of man. He sensed something of his life style and present difficulty and Link made no attempt to deny it. "What you ought to do is get yourself a place as a gardener on one of these estates. This way, you could occupy the cottage with your-friends, attend to the woman who is ill, with no one the wiser. There's even some income and the meals generally are excellent, prepared by the main household chef." He stood up, still lean, his arms exposed from beneath rolled shirt sleeves, hard and sinewy. He mused, half aloud, on the state of the estates and some of the gardeners in the area; what changes had taken place and where Link might apply. He dismissed several and then turned around suddenly with a knowing smile. "Yes, yes indeed. First thing in the morning where you want to go is to the Osterik estate. It was recently occupied by Mrs. Ann Laurie Caldwell, a woman who was some years ago a theatrical figure of some prominence. She has been over this way several times, having admired the gardens. She thought I might be able to recommend someone. Actually, she was trying to get me to offer my own services. She tried to make the prospect appealing, momentarily that is." He smiled. "Not that she isn't attractive, because she is, very much so. But I'm afraid I'm no longer susceptible and don't feel particularly comfortable in the presence of 'unfulfilled women'. " His laughter had a pleasant, human warmth. "But you-oh yes, she would be most susceptible to you. But then, of course, you know that. I was much like you physically in my younger years, and I know what that quality means. And oh yes," it occurred to him, "don't give a thought to the lack of your gardening background. My recommendation will suffice, and, besides, I will be able to give you any instructions you require along the way to maintain the place as long as you are inclined to stay."
Some time after ll:00 AM the following morning, Link bathed, shaved, and refreshed following a substantial breakfast, left Manya and Estelle, at George Ostrakhan's suggestion, and drove up the long circular driveway before the magnificent Osterik mansion. He was presently admitted to the library, which soon after Mrs. Caldwell, slim, brisk, and modishly groomed in a tailored garment ideally suited for her still exceptional figure, put in an appearance. Link had his back to her, examining the mounted objects over the mantle when she first entered, and her opening statement was most business-like, "May I see your credentials?" But as Link turned around to face her, he caught the perceptible softening in her tone and manner. She extended her hand as they exchanged names, and she seemed to have forgotten the specifics of the initially requested resume. "I'm certain if Mr. Ostrakhan was kind enough to recommend you, you must be competent." After which she insisted upon brusquely escorting Link around the grounds in order that he might "see the contour of the landscape." A tour during which time she became involved in a running monologue having no relationship to gardening, since it dwelled entirely upon her career and celebrated appearances as a former theatrical luminary. When they came to the grounds adjacent to the left wing of the house, she stepped over the concrete border area to show Link the facsimile of a moat of which she was particularly proud. However, there were several steep step-downs which, in order to negotiate, she needed Link's assistance. But instead of taking her hand as she proffered it, he firmly grasped her about her upper arms and lifted her bodily to gently lower her down. Her unsettling loss of composure, after her woman-in-control-of-the-world performance, caused Link to suppress a smile. The last step below was the steepest, several feet in height, and lowering her, Link brought her directly up against him. He could feel the surprising firmness of her body, unencumbered by the special garments of support women in the matronly years have been perpetually dependent upon. Link estimated her age to be fifty perhaps, but he had had the advantage of her career biography which informed him that she was easily a decade and a half or more than the thirty-five which her appearance seemed to imply. He felt the breath go out of her and he sensed a sagging forward but an instant recovery and restoration of her coolly composed air.
The outdoors tour was followed by an exhibition of the mansion's luxurious interior, marked all over, on the walls along the way, by photographs and paintings of herself at various stages in her career, which she recalled for Link in connection with her leading roles. And after this, she suggested cocktails in the drawing room where they might "discuss specific details of the position", an intention which remained as unfulfilled as her previously stated purposes.
Several hours had intervened since Link's arrival, and nothing had transpired except for her interminable running monologue, accompanied by flourishes of the hand and strikingly posed positions to establish the irrefutability of her charms. Where at first Link was annoyed, he then was suddenly mocking and deliberately taunting with his suggestive closeness in order to secure the position and manipulate her toward his own ends; but he now felt something akin to pity. She seemed so like a clenched fist, straining, balanced at the tips of her nerve ends. He was sitting immediately before her with a small, one-legged table upon which were poised the drinks. Without design now, he leaned forward, put his hand gently on her arm, and said, "You're a very beautiful, very desirable woman. Why do you have to try so hard to prove it to yourself or anyone else?" She seemed stunned, at first hurt, as if struck across the face, until Link added, "Relax. I'd really like to talk to you. And let's slip the drawing room social butterfly tete-a-tete. As you can see, I'm not the type."
Without forewarning, she put her hands to her face and burst into deep, racking sobs. Link put his arms around her, because at that moment, he wanted to, and he held her for perhaps as long as five minutes without speaking. Then as she slowly raised her face to look up to him, her eyes tear-stained, searching his for meaning, he took her face in his hands and kissed her. A long, deeply lingering, warmly passionate kiss. As the lips parted and her arms clutched him still, he said to her softly, "What's the great sin of needing a man? Why do you have to torture yourself? Why don't you just-reach out?" She pressed herself against him, her fingers digging into his arms. Link swept her up and carried her first in the direction of the door, which he closed and locked while still he held her, and then toward the gilt brocaded divan. He lowered her down gently, her eyes still closed, biting her lip in anguish. He knelt down beside her and touched his lips to her cheeks, her eyes, her forehead, her throat. Her breath was coming now in trembling inhale and exhalations. Now he parted her lips with his own and the deep, sweet probing of his caressing tongue. Holding her thus, his hand began to mold the contours of her ankles and calves, over her thighs, all on the outside of her garments, and then both hands pressing, modeling, sculpting her breasts from the warm, round, outermost circle to the vital nub. She sighed, and her tautness unfolded like a morning flower. Still kissing, still caressing her, he began to disrobe her. First her shoes, then his hand moving up beneath her skirt, he disengaged her nylons and drew them off as smoothly as a second skin. And then his exploring hand journeyed upward further, dipping into the waistband of the laced panties and inching them down, a movement dispersed with passionate caresses at every stage of the unveiling, until, at last, he slipped past that most vivifying of all sensors. Then his hand knew her, the kiss of his fingers on the lips that had long remained unkissed. He felt her straining against him, grasping his finger in the deepest internal embrace. He held her so, plying her with a rhythm of flesh, as with his other hand he raised her dress over her head and removed her remaining garments. During all of this nor as he reached down to yank and pull away his clothes in his own divestiture, did he withdraw his hand from that liquescence. Now he slipped his uninvolved hand, open-palmed, beneath the small of her back and then lifting her gently, turned her other, face down, still without any digital surrender of that inner woman. It was only now, as he bore down upon her and pressing the full nakedness of his own body against her and introducing his own, searching, resonant manhood between the rotund cheeks of her hind quarters, that he gave up the place of his hand. Then, gently, evenly, with the respiration of life, he moved to occupy first the higher locus, sinking in, and then the suspended withdrawal, followed by that matching channel. First one, and then the other, alternating unceasingly, between the day and night of the inner life, searching, to touch, to expunge the liquescent flame. His heaving now was like the sea itself, outstretched upon the Mother Earth, seeking out, pouring into each niche, slit, crater, to a full over pouring.
She had lay there, affixed to him, flesh commingled with flesh, a man she had never seen, never known now enspired in the needle's eye that was her most sacred self. Hours ago, detached from her own womanhood, pinned in by the dark fear of the passing years, her fountain cried out for mercy, but she could not ask someone to dip his cup. Now Link drank from her, absorbing her essence, drawing out with his manhood the pulsing fluid.
"Ann-Ann!" The high-pitched, excited female voice from the other side of the door was accompanied by rapid tapping. The figure on the couch coiled in its nakedness and still submerged in the hazes of bliss, leaped up at once, as if electrified. "Yes, yes, dear, I-I'm involved in a new landscape plan for the garden and can't be disturbed for just a little while!" At which point, she was already on her feet and oblivious to the effect of her frantic and disordered behavior before Link, grabbed for her articles of clothing. The voice on the other side of the door sounded annoyed. "I want to talk to you. Can't the damn gardening wait?"
"All right, dear. I'll be downstairs in just a little while. I'll make it very fast." She was already stepping into and pulling on her garments. She glanced at Link's nakedness, showing extreme distress. "It's my daughter, Tina," she said.
Link reached for his clothes. "It'll take me just a minute." There was a dressing room alcove, where she rapidly arranged her hair and reapplied her makeup. Then she literally ran across the room. At the doorway, she paused and said to him, her eyes imploring, "Please-please come down as if nothing-happened." And when minutes later, Link descended the long spiral staircase, he saw Mrs. Caldwell with all of her former aplomb, talking with a tawny panther of a girl, with tight pants molded to her lithe figure and terminating in deep wine-colored boots with heels. She was continually in motion, tossing her head, waving her hands as she talked. "-and we're going to go up to Lake Barth with the motorcycles. They're actually having some races up there, and Peter's entering. But he doesn't have the $100 entrance fee. These are real professional races," she was saying.
"I'll give you the $100, dear, but don't you think you might go up to the lake by car instead of motorcycles? It is a hazard--. "
"Ann, don't be such a drag. Every time I--. " It was then she became aware of Link, and she whirled about showily. "Is this what you were busily engaged with on the discussion of landscaping?! " She tossed her head back and laughed aloud, the wide, well defined mouth and flashing teeth accentuating her vital, young animal look. "What a waste."
"This is Mr. Link Hurder, our new gardener. Mr. Ostrakhan recommended him."
Tina, her hands on her hips, moved around Link, brazenly surveying him from every angle. Her movements were a series of restless, sudden stops and starts that kept the twin darts of her breasts underneath the tight sweater in constant motion. "And he's going to be living in our gardener's cottage! Well," she said with mock formality, extending her hand to Link, "as they say, we'll be very glad to be making your acquaintance." With that, she spun on her heels and dashed out of the room, calling out, "Have one of the maids bring the f 100 down to me near the garages. Pete's there, tuning up his cycle."
Mrs. Caldwell immediately assumed her formal, pretentious manner and said to Link, "You can be prepared to move into the cottage whenever you wish. You won't require anything because it's completely furnished and has all of the linens, kitchen equipment, table service, that sort of thing, and-, " she went on, but then cut herself off in mid-air. Her gaze was steadier now and her voice softened and more quiet. "Tina," she began to explain.
"There's nothing you have to explain to me," Link said, gently.
She placed her hand on his arm. "But I want to," she said. Then she went on to tell him of her pride in her youthful independence and the subordination of all her emotional interests to her theatrical ambitions. She enjoyed the company of men so long as they were fawning, attentive and assuring her of her loveliness. As long as no one was presumptive enough to draw her out from her own private self. "I married one time, but I regretted it. It was very brief. I thought he wanted too much,-part of myself." Her voice was sardonic. "Tina is my child by that marriage. But through the years, except for short visits, she never stayed with me. I purchased this house in the hopes that she would choose to live with me, instead of with her father."
CHAPTER TEN
For Alanya, it was as if they had broken through a storm and come out upon a wide, halcyonic sea. The estate was beautiful. Over two hundred acres of deep country foliage and winding brooks, rolling hills and stately trees. The cultivated gardens soon became fetchingly beshrubbed and blooming. George Ostrakhan laid out the initial plans and instructions, though Link soon began to contribute his own ideas, just for kicks, and no one was more intrigued with them than Ostrakhan himself. As for the manual labor, shrub cutting, the mowing of the great expanses of lawn, a labor crew which Ostrakhan employed intermittently began to perform the same service for Link. He occupied himself with some of the lighter gardening chores, plant trimming and bloom cutting, which Manya, who adored the gardens, assisted with. She daily began to do the flower arrangements for the main house, and she and Mrs. Caldwell became quite friendly. Link found himself with a great deal of time and began to bring over great armfuls of books from George Ostrakhan's library.
The cottage was spacious, bright, and comfortable, with more than ample room, a fact which Manya soon discovered had prompted Link to dispatch a letter to his mother and received word that she would soon be joining their domicile. The incongruity of the circumstance, as well as all the others in her life, had been set aside in Manya's mind. It was as if she were experiencing a life within a life, and the inner reality was all-enveloping. Physically, she looked well, clear-eyed, her skin gold from the sun, and in that other way, she was almost entirely healed. Link, too, looked well. The hard extra pounds seemed to add dimension and stature. He was still silent and thoughtful for long periods, but he laughed more. Sometimes when they walked across the fields doing their gardening chores, quite absently they found their hands together. She felt they were ascending the same plateau together, but there were also knifing signs of distress. The mid-afternoon they were in the cottage, Link reading and Manya quietly dozing, was one.
Mrs. Caldwell opened the door and entered the room. She came in in this way on several occasions, under some pretext to talk to Link, usually leaving with him then to go back to the main house. Manya knew what was taking place, and what troubled her the most was his easy familiarity with her, an uncharacteristic warmth. There were even signs of tenderness. She came over to Link who was seated on a rocking chair, his feet propped up on the couch bed in the corner. He let his book drop in his lap. Manya, who was almost diagonally across from them, slightly dozing in the big easy chair, heard Mrs. Caldwell, but she remained unstirring and chose to give no sign of it. "I'd like you to come out with me to the left wing and discuss what we might do with the moat," she said.
Link's tone was bantering. "Whose moat?"
"Link-, " she gasped, her tone surprised, followed by a ripple of subdued laughter. "Don't. She's--. " Manya knew the allusion was to her presence but whatever reticence was offered up, now seemed to be dwindling as Mrs. Caldwell's voice became hushed and breathless.
"Just let me hold it like-that," Link was saying, and Manya understood the significance of the woman's sigh. She ventured a veiled glance and saw her standing before Link who still remained seated and had drawn up the front of her dress, his hand buried deep in its folds. Her body swayed as she put her hands on his shoulders for support. "No, please," she continued, her writhing body unheeding her protestations. Then Manya saw Link's other hand unzipping his trousers. She could make out nothing else from her vantage point.
Mrs. Caldwell was more frantic now. "What are you doing? We can't-not here."
"Just look at it," Link said. "Here, touch it. You don't have to do anything else."
Manya felt the pressured throb in her forehead. She shifted uneasily and found herself craning until she could see Link, there between his legs, bared as he was, already risen. There it was, as she saw it now repeatedly in her deep night dreams, her dreams awake, and often visualizing it through his clothes when they walked through the garden together. Her eyes reached out to fondle it, and felt an insistent, pulsing warmth again between her thighs. Her hand, now long familiar with the recess of her most intimate part, moved in to stroke the flameless fire.
Mrs. Caldwell was bared to the waist now with Link seizing her by the raised and bunched up garment and urging her toward him. Swept up in passion's tide, the woman moved to meet him. She parted her legs to bring her body forward across his, and seizing his manhood with one hand, descended upon him, twisting and turning as if he were an inverted corkscrew, clearing the narrow vessel's passage. Bent forward now, her arms around his neck, her upper torso stationary, against him as the entire girdle was seized by frantic, grinding animus, racing to accelerate his oscillating probes. She cried out, now all restraint broken, and lurched forward against him, her legs coming up to bind themselves around his sides. There she hung, shuddering and trembling, and raining his face and neck with ardent kisses.
Estelle came lumbering drowsily from one of the other rooms, and Mrs. Caldwell backed off Link and pulled her garment down. Estelle, by her passive reaction, either had not noticed, or because of the commonness of the act in her experience, did not consider it especially notable or untoward. Estelle was the only one who had not found their temporary new life style exhilarating. The lack of excitatory stress had somehow dulled her senses. She seemed heavier, more lethargic, almost cow-like in her slothfulness. She looked over at Link. "When do we get something to eat?"
"The maid will be bringing your trays over in about half an hour," Mrs. Caldwell said, still red and flustered from the untimely interruption.
Manya took advantage of the distraction to remove herself surreptitiously from the room. She stepped through the door and entered the herbage garden. She knew by her response to every gesture of Link's that she was moving in the direction of a crisis in their relationship. But it was an impalpable thing. She did not know nor recognize a new self and avoided a direct and ultimate confrontation with this new image. Yet, how could she hope to resolve these emotions with Link? That this was a resolution she devoutly wished, was the only certainty in her life.
In this state of distraction, Mrs. Caldwell, heading from the cottage to the main house, came upon her; stepping through the bordering brush, they almost collided. They began to exchange hasty apologies when Mrs. Caldwell put her hand on hers. "Forgive me," she said, "for-for-what happened in there. I know you must have seen it all. I didn't want to be so blatant, but you know how compelling he is." They both remained silent for an awkward minute, then Mrs. Caldwell spoke again. "You-you're very fortunate. I envy you."
"You envy me!" Manya was astounded.
"Oh, yes," the older woman said. "He embraces me now and then to remind me that I am still a woman. But it's all in the way of service, out of compassion.
I'm glad to say that at least it is that, that he doesn't regard me with lecherous laughter behind my back. But I believe that has to be the way with such truly passionate men. It's as if they were fashioned for that and nothing else." Then hastening to clarify her remarks for fear she might be mistaken, she said, "Not that I think that's anything to be demeaned. I'd be the last one in the world to say that. Certainly after a lifetime of a very bitter discovery. That's why I envy you. Because I can see that you don't come from his background and it's obvious you are caught up into something with both of them. But whatever you've been through, you've had enough courage to throw up everything, to allow that something which must have central grip on every woman, to dominate your life. It's not difficult to see that's why you are with him. I envy your courage and I envy you because he is in love with you."
Manya felt the hot rush of tears, and she whirled away from the woman, running down the foot path behind her. There, beside a tall hedge, she gave vent to her wracking sobs. How ironical it was. The woman had assumed that she and Link were longtime lovers, that Manya lived and breathed for his embraces, found life in them to give her meaning and purpose. Yet, she had never known him inside that woman's core of her being. Still, aggrieved as she was, those words muttered with such certainty by the woman, remained hovering still in her deepest awareness-". . . and I envy you because he is in love with you." Then a hundred images of the weeks lately passed began to superimpose themselves. Link's relaxed comfort when she was alongside him when he read. The easy way they walked along together in the gardens and out in the fields. Sometimes, when she turned unexpectedly, she discovered his eyes deeply intent on her and signs of an emotion he hastened to conceal. The warmth of his hands as they unconsciously found hers and held there as they walked. She felt the waning of despair. How could she not be aware of his sensitivity, the uncommon depth of his interests. The names and titles of the books that he omnivorously devoured attested to that. Sartre, Flaubert, Dostoevsky, Hume, Conrad, Freud were names that remained enblazoned on her mind from her own father's bookshelves. Manya brightened. Yes, there was much they had in common. Wherever they had strayed, they were somehow now moving in the same direction. Her step was firmer and she was almost gay as she re-entered the cottage.
It was then that she met Link's mother. Estelle had introduced her. Her bags were alongside, indicating that she had just arrived. Her appearance was a disturbing departure from the picture that Manya had conjured up of an elderly, illiterate woman, poorly attired and from some deprived circumstances where she had endured a great deal which would also explain much in Link's character and behavior. Instead, the woman was about sixty but fairly tall, about five feet seven, and although not attired according to the fashion mode, she was well groomed and immaculate about her person. Her coloring, though graying, still retained identifying vestiges of Scandinavian heritage. Her features had something of Link's aquilinity, though her mouth seemed less severe, more patiently forbearing. But the expression she turned on Manya was one of notable coolness.
"I'll help you unpack and put your things away," Manya volunteered. She made as if to raise one of the suitcases, but the woman reached down herself.
"Never mind. Estelle will take care of it."
The incident was disconcerting, nor did their close proximity over the passing weeks promise to thaw the unreceptive wall that Manya had encountered. On one hand, it came as some satisfaction to note that Link himself was rather distant and unemotional with her. On the other, it served further to confuse the context she had previously constructed in her mind. She saw Link as a fiercely loyal and devoted son who was willing to risk considerable hazards to maintain his mother and attend to her welfare. True, there seemed to be a measure of that, at least in his action of having brought her to him to share the cottage. But he was often inattentive to the point of curtness as his mother went about arranging and managing the details of the household. Though the presence of his mother had in no way diminished the signs of their own increasingly closer relationship.
Manya awakened one morning, suffused with the warm glow of the sun coming through the blinds. She sat up, stretching, feeling a glorious ripple of aliveness through her now totally restored body. The night before, she and Link had gone out into the gardens to see the blooms by moonlight, and there, his arms had found her, his lips burning into her mouth. How avidly she clung to him, returning his kisses. While he pulled away suddenly, leaving her hanging there on the trembling note of promise, she was not dismayed. It was evident that he was as moved, as caught up in the emotional tug-of-war between them as she was. She removed the covers and stepped out of the bed, which she shared with Estelle. She surveyed herself, nude, in the full length mirror. Now she always slipped disrobed between the covers, her body tingling with aliveness. She was slimmer, more compact than before, but she noted with critically admiring eyes that her breasts were fuller and her hips as well. Her legs retained their long slimness, but there was no longer the concavity in between her upper thighs. She wondered how much of this was a result of those warm flowing juices which came stirring inside her, seemed to have come to the surface from a well-spring. She moved her hands over her breasts, allowed her fingers to linger on the nipples, and followed the curvaceous periphery which all led to that rich, dark mound poised over her source. Her images were of Link, confronting her in this same state and moving in together to perfect bliss. It was with her hand entrapped between her thighs that Link's mother walked in. Manya grabbed up her robe. The woman made no comment nor did she cast her eyes in her direction. She simply went about dusting and attending to her chores. Manya tried not to dislike the woman and continued in the effort to be civil to her.
Her presence was unfailingly disconcerting. Even as the presence of one other on the estate. Whatever feelings of tension existed between them, they had been resolved in that encounter in the garden. The other presence that was troubling to her was that of Mrs. Caldwell's daughter-Tina. Her brazen flirta-tiousness with Link, was not all of it. She seemed endlessly inventive in ways of seeking out Link in her attempt to be compromised. Manya was of the impression that it might have happened repeatedly between them until that early morning she decided to go down to the boat house where she knew that Link was planting in flower beds. It was off season and she expected to find Link alone. But as she came through the narrow foot path, she heard Link talking to someone. "What are you doing out here in your bathing suit? This is no time to be swimming."
Manya heard a girlish, nasally affected voice, and as Manya broke into the clearing, she saw Tina advancing to Link who was kneeling in the soil, literally pulling off the skimpy parts that comprised her bikini. She stood there about fifteen .feet before him, hands on her hips, her legs widespread, boldly inviting his glance. Then she put her arms back and let herself fall with her naked haunches upon the moist soil. There she lay, her legs apart, head up and arms outraised, saying, "Take me, come on, take me." Manya stepped back into the concealing brush. She heard Tina's voice rising angrily, "Come on, for heaven's sakes! I can give you more in five minutes than the old bat can in a year." Manya heard footsteps coming in her direction, and she retreated further into the brush. It was Link, striding away from the lake. Tina came running after him, naked, tearing at his clothes with her hands. "Don't you walk away from me, you son of a bitch. I'm not a kid, I've tumbled with more guys than you could count." Link lifted her up, forcing her away from him, then shoved her so that she fell back on the ground. And there she remained, screaming at him, at the top of her lungs, "You son of a bitch. By the time I'm through with you, you'll be kissing my pussy." Then she ran back, still muttering, to find her bathing suit.
After that episode, Manya did not think any more about what might be going on between Link and Tina. The reason that Tina's presence was a torment to her was because it reminded her of Diane! Ned's daughter. How much, despite all the things that had happened, she was on Manya's mind. The child had hated her, and she had attended her more in the way of wifely duties than with motherly affection. She had always told herself that she wanted to be a mother to her and that she would have welcomed Diane's closeness. But she found herself cast, by the girl's outrageous behavior, in the role of the interminable censor. Manya imagined that Diane's behavior, from her attitude and her activities, the kinds of friends she went with, were no different than Tina's. Yet, this girl's presence seemed to her like a reproach for some failing in herself.
It was the afternoon of the morning that Link's mother had walked in on her while she was masturbating before the mirror, ,that Link announced that he was going horseback riding with Tina and some of her friends. He invited Manya to go along.
Tina had two girlfriends come along, one a tall, slim brunette, and the other of medium height, dark and striking and with an extraordinarily vulgar mouth. There were four young men, all several years the girls' senior. And all of a rather crude, rowdy sort that Manya identified with the motorcycle gang type. She made this inevitable association because three of them were wearing leather jackets of the sort used by such groups. One of the young men, taller and with a swagger and perpetually cynical expression, was Tina's boyfriend, Pete. He provided a large whiskey flask from which he took deep swallows and passed it along to his fellows at the beginning of the ride. He demonstrated an unconcealed rancor for Link and seemed to resent Tina's invitation to him. They rode for about an hour and a half, circling the woodlands on the estate, and at one particular point, Tina burst off into a gallop, disappearing in the brush. The darldy attractive girl with the foul mouth called to her and then snapped, "What the hell is little sniggle ass up to now?"
"She's got a cuter ass than yours," Pete said, a retort that brought laughter from all but the dark haired girl. "I can remember when you had the same opinion of mine."
They continued for a while, the comments getting more risque, until they broke into a large clearing, and there, directly in their path awaiting them, was
Tina, completely nude on horseback, her tawny hair spread about her shoulders. "How's this for Lady Godiva?" she said. Her stunt was met with an appreciative response by all of her friends, except for Pete. He whirled angrily at Link. "Turn your head around, damn you! I don't want you looking at her when she's like that." Link remained seated in the saddle, unmoving. Pete leaped from his mount with a fury. "I told you to turn around," and with that, he reached up and grabbed hold of Link, pulling him down from the saddle. Link got up on his feet, slowly. "You're out of line, buddy," he said, very quietly, and was met with Pete's fist directly on his mouth. Link went back a step, arching his body to the side to avoid another blow and hooked his fist with close, hard force into Pete's midriff, folding him over. Then with his opposite hand, he caught him on the side of the jaw and stretched him out backwards, rendering him instantly unconscious. The dark haired girl said with a rippling laugh, "Do you do everything that hard?"
"He sure does," Estelle chimed in. "And you have the scars to show for it," said the dark haired girl snidely.
Estelle laughed, suddenly brightened and more animated by the excitement than she had been since her arrival at the estate. "If you had my scars, then he" she indicated Pete, just coming to, "wouldn't be admiring her ass instead of yours."
Having been assaulted on sensitive ground, the dark haired girl flew into an immediate fury. "I'll strip alongside you any day of the week, you banged out tub."
Estelle continued laughing good naturedly. "If you did, I'd just about gulp you up right between my legs."
With that, the dark haired girl slipped the stirrups and leaped to the ground. She began undressing at once, the boys clapping their hands and encouraging her, until she displayed a nicely proportioned, rather diminutive body, not without charms. Estelle, still smiling, stepped down beside her. Happily in her element, she turned her back to all those who looked on and began the disrobing ritual which was to her by now a practiced perfection. All the while, as she removed another article of clothing, she maintained the swaying, undulating motion of her hips, and skinning out her panties which exposed her great, unblemished mounds, brought an audible gasp from Tina's friends. And then, completely naked, Estelle turned around to face them. There was no laughter, no hooting, howls, or any comments whatever. Estelle's appearance had an overwhelming sensual impact. Manya realized, upon seeing her then, that all that the woman possessed, all of her thoughts, actions, responses; her entire exchange with all things around her, had been distilled into an essence of sexuality. With the rays of the setting sun cast upon her in the clearing, she seemed like some fructifying goddess descended to absorb in her vitals every earthly protuberance, Man, mountain, skyscraper. Manya recalled that Estelle had referred to Link as a "stud". She realized that Estelle was his opposite image. Sex incarnate.
Link's interest in all of this was Manya, and so sensitive was he to all of this, that he said to the others, "Okay, since some of you are undressed for it and the rest of you sound like you're in the mood, I'll show you a little Tartar trick on horseback." With that, he began to unbuckle his belt and remove his pants. He pulled off his jockey shorts at the same time, and naked from the waist down, he approached Estelle. He guided himself to her thighs and began drawing back and forth with a squirming assist from Estelle. Then, still manipulating her gently with his hand, he looked up at Tina, who was nude on the bareback mount, having removed the saddle to achieve the Godiva look. "Move up forward," he said, "I'm coming up behind you." Tina made an effort at a gay laugh and a casual remark, but she was too excited to conclude it. Her mouth was taut and her nostrils wide with desire as she held her eyes fixed to Link's rigid, encrimsoned organ. He put both hands upon the horse's shanks and leaped up, clearing the animal's hind quarters and landing behind Tina. Pete, sitting up, was dazed and helpless. Tina began to bend her body backwards to close the space between Link and herself, but Link told her, "Just stay where you are-me and the horse will do the rest." And desire constrained laughter broke off from those around them. Now Link took the reins and brought them over Tina's head, giving him control of the mount.
He started the animal moving, first slowly and then in easy loping strides in a circle around the rest. The undulant fore and aft movements of the animal soon closed the gap between them. Now Link encircled her waist with his arms and with each loping stride of the animal. And then fixing her rigidly against him, he burst into a gallop. Steady, hard, impactful, the cadence moved them in perfect consonance. Harder, faster, the circles widening, until at last he headed the mount into a swift run and a break-way gallop. Tina's pealing outcries stirred the others to such a frenzy of erotic desire that they moved to each other, touching, grasping, embracing. Pete grabbed for Manya, wrestling her to the ground. She struggled with him, in between an unappeasable desire and an irrepressible rage at Link. She pulled away from Pete, got to her feet and began to run across the field. She could see Link, now toppling from the mount with Tina, rolling over the ground with her, straining against her aroused body now with the rapidity of a pneumatic drill. Pete caught Manya and flung her to the ground. He struggled to pry her knees apart. She screamed, tore at his face with her nails. "Leave me alone," she cried. "There's something wrong with me. Don't you understand?! " Pete, frustrated by her resistance, on top of Tina's rejection, now began to beat her about the face and head with his closed fists. She screamed, and within a matter of instants, the body weight of her molester toppled to his side. Then she saw Link dragging him off and striking him with a flurry of blows that drove him down to his knees. Link helped her up. "Are you all right?" he asked anxiously. "I mean, did he hurt you there again?"
Manya began to sob, and she shook her head. He helped her up on her horse, and leaving the others behind, started back with her in the direction of the cottage.
They moved slowly and silently for some time, until Manya regained her composure. Now she pulled up rein and began to verbally assault him, all of the repressed anger, all of the unspoken thoughts choking her till they had to be ejected. "Why do you allow yourself to become involved in sick performances like that, turning yourself into some kind of a warped and hideous caricature of a person. Why do you have to live that way?-stealing, running up back alleys, living with your hand gripped on a gun. It's a subhuman existence." A sob burst from her throat. Manya choked back the tears, and her voice dropped as she fought for control. "You're not like that, Link you're not. There are other things inside you that you're denying. Feelings for beauty, the gardens, the county-the regard, the love you have for those magnificent books. I was raised to appreciate such things. We would have so much in common if you would come to realize this."
With every word of Manya's, recalled fury seemed to be building up in Link. The tendons in his neck drew taut. His fists clenching and unclenching spasmodically with a pressure that made his knuckles show white. The voice that came out of him was as flat as a blade, its edge just as cutting. "The only thing we have in common is the air we breathe. Like you? Boy, are you ever wrong. There is nothing you see, nothing you are, nothing you represent that means a damn thing to me. What you were raised to appreciate, I hate. Do you understand that? I hate it. And most of all, those books. I read them to tear them to pieces, those grandiose ideas built on stupidity and self deception, out of fear to grasp and hold on to something. Sentiments sick and sycophantic. The morals, the traditions, the ethics, words that should be flushed like feces down a cesspool for all they mean in this real world that we live in, eat in, screw in, die in."
Manya recoiled, his words searing as a whip lash, and Link slashed at her further with an obsessional need to cut her down, demolish her. "I'm supposed to be like you? That's a laugh. We represent opposite sides, sides that never meet but to rape, to ravage and to kill. The violators and the violated. As if I need to tell you which one you are. How many times have I rescued you from getting your pants banged? The guys that blasted you at the carny? The big ape that you repulsed and innocently led to slaughter? This kid back here whose guts I pounded? Poor, pure immaculate Mother Superior with that fire burning deep. I saw it when I walked in the door of your house, that need to be grabbed, plummeted, pounded-but only as the violated. When I wanted to take that kid with me, you thought you wanted to go with me to save her. She doesn't need anyone saving her. You wanted to go, so what happened to you, without your so-called will or conscious desire? So I would force you. And that's why you stuck with me. That's why you went with me, no matter how many times you could have broken away, walked off. You were waiting-waiting until you were violated. You're what they call the eternal hostage. But I wasn't going to give you what you wanted most. Maybe just a little, maybe close to it so you could see what kind of a damned fraud you are. I could see the fever in your eyes every time I blasted my pistol into some other piece instead of you. And I wanted to see you look on, eat your guts out, with a need. That's why I took you out riding today. That's why I had that kid. If you wanted me, you would have to come and get me. The violated would have to become the violator." Link looked at her with cruel mockery on his face. He stepped down from the horse. "If you want me, get off the horse, but first, you're going to have to get down on your knees and kiss me." Link, his eyes never wavering from her face, smiled his cruel smile. With a sob, Manya whirled her mount, heeled him into a gallop, headed for the cottage.
The trees, the foliage, the sky appeared a misty blur through her eyes. She swallowed, gulping back the salt of her tears. He had struck at the wound that had never healed, the wound he had opened the day he had walked into the house and taken her out with him into the night. His brutality had been punishing, but so was her own self flagellation. Even after all he had said and he stood there before her and began to expose himself, Manya knew that she wanted to come down off that horse. She wanted to go to him, kneel on the floor if necessary . . . How she hated herself for that. "Never," she muttered through still trembling lips, "Never as long as I live will he ever drag me down to get me to go to him."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Manya entered the cottage, walked past Link's mother who was completely attired in coat and hat. She went immediately to the telephone and asked the operator to connect her with the local bus depot. "I can tell you when the buses are leaving," Link's mother said to her. And Manya turned around to see two suitcases alongside the woman. "I'm leaving," she said, "you don't have to go."
"I'm not leaving because of you," Manya said. The deepening lines on the older woman's face showed a troubled weariness. "You shouldn't leave him. He loves you."
These words and the woman's entire attitude were totally incomprehensible to Manya. Especially coming at this time. "You're mistaken," Manya said. "More so than you can possibly realize."
The woman shook her head. "I'm not mistaken. I knew that from the moment I received a letter from him, telling me to come to this place. He wrote me then that there was someone else with him, someone other than Estelle. And he said that it was someone who was very fine and that it was someone he knew that I could become close to. How incredible a thing that was for him to say, only I know. In all of his life, he has never had such regard for a person or ever believed that human closeness was possible at all."
"But Estelle-, " Manya began.
"No," Link's mother said. "You don't understand. Estelle has just been someone to have in his presence. The way people keep pets, a cat, a dog, occasionally throwing it a bone of affection for the sake of some living presence." Now she averted her face in an effort to conceal her distress. "I never said anything to him about her. When there is nothing, the touch of another body has importance." She turned again and leaned forward anxiously, placing her hand on Manya's arm. "He needed something, at least, so he would not exist as a child stillborn." For some reason or other, as the woman made reference to the sexuality of the body as a detached object, a needed service, a nourishment, an image of the brother who led her to the mentally retarded giant, as if he were taking her presence to him as a light in self-consuming darkness came to her. Manya's hand returned the pressure of the older woman's. "But Link hates me."
"No, it isn't you that he hates. He hates because he does not believe that anything else is possible." Now she pressed the fingers of her hand against her lips in despair. "How can I explain it to you?-You see, he grew up very close to me as a child. We had a fine home and we never were at a loss for material things. My husband was a man very much involved in business. Quite successful, always arranging corporations, mergers, away from home weeks at a time. He was an attractive man and he had the faults of . . . "
She shrugged. ". . . I suppose what is in Man himself. Interests away from home, other women, drinking. But do not imagine that I am speaking of some kind of reprobate. My husband was very respected, highly regarded, in the church, in business. Of course, I wept, was hurt, complained. We argued, and when he was away, I carried on as if I never wanted him to return. Link saw, he heard all this. And as I said, he was very close to me. A brilliant boy, a remarkable student. Perhaps you find this difficult to believe. But this didn't last very long because there was hatred inside him for all the things that his father was and represented. This he received through me." The woman closed her eyes for a moment and drew her hand across her face. She looked up to Manya. "I remember one time that my husband was away for many weeks and he had brought home with him several men for some kind of a business conference. They were in the study, and Link came in for a book on the shelf, I think it was. They were talking and they didn't notice him. And mention was made of a party they had arranged with prostitutes, I suppose to help inveigle some group into a business merger. Something like that. And Link, who was perhaps thirteen years old, or fourteen at the most, turned upon them. All the stored up rage and vehemence. I remember I even heard his voice from upstairs, and as I came running down, I heard his words. 'You're all a bunch of phonies. Hypocrites,' he was saying. 'Business-it's just like thievery and criminality. In drinking and being dirty with other women and then a lot of church going to cover it all up. You stink. All of you stink. The whole damned world of people stinks.' I managed to get him from the room. He wouldn't let my husband reason with him, talk to him, put a hand out to him. And it all grew worse with each passing year. He left school. He went out on his own. There was to be no normal life for him. To steal meant nothing. Only he wanted to keep apart from the sickness in the world he said existed around him. To plan was pointless. To live or die was of equal unimportance.
"You see, my dear." The older woman's voice softened. "He grew up to see the world through a woman's eyes, because of his closeness to me. A woman's sensitivity, a woman's heart, a woman's insight. He learned to hate what women hate in all men, but he wasn't a woman, so he could not lose his mind in his body, as a woman does with her loved one. Because what he could not understand was that for all of this, I loved my husband so deeply that when he passed away, I would have given my life just to have been possessed by him again . . . " Her voice trailed off into a deep sigh, before she began again. "I suppose it was a mother's resentment that I reacted as coldly to you as I did. I had never known him to feel like that about anyone, not even myself. I wanted to find a way to talk to you. But when I saw how distant Link had become, I felt, I suppose, that I had been replaced and I disliked you all the more. But I see how stupid it all is, that it can bring us only further unhappiness and, God knows, the world is full of that. So I've decided to go away. I have enough to take care of myself. My husband left more than enough, but Link would never touch a penny of it." Link's mother covered Manya's both hands with her own. "Of course, I am saying all of this out of a mother's selfish interest. I have no right. Asking you to stay with him, the way he lives, can ruin your own life. But I want him to have something. To know at least why he is alive." With that, the woman drew back, lifted her two suitcases and walked out the door.
Manya was deeply shaken. She felt herself caught up in a buffeting, crushing storm that intermittently brought a lapse and a lull, allowing the hopeful beginning of a recovery, and then struck again with a more crippling force. But through it all, she fixed her mind on one thought-that single clue of Link's mother, which had come to her as a revelation. It explained why, among all of the people in the world she had ever known, it was only Link that she felt as close to as her father. Link's mother had said-"He sees with the insight and sensitivity of a woman's mind".
The slamming door behind her wrenched her from her troubled musing. Link had entered the cottage and now moved about in a hurried swirl of activity. He opened drawers and flung the contents down on chairs. "Your mother just left," Manya told him.
"I know," he said curtly without looking up. "Has Stell come back yet?"
"No," Manya started to say, and then was surprised to see Estelle stepping out of one of the rooms.
"Here I am, Link. When you took off with her" she said, alluding to Manya, "I just had to head straight back for the cottage." The uncharacteristic coldness in her reference to Manya had taken Manya aback. Estelle had never shown any signs of jealousy before.
"I've had it up to here with this place. We're going to start moving again. Help me pack," he instructed Estelle. Her face immediately brightened and she fell to her chores with a zest, pausing only to ask Link as an afterthought, "Is she coming with us?"
Manya stiffened, expectantly. Link did not acknowledge the question and Estelle persisted. "Is she?"
Link showed annoyance. "Come on, Stell, shake your ass. We want to get out of here." She did as he bade, and then turned and made her way hurriedly to the door. She paused at the threshold. "I'm going up to the main house to get our laundry."
"To hell with it," Link said.
"It'll only take me a minute," Estelle said. "I've got some things there that I want." She went out and they heard the hurried click of her heels along the walk.
During the ten minutes of her absence, Link and Manya maintained a pregnant silence. He moved now, packing and assembling things, as if driven by some internal holocaust. Manya noted with uneasiness the fluent ease of his hands as he examined and prepared for their taking, in quick succession, a rifle, a shotgun and two revolvers that she knew he had obtained from George Ostrakhan. Estelle's heels clicked even more rapidly up the walk, and the door opened. "Link, we've really got to move now. Her kid came back and she must of told her mother what you did to her out there on that horse. I heard her old lady calling the cops. You know, that kid's jail bait."
Link abruptly terminated the efforts at packing. "Okay. Forget this crud. We'll pick up what we need when we get clear of this area."
Estelle was abnormally animated. "We'll be making a run for it, Link, just like we used to, the two of us." She paused and then looked significantly at Manya again. "You can't take her now, with the cops on our tail. Besides, if they grab us with her, it's kidnapping, isn't it?"
Link started for the door and snapped back at Estelle, tensely, "Whether she wants to stay or come along, that's up to her. Let's get out of here."
Estelle opened the door and went immediately after him, and Manya went through it before it closed.
Link was gunning the motor now, swerving sharply around hairpin turns on roads dividing the various estates. Having had previous access to maps of the area in detail, he knew precisely where he was going. "We'll cut up north to the river," he said. "Then we'll dump the car and grab one of the launches or cruisers, anything with an outboard motor docked out that way and head for the other side. But we'll continue along the coastline for about thirty miles. I know that region real good, and once we latch on to another car, they can just whistle Dixie."
They were all sitting up front, with Estelle in between, now looking morose and unresponsive. As they crossed an intersection and sped past a gas station on their left, they heard the sound of police sirens. Link made no comment, but Manya saw him glance over his shoulder and then heel the floorboard. By the sound of the wailing sirens, it became clear that he was outdistancing the police car. But then as they shot across an intersection, Manya cried out, "There's a police car coming down that road!" Link yelled, "Hold on!" and zigzagged between two cars ahead, cutting off a large gasoline truck which swerved and applied its emergencies with a shrieking tear of hot rubber. Link looked back to see the massive vehicle darting across the road, blocking both lanes. "That'll give us a breather," he said, grimly.
But within the space of several minutes, the siren sound came again within ear shot. This time, gradually, relentlessly, rising in volume. Manya sat with her fingers tightly pressed into her thighs. Estelle whirled for a look. "They're closing in on us, Link."
"This lousy wagon," Link muttered. "I'm giving her all she can take right now. All we have to do is make it to the river, and we're getting close now."
Several shots rang out. "Get down," Link yelled. There was another volley, the ping of metal on the fenders. "They're going for our god damned tires," he said. "Must be a" god damned telescopic sight. They're too far away to shoot that accurately otherwise." Link cut the wheel at the next turnoff, and the car swerved, spun half about as if it were going to flip over, tilting up on the wheels of one side before it righted itself again. "We're coming to the waterfront area. Thought I'd better snake in and out of some of these side streets so they can't--. " A shuddering flip flop of the vehicle cut him off. "Son of a bitch! They plugged one of our tires back there." He pitched the car around another turn, but by now the car was dragging, flopping on the naked rim. He cut off the road, flung open the doors, grabbed the weapons which were in reach and motioned to the others. "Come on, we'll cut in and around some of these buildings and try to make it into one of those waterfront warehouses. We can crawl in and out of those things till doomsday, and they'll never find us. I've got a break, at least it's Sunday, and the whole god damned area is like a ghost town." He led them through what appeared to be a vacant truck parking area, helping them clamber over a wire fence which both girls, wearing high heels, negotiated with difficulty. Estelle, the heavier and the less gracefully adept of the two, found the going rougher. They cut across a loading depot area, and Link pushed through a gate boldly emblazoned with "No Trespass" signs. "Come on, come on," he urged them, "Quickly. We should be hitting the river area any time now." All three were breathing heavily by now, Estelle breaking into spasmodic coughing gasps for air. The siren sound came up close behind them and fanned out in an immense wail, followed by screeching brakes. "They found our car," Link said and cast about frantically for the likeliest refuge. Link pointed to his left to a steep, diagonal concrete rise, just beyond a sheet metal Quonset type structure and rising at least seventy-five feet above it. "That's some kind of a coal or loading chute," Link said. "There should be a lift or steps right down the other side of it going right down on the river front." He started running toward it and waved them after him. He paused before a concrete bordering wall about five feet high and flinging down his weapons, helped them clear it, each in turn. On the other side of that, there was a narrow, concrete, vehicle passageway, then a wrought iron picket fence, with ornate, wickedly protruding bars, and beyond this, a gradual ninety degrees concrete rise to the housing above. He helped Manya clear it first. And then, getting behind Estelle, he put his hands under her dress, grabbing her under the buttocks and lifting her to secure a foothold, but her heels kept getting in the way. "Get rid of those god damned spikes," Link said, as she finally managed to pull herself up beside Manya. A narrow concrete wall bordered the wrought iron gate fence. Link grabbed up his weapons and started running along it in the direction of a rise of concrete steps that seemed to lead, almost pyramid style, to the summitted structure. "I'll run ahead and get set up at one of the windows in the housing up there, where I can cover you if they head this way before you two can make the climb." Link cupped his hand to his mouth and shouted back to them as he started up the steps-"Steady on that wall. You've got those god damned spikes alongside it," and then furiously, "Kick off those stupid heels!" Manya immediately removed her shoes, but Estelle refused to be parted from them. "I don't want to take a chance on losing them," she said, and then adding insipidly, "Suppose I have to end up tangling with one of those dumb cops to get them off our backs." Manya made her way cautiously, with Estelle stumbling and cursing behind her. Link was about three quarters of the way, and Manya, less than ten feet from the concrete steps, heard Estelle trip and scramble for a hold. Manya turned to see her lose her balance and go off to the side. Her outcry, shrill and piercing barely leaving her throat, was truncated in mid-air as her body struck the gate fence. The sequence of motions had occurred so rapidly that Manya had not, in that instant, comprehended the fatality of the mishap. And then she saw Estelle enskewered, the black, encrimsoned spike thrust completely through her chest. She was frozen, too horrified, to immobility. The impaled young woman jerked her hands and legs like an impaled insect, and her movements compelled Manya to a repossession of her senses. She leaned over and extended her hand. "Stell-Stell. Give me your arm." Stell's eyes fluttered grotesquely, and she did make an attempt to raise her arm but then dropped it weakly. She seemed at once to know that her injury was fatal. There was an immense outpouring of blood. Looking up, she fixed her eyes glassily upon Manya's face. Her voice was a barely audible whisper. "I-I was the one -to call the cops. I . . . I . . . heard what Link's ma said-about my being like a dog or a cat . . . that he loves you. I thought if the cops-chasing us, he would you leave you be . . . " Her eyelids began to flutter, and the air rushed out of her in a deflating gasp. Manya knew from the waxen glaze of her open, unblinking eyes, that she had expired. The identical look of her father's eyes on the day he died had never left her. Link's warning shout from above blared out, and she turned at once and began to run up the concrete steps. The unsteadiness of her trembling legs caused her to stop several times, despite Link's continued urgent shouts. Struck by a sudden dizziness, and terrified that she might tumble down, she knelt down and continued her ascension on hands and knees. It seemed for her an endless ordeal, and at one point, she allowed herself to collapse, face against the cold concrete, trying to regain her breath. Then she felt him lifting her up, and for the last fifteen or twenty steps, he carried her into the shelter. When Link set her down, she wanted to sink to the floor, but he held her up, shaking her, "Come on, now, snap out of it." He grabbed up his weapons, one of which was probed through the window overlooking the vantage point from which they had come. "We've got to find a way to get out of here now, down to the riverside. This is a break because this place is built up over a wall that's a dividing line running several miles along the waterfront. In order to get at us, they've got to circle all the way around."
Manya muttered brokenly, "Estelle-down there--. " She felt the tight support of Link's hands on her arms.
"I saw it happen," he said, small muscles working in his jaws. His eyes, gray and unwavering, held hers, steadying her. He took her arm and they moved to a doorway, where all light was shut out. "Stay where you are," Link said. "I can't see a damn thing. Let me see where this leads." For several minutes there was silence, except for the sound of his shuffling footsteps in the darkness as he felt his way, probing ahead with his hands. Somewhere from below, a voice, unnaturally amplified, thundered through the silence. The police, chancing upon Estelle, easily identified the fugitives' sanctuary. "The other side is completely walled up. The only way down is right here, the way you came up. Do you hear me? You're cornered." Link came out of the darkness. She knew by the look on his face that it was true. "They must have abandoned this place and boarded it up." He walked back into the section of the structure into which they had entered and reimplanted himself by the window. He looked down to see three police cars and a scattering of men, some uniformed, some not.
The amplified voice started again. "We know you're heavily armed and we know you've got Mrs. Tellson with you. We don't want any unnecessary killing. There's no way for you to break out of here. So why don't you let her come out, and then throw your weapons out? I promise you no one on this end will get trigger happy." The pronouncement of her married name had a strange effect on Manya. It was like a summoning back to another sphere, another place in time, where someone with her semblance, her face and her body had existed. The cold, inescapable reality rose up to repossess her. She was a married woman, the legal chattel of another man. His name was Ned, and they had lived together for four years, in the intimacy of man and wife. How could that be, she wondered, if, in all that time, he had entered her body but never reached her. She looked at Link's hard hewn profile as he maintained a steady ritual at the window. Here was a man, a stranger she hardly knew, who had never entered her, but had reached her.
For a period, there was silence before the authoritarian voice boomed out again, contaminating an effort at reasoned persuasion with unctuousness. "We're not in any hurry. We've got food, hot coffee, a lot of police shifts to back us up. What have you got up there? Tell you what. We'll give you a half hour to make up your mind. You don't really have any choice. And having that woman with you now doesn't do you any good one way or the other. So why don't you just let her walk through that door, back to her husband and her daughter, where she belongs? You've tortured her enough."
Manya was on her feet. The door was no more than four feet behind her and wide open. Link turned to look at her. He caught her side glance at the open doorway.
"If you keep her up there and we have to come in and get you, it'll only mean more blood on your bands. Why take it out on her and risk her life? Do a decent thing-, " the voice continued to intone in the background.
Link turned away from her, training his attention on the window. Manya understood the action as an unspoken gesture for her release, if she wanted it. She had but to take several steps, and it was possibly her passage from death to life. She had turned inadvertently, facing the open doorway, as these thoughts passed through her, and Link, interpreting her position as an indication that she was actually going to walk out, spun about with a convulsive start. They faced each other now. The word remained unsaid, it was not unexpressed. They were there, only the two of them, perhaps for the last time. The last time--! The words knifed into Manya's brain and she began to take a step in his direction, but Link had already taken several. His arms closed around her with a painful fierceness. Her lips, her teeth, kissed, bit at him in a consuming need. Their hands, their hands searched, grasped, seized. "I want you, Link-I want you!" The full weight of his demand against her was crushing. Her knees gave way, her body falling back beneath him down with her. His mouth was a brand on her lips, her bare shoulders, her breasts! His hands reaching out, fumbling for her skirt, and she slid down toward him, to help him pull away the encumbering garment. Her own hands were grasping now, rapining as they caught the zipper, pulling, almost tearing it from its threads. She delivered both hands into its confines, deep down in the man-grove, fumbling, plying and fondling. Cupping her hands, she spilled out its entire palpitating contents. He brought his hands under the soft, cushiony mounds, raised her up, splaying wide the eager, vertical mouth. Her hand grasped it wholly now, running the full, arteried length of him from his wild-tangled hair to his satiny skinned nadir. She guided him down and forward, canting her hips to meet him. There, with her arduous moistenings, they canted together. She arched forward so violently at the electric contact that they went over on the side. She flung her leg over him and came down on top of him in a paroxysm of desire. Each movement only inflamed her the more, and she flung the top of her body down over his, circling his neck with her arms, biting, suckling his lips, seeking to uproot his tongue. The words burst out as ecstatic gasps. "More, Link, more, more, more, more, more, MORE . . . " She had risen now, soaring higher than she had ever been before, somewhere higher, it seemed to her, than life itself. In that instant, she knew that she too could burst the bounds of reason with passion, that she too could be taken, driven to that place which overrode every other consideration. And if, in that instant, she had to choose between death or the release from this ultimate embrace, she would be beyond the power to divest herself from him.
His fingers dug deep into the flesh beneath her armpits. She cried out, desiring the pain, the agony in each fiber that burned now to its limits. He bore her upward taking her with him, bodily, then slamming her down, the hard impact of his body striking above her, her upraised leg over his shoulder as he knelt cross-legged over one of her thighs. She felt the girding muscles in his back, his thighs, his haunches, and then he struck at her, the agony spreading out now, infusing her. "Yes, Link-oh, yes-yes, yes, yes, YES!" With each sledging, flesh ripping drive.
Now her arms and legs dissolved, and all her swimming senses moved inside her, entering with him the all enveloping cavernous fount where life itself was made. And there, the whole sun burst inside her, and her blood ran in hot, electric streaks to all the parts she never knew before he entered her. She clutched him now, dissolved on him, outpouring herself, her essence.
He left her now, but she felt still engorged, eternally possessed, as a molten candle waxened to its fiery wick . . .
Link raised himself slowly to his knees. He leaned forward, held her face in his hands for an interminable minute with such an eloquence that eyes can speak beyond the reach of the dumb adumbration of words. He stood up, his movements strangely energized. He went quickly to the window, at the same time, drawing up and arranging his clothes. He seized two revolvers and thrust them in his pants pockets. Then he grabbed up the rifle. He leaned down over Manya on one knee and spoke, now with a swift urgency. "I'm going to try to get out of here now," he said. And at her show of alarm, added with an undisguised tenderness, "You see, I've got to get out of here now-because I want to live. I want to be able to be with you."
She sat up quickly and grasped him by the shoulders. "But there is no way out of here. You said that yourself. They'll kill you, Link-they'll kill you!"
The touch of his hand on her face calmed her. "No they won't. I think there is another way out of here. A boarded up coal chute and I could probably snake my body down. But you'll have to stay here. Wait until they call for you to come out again. Then do it."
"No, Link, I don't want to leave you."
"Listen, I'll get out of here. You go back where you came from. Maybe it'll take a month, a couple of months, but I'll work my way back there. That's one place they'll never expect me to show up. We'll go to Mexico-we'll go to South America, somewhere where we can . . . " He broke off and embraced her fiercely. "I love you, Manya. I love you!"
"Link-Link, my darling."
He pulled away from her abruptly and ran into the darkened, adjacent area. Though she called to him, he did not respond, but she heard the wrenching away of boards. In an instant he was back, and rushing over to the window. "It is a sealed up chute and I'm going to go down the other end." He raised his rifle and poked it through one of the windows. "Don't be frightened," he said to her. "I'm going to let them have a few just to get a return of fire," and almost as quickly as he squeezed off two shots, it was followed by a hard, shattering fuselage from below. Then the voice from the megaphone, "We're ready to give it to you any way you want to take it. You still have five minutes." Link nodded to the mystified Manya. "Now I'm going back there to squeeze off a few shots into the chute just to make sure there's no one on the other side before I let go."
She heard the discharge of fire, and a moment later, no retort. And then his voice. "It's clear back here. I'm going, Manya. Take care of yourself-for me." Then he was gone. Manya sat in the center of the floor, drawing on her garments, trembling now from the damp coldness of the room. Then a shot rang out, and another shot-somewhere from behind. Somewhere from where Link had gone! Her hands clamped her mouth in horror for a suspended instant, and then the omnipresent voice rang out. "We've got him, Mrs. Tellson. Don't worry now. You're all right. Just stay where you are and we'll come to get you. You're going home . . . "
It was all a rain of tears after that, hands aiding, assisting, solicitous voices proffering hot drinks and cigarettes, bundling her up in warm blankets, reclining her in the large vehicle. Some time before she dropped into a deep, sedatized sleep, she saw Ned's face and Diane's, and she was surprised at the tenderness and compassion of her feelings. So this, she thought, was the meaning of love.
