When a child of eleven, Susan Holiday was perfectly content to live on the farm in Illinois where she had been born and raised. Her father, a burly, blonde, third generation American of Scandinavian descent, grew mostly corn and pigs, but Johnny, her fifteen year-old brother, who anted to stay on the land, was interested in raising cattle. He already had a young milk cow which he had raised from a calf and was thinking of breeding her with a neighbor's bull.
One morning early that autumn, as the pumpkins were growing yellow and plump on the vines, and her mother's kitchen was permeated with the heady smell of spices and pickling, and the fresh tart odor of baked apple pies was floating through the window to where she was sitting on the back porch with Pal, their thick-coated German Shepherd dog, she heard her father and Johnny talking in the kitchen about his cow.
"Mabel seems to be in heat now, Johnny," her father said. "If you still want to breed her, now's the time to do it. I've talked to Chris about it, and he says to bring her over anytime. He's got a fine bull and it should be a dandy calf."
"Gee. Dad, that's swell. When can we do it?"
"Tomorrow's okay with Chris. But remember the entire responsibility of bringing up this calf is yours. No saying you're tired of taking care of it and Mabel after it's here."
"Gosh, Dad, you know I won't do that. I'm all set to grow her up and win me a couple prizes at the fair."
"Okay, boy, we'll go over tomorrow after lunch, then."
Susan slipped off the porch so her parents wouldn't know she had heard and walked down to the barn to look at Mabel. She had noticed that previously she had not only been kept away from the pens and barns at breeding times, but that any discussions concerning them between her parents, or between her father and other farmers, had always ceased when she approached. Thus, the only things she associated with the word "breeding" were the sound of the bull's bellowing echoing over the green hills and a feeling that it must be something "not nice."
But lately she had been disturbed by vague warm sensations in her own body, centered deep in her belly, which had made her restless and irritable, and she had begun to speculate about her own sex organs as well as those of animals. She resolved she would surreptitiously go over to Chris's farm and see what happened.
The next day was a golden autumn day with the smell of an early winter in the air. From a deep blue sky the sun turned the leaves to a shimmering fire of reds golds. Along the road the sumac was glowing, purples and deep reds, and by the farmhouse the late blooming flowers were showing their last blossoms.
After lunch Johnny and his father went down to the barn to load Mabel into a truck to be taken over to the next farm.
"Susan," her mother said, "you're as restless as a cat. You don't have to help me with the dishes. Go out and play but stay close to the house. And put a sweater on."
She ran up to her bedroom to get her sweater, clattered back down the stairs and out the door, her pigtails flying. She went down to the barn where the men were about ready to leave.
"Put Pal in the house, Susan," her father said. " We don't him following along and disturbing the cattle."
She didn't ask to go with them as she knew they would refuse. Obediently, she took Pal back to the house and then headed for the wood, on the other side of which lay Chris's farm. Once out of sight of the house, she broke into a run. She was afraid of missing whatever was going to happen. When she came to the other edge of the wood, she hid behind a bush and peeked through the leaves. No one was in sight. Directly in front of her was the back of their neighbor's barn. Beyond it she could hear the sound of men's voices and from time to time the bellowing of the bull. She quickly climbed through a wire fence, ran across to the barn and slipped through a rear door. Inside, the barn was dimly lit with shafts of sunlight lancing through crevices in the roof and filtering through motes of hay dust lazily turning in the still air. It was warm and close with the smell of cattle, now out to pasture, and the acrid scent of manure. A few chickens stirred restlessly and raffled their feathers as they perched on the railings of the stalls. She looked around and, not seeing anybody, moved silently to the other side, beyond which lay a small corral. She could hear the voices more clearly, as well as unidentifiable rustlings and scrapings, and the restless, heavy tread of the bull.
"He's sure as hell rarin' to go," someone said. "He's hotter'n a pistol." A loud, urgent bellow cut off the words.
"Okay, Johnny," said a voice which she recognized as belonging to Chris, "you can bring your cow in soon. Just a minute until he's moved to the other side of the corral away from the gate."
Entering an empty stall, she lay down on a pile of hay. It pricked and tickled her body through her clothes. The hay dust made her afraid she would sneeze. She pressed her eyes against a small crack between the wooden slats and looked into the corral beyond.
Three or four men were standing on the other side of the corral fence, their tight blue-jeans showing every muscle and curve of their legs. To the right was her father. Johnny was looking anxiously at the bull and while saying something to his father, burst into a tense, embarrassed giggle which he tried to hide with a cough. Chris was standing near the gate, one hand on the latch. Everyone was looking inside the corral.
And there was the bull. Big. Black. Powerful. A black boxcar of latent, dynamic energy. His muscles rippled under the shiny dark hair over his firm, bulky shoulders and haunches. He was standing near the fence, a square block of massive movement. Lowering his head, he sniffed through the fence, his lips curled back, his nostrils flared, his shoulders hunched. He could smell the cow in heat, although she was not yet in sight. The scent made him all male, urgent and demanding. He was in constant, restless movement, at times almost dancing with a heavy tread as he sidled along the fence, scraping it with his side. Saliva dripped from his lips. He swayed slowly from side to side, his tail raised at an angle. Beneath him his large, potent testicle sacks were stretched tautly. He snuffled loudly again and then backed away, pawing the ground with one hoof as he raised his head. With his square, black face raised towards the luminescent sky he roared a mighty bellow which was insistent, commanding, almost an ultimatum.
When he had moved over to the other side of the corral, Chris quickly opened the gate and let the cow in. She stood quietly, switching her tail and looking at the bull. He turned towards her immediately, lowered his head and pawed the ground. Moving to her haunches he sniffed loudly and wetly at her rear. She lifted her tail and he began licking the opening beneath it. His rough tongue caressed her moistly as saliva drooled from his mouth and fell to the ground in wet splats. His pointed, pink sex emerged about six inches from its sheath. It was slimy and dripping with sex juice. He stopped to bellow triumphantly and the sound echoed over the surrounding hills, proclaiming his dominance. His penis came out another foot. He tried to mount her, rearing up with a clumsy lunge, but she moved to the side and his forefeet crashed to the ground. Staggering slightly, he tried again. He succeeded in straddling her with his front legs, his black, immense chest crushing down on her haunches. Her legs buckled under his weight. His tapering prick missed her opening and slid along her side, quickly extending a good three feet. From its dripping end a thick wad of juice shot across the corral and splattered against the side of the barn. Giving an angry snort, he backed away. His penis had retreated halfway. He plunged at her again, and this time he succeeded in entering her. With one powerful lunge his sex shot out its full length and discharged its burden deep inside her. He backed down immediately and gave an ear-splitting bellow. The cow staggered drunkenly around the corral, her head down, her back arched, her tail lifted high.
"Okay, boys, that should sure do it," Chris said.
"God, it's like a freight train goin' into a tunnel."
They all laughed.
Chris entered the corral and led the cow out and over to the truck!.
Inside the barn on her pile of hay, Susan lay tense and trembling. Her mouth was dry. The hay scratched her arms and legs. She was too surprised and shocked at what she had seen to be able to move. She had never imagined such a thing was possible. Her stomach churned slightly and she felt nauseous. Did all animals do this? Did humans? She felt sick and bitter saliva began to fill her mouth. Her whole body began to quiver uncontrollably.
Just then she heard Chris ask one of the men to go into the barn and bring back a halter for the bull. She quickly crawled back over the hay and ran out the rear door, silently scuttled through the fence and fell on the ground behind a bush. There she lay for some time, panting and gasping, shivering and afraid.
It was not until some days later, after her initial shock had been overcome, that she began to think about what she had seen. So that was what "dangles" were for. She realized that if this process took place in animals it must also occur in humans. Her curiosity returned more strongly than ever and, remembering certain sounds that periodically came from her parents' room at night, she tried to figure out how she could observe what they did together. And Johnny. Perhaps he, too, did things with his "dangle." She would have to follow him and maybe she could see exactly what and how. But she would have to be careful and not be discovered. For she knew she would be punished severely if her parents found out.
A few days later Susan went on one of her beloved rambles over the countryside. She never grew tired of these explorations, searching through the woods for tiny, wild flowers, running and skipping over the lush, dark-green meadows, with Pal barking madly at her side, or weaving her way through the rustling lanes of corn. Her favorite spot was a small glen in a wood on the other side of the wheat field. Here she used to go to drowse away an afternoon or to construct a small lean-to of branches and "play house," or to sit quietly and hope a rabbit or squirrel would approach. Pal would snuff around the surrounding wood, barking loudly in surprise and excitement when he would startle a wild bird. Usually, however, he would lie on the soft sod, panting in the heat. It was an Indian summer day, almost as hot as it had been in July.
"Come on, Pal, let's go to the wood," Susan said, as she slammed the screen door and Pal jumped up from the porch. "But no running today. It's too hot. We have to walk slowly like Grandma and Grandpa Holiday." They followed a winding path around the barns and set off across a meadow, Susan's yellow braids swinging from side to side as she looked for hidden field mice in the grass, or knelt to pick an autumn flower. The intense sun pressed sullenly on her head. The sky was a vacant, wide tent of pale blue. The air was cloyed with the sweet, fecund smell of meadow grass and the small white and yellow flowers which dotted the field.
When they reached the glen, Susan plopped on the ground and wiped the perspiration from her forehead with the hem of her skirt. Pal lay on the ground, panting heavily.
"Poor old Palie's so hot in his winter overcoat," Susan said, as she petted him. "lt's just too hot today to wear clothes. Now turn your head, Pal, while I take my things off and try to get cool."
After undressing, she lay on the grass and stroked his thick fur. He rolled over on his side and she noticed that his penis was protruding from its sheath. She remembered the black bull and tentatively touched its pink, moist end. As she gently fingered it, the small carrot emerged until it was fully in sight. Pal growled deep in his throat and then jumped up, quivering. Feeling uncertain and a little afraid, she moved back and watched him. As it began to retreat into its den, be walked over and began snuffling her skin and licking her legs.
She started to push him away, but the cool, damp tongue felt fresh on her hot skin. She lay back and stretched her arms out on the grass as he licked up her thighs. She giggled when his rough tongue lapped the lips of her tender sex and tickled her. But soon she felt a curious sensation flowing up into her groin and stomach, a feeling which was unfamiliar but pleasurable, and which had its peak of strength hidden in her underbelly. At first it alarmed her, but then she gave herself up to its new delights and there only remained a tinge of curiosity as to what was taking place.
Just as the warmth and urgency was mounting in her, Pal suddenly stopped. She sat up, tense and perspiring, wanting something more than she had ever wanted anything before, but not knowing what it was nor how to get it. Associating Pal with this dawning, strange pleasure, she crawled over to where he was lying on the grass, his head on his paws. She lay down on top of him, his thick fur rough against her young, virgin skin. He tried to get up but she told him in angry tones to lie still. She grasped his furry shoulders with her upper arms and held his front legs to the ground. With the mound of her young sex smacked against' the rising swell of his haunches and her unformed breasts buried in the coarse fur of his shoulders, she began to wiggle and squirm while Pal struggled to escape from the weight of her body. Feeling the hot delight rise in her again, she rotated her pelvis more frantically. She did not know what the outcome would be, but she instinctively felt that there was an end, some end, and that this was the path to it. As she buried her head in his shaggy neck and moaned softly and Pal growled and twisted beneath her, the wild need for an unknown completion to this burning desire goaded her on. She felt his hard bones under her madly turning, strongly pressing sex, until finally, with a last gyration, the peak of pleasure was reached.
She cried out and then all her muscles suddenly relaxed. She continued to rub her mound against his fur, but more softly and slowly now, as the burning fire quickly ebbed.
She rolled off Pal and lay on her back, panting and perspiring.
She still did not understand exactly what had happened. But she knew she liked it. And she knew she wanted to experience it again.
The winter after Johnny's calf was born was cold and bitter. The snow crackled underfoot like the snapping logs in the farmhouse fireplaces. Icicles hung in a jagged row from the eves. The pale sun made a blinding white world of the softly blanketed hills. Under the trees lay pale blue ponds of shadow. Rabbit and pheasant tracks crazy-quilted the silent white fields where the cornshocks, feathered in snow, paraded row after row. During the-ay the only sounds were the chattering of sparrows or the familiar farmyard noises of a cock crowing or a cow mooing, echoing cleanly from a neighboring farm.
At night when Susan lay in her bed she could hear the cold north wind wrapping itself around the house like a scarf. From time to time an icicle broke from the roof with a loud snap. Through the silver filigree of frost on the window she could see the moonlight sparkling on the snow. Under the door lay a thin wedge of light from the hall. Her parent's voices, coming from their room next door, were as muffled and soft as falling snow.
During the last two days the snow had been so persistent and heavy the county snowplow had not yet opened all the roads. As soon as a lane was cleared, overnight the blowing snow would fill it up again. Nor had the school bus been able to force its way through the piling drifts and carry the students to the community school. Not that they considered this a catastrophe. On the contrary, an unexpected holiday such as this always filled them with delight and produced a burst of energy never displayed on school days. Rising early in the morning, they would help with the chores, collect their skis and sleds, and then gather together on the gently sloping hills to slide and tumble, shout and laugh. From a distance, the color of their bright red, blue and green snow suits and mackinaws was greyed by the white gauze curtain of snow, and the sound of their shrill voices and the clack of their skis being slapped together to shake off the sticking snow was muted and deadened, almost as though they were playing in a sound-proof room. Afterwards they would go home, stamp their boots on the porch, take off their overshoes and enter the kitchen, laughing and dripping with moisture, to eat the hot soup, freshly fried doughnuts or piping hot pies the mothers always had ready.
The day before had been just such a day. After playing outside with Johnny and George Dawson, a tall, blonde lad who lived on an adjacent farm, Susan went home, dried off in the kitchen and went out to the barn to play in the hayloft. Here she loved to lie quietly dreaming, or to dig caverns in the straw or lately, to arouse herself, secure that she was alone and no one would intrude. She had discovered that sliding down the day, belly-downward, the friction rubbing her breasts and belly, made her body hot and sensitive; the cloth of her snowpants, drawn tightly against her groin, sharply cut between the lips of her sex until the sweet, familiar wave rolled up from deep inside her, rose to a crest and broke violently over her. While resting on the straw afterwards, she heard someone enter the barn below.
Crawling to the edge of the loft, she peered over and saw Johnny. She was about to call out to him, but something in his manner stopped her. He was looking about furtively, his face watchful, his manner secretive, as though he were doing something he shouldn't be doing. She lay down on the edge of the loft, her face hidden by the overhanging wisps of straw and, curious, waited to see what he would do. He picked up a pail and a can which she knew contained salve used on cattle and walked over to the stall in which Mabel was quietly standing, her small, black calf beside her. He put the pail under her and squirted some milk in it, the streams, in the silence of the barn, hissing loudly against the tin. He unzipped his blue-jeans and took out his male organ, glancing surreptitiously over the top of the stall, as though he were afraid someone would come in, a look of shame and determination on his face.
Dipping his hand in the pail of milk, he rubbed it on his prick, quickly bringing it to erection and then held it before the calf, who took it in her mouth, the taste and smell of milk making her suck eagerly with loud slurps, her rough, wet tongue caressing it with lavish strokes. He closed his eyes, his face twisted. But soon he withdrew, glanced around again and, spreading the salve over his firm rod, walked to the rear of the calf. He held her tail in one hand as he grasped her haunches and eased his member up her passageway, hidden in the soft curls of her black hair. He began to rock back and forth, slowly at first, his prick sliding in and out, and then more rapidly until, with a few, final strong lunges, he groaned and leaned over the calf, his chest resting on her back.
To say that Susan was amazed is an understatement. She was stunned. But also slightly envious. While watching him penetrate the calf, she had not felt any rising lust in her own belly-she had been too interested and astonished by what she was observing. Then, too, the sexual desires in her young, virgin body were still too undeveloped and intermittent to be stirred very often.
As the months and years passed, she found many new ways of fulfilling the ache which periodically filled her groin and crept down her legs and through her body. Instead of Pal's back, she used books, the arm of an overstuffed chair, the edge of her bed, or a pillow stuffed between her legs as she lay face down on her bed in the quiet of the night. The small, rosy bud mounted high between the lips of her sex became more and more the center of her attention. With one or two of her fingers she would rub its fleshy swelling, gently and rhythmically, or stroke the soft length of the path leading up to it, terminating her stroke against it until the familiar rising flood of pleasure would swell up sharply and spill over. Or she would use her whole hand to apply moving and steady pressure over these warm responsive areas. And sometimes she tugged at her sex with her hand, finding that the pull on her muscles stimulated the pink bud to which they were connected.
By the time she was fifteen Susan was strongly desirous of a full sexual experience. But the farming community in which she lived was so small and closely knit she was afraid of the possible consequences of being discovered, punished severely by her parents and talked about by all the gossips, her reputation ruined and her parents ashamed. Then, too, she still felt lagging remnants of guilt about her own masturbation and was uneasily reluctant to take the next step. True, she had been kissed, and deeply, by many of her boy friends, had allowed a few of them to handle her young, swelling breasts, and permitted one to finger her sex with his rough, chapped hand, making her sex juices flow and her desire mount almost unbearably, but she had gone no further.
That June, when the winter-bare, plowed fields were covered with emerald green stalks of corn, rapidly inching their way upward to be knee-high by the Fourth of July, a square dance was held to celebrate the end of the school year. Johnny, as well as George Dawson and another friend named Tony, were home from the state agricultural school. Tony had become engaged to Mary Lou Sorenson, who had blossomed into a dark-haired, ripely-rounded beauty with a saucy pair of blue eyes and a dimple in her right cheek.
The dance was to be held at a meeting house a few miles down the road. All the girls had new skirts, full-belled and brightly colored. The fiddlers in the area tuned up their fiddles and practiced the songs, the callers reviewed their patter and tried not to overstrain their voices during the preceding days, and all the wives and mothers cooked their treasured specialties, pecan pies, double-fudge cakes, fruits bread jeweled with red and green candied fruit, succulent hams studded with cloves, all to be eaten at midnight by the leg-weary crowd. For everyone was going, everyone who could still shake a leg or scrape a fiddle, or even just sit along the sidelines and gossip and urge on the dancers.
There was a full moon that fourteenth night of June, an orb glowing like an opal which lit the countryside almost like day and covered the rolling hills with a sinuous cloth of silver lame. Susan was dancing with Georges Dawson, now a tall, attractive lad of twenty with a lean face and a ready smile.
"My legs are about ready to give way," George said, as they finished a fast square dance and walked, breathing heavily, off the floor, nLet's get some fresh air."
They went outside and sat on the cool grass. With her arms behind her, propping her body, Susan tilted her flushed face toward the sky, in the moonlight her heavy, blonde hair a rippling mass of silver sequins, and her eyes, dark and deep-set under the winged brows, as quiet and mysterious as a Sphinx. Her blouse, cut low in a circle revealed the clean curve of her shoulders and the soft, rising mounds of her white breasts, the hollow between them a deepening shadow as it disappeared under her blouse. The firm, twin arches of her breasts rapidly rose and fell as she tried to catch her breath, perspiration gluing the cloth to her moist, hot body, sharply outlining under the thin material they molded, outward swelling curves, each tipped-with a hard bud, jutting outward under the wet gauze, dark and swollen, and the round, cupped fullness below. From her small, nipped-in waist her full skirt billowed out, its hem lying above her knees, framing the firm, plump flesh of her thighs, white and glistening in the moonlight.
"You're growin' up pretty as a heifer, Susan," George said. "Pardon my buttin' my nose in where it has no business, but is there anyone you're particularly sweet on around here?"
She glanced sideways at him, her eyes flashing in the moonlight. She liked George. "No," she said slowly. "Not particularly." She waited quietly.
He started to move his arm as though to put it around her, but then picked up a stone instead and threw it with a brisk swing, the stone clinking on a rock when it fell. He seemed embarrassed and unsure of himself, his inexperience revealed in his husky voice and nervous manner.
"Well, look, Susan," he said, "I was wonderin' what you were thinkin' of doin' after high school. Goin' to get married? Or are your parents goin' to send you to college?"
"I don't really know, George. They've said I could go if I wanted to, but I don't want to much. Maybe I'll go to Chicago and get a job. My aunt lives there, you know."
Although she hadn't told anyone, she had already made up her mind. College was not for her. She was too anxious for a quick plunge full into the complex morass of life where she could surrender herself to the myriad delights she knew it would offer. It was not for her to go to college, where the fetters of a college routine would bind and choke her like the restrictions she felt at home, where the boys would be replicas of George and others in her own community, young, hesitant, undeveloped, and where she would not be able to freely indulge in the kind of sexual experimentation she knew her body was ready for and eagerly demanded. No, when the time came, she would go to Chicago, live with her aunt until she found a job, and then strike out on her own.
As she shifted her position so her arm would brush against his and gave her head a shake so her fragrant hair swung against his face, tickling it with the golden wisps of her curls, she felt herself suddenly pushed back against the ground, her back pressed into the grass, her breasts and belly flattened by the crush of his body on top of hers. Roughly he grasped her hair with one hand, entwining his fingers in its thick locks until her scalp tingled with the pain, while his other hand kneaded her soft breast, rapidly making it become firm and taut with desire. His mouth hungrily sought her own, his lips smashed so forcefully against hers that they parted and her teeth chewed his upper lip, making die blood flow and fill her mouth with its warm, salty taste. Her nostrils flared as the acrid scent of his male sweat reached them and she arched her back like a bow while his hand passed heavily down over the smooth swell of her stomach, seeking her hot loins.
Just then a figure appeared in the brightly-lit rectangle of the door, the whirling music of the fiddles and the hoarse patter of the caller blaring out behind it like a radio fully turned up.
"Geo-o-orge! Geo-o-orge! Are you out there, George?" It was his mother.
He quickly rolled off her, breathing heavily, swearing softly. Susan lay with her eyes closed. ecYoo-oo-oo-hoo-oo-oo! Geo-o-orge!" came the insistent, inquiring call again.
"Yeah, I'm over here," he finally yelled back, as he adjusted his clothes, a What do you want?" His voice was impatient and angry.
She walked toward them, saying, "It won't take a minute, dear. I only want you to drive me home. So many more people came than expected, we'll need another big coffee urn. It'll only take a second." Her voice sounded apologetic when her eyes, now accustomed to the dark, saw Susan with him.
"God damn," he exclaimed under his breath. Turning to Susan as he got up, he added, "I'll be right back. How about eatin' with me when the chow's ready?"
She nodded and watched him trail after his mother toward the line of parked cars. She lay back on the ground, her arms clasped under her head and looked at the glowing sky. The milky moon floated like a white gull on the calm, deep sea of the night, cloudless and without horizon. The warm, summer scented air and her aroused, unfilled desires flooded her body with longing. The knot of lust twisted deeply in her belly and flowed down her limbs, making her legs ache and her muscles tense. She could not sit still. Rising from the ground, she slowly wandered away from the meeting-house, over a moon-drenched hill toward a small wood which lay like a silver castle on the far side of a meadow. Under the trees, standing like silent sentinels, the moonlight filtered down through dark, leaf-laden branches and fell on the grassy sod in liquid white pools. She walked between the dark pillars of trees; it was as if she were walking through an eerie, deserted church in a dream, or in another world, all alone, where objects could not be recognized and had no name, but only existed, quietly, peacefully.
But she was not alone, for suddenly she heard a male voice speaking gruffly a short distance away and an answering, gentle female laugh.
Wondering who it could be and what they won doing, she took off her shoes and, picking her way carefully, so as not to stumble over a branch or snap a twig and thus betray her presence, moved cautiously toward where they were hidden. As the voices became more distinct she recognized them as belonging to Tony and Mary Lou. She fell to her hands and knees and inched along; her aim a small group of bushes behind which they seemed to be. What could they be doing? Whatever it was, she hoped they were too intent to hear the small rustlings she unavoidably made now and then. That they might be making love was more than possible. The mere thought of it made the tight knot in her groin rotate sharply. Having reached the bushes, she searched for an opening; finding one, she looked through into a snug, grass-carpeted glade, ringed with bushes, which the moonlight, falling between the tall, watching trees, bathed in an opalescent light and softly spotlighted the entwined figures against the darker ground.
"Tony, darling, I do love you so," Mary Lou murmured, abut do you think we should? Mightn't someone come?" She was lying on her back, Tony beside her, one leg angled over her knees, an arm propped on the ground and the other stroking her hair.
"Oh, honey, please. No one'll come way out here's. He moved his hand to her blouse and began unbuttoning it slowly, his lips following his fumbling fingers as he gently kissed the gradually exposed flesh. Quietly she lay, the fingers of one hand hidden in his dark, curly hair, her body then moving with easy twists as he took off her blouse and reached behind to unhook her brassiere. As she sank back onto the ground her long, dark hair fanned oat on the grass, moonlight glittering in the rippling mass like phosphorescent fish swimming in a dark sea. The soft, silver light accentuated the contours of her young torso, high-lighting the lustrous curves and shadowing the hollows, molding her smooth body into a liquid, flowing melody of beautiful movement, without beginning or end. Her eyes were dark pools of desire and love; her full lips, mauve in the moonlight, were parted to reveal small, glistening teeth and the pink end of a wet tongue, eager to be met by his. The column of her neck flowed outward into the sloping, alabaster curves of her shoulders and down to the rising sweep of her apple-sued breasts, which were firm and raised like two white-hot, glowing coals, tipped with lavender buds, swollen and hard, and as softly caressed by the shimmering moonbeams as by Tony's hand and lips. Moving his fingers to her skirt, he raised it up ever her ripe belly, kissing die lily-white shafts of her thighs and then eased it down over her hips and slowly pulled off her panties with exaggerated care. Quickly he got up from the ground, undressed, and stood gazing down at her, his body like a statue of chalk in the moonlight. He was fully a man, for his male organ stood out like a long, thick rod of ivory, ready and eager to bury itself in the wet, dark tunnel of her sex. Against the darker grass, the long, milky columns of her legs widened upward in pure, clean lines, swelled outward in the rounded parentheses of her hips, which were as white as snowdrifts, as mysterious as the moon above. Her belly curved in a gentle swell, soft, inviting, centered by the dark shadow of her navel, while below rose the strong jut of her mound, richly covered with thick, dark swirls.
He dropped to toe grass, leaned half over her and raised his hands to the shadowed hollows of her neck, moving them slowly and heavily outward around her sloping shoulders, downward over the soft pillows of her breasts, around the small circle of her waist and over the smooth, silky rise of her belly, following the creamy sweep of her hips down to the pliant, satin flesh of her plump thighs which he tenderly licked, slowly, heavily. She reached down and drew him up on top of her. Their lips met in a hungry kiss at they clasped each other strongly, their legs tangled together, her hands passing languidly over his back and kneading the white globes of his haunches. Soft moans and sighs mingled with the sound of their bodies, brushing and sliding against each other as their hands and lips explored warm curves and hidden crevices, their entwined, moving bodies looking like shifting, silver snakes. He buried his head against her breasts, kissing and fondling them as she softly stroked his organ of power and glory.
"Darling, now, oh my darling," Tony whispered. Parting her legs so they lay scissored on the ground, he put his fingers between the wet lips of her sex and guided his instrument of love up her waiting passageway. She moaned loudly and crushed her head against his shoulder, chewing it with her lips. His hands holding the full, ripe melons of her haunches, he began riding her, slowly at first, as she closed her legs around his hips, clasping them tightly while she wildly rotated her pelvis. When he speeded up his thrusting hips, smacking them loudly and wetly against her mound, she matched his rhythm with urgent bucks and swivels. With a last flutter of his hips they both cried out, and then he sank upon her, suddenly quiet, breathing heavily. He rolled to one side and lay on his back, his chest rising and falling, while she put her head on his shoulder and her hand on his now limp organ. A Milky-Way of perspiration glittered on their resting, satisfied bodies.
CHAPTER TWO
It was Susan's first night in Chicago, her first night away from home. She locked the door of her bedroom in her aunt's apartment, high on. the eighteenth floor of a tall, mid-town building, and walked over to the built-in wardrobe, the doors of which opened out and made a three-way mirror. She wanted to look at herself. For she had just had sexual intercourse for the first time in her seventeen-year-old life.
It was almost midnight. Outside, a light summer rain was pattering on the. window. Through a half-open door leading to a balcony came the wet smell of rain and the muted noises of late-city traffic far below. But here in her room it was quiet. After hours of talking to her aunt, she was glad she was finally alone. All evening her body had been smarting beneath her clothes for her back and hips were covered with cuts and scratches.
Quickly taking off her clothes, she let them lay where they happened to fall and opened the mirror, switching on the neon light which was set above it. She stood before it, seeing herself reflected three times. She knew she was beautiful. And she was glad, because she wanted to feel again, many times again, what she had felt this afternoon. Being beautiful would help her attract men-the kind of men she now wanted.
In the three mirrors her heavy, golden hair rippled down over her shoulders like a waving field of ripening wheat and her eyes, the color of a clear, cobalt-blue sky above, large, slanting, fringed with thick, black eyelashes, stared back at her beneath the mocking arched wings of her eyebrows. Her nose was straight with the faintest suggestion of an upward tilt, her mouth, full and ripe, although a trifle too large. But her teeth were perfect, and her smile both innocent and seductive.
The straight lines of her neck flowed smoothly outward to the squared angles of her shoulders and downward to the rising curves of her breasts, twin mounds of firm flesh tipped with dark-red buds, their halos large and rosy. Rising on her toes, she stretched her arms above her head, making her breasts arch high and taut, her nipples becoming swollen and rigid as she remembered Dave's hands passing tightly over them that afternoon and the sucking, eager mouth. With a soft and languorous caress, her hand followed the flowing, mysterious curves of her body, brushed gently over the golden breasts, rubbed slightly the red, aching tits, cupped snugly the small circle of her waist and swept outward around her rounded hips. The slight, acrid scent of dried perspiration mingled with the musty smell of the leaves she had rolled on that afternoon and which still lingered on her skin.
From the slight indentation of the navel set in her gently rounded stomach, a faint line of down led to the strong jut of her mound, her center of sex thickly covered with silky, blonde hair, golden sworls hiding her entrance of sex. Beneath were lush, full thighs and tapering long legs, their muscles tensing and relaxing as she moved up and down on her toes. Her skin was not pure white, but slightly golden, the color of toast or the fur of a tawny tigress. Slightly rotating her body to see her back, she drew in her breath as she saw the usually smooth planes of her shoulder blades, the concave hollow of the small of her back and the orbs of her haunches, as full and plump as ripe peaches, covered with pale-pink scratches.
But she really didn't care. For the hot, rising tide of pleasure, culminating in the sharp peak of her first orgasm with a man, had been well worth the lacerations on her body. And she knew .that, for her, this would always be true. Being able to make love would be worth almost anything.
She turned out the light, walked over to the bed and slid between the sheets. Their coolness was fresh and soothing on her burning body and she fell asleep almost immediately.
She had driven to Chicago with a visiting cousin of one of their neighbors, a young fellow named Dave, whose gentle', be-spectacled face, when she had first seen him the evening before, made her think he was too shy and reserved to be possibly interesting. Since she had obtained her parent"' permission to forgo college and, instead, look for a job in Chicago-permission more easily given after her aunt had written from Chicago inviting her to stay in her apartment as long as she wanted-she had been eagerly envisioning what adventures she might fall into, adventures for which her long pent-up desires were more than ready. But when she noticed his large, strong hands and the ease with which he moved his powerful, compact body, a tingle of anticipation passed through her. Now that she was leaving home and would be finally independent, she no longer felt hesitant about indulging in a full sexual experience. It was as though a second umbilical cord had been cut, a strong cord of obligation and responsibility tying her to her parents and prohibiting her from doing anything which they might disapprove. For the first time she could look at a man and want him, without also feeling guilty about it.
They bad stopped for lunch at a roadside diner and when they climbed back in the car, Susan moved over near him, her legs folded back under her, the hem of her cotton skirt above her knees.
"What kind of a job were you thinking of getting?" Dave said.
" I'm not sure. I haven't had any experience. Do you think one will be hard to find?"
"Shouldn't be with your looks, baby," he said.
"I was thinking I might take a secretarial course first, but I'd really like to get a job right away instead, and be on my own."
"What's the rush? Anxious to make your first million?"
"No," she said, glancing at him out of the corners of her eyes, abut I'm sick of living with parents and relatives. I want to live by myself so I can do what I want."
"And what do you want to do?"
She didn't reply, but continued looking straight ahead out the window, a faint smile on her face. She felt him looking at her and then the light pressure of his warm hand on her knee.
"It's hot out. I feel all sticky," she said. He withdrew his hand as she unfolded her legs and stretched them out before her, her knees spread apart. She moved them back and forth and, holding the hem of her skirt, shook it slightly. "Perfect day to go swimming. I'd like to dive in right up to my neck."
"Yeah, I'd like to dive in, too, but not in water, and not up to my neck." He took one hand off the wheel and ran it down over her hair. "Baby, as I said before, you're a real killer."
He pulled her head toward him until it lay on his shoulder. She tilted it up and he kissed the end of her nose while his hand strayed down over her shoulder, under her armpit and over the proud rise of her breast which his fingers cupped and then tentatively pressed, the flesh soft but resilient under his spread fingers.
Moving her leg against his and laying her hand on his thigh, her fingers lightly kneaded it and then crawled slowly upward toward the crotch of his trousers. Her lips whispered with soft flutters against his neck and up to his ear, the lobe of which she gently chewed, her hot breath filling his ear. With her hand she found the bulge between his legs and began massaging it until it became large and swollen and pressed tightly against the material. Digging his fingers in her breast, he rubbed and twisted the knob of her nipple, making it swell out under the thin white jersey like a dark-red grape.
The loud blast of a horn jerked them up, startled. The car swerved to the right as he quickly spun the wheel and narrowly missed a car which roared past them, its horn a continuous screech.
"My God!" Dave exclaimed. After a moment, he laughed hollowly and said, "Honey, our romance almost came to a sudden and permanent conclusion."
Susan looked at him and said, a Can't we open a new chapter?"
He glanced at her quickly, at her flushed face and the thick hair tangled by the wind, at her blue eyes, their lids half-closed, gleaming with a frank invitation and then he slowed the car, soon turning off the highway onto a graveled road which he followed until he turned again, this time onto a bumpy lane leading into a small wood.
Switching off the key, he turned toward her, one hand still on the wheel. Wordless, they looked at each other for a moment, feeling the tension between them, stretched tautly like an elastic band. But it snapped suddenly as they fell together, their bodies hungry and frantic. For they met like two wild cats, each furiously trying to subdue the other with their lips and hands, chewing, scratching, bruising, their mouths mashed together like two crushed flowers, biting each other's lips and tongues, their hands sliding heavily over the curves and hollows of their bodies as though they were trying to hurt each other.
She cried aloud as he grasped her hair with one hand and wrenched her around so her back smashed against the steering wheel and its hard rim dug into her flesh and locked one arm behind her. His lips bit into the smooth golden hollow below her neck while his fingers, tangled in her hair and pulling the roots, held her head like a vice. His other hand pressed and squeezed her breast as though it were an orange, as though he were trying to twist it off; so sharp was the pain that she screamed and struggled furiously to make him stop, kicking her legs until her skirt fell back over her belly, exposing the sheer pink of her panties under which the blonde curls of her mound lay like a yellow crocus. Her full, tanned thighs trembled like golden jelly as she bucked and writhed, trying to escape, trying to free her twisted right arm from where it was crushed against his chest, the pen in his pocket jabbing into her flesh. He stopped her moans with his mouth and at the same time brought the palm of his hand down with a loud smack against one of her inner thighs, leaving a bright pink imprint, the sting and shock of the blow momentarily halting her contortions. He worked his hand up under the elastic of her panties, seized her wet mound and tantalized the lips and bud of her sex. As she felt his hand loosen on the scruff of her neck and his lips kiss hers more tenderly, she began to relax and slowly freed her hands. But when his nails suddenly scratched the tender flesh under the moss of her mound, she clawed his back and bit his lip until the blood flowed.
"You bitch!" he snarled. He clasped her wrists grimly in one of his hands. In one quick movement he pushed her off him and, still holding her wrists, opened the door and said in a tight, angry voice, "Come on!"
He got out and pulled her after him. Her legs slid over the seat, the friction burning her bare thighs; she felt as though her arms would come out of their sockets. She was filled with a wild anger and wanted to fight back, but at the-same time she was enjoying his violence, the open display of his lust for her and her body responded with an equal lust for him. The conflict between her anger and desire made her almost hysterical for a moment; she didn't know whether to tear him to pieces or to fall upon him with all the love and passion her long pent-up desires demanded as a release.
But she had no time to decide for he threw her roughly to the ground and fell on top of her, the impact of his body crushing the breath out of her. The sharp rip of tearing cloth mingled with her moans as he first tore off her white blouse and then, with one wrench, tore off her brassiere and pressed his mouth against the soft pulp of her breast. When she felt his hard mouth sucking and biting the tender, aching nipple, flashes of pain lanced through her body and she began to buck violently so that her bare back ground into the pebbles, sharp as broken crockery, and the dirt covered roots which stuck out from the sod like knots of rope. She rolled her head from side to side, her taffy-colored hair now streaked with dirt and threaded with bits of leaves and twigs, her eyes closed, her mouth, once red and demure, now bruised and swollen. Scraping her nails down his back, she heard his shirt rip into long ribbons and felt the warm sliminess of blood against her fingers. As he reached down and tore off the thin mesh of her panties, as easily as though he were brushing away a cobweb, he slued around on top of her and nosed his head through the brush of her mound and clamped his mouth over her wet sex, just as if he were biting into a peach and, like running" sap in a tree, she felt all the tingling carnal passions of her body rushing up from her legs and down from her clawing arms, bringing with them the rich juices of her desire which spilled over the dam of' her sex into his strongly sucking mouth.
His mastery of her had released the tightly coiled spring of her lust and her whole body vibrated and ached to be completely taken and subdued. Quickly she unzipped his trousers and took his full member into her mouth, licking and caressing the turgid cap with her lascivious tongue. As he rocked his pelvis so the rod slid in and out of her mouth, she felt the tension rising in his body to meet her own until, suddenly reversing his position, he clenched the swelling roundness of her hips between his hand and thrust his prick full into her with one massive lunge. Her muscles contracted and she cried out wildly, but soon his strong, rhythmic strokes set off an explosion of delights such as she had never dreamed possible. Her pelvis rotating against the sharp stones like a pestle in a mortar, she arched her back like a bow, her head against the ground, her hair spread out like a golden fan, her tawny breasts pointing to the sky, trembling and swirling in circles as she quickened her movements to meet the mounting urgency of his. At the moment she felt his hot juices jet deep into her, a great flame of erotic fire leaped up inside her and exploded in the volcanic eruption of her orgasm. The muscles of her hips and belly contracted in spasms, draining the last drops from his still plunging sex until finally, weak and exhausted, she stopped and fell back onto the ground.
They lay for some time, panting and gasping, the smell of her wet sex and the odor of the perspiration which coated their bodies like a film of dew overpowering the fresh scent of the grass and flowers around them. Finally he sat up and then helped her to her feet. With her torn panties he wiped the dirt and blood from her back and hips and then got their suitcases from the car.
Still without speaking, they changed their clothes, climbed back into the car and started on for Chicago.
Susan soon discovered that finding a job was not as easy as she had anticipated, With no experience, she was limited to those which paid the least and seemed to be the least interesting.
" But why don't you take a secretarial course, Susan?" her aunt said. "They have six-week courses here, and then you'd be much better qualified for a job."
"Yes, I suppose I should," Susan sighed. "But I'd like to look a bit more, first."
"Well, I think you're foolish. You know you can stay here with me as long as you want, so it's not as if you absolutely had to get a job."
"I know, Aunt Mary," Susan replied, cand thanks, but the idea of going to school again just leaves me cold."
"Did you see the ad this morning for a clerk at the Harris and Black Department Store? No experience required, it said."
"Yes, I saw it going in on the bus this morning."
"Did you go and see them."
"Yes, but ... "
"Well, what happened?"
"I had to take some tests, the usual rigmarole, and after an interview, they said they'd let me know. The hours would he awfully long, though."
"Did you go any place else?"
"Oh, yes, I went back to the Rogers Employment Agency and they sent me to a couple places-an advertising agency and a distributing outfit for household appliances."
"How were they?"
"The agency looks real good. A modern place and nice people. They seemed to like me, too."
"And?"
" And they're going to let me know. That's what they all say," she said impatiently, "'we'll let you know.' Really, doesn't anybody just hire on the spot?"
Her aunt laughed. "Well, that's the way it goes, dear. You'll just have to be patient. What kind of a job did they have open?"
"Office girl-to open mail, carry copy around, learn the switchboard to help the girl they've got on it now, and things like that. Sounds a little more interesting, at least, than the other jobs I've looked into."
"What about the one at the distributing place?"
"I didn't like it at all. The job, nor the people, nor the place."
"Well, maybe you'll hear from the advertising people. I hope so. Try not to get discouraged, dear."
Susan refrained from telling her exactly how discouraging and exhausting her job-hunting had been, for she knew her aunt would only press her the more strongly to take a secretarial course. But since she didn't want to delay earning her own living she wasn't going to give up yet, although she had already found out that some of her interviewers had been interested in her for other reasons than giving her a job. At the distributing company, the man had been particularly unpleasant; if he had been nicer, she thought, maybe she would have given him what he wanted.
She had gone in, eager and hopeful, dressed in a neat summer suit and pert white hat which framed her tanned face and golden hair, and had waited impatiently to be called in for the interview. The office had been bare and stark, not at all pleasant and not very clean. Back and forth past the open door hurried flashily-dressed, cigar-chewing men, talking to each other in loud tones and rough language. Probably salesmen, she thought, and not very attractive ones at that. She didn't like the appearance of either the office or the employees and when she had been finally summoned into the interviewer's office, she liked it even less.
Its windows closed, the room smelted of sweat, old paper and stale cigars. Behind a massive desk, which was scarred and chipped, sat a gorilla of a man with a large, square head, black, bushy brows and smoking a cigar'. He didn't get up when she entered.
"You can sit down there, girlie," he said as he pointed with his cigar, held between nicotine-stained fingers, to a straight-backed wooden chair..
She sat down and demurely crossed her ankles, her gloved hands folded on her lap, while he looked at her for a few moments without speaking. He sucked deeply on his cigar, blew out a swirling cloud of blue smoke, cleared his throat wetly and loudly, and spat on the floor. "You're not bad, girlie, not bad," he said in a gruff voice, a We could use someone like you around here. Do you want the job?"
"What is it exactly?" she said faintly. She already knew she didn't want it, but thought she might as well go through with the interview now that she was here.
"Nothing you couldn't do, honey. Opening mail, delivering it around, collecting it, and general errand work-going out to get us coffee and stuff like that. Wouldn't tax that beautiful head of yours." He tilted his chair back and leered at her.
"So what about it?" he said.
"Well, she faltered.
"Doesn't pay much, of course," he said, "but then you don't have to worry about that. The Cromwell Wholesale and Distributing Company always takes care of its employees and there's no doubt that with your looks, girlie, you'll be well taken care of around here."
He laughed, got up and walked slowly around the desk. She sat quietly, twisting her fingers, and watched his hands. His thumbs were hooked in his belt and one hand held the cigar. They were large and chapped with crescents of dirt under the cracked nails.
"Well, she started to say.
She didn't dare raise her eyes as he came toward her, but continued to stare at his hands and behind them his stomach which swelled out like a soft, over-ripe watermelon under the belt and shirt, stained with sweat and dirt, limp and wrinkled.
"What's the matter, honey, I won't bite you!" He laughed again as he stood in front of her. She saw his hands move. He flicked his cigar, the ashes falling onto her skirt and over her white gloves. He put his other hand on her shoulder and squeezed it.
"Well, what about it?" he said.
"I don't think I'll take the job," she said. She was tense and frightened. But what could happen to her here in his office? She glanced out of the corner of her eyes at the closed door.
He roared with laughter again and moved his hand to the nape of her neck and rubbed it with firm fingers.
"Honey, you better think again. There might be more money in it for you than just the job. You know, you're quite a looker."
"I don't think I want the job," she said again and started to get up, but his hand drew her toward him and he crushed her against his chest. His head bent toward hers; she saw his stained teeth and smelled the nauseating stink of his breath as his mouth sought her own. Turning her head, she struggled to free herself from his arms and kicked his shin.
"God damn!" he said. "You're a real she-devil!"
He lifted her by the armpits and put her on the edge of the desk. Pushing her back against the hard wood and crumpled papers, he leaned over her, his crotch pressed against hers, his jutting stomach spread over her hips, and held her down, one hand clamped firmly on her breast while the other searched under her skirt and fumbled up over her thighs to where her panties met in a triangle over her sex.
"Let me go!" she screamed. "Let go of me!" She twisted and writhed under his hands.
He stood up, glancing at the closed door. "Okay. Okay," he said, cMy God, shut up!"
"You didn't look like such a cold bitch," he added. " Can't blame me for trying." He laughed again and then picked up his cigar, drew on it and blew the smoke in her face as she readjusted her clothing. Pale and trembling, her fingers nervously tried to straighten her skirt.
"Sure you don't want the job?" he said.
Without replying or looking at him, she picked up her purse, walked over to the door, opened it and slammed it shut behind her. She heard him laughing as she walked away.
Two days later the advertising agency called and told her that the job for which she had been interviewed was hers. Happy and eager, she began work the next morning, resolving to do her best on this, her first job. Although the work was routine-opening mail, delivering it, running copy and doing other errands, learning to handle the switchboard and receive clients in the reception room-the novelty of doing something and being paid for it, as well as the amiability of the staff, made her like the job and conscientiously try to do her best. And in turn, the employees liked her, her youthful air, her fresh beauty, her desire to please and her quick response to their wishes.
Several of the men asked her for dates. She liked, particularly, a young copy-writer named Tom who, although not much taller than she, had a ready wit and took delight in showing her the nightlife of Chicago, a new experience for Susan, whose nightlife heretofore had consisted of the movies and a few dances in the farming community in which she had been raised. So at first she was somewhat shocked by the more ragged side of life-the burlesque shows, nightclubs shows, and the sight of prostitutes patrolling the sidewalks-but soon the novelty and shock wore off and she accepted it as only another aspect of her new and interesting life.
One Friday night after a late movie she and Tom stopped at a small all-night cafe on State Street for a hamburger and coffee. While they were dawdling over their second cup and deciding what to do next, a hand clapped Tom on the shoulder and a hearty voice said, a Well, if it isn't Tom Stevenson! Haven't seen you in months. What are you doing in this crumby section?"
Susan looked up and in the mirror behind the counter saw a tall, broad-shouldered young man with black hair, a tanned face, smiling dark eyes and a wide, friendly grin.
"I'll be damned! Mike Mahoney!" Tom exclaimed as he swirled around on his stool. "Where you've been all this time?"
"Oh, screwin' around. Makin' some dough. This and that. What about yourself?" he said. He sat down on the seat next to Tom and signalled the waiter for a cup of coffee.
"I'm downtown at the Shepherd Advertising Agency, making with the words and trying to persuade frazzled housewives to shell out $1.25 for hand lotion which costs the manufacturer ten cents to make. Great stuff. Most ennobling for the soul."
"Sounds like a real drag, man," Mike said. He glanced at Susan's bare left hand. "Hey, who's your chick? Or have you got her patented?"
He craned his head around Tom and grinned at Susan who smiled back.
"Oh, sorry," Tom said. "Susan, this is Mike Mahoney. Susan Holiday. Mike and I grew up in the same neighborhood."
"Glad to meet you, Sue," Mike said and reached over to shake her hand. "You from Chicago? You don't have that Loop pallor."
"No, I'm fresh from the country. I've only been here about four or five weeks," Susan said.
"Freighted in with the other heifers, huh? You'd better leave before you get slaughtered, too," Mike said with a laugh. "Chi's a real crazy town, baby."
"But I like it-at least so far. Tom's been showing me some of the nightlife."
"Not like life down on the farm, I bet. Do you dig it?"
"What?"
"Do you dig it."
"Dig it? What do you mean?" Puzzled, she looked at him and then at Tom.
"My God," Mike said, a A real square. I thought they weren't grown anymore."
Susan flushed. But when he grinned at her she realized he was only teasing her.
"So I'm a square," Susan said. "So I need some education. So what does 'dig it' mean?"
"He wants to know if you like it," Tom said.
"Oh, sure I do," she said, smiling at them. "Give me a few more weeks and I'll even dig digging." She sat up straighter, her pointed breasts swelling softly out under the tight sweater and brushed her heavy hair back with her hand.
Mike was still looking at her, a half-smile on his face, frankly caressing with his eyes her most, red lips and the firm upsweep of her breasts. She gazed back at him, coolly and openly.
She felt nude under his stare. She liked the feeling.
Tom cleared his throat and said, cDo you live around here, Mike?"
Mike dragged his gaze away from Susan. "Yeah. Not far," he said. He lifted his cup, cradling it with his hands and sipped slowly. Susan glanced in the mirror and caught him looking at her again over the rim of his cup.
"Well, Susan," Tom said, "we'd better be going. Nice to have seen you, Mike." His voice was brisk and commanding.
"Yeah, I gotta split, too," Mike said. "Here, I'll pay." He threw some coins on the counter.
As they got up and started out the door he took Susan's arm, holding her back momentarily, and whispered quickly, " Where can I reach you, baby?"
"I work at the Shepherd Agency, too," she said softly.
"Okay," he said and released her. "Well, so long, kids," he said. "I'm going the other way. See you later."
They shook hands and parted.
The next morning, while cleaning the small apartment into which she had just moved, Susan was thinking of Mike. She was angry at herself, not only having failed to give him her home telephone number, but also for not having indicated more clearly that she would like to see him again. After they had parted the night before, she had asked Tom about him; he had replied that although he didn't know what Mike was doing now, he had always been somewhat of a worthless ass and had tangled with the police several times and, furthermore, he added, he was someone whom Susan should steer clear of. But this, of course, together with her immediate attraction to him, only tantalized her curiosity and made her all the more eager to see him again.
When the telephone rang, she dropped the dust mop and ran to the phone, hoping it would be Mike, but realizing at the same time that her new number wasn't listed.
It was Mike.
"Hello?" she said.
"Susan? This is Mike, the cat you met last night."
"Oh, yes. Hello, Mike. How are you?" Her heart was beating rapidly. "Fine, baby. Had a hell of a time getting you. Called that slave joint of yours, but the operator said you didn't work on Saturdays. Didn't want to give me your number and address, but I finally conned her into it-told her I was your brother and just got in town. So how are you?"
"Fine, Mike. Busy cleaning my new apartment."
"Yeah? like to see it. I don't dig phones. Look, baby, you got anything on tonight?"
"Well, no, I guess not." She had a date with Tom, but knew she could break it by telling him her aunt was ill and she had to go over to see her.
"Swell. I'm tied up 'til about nine, but I'll pick you up at your pad right after. Okay?"
"Where?"
"At your place. Okay."
"Yes, that's fine, Mike."
"Okay, baby. See you then. Keep cool."
"'Bye, Mike. See you tonight."
CHAPTER THREE
Mike took Susan to the 96O Club, a small nightclub on south State Street where, he said, the feature attraction of the show was a friend of his, Flossie McNamara, who was billed as Torchy Night, the Latin Bombshell. After the show, he added, we can go backstage if you'd like, and meet some of the cast. Susan was pleased by the idea of actually being able to go behind the scenes and looked about her with interest as they sat at the bar, perched on high stools.
The Club was small, consisting of a large rectangular bar with a scarlet curtained stage at one end, its floor on a level with the bar, and a few small tables scattered along the sides. The floor was carpeted with a thick, scarlet rug and three of the walk were entirely covered with mirrors while the fourth was draped with the same scarlet material which curtained the stage. The ceiling was black, studded with stars which twinkled softly and afforded the only illumination in the room. In the dim light she could see in the mirror Mike and herself reflected back a dozen times, his rugged darkness strikingly paired with her own blondeness. On a small platform in front of the stage a four piece combo was beating out a popular song. Mike explained that when the show started the platform sank down to the floor, permitting a clear view of the stage, and that the girls not only used the stage for their acts, but also walked along the top of the bar.
Torchy's appearance was heralded by a roll of drums, the darkening of the overhead lights and a white spotlight shining on the curtains which slowly parted. And there was Torchy. Dressed in a tight, black evening gown, she looked like a black, sinuous mermaid, for the dress was covered with shiny sequins which glittered and sparkled in the spotlight like the scales of an iridescent fish and hugged each curve like a rubber glove. Except for her arms, which were encased in long, mesh gloves, the dress covered her completely and was fastened at the neck by a narrow collar of sequins. On her head was a glistening, winged cap which came down over her ears and held back the long black hair which rippled almost to her waist. One hand on her thrust-out hips, the other holding a long cigarette-holder, she was completely motionless, a shimmering statue against the red drapes, the blackness of her costume relieved only by her white, red-nailed hands, her face, chalky in the light, and her black eyes and full red lips.
As the music softly throbbed, she slowly moved her arm, took a drag on her cigarette and blew out the smoke through her nostrils. She began to sing a torch song, her voice deep and husky, caressing each word and note, intimate and seductive. At first she barely moved her body, but as the song became more passionate she started to weave her shoulders and hips. Two long slashes of startling white flesh suddenly appeared; her dress was slit both from the collar to the waist and from the floor up to her thigh. With her eyes closed, her head and shoulders thrown back, swaying in time to the music, the slit widened to show the rising curves of her breasts, framed by the jet-blackness of her gown. The music swelled up in strong, rhythmic beats and she glided languidly about the stage, her body undulating like a glittering, black serpent, her eyes staring brazenly at the audience through half-closed lids. Against the black, inverted V of her skirt, her legs flickered in and out, their whiteness and nudity accentuated.
Then, as the spotlight changed to a soft rose, she unfastened some hooks at her neck and waist and the dress suddenly fell away. like a statue of pink alabaster, her skin glowed with the soft luster of a seashell's interior. Her breasts and sex were covered with narrow satin strips, its color so nearly the same rosy hue as her skin that she seemed to be really nude, and it was only the long, pink fringe, hanging over the material, which betrayed the illusion. Swinging like moving fingers over the strong jut of her mound and over the plump orbs of her haunches, their ends caressed her lush thighs, the inner sides of which softly rubbed together as she rolled her hips in large circles and slowly revolved around the stage. Living the throbbing, sensual beat of the music, her body undulated suggestively, lewdly, her arms raised above her head, entwining and parting in the flowing movements of an Oriental dancer; her torso weaving in circles, her entire body seemed taut with sexual tension, but at the same time relaxed and languorous; the curtains of fringe swayed like the tentacles of a pink jelly-fish, drawing attention to the proud, pointed breasts, arched high, and to the hidden center of her sex.
As the spotlight followed her, bathing her in a pink sea of light, she sauntered slowly onto the bar and walked along its top. Leisurely she moved, gracefully and deliberately, her shoulders, breasts and hips pulsating in time to the music. Her heels clicked on the hard wood and as she passed, a pungent scent of musky perfume came from her body. Looking upward, following the long sweep of her legs which widened and met at the apex of her sex, one could see a faint film of sweat which coated her body like a pink dew.
When she had circled the bar and returned to the stage, she put her hands behind her. When she brought them forward again, she was holding the two satin strips which she tossed to the side. Her breasts and the lower part of her belly were now covered only by the pink fringe. Her movements became more intense and erotic, and the thin curtains swayed to and fro as she threw her torso into violent contortions, permitting glimpses of the firm twin arcs of her breasts, tipped with hard, rosy buds and the large pad of her sex, covered only by a G-string. The spotlight dimmed, shadowing more deeply the tapering under-slope of her breasts, molding more richly the turning curves of her body and legs, accentuating the glistening, pink highlights on her thrusting breasts and belly and swirling buttocks. Her legs spread wide, she bent backwards, her long, black hair sweeping the floor while she swayed her torso so the fringe fell hack and one could see only the long inverted V of her legs, climaxing at the wide-open mat of her sex, as wide as a hand, and above it her breasts, completely nude and pointing upward like two cones. When she stood up again, she moved onto the bar and once more circled it, rolling her hips, thrusting out her mound, contorting her torso into erotic positions until her entire body seemed to be vibrating with sexual passion. With her heavy-lidded eyes frank and inviting, her hair floating behind her, her tongue sliding over her wet, red lips, her hands moved heavily down over her breasts, caressed the swell of her hips and slid up her thighs to her mound, which she slowly and suggestively rubbed.
Once back on the stage, she quickly tore off the fringes and stood posed for a few moments in the rosy spotlight, entirely nude except for the almost imperceptible G-string. Then she ran off the stage. The curtains closed and the house lights came on again.
Susan was still staring wide-eyed at the closed curtains, her mouth partly open, when she felt Mike's arm around her waist.
"Well, that's Torchy. How do you like her, baby?" Mike said. "She's terrific! I've never seen anyone like her before."
"Yeah. The greatest. How'd you like to meet her?"
"Oh, I'd love to. But what about the other acts?"
"Most of them are real drags. Come on, let's cool it backstage. I've already cleared it with Joe."
"Who's Joe?"
"He runs the joint. Come on." As the curtains parted for another act, they went through a door near the bar and found themselves in a different world. In the bar, everything had been clean and luxurious; here was dirt, confusion and the smell of powder, perfume and sweat. Next to the stage sat a heavily made-up girl with red hair, sprawled on a broken-down chair and smoking a cigarette. When she saw Mike, she quickly sat up and straightened her dress.
"Hi, Mike. What brings you here, darling?" she said, looking at him through heavily mascaraed lids. She stared rudely at Susan as if to add, "and what the hell Are you doing here?"
"Hello, Sal. Havin' a ball?" Mike said.
"You kid din'? There's about as much chance of havin' a ball in this joint as havin' one at a meeting of the D.A.R. Jeez!"
"What in hell are you complaining about? You're making some bucks, aren't you?" He stared back at her, a disgusted look on his face.
"Yeah, but for what? Put your clothes oh, take 'em off to tantalize the bug-eyes out there," she said, jerking her thumb toward the bar, a put 'em back on, go out and hustle for drinks, change costumes, take your clothes off again, and so on and so on. My God, my skin feels like it's gettin' in-grown zippers."
"Good old Sal. Always complaining. I'll see you later."
"Don't I know it," she yelled after him and watched them sullenly as they walked down the corridor.
"What's she so stirred up about?" Susan asked.
"Aw, she bugs me," Mike said, "Always biting her tongue. I got her this job and now she's putting it down. I'm about fed up with her."
Susan looked at him perplexedly wondering what the story was between them. She felt a twinge of jealousy that there should be something between Mike and Sal, and then was surprised at her own feeling.
He took her by the arm and steered her around a corner. A girl sauntered out of a dressing-room, completely nude, smoking a cigarette, and clicked down the hall on high heels into another room. Several girls walked by, smiled warmly at Mike and greeted him by name. One of them was Torchy, now dressed in a tight, white gown.
"Mike, darling! How are you, darling?" she crooned and then kissed him., "Fine, Torchy. Where you off to? I'd like to have you meet Susan here," he said.
"Hello, honey," she said and smiled at Susan. "How do you like this rat nest?"
"Oh, I ... I ... really, I think it's exciting," Susan said. She was somewhat awed by all the activity backstage and the glimpses of nude women through the open dressing-room doors.
"How about we talk someplace, Torchy? I promised Susan a real look at you!" He laughed, winked at Torchy and patted her plump haunch.
"Hell, Mike, I've got to go out and hustle drinks. Sorry, honey," she said, looking at Susan. "But why don't you go in my room back there and make yourselves at home? I'll come back soon."
"Okay," Mike said. "See you then." They walked back to Torchy's dressing-room which, as she was one of the stars, she shared with only two other girls. It was a small cubicle, with two dressing tables at one side, their tops littered with jars and bottles of cream and perfume, lipstick tubes and mascara brushes, loose bobby pins and spilled powder, and a hundred other items, all jumbled together in a hopeless mess. Against one wall was an open closet, bulging with costumes and dresses, some dirty and frayed with torn hems hanging limply. On the chairs were scattered other costumes and a few G-strings, piled in wrinkled masses, mesh brassieres and filmy panties flung over the backs, while on the floor were spike-heeled shoes, red, black, lavender, lying where they had been taken off, together with a pair of soiled underpants and a litter of spilled pins, bits of thread and scraps of paper; while over all, the sweet, claying odor of talcum powder and heavy perfume mingled with the acrid scent of female sweat. From the bare, glaring light bulb suspended from the ceiling hung Torchy's pink G-string, still swaying slightly.
"Home, sweet home," Mike said.
"How do they ever find anything to put on in this mess?" Susan laughed as she peered in the door.
"No trouble there-the customers like it better if they don't find anything to put on."
They walked into the room.
"How about a drink?" he said. He brushed a pile of clothes from a chair onto the floor and picked up a bottle of cheap whiskey which was standing under it. He fished around in the litter on the table until he found two glasses, both dirty and rimmed with lipstick. He splashed some liquor in the glasses.
"Here, have a slug."
But as he raised his head, he saw Susan in the mirror. She was standing behind him, looking around at the costumes and G-strings, at the tables covered with cosmetics, her eyes dreamy and wondering. Putting the glasses down, he turned around.
"You're a strange chick, baby," he said. "Damned if I don't think you're somewhat shocked by all this." He paused. "Are you?"
"No," she said slowly, looking at him wide-eyed, "If anything, it sort of excites me." She laughed, a rosy flush creeping up her tanned cheeks.
He stared at her a moment and then reached out and took her roughly in his arms. Tilting back her head, he pressed her lips against his and felt her body, at first tense, slowly relax as he kissed her warmly and deeply. But then she began to struggle and pushed him away, glancing at the door.
"Really," she panted, a should we be doing this here?" She gestured toward the open door.
"You kiddin?" he grinned. "If anything, they'd all gather around to watch, and then hire us as a new act."
He leaned against the dressing-table and folded his arms, his long legs stretched out before him.
"But if you're worried, baby, we can always close the door, and in the meantime, relax and have a drink."
He handed her a glass.
"Oh, it's not that. It's just that ... well ... I just ... " She stammered and then stopped. "I'd just like to look around a little. It's all so new."
She took a large gulp of the whiskey, coughed at its rawness and moved slowly around the room. She fingered Torchy's pink tasseled brassiere, held up a whisp of black panties and glanced up at the G-string dangling from the light cord. Pausing in front of the closet, she ran her hand along the bright line of costumes and evening dresses, picked up the skirt of a blue satin gown and rubbed it against her face. Finally she pulled out a tight, black evening gown and walked over to the mirror; she posed in front of it, holding the dress against her.
"Why don't you try it on?" Mike said. "Oh, could I? Do you think they'd mind?"
"Sure, go ahead. Try everything on, if you want."
He reached up and pulled the G-string from the light cord.
"How about this? You'd look fine in it."
"Well, shut the door then, and turn around while I change."
"Why the bashful act? Think I've never seen a nude woman before?"
"No, I just want to be in the other costume before you see me."
"Well, okay, but there's better things to look at in this joint than a dirty wall. I'll be back in five minutes."
She watched him as he walked over to the door and shut it behind him. A tingle of anticipation prickled in her belly. Seeing the strippers flaunting their nude flesh had made her want to imitate them and eager to try on their costumes so she could see how she, herself, looked. And above all, she wanted to display herself to Mike.
Quickly she stripped off her clothes and put on a black G-string, fitting the small swatch of silk over her mound and adjusting the almost invisible string over her haunches. Next she found a black mesh brassiere, really only half a brassiere, for it came up only to her nipples, supporting the soft underpart of her breasts and leaving the top half free. Picking np a rouge "tick, she reddened and rubbed her nipples until they stood out like two crimson eyes. Then she slipped on a short game jacket, beneath which her golden skin glowe" warmly, and a short black skirt which cinched over her belly and hung in two sections, slit at the sides, one panel covering the triangle of her sex and the other, her full, ripe buttocks. Here and there the black satin was slashed in the pattern of large flowers, gauze-covered, her tawny skin showing through the mesh like pale copper flowers lying on a black field. She combed out her long, blonde hair so it rippled freely down over her shoulders, applied a slash of bright red lipstick to her mouth and a heavy coat of dark mascara to her thick eyelashes. Running a finger over the exotic labels on the row of perfume bottles, she picked out a heavy, spicy scent and sprayed herself liberally.
Just then she heard the door open and she turned around to see Mike standing in the doorway, staring at her.
She laughed and said, "How do I look?"
He continued to stare at her without saying " word for a few moments and then whistled. He shut the door and turned the key in the lock.
"Baby, I'd hire you in a second."
Poised on her high heels, she revolved slowly before him.
"All we need is some music," she said.
"We can supply our own music," he said, as he started toward her.
"No, wait," she said. "Let me take it off first."
He paused, watching her, his eyes narrowed, following the golden curves of her body as she took off the jacket and the skirt. She stood before him, the firm upper swell of her breasts protruding out above the black mesh of the half-brassiere, the nipples swollen and rouged. On her sex the small patch of silk lay like a painted black leaf, accentuating the tawny tan of her full hips and thighs. She turned around, her haunches rotating slowly, their orbs rising and falling, a thin dew of perfume still lingering on the small of her back and filming the downy hair which traced a pale line from her navel to her mound. Her back to him, she tossed back her hair and arched her breasts, watching him in the mirror as he stared at her, holding his breath. Their eye" met in the mirror and as he started for her, she turned and leap-" toward him, scissoring his waist with her bare legs and flinging her arms around his neck. His hands under her buttocks, holding her against him, he buried his head in her chest and sucked her breast into his mouth. They fell over onto the floor, tipping over a chair, their limbs and bodies writhing on the floor amongst the scattered costumes and spilled powder. He ripped off her G-string and unzipped his fly. His sex sprang out. Pinioning her on the floor with his arms, his penis nosed into her wet sex and stabbed upward, penetrating her so completely that their short hairs mingled and their pubic mounds ground roughly against each other as he slid in and out with strong thrusts. She arched her back. With her legs wrapped around his waist, her heels beat on his haunches like a drum. Within her began a roller-coaster of orgasms, one after another, until she felt his hot juice spurt forth.
After a few minutes he dismounted and got up. She lay on the floor, still gasping and moaning. Quickly undressing, he strode over to the dressing-table and returned with a large jar of cold cream. He ripped off her brassiere and began spreading large globs of the cool, sweet-smelling cream over her body and then over his own. Lying on the floor, he rolled her over on top of him, her back against his chest, her breasts pointing to the ceiling, and began rubbing the cream over her body, his hands smoothing its thickness over her shoulders, over her aching breasts and down over her belly and thighs, his fingers halting at the triangle of her mound to stroke her soft, hidden lips, coating them with the cream. When the lust mounted within her again and she felt his rod nudging up between her thighs, she turned over. Still lying on top of him, their creamed bodies, slithered against each other. Guiding his member into her, she began riding him, her pelvis sliding in circles against his greased hips, her breasts and belly slipping back and forth over his chest. like a golden, buttered nymph she rode him until their juices poured out in pearly streams and was churned into the cold cream by their still sliding bodies, its musky scent mingling with the sweet smell of the cream, the flowery fragrance of the powder and perfume and the odor of female sweat.
During the next few weeks Susan had many dates with Mike, most of them spent making love in her room. And when she thought about him during the day, thought about their lovemaking and his captivating mixture of roughness and tenderness, she wondered if she were falling in love with him. At any rate, she found her emotions and life centering around him more and more.
The mystery as to what he did for a living, and how he spent his time when he wasn't with her, at first made her curious; he wouldn't even tell her where he lived. No matter how much she tried to find out about his life, he always cleverly evaded answering her questions. That he might be engaged in some shady dealings occurred to her, especially when she remembered Tom's warnings, but on the other hand he seemed too considerate and nice, at least when he was with her, to be doing anything outside the law. She was still innocent enough to believe that any sort of lawbreaker must be so abnormal, uncouth and tough, that he would be instantly recognizable to her as though he were wearing a sign saying "Danger-Criminal at Work." Finally, however, she decided that she didn't care what he did for a living, as long as he continued seeing her and making love to her.
At the advertising agency she worked hard and continued dating Tom from time to time. She liked being with him even though she hadn't as yet slept with him.
One night she was asked to come back to the office after a quick dinner to work. By now she was doing some of the research and as the deadline for the launching of a new campaign was drawing near, almost everyone connected with it had been working overtime. As it grew late that night, however, everyone left, one by one, until finally only she, Tom and Alex, another copy-writer, were left.
"I'm really fagged," Alex yawned. "Let's close up shop for the night." He got up from his desk and stretched. "Come on, Tom, let's push off..
"You go on, Alex, I just want to finish this pieces He was seated at his desk, busily writing.
" Do you want anything else, Torn?" Susan asked. "If not, I think I'll go, too. I've finished everything they wanted for tomorrow."
He looked up at her. She was sitting on a corner of his desk, swinging her legs. Her fingers were dirty with carbon, a smudge of ink was On her cheek, her skirt was a mass of wrinkles, but she still looked fresh and lovely. He smiled at her.
"Why don't you wait a minute and I'll drive you home. I'm practically ready to wind up this great piece of literature."
She yawned and stretched her arms above her head.
"Okay. I could do with a ride."
She slipped off the desk and went toward the door.
" I'll find something to read," she said. "Well, goodnight; kids, I'm off. See you tomorrow," Alex said and left, whistling.
Susan wandered through the offices, picked up a new Esquire from the waiting room and started back to Tom's office. On the way she passed that of Mr. Jackson, the president of the agency. She looked in, switched on the light, saw his big, leather covered chair behind his desk, walked over and sat down. She tilted back the chair and began to read.
" Well, I see we've got a new president," Tom said twenty minutes later, cl must say it's an improvement."
He came into the room, carrying a pile of papers.
Susan laughed, put her feet up on the desk and said, "And what can I do for you, young man? Are you looking for a job? I'm afraid the only one we can offer pays only $2O,OOO a year."
"Won't do. Nothing less than 15O,OOO."
He sat on the edge of the desk, laid down the papers and put his hand on her leg.
"On second thought, maybe I'll take that job. With you as boss maybe I can marry the boss instead of his daughter."
"What presumption, Sir," Susan said with mock horror. "Do you think I'd marry a mere hireling?"
"In that case, I'll have to be the boss and one of his privileges is kissing the hired help." Running his hand up her leg, he stood up and scooped her neatly into his arms. She gave a little shriek which turned into a giggle.
"And is this the new position for giving dictation, boss? Or haven't I even been promoted to being your secretary yet?" She wrapped her arms around his neck as he swung her back and forth.
"With you I'd like to promote a lot more."
"Such as?" she said.
He pretended to drop her and then catch her again; she clutched him more tightly around the neck. He swung her around and put her gently on the desk, then leaned over her as she lay on her back amidst the neatly piled papers, her hair spread out against the dark wood, her arms still around him. His face close to hers, he whispered, "Oh Susan, Susan, you're so beautiful, so beautiful,"
"He put his mouth on her lips. She pulled him closer, revealing her willingness by her eager body and searching lips and tongue, until he swung his hips onto the desk and was lying beside her.
His chest pressed against her blue-sweatered breasts, his hands cradling her head, she moved her body so that their bellies and thighs rubbed against each other. When she felt his hand searching behind her, she arched her back and felt the sudden unloosening of her brassiere as he unclasped the hook and then the warm pressure of his hand moving beneath the cloth and up over her breast. Sweet longing stirred in her loins as he gently kneaded the pliant mound and stirred the tip to a hard, rubbery crest. Breaking their kiss, he helped her take off her sweater. He fell back on top of her, murmuring, a So beautiful, so beautiful"
"s his lips browsed in the golden hollow of her neck, strayed lightly to her armpit where he tongued the salty moisture and then licked their way, so slowly, so tantalizingly, down her side and up to her breast. She strained against him; her hands rubbed his back and crept under his jacket; bending her knees so her skirt fell back, she wrapped her legs around his, entwining them tightly, their hips moving against each other in a slow dance. Beneath them the papers crackled and slithered "o the side. A falling bottle of ink hit the rug with a soft thud.
"What in God's name is going on herein a voice bellowed.
They became motionless, paralyzed.
"What in hell are you doing! Get off my desk!"
They turned their heads, eyes wide with surprise and shock. In the doorway stood Mr. Jackson, briefcase in hand, his round face an apoplectic red, his eyes black with anger, his heavy jewels quivering with an uncontrollable rage. One fist clutched around the handle of the briefcase, the knuckles white, he shook the other in the air as he strode toward them, looking as though he wanted to kill them both if he could manage to do so before he had a heart attack.
They quickly jumped off the desk, on the side away from him. Susan snatched her sweater from the floor and held it to her naked breasts, one hand grasping the back of the chair to steady her shaking legs. Tom stood beside her, running a hand through his hair, his face puzzled and shocked, as though he still couldn't believe that this was really happening and not a hideous nightmare. They backed away as Mr. Jackson stamped around the desk after them, roaring and cursing like a bellowing bull.
"You God-damn bastards'. How dare you! Here! In my office! Do you think this is a whore house?" He was so furious he seemed almost insane, stuttering and spitting, kicking the desk with his foot and pounding it with his fist to accentuate his words.
"What kind of ... damnation ... you bloody sucking ... get the hell out of here!"
They both sidled toward the door, Tom sputtering in his attempt to apologize.
"Shut up!" Mr. Jackson roared. "You, Tom, get the hell out! I'll tend to you tomorrow." He pointed a shaking finger at Susan. "But you stay. I'll talk to you now!" And he brought his fist down on the desk with such force that the telephone jumped and gave a metallic buzz.
"And shut the God-damn door when you leave!" he yelled after Tom's scuttling figure.
Susan backed into a corner behind a chair and stood there trembling. As he stared at her malevolently, grinding his jaws, she realized that she was still clutching the sweater to her bare breasts. She turned her back to him and quickly slipped it on with fumbling fingers. Behind her, she heard him sink down heavily in his chair, wheezing and panting.
She turned around and stood quietly, afraid to look at him or move. In the silence she could hear her heart thudding wildly.
"Now, young lady," he said in a strangely quiet voice, "just what is the meaning of all this? You're new here, aren't you?"
"Yes," she replied' in a faint voice. Her one desire was not to irritate him further and to get out as quickly as possible.
"Are you trying to turn this office into your private boudoir?" he asked sarcastically.
I'm sorry ... I ... we ... we were working late and ... "
"Yes. So I saw. A new way to work overtime."
"No, really. We'd finished working and no one was here and ... " her words tumbled out.
"Shut up! I don't care if you were really working or not. All I care about is your having the unmitigated, God-damn gall to think you could use this place to carry on your God-damn love affairs and ... "
"But I ... "
"I said 'Shut up'! " he roared. "I don't give a fuck what you do outside, but this is a place of business and not a strip-joint for every tart who gets the urge to take her clothes off!"
Head lowered, she looked up at him under her lashes, wondering why he simply didn't tell her to get out as he had Tom. His face was beet-red, mottled with angry purple patches; fringed with wisps of gray hair, even his bald head was a bright pink. He spat the words out between tightly clamped jaws; on the desk his hands were interlocked, the fingers nervously clenching and unclenching. Realizing that she was alone with him in the empty building, she began to feel afraid, for his anger and appearance were not that of a normal man; she began to sweat under her clothes. She glanced toward the door and began edging toward it, moving sideways, inching slowly, afraid he would notice her movements.
" Where in hell do you think you're going?" he screamed, and sprang to his feet, moving with surprising quickness. She darted to the door but her perspiring hands slid fruitlessly on the metal knob and before she could get it open, he was there, his hand seizing her arm and roughly wrenching her away. He flung her back into the room. Her heel caught on the edge of the rug. She staggered and fell awkwardly to the floor. Tears came to her eyes and she began to sob. She heard the key turn in the lock and a tight knot of despairing fear turned in her stomach.
She heard a snort of evil laughter and then the sharp rasp of a match and smelled the tang of cigar smoke; she cried out as the tossed match burned through her stocking, stinging her leg, and cried out more loudly when his foot kicked her thigh. Through her tears she could see his heavy, brown shoes planted stolidly a few inches from her face. Afraid he would kick her again, she lay quietly, only her chest heaving as she tried to stifle her sobs.
He laughed loudly.
"Well, well, well. So the little bitch is afraid." He prodded her with his foot. "Come on." he said angrily. "Cut out the act and get up. You wanted to use that plump ass of yours tonight so you might as well at least sit on it."
She started to get up, watching his feet warily. Sudden pain pierced through her as he grabbed her long hair and roughly dragged her to her feet. She screamed, her mouth a large O of smudged lipstick, but the sharp flick of his hand across her face closed her mouth and made a wave of dizziness flood through her. She stumbled backward, landing heavily in a chair. As she began to faint she heard, as from a great distance through layer upon layer of cotton wool, his hysterical laugh, ending in a series of loud hiccoughs. He picked up a decanter of water from a side-table and splashed it over her; the water cascaded over her face, drenched her sweater and skirt and dripped from the ends of her sodden hair, now hanging in limp ringlets about her tear-stained face. But it brought her to her senses. Even though she was still afraid, she began to get angry.
"Stop it! Stop it!o she screamed at him and started to get out of the chair. He twisted her arm behind her and threw her back into it. Biting and kicking blindly, she yelled through her sobs, choking on her tears, "Stop it! What are you doing? Why? Let me go, you bastard! Let me go!"
But he held her firmly, chuckling all the while, until finally she collapsed into the chair, weak and exhausted.
"Fighting little bitch, aren't you?" He stepped back, drawing casually on his cigar, and regarded her. His eyes were cold and hard, the pupils small and steely-black. A muscle in his cheek twitched spasmodically.
"So you want to know what this is all about, heh?" He walked behind her and put his hand on the nape of her neck. "Well, I'll tell you, though God knows why. You've certainly had rougher treatment than this in that whoring life of yours."
"But I'm not a ... " she cried.
"Shut up!" he shouted, a I've seen you twitching that ass around here, pointing those knockers under everyone's nose, sash-shaying around like a bitch in heat."
"But I haven't ... "
He jerked her hair. She groaned and fell silent.
"And I've wanted you ever since you first waggled into here, you God-damn cunt, but ... "
His hand loosened on her hair and she heard his heavy step behind her, pacing restlessly back and forth.
"But you see, I ... " his voice was suddenly quiet, almost apologetic. "God knows why I'm telling you this, you stupid bitch, but I've lusted after you so damn much and ... " His voice went on, now sounding almost tearful, hopeless, "and, well, I haven't been able to get an erection for years."
She drew in her breath sharply.
"Look, I'm sorry. I go out of my mind sometimes when I realize I can't ... " He paused. "Look, take your clothes off for me, will you, and just let me look at you?" he pleaded.
She suddenly felt sorry for him. But she also wanted to get out as soon as possible and, thinking he'd surely let her go peacefully if she submitted to his request, she got up and quietly started taking off her clothes, fumbling at her skirt zipper, keeping her head bent so she wouldn't have to look at him.
"You can keep your stockings and shoes on," he said in a low, tense voice.
When she had undressed, she stood quietly, demurely.
"Now walk around," he whispered, a And hold your head up."
She walked slowly about the room, feeling his eyes devouring her flesh. Self-conscious and ill at ease, at first she walked awkwardly, as if each muscle was attached to a string he was holding in his clenched hand and jerking at his command. But in the silence she gradually relaxed. Under the firm skin of her tanned buttocks the muscles rippled smoothly; her pointed breasts jiggled up and down, their nipples bobbing like small, pink corks; her thighs brushed against each other with a faint, sucking sound, their plumpness downy with fine golden hairs and marred only by the large purple bruise where he had kicked her.
She looked up. He was sitting in the chair, one hand holding the cigar, breathing heavily between thick, parted lips, his eyes glazed and half-closed, staring fixedly at her mound which swelled out under her belly like a half-moon, framed by the thin strip of her black garter-belt and the elastics which stretched to the stockings whose edges hugged her thighs so tightly that the flesh bulged out above in a narrow roll.
Still staring, he put his hands on the arms of the chair and half rose while a thick, whimpering growl rumbled in his throat. She stopped, paralyzed, as she saw a crazed haze filming his eyes. As he got up and lunged toward her, growling drunkenly, she turned and ran toward the door. It was locked. She turned around, side-stepped his clawing hands and fled around the desk, too terrified to scream or shout. Rounding a corner, her heel caught in the telephone cord and she fell to the floor. On her hands and knees she crawled frantically under the desk. His hands seized her by the hips and pulled her roughly back and upward until his mouth was buried in her sex, chewing and sucking deeply, a low, animal moan rumbling deep in his throat. His cigar was still in his hand and its red-hot coal burned into her buttock. Upside down, she screamed and fought. But he held her strongly, his nails tearing into her flesh, his mouth wetting her sex, his tongue plunging deep into her. Violently she beat her heels against him until finally he dropped her, snarling with fury. He snatched a ruler from the desk and began beating her; its sharp edge lacerated her back and hips into a bleeding mess. He fell on top of her and they rolled and fought like two wrestlers. His clothes protected him from her flailing fists and hands while her unprotected, nude body was soon covered with long, bloody scratches and swollen bruises, yellow, purple, black.
And then she was suddenly free. She leaped quickly to her feet. Running across the room, she glanced back over her shoulder and saw his arm raised, behind it his face twisted with madness and hate, and something spinning through the air. She raised her arm and felt the thrown ink bottle crash against her elbow. The jar knocked off the cover and the green ink splattered over her body, splashed upward on her face, dyed her wet hair into streaks like pale green grass and ran in rivulets down her body.
The ink merged with the red blood into a sickly reddish-green, and together with the livid welts and bruises, changed her once golden body into a tortured, mottled rainbow of running color.
The shock of the bottle striking her, following the orgy of blows and cuts on her exhausted, aching body, made her collapse on the floor. She fainted momentarily. When she came to, she saw he was still sitting on the floor across the room. Shoulders hunched, his head bent down between his knees, his fingers running wildly through his hair, he was rocking back and forth. Between painful, choking moans, he was sobbing and crying over and over, "Impotent. Impotent. God help me! I'm impotent!"
She lay on the floor, at first too afraid to move. But as he continued sobbing and swaying back and forth like a beaten animal, she cautiously moved her pain-racked body and crawled over to where her clothes were scattered On the rug. Dragging them behind her, she inched toward the door, picking up the key from where it had fallen. Behind her a gory trail of blood and ink seeped into the rug.
She slipped the key into the lock. He was still crying, his words almost indistinguishable, running together into a crazed, dull monotone. She clawed the door open and crawled through.
Exhausted, she lay motionless on the floor until the fear that he would come after her goaded her to her feet. Clutching the wall for support, she staggered down the hall, threw her coat around her nude body and stumbled down the steps.
CHAPTER FOUR
When Susan finally got home a day later she fell into bed and stayed there for two days. Upon leaving Mr. Jackson she had climbed into a taxi and immediately fainted before she could give the driver her address. He had taken one horrified look at her battered face and driven her to the hospital. There they had taken care of her lacerations, stitched up the worst one and put her to bed. She had refused to tell them what had happened to her, and they finally dismissed her from the hospital, warning her to take it easy for a few days.
While lying in bed, her body tender and aching, her scratches now long lines of dark red scabs, her bruises making her flesh look like rotten eggplant, she wondered what to do next. To return to the advertising agency was impossible. And how would she ever explain what had happened? She was even afraid that Tom, missing her at the office, might come over to her room.
Rent day was fast approaching and she had no money; she had left her purse at the office, not that it made much difference, as there wasn't much money in it, anyway.
She crawled painfully out of bed and got her piggy bank from the top of her bureau. With the heel of her shoe she smashed it and carefully counted up the $2.54 it contained. She obviously needed money and fast; at least until she was in condition again to start looking for a job. But the problem was to whom was she to go for help? She didn't dare write her parents for that would entail impossible explanations. She ruled out her aunt for the same reason.
Finally, she decided to go to Mike. To him she could tell her story and, believing that he loved her just as she loved him, she was certain he would help her. However, she wasn't sure how to find him; he had always called her to make a date which they had spent either in public places or in her own room. He had never taken her to his own apartment nor even told her the address. Well, then she would go back to the "96O Club" where they had gone several times; she remembered him saying once that he was usually there about seven o'clock every evening.
Late the next afternoon she got up, dressed, tried to cover her bruised face and swollen black eye with powder and make-up, and took the bus to south State Street. There was a sprinkling of men and women in the bar and the strippers were hard at work. She went back-stage, ignoring the whistles and derisive remarks about her black eye, and asked for Torchy. Torchy was in her dressing-room, seated before the mirror, gluing on a pair of false eyelashes. When Susan came in, she turned and stared.
"My Gawd, honey," she exclaimed, "what happened to you? Did you fall down a manhole and swim through the sewers, or what?"
"No, I., it was just an accident."
"Yes, I should think so. Hardly something one would do deliberately, dearie." She patted the chair next to her. "Here, sit down. That is, if your ass doesn't look like your face."
She reached under the table, pulled out a couple of glasses and a half-empty bottle.
"Here, how about a drink. Nothing like a little gin to cure a black eye."
"Thanks, Torchy," Susan said. "I do look awful, don't I?" She sighed, peering in the glass at her swollen, purple and yellow face.
"Honey, if you were any more bruised Up I could sell you to the butcher. Now what happened?"
"Well, just one of those things. Really, if you don't mind, I'd rather not explain." She smiled at her. "I'd rather just forget the whole thing."
"Okay, honey. Your privilege. But have some more gin, anyway." She turned back to the mirror and picked up the other fringe of eyelash.
"Has Mike been around lately?" Susan said.
"Mike? Yeah, he's in here every night about this time. He'll probably be along soon. Why? Want him to beat the guy up?"
Susan laughed. "No, just like to see him."
"I'll go out front and tell Joe to send him back when he shows. You stay here and take it easy." She got up and left, leaving behind her the scent of a musky perfume.
A few minutes later she put her head in the door.
"Joe'll send him back, honey. I've got to go out and entertain the jerks." She smiled at her. "Don't fall off the chair and break your skull. And help yourself to the cat-brew."
Twenty minutes afterwards Mike hurried into the room. Without saying a word, he pulled her up and held her in his arms, kissed her tenderly and touched her bruised face with a gentle finger.
She buried her head in his shoulder and began crying softly, a Oh, Mike darling. I'm so glad to see you. It was so awful." He pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes.
"Kid, you've really had it. Who did it?"
She told him the story, explained her financial status and asked him if he could lend her some money until she could find another job.
"Sure, baby. I'll take care of you. Don't worry about a thing. And don't worry about paying me back yet. There's no rush, honey."
He kissed her as she began to thank him.
"Now lay off the thanks-routine, baby. I'll help you all I can."
When she had quieted down, he added, "Stay here awhile. I've got to see some cats out front and then we'll go out for a couple steaks. And tomorrow we'll see about finding you another pad-just in case your buddy comes around."
He filled up her glass with gin, took a big drink and left.
During the next week while her bruises were gradually disappearing, Mike helped her find another place to stay-an apartment much nicer than her old one. When she protested that she probably wouldn't be able to afford it, even after she had found a job, he urged her to take it anyway, saying, "I'm taking care of you, remember? I'll make up the difference, baby, until you can swing it yourself." Then he gave her some money to buy some new clothes, a to cheer you up and besides, you'll need them for your new job." Thus, she felt reassured, happy that Mike was the one who was helping her, for she interpreted his generosity as proof that he loved her as much as she discovered she loved him. And for him, she thought, I'd do just anything, anything at all.
With Mike providing money for all her needs, she found it more than easy to put off looking for a job. Finally, however, she mentally added up all the money he had given her, both directly and indirectly in gifts and, horrified at the total, resolved that she would begin looking for a job so she could start paying him back.
But that night Mike came over. Before going out they climbed into bed to roll a quick one. Afterwards they lay quietly and had a cigarette.
" Susie, baby, I hate to spoil the ball we've been having, but I'm getting kind of low on dough. I owe some to a guy and he's really snapping at my ass."
" I'm sorry, darling," she said apologetically. "I was adding up today how much I owe you and decided to start looking for a job tomorrow. But I wasn't going to tell you until I'd found one and surprise you. Really, you've been marvelous and I do want to start paying you back. I'll take just any job I can find."
" Jobs are pretty hard to find, though. You know, it's stupid of you to slave away at a joint like that agency and drag down such damn little loot. 'Specially with your looks."
"I know. I hate the thought of another job like that. And I'd hate to go back to a dingy one-room hole. But I'm not really qualified to do much better."
"Yeah, that's a problem. Wouldn't give you enough money to live it up, buy glad-rags, take a swell vacation-just work eight hours a day for nothing."
"Oh, Mike," she wailed, "you make it sound awful!"
"Well, baby, I've been thinking." He paused and lit another cigarette.
"Yes?"
"You could do a lot better than just another job. And make a lot more money."
She waited, not saying anything.
"Look, I really need some dough, but fast. It so happens that we can make seventy-five bucks right off-in fact, tomorrow night."
"Really? How?"
"It's like this. I was at the Club the other day and this cat I know comes up and says he's arranging for some clam-bake for a convention that's in town. He needs a couple of girls and says he'll pay 'em seventy-five bucks-now don't look so startled. All he wants 'em for is to be carried in on some platters, or God knows what, to decorate the joint and liven things up. That's all you'd have to do. I thought of you right away."
"Seventy-five dollars just for that."
"Well, of course, you'd have to be almost nude ... "
"Nude!"
"Now come off it, honey. You know damn well you'd love to have that beautiful body of yours stared at."
He smiled at her. " You'd be doing me a real big favor, kid. Gome on. Then I can pay this guy off."
"Well, I don't know," she said slowly. "I do want to help you, Mike, really I do, but ... well ... nude ... "
He just looked at her.
" All right, Mike. I'll do it. If you're sure it's okay."
"That's my baby! I knew I could count on you!"
He gave her a kiss and lightly slapped her rump.
"I told you I'd take care of you, didn't I?" He reached over to his coat hanging on the back of a chair near the bed and pulled out a cigarette case from the inside pocket. "Here, baby, try one of these." He snapped the lid up. Inside lay several cigarettes, normal looking except that they were much thinner, almost half as slim as a regular one.
She picked one out and looked ' at it curiously. "What funny cigarettes. What are they?"
"Joints?"
"Yeah. Pot."
"Pot? What's pot?"
"Marijuana, baby. The greatest."
"Marijuana? You mean dope?"
He laughed. "Yeah. Dirty dope. Come on, baby. Try it," He struck a match and lit them up.
She took a drag. "They're sort of sweet." "Yeah. But you gotta really draw it in. like this." He lay back, his eyes closed and took a huge drag, holding it down for a long time.
She lay back and imitated him. Soon her cheeks grew warm and her eyes felt strange; she closed them and took another drag, holding it down as long as she could. With this, her first marijuana cigarette, she at first was slightly nauseous, but then the sensation passed and she began to feel completely relaxed and at peace with the world, her body light and buoyant.
Mike's hand, which had been lying on her stomach, moved slowly downward until his fingers reached the lips of her sex.
Susan shifted her position. The lettuce leaves tickled her. Through the closed swinging doors filtered a discordant blare of men's voices, some talking loudly, some laughing, some singing, which swelled into an ear-splitting roar each time the doors swung open to admit a hurrying waiter.
A fat, round-faced man, chewing on a dead cigar, came bustling through the door.
"You girlies ready? You're on in a few minutes. Now come on!" he said, snapping his fingers. "Come on now. Give the boys a big smile!" He bounced down the line of girls arrayed on platters. "Hey, Hank, damn it, come here! Take some of these damn French Fries off. They're covering up her cunt too damn much!"
"This is the corniest deal I've ever seen!" a girl ahead of Susan said disgustedly. "God-damn shrimps yet! And you can't even eat the damn things." She was sitting cross-legged on a huge silver platter, shrimp made of paper piled up to her waist. Above the mound rose her torso, her bare breasts large and heavy, shaking like two tremendous bowls of Jello as she shrugged her shoulders and then flipped away her cigarette.
"Yeah, these jerks have the imaginations of toadstools." On another platter stood a majestic looking cake, in the middle of which sat a willowy-girl, nude except for a long mane of black hair and a narrow ribbon, set low around her hips which read in large red letters, "The Roto-Flex Sewer Cleaning Corp.-Keeps Your Sewers Free!"
"Hey you," the man yelled, "get back in that cake. We're ready to go."
"Keep your fly buttoned, buddy," she said. She snuggled down inside the paper cake and a waiter put the top couple of layers over her head. Through the paper came her muffled voice, "Jeez. I've had to pop out of so many damn cakes I've got candles growin' in my ears."
"Yeah, but at least you're dry. God, I'll be stinkin' for weeks," said a red-head sitting in a tremendous bowl of orange-colored punch, her pear-shaped breasts floating and bobbing on the surface. " I hope someone here knows life-saving."
The girl in front of Susan twisted around in her fake lobster shell and winked at her. On her head was a cap made to look like a lobster's head, the feelers waving around like three-foot radio aerials. "You new in this game? You look a little jittery," she said.
" A little," Susan said. She was lying on her side on a platter of lettuce leaves, a large green leaf draped over her mound like a G-string.
"Okay, gals, here we go! A great big smile now!"
Four waiters picked up the platter of shrimp, resting it on their shoulders, and disappeared through the door. A tremendous outburst of cheering, stamping and whistling surged through the door. Shortly thereafter, the French
Fries and the lobster followed and then Susan on her bed of lettuce. Trying to see through the haze of smoke, she smiled grimly as the platter swayed down the aisle towards the head table which was set on a raised platform, the other tables branching out in a big horseshoe. On each side, men stood on their chairs to get a better look, laughed and' shouted, reached out their hands to touch her; one man, his eyes glazed with liquor, his tie half-off, tried to climb over the table and fell flat on his face, broken glass and crockery flying in all directions. Behind her Susan saw the red-head gaily waving to the men from her bowl of punch and tossing orange peels at them. The platters were set down in a row on the head table. Looking over the crowd, all she could see was a nightmarish sea of waving arms, shouting mouths and lustful, beady eyes. By the time the black-haired girl had popped out of her cake and was striding up and down on top of the table, hands on her hips, her breasts jiggling, her buttocks twitching saucily; the room was in pandemonium.
As she had been instructed, Susan got up from her platter and warily strutted along the tops of the tables; hands and arms waved around her like the tentacles of a dozen octopi.
"Me for that lobster," someone shouted. "Hey, Oscar, how about some fuckin' salad?" A drunken face leered up at her, his hand snatching at the leaf covering her sex.
"Yeah, man, off with the leaf!"
A chair crashed and someone screamed. She glanced behind her and saw the red-head trying to climb out of the bowl; orange punch trickled down her body, dripped from her breasts and ran stickily down her thighs while she struggled with a man who had fallen half-way into the bowl, one arm submerged, the other circling her leg; the white tablecloth turned orange as the punch slowly spread outward. A plate of melted ice cream flew through the air and caught the lobster girl in the stomach. She staggered as the chocolate oozed down her belly and over her legs and she toppled backward to disappear in a clump of clawing arms. At the same time she felt the leaf being torn away and a rough hand seized her by the short hairs and pulled her forward. She fell over, head-first, and landed on top of someone. They both crashed to the floor and a dozen hands were on her. As she kicked and screamed, she heard someone shouting above the din and saw a burly, ginger-haired fellow trying to pull the men off of her.
"Stop, you bastards! You'll kill her!" He jerked one of them up and gave him a swift punch in the jaw and reached down and dragged another one up. She slithered out from under a man who had fallen on top of her in a sodden, drunken heap, leaped to her feet and ran through the door into the kitchen. There she collapsed against a table. Someone shoved a glass of whiskey in her hand. Behind her the waiters were guarding the door and bringing in the other girls one by one, each more disheveled than the last.
Cursing all men, they went out to a back room, got dressed and returned to the kitchen. The man who had hired them was there, wiping the back of his neck with a handkerchief. He shrugged his shoulders and said, a Well, it's all in the game, girls. You can't say you didn't get paid well."
He signalled to Susan and the black-haired girl who had been in the cake.
"There's a couple of the boys would like to meet you two." He laughed. "More than a couple, but these two asked me to give you this."
He handed them a note. They opened it and read: "Hope you're okay. How about skipping this brawl and going out on the town? Fred and Pat."
The girl looked at Susan, shrugged her shoulders and said, a Sure, what've we got to lose? Okay by me. I can't handle fifty, but I sure as hell can handle one."
Susan hesitated. "Yes, I guess so."
Turning to the man, the girl said, a You tell 'em we'll meet 'em out front. I'm not going out there with those drunken apes again." She turned to Susan. "Come on, sugar, let's blow this joint."
They got their coats, left by a back entrance, walked around to the front of the building and entered the lobby.
"My name's 'Honey', " she said, "what's yours, sugar?"
" Susan."
"We've probably got a long night ahead of us. We'd better hit 'em far the same thing. What do you think they'll go for?"
"What?"
"What do you think they're worth? What's the matter? You new in this game? You look pretty green at that."
"Yes, I guess so. This is the first time I've been out like this."
"Jeez! Honey always draws 'em!" She sighed. "Well, don't worry, kid. We're all in it together and for the same thing. But for God's sake don't act green and spoil our pitch. You couldn't have gotten this far without somethin' between your legs besides a Tampax."
Honey opened her purse, took out her compact and dabbed at her nose.
"I figure they'll go for at least fifty. Watch me and I'll give you the tip-off."
"Fifty dollars? Apiece?" Susan exclaimed.
She snapped her compact shut. "What did you think? Fifty cents? Jeez, sugar, where you been all your life?"
She took out a comb and ran it through her black hair. "Maybe more. Look, when I get up and go to the can, come with me and we'll talk it over." She looked down the hall. "This looks like it might be our mighty heroes now. At least they don't have white hair and aren't crawlin' on their knees."
As Susan watched the two men approach, she grew more and more nervous. When she had read the note, it had never occurred to her then that going out with them would entail more than having a couple of drinks at some bar or nightclub. It was only when Honey had mentioned the fifty dollars that she realized they wanted more than a few sociable drinks with her. At first she had almost backed out on the deal, but then she thought how surprised and pleased Mike would be if she returned with an extra fifty.
They went to a nightclub. After a couple of dances with Fred, Honey said she was going to powder her nose, so Susan got up and followed her to the Ladies' Room.
"How you comin' with your Joe, sugar? He said anything yet?" Honey said.
"You mean about tonight?"
"Natch."
"Well, he's hinted around at it, but nothing direct."
"You'll soon learn to make 'em lay it on the line," Honey said. "No use screwin' around if they aren't goin' to shell out. Anyway, it's all set. They want to do it together, so I told 'em it'd be seventy-five bucks."
"Seventy-five? Really?"
"Yeah. You game to do it together?"
"You mean in the same room?"
" Natch."
"Why, yes, I guess so," Susan said. "Where'll we go?"
"There's a hotel where I work a lot a couple of blocks from here. We'll get a kick-back so that'll be another five bucks."
"Okay."
"Look, kid," Honey said. "Just play it cool. Those bums aren't exactly in the prime of life, so if we play around a bit and wear 'em out, they're already so boiled they won't be good for more than one shot. Okay?"
They went to the hotel, rented two adjoining rooms and then moved into one of them. Pat had a bottle of Scotch and rang down for some ice. Honey and Susan went into the other room, undressed and came back. They settled down on the single beds, Honey and Fred leaning against the headboard on one, Susan sitting with Pat on the other. Watching the two men gulping their Scotch, both stripped to the waist, Susan thought that she wouldn't be surprised if they both passed out and fell asleep before leaping to the charge.
Pat had one arm clamped around her waist as though he would topple over if he didn't hang onto her; his other hand was feebly pawing at her thigh while his mouth weaved in circles before her chest, vainly trying to make a three-point landing on her breast. She felt disgusted as she looked at his chest, sparsely covered with red hair and freckles and larded with loose fat which hung in rolls down to his belly and flopped limply over his pants. She thought of Mike's firm, lithe body. She made a few attempts to get him on the right track, opened his fly and massaged the limp piece of spaghetti and then gave up as he fell over on his side, snoring loudly.
She looked over at the other bed. There the procession was marching along its expected route and the flag was flying. Against the white sheets Honey's svelte body was like the color of a smoky crystal, almost olive, with small, hard breasts scarcely larger than a boy's, tipped with square, purple buds. Her hips were narrow, but as she turned, rolling over on top of Fred in a long, sliding movement, Susan saw that her buttocks were round as basketballs, and while he kneaded them the dark, small ring of her after-hole winked out at the top of a line of delicate black fuzz leading down to her sex. Now his hands slid upward, rubbing the small of her back and buried themselves in her long, black hair which flowed over her shoulders and half-way down her back, rippling from side to side as she turned her head. As slowly and easily as though he were turning a page in a book, he turned her over on her back and poised over her. His arms braced on either side, he hung motionless above her, his rod aimed directly at her mound which swelled beneath him, rotating in voluptuous circles as she swiveled her hips" the apex of her sex covered with a velvet mat of soft, black hair.
Watching them, Susan felt the sap of her own desire rise within her; she got off the bed and knelt beside theirs, hardly breathing, her eyes riveted on their centers. Unconsciously, her fingers strayed between the lips of her own sex and caressed the hidden nerves, following the rhythm of their movements.
Slowly and carefully Fred lowered himself until his tusk was brushing her short hairs and then rubbing up and down the wet trough of her lips. While her hips rose upward to meet him, his member descended further, like a homing pigeon circling its nest after a long journey. And then he glided in, penetrating all the way in one smooth, easy swoop. Their hips began to flutter more rapidly; he drew out his rod again and tantalizingly hovered at the entrance, teasing it with his tip, until she arched her back and thrust her pelvis up so he plunged in up to the hilt. Without stopping, he slid rapidly in and out, making wet, sucking sounds like someone trying to walk in quicksand, until they accelerated to the final burst.
Afterwards he sank down on the bed and was asleep within seconds.
Honey rolled over, peered over the edge of the bed at Susan, looked across at Pat's snoring hulk and whispered, "Let's get the hell out before they wake up."
"But Pat hasn't done anything yet!" Susan said.
"What the hell do you care? Come on."
They crept into the other room, dressed hurriedly and walked rapidly down the corridor.
"Look," Honey said triumphantly. "I even helped ourselves to a nice tip." And she pulled out two tens and a five and waved them gleefully. On the way past the desk they stopped and collected their five dollar kick-back.
Mike was waiting for her when she arrived home. After telling him about the evening, she thought at first that he was angry because she had agreed to make love with Pat, thus making her a prostitute in his eyes.
"But I only agreed, Mike, darling, because I wanted to bring back the extra fifty dollars for you. And look, it's a whole ninety beautiful dollars and I didn't even have to make love to him."
"Look, baby, I'm not putting you down because of that. Let's get this straight! The only thing that bugs me is that you didn't have the sense to take him for more!"
She looked at him, shocked and unbelieving.
"My God, Susie," he went on, "a hick like that you could have easily started off asking for a hundred. And then when he wanted a double show, Jesus Christ, baby, wake up! you could have gone up to whatever you could get out of him!"
"But Mike! You mean you wouldn't mind my making love to that guy? Don't you love me?" she wailed.
"Darling, of course I love you." He took her in his arms. "You know I do, Susie, baby. I wouldn't have paid for this apartment and bought all your clothes and everything else, if I didn't. Don't you trust me?"
"Of course I do, darling,"" she sobbed. "It's just that ... well ... I thought I was yours and you were mine."
"That's right, baby. I'll always take care of you. But the other has nothing to do with our love, don't you see? It's just an easy way to make money so the two of us can have what we want and have a real ball." He held her in his lap. rocking her back and forth and stroking her hair. "Now quiet down, baby-doll, I'm not going to run out and leave you."
"I know you won't, darling, it's just that this sort of took me by surprise." She sniffed and blew her nose into his handkerchief.
"And that was an easy way to make almost a hundred bucks, wasn't it?" he said.
"Ye-e-es. And I want you to have it all until I pay you back."
"And it's a lot better than slaving forty-four hours a week all day long for a measly thirty-five, isn't it?"
"Ye-e-es."
"I can get some other deals like that, too. 'Course they're not all such easy rolls-those don't come my way very often. But just give me time. There're plenty of others."
"Okay, Mike. If that's what you want. I do love you so."
"And don't worry about a thing. I'll get the jobs and all you have to do is hand over the money and I'll take care of you-pay your rent, buy you clothes, and we'll really have a ball, baby. Okay?" He kissed her wet eyes and the tip of her nose. "Okay?"
"Okay, darling. Anything you say."
Mike got up to make them both a drink. His back turned, filling the glasses with ice, he said, "Of course there's a few things you should know about this racket, Susie. Most you can find out by experience, but there's a few good tips to remember."
He walked across the room with the drinks.
"Do you remember that red head at the 96O Club, Sal?" he said.
Susan nodded.
"I'll get her to talk to you. She can wise you up."
"But I thought she was working at the Club?" Susan said.
"Yeah. Now. She used to work for me until she got too bitchy and high-class-still does now and then, as a matter-of-fact."
"What? You mean you've got other girls,. . " she asked incredulously.
"Yeah. Sal and another chick." He sighed. "I might as well give it to you all at once." He lit a cigarette and sat down beside her.
"Now don't get bugged, baby," he said, noticing the look on her face. "You know it's you I love. The others have nothing to do with us. Just a way to make dough for us until we've got enough to have a ball all the time."
Susan looked at him without saying anything.
"Look, I've been thinking," he said. "Why don't we move in together?"
She brightened up and fell into his arms. "Oh, Mike, that would be marvelous!"
"You can move into my pad. It's better than this hole." He unbuttoned her blouse, reached in and fondled her breast. "Then we'll really live it up, baby.s alt'Il be wonderful, Mike."
"There's only one thing." He hesitated.
"Now what?"
"I've been trying to kick her out ever since I met you, Susie-but Sal's there right now."
"What? At your place?"
He nodded. "She bugs the shit out of me and I'll give her, her walking papers-as soon as you've pumped her. But don't let her know she's finished or she'll murder you. Let me handle the bitch afterwards."
"Okay, darling. Anything you say. It'll be wonderful to live with you."
Early the next afternoon Susan went over to Mike's apartment. He had said he wouldn't be there, but would tell Sal she was coming, saying only that Susan wanted to make a little money on the side and wanted some advice. But not that he was promoting Susan himself or that he was going to live with her.
His apartment was in a modern building. She rode up in the elevator, got off and walked down the carpeted corridor. She paused before the door, giving her nerves a chance to settle down and then rang the bell. No one answered. She put her ear to the door, but couldn't hear anything. She rang again, longer and more insistently. Finally she heard a faint voice yell " Coming," and then the door opened a few inches. In the crack appeared Sal's face, her red hair tousled, her eyes full of sleep.
"Hello, Sal." Susan said.
"Oh, it's you," she said and opened the door. "Come on in."
Susan followed her down the hall and into the living-room, wrinkling her nose at Sal's musty smell of stale perfume and sleep. Under her blue nylon negligee, Susan could see she was nude. Sal yawned and waved a hand at the couch.
"Make yourself at home. I'll be. right back."
Susan sat down on a wide, eight-foot couch which was set at an angle to the fireplace.
Although the room was luxuriously furnished, with white walls, a thick, blue rug and matching drapes and deep, comfortable chairs, it was a mess. Dust lay heavily over liquor-stained tables; ashtrays overflowed with smelly cigarette butts; on all the tables were empty and partially empty glasses with even a few lying on their sides on the rug. She looked around her critically and planned how she would rearrange the furniture after she had moved in.
Carrying two cups of coffee, Sal swished in, the blue nylon billowing out behind her, her long, heavy legs flicking in and out as the skirt parted. She was still nude, and underneath the pink flesh glowed warmly, the nipples on her full swaying breasts and the mat over her prominent mound a dark red. Her hair combed, her face washed and lipstick on, she looked more attractive, although when she handed Susan, her cup of coffee she could see faint lines of fatigue around her eyes and dark circles beneath.
She put the cup on a side-table and flopped down on a chair across from Susan.
"Jeez! What a life! At least you look alive," she said.
Susan smiled at her. At first she had been jealous when Mike had told her he was living with Sal, but now she began to feel sorry for her; she looked so tired and still didn't know that Mike was going to throw her out.
"Mike says you want to start making some dough and that you don't know much." She looked her up and down. "But that I can't believe with the lay-out you've got."
"He said you could probably give me a few tips," Susan said.
"Honey, what I know I could say in about three words. Make your pitch fast, don't waste time with them if they don't grab the bait right away, ask for more than you'll think they'll give, make them pay in advance and get out quick afterwards. Of course, that's if you're working the bars or higher class places. If you're on the street, God help you, there's a going rate." She paused, "You got a man looking after you?"
Susan stuttered. "Not yet, that is."
" Well, you soon will. If you're working the street, you'll have your beat and he'll keep an eye on you to see you're not cheating him. He gets the dough, of course, and in return he takes care of you and protects you. And for Christ's sakes, don't try to muscle in on someone else or you're liable to get cut up."
"I don't really intend to work the streets."
"Yeah. With your looks you won't have to. Start right out at the high-class bars and aim high. Someone'll probably start promoting you and then you're all set to make a hundred or so a night if you're lucky." She looked at her coldly. "I Lope you haven't got your eye on Mike."
"Why, no, of course not," Susan stammered.
"Well, don't, if you know what's good for you." She stared at her awhile and then suddenly smiled warmly. "I'm sorry, honey, for suspecting you-I guess you're on the square, though." She got up. "God. I need a drink. Want one?"
"No, not right now, thanks," Susan said.
She went over to the portable bar, poured herself some gin and sat down next to Susan, putting her arm along the top of the couch behind her.
"Being a woman, I guess you know the rest," Sal said.
"I suppose so, but ... "
"And another thing. The pay is for a reasonably straight job. If they get any funny and weird ideas, and believe me, honey, you'll come up against some you never even dreamed of, you can either refuse or get more dough out of them."
"Oh?"
"And unless it's an all-night job, get the hell our right after they've had their shot. If they want another, make them pay again."
Her arm slid down and rested lightly on Susan's shoulder.
"But don't worry, honey. You'll be okay. Just play it cool and you'll soon learn the ropes. And stick to the high-class joints."
Susan couldn't avoid looking at Sal's maturely rounded body so casually displayed under the delicate blue negligee which lay like shadowed ice over the slumberous, heavy curves. Her hand was lightly stroking Susan's shoulder and she wondered whether to get up and leave, but decided to wait and see what would happen.
"Sure you don't want a drink, honey?" Sal asked:
"No, thanks." Susan didn't know what to say or where to look. Sal uncrossed her legs and the skirt fell open. like ripe Camembert her thighs lay smooth and creamy, their heavy flesh pushed out against the blue cloth by their own weight.
"That's a pretty negligee," Susan said awkwardly.
"Thanks. Got it from a boy friend." Her hand rubbed the nape of Susan's neck. The loose neckline slid down over one shoulder, its edge draped lightly over the full curve of her breast, as large as a grapefruit.
"Well, I guess I'd better be going," Susan said. She moved slightly on the couch. "What's the rush, honey?" Sal leaned toward her, her face a few inches from Susan's. Over the dilated pupils of her eyes, her lids were partially closed; she ran her tongue over her red, half-parted lips, and then pressed them against Susan's.
For a moment Susan twisted in her arms and tried to get up but Sal held her securely. And soon the sweet honey of her mouth and tongue, her gently stroking hands and the warm, heavy weight of her body conquered her momentary shock and sparked the fire of desire in her belly. She relaxed and surrendered herself to Sal's lips and body, turning her torso as Sal's hands unbuttoned her blouse and slipped it off, arching her hips as they drew off her skirt and panties, kicking off her shoes and lying on her back, passively and quietly, as they slowly pealed her stockings from her long. slim. legs.
"Honey, you're terrific," Sal murmured. With a moist tongue she gently licked up her legs, fluttering her lips against the tender flesh of her inner thighs while Susan moaned softly. Susan reached down, grasped Sal's shoulders and pulled her up until she was lying on top of her; their lips met as her full white body writhed hotly against Susan's golden breasts and belly, their mounds grinding together, the blonde hairs mingling with the red.
Sal slithered around on top of her, buried her head between Susan's parted thighs and tongued the wet valley of her mound. As the flame of lust rose within her, Susan reached up and, clasping Sal's gyrating buttocks, drew them down over her face like a mask and began deeply licking the salty-sweet fountain of her sex until, at the same moment she tasted Sal's juices richly pouring over her mouth and nose, she felt the final, searing burst inside her.
CHAPTER FIVE
Susan moved over to Hike's apartment. Several days later the two scratches, long parallel streaks which ran across his cheek like red threads, had disappeared. When she asked him about Sal's departure, he would stroke the scratches and say, "Yeah, she was really pissed off, baby, but she's gone now, thank Cod, so don't worry about it."
That evening he drove her downtown to one of the more fashionable clubs so she could begin bringing in some money, assuring her that this was only temporary and he would soon be getting her a some rich suckers"
"s soon as he made a few more contacts. He pointed out a nearby hotel which accepted clients for short stays, kissed her and let her out at the corner.
She felt nervous; she was reluctant to enter a bar alone for the first time in her life. Nearing the neon-lighted club, she glanced at the doorman who looked her up and down appreciatively and then walked past, her courage failing her. She was afraid to enter and afraid not to, knowing how angry Mike would be if she returned empty-handed. She walked around the block and stopped for a cup of coffee. Finally, deciding that she couldn't put it off any longer, she left, walked determinedly to the Club and, clutching her purse with nervous fingers and holding her head high, marched through the door which was swept open by the uniformed doorman. Inside, she paused in the small foyer which was higher than the rest of the Club and looked down the short flight of steps. To the right was a bar and beyond were several dozen tables with a spot-lighted piano at the far end, set on a small dais and being played by an anemic-looking Negro who was moaning about his woman who had left him for a Cadillac. Feeling lost and very conspicuous, she looked around and wondered what to do, but then spotted an empty stool at the bar and walked down the steps and over to it.
When she had sat down, a man standing next to her turned around, glanced over his shoulder to see if she were alone or not and asked her if he could buy her a drink. He was short and fat and his bald head glistened in the dim light; by his nose was a wart with two long, black hairs growing out of it. She said she'd like a Scotch. When he leaned toward her, making idle chatter while his eyes appraised her, the smell of his breath almost made her topple off her chair. My Cod, she thought, what do I do now? I can't possibly make love to this toad. As he talked and became more openly admiring, she wished she'd had more experience and wondered frantically how to get rid of him; aha glanced around to see if there were any-likelier prospects, but all the other men at the bar seemed to be accompanied by women. Shivering at the thought of his hands on her nude body, she decided she couldn't possibly do it, no matter how much money he might pay. He asked her if she were busy the rest of the evening. She stammered that she had a late date, had only stopped in for a drink beforehand and would have to leave. Gathering up her gloves and purse, she murmured her thanks for the drink and quickly walked out.
Outside, she breathed the clean, fresh air and debated where to go next. She was afraid to go back to Mike so soon and without any money, so she started ambling down the street, planning to stop at another bar and there perhaps have better luck. She passed one bar after another; something seemed wrong with all of them. She was beginning to wish she had taken up the man back at the Club, just to get it over with so she could go home, when she heard a soft voice behind her. She looked over her shoulder; it was the man at the Club.
"Pardon me," he said, a Are you sure you wouldn't like another drink?"
"No, thanks," she said.
"I can make it worth your while." They walked along together.
She sighed. Although he was still as unattractive as ever, she decided that he would be better than nothing, for it was growing late.
"Okay," she said wearily, wondering how much to ask for. "It'll be fifty."
He nodded his head; she wished she had asked for more.
They went to the hotel Mike had pointed out, rented a room and went up without speaking. He counted out the fifty in ten dollars bills and handed them to her. She put them in her purse and they both began to undress, still without
"peaking. Well, she thought, if he's not going to say anything. I'll be damned if I will.
When she had undressed, she lay down on the bed and unenthusiastically watched him. He had hung his coat and shirt over the back of the chair and now was carefully laying his trousers on the seat, making sure the creases were straight. As she had expected, his hody was as fat as his face, with rolls of white, pasty dough limp around his waist and a tiny prick dangling in a sparse nest of hair. Her whole body felt cold; she looked down and saw it was covered with goose-pimples. He walked over to the bed and looked silently down at her. She stared back without saying anything, but finally managed to smile weakly.
"Kiss my ear," he said coldly, "it's the only way I can get an erection," and lay down beside her without touching her.
She almost burst out laughing with surprise. Turning on her side, she began caressing his ear, running her tongue slowly along the grooves and sworls, sucking the lobe and kissing it with her wet lips.
"Harder," he said.
Okay, Buster, she thought, you asked for it, and began viciously chewing and twisting his ear with her teeth until she thought she would tear it off. He was grunting and groaning, but whether with ecstasy or pain, she couldn't decide. She sank her white teeth deeper into his lobe and ran her tongue sharply into the canal. Glancing down through her long blonde hair lying over their faces, she almost stopped in surprise for sticking up from his groin like a soldier at attention was one of the biggest erections she had ever seen. For the first time since she had met him, she began to get excited and wished he'd start making love to her.
He suddenly wrenched his head away, rolled over and straddled her, his buttocks on her belly, and bent to lick the hollow between her breasts. With his hands he squeezed them together until the two red buds were side by side and thrust his member up the tight tunnel between, rocking back and forth so it slid up and down the wet groove. Seeing its tip appearing and disappearing between her compressed breasts, she felt her juices begin to flow. He took her hands and made her hold her breasts together while he reached behind him and stroked her sex. But just as the tension inside her was about to break, he slid down and thrust his rod up, deep into her. Her muscles contracted violently around his driving organ and she bucked under him as he lay on top of her. He said, "Bite my ear." She seized it between her teeth and furiously sucked and chewed, feeling his pelvis smack against hers more and more quickly and her own muscles contracting and relaxing.
It was soon over. Remembering Sal's advice, she got up immediately and went into the bathroom. He was still lying on the bed when she came out.
" Can't you stay longer?" he said.
"No, I have to go." She dressed quickly while he watched her. She left just as he started to get out of bed.
That wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, she thought. Now for home-and Mike.
She walked away from the hotel and looked for a taxi. As she rounded a corner she collided with a man who was walking hurriedly, head bent. He stepped back, murmured "Pardon me,"
"nd started to pass,-when he suddenly shouted i Susan I Susan Holiday!"
"nd grabbed her arm. "Susan, how wonderful to see you!"
Not recognising him at first, she stared blankly at his lean body and wide, happy smile. Then she realised it was George Dawson, the George of what seemed yean ago, with whom she had grown up and who had taken her to the square dance just before she had come to Chicago.
"George Dawson!" she said and kissed him. "What are you doing in Chicago?" She was delighted to see him.
"Up over the weekend from college," he said. "I've been trying to find you all over. Your aunt gave me your address, but they said you'd moved."
"Yes, just a couple days ago."
"Come on. Let's get a drink. This needs celebrating." He steered her into a nearby bar, his young face radiating happiness. "What a piece of luck to run into you. I'd about given up."
They sat down and ordered drinks.
"How's everything at home?" Susan said.
"Oh, fine. What are you doing these days?"
"I ... " she hesitated, "I gave up my old job and am looking for a new one." The excitement of seeing George had whirled her back to the innocent days of her life on the farm and she bad almost forgotten what she had been doing, just fifteen minutes ago. Knowing how horrified George would be if he found out, she became somewhat panic-stricken. It had all happened so gradually, she hadn't fully realized before how far she had come and how much her life had changed since she had left the farm.
"Didn't you like your old one?" he said.
"Not particularly. Bat I suppose I should have waited 'til I'd found another one-I'm getting kind of low, in cash, that is," she lied.
"Look, can I help you but, Susan?" he said eagerly. "Really, I'd love to loan you some money."
"No, that isn't necessary, George, but thanks, anyway."'
"Aw, come on." He reached in his pocket and got out his wallet. "Here, take thirty. Please. I wish I had more to give you."
"Well, okay. Thanks." She took the bills and stuffed them into her purse. She had long wanted to buy Mike a present. She decided it would be better to steer the conversation away from how she spent her time. "How's college, George?"
"Okay. I'm almost through", you know. Just a few more months."
"Then what?"
"I thought I might come to Chicago and get a job. Are you planning on staying here."
"Yes, I guess so."
"It seems to be agreeing with you. You look wonderful, Susan-and a lot older."
She laughed. "Yon mean I've aged that much?"
He blushed in confusion. "No. No. I didn't mean that! Just that you look so city-fied and sophisticated now. And beautiful!" He looked admiringly at her bare shoulders rising like a pale flower above the sheer black dress.
She laughed again. "You mean I wasn't before?" she said teasingly.
He became embarrassed, "You know what I mean. You know I've always thought you were just about the most beautiful thing ever."
He gazed at her, open adoration in his eyes; they reminded her of a puppy begging for food, pleading and hopeful. More accustomed to the hard, cynical talk and admiration of the men she had met since coming to Chicago, she found his boyish confusion and awkward attempts to compliment her appealing, although somewhat embarrassing. And then, too, he reminded her of her parents-a momentary twinge of guilt stirred in her heart as she thought of how much she had deceived them. But she felt happy again as she thought of Mike and how exciting her new life was, a life she wouldn't trade for any other. She felt years older than George.
"Dear George," she said and took his hand in hers and squeezed it. "You 're so sweet. You are nice!"
He looked disappointed. "Is that all you think of me?"
"Oh, you're impossible," she laughed. "T guess I've just changed. Our lives back home seem so far away."
"Remember the square dance we went to? You looked so pretty that night I wanted to carry you right off."
"On your white steed?"
"No, in my 194O Chevy!" He laughed. "Oh, Susan, I hope we can see each other a lot when I come to Chicago."
She became wary and evasive. "Well, probably. But I'll have a job then and I'll be a lot busier."
"And so will I-but I'll never be too busy to see you." Un-like Mike's poker-face, George's betrayed every flicker of his feelings, and now it was hopeful and pleading again. "Where are too flaying? I may not le able to come again before I finish school, but I want to write you."
"Well, that's a bit difficult." Under no circumstances did she want him to find out she was living with Mike. "I'm staying at a hotel right now, but hope to find an apartment. I'll tell you what, the beat thing to do is to write me at my aunt's."
"Okay. Just so I can find you when I come back, without having to bump into every female in Chicago!"
Someone stuck a quarter in the nickelodeon and a swingy ballad pulsed out.
"Want to dance?" he said.
"Where?" She looked around. Although the bar was almost empty, there was hardly any floor space.
"There's room between the tables. Come on." He got up and helped her to her feet.
Even in high heels, the top of her head came just to his mouth. At first he seemed ill at ease, and held her practically at arm's length, as though she were so fragile she would break if he pressed her to him. This amused her and she snuggled up against him until they were swaying slowly to the music, body against body, his head bent, his nose and lips nuzzling in her hair.
"You smell so nice," he murmured. "Fresh as a spring meadow."
She knew he wanted her, but was too much in love with her, as he had been for so long, and too shy in his inexperience to make many open advances, for fear of being rejected. However, the only love she wanted from him was physical love, and she was afraid that if she submitted it would only succeed in making him more in love with her than ever. But as she felt his young virility through the rough tweed of his clothes, her qualms left her. She wanted him. And maybe, she thought, if we make love he'll be satisfied and I'll be free of him.
So she rubbed her body up against his like a purring cat; her breasts, squashed against his chest, became hard, the nipples rigid and aching. Between the soft masses of her thighs she felt his leg moving slowly and insistently, pressed strongly along her sex, while the turgid lump of his erection jutted into the soft basket of her belly.
"Susan, Susan," he breathed in her ear, "I love you so." As they danced together, hardly moving, smashed together into one person, lust rose within her to spread the dull ache emanating from her groin throughout her limbs until her whole body was hot, trembling with desire and passion. He, too, was breathing heavily, his muscles as tense as a coiled spring.
"Let's go to my hotel," he whispered.
They left and found a taxi. The door had no sooner slammed than he crushed her in his arms and their lips met in a long, mellow kiss and their tongues sucked the honeyed juices from each other's mouths. Oblivious to the jolting taxi, the screeching halts for stop-lights, the lights of other cars flashing in the windows, they remained clasped together, searching for the treasures of lip and mouth, insatiable and without pause until the taxi jarred to a stop and a dry voice said, "Here ya are, kids."
Blindly they climbed out and started for the entrance of the hotel.
"Hey, bud," the voice yelled. "How's about payin', huh?"
George went hack and tossed him a couple of bills. " Keep the change," he mumbled and ran back to Susan.
"Thanks," the driver yelled, "and have a good time," his laugh rising above the sound of the accelerating motor.
When they reached his room, she looked around and recognized a few of his clothes scattered about-the bright green tie he had worn while home on Easter vacation and which she had unmercifully teased him about.
"Do you remember this?" she said laughingly and picked it up, holding it out to him. But he was looking at her seriously, with the seriousness of a young lover, with the complete adoration of a first love-and she almost felt like a virgin again, alone with her first lover.
"Oh, Susan, Susan, I do love you so," he murmured as he walked toward her. He picked her up and carried her over to a large chair. He sat down, holding her on this lap. With his finger be slowly traced the arch of her eyebrows, the hollow of her cheek, the straight line of her nose and ran it softly over the bow of her lips. She took it between her teeth and gentry bit the tip while they looked deeply into the bottomless depths of each other's eyes, seeing reflected their mutual lust and desire. He brushed his hand down the thick, blonde mane of her hair and drew her head down; his lips kissed the fragile shells of her closed lids and whispered over her nose and cheek to her neck, nibbling the .smooth, fragrant flesh, following the sweep of her hairline to the nape of her neck. Her head bent, his fingers ran lightly down the curve of her spine until they touched her low-cut dress and, as she straightened up, followed the black demarcation around to her breasts which swelled softly over the top of the material. He kissed the hollow of her neck, quietly, almost reverently, while his other hand strayed lightly up her leg, stroking the firm curves until it reached the full plumpness of her thighs and the barrier of her panties. "just a second," she murmured and got up.
She undid her skirt and stepped out of it. Through the transparent silkiness of her slip her legs rose lean and long, the stockings a dusky tan over the tawny skin, molding smoothly and tautly the upward curves, marking the middle of her thighs with a dark line, the flesh above wedged outward. He watched her mutely, his hands clenched together, a bead of perspiration on his upper lip. Reaching behind, she unzipped the top of her dress with its built-in brassiere so that it fell away from her suddenly, revealing in one sweep the full lushness of her torso which rose above her slip like a honey-colored tulip. Her hair tumbled loosely over her shoulders, framing the oval of her face with its blue eyes and red, parted lips and white glistening teeth. A lock strayed down over one breast, its blondeness blending with the tanned hue of her skin, its swaying gracefulness accentuating the firm upward piles of her breasts, whose rigid tips glowed dully like the hearts of two blossoms. like a flower she stood before him, but a flower of a loveliness and color never produced in nature, for below her waist she was all black and above, the rich color of a leopard; her legs, together in a straight line, encased in the dark stockings and tight, black half-slip, looked like the black stem of a flower proudly supporting the blossom of her torso, tinted like a pale, copper nasturium.
She put her fingers under the elastic of her slip and began to slide it down, wriggling her hips as she did so, but George leaped out of his chair and ran over to her, saving a Let me do it."
He knelt before her, his head on a level with her waist, and looked at the fine texture of her skin, the flat planes of her sides which leveled down to the black of the slip; he looked up and saw her breasts, small and firm, jutting outward like two outcroppings of molten rock. But he did not touch her nude, inviting flesh. Instead, he carefully put his hands on the smooth, slinky material, hooking a finger under the band, and slowly drew it downward, thus inch by inch uncovering to his gaze the swelling fullness of her hips, round and plump under the mesh panties, and the obese rise of her mound richly covered with an umbrage of golden moss. Her slip lying in a pool around her feet, he drew off her panties with the same quiet, studied care, and unhooked her stockings and garter-belt, peeling the hose down one by one between his two hands, feeling the slippery stuff give way to the warm, resilient flesh of her thighs and calves. Finally, she stepped out of her shoes and stood before him completely naked, silent before his adoration, her body quivering in anticipation. She felt like a worshipped pagan goddess.
like a blind man reading Braille, he reached up and touched her, his fingers running like gentle spiders over her body, as though he had to find and know every hair, every pore, savor every curve and hollow, every drop of perspiration, memorize her body so he could store it in the shrine of his mind. So light were his fingers she could scarcely feel them, like cobwebs blown across her skin, but at the same time they were warm and searing, their touch like a shock of electricity which coursed through her limbs and made her feel completely alive. She closed her eyes, breathing heavily, trembling uncontrollably. Through the trance of her passion she heard the muted sound of traffic, and like the opening shutter of a camera, the memory of her first night in Chicago flittered through her mind.
Just as she thought she could no longer stand his flicking fingers, she felt his warm lips on her stomach and then lower down on her mound. She put her hands on the back of his head and pressed it against her, murmuring " Yes. Yes. Oh, yes. Kiss me there." His lips found the ridges of pink flesh embedded in the circling hedge of silky, blonde curls and his tongue the soft cleft between, which he licked and sucked deeply, tasting the salty-sweet liquor of her laboratory of passion. Clasping his head, which was glued to her sex like a leech, her head fell forward, her yellow hair curtaining her quivering breasts and, moaning softly, she rocked and swayed as the agony of pleasure burned brighter within her until the final ecstasy made her whole body leap and shiver in a paroxysm of bliss, and she doubled over and fell on top of him, her still contracting pelvis rolling on his shoulder.
He put his arms around her buttocks, balanced her on his shoulder, got up and carried her over to the bed where he laid her gently down. Then he undressed quickly, snapped out the light and lay down beside her. Through the half-open slats of the blind a neon sign outside sent bars of pulsating, changing light across the bed, a flickering kaleidoscope of color; between dark bands of shadow, strips of red lashed across their bodies like whip-marks, strips which changed slowly into an eerie green, then into a rich purple, then a glowing yellow, followed by a cool, ice-blue. As the sign went off and on, bathing them in alternating darkness and slabs of rainbow color, it was as though they were in a strange underworld, their bodies alien and not belonging to them; in the moments of darkness as though they had ceased to exist; in the flashes of light as though they were more intensely alive than ever before. Their eyes and teeth glistened like devils', dark and shining, and their torsos were like turning candy-poles : red, green, yellow, purple.
Although his member was fully erect, primed like a stoked engine, he continued to explore her body, ever different in the changing light, as if he had not one passionate woman under his hands and lips, but five, each a different color.
Now her breasts rose up in the lattice of purple light like dark, sullen hills, their nipples black as cinders, hard and resilient like rubber; the once blonde mat over her sex looked like a blotter stained with purple ink, mysterious and bewitched, the chink beneath running with a purple witch's brew which issued from the caldron of her sex. Now the light flashed to a livid red and as she rolled over, turning under his inquisitive, fondling hands, her plump buttocks rose like two full, blood-red moons, the hollow between a dark path of sin leading to the vortex. Now the light changed and the smooth planes of her back lay open under his mouth like a cool, green field, her long tresses of hair creeping like green vines over her shoulders as she turned her head.
He put his hands under her belly and pulled her up until she was crouching on her hands and knees. He knelt behind her, his member nosing between the columns of her thighs which quivered in the light like two large bottles of shimmering blue fire. As he rocked slowly back and forth, he clasped her buttocks, two blue satin hills, and his rod explored the hairy, dark-blue furrow beneath. Resting on her arms, she groaned softly, lowered her back and arched her hips in the air to expose the waiting niche. Inch by inch he eased into the secret tunnel, feeling the rings of muscles giving way to his relentless drive, the soft furrows and the contracting muscles relaxing and then clamping violently around him like snapping jaws as he touched bottom and was fully imprisoned within her. With the changing of the neon light, his hands guided her rotating hips and he slowly drew out, his penis emerging with sucking slurps like a large candle from a bowl of yellow custard. She thrust her pelvis back and sucked him into her again, and now they stayed pinioned together so that her body leaped and bucked around his sex like a speared fish. She cried "Now! Now! Now!"
"nd with a gigantic lunge, came just as he gave a final quiver against her womb and poured forth the hot stream of his love.
Exhausted, they fell on their sides, still latched together. They rested quietly for a few moments and then he pivoted her on the unsatisfied fulcrum of his sex until they were facing each other, their arms enwrapped. Lips meeting in a timeless kiss, their hips moved like a lazy pendulum as their desire once more climbed to the crest. Afterwards, the muscles of her vagina squeezed him for a few last spasms and then they fell into a dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER SIX
After George had slept with Susan several times his desire for her did not lessen, as she had hoped, but only seemed to grow stronger. When he visited Chicago during the next six months, he even talked about getting married, although in a very round-about-way, hedging his thoughts with "perhaps", "when we are older," "when you want to settle down." But she had no intention of marrying George. It was perhaps true that she liked him well enough for her fondness to blossom into love under the right circumstances, but she was too engrossed in Mike and her life which centered around him to really give much thought to George. When she saw him, they had a good time together; but when they were apart, she forgot all about him. For with Mike new and exciting experiences were always occurring.
She had become increasingly dependent upon Mike. At first she had thought she would work for him only until her debt had been repaid, but then the ease of her life and the large sums of money which she earned (even though they passed through her hands into Mike's pocket) soon made her forget all about looking for an ordinary job. And Mike took good care of her new clothes, their luxurious apartment which she redecorated, a plentiful supply of good food and drink-in return for which all she had to do was what she liked best : make love. That she got paid for it only made it better, for she was not only satisfying her physical desires, but also pleasing Mike with the money she brought back. For by now she had become known in money-laden circles and could pick and choose her lovers.
And she found exciting and stimulating the swift movement of her life, the contrasts between her various friends. With her lovers, one night she could dine and drink in the plushest restaurants and bars, sleep in beautiful apartments, meet well-known figures of public life, and with Mike the next night visit the smoky dives and cluttered apartments and studios of their Bohemian friends-artists, writers, prostitutes, dope pushers-where they would drink, smoke marijuana, laugh, eat prodigiously and freely make love with each other..
It was just after she had moved in with Mike that she had found out he was selling marijuana, cocaine and heroin. Although she had not yet tried the latter, she now smoked the former whenever she was with Mike and their friends, and had even brought Mike a few new, lucrative customers through her contacts with wealthy lovers.
One evening she went to the 96O Club where she was to meet Mike. He used the Club as one of the places where he sold narcotics to clients who knew he would be there almost every day in the early part of the evening, slipping them the a joints" of marijuana or capsules of heroin as they sat at the bar or at one of the small, dimly-lit tables.
Mike had not arrived yet so she sat down with a friend named AI who was also waiting for him. Al was a journalist who had quit his paper in order to write the novel he had been trying to start for seven years. Each day he would laboriously hack out fives pages of what he was convinced was priceless prose and each night he would get high on marijuana and then read them out loud to whomever was around, laughing uproariously at his own efforts, and toss them into the fireplace. If no one came to visit him at night, he would prowl around until he found one of his friends to drag home to listen to his reading But as he was liberal with his "joints" there were usually several people who would drop in on him and "going to blow at Al's readings" became almost standard procedure. That was how Susan had first met him : when she had been taken over by a mutual friend.
Now he was sitting hunched over the table, his thin, hawk-like face morose and bleak.
"What's the matter, Al?" Susan said as she sat down. "Haven't you turned out your five pages for tonight's reading?"
He looked at her without speaking, grunted, sighed and stared down at the table again.
"What's bugging you? Come on, tell Mommy."
He sighed again. "When's Mike coming? I'm out of joint." He looked up at her. "I don't hear any uproarious laughter. That was supposed to be a joke." He rubbed a bony hand over his face.
"He should be here soon. How about a drink on me?"
"Naw. Thanks anyway. You know I only drink coffee and milk." He dipped his finger in the spilled coffee on the table and began tracing designs, al don't have any vices."
She almost laughed in his face, but he looked so unhappy, she only smiled and then said, teasingly, "Why, Al, I'd heard that you were beginning to consider your writing as a vice."
"Yeah, I'm about ready to give up. I'm getting in a rut."
"What you need is a different system."
"l was thinkin' of buyin' a tape recorder and dictatin' my five pages a day." He smiled wryly. "Think of all the money I'd save. Then I wouldn't have to burn up fives pages every night, but could just switch it back and erase it."
Susan laughed. " That might work, but I've got a better idea."
"What?"
"Instead of writing when sober and reading when high, why don't you reverse it?"
He straightened up and looked at her, his face brightening. "Hey, that's an idea." He rubbed his chin. "By God, I think I'll do it. I'll get a lot of pot from Mike tonight and start in tomorrow! At least it can't be any worse than what I'm writing now." He leaned over and kissed Susan on the cheek. "My God, Susan, that's a real brain wave."
Just then Mike sat down beside them.
"Hello, you two," he said.
"Hi, darling," Susan said. "Al's starting in on a new routine."
"Yeah, fine," he said. "Look, baby, why don't you go back and talk with some of the gals 'til I get through here."
"Okay, Mike. See you, AI."
She got up, went back-stage and chatted briefly with some of the show girls, most of whom she knew were Mike's customers. Then she walked down to Torchy's dressing-room. Torchy was just pulling off her gloves and hanging up her coat.
"Hi there, honey," Torchy said. "How's tricks?"
"Okay." Susan sat down before the other dressing-table.
"How about some gin?" Torchy said, waving a hand toward a bottle.
Susan poured them both a drink. She had become good friends with Torchy, often sitting in her room and talking while Mike was busy outside, and before she had to go out with clients. Although her jealousy over Mike's attentions to other women had often prevented her from making friends with them, she knew Torchy and Mike had grown up together and now were nothing more to each other than old friends and therefore Susan liked and trusted her. Now she sat and watched Torchy as she undressed, gossiping about their friends and laughing about Al's new method for writing the great American novel.
When Torchy was nude, she turned her back to Susan and walked over to the wardrobe.
Susan stared at her white, plump buttocks and then burst out laughing. Right in the center of one juicy haunch was a bright pink halo of teeth marks.
"Torchy," she said, choking on the drink of gin she had just taken, chare you seen your rear?"
"Yeah, I know," she said. "Looks great, doesn't it? That new boy-friend of mine is so damn near-sighted he can't tell the difference between his steak and my rump." Nude, she stood with her back to the full-length mirror, peering over her shoulder at her buttocks.
"Think I'll work up a new act," she chuckled, a How about another set on the other haunch and one on each breast?" She began wriggling so that her breasts swirled in circles and her buttocks rotated massively, the pink marks jiggling up and down.
"The bites right around each nipple in a circle," Susan ""id.
"With the tits painted to look like a tongue."
"In luminescent paint."
"So when the lights go on-it's crazy! Four sets of choppers glowing and twirling!"
They both laughed.
"And they could bill you as "The Right-Size, Bite-Size Girl!'"
Torchy walked over to the dressing-table, saying pompously, "But in the meantime, the show must go on." She picked up some cake make-up and handed it to Susan. "Here. Cover it up for me, will you, honey?"
Susan began smoothing it over her pink indentations.
"By the way," Torchy said, "have you and Mike heard about the party?"
"What party?"
"Shoo-fly's thro win' a ball next Wednesday over at his pad. It'll be a real big blow, honey."
"Sounds crazy."
"It will be. It will be."
She handed back the make-up and Torchy sat down and began patting her face with cold cream. "By the way," she said, looking at Susan in the mirror, "I don't want to stick my nose where it has no business, but have you heard what Sal's up to?"
"No, why?" She had often wondered what had happened to her.
"You mean you've heard nothing since Mike kicked her out and she got fired here?"
"No, nothing."
"Well," Torchy said as she fluffed powder over her face and body, "she's livin' with a tough hood named Flip."
"So what?"
"So she's spreadin' lots of dirt about you and Mike. I figure she still must be in love with Mike and is still so mad and jealous she's tryin' to do him in. Anyway, this Flip is real gone on her and believes every word the bitch says, about how Mike used to beat her up, made her into a junky, got her pregnant so she had to have an operation which ruined her insides, and a lot of other stuff. So she's now tryin' to get this Flip to beat Mike up. The only trouble is that this Flip is such a moron he might do it, so you'd better warn Mike."
"Okay, I will. Thanks, Torchy."
"But don't worry about it, honey, it'll probably add up to nuthin'. Shell cool down."
"I hope so."
"She also swears shell get Mike to crawl back to her on his hands and knees."
Susan laughed. "He certainly won't do that. I can't imagine Mike crawling to anyone, much less Sal."
"Yeah. Maybe. But if he doesn't she says she'll screw him up."
"How?"
"Put the Narcotics Squad onto him, and do it so they'd have to haul him in. That could be bad, honey."
"Well, I'll tell him." She sat quietly, thinking, and then as she became angry her face flushed and her eyes became dark, elf I ever catch that bitch, I'll tear her apart!"
"Let me know, and I'll help you out," Torchy said dryly. She finished putting on her costume, patted Susan on the shoulder and went off to do her act.
Susan remained, morosely thinking over what Torchy had told her. At first, she had worried about Mike's pushing drugs. He had reassured her, and when she saw that nothing happened to him over the months, even though he had been doing it for several years, she accepted it as safe. She had even met a member of the Chicago Narcotics Squad at one of the parties where everyone had been high on marijuana and some had openly been using heroin. When she had asked Mike about him, he had only laughed and said he was an addict and was on the Narcotics Squad as it was the safest place to be. She wasn't worried about Flip beating Mike up because she knew Mike had been in enough fights and brawls to take care of himself. Nor was she worried that Mike would leave her to go back to Sal. But if Sal wanted to make a big row about Mike to the narcotics' agents, they'd have to arrest him.
Realizing that her worries weren't helping to solve anything and wanting to get over her depression, she reached in her purse and dug around until she found a small box. Inside were several joints. Although she knew it was dangerous to smoke at the Club, as in all public places, she nevertheless lit it up after shutting the door. She took a deep drag and relaxed as the smoke began to take effect. As usual, first the area around her eyes and cheeks became warm; then she felt pleasantly light-headed-her whole body distended and light-and her worries vanished to be replaced by a snug, warm feeling of contentment.
Through the closed door the beat of the music in the Club was muted and distant. She could recognize it as the same song that had been on the victrola the first time she had made love with Mike while high on marijuana, and she leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, dreamily thinking of what it had been like. The record had played over and over, neither of them wanting to interrupt the flow of their love-making to change it or turn it off. Together with the joints, which extended their sense of space and time, the same rhythm and melody, repeating itself continuously, made their love seem even longer and more drawn-out.
They had returned to their apartment late at night and, still high from smoking at a party, put on the record and decided to have a last cigarette. As the joint picked her up and carried her away, she had lain down on the bed, feeling as though her body was swirling around in circles, that it was floating lightly above the bed, and that she would be blown away if she didn't hang on to something.
Laughing, she cried out, "Oh Mike, hang on to me! I'm going to float right out of this world!" Her nerves sensitized to a keen edge, the touch of his hands pierced through her like a needle, sharply but slowly, as though the impulse of his touch leaped from nerve to nerve. At first they had rolled on the bed, laughing and giggling like a couple of children, and then they began to help each other to undress. Each button, each zipper, each sleeve to be drawn off, each wisp of clothing to be slipped away from her hot, tender flesh, seemed like a high barrier in a dream-land where all action was retarded and drawn out in slow-motion. Each movement of their bodies, each contact of their hands and lips, was a sweet agony of heightened, accentuated pleasure. Time was slowed down, and just as every note of the music seemed to go in one ear and be stretched out in a spiraling circle to infinity before the next one followed after it, so she could feel and enjoy each tingling nerve, each moving muscle.
She was aware of her body in a way she had never been before; her mind and brain scarcely seemed to function; she felt entirely liberated and uninhibited and, unchained from her thoughts and all ordinary distractions, she made love with the freedom of a sex-starved animal.
She longed for Mike's body, for almost anyone's body, so when he came into Torchy's dressing-room, she opened her eyes, stretched out her arms and said, a I was just thinking of you. Let's make love, darling..
He sniffed the air, closed the door and said brusquely, ignoring her outstretched arms, " Look, baby, you know damn well you shouldn't smoke in here, so wise up, huh? This joint's been raided before." He switched on the ventilating fan.
She looked at him quietly.
"Okay. Okay," he said, a don't look at me like that. What's bugging you anyway?"
"Don't be so damn nasty," she said. "If you want to know, I was worrying about you, but if you don't want me to give a good God-damn about you, I'll leave right now." She stood up, but the sudden movement made her head whirl and her body sway as though she were trying to walk on the deck of a rolling ship. She couldn't remain angry.
"Oh, Mike!" she laughed, "I'm so-o-o on!"
He grinned at her. "You sure are, honey." He put his arms around her. "Now come on. Torchy said you wanted to talk to me. Let's hear it before you have to leave."
"Leave?"
"Tonight's when you see Harris, isn't it?"
"Good Lord, I'd forgotten all about it."
"So what's up?"
She told him what Torchy had heard about Sal and her threats not only to have him beaten up by Flip but also to make trouble for him with the Narcotics Squad, omitting, however, Sal's boast that she would make him crawl back to her.
All Mike did was laugh.
"Flip? That idiot? Sure, I know him. He couldn't kill a mosquitoe with a machine gun."
"But Mike ... "
"Now don't worry, baby. Sal may be a bitch, but she isn't so stupid to try ratting on me. She knows what's good for her."
"But what if she does?" she said worriedly.
"I said don't worry! I know where she brag" out. I'll atop by and see her sometime. Sal's just a lot of hot air. Don't let it bug you." He kissed her. "And now you'd better get over to Harris's. I'll get you a cab."
"Okay, Mike. But take it easy, please."
"Sure." He took her arm. " Come on now, and for God's sakes, don't queer the deal with Harris. We may need him sometime."
It was snowing heavily outside. Mike hailed a cab, put her inside, gave the driver the address of Steve Harris's apartment and went back to the Club.
Susan sank back against the cushions. Well, if Mike wasn't going to worry about Sal, she wasn't, either. She wanted another joint, but didn't dare light it up in the taxi. Although she had been seeing Steve regularly for three months, she was never sure exactly what kind of a mood he would be in. A well-known and influential politician in Chicago, he worked both sides of the street, the shady as well as the sunny, and Susan knew he derived a good part of his wealth through crooked deals and protection payment from the underworld. He had a wife and family at his home in Lake Forest, but maintained an apartment in the city as well. She neither particularly liked him nor trusted him, but Mike had insisted she keep up the relationship in case they ever had need of his help. Then, too, he paid liberally for the nights she spent with him, besides giving her gifts.
"Susan, you look beautiful," Steve said when he opened the door. "As usual, darling."
He took both her hands in his, drew her into the foyer, kissed her and then held her away while he looked at her admiringly. "The always lovely Susan." On the shoulders of her fur coat and on her golden hair large flakes of snow still rested lightly, sparkling in the light. "You look like a blue-eyed snow angel."
She smiled at him sweetly, even though his sentimentality and sugary compliments often made her feel like biting the end of his nose-a large nose. But then he was a large man, tall and compact, well-preserved for his forty-eight years. "Yeah," Mike had said, "She keeps his weight down by skipping back and forth from one side of the law to the other."
As he took her coat he looked approvingly at the long-sleeved green wool dress, which fitted her tightly, molding her breasts and hips, its severity relieved only by the deeply cut V neckline through which her neck and chest gleamed the color of cafe au lait. "Looks wonderful on you. Have you got it all on?"
She nodded. They had gone shopping and he had brought her not only the dress, but new shoes, lingerie and a tight waist-cincher. She kicked her shoes off and curled up in an armchair, talking to him while he mixed a drink. A quiet evening at home with fire and slippers, she thought. Nuts!
When they went out together she always dressed in her most sophisticated gowns, but she knew he liked her to be informal when they were alone together. " I want you to look like you lived in a sealed band-box in a block of ice when other people are around," he had said, abut when we're alone, I like to know I've got a woman who pisses, craps and belches like a human being."
He brought her a drink and sat down on the couch. "Susan," he said, al hate to bring the subject up again, but won't you reconsider moving into an apartment? I've found a dandy not far from here ... "
Here we go again, she thought to herself. "Oh, Steve," she pouted, cnot again! Really, I'm sorry, but I like this arrangement as it is."
"I can give you a lot more than that guy .you're living with now."
"I know. But I don't want to settle down yet. Maybe later. Let's not argue, darling."
"Okay, Susie."
While he talked on she appeared to be listening intently, but her thoughts were far away. Until they got into bed, Steve's conversation, as he droned on in a gruff voice about things she was totally uninterested in, completely bored her.
He went over to the portable bar to get another drink and paused behind her chair. She could feel him standing behind her, gazing down at the top of her head. He leaned over. She tilted her head to look up at him. He was staring down the deep V of her neckline to where her breasts nestled snugly under the green wool. She took a deep breath and threw her chest out so they arched under the material like two soft, green hills. She reached up to draw his mouth down to hers. As they kissed, his hands slid over her chest, down to her waist and up again along the firm slats of her ribs until they found the opening of her neckline and creeped under to the warm, pliant dough of her breasts.
"Take your dress off," he whispered. While he watched, she slipped the dress over her head and stood before him, her legs wide apart, clad only in long, black stockings and the black waist-cincher. Extremely tight, it nipped in her waist like an hour-glass; above, it widened upward like a black heart into a half-brassiere which, supporting only the under-part of her breasts, cupped them so they lay like two golden moons, high and full; below, it belled outward to just below the curve of her belly and the top of her swelling buttocks. Lying as closely as a second skin, a skin of satin and black lace, it made her buttocks bulge like two large, plump apples, toasted a golden tan by the sun. Framed by the long, parallel lines of the garters which stretched down to meet the silky, black sheaths of her stockings, the curve of her mound seemed even more obese and prominent, her sex, covered by fine, blonde curls, more naked and mysterious.
When she turned and walked out of the room, her round thighs brushing hotly against each other, she could feel his eyes hungrily following her sinuous movements; and when she returned with a tube of cream, for she knew how he wanted to take her, he had already undressed and was waiting for her, his clothes in a heap on the floor, his body tense, his impatience revealed by his full erection. She walked toward him, her heavy mane of hair swaying down her back; and her breasts, resting lightly in the half-cup, jiggling like caramel custard.
He put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her down so she was kneeling on the floor before him. Without otherwise touching him, she began licking his member, at first gently lapping all around the hard cap with her wet tongue. As he moaned softly, she took the heart-shaped, tumescent end full into her mouth and her lips clamped firmly around it while her tongue ran in hot, moist circles over its smooth surface. He reached down and, putting his hands under her armpits, lifted her up and carried her to an overstuffed chair. "Kneel on the arms," he said. She balanced her bent knees on the ends of the arms and let her head and torso fall downward toward the seat. Her tawny buttocks were thrust upward, bulging, plump, massive, pushed outward by the tight girdle. like a path separating two hills, between her orbs the furrow curved down, lined with soft, short hairs and broken only by the pink, crenelated bud of her after-hole. With her head on the seat of the chair, she looked back through the wide-spread arch of her legs and saw him standing behind her, not touching her.
Suddenly she felt two slaps, one on each buttock, so sharp and stinging that she gasped with pain. Although her body quivered with the shock, she retained her position and waited tensely for the next blows. Instead, she unexpectedly felt the light, gentle pressure of his lips kissing the bright pink imprints which burned and prickled. Just as she was beginning to relax, however, he slapped her again, this time so hard that her head was crushed up against the back of the chair and tears came to her eyes. Before she had time to recover, the stinging slaps fell again and she writhed and trembled and began to sob. But he murmured soothingly and lightly Caressed her smarting rump with his cool hands, Until she thought he was through tormenting her and she stopped crying and began to purr with pleasure. With his tongue he licked up the length of her furrow, pausing at the small, pink bud to feel its soft ridges while he held the melons of her buttocks apart.
Expecting that he would now take her, she moved back on the chair, thrusting her hips upward to present them more' fully, and rotated them slowly and massively under his hands around the pinion of his tongue. He drew Hack, but instead of his nudging rod, she felt a aeries of painful slaps, then his kisses and again the hard blows, all in quick succession. She crouched on the chair, crying with agony, gasping and choking on the salty tears which dripped down onto the seat, her whole body tense and trembling. Through the wet veil of tears she saw him rubbing the cream on his member and she tightened her buttocks in expectation of the first sudden pain as he forced his way into her. Holding her firmly, with one hand clamped over her belly, the other on her mound, his fingers pressing heavily between the lips of her sex, he brushed his rod up and down the path and then pressed the slippery head against the bud. At first her muscles were unyielding, but as he slowly" forced the head in, the momentary pain passed and the tight ring slackened and opened to receive him. Sliding further with each short stroke, her belly felt more and more distended. The driving rod and the searching caress of his fingers soon aroused her until she was eagerly rocking her hips, propelled by the mounting urgency of her passion. And then she felt him spew forth within her, his member jerking with spasms and, with a wild cry, her whole body contracted in the final burst of her orgasm.
Her eyes closed, she collapsed into the chair as he withdrew, and lay there in a limp heap. He picked her up and carried her into the bedroom where he laid her gently on the bed. The sheets were cool on her still smarting buttocks. He quietly unzipped the tight girdle and slipped it off. The mattress sank as he lay down beside her and she turned to him, her mouth half-open, her lips wet, and waited for his kiss.
When she woke the next morning, Steve had already left. Under the clock on the bedside table was the same amount of money he gave her each time she came plus an extra hundred dollar bill. She got up, showered, dressed and tucked the money into her wallet. Smiling to herself, she put the hundred dollar bill in a separate compartment. For several weeks now Steve had been tipping her extra, as though to say "if you move into an apartment by yourself, you'll have all this and a lot more."
She had debated whether or not to tell Mike, but had decided against it, keeping the extra money for herself. Although she knew he would be furious if he found out, lately he had not been very generous in giving her spending money and she was beginning to resent the fact that everything she earned disappeared into his pocket. Usually she had purchased clothes with the extra cash. Mike had questioned her about them, but he had seemed to be satisfied with her explanation that Steve had brought them-at least up until now.
CHAPTER SEVEN
By the time Mike and Susan arrived at Shoo-fly's apartment for the party it was well after midnight and fifteen or twenty people were already there, with more arriving as the hours went by and the musicians, strippers and other late workers finished their jobs for the night.
Susan had attended Shoo-fly's parties before and knew what to expect. But each time she entered his apartment it was with anticipation and the certain knowledge that there would be plenty of marijuana to smoke, plenty of other drugs if one wanted them, plenty of good food to eat when one became ravenously hungry after smoking and plenty of people ready to indulge in sex if one was in the mood. And Shoo-fly's apartment was luxuriously furnished for everything.
A man in his thirties, he had a sizeable private income and did absolutely nothing in the way of work, but liked to associate with those who did. Not people who labored from nine to five at regular job", but anyone who did something out-of-the ordinary, anyone who could be loosely called "Bohemian." Although he was sometimes slightly condescending, all were more amused by his antics than anything else. And he was always good for a loan, with no questions asked, and periodically gave wonderful parties. Even though he preferred men to women, often saying that the only good thing about females was that half the time they gave birth to males, he never tried to molest men after they had once given him a definite brush-off. He would just shrug his shoulders and say, "Well, no hard feelings, old dear. But do come around to all my parties and bring a girl-friends" and then, with a laugh, "and any of their old boy-friends for me."
Usually he had some new gadget to display. This time, as he opened the door for them with a flourish and a deep bow, they smelled the scent of a fresh perfume, so strong that it was even detectable through the sweet smell of marijuana smoke.
"Mike! Susan!" he cried. "Come on in. This is going to be a real ball."
He closed the door behind them. Dressed in a purple smoking jacket, white shirt and lavender string tie, with a wide, black sash around his waist cinching in tight, lavender slacks, he looked like an advertisement of expensive sin. He always wore dark glasses. Susan had wondered why, until one night while sitting next to him and studying his profile, she noticed that his eyes were over-large and bulged wetly outward like a startled fish. She had shivered with distaste and wondered if he kept them on even while making love.
Now she wrinkled up her nose, sniffing the air aa he helped them take off their coats. "Pot I recognize, Shoo-fly, but what's the other? Incense?"
"He's probably got a thousand dollars worth of flowers in there," Mike laughed, "each petal coated with Spanish Fly and when the clock strikes two we'll have a petal-eating contest."
"Hey, man, that's a crazy idea! Next time it's on!" Shoo-fly said. Turning to Susan, he added, "Susie, dearie, you know we had incense last time. Nope, old Shoo-fly's always good for something new. Come see."
He waved them ahead of him through the hall and into the living-room. In his hand was an intricately hand-carved pipe with a two-foot long stem and a tiny bowl which he had had specially made for him in North Africa for smoking marijuana and hashish.
The living-room was almost thirty feet long, the tall windows heavily draped in red velvet and the floor covered with a thick Turkish rug. Low chairs and couches were scattered about the room and on the floor were many soft, three-foot square pillows. Dimly lit by indirect lighting and hazy with smoke, Susan at first had trouble recognizing any of the people lying about on the couches and stretched lazily on the pillows. From a series of loud speakers hidden about the room the cool, intricate melodies of Gerry Mulligan weaved above the desultory talk and frequent bursts of laughter. On low, squat tables, scarcely a foot high, were placed bowls and plates of food.
"No flowers, no incense," Susan said. "Well?"
Shoo-fly laughed delightedly. "Perfume on all the light bulbs! Breaks more damn bulbs, but isn't it the absolute end?"
Hike glanced at her, amused, and as if to say, "My Cod, what a freak."
" But come, come, dears, let's laugh and let's cry, let's smoke and get high!" He steered them across the room toward a bar in the corner. "No hard liquor, but plenty of wine and plenty of what you want most. Here, meet my new mistress." As the door-bell rang, he turned away, saying over his shoulder, "Arnold, dear, take care of them, will you?"
Behind the bar sat an effete young man with long, blonde hair curling down almost to his shoulders.
"What ll you have?" he said in a crooning voice, gazing admiringly at Mike.
"Not you, at any rate," Mike said.
They helped themselves to a pile of joints. Behind them someone yelled. "Hey, Mike! Susan! Come here!" Behind the waving arm was Al, stretched comfortably on a pillow, one hand supporting his head and the other holding the stub of a joint. Beside him was Torchy, sitting cross-legged on the floor, her full, red skirt fanned out around her and her long, black hair cascading loosely down her back.
More guests kept arriving and soon the room was full of people, some moving back and forth, talking to friends, but as they gradually became high, most settled down in small groups, talking slowly and laughing uproariously at almost everything. As the warm feeling of contentment and peace stole over her, Susan lay back, resting her head on Al's lap and listened to their talk. Their voices came from a far-distant land, and although she looked as if she were asleep, her eyes closed, her face relaxed, she was aware of everything they were saying.
They were teasing Pneumatic Mary, a fifty-year old ex-stripper, ex-prostitute, who was now thin and bony. She always carried an inflatable rubber pillow in her purse which she blew up with much wheezing and puffing and used to cushion her bony bottom when she had to sit on a hard chair.
"But Mary, when you're on, what do you need that pillow for? You're floating two feet above the ground, anyway!"
"Aw, fuck you," she said.
"How'd you start usin' it?"
" You know damn well," she snorted. " And if you ever have piles like I had 'em, you'll do the same."
"Man, I dig that Mulligan," Al murmured.
"Yeah, when I'm on, it really gets in my bones," Torchy said. "like each damn corpuscle doin' a slow grind."
"Hey, look at Mike takin' those seven foot steps."
They all laughed and Susan opened her eyes to watch Mike as he weaved cautiously across the room toward the bar, placing each foot with exaggerated care. On the far side of the room she saw some of their friends whom she knew were junkies. Most of them were sitting or lying down, somewhat dull and listless, as though they were having a horrible time at the party. But she knew that in reality they were in a state of pure pleasure. For a short while before she had seen them returning from the kitchen where they had been cooking up some heroin and injecting themselves.
She felt Al's hand stroking her hair. He whispered, a Let's go on back to the room. Torchy's hot to go, too."
Just the thought of the room at the back of the apartment, especially decorated by Shoo-fly, made a tight knot of desire swirl in her stomach. He helped her to her feet and pulled Torchy up and the three of them stood clutching each other, trying to get their balance, laughing loudly. Al reached over and slid Susan's low-cut blouse off one shoulder so it lay in a curve, half revealing the soft swell of her breast. "A preview of coming attractions," he said.
They walked delicately between the chairs and pillows, stumbled over a few legs and finally reached the door to the hall. In the doorway Shoo-fly and Arnold were having an argument. His hair rumpled over his forehead, Arnold was staring sullenly at Shoo-fly who was hissing angrily, "If you do that again, I'll kill you!"
"But I wasn't doing anything," Arnold wailed.
"Don't give me that! I saw you giving him the big feel, and if you do that again, I'll ... I'll ... " Seeing the three of them, he smiled grimly, a Just a domestic fight, dears." He peered at them more closely. " Ah, I see you're about to fly down to my padded room!" He looked at Arnold and then took him by the arm. "Come, darling, let's join the queers."
"Wait a minute, where's Mike?" Susan said
"Relax, dear," Shoo-fly said, "he's already there making it with, even I must say, a delectable little red-headed wench."
A flicker of jealously passed like a cold, steel blade through her stomach, but only for a moment. She couldn't bear the thought of his secretly making love to someone else, although she herself made love all the time to many different men, and it was only in a group orgy, where they were both participants, that she could tolerate it. More than that, then she liked it and derived a vicarious pleasure from seeing him penetrate another woman.
They walked down the hall until they came to a closed door, painted a bright red. They opened it and found themselves in a small anteroom which was so cluttered with clothes-hanging from hooks, lying on the floor, flung over the back of a chair-that it looked like a bargain basement in a department store. Through a heavy red velvet curtain leading to the room beyond seeped the sweet smell of marijuana smoke and incense and the sound of subdued talk, occasional laughter and unidentifiable slurps, slaps and cries. All five quickly undressed, scarcely looking at each other in their eagerness to get into the other room.
At first glance the dimly-lit room looked like a steam bath-warm and close with the smell of smoke, sex and perspiring bodies-but on second glance, more like a scene from a bacchanalian dream. For through the haze the white naked flesh of men and women gleamed dully; some were lying quietly, watching the others, but most were engaged in prolonged love-making, in groups of twos and threes, their twisting, moving limbs interweaving in the obscure light like white snakes, pale and opalescent. There seemed to be more people there than there actually were, for the ceiling of the room was low and covered entirely with a mirror, thus affording a clear, exotic view of everyone in the room to anyone who was lying on his back, smoking or resting. The walls were entirely black, relieved only by a small niche which ran around the room a few feet above the floor, a convenient repository for ashtrays, joints, wine, or anything else. Completely bare of ordinary furniture, the floor was simply carpeted with a thick, black mat. Scattered about were numerous pillows and cushions as well as two fur throw-rugs, one white, the other black.
A man lying exhausted just inside the curtain looked up when they entered. "A-ha," he said. "New meat!"
"Pray do not disturb yourselves," Shoo-fly said contently, waving his long pipe at the crowd. "Really a most admirable scene. Come, Arnold, do not frolic with the dullards, but let us content ourselves in our own corner."
Arnold followed him sullenly and, stepping carefully over the occupants, who took no notice of them, they made their way to an empty corner. Shoo-fly was still wearing his dark glasses.
Torchy, moaning softly, her long, black hair flowing out behind her, made a direct bee-line for a group of three, two men and a woman, who were making love on the other side of the room. She dropped down beside them and. without a word, began caressing and kissing the nearest body, seemingly not caring whether it was a man or a woman.
Susan lay down on the black mat near the door, her arm propped on a pillow. Al hesitated and sat down beside her. She liked to smoke another joint before actively participating, having found that watching others making love while high, and before she, herself, had entered in, aroused her to such an intense degree of anticipation and lust that she felt like one tingling mass of erotic nerve-ends. And she also liked to locate Mike and see to whom he was making love. bat more oat of curiosity than jealousy. Not being able to see him because of intervening bodies, she looked up at the ceiling. And there he was, reflected in the mirror. Lying flat on his back, his eyes closed, he looked as if he were in a coma. His arms and legs were spread-eagled on the floor. His sex rose up, stiff and tall. Two women were crouched beside him; the one with red-hair, cropped close in a feathery urchin cut, slender waisted with small, pointed breasts and large, ripe hips, was licking up one leg, slowly and carefully lapping closer and closer to his sex; the other, a large, full-blown blonde, with pendulous but firm breasts, and a belly which looked like a bowl of spongy, white dough, was licking her way down his chest. Watching them, Susan could almost feel their wet tongues on her own body, the small strokes of moist licks, the warm pressure of moving lips tantalizingly creeping with relentless and agonizing slowness.
As she dragged on her cigarette she looked at a group of four. Except for Torchy's long black hair it was impossible to distinguish one body from another, so entangled were their arms and legs, but she could see a slim rod moving in and out of someone's heaving sex and hear a long series of gasps and groans.
She stirred restlessly on the mat, feeling the familiar ache of desire flowing outward from her belly until it became unbearable. She turned toward Al, but he was already half-lying on top of a girl, kissing her deeply.
She rolled over and, rising on her hands and knees, fell on top of them, her breasts rubbing against Al's back as she squirmed over his hard body. Someone seized her legs and unceremoniously twisted her over on her back, her legs spread wide, and a rough. mouth clamped over her sex, his bristly beard scratching her tender inner thighs as he tongued the already wet grooves. Over her face hovered a breast and she reached up and pulled the girl's body down, her mouth searching for and finding the hard, rubbery nipple which she sucked and chewed while the soft mass of the breast spread over her face. Meanwhile a hand was kneading her own breast and flicking the aching nipple back and forth. Completely out of her mind, she began bucking her hips, wanting a hard, driving male organ and when she felt one sliding deeply into her dripping tunnel, she arched her back and cried out in a long wail. The breast fell away from her face. Opening her eyes, she saw a fully erected member in front of her. Eagerly she sucked it into her mouth, holding the taut, thin buttocks behind it between her hands, guiding his rocking hips until he came, the salty, thick fluid spurting like a fountain against the roof of her mouth, almost choking her. Rotating on her hips, her mound smacking against the pelvis of her partner, she came quickly. But when he withdrew she was still unsatisfied and, with a gasp of anger, rolled over blindly until she felt someone's hot flesh, sticky and slimy with sex juice and perspiration. Her hands tried to grasp the slippery body. She rolled on top of it, straddled someone's waist and frantically ground her mound against the hard hip. But she was pulled off and another hard rod lunged into her while a pair of soft, female lips closed over her own and a searching tongue explored the hidden crevices of her mouth. Perspiration trickled in rivulets between her breasts. Hot and panting, she felt like one liquid mass of molten lava and the flesh of others under her groping, caressing hands as equally slippery with sweat and sperm. After she came, she fell back onto the cushions, almost in a faint, her mind blank, her body exhausted.
When she opened her eyes, she looked up into the mirror. Most of the others were lying as worn-out as she, but in the corner were Shoo-fly and Arnold, curled together like two embryos, sucking each other off. Shoo-fly still had his dark glasses on.
On the white fur rug Mike and the pert red-head were lying side-by-side, their legs intertwined, taking drags from the same joint.
Feeling hungry, she got up, dressed and started back to the living-room. In the hall she met Pneumatic Mary, who was leaning against the wall, a peaceful, blank look on her face. At first she didn't seem to recognize Susan, but as she brushed past her, she said, "You look a little frazzled, kid. Just been back in Shoo-fly's joy room?"
Susan nodded. "I no sooner get satisfied in one way than I'm hungry in another."
"Meaning pot? Everyone's completely zonked in there, one way or another," she said, indicating the living-room.
"No, meaning food."
"What you need is a real pick-me-up."
Susan smiled. "What I need is a real lay-me-down. Some food, some pot, some music"
"When you goin' to try the real thing? How about now?"
"Try what?"
"H. Come on." Mary took her by the arm. "Come on in the kitchen and I'll fix you up. It's the greatest."
"Well, maybe," Susan hesitated. "Which way?"
"A shot's the best, but you can sniff it, if you want. Come on."
She started off for the kitchen and Susan followed her, not yet sure whether or not to try heroin. But as she had wanted to see what it was like for some time, she finally decided she might as well.
Mary took a small capsule of heroin out of her pocket, opened it, sprinkled the white powder on a mirror, divided it into several portions and brushed most of it onto another one. She handed the mirror with the minute amount of powder on it to Susan.
"Here. Now stop up one nostril and sniff this in the other."
Susan took it. "I've heard this usually makes you sick the first time."
"Yeah, sometimes. But there's always the first time for everything, kid, and after that you're ridin' high."
Putting her finger against one nostril, Susan held the mirror up to her nose and sniffed deeply. "Now the other one," Mary said. She obediently sniffed again. Nothing happened. "Here, have a bit more," Mary said.
Then it hit her, much more suddenly and stronger than marijuana ever had, but at the same time a horrible feeling of nausea churned her stomach. She sat down on the floor, her head between her knees, trying to fight off the waves which flowed up her throat from her stomach. Pneumatic Mary hovered around, chirping like a bird, talking about the pleasures of heroin, but Susan felt so sick the sound of her voice grated on her nerves.
Finally she groaned, "Mary, for God's sakes, either shut up or get out of here."
"Okay. Okay," Mary said. She took a couple sniffs of H and left.
Weak and dizzy, Susan hauled herself to her feet, staggered over to the sink and threw up, and then sat down on the floor. When the nausea had passed she felt completely high and wonderfully light and happy. She lay on the cool linoleum floor for awhile and then slowly got up and wandered, as though in a trance, into the living-room where she collapsed on a cushion.
Around her some of the others were talking and laughing, but she took no notice of them. She was completely content to be alone with her thoughts and the supreme bliss of her body. Time ceased to exist and she had no idea how many hours passed, but finally she went to sleep.
She woke up when someone shook her shoulder. It was Al. She groaned and looked up at him, her eyes scarcely open.
"Come on, Susan. I'm going to take you home," she moaned, closed her eyes and went back to sleep.
He shook her again. "Hey, come on. Time to split. The birds are singin'. "
"For God's sakes, Al, leave me be," she wailed. "I'll go home when Mike does."
"He's already gone."
"Huh?" Surprised, she opened her eyes.
"Yeah. Come on, I'll take you homo He pulled her to her feet.
"But where did Mike go?" she said. The shock of finding he had gone without her woke her up quickly.
"Couple hours ago. Left with that chick."
" Which chick?"
"That red-head he was makin' it with."
Susan looked at him, unbelief in her eyes. Mike had never before gone off with another woman when she was around. Pangs of jealousy twisted inside her and for a moment she was afraid she'd be sick again.
Feeling somewhat numb, she silently followed Al and waited while he found their coats. Although there were still a few people in the apartment, Shoo-fly was nowhere in sight. They left. Outside, the cold winter wind woke her up completely. As they walked down the street, trying to find a taxi, the buoyancy and happiness of being high vanished and she felt only depressed and extremely tired. Perhaps Mike would' be home. But when Al left her at the door and she went in, only silence and the stale odor of tobacco smoke greeted her. Feeling more and more depressed and wondering when Mike would be back, she drew the blinds against the morning sun and went to bed.
She was wakened late that afternoon by the ringing of the telephone. It was Al, saying he wanted to tell her something he preferred not to discuss over the telephone and asking her to meet him at the 96O Club. When she asked if it was about Mike, for he had not yet returned, he said "No." She dressed quickly, grabbed a bite to eat, and ran out to find a taxi. But when she walked into the Club, Al had not yet arrived, so she went backstage after asking the bartender to tell Al where she was.
There was hardly anyone backstage and the door of Torchy's dressing-room was closed. She knocked once and then opened it.
Torchy wasn't there. But Sal was. Both were equally startled at seeing the other so unexpectedly and they stared at each other for a moment without moving or speaking. Sal was sitting on a chair, her heavy thighs crossed, one hand, holding a cigarette, arrested in mid-air.
Recovering first, Susan said, "Thought Torchy was here,"
"nd started to back out the door.
Sal jumped up and said, "Wait!" She swayed slightly and sat down heavily. "Now that you're here, come on in."
Susan looked at her warily. Sal was either high or drunk, but judging from the thick smell of gin in the room and the almost empty bottle on the table, it was undoubtedly the latter. She walked into the room and closed the door, standing with her back against it.
"Well, what do you want?" she said coldly.
"My dear pal Susan. So nice to see you again. So inexperienced, so sweet, who has no eyes for Mike." Sal laughed, loudly and drunkenly. "Okay. Cut it out. I'm leaving." She put her hand on the knob.
"No! Wait!" Sal's loud, crazy laugh ended in a series of hiccoughs. "Stay awhile."
Susan remained motionless, staring at her with disgust.
" Here, have a drink." Sal leaned over, reaching for the bottle, and almost fell off her chair.
Susan shook her head. "No, thanks," she said brusquely.
"Aw, come one, honey," Sal said, "after all, we've got something in common to drink to."
"We have absolutely nothing in common."
"WelI," Sal said, shrugging her shoulders, "at least pour me a slug, will you? The damn bottle keeps moving around."
Susan walked over, splashed some gin in a glass and handed it to Sal. " Here," she said. Sal took it with a shaking hand. Seeing her up close, Susan was shocked to find that Sal looked ten years older, the skin on her face dead-white and pasty, her hair, once an electric and vibrant red, now limp and dull. She began to feel a little sorry for her.
"Look, Sal, don't you think it's about time you went home? I'll get one of the boys to take you ... "
"Don't tell me what to do," she interrupted angrily, looking up at her with eyes dull and blood-shot.
"Have it your own way, then. Good-bye!" Susan started for the door.
"I'm waitin' for Mike to drive me home," Sal said, a smug smile on her face.
Susan paused and turned around. "Don't be stupid. Mike wouldn't even drive you to the undertakers."
"And that's all you know about it, dearie," Sal said, glancing up at her craftily.
"What do you mean by that?"
"Just what I said. You aren't as smart as you think you are."
"Meaning what?"
"Wouldn't you like to know, though!"
Susan took a step toward her. " Just what are you insinuating?"
"What's the matter? Afraid Mike will leave you?" Seeing Susan's flush, she laughed again. "Or has he already?"
"You filthy, drunken bitch," Susan blurted out angrily, cat least Mike will never go back to you!"
Sal's face became cold and bard. "Don't call me a filthy bitch," she said slowly, al can still take any man away from you, you country cow, and especially Mike. And I know how to do it!"
Susan stepped closer, her face still flushed, but now with anger. "Okay, Sal," she said, "I've heard the dirty lies you've been spreading and your stupid threats. And if you rat on him I'll tear you to pieces. So keep away from him, see?"
Sal half-rose from her chair. "You're tell-in' me to keep away from him?" she screamed, a after what you've done, you stinkin' cunt, after you ... " She suddenly raised her arm and splashed the gin at Susan.
The liquor hit her in the face and ran down the front of her coat. She stepped back' in surprise and raised her hands, wiping her eyes, so when Sal leaped at her, she was caught off-balance and fell to the floor with Sal on top of her. Cursing and sobbing, Sal was like a crazy woman, her clawing hands scratching at Susan's face and pulling her hair. Susan struggled frantically, vainly trying to ward off Sal's blows and free herself, and they rolled around on the floor, both screaming, their arms flailing, like two fighting cats.
The door burst open, banged against the wall and Al and the stage-hand rushed in. They dragged them apart. Susan leaned against Al, panting and gasping. Sal squirmed wildly in the other man's arms, trying to get back at Susan. It was only when he slapped her sharply on the face that she quieted down and then burst into tears.
"Come on, let's get out of here," Al said and steered Susan rapidly out the door. They left by the rear exit and stopped in the alley until Susan had recovered her breath and her composure. Then they walked out to the sidewalk and down the street to another bar.
With a couple of Scotches lying warmly in her stomach, she soon felt better and asked him why he had called her. "If it's anything about Sal, I don't want to hear it. I've had enough of Sal for one evening."
"No, it's about Harris," Al said.
"Steve?" She looked at him, completely surprised. "What about Steve?"
"Nothing much, really. Just a rumor I've heard. I still see a lot of my old newspaper pals and they told me about it."
"What, for heaven's sakes?"
"Well, it's really more than a rumor, to be exact. Bob knows the guy and says he's already started on it."
"Al," she said impatiently, "will you please stop mumbling and tell me what's going on?"
"There's a guy named Joe Flanagan on the 'Evening Herald'. According to Bob, he's a young squirt of a cub reporter who doesn't know his ass from his ear. Anyway, he got the bright idea that if he did a big expose on his own and presented it to his editor, all written and nicely tied up with a red ribbon, he'd be the fair-haired boy."
"Expose?"
"Yeah. Expose of Harris. And you know as well as I do that there's enough dirt to be dredged up about Harris and his crooked deals, in and out of politics, to raise a hell of a stink."
"But would they publish it? After all, Steve's a big guy in town."
"Yeah, they might. Lou Morgan, the editor, would never dare order an investigation himself, or it'd be his neck. But the trouble is their circulation has fallen lower than a stripper's morals and if he were presented with the stuff, all wrapped up, he might just print it. After all, once the stuff was out, the public would probably get so aroused they'd demand a full investigation and if Harris was convicted, Morgan would be riding high and so would his circulation."-
"Yes, I see," Susan said thoughtfully.
"Thought you might want to tip Harris off. Not that I have any burning love for that bastard, but after all, you'd be dragged in for your share of the publicity, too, as his A-number-one girlfriend."
She looked at him, startled. This aspect of it hadn't occurred to her.
"My God!" she said, "I hadn't thought of that! I'll call him up right away." She got up from the table and went back to the telephone booth.
Five minutes later she returned.
"He's getting ready to go out," she said, "but I told him it was important so he said to come right over."
"Good. Take it easy, kid."
"What's that guy's name again?"
"Joe Flanagan, on the 'Evening Herald'. "
"Okay. And thanks a lot, Al."
She picked up her gloves, kissed him lightly on the cheek and left.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Steve came to the door in his bathrobe. "Just going to shower and shave," he said. "I haven't got much time. Come on in the bathroom. You can tell me whatever it is while I shave."
Susan followed him into the bathroom and, while he lathered his face, perched on the edge of the bathtub and told him what Al had said.
He didn't say anything for a few minutes after she had finished.
He wiped his face with a towel and said, a And you say this Joe Flanagan has already started on it?"
"That's what Al says."
He looked at her thoughtfully. He said, "Well, I guess that's the end of Joe Flanagan. Thanks for the tip-off, honey." He leaned over and kissed her.
"But aren't you worried? What are you going to do? You look so cool, Steve!"
"What do you want me to do? Fly out the window? Don't worry, Susie, this has happened one way or another more times than I care to remember." He pulled her to her feet, held her head between his hands and chuckled as he saw her worried eyes.
"It's all in a day's work, honey, so don't worry."
"But what are you going to do?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "Very simple. Get him fired. And I imagine he'll soon find himself buying a one-way ticket out of Chicago."
"Oh."
"Now I've got to shower, Susie." He ran his hands down her arms, a I wish we had time to ... " He stopped and then began to undo the buttons which ran from the high neckline of her dress down to the hem.
"Steve, what are you doing?" she protested.
"You're about to take a shower."
"Me?"
Steve laughed. "Yes. You." He slipped the dress off. Putting his arms around her his hand fumbled at the hook of her brassiere. "My God, you do it," he said.
She laughed moved away from him, quickly unhooked her brassiere and stepped out of her panties. Against the hard, cold white of the tiles her golden skin looked even more soft and glowing. She crushed her body against his terry-cloth bathrobe and rubbed her breasts and belly back and forth against the nubbly material.
Under his robe she could feel the firm jut of his erection driving into her belly. She reached under the overlapping material and clutched the staff in her hand, sliding her hand up and down its length and fondling the two heavy sacs. Untwisting the belt, she pushed aside the robe and snuggled up against his bare chest, purring like a kitten. She rubbed her face against the coarse hair, took a biteful between her teeth and gently pulled.
"Come on, you vixen," he said.
He took off his robe. They both stepped into the shower and he turned on the water. She screamed as the jets of water, feeling like hot needles, stung her flesh and clouds of steam rose above their heads. He adjusted the taps until it was comfortably warm. The water, cascading over her head, drenched her hair until it lay plastered to her skull and the long blonde ringlets became dark snakes sticking to her back. Over her face it poured and down her shoulders, her high pointed breasts diverting the stream, one rivulet running in the valley between, the rest falling in two waterfalls from the pink tips. It gathered in a small pool in the indentation of her navel and fanned out over her belly. The moss of her sex darkened, the wetness gluing it into fine threads over her mound so its full fatty swell was apparent, and from the hair-ends, gathered into a small, pointed beard, a steady river of crystal water dropped between her legs. As she momentarily moved aside, away from the force of the shower, drops of moisture clung to the down on her thighs and covered her tawny breasts like sparkling jewels.
Laughing, she looked up at him, her white teeth glistening between wet, red lips, her eyelashes blackened and stuck together in sweeping points as though she were wearing heavy mascara. He pulled her back under the shower and pressed his mouth to her breast, then held it open under the waterfall so it ran into his mouth. She filled her mouth with water and as he raised his head, squirted it right in his face. Picking up the soap, he lathered her body and then his own and crushed her against his chest, their hands slipping and sliding over their wet, soapy bodies, the water forming a pool between her squashed breasts.
Feeling his member beginning to enlarge again, she squatted and took it into her mouth, caressing its end with her tongue and sucking in the water which ran down its length, until it became large and stiff. He put his hands under her armpits and lifted her up. When she had wrapped her legs around his hips and put her arms around his neck, he transferred his hands to her buttocks and pulled her closer, like a mitten drawing her opening over his wet organ. like a butterfly on a pin, she rocked back and forth, guided by his hands digging into the meat of her haunches. Sputtering and gasping under the shower, they kissed and licked the drops from each other's faces.
Afterwards, she unwrapped her legs and slid down off his sex. They remained in each other's arms for a moment, kissing deeply. Then he reached behind her and turned off the taps.
She left immediately as he had to go to a party.
While making love to Steve, she had forgotten all about Mike, but now she began to worry again. Undoubtedly he had spent the night and the day with the pert red-head. As she imagined him penetrating her, she became jealous and then afraid he might leave her, as he had left Sal for her. Hoping he would be home, but not really daring to believe it, she rushed into the apartment and then stood stock-still as she entered the living-room and found him calmly sitting in a chair reading a magazine.
He looked up placidly from his magazine, laid it down and walked over to her. As if nothing had happened, he tried to kiss her, but she turned her head aside. She wanted to feel his arms about her, but her jealousy held her back and made her want to hurt him as he had hurt her.
Ignoring the rebuff, he fingered her wet hair and said, a What happened to you? You look like you've been swimming in the lake."
His nonchalance infuriated her and she twisted away from his hand. With her back to him she slipped off her coat and threw it angrily on a chair. "I've been doing the same thing I suppose you've been doing the past twenty-four hours," she said in a tight voice.
His black eyes narrowed. "Come off it," he said brusquely, a So what if I do sleep with someone else? You got any complaints?" He stood in the middle of the room with his arms folded.
She turned and faced him. "Now I suppose you're ready to turn me in like a used car for a newer model. A red one!" she snapped.
"Jesus Christ!" he snorted, a What in the hell got up your ass? One would think you were the world's purest virgin!"
"I was until you got hold of me!" she said. She knew she was acting like an idiot, but couldn't stop; she wanted to fall into his arms and cry out her misery on his shoulder, to have him comfort and reassure her, but her pride and confused emotions, as well as his cold stare, wouldn't permit her to make the first move. "That's a damn lie and you know it," he shouted.
"I suppose you want to kick me out like you did Sal"
"Oh, for God's sakes," he said disgustedly, waving his arms in the air, "I come home for a little peace and quiet and all I find is a raving maniac" He stepped toward her. " Look, baby," he said coldly, "if you don't like the way I operate, you can leave right now. I'm boss around here, tee?"
"All right," she said furiously, "I will leave! At least Steve can be decent. He'll take care of me a lot better than you ever did!"
Mike snorted. "That ape?" He laughed. "Okay, okay. Go ahead," he said calmly.
"Well, I will! You don't know it, but he's already asked me to move into an apartment.
"Fine. You'll make a great couple and I'm sure you'll be happy together," he said mockingly.
She glared at him, speechless with anger.
"But before yon go, you might give me the money he gave you tonight," he said.
"like hell I will! You greedy bastard! Money, money, money. That's all that grasping, stupid head of yours can think of. Money!"
"You've gotten plenty of it back, so come off all that rot." He held out his hand. "And hand over the dough."
" And do you want to know something else, yon stupid prick? Oh, you think you're so smart, you do." She laughed wildly. " Believing like a damn fool everything I tell you. Where do you think I've been getting all these new clothes?"
"I was under the impression Harris had bought them," he said dryly.
" Well, you're perfectly right. But only half-right!.
"What do yon mean?" He walked toward her, his face hard and menacing and grabbed her arm. "Have yon been holding out on me? Have you?" He twisted her arm behind her.
"Mike!" she screamed. "You're hurting me!" She began to be afraid, realising that she had gone too far.
"Well, come on! Have you?" He twisted it tighter.
"Mike! Stop it!" The pain made tears come to her eyes. "Please stop it! I didn't mean what I said, really I didn't," she gasped.
"Answer me, damn it! How long have you been holding out on me?"
"Not long. Really, Mike!" Pleadingly, she looked up at him through her tears.
"How much?" he shouted, shaking her roughly.
"About eight hundred dollars," she stammered.
He looked at her, his eyes at first wide-open with unbelief, and then narrowed in cold anger. "You bitch," he snarled. He slapped her sharply across the face and as she burst into a loud wail, twisted her arm again and threw her to the floor. She lay where she fell, sobbing and moaning, her hand rubbing her aching arm. " You bitch!" He towered over her. "I should beat the shit out of you!"
He picked her up, but she collapsed in his arms, her wet hair over her tear-stained face, her arms hanging limply at her sides, whimpering like a beaten animal. He cuffed her face, on one cheek and then the other, and her head rolled loosely from side to side like a stuffed doll's. He pushed her away roughly. She staggered and reeled a few steps and then crashed against a table, knocking it over. The lamp smashed into splinters. She fell on the floor with a loud thud. Her head hit the leg of the table and momentarily dazed her. Through the fogginess of her brain, she heard the heavy stamp of his tread as he quickly walked down the hall and then the slam of the front door.
With her whole body trembling uncontrollably, she lay on the floor, sobbing wildly, murmuring over and over through her tears, "Mike. Mike. I didn't mean it. Oh, Mike. I love you so. Please come back, Mike darling."
She calmed down after awhile and got up and wandered distractedly about the room, wondering what to do next. She thought briefly of finding someone to talk to, perhaps Torchy, but then dismissed the idea. If Mike had really made up his mind not to return, merely talking to someone wouldn't bring him back. She cursed herself over and over for having acted like a jealous fool. The more she worried about the possibility of Mike's leaving her and the problem of what she would do then, the more depressed she became.
Wandering into the bedroom, she sank down on the bed and burst into tears. When she finally raised her head her eyes fell on the door to the closet where she knew Mike hid his store of narcotics. She remembered the peace and happiness she had felt after sniffing heroin at Shoo-fly's party. She got up, walked over to the closet and returned with a capsule of heroin. Mike would have to return sometime, to get his clothes if nothing else, and as there was no sense in worrying further, she might as well be at peace until then. She found a hypodermic and some cotton in the bathroom and went into the kitchen for a spoon.
Opening the capsule, she divided the white powder into portions and put some in the spoon with a little water. On the end of the hypodermic needle she stuck a small wad of cotton. She held a cigarette lighter under the spoon until the mixture barely began to bubble and then drew it up into the needle and jabbed it into the fleshy part of her arm. Almost immediately she was high. As in a dream she wandered back into the bedroom and lay down. In the pure enjoyment of her bodily sensations, she forgot about her worries; they seemed only ludicrous and she remained lying on the bed in a sort of a trance, neither asleep nor really awake, only scratching herself now and then or moving her limbs, absorbed completely in the warm bliss of her body.
After some hours when the euphoria began to subside, she went back into the kitchen, ate a little food and then went to sleep. As soon as she woke up she gave herself another injection. For three days she followed this routine and was so happy that she almost convinced herself that she didn't care whether Mike came back or not. But when the doorbell rang on the afternoon of the third day, her first thought was of Mike. She slipped on a bathrobe and hurried to the door. It was only when she had her hand on the knob that she realized that of course it couldn't be Mike as he had his own key.
For some moments she stared blankly at the tall, blonde man standing outside the door.
? Susan! Thank Cod! I've been looking all over for you," the man said.
Not until he had stepped forward and kissed her did she realize it was George.
"George! For heaven's sakes! How did you ever ... " she said in surprise.
"Find you? I've been looking all over. Are you alone?"
She nodded her head.
"Can't I come in?" he said.
"Why, yes, of course," she replied. She was so confused by his unexpected appearance that she hardly knew what to say.
He followed her into the living-room and looked around at the disorder : the overflowing ashtrays, the overturned table, the broken lamp, the rumpled rugs. Then he stared at her, a puzzled look on his face.
"Aren't you well, Susan? You look as if you've been sick."
She raised a hand self-consciously to her uncombed hair and unwashed face and knew she must look as though she had been on a three-week binge. "No, I haven't been too well," she said slowly.
They were both standing in the middle of the room, not quite knowing what to do or say. Although she was still slightly high, she knew that an inexperienced person would only attribute her slowness of movement and response and her air of preoccupation to something else.
"Would you like some coffee or a drink?" she said finally.
"Coffee would be fine." He sat down on the edge of the couch.
"I'll comb my hair and then make us some. Just a moment." She went back to the bedroom, hid the heroin in the closet, put on make-up and combed her hair and went back into the living-room.
George got up from the couch. "Let me help you with the coffee, Susan. You don't look very well," he said worriedly.
"Well, okay."
They went into the kitchen. There on the table was the hypodermic needle, the spoon and a wad of cotton. She had forgotten all about it. She glanced in alarm at George to see if he had noticed them, but he was already walking toward the percolator on the stove. She sidled over to the table, scooped up the things and dropped them into her bathrobe pocket.
"Where's the coffee, Susan? I'll make it. Why don't you sit down?"
"No, no," she nervously, "I'll do it."
She started making the coffee and he sat on the table, talking to her, explaining that he was now living in Chicago, had a job and an apartment, and had been trying to find her for several weeks. Her aunt had said she hadn't seen or heard from Susan for months and all her old addresses had been blind leads. Finally he had gone to the advertising agency where she had first worked. While talking to Tom, he had found out that Susan used to go with Mike and by inquiring around he had finally discovered he was often at the "96O Club." There he had asked about Susan and one of her friends, thinking George was an old acquaintance, had said Susan was living with Mike and gave him her address.
As George talked on, Susan could see that he knew all about her way of life. And to her great surprise, he didn't seem at all shocked, merely relieved and happy that he had finally found her. The last time she had seen George he had still seemed like the naive, self-conscious, bumbling youth she had known when they grew up together, but now he acted and talked like a self-assured, fully grown man. Still youthful, of course, with the tall, lean hardness of his early twenties, and the charm of his ready, boyish smile.
He seemed like a breath of fresh air from a different world, reminding her of her parents and her childhood. For the first time since she had come to Chicago, a wave of nostalgia passed over her and she began to view life on the farm in a new light, contrasting its security and peaceful routine with the hectic and troubled experiences she had recently gone through.
So when he abruptly stopped talking about himself and asked in a kind, gentle voice, "Susan, darling, please tell me about yourself-you look so awfully unhappy," she began to cry quietly. He walked over, put his arms around her and, smoothing her hair and patting her shoulder, murmured warm words of love as she buried her head in his shoulder.
When she had quieted down, he said, "Susan, darling, it makes no difference to me how you've been living or what you've done. You know I've loved you ever since we were kids, and I wish you'd let me help you if I can."
She dried her tears on his handkerchief and blew her nose loudly.
She smiled wanly. "Sweet old George. You come charging in like a knight to the rescue." He made her sit down on a chair, poured two cups of coffee and sat across the table from her.
Slowly and hesitatingly, she recounted all that had happened to her since she had left the farm, omitting only the fact that she had been on heroin the last few days. He listened intently, sipping his coffee and looking at her with eyes full of encouragement and understanding.
"And so now I guess Mike is off with that red-bead," she said bitterly.
"I suppose it's none of my business, but do you still love him?" he asked in a tight voice.
"I don't know," she answered. "I guess so, but ... yes, I suppose I do, but sometimes ... " She sighed wearily. "I guess I'm just sick of it all for the time being. I'd like to go off someplace and just forget it for awhile." She stared down dejectedly at her empty cup.
He offered her a cigarette. After shaking one out for himself, he lit them both. They smoked in silence, neither of them looking at the other.
"I've got an idea," he finally said. "How about coming over to my place for a few days just for a change of scenery, until things clear up?"
She gazed at him thoughtfully. "I suppose I could. But on the other hand I'd like to be here when Mike comes back."
"Maybe it'd be better if you weren't."
"Maybe." She thought awhile and then said, "Okay, I'll do it. When?"
"Why not right now?"
"All right. I'll get dressed and throw a few things in a bag." She got up and walked around the table. "You are sweet, George." She kissed him. "I feel a bit better already."
"Yeah. Old faithful dog, George, but then I keep hoping," he said.
She started to go out the door and then paused.
"Look, George, we'd better get one thing straight. If Mike wants me back, I'll go."
He didn't say anything, but continued staring at the wall in front of him.
She gazed uncertainly at his back for a few moments and then left.
He yelled after her, a And leave your damn hypo' here."
CHAPTER NINE
For four days Susan stayed in George's apartment. The first day was the hardest. Although she hadn't been on heroin long enough to become addicted, at first she craved the warm peace and elation it had given her. But George took the day off from his job and they went from one movie to another until late that night. When they arrived home she was so tired she lay down on the couch and went to sleep immediately. He carried her into the bedroom, undressed her and tucked her into bed. He went back to the living-room and slept on the couch.
When she woke after having slept for sixteen hours, George was away at work. She debated whether or not to run over to her apartment to see if Mike had returned, but decided not to. It was pleasant and peaceful here and she thought she'd wait a few more days. If Mike wanted her back, he'd only want her all the more when he found she'd gone, and if he didn't-well, she'd face that problem after she'd seen him again. For her pride and her love for Mike wouldn't let her seriously believe that he would desert her.
She went out, shopped for food and had a big dinner cooking on the stove when George came home. But they both felt ill-at-ease and treated each other with exaggerated courtesy, pretending as though Susan's recent experiences had never occurred. They talked at first, in a restrained and stilted manner, of casual, unimportant things and then lapsed into complete silence while they ate their dessert and finished a last cup of coffee.
"Well, what do you want to do?" George finally said, his voice as casual as though he were talking to a complete stranger.
She shrugged her shoulders, a You mean tonight?"
"Naturally."
"I couldn't care less."
"How about a movie?"
"I'm sick of movies. "
"Well. do you want to go out to a bar?"
"No."
They fell silent, avoiding each other's eyes, smoking nervously. He took a last drag and as he stubbed out the cigarette, said irritably, " Well, what in hell do you want to do?"
She wanted a joint, a shot of heroin, or Mike, but didn't say so. "Nothing that concerns you," she said shortly.
He scraped his chair back, got up without resentment in his eyes, a Well, if you don't give a damn, then, I think I'll leave you to the comforts of my apartment and go out."
" Nothing would give me more pleasure," she said brusquely.
He scraped his chair back, got up without saying anything more, strode into the hall, yanked his coat off a hanger and left.
Feeling more and more restless, she got up and wandered about the apartment, picking things up and staring at them blankly and then setting them down again. She sat down and leafed through a magazine without knowing what she was looking at. She went to the closet and started putting her coat on to go back to her own apartment to see if Mike was there. She changed her mind, took it off again and ambled into the kitchen. The dirty dishes, coated with hardened grease, were on the table. She picked one up and threw it against the wall. It hit with a sharp crash and fell in pieces to the floor.
Marching over to a cabinet, she opened it angrily and took out a bottle of Scotch. After filling a bucket with ice and rinsing out a glass, she carried everything to the bedroom and put them on the floor. She undressed and climbed into bed, propping herself against the pillows, and reached down to pour herself a big slug of Scotch. She swallowed it in one gulp and poured herself another. Morosely, she thought about Mike and then about George, but the more she drank the more fuzzy and unconnected her thoughts became until she finally went to sleep.
A loud banging on the door and the insistent ring of the bell woke her up. Glancing at the clock, she saw it was after two. Without stopping to throw a bathrobe over her nakedness, she ran to the door and opened it a crack.
She saw George leaning drunkenly against the door-jamb, leering at her, his hat hanging over one ear, a bottle of champagne in his hand.
"I couldn't get the door open," he grinned lopsidedly.
Hiding behind the door, she opened it and he staggered through. As she closed it he turned, and, swaying on widespread legs, stared at her with glazed eyes.
-I've been out celebratin', " he said drunkenly, measuring his words slowly and interspersing them with hiccoughs. "Celebratin'. Here, brought you this to help me celebrate." He held out the bottle. "No one should celebrate alone, and you know why I'm celebratin'? "
She shook her head, a Come on, George, let's put you in the shower."
He shook her arm off. "No. We gotta celebrate. And you know why?"
She looked at him silently.
"Because I've got the one woman I love in my apartment ... " He hiccoughed loudly and covered his mouth with his hand. "Pardon me, madam ... In my apartment and here I was out all by myself with her home in my bed. Don't you think that's funny?" He laughed. "Well, don't you? So I thought this great, memorable, unforgettable occasion was worth celebratin'. . . so let's celebrate, huh?"
He hiccoughed, stared up and down her naked body and then, taking off his hat, tried to hang it on one of her breasts. It slid off and fell to the floor.
"Lousy service in this night-club," he said morosely and lurched into the living-room and fell into an arm-chair with his overcoat still on.
She put the bottle on a table and started toward the bedroom to get a bathrobe. As she walked past him, he stuck his foot out; she tripped over it and fell to the floor with a thud.
"You aren't goin' any place," he said, a We're celebratin' right here."
She started to get up, but he reached over, grasped her arm and jerked her into his lap. The rough tweed rasped her flesh and she struggled to free herself.
"I said let's celebrate right here!" Although his words were slurred with drunkenness, she recognized an angry edge to them. Not wanting to get into a fight, she decided to do what he wanted.
"Okay," he said, "now go in the kitchen and get a couple glasses."
She padded into the kitchen and obediently returned. He was still sitting in the chair with his coat on, a drunken, cold gleam in his eye.
"Now open the bottle."
She tried to pull the cork out, but couldn't.
"Oh, for Christ's sakes," he said. He grabbed the bottle and began easing the cork out, but then paused and looked up at her. " Stand over there and don't move." She walked a few feet away and eyed him cautiously. "No, that's too far. Closer." She came closer. "Okay. Fine. Now stay there if you don't want to get beat up."
He bent over the bottle and strained at the cork. It shot out with a loud pop and hit the ceiling. With a loud laugh he aimed the jet of champagne at her. She was so taken by surprise that she stood rigidly, staring at him blankly. It splashed against her chest and, foaming and sizzling, ran over her breasts and down her belly and thighs, bubbles catching in the curly hairs of her sex until it looked as though she had been lathered with soap.
As the jet subsided he reached out and seized her by the wrist so she couldn't escape, took a drink from the bottle and tilted the remain-der against her neck. She gasped and tried to twist out of his hand, but he threw her to the floor and fell on top of her, his overcoat flying open and covering them both. Straddling her thighs with his legs, he held her arms spread-eagled to the floor so she couldn't move and then leaned over and began to lick away the drops of champagne which coated her body like a fine dew. Grunting and smacking his lips like an animal, he lapped her breasts, sucking the hard, sticky nipple until she cried out with pain, and then licked every inch of her torso, sticking his tongue greedily into the pool in her navel and, sliding back on her legs, lapped at her wet sex like a dog noisily drinking water. Arching and writhing her body, she tried to break free, but only succeeded in throwing her curves into such erotic postures that, snarling like an angry wildcat, he began all over again, but this time interspersing his laps with nibbles and bites, and none too gently, until her tender flesh felt like a piece of gnawed steak.
Letting go of one wrist, he quickly unzipped his fly and his rod popped out. He clamped his hand over her wrist again. He pushed his sex against the pouting lips of her mound, still wet and sticky with champagne and, without any preliminaries or regard for her, jabbed it all the way in with one savage lunge. She cried out with pain as it ripped into the tight sheath and hit bottom like the blow of a fist. Rapidly and relentlessly pumping in and out like a piston gone wild, he drove each plunge in up to the hilt, backed with the full force and weight of his hips. She screamed with pain and shouted for him to stop. She opened her eyes. He looked like a madman; his face was screwed up as in agony and his eyeballs were turned back, so that only the whites gleamed between the slits of his lids.
He angrily socked it into her harder and harder until her juices finally began to flow, but just as she was about to come, he suddenly stopped. Paralyzed, as rigid and tense as though he were on the verge on an epileptic fit, he paused motionless for a moment and then, with a long, sad wail, his whole body began to tremble and she felt his sex quiver spasmodically as the hot fluid spurted out within her.
Completely frustrated and hanging on the agonizing brink of her orgasm, she frantically tried to buck her hips against him to bring herself off. But before she could come he gave a low moan, slid out of her burning hole and collapsed on top of her. His sudden weight knocked the breath out of her and she gasped for air. His muscles limp, she freed her hands and tried to push him away to roll out from under the smothering mantle of his coat. Just as she was succeeding, he came to and with a wild snarl caught her arms. Holding her pinioned to the floor, he crouched beside her. Then he stood up and before she could move, put one foot firmly on her stomach while he shrugged off his overcoat. The more she moved the more the rough, dirty sole of his shoe dug into her belly, so finally she just lay there, flailing her arms and legs like a windmill and crying with frustration.
He leaned over, scooped her up in his arms and dropped heavily into an armchair.
Splayed out on his lap, one slim leg stretched out to the floor, the other hanging over the side of the chair, he held her wrists together behind her back with one hand. Her shoulders against his arm and her head tilted back so her long mane of hair rippled to the floor, his hand pulled at her wrists until the tension made her torso arch in a long curve towards his bent head. Coolly he looked up and down its length, at the taut breasts jutting out full and smooth, their pert, dusky buds only a foot from his face, at the peach-colored swell of her belly and below, the parentheses of her plump, tawny hips and the bushy, blonde undergrowth of her sex, wet and sticky with sperm and champagne.
"So this is what gets a couple of hundred bucks a night!" He leered at her. "And I've had it for nothin'. " He chuckled evily. She twisted in his lap but he clamped his other arm over her legs and held her down. "You're stay in' right here!" he said angrily.
When she had stopped struggling, he relaxed his hold on her legs. She couldn't see what he was doing, but she heard him noisily clear his throat and then felt the wet drops of his spit splattering on her belly. He chuckled and spat again, and then again. Still laughing to himself, he rubbed the spit over her breasts and stomach, flicked her sore nipples as though he were flicking away a bothersome bug and jabbed two fingers up her wet sex. Moaning, she gyrated her hips and shoulders, rubbing herself against the coarse suiting until she felt the hard pile of his erection stabbing her in the small of her back. Suddenly he rammed his thumb past the protesting rings of her after-hole and she writhed with pain. But his fingers soon aroused her frustrated lusts a second time and her groans changed to those of pleasure. Just as she was about to come he released her, drew her head up and crushed his lips against hers in a burning, savage kiss.
Having been brought to the edge of her orgasm twice and then suddenly let down before completing it, she was now completely wild with frustration. Furiously, she swiveled around until she was straddling him, her legs hanging over the arms of the chair. His member was nudging her dripping mound. She raised herself up and sank down again, spearing herself neatly on his up-thrust organ. He cradled his hands under the mass of her buttocks. His head fell back, his mouth half-open and emitting soft moans as she savagely slid up and down his slippery pole. Her hair falling over her face, her breasts bobbing and jiggling against the rough tweed, she leaned over and began biting his neck while her orgasm quickly surged up and spilled over. But she didn't stop her frantic movements, for as the first orgasm began to subside, a second and a third followed after. When he began to buck under her and his fingers tightened, she knew that he was about to come again and she kept on relentlessly. As his member leaped to the final series of fluttering pulsations, she smashed down upon him with the full force of her own contractions and milked the last drops from him.
She collapsed weakly on top of him, panting and gasping. His head still flung back, he was breathing like a dying man. She raised herself off his spear and thick, white drops threaded down to his trousers. She stood and looked at him for a few moments. Perspiration was running down his face. She went to get a towel and when she came back he was standing up, one hand bracing himself against the chair.
"My God," he said. "I feel like I've been in a Steam bath." He seemed completely sober. She helped him take off his tweed suit. His body was dripping with perspiration. He sank back in the chair and she rubbed him. with the towel.
"Susan," she said, "I'm sorry for any nasty things I said."
"She didn't reply. But instead of being angry with him, on the contrary the rough and domineering way he had made love made him seem like an entirely different man, a man she really knew nothing about although he knew almost everything about bar; this discovery made him seem almost like a stranger, a stranger she wanted to know better and one who excited her physically.
So the next three days passed swiftly as they made love and talked as they had never done before. For the first time she ceased to takehis unquestioning love for granted and, wondering at its strength and fullness, was thankful for it.
But she hadn't forgotten about Hike, Although she loved George, too, she said to herself that it was a different kind of love, more peaceful, perhaps, but not the overwhelming, burning, mind and body consuming love she felt for Mike. So on the evening of the third day she told George that she had to find Mike.
All he said was, "Okay, darling. I'll he here for awhile if you need me-but I'm not going to be here forever." Then he smiled and kissed her. "But long enough for it to become a bad habit."
CHAPTER TEN
She hailed a cab and drove over to their apartment. Her heart was beating wildly as she stood outside the door, and she felt she couldn't bear it if Mike wasn't there, or hadn't even left a note for her. She put the key in the lock with a trembling hand and pushed the door open.
But Mike was there. They fell into each other's arms and she burst into tears of relief and joy.
He held her close, his face beaming his eyes dark and shining, "I've been waiting for you for days, you beautiful bitch, you, and then I heard the key in the lock and ... "
"Oh, Mike," she sniffed, "I do love you so."
He gave her a little shake. "But where in hell have you been ? I've been worried sick and no one had heard a word from you."
"I went away for awhile. But now I'm back, and for good, Mike."
"You damn well better be," he Mid tenderly.
"But what about the eight hundred dollars?" she said, smiling at him.
"To hell with the eight hundred dollars!" He grinned at her mischievously. "But if you do it again I'll really whale the skin off your bones!" He tousled her thick hair. "And what about my red-head?"
They looked at each other with complete understanding and laughed together. Then, hand in hand, they walked right through the living-room and into the bedroom, wordlessly stripped off their clothes and, clutching each other like drowning people, fell on the bed and made love as though they were doing it for the first time and would never be able to do it again. like one person their bodies rose and fell, twisted and turned. Or rather, like two persons who have attained that often sought for but seldom achieved state of complete understanding on the nonverbal level where each intuitively knew when, where and what the other wanted. Coupled together, murmuring words only of love and understanding, they made love for hours, rapturously, blissfully, pausing only to snuggle peacefully in-each other's arms, resting briefly before they began again.
The doorbell rang, a long, harsh, insistent peal. At first they ignored it, but as it continued, minute after minute, Mike finally crawled out of the bed and threw a bathrobe around him. Leaning over and kissing her, he told her to stay where she was, that he'd be right back. She reached out to the bedside table and lit a cigarette. Stretching her body languorously, it was as though he were still inside her, for their love-making had been so completely full and satisfying she ached all the way down to her toes and she felt like one, overflowing, warm, liquid receptacle of love.
But then she heard the growl of Mike's voice raised in anger and the sharp whine of a woman's reply. Curious, she sat up and strained her ears. They were evidently having an argument by the door. She heard Mike's heavy tread walking down the hall and the accompanying, impatient click of high heels. As they entered the living-room, talking loudly, she recognized the woman's voice. Completely shocked, she sat bolt upright; her cigarette fell from her fingers tmto the quilt where it smoldered quietly. It was Sal. Wondering whatever had brought her at this time of night, she felt an icy chill pass over her and a premonition that something terrible was about to happen. She jumped out of bed, slipped into a skirt and sweater and ran into the living-room. She wanted to be with Mike, be where she could see him.
When she entered, Mike was standing on the other side of the room, his hands thrust into the pockets of his bathrobe, his head to one side, a thin thread of blue smoke drifting up from the cigarette dangling in one corner of his mouth. Through half-closed lids he was staring coldly at Sal who, her back to Susan, was standing directly in front of him, swaying slightly from side to side. Susan paused in the doorway, one hand on the door-jamb, and listened to what Sal was saying.
"But you've got to believe me, Mike, you've got to! It's the truth! It is! It is!" Her voice was high, pleading, tense, almost a wail. She reached a trembling hand out to Mike's sleeve and shook it. "You've got to believe me!i
Mike shrugged her hand away and said coldly, "Sal, why in hell don't you blow ? I've heard this story so damn many times from you that you're worse than a broken record. Turn it off!" He took a menacing step toward her and she moved back, tripping over her own feet, a What in the name of God do I have to do to shut you up ? Kill you?"
She clutched his arm again, stumbled and fell down on her knees before him. Putting her arms around his legs, she began to sob, "Mike, I love you so. Please believe me and come away with me before it's too late!"
He reached down and roughly pulled her to her feet. Swaying drunkenly, she grabbed his arm, her long fingers hanging on to him like the talons of a hawk. "Sal!" he shouted, "You're stinking, blind, hysterical drunk. For God's sakes, pull yourself together and get out of here!"
"But why won't you believe me?" she wailed. "I only did it to get you back! Please believe me, Mike. Please!" Her voice was high, her words broken, a Torchy said Susan has left you. .So you're free, Mike. Free! Please come with me. I'll do anything you say, I promise!"
Mike looked at her disgustedly, a So Susan has left me, has she?" He took her by the shoulders and swung her around. "Well, look right over there, you raving maniac," he yelled, pointing at Susan standing spell-bound in the door-way, "Susan is here, and what's more we're going to get married immediately!"
In the sudden silence that followed Susan stared at Mike, surprise and joy welling up in her heart. "Oh Mike," she whispered and ran toward him, a you mean really married?"
But she stopped abruptly when her eyes fell on Sal. Looking as though she had seen a ghost, Sal was staring at her, completely paralyzed. Clad in "dirty, wrinkled dress, her arms hanging limply, at her sides, her hands convulsively clutching the air, she looked like an evil witch-her mouth half-open, her teeth grinding together, gasping for breath as though she were suffocating; her red hair was as dirty and tangled as an old mop and her eyes shone with a queer, demented light. She gave a long, low, heart-broken wail, staggered a few steps and collapsed into a chair.
Fascinated and horrified, Susan couldn't take her eyes off her. Mike stepped over and, putting his arms around her, turned her head toward his and kissed her gently on the mouth. "Susan, darling," he murmured, "why don't you go out for a walk for awhile? Sal is blind drunk and by the time you get back, I'll have her out of here." He smoothed her hair tenderly and kissed her again. Smiling into her eyes, he added, "And then tomorrow we'll go off and get married."
"But Mike, darling," she whispered, "what does she want and why is she here? I don't understand."
"Nothing for you to worry about. Nothing I can't handle myself."
"But why does she want you to leave?" she said.
"Susan, darling, it's the same old story. She's threatened me a dozen times, but all she is, is a lot of hot air. So don't worry about it. Now run along."
"You mean about calling in the narcotic boys?"
He nodded his head wearily, a As always, she says she's called them up and they're on their way over to raid the apartment and take me in.
And as always, she says she's rushed over here to warn me and save me, if only I'll go away with her. She's half nuts."
"You mean this has happened before?"
He nodded his head again. "Yeah. You were always out. But don't worry, darling, it's never been true before and it's not now."
"Well, okay," she said reluctantly. "I'll go out for a while then."
She kissed him and went out in the hall to get her coat. As she left, she glanced over her shoulder and paused momentarily, struck by the look in Sal's eyes. Her legs drawn up to her chin, she was curled in the chair like an embryo, her whole body quivering like a plucked violin string. With her head lowered, she was staring up at Mike with a fixed, unblinking look of pure hatred. She looked insane.
Susan put her coat on and then, feeling as though she shouldn't leave, hesitated before the outer door. But finally she opened it brusquely, stepped determinedly into the hall and closed it carefully behind her, easing it to until she heard the lock catch. She walked quickly to the self-operating elevator, pushed the buzzer and waited impatiently as its low whine grew louder. It stopped opposite her with a soft click. She pushed open the door and stepped in. As she glided down, she felt as though she should be going in the opposite direction, back up to Mike. The elevator stopped and she walked into the empty foyer. She paused again, debating whether or not to return. But Mike had told her to leave for awhile and so, trying a scarf around her head, she strode toward the main entrance, her heels clicking loudly on the marble floor. Outside, she bent her head against the cold night wind blowing down the silent, deserted street and began walking aimlessly, up one block and down another. The heavy, dark shadows were punctured only by pools of pale, yellow light, cast bleakly on the sidewalk by widely-spaced street-lamps. To keep her mind off Mike and what might be happening in their apartment, she began to count the street-lamps as she passed them, saying the numbers out loud to herself. When she had counted up to fifty, she decided she had been away long enough. Taking a shortcut back, she soon found herself outside their apartment building.
She went back up in the elevator, feeling relieved and happy and walked eagerly down the hall, thinking only of Mike's warm arms and passionate lips. Outside the door, she stopped and put her ear to the panel. There was no sound from within. Sal must really have left. She turned the key, opened the door and closed it behind her, calling opt, "Mike! I'm back!"
But instead of his cheerful voice, only an eerie silence greeted her. She paused, a cold, sickening stone of alarm and fear in her stomach and then ran toward the living-room. As she entered, the acrid scent of cordite stung her nostrils. Looking about the room, her eyes riveted with horror and unbelief; her legs became weak, she felt as though she were going to faint and she leaned feebly against the door-jamb, clutching it for support.
With open eyes staring vacantly at the ceiling. Mike was crumpled on the floor. From a dark hole in his chest blood had seeped over his bathrobe, staining it a dark red, and spread out around him on the rug.
She choked out his name in a strangled voice, tottered over and knelt beside him. But he was already dead. Too numb with shock to cry or to realize that he was really dead, she looked beyond him to where Sal was lying on the floor, her chest slowly rising and falling in shallow breaths, the gun a foot away from her hand. She was either in a dead faint or in some kind of a coma.
Trembling, tense, her mind a blank, Susan started to get up, reeled dizzily, and fainted. When she came to a few minutes later, she was panic-stricken, not knowing whether to call a doctor, to go for help, or to call the police. The police! Vividly she remembered Sal's swearing the apartment would be raided that night. Perhaps Sal had been telling the truth. She had an overwhelming impulse to flee, blinded by the fear that she would be arrested. For she had met no one on her solitary walk, no one to prove she hadn't been here all the time and partaken in Mike's murder. And as she remembered the glare of hatred in Sal's eyes, she was suddenly sure that Sal would try to implicate her.
Stumbling as she ran, she made for the front door. Narcotic agents! A picture of the stock of drugs Mike had hidden in the closet flashed across her mind. Knowing that it was a crazy idea, for what good would it do Mike now not to have the heroin found in his possession, she nevertheless turned and ran into the bedroom. She quickly dumped the capsules in her purse and started back. A snapshot of Mike propped up on the dresser arrested her flight. She paused before it, a cry of bitter despair and agony on her lips, swept it off the dresser into her purse and ran headlong out of the apartment as though she were being chased by demons.
Still struck with a nameless terror, instead of stepping into the elevator, she clattered down the six flights of stairs and rushed out into the cold night. She ran blindly down the street, not thinking where she was going. In front of her a glare of headlights swept around the corner and raked the opposite buildings. Instinctively she dodged into a doorway and pressed herself against the wall in the dark shadows as the car passed. It was a police car. Her heart thumping wildly, she peered out and saw it stop in front of their apartment building. Three men got out. When they had disappeared into the entrance she stepped out from the doorway. Hugging the shadows next to the building, she sidled cautiously to the corner and around it. She was reluctant to hail one of the few taxis which passed her for fear the driver would remember her and connect her with the murder, so she kept on walking, her heart a black, bottomless pit of sorrow.
She had already decided to go to George's. When she came to a street which was still brightly lit by bars and nightclubs and where enough people were on the street for her to be thought of as just another all-night reveler, she got into a cab and gave the driver the address of a building a block down the street from George's.
By the time she finally stood before his door she barely had enough energy left to ring the buzzer. After awhile she heard his step and then his sleepy voice calling through the door.
"Who is it?" he said.
"Susan," she answered weakly.
He quickly threw the door open. She had time only to see the look of surprise on his face before she fainted into his arms.
When she woke up she was lying on the couch. George was anxiously hovering over her.
"My God, Susan, what's happened?" he said.
She tried to speak, but her tongue couldn't seem to move in her dry mouth. "Here, have some brandy." Cradling her head, he raised her up so she could take a sip. She coughed and sank back on the cushions.
"How do you feel? Better?"
She nodded.
"Tell me what's happened, darling!"
She looked up at him. As the memory of Mike lying crumpled on the floor came back to her, her eyes filled with tears, she blurted out "Mike's dead"
"nd then broke into a wild sobbing, crying for the first time since she had walked into their apartment a lifetime ago.
George pressed her head against his shoulder and waited patiently until she had quieted down. Then he carried her into the bedroom, undressed her and put her to bed.
"If you don't feel like it, don't try to tell me about it tonight," he said. He made her take some sleeping pills and she fell into a deep, troubled sleep.
When she woke up it was early the next afternoon. At first she didn't know where she was. But then she remembered the horrible events of the night before and she called out weakly for George. He hurried into the bedroom, telling her not to stir, that he would bring her breakfast. But she was too upset to eat. As he sat on the edge of the bed and held her hand, she told him what had happened and they discussed what to do next.
He scratched his head, sighed and said, "I think it might have been better, Susan, if you'd called the police right away. After all, you had been out while it happened and it was obvious that it was Sal who killed him. Running away like that might make you seem more suspicious to the police, that is, not to me, darling."
"I suppose so, George, but it's too late now. Really, I was too panic-stricken to know what I was doing. My only thought was to get out of there. I was so sure that Sal would try to drag me into it."
"Yeah. Perhaps she would have, if she's as nuts as she sounds. But I don't quite see how she could implicate you. After all ... "
They sat in silence, looking worriedly at each other.
"Anything in the papers about it?" she asked.
"Not in the morning editions. Probably discovered it too late for that. Maybe in the afternoon ones."
"So now what'll we do?"
"Well, for the time being, you stay right here and don't show your nose out of doors. I'll go out and buy some papers."
He got up and started to leave. She called after him.
"George! I've got an idea!"
He stuck his head in the door. "What?"
"Hand me my purse a second."
She rummaged around in its depths, noted that the capsules had disappeared and dredged up her address book. She thumbed through it. "Here, call this guy and ask him to come over."
"Who is it?" he said, as he took the book.
"Friend named Al. He used to be a newspaper reporter and still has lots of friends there. Maybe he could inquire around and find out what's going on-I mean stuff the police haven't officially let out yet."
"Good idea," George said, "I'll call him up right away."
He left the apartment on the run. Susan burrowed down under the blankets and began quietly weeping.
In less than an hour George returned with Al. Susan heard them talking in the hall in low voices before they came into the bedroom. She told Al the story, begged him to find out all he could. He left, promising to do his best.
It was early in the evening before he returned.
He dropped wearily into a chair by the bed while George and Susan waited anxiously for what he had to say.
"Thank God I quit the 'newspaper racket," he said. "My feet are killing me!"
"For God's sakes, tell us what you found out," George interrupted.
"Well," he said, looking seriously at Susan, "I'm afraid it's not very pleasant."
They looked at him in silence.
"The papers say hardly anything about it, as I guess you know," he went on, "only that Mike was murdered and they're holding Sal. " He paused. "But I found out from some pals on the police beat that the cops have the drag net out for you." He stopped to light a cigarette and took a deep drag.
"But why?" Susan said, "I wasn't even there when it happened!"
"Yeah, I know. But Sal seems to have a beaut of a story. She may be nuts but she sure can think fast. Anyway, her story is that you were there all the time, that Mike had just told you he vu going to leave you and go off with her."
"What?" exclaimed Susan, abut ... "
"Now wait a minute! Let me finish with the gruesome details!. . . that he was going to go back to Sal. And you then got so insanely jealous and furious that you attacked Sal and during the scrap you. gave her a black eye-and they say she's really got a beauty. Then, Sal says, she drew out her gun in self-defense against you as you were so hysterical she was afraid you were going to kill her. Mike hauled you apart, but you broke loose and attacked Sal again. She still had the gun in her hand, with no intentions of using it, naturally, but in the scuffle you knocked her about so hard that the gun went off and accidentally killed Mike. So that although she was technically holding the gun when it went off, it was purely accidental on her part and she's innocent of blame. It was really you who are responsible for his death-having started the fight and knocked her around so much it went off."
"But ... but ... but that's ridiculous!" Susan stammered.
"Yeah, I know. But you got anything to prove it? It's her word against yours."
She looked at him blankly and then said, horrified, a No. Absolutely nothing. I didn't see anyone while I was out."
"Of course, there's another thing'll might back up her story," Al said, a I mean the part about Mike leaving you to go back to Sal."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, it's been common talk around the Club that you and Mike had split up, you know--or didn't you? Some were saying that you had left Mike, others that Mike had left you. Unfortunately, Mike never said anything about it, so who's to really know?"
"My God," George said.
"But Al!" Susan said. "Mike and I just made up last night, just before Mike was ... was ... " She swallowed hard and then went on in a small, broken voice, "He even said he wanted to marry me."
"Yeah," Al said, "fat chance the cops will believe that, on top of everything else, when you tell them you'd just been off spending a week with George."
They sat in silence, looking at one another.
"Well, God knows what to do," Al said. "But you'd better hole up here for awhile. It's as safe as anyplace. No one knows you know George. In the meantime, I'll snoop around some more and see what else I can pick up."
He grabbed his hat and left.
Susan felt as though she had aged ten years in the last twenty-four hours. Even George, his face white and drawn, looked years older. Following so soon after Mike's death, this new, apparently unsolvable problem made her alternately burst into uncontrollable tears and then into hysterical laughter.
In a moment of comparative calm she said to George, "I swear to God if I ever get out of this mess, I'll never go back to that kind of life-never as long as I live! I'll never make love for money, never smoke a joint, never shoot horse!" She smiled at him wanly, a And if I do, you can strangle me yourself-that is, if you haven't already given me up for lost."
It was George who late that evening thought of Steve Harris.
"Say, what about that Harris guy? Isn't he a big cheese around here? Maybe he could help you."
"Steve! Of course!" she said excitedly. "Oh, George, get him to come over. Right away! He'll know what to do."
"Maybe I'd better go over to his place, instead of calling. He doesn't know me from Adam."
"Good idea. Here, I'll write him a note, saying I've got to see him."
George dashed off and Susan waited impatiently. She slipped on George's dressing-gown and paced up and down the living-room.
Steve arrived, but without George, explaining that he wanted to see her alone. Although he had read in the papers that Mike had been killed and George had filled in the details, she told him the story all over again.
"And so I thought of you-, Steve," she concluded. "Can't you think of anything to get me out of this mess? You do believe that I really wasn't there, don't you?"
"Of course, I do, Susan" he said. "But I must say you're in one sweet pickle. Nothing we can't get you out of, though." He pulled her down on his lap. "Sit here. I can think better." He played idly with the tassel of her robe while he stared into space, thinking deeply.
After some minutes he said slowly and thoughtfully. "Well, Susan, I know a way out of this. But it might not work and it means sticking my own neck out." He looked at her seriously. "Are you sure you didn't see anyone while you were out walking, or anyone who'd remember you on your way over here?"
" Positive.".
"Good. Frankly, I wouldn't do this even for you-except that you gave me that tip about that expose. That guy had gone pretty far, too far for comfort, and if I'd found out only a few days later, it would have been the fireworks. So ... "
"So?" she said hopefully.
"It so happens that I was alone, completely alone, last night. Even the maid was away. Now, we'll have to work out a story that mutually checks, get the hours straight and everything." He paused, a I'll swear that you spent the night with me."
"Oh, Steve!" She collapsed with relief against him and kissed him.
He patted her on the shoulder. He said, "This Sal babe will probably break down and confess completely when they put the pressure on after I swear you were with me. As of course they'll believe me, and not her."
"But in any case," he added, "you'd better leave Chicago for a while. Got any money?"
She shook her head.
"I'll give you a thousand bucks, which should keep you out of sight for awhile until this blows over."
They talked for a while, rehearsing their stories and then he said he had to leave. She walked with him to the door. In the hall she flung herself against his chest and kissed him, murmuring her thanks for what he was doing.
"Forget it, baby," he said. He kissed her on the mouth. "I guess I won't be seeing you for a while, Susan. How about one for the road?"
He slipped her robe aside and ran his hands over her naked, golden body. She closed her eyes, her heart a tight knot of sorrow as his warm hands, passing so lightly and caressingly over her tender flesh, reminded her of her last night with Mike, in reality such a short time ago, but already as though it had happened in another life. Standing face to face, he pressed her against the wall and took out his rod. As he gently kissed her and then quietly nudged his member up between her parted thighs, she held him by the shoulders and submitted passively. Keeping her eyes closed all the while, for the last time in her life she imagined it was Mike making love to her; that it was he who was so lovingly kissing her, he who was so warmly sliding his member up the center of her being and making her rich juices flow, he who was so tenderly kissing away the tears which flowed silently between her closed lids and ran down her face. After they had both come, she with a soft moan of despair, he kissed her lightly on the mouth, ran a hand over her thick, blonde hair and walked out without saying a word.
True to his word, Steve went to the police, said he had heard they were looking for Susan and swore she had been with him the night of the murder. Because he was a well-known and influential man, they believed him without question. As he had predicted, Sal, confronted with Steve's statement, broke down and confessed that she, herself, had killed Mike, although, she maintained until the end that Susan had been there earlier. But the police only laughed at her. Shortly after her confession she went completely insane.
Susan was not even called down to the police station. Steve had slipped the officer in charge of the case a sealed envelope, bulky with ten dollar bills, and with a wink and a hint about a captaincy in the police department which was unfilled, but which he implied the officer would be handsomely suited for, had requested that Susan's name be kept entirely out of the affair. So even in the newspapers she was only anonymously referred to as the woman Michael Mahoney had been living with..
Susan stayed with George until the case was closed. She spent the days wandering dejectedly about the apartment or for hours staring silently out the window, her chin in her hand. Steadily she lost weight until she looked like a pale, wan ghost. George was always there in the background, a quiet, sympathetic George who waited patiently for her to get over her sadness.
One day she smiled at him, "Well, I guess I'd better get off your neck, George. You've put up with me long enough."
"I'd like to have you on my neck for the rest of my life, Susan," he said quietly.
Then he told her that his parents wanted him to take over the family farm so they could retire to California.
"I know you're not ready to give me a definite answer, darling, but you know I've always loved you and wanted to marry you." He paused and added, "So why don't you go back home with me, stay with your parents for awhile-and take it easy until you know what you want to do?"
She thought for awhile and then said with a slow, sweet smile, "AU right, George, I think I will--it sounds so wonderfully peaceful..
