Fortier Beach was where it was happening and, for the first time, Angel was going to be there. All of young American would be gathered, sun browned, lithe, happy, mod. They would be with it in spite of the pressures against the annual gathering from school and parents and local fuzz. Angel was going to be with it. Nothing would stop her from being a part of the scene, not family, not her school, not the lack of ready cash. She had only a few dollars, but she would make it last.
Angel's girl friend, Stanley Richmond, tooled the passionate pink Mustang up the Florida Turnpike and the wind whipped her bleached, short, Mia Farrow hair-do and she didn't have to worry about a lack of loot in her pocketbook. The worrying was done, if it were to be done at all, by Angel, a dark, tiny girl with an orange kerchief around her ebon hair.
"Great, God, isn't it just great?" Stanley cried suddenly, still excited, not yet settled down to the rather long drive from school to the big, long, crowded beach where college students from all over the country were gathering.
The small girl turned a dark, even face toward the driver, eyes large, deep black, lashes so long that she would never, never need to resort to false ones, nose a pert appendage on an face which radiated a sort of peaceful, youthful beauty. When old Igor Tomsk named his first born, his only daughter, born in freedom after an escape from Siberian Russia which almost cost him his life, he looked into her tiny face and saw that serene beauty, even in one so young, and he called her Angel.
"Won't it go any faster, Stan?" Angel asked, casting a nervous eye toward the speedometer needle which hovered quiveringly at the ninety mark.
"Okay," the blonde girl said, easing off the accelerator. The wind became a mere hurricane as it sped past the fleeing convertible. Stanley's short hair whipped against her well shaped skull. Even with the handicap of the Farrow cut Stanley was still a dish. Angel was not unaware of the rather glamorous picture the two of them presented, tooling along in the angry little car, taking great bites of the Florida landscape with each passing minute.
"It's great," Angel answered, without having to fake her enthusiasm. "I keep looking over my shoulder to see if there's anyone there to shake his head and say, no, no, don't touch, burn." 'The Prof?"
"I should have told him," Angel said. "And if you had told him, what would he have said?"
Angel laughed. "No. He would have said no in about a total of fifty thousand words with adequate and quite reasonable data against my going."
"So, it's great," Angel said, trying to push the disapproving mental image of her father from her mind, but Igor Tomsk was a difficult man to forget, especially when one had been his daughter for just over nineteen years. She was, however, determined to enjoy her three days at Fortier Beach. Stolen fruit is sometimes riper, richer, more pleasant to the tongue. Knowing that she was going against her father's will, perhaps for the first time in her life, made the trip more exciting. It made the wind seem fresher as it carried to her nostrils the sweet aroma of orange blossoms, made the sun seem more mellow as it warmed the long length of thigh which protruded from her skirt as she comfortable let the material flow back to rest against her taut stomach, almost exposing skin tight leopard skin panties.
"You know what?" Stanley said, having to talk loudly because of the rushing speed of the car. "I think we might just keep going. It's so great! Just think. We wouldn't have to stop anywhere. We wouldn't have to worry about classes or grades or parents or anything. We could just tell them all goodbye and keep going until we hit Jacksonville and then roar through Georgia like Sherman and into South Carolina and then let the wind take us, maybe New York or Washington or, hell, who knows?"
"I think," Angel said, smiling at her friend, "that you'd run out of gas."
The ocean. Fortier Beach on a spring day with the Florida sun sending a soothing message of heat down through a few fleecy, lumpsy cumulous clouds and the salt air already in their noses before they saw the strand, long and low, dotted with cars and people. Stanley found an access road and drove slowly along the hard-packed sand. A city policeman passed them, eyeing them with a hard-faced, uncommiting look. Stanley waved gaily. A group of boys-men really, although Angel still thought of men her age as boys, just as she thought of herself as a girl, not a woman-hoisted beer cans from their reclining positions on the sand and yelled and whistled as the pink convertible went slowly by.
"Ummmm," Stanley said, eyeing the selection of college men, "smorgesbord."
There were hundreds of them and the holiday was only getting underway. They congregated in one area of the long strand, the lean-limbed girls from Massachusetts and Holyoke, the agile young men from Yale and the University of Texas, from Illinois and South Carolina. They came from all over the United States and congregated in groups and, on occasion, threw coke bottles at the local police.
When the tradition began, there were more boys than girls. In the early days college men came to the beach to drink beer and chase local girls and the few coeds who were daring enough to make the trip. In recent years, however, the explosive change in the morals of the young had freed college women of the age-old bonds, had given them the pill. The upheaval in population weight which put parents in the minority; the extablisliment of the cult of youth had made it possible for Betty Coed to joint Joe College in the Easter orgy. Bikinis and one piecers, ruffles and laces over feminine breasts and buttocks did not match in numbers the thousands of sets of swim trunks, but there were enough girls sprinkled through the sea of college type humanity to make life interesting.
There was something about it which made Angel feel warm, an almost-felt empathy. They were in it. Out there was the world with the bomb and the necessity to make grades and the future which stared them in the face with a blank, awesome, threatening face. Here they were out of it for a while and you could feel it. You could feel the spirit of togetherness, boys and girls together, the warmth of understanding. Let a guy take too many beers and no one would be there to say shame and shake a disapproving head. Let a girl slip a little and who, among the great hoard of kindred spirits, would frown?
They drove along the beach to a chorus of calls, greetings, whistles, waves. Stanley, lips spread in a pleased smile, turned the convertible. Tires made little dig marks on the packed sand and the ocean muttered at them with small waves on which a few optimistic souls lounged or knelt on surfboards, waiting in vain for the big wave. The sea was quiet.
Two muscular, tanned crew cut young men stood in front of the car, forcing Stanley to stop. One leaned on Stanley's side, the other leaned to grin into Angel's face.
"I can offer a beach umbrella, a cold can of brew and good companionship," the tall, grinning boy said to Angel.
"Best offer you've had all day," the other one said to Stanley.
"The first offer," Stanley said. "You don't mind if we shop around a bit?"
"I'm Joe Howard," the boy looking into Angel's face said. "If you get lonely, call me at the Chevelier MoteL"
Then they were gone, the two boys looking after them, Stanley laughing deep in her throat, turned on by the masculine attention.
"Time to get our feet wet," Stanley said. She pushed the car to a swifter pace, found a street off the beach, drove to the beachside motel where she, as a veteran of the Easter holiday, had reserved a room months in advance. Angel's share of the rent cut into her pocket money seriously, but the room was nice, new, hard-surfaced and shiny to resist salt moisture, water tracked in on bare feet, the blowing sand and mist of the sea.
Stanley tossed her bag onto a bed, opened it, drew out a shamefully brief bikini and stripped to the buff to show a girl of no angles, only curves. Curved hips and curved breasts and curved, long legs and a mouse-colored bush to contrast with her bleached hair.
"Move it, Gabriel," she told Angel. Stanley having taken the bed beside the huge windows opening onto the terrace and the pool, Angel put her bag on the other one. The room, air conditioned, was cool to her skin as she stripped away the smooth, one piece short dress and stood in leopard skin bra and panties for a moment.
"Damn, you are stacked," Stanley said, watching as Angel lifted a foot to retrieve the dropped panties and twisted the bra around to get at the hooks.
"Nobody shorted you," Angel said, in return.
"We make a sexy pair," Stanley said. "Let's see what we can catch with bait like this." She did a crude grind and bumped her pelvic area forward. The effect was both comic and wanton. Angel squeezed into a modified bikini which snowed a lot of Angel but left more to the imagination than did the bikini of Stanley. Then they were back on the beach, in the passionate pink convertible which had been given the unusual coloration during a complete rebuilding job after Stanley cracked it up with less than a thousand miles on the speedometer.
"You're not going to drive all the way down the beach are you?" Angel asked, when it became apparent that Stanley was not going to stop the car near their motel.
"That's where the action is."
"Looks pretty active anywhere along here to me," Angel said.
"Watch it there," the boy said, turning as the car missed him by inches. His face dissolved into a smile as he looked directly into Angel's face.
"Hi again," he said. "Ready to take me up on that cold beer?"
But the car was moving again.
The college people were scattered mainly along a half mile length of the strand. Stanley had driven that length once, before going to the motel to change. Now she drove it again, looking at the hoards of lounging young people with a calculating eye. She had made a turn at the far end of the accumulation of college students and was halfway back down toward the motel when she turned the car, drove to a high part of the strand out of reach of the tide and stopped. "This is it," she said.
Angel laughed. "What makes this spot any better than any other spot?"
"By calculating the velocity of the wind along the horizontal vector and allowing for a maximum rise of the tide and the pre-calculated fall of the sun toward the skyline I decided that this particular spot offers the best tanning sun on the Florida coast."
Angel giggled happily at the double-talk. She reached into the back seat for her beach basket containing towel, suntan oil, shades, make-up. They spread a blanket in front of the car, arranged useful items around them, set to protecting their skin from the sun with liberal applications of oil. This action quickly attracted an audience of three tipsy college men who offered advice and active participation.
"Thanks," Angel said, "but we'll manage."
"That's what I fear," one of the boys said dolefully, as the girls took turns doing each other's back and shoulders with oil. Then they lounged on their stomachs, sun warm on their backs, the boys kneeling in the sand, horsing around, trying to make clever chatter. It was nice, warm, sleepy. Male attention was not new for Angel. She'd been the object of male attention from a very early age. Too early, she sometimes thought. Male attention sometimes interfered with her studies, as witness the dismal marks she had turned in after the last quarter, as witness the almost assured fact that she was going to flunk flatly in two of her subjects in the spring quarter. But it was nice to know that boys were attracted to her. She liked boys. She liked boys a lot better than she liked most girls-Stanley excluded-because boys were so, well, so opposite. She liked the way they talked, the way their minds worked, the way they looked at her, the feel of a boy's hand on her. She liked to be kissed and she liked!-well, that, too; but mostly she liked boys because they were more interesting. The things boys were interested in, she was more Interested in. She liked diving in the sea and her biggest fight with her father had been when he tried to stop her from scuba diving with the boys, spear fishing around a World War n freighter which had been sunk by a German submarine within sight of the populous beach near the University.
The sun sank, the afternoon lengthened. The three boys who had been drawn to them, like flies to fresh meat, chattered and laughed and were not discouraged by the short, disinterested replies of Stanley, by the distant smile of the darker, smaller Angel.
"Go away, little boys," Stanley said, at last, when it was apparent that the three were not going to take no for an answer.
The belittling remark killed the smiles. "My, my," one of the tipsy boys said, "Listen to Grandma. Grandma says we should go away."
"Come on," another said, "Let's shove off."
"Not before a little kiss," the third boy said. He, the more tipsy of the three, leaned toward Angel. She rolled away, sat up.
"Come on, fellows," she said. "Give us a break, huh? We want to soak up some sun."
"Kiss me goodbye, then," the tipsy one insisted. Angel pushed against him. He sprawled across the blanket, strewing sand everywhere.
"Oh, damn," Stanley said, leaping to her feet. "Get the hell out of here, will ya?"
Angel scrambled off the blanket to escape the reaching hands of the tipsy boy. His companions reached for him, laughing, but they did not suc-cede in pulling him back before a tall, thick-shouldered young man seized the boy by the nape of the neck and the seat of his trunks and tossed him off the blanket
"Beat it," the newcomer said, standing menacingly over the fallen lover. The other two blustered. For a moment it seemed that trouble would develop. Then the tall young man was joined by an equally muscular companion and the three tipsy underclassmen folded their tents and snuck away without honor, but with skins intact
"Thanks," Stanley said, picking things off the blanket so that it could be shook to be desanded.
"I don't think they'll bother you again," the largest of the two newcomers said. "Want me to help you spread the blanket?"
"We'll manage," Angel said. "But thank you."
"No sweat," the other young man said, brushing a long hanging mass of hair back from his forehead. "We make a specialty of rescuing damsels in distress."
"Gaa," Stanley said, spitting sand as she shook the blanket.
"What you need," one of the young men said, "is a cool one to wash the sand out of your teeth."
"I dig," Stanley said. "You, Angel."
"Suits," Angel said.
"Our palace," He pointed to a canopy tent pitched higher up on the strand.
"First," Stanley said, "who are you."
"Alan Govern."
"Carl Feurter."
Alan Govern was well over six feet. He wore a Beetle cut, but he was big enough to guarantee that no one would question his manliness. His face, dark, almost pretty, featured sensitive eyes and full, voluptuous looking lips. Carl Peurter was of a size, perhaps half an inch taller, standing with one leg thrust forward, thigh big as a barrel and very muscular. His hands were the most striking thing about him, huge, capable looking, work-hardened. His hair was not long but full, well groomed, dark, growing luxuriantly to lower what would have been a high forehead. When he spoke it was with a surprisingly soft voice, deep, full, yet so astoundingly gentle to be coming from such a rugged man.
"I'm Stanley."
"You're mine," Alan Govern said.
"By right of conquest?" Stanley asked, smiling suggestively.
"This is Angel," Stanley then said, turning, to Carl Peurter, who stood without a trace of awkwardness staring into Angel's face.
"I believe. Lord, I believe," Carl said. "I believe."
The move was made. Carl gathered the scattered items of the girls' possessions into his huge hands while Alan folded the blanket.
Under the canopy were: a cooler of beer, the brew chilled to perfection by melting ice; two bedrolls; another cooler box containing iced food; an expensive radio; two folding chairs and two dissimiliar traveling bags.
"Home," Carl said, putting the girl-things down atop the food cooler.
Angel looked at Carl Peurter and wondered how it was going to be to feel Carl's big hands on her, for she had known immediately, back there when Carl was tossing her teaser away from her blanket, that it would come to that. It was as sure as if it had been written in the stars a century ago. She would make love with Carl Peurter. When? Where? She didn't know. She knew only that it would happen.
A beach, seen from a comfortable chair under a shade, takes on a different aspect. The hot glare of the sun is pushed to a comfortable distance. One looks out on sun and sand and is not a part of them. Yet the sea breeze is there and the sea smell and the rushing fall of the surf and the voices of the hundreds of people who are there is a sort of a Lemming-like rush toward a moment or two of empathy.
Carl sat on the blanket at Angel's feet He talked. A cold beer in her hand-delicious, outdoorsy taste hitting the spot nicely-Angel listened, asked questions, gave information in return. Small information. School. Age. Major. (She hadn't decided yet, having not finished her sophomore year, but she thought it would be something to do with the marine sciences, if she could ever master chemistry and biology). The kind of talk which takes place between young people everywhere, get acquainted talk, the surface excavation as one tries to discover the personality of the newly met. But underneath it all was the sensuous, delicious feeling of togetherness, the awareness in Angel that this boy, this man, had the power to rouse her, had the power to take her without struggle at any given place or time, the question of where, where, causing little neuromuscular tensions to develop in her, causing her to drink with gusto and feel the little tingle of intoxication begin.
Then he told her he knew by placing his huge, tender, hard hand on her ankle, closing his fingers around it, squeezing lightly and holding her as she caught her breath at the quick thrill of his touch.
She was not wanton, not promiscuous. She was a healthy, normal girl of nineteen, college trained for a year and almost two, a product of the changing times which condemned more the people who were hung up on sex than those who knew it and used it as a part of living, a necessary and sometimes wonderful thing which had to have more meaning than a handshake but was, could be, as natural. Her father, with his old country morals, would not understand, but then he would never be asked to understand because she was discreet. She was not loose enough with her libido to risk exposure. Her affairs, and they were easily numbered on one hand with two fingers left over, were-had been-with boys who thought as she did, who were discreet as she was. And, as she felt the lubricous flow of glandular action in her aroused body, she was sure, just from her couple of hours of talk with Carl Peurter, that he would make as ideal a cohort as the three previously chosen lovers whom she had allowed herself.
There was only the question of where and when.
The sun, low, showed no signs of driving any of the college throng from the beach by its absence. It was clear to Angel, now, that the two boys, Carl and Alan, were living on the beach-at least until the local fuzz came and drove them away. She thought it sounded adventurous and fun to sleep on the beach for three days, to cook and eat in the open. Warmed by her passion, intoxicated slightly by the deliciously cold beer, she voiced the wish to be able to sleep on the beach like the boys.
"Why not?" Carl asked, his huge, hot hand still on her ankle.
"I'll tell you why not," Stanley said. "Mosquitoes. That's why not"
"No pioneer blood," Alan Govern said. He was not contenting himself with a mere touch of Stanley's ankle. He had long since pulled Stanley out of her chair to lie beside him on the blanket, their bodies side by side, Stanley's smallness contrasting with his muscular build.
"But it would be fun," Angel said.
'Tell you what," Carl said laughingly, "you girls sleep on the beach and we'll sleep in your room."
"I have a better idea than that," Alan said. "Let's all sleep in the girls' room."
"Naughty, naughty," Stanley said. "Besides, those tightwads will probably be spying on us to see that we don't slip anyone in to beat them out of a few bucks."
"Guess we're stuck," Carl said. "But wouldn't I like to have a shower. This salt bathing is fine, but it leaves you kind of sticky."
"I suppose we could sneak you in for a shower," Angel said.
"Give you a pretty if you will," Carl grinned.
Just before darkness closed down, Angel and Stanley, using a tiny grill and supplies from the food cooler, cooked hamburgers and beans, warming the beans in the can after Carl sawed the can open with his pocketknife. The food was good, better than good, with appetites stimulated by salt air and beer. Angel ate voraciously, taking seconds on everything, wiping her hands and lips on her towel, grinning, talking, having a wonderful evening, liking the beach, the food, the company.
There was one incident during the meal. Stanley, seated cross-legged on the blanket beside Alan, dropped a bite of hamburger onto her thigh, close up to the very brief bikini bottom. She reached for a towel.
"Hold it," Alan said. "We don't have so much food that we can afford to waste it."
"It's yours, then," Stanley laughed.
It was one of the most sensuous things Angel had ever seen. At least it struck her that way. Bending, Alan closed his opened mouth over the morsel of food and kissed Stanley's bare thigh, close up, where the skin was smooth and sensitive. He did it quickly. He did it openly. Angel held her breath and glanced upward to see a shock of awareness appear momentarily on her friend's face. Then the moment was past.
In the darkness, after a quick swim in the surf to clean hands and mouths of food and to allow basic processes of nature to rid their bodies of the accumulating beer, although no one was crude enough to admit that the swim was for such a purpose, they sat under the canopy tent and watched the stars come out into brightness and heard a really good folk singer from a few yards away.
Carl was curled on his side. Angel sat on the blanket, leaning her back into the fold of his body, feeling the hard-muscled firmness of him. It wasn't polite to look, but Alan and Stanley had progressed to open petting, lying full length, bodies staining against each other. Now and then Angel could hear one of them sigh or whisper something in a sultry, sleepy sounding voice. Carl talked quietly about school and about how he was thinking about becoming an active member in a protest group which was being formed there.
"I don't know much about those things," Angel said.
"But you must have some opinion about the war," he told her, moving to put one big arm around her waist, flat of his hand covering the midriff between the two-piece bathing suit.
"Oh, I don't know," Angel said. "I leave politics to you men. I know so little about spheres of influence and communism and things like that."
"But everyone must think about those things," Carl sighed, his voice sounding serious, thoughtful. "They affect all of us. They will affect our children. We owe it to future generations to stand up and be counted, to let our voices be heard."
"My voice will be heard," Angel said. "I want a beer, now."
She leaned forward to allow him freedom of movement as he stretched to reach the beer cooler. Then she leaned back with a sigh of comfort to feel the hard heat of him, the muscles of his chest, the rise and fall as he breathed.
The beer was cold and fine and she was not drunk, just pleasantly light headed. She felt very, very good. Her father thought she was spending the weekend with Stanley and her people in Jacksonville and she had no worries and the wind was cool and her body felt young and alive and was waiting, waiting. "Angel?"
She turned her head and looked down at him. His face was on his hand supported by his elbow in the sand. "Hummm?"
She bent, bringing her face close to his, prepared for the first kiss. Instead, he whispered to her.
'That shower?" His voice was low, intimate.
"Hummm?"
"Take me to the room so that I can have that shower. "Now." '"But . . . "
"It's time, isn't it?" His hand closed over her arm, big, all powerful, warm, commanding.
"Yes," she whispered back. "It's time."
"I don't think they even heard us leave," she said, as they walked away from the closely huddled forms of Stanley and Alan.
CHAPTER TWO
Carl carried a small bag containing, he explained, his soap, shaving equipment and other vital necessities. It was an extended walk to the motel where Angel and Stanley had their room, but it was a pleasant night, the wind was cool, young bodies were warm and receptive as they brushed against each other. Angel felt as if she were surrounded by maleness as Carl towered over her, his strong arm extending downward around her waist. The talk was small talk, gay, laughing. Bare feet plowed through warm sand and the lights along the strand were rainbow hued brilliance.
"Look!" Angel cried, as a star fell. They paused, watching the burn streak down the sky to fade.
"Man," Carl said, "what a night."
"You like it?" Angel asked gaily. "It's yours. I present it to you."
"Thanks."
"All of it. The sea. The stars. The whole world."
"I'll have to change it, then," Carl said musingly.
"Change it? What for? It's perfect as is."
"Men are dying," Carl said, his voice almost inaudible.
"Carl," she wailed, "for heaven's sake!"
"For no real reasons," he said. "For national pride and for dollars. For heart-felt beliefs and for flagrantly false causes."
"Jeese," she said, pulling at his arm. "You sound like my father."
"I'd like to know your father," he said seriously. "He's a very great man."
"Dad?" she asked. "Great? Hey, how do you know about my father?"
"Everyone knows about Igor Tomsk," he said. He started, as if coming out of a reverie. "But let's cool that, baby. I'm for that shower."
They crept guiltily along the veranda outside the row of glass-fronted rooms until, standing in front of the girl's room, Carl fumbled for the keyhole with the key which had been entrusted to his care and they entered the room without lights until Angel could draw the drapes. When she had completed the isolation of the room she flipped the switch. A bedside lamp lit the room warmly but not too brightly. Carl was standing with his bag in his hand, looking at her strangely.
"The shower is in there," she said, motioning.
He turned, put the bag on the bed nearest the bath, rummaged through it. Angel, heart drumming with increasing insistence, walked to his side and watched as he laid out razor and shaving cream, a wash cloth and a bar of soap.
"There are towels inside," she said.
"Don't want to use all of them. You girls will need some." He threw a towel over his shoulder. "You won't go way?"
The way Angel felt she wasn't going anywhere. Except maybe into the shower with him if he gave her half the chance. She shook her head.
"I promised you something if you let me use your shower," he said, hand in the bag on the bed.
"A pretty," she said, "as you so quaintly put it."
"O.K. Close your beady little eyes."
"Surprise?"
"Surprise," he said. "Close and turn around."
Giggling, she obeyed. After a few seconds she felt his hand on her shoulder. "Don't open your eyes," he said.
He turned her to face him. "Open your little birdie mouth," he said inanely.
"I'm not hungry," she said, giggling.
"Open," he said, more forcefully. She opened her mouth. He put something on her tongue which was sweet and, as she closed her mouth automatically, began to melt with surprising speed.
"Gaaa," she said, shaking her head. "What on earth is that?"
"Just a piece of candy," he said.
"Whew," she said, swallowing the sickenly sweet taste, going to the dresser for a glass and some water from the pitcher of melted ice water there. "Must be home made."
"Sorry you didn't like it," he said, closing the bag. He wasn't looking at her. She rinsed the sweet taste out of her mouth.
"Well," he said. "That shower."
She walked to the drapes and pulled one back a few inches and looked out onto the veranda and the swimming pool below. The nightlights made things look warm and yellowish. She thought a quick dip in the pool would be fun. She heard the water start in the shower and heard the masculine snorts which indicated that Carl was running water over his head. She smiled and hummed a mournfully pretty melody which the folksinger down the beach from them had been singing and walked to flop down onto the bed.
She brushed sand from the soles of her feet by rubbing her feet together, propped her feet onto the white bedspread, cocked one leg over her knee, swung her foot, hummed and looked idly at the ceiling with the sound of the shower in her ears.
"Carl!" she called suddenly. "Are you going to take all night?"
He couldn't hear her. She swung her foot and whistled, a faint little girl-like whistle between prettily puckered lips.
The drapes were moving.
They began to twist and climb themselves and wave in movements like huge snakes. She stopped whistling and shook her head. The drapes stopped moving.
She frowned in puzzlement and looked around the room and the shower roared wetly.
Dizzy from the sun, she thought.
Then the lamp began to grow and grow and it became a sun, warm, yellow, non-menacing but huge and hot and all consuming and she lay on the bed staring at it wide-eyed with her leg crossed over her cocked knee, a small, dark girl in a modified bikini with her dark, short hair mussed from the wind and the sea and accepted the growth of the lamp into a miniature sun because it was natural that it be so and it was natural that the colors in the short dress she'd worji early, had tossed over the back of a chair, blend into a rainbow of beauty while the sound of the shower roared louder and louder, becoming a Niagara, filling the small room and her body sensed a change in the flow of her blood and knew the minute movement of the corpuscles through her veins and she knew her own body as she'd never known it before. In an instant all became clear to her, to the all knowing being she became, the workings of her heart and her internal organs and the flow of messages along her nerves could be followed minutely and . . . and . . . She screamed.
She screamed until the tension burst small blood vessels around her deep, dark eyes but no sound came.
"All." She was saying it over and over. "All. All. All. Answer." The word had the meaning of the world. It was instant wisdom. It was the knowledge of the centuries in one word. Beautiful word. A-N-S-W-E-R. All the rhythm and the beauty of the English language in one word. Her favorite word.
"What have you done?"
He was standing there looking down at her, a towel around his bulk, huge, manly. "What have you done to me."
"Easy, baby," he said. "Take it easy." He leaned toward her. She was still in her cocked leg position, but she let her legs fall when he touched her knee.
"Cool it, Angel. Be with it. I'm here." He sat on the edge of the bed, his weight making the mattress groan, springs creak.
He was man. She wanted him. She tried to reach for him, but her arms were shortened and she coldly realized that she was changing, changing, becoming different, her very body altering its shape to reach out for him not with arms but with a burning, growing, all consuming soft thing which was woman to wrap, consume him.
"What did you give me?" One part of her mind, clear, fighting.
"Nothing, kid. A bite of candy."
"Not candy," she said. Spittle drooled down her chin. He reached out to wipe her mouth with his towel. The nap was rough on her face. She coudn't stop drooling.
"I'll get you a towel," he said, rising.
His back, broad, beautiful. Wanted. God, she'd wanted him. Why did he think . . . Why did he think he had, to . . . do whatever it was he'd done to her when he could have had her so easily, just by answering her need, just by asking, just by a gentle touch and she was off the bed, resenting him, running, running on bare feet across a room with a cold terrazo floor which was miles across before she reached, gasping, the door and flung it open to plunge into the dark night lit by the yellow lights but still dark and reassuring, giving her strength as she ran, ran, reaching the corner of the motel with her breath gasping, running, running, a small, dark girl with smoothly tanned skin exposed by her brief bathing suit, attracting stares from passersby as she ran into the street and toward the beach, the sand warm under her feet and somewhere behind her someone calling her name.
"Angel! Angel! Angel!"
All the stars fell leaving a void above. Now it was the sand in her face and she was lying with her face against dampness with the ocean near growing larger but still not frightening. Dark. People around but not noticing. Glowing lights of fires on the stand and, suddenly, child horrors coming at her, growing, things, all the fear of a closed room and loneliness and the threat of . . . of . . . things.
"You really laid one on, huh, chick?"
He was bending over her, and unknown face, in the context of childhood horrors a threat from which she shrank soundlessly as his hand closed over her arm.
"Give you a hand. Who you with? You got a room or something?"
Leave me alone. Leave me alone.
"What have you been drinking, sweetie?" A leer near her face. Sound came this time. The face flinched. "Look, don't do that. I'm only trying to help. You wanta have people thinking I'm killing you or something?"
She screamed and screamed people hearing, coming. The face jerked away. "Look, baby, I'm cutting out. I was going to give you a hand but I'm not buying in for any of this nutty stuff."
People around her. Run. Run. Away from them then with their inquiring voices behind her, getting off the beach for it was home to terrors. Finding the lights of the hardware of civilization ahead, buildings.
A telephone booth. It was not a telephone both at first but it was later as she looked and it stopped being something else and she was saying, stumbling toward it, "Help me, somebody please help me, oh God, help me."
"Help me," she was saying into the dead telephone, standing in the lighted booth with the door partially closed. "Help me. Help me." For outside were things which writhed like huge snakes and colors which flowed and ran and sounds which were un-like any sounds ever heard on earth since the dawn of life and then a firm hand on her shoulder. She turned, ready to scream.
"Angel. Angel."
Dear, beloved, wonderful, rescuing face.
"Oh, Stanley. Stanley."
"Come on, baby."
She walked docilly, Stanley's arm around her. The world was going mad but it was no longer frightening, interesting rather with Stanley there to listen as she described it to Stanley, who laughed. She didn't even question the fact that Stanley was taking her back to the motel. She went without question because she was so grateful to Stanley for saving her. She felt expansive, warm, happy. She was giddily drunk and she hadn't had a drink in hours but it was so funny. She was laughing crazily when they put her on the bed.
"Where was she?"
"In a telephone booth."
"Damn, who did she call?"
"No one, idiot. She didn't have a dime."
"I didn't think it would hit her so fast."
"Idiot. You should have stayed with her."
Voices, just voices. She heard them say the meaningless words and then someone was lifting her, hands under her shoulders.
"Angel. Angel. Come out of it. Do you hear me?"
"Stan? Hi, Stan."
"Angel. I want you to do something for me. Do you understand? I want you to do something for me."
"Sure, Stanley."
"Here, Angel, hold this."
"Phallic symbol," Angel giggled. Her hand held the upright microphone. "Phallic as phallic as phallic," she mumbled, as Stanley held a sheet of paper before her eyes.
"I want you to read this, Angel."
The letters began to unblur. Angel blinked her eyes. The phallical microphone was near her lips, rousing thoughts in her which had nothing to do with the game Stanley seemed to be intent on playing.
"Read, Angel. Read for Stanley."
"There comes a time," Angel began, the words trying to race ahead of her eyes to escape, "when one must speak out."
"S'good," she said. "That's very good."
"Angel," Stanley said, shaking her. "Read it."
"There comes a time when one must speak out," Angel read. "I'm Angel Tomsk . . . " She paused. She grinned up at them. "That's I'm," she said.
"Angel. Angel. Just read it. Just read it right through without any cute comment."
"Carl," Angel wailed, because the phallical thing in her hands was alive, alive. "Carl, I don't want . . . please, Carl."
"I'm here, Angel. I'm here."
"Hold me Carl. I'm scared. There's something wrong. Please."
CHAPTER THREE
The world was his arms around her. She snuggled against his large, secure feeling chest and signed with contentment and, with a naughty grin, let her hand go into his lap to find a bulky softness. "Hi, Carl," she said.
"O.K., " a voice said. Stanley "We'll go that route."
"Hi, Carl," Angel said. "I feel you. I feel you growing. Don't try to hide that." She giggled happily as the world became lust. Forgotten were the others, the terror of the night, the strangeness. She knew only a calorific closeness of the male body, the hard, engulfing arms of Carl Peurter. She knew great tensions in the gluteal muscles of her buttocks and a lubricous flowing of glandular action as, for the first time, lips found hers and pressed as she fought wildly to devour the mouth which was on hers, taking her eager, pointing, searching tongue.
"Carl, Carl," she whispered. "I want you Carl. I want you terribly. I want you immediately. I want you big and hard and now. Now. Now."
"Wait," someone said. "Not so Goddamned fast."
"Now," Angel said, not hearing, hearing but not registering the voice. She was trying to crawl out of her skimpy bathing suit and Carl was holding her hands so that she couldn't shuck the halter to answer her burning need to push her bare, firm breasts against his chest.
"O.K. We're ready."
Big hands were on her, working with her bra, her halter. Big hands were on bare flesh, cupping her breasts as if they were tiny things which they were not. She was a small girl but she was all woman. She felt herself cupped, squeezed in the big, hard hands of Carl Peurter and she moaned with the ecstasy of it and let her hand push eagerly down the front of his trunks to find response, not fully grown, but growing, coming to pulsing life in the circle of her fingers.
"Oh, God, Carl," she was saying. "Oh, Carl. Oh, Carl."
Transported, lifted into a supernatural world where sensualism was all, where her femininity was all that existed to be ravaged, taken, used by the hard prick she clasped, she was oblivious to all but the sensations of her body. Eagerly she ripped away her bikini pants, arched her trim loins, pointing a beautifully protruding mons veneris hungrily upward to receive the first caress of that huge, hard hand. His hands on her. His palm against her, rousing the lust to shaking fury in her, causing her breath to come in burning gasps as she reached, pulled, tugged, until he, too, was freed of clothing. "Not yet"
She was pulling him toward her, wanting his weight on her, panting, clawing her need. The world spun on lust, passion making a brightness in her eyes so that she had to keep her lids tightly closed.
"Angel," he was saying, and he was trying to get her to do something. He wanted something and she was so willing, so eager. He wanted. . .
Down she went. Hair fell around her cheeks and there was the slim column of his passion and her warm lips touched, enclosed, because that was what he wanted and she was woman, she was passion. The lubricity of him. The heft of him. Her gasping as he hardened his loin muscles and pushed and filled her until her lips were spread, soft, red, wet and then heaven was coming, was nearing as he pushed her away, positioned her, lifting her lightly to put her on the center of the bed and his hard, gentle hands pushed a necessary message into her by a soft pressure on the inside of her thigh so that she allowed her long, white, smooth legs to spread for him, open, expose the waiting flower of lubricity, of womanly need to the approach, as she held her breath and the world spun dizzily, of lustihood and then, impaled, deep, straining, lifting herself from the mattress to take more of him, throwing her legs into the air to clasp him she was thunderously there and the world stood still while rhythmic contractions told him of her bliss and lifted him, even under the circumstances, to extravagant movements, up and down plunges which made her his, filled her, gorged her. She was near bliss when she felt the abandonment of his lunges, when she knew that he was nearing and she strained, reached, impaled herself gladly with little sobs of joy to reach and find as he became a throbbing thrill deep inside, filling her, washing her, giving her his male strength in outflowing gushes of pleasure.
"Goddamn," someone said.
She was a languorous, floating entity consisting of nothing more than her oozing cunt which was filled and sated. Illusion grew until it was reality as she heard the music of the universe and felt her body open, become one huge, wet, warm thing of passion to hold him, engulf him, take him head, heart and heels to her and then she was reaching for him, crying out need as he left her, left her cold and lone and needing him back to make her complete.
"Carl! Carl!"
"You got all you need?" Carl asked, but he wasn't talking to her, although she didn't know.
"Carl, please," she begged, writhing, needing him.
"By Gawd," Alan Govern said, from behind the movie camera which he had stopped when Carl dismounted. "-She's really turned on."
"I've had it," Carl said. "I feel like a prime stud on exhibition."
"I just feel," Alan said with a leer in his voice.
"You put on quite a show, buddy."
'That stuff hit her hard," Stanley Richmond said. "How long before it wears off?"
"Who knows?" Carl shook his head. "I'm not exactly a hophead. I'm no expert on that junk."
"God, she's turned on," Alan said, staring at the writhing form of Angel, her pussy moist, used spread for more use as she continued to call for Carl.
"Maybe you'd like seconds," Stanley said sarcastically.
"That's probably a better offer than I'll get from you, Ice Maiden," Alan said.
"You can bet your life on that," she said. "I pick my own, buster. You lay your hands on me again like you did on the beach . . . "
"We had to make it look good, honey," Alan said, laughing.
"I'm going to take a bath," Carl said. "You two can stay with her until she comes out of it." He left, carrying his bag with him. Alan Govern shifted on his feet, moved, sat on the bed not occupied by Angel, who was moaning softly, eyes closed.
"It'll be a long wait, doll," he said. "We might be able to amuse each other."
"Not a chance," Stanley said, sitting down in an uncomfortable straight chair. She sneered in disgust as she looked at Alan. He was watching Angel with feverish eyes, his tongue coming out to wet his sensuous lips.
"Look, doll," he said. "If you'd like to go somewhere and get a cup of coffee or something . . . "
"You pig," she said. "You dirty animal."
"To each his own, baby. Me, I'm a normal, red blooded American boy and that was a pretty sexy show old Carl just put on for us. I'll admit that I was not unmoved." He shrugged. "Course, if you're bound and determined to protect your little Angel . . . "
"She's a snotty little bitch," Stanley said nastily. "Then take a walk, doll."
He waited until she'd closed the door. He rose, tongue running over his lips in anticipation. He walked to the bed, looked down on the small, perfect body. Taut breasts with rosy nipples. Tight belly. Long legs. Things so soft.
"Angel?"
She moved, tongue in the comer of her mouth, thrusting up her loins blindly. With quick movement he reached for a towel, cleaned her as best he could, cleaning her, at least, of the evidence of passion on the soft interior of her thighs, wiping as she pushed blindly upward, reaching for him. He stripped away his trunks, mounted her, began to assault her with determined rhythm.
She, feeling him touch her, became alive again, swimming up from a fantasy of color and light to the reality of gluttonous joy as his hands scrubbed her roughly and she became aware, once more, that she was changing, changing, becoming a huge woman thing to swallow him, to feel with interior sensitivity not only that masculine part of him, but, with her heightened awareness, all of him, the strength of his torso in her arms, the hard thrust of his mouth against her. She lived for that. She existed only for the filling of her body and for the thrills which radiated out from that core of her which he was taking with deepness. She was one vast maw of woman, swallowing him, knowing him, knowing bliss never before achieved on this earth and the sound of it was music, the rush of breath, the moans which escaped her own lips as she ascended a mountain of sensation and clung there to the highest point for long years before, with a wild cry, she plunged, loins flailing wildly, and closed tightly in deep, strong pulses around him to know him more intimately.
She took his release with a sweet smile of acceptance, loving it, feeling the pulse of it on secret inner things, nor would she release him. She kept him there, forcing him to go through the period of non-passion with small movements, keeping him alive with kisses, cooings of meaningless sounds until, rearoused, they fought the battle of love to another temporary conclusion.
She would not remember that night. There would be vague flashes, sensuous flashes of knowledge. Somehow she was atop, using him, sitting high, leaning back, bending him, feeling him up there, possessing him as he had previously possessed her. And another picture which would stay with her through the fog of forgetfulness was him holding her against the wall of the shower, the water cool around them, holding her feet clear of the floor, since he was so much taller, taking her there with her back against cool tile, that awareness in her anything but cool, boiling hot, boiling over into climax, still another glorious reaching and finding of heaven. And the tenderness with which she woke him later, her head clearing but unreality still upon her, to kiss him on the chest, on the stomach. Fingers clasped in the hair of his chest, pulling gently to wake him, mouth finding lax man and stirring him into non-laxness and then mounting to reach, to reach. A frenzy of passion which went on and and the world still not there. Dark. Not seeing him. Feeling him large and man, muscular and hard. Hair on legs and chest and hair on head sometimes-and this was entirely in keeping with the other unreality-long and sometimes short. She slept.
She awoke with the sun coming in through the windows, shades drawn. She was nude, rumpled into a disturbed bed with one pillow on the floor, the other clasped against her breasts. Sheets twisted, bedspread kicked off the foot of the bed. She opened an eye and the room was there. She could not remember why it was there because she'd been on the beach. Hadn't she? Wasn't she on the beach screaming? No. Silly. Why should she scream?
She looked for Stanley and saw an empty bed. However, the bed had been slept in.
"Hey," she called. She moved and winded. God! Talk about sore! She ached. She moved her legs and found that she was sore in a very delicate spot.
"Whoops!"
How had it happened? She remembered walking from the beach. She remembered coming into the room with Carl. She remembered waiting for him to finish his shower and she . . .
Flashing vision of her, legs lifted, impaled.
"Whoops!"
Hangover? God, she must have been wiped out not to be able to remember, but there was no hangover. Her head was clear. She got up, stretching slowly, easing sore muscles. My God, she'd never been that sore. Not even after the first time.
"Whoops!"
Her standing, rather being held against the shower wall . . .
As Captain Marvel used to say, she thought, or somebody, "Holy Moley!"
And her body was feeling soiled. She needed a bath. She explored sensitive places with a tender hand, found suspicious moisture, sniffed to confirm her flashing memories, found the ripe aroma of stale semen.
The door opened with a sudden sound and she whirled, relaxing when she saw it was only Stanley. "Hi," she said.
"Why don't you take a bath?" Stanley said cruelly. "You stink." And, in Stanley's eyes, where there had been friendship, was a cold hate.
CHAPTER FOUR
Angel Tomsk was the product of a home dominated by a loving but firm father, a motherless home. An only child, she was, as an almost necessary result of being the pride of her father's heart, somewhat spoiled. Her life had started with drama, Angel being born on a leaking fishing boat in a storm while crossing from Siberian Russia to the northern islands of Japan shortly after her father had been condemned to death after a short period of exile. Angel and her father were lucky. Igor Tomsk survived the ire of Stalin and Angel survived a birthing which destroyed her mother.
However, Angel knew nothing of the hardships of Siberia, nothing of the coldness of the storm during which she was born. Her earlier memories consisted of warm sun and a comfortable home, of being the daughter of a respected member of the faculty of a large university in a sub-tropic climate. She remembered only comfortable beds and cozy rooms and the arms of her father around her as he read to her. She remembered being teacher's pet in the first grade and she remembered how boys started being nice to her when she had her long hair cut at the age of twelve.
Angel was one of those very pretty girls who, at puberty, become women. She had the features and the body to attract stares from both admiring males and envious females. She went through high school gathering the honors and attentions which come to the very pretty ones: office, election to various "queen-ships" of beauty, a constant stream of dates, for she did not believe in going steady.
She was spoiled. She was spoiled as millions of American girls are spoiled by parents who are in a position to grant every reasonable wish, by having that young, vital beauty which assures male attentions. Aside from petty quarrels with friends, Angel had never been exposed to open animosity.
When she saw hate in the eyes of her friend, Stanley Richmond, she was hurt, puzzled, shocked. She started to protest, to cry out against the almost burning look of hate and then it was gone and she wasn't quite sure whether or not she had imagined it. For her head was light. She was confused by flashes of memory from the hectic night past. Her body ached with soreness.
"Why don't you take a fast shower?" Stanley asked, herself again, smiling. "The boys are waiting for us on the beach."
Angel used the few moments of privacy under the shower to try to collect herself. However, try as she might, the night was largely a blank. She remembered the craziest things and decided, finally, with chilling cold water needling into her bare body, that she had become wiped out on beer. Yes, that was it. She had put away too much booze and had really let herself go with Carl.
At least she hoped it was Carl.
"It was Carl, wasn't it?" she asked, coming out of the shower with a large towel wrapped around her.
"It was Carl who what?" Stanley asked. The bleached blonde was in a different bikini, a revealing pair of postage stamp sized panties and a skimpy bra, and was stretched out on the bed doing exercises, lifting her legs to tighten her stomach muscles.
"Whoops," Angel said, laughing. "Maybe I revealed more than you knew by asking that question, huh?"
"It was Carl," Stanley said wearily.
"It sounds silly," Angel said, "when I ask, but was I altogether disgusting about it?"
"You were pretty Goddamned disgusting," Stanley said. Angel frowned. The blonde relented slightly, although her voice was still coldly disapproving. "But so were others. You were not alone."
"No," Angel said. "I think it takes two, doesn't it?" She smiled, trying to make a wan joke. Stanley offered no show of empathy. "What did I drink V Angel asked. "You don't suppose that fellow put something into my beer?"
"No," Stanley said, turning away. "He didn't put anything into your beer."
Angel, feeling the gnawing of guilt, tried to reestablish the rapport she'd felt with Stanley during the course of their brief friendship. "Where were you when the stuff hit the fan?" She winked at Stanley. "You said I was disgusting, but that I was not alone. Were you company for me?"
There was a withering glance as Stanley formed her answer which was short and harsh. "Hell, no!"
There was an awkward silence. Finally, it was Stanley who broke it. "Are you coming?"
"You go ahead," Angel said. I'll be along in a few minutes. I want to do my hair."
"I'll wait."
"No, please. The fact of the matter is I wouldn't mind being alone for a while."
Stanley shrugged. "We're right in front of the motel this time. Look for the tent."
Alone, Angel tried, once again, to reconstruct the events of the night. There were disjointed flashes of memory and an eerie feeling that something important had happened.
And there was an overwhelming feeling of guilt. Not because she'd gone to bed with a boy, but because she'd overdone it. She'd been too open about it and, in her generation, sex was a more or less accepted thing but it was still a private thing. Her impression was that she'd been rather immodest.
It was natural, then, that she was a bit reluctant to face the group. She knew that Stanley and Alan and Carl Peurter were waiting for her on the strand with a cold beer and a welcome shade but instead of walking toward the beach directly in front of the motel she angled up the strand to enter the student packed sands a block from the motel, safely out of the sight of those under the canopy tent in front of the motel.
It was mid-morning. Some groups, in defiance of local ordinances, were cooking on the strand. The healthy aroma of coffee assaulted her nostrils. Salt breeze and sun did much to drive the gloom of her spirit away, but she was still not ready to face her friends as she wandered in and out, by-passing knots of students around fires, under umbrellas.
Ahead of her the crowd seemed more dense than usual. She paused, shaded her eyes with her hands. Someone had appropriated a lifeguard stand and was using it as an improvised podium. Curious, she walked through the mussed sand to stand on the fringe of the crowd around the stand. Words began to take meaning as she neared and it brought a gry smile to her lips when she realized that the serious faced boy atop the lifeguard stand was speaking passionately against the Viet Nam war.
In an old country phrase, Angel was not political.
"For politics," her father yould have said, "you have no time, my Angel. You have time only for the study, the living; the strain of being young is enough for you without your mixing in things which are best left to the statesmen and the politicians." Yet, there were movements on campus. Her university, for all of its fun-loving reputation, was a mixture of American young people as was any other university in the country and there were those who felt their importance, who felt it necessary to have rabid opinions on the subjects which preoccupied the world.
She listened to the impassioned speaker for a moment. Her eyes moved over the crowd around the stand it was easy to spot the serious types, the long-faced girls with lanky hair, the long-haired boys, the bearded ones. That it was a sympathetic crowd was evidenced by the posters held by many of the serious young ones. Posters showed burned Viet Nam babies, spread-eagled dead women, American war planes distorted into things of evil. It was not new.
"Vietnicks," her father would have said in disgust.
"You'd think," someone said in her ear, "that they'd leave all this at home over the holidays."
"I was thinking the same thing," Angel said, turning to look into a strong, young man's face. The face, stubbled from lack of a morning shave, seemed familiar. The boy had smiling brown eyes, crew cut, sandy hair, a nice smile, a nose which had been battered in some violence-football, perhaps, from the size of him.
"I know you," Angel said.
"No, but if I have anything to say about it you are going to know me," he said, extending a hand. "I'm Joe Howard." He named a mid-south university famous for its football. "You may think you remember me because I've seen you twice . . . "
"You stopped the car," Angel said, smiling.
"At the risk of life and limb," Joe Howard said. "That blonde driving looked as if she'd just as soon run me down, but I had to risk it, having seen your face."
"Whee," Angel said, "a snow artist."
"Sincere as mother, apple pie, the American flag and the faithful dog," Joe said, grinning from ear to ear. "Are you interested in this politicking?"
"Not in the slightest," Angel said. "What are they going to do? March through the town or something?"
"Or something," Joe said. "I'm not going. Are you?"
"Not a chance," Angel said. "As a matter-of-fact, I'm looking for my friends."
"You've found one of them," he said. "Don't be greedy."
She laughed. He was a big, friendly boy. Under different circumstances she'd have been half way willing to let him pick her up. However, Stanley and the others were waiting.
"Really," she said, "I have to go."
"I'll walk with you," the big boy said, putting his hand protectively on her arm as she started back down the beach toward the area of the motel.
"I can still offer a cold one and some friendly shade," Joe said, waving a big, muscular arm toward a beach umbrella.
'Thanks," Angel said. "Some other time, maybe?"
"like next century? If I let you get away now I'll never see you again."
"Will that make you sad?"
"I might pine away completely."
Angel laughed. Her voice tinkled and she threw her head back to expose her trim, soft throat. "Goodbye, crazy boy," she said. She struck a serious pose. "Go back to your beer and your shade and try to forget about me."
"Not a chance," he said. He scooped her into his arms as if she were feather light. She kicked and squirmed, laughing, but his arms were like steel bands, holding her tightly, yet gently. "The day is young. You can devote hours of it to your friends later, but not now. Now I'm demanding a quarter hour. Long enough for that drink and . . . "
"This is kidnapping," she laughed. "I'll scream."
"You are in my power," he sneered, villain-like. "Your puny struggles are hopeless."
He had carried her to his umbrella. He dumped her unceremoniously onto a large beach towel, flopped beside her. He was not even breathing hard from having carried her through the deep sand. He popped two cans of beer, extended one. She sipped. It was the first time she'd ever had a beer before noon and it was surprisingly good, cold, biting, sturdy tasting.
"Joe," she said.
"Aggg!" He went through a contortion of face and body which she presumed to be overdone ecstasy. "The first time you've graced my name with those beautiful lips."
"You are crazy," she said.
"like a fox. I'm playing on your sympathy. I'm just a lonely little boy underneath all this beef."
"Your beer is fine and your shade is comfortable and I will stay for ten minutes. Then I have to go."
"Fair enough. I work fast." He made a pretense of eating her hand, her hand small and lost in his large one, his lips dry and warm on her fingers.
He was a fun guy, crazy, frivolous. He kept her laughing for twice times ten minutes, during which they took time to notice that the crowd around the lifeguard stand and a few others from the strand had formed into a rough line, two abreast, and disappeared into one of the town side streets.
Angel had broken down and accepted her second beer when she looked up to see her three companions, Stanley, Alan and Carl, approaching.
"Whoops," she said. "I'm caught."
Joe, sprawled on his stomach, weight on his elbows to put his ruggedly handsome face down close to hers, looked up as the three stood over them. He said, "Hi."
"We've been looking for you," Stanley said, smiling in an unconvincing way.
"Here I am," Angel said. "Surprise!"
"I can offer you a beer," Joe said, still making no effort to stand, matching the glares of Alan and Carl with a stiff expression on his face.
"Coming, Angel?" Stanley asked.
"Yeah, sure." She gathered her feet under her and stood. "Thanks for the cold one, Joe," she said, smiling at him.
"Any time," he said. "I'll keep one cold for later, huh?"
"She'll be busy later," Carl said coldly. Joe looked at Angel and raised and eyebrow questioningly.
"We'll see," Angel said. She didn't like being treated as property. She brushed sand from her smooth flanks and stood beside Stanley.
"Take it easy, fella," Carl said to Joe, starting off, managing to kick sand on Joe's towel. Joe, looking after them, brushed the sand away, a mussing smile on his face.
"Shake it up," Alan Govern said, striding through the loose sand, heading for the nearest street opening. Carl's hand was on Angel's arm. She was half running to keep up with them.
"What's the rush?" she demanded, jerking her arm away from Carl.
"We'll miss the excitement," Stanley said.
"I'm not sure I want to be excited," Angel said.
She looked at Carl. There was a certain feeling of coldness about the three who, only the previous evening, had seemed to be so much fun.
Carl, seeming to sense her disease, grinned at her. "Not that kind of excitement," he said meaningfully.
But this, too, hit Angel the wrong way. She didn't like being reminded in such a crude, joking way of her behavior of the past night, especially since she had trouble remembering just what that behavior had been. She trudged along beside Carl, suffering him to have his hand on her arm. Alan Govern looked at his watch and frowned. Ahead of them, around a corner, a crowd broadcast its presence in a low, muttering, growing sound.
"What is it?" Angel asked.
"The demonstration," Carl said. "It's underway."
"I don't want to go there," Angel said, holding back.
"Ah, come on. That's where the action is."
"I don't like that kind of action."
"We're spectators, not participants," Stanley said over her shoulder, her voice impatient. "Hurry up, I don't want to miss it."
CHAPTER FIVE
The Vietnicks had congregated In front of the city hall. There seemed to be more of them than had left the beach while Joe and Angel were drinking beer under the beach umbrellas, the crowd covering most of the rather large square in front of the southern plantation style city hall. Angel shrugged mentally and allowed herself to be swept along toward the fringes of the mob. A strong-voice young man was on the steps of the building, shouting his slogans, his condemnation of the government. A cordon of city police stood behind him, protecting the entrance to the building. A large, expensive looking fire tfuck blocked one street leading out of the square, firemen in helmets and slickers standing beside the tfuck. The slogans of the speaker were cheered by the crowd. Banners and placards waved.
"Let's not get any closer," Angel said.
"We can't see anything from here," Carl answered. His hand was firm on her arm, leading her forward. He and Alan began to push their way through the loosely packed fringes of the mob, working their way toward the steps of the city hall, moving in front of the street which was blocked by the fire tfuck.
"This is all right," Alan said.
Angel couldn't see a thing. She felt hemmed in, smothered by the crowd around her. She could see backs and necks and she could see Carl, standing beside her, crushed against her by the crowd. She didn't like crowds. She didn't even like going to the movies when the theater was full of people. She had a secret horror of being overwhelmed by a crowd, pushed down, trapped. She clung to Carl's strong arm for reassurance. She felt drops of perspiration form on her skin, run, drop. She wiped her eyes and listened to the ranting of the speaker and the cheers of the crowd and when Alan Govern said, "Here they come," she was so uncomfortable, so near a senseless panic that she didn't even wonder who "they" were.
To the Fortier Beach police, the riot seemed so senseless. They were used to having a certain amount of problems with the Easter influx of college students. They were ready to make a limited number of arrests after giving the kids every break. They were under orders to keep order with as little force as necessary and they were somewhat unprepared for the explosion which occurred when the group of Viet Nam veterans staged a counter demonstration, marching into the assembled crowd in a disciplined wedge, shoving students aside until, nearing the steps where the Vietnick speaker had stopped his harangue, some small spark started the fire which spread in an instant to engulf the mob, for the crowd became a mob.
"Carl, what is it?" Angel kept asking, as she felt the movement, the crush of the mob around her. "Carl, please."
And she was being moved against her will, being shoved and crushed, her voice rising in true panic now as secret fears seemed to be near realization. She could hear the screams and the shouts and the voice blaring for order over a loud speaker. She looked around her wildly and Stanley was gone along with Alan. There was only Carl and he was behind her, holding her arms, guiding her somewhere. She, being so small, her face below the level of the mass of people, could not see, could only trust him as he pushed, making a way for her through the tightly packed mass until, with a stumbling suddenness, she broke through into open space and saw the milling, battling melee which had formed around the smaller group of counter demonstrators.
Trying to regain her balance, she reached out for Carl and her hands clutched at air. A hand pushed in the small of her back and she lurched forward, caroming off two battling young men who shouted at each other as they clinched. She felt the harsh bite of concrete on her bare knee as she went down, heard the shouting, the blaring voice on the loud speaker screaming for order and then, as she struggled to her feet, looking for Carl and seeing only the whirling, mad senseless mass of people something struck her with the force of a fist, a huge, lifting, wet blow into her bare midriff as the firemen turned on their high pressure hoses.
Rolling on the gray, wet concrete, buffeted by the power of the stream of water, she screamed, her voice lost in the roar of the mob. She bounced, banged into someone on the concrete, crawled, sobbing, trying to get away from the noise and the fear.
"Angel!"
She could hear her name. The stream of water passed over her, the full force not hitting her, spray causing her to close her eyes and then she felt a powerful grip on her arms and she was being pulled to her feet. She looked up, expecting to see Carl and looked into the concerned brown eyes of Joe Howard.
"Oh," she said, as he pulled her away from the milling crowd. Around her, the mob was thinning as the police moved forward, taking the combatants into custody. Someone bumped into her, pulling her away from Joe for a moment and she screamed again, only to see him push his way to her side and put his arm around her. She took a painful blow in the side as Joe bulldozed his way through the crowd, felt salt tears form and begin to ooze from her eyes, prayed that it would end, that she would be free of the press of people, the maddened cries of the mob, the shrill blasts of police whistles and the overriding boom, boom, boom of the male voice on the loud speaker. She was sobbing openly when, at last, Joe pushed his way clear and led her, at a run, down a street away from the riot. Behind them, she heard the smash of breaking glass and turned in time to see a smiling boy throw a brick through a plate glass window. Then they were around a corner and it was as if they were in a different world. No police. No moving masses of people. No crush around her. Her hand was clasped tightly in Joe's and they were walking fast.
"Are you hurt badly?" he asked, stopping her in a store-front alcove.
"No," she said. "I don't think so."
"Nasty scratch on your knee," he said.
She glanced down. She didn't feel it, but her knee was abraded by the rough concrete, was red and raw.
"We'll stop at my room and get something for it," Joe said. "What the hell were you doing in the middle of that mass of idiots?"
"I don't know," she said truthfully. "Carl and the others. They wanted to see the excitement."
"And where was dear Carl when you needed him?"
"We got separated. We were right in the midst of it. I . . . "
"I gave you credit for more sense," Joe said. "Let those idiots do their protesting, but give them a square mile of room to do it in, that's my motto."
Ahead of them was the beach, black with people. It was hard to believe that there were so many of the Easter vacationers left on the strand, so many of them who had no part in the riot back in the town square. When she was mixed up in it, it had seemed that all the world was crushed into the square.
"I have a room here," Joe said, leading her up a walkway to an old frame, two-story house. "And the landlady is very understanding about her guests giving aid and comfort to beautiful, bruised ladies in distress.
He led her into an airless, hot hall, up a flight of stairs and into a somewhat musty smelling room with windows overlooking the strand. He put her down on the bed and told her to sit there while he rummaged through bags in one corner of the room and came up with disinfectant and a band-aid. She winced when he applied the stuff to the scratched knee. The cooling feel of his breath as he blew the afflicted spot made her laugh. The band aid was far too small for the area which had been brush burned by contact with the pavement.
"I could tear up one of the sheets and make bandages," he said, grinning at her.
"And get in bad with your understanding landlady?"
"You're right. Look, you just lie back. No, you'd better get out of that wet suit first, hear?"
"Sir!" she said, in mock protest.
"Here," he said, moving away, tossing back a white tee-shirt. "I'll wait in the John while you change into Dr. Howard's surgical gown."
She was conditioned, by the frightful experience in the sweaty crowd of the square, to obey his orders. He went into the bath, closed the door, and she stripped out of her wet two piece bathing suit, spread it on the window sill to dry and slipped into the tee-shirt. It covered her like a mother hub-bard, to her knees. It was thin enough to show the pert nipples of her well formed breasts and to show a darksome bulge just below her mid-section, but it was dry and comfortable and she was beginning to have a delayed reaction to the riot. She was shivering, her shoulders shaking uncontrolably when, after a long silence, Joe banged on the bathroom door, yelled, "Are you decent?" and looked tentatively around the door. Seeing her, huddled on the bed, arm lock around herself, head bent, lips distorted, eyes wild, he leaped across the room.
"Hey, hey," he said, his voice worried, soft. He knelt on the side of the bed and folded her in his arms. "Hey, hey," he kept repeating as the floodgates opened and she sobbed out her tensions against his shoulder. He was dressed in a faded sweatshirt and swim trunks and she made dark, wet spots on the shirt with her tears as his big hands clumsily patted her on the back and he held her close, both of them kneeling on the bed, their combined weight making the springs squeak in protest.
"Hey, hey," he kept saying. "It's all right," he said at last, when he thought he detected a change in her sobbing.
"It's all over, Angel," he whispered, as she snubbed the sobs into silence.
"I'm so sorry," she stammered, pulling away, eyes red, nose dripping tears off a pert end. "You're not a wailing wall, I know, but . . . "
"Any time, Angel," he said sincerely. "Any time you need me as a wailing wall."
"I'm all right now," she said, taking his offer of a handkerchief to wipe her eyes, her nose.
"It was enough to scare anyone," he said. "I still don't understand why you were right there in the middle of it. It just goes to show that you kind of need ole Joe Howard to look after you."
"You might be right," she said, smiling.
"Might be? I know I'm right And I'm not about to let you get out of my sight again."
"I'll have to leave sometime," she said, smiling at him. "Your roommate will be coming back or . . . "
"He's going to spend the night on the beach again," Joe said.
"I have to go back to the room to tell Stanley . . . "
"The jerk who left you on the lurch?"
"No, the blonde. That's Stanley. I rode up with her, you know."
"We'll worry about Stanley some other time," Joe said. "Are you hungry?"
"No." She had arisen from the bed and was standing. The loose tee-shirt showed blue-black woman mound, bulging breast. She was aware of his eyes on her.
"Well," he said, "I'm not letting you get out of my sight" he said weakly, his thought definitely elsewhere. A man can't look and think at the same time. "I'm going to take care of you."
"Is that a threat?" Angel said, going, in her highly emotional state, from one highly charged feeling to another, "or a promise?"
CHAPTER SIX
The swift change in Angel's feelings was not lost on Joe Howard. From the moment he'd first laid eyes on the small, dark girl, he'd been turned on. Naturally, since the Easter weekend was, by tradition, a time during which the rules were toosed out the window, Joe entertained thoughts of getting into Angel's pants. That was what made the world go round. However, he could scarcely believe his good fortune when Angel obviously turned it on for him.
"Is that a threat or a promise?" she asked archly.
Joe grinned. She was a sight to gladden the dreams of any man and he wasn't even dreaming. He was wide awake. It was broad daylight on a nice Florida day. The bright sun from outside lit the room which was costing him much more then it was worth-at least more than it had been worth. Angel in it made it suddenly more valuable. She stood near the bed in one of his athletic tee-shirts. The garment was loose and flowing, but it was snugged around a set of spectacular breasts which made Joe's mouth water.
Joe was a basic man. He liked hamburgers and steak and biscuits and gravy, the common, down to earth solid things of life. He played tackle on one of the toughest footballs teams in the south, a real hard-nosed outfit. He liked his beer cold, his bourbon straight followed by a shot of water plain from the tap and he liked his women just about any way. He liked, especially, what he saw before him and he liked the inviting way she smiled at him.
"Obviously," Joe said, not wasting time in getting close to her, "you need someone to take care of you. You go around getting into trouble."
"Humm," Angel said. She didn't stop to think that she was throwing herself at this boy. She'd seen him just three times, twice for brief periods and now when he had helped her escape the crush of the mob in the town square and she was not the sort of girl who went around crawling into bed with just anyone. Before the previous night, she'd been rather selective in her sexual activity. She was not promiscuous. She had taken only three lovers in her lifetime, before the night at Fortier Beach when things began so nicely with Carl and ended in a blur of confusion. Carl, she knew, made four and now, within a space of a few hours, whee, she was going to make it five, but what the hell.
Something was happening to her and she didn't take time to analyze it. Things moved so swiftly. There seemed to be something about the sunlight, the air, the very atmosphere, the world, the feeling of her body which made her come to decisions without thinking them through. For example, the absolutely stunning swiftness of the passion which filled her. One minute she was scared, nervous, not fully recovered from the stress of being caught in the crowd in the town square. The next she was crawling with lust. That, she thought, is what is filling me. It's lust Passion? A pleasant word to be used in romantic situations. Passion can be anything from a whispered, "I love you" to a coming together in tenderness. Lust was what she felt. Good, hard, bone thingling lust which made her body tingle, made her blood rush. She stood, clad in a thin, white tee-shirt which showed the nipples on her taut breast and the dark bush of her woman-hair and she could feel herself reaching out. It was as if her darn body, of its own accord, were moving toward Joe.
There was a moment which seemed to be frozen in time when they stood near each other. Neither of them spoke. Joe was smiling at her, his eyes on her face. She having already surrendered to him in her mind, afire with that swift, all-consuming need, was waiting. He seemed to be content to look at her and anticipate. Or, perhaps, he was fearful that the golden moment was false, that the surrender he could read in her dark eyes was a false hope, built of his own desire.
At any rate, it was Angel who broke the silence.
"I can't think of anyone nicer to, uh, take care of me, Joe," she whispered. Then it began. Already her blood was thundering through her veins, but when he extended one hand, one big, manly hand and touched her arm softly she looked down at the point of impact quickly because there was an actual electrical exchange, a bristling of the tiny hairs on her arms as he touched her.
"Hey," he said, having felt it too. "Electric personality."
"Electric," she repeated, mesmerized by his lips. She kept her eyes on them, on his mouth, as he leaned toward her, not yet reaching for her. The first kiss was a mere touch. His lips were sun-dried, dry. They brushed hers and she let her mouth go lax so that the smallest of pressures from him put his dry lips into the sweet woman moisture of her mouth and she tasted him. Evidently he'd been swimming, for there was a small tinge of salt-sea taste about him. Since he didn't smoke there was no cigarette taste to disguise his man-mouth goodness as he pushed his lips closer, still making contact with her without demand, still with his hand on her arm.
"God, you're sweet," he said, his voice strong, low. "So small." He had to bend far down to kiss her.
"Ah, Joe," she said, lifting herself to tiptoe up into his arms as he gathered her in. She felt his strength, the hardness of his arms as they went around her and wrapped her up into a blanket of man. He could reach almost all the way around her. His hands, palms flat, fingers spread to touch as much of her as possible, folded themselves around the curve of her sides, below the beginnings of breast bulge. She felt herself being pulled off her feet, supported by his arms. His manhood struck her in the soft stomach as she was pressed against him and she was pressed against him and she felt the bulge of it, soft at first, then increasingly large and hard as the kiss went from lip touch to wet, reaching tongue play and spread lips and wide, sucking mouths. She began to tremble as he hardened against the softness of her stomach, as she felt the sheer massiveness of it. "Oh, Joe," she whispered, pulling her lips away for only a moment to plunge back into the kiss with her mouth wide, teeth bumping his as his tongue came out to do battle with her weaker one.
"You're so beautiful," he whispered to her.
He lifted her. She made a delightfully light, warm bundle in his arms. Her flesh was so wondrously soft. Joe Howard liked girls to the point of worship. He felt her warmth and couldn't believe it. She was too good. The sweet feel of body contact was so good as to be unbelievable, but, truly, she was there in his arms, legs long and bare as they thrust from his short tee-shirt, her knees bend as he supported her with one arm under her knees, one behind her back. She lifted her face for his kiss as he moved slowly toward the bed. He had made the bed when he got out of it that morning, so it was neatly spread up with the chenille bedspread in a Florida coral color which was somewhat faded by repeated washings.
He moved toward the bed, shuffling his feet. Her soft, girl's body pressed to his. She had her arms around his neck and was clinging. Her lips were ripe-apple-sweet under his mouth. He felt the edge of the bed strike his legs and paused, reluctant to release her even for a moment. He knelt on the bed, worked himself into the middle of it, lowered her, still folded in his big arms, and put his weight on her. She, like a soft flower, spread, letting his big body go between her legs. The shirt was inadequate. He heard it rip under the strain. He felt, through his clothing, the soft heat of her pussy the sweet saddle between her out-thrust legs, and pushed into it with his clothing-sheathed prick.
He could not get enough of her. He ran his tongue around her teeth, searching for the hidden areas of sweetness which lay far back in her mouth, up in the soft-hard area between her front teeth and her lips. She was gasping, straining against him, churning her hips to press that cloth-covered hardness into the sensitive area at the base of her pelvic mound. She was small, dainty in his arms. She was woman, sweet, eternal. She was woman of tremendous appeal and Joe felt his lungs churning to get enough air. He let his hands feel and appreciate her body. Although she was a small girl, she had wonderful breasts. They were hard-soft with a core of heat which burned at him through the thin tee-shirt. She made no objection as he lifted himself from her, stripped the tee-shirt up and exposed the sweet, brown tipped mounds. She was languid with need as he pulled the shirt roughly over her head, mussing her hair further. He pushed himself down to have a view of twin peaks with rosy-brown rings of just the right size. He closed his mouth over one unexpanded nipple and felt it go hard and grow as he bit it gently between his front teeth. Angel let a sensuous moan escape, a sound which fired him to a zeal which was rare, even in a man as passionate as Joe.
She was his. All of her was his and his to be claimed. He did so with his mouth and his lips. He let her burn for a moment as he withdrew just to look at her. Then, with a gusty sigh, he lowered himself and kissed her between the twin peaks of her breasts. She put her small hands on the back of his head and rolled his head back and forth as he mauled one taut nipple roughly with his tongue and teeth. He switched his attentions as she began to do a little hip dance of lust under him, grinding herself up into his hardness. Then, with a quickening heart, he lowered himself along her perfect body, letting his rough tongue drag, pursing his lips, sucking at her lovely, unblemished skin, kissing it, licking it as he went lower, lower. The indentation of her navel seemed, he thought, to be very sensitive. She moaned aloud with pleasure as he teased it. She was lying with her eyes closed, her lips parted. Her hair had fallen about both sides of her face to give her a wanton, mussed look. Her breasts showed a small area of white where sun had never reached and there was a marking around her hips as he looked at that very feminine part of her. Her bathing suit was outlined in darker, sun-browned skin. He kissed the white of her little pleasure belly. Her skin was surprisingly cool. Her legs were spread expectantly and her loins kept up that churning, heaving motion, pushing her hard pelvic roundness against his chest.
He knew that he was going to possess her utterly, completely, as completely as a man can possess a woman. But there was time. He raised himself to his knees and stripped away his shirt. Then, in a moment of complete abandonment, he pushed his muscular, male breast down between Angel's outspread legs, put the little male nipple at the center of the heat and moistness and pushed to feel her, hot, lubricated by the flow of passion.
With a gasp, she pushed down, lifting her wet pussy to press it softly, demandingly, against his bare chest. He could see her chest heaving. He reached up and pinched her distended nipples, hard. She writhed. Then he was ready. He knelt before her, primitive male worshiping at the altar of the fertility goddess, his fingers reaching out to be wetted by her lubricity as he pulled her tiny labia apart and looked at the soft-flesh, iris-like opening. Sweet, passion-oiled woman waited as he hesitated, not from misgivings, but from sheer anticipatory pleasure. Then he lowered his head to the attack, spreading his lips wide to take in all, all. His tongue went deep into her cunt, thrusting. His nose pressed hard into the upper reaches.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Angel held her breath in ecstasy. She felt herself engulfed by the soft-hot wetness of his mouth. She felt his nose press hard against the center of her pleasure and felt his hard tongue point and thrust into the yielding heat of her cunt and she blew sky high. She felt it begin way back and tried to hold it. The effort served only to intensify the pleasure as she held her breath and then, as it became inevitable, breathed out in a long, sensuous moan of bliss and heaved under his wild ministrations. She felt, for one joyous moment, that he was going to devour her. She'd never been so completely taken, so wantonly thrilled. She let the good, hard, blasting climax send her into convulsions of delight, causing her loins to churn and writhe as she forced herself up into the lusting kiss.
He felt her go. He knew she was being lifted and he took great pleasure in doing it to her. He closed his lips around the hard little core of her, bit her tenderly with his teeth and listened as she moaned out her joy. Then, as she peaked, he thrust his tongue far, far and felt the inner throbs of her bliss.
He left her, pulling himself away as she relaxed, but not before making soft little after movements into his kiss to savor the last iota of goodness. She sighed.
"Sorry about that," she giggled. "It's your fault, though. Whee!"
Joe licked his lips, tasting her passion. He stripped away his trunks and revealed himself, all man, huge. He pulled himself to her, knelt over her, bent up into a fetal position, his knees on either side of her along her sides. His awareness was thus pressed, from base to tip, into the soft, yielding surface of her stomach. He kissed her mouth and she tasted the strange, not unpleasant residue of her passion. He trembled. He held her there, wrapped around her, his weight partially on her, mostly supported by his elbows, kissing her gently, savoring the goodness of her lax mouth.
But the goodness of her release stayed with her. She would give herself to him, but she felt no quick return of the grand passion, the hard, good lust she'd felt before. She answered his soft kisses, her body motionless under his, feeling the great, hard length of his need against her stomach.
He held his position, kneeling over her, pressing his prick into her soft stomach, for a long time. Then he moved. She expected him to enter her, then. Instead, he turned her, putting his big hands under her body to lift her effortlessly onto her stomach and then he kissed her back. He started with her shoulders and her neck, breathing with great need as he brushed his lips over her skin, teased her with his tongue. He lowered his weight on her and, for the first time, pressed the lubricated roundness of his prick into the area of her pussy, from the rear, not penetration, just a touch. Then even that was gone as he kissed his way down her back to her bulging hips, paying tribute to the tender little spot at the base of her spine, the soft little valley which indented just above the bulge of her rump.
She felt little tingles of interest.
He opened her legs. His tongue smoothed the inner softness of her thighs, reached into that area of sensitivity which had, suddenly, come back to life. She lifted her pelvic area from the bed to give him access, wanting him to turn her over, repeat the wonderful love he'd give her before.
That was not his plan. He turned her over and she automatically opened her legs for him, but he knelt over her instead and thrust his hardened cock into her lips. For a moment, her mouth remained closed. It was hot and soft-hard and slicked by his passion. Then, with a sigh, she spread her lips wide, opening her mouth to take him with jaw-stretching thorougliness. The position was awkward. She disengaged, pushing on him, her hands small against his muscular body. He lay on his back and she went down, down, taking the already familiar prick, driving herself to please him. But she was pleasing herself, too, for the erotic deed sent big thrills through her body, finished the reawakening process.
She took all she could, feeling the strange, almost gagging sensation of pressure far at the back of her mouth. She made her mouth a tube of suction and moved her head, making little sounds. She let her lips part wetly, softly and moved them the length of him, teased and kissed until, her need as great as it had ever been, she became the driver and, quickly, surely, knelt over him, positioning herself with one hand on his engine of lust, feeling it first big and hard in her small hand and then pointing into the depths of her as she lowered herself impalingly on him, taking all in one swift, complete motion which was so pleasurable as to be near pain. He was big and her position made him more effective. Her weight forced her down, down, until her entire stomach cavity seemed to be filled with man. She leaned far back, bending him, feeling him vividly alive inside. She swept her hips in tiny, wild circles and moaned her joy as he thrust into her swiveling, a lust full, big, filling, up and down stroking. He put his hands on her hips, accented by her kneeling position. He used her hips as handles to lift her and push her down until she thought he was going to penetrate all of her body and then he was near, gasping, lunging. She let him go, felt the big thrust, the quick splashing and spoutings and then she let her own joy come, immediately following his, laughing, crying with the bigness of it.
When it ended, all too soon, she fell atop him, exhausted. He pulled one of her legs up, pushed her down on his slowly relaxing prick, keeping the penetration and kissed her lightly on the cheek. She slept.
When she awoke, she smelled bacon and eggs. It was one of the world's finest smells, she decided, although it wasn't breakfast time. In fact, there was a dimness in the room which denoted early evening. She'd slept for hours. She lay there drowsily, watching Joe, in his swim trunk again, moving around the small cooking area. When he called out to her she answered in a soft little moan of sleepiness.
"Up and at 'em, lazy," he said, turning to grin at her. He had such a nice face, she decided. He was not handsome, really, but he was manly. He had a regularity of feature which made his face look friendly and nice.
"Ummm," she said, stretching, letting the spread, which had been pulled up to cover her nude body, fall away to expose her breasts. "Do I have to?"
"You expect maybe that I'm going to feed you in bed?"
"Why not?"
"I'll tell you why not," he said, turning back to his skillet. "If I get close to you and that bed with you looking like that the food will get cold, and I'm hungry. Now get up."
His tee-shirt was lying beside the bed. She rolled onto her stomach and got it. She sat up in bed, pulled the shirt over her torso and got up. She freshened up in the bath with a quick face rinse. She used his comb to flip her hair into some semblance of tidiness. Then she had to do other cleanup chores. The spoils of their mutual passion were sticky on the softness of her thighs.
He had eggs and bacon ready. There was coffee, so strong she could almost chew it, but good. There was a snack bar with two stools. She sat on one stool, the short shirt pulled up around her thighs.
"I figure maybe we make the scene on the beach for a while," Joe said. "Then back here for a beer or two?"
She was sorry he'd mentioned anything pertaining to the future. She'd been trying to get by with present time, only. She didn't want to think of having to leave him. She didn't want to have to think of the afternoon, with the horror of being caught in the midst of that mob. However, he'd brought it up and it was getting late.
"My friends will be worried about me," she said.
"Look," Joe said, "I don't want to sound nasty, but it was your friends who got you into the middle of that bit this afternoon."
"I know."
"So let 'em worry."
"I can't do that," she said. "Stanley . . . "
"That's the blonde?"
"Yes. I came with her. You see, my father thinks Stanley and I are in Jacksonville with her parents."
"So you can't ditch Stanley," Joe said.
"No. Not if I wanted to, Joe."
"O.K., " he growled. "But that doesn't mean we can't see each other."
"Of course not."
"No claims on you, then?" Joe asked, taking around a big bit of eggs and toast, but showing concern with a wrinkled brow.
"No," she said.
"That big guy . . . "
"Just some boys we met. I hardly know them."
Joe was silent. Hell, for that matter she hardly knew him. But that sort of thinking was bad for the ego. Besides, she was just a girl. She was a beautiful, sexy girl, but just a girl he'd met on the Easter weekend. When they both went back to their respective schools they would probably never see each other again. He looked at her. That, he decided calmly and rationally, would be a shame, for she was some chick.
"Well, we can go find your blonde friend . . . "
"I think I'd better go alone, Joe," she said. She suddenly remembered Stanley's strange behavior. That morning she would have sworn that Stanley looked at her with undisguised hate. Perhaps it was just disgust, she told herself, disgust at the way I acted the night before, getting so bombed out of my mind that I didn't know what I was doing. I know I got laid, she thought, because I was sore as hell, but how and where I got laid I don't know, so perhaps I did it in a disgusting, open way which shocked Stanley.
But, hell, Stanley was no virgin. At least she didn't talk like a virgin. And she was sure quick to let herself be picked up by Alan Govern.
Alan. And Carl. They'd been so strangely insistent that she go with them to the Vietnik demonstration in the town square. And then she'd been separated from them so easily, almost as if . . . No. Of course not. Just because Joe found her and got her out of the crush of people didn't mean that Carl didn't even try.
"Why so serious?" Joe asked, wiping his face on a paper towel.
"Just thinking."
"Well?"
'I'll have to go find Stanley."
"Yes, you said that I'll go with you. I said that too."
"I know, but I'd better go alone. Stanley is, well, she's sort of strange."
"You're acting as if she's your lover or something."
Angel giggled. "Oh, no. Stanley--likes boys and after this afternoon, you shouldn't have any doubts about me, Joe."
He grinned. "No."
"It's just that I came with her. My story to cover this long weekend depends on her and I wouldn't hurt my father for anything. I suppose I'm hurting him without his knowing it by deceiving him, but he doesn't know it and it's all rightOh, hell. You know what I mean."
"Sure. There comes a time when you have to find your own thing," Joe said.
"So I'll have to go. Maybe we can meet tomorrow?"
"Maybe I won't even let you leave," Joe said, coming to stand beside her, putting his big arm around her, his hand closing familiarly on her left breast. A series of thrills shot out from his touch. Never before had a boy so casually felt of her breast and never before had it done so much for her.
"Joe," she whispered, "I don't know what kind of girl you thing I am"
"I think you're the kissing kind of girl," he said, trying to suit actions to words.
She avoided his mouth. "No, please, let me say it. I'm not a whore. You know I wasn't a virgin, but I'm not bad. I've known boys . . . not many . . . "
"Hey, don't knock yourself out. I've screwed a few girls. Everybody's doing it." He grinned at her.
"But I've never known one who turns me on the way you do," she whispered. "I'm not promiscuous, but I don't really care if you think I am when I ask you to make love to me again before I go."
"Glad to oblige," he said, lifting her from the stool. This time he tasted of bacon and eggs but she didn't care. So did she. "How?" he whispered, holding her easily.
"All the way, Joe? like this afternoon?"
"All the way, baby."
"Make me tingle, Joe. Make me want it. Make me beg for it."
"You're on," he whispered. He walked quickly to the bed, put her down, stripped away his trunks quickly. He pushed her down, the tee-shirt still on her torso, her legs cocked with her feet at the very edge of the bed. He knelt on the floor and put his face into the already creaming pelvic pocket and her joy began. "Ah, Joe," she moaned. "Ah, baby!"
CHAPTER EIGHT
"Where the hell have you been all day?" Stanley demanded.
Angel had scarcely entered the motel room. The blonde girl was dressed in one of her revealing bikinis and was stretched out on one of the beds, two pillows under her head. She didn't make a move to get up.
"For all you care, I might have been in jail," Angel said angrily. She felt soft and melty inside, the result of the extended loving session with one very nice boy named Joe Howard, and she didn't take too well to the tone of Stanley's voice.
Stanley checked herself visibly. "We looked all over for you."
"I was with a friend," Angel said, heading for the bathroom. She had not taken time to shower at Joe's place. She picked up a set of slacks and accessories and went into the bath without further conversation.
"Who was the friend?" she heard Stanley call, just as she turned on the water. She realized that her friend had walked into the bath after her.
"You don't know him," Angel answered, still miffed by Stanley's demanding question upon her entrance to the room. Stanley could have shown a little concern, she thought, rather than being brusk. After all, it was Angel who almost got trampled by the mob, and it wasn't Angel's idea to go there in the first place.
"That big guy you were with on the beach this morning?" Stanley asked, raising her voice to be heard over the roar of the shower.
"Well, if you must know, yes," Angel admitted.
"Nice looking guy. Who is he?"
She sounded, Angel thought, like the old Stanley, the friend who was always so very sympathetic. "His name is Joe Howard," she called, rinsing soap off her breasts, breasts which, only a few minutes ago, were being thoroughly kissed by Joe Howard. The thought made her experience a small glow of warmth in her pussy.
"You pick him up on the beach?" The way Stanley asked the question indicated disapproval.
"Yes," Angel called back, "just like you picked up Carl and Alan."
"Touche," Stanley said.
There was no further conversation as Angel finished the shower. She stepped out and began to dry herself, standing on the bathmat which happened to be directly in front of the open door. Stanley, back on the bed, had a good view. Angel felt the blonde girl's eyes on her. She finished drying, climbed into her tight panties, hooked on her bra and then topped them off with slacks and blouse. She looked fresh, very young and very desirable when she came out into the room, padding in bare feet.
'There's a drink for you," Stanley said.
The glass was full, packed with ice. It was very cold and very good. Angel gulped it, feeling better toward Stanley. "Thank you," she said, "I needed that."
"You don't know how badly you needed it," Stanley said. She rose from the bed. "How about we have something sent in to eat? Carl and Alan are coming over . . . "
"I'm going out," Angel said suddenly, her mind coming to the decision with a snap which surprised her. Ordinarily she would not have been so decisive. She felt as if she owed Stanley something. After all, it was Stanley who had arranged for her to make the weekend trip. Stanley furnished the ride and, shamefully, Stanley was furnishing most of the money. Angel had not been able to coax a large enough amount of money out of her father, not without making him suspicious. After all, why would she need a lot of money to spend the weekend with Stanley's family in Jacksonville? So she was obligated to Stanley and would not, ordinarily, have gone so directly against Stanley's wishes. However, in that split second the sheer pleasure of being with Joe Howard had made itself felt in her memory. Not just the sex. It was nice to be with him, to talk with him and laugh and just be there. So she decided that she was going out. To hell with everyone, she was going back to spend the evening with Joe.
"Well," Stanley said, 'let's have a bite first."
"I ate at Joe's," she said. "I'm not hungry."
"Why, Angel," Stanley said, blocking Angel's way as the smaller girl moved toward her bed, where her shoes were lying on the floor, "are you angry with me for some reason?"
"No," Angel said. "But I'm going out with Joe. If you'd like to come alone? Maybe you and Alan . . . "
"We might," Stanley said. "Why don't you wait until they get here and I'll ask him."
"What about Carl?" There was something about the thought of Carl which gave Angel the chills. She had certainly been hot for his cock the day before. She'd certainly opened herself for him on the previous night, when she was looped. But she felt that strange mixture of shame and dread when she thought of Carl Peurter. For a moment, she wondered just what had happened while she was drunk.
"Oh," Stanley said, "well dump him."
"Well, O.K., " Angel said.
"Now I'm going to send for a sandwich. Are you sure you don't want one?" Stanley was standing very close, peering intently into Angel's face. Angel wondered what she was looking for, but said nothing.
"Not a thing," Angel said. "I need only food for the soul." She shook her head. Now why had she said such an inane thing? She was poised in the center of the room. Around her were familiar things, the beds, the two chairs, the cases which they'd carried with them on the trip, her friend, the blonde Stanley-whose hair was all made of snakes!
"Stanley," she said, holding back a giggle," you should, really, comb your hair."
Stanley was still looking closely into Angel's face. She said, "Yes." She smiled with satisfaction and plopped down onto the nearest bed. "You'd better lie down, Angel."
The snakes were coiled around Stanley's ears, making her look very funny. "The funny black one is going to chew your ear," Angel said.
The walls perspected away from her, leaving her free in a noncompressed area which was hers and hers and alone. "Do you mind if I fly?"
"You'd better lie down, jerk," Stanley said.
There was a moment of clear horror. She remembered the feeling. It was the same the night with Carl, everything seeming to go away from her. "God," she said, "what was in that drink?"
"Lie down, Goddamnit."
"You've done something to me," Angel screamed, her voice coming out not as a scream, but as a low, unbelieving croak. "What are you doing to me?"
She felt pressure at her shoulders and looked up from the bottom of a rainbow-filled cavern of ice to see Stanley's leering face. "Stanley? Stanley?"
"It's all right, Angel. Just lie down."
"Down, down, down." She was falling, falling through a storm of aurora Australis spectacular sounds of music and the continued thunder of massive sexual climax which clenched her muscles and made her moan in authentic bliss as she moved, moved, feeling the bottom of the pit coming closer, closer until, with a motion like a downy feather settling onto velvet she was prone.
"You could have given her too much," Carl Peurter said, standing over on Angel who was out of it, writhing in her own private world, eyes open but unseeing.
"How did you get it into her?" Alan Govern asked.
"In a drink."
"It hits faster and harder that way, I'm told," Carl said.
"Well, she's sure out of it," Alan said. "We won't do any good with her for a while."
'That depends on what you mean by doing good," Carl said, smirking at Angel.
"Do you always think through your balls?" Stanley asked, her voice filled with disgust.
"Knock it off," Alan said. "Look, maybe when it starts to wear off . . . "
"Well, if you want me to take the first shift watching her," Carl said.
"Jesus Christ," Stanley spat. "Is that all the hell you think about? What kind of man are you, wanting to screw a girl who is so far out of it she wouldn't even know it?"
'To each his own, baby," Carl said. "You don't want to trust me alone with our Angel, you watch her yourself, O.K.? "
"Just get out," Stanley said.
"I'm going to sack out for a while," Alan said to Stanley. "If she seems to be coming out of it any time soon .enough so that we can get some sense out of her, give me a ring."
Then they were gone, Carl looking over his shoulder with a shrug of regret as Angel lifted her hips in a copulatory movement and moaned lustily. "Damned waste," he said to Alan, who ignored him.
Under the influence of the drug, Angel was having a sexual fantasy. The dosage was so powerful that she would never remember the details of the fantasy, she would only recall the all pervading aroma of passion, the total body participation in what was but a dream. She moaned in her fantasy and Stanley Richmond, tall and straight in a chair, short hair neat, lips compressed, watched as the trim body on the bed, dressed in form fitting slacks, heaved as if in the throes of sexual pleasure.
Stanley thought about the disgusting lust of that animal, Carl Peurter. She thought of the sickening scene of the night before when both of them, like rutting animals, took the helpless Angel. If Angel weren't such a snotty little bitch, thinking she was so damned pretty and so damned smart, Stanley might have done something to stop that gang-bang, but Angel thought she knew it all, just because her father was a professor and Angel could ease her way through school on her father's reputation instead of having to study for it, like Stanley. Then, too, Angel was so damned ignorant of the real things. Angel was totally selfish. She thought only of herself when the world was going to hell. Angel thought about her little sexual pleasures, about clothing herself in finery and living in luxury when half the world was hungry.
Not that Stanley starved in sympathy. She, if anything, lived more luxuriously than Angel. She had her own car and more spending money than
Angel ever had, but at least she cared. At least she was aware of the need to do something and, so help her, she was doing it. She was striking a blow against the warmongers, the baby-killers, the napalm bombers. She, Stanley Richmond, was personally letting her voice be heard in a way which would count.
On the bed, writhing, still caught up in the drug-induced sex fantasy, Angel moaned sensuously. It made shivers go up and down Stanley's back. She rose from her chair, walked the floor as Angel moaned and heaved. It was, Stanley thought, almost indecent.
Then Angel, with fumbling, uncoordinated fingers, began to undress. She ripped buttons as she removed the blouse and had to fumble for a long time with the bra, all the time gazing at an inner world with glazed eyes, lips moving, body trembling and writing. Stanley stood, rooted to the spot by the sheer voluptuousness of it as Angle pushed away her panties and slacks and kicked them away and was nude on the bed. Stanley licked her dry lips.
"Ah, God!" Angel cried, her hand going down to clasp herself. She moaned softly as her hand rubbed her clitoris.
"Bitch," Stanley yelled, disturbed, angered, sickened by Angel's behavior and by her own response. "You lascivious bitch!"
Angel's fantasy continued, lengthened by the drug, she far out of the real world, not even hearing Stanley's tortured words.
Angel began to speak. Her words were slurred, unclear, but Stanley could get the gist of it. She was begging. She was begging someone-Joe-to make love to her, only she was using basic language. She spoke the intimate words of the language of sex, words which, in the gutter, have a different value than when used as Angel was using them, in a moment of love. That Angel's moment of love was totally within her drug warped mind was unimportant. She believed the words she was saying and that made them sound hot, wanton, erotic.
Stanley moved quickly to a basket of fruit which was hardly touched. She was unreasonably angry. "Bitch," she screamed at Angel, moving to the bed with a large banana in her hand. "You want it, you get it, bitch!"
Into the spread-legged stance, the drug-induced sexual fantasy of Angel Tomsk, her friend, Stanley Richmond, inserted a large, curving, unpeeled banana. She inserted it with considerable force and only Angel's functioning love-glands, having lubricated the area of her passion, saved her from possible irritation or injury.
"Bitch," Stanley breathed, wide-eyed, watching as Angel's body accepted the phallic shape almost to the point of disappearance. She watched, with her emotions churning, as Angel bucked up to take the banana deep into lubricated tissue with a moan of sheer extravagance. "There," Stanley said, shoving, shoving. "Take it, bitch. Take it."
Angel writhed, her hungry pussy filled. In her fantasy, it was a man, not the curved, large fruit. In her fantasy it was a man and wonderful and her sounds, her actions were as real as her fantasy was unreal.
Stanley, torn by her mixed emotions, thought about the disgusting things Carl and Alan had done to Angel the night before, during her first trip. And suddenly, the idea of doing as one wanted with a helpless sexual partner, the idea of complete mastery over someone, sent a shiver of something through Stanley. She let the idea develop. There was an appeal to it. Men, she had long thought, were disgusting, but those two men, Carl and Alan, had enjoyed all of Angel, doing whatever they wanted, no matter how forbidden, how disgusting.
It was something to think about.
She was no longer angry. Angel was a bitch, true. She was a promiscuous bitch who acted like a bitch in heat, falling into bed with anyone, anytime. In just over twenty-four hours, Stanley knew, Angel's vagina had been filled by the pricks of at least three separate men, Carl, Alan and that Joe jerk. Little bitch. Stanley was more selective in her loving. She chose only partners who were virgin. This was fairly difficult, but not nearly as difficult as it would have been had Stanley been searching for male partners. Stanley Richmond loved virgin girls. It wasn't hard to find them, in spite of the new morality. There were still girls who wanted to save themselves for marriage, or girls who just had never been turned on by boys. Stanley liked the later kind best. She was an avowed Lesbian, herself, and she liked to make swooning love to and with another girl who had at least some over Lesbian feelings and wasn't just going along with Stanley for a thrill. The kind who were saving themselves for marriage tended to look on Stanley's love as a substitute, a harmless kind of masturbation which left their maidenheads intact.
But Stanley hated girls like Angel who gave themselves to men. She hated Angel. She-rammed the banana deep into Angel's lubricous depths and hated her while desiring her at the same time.
But, God, she could do anything she wanted with Angel and no one would ever know! Not even Angel! Only she, Stanley, would know what she did with the drug-crazed girl who writhed and heaved at the stimulus of the phallic object which was shoved into her.
It was too much to resist. Stanley released the banana. Freed, it was sliding out almost immediately, to lie glossy and wet on the spread between Angel's legs as Angel continued to heave in sexual torment. Stanley undressed with feverish haste. She was feeling it now. She understood how Carl and Alan had felt now, as she neared the bed.
She could do anything she wanted!
She straddled Angel's face. "Hold still, damn you," she said, as Angel tossed her head. She held Angel's head and lowered herself until the contact was made. She reached down, pulled labia apart, put the moist inner softness around and on Angel's mouth, heaving her hips to rub her sensitivity on the hardness of Angel's teeth. Angel gasped, her nose covered, having difficulty in breathing. Stanley, being practical, not considerate, allowed her nose to be freed, but continued her cruel grinding against Angel's lax lips and mouth.
"Do something, damn you," Stanley said, feeling that big need grow in her. "Hey, look, Angel. It's Joe! Joe is kissing you! Hear me? It's Joe! He's kissing you."
Through the wildness of the drug, the suggesting voice came, telling her-Joe, Joe, Joe!
His lips were hot on hers, smothering her, devouring her. She kissed him.
Stanley Richmond felt the tongue, penetrate, felt the life come into Angel's lips. She laughed. She moved in smooth circles as Angel's lips and tongue worked and then it was huge in her and she didn't want to end it-not just then. She had hardly begun.
She removed herself from Angel's face, looked at the sweet body of the dark, small girl, moaned in need and fell toward the mounds of woman-breast which called to her. She let her mouth and hands appreciate the warm softness and then, her passions fully aroused, she did what she had promised herself she would not do. She kissed Angel. She kissed a mouth which had, undoubtedly, contained vile man-things. But she was burning with desire. She let her saliva collect, let it ooze into Angel's responding mouth, sucked it out again. She devoured the mouth which had, for a few sensuous moments, kissed the most intimate parts of her body and, thinking that wondrous thought went back to the straddle-face position to let Angel, still dreaming her fantasy, kiss the thing she thought was Joe's mouth. And she was so close, so thunderously close.
She had to have more. She hated herself for it, but she had to have it all. She turned, her face facing Angel's feet. She bent and tugged. She kept her pussy pressed against Angel's working lips and tongue, but she found a heated, oiled place of her own and kissed it as it heaved under her, as if it were virgin, clean and pure. She kissed it and devoured it and felt her climax come roaring up into her body with a force which surprised her.
Twice more she ravished the helpless girl. Angel, having experience and actual climax, fantasy and factually produced while Stanley was experiencing her own joy, was witlidrawn during the two remaining times. Feeling completely debauched, totally unconstrained because no one would ever know, Stanley let herself go and did vile, horrible things, things she had never even dreamed. Having total freedom to do as she wanted with Angel, she did it.
Totally exhausted, she slept. When she awoke, Angel was sitting, nude, on the floor in the corner of the room. Her eyes were wide. A look of horror was on her face. She was talking, but her vocal cords made no sound. Only her lips moved.
Stanley, drained of all emotion by the excesses she'd committed with Angel, got out of bed. "Bad trip, baby?" she asked.
Angel shrank away as Stanley touched her. Then a moment of clarity came to her. "What's happening to me, Stanley?" she asked.
She almost felt pity. But hell, it wasn't that bad. She'd taken the trips herself. True, she'd given Angel a bit more than she'd ever taken to start a trip, but that was necessary. Carl had a lot of experience with the stuff. He said it would take that much to break Angel down. Well, she was coming along all right, Stanley thought, as she led Angel unprotestingly, to the bed.
"I feel so funny," Angel said.
Stanley went to the telephone. It was almost four a.m. She called the boy's room and had to wait for a long time before Alan answered in a sleepy voice. Then, a few minutes later, they were in the room.
"What happened to the chick's clothes?" Carl asked, grinning at Stanley. "You decide you wanted a little bit of that yourself?"
"Don't be disgusting," Stanley said. She didn't allow herself to blush, but she looked at Angel's body to see if she had left any traces of the actions she'd performed. Angel looked fresh and lovely. Funny, Stanley thought, the things you can do to a human body and not change it at all. But she was changed. She'd let herself go all out in sex and she'd discovered some things about herself. She'd found out that she had, when completely uninhibited, some weird desires.
"Think she can read now?"
"I don't know," Stanley said. "She was making sense a minute ago, just before I called you."
"Angel," Alan said, lifting her, forcing her to sit against the headboard of the bed. "Listen."
"Feel funny," Angel said, her voice going through a range of tone, up and down, like a fire siren.
"Listen, baby," Alan coaxed. "We want to do something, hear? We want you to help us. You want to help, don't you?"
"Want to help," Angel repeated.
"Can you read this for us?" Alan asked, holding a piece of paper in front of Angel's face.
"Read this," Angel said.
"Carl, you got that damned tape machine ready?" Alan asked, looking over his shoulder. The other man was setting up the machine.
"Almost"
"Read it, Angel."
"There comes a time," Angel began, "when one must speak out. I am Angel Tomsk . . . "
"Hey, fine, baby," Alan said. "That's great. Now, can you do it all the way through for me?" He held the microphone in front of Angel. "Now, baby."
"There comes a time when one must speak out. I am Angel Tomsk. My Father is Igor Tomsk. That's my pop."
"Aw, come on, Angel," Alan coaxed. "No ad-libbing, huh? Just read it as it is."
"There comes a time when one must speak out. I am Angel Tomsk. My father is Igor Tomsk. He has given me permission to speak for him against a war which we all know is horribly wrong . . . " She giggled.
"Come on, baby," Alan said. "Start over."
"Feel funny," Angel said.
"Read, dammit," Stanley said.
Angel started again and half-way through the first sentence a thing took the paper and her hand and went off with them to a vast distance. She squinted her eyes, but she could not see the print and it was all so silly. She giggled.
"You're not going to do any good that way," Carl said, shutting off the tape machine. "Look, why don't we just go right straight to the old boy, show him a sample of the flics we took last night, and have him make his own statement?"
"Igor Tomsk witlistood the Russian secret police," Stanley said. "Do you think a couple of amateurs are going to make him say or do anything he doesn't want to do?"
"Well," Carl said, "it seems sort of kooky to me, working this chick over just to get her to read a prepared statement saying that her father in all his wisdom is against the war."
"Because," Alan said, "we feel that Tomsk will compromise a little. We get Angel's statement on tape. We show Igor Tomsk a few frames of the film, showing his daughter screwing like a mink and doing other nice things. Then we say, all you gotta do to keep us from making this film public is just keep quiet. See? We're not asking him to say or do anything positive. We're asking for a negative response. A man doesn't survive a commie purge and Siberia without making some small compromises in honor. So we're betting that he'll keep quiet."
"In the meantime, back at the motel," Stanley said. Angel was going sensual again. Her lips were moist, parted slightly. She leaned forward on her hands, giving a saucy exposure of breast as her arms were tight against her sides, compressing the two large mounds in on themselves, closing the natural cleavage between them. She was squirming, oblivious to the presence of the three people in the room.
"Maybe I'll stand guard a while," Carl said, grinning.
"Oh, hell," Stanley said, not "again." For there was a small stir of interest in her as she watched Angel go off into that world of abandonment. "Get out, both of you. We'll try again tomorrow, this morning-since it's almost dawn. Let's get a few more hours sleep and then maybe she'll be far enough out of it to be controllable."
As soon as they were gone, she quickly stripped out of her pajamas. The stimulus of being completely sexually free was a powerful one. She thought of the things she'd done to Angel during the early hours of the night and they no longer seemed disgusting, perverted. They seemed wantonly sensuous and she could wait no longer to get started on them again.
"Angel, baby," she cooed, having denuded herself, climbing onto the bed with an oblivious Angel who met her embrace with indifference.
"It's me, Joe," Stanley whispered, over and over, kissing the lax mouth until the suggestion drove through, made contact with Angel's drug-exposed sexual desires and sent her into delicious desire as Stanley went down to put her face into the sweet lap which was just beginning to feel the lubricity of sexual excitement.
Who could sleep? Stanley thought wryly. Who could sleep with the stimulus of Angel's body, a body which was pliable, which was not even peopled by a mind at the moment. Stanley had seen ads in magazines for a doll, a life-size, soft ordered that doll and used it as a sexual object. Now, it seemed, she had her own doll, but a doll of flesh and blood, a mindless doll who was suggestable, who would do anything she was told to do, who offered no objection to the things Stanley wanted to do.
And Stanley had discovered some bizarre tastes. One of them involved kneeling over Angel's face while Angel, in her fantasy, kissed Joe Howard's mouth. Then Stanley would combine the sexual feeling with one of bladder release and . . .
CHAPTER NINE
She swam up from depths, green, cold, forbidding. She was cold. Across the room one of the curtains became a flow of motion, moving into and through the ceiling. Then it stopped and she was cold again. She was naked, lying on the bed without cover. Stanley was sleeping in the next bed. She felt a vague puzzlement. She could have sworn that Stanley was in bed with her. She reached for the spread. It was mussed and damp. She pulled it over her naked body, shivering. The floor of the room, with its worn rug, rose up to sway before her eyes. She shook her head and moaned, half awake.
Stanley had been so nice, she thought, fixing her a drink. She looked around. She couldn't find the drink and she knew that she hadn't had time to finish it. But it was daylight. No longer half asleep, she rose from the bed. Her watch said ten o' clock. The early morning chill she'd imagined was just imagination, wasn't it? She was no longer cold. She was warm, hot. She couldn't no longer breath. She rushed to the door, slid it open a few inches, put her face out into the mid-morning air. It was pleasantly warm. The sun was bright. The swimming pool was inviting. The water sparkled and called to her. She slid the door open, stepped out onto the little patio over the pool and it took several seconds for the series of whistles to burn through her comfortable, sun warmed feeling. She looked down. Three young men were grinning up at her and she realized, suddenly, that she was nude. She leaped back inside, closing the door behind her. The far wall came toward her, writhing in a flow of color. She felt a scream form in her throat.
Stanley fixed a drink and a whole night disappeared!
Stanley? She walked to the bed and looked down. Stanley was sleeping a sleep of sexual exhaustion.
It didn't make sense. The floor heaved under her and she could hear music. She thought at first that it was a radio in another room, but it seemed to come from inside her head. It came and went and it frightened her.
That drink. Now what the hell had happened to the night?
Angel knew that she was not much of a drinker. She had a low tolerance toward alcohol. It took only a couple of drinks to make her high as a kite and she hadn't questioned the fact that she'd had too much to drink on that first night, the night when she conducted herself in a way which was obviously wanton enough to disgust Stanley. But she distinctly remembered having one drink, one drink only the night before and on that one drink the entire night had gone away from her.
The music in her head went away, for a moment. She frowned, her brow wrinkled in thought. She tried to remember one thing about the night. She could get as far as the drink. She had made a decision to go but with Joe, and Stanley had been opposed to it for some reason. Then she took the drink Stanley had mixed for her while she was in the shower and she distinctly remembered taking a long, cooling drink. The glass had been packed full of finely crushed ice and the drink was fairly strong.
But not strong enough to knock her out so that she didn't remember anything past taking that first long drink of it!
The music roared up in her head, all diminished chords, eerie, threatening. She stood, frozen into immobility, in the center of the room. The curtains writhed their way up into the ceiling and she was screaming.
Stanley came off the bed, nude, in one flow of graceful feminine motion. Angel was bending, her hands at the cleavage of her breasts, clenched into fists so tightly that her knuckles were white. "Knock it off," Stanley said, seizing Angel by the shoulders and shaking. "Shut up."
She let the scream trail off into a faint, sobbing sound. She looked into Stanley's face and saw, for an eerie moment, the skeletal structure of it, the empty eye sockets, black and horrible, the bright gleam of gumless teeth in a grinning mouth. Then it was gone and Stanley was Stanley.
"You've done something to me," she said, her voice calm. A moment of supreme rationality was upon her. "You used something in my drink. Why, Stanley?"
"You're tired," Stanley said, unable to think of anything more witty on the spur of the moment, "Let's both lie down."
"No," she said, very, very calmly, pulling away from Stanley with dignity. "I'm not going it wobbles and burns and . . . " Oh, God! It waaaaaaailed.
"Lie down, baby."
"Lie down," Angel said. "Sometime something in drink and I'm Angel Tomsk. My father is Igor Tomsk and he'll hate me because I've screwed all of them-blue and white. See? Angel? See?"
Stanley pushed her down. The kid was really out of it again, sifter seemingly having recovered from the trip. She watched. Angel went motionless and her eyes closed. She was quiet as Stanley tiptoed to the telephone. She had to let the telephone ring ten times before a sleepy male voice answered.
"Alan? This kid is still out of it. She's having a pretty bad trip, too. Screaming and all."
"Still out of it?" She could hear him wayning. "Look, we'll come over."
Stanley dressed in a mini-shift. She looked the all American girl, pretty knees, good, full thighs below the dinky skirt, a pair of well rounded hips and a good set of breasts. Her short, blonde hair was set to order with a quick attack by a brush and then they were there. Carl had left the tape recorder. He went to it immediately.
"She can't still be under it," Alan said. "It wears off quicker than that."
"Five minutes ago she was screaming like crazy," Stanley said, "but before that she seemed to be out of it. In fact, she said something about me putting something in her drink."
"If she's that rational, she must be coming out of it," Carl said. "Let's give her a whirl. We have to leave here tomorrow, you know."
"See if you can rouse her, ice maiden," Alan said.
"Look, bastard," Stanley told him, "the mere fact that you, as a male specimen, don't turn me on doesn't give you the right to follow the ape-man's lead in calling me names."
"Sorry," Alan said, grinning. "Just a slip."
Stanley couldn't let it drop. "I've kissed little children who have a better technique than yours," she said, remembering with disgust the way she had to let Alan kiss her and fondle her there on the beach that night when they were setting the stage for passion, making it possible for Carl to get Angel into the motel room and slip the acid into her.
"I've never had complaints before," Alan said. "Maybe you aren't turned on by a man, honey."
"Screw you, Jack," Stanley said. She flipped to the bed, shook Angel hard, taking out her anger on the limp girl. "Wake up, sleeping beauty."
"Am awake," Angel said, pulling herself up. She looked up and saw Carl and Alan. "Hey," she yelped. "I'm exposed." She reached for the spread while Carl laughed nastily.
"If I see anything I haven't seen before," Carl said, "I'll plant a flag on it and claim it for God and Country."
Angel tucked the spread over her bosom and looked at them questioningly. "Is this a convention?"
"We want to have you finish that little thing you were doing for us, baby," Alan said. He held out the paper.
For a moment, it seemed that the paper was going to turn into a bat and fly away, but with squinted eyes she managed to keep it in place. Carl thrust the microphone in front of her.
"Just read it, baby," Alan said coaxingly. 'That's all. Then you can go back to sleep."
"I don't want to sleep," Angel said. "I'm wide awake. And why are you talking to me as If I were a child, or drunk, or something?"
"It's worn off," Carl said.
"Shut up," Stanley told him sharply.
"What's worn off?" Angel asked. "Hey, that's something I want to take up with you people. You've been doing something to me and I want to know what. You using some kind of dope or something and slipping it into my drinks?"
"Why, honey," Alan soothed, "you know better than that. We just had a party, that's all. You had a little too much."
"One drink," Angel said and the wall across the room turned into a parched, burning desert and all wild and terrible with things there, dark, unseen but felt coming toward her. She could not hold back the scream.
"Jesus," Carl said, his voice soft.
"I don't know," Alan said, after a minute of watching, awe stricken, as Angel went from complete normality to a state verging on catatonia. "I think the stuff is working on her too much."
"I never had a trip that wild," Carl said.
"Angel, Angel," Alan was repeating. "Hey, come out of it" She seemed to respond. "I can make it go away, baby. Want me to make it all go away?"
"Oh, please," she begged. "Please, please, please."
"Listen, then," he said, motioning to Carl, who was holding the microphone. "This is important. This is the way to make it go away. Just read. Hear me? Just read this"
She began. The words seemed familiar and yet strange. She looked at the paper with eye squinting concentration and read the words, for there in the back of her mind were the horrors waiting. But there were some she understood.
"It is a just war," she seemed to hear as she read the words on the paper which said exactly the opposite.
"Damn it, Angel," Alan said, when she paused, "if you want me to help you, you have to read this."
"Let me think," she said desperately.
As she looked at the paper which condemned the war and all those who believed in it, a statement which called the government murderers and matimen, which urged all young men to defy the draft, she could hear her father's voice.
"We are there because we made a promise to some people," Igor Tomsk was saying, as if he had always been a part of the American nation, not just an adopted son. "We told them we would protect them against aggression and force. We promised this solemnly. The existence of a sovereign state is threatened by outside force. If, in this country, for example, Castro armed the more fanatic advocates of the so-called "Black Power" and they began to terrorize the nation, killing the duly elected or appointed officials and anyone who opposed them, levying their own taxes on those who did not have the power to resist, if Castro then sent in his own troops to help the deluded traitors, do you think for one minute that we would call it a civil war? No. We would call it Communist aggression and we would fight it with all the power at our disposal. The people of South Viet Nam choose, long ago, not to be Communist. Now that Communism is being forced down their throats by armed force from within and without, but mostly, now, from without. If the North Vietnamese were to witlidraw from the South, the South could police its own political problem. The government of the South is freely elected and we are pledge on our solemn honor to support it. That alone should convince all that the war is just. Then, too, we can cite the selfish reasons for our being in Southeast Asia, then 'it's better to fight them there than in Australia or the Philippines' idea."
She had heard it all so many times. Igor Tomsk had personal experience with Communism. He'd barely escaped with his life from the original seat of Communism, Russia. He had reason to know it, to hate it, to fear it. Now they, these funny people, were trying to make her, the daughter of Igor Tomsk, say things which were directly contrary to her father's beliefs.
And to her own belief.
She'd never given much consideration to the war. It didn't touch her. She'd always felt that it was something to be handled by the statesman. Boys she knew worried about the draft, but they were still safe from it as long as they kept their grades up. The war didn't touch her. But now, seeing the words, having read enough of them to know that they were silly, the thoughtless mouthing of the Vietniks, she knew that being Igor Tomsk's daughter had done something for her. She knew, now, that she, too, believed that the war was just and necessary.
"I can't," she said.
"Sure you can. You were doing so well."
"No. What are you, crazy? A bunch of nuts? That's weirdo stuff there. I don't believe it. My father would kill me."
"I'll make it start again, Angel," Alan said, leaning toward her. "Do you want that?" He was counting on the lingering effects of the acid. He was banking on fear. It was obvious that the chick had a really bad trip.
"No," she said, knowing that she was safe. Her determination would keep it away. Now that she knew, now that she was certain that they had put something, probably one of the hallucinogens, into her drink she was safe.
"You people are really weird," she said, throwing back the spread, unconcerned about her nudity. "You're a rare bunch of freak-outs, you are."
She moved with graceful decision to pick up her scattered clothing. She pulled on her panties and her slacks before any of them spoke.
"What do you think you're doing?" Stanley asked.
"I'm bugging out, baby," Angel said. "Look, I owe you. All I owe, though, is a bit of loot and a ride to this freak out and I'm going to pay you for that. I won't pay you in kind, my dear friend Stanley-baby, but I'll pay you back the loot for my share of the gas and my share of the room and all."
"Alan?" Stanley asked, looking toward the big, young man for leadership.
He shrugged. "Hey, baby, no harm done, huh?" He watched Angel struggle into a blouse and start tossing things into her bag.
She paused and looked at him. "No harm? You son-of-a-bitch, don't you know that stuff is dangerous? No harm? I won't know until after my first child is born." Suddenly she was scared. "If you've done anything to him . . . " It was funny, in a way. She was only nineteen. She had no plans for marriage in the near future, but suddenly she knew that she wanted marriage. She'd read of the effects of LSD, not enough to be sure of her facts, but enough to know that there was something about damaging the hereditary genes, causing bad things to happens in unborn children. She remembered it and was as sure as she was standing there that someday she would have children and would want them passionately. "And," she went on, "if you've done anything to my child, I'm going to look for you and kill you. All of you."
"That's all for the birds, chick," Carl said. "Look, cool it, huh? You just had a bad trip, that's all. Let's let bygones be and be friends, huh?"
"I'm leaving," Angel said, having tossed her few things helter-skelter into the bag.
"No," Alan said sadly, blocking her way. "I'm sorry, we can't let you do that. Not just yet."
"You can't stop me," Angel said, but there was a new fear in her. They were so big. And they were between her and the door.
"There's something you have to do first," Alan said. "Just help us out by reading the statement."
"You're crazy," she said angrily.
"O. K., Carl, get the projector . . . "
She tried to walk past as Carl went out the door. Alan stopped her forcibly. He took the bag from her hand, roughly, and forced her back into a chair. "I don't want to have to hurt you, baby," he said.
"You can't keep me here," Angel said. "Cool it," Alan said. "We just want to show you something."
She waited nervously for a few minutes, then Carl was back with a movie projector and a screen, which he set up at opposite sides of the room.
"Now, baby," Alan said, "we want you to take a good look. We had a little epic movie production right here in this room night before last and we went to a lot of trouble to get the film processed so that you could see it. I think you'll recognize the star."
Seeing herself on the screen was a shock. She tensed, sat up stiffly straight in the chair for, in the pictures which flashed onto the screen, she was nude. Moreover, with the camera close-up on her face, she could see a look which she recognized. She'd never seen it before, that look, at least not on her face, but she recognized it as the almost pained, somewhat hammy expression of passion. The camera work was not professional, but it was adequate. Quickly, without preliminary, the camera followed her as she moved, as she went down on a huge male organ with careless abandon. The camera moved in closer, with a jerk, to show her take the prick into her mouth with a visible gasp.
CHAPTER TEN
It was almost unreal. She saw herself and she knew, then, what had happened to that first night. She saw herself performing a ritual of lust, lips extended, jaws wide, hair falling to hide theingress of that red cock into her mouth, then allowing it to come into view again as she worried it playfully. There was no mistaking her identity. The cameraman, obviously Alan Govern, had seen to it that her face was clear at all times. She could see her closed eyes, her working throat as she swallowed. The close-up made everything more than life size on the screen, made the huge phallus seem grotesque, unreal. And for long minutes it continued as she laved the prick with her eager mouth, her extended tongue running around the distended ridge of it, slicking up and down the length of it until, with an eagerness which made her, as a viewer of her passion, squirm with fixed emotions, she stopped and submitted herself to the male in the picture with her.
The face of the man was not seen, except in profile, but she recognized Carl. She gasped as she, in the movie, ceased the sensual activity, fell back onto the bed, reached for Carl. She could not tear her eyes away from the screen as she allowed him to spread her legs, as she reached for him with hungry arms and clung tightly as the camera moved jerkily from the over-all scene to focus on the base of Carl's huge manhood and the dark flower of her waiting womanhood. She saw the impaling thrust of him as he entered. She saw her own cunt thrust up to take more and then she saw herself raise her rump from the mattress, push up lustily. She saw herself fling her trim legs high, clasp them around Carl's body. The view showed the huge engine of his passion going and coming, swift, sure, hard. Then the camera moved to show her face, a face transported with lust, eyes clenched tightly shut, lips contorted, neck muscles straining as she answered the lunges of the big man who was possessing her totally.
"Goddamn," Stanley said. "Isn't that enough?"
Angel, strangely calm, looked at Stanley, wondering at the strain in the blonde girl's voice.
"Just a little more," Alan said.
In the movie, she went frantic, loins, pumping, her entire body lifting. She saw herself reach an obvious climax and wondered if her open mouth made sounds. Then, as a grand finale, the camera zoomed in on the impaling shaft and showed it plunge deep and throb in obvious release. The room was dark for a moment as the film ran out. Then someone turned on a light.
"Any questions?" Alan asked her, looking at her with a grin.
Angel couldn't bring herself to speak.
"So? No questions? It's clear to you, then, that your father would be highly upset by this film."
"Why?" Angel asked. "Why are you doing this? You can't believe in anything enough to do something like this. What did I ever do to you to make you want to hurt me, humiliate me . . . "
"Baby, it sickens me, really," Alan said. "But you're sort of important. Look, your old man is a kind of important guy. There is still about one story every month or so in some magazine about how one of the commie world's leading scientists defected. That makes him news. Now we need, right now, a boost. We need a big propaganda coup; and the announcement that Igor Tomsk is against the war, with his record of anticommunism and all, will be the biggest news since grandma gave birth to a runt with two heads. You know?"
"He won't.
"He doesn't have to. All he has to do is keep quiet and we think he will. All you have to do is speak for yourself and for your father. His silence after that will be enough for us."
"He won't be silent," Angel said. "He'll . . . "
"He'll keep his mouth shut when we show him this little epic," Carl said, patting the roll of movie film. "When we tell him that one word of denial will put this roll of film into the hand of the nation's top scandal-mongering columnist. He will keep his mouth shut to protect the reputation of his darling Angel baby."
Angel thought about it. Above all, she needed to be away from those awful people. How could she have ever thought they were nice people?
"Now, let's quit around," Carl said, turning on the tape recorder.
She read the statement. She could not do anything else. She read it exactly as they had written it. When the first reading didn't sound convincing enough for Alan, she read it again.
"Cool, baby," Carl said, after the second reading. He played the tape back, nodding with satisfaction.
"May I go now?"
"You're leaving good company," Carl said. "Now that the business is over, we could have a ball. We have the evening ahead of us."
"You stink," Angel said. "You know that? You stink, all of you."
"So goodbye," Stanley said swiftly. "Get the hell out of here."
She picked up her bag. As she started toward the door, the telephone rang. Alan, nearest to it, picked it up. She heard him say hello, then she was closing the door behind her. She had very little money. She would have to do something about that. Call her father? Oh, God! He was going to be hurt so very badly. Her lust, her passion, that which had seemed to her to be such a necessary part of life, a nice part of life, a luxury which she was free to enjoy at her discretion, her body pleasures would hurt him. He was an old fashioned man. It would kill him to see her doing the things she did on that film with Carl.
She could go away. She could go and never return home. She could get money somehow. She could work.
Joe Howard. Maybe he would give her some money. She seized on that hope, quickened her step. She didn't hear the footsteps coming up rapidly behind her until they were almost on her, then she looked over her shoulder. It was Carl Peurter.
"Angel, baby," he cooed, with mock politeness, "We are not, it seems, quite finished with you." He seized her arm and she tried to pull away. His fingers dug into her flesh cruelly. She started to scream and he put his hand over her mouth, dragging her back toward the motel room.
She tried to call for help. There were people in the swimming pool. Surely they'd see and come to her aid. Surely she was not going to be kidnapped in broad daylight from the inner court of a motel full of people. She tried to call out and his hand closed off her mouth, her breath. Two young men in bathing trunks came toward them and she struggled, her heart leaping up in hope.
"This kid had one too many," she heard Carl saying, as the two men looked at them. "She wants to hitchhike home and if I let her, her old man would skin me alive. He told me to look after her."
They snickered at her and went on. She was dragged forcibly back into the room, Carl's hand still over her mouth. When they were inside he said, "If you scream, I'll pop you one, baby."
She gasped for air when he released her. Alan and Stanley were looking at her.
"Sorry, baby," Alan said. "The tape won't cut it, it seems."
"What do you mean?" she asked, on the edge of panic.
"The big boys say they want more than just a taped statement from you," Alan said. "They want you to make the little speech at a rally."
Angel let her shoulders sag. She felt as if she would faint.
"It's tomorrow. It's timed to make the last day of the big gig here a swinging one, baby. You're the star. You should be flattered."
What could she do? She dropped her bag to the floor and felt tears of anger and frustration creep down her face.
"Look," Stanley said, "If you think I'm going to sit here for twenty-four hours being a nurse maid . . . "
"Who asked you?" Carl said. "Angel doesn't need a nurse maid, do you Angel."
"No," she said.
"Angel won't run away," Carl said. "She doesn't want us to show the film to papa."
"But you're going to show it to him anyhow," Angel said, with sudden shock. There was something wrong with her mind. Why hadn't she thought of that before? They were going to show the film to her father to force his silence after her forced statement was made public, so she had nothing further to lose. The drug they'd been giving her must have slowed down her thinking processes or she would have realized that before. Then she would never have read their propaganda statement for them.
"You will show it to him no matter what I do," she said. She turned toward the door. "I won't make your speech. I will not help you any further and I'D swear that the statement you have on tape was forced out of me."
"The slit is getting wise," Alan said. "Grab her, Carl."
She was wrapped in Carl's arms. She tried to kick his shins and he pinched her painfully. "Knock it off," he told her forcefully, "or you'll be minus a couple of teeth."
"Angel," Alan said. "Listen to me. Look, this has been, like, a game so far. You haven't been hurt, now have you? You got laid, that's all. You had the hots for ole Carl anyhow. But things have changed. That thundering telephone call did that. It isn't a game any more, baby. It's for real. Now them tomorrow at that rally. They want you to talk so badly that they told me to tell you that if you refused, Igor Tomsk wouldn't have to worry about seeing his little Angle perform in a pornographic film. They told me to tell you he wouldn't ever worry about anything, again."
She felt a cold chill of dread. The seriousness with which Alan spoke frightened her more than anything she'd ever experienced.
"Who are you?" she asked. "You're not just a college student."
"Sure," Alan said. "That's what I am."
"Listen," Stanley said. "I don't like this bit. I don't like that kind of talk about killing . . . "
"Now who said anything about killing?" Alan asked. "And, darling, ice maiden, baby-child, it doesn't matter what you like, now does it? You're in this thing. Or are you losing your belief that things are screwed up pretty severely in this world."
"I just don't like . . . "
"Well, there are a lot of things I don't like. But if we are to change those things, the methods we use will have to be left up to those in charge of changing them. Now we all got on this bandwagon. We're all going to have to stay. You dig?"
"I . . . . "
"No one will get hurt if little Angle makes her speech. And she's going to do that, isn't she?" He chucked an extended finger under Angel's chin.
"Yes," she said, in a whisper, but her mind was saying no. Her mind told he to play along with them, to wait her chance and then run like hell to warn her father.
"Now we have a long time to wait," Alan said. "I suggest we make it as pleasant as possible. Stan, how about you making us a drink and then give room service a call for some chow?"
Angel sat in one of the straight chairs. She watched Stanley mix drinks. She watched with a great deal of interest, for Stanley was mixing four drinks. When they were ready, the blonde delivered them to the men first, then extended a glass to Angel.
"No," Angel said.
"Suit yourself," Stanley shrugged, putting the glass back on the dresser.
"Here's to our lively little party," Carl Peurter said, lifting his glass.
She sat there, her mind working furiously. She would wait until they were all asleep, or until the room service man came, or until she had a good chance to escape. She would not risk all by making a premature move. Time passed. The food was delivered by a girl, a dark skinned girl who obviously would have been of no great help in overpowering two strong men like Carl and Alan. Carl was drinking steadily. He was beginning to show the effects. Stanley was aloof, nursing a couple of drinks. Alan calm and sure of himself.
"Some party," Carl said, after darkness had fallen and the lights had been turned on in the room. "I liked the one we had the first night better, huh, Angel?" He looked at her, lust hot in his eyes. Angel felt herself cringe.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
She made her break when Carl began to paw her. As the evening progressed, Carl became drunker. Stanley had cut herself off from the group, lying on her stomach on one of the beds, either asleep or pretending to be asleep. Alan was reading, apparently none the worse from the steady drinking. Carl came to Angel, still seated in the straight chair. He grabbed a breast roughly and she jerked away, almost falling out of the chair.
"Leave me alone," she said.
" 'Kay, slit," Carl said. "Be that way. It's going to be a long night." He went off, staggering, to the bath. Alan continued to read, as if he were oblivious to the entire scene. Stanley was stretched out on the bed, lying on her stomach. Angel, her heart pounding, picked that moment to flee. She started slowly, lifting herself from the chair with an eye on Alan. Then she moved rapidly and was throwing open the door, with freedom out there in the darkness of the night, when Alan caught her.
He jerked her back into the room. "Angel," he said, his voice hard, "as Carl said, it's going to be a long night. Now I can't afford to risk another little incident like that. I'm going to get some sleep sometime tonight and short of tying you up, I don't know I'm going to do that, do you?"
She refused to speak to him. She jerked out from under his hands and walked to the far side of the room, her body shivering.
"Send her on a trip," Carl said, having come out to witness the last part of the abortive escape attempt. "She goes way out and we won't have to worry about her trying to bug out."
"I donno," Alan said, rubbing his chin. "The stuff hits her pretty hard."
"Well, hell, it never hurt anyone yet," Carl said. "Look, like you say, we gotta get some sleep sometime. Now I say let's slip her a cube and forget it."
"No," Angel said. "No." Her voice rose in panic as she thought of the horrors which came to her while she was under the influence of the drug.
But Carl, seemingly more sober, at least more steady on his feet, reached into his pocket and took out a small box, somewhat like a pill box.
He took out a white cube of sugar and held it up. "Come and get it, baby," he said.
Angel bolted for the door and was grabbed roughly by Alan. She fought, heels making contact with Alan's shins. The big fellow cursed and smothered her struggles in a bear hug, falling with her to the floor, wrapping one of his legs around hers so that she couldn't kick him. Held helpless, able to move only her head, she saw Carl kneel and hold the cube of sugar out to her. She closed her mouth tightly, like a small child refusing the nasty tasting medicine, and shook her head wildly back and forth. Carl's big hand seized her by the chin and the cube approached her lips. Still she wouldn't take it.
Carl held her head between one arm and his body, leaving one hand free to close over her nose. She could not breath. With his other hand, he held the sugar cube, loaded with the acid, to her lips. She held her breath until blackness began to close in. Her body went limp. With a short, quick gasp of surrender, she opened her mouth and the sickeningly sweet taste was in her mouth. The cube of sugar melted slowly. She could not taste the acid, but there was a growing feeling of hopeless panic in her. They held her there, her body wrapped up in Alan's arms and legs, her face held by Carl, until she swallowed the last of it.
Stanley was not asleep. She'd heard all of it. She started to offer an objection. She didn't like the way the stuff treated Angel. On some people, it was bad stuff. On some people the results were accumulative and she didn't like the way Angel had acted after having only two doses. But she didn't object. She lay on the bed, face down, and her mind leaped ahead. With Angel out of it, under the drug, maybe the boys would go to their room for a nap and then.. . .
The drug had a strange effect on Angel. It began to work with the usual quickness, but instead of the horrors, it produced a tranquil, dazed, drunken peace in her mind. She rolled away from Alan, who was still lying on the rug, his face supported on one hand as he watched her, and lay on her back. She laughed softly.
"Hey, Angel," Alan said. "What's so funny?"
"You," she said gaily. "Carl, all of you. You are so serious about all this when really nothing matters but happiness. Love. Happy, happy love and.. . " She broke off, humming tunelessly, but the melody was, in her mind, more beautiful than the finest aria ever composed. Alan grimed at Carl.
"Good trip," Carl said. "Makes me want to join her."
"We've earned it," Alan said, "but I'm afraid we can't risk it."
"One of us could take the trip," Carl said.
"You're already half-boozed," Alan said.
"You got a point. S'Kay, I'll have a drink or two and you fly, huh, baby? Ole Carl will guard the fort." He produced the box and Alan, a strange look of peace on his face, chewed the acid-laden cube hungrily.
"How about the ice maiden?" Carl asked, risking to stand over the bed.
"How about it, doll?" Alan asked. "And don't tell me you're asleep."
She rolled over. "No thanks," she said. "I'm not in the mood. One of us had better keep his senses." She rolled back over and turned her back to them.
Angel crawled to a wall, sat with her legs spread wide, her hands loosely idle in her lap. She looked misty-eyed, dreamy. A lovely little smile spread across her face and stayed there. Carl sat down to watch her, while Alan, beginning to feel the effects of the drug, speculated on the rounded curve of Stanley's rump. In the mini-shift, there was a lot of Stanley showing. Her long legs were creamy white and her rump made such a delightful jump up in swift, soft curves.
The acid always had a happy effect on Alan. From the first time he'd ever taken a trip, he lived for the time when he could leave it all, fly away climb into himself for that glorious, spinning ride to nowhere which came with a specified, small amount of LSD. Each trip was better than the last. Each trip made the world seem smaller, less important When he felt the thing begin, with his eyes on the sweet, feminine shape of the ice maiden, he no longer had to think about the fact that he was probably in his last quarter at school. His grade level was down to the disaster point and he probably wouldn't be allowed to re-enroll for the next quarter. He didn't have to think about the fact that his parents were questioning the expenses of his schooling. He was in his fifth year away from home and was still a considerable distance away from even the simplest bachelor's degree and his father was growing increasingly sceptical of Alan's stories and excuses. Nor then, with the shape of Stanley growing to become world mother, all-woman, did Alan have to wonder if he had done right to ally himself with people who were obviously not interested in non-violent protests against the Viet Nam war.
The people who had sent him, along with Carl, to meet Stanley and Angel Tomsk were after something bigger than mere student protest, but Alan didn't have to ask what with the sweet feeling of apartness coming over him.
He sat next to Angel, against the wall. He heard her tuneless humming ann joined her in an off-key, wandering serenade to the world of illusion. Sex was not on his mind. Nothing was on his mind, really. His mind was a jewel floating on a sea of cold fire. His soul was disembodied. He was eternal and complete and at times as huge as the universe, itself.
Carl had a drink, looked at Angel and Alan, envied them. "Good trip," he said to an unresponsive Stanley. "Look at ole Alan. He's flying."
For a long, long time they sat against the wall. Sometimes Angel hummed. Alan, his eyes open, unblinking, was relieved of even that casual link with reality. Carl, feeling the effects of the booze he'd been putting away, leaned back in the chair and dozed off. Stanley, no longer pretending sleep, made a tiny buzzing sound as she breathed deeply and regularly.
Something woke Carl. It crept into his sleep fogged mind insidiously, bringing him back to a state of drugged, mouth-dirty semi-consciousness. He opened his eyes. Stanley was making that little half-snore. She had turned onto her back in her sleep and the miniskirt had pulled up to show the lower lace on a pair of yellow panties. But the sound was coming from Angel. She was lying on the floor, making soft, hair-raising moans. At first Carl thought she was having a bad trip, then, upon closer inspection, he felt a visceral stir of carnality. The chick was turned on. She was still way out of it, but the stuff had hit her in the seat of the pants, the way it did last time and the time before that. She was lying on her back, one hand on her stomach, the other on one of her large breasts. It was quite a sexy pose. She quashed her breast forcefully between her fingers, paying attention to a nipple, and moaned like a girl on the verge of pitching her cookies or something. She sounded more sick than sexy, but it was obvious that she was turned on.
For a moment, Carl considered it. Then he decided that this head hurt. He had a vile taste in his mouth and his neck was stiff from sitting in the chair.
Old Alan was still sitting next to the wall, out of it. Having a joyful trip, to judge from his shifting, non-blinking eyes. Alan, Carl thought, where are you boy? He went back to sit in the chair. The dumb broad still played with her tit and made the moaning sounds.
It was almost midnight. He had to get some sleep. Everyone was either out of it or asleep. He leaned back in the chair, said aloud, "What the hell?", went to sack out on the other bed.
Her moaning kept him awake. He sat up, cursing. He had one more drink and the bitch was still at it, squeezing her tit like crazy. He grinned. Shame to make her suffer, even in the world of unreality. He got up from the bed and walked to stand over them. Alan was way out of it. He unbuttoned Alan's shirt, grinning all the way. Be a good joke on ole Alan. Tell him all about it tomorrow. He jerked the shirt out of Alan's trousers, pulled the inert man away from the wall to remove the upper garment. Then he took hold of Alan's feet, pulled him roughly out into the floor. Alan's head hit the rug with a sound like that of a ripe mellon falling. Carl, his purpose clear, pulled off the dreamer's shoes and then jerked off slacks and shorts together.
Alan was about as interested in sex as he was in advanced trig at that moment.
But he thought he could fix that, with Angel's help. It was easier undressing her and, for a moment, it was touch and go whether or not he would carry out his original intention or take her himself. His tiredness won. He had that miserable feeling which comes from sobering up without an adequate amount of sleep to help the body recover. He felt a tiny urge, deep within, but it wasn't enough to make him do anything about it. It was enough to push on with his joke.
"O. K., Angel-baby," he was saying, as he tugged Angel into position. "You want it, baby. Here it is."
He put her hand on Alan's limpness. "Sic 'em, baby," he said, grinning.
Somewhere down there it did something to her. He saw her hand tighten around Alan and begin a little massage. Nothing happened. He'd have to do something about it. Looked as if the broad would be content to just play with nothing all night.
He picked her up, positioned her. Her face was pushed down into Alan's lap. He had to almost put it in, himself, but she got the idea, at last, and started using it like a baby after milk. He chuckled. Whether or not ole Carl knew what was going on, things got up. Things began to happen. He thought it was rather exciting to see it get hard and push its way out of Angel's puckered lips. And he thought it did something for her, for she was making little moaning sounds as she worked him over.
But in the end he even had to lift her again, place on atop the inert Alan. He had to position her and with his hands in contact with her lubricous womanhood as he pushed her down to make contact with the only part of Alan which wasn't inert, he began to experience a growth of real world, but her world had become man, huge, interest, himself. Then she felt the penetration and her sexuality took over. She was still out of the big in her, filling her, thrilling her as she'd never been thrilled before. Her mind made her entire body one huge vagina and she was full of man. She lunged and bucked and pulled her soft, female body on and down on the body of Alan. She reached one happy peak quickly and didn't even stop, pulling herself up and down as soft things convulsed inside her. She was the spirit of sex personified and nothing would stop her . . . now.
"You are a vile son-of-a-bitch," Carl heard, as he knelt beside them, watching her doing all the work, wondering if those wet, sobbing, laughing sounds she made indicated as much kicks as they sounded like. He turned. Stanley was sitting up on the bed, looking at him with disgust on her face.
"Just watching the action," he said, feeling guilt, not because he'd coupled Angel and Alan, but because he'd been caught watching it, from up close.
"Well," Stanley said, "that's how some people get their kicks."
The sound of her voice, her haughty tone, made him angry. He got up off his knees and looked down at her. "Knock it off," he said warningly. "At least I'm capable of getting my kicks in a normal way. I'm not so sure about you, ice maiden."
"When little boys can't do anything else, or think of anything else to say, they call people names," Stanley said.
"You snotty bitch," Carl said. "You got no right to talk to me that way. Who told you, you were such hot shit, hah?"
"And I don't like vulgarity," Stanley said, her disgust still strong. Behind Carl, Angel was still mounted on Alan.
"What do you like?" Alan asked her, his voice tense. His hands were clenched. He was still a little bit drunk, he felt like hell with his body trying to throw off the booze without adequate sleep, and he'd been excited by watching the wanton, drugged Angel using the inert Alan for her own purposes. "What is it you do like, huh?" He leaned over her, a big, powerful man, young, vigorous. She saw the anger in his face and returned it in kind. She had been brought out of a restless sleep by the animal sounds made by that bitch, Angel, and then she'd seen a male pig down on his hands and knees practically lapping up the juices of the disgusting spectacle. What the hell did they think she was, some kind of pervert? What kind of a circus was this?
"I don't like you," she said icily. "I don't like being made witness to filth. I don't like being associated with animals."
"Animals?" Carl asked. "You calling me an animal?" He grabbed for her and got a handful of sharp nails across his forearm. Four red welts leaped up and he cursed, his hand finding purchase, this time, in the material of the skimpy shift. Stanley tried to pull away, scratching, kicking. The dress came apart at the seams, the front panel coming off neatly to leave her dressed in very brief yellow panties, a lacy bra and the back half of a mini-shift which clung to her body by the armholes.
"Animal," she spat, backing off the other side of the bed to stand facing Carl.
"Don't call me that," he said warningly.
"Animal," she repeated, edging toward the bathroom, with a vague warning sounding back in her mind. He came directly across the bed. She'd been expecting him to come around it and she would have had a clear shot at the bathroom door. Once inside, she could have locked it, but he came over the bed, surprised her by his quickness, and caught her before she could do more than make a sound in her throat. She fought. She left her marks on him. Her nails made red, angry welts on his arms and his neck but he was so big, so strong. He smothered her struggles until, gasping, she let her body hang limp in his arms, her feet off the floor.
"Animal, am I, huh?" he asked. "You queer bitch, calling me names. You never had a normal urge in your life, bitch. And you call me names."
She sobbed. She tried to escape the crushing arms. He was squeezing her so tightly that she couldn't breath. He moved, tossed her lightly onto the bed. She bounced and came up on her rump, hands behind her. The position jutted her nice breasts forward in the skimpy, lacy bra. Carl saw and a new joke was forming in his mind.
"You ever try a man, queer girl?" he asked, moving toward the bed.
"Carl," she said, telling herself that he was just drunk, that she could talk sense to him if she remained calm. "Now, Carl, listen to me."
"Gonna save you, baby," Carl said, grinning, coming closer, closer. "I'm gonna save you from yourself, show you what a real man is and deliver you from a life of queerdom. Your hear, baby? I'm gonna give it to you, right in the ole kazoo, baby. like . . . WHAM!" He jammed one finger into a circle formed by thumb and forefinger. "Wham! Huh, Stanley, baby?"
"Be sensible, Carl," she said, forcing her voice to be calm, not able to believe that he could be serious. Behind him, Angel was clinging to Alan, riding, disgustingly erotic and making wet, slurping sounds.
He leaped for her and she couldn't get off the bed fast enough. He dragged her back, ripping the back portion of the dress away. In yellow panties and bra, she was forced to be close to him. She beat on his chest with puny fists and told him to leave her alone. She writhed in anger and agony and turned her face away from him. She tried to knee him, but her legs were pinned under one of his heavy thighs and her face and neck were being hurt as he held this portion of her rigid in one huge, ham-like hand. His breath smelled of stale booze and she held her breath, closed her mouth tightly, turning her lips inward to avoid as much of his kiss as possible.
He would stop. She knew he would stop. He was just teasing her in his drunken way and nothing serious would happen.
"Carl, please," she begged.
"Carl, please," he mimicked, forcing his disgusting mouth down on hers with his lips wide. She felt his wet, sickening kiss on her closed mouth and she freed one hand, raking her nails into the back of his neck. He yelped in pain and hit her. He hit her with an open palm, but the force of it almost unseated her head, made her see stars, then a moment of real blackness during which Carl, taking advantage of her sudden limpness, broke bra straps and exposed a pair of very feminine breasts. He was playing with them, using both hands, when she came out of the blackness and, screaming, went wild.
She'd never, never had a set of male hands where his were. She'd been born the way she was, she was convinced of that. She'd never liked boys, except as friends or playmates or as someone with whom to compete. She had her first Lesbian experience when she was nine years old and all her sexual thoughts since then had been feminine directed. She'd never dated a boy, never kissed a boy when it wasn't absolutely necessary to maintain the fiction that she was like other girls. And, when it was necessary to date a boy, such as for the Junior-Senior prom, she went with some boy who usually had trouble finding a date of any kind and she never, never allowed liberties. Thus, when she came out of the brief blackness and felt Carl's rough, male hands on her sensitive breasts, she went wild and almost broke away before Carl recovered from his surprise. When he hit her again, it was with his fist, for her flailing nails had caught him again, under his left eye. She fell back, limp.
Something about it had turned him on. Maybe it was the feel of her struggling body, hard-soft girl fighting, fighting. Maybe it was the atavistic cave-man instinct of conquest which made him ready. With lust growing in him by the second, he determined quickly that she wasn't really hurt. She was breathing normally. He pushed her into position in the center of the bed, divested her of the yellow panties quickly. She had blonde pubic hair and he grinned, thinking that a true blonde was hard to find, baby. He glanced over his shoulder. Angel was riding. She was kneeling over the body of Alan, her knees under her, impaled on Alan's cooperating prick. She was grinding, grinding, a really well-stacked chick getting her jollies right before his eyes. But there was another well-stacked chick on the bed under him and she was his by right of conquest. He pushed the white, well shaped thighs apart and looked at the dark-red-moist areas of Stanley which offered him the greatest temptation.
She was vaguely aware of his hands on her. She couldn't move. She felt his fingers pull her labia apart and she felt his hands push her thighs apart and she felt his body go into position between her thighs.
"Don't," she whispered, "Oh, please don't!"
He said nothing. He put his weight on her and his hand was between them, guiding that disgusting, hard, man-thing into the defenseless softness where man had never been, should never have been.
"God, Carl, you don't know what you're doing," she said, shifting her hips desperately, avoiding the penetration. "Please stop. Oh, God, please, please." But she was so weak. Her head was still spinning from his blow.
She screamed, once, as he pinched her hips painfully, forcing her to be still. "I don't want to hurt you," he told her.
"Then stop, oh, God, stop!"
"Not a chance, baby," he said.
"I'll kill you, Carl," she promised. "I swear I'll kill you."
He laughed. The sound was low, eerie. She screamed as he centered that vile, huge object and shoved to tear tender tissue which had felt nothing more penetrating than a friendly, feminine tongue. She fainted with the pain, with the sheer disaster of it and she awoke with pain continued as the beast in her and on her lunged and shoved in an animalistic fury.
"I'll kill you," she promised, as he bucked the monstrous thing into her. She lay lax, full of pain, full of horror and a sickening disgust.
He went quickly, fortunately. He poured his filth into her softness which she tried to pull away, in sudden terror, as she realized that he was near. He held her painfully, his fingers digging into her soft rump and she could feel it pulse obscenely into her. He left her. He went into the bathroom.
On the floor, Angel moaned sensuously as she, lying flat on the motionless Alan, moved slowly, erotically, that impaling manhood still in her. Stanley leaned over the edge of the bed and vomited. Then, after Carl had slammed out the door, she couldn't stop the sobbing. She lay on the bed, nude, weak, helpless. She sobbed. She cried until her body jerked and the harsliness of her sobbing made her throat hurt. She cried for what she had lost.
She cried out her hate and horror as Carl's vile leavings oozed onto the softness of her inner thigh. And on the rug, Angel, at last, was still.
CHAPTER TWELVE
When she awoke, she was lying on the rug with a blanket tossed over her nudeness. Alan Govern, clothing mussed, hair in need of brushing, sat with his head in his hands on the edge of one of the beds. When she moved he looked up.
"Welcome to the living," he said.
She was not quite sure she was living. The hallucinatory drug had taken control of her mind and was reluctant to relinquish its hold. She flashed in and out of the world of reality at odd moments, with frightening results. A simple movement, sitting up with the blanket tucked under her bare breasts, became a lengthy, unreal activity which extended her senses beyond the room to a place where birds sang.
"Stanley and Carl went out for some breakfast." He looked as if he could have used something himself. "If you're hungry, we'll go as soon as you dress."
She waited a moment. It was obvious that he was not going to leave the room. In a moment of lucidity she became aware of the used state of her body, the stickiness, the slight soreness which indicated sexual activity.
"Who was it this time?" she asked Alan Govern, "You?"
"Who was it what?"
"Never mind," she said. "Do you mind if I have a shower."
"Help yourself."
She got lost in the shower and he found her seated on the tile floor, a slack expression on her face. He had to shake her hard to make her stand, rinse off the soap and get out. Then she drifted off again and he had to dry her.
"I don't think we should try to take her to a restaurant," he told Carl Peurter, as the big man came in the door. Angel was dressed, but she was out of it again. "Where's Stanley?"
'That dumb slit?" Carl snorted. "Something's buggin' her. She took off the minute we got out the door?"
Alan frowned worriedly. "Took off? What the hell? You do something to rile her up last night?"
"Who?" Carl asked, the picture of innocence. "Me?" He grinned, remembering. The queer slit was really stirred up, all right. She'd acted as if he had killed her or something, except worse. When he knocked on the door of the room, after getting a good night's sleep, she didn't answer at first. Then he kept pounding and she finally came to open the door and the look she gave him was pure, liquid hate. There was so much hate in her eyes that it shook him, just a little.
"Hey, kid," he said. "I'm sorry. I got drunked out I guess. No real harm done, though, huh?"
She looked at him with that venom-filled stare and left. He told Alan, when that worthy mumbled his way up out of an exhausted sleep, that he and Stanley were going for some breakfast. Then he went to look for her and the passionate pink mustang she drove wasn't in the parking lot. Now it was going no then o'clock. The rally was set to kick off about one and Angel-baby's presence was required at the town square when the crowd gathered, anytime after one o'clock. He didn't have time to think about Stanley.
"Maybe you'd better go out and get us something," Alan told Carl, shaking his head as Angel began to chant nonsense words. "I'll stay with this one. Christ, you'd think we gave her a gallon of the stuff, huh?"
"Well, it acts funny with some people," Carl said. "Remember that nut at school jumped out the third story window?"
"I'm glad it's almost over," Alan said. "I'll be damned glad to head north again. Leave this slit with Stanley and take off like a big-assed bird, boy. You dig?"
"I'm with you."
"So I'll take some toast and about a gallon of coffee. Get the slit a couple of soft boiled eggs and we'll play feed the baby. See if some food will help bring her out of it"
He was seriously worried about Angel. In the minute dosages they'd been using, the stuff should not have lasted so long. His trip, for example, had ended hours ago. Of course, he was more inured to the stuff. He never knew anyone who was really hurt by the stuff. Oh, there was the nut who leaped out the window and there'd been other incidents along that line, but that wasn't really the stuff, itself. It was just that some people had hang-ups which came out while under LSD and that made for a bad trip. People hurt themselves while under the acid, but the stuff never hurt them.
Nevertheless, he didn't like the way Angel went in and out. Some of the scare propaganda put out by the nervous nellies against LSD cited cases where some people lost contact with reality permanently from just one trip. He didn't really believe it. He put such reports in the class with the nut up north who spread the false story about six guys going blind from staring at the sun while on a trip. Bunch of nuts in the world, boy.
When Carl came back with the food, he gulped a quart of coffee and ate four pieces of toast while Carl helped Angel with her food. Angel said she was sleepy. That suited him. He let her sack out, dressed in a cute little outfit which made her look young and fresh, short skirt, neat lines. He told Carl he needed to go for a walk.
Now and then a man needs some time to himself. We walked around the empty swimming pool. The spring sun was pleasant. Florida blooms made a sweet smell in the air and it was so quiet that now and then he could catch the sound of the surf from the beach.
It gave him time to think. Sometimes, after a trip, the thinking was tough. Sometimes, then, things seemed to be too much. He supposed that it was the contrast. He had come, in the space of a few hours, from a world where everything was jazz and truth and stuff to the world where it seemed, sometimes, as if everyone were out to get him. The Army would get him, that was for damned sure, just as soon as they announced the grades for the past quarter. And, by Gawd, he was sincere about thinking the war was for the birds. Who the hell was he to go over there and kill little men who were having a revolution or something? None of his affair. Deep down underneath there was the fear that some little man might kill him, but it was, he told himself, secondary to his belief that no man should kill another.
No wonder he was doing something. They wanted to kill him! They wanted to send him off and keep him locked up in a totalitarian society-that's what the Army was-rfor three years. They wanted him to play with their toys, their guns and bombs. No wonder he was doing something about it. What he was doing might not have much of an effect in the long run, but he was showing the world that there was someone who cared. His little bit with Angel Tomsk wouldn't change the course of history. He didn't think it was all that important. So Angel was the daughter of a man who had defected from the Commies. So what? More people around the world knew Dr. Spock, and his stand against the war hadn't changed anything. So he wasn't kidding himself about the importance of his mission, if you wanted to call it that. He sometimes thought that the fellows who paid the bills were more interested in revenge on Dr. Tomsk than in the propaganda value of a statement from his daughter. He knew that no matter what happened, they were going to send the movie film of Angel and Carl to the old man. That sounded like just plain meanness to him, but it wasn't his red wagon. Live and let live, that was his bag. Angel had the hots for Carl. She would have screwed him with or without the LSD and the camera, so what the hell. Who hurt who? It was Angel's fault, not his. He was just a kid doing a chore for a buck. And to take a crack at the bastards who wanted him to go kill babies.
Still, he'd be glad when it was over and he could head north again. It was too late to do anything about the school bit, but he'd find something to do. They'd offered him a job. He could take it. It required traveling around to different colleges, taking his experience to the masses, they said. Well, he could do it. It would keep him in steaks. Then, when the draft boys got too insistent, he could flip over the border to Canada and let them know about it.
In the meantime, he had a little job of work to do. He went back to the room. Carl was putting Angel through her paces. The chick looked bad, but she was doing all right reading the little speech she would have to make in front of the big crowd at the protest rally in the town square. It was really cornball stuff, Alan thought, as he listened. It sounded like something from an amateur theatrical, but he wasn't being paid to be a literary critic. He'd copied the statement down word for word on the telephone and the man who sent it to him also sent the money, so it would be read just as it was written. Who the hell was he to tell them that they sounded like a bunch of commie nuts?
While Alan Govern waited for the hours to pass and Carl forced Angel to read her speech over and over, Stanley Richmond went shopping. Once she was out of the motel room away from those animals, she could not go back. Nothing would have driven her back to that horrible place. She had money. With it she bought new clothing from the inside out. She also bought sanitary supplies from a drug store and then, laden down with her purchases, she took a room in a different motel and began to try to cleanse herself of the soil of the night.
She cried with horror and frustration when, during the course of a through internal washing, she discovered actual torn tissue. She would never be whole again. She, who had never even allowed a man to touch her breast before, would never be able to think of herself as pure again.
Cleansed inside, with several rinses, she soaked in water so hot she could barely stand it. She used two of the small bars of motel soap and still she felt filthy.
She had to end it, however. Her skin was raw from scrubbing. She was sensitive inside and the torn tissue in her vagina was painful. She dried herself hard, as if by punishing her skin she would be able to erase the memory.
She tried to sleep. It was impossible. She would doze off and then she'd dream. He would be coming at her again and he would be so huge, so threatening, that she'd wake up with her heart pounding and floods of adrenal fluid rushing sickeningly into her solar plexus. She had hated him from the time of his first touch, but alone, able to let the real significance of it soak in, she began to hate Carl Peurter with a violence which caused her fingers to clench so tightly that her nails dug into her palms.
And when the most horrifying thought of all came she screamed aloud. Her mental conditioning to her own Lesbianism had kept her from thinking of that terrible possibility before.
You see, when one thinks of man as competition and not as a sexual partner, when one has never felt drawn to a man and knows that she will never, never allow a man to get into her bed, she never, never considers the possibility of pregnancy. It doesn't happen to a girl like Stanley. She'd never given one minute's thought to a worry which is common to all girls who commit adultery.
Now, suddenly, there was a very real chance that she, who had never been tempted by man, could become pregnant from an experience which already held enough horror to make her cringe.
Stanley lay on a hard motel bed and stared wide-eyed at the ceiling and wished that Carl Peurter were dead. She wished that all men were dead. She hated them all. They were filthy, degraded beasts.
If one of them ever even so much as touched her again . . .
Well, what could she do? Unfortunately, she was weaker than men. She'd been helpless before the beast, Carl. She would be helpless aain if . . .
It was more terrifying then than it had been before. Any man who was bigger and stronger could do it to her all over again. She could not stop them. She could scratch and kick and leave her feeble marks on him, but if he were serious enough he could rape her. She leaped from the bed and paced the floor, considering means of countering this horrible threat.
It was nearly noon when fear and desperation drove Stanley out into the streets in her passionate pink mustang to look for a place to buy a gun. She went into a hardware store and approached the counter where a strong man with bull-dog features asked her if he could help. She almost fled. She told him she wanted a gun. He was very helpful. But she had to have a permit to carry a pistol. It was all very frustrating. She was at the mercy of men. They could do to her anything they pleased and she couldn't even carry a gun as protection lest they say she was being lawless.
As empty handed as when she entered, she left the store and drove until, with sudden inspiration, she sought that part of town where the pawn shops were. She found an impressive display of guns in the first one she entered and, to her disgust, was given the same sort of pitch by the little old man behind the counter. Of course, he would sell her a gun. But she'd have to ask the police for a permit.
On the counter near the pistols were several wicked looking daggers. With anger and frustration making her eyes flash, she picked one up. "I'll take this," she said.
"Lady, are you sure you want that?"
"How much?"
He told her. It fit nicely into the new purse she carried. It gave her a secure feeling. Now she had claws more effective than her fingernails. Let one of the animals try to harm her now.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The stage was set.
Carl Peurter, Alan Govern and Angel were located near the steps of the town hall, an elevation which served as a stage for the singers and the speakers. The television cameras were turning and a newsman was carrying a portable mike around among those who were self-appointed leaders of the protest. Alan waited for the right time, keeping Angel near enough to the mike so that, when the time came, he'd be able to gain the newsman's attention.
Joe Howard, having walked away five pounds in his futile search for Angel, was attracted to the square by the roar of the crowd and the sound of amplified music. In a motel room, a traumatized Stanley Richmond looked at her watch, remembered that she was supposed to be in the town and her firm convictions against war pushed her own selfish concerns to the rear, at least enough so that she left the room, drove to the edge of the square and, carrying her purse, began to edge through the crowd toward the steps. She had a job to do. It was her job to sea that Angel made the speech assigned to her and then to deliver Angel safely back to her father.
But there were so many men; She was pushed by men. She felt their hard, sweaty bodies press against her and she cringed. She wanted to scream and never stop screaming until she was so far away from men that she would never see them again. Yet, her duty to herself, to the world, pushed her forward, moving slowly and with much difficulty through the pressing mob toward the steps where the film tfuck waited, where, if the plan was operating properly, Carl and Alan had Angel primed for her starring role.
Rock and roll music boomed out. The musicians had set up their amplifiers, getting power from the cooperative newsman in the television film tfuck. The cameras turned. The scene alternated between couples dancing happily in the street and cheering, booing faces as some would-be demagogue spoke into the microphones of both the loud speaker system and the television people.
"Maybe we can get one of the little bastards to burn a draft card," one cameraman said to the director, who worked inside the film unit.
"Naw," the director said. "That's old stuff."
Joe Howard, remembering that Angel had been at the center of the mob on the previous day, indulged a hunch and began to work his way toward the steps, approaching them in the opposite direction from Stanley, who was very near now, near enough to see that Angel was there, in a good position. She also saw Carl and her heart pounded with fierce hatred. She clutched her purse tightly.
The music stopped. Carl pushed Angel forward. An excited young man was talking to the newsman, telling the world about his feelings toward the war. He voiced the cliches. Baby burning. Fight the draft. Napalm. Alan Govern, thinking the time right, wanting to get it over, pushed his way to the side of the newsman.
"Hey," he yelled into the man's ear. "I got something good for you."
The excited student was still talking. Alan, veteran of many demonstrations, saw quickly that the kid was wasting his breath. He, the kid, thought he was being filmed for national television. Alan saw at a glance that the cameras were not turning.
"Don't yell in my damned ear," the newsman said.
"I got Angel Tomsk," Alan said. "Jolly for you."
"Igor Tomsk's daughter," Alan said. "The scientist who . . . "
"You'd better not be kidding me, buddy." The newsman said to the excited student, "Hey, knock it off, huh?" He pulled the mike away and faced Alan. He saw Angel behind him. "That's the daughter of Igor Tomsk."
"She has a statement to make," Alan said. "Yeah? What about?"
"She wants to speak against the war," Alan said.
The newsman spoke into the mike. In the tfuck, the director heard his voice. "We got something here, maybe. Kid says she's Angel Tomsk, daughter of that Ruski who flew the coop a few years back. Wanta waste some film on it?"
"We need something," the director said. "What we got so far won't get us thirty-seconds on the evening news and I kinda like it down here in Florida."
"I dig," the newsman said. He spoke to Alan. "Look, let's get the girl up there where we can get a good shot of her." He led the way, pushing through the musicians, gaining the height advantage of the steps. Angel, feeling a numbed acceptance, followed, her arm held tightly by Alan.
"You talk pretty, baby, you hear?" Alan said to her.
At the foot of the steps, Joe Howard stood only a few feet away from Stanley Richmond. Neither of them was aware of the other's presence. Stanley had eyes only for Angel and Alan, high on the steps with the newsman making space around them.
"Are you ready, Miss Tomsk?" the newsman asked politely.
Angel nodded. Alan looked down directly into the face of the blonde and began to yell at Carl. Carl got the message, looked over and saw Stanley. When they had Angel's speech safely on the television film, they'd be through with the gig. It was up to Stanley to take over, then. The girl was a nut, but he didn't care about that. All he wanted was to be sure she was on hand to take Angel off their hands in a few minutes. He pushed his way toward Stanley.
One of the musician pushed the public address mike under Angel's chin, bringing a frown from the television newsman. But he couldn't fight it. He said, "Roll 'em." He stood beside Angel and set the scene, on a hunch that this segment of film would be the one used on the evening telecast. He told the camera and the crowd who he was and then he began to tell them who Angel was.
Carl Peurter gained Stanley's side and said, "Where the hell you been?"
She hadn't seen him coming. She looked up into his face and saw the face of the man who had violated her. She shrank back, making an attempt to get away from him. He, wanting only to keep her there so that she could releive them of Angel, grabbed her arm. Stanley screamed.
"I am Angel Tomsk," Angel began, hearing her voice echo back to her from the big speakers which had been set up by the rock and roll musicians, unknows who were at the rally because they thought TV cameras would be there. They hoped that some of their music would be included in the news films when they were broadcast on television.
"Let me go," Stanley Richmond screamed at Carl.
Joe Howard was looking up at Angel, wondering what the hell she was doing making a speech. She didn't seem like the speech making sort.
"I find it necessary," Angel said, her voice amplified into a huge noise which covered the crowd and was recorded by the sound cameras, "to speak out . . . "
"Cool it, Goddamnit," Carl said to the struggling Stanley.
"Let me go, let me go, let me go," she screamed, causing eyes to turn as she dug frantically in her purse, came out with the long, sharp dagger and plunged it with all her strength into Carl's stomach.
"Get that, Johnny," someone shouted to a cameraman, mounted atop the tfuck. "Get that!"
Angel was talking, but no one heard. The cameras turned away from her. A series of screams came from those close to Carl as he fell, trying to pull the dagger from his body. He felt forward, hand clutching frantically at the deadly pain in his gut and he landed squarely on the dagger, driving it even deeper into his vitals.
Joe Howard, near enough to see what was happening, moved without thinking. Several students seized Stanley Richmond and, with so much male force directed at her, she went hysterical, screaming incoherently.
Angel saw Carl fall, saw Stanley, saw and didn't understand. Under stress, she began to hallucinate. She was screaming as Joe Howard, acting without even thinking, came bounding up the stairs.
"Angel!"
"I'll take care of her," Alan said, his mind running behind events, but still clinging to the vague hope of having an opportunity to put Angel back on camera to finish her statement.
Joe hit him lightly, really, but the blow was enough to send him tumbling in a tangle of wires and drums as Alan reeled back into the group of musicians.
"Angel?" he repeated. She was standing stiffly, screaming, her hands at her sides. He slapped her lightly. She closed her mouth. "Joe! Oh, Joe!"
It was enough for him. He felt that it was time to get the hell out of there. He didn't know what was happening, actually, but it was exciting enough to last him for a long time. A man had been stabbed and Angel was up there making a speech, then screaming and it was time to get out of there to a quiet place where he could ask some questions.
He didn't stop to think that it was, really, none of his business. He didn't stop to consider that he, perhaps, was biting off a chunk of trouble. He got out of there, leading Angel firmly by the arm.
There was no hope of getting away through the crowd, which pushed forward out of curiosity to see the fallen Carl Peurter. While Alan struggled to extricate himself from the drums and the musicians cursed him for damaging their property, Joe led Angel up the stairs, into the town hall, out a side door onto a deserted street. Behind them sirens began to scream. He didn't stop running until they had put about two blocks between them and the mob there in the town square. He pulled Angel into an alcove and looked at her, grinning.
"This is getting to be familiar," he began, thinking that it was the second time he'd pulled her out of a mob scene. Her face was slack. A beading of spittle fell from her lax mouth. "Angel?"
She was gone. She wasn't there. He thought it was shock. He tried to shake her out of it. Then he began to worry. When it became obvious that she was in real trouble, he found a doctor in a nearby building and carried her up the stairs, bursting into the waiting room to create a minor sensation among the people waiting there.
"Emergency," he said, breathing hard. "Emergency."
A nurse fluttered around, directing him to carry Angel into a treatment room. She was completely limp. She showed no signs of life as the doctor examined her. He told Joe to leave the room, but Joe stood in the doorway and watched. He told the doctor, in as few words as possible, what had happened.
"It's just shock, isn't it?" he asked, after a few minutes of silence, during which the doctor had been busy.
"I'm not sure," the doctor said. "She shows all the symptoms of catatonia. She seems to have completely witlidrawn from reality."
"My God," Joe said.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Carl Peurter died while en route to a hospital. Behind him, the demonstration in the square disintegrated in the face of determined police efforts backed with fire hoses and tear gas. A group of male students delivered Stanley Richmond, weeping, crying hysterically, to the police along with eye witness evidence that she had been the one who stabbed Carl Peurter.
Alan Govern made his way to the police station in order to get information about Carl. He didn't even know where they'd taken his friend. When he discovered that Carl was dead it was like being hit in the gut with a baseball bat He sat down on a hard bench and tried to catch his breath. Then he walked.
In the end, he walked to the motel where he and Carl had left their things. The police had been to the room which had been occupied by Stanley and Angel and had removed all of the things there. Fortunately, there was nothing to connect the girls with Alan. In her hysterical state, Stanley had been unable to tell the police anything and Angel had disappeared. Alan thought it might be well for him to fade away.
He packed his things, wondering what to do about Carl's personal effects. He decided to leave them for the police. They already knew he was connected to Carl, so he could call and tell them that Carl's things were in the motel room. First, however, he burned the film which showed Angel and Carl screwing. Then he packed everything, including the camera and projector, into his car and only then did he call the police. They took possession of the personal effects and told Alan that, yes, it was all right for him to return to his school.
Shortly before Stanley Richmond was put on trial for the murder of Carl Peurter, Alan Govern, traveling between two mid-western universities, was subpoenaed as a witness. To stop worrying, he took a trip. He could afford to pander to his addiction to LSD, for he was well paid for being a professional organizer of student protests. While under the effects of the drug, he drove his late model convertible into the side of a moving freight train. At the moment of impact, it was estimated that he was traveling ninety miles an hour.
Angel Tomsk was unable to appear at Stanley's trial. She was in a private sanitarium. Stanley pled guilty by reason of temporary insanity and was remitted for treatment to an institution much like that in which Angel spent the better part of six months.
Toward the end of that six month period Angel was having longer and longer period of lucidity. She was allowed visitors, although no one came except a worried Igor Tomsk, who knew nothing, except that Angel had been, before her witlidrawal, taking repeated doses of LSD. Of course, it had come out at the trial of Stanley Richmond that Stanley, Angel, Carl Peurter and Alan Govern had been a foursome while at the beach. Igor Tomsk was, of course, hurt by the knowledge that his Angel would lie to him. The first knowledge he had that Angel was not in Jacksonville with Stanley Richmond's family was a telephone call from the state police, telling him that his daughter was hospitalized.
Talking with that nice fellow from South Carolina, Joe Howard, didn't make Igor Tomsk feel much better, either. Joe couldn't tell him much, except what happened that final day when Angel went into her witlidrawal.
But now, with his daughter becoming more like herself with each passing day, Igor Tomsk felt better about the while situation. So his daughter had lied to him. Ha! What young person had not lied to his parents at one time or the other? And his Angel was so cheerful these days. Oh, there were still times, and they came unexpectedly, when she would go off again into that world of unreality, a world which she was so lucky to escape even for short periods.
In response to Angel's repeated requests, Joe Howard flew to the southeast coast in the early days of Autumn. By that time, Angel was allowed to leave the sanitarium when accompanied by her parent. Excited, pleased that Joe would fly all the way down to see her, she arranged for her father to take her home, to the pleasant beach house on the sands, where Joe could visit without having to see her in her sanitarium surroundings. The visit was very important to her. Out of the curious memories of that lost weekend, Joe Howard stood out as the only good thing which had happened.
Igor Tomsk ushered him into the screen porch, where Angel, dressed in slacks and sweater, waited. She met him with restraint. It was hours before Igor Tomsk left them alone and only seconds after that before she had put herself into Joe's arms. She lifted her face, took his kiss, a curiously lack-luster kiss, she soon discovered. She drew back, looked at him.
"Is that the best you can do?" she asked.
"I wasn't sure," Joe said weakly. "After all that's happened . . . "
"You weren't sure I would want you to kiss me?"
"Yeah, I mean . . . "
"Now you can be sure," she whispered, lifting herself to stand on tiptoe, placing her warm mouth on his. He let his arms close about her. She was, he thought, a crazy one. But she was a lot of girl and the way she was climbing all over him wasn't calculated to keep him cool and collected.
"Your father . . . " He whispered.
"Has gone to his laboratory at the school," she said. "We're all alone. Does that frighten you?"
"Yeah," he said. "I'm afraid it might not last."
"It will last long enough," she said.
It was clear to him that she was offering herself. Every move of her body told him. She was lifting herself, pushing her taut stomach against the growing hardness of his manhood. She could feel it, he knew.
But a thought came to him. What if the kid thought she was in love with him? After all, she'd had a rough time up there, what with those kooks giving her the junk and all.
"Angel," he said, "I think we'd better do some talking."
"Here, or inside, where we can be comfortable?"
"Here. Look, it's nice to see you and all that, but I don't want you to get the idea . . . I mean, well, I've got a lot of years of school ahead of me and then I wanta thy pro ball . . . "
"Silly," she said. "I know."
"And all that happened up there last Easter," Joe said. "You being forced to take that LSD stuff . . . "
"I wasn't under the influence that day in your room, Joe."
Lightening flashes of erotic memory sent the blood surging through his veins. "And you're not now," he said.
"No."
"Where inside do you want to go to be comfortable?" he asked.
She led him to her bedroom, a very feminine room with a queen sized bed and lace curtains. She turned, but herself into his arms. "Be tender with me, Joe."
His need was great. He undressed her carefully, gently. She had the most wondrously beautiful body. It was his, and no strings seemed to be attached. Her need, he could see, was as great as his. Her body burned. Her breath came in short gasps. She trembled.
But not from passion. Angel Tomsk trembled with dread. She was doing something she had to do, but she feared what would happen. For in her mind, sexual desire had become linked with the horrible feeling of fantasy which came with the acid. In her mind, for six long months, they had been one and the same and she had to find out, once and for all, if she had ceased to be a woman out of fear.
Before she took the Easter weekend trip with Stanley, sex was an important part of her life and she had thought at that time that she was handling it fairly well. Before she went to the beach, she'd slept with three boys. Then, during a three day period, she had indulged in excess, sleeping with as many boys in that three day period as she had slept with up to that time. And the sexual excess had been a direct result of the hallucinations brought about by LSD. Even now, up until recent weeks at least, a sexual urge, however minor, brought back the eerie feeling of horrible unreality.
Now, when the doctors had pronounced her normal again, she had one final thing to prove to herself. With Joe's hungry mouth at her breast and her heart beating from fear, not lust, she had to find out if her mind had repaired the damage done by the drug.
She tried to feel his kiss, arching her body up to push her pert breast deeper into his mouth. She tried to tell her body to relax, enjoy it, but she was tense and fearful as Joe, in his need, mounted her, pushing aside her soft thighs to go between with his muscular body. Then there was the first tentative touch of hardness there at the soft gateway to her body and, with a pounding heart, she lifted her loins to take his push, feeling it go and go and fill her and she wanted to scream with fear, for there was no joy in it for her. She fought it. She pretended passion, lifting her softness to take more of him, feeling his great need in his trembling, plunging loins.
It was too late for her. The horror was there, a greyness which was almost covering her, almost sending her back into that half world in which she had spent so much time. She wanted to push him away and then, like a great, lunging engine of lust, he possessed her totally with one huge squeeze of his arms and she felt his bliss explode deep inside her.
"Joe?"
"Oh, sweet," he whispered. "Oh, you're so lovely."
Horrible? No. It was Joe. She'd made him feel wonderful and there wasn't anything horrible about it. Down there, brought out by his big finish, was a little feel of trembling excitement. She moved her loins tentatively. It was there and she was in Joe's arms, lubricated by his passion.
"You didn't go?" he asked her.
"Yes," she lied. But it was there and it was going to be all right. Never again would she go out into that gray world of unreality.
"Good?" he whispered.
"Good," she said, pushing him away, falling down to use her lips to bring him back to life.
"As they say on the record," she said, herself again, in control of her life again, "one more time," Mr. Howard." She crawled up on his body, seated herself in a long, sliding moment of blissfulingress.
