That's Jimmy Kean, seventeen and just out of high school with a new Harley and ready to find out what life is all about as he takes to the lust road. The first night he finds him unwilling witness to a brutal scene. Trapped in a cemetery, a gang of fraternity brothers become blood brothers ... bathed together in the blood of the virgin blonde they leave behind ... a multilated corpse on a gravestone. As Jimmy flees, tortured with the memory of their shame and brutality, he is trapped by The Rattlers, a gang of motorcyclists. After fighting with the leader, Jimmy is accepted as a member and allowed to spend a furious love session with an exciting blonde in a green bikini ... to sooth away the aches of his fight. The Rattlers invade a luxury mansion and capture a mother and daughter and drag them into their pool. Jimmy is offered untouched delights of the daughter while the other gang members alternate in teaching diving to the mother ... atop the diving board. Leaving the Rattlers behind, Jimmy goes on to North Beach where he meets Matty, of the lovely dark hair and seething passions ... and finds himself whirled up in the granddaddy of all orgies that scorches North Beach in a cloak of degradation and shames the evil beatniks who cluster there in rigid conformity....
CHAPTER ONE
Stripped to the waist, his young broad and bony shoulders moist with a slick of sweat running down over the pale tan of his skin, Jimmy Kean leaned lovingly over the brightly polished metalwork of his HarleyDavidson motorcycle. His.
That was the part that was hard to believe, the part he had to keep convincing himself of as he went over and over the already gleaming chromium gas tank cap with a piece of jeweler's cloth.
His own bike.
A Harley. A full-fl-edged motorcycle, a road-monster with all the zip and terrible power its two huge pistons could give it; the almost new paint a bright white and gold, the saddle covered with new sheepskin, the gleaming chrome wheels, spokes and hubs, with hardly a mark of rust in them-it was just about too much to absorb in one day. He rubbed harder, his long sinewy fingers feeling the warmth of the metal through the cloth as he worked, wanting to know the feel of all its parts, experiencing the pride of ownership.
Too much. A dreamy look came over his soft gray eyes as he worked in the shade of the woodshed in his back yard, going over in his mind all of the possibilities now opened up to him by the simple fact of owning a cycle-the best damn cycle in town!
His own wheels.
There wasn't a thing, a spoke or sprocket or metal part on it that didn't shine enough to knock anyone's eyes out already, but he kept on rubbing anyway, rub bing and thinking and dreaming in the shade of the shed in the late afternoon, a hot late June afternoon in a small sunny suburban town in north California. He thought about all the things he had done to get it-lying about his age so he could work on construction last summer for a whole month before they found out about his age and fired him; working the summer before that picking prunes and during the school term often working as many as three part-time jobs at once. A lot of sweat had gone into his acquiring this machine.
To some people this might seem fairly stupid. What is a motorcycle but two wheels held together by a frame and propelled by a couple of rackety pistons? Just a hunk of metal and rubber; an expensive high-powered way to kill yourself and generally a damned nuisance to anyone who had to hear it.
Of course.
On the other hand, if you happen to be seventeen years old and you've been dreaming about owning one for the last three years and, furthermore, hustling your rear off to achieve that goal, a motorcycle can be a whole lot more.
It can be everything.
The world on wheels. A friend and a lover and a pride and a joy. A symbol of achievement. A girl who can give you the best time in the world. A mark of status, of arriving-having "made it."
Everything.
Jimmy Kean was seventeen years old, tall for his age, broad shouldered and rangy of build, with cool gray eyes set in a thin handsome face and a shock of dirty blond hair that often as not hung down over his forehead, untamed by a comb. He had slim hard muscles all over his wiry body, some of which, had come from his interest in working out with weights in the cellar of his parents' white frame house, when he had nothing better to do.
He had graduated from high school, barely making it, just two days before acquiring the Harley. His old man had given him a hundred bucks as a graduation present, and that had clinched the deal as far as Jimmy was concerned. Above both of his parents' objections he had gone ahead and bought the machine, and now he had it and that was all there was to it. The way Jimmy figured, he was a man now and he could do whatever he took a mind to doing.
A young man with wheels.
The Harley had cost nearly two thou. It was only a year and a half old and he knew the man who had owned it had taken good care of it, which was why he hadn't tried to knock down the price too much. One look at the Harley and it had been a case of love at first sight. His only fear had been that the guy might sell it before he had a chance to get up the rest of the dough. But he had talked long and hard and the guy had waited an extra month, and the hundred bucks had clinched it.
Now the Harley was his.
All of it.
God.
Excited by his thoughts and dreams, he dropped the polishing cloth at last and swung a long, slim, Levi clad leg over the saddle. His palms sweated as his fingers slid around the handle grips. A dry feeling clutched at his throat as he put the gears in neutral, braced his right leg against the ground and with the leather sole of his left boot slammed down on the starter.
The machine exploded to life under him. He turned the grip, revving the engine down to a low steady deep-throated throb. The sound was loud, but to him it sounded like the purring of a kitten when its stomach is stroked.
Music to his ears.
Cool, he thought. Perfectly tuned, both cylinders firing clean and in exact time. He could almost feel the wind rushing past him out on the open highway. It was like sitting atop a thousand pounds of dynamite, going off in a steady controlled way. The urge to ride out and away was like a pain in his middle. Where the hell couldn't he go with this rig? Across country, if he wanted to. The east coast: he had never been there....
But then the sound of another engine, the familiar one of Jerry Wise's hot-rod roadster coming down the street and spinning gravel into his driveway, came to his ears. He sat there, poised and cool, a tight grin pulling at the corners of his thin lips, as the red car with its brightly chromed exposed Merc engine, slid into view around the house.
Jerry scrunched his red bomb to a halt and leaned his dark head out the window, letting off a long low whistle as he took in Jimmy on the cycle.
"What is it man-an Indian?"
Jimmy shook his head, grinning wider. "Hell no! Can't you tell a boss Harley when you see one, stupid?"
Jerry got out, slamming the door after him. He walked up to and circled around his friend, his eyes full of awe.
"Like its bee-yootiful, man! When? Where? And how much? Can I cop a ride?"
Jimmy answered his friend's last question first. "Nobody hops this girl but me, Jer. Sorry. But you can get in back of me if you want. I just tuned her and cleaned the plugs. Want to spin off for a short run?"
"Yeah, man-let's see what the golden cat can do!"
"Later-I'm not doing anything freakish yet. Just a test run down Joplin."
"Cool," Jerry said, hopping on the big fleece saddle in back of Jimmy. "Let 'er rip!"
Jimmy revved up the engine till the sound bounced off the house next door like rocks clattering against a wall. Then he kicked the machine into gear, and with Jerry gripping tight, they rolled across the lawn and out the driveway. Jerry letting out a big whoop as they turned into Joplin Avenue.
Myra Lesser had been watching everything from her upstairs bedroom window.
She had been watching Jimmy, working on his motorcycle all afternoon, trying to get up the courage to go down and ask him to take her for a ride. This might have been no great problem except for one little fact: Myra Lesser was in love with Jimmy Kean. Or, if you wanted to put it another way, she had a big thing going for the blond boy next door.
Simple enough. Still, it was all horribly complicated for her. Tremendously complicated.
It should all have been very simple, really. She was the girl next door; she had been the girl next door for a year, since the first day they had moved in. Being the Girl Next Door was supposed to be the simplest thing in the world. You had all the opportunity in the world, being the Girl Next Door. You could sit on the porch in very short shorts and let your legs dangle over the rail; you could wear very tight knit blouses to show off your breasts; you could walk around in your own back yard and smile over the fence and say hello while the smile said something else.
If you were good looking you could do all these things. Myra was very good looking, and she had done all these things. She had even tried undressing in her room at night with the shade pulled up and the light behind her.
And all for nothing. Jimmy, for all she knew, wasn't even aware that she existed. Lots of boys were very much aware that she existed, but not Jimmy. He just never seemed to be around, and when he was, he was always doing something.
Now he had that beautiful motorcycle. It was hell, having to be jealous o a motorcycle, but she was jealous. Jimmy went out with girls, but unlike the other boys his age he had never gone steady with any of them. Not as far as Myra knew, and Myra had made it her business for the past year to know all about Jimmy Kean. He was two years ahead of her in school, one of the "older boys," and though she had done everything she could think of to attract his attention there-going out for cheerleaders when he was on the team, inviting him to a girl's sorority party, arranging to be in places around school where she knew he would appear-he had never given her a second look.
All of which was highly frustrating to a fifteen-year-old girl who knew damn well that she was pretty. Lots of boys had told her that already, when they took her out on dates and went parking afterward and got their hands under her blouse in the initial stages of the kind of heavy petting she was accustomed to. They had told her she was pretty, beautiful, lovely, nice, neat, cool, a swinging chick-all the compliments you could expect to receive if you were fourteen and going on fifteen and damn good looking.
Now she was fifteen and even better looking only how in God's name could she prove that to a boy who never even asked her out? Tremendously complicated.
Complicated because his treatment made her angry, and the angrier she got the more she knew she was in love with him and would do just about anything to get him.
Anything at all. That, too!
Yes. If a girl had to resort to that to get noticed by the right person, she had to, and that was all there was to that.
God knows, she had imagined that enough times. She had almost done that a number of times too, if the truth be told; even lost her bra and panties in the back of a car with a big stupid jerk who didn't know that a girl meant No when she said No.
But that was all she had lost. Losing more had been the intense subject of her thoughts for the last intense year of her life, and several times she had lost, in her imagination-with Jimmy. But always they were married and on their honeymoon and he would be kissing her tenderly, soft sweet music in the background as they lay on a grassy riverbank or in a boat bottom in the middle of a moonlit lake. And she would imagine him doing that and he would be good, sweet and tender and not hurting her at all or if he hurt her just a little she wouldn't complain, because she had him, body and soul, and then they would live together in a nice little house and he would go to work everyday while she cleaned and cooked and waited for him, and then they would have a baby....
"Oh hell!" she groaned, stepping back from the window where she had been poking her nose between the curtains while Jimmy worked in the yard below, his bare tanned upper body exciting all kinds of delicious thoughts in her, just watching him. And then, when she had finally screwed up the courage to get dressed and go down and talk to him, that other boy, Jerry had come wheeling in and spoiled the whole thing.
"What the heck's wrong with me?" she said aloud to the empty room, stepping in front of the full length mirror on the back of her bedroom door. "Am I ugly or somethin'? Do I have pimples? Buck teeth like Ellen Stewart or flat breasts like Janie or skinny legs like Sue Walker or...."
But the mirror answered No to each of these questions.
At fifteen, Myra Lesser was doing more than all right in each and every department you could think of.
Take breasts, for instance. Why not take breasts for instance? Myra had nice breasts, round and hard and pointed at the tips so that under a sweater they looked like a couple of Indian teepees-which may be a very odd place to find a couple of Indian teepees, come to think of it.
But you get the idea. Myra had nice breasts. Fine breasts, superb breasts, as good breasts as any sixteen or seventeen year old girl could hope to have. And she was only fifteen.
Take legs. Myra had two, which made her fairly normal, but each of them was much nicer to look at than normal legs, nice as normal legs can be to look at. She had the best legs on the high school cheerleading squad. If you've ever stared much at the legs of a high school cheerleading squad, your imagination can fill in the blanks. Myra had damn nice legs. Both of them.
Take waist. Myra's was small, without an ounce of waisted flesh, and her fullish hips and remarkable chest development served to accentuate that fact. She had a small waist.
Take buttocks. Some of the cheers Myra did required bending over and facing the audience backward, so to speak-but when Myra did them, she was simply putting her best foot forward. The younger, weaker, virginal boys sitting in the stands at such times could be seen nervously cracking their knuckles. Yes, Myra had a lovely little rear on her.
You would have enjoyed being the chair she sat on.
But let's not forget face, either. Something has to be said about face sooner or later, just to sort of complete the picture, so we'll say something about face. Lips, for instance. Myra's were cute as could be, two rosy round rosebuds which, since she had a habit of looking astonished when she wasn't, formed the nicest little O. She also had a pert, slightly turned-up nose, hazely big eyes, creamy skin with just a light spattering of Girl-Next-Door freckles, and, of course, red hair.
Naturally.
Nice bright red or orange red or carrot red hair. Her hair was closer to what would be called a chestnut red. Darkish, shiny, but definitely red.
Definitely.
Myra found herself toying with her definitely red hair now. She stood in front of her mirror, just sort of thinking about Jimmy Kean and his beautiful gold and white motorcycle....
School was over and she had the summer ahead of her, a summer with nothing to do, a dull dreary boring summer of helping her mother with housework and oth er dull, dreary things, things she had to help her with because her father was dead and her mother had to work most of the time.
But this summer would be different. This summer would be shared, by hook or by crook, with Jimmy. All her thoughts and emotions would be needed for him. because she was going to make him feel toward her a little bit like the way she felt for him. Jimmy's cycle was beautiful, a gas, and she intended to be the girl who got to ride around on the back of that cycle.
She would open his eyes if it was the last thing she did.
Starting today. This afternoon, even-when he came back from his ride.
She moved from the mirror, her limbs animated with determination, and went to her dresser to get the new summer outfit she had brought from a downtown department store a day ago. She got it out and began to get into it, forgetting about underclothes.
She wouldn't need them, if things worked out right. A bra and panties would just get in the way.
In front of the mirror again, she looked at herself in a pair of the wildest shorts she had been able to find. They were navy blue, tight fitting and slit up the sides in little inverted vees, baring most of her legs there, and in back the hem failed to do the job of completely covering the soft undercurve of her softly rounded rear.
The blouse had no sleeves. It was an orange and white print with a low neckline made by tying the tails together, which left a good deal to see upstairs and down.
She thought of herself riding on the back of a motorcycle in that, her arms clinging tighter around Jimmy Kean's strong waist than was necessary-and her thoughts seemed to take on a sudden reality as she heard the sound of a motorcycle in the street below. Breathlessly, she grabbed for her lipstick.
"It's too cool, man," Jerry said, getting off and slapping the seat with his hand. "Going to get yourself a jacket and cap?"
"I don't know," Jimmy said, kicking out the stand and propping the bike with it. "I don't think I want to run with a pack or nothing like that."
Jerry nodded. "They're hard guys. You'd have to carry a blade. I hear they have real kicks, though."
"Well, I just don't want to get my bike busted up, is all."
"I'm hip, baby. What do you want to do tonight? Got a date?"
"No."
"What about that chick next door-what's her name?"
Jimmy looked toward the gray shingle house next door.
"Myra? She's too young for me. I like 'em older."
"Well you know what they say-train 'em while they're young. See you later, man. I got to go before the old man swears out a warrant. What a drag!"
"Later."
"Later."
Jerry got back in his car and whipped out of the driveway and down the street. Jimmy grabbed his motorcycle and wheeled it into the woodshed. Out on Joplin, he had heard a nose he wanted to check out before the folks came home from a visit to his uncle across town.
He was inside, bending over the machine with a spanner in his hand when he heard his name called softly behind him.
"Jimmy!"
He turned his head. "I'm in here! Who is it?"
The light in the shed was not very bright, but when she stepped into view she was fully illuminated by the bright sun behind her. He blinked his eyes, not recognizing her for several seconds. When he did, he said: "Oh, it's you. What's up?"
She stepped inside and stood close to him, leaning down when she spoke.
"Jimmy, I saw your new motorcycle from my windown. Oh, it's simply beautiful! I mean, gorgeous, you know?"
"Yeah," he said with some annoyance. "Well, I got to work on it a little. I think the carburetor might be clogged."
"Will you take me for a ride on it when you're finished?"
Jimmy looked around with annoyance and then at her. Her trim white legs were very near his face. It was funny how he had never noticed them before-her legs. God, with the shorts she had on he was sure as hell noticing them now.
Some legs, he thought.
"Jimmy? Please?"
He began clanking the spanner rhythmically against the cement floor, frowning, "I don't know, Myra-I'm supposed to go meet the guys later. Maybe some day, thought."
This time she was annoyed. She stamped her foot loudly on the floor. "The guys! Why don't you try looking at me for a change?"
It amused him to have got her goat so easy. He decided to see how far he could push her. His eyes went over her, taking in some things he had never noticed before.
"Maybe you don't show me much," he said. "Oh, I could show you a whole lot if I thought you'd look," she said, her cheeks reddening prettily. "Yeah? Like what?"
Her voice changed a little, became coy as she wriggled her hips and turned around completely.
"Don't you like what you see now?"
He managed to scowl and grin at the same time. This was getting to be fun. She was neat all right, even if she was just a kid, but there was no need telling her so.
"Maybe," he said. He fingered a cigarette from a crumpled pack in his dungaree pocket, and stuck it in his lips. Again, he looked at her sharply. "Yeah, you don't look too bad-what I can see of you, that is."
"You might see more if you tried being nice to me."
He reached out a greasy hand and caught her around one trim white ankle.
"You really want to go for a cycle ride, baby?"
"Yes."
"Okay," he laughed, "Do something for me first!" He was only kidding. But when he saw her face the smile left his.
Her face was dead serious.
And her hand was untying the knot that held her flimsy blouse together.
"I'm going to Jimmy," she said. "I'm going to do something for you, right now."
His hand slid up the back of her leg, feeling the swell of the calf.
"I was just kidding, Myra," he said a little nervously, wondering what had gotten into her all of a sudden. He never remembered her acting like this in front of him before.
Maybe it was the bike, he thought. They really went for a neat looking bike.
She continued to undo her blouse. When she had the ends separated, she held them in her hands, moving them apart just enough for him to see the rounded beginnings of her firm young breasts. They swelled like growing melons underneath the thin material, their stems about to poke through.
Jimmy began to hope they would. As if to help them, he rubbed his hand behind her knee, experiencing the sensation he always got just before starting something with a girl.
He was getting excited as hell, against his will. He had never paid any attention to Myra before because he had always thought of her as being too young; the girls he went out with were usually his age or older.
But she didn't seem too young now. As she pulled the ends of her blouse, each breast appeared, like a small moon glowing softly in the pale light inside the shed. His breath caught in his throat as he looked at them, and he knew that this was no longer just a little wising around. Suddenly it seemed very warm in the shed, airless.
Hotter than hell. He could feel little droplets of sweat begin to prickle the bare skin of his torso. Not a sound came from outside; his parents wouldn't be back for at least another hour....
Plenty of time....
Should he? He didn't want to get involved with her; the plans he had been dreaming up for the summer didn't include her or anyone else for that matter. But the flesh of her leg was cool under his hand, cool with an underlying warmth, and those breasts....
His hand gripped her leg harder and she sank slowly down to him, onto the rough cement floor. "Jimmy!"
He could see she was excited. Breathless, panting, warm for him. He had never had an offer right off like this before-not like this, completely with abandon, without the usual sweet-talk and extended foreplay. His throat felt constricted and there was an ache in his spine, a keen pulsing ache.
"Myra baby," he breathed, folding her to him and putting a hand around her ripe pear-like breast. The flesh was cool but the nipple felt like a hard knot under his moist palm. He squeezed and felt the hard thump of her heart underneath.
Her eyes, her flesh--everything about her said she wanted him, here in the woodshed.
He tipped her backward, against the floor amid some rags he had been using to clean the cycle with. She gasped and then the gasp turned into a sigh as he began to stroke her breasts and legs in earnest. She clutched him around the neck, craning her face up to his to be kissed.
He kissed. Her ripe red lips tasted like berries, sweet and succulent against his mouth, and then his tongue probed and she was even sweeter, warm and sweet.
At least she knew what this was all about, he thought to himself, growing more and more excited. She must have been spreading herself around all along living right next door to him and playing around and he had never noticed or guessed. So this wasn't as if he were taking something that didn't belong to him, something she didn't want to give.
He spread the blouse further apart and began kissing her breasts. Her low quick cries filled the shed.
"Ooohhh! Ohhh, oooh, ahhh, ah-ah-ah-ahha!"
Each time he touched her with his lips or hands a current of electricity seemed to go through her. This was the most excited he had ever gotten a girl, and a feeling of enormous power surged over him.
She was old enough....
His hand found the button and then the zipper at the side of her shorts. The sound was like a quiet snicker in the woodshed. She helped as he tugged the shorts down.
"Jimmy. Jimmy, hurry, hurry-please, Jimmy darling!"
She seemed to go crazy. Her nails dug into his bare back as he wrestled with his pants to get them undone and down while the rest of her flipped in a fierce fury, making things all the more difficult.
But at last he managed.
At last he was ready.
More than ready, he was eager. She had a soft sweet curvy body and for the first time he noticed that she was truly a beauty, all the way, and somehow this discovery gave him a new respect for her.
A highly physical kind of respect.
He knew what to do and began. But now he detected along with her obvious passion a tense nervousness, a quivering in her flesh and a painful fear in her hazely eyes, which went wide, her lips compressing as he pressed himself against her, trying to take her effortlessly, wanting to show his experience.
But he encountered difficulties almost immediately.
Real difficulties "Myra ... I can't seem to...."
"I'll help you," she screamed. "Please don't stop; God don't stop now; I've never done this before Jimmy but I want you now, now!"
His head drew back in amazement.
"You mean you're...."
"Yes!"
"I don't know..
"Please! I love you Jimmy and I want you to be the first ... please!"
But her urging was by then unnecessary. He became even more excited once the fact of her virginity was accepted, and, seizing her in a tight embrace, he took her.
She screamed.
Again.
Afraid, he put his hand over her mouth until she stopped and was relatively still.
Her moment of fear passed. This had just begun for him-the thrill of getting her, being there first, overcame him.
Quickly, in fast determined phases.
Again and again.
She seemed to be all right now. The fear left her eyes and her jaws unclenched; her first sobs turned into whimpers of pleasure and then sighs.
Again and again.
Her soft rounded flesh scraped against the floor as she moved for him. Faster and faster.
He felt so strong, so terribly strong and controlled, like he could go on forever without stopping, but the inevitable rhythm of the cement floor produced the inevitable results-her saw her strain toward him and they both seemed to rise upon a hazy cloud of expanding passion like balloons being inflated past the bursting point.
And then their twin passions burst and spent them selves. She screamed and he groaned and rolled away from her.
Finished.
Only the sound of their loud heavy breathing filled the still air of the shed now.
After a few minutes he dressed, feeling elated.
She got up slowly and painfully. There were tears in the corners of her eyes, but her face was flushed with pleasure and she looked at him with love.
"Jimmy," she said softly, "will you take me for a ride now?"
CHAPTER TWO
THERE ARE A LOT OF THINGS YOU CAN DO WITH A motorcycle. In the next couple of days, Jimmy Kean explored some of these possibilities, riding out into the countryside with Myra clinging to his back.
Jimmy didn't mind her being there. She was one of the things you could do with a motorcycle, he soon discovered. One of the nicer things, in fact. Owning a motorcycle gave him immediate prestige among a number of local teenagers, ones whose acquaintance he had never bothered to cultivate before, either because he had been too busy working or simply because he liked to think of himself as a loner, a guy who could run with the pack if he wanted to or play it solo. And that was the way it worked out, for Jimmy. Popularity is a fickle woman. The more you court her, play up to her, the more she's apt to turn her back on you and wriggle her rear in your face. Because Jimmy had never worked hard at being popular, he was popular. He didn't have to make every school dance or make every school drum majorette or join every club in order to be considered In. He was good at athletics, had picked up three letters, and though he barely made it in his schoolwork. it was more because a natural laziness concerning things he wasn't interested in than from any lack of brains.
Just about everybody liked Jimmy. Girls included.
He'd had his share. It wasn't too long after puberty, working as junior counselor in a summer camp, that he had lost his virginity with an older girl, herself a counselor in a nearby girls' camp. She had taken him for being a couple of years older than he was because of his already consideable size and big-boned ranginess of build. Her name was Jan Evans and she had shown him the works that summer. Before it was over, he knew what a guy had to know about the technical end of making out with a chick. As far as the other end was concerned-the necessary games and preliminaries for a score, there his natural laziness came into play again. He found that part distasteful, a drag and a bore and often a waste of time, and therefore he had never scored nearly as much as he surely could have, even times when he'd had half a mind to. But none of his male buddies questioned his prowess with the chicks. They saw him as a strong silent type who scored regularly on the q.t., and if he didn't tell dirty jokes and/or brag about his conquests, it was understood that this was because he didn't have to. Thus Jimmy, never a high school stud, was more or less suspected to being one and nobody questioned.
But high school was behind him now. In a way, that was hard to believe. It all seemed now to have gone by so fast, busy as he had been with working and his private projects of his own, and, of course, school work-it was all like a brief dream. Could it really be over?
Of course it was over. It had slipped by somehow, Without plans of a concrete and long-term nature, that think about it a bit, cycling around the countryside with Myra attached to his back, sandwiches stowed in the saddlebags, made by her own eager little hands, he realized a definite change had come into his life. The kids he had assumed would always be around Pop's Luncheonette or the town's single pool room, looking for someone to come along to take in a flick with or waiting for dates to show up or dancing in front of the ancient juke box-they were disappearing, one by one; some to summer jobs, quite a few of these to get extra money for college.
Jimmy had never thought about college and didn't now. He simply wasn't interested in studying anything. Bad as his marks were, he knew he could have managed an athletic scholarship to some small school or other. He was good enough to make a freshman football team. But he wasn't interested. His parents were dissappointed, of course.
Naturally.
They had seen him as sooner or later shedding his blue jeans and black leather boots for an olive-colored Ivy League suit with button down collar, polished oxfords and the rest. But his parents were old, well into their middle age, and they had already begun to resign themselves to the fact that they couldn't control Jimmy. Not that he wasn't a "good" boy-he got into much fewer scrapes than some of the wilder kids in school and was never outrightly disrespectful of them. He was mostly just silent around them, the few times he ever did hang around the house on an evening, and the sad truth mutely dawned on them that they had lost him to another world, one of fast cars and engines and rock and roll music-things they had no way of understanding or coping with. Jimmy had gotten through school without getting arrested, and that was something, the way kids were nowadays-so they consoled themselves.
So, in a sense, Jimmy saw that he was hung up. Without plans of a concrete and long-term nautre, that is. He wasn't exactly sure what he wanted to do with himself, and this feeling bugged him, the way a mosquito bite would. He was experiencing a general restlessness, an irritation with things that made him jumpy and quick to snap at anyone crossly.
He needed a change. This was nice, riding out on the highway on a powerful cat like the Harley; a real ball, and having that helped a good deal to soothe his restlessness. And Myra.
Having Myra helped, too.
But neither could provide the answer. He didn't know if there was one, but he suspected that if there was, it lay somewhere else, outside the familiar hills surrounding Coram.
Out there, beyond the hills and the mountains, he would find some kind of an answer. They drew him like magnets, the highway a river passing between, the open road an avenue to adventure, new sights, new sounds, new thrills and kicks he had never dreamt of before.
He had to get away from this familiar scene. Maybe he'd go into the navy; he'd always like the sea but that couldn't happen until he was eighteen, and he wouldn't be eighteen until the following November.
A long way away.
Five months. Five months around Coram would wig him for sure. Five months of the same scene, only without the familiar faces to rely on for things to entertain him-it would be a killer.
The thing to do was to get out. Split, as Jerry would say. Jerry, the local hipster who knew San Francisco inside and out, having lived there up until a year ago, when his family moved to Coram.
San Francisco might be a good place to start looking for ... For whatever it was he was looking for.
Why not?
Or maybe Oregon, or perhaps Arizona. Or even, if he really got the bug, a cross-country jaunt to the big bad east coast, where a lot of the jazz musicians Jerry had taught him to dig blew. Yeah, the east coast might be a gas....
Or just following the road, to wherever it led, with the big gold and white Harley throbbing away underneath him.
It throbbed now, steadily, the gas tank three-quarters full, the macadam road straight and flat, twisting up into the hills in the distance. The late afternoon sun was already dipping between them, twin peaks reaching up like a hungry mouth about to swallow a fiery morsel. Swooping down a slope, he could feel the breeze in his face, cool, and Myra's body against him-warm. The two opposite sensations held him suspended between in a state of sensitized dreaminess. Only his hands squeezing the rubber handle grips were real.
Her voice shouted in his ear from behind: "Why don't we stop under those trees up there!"
He turned his head enough for her to hear him shout "Okay!" above the roar, and felt her hug him tighter. It was a nice feeling. The trees in the distance grew larger as he began going uphill, slowing the Harley for the dirt road turnoff leading to them.
The sun was brighter on the crest of the hill where the trees were. Big spreading beeches, some elms and maples, their greenery made into a deeper hue by the almost horizontal rays of the sun.
He braked the Harley to a halt, raising dust after him, and they got off. With an effort he wheeled the heavy machine off the dirt road and onto the grassy meadow sloping downward.
The spot was secluded. Under the line of trees, which cast long shadows downward, they could be seen neither from the highway nor the dirt road they had just left behind.
Perfect.
It was a perfect day all around. That afternoon they had gone out to the old fair grounds and watched an automobile demolition race. It had been a ball, cars racing in a mad scramble around the dirt track, skidding and colliding with one another purposely, some going end-over-end, some blowing tires and crashing into the concrete retaining wall, others breaking axles and one even catching on fire and blowing up barely after the driver had been able to get himself out of it.
Fun. A gas. Real excitement. Thrills. And the guys coming over afterward, gathering around and admiring the Harley. Jimmy had felt about ten feet tall then.
Now everything was quiet and peaceful by contrast. As he walked with Myra down to a soft grassy spot, his arm around her waist and the bag of sandwiches in the other hand, a lazy torpor seemed to spread over him, a feeling very real but very inexpressible, something like yearning, part desire, part animal contentment.
Wordlessly, they sat down beneath the shade of a small elm. She got the sandwiches out of the paper bag and they began eating them. Jimmy discovered he was hungry and wolfed down two while Myra chewed slowly on hers and watched him, her clean tanned bare leg against his.
"Look," she said, reaching into the bag again; "I stole some wine from the house and brought it along for the picnic."
"Nice," he nodded. "Let's swig."
She opened the fruit jar and handed it to him. It was white wine, a California Chablis, and though it was warm it tasted very good. He took a long drink of it and handed the jar back to her, and then she drank. They passed the jar back and forth that way as the shadows lengthened around them.
The wine had its effect. It's effect was exactly the kind of effect you'd expect it to have-as far as Jimmy was concerned.
With Myra, unused to drinking anything alcoholic as she was, the effect was a little bit different.
Stronger.
A very strong effect, on a very young girl, just three days removed from the time of her virginity, as the poets would put it. She felt funny, giddy, drunk. The air was so delicious around her bare arms and legs, the grass so soft under her, that she felt a desire to be completely naked.
She sat cross-legged with Jimmy's head on her lap, stroking his wayward blond hair, and the desire grew stronger and stronger.
She wanted him.
But she also wanted complete nakedness.
The idea was wild, exciting, because it was forbidden. They could make love here, Jimmy and herself, in the shade of the tree, undressing just enough to make things good, just enough so that in case they were interrupted they could get their clothes on again hastily and not be caught, so to speak, in the act. But she didn't want that.
Her eyes kept roving out toward the middle of the wide meadow, an open grassy spot right in the center where the lowering sun seemed to set fire to the tips of the blades of grass.
It was glowing, like her.
She wanted to merge with its fire, that feel all over her lithe young body, scorching her.
She pushed him away and jumped up.
I'm going to take off my clothes," she announced, by her sudden action and even more by her pronouncement.
"You're crazy," he laughed, trying to catch her by the ankle. But she danced away, almost falling backward over a hillock.
"No, I am going to! Watch me if you don't believe me.
He watched her, not believing. In his experience, girls didn't act like this. But then, she was a pretty crazy kid, and some of the things she had done already had surprised him more than a little. Like that first time in the shed, for instance.
Crazy.
He watched.
The outfit she was wearing offered little in the way of resistance to her objective-complete nakedness. A striped pullover knit jersey, which she quickly pulled over her head, a pair of slippers she quickly kicked off, a pair of Bermudas she quickly slid down.
Jimmy was no longer surprised to see nothing underneath.
Just Myra.
He sat up, excited by the vision she presented to his eyes.
A beautiful vision. But there was a farmhouse nearby, and the highway, and the road in back-this was hardly the place to begin a nudist colony. He scrambled to his feet.
"Hey you better cover up! Somebody might come."
She ignored him, scampering away.
Jimmy found that he was a little drunk too from the wine as he started after her. Not as drunk as she was--she was crazy out of her mind to do a thing like this in full sight of anyone who might happen along. But he seemed lightheaded and stumbled a couple of times as he began to chase her.
She was faster. Whatever the wine was doing to her, it wasn't putting hobbles around her feet. She raced ahead of him, her smoothly curved buttocks rising and falling in a rapid exciting motion as her bare feet seemed to fly over the grass. She was headed right for the middle of the field!
He panted after her, his cheeks flushed red with excitement. Watching her run across the grass like that did things to him. She was small, a nymph, but beautifully built, and all those curves in motion were too much to take.
Too much to take, that is, without doing anything about them.
He knew what he was going to do when he caught her. Crazy as that was, he was going to, then and there on the spot, because he was so excited now he felt like he was on fire.
At last he got near enough to tackle her. She was laughing, evading him, and he thought she might just keep the chase going forever if he didn't do something to stop her. And he had to stop her.
This wasn't a game any more.
When he was within distance, he leapt at her in a low flying tackle. His arms caught her low around the calves just as he hit the ground, and then he twisted, bringing her off her feet, her momentum carrying them forward and his causing them to roll over and over in a mad tangle of limbs.
The grass was soft, a green velvety cushion that saved them from injury as they rolled. She laughed wildly, still scrambling to get away from him, but he had her in his grip now and there was no way she could get away, even if she had really wanted to. They ended with her face down on the thick grass, and quickly he sat on her and pinioned her shoulders to the ground.
"Ouch! I give up ... let go!"
"You nut! You want me to get picked up for messing around with fifteen-year-old jailbait?"
She turned violently, twisting her face up toward his.
"Is that all I am to you Jimmy-just jailbait?" Her fierce eyes cowed him a little. "Aw, I didn't mean that exactly, Myra. You know I like you, only ... "
"Then take off your clothes too!"
"But...."
"Come on, sissy-I dare you!"
A dare was a dare. He took a gulp of air in his lungs and then tore at his shirt.
It came off in no time. The buckle of his thick leather belt came next, and then his boots. But to get his pants off, he had to get off her.
He did. And she scrambled away, just out of reach, cowering there in some tall grass like a beautiful white cat in the jungle, her hazely eyes gleaming at him brightly.
"Nobody will see," she encouraged. "It's getting dark already."
That was true. The sun had fallen below the line of hills above them, casting the meadow in deepening shadows, a sort of eerie in-between kind of light that was neither night nor day.
He loosened his belt buckle and dropped his pants. Then he did the same with his shorts, and as he stepped out of them the cool air seemed to caress him all over. He wasn't afraid of being seen now. In the unreal light the chances were they wouldn't be spotted by anyone as far away as the road or the farmhouse, and it felt good to be naked.
Very good. He wondered if this was the way those nudists in some of the films they showed in seedy movie houses in the city felt. He had always considered such people nuts, but this was a strangely exhilarating experience. Like going on a moonlight swim with a girl only without the water as an excuse.
He looked for her and spotted her courching nearby in a different spot from the one she had been in. His desire for her was strong now. "Come here, Myra."
"You'll have to catch me!"
"No. I can't chase you like this!" She giggled. "That would look funny!"
"Damn it, come on!"
She was silent. Angered, he reached down and slipped the leather belt from his Levis. If she wanted to play games ... He caught sight of her retreating white hips just in time to take a good swing at them with the belt. Maybe she hadn't seen die belt. Whatever the case, when he sprang toward her and swung at the same time the flat of the leather caught her sharply across the rump with a loud snap. She screamed with surprised pain and stumbled forward to her knees. "Oh! You hurt me!"
He was really angry with her now. Her teasing displays had gotten him excited beyond the point of playing around, and she had kept that up. His belt had left a red mark across her buttocks.
It was the first time he had ever hit a girl. He felt ashamed, and yet a strange thrill of excitement had gone through him and continued to go through him now as he stood over her, she kneeling on the grass, slumped forward, her face in her hands, crying.
"You asked for that. I don't like a tease!"
"But ... You didn't have to...."
He dropped the belt and knelt down by her, taking her by the shoulders.
"Look, I'm sorry, kid honest!"
"Well...."
"You got me excited." Her face raised slowly. "Did I?"
"Sure. Couldn't you tell?"
A smile broke through the tears. "Oh, yes. But I didn't think...."
"When a guy's like that, you shouldn't kid around any more."
"I'm sorry, Jimmy baby!" She reached out and stroked him. "Are you still excited?"
"Yeah. So don't tease, damn you!"
"I won't," she said, stroking. "I'll do anything you say."
He stood up, excited anew. "Will you?"
"Yes."
"Anything, huh?"
"Anything!"
He wondered if she knew what the word meant For him, standing above her, that could mean only one thing, and though his experience along that line wasn't extensive, he knew it was a hell of a lot more than hers.
Much more.
"Would you do this?" he said, experimenting. "If you want me to I will, Jimmy. Is that fun for you?"
"Yeah, a lot of fun. Ever done that before?"
She flushed. "No. I told you, you were the first In everything."
His fingers slid into the silken red tresses of her hair and he showed her what to do. That wasn't so complicated, really, but he had figured she would be disgusted or something, inexperienced as she was.
If she was disgusted, she didn't show it. Her cool kisses sent chills through him, and then, when she got the idea, that was like being in heaven.
Fantastic.
He was convinced now that she would do anything for him. And just for him, because he was the first Knowing that, he felt a little guilty for the way he was using her. But the guilt feeling was hardly equal to the intense electric excitement her lips were working for him, and soon he grew afraid he wouldn't be able to control himself much longer.
"Okay," he panted, "I believe you. God, you're good for anything aren't you!"
"Anything you say, Jimmy."
"We'll make out then. That was just a warmer-upper."
"I'm warm for you now, honey. You don't have to do anything more to me if you don't want to."
He got down on the grass with her. Just one touch and he knew she wasn't lying. Her breasts seemed to swell up as she held her breath tensely, the little pink nipples poking out like rosebuds as he rubbed them briefly.
The preliminaries weren't necessary. She was impatient as a whistling tea kettle, twisting like a young calf about to be branded, as he stroked her legs and kissed the buds of her breasts. The preliminaries weren't necessary, but he was enjoying them. Becoming an artist at them, he figured. His eyes were really getting opened as to how excited you could get a girl.
Love had never been this much fun before. Technique-wise, he had always been a grabber. The girls he went with always wanted to pet longer, to draw that out so they could finally avoid the issue when the chips were down and it came time to either get into the back seat or drive home. To him, there had been only one object in love, and that was simply to get there.
Now, he saw it could be fun teasing a girl to the kind of frenzied state Myra was in.
A kick.
He kissed her breasts some more, ignoring his own urgency, and took the hard buds in his mouth and bit them until she got so loud he was afraid someone would hear. Then he stroked her gently and she wailed-he realized he had actually made her jump the gun!
H didn't wait after that.
Now was the time to take care of business.
Business on the grass. A modern day version of a very old painting subject. Or was that called Picnic on the Grass?
That was more like a dance. She did most of the moving, her white body receiving the imprint of crisscross marks left by the rich matting of grass.
"I'm dying!" she cried once.
It was dark now, crickets cricketing and fireflies turning on around them. The noise of their breathing seemed to match the rhythmic screech of the crickets as they went on and on.
Faster and faster.
Chirr-ep, chirr-ep.
A singsong rhythm, exploding around them like miniature thunder. A nightsong, a nightingale's song, a new song and an old song, the first song and the last song.
The only song.
That was good. That was fine and clean and smelling of fresh grass and goldenrod and sounding like field mice and crickets-young love, good love, the best love either of them had ever had and the best, of its kind, they might ever have. There has to be a time like this in every young life, a time when love is pure and clean and sweet and good, without thought or word or recrimination or guilt.
He loved her and the sky exploded with fresh new stars and then it was over.
They lay back on the still warm grass, listening to the sound of the crickets, who had never stopped, and to their own breathing slowly winding down. He stroked her breasts playfully and she nestled close to him.
After awhile, she spoke.
"That was nice. You did that to me nice."
That was true, he thought to himself, not answering. Only he didn't want to talk now. That was over, so why talk? Girls were like that-they wanted you to say nice things to them afterward, to make things all right. To square things, maybe. But he didn't feel like answering.
"That was beautiful," she said, a little sadly. Then, "Jimmy ... what are you thinking about?"
"Nothing much," he said.
"Yes you are-you're thinking about something. Tell me."
A little annoyed, he raised himself on one elbow.
"I was thinking we ought to get our things on and start back to Coram."
"Not yet. It's so nice here. Let's stay just a while longer and talk, please?"
"All right. But what's there to talk about?"
"Oh, lots of things. I just feel like talking, is all. What are you going to do now that you've graduated?"
He picked at a long piece of seedling grass and stuck the end in his mouth, chewing on it and frowning. He didn't go for laying around here in somebody's pasture with no clothes on very much; they had had their fun and now they ought to scram. And he didn't want to answer a lot of stupid questions. But the night was nice and he found himself in just enough of a languorous mood to relax.
"I don't know really," he said grudgingly. "I mean I've got a couple of ideas but I don't really know, see?"
"Do you like me Jimmy?"
"Sure."
"I love you."
"Come on!"
"Don't make fun of me."
"That's cornball. You've been seeing too many movies."
"Don't you like me even a little?" Her voice quavered, hurt.
"Sure," he said consolingly, slipping his arm underneath her slim shoulders. "You know that. But what do you want me to say?"
"We could get married," she blurted.
"The hell with that! You're only fifteen, for God's sake! Don't talk crazy like that, Myra, or I'll leave you here!"
"Some people get married this young."
"Not me. Not you either. You're still wet behind the ears."
"What do you want me to do," she said testily. "Go out and date other boys?"
He was silent. Then he said, "No."
"Then you must like me."
"I told you I did."
"I'm glad," she sighed. "I won't talk about that again. I just wanted to hear you say you liked me."
"Okay, I said it."
"Don't be angry."
"I'm not."
They were both silent for several minutes. Then she said suddenly: "Jimmy, take me with you!" He raised himself up again. "What?"
"I said take me with you!"
"Take you with me where? What the hell are yon talking about anyway?"
"Take me with you, that's all!"
He laughed, trying to cover up his surprise at the way she had read his thoughts.
"What makes you think I'm going somewhere?"
"I just know."
"Oh, I see, you just know, huh?"
"Yes. I can tell. You get that faraway look in your eyes all the time lately. Like you're going to go some where, far away, and not tell anybody."
"Well, so what if I am?" he said defensively.
"Nothing, I think it's a great idea! Only I want you to take me with you."
"I can't."
"Why not?"
"You know why!"
"You think I'm too young? Is that it?"
"Maybe."
"Well I'm not! Do I act too young when I'm with you?"
"No," he admitted. "Well then why?"
He frowned, struggling with his thoughts, and then said: "It's not how you act, it's how old you are. I could get into trouble running away with you. You're just too young, that's all."
She was silent, digesting what he had said.
Then: "I could fool my mother. Tell her I was going to visit a girl friend of mine back in San Jose for the summer. She'd be glad to get rid of me, I think."
"Yeah, but there's still the law What if we got caught out on the road together by some cop and he started asking a lot of questions, about your age and like that?"
"We could think up a good story."
"I don't know. Let me think it over awhile, will you?"
He got up and began putting on his things. She followed his lead, dressing in the bright moonlight, and he glanced at her and saw how pretty the light made her bare skin-like one of those marble statues or something.
But, hell, she would just put a crimp in his style if he took her along with him. He liked her okay, she was the neatest little girl he had ever known and may be she wouldn't be much trouble at that.
But the thing was, she couldn't help being trouble, whether she wanted to or not. Bad enough the squawk his parents were going to make without having it known that they were taking off together. And somehow somebody might find out. They had been seen together a lot in the past week. People were beginning to associate the two of them: Here comes Jimmy on his Harley with his girl tied behind him!-that kind of thing.
Troubled, he finished dressing. It would be hard to tell her he wasn't going to take her with him.
Very hard.
Maybe it would be better not to tell her then. Her, or anyone. He'd just get his things together and sneak off in the night, leaving a note for his parents that he was going down to San Francisco for a week or something like that. That way, no static from them either.
Only he'd have to admit he'd miss her. Naturally.
He'd think about tonight and he'd miss her plenty, her neat little breasts and pretty legs and rear ... The works.
"Listen," he said when they were both dressed and walking back to the motorcycle; "that friend of yours in San Jose-is she real?"
"Of course she is honey-why do you ask?"
"I was thinking maybe you ought to go visit her. We could meet each other there."
"How would we get in touch?" she said, excited.
"Just give me her phone number, that's all. Or her name, if it's in the book."
"That's a swell idea! But can't I ride down with you?"
"No," he said firmly, kicking up the stand on the Harley. "That's out."
"All right," she said softly. "Whatever you say, darling."
The cycle exploded to life as he jumped down on the starter.
CHAPTER THREE
The open road.
Songs have been sung about it, stories written, books and poems composed. The romance of the road is perhaps the oldest one. beginning with Homer's Odyssey. Man's life is a voyage. Adventure comes only to those who are willing to go in search of it, out away a journey through unknown perils and undreamed of pleasures from their houses and TV sets, on to the next town, the next city, and the ones after that.
Jimmy began his odyssey at midnight of the next evening. Just why he should have chosen that hour was not exactly clear to him. Somehow it just seemed to be right.
There was no reason to hang around any longer. His father had started bugging him that evening at the supper table, and Jimmy had known what was coming: "Well, you've had your vacation boy-when are you going to start looking for work? Just because you've got that motorcycle don't mean you don't have to do anything now, you know."
And his mother: "Ned, leave Jimmy alone awhile; he's going to get something soon-aren't you, baby?"
Baby. She still used that word, and just about always at the wrong time, Jimmy had thought glumly then. He liked his mother, but he had to get away from her, too.
"I can maybe get you a job sweeping floors down at the mill," his old man had started in again. "Ain't much, but if you wanted to you could work your way up to becoming a machinist like me. You got the bent; all you need is a little ambition."
Ambition. That was the old man's favorite word. Like it took a lot of ambition to become a machinist or something! Here he was, going on fifty-and he had worked his way up to becoming a turret-lathe operator at a hundred and fifty bucks a week.
Big Deal!
Maybe he could do it in five. Things were easier than when the old man had started out. But five years was too long. And he wasn't going to sweep floors and haul filings.
Not this summer.
So he had played it cool. He had simply nodded and said "I'll think it over," and gone off to his room, knowing there wasn't any thinking to be done about it at all.
His decision was made.
He was splitting. Bugging out, making it, leaving the scene. There was a big world out there, a lot bigger than Coram and a machine shop and a broom. Maybe he'd end up like the old man some day, but first he was going to see what else the world had to offer.
So he had spent the rest of the evening packing his gear. He had a lot of camping equipment and he made use of some of it. It seemed like a good idea, since he had no idea what he might run into on the road. Some aluminum cooking gear, a sleeping bag and an inflatable army surplus air mattress-leftovers from the days when he had been interested in such things and camped by himself out in the hills around Coram. They might come in handy now, and since he didn't have a lot of money he took them along just in case, packing only the bare essentials in the huge leather saddlebags of his motorcycle. No matter what happened, at least he would always have a place to sleep.
For money, all he had was about forty-some dollars in assorted small bills, rolled up and stashed in a bottom drawer of his dresser. It had been there a long time. For some reason he had never touched it, even when he had needed the extra money for the Harley. It wasn't much, but it would help.
Then he wrote his parents a note. It was a brief one, because Jimmy wasn't much for writing:
Dear Mom and Dad, I decided to take off and go down to San Francisco to see about work there for the summer. Hear there's a lot of construction going on. Don't worry about me; I'll write in a couple of weeks or so.
Love, Jimmy.
He left the note propped up on his dresser in front of the mirror where his mother wouldn't miss it when she came in to straighten up in the morning.
Then he walked quietly down the stairs, through the kitchen and out the back door to the woodshed with his bulky bundles.
It took him only a short time to get his gear hung neatly on the big Harley. When he was done, there was room for more.
But he had plenty. You didn't need a lot of junk weighing you down when you were going roaming.
Dressed in a waist-length black leather jacket, tight lack pipe stem cotton slacks, and polished black half-length leather soled boots, he wheeled the loaded down Harley cautiously out of the shed. He didn't want to wake his parents, or the whole neighborhood, for that matter. Not until he was out of the driveway and a good block down the street did he mount his engine and start it up.
Then he was away.
The edge of town wasn't far, and soon he was past the city limit sign: Coram, population 8,000, whizzing past at sixty, and then out on the white moonlit ribbon of highway leading up and over the hills which -rimmed the town.
The night air was exhilarating. Rising ever higher, he gave one last look back over his shoulder at the congestion of little lights in the valley behind him, each little light a house, but one house in particular, Myra's, the one he wanted to identify among them but couldn't.
But maybe her lights weren't on anyway. He faced the road again and accelerated the Harley up to seventy.
There would be no more looking back.
Not now.
He sped over the crest of the highest hill and the town dropped from sight behind him as he began the long swoop downward toward the highway heading south to San Francisco.
After three hours on the road Jimmy found himself becoming drowsy. The mostly empty highway, its monotonous broken white line dotting down the middle like the perforation of a cereal box top, began to hypnotize him; the eerie light bathing the countryside made of it an alluring dreamscape beckoning him away to the Land of Nod. He knew that it was possible to fall asleep driving a motorcycle, as possible as it was driving a car, so when he came to the first likely place for sleeping out in, he pulled off the road and stopped his machine.
The place was a cemetery. Jimmy pushed the heavy vehicle silently in through its rusted iron gate, his body heavy with fatigue, going in deep until he was out of sight from any passing patrol cars on the highway, among the graves and big overspreading trees and soft manicured grass.
A perfect bed.
A safe soft place to lie down in.
Jimmy was well past the age where he could be frightened by staying overnight in a lonely deserted cemetery with nothing but the dead for company. He knew from talking to others that cemeteries were good places to sleep in when you were on the road. Nobody bothered you there, as a rule, and it was always quiet and peaceful.
Just as a cautionary measure, however, he hid the Harley beneath the low-hanging branches of a thickly foliaged weeping willow, getting it completely out of sight. That way, if he overslept the chances were nobody would spot it.
Then he found a spot nearby and began to lay out his air mattress and sleeping bag. Even though it was almost summer, the nights were cool along these coastal roads with the wind blowing in from the sea, and you would need at least a good wool blanket to sleep comfortably in.
A light sleeping bag atop an inflated air mattress was even better.
The best. You couldn't get better sleep on a foam cushion bed, as far as he was concerned. Fresh air and crickets and the smell of new mown grass all around him. He took off his jacket, balled it up into a pillow and slid in, falling asleep almost immediately. One look at the billions of brilliant stars overhead, a yawn and a sigh, and then sleep.
Perfect.
Who could ask for anything better?
It was less than a half-hour later when he awakened however. A noise nearby, a noise which even through his sleep he was able to identify as the crunch of automobile tires on gravel, made him sit up, suddenly alert. He had made his bed in the shallow of a little grassy ravine, away from the graves just over the rise and protected by a line of trees. The noise, at first just the sound of a car engine running, came from just over this rise, behind the trees, and he could see automobile lights reflected and broken up by their branches.
Who could it be at this hour? he wondered. The cemetery was not on the outskirts of a town, like most cemeteries, but isolated along the highway, a very old, country-type burying ground. Would the cops be checking around here for bums sleeping out? It was hard to believe, but he decided he better investigate. Better to see first than to be seen first.
He slid quietly out of the bag, got to his feet and in a crouch went up the rise to the trees. The headlights had disappeared, but the car was still there. He could hear its engine, and finally he could make out voices. Low and indistinguishable at first, but then, as he went between the thick pines and peered around, louder.
Voices and laughter.
The voices were male, and after crawling under the low branches of a pine, he could see the people who belonged to them clearly in the car.
The car was a big new convertible, a Lincoln, with the white top down and the plush interior exposed to the bright light of the moon.
There were three guys in it. One in front, behind the wheel, and the other two in back. They were all drinking from cans of beer, smoking and talking noisily. Drunk, it wasn't hard to figure.
Stoned out of their minds.
It wasn't hard to see that at all. The guy in front was leaning his head back against the seat like he was sleeping, but the two in the back seat were doing the talking and laughing and spilling a lot of beer in the process.
Over a body. Jimmy hadn't seen that at first. She was slumped down between them, a small but curvy platinum blonde, obviously out cold because she wasn't doing anything about the beer being poured over her by the guy on either side of her. First one and then the other poured, the sudsy liquid spilling down over her face and hair, the creamy white throat and the rise of her breasts just above the top of an expensive looking strapless party gown. The beer wetted her face and breasts and shoulders, making them shine in the moonlight like carved marble, making dark splotches down the filmy material of the bodice and skirt-but she didn't move a finger to stop them. She just sat back, like the guy in front, passed out maybe.
They all looked to be about college age. Not too much older than Jimmy himself was.
The girl was beautiful.
Breathtakingly beautiful.
That was the only way to describe her, and Jimmy felt that clutched-up feeling in his throat he got when he saw a really fine looking broad.
He edged closer, trying to get a better look and to hear what they were saying. The whole scene was so odd he forgot about sleep for the moment. It wasn't likely that he'd get any with the racket they were making anyway. They must have thought they were absolutely alone in this place.
The voices came in clear, the two guys in the back seat talking to each other:
"Man, she's really out."
"What are we going to do with her?"
"Ha ha! What would you like to do with her, Smitty?"
"Yeah, I know. But, hell, she's Jake's date."
"Jake's out of this. Besides, he's a fraternity brother, isn't he? One for all, all for one, you know."
"I'm soused."
"So am I. Blitzed, man; wiped out. But that don't mean I don't have ideas. Look at her, mouth hanging open!"
"Maybe Jake wouldn't mind. Carol's a witch anyway!"
"A real teaser. She hasn't loved one single guy in the frat yet!"
"We could fix that right now, couldn't we?"
"Want to?"
"Let's."
"Maybe we ought to ask Jake first. She's his date."
"Listen, why do you think he brought us all the way here? He'd do that himself if he wasn't rotten stoned. Damn, she needs something like this!"
"You're twisting my arm, man."
"Let's try twisting hers. See if it'll wake her up."
"Okay, but not her arm. I've got a better way."
"Show me the way, Smitty baby! I'll follow your lead, you crazy joker!"
Jimmy watched, the guy on his near side reached his hand over and gave the bodice of the girl's dress a good yank.
It came away in one piece.
Her breasts were soaked in beer, only the beer was drying already, making a sticky film over the perfect creamy skin.
They were beautiful breasts.
Perfect.
The girl didn't wake up right away. Her mouth moved and she moaned and tossed her head, but her eyes didn't open. It was as though she were awake but not yet able to move.
The guy named Smitty was able to move. He moved very quickly, grabbing one voluptuous young breast in his hands and ducking his head down to it.
The other guy watched for a minute and then did the same.
Their laughter and remarks were muffled as they moved their heads busily. "Nice?"
"Mmmmm-beer-coated! I love them I"
"What a treat she is!"
"Best boobs on the campus, by gawd!"
"Tasty."
"Too much."
"I'm getting a strong, strong yen from this action, man."
"You too?"
"Right. Why the hell don't we strip her and get her on the grass over there?"
"On a grave?"
"That's the place to stretch her out, isn't it?"
"Man. Like wow!"
"Let's do that. I'm not drunk any more. Just drunk on her luscious melons."
"Okay, but she's waking up."
"Tough. I've got too much going for her to stop now. She's going to whether she wants to or not."
"I'm for that. Gawd, what punching bags these things would make!"
Jimmy rubbed his eyes, unable to believe what was taking place before him.
A strip-tease.
Only the girl wasn't doing the stripping-they were, the college fraternity boys sitting in the back seat with her-and they weren't being very subtle.
They were ripping her dress to shreds.
The dress riped pretty easily, for that matter, by the time they had her down to underpants, garter belt, and stockings, she woke up.
"Oh! What are you doing?" she said in a shocked, half-awake voice, her words slurring themselves together.
"Relax, Carol baby," the guy named Smitty said. "We're just having a little fun."
"My dress!"
"It kind of got ripped-don't you remember?"
"No. No! Let me out of here!" The guy named Smitty stood up in the back seat of the car.
"Damn, she's going to start screaming all over the place. I knew it!"
"Belt her one then!"
Smitty belted her one. As she tried to struggle up from the seat the back of his hand came down across her pretty red lips in a vicious arc that ended in a crack loud enough to make Jimmy wince. The girl's body went back, her head bouncing against the back seat. She shrieked once, covering her face with her hands, and then began to sob.
"Hit her again," the other guy coaxed.
"No, she's all right now. You don't mind us having a little fun, do you Carol? The word will never get past this car, honest."
"Puh-please," she blubberd, "take me b-back to the dorm!"
"She's not going to," the other guy said disgustedly. "Here, let me talk to her."
Smitty moved over to let the other guy talk to her. The other guy knelt across her body and began his conversation.
Using his fist!
His fist smacked into her chest repeatedly, first one side and then the other, while the girl screamed and began to babble incoherently. He held her behind the neck finally and then planted three carefully timed blows in her middle. Smitty watched it all, obviously excited by the sight because he didn't try to interfere. The other guy was much bigger than him, about the size of a good college football tackle.
The girl went: "Uh, uh, uh," over and over. It was the only sound she seemed to be able to make when he was finished. Her white, perfect body curled up like a caterpillar and she fell back on the seat, hugging her knees to her chest.
"See? No more screaming," the guy said, smacking her once more in the bottom of her now exposed buttocks for good measure. He was right.
She had stopped screaming.
She was fully awake, her eyes wide as saucers, her knees pressed against her breasts and her ankles crossed defensively-but she wasn't screaming. She didn't make a sound or move when Smitty ripped her garter belt and stockings down and tore her panties off.
Jimmy's blood was pounding. He didn't know what to do. Those guys were real rough, treating a girl like that, but if he tried to help her he'd just get clobbered himself, three-to-one, because the other guy, the one in front they called Jack or Jake, was waking up now too.
Maybe he'd stop them, Jimmy thought. The girl, Carol, was supposed to be his date.
He waited and he watched, holding his breath. There was something about the scene that excited him, too, making him reluctant to move away.
It wasn't hard to discover what. His eyes kept returning to the girl. He could see her in close detail, the light was so bright-her naked limbs and frightened eyes and her beautiful blonde hair.
Jake, her date, had woken up and was turning around in the seat to see what was going on.
Smitty and his big friend were tossing a coin over the cowering form of the girl.
"Heads. I make her first," Smitty's friend was saying.
Jimmy wormed his way closer under the branches in an effort to see what would happen. The air was very still, not a breeze around, and an electric tension seemed to fill the atmosphere.
"What's going on?" Jake said.
The two boys turned around and looked at him.
"It's Carol," the big one explained. "She took all her clothes off and now she won't."
"Maybe we ought to leave her alone," the one named Smitty said, obviously getting a little nervous now that the driver of the car was awake.
Jake took a long look at his girl, lying naked and doubled-up in the back seat. Then he opened the car door and got out, walking around to the far side where her head was crouched down between the seat and the side upholstery.
What he did then amazed Jimmy completely.
He grabbed her by the hair and started pulling her up over the side of the car.
Jimmy began to feel suddenly queasy when he understood what was happening before his eyes.
A gang rape.
He had heard of them and even been in on one once, but that had been with an old local pro in her forties with seven guys at the lake shore one night. They had all chipped in and taken their turn and that had been pretty lousy and he had been afraid he wouldn't be able to when his turn came, but somehow he had, thereby saving face.
But this was completely different. She was not only a young, swell-looking girl, but she wasn't doing this thing willingly. Weak and drunk as she was, she now realized what was happening to her and was fighting like sixty, screaming and clawing at them as the other two guys helped the driver get her out over the side of the car. He pulled her by the hair and the others grabbed her legs and threw her over and she landed sprawling in the gravel drive. And the guys acting like they were crazy, laughing insanely....
He watched with bated breath, unable to move, a strange, sickish feeling coming over him but all of his senses alerted, even stimulated.
The girl tried to get up and run, but the other two were out of the car now and the guy named Smitty tripped her up with his foot, pushing her at the same time, so that she went spinning down against the side of the convertible, her body making a loud thump against its metal.
"No! Don't! Please! Help me, help me somebody!"
He wanted to. This was brutal, terrible-a scene from some fantastic fantasy going on before his eyes. There was in him the instinct to help her, but it seemed there was little he could do, nothing but miles of deserted road on either side of-the cemetery; if he ran for help it would be too late and if he tried to interfere the three of them would kill him. If he had a gun or something....
But he didn't have a gun.
And, worse than that, he didn't even have the power to move. Because, despite this one instinct, there were others-new ones he had never been aware of in himself and which he wasn't completely aware of now that they were acting on him.
Along with the nausea he felt clutching at his stomach, he felt something else.
Fascination.
It was as though he were watching a movie, a really exciting movie.
A movie which hypnotized him into a state of increasing inner excitement while at the same time paralyzing him physically.
His eyes remained on the girl. He could see in the clear light a thin streak of blood running down from the corner of her pretty lips as she raised her blonde head and moaned. He even imagined he could see the color-a deep red, like her lips. Then her head jerked upward again as one of them caught her by the hair and hauled her to her feet.
They weren't laughing or joking now. They were perfectly silent.
That was worse.
Jimmy sensed it. It was as though he were experiencing what they were feeling and what she was feeling both at the same time-he could identify with her pain but also with their pleasure. Like pulling the legs off grasshoppers or throwing stones at the little girl down the block.
Only they weren't children.
And their silence meant that they knew they had gone too far now; they were charged emotionally by the pain they had inflicted on the girl and couldn't stop what they had drunkenly started. The sight of blood running from a pretty mouth in a pretty face had excited a kind of lust in them that could lead to anything. They were no longer responsible for what they did.
Jimmy sensed all this without reasoning it out. He was held in a spell. He wanted to at least tear his eyes away but he couldn't even do that. The thing had to be carried out to the illogical conclusion, they the actors and he the witness. A captive audience, by now.
"Let me go, please let me go," the girl moaned dully, her head propped back against the rear tire of the convertible after the one holding her hair released her and she had slumped down on her buttocks again.
When the boys spoke again, their voices were high-pitched, unnatural.
"We can't do that now, can we?"
"No. She'd tell. She'll report us anyway."
"Let's smoke on this. I've got a joint left. Let's take off our clothes and smoke a joint. She isn't going to get up."
High-pitched, hysterical voices.
Then, silence as they undressed. The girl continued to sob, slumped against the wheel, one beautiful leg folded under her and the other sticking straight out in front.
Then they were naked, standing around her and passing a cigarette around. Their silence was maddening. Her sobs soon took on an edge of hysteria.
One of them started laughing at her. The louder she sobbed, the more he laughed.
"Listen to her. She knows she's going to be raped!"
"Man, I'm strong for you now baby...."
"Give her a drag. Maybe she wants a drag."
"Want a drag, Carol? It will make things better for you, baby."
The speaker held the cigarette down toward her face, but she cringed away from it.
That was a mistake. There was no way for Jimmy to know this, but somehow he knew it-if she had taken the offer it would have shown she wasn't so afraid of them and they might have remembered what they were doing and how this had started. That might have cooled them just enough.
The would-be donor's reaction was quick, violent. He seized her by the hair and began banging her head against the car's fender. Hard. The hollow-sounding thumps reached Jimmy's ears like physical blows.
Thump thump thump....
Her screams filled the air again. Her legs kicked out and she clawed like a cornered bobcat, but it was of little use. The lust of the three of them was well in evidence. Hands reached down and caught her, lifted her up in the air, carried her-and then threw her hard on the long low rear trunk deck of the convertible.
Her body was out-lined clearly on the car; the rearend of the convertible dipped as the big one clambered up on it and forced her to help him carry out his lust. She was stretched out, her head falling back over the edge so that her loosened white-appearing hair streamed down into the back seat. Moose grabbed her ruthlessly and forced himself at her.
She screamed.
The convertible began to rock on its springs, rocking violently.
Again and again.
Jimmy's vision blurred. His eyes seemed to mist over and everything became darker, as if a clod had suddenly covered over the bright full moon. But he could still see them darkly somehow, dark distorted goat-like figures scuffling around the car, breathing heavily, all of them trying to get up on the deck at once.
Taking turns.
Changing partners.
Musical chairs.
Musical rape.
The music of her screams, sighs, groans, sobs, pleas, chokings, coughs, sputterings, moan, silence....
Her silence the worst. Jimmy's head fell down on his crossed arms and he tried to bury his ears away from the sounds, but he couldn't blot them out.
Sounds like meat being slapped and pounded by a butcher. Dull metallic thumps. Sounds like a whip slapping flesh, or a leather belt being used as a whip.
His mind grew dizzy and his ears seemed to fill with a roar like the surf along the ocean; he clenched his eyes shut and saw red whirling pinwheels of flashing light.
Someone yelling something, and then another voice answering, frightened.
He raised his head in time to see the three of them scrambling into the car. The engine boomed to life and gravel went flying out from under the rear wheels as the convertible spun crazily away, headed toward the cemetery entrance under full power.
When he finally came to his senses, Jimmy realized he was alone again.
What had happened to him? He had almost passed out with the thick tangle of sensations that had bombarded his senses. That had been like....
Like....
That had been like with a girl, he realized dully. He raised himself slowly, feeling the cold drying sweat on his skin. He was tremendously thirsty all of a sudden; he looked around for a spigot along the line of graves on the other side of the drive where the car had been.
And then he saw her.
She was lying there, face upward, her body arched slightly across the slight mound of one of the graves so that her fullish breasts were spread wide and flattened somewhat. She lay limp and unmoving. He blinked his eyes at the beautiful vision and finally realized it was real.
She was real. Beautifully real.
He staggered the rest of the way to his feet and hurried over to help her, wishing he had some whiskey or something with him to give her. She would need it.
But when he got to her, he was shocked. Close up, her body still beautiful in contour, was not so pleasant to look at. Dark, ugly bruises, raw red welts, what looked like scars from cigarettes, and dried and drying blood marred the perfection of her face, breasts, and stomach.
Turning sick again, he bent down and tried to raise her head. It was then that he realized her eyes were open and staring at him.
Only she wasn't breathing.
She was dead.
He fell away from her, onto the smooth cropped grass beside the grave and vomited.
When he was able to raise himself, he staggered away in a semi-delirium, his only thought to get as far away from this place as quickly as possible.
In a dream, he scooped up his gear, stowed it in the saddlebags of his motorcycle and got the machine started.
Not until he was well down the highway was he able to breathe almost normally again. He kept the red speedometer needle up near eighty, and his mind a blank. If that had been a nightmare, all he wanted to do was forget it If he could....
CHAPTER FOUR
Such AN experience isn't easy to forget, AND Jimmy didn't forget it as he rode through the most part of the next day.
He went through three towns before he stopped at a roadside tavern for a sandwich and some beer. The place was just a joint, one story, white, with a green tar shingle roof, but by the time he came upon it he was so fatigued it looked like a small oasis.
The tap room was paneled in unfinished knotty pine. The bartender looked at him but didn't ask for a draft card when Jimmy ordered a tall glass of Ballantine from the tap.
The beer was cold and good after the hot dusty road and he quaffed it down almost in one draw. There were no other customers in the place, and the bartender, a balding portly man in his late forties, seemed in a mood to talk. He did, after he saw that Jimmy was staying for a refill.
"That's a nice bike you got there, kid."
Jimmy resented the "kid" bit, but he smiled pleasantly and said "Thanks. It's a Harley Davidson."
"Yeah?" the bartender said, wiping his sweating dome with a big dirty white handkerchief. "You must be in one of them motorcycle clubs, huh?"
Jimmy shook his head. He didn't especially want to talk to this guy, but he also thought it might look funny if he didn't. They might have an A. P. B. out on the murder already, if the State Police had discovered the corpse, and someone might stop here later and ask if the innkeeper had noticed any suspiciously acting customers.
"No?" the bartender said, for some reason looking relieved.
"No. I'm just going downstate to visit my aunt."
"Oh, I see. Well, that's good. I'm glad to hear that, in fact. You look like a nice cleancut kid-that's what I said to myself when you walked in; he looks like a real nice cleancut kid. But with the black leather jacket and all you never know. I thought maybe you was in one of them motorcycle gangs-the hoodlums, you know."
"Oh, no sir."
"Yeah, I see you ain't got no skull and crossbones on the back. Here, have this one on me." He took Jimmy's glass and drew another one, setting it before Jimmy with a flourish.
"Those gangs," he said, wagging his head knowingly. "They ought to be kept off the road. Nothing but criminals, they are. Not that every kid who has a bike is bad-lookit you-but when they band up like that you have to fear for your life when you near them coming! Me, I say they ought to bust them all up, throw the scum in jail and teach 'em a lesson."
"Yeah, maybe you're right," Jimmy said. "Can I get a sandwich here?"
"That you can, boy; that you can. Sausage, meat loaf, liverwurst, roast beef...."
"I'll take a roast beef on rye."
"Mustard?"
"Catsup."
"Coming up."
The bartender went to make the sandwich and Jimmy sat on the wooden stool, sipping his third beer. He was beginning to relax now, and, relaxing, he felt for the first time how tired he was. But it was a rather pleasant kind of tiredness, and the beer tasted good, and as he went over things he began to feel a little more cheerful.
For one thing, he couldn't see any way they could connect him with the crime that had been committed back in that abandoned old cemetery. He had been really scared, but now, in the light of day, it all seemed something like a bad dream, to be forgotten as quickly as possible.
After all, it wasn't as if he were really connected with it. It had just been an accident that he happened to be there. And besides, maybe she hadn't really been dead. It was hard to think of a beautiful young girl like that as being dead. But then, the whole thing had been hard to believe.
No; he thought; as far as he could see he was in the clear and there was no way they could touch him. Reporting the crime to the police would only have involved him, maybe put him under suspicion. They would see him as a footloose teenage hot-roder wandering around looking for trouble and there would be a lot of questions and finally his parents getting involved in it, and that would be the end of his plans for a swinging summer. He had worked and saved too long for this to have it ruined at the outset. And the cops would catch those college guys anyway, if they had really killed her.
So thinking, he ate his sandwich and finished his beer in silence while the bartender served some construction workers who had come into the place.
He paid for the sandwich. "Is there a filling station near here?" he asked the bartender before leaving.
"About a mile down the road, boy; can't miss it,"
"Thanks. See you."
"Good luck, boy. Be careful with that thing now."
Jimmy nodded and left the place.
The Harley was almost out of gas by the time he reached the filling station. It was just an old beaten-up looking place with one rusted orange pump outside, and at first Jimmy thought it was deserted. He parked the motorcycle in front and got off to check. One thing was sure; he needed gas right away. He had no idea when the next station might be, and there was only enough gas in the tank for a couple more miles.
He found no one inside the office in the shack. Just a dusty room with a desk and a chair and cans of motor oil stacked around the walls.
"Hello!" he called, cupping his hands to his face.
No answer.
He had to have gas. Tired as he was, he might not even get to the next station if there was one. A place by the side of the road to sack out in was in order, but first he had to gas the Harley. He went back outside to the pump to see if it was locked.
It wasn't. He removed the cap from the belly tank of the motorcycle, wound the pump and stuck the nozzle in and began filling it up, figuring to leave the money for the sale on the desk inside when he was finished.
It was almost filled when he heard a voice behind him.
"Hi," the voice said. "What you doing?"
It was a girl's voice and it belonged to a pale freckled blue-eyed straw-haired young thing of about fourteen, wearing faded blue jeans and a man's khaki work shirt that was much too big for her. The tails hung out and the sleeves were rolled up and the top three buttons undone. Her hair, bleached colorless, was held by a blue band of ribbon and it hung down behind as far as her shoulder blades. She was a very slim young thing with wild eyes, but rather pretty in a tomboyish way. Like somebody's kid sister who liked to climb trees and play at boys' games.
She wore no shoes. Her bare dirty feet shuffled in the dust as Jimmy looked at her, surprised at her sudden appearance.
"I'm getting gas," he explained. "Isn't anyone watching this station?"
"I'm watching it. You owe me two dollars and seventy-nine cents for that. You got money?"
"Sure. I couldn't find anyone around and I needed the gas, so I helped myself. But I was going to pay."
"That's all right then. I was out back of the shed chopping some wood for the stove. Ma went to town for the day and I'm taking care of everything."
Jimmy couldn't help snickering. "You are, huh?" he said, hanging up the pump hose.
"Sure. Don't you think I can? I can grease a car, too, and change tires and adjust carburetors and...."
"Okay, okay," Jimmy laughed; "I believe you honey. Only, doesn't your old man do those things?"
She made a wry face. "I don't have any. 'Least, not since I can remember. Just me and Ma is all. But I can do anything a man can do and do it better."
Jimmy got three bills out of his wallet and handed them to her. He followed her inside to get his change, curious about this funny little girl.
She made change on the ancient crank-handle cash register and handed it to him.
"That's a nice looking motorcycle you got there," she said enthusiastically. "Would you take me for a ride on it?"
"I don't think I better," he laughed. "You might lose customers. Besides, I'm dead tired from traveling ail day, kid. Got to find me a nice quiet place to sleep."
"Why not sleep here then? There's a bed in back and I won t charge you anything for it."
Jimmy was surprised by the offer. "But your mother...."
"She don't come back till the next day when she goes into town. She's got a boy friend there, sleeps with him. Thinks I don't know, but I watched one time when he was out here and stayed overnight. I don't like him. But I like you-you're real cute. Why don't you stay if you need sleep? Better than laying out in some old field and having a farmer chase after you with a pitchfork."
It was a funny image and he couldn't help laughing, both at that and at the way she talked about her mother and her mother's boy friend. A real fresh kid, part wild, he guessed-but he sort of liked her open, friendly manner.
And he was dead tired.
"Okay," he said quickly. "For a couple of hours anyway. Till it gets dark."
"You like riding at night?"
"Sure."
"I bet that's fun. Well, put your motorcycle around back in case somebody comes and gets nosy. The bedroom's right in there."
Just the mention of a bed made Jimmy realize how tired he actually was. He hadn't had any real sleep in almost forty hours; just a wink or two, and it would be good to lie in a real sack.
Very good.
Feeling slightly drugged, he wheeled the cycle around back of the shack and reentered it through the back screen door.
The place wasn't much to look at-a tiny kitchen, a smaller living room and two closet-sized bedrooms. The furniture was all old and decrepit, giving off a musty odor, but the place wasn't too badly kept for all that.
He went into the nearest bedroom, not caring whose it was, took off his jacket and boots and lay down on the sagging cot-like bed. To his drugged body it felt like the height of comfort; much better than the hard ground he had been contemplating, and through the open window he could smell the breeze and hear birds singing. This was real country, he thought, and then he promptly drifted off to sleep. A deep dark dreamless sleep known only to the really tired.
Much later, he awakened from it gradually. The sound of crickets in full chorus came through the screen, bringing him out of it, but in the netherland between sleep and wakefulness he had a dream that seemed very real. His eyes were open, it seemed, but he had no idea where he was and no control over his limbs. The screech of the crickets rose up to a din.
Suddenly he was back in the cemetery.
He groaned, tried to move, to yell, his throat working furiously, but no sound seemed to come out-only a strangled senseless babble. He began to struggle on the bed. trying desperately to wake himself up.
But then a cool hand touched his forehead and a voice spoke to him:
"What's the matter? Are you having a bad dream?"
Slowly his eyes re-focused on the room, strange now in the semi-darkness, but he remembered where he was at least, and the hand, rubbing his chest and stomach under his tee shirt, had a warm reassuring feel to it.
Dimly he made out the girl, seated in shadow on the edge of the bed next to him.
He let out a long sigh of relief.
"God! Yeah, it was a real bad one. I'm okay now though. What time is it?"
"Half-past eleven. I was sleeping in the other room myself when you started yelling, so I come in to see what was the matter with you. You slept like a baby all evening."
"Umm. Thanks. I didn't know it was so late. I guess I better be going."
"Don't hurry," she said softly, pulling up his shirt and continued to rub with her delicate bird-like hand. "You have a dream like that, it must mean the witches got into your craw. Now you got to make sure they're gone before you get up from bed or else they'll follow you wherever you go."
Her tone of voice was so serious it made Jimmy laugh.
"I don't believe in witches, kid."
"My name's Cindy and I'm almost fifteen," she replied tardy, giving him a sharp little pinch. "So don't you go talking down at me! And even if you don't believe in witches you ought to be more careful. You never know."
Jimmy grinned in the darkness, reaching over the bed for his jacket, which had some cigarettes in the pocket. This nutty little girl was one of the funniest he had ever met, he thought, but it wouldn't do any harm to smoke a cigarette before he took off. At least she had been nice to him, very hospitable.
He stuck a cigarette in his mouth and started to light it when she stopped him with her hand, "Let me have one too."
"Do you smoke?"
"Of course! I'm fifteen, ain't I?"
"That's right; I forgot," Jimmy laughed, and held the pack out to her. She took one and put it between her lips, and then he struck a match to light it with.
Suddenly he sat up with surprise.
"Hey! You don't have any clothes on!" The flame of the match had revealed what he couldn't see before in the shadowy darkness: she was completely naked from head to toe.
"Are you going to light me or ain't you?" she said, ignoring his exclamation.
He lit her cigarette and then his hand, shaking the match out quickly afterward and dropping it to the floor.
"Don't see why a girl has to wear anything in this weather," she said then. "Ain't you ever seen a naked girl before?"
"Sure," Jimmy said, puffing on his weed and laying back on the bed again, but still looking at her. His eyes, accustomed now to the trickly light, traveled over her pert body, the white skin and hard little beginning breasts. She saw him looking at her but didn't move.
What a funny little witch, Jimmy thought, amused by her innocent display. When she made fifteen, she wouldn't be anything like Myra was, but she was cute as hell in her own slim boyish way.
And bold as hell.
"Can I lie down next to you?" she said, moving on the bed.
Jimmy moved over and let her lie down next to him. She snuggled close, putting her head on his shoulder. He was surprised to find that he didn't mind at all. It made him feel protective toward her, like she was his kid sister or something.
They smoked for a while in silence, only the night sounds coming through the screen and an occasional car going by on the highway to disturb them. Her slim body was like a little warm bird nesting against him.
A little yellow bird.
"What's your name?" she whispered.
"Jimmy."'
"That's a nice name. I had a boy friend once named Jimmy."
"No kidding."
"Uh-huh. He was real nice, but then he moved away. Where you going, Jimmy?"
"South. All over."
"I wish I was going with you."
He didn't say anything to that. The way she was snuggling up to him and running her hand over his bare skin above the slacks was causing a change in him.
It was getting difficult to think of her as a kid sister.
Very difficult.
He leaned over her and stubbed his cigarette out on the ash tray on a stand near the bed, and as he was doing so she suddenly wrapped her arms around him and began kissing his chest.
"Hey!"
"Put mine out too, Jimmy," she said, handing her cigarette to him. He took it and ground it in the tray, leaning across her again, and this time she went much further than kisses.
Her hand slipped quickly under his belt. She tickled.
"You're crazy!" he gasped. "What are you trying to do, damn it!"
"I knew you liked me," she giggled.
"You're just a kid," he said shakily. "Hell, you don't even know what you're doing!"
"Don't I? Why don't you take off your clothes and see?"
"No," he said firmly. "I've got to go." But she was undoing his clothes for him. A catch, a button-and her hand was driving him crazy.
Wild.
This was too much for him to resist. He lay back and let her work, and pretty soon she was kneeling in the darkness, tugging his pants down.
And then his shorts.
And touching him. Her hands were like the feathered wings of a small bird, fluttering and brushing, tickling and touching, caressing and exploring.
He knew he was eager with excitement, but a stab of conscience made him speak.
"God Cindy-you shouldn't do things like this with boys. This's bad."
"Why?"
"You just teases them and make them want to do bad things to you, things you shouldn't do till you get a little older."
This time it was she who laughed.
"You're funny," she said. "Don't you think I've done that before?"
Aroused, excited and excitedly curious, he craned his head up to look at her.
"You have? When?"
"Oh, ages ago. When I was eleven, if you mean the first time. Ma used to have a real mean boy friend and one night he came out here all whiskeyed up, when I was alone."
"God," Jimmy said, excited. "What did he do?"
"Well, first he beat me. He grabbed me by the hair and dragged me out to the shed and beat me with this big thick belt he used to wear, something like yours. I was scared something awful."
Jimmy was held in a double suspense of physical excitement and vivid mental pictures which flashed through his brain as she told her story.
"And then?"
"Well, then he made me take all my clothes off while he turned the gas lantern up real bright so he could watch. Oh, I don't like to talk about that though."
"Tell me," Jimmy urged. "I want to hear the rest of that, Cindy honey I"
"All right, but I don't see why. That was just plain awful, all dark and everything, and when he got his for miles I guess, at least no one came so I guess no one heard. When I finished undressing he made me sit on a milking stool and watch him undress. He was awful, all dark and everything, and when he got his clothes off he looked so scary to me I thought I'd die if he touched me.
"I tried to run then, scared as I was to even move, but he caught me and threw me down so hard I saw stars in the back of my head. Even so, I was ready to run again the first chance I got, and I think he must have known that because he picked me up and threw me on the work bench-we used to have a work bench out there with tools and all, most of them rusted and going to pieces.
"But there was this vise that still worked and he used that on me."
"Used that on you?" Jimmy said, barely able to speak with the excitement she was causing in him. "How?"
"Put my arm in, he did, and turned it up so tight he like to bust it, the rotten jerk. I didn't get rid of that bruise for a good month and couldn't even milk the cow for even longer than that. Boy, was Ma mad when she found out what happened!
"Anyway, he had me like that and I couldn't move and the pain was terrible; I just screamed and screamed till I thought my lungs was going to explode. But they didn't."
"What happened then?"
"I don't know. I went out, I think, because everything went red and then black and when I opened my eyes again he was hurting me something awful. I don't know how long that lasted because everything went black again. And when I woke up he was gone and Ma was standing there, crying and carrying on something awful. My arm was all numb and the workbench was all upset, and when she helped me get up I could hardly walk. I was real sick for a long time and had to stay in bed."
"Did the police get him?"
"No; Ma said not to say anything or he might come back some day and kill us both. He was from some kind of army hospital I think and she was afraid they'd just put him in again and then he'd get out and come back and kill us both. She told me something was wrong with his head, he had a piece of metal in it from a bomb or something. But she said not to worry, he wouldn't be back again and I'd get better after awhile. She was real nice to me, took care of me and didn't have any boy friends for a long time after that. Only now she does again, two or three of them I think. They're not so bad except for Frank, the one she went to see today when he called her up on the phone. He looks at me like he'd like to do like that other one did. Only he's not crazy, I don't think."
"But what if he came back some night and tried?" Jimmy said, amazed by the whole story.
She answered that question very quickly by reaching down at the foot of the bed for something Jimmy couldn't quite make out in the darkness.
But when she brought it up and put it to his stomach he saw and felt what it was.
A double-barreled, sawed-off shotgun.
"Ma said if anyone comes around and tries to get fresh to use this on him," Cindy said. "That's why I brought it with me in here when you started yelling, in case you turned out to be crazy or something. See?"
"But I'm not!" Jimmy nearly screamed.
She laughed, easing the pressure of the gun.
"I know that. But if you don't do what I say for you to do, I might just make a mistake and think different. You wouldn't want me to do that, would you?"
"God no!"
"Then you better do what I say."
"Sure. Just say what."
"Sleep with me."
"Sure, anything. Only put that damn thing down, for God's sake!"
She did. She put it down by the side of the bed, within her reach but out of his. Then she began leaning over him and kissing him again.
Jimmy closed his eyes and let her, breathing easier now. She was crazy; there was no doubt about that but as long as he did what she wanted he would get off without a load of buckshot.
She had cooled his excitement with the shotgun but she was artful and clever and pretty soon she had him stimulated all over again, nearly as much as before, when she had been telling the story of her life to him.
A wild story.
And a wild mountain girl. Unbelievable.
But he saw now how he could get even with her for the little trick she had played on him with the gun.
She was getting excited now too; excited as hell, kissing him and rubbing her soft-hard downy body against his.
It wasn't long before he was ready.
Her little breasts were like hard green apples just about to ripen and her mouth tasted like spring water and wild mint. He kissed her and stroked her little bumps; he teased her with his hands and with his lips, and then she was ready.
"Oh! Oh, oh, oh!"
But he didn't begin right away. Excited as her wiry little body made him, he wanted a taste of revenge. He caught the shotgun by the barrel and brought it up to his hands, pointing it at her chest.
"Now," he panted, "how do you like being threatened with a gun, damn you!"
To his amazement, she simply laughed.
"I don't mind;" she whispered, "as long as there ain't nothing in it-and there ain't a damn thing in that old blunderbuss!"
Her words stung him to the quick. In a fury he heaved the gun at the window, but it missed, colliding with the wall and clattering noisily to the floor.
"Damn you!" he said, and slapped her across the face, but she was still laughing.
And finally, he was laughing with her. Hell, the joke was on him-he had let himself be fooled by a fourteen-year-old mountain girl!
The joke was on him, but pretty soon neither of them were laughing.
Her little body was like a hard tight flame, moving in ten different directions at once, and he began to enjoy her in earnest.
She was like wildfire.
Dynamite.
Eighty pounds of TNT, rolled up into a tight, pretty little package, and a real swinger. She swung with him, making a difficult job enjoyable, and the cot springs began squeaking louder than the crickets outside.
Louder and louder.
Louder still.
And then the bed seemed to leap into the air and the wails came crashing down around them as stars burst out of their orbits and fell down through the night, down to where they lay in a tangled heap of naked limbs.
The night was peaceful then. Again he could hear the crickets, against the softly ululating backdrop of her child-like breathing, like the dip and swell of waves slushing over a sandbar.
But it was time to go. She said nothing and he didn't even know if she was awake; the room was silent. He got up and began to put on his clothes.
Dressed, he took one last look at her before he crossed the threshold of her bedroom. She was lying perfectly still, her child's body recumbent with arms folded across her tiny breasts.
He damn near tripped over the forgotten shotgun as he started to tiptoe out of the room. Stooping, a grin on his face as he scooped the weapon up, he thought about how she had tricked him and laughed softly to himself.
She was something all right. A nervy little broad who wasn't afraid of anything and knew how to get what she wanted. She'd do all right, Cindy would.
Just for the hell of it, he put the gun to his shoulder and aimed it at the window, squeezing the trigger.
The room was filled with a bright flash and boom and the screen plus most of the window frame went flying in shreds of metal and wood out into the night. Jim fell over backward through the doorway and Cindy sat bolt upright and screamed.
For the next five minutes Jimmy used every curse word he could think of, plus a few he invented on the spur of the moment. Then he got up, dropping the discharged weapon noisily. Without further words he stalked out the back screen door, slamming it after him, and went to the Harley and jumped on.
Less than a minute later, he was roaring off down the moonlit highway, feeling like he had had a couple of years taken off his life.
He rode most of that night, loving the cool of the wind against his face. When he had time to think about it, everything that had happened back at the filling station became riotously funny. He began to laugh so hard the tears were streaming down his face and he had to wipe them away with the sleeve of his jacket.
Funny.
Hilarious.
A real scream, no matter how you looked at it. She had tricked him, got the best of him not only once, but twice in a row.
And he had gotten the best of her, too. That made everything worthwhile, and he could laugh. He imagined himself telling the story just as it had happened to the guys back in Coram. Hell, they probably wouldn't believe him. They'd probably think he'd made the whole thing up, so maybe he wouldn't tell them after all.
But then, they wouldn't believe that other tale either, the one about the cemetery. Even he didn't quite believe that that incident had actually happened. Already it seemed remote, unreal.
Only the road ahead was real. He was just starting on his journey, he realized. Amazing things had happened to him already, but he hadn't even been anywhere yet.
At a fork in the road, he veered right, knowing the secondary road would eventually take him down along the coast, where there were miles and miles of deserted beach, good places to camp and cook out for a guy alone on the road. Not that he was tired yet and couldn't go many miles before he camped, but when the dawn broke, as it was sure to in a few hours, it might be nice to take a refreshing swim in the ocean.
Very nice.
Dreaming of it, his headlight burrowing a long bright tunnel into the thick night ahead, he loafed the Harley along at a mere fifty-five or sixty. It was mostly a long sweep downhill, and pretty soon he was going along the flat, riding like a noisy wind at near sea level. His mind was lulled by the sound of his smoothly running engine and the muted roar of the surf to his right.
But then his dreams were invaded by another sound; a sound like a swarm of angry hornets buzzing in back of him.
Turning, he looked over his shoulder and saw them swooping down the grade he had just descended: ten, maybe twenty of them, coming on fast, their swaying headlights like white eyes pursuing him in the night.
It took him several seconds to realize that the swarm of approaching fireflies was actually a motorcycle pack, coming on hard.
He gunned the Harley, but by then it was too late. They were surrounding him, forcing him off the road.
CHAPTER FIVE
The racket of their exploding engines engulfed him like a physical wall. He had to slow down; they were all around him, behind him and in front of him and on either side of him. Headlights and road lights flashed in his eyes, blinding him, making him lose his bearings; his only thought was to avoid a collision with one.
It was eerie, appalling.
The damn fools were acting like they wanted to kill him!
None of them spoke, but by some prearranged plan they had him boxed in on a flat hard stretch of beach off the road, a gravelly part where their tires wouldn't skid and sink in so easily.
It was a cat-and-mouse game.
A deadly game in which he was the mouse and they were the cats. He slowed and swerved and zigged and zagged, using all the skill he had to try to break loose, but they had him and they knew it. Finally he was forced to a stop in the middle of a big open space.
Then the parade began. These guys were good, and Jimmy, angry as he was, had to admit it, even though he knew also that they were out to waste him. They fanned out and made a circle, a ring of moving bikes, circling around and around him in a precise geometric pattern, their road lights aimed dead at him so that he couldn't see a thing except vague shadows atop moving wheels.
He swore, cursed to himself and waited. There was nothing else he could do. They had him trapped like a fly in a spider web. If he hadn't been dreaming back there on the slope they never would have caught him like this. The Harley was fast, powerful, souped-up. He would have put it up against any machine in a road race.
But it was too late for that now.. Helpless, he waited for them to make the next move.
The circle became two circles, the smaller inner circle becoming tighter and tighter-the leaders, sizing him up, he guessed. Then he heard voices yelling things, at him and to each other.
"Hey fink! Your mama know you up this late?"
"Hey what's that thing he's sitting on, man-some kind of weird invention?"
"It's Dr. Zarkov, the man from Mongo!"
"Nah, he's just a fink is all!"
"Hey baby; quit blinking those beautiful gray eyes. The light bother you or something? Quit blinking, I said!"
"We caught us a big fish on the beach! Hey, men-like let's have us a fish fry, huh?"
"Let's dump his machine in the ocean!"
"Let's waste the fink!"
Jimmy didn't bother trying to reply to their taunts. He knew it was useless anyway-they were just doing it to get him steamed. He set his jaw stubbornly and waited. It stung him when they made remarks about his motorcycle, though, but he let his face go dead and expressionless, gathering his energy up coolly for the first chance that came along to bust one of them. They'd gang him and maybe stomp him, but with luck he could put one or two of them in the hospital first.
He was angry enough to do that much.
The inner circle thinned out until just three bikes were left, and they stopped finally, bracketing him in side a triangle. Before they shut down they revved up simultaneously, blasting his ears with the noise. Jimmy remained on his cycle, afraid they might do something to it if he got off. He didn't give a damn what they did to him, but if they tried putting so much as a scratch in the bright paint of his cycle he was ready to demand blood in repayment. So he sat like a rock, unmoving, until they stopped and got off their cycles.
A short, stocky young man with enormously wide shoulders approached him then. Like Jimmy, he had on a tight-fitting black leather jacket, but unlike Jimmy's jacket his was studded with brightly shining rivet heads and red, blue and gold ornamentation. He walked with a low swinging shuffle, the careless walk of one who was powerful physically and yet lazy about it-a threat of instant explosion seemed contained in that careless shuffle which made him seem all the more dangerous, in a graceful cat-like way. He wore a black and white short-billed motorcycle cap, crushed down over his head in the same careless way, almost but not quite hiding his eyes.
They were hard-looking eyes. Jimmy could see their steely glint in the reflected light.
He came up to Jimmy and Jimmy could see his face-a tough, mulatto face, swarthy skin and dark narrow eyes.
"What are you doing on this strip of road?" he demanded in a surly, slightly lispish voice. "Just riding," Jimmy said evenly. "Riding where?"
"South."
"Don't wise off, buddy. I asked you where." Jimmy shrugged, checking around him with the corners of his eyes to see if any of them had crept up behind him. Every nerve in his body was alert, knowing they would rumble and stomp him with very little excuse. He had heard about these motorcycle gangs, but this was the first time he had ever run into one.
"San Francisco, L. A. Just cruising around."
"Just cruising around," the leader of the gang mimicked. "How come you took this road then? Nobody brings a bike down this strip without permission from the Rattlers."
"I didn't know that."
"Where you from?"
"Upstate. Coram."
Somebody behind him laughed. "A square from nowhere. This cat isn't hip, Ronnie-think we ought to hip him?"
"Like yeah, man-let's turn him on to some real downstate action," another voice chimed in.
But the leader, the one they called Ronnie, held up his hand and they stopped talking. He faced Jimmy again, slowly and deliberately chewing a wad of gum for several seconds before he spoke.
When he did, his words came out flat, toneless. "The guys. You know, like they get excited, kind of Always looking for a wingding, they are. How old are you, kid?"
"Seventeen."
"Know how old I am?"
Jimmy shook his head.
"Twenty-five. Like I'm the oldest, see, so I'm the guy that says stomp or don't stomp. Me, I don't care, but I got to satisfy the guys, get them a little action, or else...." He made a noise with his tongue and drew his finger across his throat. And then laughed evilly. "Like what do you think I ought to do, kid?"
"I don't know," Jimmy said. "But if you want to fight me I'll take you on even."
Ronnie laughed again. "Hear that? The punk ain't no chicken. Says he'll take me on even, like a champ, like man-to-man, fair play shake hands and come out fighting."
The group roared with laughter.
"Hell, let's stomp him."
"We didn't bring the boxing gloves, Ronnie."
"Hey, maybe he's a professional, like Aragon, man!"
Ronnie turned to Jimmy again. "Like they're crude," he explained, in a pretended apologetic manner. "Like they never heard of Fair Play and like that, you dig?"
Jimmy took a slow deep breath and then said: "Weil, maybe they're afraid to see you get beaten up."
The silence was loud, thunderous. Like the waves pounding against the shore fifty or so yards away.
Ronnie pushed his cap back from his eyes and looked at Jimmy, a tight little grin turning up the corners of his thin knife-slash of a mouth, his hands coming to rest on his hips. They were all waiting to see what he would say. Jimmy had dared him with an insult, and now whatever happened depended on the leader alone. Jimmy kept his eyes locked with Ronnie's now, ignoring the others around and in back of him. He knew there had to be a fight, but the question was how many against one. The leader was tough and would know how to rumble, but if he agreed to fight Jimmy alone, Jimmy had at least a chance of just getting off with a beating.
He waited for the answer and it came.
"Hey I like you, man," Ronnie said. "I like the way you said that. You know there ain't one guy in this bunch who would say a thing like that, man? Like I know you just said that because you're a real kick who's never been nowhere, a cornball jerk from the sticks, like a real baby with a big new bike. Like that's what you remind me of-a baby. You're real cute, man. Like I bet all the chicks go for you at the drop of a hat, huh?"
His voice was laughing, mocking, but Jimmy wondered if there wasn't a note of sincerity underneath.
"What's your name, man?"
"Jim."
"That it! Like I knew you reminded me of someone!" He turned to the gang. "He's a ghost, you dig? His name's Jimmy and he's a ghost"
Nobody said anything.
Ronnie spat his gum out on the sand. "Okay, man off the bike."
Jimmy hesitated, and then got off slowly, not taking his eyes from Ronnie.
Ronnie just watched him, grinning. "Relax, man! Like I said, I dig you. We'll go over there on the beach, just you and me, see? You carrying a blade?"
Jimmy showed him his hunting knife, attached to his belt.
Ronnie laughed. "Wow, some blade! Like a real machete!" He made a quick motion with his hand and a silver switchblade popped open into view for the first time. "Okay, we go over there man. You other guys stay here, except for Paul and Lou. Don't want no cops horning in on this hassle."
Two of them moved up behind Jimmy but didn't touch him. The four of them began walking out over the sand onto the beach. When they got to a flat open spot, Paul and Lou hung back. Ronnie and Jimmy separated and laced each other.
Ronnie's knife was already in his hand. Jimmy took his steel hunting knife from his belt sheath and held it extended in his.
It was very silent. Except for the sea, there was no sound, and all the motorcycle lights had been turned off. Only the moon provided illumination in the early morning night, but it was sufficient, out in the open.
They circled each other. Ronnie whispered a laugh, stopped and began taking off his jacket, turning his back on Jimmy. Jimmy did the same. Then, in their tee shirts, they faced each other, and this time Ronnie darted in suddenly with a yell-"Yahhh!"-and catching Jimmy by surprise tore a long slash in the front of his tee shirt. He was barely able to backpedal in time to avoid a cut.
He was more wary after that. He crouched, moving to keep himself facing Ronnie at all times. Ronnie's expression was like smiling death, chilling-but Jimmy's jaw was set stubbornly. He wasn't a knife fighter, but he knew the elements. Keep low, keep moving, face your opponent, look for an opening.
Watch your opponent's feet, like in boxing. The feet tell you everything, telegraph his moves. Jimmy knew boxing, at least. His old man had taught him that. He used what he could of it now, setting up a little dance step counter to the wolfish shuffle of the experienced gang leader.
Ronnie lunged again, underestimating his opponent, and Jimmy was ready. He saw the knife hook toward his stomach and quickly brought the hilt of his down on Ronnie's wrist in a sharp, chopping blow.
Luck was with him. Ronnie had been underestimating him, trying to make quick work after Jimmy's first clumsy movements. The hard nub of the handle whammed into wrist bone and Ronnie's knife went scudding down into the sand. He lunged after it but Jimmy dove at him, colliding with him on the ground just as Ronnie grasped the handle of his switchblade.
He caught the wrist of Ronnie's knife hand and Ronnie caught his, and locked together they went rolling over and over down to the surf.
Jimmy could feel the power in his opponent's body; power like a panther's, those broad shoulders giving him great strength. The wrist of his knife hand felt like it was being squeezed in a vise. But he gritted his teeth and they got to their feet, standing in the wet surf, trying to arm-wrestle each other down or out of position.
Jimmy suddenly let himself go slack and fell backward at the same time. It was a gamble, but he had to do something because his opponent had more sheer brute strength and would have exhausted him eventually in a test like that.
Ronnie came flying forward, tumbling into him, and Jimmy lacked out-the deadly grip was broken as they both went down into the surf, the cold water splashing over them. Jimmy rolled and found himself on top of his opponent, his knife still in his hand, thrust against his opponent's rib cage.
He could have ended it there. He knew it and Ronnie knew it, looking up at him expressionlessly, waiting for the thrust.
But Jimmy couldn't. He wanted to, but he couldn't; he hesitated, and in that instant's hesitation his whole advantage was lost. Ronnie's strength was enough to throw him back and off, and then they were thrashing around in the surf, both their knives gone, pummeling each other with their fists.
The fight dragged on. Out of the water, their clothes torn and fouled with wet sand, they pounded at each other, fell down, got up, rolled, clutched, knead-on and on, each hurting the other almost equally, Ronnie's blows more crushing but Jimmy's quicker and more often hitting their mark.
Until at last they were both nearly exhausted. Down on the sand, locked together in a panting embrace like two lovers, their faces close together.
"Why didn't you, man-you could have back there in the water," Ronnie gasped.
"I don't know," Jimmy panted.
"That was real dumb, kid. I would have wasted you."
"I know."
They rolled again, this time Ronnie getting the advantage, his elbow crushing down on Jimmy's windpipe.
"I could waste you now," he panted, "I could waste you now, you rube hick!"
Jimmy felt his eyes begin to blur with the pain as he gasped for breath. Everything seemed to grow dim, darker! he could hear a high thin ringing in his ears the sound of his own blood. This was it, he thought, and relaxed. He just didn't have any more to give.
But the pressure eased suddenly, and then they were both lying there, gasping, totally spent.
Paul and Lou came over and watched, but neither of them said anything.
At last, Ronnie spoke to them: "Okay; you guys saw it-who won?"
Paul, a small wiry guy, shifted on his feet. "Why didn't you do it, Ronnie? You had him that time!"
"Who won damn you!"
"You did, man."
"Lou? You think I did enough to him? Or maybe you want to try it with me, huh?"
Lou was bigger than Paul, almost as big as Jimmy, but he shook his head quickly. "No, man; you won. You could have wasted him but you didn't. So that's your business."
Ronnie laughed, getting to his feet. Jimmy, hardly able to move, was surprised when he reached down to help him up also.
"Listen, man-never do that again, what you did back there in the water. Never with anyone, dig?"
Jimmy nodded slowly, wiping some blood streaming from his nose with his torn undershirt.
He was barely able to stand. Ronnie threw his arm up across his shoulder, and together they lurched off up the beach, staggering back to the group squatting and smoking around their bikes.
Ronnie let go of Jimmy, who promptly fell back on his rump in the sand, the pain of battle really making itself felt now. He could see Ronnie was still bleeding from several cuts and wondered at his ability to stand up and talk normally, as though nothing had happened.
"He's Jimmy," Ronnie announced. "He fights like one of them big old mountain lions, dig? He almost wasted me. Anyone want to try him out now?"
There were a lot of nervous, questioning glances at the two of them, but nobody spoke up.
"Anyone wants to try him out, go ahead. Only one at a time, see?-his rules. Go ahead; try him you dumb chickens! But when you get done with him, then you got to go through me, too-dig?"
Somebody laughed, breaking the tension. "Hey, I bet you got those muscles picking apples, huh Jimmy?"
The others began laughing too, and Jimmy realized dully that they were laughing with him, not against him.
"That's a boss set of wheels you got there, man," Paul said, comming over to Jimmy with a pack of cigarettes and offering him one.
Jimmy took the cigarette eagerly, his hands shaking now with the sudden relaxation of tension. But he managed to get the flame cupped in Paul's hands, and the long drag of smoke soothed him. He felt sore, battered-and exhilarated.
"Yeah," Jimmy said. "I just got her a week ago."
"Bet she purrs."
"You bet. You guys never would have caught me if I'd opened her up coming down that slope."
"Come on, man! My Indian will take you any time."
"Not the Harley!"
"We'll race. Hey Ron-how about a race, huh? Down along the beach?"
"Nah, not tonight. See-it's getting light already! We'll just camp out here for the morning and make it tomorrow."
"He staying with us?"
All eyes turned on Jimmy. Ronnie came over to him and tousled his hair roughly.
"How about it, baby? Think you could make being a Rattler?"
Jimmy thought about it. These guys didn't seem so bad, now that he had proved himself. They were being real friendly, in fact. And there was a strange thrill at being accepted by a group of real tough cookies like them-guys who raced their cycles and knew all about them. He could talk to them, share the joy of roading with them. For awhile, at least.
Why not?
"Why not?" he said, grinning.
"That's it man-why not?" Paul said, whooping and jumping up and down like a crazy bird. He started a little dance, taking off his jacket and waving the bright red and yellow and green emblem of a coiled rattlesnake about to strike, painted on the back of it. "A Rattler! A Rattler! ah man, he's going to be a Rattler, a Rattler! Bring out the booze, man-we've got to have an initiation right here!"
The others jumped up and began whooping and laughing along with him, making a circle around him and Ronnie and doing some wild kind of Indian dance step Jimmy had never seen before.
He watched, fascinated, as each one passed before him and shook his hand.
And then he discovered something for the first time.
Three of the Rattlers were girls!
They made a big bonfire right there on the beach, and before the sun came up the flames were roaring.
It seemed like a silly time to have a bonfire, but after cans of beer and pints of whiskey were passed his way, Jimmy got "with it," as Paul, Lou and Ronnie told him in a half-complimenting, half-joking way. One by one he met each member of the club. There were a dozen of them assembled there and more, he learned, back in L. A., where they had originally started out from. Some of the members were from San Francisco also, and a few other towns and suburbs.
They were all tough. That was one thing they had in common; a city toughness which was closely connected with an awareness of a lot of things Jimmy had only read about. And that happened to be their highest word of praise for anything-when a thing was really approved by them, whether it was music or a motorcycle or a chick's looks, it was "tough." All of them carried knives somewhere about them and Jimmy suspected from the way a couple of them talked that they had guns, also.
Hoodlums the guy back in the roadside tavern had called them.
And maybe that was all they were, but he wasn't forming any judgment on that particular subject right now.
He was getting drunk as hell.
Bombed out. Ronnie had called the rumble a draw in front of the other guys, which made him something of a hero. Lou and Paul were his lieutenants and they backed him up, and when the drinking got going Jimmy heard a lot of stories about guys Ronnie had wasted in previous rumbles, so he figured he had been pretty lucky. Tired and sore as he was, the alcohol hit him too quickly; he could no longer think by the time things really got going.
And things were really getting going. The three girls who rode with the group, a blonde named Margot, a brunette named Jill, and a redhead called Nikki, all had been giving him the eye since the fight on the beach. Jimmy noticed this but didn't act on it because he knew they probably belonged to various members, and one rumble in a day had been more than he could handle.
Still, they came up to him and eyed him, and he couldn't help eyeing them back. They were all pretty, but in a hard, bold-faced way he wasn't used to in girls. And the fact that they were totally accepted by the group meant that they must have been pretty tough too, in their own way.
Real tough.
Only he couldn't figure out who they belonged to.
The blonde played up to Ronnie, but his mood had turned inward and surly and when she tried to sit on his lap on the beach he pushed her roughly away.
Inevitably, they all began taking off their clothes for a morning dip. It was a funny sight, a mob scene, undressing on an open beach, stoned to the gills, laughing and pushing, tossing empty beer cans out into the ocean and some getting thrown into the water with their clothes on by others.
In a kind of dull, stupefied way, Jimmy found he was enjoying himself. At least this was something new, something different from Coram. There seemed to be an atmosphere of close-knit friendship among the club members, combined with a feeling that there was nothing that, as a group, they wouldn't do. Ronnie was unquestionably the leader, but he didn't push it most of the time. In fact, Jimmy discovered that he was silent and aloof a lot. The guys ranged in age from seventeen to their early twenties, and Ronnie, as the oldest, perhaps had a kind of dignity to maintain.
The girls undressed first. And there was no going stripped off their jackets, undid their motorcycle belts, kicked off their boots and undressed, while the guys watched, encouraging them. Verbally, with wolf whistles and remarks.
"Let's see them, Margot baby-you know you've got the best set in L.A.!"
"Hey Nikki-you wearing anything under that shirt?"
"Quit straggling, you guys-let's spread the blankets out for them for when they come out."
And, incredible as it seemed, they were doing just that-spreading some wool army blankets out on the sand behind some rocks which partly shielded them from the sight of anyone going down the beach road.
Margot was the first to get undressed. Stepping out of her pants, Jimmy saw that she had on the smallest bikini he had ever seen-a mere twist of green cloth around har tanned and neatly shaped little buttocks. Three guys were scrambling out of their clothes just as she emerged from hers, and it looked as though they were going to blanket her before she made the sea. But she had legs like a gazelle and made the water before they did, and then the other girls and club members following in a big splashy fray.
Jimmy stayed back on the beach with Ronnie. He was too tired and too stewed even to want to get up and take his clothes off, and Ronnie simply lay smoking a cigarette and watching, like the lord of all he surveyed.
"Somebody's going to get a surf job," he said, grinning out of the corner of his mouth.
Jimmy nodded, not quite sure what the remark meant.
"Which one do you like, man?" Ronnie said, nodding toward the three girls.
"I don't know," Jimmy admitted. "They're all nice."
Ronnie laughed. "They're all little tramps, I mean, which one do you want to do afterward?"
"Do?"
"Yeah. I mean, like make man-dig?"
"Well, uh...."
"Margot's a good one. Nice boobs and everything. She thinks she's in love with me or something, but if I give her the word you can cop." He yawned, stretching lazily, and handed a near-empty pint bottle of bourbon to Jimmy.
"Knock it off, champ-you're an honorary Rat tier now."
Jimmy tilted the bottle up and finished it off. He felt too stoned to move.
Ronnie went on talking about the girls. "You take Jill, now-she's a pretty good lover, too. Just about every guy in the club has tried at least once. She's only sixteen, too.
"Or Nikki. Nikki loves to tumble man, but she's like really stuck on herself. Thinks she's the greatest on the west coast or something. But all you got to do is kid her along a little and she'll give you anything you want. And she ain't bad, either. Damn good in fact. You want her, you just give the word."
"Which is your girl?" Jimmy said finally.
He laughed. "All three. And none. I got a cute little Mex chick back in L. A. who's my true love. She's only fourteen, but she don't take on anybody but me, and I like things that way. She's got a knife, man, and like whenever I go down to see her she says if she catches me with any other chick she'll cut that chick's boobs off! I like that."
Jimmy tried to picture a pretty dark-eyed fourteen-year-old Mexican girl cutting Margot's boobs off. For some reason, he laughed.
"I'm not putting you on, Jimmy," Ronnie said. "She's a fierce little trick. Hey man, I think I'm drunk, telling you this!"
"I'm drunk too."
"That's cool. Which chick are you going to take?"
"Well, I don't know...."
"I'll let you have Margot"
"She's nice."
"I'll take Nikki."
"That leaves Jill."
"Yeah. Like she's going to be very busy. You ever been to a real orgy?"
"No."
"No. I like that, the way you said that. Some guys, they'd try to put you on about that, make up all kinds of stories. You're okay, Jimmy. You stick with me, huh? I'll show you some things you've never seen before."
"Sure, Ron."
"We'll go down to San Fran together. Know all kinds of chicks there. They all love me in San Fran."
"Nice."
"They'll love you too, baby. You're cute."
"Cut it out."
"A real sensitive cat too, I can see. But that's okay-you can handle yourself. Only don't ever give a guy a chance the way you gave me. You'll get wasted some day, doing that."
"Maybe you're right."
"I'm right. You weren't so cute, I'd have wasted you after you let me up in the water there. Here come the chicks."
The three girls came out of the water. Ron got up lazily and went down to them, and the other guys held back, waiting for the signal. Ron talked to the girls by themselves as Jimmy stood a distance away, watching. He saw Jill make an angry face and turn away, spit in the sand and walk off down the beach. The other guys looked at her and then Ron; Ron nodded and they began to follow her.
She began walking faster, and then running. But they caught up with her, and pretty soon she disappeared with them around some rocks out of sight. Jimmy heard a lot of yelling and a few screams, but he couldn't see what was happening, "That Jill," Ron said. "Some actress. Like she ought to be on TV or something."
Margot shrugged, giving Jimmy the eye. "Hi, man. You're shy, aren't you?"
Ron laughed. "Yeah, he's shy baby. You got to teach him not to be shy."
"That ought to be fun," she said, coming over to him and putting her arm through his. The water had washed the make-up from her face, giving her features a much softer look. She was more out of the bikini than in, and her wet hair was tangled like seaweed around her head. Her damp cool skin felt electric against his. Jimmy felt very, very drunk.
Ron and Nikki were walking away from them.
"Come on," Margot said. "Let's go with them."
"Maybe they want to be alone," Jimmy suggested, feeling uneasy.
She laughed, bumping him with her rounded hip. "I doubt that, honey. Not that I wouldn't mind being alone with you. But Ron wants to make this a party, so let's swing with them."
They followed the other couple around another outcropping of rocks, going around to where the blankets had been spread out on the sand.
Jimmy didn't know what to do. But he didn't have to worry long about that.
Margot began doing things for him. They sat together on a blanket, and then she was pushing him back, her marvelously built body against his and kissing him on the mouth. Jimmy felt his head begin to spin from her lancing kisses. Her breasts were like big soft pillows against his bare chest. She reached behind her and loosened the halter of her bikini. It came away from her breasts when they parted.
"You like them honey?" she said proudly, sitting erect and thrusting her chest out like a model posing tor a girlie magazine.
She had wonderful breasts.
Amazing breasts.
He forgot all about everything except those breasts, soft and white and damp next to him, the rosy tips sprouting into large hard buds.
"Beautiful," he breathed.
"Kiss them."
He kissed them. He could taste the salt of the sea on their snowy mounds; the nipples became hard as chestnuts when his lips covered them.
"Oooh-that's right, that's good; you know how, baby!"
He became very excited. While he played with and kissed her breasts, she loosened his belt for him, and soon he was struggling to get out of his pants. The sun was up now, bathing everything in a bright morning light. Drugged and excited, he got his clothes off while Margot lay back on the blanket and untied the side knots of her green bikini.
He lay down with her again, this time his desire unwavering. She sighed in appreciation of his body; clasped him to her and caressed him with her hands, skillfully, even though that wasn't necessary.
"You're marvelous," she said. "I just knew you'd be like this!"
He was drunk with the feel of her cool flesh. Absolutely crazy with her. His fatigue seemed to melt away as he worked, kissing her mouth and throat and breasts; kissing her and cupping her big breasts in his hands like a child building castles in the sand.
"Hey look-a technician!" he heard Ronnie say, and he looked around to see him, remembering suddenly that they were not alone. Ron's blanket was only a few feet away, and both he and Nikki were sitting up, naked as jays, their arms around each other, and watching Jimmy and Margot.
"Go on man-make out!" Ron grinned. "Don't mind us. We're getting charged just watching you."
Jimmy was embarrassed as hell, but Margot quickly put him at ease. She caught him in her deft cool hands and drew him toward her, lying back so that her splendid breasts flattened out on her chest like pillows smoothed down under a blanket at the head of a bed.
Ripe, soft pillows.
Living pillows.
And she was driving him crazy with her hands, continuing to draw him to her.
His excitement was intense. Terrific.
Suddenly he didn't mind being watched any more. That seemed to add something even.
He knew what he could do to this girl and he was proud.
He began.
Slow at first, taking his time. She urged him to hurry, but he purposely made himself go slow, remembering how he had gotten Myra all worked up this way once.
That worked this time, too. Before he was done she was begging him, pleading with him to go further. He moved. Faster and faster.
She wrapped her arms around him, wild for him and for what he was doing to her, raking her nails down his back.
"Go, man, go!" Ronnie shouted.
He went. He went like crazy, losing himself. Her wild cries drove him on, faster and faster, on and on, the fiery sun now burning against him, the sweat pouring out of him in buckets, losing himself.
And then the world shook and a tidal wave seemed to rise and sweep both of them away in a roaring rush, and that was over.
He fell back, exhausted, his whole body suddenly sweetly heavy with want of sleep.
The last thing he saw before closing his eyes was Ron and Nikki. They were standing up, framed by the morning sunlight, she clinging to him as though she were climbing a tree.
They were making love.
And then his eyes closed and all sensation left him. Peace.
CHAPTER SIX
THEY RODE BY NIGHT MOSTLY. NOON OR LATE AFTER noon they started out, riding deep into the night until they came to a small town with a beer joint and juke box or another deserted stretch of beach where they drank and cooked hot dogs over a fire and drank and did crazy things and drank and then dropped like dead gulls on the beach until the morning sun burned through the black clouds of unconsciousness and woke them.
Sometimes girls came out from the local towns; the wilder kind of girls who would do anything for a kick. There were always a few, and sometimes more than a few. The sound of banging motorcycle engines attracted them like flies to honey.
There were also rumbles. Naturally.
The local dudes, as Ron called them, naturally resented having some of the best talent plucked from their vinyards by theives riding bikes by night.
But mostly it was a case of a threat of a rumble. There was something awesome and fear-inspiring tight-lipped cyclists, and the small hick towns they hit about the gang of black-jacketed, hard-eyed and offered little resistance of the organized nature that would have been required to resist its girl-raids.
The resistance was poor and the pickings were far from slim. As far as the local people were concerned, they were glad to see the hoodlums leave the village with its stores and windows still intact. And there was always at least one bar or tavern that was glad to have the sudden upsurge in business the free-spending Rattlers brought to it.
Only a couple of times in the next few days on the road did actual fights occur-and then it was usually quick work on the part of the gang.
"Nobody's really going to rumble us as a gang in these square hick towns," Ronnie explained to Jimmy. "Like they're scared stiff, see? Only once in awhile you get a hero or two. But when we get further south you'll really see some action, Jimmy baby. They got clubs of their own down that way. Punk clubs, compared to the Rattlers, but they got their own prestige to maintain when we start cutting in on their chicks."
Jimmy wasn't without misgivings about being with the gang, but he found himself enjoying their company as a rule. Some of them, guys like Paul, were real ape, always doing crazy things that made you laugh. Paul seemed fearless when it came to calling down on a guy bigger than himself. He wore a neat little mustache and goatee, and this plus his diminutive size seemed a natural provocation to anyone who was going around with a grudge against beatniks or motorcycle drivers or Mexicans.
Or anyone. Paul was the kind of guy people would naturally underestimate. He was as thin as a blade, but the blade was made of tough steel. Speed, strength and ferocity made up for his lack of size. This was demonstrated to Jimmy a couple of days after he had joined the gang.
They were in a bar. Lou, Ronnie, and Jim were playing the bowling machine for beers and Paul for some reason was sitting the game out at the far end of the bar, away from them. With his dark glasses, wild bushy hair, combed back from his thin black goatee, he was a natural target for the disapproving looks and finally remarks of an inebriated local dude in shirtsleeves who came in and sat next to him.
In no time at all he was bugging Paul.
"So what's with the beard, hey? Make you something special? You must be one of them beatniks, huh boy?"
Paul cooled it, but Jimmy, looking over his way, could see the little guy gathering himself, waiting to see how far he would be pushed. The guy kept baiting him, and pretty soon everyone in the bar was listening. The bartender made no move to stop the jerk from mouthing off, either. It wasn't exactly a friendly bar-or town.
"Beatnik!" the dude yelled finally, exasperated by Paul's continued silence.
Then he made his big mistake. Twice Paul's size and a good ten years older, he got to feeling very brave. He grabbed Paul by the shirt.
They both came off their stools at the same time, and Paul's shirt ripped. But Paul was wound up like a clock; the dude took about six punches in the face just making it down to the floor. By that time the bartender was around, but it was all over-all he had to do was help the dude to his feet and out the door, blood streaming from his nose.
No one in the bar mentioned the word beatnik after that, or even the word motorcycle, for that matter. Jimmy had never seen anyone move as fast as Paul had. They spent the rest of the afternoon getting very drunk, and as a final gesture of high spirits carried the bowling machine out into the middle of the street of the one-street town. Not a soul moved to stop them and the local constable was notable by his absence.
Jimmy had cause to wonder how far the gang would go with their high jinks. They seemed to be afraid of nothing, and at times Jimmy felt it was only the coo!, quiet leadership of Ronnie that prevented mass mayhem in some of the tiny villages they passed through. They came down on these places like a noisy cyclone, but the villagers, perhaps having had past experiences with this kind of thing, did what people do when a cyclone hits; they closed their doors and kept off the streets till the wind blew through.
It was all very new to Jimmy, and all very exciting.
A gas, as Paul would have put it. Sometimes they found long flat deserted sections of secondary road, good for racing, and Jimmy gained stature through proving how good his machine was and how well he could handle it. After winning several of these races, Ronnie remarked: "You're cool, man; real cool with the bike. Hell, we ought to put you in one of those square official races and cop a few nice shiny prizes for the club."
"You ever get in them yourself?"
"Yeah, man; a couple of times," Ronnie said, making a face. "But like we don't dig them. They're usually run by the do-gooder type dudes and you have to have applications and all that. Once we barged in on one and took all the events before they could chase us off, but we figured we had won so we like came back later that evening and just sort of took the trophies, you know...."
Little glimpses like this gave him a sinking feeling that he had gotten into more than he was ready for, but with the feeling came another feeling, one of excitement, or anticipation, or maybe just the thrill of waiting to see how far he would go himself when the time of his test came. Just what that test would be and how he would react to it was something he didn't yet know.
But in the meantime, he was having fun. A small ball.
Margot rode with him, next to him on her small-tired BSA, Ronnie on the other side atop his big red Honda, with Nikki clinging to his back. The three of them, or sometimes one or the other, led the pack down the highway, always on the lookout for a spot or a town that looked like a place where the group could have some fun, a few kicks or an undisturbed rest.
The further south they rode, the bigger the towns became, swelling into cities eventually, with full-blown suburbs skirting them. Jimmy sensed an increasing agitation among the group to do something really wild and way-out before they hit San Francisco. Some of the guys, like Lou and a tow-headed kid called Gunner, were real toughs, with jail and prison farm records for on sort of petty crime or another, Jimmy learned. These grew sullen when nothing seemed to be happening, and they gave Ronnie questioning looks and made remarks like: "Man, this cruise has been pretty tame so far. Wonder if the boy scouts have as much fun." Never directly in front of Ronnie, but so he could overhear them. Ronnie would just narrow his eyes and say nothing. But Jimmy noticed he seemed to be getting pretty restless himself, and wondered when the leader would finally give in to their desire for some "wild kicks."
He didn't have long to wait to find out.
They had gone through a good-sized city of maybe twenty thousand late one evening, right through the brightly lighted center of town, roaring through without stopping, and then heading out south through a suburban residential district that, as it thinned out, the houses becoming further and further apart with bigger and bigger acreage around them, looked increasingly luxurious.
They slowed, admiring the rich houses, lawns, trees and shrubbery, no doubt envious of what they saw.
"Some shack," Lou would say. "I bet some rich broad lives in it, with three Cadillacs and a poodle."
"How'd you like to take a rich chick, Lou?"
"Hell, man, I've had all kinds of chicks."
"I mean now."
"Hey, man; like I'd go for that! Some platinum blonde in a bikini, sitting beside her pool with a mint julep in her hand."
"Man, you're making my mouth water!"
"Hell, what broad with any kind of money would look at your ugly puss?"
"Oh yeah? Why don't we stop at one of these museums and see, you dumb jerk!"
Other guys joined in, and pretty soon an argument was going full steam as they drew up one by one to the side of the road near a deserted house. Ronnie sat quietly atop his bike, indifferent to them, smoking a cigarette and looking down over a small valley where a few homes nestled.
The quarrel continued.
"Why don't we bust into one of these classy joints then?"
"Yeah; let's go to a swanky cocktail party I"
"We'd get thrown out on our cans."
"Who? Who's going to throw us out?"
"Ah, they got guards at them things!"
"Guards! What guards you talking about anyway? Why I was to one of those fancy blasts once myself and...."
"You? You couldn't get into the John at the Bijou without getting busted, ya mug!"
"Oh yeah? You're just chicken, that's all! There's a party going on over there, in that house up on the hill with all the lights-see? I say let's crash and scare the daylight out of them stiffs!"
"They'll call the cops."
"Nah, not if we bust it right, rip out the phones.
Hey, maybe they might even ask us in! You know hire a beatnik for your party, like that? Ha ha, we'll say the agency sent us!"
"What agency, man?"
"The East Side Rattler's Rich Man's Benevolent Society Agency, that's what agency! We'll grab the booze and the broads and then split, man, before the fuzz comes."
From heckling banter the discussion thus took on a serious tone, and soon everyone was looking toward Ronnie, who hadn't said a word so far.
Gunner Witowski finally braved the leader's silence.
"What'cha say, Ron baby--do we bust in on that shindig up there?"
Ron turned his head slowly and looked at Gunner, his eyes hooded like a cobra's.
"The idea stinks," he said quietly.
Dead silence. Gunner's face flushed and he seemed to gather himself. He had been "put down," and now he had to save face.
"Yeah?" he snarled. "Maybe you got a better idea then, huh?"
Ronnie chewed his gum a few times, his jaw muscles bulging.
"Yeah, like maybe."
"Like a picnic out on the grass, huh? Pin the tail on the donkey, games like that?"
"Um, like are you volunteering, man?"
Everybody laughed, breaking the tension. Gunner's face grew beet red, but he managed a crooked little smile. Ronnie laughed loudly at his own joke, but then his face grew abruptly serious, and the laughter stopped.
"Okay," he said. "You guys want action) right?"
Heads nodded as one, and mutterings ol "Yeah, man!" and "Let's do something," were heard. Jimmy sat silent, tense, waiting to see what was on the leader's mind.
Ronnie carefully spat out his wad of gum and pointed down into the valley. There were only three houses down in there, widely separated, with long driveways and fences around them. Only one of them was lighted, and since Ronnie was furthest ahead, on the crest of the hill, the others hadn't been able to see what he had been looking at while they argued. Now, they moved their bikes up level with his to look down where his finger pointed.
"There," Ronnie said. "That's our gig."
Jimmy looked also.
The house Ronnie had in mind was immediately apparent-a low, expensively built modernistic ranch style, with a long driveway leading in. From the road it would be almost entirely hidden by growths of pines and beech surrounding it. But they were almost directly above it, owing to the formation of the land. The macadam road they were on wound down the hill in a steep hairpin, curving in on itself again at the base.
But it wasn't the house itself that attracted all their eyes.
It was the lighted patio in back. A beautiful flagstone terrace, surrounding an enormous swimming pool, and then a lot of green lawn and rich shrubbery, hidden from view of any of the surrounding houses, distant as they were, by long fences of tall box hedges.
They were reclining on two lounge chairs next to the pool.
Two women.
They were both dressed in swim suits, one a near-bikini and the other a knit one-piece style, deep red. They had drinks in their hands and a portable FM radio atop a white enameled steel table sent soft music up the hill through the unusually clear night.
The woman in the red suit had dark hair, and even in the distance the long, elegant curves of her lushly slim body were evident. The other one, younger, was just as good looking, with lighter hair and tighter, round er curves, owing to her somewhat smaller stature. They were both gorgeous.
And they were both obviously spending an evening alone. The rear of the ranch home, which could be seen clearly from where the pack was gathered atop the knoll, was almost entirely glass, and the curtains had been drawn back, displaying the softly illuminated interior of most of the house.
From what Jimmy could see, it was quite empty. A sudden throb of fear thumped in his chest as he turned his eyes from the scene below and looked at Ronnie.
He had never seen such a sullen, unsmilingly vicious expression before. The familiar tight grin was there, but the eyes said everything now.
They looked really pleased at what they saw.
Pleased with the anticipation of pleasure.
"What about the bikes, Ron?" Gunner said in a deathly soft, sensuous voice.
Ron grunted. "We coast down the hill," he said. "We leave them there, behind those bushes. Are you punks with me?"
"We're with you, baby!" came the answer from Gunner. His soft, lethal voice was full of respect now. It clearly said that Ron was the leader.
They floated down the hill silently, like a dream breeze, only the sound of whispering tires disturbing the night. As they wound down and down, holding tight in a long sweeping coast to the curve of the road. Jimmy felt reality slipping away from him. It was as if he were leaving some part of himself back up there, on the rise where they had stopped, and now was a mere pawn in some new game he didn't understand. Following the leader, like the rest. Ron's shoulders seemed twice as broad, his figure twice as erect as he led them down to their rendezvous with crime. The time for Jimmy to protest or bug out had slipped by without his noticing it, paralyzed with fascination as he was.
So he was part of it and not part of it.
A spectator and a participant.
The road at the base of the hill was dark, without street lamps. This was a very exclusive section, a place where crime and mugging and delinquency seemed remote, no doubt, to the kind of people who could afford to live in such homes.
Black leather jackets and hard-soled boots bad no place here.
None at all.
This added to his feeling that what they were doing was not quite real. Everything was too perfect, too peaceful, too beautiful and serene-like in a picture from one of the better homes type of magazines his mother used to read all the time.
Nothing violent could happen here.
But then they were coasting to a stop, getting off their bikes and silently pushing them through the shadows, becoming part of the deep shadows themselves as they secreted the machines behind bushes, out of view from passing car headlights but near enough to the road for quick access.
The three girls stayed with the bikes. They grumbled about it, but Ron shut them up with a look. That was all that was necessary.
A complete change had come over him. He walked like a cat, graceful, the epitome of grace, as he walked boldy up the grass lawn beside the driveway, approaching the house from the front.
Ten figures followed him silently. At the front of the house, he turned, pointing.
"You and you," he said, "stay here. The chicks will warn you if anyone comes, and you'll warn us, dig?"
Disappointed, the two nodded and sat down under a tree.
That left eight. Ron was in full command now, like a general, a modern-day Napoleon whose complete physical confidence in his movements brought a kind of respectful awe to his followers.
The front door was unlocked. Jimmy wondered why they didn't simply circle around back to the patio, but Ron seemed deliberately to be taking his time, staking out the place.
Inside, they gathered around him to see what he would do next. The living room was empty. It was the most gorgeous room Jimmy had ever seen; done in walnut and pastels, with a huge flagstone fireplace going the length of one wall almost, a curved bar in one corner, an expensive stereo console-bookcase setup going along another, an endless orange curved couch circling around the other. Three steps led down into this sunken living room, the floor of which was covered with stark white wooly carpeting so deep it seemed to be growing under your feet.
"Some shack," Ronnie said, taking a half-smoked cigarette from his lips and dropping it on the carpet. He ground it out with the heel of his boot.
Through the glass wall they could see out onto the patio. The women were there in the distance, but hidden from view, except for their legs and the backs of the lounge chair they were reclining in. The soft music flowed in, louder now, through open sliding glass doors, providing a blanket of sound which hid any sounds they might make.
Ronnie ignored them and went directly to the bar. Behind it, in a walnut wall cabinet with doors which slid back, was an amazing stock of expensive liquor.
"Nice," Ronnie said, taking down bottles and examining the labels. He opened one, an expensive liqueur, tasted it, spat it out in disgust and emptied the bottle over the bar, floor, and part of the sofa.
"Canadian Club," he said, holding up another. "How about that, Gunner-nothing but the best for the Rattlers, huh?"
Gunner seemed to have gone crazy, a wild look in his eyes as he did a little dance around the room. Crazy, man! I dig it, I dig it, I dig it!"
Ronnie tossed him the bottle of CC after taking a long pull from it, and Gunner promptly began sloshing it down his chin and the front of his tee shirt through the open motorcycle jacket as he leapt up onto the bar and scraped his boots against the unflawed surface.
"Nice upholstery, man," Lou was saying, and Jimmy saw he was going along it with an open switchblade knife, making ugly gashes in a zigzag pattern across its beautiful surface. The other guys began helping themselves to bottles of liquor, following Ronnie's lead.
Jimmy felt a sick, sinking feeling. Somebody shoved a bottle of Teacher's Highland Cream at him and he began drinking quickly, fighting the giddy feeling that was possessing him.
Ronnie had found one wall phone and ripped it loose, and now he was directing Paul to go into the bedrooms and do the same with any phones he might find there. Paul proceeded to do so, taking only a few minutes. The other guys had settled down by then, and m were quietly drinking and smoking and being very careless of where and how they got rid of their butts.
Okay, I broke all the pipes," Paul announced.
Ronnie nodded, looking out the window. The two women hadn't moved.
"Okay. Take all the full bottles outside and dump them on the lawn." He looked around at them slowly.
Sizing them up, Jimmy realized. Picking from among them a small advance group to go out onto the patio with him.
"Gunner," he said.
Jimmy's heart thumped.
Steel fingers seemed to grip Jimmy's guts.
"Paul," he said.
Was that all?"
Ronnie's eyes fell on him again, and the tight hard grin appeared. "And lover-boy, of course. We need someone like him along to make the chicks dig us, don't we?"
They laughed briefly, but nausea seemed to flood his stomach. He couldn't back out now, he knew. These guys were crazy, dangerously crazy the way they were now, and if he tried to back out they might gang him. It had to be that way; no one could turn chicken without becoming a threat to the group's security-therefore anyone who displayed fear under pressure would be dealt with severely, cruelly and quickly.
Jimmy managed a weak grin and downed some more Scotch, gagging down until it felt like the lining of his stomach was burning away. But the effect was immediate, a numbing effect that made him steady again once the nausea passed.
Ronnie turned his back to them then and began walking in his slow, hipsterish slump, through the open glass door and out toward the terrace, his hands thrust deep in his jeans pockets, cap pushed back on his dark head.
They followed, carrying bottles of booze. Through the door. Out onto the flagstones. Up to the lounge chairs.
Just before they reached them, Ronnie held up his hand, signaling for them to stop, and began taking off his jacket. The others imitated him, and Jimmy figured quickly that it was because of the easily identifiable Rattlers emblem on the back. Since he didn't have one on his, he didn't bother taking his jacket off with the rest of them.
Still the women hadn't seen them. The patio and pool were lighted by soft filtered spot lamps of a yellowish hue which kept bugs and mosquitos away and the sound of the portable radio tinkled melodiously through the night air. It was a perfect night, a beautiful night.
A good night for almost anything.
Jimmy felt the power of the alcohol he had drunk in him. He staggered just a little as he brought up the rear of the group, who had stashed their jackets together behind a dwarf pine and now proceeded out onto the patio at the pool's edge, coming into full view of the two women seated there.
The dark-haired one in the red suit was the first to see their approach. She sat up, her mouth dropping open, leaning forward and setting her drink on the table. Jimmy saw that she was older than the shorter one, who was just a girl in her teens, perhaps the daughter of the first one.
"Who are you?" she said in a shrill voice, to Ronnie, who was in the lead. "How did you get in here?"
Ronnie didn't say anything, but strode right up to her, thrusting his hands deeper in his pockets and letting his eyes go slowly up and down her figure.
The other guys fanned out, surrounding the two chairs, giving the younger one in the bikini the same kind of insolent treatment.
The silence was electric, broken only by Ronnie.
"Your husband sent us over, ma'am," he drawled. "To like make sure nobody crashes the party."
The older woman was indignant. Late thirties, maybe, with good breasts and the tanned figure of a fashion model. She had long beautiful legs and dark eyes that smouldered with suspicion. The younger one, a darkish blond, just stared at the young men curiously. Her breasts were just a trifle smaller than her mother's, but more could be seen of them because of the bikini.
Much more.
Paul and Gunner squatted around her and stared. Jimmy hung back, waiting to see what the play was.
The mother, as she turned out to be, got up off her lounge chair.
"Party? What party are you talking about young man!"
"Um, you know-take it easy, lady, please huh?"
"I demand you leave at once or I'll call the police."
Ronnie looked away, shaking his head slowly as if he had just been talking to some kind of an idiot who couldn't even understand plain English.
"Police, police. That's very bad, very bad. Um, I don't think your husband would like that, after telling us to come over here, lady."
"My husband's out of town!" she blurted. "He's not even in the country! How could he...." And then, realizing her mistake, she covered her mouth with her hand. "Oh!"
Ronnie swung a hip onto the table, leaning back and twisting the knob of the radio until some very loud rock and roll music from a local station blasted the air.
"Like the party's just starting," Ronnie laughed. "Why don't you give the lady a drink, Gunner?"
CHAPTER SEVEN
They were alone and unprotected. the woman's name was Marjorie Deerland; Mrs. Marjorie Deerland, and she was enjoying a weekend alone with her daughter, just home from college, while Mr. Deerland was in Ottawa on business. The irony of it was that Mr. Deerland was a board member of a large corporation, internationally affiliated, that sold locks, safes, and burglar alarm systems of all types.
But a lock wouldn't have done his wife and daughter much good anyway, under the circumstances. The front door of their ranch home had a very good lock on it, as a matter-of-fact, and there was little chance that the family jewels in the wall safe would be stolen, because it was a very good safe of the type that even an expert burglar would have had difficulty locating at once.
None of this was too important to the immediate situation, though. Which is to say, neither the Deerland's impeccable reputation as good, law-abiding, respectable upper-middle class people nor the fact that the husband happened to be in a line of work connected with the prevention of crimes of various kinds was going to do a thing in the way of helping Marjorie Deerland or her daughter Beverly.
Mrs. Deerland, being a woman of above average intelligence, recognized this fact almost immediately. She had no time to stop and philosophize about it, to psych out the little ironies connected with her involvement with a bunch of motorcycle hoodlums bent on thrill-seeking while her husband made speeches about the prevention of crime and delinquincy at a hotel banquet in Ottowa.
She simply knew instinctively that she and her daughter were in a hell of a lot of trouble.
Trouble itself was something she had very little experience with in her life, so she could hardly be blamed if she was totally unprepared for it. Although she didn't consider herself to be a snob, the only thing she knew about a slum was that it was something you occasionally had to pass through on your way to a city shopping district. As a child of well-to-do parents she had never known any serious wants in a material sense, and it seemed quite natural for her to end up married to a respectable and successful businessman and live in an exclusive residential section like Longwood. The kind of section where citizens would have been horrified at a proposal to install adequate street lighting.
Longwood had no criminal element-therefore, why should Longwood need street lights? It was much prettier without them, and much more exclusive-looking. A patrol car made its rounds through there twice a night, which was certainly more than was necessary. Who wanted to live in a neighborhood where one had to be constantly reminded of such things as police and crime?
Certainly not Marjorie Deerland.
Naturally not.
But she did recognize the fact that she was in what could amount to serious trouble.
She recognized trouble in the rather terrifying low-class face of the swarthy dark-haired young man in jeans and boots and tee shirt and motorcycle cap. She didn't associate the trouble with motorcycles necessarily, because she hadn't heard any coming down the street. The sound of motorcycle engines was never heard in the quiet streets of Longwood. There was a local ordinance against such things.
Of course.
But the further, conclusive recognition of the fact of trouble came to her in a much more immediate manner.
It came to her when the young man referred to as Gunner, a young white-haired giant with a crazy look in his eye, began pouring a bottle of her husband's expensive stock of whiskey down the front of her bathing suit.
Naturally.
She screamed in sudden choking fury, less afraid than indignant. "Stop that!" she yelled, knocking his arm away. And the other one, the one with the big shoulders and hairy arms and bulging biceps, he seemed to back her up.
He shoved the tow-head away. "Lay off," he growled. "How we going to have a nice respectable party if you do things like that?"
Gunner looked indignant himself, but stopped.
Mrs. Deerland was on her feet by then, facing the young man who was obviously the leader of these thugs. She was not a woman entirely lacking in bravery.
"You're not having any party here," she said shrilly, finding her voice gone a little out of control. "Now you get away from here, young man-and take your friends with you!-before I go into the house and phone for the police!"
Ronnie looked hurt by her words. Sitting on the patio table, he swung one leg back and forth, studying the toe of his boot.
"Now, ma'am," he said quietly, "he didn't mean nothing by that. He was just having a little fun, is all. Now you shouldn't talk to us like that either. It's, um, what they call an, uh, anti-social attitude, you know, in, uh, those books you read about, uh, juvenile delinquents and like that."
"You have unmitigated gall!" Mrs. Deerland said in a deadly cold voice. "Leave here at once, I say, or I'll go in there and phone...."
"It's like a bad attitude," Ronnie interrupted, "and like besides, we, uh, sort of checked with the phones, you see, and like they're not working or something."
Mrs. Deerland clutched at her throat. "Not working? What are you talking about, young man?"
"Funny thing," Ronnie chuckled. "I mean, in a swank neighborhood like this you'd think at least the phones would be working, huh?" He laughed, and Paul and Gunner began to laugh with him, doubling over and clutching at their stomachs.
"Yeah, yeah; the pipes is all busted!" Paul chanted. "Ain't that a shame? The pipes is all busted!"
Livid with outrage, Mrs. Deerland turned her statuesque figure toward the glass rear of her house.
Two more of them, in black jackets, were standing in the doorway of her living room.
They had cigarettes dangling from their lips.
And telephones dangling from their hands.
Her telephones.
It began to dawn then on Mrs. Deerland that she might be in very serious trouble indeed.
Her mind reeled as though she had been struck a physical blow. No phones; her husband not due home till tomorrow evening; the neighbors on either side of her gone away for the weekend; she and her daughter here alone with these strange, vulgar and insolent young men who seemed to have popped up out of a bad dream....
Suddenly she felt like screaming.
"What do you want?" she said in a low whisper, her handsome breasts heaving under the tight-fitting swim suit.
Ignoring her, Ron grabbed a partly-emptied bottle of Haig and Haig from Gunner's hands and took a swig. Then he returned his gaze to the white-faced woman.
"Um, like you know-some company," he grinned, showing white perfect teeth. "Like we've been traveling, you see, and we saw your swell pad here and we say to ourselves: "Gee, wouldn't it be nice if they was to invite us in for a drink or two, man!" And, well, it looks like you did that."
"Get-out-of-here!" she said, shaking now.
"Like she doesn't dig us, man," Paul put in. "Like maybe she's afraid we're going to corrupt her sweet little daughter if we hang around!"
Ronnie stared blankly at the older woman a minute, and then turned slowly to the daughter. She was still sitting in the chair, her pretty legs crossed, her arms folded across her breasts to make up for the inadequate bikini.
Slowly, in a smooth liquid motion he slid off the table to his feet. A loud band was playing over the station, a big band arrangement of a popular twist number. Ronnie began moving his hips slowly, staring at the young, pretty, dimple-faced girl, his arms extended to ward her.
"Come on, baby," he slurred. "Come on and twist with me a little, huh?"
The girl began to rise uncertainly from her chair, back at Ronnie, a little defiantly.
"You're a real creep!" she said. "Why don't you leave us alone?"
"Just one dance, baby ... then we'll go. Right, boys?"
"Right," Paul and Gunner said in unison, laughing.
The girl began to rise uncertainly from her chair, looking from face to face.
Her mother stepped between them. "No! Get out of here at once!"
His face turned to carved stone as he looked at her with pure hatred gleaming from his dark slits of eyes. He walked stiffly up against her, forcing her back to her chair.
"Like the chick wants to dance with me, okay? Like you saw her get up on her own two feet all by herself, didn't you? Like don't bug me, lady!"
The mother slumped back into the chair, her face ashen. She had seen the other one, the little one with the beard, take out a knife and begin to play with it. She gripped the arms of her chair, her eyes wide with amazement, like a child's who has overturned his first rock and seen what was underneath. The sight paralyzed her for the moment.
Ronnie caught the girl's hand, drew her toward him and began twisting. His eyes almost closed, he began moving loosely, grooving to the music, while her movements were spastic and unsure.
"Atta girl," he grinned. "You can swing, baby!"
She shrugged and began twisting in earnest She was good. She had the rhythm and the equipment, a marvelous body with a narrow waist and flaring hips and good breasts that promised to fly out of the skimpy bikini top as she began getting with the music.
Jimmy watched that all, fascinated, tense, feeling drugged with the alcohol. She couldn't have been enjoying this, he knew, but maybe she figured that if she danced with him, that would satisfy him and prevent anything further from happening. Paul and Gunner began twisting too, with each other-one on either side of Mrs. Deerland's deck chair.
The number came to a finish. Ronnie slapped his hands together and yelled "Groove!" as she finished.
"Satisfied?" she said tartly. "Now leave us alone!"
It was the wrong thing to say at that point and Jimmy knew it. But it was like the night in the cemetery--he felt like a helpless spectator.
Paul had his knife out again and was making incisions in the air in front of the girl's face.
"What a nasty tongue! Want I should cut that tongue out, man?"
The girl screamed with fright, back-peddling to the edge of the pool.
She went over and in with a loud splash. Paul danced at the edge, laughing demonically.
"Let her cool off," Ronnie said, turning to the mother, who was rising up out of the chair again, her face suddenly terror-stricken. "You ought to cool off too, lady-go in for a nice swim, huh?"
"No, no; leave me alone!" she screamed, and tried to rush past him in the direction of the house.
His boot went out, kicking at her trim ankles, and she went over onto the flagstones in a loud slap of flesh against stone, screaming in terror.
Ron and Gunner were around her quickly, gathering her up, each taking an arm and a leg and carrying her, head hanging down, to the edge of the pool.
"Wait, man," Ronnie panted. "Off with the suit first."
Jimmy stood watching in horror as Paul swung his knife at her. There was a loud ripping of cloth and he expected to see guts come spilling out.
But Paul was incredible with a blade. The suit came apart without the flesh underneath being so much as scratched, and then they ripped it from her and tossed her bodily high up into the air.
She landed almost in the center of the pool, completely naked now, her red suit nothing more than a rag lying beside the pool's edge.
Jimmy wanted to run, but his feet seemed rooted to the spot where he stood. His mind whirled. This was too much, going too far-and how much further would this go? It seemed like they had already been here ages, but his mind told him it was actually little more than twenty or thirty minutes. He was drunk, but all his senses were galvanized.
Electrified.
Both of them were in the pool now, mother and daughter, thrashing around, the mother completely naked and trying senselessly in her irrational terror to hide it, the daughter partly naked, having somehow lost the top to her bikini.
Naked and screaming, thrashing around. But their screams were masked by the loud music coming over the portable radio.
And a bizarre game had begun.
The pool was a rectangular one. Paul had circled around to the far side, Gunner to one end and Ron the other. That left Jimmy to cover the fourth side, and whether he intended to or not, he was there, and therefore part of this.
Paul and Gunner both had their knives out and were squatting at the edge of the pool. Ron sat on the low diving board, his booted feet dangling menacingly close to the surface of the water and the pool's edge. He was smoking a cigarette and evidently paying no attention to the two in the pool.
But Jimmy knew better. The swimmers could not stay in the middle, deep water forever. They would tire soon, treading water the way they were, and then they would have to either come to the edges and cling or swim up to the shallow end where they could stand with their heads above water and rest.
They were like two fish trapped in a barrel.
The meaning of the game soon became clear to them also. They were both good swimmers, but they were also both being terrorized, and had wasted a lot of energy just thrashing about in the beginning. Calmer now, he could see them gauging their chances.
The woman moved first, striking out in Ron's direction, toward the ladder near the side of the low board. She had a beautiful body and, naked, she reminded Jimmy of some stag pictures he had once seen, rather tame ones of naked women swimming around underwater in a kind of fancy ballet.
But this was not a film now. Her long, gracefully curved body cut smoothly through the clear greenish water while her daughter stayed in the middle, treading.
The mother reached the bottom of the ladder quickly. Gasping for breath, her large graceful breasts heaving, she reached out and caught the lower rung in her fingers, clinging to it.
"Please," she pleaded, looking up at Ron. "Please let us get out! We don't want any trouble, we won't make any trouble ... "
He pretended not to hear, but sat biting his nails. Slowly she drew herself up, catching hold of the next rung....
The next....
And then his booted foot came down on her hand, crushingly. She screamed and fell backward from the ladder, thrashing desperately to get away from him.
But he was faster. In a blur he moved on the board, flopping over and reaching down with his arm to catch a handful of wet tangled dark hair.
He was strong, and the water made her body lighter. Holding her up by the hair, he crawled out on the board, dragging her through the water under him, out to the very edge.
There, he started bouncing. Leaning way over and down, holding all of her hair in the steely grip of his fist, he bounced the piable springboard, up and down, up and down. Her head would go under, and then up, under and then up-like a cork bobbling below and above the surface of the water. The girl screamed as she saw what was happening, but the woman was only able to splutter and gasp for breath each time she came up.
He began making her come higher and higher, until her magnificent breasts with their darkish round nipples and aureoles appeared each time, streaming twin streams of water, and her eyes were shut and her jaws clenched shut in pain.
And then, on the highest rise, his thick legs wrapped around the board to support him, he hauled her face up to his and ground his lips against her mouth, kissing her while holding her in that agonizing grip.
For ages, it semed. Sheer brute strength, holding her there at the edge of the board, her neck in an arm lock while he kissed her and felt her breasts with his other hand.
It was impossible for him to maintain the position. Finally he had to let go, and she dropped down into the water. Jimmy was afraid she had fainted and would drown, but after going under she surfaced again, out of his reach now, back-floating away from him, the tips of her beautiful breasts breaking the surface.
The daughter tried next. She swam to the shallow end, where she could at least stand on her feet, and began advancing in a circling maneuver toward the edge.
Cautiously. But Gunner realized it was his turn now, and crab-stepped back and forth along the edge of the pool, matching each move of hers while his wild face leered down at her.
"Come on baby; that's it-come on up here to Daddy-O now! don't be frightened, sweet lips; I'm gonna be real nice to you when you get up here honey, don't worry. Sweet li'l ol' thing like you now! Just a little squeeze maybe, huh? A kiss or two, huh baby? I don't want nothing you ain't giving to the other guys in school, honest I don't! Why, I'll be much better for you than they are, baby-I'll show you things you never dreamed of before, I will! Yeah, man, when you get up here we'll have ourselves a real old time, right here next to the pool-come on, baby; don't be afraid! Hey, man, you can't stay in there all night now, can you? You're starting to look real cold! Let me warm up them nice little boobs for you, huh babe?"
She stopped short, out of his reach. The game had gotten grotesque. They could have taken off their clothes and gone in after them, but this was it was making the girls choose.
And what they were choosing was pretty clear by now. There was no way out for them. As Gunner had said, they couldn't stay in there all night.
The mother was standing in the shallow end now, too, clutching her arms around her big breasts and moaning and shivering. The air had turned much cooler. She was beyond the point of screaming now, in a state of sort of stupefied shock.
The daughter suddenly moved away from that end of the pool and swam toward Jimmy.
He stood there, petrified, watching her close. This was the test, he realized dimly-the eyes of the other three club members were all on him now.
He had to play their game or....
"Looka that, man!" Gunner shouted; "She's choosing lover-boy! Hey man, dig that! She don't want me or you guys-she wants him! Hey, like I'm jealous, man!"
"Get her, baby," Paul yelled across the pool. "Don't let her get away!"
No, Jimmy thought. He couldn't go through with this. This was more than he had bargained for.
Much more.
He was getting in too deep, over his head. If he did what they clearly wanted him to do, demanded that he do, he would be as much a criminal as any of them.
And suddenly he realized that this was the initiation they had been talking about since the first day!
He was standing near the middle, where she couldn't touch, but she continued to swim in a straight path toward him, obviously fagged out from being in the water so long. The mother stood moaning and sobbing. watching helplessly.
Jimmy knelt down to the pool's edge. He wouldn't he thought. He'd help her out of the pool and then, somehow, the two of them would make a run for safety, off through the bushes or something. A desperate plan, but there was nothing else.
Her hand locked around his wrist and his locked around hers. She clung there, slumping against the tiled side. Their faces were very close.
"Help me out," she said.
"You know what will happen?" he whispered urgently.
"Help me out," she repeated. "I don't care."
He pulled, and she came up over the side, bare-breasted and dripping water. Suddenly, she lunged at him, knocking him backward off his feet and falling against him. His arms instinctively went around her.
"I'll pretend to fight you," she said. "Go ahead do what they want!"
He couldn't believe his ears. From the distance, he could hear the others shouting and cheering like crazy fools, but her cool wet body clung to his and she was half-heartedly pretending to struggle. Over and over they rolled, off the flagstones and out onto the grass lawn.
"Do you know what you're saying?" he panted.
Incredibly, her face softened into a smile.
"Yes. They want you to take me now. Why don't you go ahead and do that, you big lug?"
"But ... but your mother...."
"Mother's scared to death, isn't she? I think that's stupid. If she just let them have what they want, they'd go away."
"But they want to...."
"Give her a good going over. Maybe that's what she needs. She's so square, I don't think she's ever cheated on dad in fifteen years. Maybe this will show her what life's all about."
"But your own mother!"
"God, I hope I get to watch! That tough one ... I hope he gets to her! Now come on, baby; make this look good!"
This was incredible. He could hardly believe his ears-but there she was, encouraging him, saying those things and actually laughing. Her fear must have all been pretended, just for the benefit of her mother then.
Amazing.
He began to get cat-calls now, and, fearing the others would come and do the job if he didn't, he began unbuckling his belt and opening his clothes.
Pulling them down.
There was no difficulty about being ready.
None at all. He knew by now that no matter what else he might feel as a result of his small-town upbringing, sadism and violence could create a very definite response in him. Maybe he would have raped this girl and maybe he wouldn't have. He didn't know. That part of his mind was totally confused, all mixed-up.
But another part of his mind had a perfectly clear idea of what he wanted to do. Watching Ronnie at work had been an agony of attraction and self-hatred.
But the self-hatred was gone now, and this was no longer a matter of rape.
She was asking him.
So, this might look like rape to the others, now shouting encouragement, but at least he knew this wasn't. This crazy broad wanted him, had wanted him all along, and that was all he needed to know.
He was ready.
She struggled. She even screamed once, making things look good. But between the screams, she said things in a low voice that only he could hear: "I love you, man. You're beautiful. Go on honey; don't stop!" Or, "Hit me, hit me! Slap my face, you beautiful thing!"
"You're crazy," he said through gritted teeth, slapping her.
"Crazy for you!" she babbled, almost throwing herself away from him.
But then, a sudden move, and her screams turned to screams of passion. The guys in the house were out now, halfway up the lawn, watching, excited themselves.
He moved. He realized he hadn't even taken off the bikini bottom, but that was unnecessary. That offered no problem at all.
None.
Faster and faster he worked, thrilled to the core, wild, tine blood pounding in his head as she beat at him with her fists and thrashed her head back and forth in the grass.
Faster and faster.
Bull-like, he sped the pace until the engines of his desire were wide-open, full-throttle, revving up on high octane, the wild excitement of the night, forbidden kicks, sadism, desire, lust....
She cried out once and closed her eyes and then that was all over. Done.
Drugged, sated, he dragged himself away from her, his sense dulled by the rapid loss of his desire. She looked pretty, innocent, a pretty young coed lying there in the grass, her blondish hair fanned out in a soft halo around her. Could she really have said those things to him? That was all too crazy, too crazy to think about. He tried sitting up, rubbing his head to clear it. They would be coming over to him now, coming to get some for themselves-should he let them? No; no damn it; ho would fight the lousy crums tooth and nail, no matter what she had said; fight until they ripped him apart with their evil knives or stomped his face in with their hob-nailed boots, because....
Because he just would, that was all.
He didn't need a reason.
But, looking around, he saw that he was wrong. Now that that was over between him and the girl, they had turned their attentions elsewhere.
To the woman.
There was just a sound at first, a sound which drew his eyes toward the far end of the pool. Thunk-a-thunk-a-thunk-a-thunk ... Out on the lowboard. With Ronnie, naked now, like her.
The low board bouncing, the radio tuned off, Paul and Gunner gathered at one end, watching, waiting their turn....
Thunk-a-thunk-thunk-a-thunk! A wild rhythm, an insane ever-increasing tattoo beat, becoming staccato. Crazy.
He felt a hand sieze and squeeze his bicep. A girl's voice, filled with ecstatic lust: "Good, good, get her, get her good!"
Watching wide-eyed, the daughter! "What's your name?" she said to him. "Jimmy."
"You're not like they, are you Jimmy?"
"No."
"You're a loner." He nodded.
"I knew that. As soon as i looked at you I knew you were different. Like me. That's crazy, isn't it?"
That didn't need an answer, so he didn't give one.
"Do you hate her?" be said.
She laughed, jiggling her breasts against his arm sensuously.
"No, silly ... I love her. Square, stupid mother that she is ... they won't hurt her, will they? I mean, cut her or anything?"
"I don't think so."
"They'll just get her, the way dad never does anymore. Poor, dumb thing, doesn't even know how good that is."
"She'll call the police afterward."
"Maybe not, Jimmy. Maybe I can talk her out of it. But you'll get away anyway, and if they come afterward I'll lie about you, get the description wrong and everything."
"Why?"
She hesitated before answering. "Then: "Because that's the most exciting and beautiful thing I've ever seen!"
Jimmy got up suddenly, wanting to be away, away from her and from this place. Far away.
Drunk, confused, he staggered back toward the house, scooping up his jacket on the way.
He heard the others coming close behind, finished now with what they had been doing. Dimly he realized that they were going to leave the girl alone. Like him, they were splitting.
He ran. Heart pounding and blood screaming through his brain, breath burning in his lungs, he ran through the silent shadows, faster and faster, feet pounding against the soft close-cropped turf, dodging in and out of trees, down the slope along the drive to where the motorcycles were hidden.
He didn't care if they followed him or not. The night had become a fantasy, and in front of his eyes only one image remained, burning itself into his brain from a hot branding iron.
A diving board. A diving board with three guys and a naked woman on it, going on and on and on into the night.
In a trance he found the Harley, wheeled it out to the quiet street, ignoring the looks and questions of the girls who had been left behind to guard them.
He jumped up and came down on the starter with all his weight. Instant life exploded through the mechanical body underneath him. He turned the handle, feeding gas to thirsty innards, and started off down the road.
Somebody yelled behind him.
"Hey! Hey, man-wait for us!"
He didn't wait.
He rode recklessly at full-throttle down the deserted midnight street, tore around one corner and then another, instinctively found his way out to the main highway where he hugged the saddle with his strong legs and let the mechanical beast under him have its full head.
Behind him in the distance he could hear the bee-like sound of the pack.
Fleeing, like him.
Splitting.
They might catch him and they might not. He didn't even know which he was running away from the house, the town, the police-or them.
It didn't matter. The wind was real. The sound of exploding pistons was real. The road was real. Only the road, the wind....
CHAPTER EIGHT
It seemed stupid to run and stupid not to. Jimmy couldn't make up his mind. Way-out kicks were fine, but he had no taste for winding up in jail, and when you figured out all the charges that could be brought against them, you'd need an adding machine to figure up the number of years you could get.
Trespassing, for instance. A mild sort of offense, and not very significant in itself.
Vandalism-destruction of private property. Though he hadn't participated in it himself, the others had made a shambles of that beautiful house. And he had been part of the group.
Theft. They must have taken at least a hundred dollars worth of liquor from the owner's private stock.
Assault with a deadly weapon. He hadn't taken out his knife, but the others had, and when you take out a knife and act like you're going to use it, that's a very serious charge.
And last but not least, the little matter of rape. Technically, he had done that, too. He hadn't touched the woman, and the girl, that crazy broad of a daughter who seemed delighted with everything that was happening, had begged him to take her. But she might not be eighteen, which would make that rape anyway. And the mother might force her to press charges anyway, if the pack got caught. If the pack got caught.
That was the whole thing in a nutshell. If the pack got caught, they might all be held responsible. In a sense, each individual was as guilty as the next. The whole thing had been a group kick, each member lending support to the other, to go further and further out, to do wilder and wilder things.
Jimmy understood this instinctively. By himself, any one member might have been much less daring. Each one had a position to maintain in the eyes of the others-he had felt that part of it keenly when the girl came swimming over to him. He still wasn't sure whether he would have forced her or not.
And now, he realized, he didn't want to find out. Not that way. Whatever he might do in the way of kicks he wanted to do on his own, for his own reasons not because he had to prove himself to others. And he realized also that there would be more of that, that running with the pack meant a constant test, proving yourself constantly in front of everyone else as a guy who wouldn't crack under any circumstances whatever.
It was crazy. It would be a lie to say that it wasn't fun, but it was also crazy.
Stupid.
If he got caught now, he would take whatever rap they threw at him and not rat on the others-but he was going to go it alone from here on in.
That was his decision.
He glanced back over his shoulder to see how much distance he had put between them, and noticed for the first time that there were only two lights following him now. Whose? Then it occurred to him that the road had forked off in several places in the ten or fifteen miles he had covered so far, and no doubt the group had split up for purposes of safety. Of course; that as it.
He breathed easier then, realizing they weren't chasing him. They had no reason to, really. He had convinced them that he was as far out as they were, so why should they be after him? The idea would be to go thirty or so miles, until they came to a fairly large city, each one traveling individually or in two's and then wait for the others, group up again. He had heard them talking about this kind of strategy once before.
The fact that he wasn't being pursued only made him drive faster. There would only be one big town before San Francisco, according to the map, and he could bypass it and go on.
Alone.
That was the way for him to travel, he decided. The girl had been right about one thing-he preferred being a loner. It might not always be as much fun, but at least you just had yourself to worry about. You got into trouble, you had nobody else but yourself to blame. Maybe he'd meet up with some of the guys in the Rattlers later, in San Francisco. And maybe they wouldn't like the way he had cut out on his own.
If they didn't, that was tough. Because that was the way he was playing it from here on in.
He felt better after making that decision. And he knew they'd never catch up with him between here and San Francisco. Not with the Harley under him, they wouldn't. It was the fastest thing on the road.
It was a beautiful sight, beneath him in the beginning light of dawn. You rounded a curve in the hills and there it was, spread out beneath you like a toy city
-the lights, the bay, the Golden Gate in the distance.
Tired, sleepless, he felt exhilarated by it, nevertheless. He had ridden many miles, stopping only once or gas and a sandwich in an all-night diner. He had ridden right on through the worst part of his fatigue, caught a second wind, and now he was here.
San Francisco.
God!
It was the kind of thrilling sight that made you forget all your troubles, that raised all your hopes and expectations so that you felt like a really new person.
It was beautiful.
Perfect.
Jimmy coasted down the steep incline slowly, taking in everything as the rosy light spread, in through the beginning suburbs of small houses with people just waking up in them, occasional stores, still closed for the night, past filling stations and tree-lined streets, bigger houses, outlying shopping districts ... He felt like he had to go straight to the heart of the city before he stopped, tired as he was.
And hungry. Famished. It was funny how you could be sleepy and hungry at the same time. The thought of a good plate of bacon and eggs and a hot cup of coffee made his mouth water.
Mouth watering, he stopped at a diner along the waterfront. It was a small, rough-looking place, but the smell of frying bacon came out through the swinging doors, and he could see the bay and white sails sparkling behind, having traveled down to the water's edge before he realized it.
He parked the Harley in front and went in.
The place was filled with merchant seamen and dock workers, having their breakfasts. Jimmy found a place along the plain wooden counter and sat down.
The waitress came over and took his order. She was a short slim dark-haired girl, and at first he paid no attention to her, giving her his order automatically. But when she smiled at him he noticed the whiteness of her teeth, and then he began to notice the rest of her as she moved gracefully behind the counter.
She was a strange looking girl. Petite, almost flat-chested, she wore her dark hair in straight bangs in front and long in back, drawn back over her delicate ears and held together by a band so that it formed a curious kind of pony-tail effect as it cascaded down between her narrow shoulders.
But it was her face itself that held his interest. Something about it made her different from most girls he had ever seen-a sort of fresh, boyish look, yet curiously feminine at the same time. Wide, doe-like brown eyes, a pert, delicate nose, a rather severe mouth that wore no lipstick at all. Instead of the customary white waitress uniform she wore a black and white striped short sleeve polo shirt and tight black bullfighter's pants, which made her look somewhat out of place. But she walked self-confidently and seemed not to be bothered at all by the rough language of stevedores and deck hands who shouted and swore and laughed noisily over their coffee and rolls.
His order came: a heaping plate of buckwheat cakes, dripping with maple syrup, small browned sausages, a tall glass of buttermilk and a mug of steaming black coffee.
It was delicious. Happy that he had hit on the idea of coming down to the waterfront to eat, he wolfed the food down, and by the time he had gotten to the coffee he felt pleasantly full and warm and so tired his eyes would hardly stay open, He caught himself actually nodding over the counter, the chatter of the customers around him becoming a soft lulling buzzing in his ears.
"Hey, wake up!" the young waitress said, shaking his arm and laughing at him.
His eyes popped open and he grinned stupidly. "Sorry. I was about to go off."
"Must have had a big night, honey."
"A big night on the road." he said, finding Ms words slurring together from a kind of intoxication of fatigue.
"Hey, you really are tired! I thought you were hung-over, the way you stumbled in here."
"Did I? Never noticed."
"If I were you, baby, I'd go home and hit the rack."
"Don't live here. Came down from upstate. Any good cheap hotels around here?"
"There's good hotels and there's cheap hotels, but they're not the same ones. Don't you know anyone in the city?"
He shook his head groggily.
"Well, I'd hate to see you get clipped. You look like a nice kid. Want me to find you a place to pad over for the day?"
She wasn't much more than a "kid" herself, but Jimmy appreciated the friendly offer.
"I don't want you to go to all that trouble," he said. "Besides, you're working."
She glanced at the clock and threw the rag she had been mopping the counter with into the sink. "Not as of now I'm not," she said. "And it's no trouble. I've been hung up in strange cities before and I know what a hell it can be when you're completely dragged. My name's Matilda, but my friends call me Matty."
He noticed for the first time as she came around the counter that she had a very nice figure, small breasts and shoulders, a narrow waist, and slim, prettily curved legs. She wore rope sandals on her feet and her toenails were painted orange.
He got up and paid for his meal at the cash register, noting with dismay how little money he had left. Somehow he had spent most of the forty dollars he had started out with in various places along the road without noticing it.
It might be a good idea to take her up on the offer after all.
"If you don't mind riding on the back of a motorcycle, I think I might just go along with your suggestion," he said.
"Crazy. I dig motorcycles, baby-only you better let me do the driving. You look like you're about to topple over."
He had to admit that she was right as he nearly tripped going out the doorway. He didn't like the idea of letting anyone jockey the Harley, and especially a girl, but the hot meal had made him so sleepy he could no longer trust his reactions.
"Can you?" he said doubtfully.
"Watch me."
She got on expertly, humped the starter and got it going as he slid into the saddle behind her, putting his arms around her ridiculously small waist.
She started away, controlling the machine like an expert. He had to admire her skill.
It was the last thing he thought about as, slumping against her surprisingly strong body, he fell dead asleep behind her.
"Where are we?" he said, his head jerking erect suddenly as they ground to a halt. They were in a funny looking area near the water, with crazy narrow streets, lined with tumbledown one and two story frame houses, some of which seemed to be falling apart. Sand and clumpy grass surrounded the houses and open lots with pieces of rusting junk could be seen here and there.
"North Beach, honey. Haven't you ever heard of it?"
"I don't think so."
"Wow, have you got a lot to learn! But this is the place, man-park your chopper out around back so nobody will steal. We have, um, a few dishonest people among us, unfortunately."
Jimmy got off and managed to wheel the machine around back of the faded gray clapboard shack, propping it under a stunted acanthus tree.
She led him up two flights of rickety back outside stairs, through an unlocked door into a low-ceilinged three room apartment that occupied the top floor of the tumbledown building.
"The bed's in there," she said, pointing to a doorway hung with frayed burlap curtains. "I've only got one, so you'll have to share it with me."
"This is your place?" he said, surprised.
"Not exactly," she said, her eyes twinkling. "I'm sort of borrowing it from a friend till I get enough bread together to rent a pad of my own. Artist-type, gone down to Mexico to paint and bring back a load of pot. You're not the modest type, are you?"
"I don't think so."
"Crazy. I've been working all night, sweets, and my feet have grown three sizes. So don't feel insulted if I fall right to sleep."
She made that sound so natural that he went into the tiny dark bedroom with her without further ado.
He tossed his jacket in the corner and sat on the bed, taking off his boots.
She began to undress in front of him.
His mind felt drugged, but he couldn't help watching her with interest. She seemed to have no false modesty about her at all. She pulled the polo shirt off and he caught a glimpse of naked, cute little breasts before she turned and began pulling down her toreador pants.
At least she wore panties. Sheer black nylon ones that were a bit raggedy. He stared at her as she bent over, feeling a little like a Peeping Tom.
She turned around then and caught him looking at her. An impish, sarcastic gleam came into her wide dark eyes.
"Come on, now," she said, "you're supposed to be dead tired, remember?"
Jimmy felt himself blushing a little. Her complete naturalness about everything made him feel clumsy, a little prudish.
"Well, uh, I guess I've just been up too long. Everything seems ... different."
She nodded. "I've been on no-sleep jags myself, honey. You can get pretty high that way. But I really don't mind you looking that much.
And to prove her words, she hooked her thumbs inside the elastic of her panties and pulled them swiftly down.
She had beautiful legs and hips. Petite. Trim.
Lovely.
"I've got the habit of sleeping nudie," she said. "I hope you don't mind."
"I don't mind at all, Matty."
"Good. Why don't you take your rags off too then? They look like they're stuck to you, man."
What the hell, he thought, and began drawing his sweaty tee shirt over his head, fatigue slowing his movements.
Just as the shirt cut his vision, he felt her slim little fingers tugging at the buckle of his wide motorcycle belt.
"Lie back, baby-I'll finish this for you. Go to sleep if you want to."
He did lie back, drowsiness immediately enfolding him like a thick warm blanket.
But he didn't drift off to sleep immediately. He felt her tickly little fingers undressing him, pulling down his pants, removing his socks-and finally, although it seemed to him unnecessary, his briefs.
Her hand patted him appreciatively.
"My, you're beautiful," she murmured somewhat matter-of-factly. "I'd like to do a study of you sometime. I sculpt, you know. Mostly nude figures, when I'm doing straight stuff. A man's body is much more interesting than a woman's."
He was both flattered and aroused, in a low-keyed way. Her hands brushed down his legs, feeling his muscles as though to test their form and tone, and strong flickers of desire wove through his increasing fogginess.
So pleasant, to lie like this in bed....
But the need for sleep was too strong in him. He drifted off, feeling her lithe little body slide onto the bare mattress next to him.
After that, he fell into a deep dark pit of dreamless sleep.
He had no idea what time it was when he finally awoke, but light was coming into the room, and as his eyes slowly opened to the vaguely familiar surroundings he judged from the slanting rays of sun corning through the window that it must be late afternoon.
Turning his head, he saw that he was not alone in the room either.
Matty was there, perched on a low stool with a sketch pad on her lap and a piece of charcoal in her hand. She glanced at him, made a few quick strokes on the pad and then tossed it and the charcoal onto a chipped dresser behind her.
Awake now, he realized she hadn't bothered to put any clothes on while he was sleeping.
Strange. He couldn't figure her out, but it wasn't hard to see that she was some kind of an arty beatnik chick who didn't give much of a damn about little formalities in life.
Like clothing, for instance.
"Hi," she chirped. "Awake at last, huh? I was borrowing that crazy physique of yours for a model while you were copping out. Can't afford professionals, hope you don't mind."
He didn't mind, but he discovered that his body was a little more alert than his mind. It had other ideas about how it should be used than as a model.
"Oh-oh," she clucked; "I see you're really waking up, Jimmy boy."
He grinned a little sheepishly. "Can you blame me? You ought to be a model yourself."
She came over to the bed and sat down.
"Yes, you would make one hell of a sculpture," she said, brushing him with her hand.
He reached for her, trying to pull her down to him. But she pushed herself away, resisting his attempt.
"No, baby doll; none of that now! You're leaping to big conclusions-but wrong ones, I'm afraid."
He leaned up on one elbow, angered at her resistance after the obvious temptation she had presented.
"Hell, I'm only human-what did you expect?"
"That, I guess," she smiled. "But we all have our own quirks, and since you're my guest you'll have to respect mine, baby."
"Then you'd better stop doing that," he said tensely, desire really worked up in him now by her continued stroking.
"Why? Don't you like that?"
"Sure, but...."
"I'm going to satisfy you, hon-but not that way. Relax."
"That's kid stuff though!"
"Better a kid than kidded."
"I don't get you."
"I'm not what you think I am. Look; you're broke and you need a place to stay for awhile; just let me be nice to you in my own way and you can pad over here as long as you like-okay?"
He sank back onto the mattress.
"Okay. Only I'd rather do something for you, too."
"You're doing plenty, dear. A free model, remember? And in return, I'll do this for you."
Her hands moved rapidly, working up a straining desire in him that gave him a strangely pleasurable agony not to touch her and make love to her while she stroked and caressed him. He gritted his teeth and closed his eyes.
"See? You do like that don't you."
"Yes. Yes, yes, yes...."
"And I don't mind this way. Or even," she said, her voice changing, "this."
He felt her lips then-cool moist, caressing lips. Small oval of a mouth. Automatically he reached to twine his hands in her rich dark locks of hair.
Crazy.
She made little sounds as she made love to him in her own peculiar style. "Mmmm."
"MMmmuhhh! "Ugggmmm!"
Crazy, wild little sounds as she worked, faster and faster, increasing his desire. Again and again. Faster and faster.
He groaned, turning on the mattress, past the point of wanting anything else now. She was so expert at this! Amazingly expert.
Her arms went around him and she held him and she seemed intent on exploiting his desire to the hilt. He groaned once more, the wind wheezing in his lungs.
And then that happened. Ka-boom!
A release so sudden and complete it wracked his whole body; then he fell back on the mattress in slack-limbed peace.
She got up and left him, padding on quick feet to the bathroom. He lay still on the bed for several minutes, listening to the sound of tap water running as his breathing slowly wound down to a normal tempo again.
She was good.
Damn good.
So damn good at that, she excited his curiosity as how good she would be at other things. And then he began thinking about her, why she was like that and how she got any pleasure herself from being that way.
That was all pretty crazy. But then, this whole place looked kind of crazy, full of strange people. He had glimpsed some of them that morning, waking up on the back of the motorcycle behind her-strange cats walking about in bare feet and wearing beards on their faces and rags on their backs, some looking very hungover and some looking as though they hadn't been to bed yet.
A beatnik colony, he guessed. That wasn't hard to figure out, and now that he thought about it he remembered reading about North Beach with its wild bohemian crowd, somewhere, in a newspaper or book or something.
And she was one of them; a beatnik chick. A very strange girl with very strange ideas about how to make love with a guy.
Well, he thought, sitting up and rubbing his eyes; it takes all kinds. And broke as he was, it would be a good idea to cool it here for awhile until he got a job washing dishes or something-anything to raise a small stake so he could move on again.
Why not?
He dressed himself quickly, his curiosity aroused about where he was and what new city sights and sounds there were that were worth exploring.
A good many, no doubt.
Matty was in the kitchen, making coffee with a little espresso rig, bending over a tiny two-burner gas stove. She had put on a loose robe that looked like a man's bathrobe. It was too big for her and it hung open in front, but Jimmy figured that this was for her a big step in the direction of feminine modesty.
"Hi, lover," she chirped. "Ready for some mud and rolls? That's all there is in this dump, I'm afraid."
Jimmy sat down at a marred maple kitchen table, scraping back one of the two chairs and watching her precise, mannish movements.
She served the coffee in a small cup, a deep dark liquid with a brackish taste, but not at all bad to drink for all its strength. A couple of margarined rolls appeared before him and he ate them quickly, satisfying his hunger if not his teste.
"Thanks," he said. "You treat me like a mother."
She pretended to look shocked. "Really? Wow, she must be quite a gal, honey."
Jimmy blushed. "I didn't mean that part. Uh, are you working tonight?"
"No, baby; I'm at that lousy gig six days a week and that's enough. Why?"
"I'm going to have a look at the city. Want to come?"
"Man, I've had a look at the city. Thanks anyway, though. You go on and have yourself a small ball. But don't be surprised if this place is mobbed tonight. Like it happens to be a Saturday night, which means tea party time hereabouts, in case you're not hip to the ways of the beach."
"Oh. You want me to stay away until a certain time?"
She laughed loudly, crumbs of hard roll spilling from the corners of her mouth.
"How polite! Listen, a party out this way means everyone in the world is invited, and everyone in the world usually comes. Just wander in any time and grab the nearest wine jug. If the noise bothers you, the wine will turn it off."
"It sounds wild."
She leaned across the table, her robe falling away from her child-like breasts, and rubbed his cheek with the back of her hand.
"See no evil, child," she said, "and there won't be any. But in case the scene is too much for your dewy young eyes, there's a shed out back with an old army cot in it. You can evict anyone in there if you really need to sack out that bad."
"Okay. I probably won't do that though. The party sounds like fun."
"You'll be a hit, man. All the girls will start thinking I've gone straight when they see your big gray eyes."
"Straight?"
"Just an expression, forget it. You'll learn to speak the language in no time, primitive. But do fall back here whenever you want to, baby-a new face is always a kick."
He got up then, set to leave. At the doorway, she offered her lips for a kiss, and he gave her one. But it seemed more like a polite or sisterly gesture than anything else.
"Take a bus, hon," she advised. "You don't want to be hanging around the city on that noisemaker. Besides, you might get stoned and end up in the bay or something."
"Will it be all right back there?"
"Don't worry-I'll shoot anyone who even looks at it."
"See you later then."
"Later."
He went down the stairs then, feeling alive and good, ready to dig whatever the night had to offer. Just as a cautionary measure he wheeled the Harley around back of the shed before leaving. He gave it a pat and took off down the street to find the nearest bus stop.
A bus headed into the city carat: along after a tan minute wait on the corner. Jimmy got on and found a seat near the rear next to the window, where he could watch the sights as the bus rolled along, connecting with a main avenue.
Riding and relaxing, he had time to think about his present situation.
It wasn't great in some ways. He had less than ten dollars left to his name, enough to fill the tank and buy some dry food and cigarettes if he decided to take off from the city in a fairly short time. Maybe it would be best to find a job here, work a couple of weeks, and then head either south or east, depending on how he felt about it when he was ready.
The thought of running out of money didn't bother him that much, however. He had never had trouble finding a job of one kind of another since he had been fourteen. And he had luck. Running into Matty right off the bat was a piece of luck, and he had been lucky in not getting involved in a number of scrapes on the way downstate.
Very lucky indeed.
Jimmy believed in his luck. Luck was more valuable than money anyway, he figured. Some of the things he had done, he could easily have gotten his fingers burned, but he had come away without so much as a scratch.
That was luck.
Not that he was superstitious or carried a rabbit's foot or anything like that. But, as Ron put it once, when you're "Making it," there isn't much that can stop you.
He felt like he was making it now, in his own way.
Free and easy as the breeze, copping in on a lot of crazy experience, knowing chicks like Margot and that girl back in the filling station a couple of hundred miles away.
Making it.
The thing was to stay out of trouble. He had come close, but he hadn't gotten burned, and now he knew better. Wild kicks were fine, but everything was a kick if you only looked at it that way-so why put yourself in the way of having all the kicks you wanted by doing stupid things which could land you in jail?
Matty was a kick. She treated him like a sister, except in bed, and there, strange as her ways were, she was one hell of a good kick. There was something about her that made him like her better than any chick he had yet met along the road. Maybe she was just teasing him, withholding the real prize like that. Or maybe she had a serious boy friend somewhere who she was saving herself for.
He'd have to check on that, he decided. She was so damn nice in every other way, a real sport who could hop a bike as good as any guy....
Suddenly he remembered Myra.
Myra would be down in San Jose by now. She had probably made it several days ahead of him, in fact, with all the hang-ups he had suffered on the way down.
But somehow Myra seemed remote from him now. He tried, but couldn't quite get a picture of her lace before his mind's eye.
Poor Myra!
But she was part of Coram; for all her sexy ways a sweet and innocent part of Coram, and he didn't feel very sweet or very innocent any more. He had seen and done things that would have shocked her to the core.
Still, he at least owed her a phone call.
Later for that, he decided. There was plenty of time. He didn't plan on leaving the city for at least three days, maybe a week, and he'd call her before he left.
The person he was really interested in was Matty, and as he rode the bus deep into the city, through the narrow crooked streets of Chinatown, he began to realize just how much he had wanted her to go with him.
CHAPTER NINE
He didn't know where he was when he got off the bus.
In the city, San Francisco.
That was all that mattered. It had become early evening, twilight time, and as he looked down the streets, all of which seemed to go right down like ski-jumps to the bay, hauling the imaginary or would-be skiers back up by means of quaint little cable cars, he could see the burnished copper water between buildings as the sun slowly extinguished itself in the bay.
You were always walking on a slant, it seemed. Maybe it was his imagination, but that kind of continuous exercise seemed to have done nice things to the local women's legs. A flexed calf-muscle can be the prettiest sight in the world.
Natural.
There were also buildings, old brownstones and new modern office and apartment structures, and he looked at them, too.
The buildings and the people. Girls.
Girls everywhere, it seemed-fashion-plates out for a walk with a pet poodle; young high school chicks with freshly painted faces and freshly pointed looks wearing Bermuda shorts and sleeveless blouses, wagging their back ends around like advertisements for themselves.
Nice advertisements.
He wouldn't mind buying that brand any time.
But not now. He got eyes from them, but he was investigating and there was plenty of time to investigate that later. High school girls weren't going out of style right away, he decided. Nice to look at, though.
Tasty.
He wandered around until he found his legs tiring from the exercise, and then got on a cable car and rode all the way to the end of the line, where he got off and rode another, heading back by a different route. The sun did a disappearing act while he rode, and when he got off, the better part of an hour killed off, it was dusky night.
Lights. Lights everywhere; neon signs advertising bars and restaurants, hotels and movie houses; lights in windows and street lights and traffic lights.
In Chinatown again, he stopped in a bar-restaurant and had a bottle of beer which he drank thirstily and then left the place and headed down toward a seedier section near the waterfront where instinct told him things would be happening.
Instinct was no liar. People were out in full force now, and he began to see a procession of weirdoes that made him want to stop and rub his eyes.
The section he was in contained a lot of rundown third-rate real estate, but interspersed among the low rent apartment buildings and cheap hotels and bars were coffee houses. Espresso joints, filling up with bearded characters in beat looking costumes and some of the weirdest, wildest-looking chicks he had ever laid eyes on. Lipstickless, with black mascaraed holes for eyes, stone faced and wearing plain tight dark colored clothing which clung to their well-curved figures, they were escorted by equally odd looking cats with beards and berets, or by tweedy college types, or by each other. He felt a little out of place with his boots, jeans and black leather jacket here.
He stopped in another little place, full of tables and chairs and young people talking about all kinds of strange things he had never heard of. Nuts, some of them acted like. But he had a wine and dug the scene, and then filtered out with the mob to find another place.
The third place he went in had a band. It was more expensive than the others, but the bar was up front and there was no cover or music charge for sitting there.
Jimmy found an empty leaning space against the mahogany and ordered another sour wine, already feeling the effect of the first two drinks. The cats in this place were just as weird, but when the music started up he knew he had hit on a swinging joint.
The bar was packed. An archway at the far end opened up on a floor crammed with tables and people sitting at the tables, and as soon as the musicians came on the stage, everyone in the place seemed to go crazy.
Absolutely wild.
They jumped up on chairs and tables and began clapping and stamping their feet and yelling themselves hoarse before the first note was sounded by the Negro alto saxophonist leading the group.
A low, raspy guttural moaning sound came out of his glittering golden horn, louder even than the shouting going on beneath him, and then an amplified fender bass, drums and piano started up the rhythm behind him.
Jimmy didn't know much about jazz, but he knew that this stuff was pretty far out. They didn't seem to be playing notes at all most of the time, just bleats, wild prairie-sounding howls as a tenor man got up from a front table and joined in with the altoist.
The two of them faced each other, bending backward and blowing crazy sounds through their instruments as though they had a mind to blast each other right off the stage, while behind them the rhythm section went crazy with a thundering, riffling beat of complex rhythms established by bass, piano, drums and cymbals.
The whole place seemed to rock with sound. "Yeah man, go!" someone yelled. Hands began to clap in unison. "Solid, man!"
The music wailed louder and even wilder, somewhere between a twist and a dirty boogie-something Jimmy had never seen quite the likes of before.
Out at the bar where he stood, the sounds came in clear and loud and the frenzy was just as intense.
A doll-faced blonde in a short flare skirt was sitting next to him, a young fierce-looking Negro boy beside her with his arm around her waist and his hand over her amazingly big breast, both of them rocking back and forth to the beat like they were drugged or something.
Suddenly the blonde leapt up onto the bar and began to dance. The other customers gathered around in a circle and began clapping their hands, and the blonde went crazy, kicking over drinks and doing a wild kicking and shuffling step that sent her little skirt flying out and up around her waist.
Standing directly underneath her, Jimmy could see very well.
Very well indeed.
Wild white curvy legs, and a strip of black panty, and breasts that jiggled under her blouse so that they threatened to jump out of the low neckline at any minute.
Her eyes were closed and her pretty face expressionless as she swung, shimmying and shaking in such a wildly exotic way that Jimmy found it necessary to tear his eyes away finally, even before the music stopped.
The din was incredible. He began rocking himself, wishing Matty were with him, wishing any chick were with him right now. He emptied his wine glass and grabbed another at random and emptied that, and when he looked back at the bar he saw hands reaching up and grabbing at the girl, feeling her legs, dragging her down off the bar into the massed customers below. He caught sight of her blonde head hobbling among them, a bare leg, a ripped blouse and then an exposed breast, and then the fight started.
Somebody threw a beer mug into the bar mirror; somebody else screamed, and suddenly he was being thrown backward toward the door as fists started flying and curses and oaths replaced the cheering and clapping.
Knocked to his hands and knees, he managed to crawl through the scuffle without getting trampled, making his way to the door. He got up then and dodged out side, just as a full beer bottle exploded against it beside him.
In the distance he could hear police sirens. He trotted quickly down the street, turned a corner and ran up an alley joining into another street, this one more peaceful and quiet, and only then did he slow down to a walk.
What a crazy city, he thought, laughing to himself. There were going to be a lot of broken heads back there before the police broke it up. He was damn glad he had gotten out of there in one piece.
One more drink and he might have joined in.
But he wanted another drink, he realized. The night was young yet; he wanted to see people having fun, to be with them, to drink himself off his feet it he felt like it.
Remembering the party at Matty's house out on North Beach, he circled back to where the bus had left him off before.
A party was just what he wanted now.
Just the ticket.
A party, and Matty. The wine seemed to thicken the blood in his veins as he thought about her, waiting for the bus. There was something he wanted from Matty, something she had refused to give to him earlier.
Something he'd claim for himself tonight.
North Beach coffee houses were boiling forth their contents when he got there, hipsters and beatniks and in-between-niks spilling out and wandering through the streets holding jugs of wine and cool looking chicks, laughing and yelling and inviting each other to parties or informing each other where there were parties going which could be crashed.
It was quite a scene; an intenser, purer form of the one he had just left.
Jimmy picked his way through the streets, making his way toward Matty's pad near the far end of the Beach.
When he got there the house was blazing with light and activity, upstairs and down. Beat and hippish types were scattered around the yard even, some sitting with their chicks on the crooked front steps leading up to the front door, which was wide open, giving a view of the interior and more people milling around inside. Jazz sounds from a phonograph playing at full volume spilled out into the night, cool West Coast sounds, sensuous to the ear and subtly polyrhythmic but always swinging.
Informality was the style. He hardly even got any glances as he made his way through the yard and around back, stumbling over some couples lying down in darkness under trees, petting and necking or just sitting and smoking, listening to the music.
It looked like one hell of an orgy was going on.
A swinger.
It was a hassle getting up the back stairs, with people on the steps and landing, but he made it, weaving his way through, already excited at the prospect of seeing Matty again. He might have competition, he realized-but he felt up to that. He'd see to it she wanted him before the evening was over.
The kitchen seemed full of people too. Only they weren't drinking.
They were smoking.
Draped around the floor, the table, the chairs, they were sitting or lying down or leaning against the wall, passing a long thin homemade looking cigarette around.
Jimmy realized at once that it must be marijuana.
He had never smoked any, but he had seen a joint once at school, and the guy had offered him a drag but he hadn't taken any.
Pot, they called it. The smell of it filled the room; an odor dry and sweet, something like burning leaves. It was so thick it almost choked him when he walked in.
"Hi man," somebody said, looking up at him. A heavyset guy wearing no shirt, propped up against the refrigerator and smoking. "What's happening?"
"Matty-where is she?"
The cat frowned. "Who?"
"You mean Matilda Jennings, the girl who keeps this pad?" a redheaded chick in slacks and halter asked.
Jimmy nodded. "Yeah, that's her-isn't this her party?
The girl laughed, her breasts shaking. "Who knows by now, baby! But you're cute. Why don't you come over here and smoke a little pot with me?"
"No thanks," Jimmy said.
Disappointed, she lost interest and turned away to talk to another guy. Jimmy pushed through the kitchen into the living room area, and there the scene was even stranger. Only one lamp was lighted, at the far end of the studio couch, and that had a red bulb in it which under the green shade gave off an eerie, murky muddish light that made all objects appear ghostly.
But the room was not filled with ghosts.
It was filled with couples, lying about on the floor and smoking. Not all of them, of course.
Some of them were much too busy for things like smoking.
But the ones who were smoking were watching, and the ones who weren't smoking were doing.
A nice division of labor if there ever was one.
The non-smokers occupied the middle space on the floor. The smokers, barely discernible by the lighted tips of their marijuana joints, were seated along the couch and on cushions placed against the wall.
Nobody seemed interested in his intrusion. Everyone seemed completely stoned, dream-like spectators of a live action show going on in the middle of the floor.
There were two couples there. They were providing a hell of a good show for the spectators, the kind of show you usually expect to see only on film, at a men's smoker or a very, very private kind of party. This was hardly a private party, since he had been able to walk right in, but that fact didn't seem to inhibit the two couples on the floor.
Not a bit.
They were stripped, naked, nude, unclothed, and in the reddish light their bodies looked demonic, like a scene from Dante's popular poem. Satyrs and nymphs, sporting in the dusky glen of a secret wood cave by the light of the dying embers of a fire. Something like that. The living room, at any rate, was obviously no longer just a living room.
Jimmy sat down on an empty cushion, forgetting for the moment his search for Matty. If this was the kind of party it was going to be, he might as well dig some of it, since nobody seemed to object to his presence.
The couples on the floor weren't making love. Not yet. But they were going through a lot of interesting things, drawing that out to a point where it became hard to understand how they could restrain themselves. His eyes fell on the nearest pair, fascinated, and when somebody, a girl next to him against the wall, passed him a joint, he took it automatically, without thinking.
Pot. He didn't know much about it except what he had heard. He held it a second, wondering if he should. But they might take it as an offense if he didn't, so he put it to his lips and drew on it the way he had seen the others in the kitchen doing, drawing the smoke straight down along with air, like breathing.
He was surprised to find the taste not at all unpleasant. He held it down a few seconds and then let it out slowly, passing it over to a guy squatting with his chick on his right. The guy took it and Jimmy's eyes returned to the scene in front of him.
The girl on the floor had an amazing body; the biggest set of boobs he had ever seen, a narrow waist and a tremendous set of muscles. She was kneeling on all fours beside a guy whose head would bob up and kiss first one breast, then the other. Then she would lean down and smother his face with those gigantic boobs, rolling them around, and rise again, and the process would be repeated. They too must have been stoned, because their motions seemed to have a slow deliberateness, as if they were drugged.
Jimmy began to feel the effects of the pot as he watched. A tightening feeling in the pit of his stomach; an intensified perception of everything, as though he were detached from himself somehow. Each little sound, a breath, a cough, a groan, the scuffle of feet, a girl's moan, became clear and distinct like a physical sensation against his tightening ear drums. The loud music below pulsed against the floor, seeming to add life to it. The floor moved under him.
The joint came around again and he took another, deep drag this time.
Suddenly he felt like stone, unable to move. But it was a pleasant sensation because there was no need to move, realty.
Why move when you could just sit in one place forever and watch interesting things going on?
He watched. He was the aloof observer of all things, and all things became equally interesting.
Fascinating.
Big things and little things. The girl's boobs were big things, and they were very interesting indeed. He touched and caressed them with his eyes, experienced a warm glowing excitement as he identified with the guy. He realized now that the rhythm of their movements was timed to the beat of the music coming from below.
Crazy.
He felt great, high, stoned; involved in everything and detached from everything at the same time. This was a weird, eerie experience and he was a little afraid of it, but this was a great big kick just the same.
The girl with the amazing breast development had moved now, and her face dipped down to kiss the guy she was with.
Jimmy felt very excited by all this.
Naturally.
He wished Matty were with him, but Matty wasn't with him, so he forgot the wish as soon as he had wished it.
Now the lovers were really grooving, swinging into fast and furious action as the music picked up tempo. Both on the floor now, curled up together like two bugs in a rug.
They looked funny. Jimmy wanted to laugh. They looked funny but they also made him want a girl, any girl. His eyes switched then to the other couple, to see what they were up to.
They were up to plenty. They had been busy all the time Jimmy had been watching the first pair, and now they had reached the stage of complete stimulation. This girl was bigger bodied, like a big, sleek jungle cat, and Jimmy noticed for the first time in the funny light that she was a Negress. Light-skinner, big-hipped and busty, beautiful.
The guy with her was white, or at least seemed to be. He was chunky, big-muscled, with the build of a weight-lifter.
The Negro girl seemed to appreciate him greatly. She was showing her appreciation by caressing him with her lips, her eyes closed and a dreamy expression on her face.
But he soon tired of that. Impatiently, he moved away from her, and pushed her forward onto her hands and knees, the way the other girl had been at first, and Jimmy thought they would do the same thing.
But they didn't. Hercules had reverse ideas about making love to his tawny goddess.
Almost knocking her over, he began at a fantastic rhythm, becoming a blur before Jimmy's eyes. In fact, everything was becoming a blur before Jimmy's eyes, and he began to wonder if all this was really happening to him.
Was this the pot?
Or was this really real, and if it was really real, why was he wondering if it was real?
Everything seemed suddenly confused, uncertain. He had to get out of this room, but it seemed to take a monumental effort just to get up. He tried several times, getting little more than a muscled twitch in his legs for all his efforts.
This was crazy, insane. He didn't want to smoke any more pot, but when another joint came around his way again, he did. The thought occurred to him that he was being silly about this; he was in a room where a perfectly fine orgy was going on, so why should he worry about little things like getting to his feet?
He stopped worrying about them and got to his feet, weaving his way out of the room into the kitchen again. The bright light hurt his eyes, so he backed away back into the living room and tried the bedroom instead.
That was a mistake. The bedroom also was occupied. Two lovers were on the bed that he and Matty had slept on together, making love in a very interesting fashion. He stood watching them with great interest until one of them raised his head and said: "Want to join us, dearie?"
Disgusted, he backed out, through the living room again and into the kitchen, where nobody paid any attention to him at all.
Suddenly he felt very lonely and in need of companionship. He remembered what he had come out here for-to find Matty, of course-and looking around and not finding her, he went through the couples sprawled on the floor, teetering this way and that as he walked, his feet seeming to bounce as though they had springs in them. Giddy, he began laughing to himself as he walked through the door and floated down the outside stairs.
The world had turned crazy. Everything seemed to have changed, or else he had changed, or else nothing had changed and he was only imagining things. He couldn't figure out this strange state of mind he seemed to be in where everything was alternately real and an illusion.
Strange.
Weird.
He had trouble concentrating on what he was doing, and several times he got hung up just staring at some ridiculous object-his foot on a stair; a spot on the wall; the top of a tree in the distance. And then he would sort of come to and remember that he was looking for Matty.
Of course.
That was what he was doing here, wasn't it?
Right! Resolutely, he marched through the side yard and around to the front entrance of the house, following the sounds of the music from the phonograph inside. For some reason he identified those sounds with her, feeling that as they grew louder and louder he was coming nearer and nearer to the object of his now intense desire.
Matilda.
Silly. He had been singing without realizing it Now he was climbing another pair of stairs, the front stairs. He knew this because there were less of them. He was going in to some strange place he had never been before, perhaps to see things he had never seen before.
Perhaps to see Matty, Matilda....
Inside in a narrow hallway he shouted at the top of his lungs: "Has anyone seen Matilda?"
Nobody answered him in the crowded room he entered, but he got a lot of strange looks.
The music was blasting in here, loud loud jazz, ear-splitting bop sounds now, and for several minutes he thought he was really going crazy. He grabbed hold of a wall and held on for dear life, the room spinning around him.
But it stopped and finally he was able to control himself. He realized that he was simply high on marijuana, which thought brought him down, back to reality, almost. Suddenly very self-conscious, feeling like he had made a fool of himself, he slithered snake-like along the wall toward the nearest doorway.
He almost tripped over a couple on the floor.
"Excuse me," he said, stepping back. "Have either of you seen Matty?"
The girl looked up over the guy's shoulder and laughed.
"Matty? Sure, honey, she's in there. But you don't want Matty, do you? Jerry will be through in a few minutes and then you can have me. I like you baby."
The guy with her didn't even seem to notice the conversation, but kept right on doing what he was doing.
"Maybe later," Jimmy said, and stepped over them and through the doorway into the next room.
A real nice offer, he thought to himself as he went in. Such courteous people.
The next room was pitch black. Thick curtains separated it from the living room, and once he had fought his way through these he was in almost total darkness. It was as though he had stepped into some kind of a tomb.
But there were live bodies in there with him. He could tell by the heavy breathing going on and the sound of bed springs complaining in the darkness.
He groped along a wall until his knees struck what seemed to be the foot of a bed. Cautiously, he reached out to make sure, and his fingers contacted a naked foot.
A girl's foot.
He didn't know he knew, except that it was a very small, delicately formed foot, like a child's, and he could not quite picture any children being at this party.
Not unless they happened to be very advanced children.
Which was just possible.
Anything seemed possible here, for that matter anything and everything-so he decided that the only thing to do under the circumstances was to act natural.
Naturally curious, he groped his way along the edge of the bed until he ran into the wall, where he found a light fixture.
He turned it on.
The light wasn't red this time, it was a pale blue-green, and it didn't give off a hell of a lot of illumination from the small wattage bulb.
But it gave enough. The shade around it cast a green-blue circle of light over the bed, leaving him in semi-darkness so that he could view the bed's occupants without having them see him. Unplanned as it was, this fact turned out to be very fortunate.
He had found Matilda at last.
Matilda was making love on the bed, or being made love to-it was hard to tell which. And that wasn't very important, really.
Not important at all.
Matilda was with another girl.
Her sleek slim body was against this other girl like the sticker on a Christmas present, not to be opened till New Year's. The other girl had what could have been blonde hair, which now looked like green hair, closecropped in a butch cut around her pretty little head. She had a sexy body, like Matty's; bigger breasts and wider hips, but otherwise much the same.
Like two peas in a pod, Jimmy thought. Funny, Only Jimmy wasn't laughing. His surprise turned into a sickened, nauseous feeling as he watched. Watching seemed to be his role this evening, and being watched seemed to be everybody else's. All the world was a stage and he was its audience.
They didn't even look up, good little Thespians that they were, but continued to huff and to puff.
"We have an audience," the blonde murmured sexily, but this was merely a Shakespearian aside, and the audience, being beyond the footlights, didn't figure in on the action.
This was a play filled with action. His intrusion seemed to spur Matilda on to greater bits of emoting, for that matter. She kissed her lover's sizable breasts like a monkey discovering a lovely bunch of cocoanuts. That was about the size of them. Her lips moved sensuously, and Jimmy had the feeling that she was merely doing a repeat scene of an act they had already rehearsed before his arrival.
If so, they swung into the real performance like experienced old troupers.
They hugged and they kissed, mouth to mouth, breast to breast, mouth to breast....
He felt like running away, but he stood transfixed to the spot, his hands againt the wall like nails had been driven into them.
God, he thought.
But everything fell into place now. The whole bit: her reluctance to go with him the way a normal boy and girl would. Her allusion to not being "straight." Stupid, he had been, not to catch them.
She was a Lesbian. A Thespian Lesbian, a girl whose mouth watered more at the sight of female flesh than at male.
God!
Her kisses trailed over the curvy blonde's lean, luscious body. Said blonde proceeded to turn and holler and generally to go crazy, her vocal chords articulating love-cries that sounded like urgent pleas ... "Please, please, please!"
And Matilda did her damndest to please. And she was succeeding. Eminently succeeding. The blonde was as ready as an about-to-explode bombshell.
Just as Jimmy was wondering what on earth Matilda could be getting out of such a thing, there was a flurry of lovely limbs on the bed, a ripple of smooth flesh as the blonde moved around and Matty moved around, so that eventually he knew the answer.
Jimmy felt sick. Excited, but sick. Sickly excited or excitedly sick-whichever way you put it, he felt at once highly stimulated and highly disturbed. The sight of their beautiful bodies was as exciting a thing as could be seen, but the sight of what they were doing to each other was, in a word, nauseating.
But he had to watch, and he did-right up to the conclusion of the play.
Everything added up now.
Everything was clear.
He doused the light just as he heard their cries of completion, and then he floated out of the room on wings of insanity, looking for he didn't know what.
CHAPTER TEN
HE DIDN'T FIND ANYTHING.
To find something, you have to know what it is you looking for, and Jimmy now knew less than when he had started out on the road just what that thing was.
Something.
What?
Kicks, maybe. ATI kinds of experiences; experiences that were different from any he had had before. That might have been it, to begin with, but somehow in the process of having them the idea lost its meaning, and now he wasn't even sure that that was it. For one thing, the people Matty knew seemed to be having kicks all the time, and the longer he stayed there the less surprised he was by them, Things that were at first very exciting became eventually almost commonplace-people dropping in at all kinds of odd hours, to talk, to drink, to smoke a joint, to listen to records or to go into a bedroom and play.
It was all very strange to him until he began to realize that this was all very normal to them. Not that this wasn't fun-he had his kicks, too, with more than one chick who spied him and promptly had eyes for him.
He did a lot of things during the next week at Matty's. He forgot about getting a job, or a gig, as they called it. There was always something to eat in the pantry, a scrap of bread or some leftover slices of pizza or part of a chicken Matty had stolen from the restaurant she worked in. There was always some wine somebody had left from the night before, or a few roaches of marijuana left in ashtrays to get high on. And Matty didn't seem to complain about his extended stay there, so why work?
She seemed to like him, in fact. And now that he knew she was a full-fl-edged Lesbian, she intrigued him.
After his initial disgust at the discovery, he forgot about that as far as doing a lot of conscious thinking about it was concerned, and he learned a lot from her.
They talked a lot. She told him about things he had never thought about before-things like modern art, poetry, way-out jazz music and musicians, even philosophy. A lot of it he didn't understand and a good deal of it he wasn't very interested in, but she managed to get him interrested in a lot more things than he might otherwise have been, and it was fun listening to her talk.
He liked her.
A lot.
This fact was all the more confusing to him, considering what he knew about her.
How could you like a Lesbian? He had always thought of them as being funny, objects of ridicule or scorn.
He hated them but he learned to tolerate them when they came around. A lot of her friends seemed to be that way. He'd just take off or sit silently in a corner, getting stoned or sipping wine or drinking espresso.
Lesbians, weirdos-he got to see them all. A real human circus, passing before his eyes.
Some of the stuff he saw going on nobody back home would believe if he told them. But he had no idea whether or not he was ever going home again anyway, so he didn't think about telling anyone. If you dug a thing, you didn't have to do a lot of talking about it.
He dug Matty. That was his hang-up, he began to realize. She should have disgusted him, but when he was alone with her he dug her, liked being around her, liked listening to her voice and liked lying in bed with her and letting her stroke him.
That was pretty nutty.
Sometimes he wondered if he was flipping, going along with a bit like that. Maybe he was.
But, the hell, he couldn't figure out his next move, so there he was, all hung-up on a chick who preferred little girls to little boys. Espresso and talk and wine and turning on and more talk-the whole bit.
The night he got into bed with a girl named Rosie who lived on the next street over in a tiny pad with her sister. Rosie was nineteen and her sister was twenty-three and worked nights in a bakery. When she came home that morning and found him in bed with her kid sister, instead of kicking him out of the house she promptly took off her clothes and climbed into bed with them, and Jimmy spent all that morning with two chicks.
That was a kick.
Rosie was a redheaded athletically built girl with a hard firm body and her sister was a big built-for-comfort brunette who couldn't find a bra big enough for her, and between the two of them Jimmy was busier than an amateur Russian track star in training for a meet in the States.
"You be good to my little sister," big sister would admonish, watching while Jimmy did his damndest to be good to the little filly, and then big sister would do things with her hands and mouth that made it impossible not to be good for Rosie.
Thus they formed a three-ring circus.
Fun and games. But all play and no work makes Jack a very tired boy. Jimmy, returning to Matty's was almost glad his roommate was the way she was.
Almost.
But almost doesn't count. Matty did everything for him a girl can do except the one thing he wanted her to do, and the situation became more and more frustrating.
Agonizing, in fact.
And at times, downright painful. A couple of times he came home from a foray around Chinatown or lower Market Street or a jaunt along Fisherman's Wharf to find her bedded but not asleep with another girl, giving her all in the cause of true love. She let Jimmy watch, but that was all. He'd light up a joint and get sick and disgusted and stoned as he watched, an exquisite form of self-torture which became a habit.
Smoking the weed was like that-it could make you lose active interest eventually. Jimmy explored the secrets of pot one by one, until it held none for him.
His conversations with Matty became a ritual too, always the same.
"I like you, Matty. Why don't we...."
"No. Anything but that."
"God, haven't you ever even tried that?"
"I told you I have. I just don't like that, that's all-that makes me sick to my stomach!"
"Maybe not this time."
"Yes."
"How do you know?"
"Because that always does, that's how. If you want to stay here, Jimmy, you've got to stop asking me for that. What's wrong with the other chicks you've been sleeping with?"
"Nothing," he said glumly. "I just don't feel the same way about them, is all."
"I'm touched. But I just can't help you that way. Don't you have a steady girl back home?"
He evaded that question, wondering if he did or not. He hadn't bothered to try the number Myra had given him. despite his resolution to do just that.
By now, she had probably given up anyway and gone on back to Coram.
To kill time, he stripped the Harley down, working Jn the shed with tools borrowed from a guy who built hot rods, cleaning and checking each part, greasing it, reassembling them again and then waxing the paint and chrome until the machine gleamed like new in the afternoon sunlight.
It was in perfect working order by the time he was done. The only problem was, he couldn't make up his mind to leave.
This led him eventually into a state of depression. He would wander around the city, glum-faced, aimlessly walking while he stewed in his own juices. Normally cheerful by nature, being depressed was a new thing to him, and he blamed it on the marijuana he had been smoking. A good part of the time his brain seemed dull, slowed down, and he lacked the energy to do much of anything.
But it wasn't pot, he secretly knew. It was her.
She was driving him crazy.
Another week of that and he was just about going out of his head. He lost all interest in other chicks, rejecting their offers of a night in bed. Things became so bad he began to lose any physical desire at all.
This worried him. That would worry any male, and especially him, being only seventeen. Could pot do this to you, too? He wondered. He wished he were eighteen so that he could go and enlist in the navy and forget the whole thing, break out of this mental bind he was in. He even thought of going down to the enlistment place and lying about his age, but somehow he didn't even have the will to carry such a simple plan through. They would want proof or something that he was eighteen, and he didn't have any.
And didn't care.
He thought about all the things he had seen along the road, the guys he had met and the chicks he had had, and one day out of sheer desperation he talked Matty into lending him ten bucks and went out to get roaring drunk.
He started in the afternoon, drinking beer in a little place down near the wharf. Some idle dock hands were in there, playing the bowling machine. Jimmy challenged them for beers and won six straight before they gave up. Six tall cold bottles of beer in mid-afternoon and he was on his way.
He walked stiffly out into the blazing late afternoon sun, wearing his Air Force surplus sunglasses, and began the long climb uphill to find another place to drink in a different section.
A fancy place, he thought. No more beat hangouts, seedy bars smelling of urine and sweat. He had spent less than a dollar of the ten, winning all those beers, and had a head start on a good high already.
The bar he chose was a cocktail lounge in the uptown section, near an expensive and fashionable hotel. His leather jacket open, soiled tee shirt underneath hanging out, he sauntered in, went up to the fancy walnut bar and eased a hip onto a plush-bottomed, high-backed stool.
The bartender looked like a character from an English film, cropped mustache, gray hair and all. He looked at Jimmy and his nose wrinkled slightly, as though he had smelled something bad.
"You must have made a mistake, young man," he said, peering down his nose. "One is required to wear a jacket in here."
"I'm wearing one," Jimmy said belligerently
"I mean a suit jacket. And tie."
"Okay, man," he said, placing his hands on the bar and slurring his words deliberately, the way Ronnie would have, "like lend me yours, huh?" And he slowly reached out and made as if to grab the man's black tie.
"You'd better leave here, fellow, or I'll have to call the police."
"Call the police," Jimmy mimicked, feeling nastier by the minute. "Like I'm a customer, Jack-like serve me, huh?"
"Certainly not! We don't serve beatniks in this place!"
Jimmy stood up, raising himself to full heighth and shoving his face at the bartender's.
"You don't huh? You ever been beaten by a beatnik?" His voice sounded so nasty it surprised even him as he said it. But it felt good. A hard cold anger burned in him now; a reckless anger that knew no limits. The lousy square needed a pasting, and he was ready to give it. He caught him by the shirt-front, jerked him onto the bar, and drew his arm back to swing at the round, middle-aged kisser.
"Don't!" a female voice cried.
Jimmy held back, surprised by the noise. He hadn't seen anyone in the place, but now, looking down at the end of the bar, he saw her.
She was a knockout. A vision in platinum and black, with dark narrow glasses covering her eyes, but not her face, which was beautiful, with lavender colored lips and exquisite white teeth. Her bosom was tremendous, spilling out over the bar in two mammoth curves, a lot of the deep cleavage showing above the low cut top of the black dress.
"Don't do that," she repeated in a clear throaty voice. "The young man is right, Francis. He's a customer, so you're required to serve him."
Jimmy let go of the bartender, who fell back, his face beet red, and smoothed his wrinkled tie and shirt.
"Of course, Mrs. Devereaux," he said, nodding deferentially in her direction. "Whatever you say."
Jimmy grinned unpleasantly. "Give me a double Scotch and soda then, gramps-easy on the wash, too!"
"That's on me, Francis," the woman's cool voice said. "We'll drink it in a booth, please."
She slid off the stool and walked over to a booth away from the bar. Jimmy watched her walk with frank amazement. She seemed to be built of all curves, all moving at once, a big, magnificently built woman in her thirties, yet graceful and poised and cool as a cucumber.
He followed her over to the booth and slid in. The bartender brought them their drinks and left them alone, busying himself in the kitchen.
"Thanks, baby," Jimmy grunted, still finding Ronnie's style suited to his mean mood. "What's the pitch?"
"I want you to take me for a spin."
"Huh?"
"On your motorcycle. I want to go for a ride with you on your motorcycle. That's the pitch."
"What makes you think I got a motorcycle, lady?"
"You have a black leather jacket. That means you probably have a motorcycle."
"Zebras have stripes, too, but they've never been in jail," he sneered.
She laughed, from the breasts up.
"All right," she said; "Maybe that was the wrong approach. What I really want you to do is make love to me."
He tossed down half of his Scotch before answering that one.
"Yeah? Why?"
She pinked just slightly, taking off her sunglasses and showing him a beautiful set of green eyes to go with the platinum hair.
"Because you look strong and-capable. Like a tough motorcycle kid. Am I right?"
"Sure. I'm hell on wheels. But-a broad like you, you could get any man to tumble you."
She took a deep breath, her fantastic breasts moving with it, and when she spoke her voice was pure sex: "I don't want anybody, I want you. I'll pay you anything you want."
"How much is anything?" he said cautiously, thinking she was kidding him along.
She opened her purse beneath the table, took something out and dropped it in front of him.
He looked at it. Twice. The second time, it was still a hundred dollar bill. He picked it up and felt it, rubbed it between his fingers.
The 100 didn't rub off.
"Okay," he breathed, tucking it in his jacekt pocket before it flew away from him. "Where?"
"Across the street, the hotel. I have a suite there."
Jimmy downed the rest of his Scotch and got up. This was fantastic, but with a C-note in his pocket he wasn't about to ask questions. "Let's go, lady."
She got out of the booth, showing him enough leg to make his mouth water.
"My name's Marion," she said, tucking her arm in his as they left. "Marion Keyes. I've just been divorced and I haven't had any love in a week. I'm starved for some; that's why I'm paying you."
"Mine's Jimmy."
"Good. I like the name. And the looks. Have you ever thought of being a gigolo, Jimmy?" He shook his head.
"You ought to. You're extremely good looking."
He didn't say anything till they crossed the street, entered the plush lobby of her hotel and were going up in the elevator.
"Nice joint," he commented.
"It's adequate."
They got off at the fifth floor and walked through a knee-deep carpet down the hall to her suite. She unlocked the door and they went in.
It was something out of a Hollywood movie. Jimmy had been inside hotels before, but never one as luxurious as this. The furnishings were all tastefully modern, the carpets deep, the walls soundproofed so that you couldn't have heard a car pass below without the windows open. Abstract paintings hung from the walls and the living room had a pull-out bed which Marion promptly went over to and pulled out from the wall.
"Will you have a drink?" she said.
"Sure. I'll make my own."
"Good. I won't be long. Relax and enjoy yourself. There's a stereo over there and plenty of cigarettes in the silver box on that stand."
"I'll make out."
"I'm sure you Will," she smiled. But then her face turned serious. "One thing, Jimmy-you've got to be good."
"No sweat," he said sarcastically.
"I mean good the way I want you good. You have to do what I tell you."
He frowned, pouring himself some Scotch in a crystal tumbler.
"So okay. So what's the hang-up?"
Her face looked a little worried as she studied him, but then she smiled, turned and disappeared off into a bedroom.
Jimmy took off his sunglasses, sat down with his drink on the ssofa next to the stereo, and turned it on. Softly muted cocktail music came on in a few seconds.
Cocktails for two, he thought. A crazy broad with a lot of money to blow, and him.
He wondered what her bit was.
He didn't have to wait long to find out. He was halfway through his drink, smoking a gold-tipped imported cigarette when she came back into the room.
Jimmy gaped.
The outfit she was wearing would have been ridiculous on a lot of women, but somehow it wasn't on her. It was a baby-doll kind of thing, the type of nightie an eight-year-old girl might wear, full of ribbons and ruffles and frills. Pale pink, practically transparent, so you could see all the monumental sights underneath. It barely came down over her hips, and she had the most absolutely fantastic legs he had ever seen on any woman, real or in a picture.
Perfect legs.
Perfect legs and perfect breasts. Perfect body.
But it wasn't the nightie, with all its long blue pastel ribbons and pink chiffon ruffles, that made him gape. It wasn't the way she had changed her hairdo to that of a girl, with a big ribbon and bow around it. her beautiful face lipstickless now and devoid of make-up, that made him stare.
It wasn't the perfect legs and breasts and body that made him flip, either.
It was the whip in her hand.
Jimmy knew that kind of whip. The kind certain parents who had never heard of Freud or Dr. Spock occasionally kept around to use on their kids.
A cat-o-nine-tails, it was called.
Jimmy's old man had used one on him a couple of times, when he was small and had done some real bad things.
So that was her bit, he thought, continuing to smoke now as she stood posing in front of him, letting his eyes run up and down the length of her amazing physique. Baby-Doll with a cat-o-nine-tails. A six foot stacked platinum blonde with a body out of a Hollywood movie advertisement, pretending to be an eight-year-old waiting for daddy-o to punish her for being a bad girl.
And he thought he had been living among weirdos!
Even her voice seemed to change.
"Do you like me, Jimmy darling?" she said in a thin, high, sugar sweet voice that sounded like innocence itself.
"Yeah," he answered, a little hoarsely.
Hell, he would have liked that in a burlap bag.
"I've been a bad girl though," she said, frowning and wrinkling up her nose as though she were going to burst into child's tears. "You have to whip me, I've been a bad, bad girl!"
She tossed him the whip. He caught it in his hand, examined it as he crushed out his butt.
It was a thick piece of well-oiled, pliant leather, about three feet in length and as many inches wide, solid about halfway down and then sliced up into strips from there on, about eight or ten of them.
That would hurt like the blazes.
She knelt to the floor in front of him, real tears coming to her eyes now.
"Are-are you going to hit me, Jimmy?"
Sure, he was going to hit her. For a hundred dollars he'd throw her out the window if she wanted him to.
He got up and took off his jacket. Her body quivered as she watched him.
Then he went to her. The beautiful curve of her back and butoocks, milk-white under the transparent material, were directly under him as she bent forward, making of her body a pliant bow of soft female flesh.
Beautiful.
Perfect.
He raised the cat and swung it down, aiming carefully.
Slap!
It sounded like a shot. She jerked spastically, biting her lips, but she didn't scream. He swung again, harder. Slap!
Again and again, perversely enjoying this now, enjoying the nice red stripes it made across her flawless white flesh, the whiny screams issuing from her beautiful throat....
Enjoying the hell out of this.
He reached down and tore the nightie off her back, ripped it up the middle, halving it, to get directly at the smooth flesh underneath. Every muscle in her beautiful body was quivering now. Sobs racked her throat and tears of real pain spilled from her eyes as she bit her lips till they bled.
He swung.
He swung and swung and swung.
Again and again and again, all up and down her body, slapping once at the back of her head so that she sprawled forward on the floor, hitting her with all his might until her back and buttocks and legs were beet red.
Then he kicked her, making her turn over.
And began again on the other side.
She was getting more than she had bargained for. Her screams were real ones now, not fake, but the windows were closed and they never got beyond the walls of the room.
He lashed at her big spreading breasts.
Again.
He stood by her, whipping again and again, mercilessly.
Then her waist. Legs.
Perfectly perfect legs. He made a red and white zebra out of her marvelous body. She screamed so loud he felt his eardrums would crack, but still he didn't stop.
She wanted this.
She was getting this.
Sweat dripped from his forehead and face, soaked his T-shirt, ran down his arms.
When his arm turned to lead, he stopped, dropping to his knees, exhausted.
He looked at her. That beautiful white body was now covered with marks, ripe red welts that would later turn to bruises, dark and ugly, but not so serious that a week in bed wouldn't recover her.
That was going to be a damned painful week though.
Her eyes were closed and she was unconscious, knocked out from the pain. His whole arm and shoulder hurt. He got to his feet, stumbled to the bar and got a drink from the Scotch bottle, grabbing it by the neck and tilting his head back and pouring.
Then he started laughing. Crazy, hysterical laughter. She had wanted this, he realized. She had wanted to be beaten senseless like that.
Her groans as she came to were groans of pain, but also groans of pleasure.
Her pleasure.
But now was the time for him to have his pleasure. Quickly he undid his belt and got out of his boots and pants and shirt.
In no time at all he was undressed. Undressed and ready.
She saw him, her eyes grew wide as he approached her where she lay in the middle of the rug, and the crying began once more.
"No, no; you hurt me too much, too much!"
He paid no attention. When she tried to stop him with her knee he banged his fist so hard into her he thought he felt bone. Her face went white as a sheet.
She didn't offer any resistance then.
She hadn't any left.
He took her quick, with all his force. He saw her try to double up, but that was useless.
"Now, babydoll," he said through gritted teeth, "I'm going to show you what I'm for."
Which was exactly what he did.
He demonstrated for a good long time, and each time when she seemed to be on the verge of slipping away from consciousness, he stopped, waited until the glassiness left her eyes, then started again.
On and on.
She began to babble, to spit, to froth at the mouth like a damned idiot. He laughed in her face, spit on her, said the most awful things to her he could think of.
On and on he went, till the walls of the room seemed to explode outward and the ceiling come crashing down and the whole damn world blew apart.
Then that was over.
For a long time he lay there, spent, without moving.
Finally he got up, gathered his clothes. Through the big windows he could see it had turned dark outside now. Nighttime had fallen.
The bathroom of her suite was big, luxurious, built for comfort. He took his time in it, helping himself to whatever he wanted, taking a long hot soaking bath in her gigantic sunken bathtub and when he grew tired of that, getting under the shower and torturing his flesh with a driving cold needle spray.
By the time he was done, he felt good.
Very good.
A man again. He got into his clothes and left the bathroom.
She was sitting on the floor now, squatting, her legs folded under her and her head drooping down toward those magnificent breasts. She was crying softly to herself, holding her mistreated breasts in her arms as if to comfort them.
"You asked for that," he said, looking down at her.
She didn't look up.
"Yes, I asked for that," she said softly. "You were bound to pick up the wrong guy sooner or later."
"I know."
"I'm leaving now."
"Don't. Stay here. Stay with me. I need somebody like you. I've got money. Stay."
"The hell, I got to go." He stopped, picking up the cat-o-nine-tails. "But I'll take this with me. To remember you by."
And then he left.
Downstairs, at the main desk, he had the hundred dollar bill broken up into small ones. The clerk gave him a funny look, but he ignored it.
After that he went out to the streets to find a nice quiet place to get very drunk in.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
He was still drunk the next day when he returned to the pad he was sharing with Matty.
Matty wasn't home from work yet, so he stumbled around the kitchen, making himself coffee.
He drank three cups of the black, brackish liquid, pacing up and down the tiny kitchen, and then he sat down in a chair, put his booted feet up on the table and propped the chair back against the wall. The rolled-up cat-a-ninetails made a big lump in the pocket of his leather jacket.
He took it out, laying it across his lap, and then he leaned his head back against the wall and dozed off.
He had a dream. A violent dream. He was riding his motorcycle, going at a fantastic rate of speed up a narrow dirt road.
A mountain road. The road was full of ruts and studded with fallen rocks. The rocks and the ruts almost threw him as he zigzagged through them. They tried to jerk the handlebars out of his grip, but somehow, through desperate effort, he managed to hold on. It amazed him to be going at such a terrific speed up such a steep mountain, but he had no control over the speed of his machine. All he could do was hold on and fight the bucking front wheel. One moment of weakness and he would go over the edge, plunging down and down into the deep black chasm below.
He sweated freely with the terrible struggle.
At last he could see the last ridge, the peak of the mountain ahead of him. The sun was coming up just over its edge, blinding his eyes, making the struggle even more difficult. Somehow he had to make that last stretch, even though he had no idea what was on the other side of the mountain. He might go spinning off into empty space, or plunge like a blazing meteorite into the sea. but whatever happened he just had to make it.
Suddenly a huge boulder loomed up out of nowhere. He screamed, swerving the machine violently....
And that was all. He woke up, the sun streaming directly into his eyes through the open kitchen window.
He heard the sound of footsteps coming up the back stairs, and then Matty opening the back door.
She had a bag of groceries in her arm, which she promptly sat on the table. Only then did she see him sitting there. "Hello! God, you scared me. You look awful. Where have you been, baby-out saucing it up again?"
He grunted, ungluing his tongue from the roof of his mouth, and brought the front chair legs down to the floor again.
He reached into his pocket, took out some crumpled bills and tossed them onto the table next to the bag of groceries.
"What's that for?" she said, picking them up and examining them. Two tens and a five. "Your rich uncle die or something?"
"No, I worked for it. That's about what I owe you, isn't it?"
"Hey, man-you don't owe me anything."
"Yes I do. That ought to pay the rent for the time I've been here. And now you owe me something!"
"What?"
"Something I've wanted all along but you wouldn't give."
"Oh come on! Let's not go through all that again-not at this hour, for God's sake!"
He shrugged, stretching his sore muscles.
"This hour's as good as any. Beside, I'm leaving today. It's my last chance to collect."
She turned her pretty face into a self-satisfied smirk.
"Well I guess you're out of luck then, man, because Matty's not giving any of that out to any male stud."
He stood up slowly, gripping the whip in his hand.
"Oh yes you are-and to this one right here."
For the first time she looked a little frightened.
"Hey, have you gone crazy or something?"
"Crazy like a fox. You've been getting a great big kick out of teasing me all this time. Now it's my turn."
He began moving around the table. She saw the whip, and her eyes widened a little.
"Jimmy-no!"
He moved toward her.
She turned suddenly and ran. But her sense of direction was wrong.
She ran toward instead of away from the bedroom. He caught her there. He caught her by the waist and kissed her pert little mouth crushingly. She writhed in his arms and clawed at him with her nails, but he felt nothing. Her body seemed fragile, like he could break every bone in it if he wanted to.
But he let her go suddenly.
"Strip!"
"Jimmy," she said, her voice scared now, "be nice and I'll...."
He caught her shirt front and ripped it away. Then he pinioned her in the bed, got hold of her pants zipper and ripped it down. She kicked at him, hard.
He used the whip then. He caught her and turned her across his knee, yanking down her pants, and began to whip her with it.
Not hysterically this time.
Determinedly.
She screamed and yowled, so he took the pillow and shoved it in her face and used the cat some more. Her neat little buttocks twitched and turned to flame, but pretty soon the fight went out of her. He pushed her back on the bed then and tossed the whip into a corner of the room.
She didn't move as he began taking off his clothes.
She was still motionless as he came to her, naked, ready and determined.
He wasn't rough and he wasn't tender. He was very methodical. He kissed her on the mouth, on her small breasts, ran his hands over her, trying to stimulate her in every way he knew how.
He was only partially successful.
But that was enough.
Then he began. He forced her, he pressed himself against her, slowly but urgently. Her eyes went shut and she grimaced in pain. But she didn't scream.
He had to give her credit for that-she didn't scream. And he must have hurt her quite a bit, too.
The loss of virginity usually does.
He wasn't surprised by that. She had been lying all along on that score.
She had never had a man.
He became tender then, after the initial move. She cried out once but then she said nothing, and he stroked her and kissed her and soothed her.
And made love to her.
When he was finished, she lay still. He got up and dressed.
"I hate you," she said, watching him. He laughed.
"Don't worry; you'll get over that. You're good, Matty. And you're also a nice girl. Try being one for awhile-that can be a kick, too."
He walked out of the room before she started crying. She had pride. She wouldn't want him to see that.
Out through the living room and kitchen, racing down the familiar back stairs.
Morning.
Bright morning. A new day.
The Harley's engine kicked over on the first try out in the street. Its deep-throated roar rose up to greet the sun. Then he was going, tooling down the street and up the hill, skirting the city.
He stopped at the first filling station that was open.
"Fill 'er up," he said to the sleepy-eyed attendant, and went inside to the coin phone hanging from the wall.
With luck, she might still be in San Jose, he thought as he dropped his dime in and dialed.
His luck was holding out. Her familiar voice was the one that answered the phone.
"Hello," he said. "Want to go for a ride on a motorcycle?"
