...is not quite the expression Larry Poston would have applied to his considerable PR abilities. But he'd taken on the job of rejuvenating a fishing town where there was no longer any fishing. He changed it to the kind of swinging, no-holds-barred, temporary resort that would attract the college kids. And he threw in a hootenanny for good measure. He succeeded, but the impending, small-scale war he could sense, indicated he'd bitten off more than he could chew. William and Jerrye Breedlove, in The Swinging Set, explain: "The easy atmosphere, the less-stringently-observed traditions, the transitory nature of the residents ... attract a variety of thrill-seekers ... and swingin' things do happen." But the swingin' thing that worried Larry Poston most at the moment was the knife blade that arched through the firelight and into the boy. And that started the riot, the mass scene of wild shame, the orgy that surrounded it. And the whole degraded mess was his fault....
CHAPTER ONE
He was sitting at the bar when he saw the girl. She came in unescorted and took a stool halfway down the length of the bar and ordered a martini. It was three o'clock in the afternoon, and the bar was deserted except for the two of them, and Posten watched her not only with curiosity, but with unconcealed admiration. She was something to see.
She wore her hair piled high in one of those towering coiffures that were almost, but not quite passe. It looked like a small beehive made of hammered gold, caught the glints of light from the muted fixtures overhead and give them back more richly. Beneath the hair, her face was, in profile, finely chiseled, with a high forehead and a long, slightly incurving nose. Her mouth was generous, red, and sensual, her chin firm.
Her eyes were blue and her lashes incredibly long. Her neck was long and slender and white and smooth, and so was the square of skin at the base of her throat revealed by the cut-out in the blue satin dress that hugged her figure as if it had been sprayed on. Her breasts, Poston saw, were not just large, but huge-they jutted against the blue satin as if they resented its control, as if they would like to break loose and dance. His eyes ran down the rest of her body. Slender waist. Nice, round, soft hips. Superb legs, bared halfway up the stockinged thighs by her posture on the stool. Rather large feet in blue shoes with heels like knitting needles.
The eyes of Horatio, the bartender, met those of Poston. The look that passed between them was mutually appreciative. Sex, they told each other. And-have you ever seen such boobs?
Because Poston kept a suite in the hotel, Horatio knew all about him and needed no instruction. As he mixed the martini, he made it very, very dry, and he put no tab before her. The girl had carefully been keeping her eyes off Poston, and she continued to do so as she sipped the martini. She stared at the back of the bar, as if there were something very interesting there. It seemed only an accident that her handbag, black with gold braid, slipped from her lap and crashed to the floor.
Poston, tall, lithe and rangy, was off his stool in an instant, bending and picking it up. He held it out to the girl and she took it, for a moment meeting his gaze with cool eyes as blue as her dress. Then she smiled, the generous lips parting to show perfect, white teeth. "Thank you," she said, and turned back to the bar.
A little frustrated, Poston sat down and motioned impatiently to Horatio. Horatio took his glass and refilled it. While he did, Poston scribbled on the back of the tab: Know her?
Horatio set down the glass and shook his head. Poston felt relieved. If she were a call-girl or a pickup for money, Horatio would have known that and given him a negative signal. Horatio knew that he never paid for women. He had never had to.
Poston drank half of his drink.
"I hope nothing in your handbag broke," he said at last, easing off his stool and taking the one beside the girl.
"I don't think so," she said.
There was silence in the bar.
The girl had finished the martini now. Poston signaled to Horatio. He took the glass. This time he put in no vermouth at all.
The girl sipped it. If it was too strong for her, she gave no sign. Poston tried again.
"I thought I heard something crunch in it."
"No," the girl said. "There's nothing in it that could break."
"That's good," Poston said, almost ready to admit defeat.
The girl kept him from the necessity of that.
"Wait," she said. "Yes. There was a bottle of perfume in it." She opened the bag. She fumbled in it, took out a small flagon. Poston recognized the brand, knew it was terrifically expensive. He had dealt it out lavishly on occasion.
"It's not broken," she said.
"That's good," he said. "It looks like it cost money."
"It did."
"What does it smell like?"
For the first time, she looked at him with the beginnings of a smile. "Would you like to smell it?"
"Yes."
Instead of opening the bottle, she held out her arm. "There," she said, indicating the inner crook of her elbow. "Right there."
Poston bent over and put his nose close to the satiny skin.
"It smells delicious," he said.
"Thank you," she said, and put the perfume back in her handbag. She sipped the martini.
"My name," he said, "is Larry Poston."
She said, coolly, "How do you do?"
"Aren't you going to tell me your name?"
"All right. My name is June. June Gregg."
"June Gregg. I rather like that."
"Thank you," she said. "I have a sister named April and a sister named May."
He laughed. "Your mother must have been frightened by a calendar."
She smiled. "Haven't most women at one time or another?"
That broke the ice. She had finished that martini too. Poston called for another round of drinks.
She looked at him. "You must be very rich."
He blinked. "What?"
"I said, you must be very rich. To be able to sit in a bar at this time of day and drink. Don't you work?"
He laughed. "Of course I work. It just happens that I'm working now."
"Oh?"
"Of course. I'm a PR man. Public relations. Right now I'm sitting in here dreaming up ideas for clients. This is where I get my best ideas."
"Oh. I suppose you have a great many clients?"
"More, really, than I can handle."
"Then I guess you are rich," she said.
"I'm not rich. I'm better." There was no boastfulness in his voice. "I'm good. Being good at what you do is even better than being rich. You can make a living and still pick and choose your clients."
"Do you turn many clients away?"
"About two for every one I accept."
"Then you're independent, anyway, even if you're not rich."
"Very independent," said Poston. "Always."
"That's nice," June Gregg said. "Are you rich?" Poston asked. She laughed. "Not very."
"That's expensive perfume. And you're here in a bar in the middle of a day, too."
"I'm here," she said, "because I'm away from home. And I have a room in this hotel. And nothing to do right now, really, except sit here and enjoy my drink."
"Fine," said Poston. "I mean, I'm glad you're not waiting for anybody."
"No. No, I'm not waiting for anybody ... now." He laughed. "Do you know what?"
"What?"
"I'd like to smell your arm again."
She laughed too. It was a fine, silvery sound that sent chills to chasing each other up and down Poston's spine. "All right," she said; and then her eyes flickered up and met his for a moment and what he saw there filled him with excitement. "All right. Help yourself. But that's not the only place I use the perfume."
After that, it was all downhill. One more martini, and then she came up to his suite. As he unlocked the door, with her standing very close beside him, so close that he could feel the point of one of those magnificent breasts touching his arm, he puzzled over her. She had certainly been a slow starter, but it looked as if she would be a fast finisher. He realized that, except for her name, she had told him virtually nothing about herself. Well, it didn't matter. What mattered right now was that she was here with him and that he wanted her and she seemed willing. After he had sampled her wares, he would know whether he wanted to learn anything else about her.
"Is this where you work?" she asked.
"No. No, I have an office over on Vine. This is where I live."
"Oh," she said; and when he opened the door, she went in promptly. She paused inside the threshold and said, "How nice. And original."
He had decorated the suite himself. He liked austerity in everything except women. The living room was spartanly functional. But suddenly, with her standing in the midst of it, he no longer liked it. She made it seem cold and barren.
He licked his lips. "The bedroom's not quite this austere," he said.
"Oh," she said. "I'd like to see the bedroom."
"Yes," he said. "I want you to see it." He took her hand and led her into it. He had an enormous bed. Suddenly it seemed terribly vulgar and in poor taste.
"Very nice," she said, and she tossed her handbag on the bed and turned. "He makes awfully strong martinis, doesn't he?" she said.
"Yes," said Poston.
They looked at one another for a moment, and then Poston took her in his arms and pulled her to him. He did it hard enough so that the immense cushions of her breasts flattened themselves against his chest, and he brought his mouth down on hers forcefully. He found her lips parted and waiting for him, and immediately there was the thrusting, responsive flicker of her tongue. After a second, it became more than a flicker-it sought his greedily.
Poston felt himself becoming tremendously aroused. She was, of course, perfectly aware of it, too; she could not help being so. She ground herself against him in exactly the right way. It increased the intensity of the fire flaming upward within him. His hands slipped down the blue satin of her back, over the rounded, soft mounds of ungirdled buttocks, and squeezed the yielding, delicious flesh through the exciting smoothness of the fabric.
After a long while, she pulled her mouth away. Her breath, panting, was a series of warm little spurts of air against his face. Her voice was tremulous. "I ... think you'd better unhook me." She turned her back to him.
Poston fumbled with the top hook of the dress. Then, getting himself under control, he unlatched the succession of little eyes. They came loose one by one, revealing a broadening V of smooth, ivory skin, trans-versed a third of the way down by the strap of her bra. Poston bent forward and ran his tongue down her spine, from the base of her neck to the top of her bra. She shuddered.
Then he had the dress unhooked as far as it would go, to the top rim of panties obviously transparent. Now it was up to her. He backed away and watched as she pulled the dress over her head and turned and faced him.
What he saw made him draw in a quick breath of admiration.
The bra was a fantastic thing, supporting only from underneath, each cup cut out in the center. Twin pink nipples winked nakedly at him, each hard and distended. Her breasts were so large that it seemed impossible that the tiny scrap of fabric could support them.
But when she reached behind her back and unhooked the bra and tossed it aside, he saw that, really, they supported themselves-great, white globes with tempting circles the size of silver dollars at their apexes.
He wrenched his eyes away from them and looked at the rest of her body. Through the transparent panties, he could see a reflection of the glow of her. Above the rim of the panties, the inset of the navel was like a dimple. A garter belt supported the stockings. Her legs were very long and just as superb as he had imagined them, a milky white above the stocking tops.
She did something with the garter belt and then sat down on the bed. She stripped her stockings away, first from the right leg, then from the left one. After that she wore only the panties.
Her eyes looked at him, still cool, still with a certain, strange mockery in them. "I suppose I'd better get rid of these, too."
"You won't have much use for them," Poston said thickly. "Not for the next few minutes."
"I didn't think I would," she said, with a gentle amusement, and she began to roll the filmy fabric down. He kept his eyes riveted on that part of her body. She tossed the panties after the rest of her clothes. Then she postured, hands behind her head, pelvis tipped slightly forward. "Do you like me?"
"Like you?" Poston croaked. "Like you?"
She put her hands under her breasts and lifted them in a proffering gesture. Her tongue ran along her lower lip, moistening it and making it gleam wetly. "Well, then...." she said.
It took Poston only seconds to strip away his own clothes. Her eyes measured his arousal and seemed pleased by what was revealed as his garments were tossed aside. Then Poston went to her and they stood for a moment, naked flesh against naked flesh, enjoying the feel of each other.
Then they lay down on the bed. He cradled her head in his arm and kissed her savagely; and she responded with equal vigor. Her tongue was lusty, engaging his. While they kissed, he let his hand play over her breasts. They were soft and smooth as velvet, and as he toyed with them deftly, he was aware that her hips had begun to move on the bed, her body rising and falling in a slow, squirming rhythm of love. Her own hands slipped up and down his torso caressingly, and then one of them seized him with urgency and pulled him to her.
So he slid over onto soft thighs that pressured his flanks. He lowered himself and then dropped viciously. She moaned. There was warm, exquisite tightness and complete responsiveness to him, and they moved together as if they had rehearsed this for a long time.
The springs of the bed began to sing a thin paean as their rhythm picked up, as they struck a frantic, driving cadence. She was making mewing sounds now, deep in her chest, her mouth fastened to his as if it would never come loose. He got his hands under the soft cushions of the buttocks, held them tightly, feeling pleasure mounting in him until it became unbearable. Then there was the final, single, shattering lunge and everything seeming to come apart within him-and at the same moment she twisted wildly, arching and clinging. She wrenched her mouth away and squealed. The squeal was long and thin and high, stretching out in the silence of the room like a ululation of agony.
Then it died away, and there was only the hoarse rasping of their breathing as they sank back on the mattress. They lay inert for a while. It was she who initiated the resumption. He was still one with her, and after a while she began to do things with secret muscles of her body, arousing him once more, and then, taking longer this time, it happened again....
Later, when there was no more desire in either of them, they sat on the bed with drinks. Poston looked at her curiously.
"June Gregg," he said. "You were very clever, weren't you, June?"
Her wide, blue eyes were carefully innocent.
"Why," she said, "I don't know what you mean."
Larry Poston laughed shortly.
"Oh, no, of course not. You came into that bar. You sat down close, but not too close. You accidentally dropped the handbag--on purpose. But you didn't make it easy, not too easy. You made it just tricky enough to keep me on the hook, to be convinced I'd made a conquest, that you and I were both a little special. You carried it out very carefully. What's the gimmick?"
She smiled at him. "Maybe I just wanted to be loved."
He waved a hand.
"All right. You wanted that. But there was something else, too."
"You're a very suspicious man, Mr. Poston. Very, very good in bed, but very suspicious."
"I wasn't born yesterday. I can smell a gimmick a mile off. What's this one?"
She just smiled enigmatically and lay back on the bed, stretching herself like a huge cat.
"If you think I'm good," she said, "you ought to meet my sisters, May and April."
"I'm not interested in your sisters. I want to know what you've got up your sleeve."
"You should be interested in my sisters. They're very lovely. I'm the middle one. April's five years older than I-she's thirty. And May's seven years younger-eighteen. I've always been considered the ugly duckling of the family."
Poston began to sense that she was driving at something.
"All right," he said. "This family of yours. Where do they live?"
"Pelican Shores."
"Pelican Shores? Never heard of it."
She smiled. "I didn't expect that you had. That's the whole trouble. Nobody has ever heard of it."
Now Poston was beginning to add things in his mind. "Nobody's ever heard of Pelican Shores. And I'm a public relations man. And you've got two sisters who, you say and I doubt, are prettier than you. All right. I've got all those facts. Do you want to keep on talking?"
"You'd enjoy Pelican Shores," she said. "We've got a big house up on the bluff overlooking the beach. Just April, May and I. You'd enjoy spending a few months with us there."
"I don't doubt it," Poston said tersely. "But I have a business to run. Keep talking."
She sat up, leaned slightly forward, and the huge, meaty breasts dipped and swayed.
"Pelican Shores used to be a cannery town," she said; and her face was serious now. "Used to be. But it's ... it's a ghost town now. Or almost. Something's happened in the ocean, the currents have changed or something; anyhow, our people no longer catch the fish. Sardines, tuna, they've gone somewhere else. Besides, there's the cheap Japanese competition now. It's just about wiped out Pelican Shores."
"I see," Poston murmured.
"The fishing's gone. The cannery's gone. There's nothing left in Pelican Shores any more. Just the town, and people are moving away from that when they can. But there are a lot of people who can't. Who don't have anywhere to go. People who have fished all their lives. People who have never done anything but work in the cannery. They don't know what else to do; they don't have anywhere else to go."
"Uh-huh."
Poston offered her a cigarette and she took it. He lit it for her, lit one of his own. She blew smoke and went on talking.
"It was a Gregg town," she said. "My grandfather built the cannery. My father ran it, too. He's dead now and there's nobody left of the family but us-three sisters. We've got a town, an empty cannery, a beach, and a bunch of poverty-stricken people on our hands who're looking to us to bail them out, give them work, just as Greggs have always provided for them. It's our responsibility, and we've got to take it."
"That's very admirable of you," Poston said with mild irony. "And so-?"
"And so we heard of this man Poston. Larry Poston, the public relations man. The man, they say, who, if he took the notion, could make scarlet fever popular and fashionable, the man who can sell anything to anybody."
"I'm not quite that good," Poston murmured. "But almost."
"Only," June Gregg went on, "Larry Poston, it seems, is very choosy about his assignments. Larry Poston turns away more clients than he accepts. And Larry Poston comes high. Very high. And-let's face it, April, May and June Gregg don't have much in the way of money."
She blew smoke through her nostrils.
"I went to your office twice. Your secretary fobbed me off both times."
"That's her job. To screen prospects and only let the best ones through."
June Gregg's red, wet mouth curved sardonically. "Obviously she didn't consider me one of the more promising ones. Or maybe it's only natural female jealousy. She's quite a dish herself, that Miss Carlyle. Are you sleeping with her?"
"Off and on," Poston said. "I always sleep with my secretaries. I wouldn't hire one I couldn't sleep with."
"No," June Gregg said, "I didn't think you would. Anyhow, I could see I'd never get through her. So ... I had to get to you another way."
Poston grinned. "You chose a very effective way."
"I thought it would be. You've had that reputation. And because you do have it, I think the proposition I'm prepared to make you is one you'll find attractive."
"Okay," Poston said. "Now we're getting down to brass tacks. All right, you've certainly earned a hearing of your case. What's the deal?"
"Somehow," she said earnestly, "in some fashion, we've got to revive Pelican Shores We've got to put it back on its feet. The only thing my sisters and I could think of would be to make it into a ... a resort of some kind. But we don't know how to go about doing it and we don't know how to get the money to do it and we don't even know if it's possible. But we had heard enough about you to know that you could tell us. And that if it was possible-remotely possible-you could do it if you took the job."
Poston shook his head. "Take a little fishing and cannery town and make a resort out of it? I'm not enthusiastic. Sure, I can promote anything. But what you're talking about seems to be a tough, long-range proposition In the first place, if it were a suitable place for a resort, somebody would have found it before now. If they're developing things in Baja, California and on the coast of Mexico, cutting resorts out of jungles nobody ever heard of before, how could they have overlooked Pelican Shores until now, if it had any potential at all? No, June, if there were a ghost of a chance, you wouldn't even have had to come to me. You'd have had promoters banging at your doors for the past five years."
"Won't you at least hear me out?"
"Of course. Go ahead."
"All right. I'll admit, Pelican Shores isn't much to look at. It's rugged and it's isolated, and the beach is hard to get to, though it's nice once you get there. I know it's not the kind of place movie stars and fat old millionaires would want to come to to relax. But there's another kind of resort trade it seems to me we could shoot for, and there ought to be enough of that to provide the people with a living, and that's all we want, all we ask."
"What kind of trade do you have in mind?"
"College students and young people. We've been reading about how they suddenly decide that this place or that one is the new place to get together. Well, we're only forty miles each way from two colleges-West Coast U., and Gryffindale. If we could attract students from there-"
Poston nodded. "I see what you're driving at. West Coast U. is mainly a technical school, mostly men. And Gryffindale is a girls' school. And you think that Pelican Shores could be popularized as a place where they could get together." He stood up, pacing the room. "No, I'm afraid not. Those things are too unpredictable. These people, these kids, they operate entirely on whim."
June Gregg shifted to the edge of the bed and put her feet on the floor. "Not entirely," she said.
Poston stopped and looked at her.
"That kind of crowd doesn't demand fancy accommodations. They don't mind sleeping on the beach or anywhere else they fall down. But what they do demand is-well, the boys demand girls and the girls demand boys. And when they get together, they demand privacy and being left alone They don't like to have grownups bugging them. They like to be able to raise as much hell as they want to and to blow off as much steam as they care to without being squelched by older people."
"That's true."
"Well, why should we at Pelican Shores squelch them? We need them, in the first place. In the second place, even if they get rowdy, there's nothing at Pelican Shores that they could really damage. And in the third place, we'd screen out the older people so that there'd be nobody else to complain."
"So the kids could come to Pelican Shores and do anything they wanted to?" There was interest in Poston 's voice now.
June Gregg's voice was suddenly harsh and flat.
"We wouldn't care if they all decided to make love on Main Street at high noon, as long as they spent their money with us. That's how bad we need some sort of business at Pelican Shores."
Poston grinned. "And you three girls thought up this idea all by yourself?"
"Yes."
"Well, I haven't seen the town, I don't know. But obviously the idea's not too far out."
Her voice quickened "Then you'll help us? You'll show us how to promote Pelican Shores?"
"No," said Poston. "I won't. I'm too busy now."
Her excitement drained from her. "Damn you," she said fiercely.
"Listen, June, it's a good idea, but get somebody else to handle it. I really just don't want any new clients right now. I don't have time...." He shrugged. "Besides, even if I did, you couldn't afford me."
"Not if we paid you in money, no."
He blinked. "What else could you pay me in?"
June Gregg smiled. It was a slow, lazy, meaningful smile. "Mr. Poston, have you ever spent a few weeks in a house with three sisters named Gregg?"
"No," Poston said.
She ran her hands over her breasts. "What you've had today is only a sample. It's like the little package of cereal they give away to persuade you to buy the large economy size. I think if you would come to stay at Pelican Shores with us for a while and help us out, you'd feel pretty thoroughly compensated. You might not make much money, but you'd have memories that would last you the rest of your life."
Poston stared at her. "You and your sisters are offering to pay my fee in sex?"
"That's such a crude way to put it," she replied.
She lay back on the bed and looked at him seductively.
"Three women, Mr. Poston. Three experienced, accomplished and enthusiastic women-three women who will do anything, absolutely anything, that you like. That's not a bad fee, is it? Would you like to have me demonstrate some of the other things I can do?"
Poston was silent He could not take his eyes from her body, beginning to writhe slightly on the bed. "For instance," she said, "suppose you wanted to be-"
She suggested, in bold terms, what he might like.
She told him, in equally bold terms, exactly how thoroughly any desire that might strike him could be satisfied. By the time she was through talking, Poston felt arousal creeping through him like wine.
"That," she murmured, "would be your fee. And, of course, after you have finished the job, you can come back any time to check up. There's no limit on how long we'd go on paying your fee ... we might keep you on retainer, so to speak...."
"Damn you," Poston said. "You've found my weak spot."
"We checked into your likes and dislikes pretty thoroughly. Money, you don't need. Sex, you never get quite enough of. And this will be pretty special sex, Mr. Poston-a harem of three women. And more if you need them."
"More?"
"The girls of Pelican Shores. They've had nothing to do for two years now but enjoy sex. It's the only recreation they have, but they've pretty well used up all the available males. They'd all welcome some fresh blood...."
She put her hands behind her head.
"In fact," she said, "if you'll come work with us, Mr. Poston, if you'll take us on as clients, you'll have the women of a whole town at your disposal. If you've got any strength left when April, May and I get through with you."
Poston lay down on the bed beside her He cupped one of those soft, enormous breasts in his hand. "Well...." he said.
June Gregg pushed his hand away. "No, Mr. Poston. Not yet."
"Not yet?" Her hand was stroking, caressing him. His arousal was becoming unbearable.
"Not," she murmured, "until you'll at least promise to come to Pelican Shores with me and look the place over and meet my sisters." Her fingers were fantastic little worms of desire. Poston groaned. He looked at her thighs, clamped tightly.
Then he let out a long, gusty breath, for he could stand this agony no longer.
"All right," he muttered. "All right. I promise. I'll at least go to Pelican Shores. I'll meet your sisters. Only, now-"
June Gregg smiled. "That's better," she whispered. "That's much better." And then she rolled toward him.
CHAPTER TWO
They had left the freeway a long time ago and now the road they were on was a narrow, winding lane through a remote wasteland. "It doesn't look very promising," Larry Poston said.
"It's not like this at Pelican Shores," said June Gregg. "Pelican Shores is a very lovely place." She was at the wheel of her own four-year-old convertible, a bandana bound across her intricate beehive hairdo to protect it from the wind. Watching her profile, Poston had to admit that she was something very special. Not, of course, that he had any intention of getting mixed up in her scheme for her one-horse cannery town. Business was one thing and pleasure was quite another. He had found her very, very pleasure-able, but the promise she had extracted from him to come and look at Pelican Shores was as far as he intended to go.
"We've still got five miles to go," she continued. "You'll love the place when we get there."
"Yeah," said Poston dryly. "I'll bet."
After a while, the road began to slope. Then they were passing through tall pine woods. Poston had to admit that the prospects were improving. It was pretty in here, though very isolated.
Then, ahead, he saw the light blue of the sky joined to a darker, rolling blue through the interstices of the pines; and he knew that they must be almost there. They rounded a curve and Poston sucked in his breath at the view, as June stopped the car on the point of a towering bluff.
"There," she said quietly. "Pelican Shores."
First there was the ocean, rolling away without limit to the horizontal streak of the horizon, calm and waveless, only gentle swells ruffling its startlingly-blue surface. Then, almost directly below the bluff on which they sat, the town began.
From this height it looked like a collection of toy houses scattered in a sandpile. There were wharves, probably rotting with disrepair and disuse, and fishing boats sitting forlornly alongside. There was a long, low wooden building directly at the water's edge; it, too looked abandoned and deserted. That, he guessed, would be the cannery building. Closer in, back from the water, there were perhaps a hundred houses and a single business street with a few service stations, a general store, and the like.
The town was shabby, seemed deserted and dead; but it was not the town that had captured Poston's imagination. It was the beach that lay up the coast at its flank.
The beach was not long, but it was smooth and clean and gently sloping. It was set in a crescent composed of other bluffs similar to the one on which they sat. It ended where a promontory, a jagged row of tooth-like rocks about its base, jutted out to sea with a dramatic swirl of breakers and spray. On the bluffs above, unspoiled woods added a final garnish of beauty to the scene. It was so long since Poston had seen a stretch of shore like that, uncluttered by commercialism, boardwalk, arcades, shooting galleries, bath houses and beer joints, that its pristine tranquillity startled him.
"That's better," he said quietly. "That's much better."
"I knew you'd be impressed," June said, unable to keep the excitement out of her voice.
"I'm impressed," said Poston slowly. But then his voice turned crisp. "Just the same, though, I won't take advantage of you and your sisters. It's nice, very nice. But the beach is too short. And the town's too remote. And there's nothing at all here-nothing to attract the kind of trade you want. It would take a fortune, June ... You'd have to build all sorts of gaudy attractions-dance pavilions and that kind of stuff. It's nice, it's wonderful, but it's not susceptible to being commercialized. Why don't you just take me back, and then we both won't lose any more time?"
Her face was white and angry as she whirled; her breasts rose and fell under the tight jersey of her blouse. "No!" she snapped. "Our bargain was that you'd look the town over and meet my sisters. You can't make a decision from here."
"I've got a feel for these things. This is nice. Nice-but hopeless."
"It might be hopeless for anybody else. But it shouldn't be for Larry Poston. That's why we came to you in the first place."
He said, wryly: "Not even I can bring a corpse back to life and turn it into a movie star. Look. The town-everything's fallen down. Have you or the people here got the money to repaint and spruce up? To build accommodations for the kind of crowds you want to attract? To advertise-advertise in every newspaper, on every TV and radio station in the state? June, it could be done-but at a terrific price. Unless you've got the price, it's hopeless for me and it's hopeless for anyone."
"I don't care what you say," she muttered doggedly. "You made me a promise and I'm going to hold you to it." She flung out an arm. "There are three hundred people, men, women, and children, down there in that town waiting for us Greggs to save them. Waiting for us Greggs to provide them with some way of earning a living and being able to keep their own homes, just as we've always done. It's our responsibility and we're going to fulfill it. No, sir, Mr. Larry Poston, I'm not listening to you say it's hopeless yet. You promised me you'd give the place a fair examination. You can't do that in two minutes from the top of this bluff. And you promised to meet my sisters. I'm going to hold you to both those promises."
Poston sighed. "All right," he said. "I may not have a surplus of admirable traits, but I always keep my promises. Okay, let's go down and have a closer look at the town."
They descended the bluff on a road that would have made a mountain goat tremble. It slipped and slid and doubled down to the shore below, all curves and acute angles; and Poston was sweating by the time they reached the bottom-especially since June, with the ease of one who had driven this so many times she could do it blindfolded, kept the car nearly flat-out all the way down. When they were finally on level ground, Poston heaved a long, fervent sigh of relief.
"Brr," he said, "that road would be enough to put the freeze on this place by itself."
"Don't be so negative!" she snapped.
Then they were within the limits of the town, and a pathetic sight it was. They passed houses that were small, ill-kept, unpainted. Barefooted women came to stand in open doors to stare at them as they bounced by over rutted, potholed unpaved streets. The children who played in the dusty, grassless yards were dirty and ragged. The whole setup screamed despair and apathy, hopelessness. And, as an offshore breeze caught them, over it all was the taint of fish.
Poston wrinkled his nose. "Phew. I thought you said the cannery wasn't operating."
June frowned. "It isn't. Hasn't in several years. But when a town has lived on fish for generations, the aura of it doesn't leave immediately. Don't worry, you'll get used to it."
"Ugh," said Poston.
They turned onto what passed for the main street of the town. There were almost no pedestrians on it and very few cars. It looked sleepy, deserted, forlorn. Most of the buildings were shuttered and boarded up. Only the general store and two service stations remained open.
They turned at a right angle to this, and then they came to the waterfront, by the big wooden building that had once been the cannery. June parked the car. "Come on, let me show you what we've got here." She got out and Poston followed her as she stepped up on one of the docks that stuck out into the bay.
Poston looked at the ranks of fishing boats. They badly needed painting. There was no sign of life on any of them, until, strolling down the wharf, they had almost reached the cannery. Then, on a boat called the Sadie L., he saw two figures on deck. One was a young man, with a thick crop of dark, wavy hair, a tanned, startlingly-handsome face, wide shoulders and narrow hips. He sat on an upended tub, a cigarette dangling from his lips as he long-spliced a rope.
But it was the girl beside him, leaning against the rail, that drew Poston's attention. She had a mass of hair just as black, just as shimmeringly wavy as that of the man. She was, perhaps, seventeen years old. She wore a T-shirt, and obviously there was nothing beneath it except the two twin cones of breasts that stood out thrustingly against the fabric. The shirt did not quite come to her waistline-perhaps because of the jutting bulges above; and Poston saw a ring of tanned flesh above the band of her blue jeans.
The denim pants had been washed so many times that they were light blue, and their bottoms had been docked. It was as if the girl had them shrunken in place on her hips and thighs. The fabric clung like a second skin to compactly-saucy buttocks and long, devastating legs.
At the sound of June's and Poston's footsteps on the wharf planking, the couple broke off the conversation they had been holding and raised their heads. From the family resemblance between them, the girl as darkly-beautiful and vital as the man was handsome, Poston guessed immediately that they were brother and sister.
June Gregg lifted a hand in greeting. "Hello, Luisa. Hello, Thomas."
The two nodded but did not speak. As June and Poston moved on, Poston was aware of two pairs of dark eyes following them curiously.
"Thomas and Luisa Chilton," June said. "Their father was the best fisherman in the village. He was lost at sea a couple of years ago."
"Too bad," Poston said automatically. Then, "She's a lovely girl."
"Yes," June said with something strange in her voice. "Yes, I suppose she is."
"They didn't look very friendly."
"No," said June. "I guess you could say that they aren't. Not toward the Gregg family."
Poston stared at her curiously. "Why not?"
They were approaching the end of the big cannery building now. The smell of fish was almost overpowering. June lowered her voice. "They're the only people in Pelican Shores who don't want to see something done to revive the town. For some reason, they resent anything the rest of us try to do to bring the town back to life. I don't know why. They'd benefit from it as much as the rest of us. But the Chiltons always have been rather strange, very clannish...." The end of the cannery was sealed by two huge double doors, but there was a smaller access door built into one of them. June pushed it open.
"Come on in," she said, and Poston followed her into dimness, gagging at the intense fishiness of the musty interior.
The only illumination came from a row of skylights in the roof of the long, high, wide building. June pointed to machinery, cobwebbed and dust-covered, set here and there, and to long rows of motionless conveyors.
"All this stuff," she said, her voice echoing in the vastness of the interior. "I thought ... we thought it could be taken out. And then the cannery could be converted into a ... a recreation hall or something. A dance hall. You know."
Poston's voice was grim. "You'd have to do quite a decontamination job on it first. It wouldn't be very romantic, dancing cheek to cheek in a place that smells like a bucket of old fish heads."
June looked surprised. "Is it really that bad?"
"Can't you smell it?"
She shook her head. "I was born and grew up here. I got used to it long ago."
"Well, believe me, it's here. All over the whole town. A stink of fish." He deliberately made his voice as harsh and brutal as he could; there was no point in fostering her illusions.
"Oh, my," she said, as if the fact that the town smelled of fish was something totally new to her.
Poston strolled through the building. It was nearly two hundred feet long, and a quarter that wide. Its floor was concrete; and there were stale, green puddles of water coagulated in low places.
He shook his head. "To renovate this place alone would cost thirty or forty thousand dollars."
"Wouldn't a bank lend it to us if she could show a good possibility of success?"
Poston laughed shortly. "Sweetheart, I doubt that you could get any bank to lend you thirty thousand dollars on the whole damned town."
She was silent for a moment. Her shoulders slumped, then straightened resolutely. "Come on, let's get out of here for right now. You've seen the town and just about everything there is to see. Let's go meet my sisters."
Poston shrugged. "Sooner the better. Then I'll have kept my promise and you can take me back to the city."
They drove up the side of another bluff, this road just as precarious as the one they had descended. Above them, perched on the bluff's edge like an eagle about to take wing, Poston saw a huge frame house, obviously built in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Like everything else around Pelican Shores, a coat of paint would have done wonders for it.
"That's where you and your sisters live?" Poston asked.
"That's it," she said.
"Just you three girls?"
"Ever since our father died, several years ago."
"And none of you has ever married?" She shook her head. "No."
"What's the matter? Don't you believe in marriage?"
"No," she said again. "Not until we've got Pelican Shores on its feet again. That's our first responsibility."
"You certainly are a dedicated bunch."
"Well, we know what our responsibilities are.
We've had it drummed into us ever since we were old enough to understand. Our grandfather came to this place nearly eighty years ago, as a young man. He started this cannery and persuaded all these workers to settle here. Until he did that, there was no Pelican Shores. So these people wouldn't be here now, trapped like they are, if it weren't for Grandfather Gregg. They've never had the opportunity to learn any skills except those that the cannery needed, and they'd be lost anywhere else."
"So you three women wind up playing godmothers to a whole town."
"That's about the size of it."
"I'll give you a high grade for guts if nothing else."
"Thanks," she said wryly; and then they had crested the bluff and were drawing up before the huge, old house.
June parked the car and got out; and Poston followed her up the front steps of the rambling, airy porch. He admired the smooth, silken, shifting motion of her buttocks under the tightness of her skirt, the perfect symmetry of her legs. If her sisters were even half as lovely as she, they would have to be quite a pair of dolls, he told himself.
They passed through the front door into an entry hall that was huge and dim and musty, as if it had been long shut up. June called out: "April? May? Where are you? I've got company. Mr. Poston came!"
Somewhere in the rear, a door slammed. Poston heard the tap of high-heeled shoes. Then, in the hall's dimness, he saw the figure of a woman.
"There's May now," said June.
She was, Poston saw, startlingly tall. She must have been at least six feet without the high heels, they made her tower over him. She came up to them with lithe strides, and her voice was husky as she said, "Hello."
Poston looked at her.
She had dark, lustrous red hair, cut rather short and mannishly. Her skin was very white. Her brows had been penciled a deep, striking black; two, thick crayon marks slanting down to a straight, long, almost-arrogant nose. Her mouth was wide, a deeply-painted red. Long earrings, glittering in the dimness, were pendant from her earlobes, and every time she moved her head, they chattered with a barbaric little clanging.
She was beautiful, all right-no, not so much beautiful as striking. There was a patrician imperiousness to her, added to by her height. Beneath the simple, rather short dress she wore, Poston saw the outlines of a fine figure. It was not a soft, billowingly lush figure like that of June, but a restrained series of beautifully modeled lines and curves-breasts that were neither fantastically large nor unsatisfyingly small; a slender waist, compact buttocks, hips a trifle narrow, and what he could see of her legs was excellent.
She seemed to radiate arrogance and a sense of power, but her voice was cordial when she said, "I'm very glad you came, Mr. Poston." Her hand, gripping his, was cool and strong, the fingers long, the nails longer and dark crimson, as if they had been dipped in blood.
"I'm glad to be here," Poston said automatically. But he could see now why June had been the bait instead of May. She was almost too striking, she would appeal to a very special taste. Whereas June, with her voluptuousness, would have attracted any male.
May said, "April's down at the beach taking a swim. She ought to be up before long. In the meantime, what about a drink, Mr. Poston?"
He smiled. "I could use one," he said gratefully.
May gestured. "You two go on in the parlor. I'll bring the drinks." Then she turned and went to the back of the house.
June led him into a room to one side of the hall. It was big and dim, and she went to the window and pulled a pair of drapes. Light flooded in, revealing a room furnished in the cluttered fashion of the Victorian era, with overstuffed chairs and sofa and tassels on nearly everything. There was bric-a-brac on every surface, dishes and cozies and books and vases. It was as if the room had been preserved for generations, like a fly caught in amber.
Poston sat down on the sofa, looking about curiously. "I don't believe I've seen a room like this since I used to visit my grandmother when I was a kid," he murmured.
"Things don't change much here in Pelican Shores," June said. She sat down in a chair, opposite him, and crossed her legs. The tight skirt slid back, revealing a generous section of sleek, stockinged thigh and a rim of soft, white flesh above it. She made no effort to pull the skirt down. "At least," she added, "they haven't changed much so far. We're hoping they'll change a lot in the future."
Before Poston could answer, May reappeared with a pitcher of martinis and three glasses. She poured and passed the glasses around and, coolly, sat down beside Poston. He smelled a musky, exotic perfume, different even from the rich, sensuous one that June used and somehow more deeply, even more dangerously stirring. Poston was aware of an increase in his heartbeat, a tendency for his attention to wander.
"Well," May said, sipping her drink and then lighting a cigarette. "Well, I suppose June has told you everything." Her heavily-crayoned brows drew together, and her deeply-made-up eyelids half closed. "I suppose you've ... got the picture." Her voice was gently insinuating in its huskiness. "What do you think of it so far?"
Poston took a big swallow of his drink, searching for words. "I, uh, don't know, so far," he temporized.
The alcohol exploded pleasantly in his belly. He was aware that May was moving closer to him on the sofa. "Surely you've had a chance to form some opinon. I mean, June told you about...." Her tongue moved over her lower lip, leaving it moist and red. "About what compensation we're prepared to offer."
"Yes," said Poston hoarsely. "We've discussed that." Almost desperatley, he swallowed the rest of the martini. Her musky perfume was nearly overpowering.
"Help yourself to another drink," she murmured. Poston did. When he had settled back, he discovered that she now was so close to him that her thigh was touching his. He looked at June, seated across from them. An enigmatic smile curved her lips. It was almost as if she were thinking: Ah, everything will be all right, now. The old master has gone to work on him.
Damn it, Poston thought, this is riduculous. I can get all the women I want without having to get mixed up in something like this. I don't have either the time or the inclination to get involved....
"I don't believe-" he began, a trifle reedily; but before he could finish, a door slammed somewhere in the back of the house.
June's smile widened.
"Ah," she said, "that will be April now."
CHAPTER THREE
When the girl appeared in the door of the parlor, Poston stared at her.
It was hard to believe that three such different types of women could have sprung from the same loins. The blonde, voluptuous June; the redheaded, towering May-and now, clad only in the scantiest of bikinis, and that soaking wet and clinging to every rounded curve of her figure, a veritable doll of a woman. April had curly, sandy hair; wide, blue eyes; a cupid's-bow mouth; a pair of breasts like ripened cante-loupes, and lovely hips and legs-and all of it encompassed in five feet even of height.
Either oblivious to her near-nudity or completely unashamed of it, April Gregg paused in the doorway and smiled at them, and she said: "I'll bet this is Mr. Poston."
He got to his feet automatically. "That's right. And you're April."
The cupid's-bow mouth was very red. "That's right." She looked up at him with startlingly innocent eyes. He could see right down into the cleft of the bikini top, see the rounded, soft, lovely curves of her breasts, nothing concealed except their nipples. And those were manifest too, through the thin triangles of wet fabric that covered them-little, jutting nozzles to which the plastered cloth clung lovingly.
"I had a lovely swim," she said. There was a spare glass with the pitcher of martinis, and she moved past Poston and poured herself a drink. The lower part of the bathing suit was as scanty as the upper; as she bent to pour, he admired the curving rondures of naked buttocks.
"Let me freshen your glass," April said, and she refilled his as he sat down thoughtfully on the sofa again. Then, calmly, and as if her wet bathing suit didn't matter, she sat down beside him, so that he was between her and her sister, May.
Poston tried hard to keep the glass steady as he raised it to his lips. Three women-three lovely women, and each as different from the other-at least physically-as night from day. And yet-
Damn it, he thought, it would be ridiculous to take on a losing job like this just because-Get a grip on yourself, Poston. You're a businessman, not a sultan. You're not sex-starved. You're-
But flanked by the exotic May on one side, the doll-like, nearly-naked April on the other, and with June's skirt somehow creeping higher on her thighs across the room, it was not a simple matter to keep his mind on the hard, cold facts of business. But he made a manful try.
"Ladies," he heard himself say thickly, "I'm sorry to disappoint you. I know how much ... how much rehabilitating Pelican Shores means to you. And the, uh-the fee you've offered ... It's not every day, you know. Just the same...." He made his voice sharper and more business-like. "Just the same, there's no use deceiving you. What you want done is not the impossible, but it's pretty close to the improbable. And it would take buckets of money. If you haven't got buckets of money, I'd say forget the whole business."
"If we had buckets of money," May said easily, "we wouldn't have needed to worry about it in the beginning. I'm glad to hear you say, though, that it's not impossible, Mr. Poston."
"Call me Larry," he said.
"Larry," April murmured. "I like that name."
"What I mean is," he went on, "we'd only be wasting our time, all of us. We'd...."
May's voice was low, unbelievably sultry. "I don't believe you'd totally be wasting your time, Larry."
He tried not to betray the little shiver that went down his spine. The martinis and the presence of all these women were definitely getting to him. He said, "Really, I ought to be getting back to my office. I've got so much to do. And I've ... kept my promise."
"Oh, you can't leave yet," April protested. She had a high, rather shrill voice, a baby voice. "We've only just met." Casually, she placed a hand on his thigh. "We've got to know you much better. And you ought to know us a lot better, too, before you make any decision at all." Her fingers dug into his thigh muscle.
Poston swallowed hard. "No," he said. "No, I don't think I had better...." He stood up, quickly. "If it's not convenient for June to drive me back, I'll hire a car down in the village."
Then June was off the chair, quickly and lithely and at the door before him. She turned a key in a lock and then withdrew it. She leaned against the closed door and smiled at him, an incredibly sensuous and taunting smile. "You can't possibly go yet," she murmured, and then she dropped the key in the cleft between her breasts.
"Now, wait a minute!" said Poston angrily. "This wasn't in the bargain! I've kept my promise and I've got work to do. Give me that key!"
Anger was flaring in him now. It was not eased any by June's taunting smile. "You can take it away from me."
"By God!" he snapped. "I will!" And then, quickly and ruthlessly, he hooked his hand in the front of her dress and tore.
She did not even flinch as the fabric ripped. "Go ahead," she murmured. "Tear the rest of it off."
"Damn it, you asked for it!" Poston seized the tattered pieces of cloth. He yanked with all his might. The dress ripped all the way down the front. June smiled. Then she shrugged and the dress fell off, and she was standing there in bra and transparent panties.
"The key's in my bra," she said. "You'll have to rip that off too!"
He snarled something and gave the bra a jerk. It came free in his hands, and her breasts plunged out like unchained animals. She made a quick motion with her hands and caught the key as it fell. Before Poston could grab her wrist, she flipped the key across the room.
"May! Catch!"
May seized it deftly. She dropped it in the front of her own dress. Her wide, red lips smiled. "Now, Mr. Poston, you've got it all to do over again."
"I'll do it if I have to," Poston grated, and he stalked across the room. She towered over him so that he had to reach high to seize the front of her dress. He could smell, very intensely, that musky perfume. May Gregg smiled down at him.
"Rip!" she said savagely. "Go ahead, rip!"
He did, the fabric tearing away. She did not lift a hand to stop him. Almost instantly, she was stripped to the waist except for her bra. Poston's hand hooked, tore again, and the bra came loose. Her breasts were smaller than June's, sharp-pointed, white and tempting. He found himself almost face to face with their nipples. But he did not have the key. Her hand, quicker than his, locked over it just as he reached for it. His hand wrestled with hers, between her breasts. He felt the smooth, soft touch of them on his knuckles, on his palm, saw the small, round nipples standing out, sharp and excited.
Then May laughed. "April?" she said, and she flipped the key.
Like a furious animal, Poston turned just in time to see April snatch it out of the air. She stared at it curiously. "My goodness," she chirped. "I don't have anywhere to hide it." Then, with a quick, lithe spring, she was at the window.
Poston was after her, seized her, wrestled her for the key. He was aware that she was giggling. Her still damp, faintly cool body was soft under his grip. In the stress of the moment, her bra strap parted; the tiny, triangular scraps of cloth fell loose. Then she, like her sisters, was naked to the waist.
Poston pinned her to him, reaching for the key, which she held at arm's length. Her laughing face was very close to his, her breasts flattened against his chest. His hand slid down her back to her rounded, naked buttocks; they were resilient and velvety. Her body crowded against him tightly, stirring him in spite of himself. He could hear May and June laughing softly behind him. Suddenly, April twisted. The key flew through the air, struck the window pane. There was a shattering of glass, then it was gone. Poston released April and ran to the window.
When he looked out, he was staring into space. The window jutted over the bluff, and the key had fallen two hundred feet to the town below.
Poston swore and turned from the window like a bayed animal. Then his swearing died, and faded out.
The three sisters stood side by side before him. They were smiling at him. There was the tall one, the middle-sized one, and the short one. Their eyes were glowing.
And they were all completely naked except for their shoes.
Poston let out a long, shuddering breath.
May Gregg smiled more widely. "Don't you think," she murmured, "that's it's about time for you to quit fighting now?"
And then they were on him. The three women. Three mouths suddenly questing over his face. Three pairs of naked breasts pinning him. Three eager bodies undulating against his own. Three pairs of hands clutching shamelessly, greedily, and with designs of arousal....
Now they were clawing at his clothes. He felt his belt come unlatched. His tie was pulled loose. Somebody was unbuttoning his shirt.
He struggled for only a moment more against the three naked, pinning bodies. Then, knowing it was no use, he relaxed as they bore him back to the ancient sofa....
Nothing quite like it had ever happened to Poston before.
He was completely immersed in woman-flesh. He put out a hand; it encountered swaying breasts. He cupped one of them, feeling a nipple hard againt his palm. In the meantime, a mouth had crushed down on his, a tongue was thrusting eagerly. There was another mouth on his naked chest, a fierce, demanding little mouth that did things with its lips, and wandered down to his belly and circled there for a moment, and later he felt it on his thighs.
They were all over him, a welter of soft flesh, of round buttocks and pressing thighs and swaying breasts and hungry mouths. He turned and writhed and thrashed in that maelstrom. He forgot his desire to escape, he forgot the necessity to go back to his office, he forgot the hopelessness of doing anything with Pelican Shores, he forgot everything except the sensation that blurred through him.
Then the crowd of flesh was dissipating. He was on his stomach, now, and there was a woman beneath him, her mouth glued to his. Now there was no more pressure on his back, only hands, soft and encouraging. The woman underneath rose, gripping him, her long thighs coming up and pinning him. She wrenched her mouth away, and he saw that it was May Gregg he held-or who held him.
And then he did not care who she was; all he cared about was what she was doing with him. What she was doing was fantastic, incredible. It was as if she had a hundred separate little muscles, each capable of moving in a different direction at once, each under her complete command and control. There was no need for him to do anything, not anything at all.
So he lay inertly and let her do everything with that incredible control, and he felt the goodness, the delight of it mounting in him instant by instant. He heard the harsh, sharp breathing of the other two girls nearby, as they watched, fascinated. Then he heard nothing at all, was aware of nothing at all, as May stepped up the rhythm of her body....
Savagely she caught his mouth again with her own and savagely she explored it with her tongue. He felt her hands gripping his buttocks, and he felt both their bodies tightening like stretched strings on a violin, tightened almost to the snapping point ... he thought he would snap. He was stretched incredibly, it seemed. In a moment he would snap and break and curl up and never be of any use again....
And then he gave way. He heard his own long, gusty sigh, and he heard her deep grunt of gratification, and then it was over, and he felt everything seem to leave him, all strength, all resolve, all concern, everything ... And he relaxed, knowing now nothing but lassitude and complete contentment.
It was a long while before he roused himself. He sat up. May pulled away and sat up beside him. She was smiling. "Well," she murmured. "You've tried June, and me. Now, are you convinced? Now, do you think that the fee will be sufficient?"
The other two girls were still kneeling by the sofa. Suddenly, April sprang to her feet. She sat down on Poston's lap. "He hasn't tried me!" she cried in that shrill baby voice, and she ground herself down.
Poston could not respond. He was exhausted. "Please," he said, and he shoved her roughly to the floor. She landed with a bump and pouted.
June Gregg smiled.
"You might as well promise to help us," she murmured. "Because we're not going to let you out of here until you do-not if it takes all week."
Poston stood up. He was thinking more clearly now. He looked at the three women-the calm, smiling June; the satiated, relaxed May, and the pouting, wriggling April. He let out a gusty breath.
What the hell, he thought. Where else am I going to collect a fee like this?
"All right," he said. "I'll do what I can."
June Gregg stood up. "Is that a promise?"
"It's a promise," Poston heard himself say.
"Fine," June said. She went to the mantel and fished under a piece of bric-a-brac. She withdrew a key and went to the door.
"Come on, May," she said. "We'll leave him alone with April while we make some lunch."
When they had gone out, Poston sat on the sofa, rubbing his face dazedly. April bounced to her feet, sat beside him, rubbing her small, full, velvety figure against him. "What's the matter?" she whispered into his ear, her breath a warm and tickling explosion. "Don't you like me?" Her hand came down and smoothed itself along his thigh.
Poston raised his head and looked at her. "Are all you girls crazy?"
April smiled. "You live here all alone and you'd be crazy, too. We've just been waiting for somebody like you." She lowered her voice. "I'll tell you the truth. I don't care a bit what happens to Pelican Shores. But this sounded like fun."
"Listen," Poston said dazedly. "You're a very lovely girl. But I'm-tired. You know-tired. Worn out. I don't mean that I don't think you're desirable and all that, but a man can only...."
Her hand was slipping higher up his thigh.
"Oh, pooh," she said. "You're not tired, either. A man like you? You can't possibly be tired. You wait," she whispered. "In just a minute, you won't be tired any more."
Curiously enough, as it turned out, she was right.
CHAPTER FOUR
So that now he had had all three of them, April, May and June; and he could not say which of them was the best. They were all superb, all very adept, and he was reconciled to keeping his bargain, even though it would cost him substantially. But what the hell, he thought. Money, I can make any time.
Now, sated as he was, he put the thought of their bodies from his mind and tried to concentrate on business, as they ate lunch on a pleasant porch overlooking the ocean. June and May, it seemed, were excellent cooks; but his mind, freed of preoccupation with sex, was already turning over with that rapid-fire precision which had made him tops in his profession, and he hardly tasted the immense shrimp cocktail they had set before him, nor the vast platter of seafood.
The three girls had changed into shifts which reached to mid-thigh and were slit up the sides. The breeze molded the fabric to their bodies, but he did not notice that, either.
He said, "Listen, now that I'm committed, I don't propose to waste any time. You say you want to make this into a resort to appeal to the college crowd. Now, exactly what financial resources do you have to work with?"
They all looked to May; apparently she was the spokesmen for them on business matters. "Well," she said, "we have a trust fund that our father left us. It provides us with enough money to live comfortably, but ... "
"But what?"
"But there's no way we can touch the principal. It's tied up tight until we're married."
Poston shook his head. "Well, that's no help. Any other assets? Any other sources of capital?"
"We own all the stock in the Gregg Cannery. Only-well, it's not worth anything."
"No," said Poston. "Of course not."
"And," added May, "we own most of the real estate in Pelican Shores. For all practical purposes, the town really belongs to us."
"But you don't collect any rental from your property."
"No, of course not. How could we ask people to pay rent when they're out of work?"
"I thought that would probably be your answer," he said with a grim smile. "Well, does that sum it up?"
"I guess it does," May said.
"No, it doesn't," June Gregg snapped. "You're overlooking one of the biggest resources we've got, May."
Poston stared at her curiously. "What's that?"
"The people of Pelican Shores. We've got their labor. They're sitting down there idle right now, just itching to get their hands on something constructive to do. I don't know what we'll have to do in construction and renovation around here, but couldn't they do part of it?"
"Of course they can," Poston said. "If they will." He thought for a moment. "Yes, they very probably could. Of course, you'd need lumber, concrete, that sort of stuff. And it costs money."
"No," June said. "We don't need any of that sort of stuff. You're missing the whole point, Larry. We don't need to fancy up Pelican Shores. All we need to do is clean it up and paint it."
"That's an optimistic view of it," Poston said wryly. "If you're going to have people in here, they've got to have places to eat, they've got to have places to drink, and they've got to have places to sleep."
"I know. But those places don't have to be fancy. The restaurant in town is closed, but all its fixtures are in place. It can be opened up and cleaned up and put back in business. So can Clancy's tavern. It's not a matter of starting from scratch-it's just a matter of some paint and ingenuity and some elbow grease.
Just like thie cannery building. I still think that would make a wonderful dance hall."
"For the sake of argument, suppose you're right. You've still got to have places for your guests to sleep. You don't have a hotel you can unshutter and put back in business, do you?"
"No," said June promptly. "But we've got the fishing boats."
"I never thought of that," said May.
Poston stared at her. "What do you mean, the fishing boats?"
"I mean," June went on, her voice excited, "that each one of those fishing boats down there will sleep six or more. Sure, the quarters are pretty crowded, but to college boys and their dates, do you think that's going to matter? Six to a boat, at least, and there are twenty boats down there. That's accommodations for a hundred and twenty people. We've got rooms enough here so we could take care of maybe twenty more, two to a room. And there are deserted houses down there, we could get some beds and put them in those. Even, maybe, turn part of the cannery into a dormitory."
Poston could not suppress a grin of admiration. "You've been giving this whole matter considerable thought, haven't you?"
"Well, I'm young enough myself," June said quietly, "to know how young people feel. They don't care about comfort. What they want is privacy, intimacy-and a chance to blow off steam. That's all we can offer them here at Pelican Shores, but I have a feeling that if we present it in the proper way, it'll be enough."
"What do you mean, the proper way?"
"I've told you what I mean," she said, a touch of harshness in her voice. "I've told you that as long as they spend money here, we don't care if they all make love on Main Street at high noon. In fact," she said, "if it would help any, we'd make it easy for them to do that."
Poston nodded, smiling slightly.
"I've got to give you credit. You've unwittingly-or maybe wittingly-hit on the oldest promotional gimmick in the world."
"What's that?" June asked.
"Sex," grinned Poston. "You know, you can sell anything with sex. It doesn't matter what-automobiles, cigarettes, washing machines, liquor, hot water bottles, shampoo ... If you can find a sexual tie-in, you can sell it. Actually, when you get right down to it, just about all of America's industry that's not defense connected is founded on sex. Automobiles are designed not only as sexual symbols but as mobile bedrooms. You'd be surprised how much research the motivation boys put into figuring out the sex appeal of a particular model of a car-or even a cigarette. It doesn't' matter what-you'll find its sales stimulated by the judicious use of sex. Take the sex out of selling, business drops off, and blip! We have a depression. Oversimplification, maybe, but not much. A nearly naked girl looking as if she wants sex, is having sex or just had sex, is still the most potent appeal that can be made to the public. So what you're saying is that you think that instead of selling Pelican Shores as a vacation resort, it can be sold as a sort of sex resort?"
"If you want to call it that."
"Don't worry. Well call it that. Not in public, of course, but we'll see that the rumor gets around. Pelican Shores, the place where anything goes. Of course," he added, "it's kind of amoral, I suppose, to simply turn the place into a trysting spot for the younger set ... It might even be said to be corrupting American youth...."
She looked at him levelly. "If a boy and a girl want to get together, Mr. Larry Poston, do you honestly think anything is going to stop them? And if, in the process of getting together, they want to spend a little money-well, why shouldn't it be spent at Pelican Shores?"
"Pelican Shores," Poston said. "The new Malibu or Fort Lauderdale-only with all the wraps off. That's what you see, eh?"
"It's what I see."
"All right," Poston said. "Then that's the approach we'll use. It's as good as any other." He laid down his fork. "Listen, how long would it take to get the townspeople together in a sort of meeting? Where we could address them and tell them what we'v'e got in mind. If there are any objections, we might as well hear 'em now."
"It'll take about two hours," May Gregg said. "We ought to have everybody in the cannery in two hours. I'll phone down to the town now and have Jim Haller-an, the storekeeper, spread the word."
"Good," said Poston. "In the meantime, I'd like a nap." He grinned. "After the, uh, down payment on my services you made, I could use the rest."
May Gregg smiled. "Just wait," she said in a low, husky voice, "until you start collecting the installments."
Later, he lay on the bed in the upstairs room they had given him. He felt better now that he had showered. It was hot, but he was stripped and a sea breeze had begun to blow in through the window. He had tried to nap, but his brain would not stop working long enough to allow that.
Poston, he thought, you get yourself the damndest contracts ... Right now there are people in your office going crazy wondering what's become of you. And poor old Candy Carlyle trying to stave 'em off without having any idea herself....
Still, the more he thought about the whole proposition, the more intrigued by it he was. It was certainly something unusual, a break in the monotony. And he had to admit that what June Gregg had in mind just might be feasible. Not if handled by somebody else, of course-but if promoted by the. great Larry Poston....
But he was honest enough with himself to admit that the lure of trying to make a profitable silk purse out of a run-down sow's ear like Pelican Shores shrank to nothing beside the lure of the temptations and opportunities offered by April, May and June. He closed his eyes, feeling again the smothering of the soft bodies that had overwhelmed him; the delicious and unusual muscular control of May Gregg; the eager, uninhibited, and vigorous bounciness of April; the practiced, voluptuous and totally satisfying femininity of June ... With a smorgasbord like that laid before a man, he would have needed far more will power than Larry Poston owned to turn it down....
Poston had been running fast all his life. He had started running in a little town in Missouri, clerking in a dry-goods store. His fertile brain, even then, had been churning with ideas for getting people to buy more, buy beyond their means if necessary, buy things they didn't really need if necessary, but to get them to buy, to part with their money....
He had, in the two years of his employ in the store, doubled its sales with his promotions, raffles and gimmicks. He might, even now, have still been in Missouri, owner of the store himself, if Cass Marks, his boss, had not had a daughter.
Cindy Marks had been long-legged and bucktoothed and had worn braces, and her breasts had not yet fully matured, but at sixteen Cindy Marks knew what she liked, and she got her liking as frequently as she could, in the bushes down by the river. It hadn't been long before she'd fastened a hungry eye on handsome young Larry Poston, seventeen years old and already a promotional genius.
One afternoon, Larry was tending the store alone. Cass had gone to the bank to borrow a little money to finance an expansion necessitated by the store's increased volume. Cindy Marks seemingly appeared out of nowhere as Larry was opening cases of overalls in the storeroom. He had been trying hard to avoid getting mixed up with her, because he liked his job and had ambitions. But he was only human, and when Cindy made certain overtures indicating unmistakably what she would like for him to do with her, he was tempted beyond discretion.
He did what she wanted, with Cindy pinned down on a case of overalls, her skirt up around her neck, her panties in her hand and a peculiar, eerie, moaning sound coming from her throat. Cindy was as homely as a mud fence, but she knew very well indeed what she was about, and Larry was finding the experience more and more enjoyable. Unfortunately, there was a question of timing involved. If he and Cindy had completed their tryst three minutes earlier, or if Cass had not declined the banker's offer to join him for a cup of coffee, Larry Poston would still have been in Missouri.
But while Cindy keened and thrashed and clung, a shadow fell across their locked, entangled bodies. And it was the shadow of Cass Marks, Cindy's father. And the shadow was followed by Cass Marks himself, who was a powerful and righteous man.
Cass Marks seized the seducer of his homely daughter and threw him all the way from the rear of the store through the front door. It was a beautiful toss, and even today Larry Poston could appreciate the great muscular effort and the keen eye that it must have taken to make a throw like that.
He had landed running, and he had been running ever since.
He ran out of the Missouri town. He ran into the Army just in time to get in a year of combat in the dwindling Korean war. After being discharged, he began to run up and down the West Coast of the United States. Three things made him run. The most important was the dollar. Women were next. And then, finally, he ran because he could not stay still. His unceasingly-busy brain was always finding opportunities others missed, figuring out the gimmick others could not see. He could no more help doing that than he could help breathing....
He promoted a small-town hooker into a movie actress drawing a quarter of a million a picture. He promoted a little Greek restaurant into a fashionable night spot, where, though the food had not improved an iota, the prices had become astronomical and the tables were always packed. He promoted a writer of terrible books into consideration for the Nobel prize. He promoted the unpromotable, the impossible, the can't-be-done-and he had never failed. He did not worry about failing now. Once he had committed himself to anything, he attacked it with all the enterprise and aggression at his command, and nothing, he was sure, could long stand between him and success....
Two hours later, he stood wrinkling his nose against the fishy smell of the cannery, on one of the idle conveyors in the barn-like building. He looked down at the faces of the people of Pelican Shores.
Most of the faces he saw were middle-aged and weathered by sun and wind, faces with the squint of the sea impressed upon them. The younger people, seemingly, had all long since left Pelican Shores for greener pastures-only the older ones, the defeated ones, remained.
With two exceptions. Standing in the front rank of the assembled people were the brother and sister, Lucia and Thomas, the Chiltons, whom he had seen earlier that day on their boat. While June talked to the crowd, Poston ran his eye up and down Lucia Chilton's body. She was, he thought, certainly a striking beauty-she had a wild, untamed animality about her. He admired the rippling waves of her dark hair, the thrust of her unhaltered breasts beneath the thin T-shirt, the curve of her slouching hips, where the tight-fitting jeans rode low.
Then he was aware of eyes returning his gaze, and they were not the girl's eyes, but those of her brother. Poston was abruptly shocked as he found Thomas Chilton staring at him with an expression of disgust and hatred. There was something so murderous in the dark young man's handsome face that a chill played up Poston's spine, and he turned away, listening to June Gregg...." And this is our only hope," she was saying. "To turn Pelican Shores from a fishing and cannery town into a resort village. It's either that, or it's the end of Pelican Shores. We've been fortunate in securing the services of Mr. Larry Poston, the famous expert in public relations. Mr. Poston has promoted several resorts, always successfully, and we have great hopes he'll succeed with Pelican Shores. Now I'll turn the meeting over to him: Mr. Poston."
There was no applause. Poston tried to keep his eyes from the dark-haired girl and her sullen brother.
"I don't know you people of Pelican Shores," he said. "But I know the predicament you're in. Now, maybe this predicament can be solved. Anyhow, if you're willing, we're going to give it a try.
"But first, let me tell you what's involved. What we project is bringing in the college crowd, making this place fashionable with them. Now, that's not like bringing in nice, settled adult middle-class people on a second honeymoon. Well be dealing with people who're young, uninhibited, and just plain wild. They'll come here for a good time-and for them, good time is translated as beer, surfing and sex. The thing about it is, if you solicit their business, you've got to be willing to put up with them. What they'll do will sometimes shock you. More often it might make you mad. But you won't be able to afford to be shocked and you can't afford to get angry. You'll have to be tolerant and easy-going and let them run their own show. Now, the question is-how many of you are in favor of this? How many of you are willing to lend your time and hard work to bring it about? Because it's the only chance you've got to save this town...."
There was a moment of silence. Then a man's gruff voice said, "I don't care what they do, long as I can make some money and don't have to move from my home."
"Yeah," somebody else said. "That's the way I feel. Hell, I'll do anything I can. I ain't no carpenter, but I'm a pretty good painter if somebodyll furnish the paint."
"I'm not much on painting," somebody else said, "but I can do a pretty good job at building."
Then it spread among the crowd like an infection-the virus of hope. Larry Poston saw dull, discouraged eyes beginning to light, slumped shoulders coming erect, heads being uplifted. "Sure," somebody yelled. "We been sitting on our cans too long. Let's get off 'em and get this town back on its feet!"
Poston grinned. At least cooperation wasn't going to be lacking. At least-
Somebody sprang to the conveyor beside him. Startled, he turned to see Thomas Chilton there, his handsome face like a thundercloud. Chilton shook his fist at the crowd. "You damn fools!" he bellowed. "Listen to me!"
The murmur of the crowd died; they turned their faces upward curiously.
Chilton put his hands on his narrow hips and surveyed them contemptuously.
"What's the matter with you people, anyhow?" His voice was a sardonic rasp. "You all gone crazy? Listen, you want a whole bunch of outsiders coming into Pelican Shores and taking the town over? You want all these jerk college kids cornering your women and making love to 'em? You want these jerk college kids tearing up the town? Hell, we've got along this far without no outsiders. We've managed to stay alive. We can keep on managing. We don't need no high-priced publicity expert to come in from outside and make us over ... The fish are gonna come back some day, the sardines and the tuna. They aren't gone for good-they've just changed their grounds, and they can change 'em again. One day you'll wake up and see those waters out there alive with fish-" He gestured with an out-flung arm. "And then, when you can make some real money, you'll be so tied down with all these wetpants college kids that you won't even be able to get your boat out of harbor."
June Gregg stared at him as if stunned. "Tom Chilton! Are you out of your mind? Do you want to see this town die?"
He turned on her savagely. "I don't want to see a bunch of jerk outsiders coming in and changing the way we live. I like the way we live right now!"
June Gregg put her hands on her hips. "Oh, so you like going hungry and ragged, huh?"
"I don't go hungry. I can still catch enough fish out there to feed me and Luisa. And I don't go ragged
-Luisa mends my clothes."
"Yeah," somebody called out from the crowd. "But what do you do when you ain't got any clothes left to mend, answer me that? What do you do when your kids can't go to school because you ain't got money to send 'em? You're all wet, Tom Chilton! Pelican Shores has got to be brought back to life!"
A roar of assent went up from the crowd. Furiously, Tom Chilton tried to speak, but the crowd drowned his voice. He shook his fist into the echoing sound-then, his face dark and contorted, he leaped down, seized his sister's arm and stalked from the cannery building, half dragging her along.
The crowd noise died. Somebody yelled: "We're with you, Miss June. Greggs have always treated us right. We're with you. Just tell us what you want us to do."
"The first thing," Larry Poston said, "is to get the restaurant and the tavern unboarded and cleaned until they shine. And clean up the town in general, pick up the rubbish and the trash and try to get it less don't bare looking. Because summer vacation for the college kids will be coming up in two weeks, and I've got to start beating the drum. I've got a little idea in mind that came to me while I was having a nap this afternoon, and if it works, you're going to have more college boys in here-and girls, too-than you ever saw before."
He was aware of June Gregg's startled and delighted eyes on him. He had not told her of the inspiration that had come to him while he had lain on the bed in the upstairs room. But he knew now that he had stumbled into a good thing here, and that instead of Pelican Shores turning out to be a dog, it was going to be a gold mine. Because, while drowsing, he had found the key he had subconsciously been seeking all along.
June touched his arm as the crowd responded with shouted assent. "Larry! You didn't tell me! What kind of idea have you got?"
Poston smiled. "You'll just have to do like everybody else in Pelican Shores, June. You'll have to wait and see."
CHAPTER FIVE
When, he was in the throes of creativity, when a new gimmick, the right gimmick, the absolutely perfect gimmick for the purpose at hand sprang upon him full-blown, he liked to be by himself to work out the details. Accordingly, when the crowd had dissipated, he managed to give the Gregg girls the slip; and now he strolled along the beach, staring out at the ocean.
There was a wry smile on his face. The beach was deserted right now. But if his plans matured, three weeks hence there would be youthful figures locked together on blankets covering every square inch of it. It would look like the mating colony of a herd of seals.
But that was in the future, and because he was a man who was not unappreciative of beauty, he was content for the moment to enjoy the clean, stainless sweep of sand, the limitless reach of the ocean beyond; the shriek and swoop of hungry gulls, and the light, battering assault of the clean, cool offshore wind, that now, it nearing sunset and the. tide bound in, had freshened and lifted.
After a while, his subconscious mind still ironing out details, his conscious mind concerned only with the realities of sand and surf, he sat at the back of the beach, in the lee of the rocks projecting from the foot of the bluff, and smoked a cigarette.
It was nearly dark when he saw the girl.
She swam around the point, the promontory where the beach ended. She was swimming well out to sea, keeping away from the fierce rocks at the base of the point. At first, he saw just her head and her naked shoulders, wet, black hair streaming down across them. Then, as she swam in closer to the beach in the gathering dusk, her feet gained purchase and she emerged from the surf.
She was mother-naked and like a Venus arising.
He saw her come out of the water, her body a white shaft in the last of the light, her breasts full, white globes with dark, round tips, her black hair streaming down over Ivory shoulders. The beach was deserted and she seemed to be confident that she was in absolute privacy. She sloshed ashore, naked legs magnificent, breasts bobbing with each movement.
Poston's mouth was dry, and his tongue seemed to clog it, as from his hiding place he watched her unobserved.
And then, as she came closer, he recognized her. It was Luisa Chilton. And her nude body more than fulfilled the promise of the tight clothes she had worn when last he'd seen her.
Then he stiffened. Suddenly she had turned and, with unerring accuracy, was walking directly to the spot where he sat hidden.
Poston looked around in a curious panic. But there was no way to flee without revealing himself as a Peeping Tom. Maybe it was just coincidence, maybe she would turn aside before she saw him.
But no, she was heading directly for him. And there was purpose in her lithe, graceful movements as she came.
"Well, hell," Poston murmured, baffled, and he ground his cigarette into the sand.
She broke into a run, breasts bouncing in tantalizing fashion, and covered the last few paces quickly. Poston knew he had been seen now, and he waited quietly, wondering what she was up to.
Then she was where he sat, and she threw her naked body down in the sand beside him and then her arms were around him and her face was close to his, lips parted; and her eyes, dark violet and lustrous, were gleaming with hunger and desperation. "Please," she whispered. "Please...."
"Wait," Poston began to protest, but her arms were already around him. Her lips found his and pressed against them in a furious kiss. He was aware of the quick, thrusting dart of her tongue. It was like an avid little snake.
Then she was springing to her feet again, breasts swaying. She seized his hand. "Come," she husked, pulling him to his feet. "Hurry."
Like a man in a dream, Poston felt himself arising. He had not noticed the trail up the bluff, but she was climbing it, still holding his wrist, not looking back. It was a long climb, and he was panting slightly when they reached a ledge.
Then he saw the cave. It was a wide, low blackness against the side of the bluff. "In here," the girl said. "Quickly." And she had vanished into the dark maw, still clinging to Poston's hand.
Hesitantly, he allowed himself to be pulled in after her, although he knew it was doing his clothes no good. Then he was in utter blackness on cool sand, with only the sound of the girl's breathing in the darkness.
"Wait a minute," Poston said. "What's this all about?"
"This is my secret place," the girl said. "Not even he knows about this place."
"He?" Poston's voice was blank. "Who do you mean?"
"Tom, my brother." There was a pause. Then she said, "Now. Now, please. I want you to make love to me."
Poston said, incredulously: "What?"
Her voice was tinged with impatience. "I said I want you to make love to me." Her band tightened on his wrist. He felt the wet brush of her hair touch his face. Her lips were close to his, he could feel the perfumed warmth of her breath.
"I've got to know," she said desperately. "Don't you understand? I've got to know."
"Got to know what?" Poston's groping hand touched rounded flesh, a swaying, dangling breast with a nipple hard as iron. Automatically, his grip tightened on it and he heard the outrush of her breath.
"That's it," she said with her voice trembling. "Yes. Do that. And all the other."
"I don't understand," Poston said.
"Hurry!" Her voice was furious with impatience. "Please hurry. Don't you understand? I've got to know. I've got to know." And then her hand was wrestling with his belt buckle.
Despite his bafflement, Poston was aroused, responding to this naked urgency in the dark. "I don't understand," he said again, but her touch, as her hand moved down his belly and then lower, substituted desire for his curiosity.
"You don't have to understand," she grated. "You're better off not understanding. Just please-I'm not revolting, am I? I'm pretty, aren't I?"
"You're beautiful," Poston said.
"Then come on," she whispered. "Hurry. Make love to me."
So he did.
It was accomplished in the darkness of the shallow cave. Out of the darkness came a hungry mouth, groping thighs, a wriggling, upsurging body fitting itself to his, a hand that guided him. Then he was easing down and forward and she was making sounds and her hips were working under him.
There was a desperation about her that was more than the desperation of unsatisfied lust. Even as his reasoning faculties began to blank out in the growing pleasure that he felt, even as her body did things that set his nerves to throbbing and his heart to pounding, he puzzled about that. But then even his curiosity was lost in the totality of her passion. There was no more curiosity, no more thinking, no more questioning-only the twisting and grinding of sandy nakedness beneath him, the tongue in his mouth, twining with his, the softness of full, marble-tipped breasts, the hammering drive of buttocks, the clamp of thighs, the drumming of heels on his back, the gouge of nails in his shoulders.
All that combined in the blackness of the cave to bring them both step by step up a height they climbed together, to bring them to the peak. They poised there, balanced, and there was a blinding flash of fulfillment. The girl's body arched and strained; Larry Poston lunged with one more tremendous motion and that was it.
They went back down the height step by step, still locked together in the darkness. Poston could feel the slowing rise and fall of the breasts pinned beneath him. He could feel the diminishing of the kisses her mruth had been planting across his cheek and down his neck and over his shoulder.
Then, to his surprise, the girl was wriggling loose. Her voice was a trembling whisper. "Thank you," she breathed. "Oh, thank you."
"Wait," Poston said, clutching at her; but he missed her in the darkness.
He saw her, limned for a moment against the mouth of the cave; it was dark, now, but a moon was rising. For just an instant, he saw in silhouette the outlines of a trim yet luscious woman-body; then she was gone.
He crawled to the mouth of the cave. He saw her sliding down the bluff. Then, in the first light of the moon, she was running, naked, across the deserted beach. He watched her plunge into the surf. She swam out as if she had been born in the water. He could see the bobbing dot of her head for a long time. Then, making a wide arc to avoid the rocks at the foot of the promontory, she circled the point and was gone.
Poston found his clothes. He crawled to the mouth of the cave and put most of them on. Carrying the rest of them, he slipped down the bluff. Thoughtfully, he walked back to the town.
Luisa Chilton. Why had she come to him like that? She must have seen him walking the beach. She must have seen him sit down in the sheltered place.
It had not been a chance encounter, but one she had decided upon. Nor had it been simply a case of a near-nympho girl feeling sudden lust for a stranger and deciding to have a bit of fun. There was more to it than that, but he did not know yet what it was.
His mind was very busy as he climbed slowly up the bluff to the house of the three Gregg women.
Luisa Chilton came out of the ocean at a deserted place and found her clothes. Shaking her dark hair and sending drops of water flying, she pulled on the T-shirt, which immediately plastered itself to the full globes of her breasts. She struggled with the ultra-tight jeans, finally managed to get wet legs and hips down in them and fasten their snaps. Then, barefoot, she walked along a path through the woods, which, though it was utterly dark, she knew so well that she did not stray from it.
After a while, she saw the lights of the shack at the edge of town. She paused, staring at it for a moment, breathing hard. Then she let out a long, strange sigh and walked on again.
When she entered the shack, she saw that, as she had expected, Tom had been drinking again. He sat at the rickety table in the middle of the single room, his hand wrapped around a half-empty quart of cheap wine. His dark hair fell across his forehead; the full lips in the handsome face that was such an identical, though masculine, version of her own were twisted irritably. As she entered, he looked up, focused his eyes with a deliberate effort, running his gaze up and down her body, taking in the flesh tint of her torso where the damp knit shirt was tightly stretched across it, the lines of curving hips and thighs.
"Where th' hell you been?" His voice was surly, mean. And, as usual, suspicious.
Luisa tried hard to make her answer casual. "I took a swim."
"I thought I told you not to go off anywhere."
"I was hot and sticky."
His eyes narrowed. "Hot, yeah. I believe that. You're hot all right. Which man you running after this time like a she-dog in heat?"
"Tom." Her voice trembled. "Please. Don't say things like that."
He shook his big head. "You ain't fooling me. I know what you'd like to do. You'd like to doll yourself up in a fancy dress and a lot of lipstick and junk jewelry and go out strumpeting around just like the ole lady used to do...."
"Tom, don't talk that way about mother!"
"It's the truth, ain't it? How many times have you and I both seen it? She comin' home all duked out in that tramp-finery of hers with some drunk fisherman in tow. How many times have I heard men down at the store laugh just at the mention of her name and whistle and roll their eyes ... All right, I had to go through it with her-I had to see all that and listen to all that when I was a kid. But I know one thing-you ain't going the same route! Not if I have to-" His big hand opened and closed expressively.
"Tom, so help me, I don't want to-I know how you feel. I feel the same way. But-"
He drank from the bottle. "But what? But you got the itch, huh? You got the itch again. All right. But you're not gonna satisfy it by goin' out and tartin' around with men and makin' yourself a laughing stock." He set the bottle down, hard; it made a loud thump in the silence. He straightened up and took a step toward her. "I swore my sister was never going to go out and make a pig out of herself like my mother did. I. swore I'd look after you and see that didn't happen. And by God, that's the way it's going to be. There's just the two of us, you understand? Just the two of us and that's all there's going to be, ever. You and me ... "
She did not step back from him. She stood there looking at him with the same kind of glazed fascination that a bird, hypnotized, might have shown for the weaving head of an approaching snake. He was close to her, towering over her now. She could smell the sweet reek of the wine on his breath. She felt her knees begin to shake, her body dissolving, it seemed, as she recognized the light in his eyes.
"You don't have to go out and be a tramp," he rasped. "You're not going to lack for what you need."
"Tom," she said thinly, "no. No, not now."
His dark brows arched. "What? Where've you been? What have you been up to? What do you mean not now! This is the first time you've ever said that." His face contorted, lips peeling back from white teeth. His big hands closed on her arms, contracting like jaws of a trap. "Where've you been?" he snapped. "What have you been up to? Who've you been with?"
She turned her face from the sourness of the wine, from the anger and lust she read in his eyes. "Nobody," she lied, wincing against the pain. "I promise you, Tom, believe me-nobody."
"I'm not enough for you any more, is that it? You're like all the rest. You want to see those college boys come in. That's what you want, isn't it?"
"Tom-"
He released her suddenly and then he hit her, a massive, backhanded slap that drove her across the room and sent her sprawling on the single, rumpled bed.
He snarled one short, foul imprecation at her.
Then he strode to the bed; he was towering over her. His hand flashed down, ripped away the rotten fabric of the flimsy T-shirt. That left her naked to the waist. She crossed her arms over her breasts.
"I'll show you," he snapped. "I'll teach you. Take off those pants."
"No, Tom-"
His voice was like thunder.
"Damn it! I said take 'em off!"
She whimpered. But with fingers that felt cold, leaden, and numb, she complied, rolling the faded blue denim down until she could kick out of it. Then she was lying, cowering, completely nude.
He stared down at her for an interminable second, his handsome face contorted. Then his belt made a thin whishing sound as he drew it from its loops.
It dangled from his big hand, thirty inches of metal-studded leather.
"I'll teach you the lesson the old man oughta taught the ole lady," he grated. "The lesson I woulda taught her if I'd had any sense!"
"Tom, so help me-" She rolled over on her stomach. If it were coming, she wanted to take it on her back, her buttocks, not on her belly or thighs. She closed her eyes....
She heard the whistle of the belt. She felt it bite her flesh across the crest of her rear. She bit her lip against the pain. She could hear Tom's hard breathing.
The belt came down again, thwacking loudly. And again and again and again, with a rhythm of sound and a rhythm of pain. She felt it lancing through her whole body, almost like sexuality, and she sobbed and covered her mouth with her hand and lay inertly with her eyes closed, helpless, as he lashed again and again.
Then, at last, it was over. She heard the belt land on the floor as he tossed it aside. She heard the stertorous, excited rhythm of his breathing.
She heard, too, the soft sound of his clothing being tossed aside.
"That was the first part of the lesson," he grated. "Now, you're gonna get the second part."
Adrift in a sea of pain, she did not move. She just lay there with her eyes closed. She felt his weight come down on top of her.
This time she did not care. She had found out tonight what she needed to know, had made her decision, and it insulated her against the pain.
He could not seal her off forever. There was a world out there, and in it there were men who could stir her as much, more, than he could.
And no matter what he did to her, he could not keep her from somehow, sooner or later, escaping from him into that world.
CHAPTER SIX
When Larry Poston returned to his office two days later, his secretary, Candy Carlyle, stared at him. "Where," she asked softly, "in the world have you been?"
Poston grinned. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
"Well, you'd better have a good story. About a half-dozen of our best clients are ready to strangle you."
Poston ran his eyes up and down her form with a certain fondness. Good old Candy; she was his strong right arm. Not a raving beauty; she was a little too lean, a little too hatchet-faced for that, but she was as efficient as an eight-day clock ... and there were times, as he knew from experience, when she could be very affectionate, as well. She had worked for him for nearly three years now, and the relationship between them was warm on both sides.
"We'll get those out of the way," he said casually. "Just leave 'em to me. I'll placate 'em all."
"With the usual Poston charm," she said wryly.
"What else?"
She smiled faintly and patted her chestnut hair. "What about me? Don't I deserve a little placating? You run off with no word at all and leave me to fend away the wolves. I could stand a little placating, too."
He moved closer to her and patted her shoulder. "You may very well get placated before the day is over, Girl Friday. But first, let me calm the irate clients."
He did it quickly and adeptly with a few telephone calls. By the time he hung up, they were all deliriously happy to have been noticed by him at all, and glowing with the extravagant promises he had made of the efforts he would expend in their behalfs. What he had really done, though, carefully and without any of the clients fully realizing it, was to buy himself time. Each of them had received the promise that he was working on a long-range project for them; it would require a few more weeks. Until then, be patient; the results would be worth the wait.
So he was pleased with himself when his calls were over. He pressed the buzzer on his desk and Candy came in from the outer office. Casually, she sat on the edge of his desk, her skirt riding up above her knees, showing long stretches of lean but excellent stockinged leg.
"Well," she said, "what now?"
Poston smiled at her and caressed the smooth nylon stretched taut across her left thigh. "Nothing much," he said. "We've got a campaign to map out, but it's not too complicated." His hand slid to the inside of her thigh.
She drew in a deep breath. "Do you want me for business or for pleasure right now?"
"Maybe a combination of both," he said, letting his hand move further up her leg. It passed the stocking top, stroking the smooth, bare flesh up there. He did not really want Candy right now, not right this moment, but he knew she felt hurt at his running out without leaving any word, and she had to be kept happy. There was one thing that made her happier than anything else. Thus, he kept sliding his palm back and forth along the warm inner thigh, moving it a little higher each time.
After a while his hand had gone as high as it could go. Through taut nylon, he touched a warm softness that was different from the flesh of the thigh. Candy sucked in her breath, wriggled on the desk, and her legs moved. "It's going to be awfully hard to concentrate on business if you keep on doing that."
"Who said I wanted to concentrate on business?" He bent and kissed her knee.
She pressed one hand against her breasts, which were neither large nor small, but just right. "I can see that this is going to be another one of those mornings."
"I have a feeling it is, too."
She took his wrist and pulled his hand away. "Excuse me," she said breathily, "while I lock the door to the outer office."
While she was gone, Poston leaned back in his chair and thought about the events of the past two days.
After his encounter with the Chilton girl in the cave on the bluff, he had returned to the Gregg house. The three women were waiting for him there, and, even sated as he was by his experiences of the day, he had to admit that they were a tempting trio in their thigh-split shifts. Their very variety made them even more tempting-that together with the knowledge that all three of them were his to do with what he wanted, that they would respond to any sexual command he gave them.
But he was tired. He was not a satyr; he could not perform the incredible feats of the hero of a cheap novel; he had done all he was able to do in the way of handling women without a good night's rest. Accordingly, he fended off their efforts to arouse him as best he could-May and April were especially determined. The very tall girl and the very short one seemed to be fascinated by him, and he could not turn around without bumping into a soft mound of woman flesh or encountering caressing hands or wet, warm mouths. At last he had to state it flatly: "Look, girls, I've had a long day. I've got to have some rest. Can't we sit and just talk for a while?"
May and April had looked crestfallen. June had nodded. "Of course," she said. "We promised that we'd do whatever you say. That includes leaving you alone, doesn't it, sisters?" She stared at them almost commandingly, and Poston had the intuitive feeling that she really was the brains behind this whole project.
The girls looked reluctant, but they nodded. June said, rather contemptuously, "Sometimes I think they're more interested in the men this scheme will bring in then they are in the welfare of Pelican Shores."
April bounced on the sofa. "Well, it's lonesome here at Pelican Shores...."
May said nothing, but curled her incredibly long legs sinuously under herself on the sofa. "All right," she murmured. "We'll wait. For a while, at least...."
"You'll have to," Poston smiled. "Now, let's have a drink and talk some business."
June had fixed martinis, and they sat on a rambling porch in the cool breeze that blew in from the sea. "It looks like we've got the complete cooperation of the townspeople," Poston said. "All except for those Chiltons. What gives with them?" He asked the question casually, trying to mask his own special curiosity, "Luisa and Tom? It's hard to say." June sipped her drink. "Their father was a fisherman-he was at sea a great deal of the time. Their mother was-well, let's face it. She was the town pushover. You know the type-pour a couple of drinks into her and any man could have her. She ran off with some man from up the coast right after her husband was washed overboard in a storm, left the children to shift for themselves. Tom and Luisa-they were fourteen or fifteen then. Since that time they've been as close as a brother and sister possibly could be."
"What do you mean by that?" Poston asked sharply.
She looked at him in surprise. "Nothing. I mean that Tom has taken care of her, tired to be mother and father both to her. He's very jealous of her, very careful that she won't follow in her mother's footsteps, so to speak. She can hardly go anywhere without him trailing along behind her, and the men in the village have already found out that it's a good idea to leave her alone. He's beat up several that have tried to get fresh with her."
"I see. And they're the only ones dead set against progress coming to Pelican Shores?"
"Yes. But they don't count. Don't worry about them. Everybody else is behind us. Listen, you said this afternoon you had an idea. Can't you please tell me about it now?"
"No," he said. "Not until I'm sure it will work. I've got to do a little research on the college crowd, make sure what their current tastes and fads are. If I'm right, though, it may turn out that we'll-you'll-hit the jackpot here with Pelican Shores." He stood up. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm very tired. I'm going to bed...."
He had slept well. And he had barely opened his eyes when there was a gentle knock at his bedroom door. Yawning, he pulled the sheet up about his naked torso, blinked at the sunlight streaming through the window, and said: "Come in."
When the door had opened, May Gregg entered the room. She was carrying a tray with a pot of coffee and a cup and saucer. "I thought you might need this," she said, setting it down on the bed table.
"Yeah." He sat up, the sheet falling away to his waist. As she poured the coffee and handed it to him, he did not miss the hunger in her eyes as they roamed up and down his naked body, taking in the heavy, muscular chest, the flat, hard stomach. He had always tried to keep himself in condition, and he knew that women liked his body, liked the economical, muscular symmetry of it.
She was wearing a two-piece bathing suit. There was nothing particularly daring about its cut, but her body was so long that there seemed to be acres of skin exposed between the bra and trunks. She wore again this morning that rather eerie facial make-up, the crayoned brows, the heavily painted eyes, the crimson-daubed mouth. A different set of earrings dangled long and paganly from her ears, clinking with every motion of her head.
He thought about yesterday, on the sofa, about that phenomenal way of controlling her body that she knew, and as the coffee revived him, he felt, coming with wakefulness, a renewed lustiness.
"Did you sleep well?" she murmured.
"I slept very well, thank you."
"That's good," she said. Then she said, "You know, it's hell living all alone with just my sisters here. Away from everything, shut off from everything."
"I gathered you were lonely."
"More lonely than you could guess." She stood up. She was not wearing the ultra-high heels today, but even so, she seemed to tower. "Even if I lived in a town that was a real hot spot, I guess I'd be lonely. Do you know what life is like for a very tall woman? It doesn't matter whether she's beautiful or not. No matter how beautiful she is, she can't compete with the girls of average height or the little, cuddly ones. And it's worse here than it would be anywhere else."
"There are men in the village, aren't there?"
"Yes," she said bitterly. "There are men there. But we're Greggs. We're the ruling family. We can't-associate with the peasants...."
She broke off. After a moment, she sat down on the bed again. "You don't know how hungry for a man I've been," she whispered, and her eyes were burning as they stared into his. She laid her hand on his thigh.
"Well, if this plan works out, there'll be plenty of men coming to Pelican Shores," Poston said. "Young men, strong ones. All the men you can handle. They won't care whether you're tall or not."
"Please," she said desperately. "You've got to make it work. I can't stand being shut off here much longer. I-" Her hand was slipping up his thigh; suddenly she seized the sheet and threw it aside.
"You're all right now," she said hoarsely, looking at him. "You're rested."
"Yes," said Poston. "I'm rested."
"Good," she whispered. "Good." Then she was unfastening the bra. It came away and her breasts were bared. She stood up, peeled away the trunks of the swimsuit, stepped out of them. Then, an incredible length of lovely woman, she was naked before him.
Her next move surprised him. Instead of getting in the bed, she knelt beside it. Her neck and torso were so long that when she leaned forward, her breasts, dangling, swept across his stomach, the hard tips dragging across his sensitive skin. "Poston," she said thickly, and then she was kissing him. Her mouth was on his chest, playing across the hard pectoral muscles. Her tongue made little circular traceries within the framework of her lips. It was like having fire and ice dragged over his body all at .once.
Poston lay quiet, tense.
She said his name again in that hoarse voice, muffled now by contact of her mouth on his belly. He closed his eyes, as that mouth played its way down the length of him, along with the feather touch of her hair.
Then he drew in a long, shuddering breath. He put his hand on her head pressing, encouraging her.
She needed no encouragement. She knew exactly what she wanted, and she was engrossed in what she was doing. Poston felt tremendous pressures gathering themselves within him.
Then she raised her head. "Now," she breathed, and all at once she was in the bed with him.
Poston did not move. She was straddling his body. Slowly, she lowered herself to him.
And there was no necessity for him to move. He could have, as easily, been a stone idol or a contrivance, for all the demands made on him. She was so greedy that she did everything that was necessary. All those wonderful muscles of her body came into play again, and Poston gripped her breasts and held them; otherwise he lay inert.
Finally, as he felt all the forces of his body mustering themselves, he raised his head. He drew in first the right nipple and then the left one between his lips. He rolled his tongue around them. He felt the shudder that went through May Gregg, felt the tempo of her frantic hips increase. She got her hands under his buttocks, sealing him to her more tightly, and her body seemed determined to waste no fraction of time.
And then it happened; it happened quickly; it happened for both of them almost simultaneously, and it was over.
Almost.
Poston sank back. May Greg sat where she was. Her body was still except for that one secret part of it.
And then, finally, even she seemed to be exhausted and she let out a gusty breath and she swung free of the bed and of Poston and smiled down at him.
"I hope you're going to stay with us a long time," she said."
"Only tonight," he said. "Tomorrow I'm going back to my office and get to work." She looked disappointed.
"But," said Poston, "don't forget-I'll be back."
When she had left the room. Poston lay back inertly, his eyes closed, for a long time. After a while, he sat up and drank another cup of coffee.
He had just drained it when the door opened.
April Gregg entered, short, lush, wearing a transparent nightgown that ended just at her hips, and bearing a tray.
"I brought you some coffee," she said. And then she saw the other pot on the bed table and she swore. "Damn her," she said. "She beat me to it."
She set the tray on a chair and stood with hands on hips. The nightgown was completely sheer, and he saw the dull gleam of her nipples through it. Then, suddenly, April made a sound in her thorat. Before Poston could move or even protest, she was in the bed with him, under the sheet, her arms about him, her breasts pressed against him, her splayed lower body rubbing itself up and down his thigh frantically.
He saw her open, hungry mouth in front of his face. "Poston," she whispered. "Larry." Her mouth fastened on his. Her body rubbed itself along him with even more desperation. Her tongue unreeled itself into his mouth, hot and wet and groping.
Poston was incredulous to feel himself responding again so soon. But her demands would not be denied. His sigh was half one of resignation, half one of arousal. "All right, April," he whispered, and he rolled her over on her back....
That had been the morning. He had spent the day familiarizing himself with the village, in the company of June Gregg. She seemed to lack the lecherous urgency of her sisters; she made no overtures to him and he had no strength or willingness to make any to her. Besides, he was fascinated by the energy and enthusiasm the villagers were showing as they threw themselves into the cleanup campaign. Pelican Shores was beginning to undergo a renaissance. Paint was brought off the fishing boats and out of storage in the cannery: all hands, men, women, and children worked at cleaning and applying the paint in the business district.
"I see now," Poston murmured, "why you were so concerned about these people. They really do want to work, don't they?"
"They were brought up to work," June Gregg said. "When they don't have work to do, they're not themselves. They're unhappy. But they're happy now, and I hope ... oh, God, Poston, I hope we don't let them down. I hope this isn't all going to be a tremendous flop."
He looked down at her, saw that her lovely face beneath its dome of blonde hair was genuinely concerned. She was not thinking of herself, as her sisters had done. And he liked her immensely, far more than he cared for either April or May.
"Don't worry," he said. "Larry Poston never let down a client yet."
After dinner that night, he fell under assault by May and April again. When he went to his room, he found both of them waiting for him there this time.
Poston sighed. I'll never take another contract like this again, he thought.
He looked at the two girls sardonically. They were both wearing their thigh-slit shifts, nothing else. "Well," he said sarcastically. "The night watch. Where's June?"
May did not catch his irony. "Do you want June, too?"
"Yes," Poston said, suddenly seized by a perverse desire. "Yes, I want June, too. I want all three of you."
May did not even blink. "All right," she said. "I'll get her." And she left the room. She returned in a moment with her sister. June was still fully-clad, wearing the green dress she had worn down into town with Poston. Her face was expressionless.
"You, too," Poston said, motioning to the bed.
She nodded, making no protest, but displaying no real enthusiasm, either. He watched all three of them undress. Poston himself made no effort to undress. He stood with his hand in his pocket. When the three naked girls were sitting on the bed, May and April with lust written in every line of their tense bodies, June sitting quietly, Poston suddenly strode toward the door, whipping out the key they had given him to the bedroom. Before they realized what he was up to, he was out in the hall and locking the door. There were indignant screams from inside as the key turned in the lock.
"Now!" Poston shouted through the door. "You three can amuse yourselves. I'm getting a good night's sleep." And, laughing softly at the uproar in his wake, he crossed the hall, entered another bedroom, peeled off his clothes, lay down on the bed and soon was in blissful, undisturbed slumber.
The two girls were angry with him next morning, but the third one, June, had no comment when he released her. All she said, on the trip back to the city, was: "That was rather dirty pool last night."
"I had to get some rest. I'm not made of iron, you know."
"I hadn't bothered you, had I?"
"No," he said in remorse, "you didn't. I'm sorry."
"Besides," she said, and there was a ring of something like disgust in her voice, "when April and May are like they were last night, all excited, it's not pleasant to be locked in with them."
Poston looked at her sharply. "What do you mean?"
"Never mind," she said; and she did not speak again until she let him out in front of the huge building that housed his office.
"We'll be hearing from you seen, won't we?" she asked.
"Very soon," Poston promised. "Your project has the highest priority."
She looked relieved. "That's good," she said, and then she started the car and drove away.
So Poston had had enough sex during those two days to hold any normal man for a month. But Candy Carlyle had to be kept happy. He could not afford to lose her. And he knew what she considered the ultimate happiness.
Therefore, jaded as he was, he mustered all his resources as she came back into the office after locking the outer door. She looked at him hungrily from a rather plain and yet somehow attractive face.
"Now," she said, "you can proceed to placate me," and she reached under her skirt and unfastened garter belt and panties and removed the whole assembly. She unbuttoned her blouse. She sat on his lap. She ground her body againt his. She fastened her mouth on his. He put his hand inside her blouse and squeezed her breasts until she was a wild thing. Then they fell out of the chair. They landed on the deep, soft carpet of his office.
He placated her....
CHAPTER SEVEN
And with that not-totally-unpleasant chore out of the way, Larry Poston buckled down to work. Summer vacation for college students was rapidly approaching. Vacation for most of them meant lazy weeks at the shore; for boys it meant the pursuit of girls; for girls it meant fleeing from the boys, but not fast enough to avoid being caught. Each sex desperately wanted a place to meet the other, to yield to all the wild and tempestuous hungers of youth without adult intervention, to do within a society of their own what they could not do in a society of adults.
Over the years they had sought such opportunity in first this resort and then the other. Obscure beaches had sprung into notoriety, sometimes unwel-comed, as the college youth flooded in for their annual riotous summer rites, in vehicles old and new, in scanty bathing suits, laden with transistor radios and blankets and beer openers and all the wild lusts of the young. It was almost like a migration of birds-no one could really tell why this beach or that suddenly became the place, why students from all over the country suddenly assembled there with no prior warning; it was as if they knew by instinct where to find each other and gathered by instinct.
When they were all together, they made love and they danced their weird and suggestive dances and they drank beer and they prowled and they pranked and they sometimes rioted. And though few of them had much money to spend individually, when thousands of them gathered, the coffers of whatever resort they had picked overflowed.
What Poston was determined to do now was to make Pelican Shores the place.
He wasted no time slanting his propaganda to the adult trade. He went directly to the youth. And so did Candy Carlyle.
For two weeks, they were fixtures in the favorite hangouts of the local college crowd-Poston at West Coast U., and Candy at Gryffindale, the posh girl's school thirty-five miles away. An unbriefed observer might have thought there was something sinister about the two adults mingling with the young people-might have tagged them as dope pushers. Actually, they were doing nothing more sinister than simply mentioning that Pelican Shores was a new and isolated resort completely free of adults. That it had a fine beach, that there were cheap accommodations available, and that the people who ran it were not too fussy about what went on there.
And then, to cinch things, Poston spent a considerable amount of his own money implementing the idea that had come to him at Pelican Shores.
Among his clients there were two folk-singing groups, one called The Lonesome Five, which consisted of three men and two girls, all young, all involved in some weird and inextricable sexual relationship with each other which Poston did not even try to figure out. And then there was The Traveling Trio, two young girls and a man-he did not try to unravel that one either. But he hired The Lonesome Five and The Traveling Trio and he hired, as well, a young girl of twenty who did a single act-she was gaunt and had the saddest face he had ever seen on a human being, and owned the sweetest voice. Her name was Frieda Friday, and she played an instrument of her own invention, the vibra-zither, and sang English ballads so old that no one but herself had ever heard of them until she introduced them.
She came higher than The Lonesome Five and The Traveling Trio put together, but he paid her guarantee ungrudgingly. For the name of Frieda Friday was a magical one among the younger set; there were those who would willingly have walked barefoot across the continent to hear her sing. Folk music, it had occurred to Poston, was the latest kick, the biggest fad, among the group he was trying to reach-and when the handbills about the gigantic, free folk music festival at Pelican Shores were passed about the campuses, he knew his work was done. He and Candy Carlyle went back to their haunts at West Coast U. and Gryffindale and sampled the results. Accordingly, he was able to write to June Gregg: Batten the hatches. The stampede is under way.
And then, with Candy Carlyle in tow, he went back to Pelican Shores to make sure they were ready. He was pretty sure that what they were going to get was a great deal more than they were expecting.
Final exams were over. In a dorm room at West Coast U., three young men sat talking.
Chad Ricketts was an engineering major. He moved his lips when he read. He was reading now, deciphering the yellow handbill he held, his broad, knobby face twisted in concentration.
"'Hootenanny and Folk Festival,' " the handbill said. " 'Hear The Lonesome Five and The Traveling Trio. Hear Frieda Friday, Queen of the Folkniks. Free. Free! Free!! Pelican Shores, June 25, 26, and 27.' " Chad raised his head. "Where the hell is Pelican Shores?"
"They printed a map on the back of the handbill," Bert Witherspoon said, around the pipe in his mouth. Well on his way to becoming a nuclear scientist, he was tall and lean, and already balding, his head dome-shaped.
"This is something new," Fred Asher added. "I had a date with a broad from Gryffindale last night. She was telling me all about it. Seems Pelican Shores is a little out-of-the way fishing town. It's got a nice beach, no fancy stuff, no plush hotels, nothing to draw the older trade. She said she was going there soon as school was out. So are most of the girls she knows." Asher was a football quarterback, second string, and smarter than he looked, a muscular, beefy giant. "Matter of fact, from what she said, that whole place is going to be swarming with stuff from Gryffindale. All the girls are going to be there."
Chad Ricketts' brow was still wrinkled. "Well, that wasn't where I had planned to go. I'd planned to go to-"
"You'd better change your plans," Bert Wither-spoon cut in. "Unless you wanta spend a stag summer. Because that's what my girl told me, too. They're all going to give Pelican Shores a try." He had been sprawled on the bed, but now he sat up. "So'm I. It sounds like the best deal in years. There was some older guy down in The Bierstube last week that was telling me about it. You know the way they crack down on you at some of these places? Well, you don't need to worry about that at Pelican Shores. They're just getting started and they're anxious to build up trade and anything goes there now. If you want to dash down Main Street in your altogether, nobody's going to notice it at Pelican Shores."
"I don't plan to do that," Fred Asher grinned. "But it would be nice to go to a place where if you sort of get carried away by all the bare woman-meat all around you, nobody's going to throw you in the pokey for indecent behavior in public. I remember at that place we went to last year, Joe Hollis-you know Joe-well, he got a little beered up and he tackled a girl on the beach and it turned out she was a town girl and she screamed and called a cop-and Jo.-; had to spend the night in jail. They were going to prosecute him for rape-he tore off the bra to her bathing suit-but then it turned out the girl was already pregnant and not married, so they dropped the charge. But it got ole Joe kind of hot under the collar, and he started throwing beer cans when he got out and then somebody else started a fight, and pretty soon there was a riot on the beach and they called out trucks with fire hoses and washed us all down like a bunch of fighting dogs. I swore then I'd never go back there again-they got no sense of humor there." He tapped the handbill Chad Ricketts held. "Me for Pelican Shores this time."
Chad Ricketts blinked. "Well, hell," he rumbled, "if that's where you fellows are going, then I'll go there too."
Much the same sort of scene was taking place in a dorm room at Gryffindale.
Linda Murray came out of the shower with only a towel wrapped around her plump body. "What's that?" she said. "Pelican Shores?" Linda was not a particularly-attractive young lady; assiduous beer drinking had made her fifteen pounds overweight and her complexion had a tendency toward frequent eruption. "Where's Pelican Shores?"
"It's where the boys are going to be this year," Jessica Throne said. She was not startlingly beautiful either. As a matter-of-fact, neither was the third girl, Nancy Clancy. The three of them had a common complaint-not enough dating. Nancy Clancy, a skinny brunette, sat in front of the room's mirror now, completely nude, powdering her body in preparation for one of her infrequent trysts with a real, live boy. She dabbed with the powder puff between breasts which, even when mature, would be inadequate-and said:
"If it's where the boys are going to be, it's where I'm going to be."
"I heard Betty Murchison talking," Jessica Throne said. Everybody knew that Betty Murchison was the prettiest, most popular girl on campus. "She's going there for this folk music festival they're having."
"All of them are going, I hear," said Nancy. By them, used half in envy, half in hatred, she meant the loveliest and most-attractive girls of the school.
"Well if they go, we won't have to worry about tht boys being there," said Jessica. "There'll be gobs of 'em. And you know how it is-there's always an overflow of boys at things like this. Last year there were at least two boys for every girl, no matter who she was or what she looked like."
Linda Murray dropped her towel and pirouetted, plump breasts swaying, heavy buttocks jouncing. "Two boys? That's just about half enough for me!" She clasped her hands over her breasts. "This has been a long winter and no dates. I'm ready to be loved! I want to be loved backward, forward, sideways and upside down. Two boys won't even get me started!"
Nancy Clancy laughed. "I guess we all feel that way. Anyhow, I can hardly wait. I'm tired of ... of substitutes. No offense, girls-but let's face it. What I want is men!"
Jessica Throne yawned and stretched. "We ought to make that our battle cry as we charge down on Pelican Shores. What I want is men!"
"Well," Poston said to Candy Carlyle, "what do you think of the deal?"
Her lean face was sardonic. "I can see where it would have its attractions for you. But with those three after you, do you think you'll have strength enough left to see it through?"
Poston laughed. "Candy, you're jealous."
"I'm not jealous. I know I'm just a working girl, with a few fringe benefits thrown in on the side. I'm not getting any delusions of grandeur. I don't care how many women you have, it's none of my business. Just the same, you've plowed a pile of your own money into this thing, hiring those entertainers, letting your other clients slide. Do you think it's worth all that just to get the opportunity to play around with those three ... well, weird nymphos up there?"
"Don't worry," said Poston. "I can look after myself." They were walking down the main street of Pelican Shores. It had undergone a transformation; buildings once scabby and shuttered were open now, and gleaming with paint. The cannery had been cleaned of equipment and refurbished: partitions had been built and now there were dormitories within it for male and female, and there was a beer parlor and a dance floor. Even the fishing boats riding at anchor had been spruced up above-and below-decks, their sleeping quarters made more attractive with paint and fresh bedding. "I'm not engaged in this entirely because I need the sex."
Candy squeezed his arm. "I should hope not," she said.
"We're forming a corporation," Poston told her. "I'm getting twenty-five per cent of the stock for my services."
"Your services where? In bed?"
"Listen. Twenty-five per cent of Pelican Shores is going to be like owning twenty-five per cent of a gold mine. In about a week this place will be crawling with kids, all spending money like it was going out of style. The corporation will own all the property here and it'll begin to collect rent from it again. Don't worry about Larry Poston. He likes women, but he likes money, too. Nobody's ever going to accuse him of letting himself be made a sucker of."
"I don't know," Candy said, rubbing her face thoughtfully. "These girls might not be as simple as they pretend to be. They were smart enough to lure you here, and to use their bodies to get you in on this deal. Once it's going, they might be smart enough to freeze you out. I'm not talking necessarily about June-I think she's on the square. But that ... that weird giraffe of a May and that teenage sexpot of an April. Well, I wouldn't trust them around the block. There's something unwholesome about both of them."
"Don't worry. They know they couldn't get to first base without me. They're not going to try any tricks."
They had reached the end of the town, now. Poston gestured. "There's the beach." '
"Oh, it's lovely," Candy said quickly. "It makes you want to take off all your clothes and run naked out into that beautiful water."
Poston grinned. "Go ahead."
"No, thanks. I'm shy."
"No need to be. I imagine there'll be plenty of kids doing just that in about a week or ten days."
"Well, maybe then. When in Rome, you know...."
They strolled along the water's edge. The tide was going out and the sea was calm. As they neared the promontory that terminated the strip of shore, Candy halted. "Wait," she said.
Poston looked at her in surprise. "Changed your mind about the skinny-dip?"
"No. No, listen."
He was silent, trying to hear what she had heard. Then, above the gentle lapping of the surf, it came to him, from around the jut of the promontorya woman's voice, clear, true, heartbreakingly beautiful, singing....
Poston held his breath.
And then he took her to the sea And there he held her down ... My dear, he said, our love is dead And now it's you I'll drown ... In a plaintive, hunting minor key, it floated to them on the wind, underlaid by the rhythmic strumming of a guitar.
Candy Carlyle frowned. "Did one of your folk-singers get here early?"
Puzzled, Poston shook his head. "No, it must be one of the natives here. Come on, let's see who it is."
"How? We can't get around that point without a boat."
"I know a path up to the top if you're game for a climb."
"All right. Whoever that is, she certainly has the finest voice for that kind of song I've ever heard."
Poston helped her up the bluff. It was a scramble, for Candy wore shoes with high, spiked heels. But, panting, at last they made it, and they walked quietly out to the very edge of the point and looked down at the rocks below.
A girl sat on the rocks.
Either a girl, Poston thought, or a siren out of mythology or a ... a mermaid fresh-crawled from the sea....
Nearly a hundred feet below them, she sat on a huge boulder that rose above the swirling water. She was naked, and her long, black hair was plastered to tanned shoulders. She held a guitar cradled tight against superb breasts. The sun glinted on the bronzed skin of her flanks and thighs.
Her voice drifted up to them, fainter now, barely audible above the surf.
And there he drowned his one true-love,
He drowned her in a wave
And in the deeps her body sleeps
Down in a watery grave....
"Luisa," Poston said softly. "Who?"
"Luisa Chilton. She's one of the natives."
"Oh," Candy said thoughtfully. "Well, folk music's not my cup of tea. But that girl's voice sends shivers even down my spine." She shook her head. "I've never heard anything so ... so sad."
"She's got a right to be sad from what I've heard of her," Poston said. "Shhh. Get down. She's coming in to shore."
Luisa Chilton stood up on the rock, the guitar dangling by its neck from her hand. She looked out over the ocean for a moment, and then she turned toward the land. Poston drew in a breath of admiration at the dark loveliness of her naked body. Beside him Candy whispered: "Gosh. I'd give my right eye to own a pair of boobies like those...."
Then, gracefully, Luisa slid off the rock into the surf. She held her guitar high over her head. The water came up only to her belly, swirled about her navel. Slowly she waded to shore at the foot of the bluff. Carefully, as they watched, she laid the guitar down, and then she wriggled into a T-shirt and tight jeans. When she was dressed, she picked up the guitar, slung it over her shoulder, and began to climb the bluff by another path.
When she had disappeared from view behind an outcropping, Candy Carlyle let out a long breath.
"And you spent a fortune," she whispered, "as a guarantee to Frieda Friday."
Poston looked at her thoughtfully. "I've got a tin ear," he murmured. "Was she really as good as she sounded?"
"Probably better," Candy said. "Up close, she'd be fine. And that figure of hers wouldn't hurt her crowd appeal, either. Most lady folksingers look like slats."
Luisa reappeared, farther away now, trudging over the top of a bluff into a grove of pines.
"She must live up there somewhere," Candy said. "Larry, she ought to be on your program."
Poston had been thinking the same thing. He trusted Candy's judgment on such matters implicitly. She had taste and awareness and a background of culture that far exceeded his own. It was obvious that, in Luisa Chilton, they had stumbled on one of those naturals-an artist self-trained into perfection, motivated not by money but by inner tensions and drives requiring expression. Poston's thoughts raced ahead. He saw Luisa giving concerts before packed auditoriums; he saw her dark, beautiful features on record albums; he had a vision of her in an evening gown, singing on television ... He thought of all that, and he thought of money, too. He was a man of immediate decision, and now he stood erect, his face was serious. "Do you know what I'm going to do, Candy? I'm going to sign that girl to a personal contract and give her a place on the festival program. If she's as good as we think she is, that ought to set her off on a career. And I'm going to tape her performance and take it around to some of the record companies and make the A&R men listen to her if I have to tie 'em and gag 'em." He seized Candy's arm. "Come on."
She looked startled. "Where are we going?"
"To wherever that girl lives. There's no time like the present."
Luisa Chilton was humming to herself as she walked along the path through the pines. She was not humming because she was happy, but only because music was part of her and it insisted on boiling out to express her mood, no matter what that mood might be. Right now, far from happiness, it was loneliness and melancholy. As she trudged along with the guitar riding on its sling, her shoulders were slumped and she looked down at her feet, rarely raising her head.
It was strange, she thought, that she had not been discontented until that man, that Larry Poston, had come to Pelican Shores. Until then she had been satisfied with the method of living her brother had devised for them.
She loved her brother and she felt gratitude and loyalty toward him for the care and protection he had given her. He was short-tempered, at times brutal-but, in a secret part of herself, she had to admit that she savored even his brutality. She did not even mind the whippings he gave her-or at least she had not minded them until now. They had at least been something to break the monotony; the pain had provided her with proof that she was at least alive and able to feel, and sometimes she had deliberately even provoked him into lashing her.
No, it was not his brutality that she minded. What she was saddened by was the feeling that life was passing her by, that he was using her love and his claim on her to keep her trapped here until her youth had vanished forever and she was suddenly an old woman with nothing to show for her life. His protection had been right for her while she was a child, but she was a child no longer-she was a woman and she was entitled to a life of her own.
And yet she owed Tom so much....
She remembered with a shudder the riotous parties that had taken place in their shack during her mother's time. Remembered, with the clear recollection of memory burned into a childish brain, her mother shamelessly naked before herself and Tom, her mother drunken, breasts flapping, mouth gaping, eyes glazed-her mother making love while they watched, to one man, two men, three men ... whatever contingent she had been able to cajole into buying whiskey and coming home with her. Remembered, too, the night when she was eleven years old and her mother had come home with two sailors, both of them roaring drunk. And had heard, not understanding, one sailor say, pointing at her, Luisa, "How much for that one?" And her mother giggling and saying, "Go ahead. Take her. She's old enough to learn what it's all about."
And then the drunken sailor was seizing her and bearing her down on the floor. And, out of the dark corner of the house, like an unleashed fury, the skinny, fourteen-year-old body of Tom was hurtling forward. And then Tom was kicking, hitting, biting the drunken sailor until he had to stop trying to pry Luisa's legs apart and throw up his hands to protect himself.
And Tom's voice had kept shrieking: "You let my sister alone. Damn you, you keep your dirty, filthy hands off my sister!"
The sailor could have crushed Tom with one blow. But her brother's onslaught seemed to have sobered him. He got to his feet, with Tom still hammering against him with no more physical effect than if he were pounding a brick wall. The sailor had rubbed his face and shuddered.
"Yeah," he had said. "Yeah, okay, son. Okay, boy, all right." He had been like a man emerging from a dream. He had looked at Luisa's mother, and at the other man beside her on the bed. His voice was like the voice of a man who had just looked into hell.
"Come on, Josh," he said quietly. "Let's get out of here. You don't want to get mixed up with a pig like that."
Their mother had been furious when the two men left immediately. She had whipped both Luisa and Tom. But she had never tried to sell or give away Luisa's body after that.
And Tom had comforted Luisa after the whipping. "Don't worry." he breathed, his thin, dark face preternaturally old. "Don't worry, I'm not going to let anybody hurt you, not ever. I'll look after you always...."
And he had done so. After their mother had left and their father had drowned, it had been just the two of them. In those days the boats were still going out and Tom could have got a job on one of them, young as he was. But he refused to leave Luisa alone. Instead, he fished for food and picked up odd jobs around the town. People in Pelican Shores had troubles of their own and nobody paid anv attention to the Chilton kids or how they lived. If they had asked for help, they would gladly have been given help. But they had never asked for it.
So they grew up wild and devoted to each other. Tom managed to keep them in food, Luisa cooked it and cleaned and mended. They were sufficient unto each other-completely so.
From earliest childhood, because of the crowded cabin, they had slept together in the same bed. Now they continued to do so. But they were no longer children. Luisa could remember the night they had ceased to be children. She could remember, too, that it was she who had brought it about.
She was fourteen, then, and Tom was sixteen. They both slept naked. She had awakened in the night to find Tom's hard body, already muscular and well-developed, tight against her, his arm about her protectively. He was breathing with the regularity of deep sleep.
It could have been a dream he was having that had excited him in his sleep. Or maybe just the physical contact of her flesh against him. At any rate, even though he slept, part of him seemed, blindly, to be seeking her, and she felt an immediate response. Suddenly a wild and desperate urgency washed through her, and she ran her hand down his chest. She moved her own body tightly against his, grinding with an instinctive knowledge. She had seen her own mother in too many wild exhibitions with picked-up sailors not to know what Tom's condition and her own response to it meant; what she had not expected was to feel the same blind, reckless need that must have filled her mother at such times.
"Tom," she whispered, and her hand explored.
He stirred slightly in his sleep.
She threw a thigh across his body, crowded closer. "Tom."
By the time he awakened, she had already managed to link them together.
He opened his eyes. "Luisa?" he said groggily, but by then it was too late. She had started it and his defenses were down. 'She did not give him any chance to protest. She rolled over on her back and pulled him to her. "Tom...."
Neither of them had felt any guilt when it was over They had only felt closer, more self-sufficient, completely armored against the world.
And so it had gone for nearly eight years more, each of them all the other needed. Each of them all the other wanted. The two of them together against the world....
And she had been content to have it that way. There was no man in Pelican Shores who appealed to her enough even to make her question the Tightness of their arrangement. Until Larry Poston had come-and now she was all at sea, her carefully-arranged world crumbling about her.
She had first seen him that morning on the boat, while Tom, who was an expert splicer, had been repairing a line for the boat's owner. He was so totally different from the men of Pelican Shores, that immediately something had stirred within her. It was as if, by his very presence, he had opened a window and let in the huge world outside-the world she had never seen, of which she knew nothing. Suddenly, she had been filled with discontent; suddenly, she had questioned everything about the life she had led. So strong had it become, that she had followed Poston to the beach that first night, had led him to the cave that had been her secret hiding place since childhood, the place that not even Tom knew. And what he had done to her there had stirred her far more than anything Tom could do-and suddenly, she realized what had happened to her.
She was a grown woman now. And she had a life before her. And she had a thousand needs, desires and wants that neither her brother nor Pelican Shores could satisfy.
She had learned from her encounter with Poston that it was possible for other men to bring her body to a pitch of ecstasy that even Tom could not make her achieve. That Tom was no longer enough and would never again be enough-that the world was full of men and many of them appealed to her more than Tom.
Now she was desperately torn, she owed Tom a great deal; she loved him and hated to hurt him. And yet-there was a craving in her which she knew it would be death to deny. A craving to break loose into a world she had never known-a world of strange pleasures and sensations she had never savored. A word unimaginably alluring.
And that was what had brought her out on the rocks to try to sing away her sadness. And that was what boiled within her as she walked toward the cabin. Poston was back, and she was tempted. A phase of her life was about to end, and a new one was somehow in the making. And there would be sorrow and pain before either that ending or beginning was achieved....
When she got to the shack, Tom was sitting out in front cleaning fish. The big, sharp-edged knife he used gleamed as he deftly gutted one after another and severed the heads. He looked up as he saw her coming. He was in a good mood, and his smile was warm. No one but herself ever evoked such a smile from him. "Hi. Have a good swim?"
"Fine," she said, and she unslung the guitar. She squatted down beside him, watching the way his strong, hairy hands wielded the knife.
"I hear that dope from the city's back again," he grated.
"I don't know, I didn't go into town."
He waved the knife. "They're fools, all fools. Laying themselves wide open to all those outsiders coming in."
"I don't know, Tom. What's so foolish about it? The people need the money."
He looked up at her and his eyes went cold as he laid the knife aside. "Wait a minute. Don't tell me you're beginning to talk and think like the rest." His hand fumbled with his belt buckle. "Do you want another taste of this?"
She looked away. "No," she whispered. "Not now. But, Tom-nobody can stay cut off from the world forever. Nobody can just ... just spit in the world's eye and tell it to go to hell, they're not going to have anything to do with it. Not even us."
His mouth went straight and thin. "What do you mean not even us? Why not us." He stood up. "Haven't I always looked after you? Haven't I always given you everything you need? I've fed you and clothed you and sheltered you and loved you and ... You've had everything any woman needs, you've had it from me and there's no call for you to start talking like that. I won't hear of it."
She sighed. "Tom, it's foolish. We need money. And they'll-they'll pay me to act as barmaid in the tavern down there. I could do that, anyhow-earn some cash."
"No!" His voice rang through the pines like thunder. His face darkened, the brows pulling together furiously. "No, I'll not have it. I know what you want. I know what's inside of you. I know what you're itching to become-you just can't wait to follow in that tramp's footsteps, can you? One man isn't enough for you, is it? You've got to be like her, have two, three, four, a half-dozen. You want to be down there where you can meet men."
"Tom, it's not-"
But he had already seized her arm and jerked her to her feet, his strong fingers tightening cruelly about her wrist.
"Well, you're not going to! I won't have it, do you hear? You're going to stay here with me-just the two of us, always. And you'd better get that through your head!"
"Tom, you're hurting me."
"I don't care. You-" He broke off, released her arm, and whirled as there were footsteps on the trail through the pines.
When Poston and Candy Carlyle emerged from the pines into the clearing before the shack, Poston knew immediately that he had made a mistake. I should have got her alone, he thought. That brother of hers is in no mood to be reasonable.
Still, though he was concerned by the flashing look of hatred Tom Chilton threw at him, he mustered a smile and threw up a hand in greeting. "Hi," he said cheerily. "Miss Chilton, Mr. Chilton, you remember me. Larry Poston. This is Miss Carlyle.", Tom Chilton strode forward. Spraddle-legged, hands on lean hips, he confronted Poston. "I remember you," he grated. "And I don't want to have anything to do with you. Clear out."
"Now that's not a very friendly attitude," Poston said in what he hoped was a disarming manner.
"I didn't mean for it to be," Chilton said thinly. "Git!"
"Now, just a minute." Some of the ingratiation went out of Poston's voice. "We didn't come here to see you in the first place. We came here to see your sister. We've got a business proposition for her."
"She's not going to be a barmaid in any beer joint down in the village!" Chilton snapped. "And that's all there is to it!"
"Who said anything about her being a barmaid?"
Luisa Chilton stepped forward. "Tom. At least let's hear what he's got to say."
"No!" His back-flung hand sent her sprawling with brutal force. "You keep out of this." He took a step toward Poston. "Look here, mister. My sister and I are happy just exactly like we are. We don't need no fancy dan from outside coming in here and stirring up trouble. I don't care what you got to say, I don't want to hear any of it, you understand? And now I'm telling you for the last time, git!"
Poston flung a quick look at Candy Carlyle. Oddly, there was no fear on her lean face. She was staring at Tom Chilton with an odd mixture of fascination and admiration.
Poston said, "I'm not ready to go yet. Listen, I happened to hear your sister singing a while ago down at the beach. She's got a remarkable voice-a voice it's a shame to bury out here in the back woods. I'm prepared to put her under personal contract, pay her a hundred and fifty a week, and make a commerical folksinger out of her. I'll also offer her a spot on the program of the Folk Music Festival we're going to hold. This could be a big thing for her, Mr. Chilton. I'm Larry Poston, and when Larry Poston takes somebody on for promotion, Larry Poston makes a star."
Luisa Chilton was getting to her feet, her eyes wide.
"A hundred and fifty dollars a week," she whispered. "Just for singing? A star? ME?"
"That's right," Poston said.
"Shut up, Luisa," Tom rasped. "Don't you see? This is just a trick. He'll do nothing but lead you on and make a tramp out of you " He took a step backward. "Mister, I don't care if you pay my sister a thousand dollars a week, she's not moving one step away from here. She's not going away with you or anyone else. You got that straight?"
Poston, his anger up, said tartly: "I think that's for her to decide. Miss Chilton, do you want to talk about it?"
She stepped forward. "Yes, I-"
Tom Chilton was a blur of motion. He whirled back toward the cabin, stooped and when he came up there was the long-bladed knife in his hand. "I've said it!" he roared, and he plunged toward Poston.
Luisa screamed.
Poston stood rigidly for a moment. Then he backed away, not running, just balanced on the balls of his feet, hands guarding himself. "Don't be a fool, Chilton."
Chilton advanced on him, brandishing the knife. "I'm not a fool. It's all the others who are fools. You're not going to take my sister away from me...."
"Tom," Luisa moaned, and Poston's eyes darted to her. She was bending over, and Poston saw her hand close over a thick section of pine, a fallen branch.
Poston let his eyes shuttle back to Chilton. Chilton was poised for another lunge now. "Mister," he said thinly, "I'm going to cut you up as a warning to all the rest."
Luisa was coming forward, the branch in her hand. "Tom." she said again, still a moan, but he didn't look around. Then, just as he was about to launch himself at Poston, Luisa raised the chunk of wood and slammed it down on his head.
The knife dropped from Chilton's hand. He swayed and then his knees gave way and he crumpled to the ground.
"Oh," Luisa whimpered, "oh, my God, what have I done?" She started to kneel by her prostrate brother.
Candy Carlyle's voice was harsh and crackling. "Take her, Larry. Get her out of here before that big ox wakes up."
"No," Luisa whispered, as Poston seized her wrist. "No, I can't leave him. He might be hurt. He might need me-"
Candy Carlyle was bending over him. "He's not hurt, he's just out cold. Larry, get her on down the bluff to town." She looked at Luisa. "I'll stay here with him. I'll see that he's all right. Don't worry."
"Candy," Poston said, "you can't. He might-"
She looked up at him calmly, with a strange expression in her eyes. "Just do as I say and get the girl away from here. Don't worry. I can take care of myself. He's not going to hurt me."
"All right," Poston said, shrugging. "Don't worry about him, Luisa-Candy can take care of him. Come on. This is a big day for you. I'm going to change your whole life for you. Bring your guitar."
And then he half led her, half dragged her, back down the trail toward the beach.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The moment she had laid eyes on Tom Chilton, Candy Carlyle had decided that never in her life had she seen such a fine specimen of maleness. Just the sight of him, wide-shouldered, slim-hipped, long-legged, handsome and defiant, had kindled something within her. Sure, he was probably at least eight, maybe ten years younger than she. But that made no difference. He was man, all man, with a primitive strength to him that not even Larry Poston could match.
Her decision to stay behind with him, her assurance that he would not hurt her, had been based on something more than a desire to see Poston get away with Luisa. She was fascinated by Tom Chilton and she wanted to know more about him.
It took all her strength to do it, but she managed to drag him into the shack. Somehow she rolled him onto the rumpled bed. Panting from the unaccustomed exertion-and perhaps from something else as well-she stood over him and looked down at him for a moment.
Slowly there swam into her consciousness the reason for her instantaneous fascination with him. He was so much like Reid.
Reid Carlyle ... He had been like this. Wide of shoulder, lean in the hip; totally, brutally masculine. She had married him when she was eighteen, and she had loved him dearly. No pleasure that any other man had ever given her could match the pleasure she had had from Reid.
He had been an Air Force lieutenant. They had known two months of pleasure before he had been sent to Korea to do close-support flying. His plane had been shot down and then the world had very nearly come to an end for Candace Carlyle. She had gone into a tailspin that had turned into a wild orgy of liquor and men, striving to recapture the happiness she had known with Reid, always failing. After a year or two, she had come out of it, had managed to conquer her grief. She had invested most of her energy in being the best secretary and general all-around girl Friday possible. She liked sex and took it when and where it was available, but she had never met another man like Reid-not even Larry Poston. Not until now.
And suddenly, here was a younger version of Reid Carlyle stretched out on the bed before her. She was aware that she was breathing hard, even trembling a little. She reached down and felt the knot beginning to swell under the thick, coarse hair of his scalp. He moaned slightly but did not stir.
Her hands seemed to move independently of herself. They began to unfasten Tom Chilton's shirt buttons. She laid bare his muscular, perfect torso and stared at it with a curious expression on her face. She put her palm on his chest and caressed it, running her hand down his hard belly to where the belt blocked further progress. She was beginning to breathe harder now, and she pressed her other hand to her own breast and squeezed.
She could not help herself. She bent over the inert form. She kissed the motionless lips. She trailed her mouth down the chin to the base of the throat, over the hard muscles of the chest. She ran her hand caressingly over the iron-banded thigh beneath the faded jeans.
Then her hand moved away from the thigh and explored. She bit her lower lip. Yes. Like Reid. Exactly like Reid. A great deal of man.
He stirred suddenly, and she jerked her hand away. He moaned slightly and then his eyes came open. They focused on her uncomprehendingly for a moment. "Who...." he breathed. "Who ... what hit me?"
"Never mind that." Candy's voice was soft. "You're all right now. You're going to be perfectly all right." She knelt beside the bed and ran her hand over his chest again. "I'm here to look after you."
He closed his eyes. "Don't want you. Want Luisa. Want my sister."
"She's not here right now. I'll have to do." Candy looked around, saw a bottle of cheap wine sitting on the table. She reached for it, uncorked it, and put it to his lips. "Here, drink this. It'll make you feel better."
He gagged on it, but she forced a great deal of it down his throat. He sighed and lay back, closing his eyes again. Still trembling, Candy put the wine bottle to her own mouth, slid its neck between her lips, and drank deeply, too. She withdrew the bottle and set it on the floor.
"Luisa," Tom Chilton said again. "I want-
"I've told you," Candy whispered, "she's not here. I'll have to do. Let me ... let me loosen your clothing." Her hand shook as it unlatched his belt, opened the front of his jeans. "There," she murmured. "That's better, isn't it?"
"Better...." He was still foggy. "Yes., better."
"Here, have more wine." She put the bottle to his lips again and poured. He drank an incredible amount. She drank some more herself. It added fuel to the flames roaring inside her now.
"Who're you?" Chilton said blurrily. He made an effort to sit, managed to get to one elbow. He rubbed his face. "Where's Luisa? Who're you?"
"Just call me Candy," she whispered. "That's all you need to call me."
"I feel better now," he said'. Again he tried to sit. She pressed him back.
"No, don't try to get up yet. Just lie there, Reid
-I mean Tom."
He lay back unquestioningly.
"I'll take care of you," she said. "Luisa's in good hands and so are you." Again, unable to help herself, she bent forward, kissed his chest, dragged lips and tongue downward.
Chilton sighed. "Feels good," he said thickly.
"Yes," Candy said. "Feels good. I'll make you feel better." Her hands shook as she began to unbutton her dress. It was only an instant, but it seemed to her forever before she got it over her head and cast it aside.
Chilton blinked at her. She knew she was no raving beauty, but she was no dog, either. She stood proudly, for a moment, and then she unfastened the bra and let it drop. She peeled away garter belt and panties, and sat down on the bed beside him.
Dazedly, he put up one hand and touched the hard, brown points of her breasts. "Not like Luisa's," he said. "But they're nice." He closed his eyes. "Never saw a woman like that, a woman without no clothes. No woman like that except my mother-and Luisa."
Suddenly, intuitively, Candy knew what he meant. Instead of shocking her, it only seemed to arouse her. "You mean you and your sister...."
"Yes," he breathed. "I gave her what she needed. Enough to keep her away from all those other men in the village. Not going to let her ... wind up tramp like mother...."
"And you've never had any woman but Luisa?"
"No," he whispered.
"Then it's high time," Candy breathed. She bent over him, her breasts dangling to touch his chest, and then she pressed her mouth down on his, hard. Her lips pried his open and her tongue forced its way between his teeth. He stirred automatically, almost hesitantly, and then she felt an answering response. Her hand slid down his belly, under the waistband of the jeans.
"There," she said, raising her lips for at moment. "There. Doesn't that feel good?"
"Good," he said; and she was aware of his growing arousal, and then what she had wanted to happen, happened. He put up a strong arm and pulled her face down toward his again. This time he was the aggressor.
She drew his tongue into her mouth and held him desperately as his big hand seized both of her breasts at once and squeezed them together. She whimpered and tightened her own grip on him. Then he was rolling her over on the bed, and if there were anything wrong with him as a result of the blow, it was not evident now. His big body loomed over her and she rose to meet him eagerly. She shuddered with a wild joy as he plunged downward. He's incredible, she thought. Just incredible! Like an animal, a stallion, a bull-
But she was enough woman for him. Just as she had been for Reid.
Poston kept looking back over his shoulder. "I hope Candy will be all right up there," he muttered.
"I don't know," Luisa whispered. "When Tom is mad-"
"Well, Candy can take care of herself, I guess." They had reached the town now. Poston's car was parked alongside the newly-rehabilitated cannery. He opened the door. "Get in," he said.
Still dazed, Luisa looked at him blankly. "Where are we going?"
"Up to the Gregg house. We can talk there." He had learned to negotiate the bluff road in a car now, and he started the engine and turned the vehicle around. "I don't want to talk you into anything you don't want to do. But you've got too much talent to waste living the way you live now. Your brother's got no right to deny the use of that talent either to you or to the world."
"But my brother has been so good to me...."
"I'll grant that. Just the same, you have an obligation to yourself." His voice gentled. "I want you to believe in me, Luisa. I'm not trying to pull any kind of tricky deal. It's just that it doesn't take me long to make up my mind. You're a natural-you sing like an angel, and you look like one, too-with maybe just a touch of the devil thrown in. This festival is the perfect way to introduce you to the public. Then you can probably write your ticket if my guess is correct. I'm gambling. I'll sign you to a personal contract. A hundred and fifty a week isn't much. In six months, you'll probably be worth ten times that, maybe more. When you are, somebody else will offer you a contract. But to make the deal go through, they'll have to buy up mine, and that's where my profit will come in. In the meantime, I'll pay all the expenses of getting you started."
"I'm sorry," Luisa said, "I just can't take all this in."
"Don't worry," he said. "It'll all make sense in good time."
They had reached the top of the bluff now. He pulled up in front of the sprawling, ancient house of the Gregg sisters. "Come on," he said, opening the car door for Luisa. "I'm going to ask them to put you up here while we get the details ironed out...."
June Gregg met him at the door. She was startled to see Luisa with him. "What-?"
"I want to ask a favor," Poston said. "I think I'm going to open up a whole new world to this girl. But in the meantime she needs a place to stay, away from her brother. And some clothes. Can you help me out? Can you fix her up with both?"
"Of course," June said slowly. "Come on in, Luisa."
Hesitantly, she followed them down the hall. It was obvious that she had never been in a house that even resembled this before. She was awed, impressed. Watching her, Poston was a little touched by how pathetic her response to this outdated luxury really was.
"Come on into my bedroom," said June. She led them up the stairs. As they climbed, Poston explained to her what he had in mind.
"Yes," she said, "I've heard Luisa sing. She has a fine voice. And it would be nice to have somebody from Pelican Shores-somebody who's not a professional-on the program. After all, isn't that what folk singing's really about? People like Luisa singing naturally the songs they've always known?"
"I guess it used to be," Poston said. "Now it's about money."
They entered June's bedroom, and Luisa drew in an audible breath at the sight of the huge, luxurious bed, the vanity loaded with cosmetics. Poston sat on the bed while June went to a closet and took down several dresses. "I think she's about my size," June murmured. "We'll see how these fit."
Poston said to Luisa, "Take off your clothes."
"What?" She seemed startled. He saw a faint flush touch her cheeks.
"Take off those rags you're wearing." His eyes met hers. "After all," he murmured, remembering the evening in the cave; he saw that she remembered it, too. The flush deepened, but she pulled the T-shirt over her head.
Even June made a sound of admiration at the sight of her magnificent breasts. Then Luisa stripped away the jeans and stood naked. She made no falsely-modest attempts to cover her nudity.
At that moment, the door to the bedroom opened and May Gregg entered. She halted in the doorway, brows arching. "Well, what have we here? A private strip tease?"
A little nettled, Poston explained the situation to her. May smiled, heavily smudged eyes half-lidded, painted mouth quirking. With a jangle of earrings, she sat down beside Poston on the bed and crossed her legs, letting her eyes run up and down Luisa's naked body. "Your own private Galatea, eh?" she murmured.
"I'm not trying to play Pygmalion," he said sharply. "I'm just trying to give this girl a chance and at the same time make a buck."
"I'm sure that's lovely of you." said May. Her voice was full of a slow, silken admiration. "She is a lovely thing, isn't she?"
June Gregg held out a frothy, black-lace confection that was another of the cut-away bras she preferred. "Here," she said, "try this on."
Luisa stared at it curiously, handling it awkwardly. She blushed. "I ... I really don't know how to put it on."
May Gregg sprang to her feet. There was a curious intensity in her long face. "I'll help you," she said. She came up behind Luisa, reached around her, and fitted the cups of the bra to her breasts. She cupped the breasts in her hands as if making sure the bra was firmly in place. "I'll bet these things weigh two pounds apiece," she said, and then she let go of them and fastened the snap of the bra in back. Poston saw that Luisa was blushing furiously now, and June was looking at her sister with a peculiar, speculative expression.
"Now the panties," May said. She took the pair of dark-gossamer transparencies that June handed her and knelt in front of Luisa, her face very close to the other girl. "Now," she said, softly: "Step in."
Luisa did so, quickly, and May carefully, almost lovingly, slipped the panties up her thighs and over her hips. They only accentuated Luisa's beauty-suddenly, she was not only pretty, but sexy as well. May stepped back, running her tongue over her red-enameled lower lip. "Well," she said in a throaty voice, "how do they feel?"
Luisa ran her hands wonderingly down over the fabric that sheathed her velvety body like a second skin. "Why, I never-I mean, I've never had anything to wear that felt like this." Her voice was almost tearful. "I-I feel like a different person." She spun and viewed herself in a full-length mirror on a closet door. "I look like a different person, too!"
"You ain't seen nothing, yet," May said coarsely. "Sit down over here and let me put some make-up on you."
June moved quickly across the room. "I'll do it," she said firmly. "You'll have her looking like-like some sort of a clown."
Poston saw the eyes of the sisters lock for a second, but May shrugged and stepped back. "Suit yourself," she said.
June lightly applied make-up and lipstick. "You don't need much," she said. "There. How does that look?"
"I just don't know what to say," Luisa murmured. "All that," said May mockingly, "and she can sing, too."
"Yes," Poston said. "Now, can you give her a place to spend the night?"
Before June could speak, May said, "She can sleep with me."
Something in her voice bothered Poston. He said, "Don't you have a spare room? In this big, old house...?"
"We're working in all of them," May said. "Getting them ready for the rush. Don't worry my bed's plenty big enough for two." She touched Luisa's arm. "You don't mind sleeping with me, do you, Luisa?"
"I-I guess not," she said doubtfully.
June opened her mouth as if to say something, apparently thought better of it, and closed it again. "Now," she said, "let's try this dress on you...."
Poston stood up. "Well, I'll leave her in your hands. I've got to go back and make sure Candy's all right. Take care of her."
"Don't worry," said May Gregg quickly. "We will."
A half hour later, Poston, tense and ready for anything, was approaching the cabin in the pines. There was no sign of life, of either Tom Chilton or Candy Carlyle, on the outside. He felt his stomach knot with apprehension. If that big ox had hurt her-
Cautiously, he eased up to the window of the cabin. It was getting late, but they had not lighted the lamp inside. He had a little trouble making out what was going on in the interior.
Then he managed to discern the bed. He stared at it incredulously. There were two people on it.
Candy Carlyle and Tom Chilton.
He did not know what he had expected, but whatever it was, it was not this.
The man and the woman on the bed were locked together.
But rather curiously.
Chilton was underneath. Candy Carlyle was on top. An empty wine bottle was on the floor.
Poston turned away quietly, grinning. Candy had meant what she had said when she had promised to take care of Tom Chilton.
Well, that had been his experience with her.
She was nothing, if not efficient.
Still grinning, he turned and went quietly back through the woods and down the bluff to his car.
CHAPTER NINE
It was late. the three Gregg sisters and Larry Poston sat on one of the porches of the house, listening to Lusia Chilton sing. Her repertoire seemed endless, and each song was delivered in a clear, true, affecting voice and with great feeling. Poston sipped his drink, warmed not only by the alcohol, but by the verified knowledge that his instinct had again served him well. Once more, he had picked a winner. That made two winners in three weeks-Pelican Shores and Luisa Chilton.
She finished singing and laid the guitar aside. "I think that's all I can do for tonight. My throat's awfully dry."
"Here, let me fix you a drink," May Gregg said quickly. She poured a martini from a pitcher.
"Wait a minute, May," said June Gregg. "She may not be used to that."
"Have you ever done any drinking, Luisa?" Poston asked the question gently.
"No. Tom drank wine, but he would never let me touch anything."
"Then maybe you'd better not-" he began, but May Gregg cut him off.
"For heaven's sake. The girl's got to learn sometime. And she'd better learn before all those students get here. Go ahead, Luisa, drink it." She thrust out the glass and Luisa took it hesitantly and looked at Poston.
He shrugged. April Gregg giggled, a white, round figure on the porch steps, once again wearing the tiny bikini. "Good old May. That's my sister-always looking out for other people." April sprang to her feet and came up the steps quickly and plumped her nearly-naked self down in Poston's lap. She twisted her head and her tongue flickered into his ear and back out again. She wriggled her rump. "Well, I'm looking out for myself. Tonight's my turn. Right, Larry?"
There was no resisting her blatant sexuality. "Right," he said, a little wearily. June Gregg stood up. There was an edge of something in her voice when she spoke-perhaps fatigue, perhaps disgust.
"I'm going to bed," she said. "Good night."
She went in the house. It was hard to make conversation because April kept trying to block his mouth with hers, but Poston did manage to ask: "Luisa, where did you learn all those songs?"
She sipped the martini and wrinkled her face "Ooh, it's bitter. Oh, I've heard them all my life They're the songs the fishermen sing."
"They're terrific," Poston said. "April, will you stop that?"
"No," she said, running her tongue wetly across his lower hp. "Not until you go upstairs with me."
Poston sighed. If ever there had been a sex-machine in human form, April Gregg was it. "All right," he said, sliding her off his lap as he arose. "Come on. May, see to Luisa, will you?"
"Don't worry," said May throatily. "I will."
When the door had closed behind Poston and April, Luisa felt an odd sense of loss. She sipped a little more of the clear drink in the glass May had given her, and looked out at the darkness. The drink was not bad once you got used to its taste in your mouth; and it certainly was having a delicious effect on her. She could feel a warmth in her stomach and a relaxing that went on all through her limbs. She sighed.
"Do you like it?" May asked softly.
"It's very nice," Luisa said. She drank more deeply, draining the glass. The warmth and good feeling within her was very pronounced now.
"Would you like another one?"
"Yes, if you don't mind."
May Gregg stood up, a tall figure in the twilight. Through the slit in her shift, Luisa saw the whiteness of her long thigh. "I'll tell you what. There's plenty left in the pitcher. Let's take the pitcher and our glasses up to my room and we'll finish it off there."
Luisa would have preferred to sit for a while longer in the dark, but she nodded. "All right, whatever you say." Standing up, she giggled suddenly and without meaning to. But all at once she felt giddy, and there was a strange wobbliness in her legs. It was a curious feeling. Automatically, she put out a hand and grasped May Gregg's arm for steadiness.
"I feel so funny."
May's voice was oddly strained. "Don't worry. It'll wear off. Come along."
Luisa followed her into the house and up the stairs. She still clung to May's arm, and their hips brushed against each other as they climbed together. Luisa could not resist the impulse to laugh.
"What's so funny?" asked May.
"I don't know. It's just that ... that I feel like I'm in some kind of dream. Everything's happened so swiftly. I ... I wonder how Tom is."
"Poston said he was all right. The Carlyle woman is looking after him. Forget Tom for a while."
"All right."
"Forget everything," May said in an odd voice. "Except enjoying yourself."
"All right," Luisa said again.
Now they had reached the top of the stairs. May opened the door to her room and they went in. May set down the martini pitcher and locked the door.
"Now," she said. "Let me refill your glass."
"Sure," said Luisa, admiring the vast, soft sweep of the enormous bed. She gave May the glass and then ran to the bed, jumped upon it, and bounced up and down like a child on a trampoline. "I've never felt anything this soft before! Do you really sleep on this every night?"
"Every night," May said thickly, and she handed Luisa the glass. Luisa drank it very quickly; it went down much more easily this time, and now she was suffused throughout her body with a glorious, delicious warmth. Suddenly she wanted Tom. Or Poston. Or somebody.
She looked at May with gratitude. "Everybody's been so wonderful to me."
"Have another martini," May said. "All right," said Luisa.
After a moment, her head began to buzz. She blinked. "I feel odd."
"Odd, how?"
"I don't know. Just odd."
May laughed softly. "All right. Let's take off your clothes and maybe you'll feel better."
"I'm ... not sure I can do it by myself." Her voice was strangely thick and she was having trouble pronouncing the words.
"I don't mind helping you," said May.
Then Luisa felt gentle fingers working at the buttons of the dress. She felt the bra give way after the dress was removed. When the bra was gone, the cool air felt good on her breasts, which were unused to being haltered. She sighed. Then she felt May's fingers peeling down the panties. She let May tug them off, and then she lay back on the bed, her head swimming crazily and her brain beginning to be crowded with desire. She ran her hand down her stomach. "I feel so funny," she said. "I feel like I'm on fire. Here. Right here."
May said nothing. But there was the dipping of the bed as May lay down beside her. Then, with a shock, Luisa realized that the other girl was as naked as she.
May's breath was warm on her ear and neck. "Maybe I can do something about that," she murmured.
Luisa blinked, trying to make sense out of that. "But how-?"
Then she felt May's hands on her breasts. She drew in her breath, tensing. This was, somehow, not right. And yet ... She knew she should push May's hands away, make some sort of protest, but she could not seem to get her body and brain to working together. Besides, May's hands felt good there.
"I think-" she said, and then she was silent.
"Don't think," said May. "Just lie there."
Then her hands were slipping lower, delicate on the soft, velvety sensitivity of Luisa's flanks. Luisa felt them stroke the rounded curve of her lower belly.
Is she going to put her hand there? she wondered. She was very cool, and felt oddly detached and curious. And yet, somehow, she was at the same time tremendously excited.
Now she felt the warmth of May's breath on her breasts. She felt the brush of May's hair against them. Then she moaned, for May had dipped her head and captured one of the erect nipples with her lips and had drawn it into her mouth, and now she was running her tongue around it, and surely enough, her hand had ended up there-and suddenly, Luisa knew that this was wrong and more than she had bargained for. Wrong, totally wrong-and yet....
She did not have the will power to move.
And now, May was doing with the other nipple what she had done with the first one. And then her head was moving back and forth, her mouth playing with first right, then left, then right again, then left again ... Luisa put up a hand rather blindly, encountered the softness of May's own breasts. It was a strange sensation to cup another woman's breast within her palm, to feel the nipple hard against her hand. She stroked and squeezed the dollop of flesh she held, and May whimpered.
Then Luisa whimpered in turn as May's mouth left her breasts. She felt deserted, disappointed. But now May was kissing, of all places, her stomach. And now those lips were traveling lower. Luisa felt her hips begin to rise and fall in a slow, involuntary and uncontrollable rhythm. Now, she felt May's mouth on the insides of her thighs. May was kneeling by the bed now; she had dragged Luisa's legs over the edge. Luisa's calves were propped on May's shoulders.
She wondered groggily what was going to happen next.
Then May made a savage sound and her head plunged forward and Luisa gasped.
"Oh," she said. "Oh, oh, oh." Her hand entangled itself in May's hair, but she made no effort to drag May's head away. There was too much moving, lunging fire, too much ecstasy. "Oh," she said again. "Oh, oh."
Her heels drummed against May. Her body rose and fell.
Maybe this was what Tom had been trying to protect her from. But why should he have tried to protect her against something that felt so good?
It became almost unbearably wonderful. She pulled away, rolled back on the bed. But May would not be thwarted. She was on the bed, too, crouching, her mouth seeking again. Luisa ran her hand over the soft flesh of May's thighs and buttocks.
Then May shifted her body. Luisa moaned with the pleasure May was giving her. Dimly, it occurred to her that what May was doing now was offering her a chance to reciprocate that pleasure.
It was not something she particularly wanted to do. On the other hand, she dimly felt that it was something she owed to May. If the other girl made her feel that good, shouldn't she respond in kind-?
So she anchored her hands on May's body. She raised her head, groped.
It's all right with me, Luisa thought vaguely. I can go on like this all night....
CHAPTER TEN
A few days later, the students began to arrive. At first, there was only a slow trickle of them. They came, six boys or maybe eight or ten, in a car. They came in rickety, backfiring heaps or they came in low-slung, gutty sports cars. Some of them came by standing on the highway and jerking their thumbs until they got rides.
But, whatever their mode of transportation, they were coming.
At first, they were almost all boys. It was as if the girls were hanging back until they were sure the boys would be there. The boys came, looked over Pelican Shores, drank immense quantities of beer and not a little whiskey, and waited for the girls. They were lusty, bawdy, and impatient. They swam and they played football on the sand, and some of them had guitars and banjos and they sang in impromptu foursomes. At night, they slept in their cars or camped on the beach or on the bluffs above, as if unwilling to pay for beds until they made sure that there would be girls.
And, in due time, the girls came too.
A trickle of them at first, also. They came in no half-wrecked jalopies, but in sleek convertibles or expensive sports cars purchased for them by indulgent parents. They came with hunger in their eyes and yearning on their mouths and with quivering, lustful excitement stringing their young bodies bow-taut. They came both to be pursued and the pursuer, as the fox that loves the chase taunts the hounds. If they had virginity, they came to lose it; if they had experience, they came to broaden it. Their very presence here was token of their willingness, and immediately the chase was on.
When the girls came, more boys came; and when more boys came, more girls came; and suddenly Pelican Shores was fully alive, packed, and running over with exuberant youth.
Larry Poston watched them come, knowing a deep, inner satisfaction that he had guessed right. The papers were drawn up, now, and he owned twenty-five per cent of a gold mine called Pelican Shores. Other papers had been drawn up, and he owned a hundred per cent of a gold mine named Luisa Chilton. For him, it would be a profitable summer.
June Gregg watched them come. She felt an almost shattering sense of relief. Pelican Shores was saved-her long-shot gamble, for which she had sold her body, was about to pay off. She knew that she attached more importance to her body than either of her sisters attached to theirs. And she knew that the relief her sisters felt was of a different caliber from hers. They cared nothing about Pelican Shores, but they were pleased to see the town swarming with virile, young men.
Candy Carlyle watched them coming, noted their numbers with gratification, and went back to bed with Tom Chilton. She knew that she was fulfilling a dual purpose. She had taught Chilton things of which he had never dreamed, had him enmeshed in a captivity of sex, hypnotized by their daily explorations of the outer limits of sensation. For Larry Poston that was good. As long as she kept Tom Chilton neutralized, he would be free to execute any plans he had for Luisa Chilton.
Her second purpose was her own gratification. Since Reid Carlyle, no one had stirred her as this young bull of a man stirred her now. Always-even including Poston-she had weighed men against her recollection of Reid and had found them wanting. But it was different with Tom Chilton. He was what she had been seeking for over ten years-Reid Carlyle reincarnated, the same stallion coarseness, the same bull vigor, the same male brutality. He beat her occasionally; they both enjoyed it. She liked to feel the lash of his belt; it aroused her in a subtle way and when he had hit her often enough and hard enough, there was little that she would not try. Since almost everything she tried was new to him, he was equally fascinated. When she had assured him that Luisa was in good hands, he had seemed content to stay with her and learn everything that she could teach him.
Luisa Chilton watched them come with a strange mixture of feelings. She had moved out of May Gregg's room into June's room. After that night with May, she had awakened with a head that felt as if it were being pried apart, and an enormous sense of guilt that no rationalization would dissipate. She was pleased that Tom was being well taken care of; she was pleased that she had a totally new life ahead of her-at least according to Poston-and she was almost unbearably tortured by the sight of all those nearly naked and brawny male torsos on the beach. Something within her, hitherto unsuspected, had blossomed and bloomed. She wished, yearned, that she were able to offer herself to each of those young men striding the sand, to allow each of them to seek out the mystery of her body and to know in her turn the special feel of their bodies. But Poston kept a close watch on her. "You can't afford any scandal," he said. "Not if you're going to be a star...."
So they came. Boys and girls, young men and young women. They came and they spread their blankets on the beach, and groping hand cupped bared breast and slid beneath the taut fabric of bathing suit, and mouth met mouth and bodies strained together, and some found love and some found only sensation-and for some, their whole lives were changed. But that was what they had come for-the hope that somehow their lives would be changed, and they could not complain....
One night, a few days before the scheduled festival, June Gregg and Larry Poston visited the beach together.
A half dozen fires flamed, people gathered around them. The raucous, stirring whang, pagan and primitive, of rock-and-roll; the hammering, driving, hoarse beat of twist music; and, occasionally, the sad, dreamy, sexy moaning of a ballad-all these emanated from hundreds of transistor radios, filling the night air with an odd, harsh, strangely-moving melange of sound.
Poston was in a bathing suit. So was June. She wore a two-piece suit, neither radically scanty nor overwhelmingly modest. Her massive breasts billowed whitely above the top of the bra. The trunks rode low on her hips, revealing the rounded curve of her belly and the dimple of her navel. The fabric of bra and trunks both hugged every curve of the flesh they concealed.
Holding her arm, Poston guided her among sprawled bodies: girl and boy, locked together, lay like two melded into one on dozens of blankets, oblivious to the gaze of outside eyes. Some of the couples on the blankets, away from the brightness of the fires, were not bothered by clothing.
"Well," said Poston, "obviously, it's a success."
"Yes," June Gregg said. "Only in America."
"Only in America what?"
"Only in America," she said, "could successful entrepeneurs make money out of what people do naturally everywhere else. Only in America, could we rehabilitate a whole town by giving young people a place to do what they're going to do anyway."
"I don't know," Poston said, not quite following her.
"In most European countries," June said, "it's considered normal for a boy to want to make love to a girl and a girl to want to be loved by a boy. Nobody makes a big thing out of it, and consequently there's no profit in it. But there is here. I believe what you said. And more. I believe that not only can you sell anything with sex, not only is sex the easiest thing to make money out of, but I believe the whole system is founded on the repression of sex."
"What?" Poston said.
"If there were no repression of sex," June said, "sex wouldn't sell anything. It has to be illicit before it has any value. Suppose these couples could do this on any beach-or anywhere else they took a notion to. Then we couldn't make money out of Pelican Shores. An example: eating is much the same sort of function as sex. Suppose it were considered bad to be seen eating in public. Why, then, places like this would open, catering to people who wanted to eat as much as they cared to without being considered vulgar and ill-bred. People would sell dirty pictures of other people eating. Yet, it's all the same satisfaction of a fundamental appetite. It's just an accident of history that sex turned out to be the appetite repressed and eating turned out to be the one that had social sanction."
"I don't agree," said Poston. "The human race couldn't survive without eating."
"Neither could it survive without sex."
"Yes, but eating is a personal thing, for only your own gratification. Sex involves someone else."
"Of course. But with modern technology, it doesn't have to involve any more consequences than eating. Less, actually. Sex doesn't make you fat." She gestured. "Don't you think all those girls know the score? Each one has got her own personal method of making sure. Pills, maybe, or some sort of contrivance. But anyhow, they approach it in the same frame of mind that they approach eating. Only with more of a thrill, because sex is still frowned on, and eating's okay."
"You're getting too deep for me," Poston said. "I like things the way they are. If I get an extra kick from sex because it's theoretically illicit, that suits me fine."
"I know," said June. "The whole system's based on that, don't you see?"
They came to a campfire. Poston smiled at the youths gathered around it. "Mind if we join you for a little while?"
He was aware of the hot eyes of the girls running up and down his own body; of the hot eyes of the men surveying June. Somebody gestured. "Help yourself, Dad."
June and Poston sat down. There was a thermos box full of ice and beer on each side of the circle around the fire. "Have some brew, Dad," the boy who had given them permission to sit said, and he opened two cans and passed them to them.
Poston drank the beer, grateful for its tart chill, and looked around the camp fire. Unselfconsciously, couples were locked in various forms of embrace, with roving lips and roving hands. Poston saw a boy peel away the bra of a girl who arched her body, saw his mouth go to her nipples. Nobody paid any particular attention.
Poston felt excited. Before he could put his arm about June Gregg, she moved closer to him; and he knew that she was excited too.
Although, under the terms of their agreement, he had been free to enjoy June at his whim, to force her to perform any act that entered his mind, in practice he had refrained from that. In the first place, both April and May were not only eager, but thoroughly depraved. They left him no necessity to force his attentions on June, and she did not enter into competition with her sisters. So he had let her alone.
Now he slid his arm about her waist, stroking the smooth, bare flesh there. He brought his hand up, cupping, in the full glare of the firelight, one of her magnificent breasts. It was like having a vast handful of resilient latex, and he felt the hardening of her nipple under his palm, the tautening of the whole, huge breast under the caress of his hand.
She leaned against him, squeezing the hard muscles of his thigh with her hand. He smelled the perfume of her hair.
"Anything goes at Pelican Shores," he whispered.
"That's right," she said in a soft voice. "Anything goes at Pelican Shores."
Across the fire, the boy who had stripped away the girl's bra was working on her trunks now. They were a mockery, anyhow; simply a thin strip of knit cloth, barely containing the most important part it was supposed to contain, and not containing at all the rounded mounds of her buttocks. In the full glare of firelight, he peeled away her trunks and had her naked. She lay back on a blanket and pulled him down to her, her hand clawing at his trunks. Nobody paid any attention to them except June Gregg and Larry Poston. They watched, fascinated, as the couple made love in the firelight.
He was very excited by it, and apparently, June was, too. He was just about to lift her to her feet and take her off into the darkness when he was aware that a handsome young man in his late teens or early twenties had sat down on the other side of her and had confidently slipped an arm about her waist. "Hi," the young man said.
To Poston's surprise, instead of freezing him in his tracks, June said, casually: "Hi."
Then Poston found himself in the awkward position of cupping one of June's breasts while another man held the other. "Just a minute," Poston said harshly.
"Hush," June said with a quality of amusement in her voice. "He's a paying guest."
"I don't care-" Poston had never fought over any woman before. He was surprised at the anger in his voice now. "You're with me."
The young man, massive, dark-haired, handsome, leaned across June.
"What's with you, Grandpa?"
"Grandpa?" Poston's voice was strangled. "I'm thirty-three and he calls me Grandpa? I'll-"
"You'll what?" the young man said and doubled his dangerously-biceped free arm.
"Now, Larry," June said quietly.
"I go for you, kid," the boy said. "You from Es nada Gryffindale?"
June gave him a smile that infuriated Poston. "Not exactly."
"Es nada," the boy said. "That's Spanish for it doesn't matter." He hugged her more tightly. Poston saw his fingertips indenting the soft flesh of the breast he held. "The main thing is, you turn me on."
"Damnit," Poston said harshly.
"Hush," June said again. "Anything to make the guests at Pelican Shores happy." She edged away from Poston and moved closer to the young man. "Are you having a good time here?"
"I could," he said. "If I had a little cooperation."
Poston pulled his arm away. "Damn it," he said again, in utter frustration.
Suddenly, to his relief, June disengaged the boy's hand and stood up. "Maybe we can arrange that later," she murmured, bent and kissed him on the cheek, and began to walk down the beach. Poston sprang to his feet and ran after her. When he caught up with her, he seized her arm savagely. "Confound you," he grated, "you did that on purpose, just to make me mad."
She looked at him innocently in the fervid, flickering light of another beach fire. "Why," she said, "you wouldn't want me to discourage a paying customer, would you?"
"They came here for the beach, not for you." Poston's voice was strangled. "What do you want to do-make sure they're all happy by loving each one of them out here on the sand?"
"Would that upset you, Larry?"
"You're damn right it would upset me!" he flared And then, realizing what he had said, he caught himself. "I mean-"
Her full, red lips were curving in a smile. "I do believe you're jealous."
"I'm not jealous. It's just that-"
"Just that what? After all, what am I to you? Just a girl you picked up in a bar. A girl who conned you into a deal by giving you everything you wanted. If I let you, why shouldn't I let anybody else?"
"Because," Poston said ineffectually. "Because-"
"Because what, Larry?"
"I don't know." he said suddenly, hardly with any volition of his own. "Because I love you, I guess."
He saw her face change, then, saw all the mockery go off of it. "Say that again," she whispered.
"All right, damnit," said Poston. "I love you." He licked his lips. "I never said that to any other woman. I never had to. I never wanted to."
June's lips parted. Suddenly she put her arms about his neck. "Larry," she whispered, "I've been waiting to hear it. Why do you suppose I've kept myself out of your room, let April and May run wild with you? Because ... because I hoped you would tire of them. I hoped you would ... oh, Larry...." Then she was crowding against him, her nearly-naked body tight against his, her mouth waiting for him. He crushed his lips down on hers, thrust with his tongue. Her mouth opened wide and answered him.
He ran his hand down the smoothness of her back and over the round mountain of a buttock. She sighed, an explosion of breath in his mouth, and shoved her lower body against his in such a fashion that he could hardly bear the excitement. Then she was pulling him away from the firelight. "Larry," she whispered, wrenching her mouth away. "Larry, over here in the shadows."
They were not more than ten feet from a group around a campfire, but there was blessed shadow. Only, when they got into it, they found that another couple had appropriated it. They did not let that stop them. In view of what was happening all over the beach, that would have been foolish, false modesty. There was half a blanket vacant, and they appropriated it, June sinking down onto it first, Poston following her. On the other half of the blanket, two bodies were locked writhing and striving in the shadow.
Then June's hands were clawing at his trunks and his own were pulling away her bra. He buried his face in the meaty fragrance of her breasts as she stripped the trunks away from him, and her hand stroked him with urgency and lustful desperation. His mouth found her nipples and did things with them. Her hand kept on doing things with him, and she used her other hand to strip down her own trunks. Then she was completely naked beneath him.
The couple next to them paid them no attention. They could hear the boy whispering something incomprehensible and the girl saying, "Ah. Ah, yes. Ah, ah ... ah...."
June's legs came up to pull him down, locked him like the soft jaws of a velvet trap. He lowered himself, heard her gasp as their union was complete. Her arms fastened about his neck, her mouth sought his. He began to hammer with his body....
Now it was she who was making that "Ah, ah, ah," sound, in perfect cadence to the rhythm he had hit upon, her body matching his motion for motion, moving with him as if there were coil springs built into her. He was lifted instantly to a warm, fantastically-delightful height that even surprised him in its intensity.
Vaguely, he was aware that the other couple had finished now, and were sitting up and watching them curiously, the girl giggling giddily. The boy said, "That's right, Daddy-o. Don't falter! Don't falter!" Neither June nor Poston paid any attention to either of them.
Poston felt an enormous love for her growing within him, swelling until it could no longer be contained. June was twisting under him as if she had slipped into insanity. Then she shrieked, and he felt her body being racked by spasm after spasm, and that was all he needed. Suddenly the enormous desire within him exploded. He sighed and dropped forward in one last desperate lunge and lay exhausted in her arms.
The boy near him said, "Good going, Daddy-o. Now, you want to swap partners?"
"No," Poston barely had the strength to grunt.
"Oh, pooh," the girl said, in a disappointed voice.
But Poston didn't care. He just held June tightly for a long time. Something new had come into his life and he had no intention of letting it go.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
By the tail end of June, Pelican Shores was packed and running over with young, men and young women. Every bed was taken, every place on the beach occupied. Every clump of bushes on the bluff was inhabited. The people of Pelican Shores, the natives, worked in an unending frenzy trying to satisfy the demands made upon them.
June Gregg was a little awed, a little impressed. "I didn't expect this," she told Poston.
"Neither did I," he said. "I've never heard of anything like it."
"We're running short of beer," she said, "of food, of just about everything. I've had to order two special truckloads from the city today."
"Well, at least you'll be able to pay for it when it comes."
"Yes," she said. "That's something I never expected to happen."
But there were other complications besides shortages. Though the beach was crowded, there were still not quite enough girls to go around, and packs of lecherous, stag boys roamed the strand. Complaints began to be brought to the Gregg house on the bluff.
"Miss Gregg...." It was Jasper Holt, owner of one of the service stations. "This thing's gittin' out of hand. It's more than we bargained on. We aimed to show these young people a good time, yes, but we didn't expect to have our women taken away from us, wholesale."
"Your women taken away from you?"
"Yes, ma'am. There isn't a woman in Pelican Shores under the age of fifty that hasn't had half a dozen boys hanging onto her and making her all sorts of propositions."
"But surely, Jasper, they're not paying any attention to those propositions...."
"Ain't they?" Jasper Holt tapped his chest. "Look at me," he grated. "I'm fifty years old and I got a wife that's thirty-seven. I alius been able to keep her more than happy-that way-until now. But I ain't much to look at, no matter how much man I am. And now here comes a bunch of whippersnappers not dry behind the ears yet, haven't all withered away from trying to earn a living the way I have, and they're making all sorts of indecent propositions to my Louise."
"Surely she's not taking them, though?"
"Ain't she?" Holt's face was grim. "How come when I come home she's not there, and then maybe about midnight she comes staggerin' in lookin' like she's been caught in an otter trawl, hair all down, bite marks all over her body, a silly grin on her face. And when I ask her where she's been, all she does is giggle and say. 'Never you mind, old man. Never you mind...."' Holt drew himself up. "There's a limit to what a man can stand for the welfare of this town, Miss Gregg."
Or maybe it was Kenneth Friebleman, who had once been superintendent of the cannery. He was a bit articulate and less embarrassed than Jasper Holt.
"Look here, Miss Gregg, something's got to be done about this mess. Making money is fine, but there's other things more important."
"What do you mean, Ken?"
His wind-burned face was twisted in wrath. "I mean my Betsy, my daughter. She ain't but fifteen years old and she's always been a good girl until now. But I came home last night early because I had a headache, and before I even got in the house I could hear the hullaballoo in there. And I walked in and there in the bedroom-on my bed, mind you-there was Betsy. And a boy. And another six boys waiting their turn in line." His brows drew together. "That's not what we bargained for when we decided to go along with you on this thing." He slapped one hand into the palm of the other. "What we need is some police. I'd have called the police last night if we'd had any. But we've never needed any until now. I tell you, Miss Gregg, this is getting too far out of hand. Giving these young folks a place to blow off steam is one thing. Letting them make free with our wives and daughters is something else again!"
When he had gone, June Gregg and Poston looked at each other seriously.
"He may be right," she said.
"Well, the whole idea was that we weren't going to impose any restraints on the kids."
"I know. But that doesn't mean that the townspeople have to put up with every kind of indignity. Maybe ... Maybe we should form some kind of police force."
Poston was indignant. "June, that's been the trouble with every other place they've ever congregated. The police have bugged them until they couldn't stand it. That's why Pelican Shores is having this unprecedented popularity. Because it's wide open. Why, there are kids coming from halfway across the country now, just to join this gang here."
June rubbed her face. "I know. It ... it frightens me."
"It shouldn't. It was your idea."
"I know that, too. But ... "
"Listen," Poston said. "Those folksingers will be coming in tomorrow for the concert tomorrow night. Let's see how they behave at the first night of the festival. If they're orderly, fine. If they get out of hand-well, then, we might have to do what you say.
Form a police force of some kind. But if you ask me, the townspeople have got to choose. They can either have law and order, or they can have money. But I don't think they can have both."
"That's a hard choice to make," said June. "For a town that's been broke as long as this one."
Candy Carlyle said, with a touch of fear in her voice, "What's the matter with you?"
Naked to the waist, Tom Chilton stood in the doorway of the little cabin. Candy, her hair a frowzily tangle, was naked on the rumpled bed. When he did not answer, she begged him. "Please," she whispered. "Please come back here to me."
Tom Chilton whirled. "You've kept me penned up here for over a week now. I'll admit, I never run into anything or anybody like you before. I never dreamed that people did such things as you've taught me to do with you. But I like those things and I'm not ashamed of 'em. Just the same-" He flung out one arm in a gesture. "Just the same, my sister's out there somewhere." His face grew dark, clouded with anger-not so much at her as at himself. "I made a promise to her and to myself a long time ago that I would look after her. And I've forgot that promise. You made me forget it. But now I've got to keep it. I've got to go find Luisa and make sure she's all right."
"She's all right," Candy moaned. "I promise you that. Now, please, Tom, come back to bed."
"No," he said. "Listen at all those kids yellin' down there on the beach. And she's out among all them. I've got to go see to her."
Candy sat up, smoothing back her hair. "All right," she sighed. "But I promise you, your sister's okay. She's being looked after by Larry Poston, so she's in good hands. All that yelling-they're just getting ready for the first night of the festival. The singing will start as soon as it gets dark."
"All the more reason to be down there to look after her," said Tom Chilton. "Singing in the middle of all that crowd of men. I tell you, she can't be trusted out there by herself, no matter who's looking after her. She's got too much of her mother in her, and her mother was nothing but a tramp. If I'm not there to see to her-I ought to be kicked-"
Candy reached for her clothes. She had not had them on for nearly five days. Nor had she missed them.
"All right," she said. "We'll go down for the singing. But it won't start yet for a while. Can't we-can't we wait just a little while longer?"
Chilton turned. He saw the pleading in her face. "You never get enough, do you?" he said.
"No," she whispered. "Never."
He strode to the bed and stood over her. "All right. I guess it won't hurt to wait a few minutes. What do you want now?"
She looked up at him and licked her lips. Then she rolled over on her back, leaving all her body revealed and vulnerable.
"You might start with the belt," she whispered.
Luisa Chilton was nearly sick.
To think that in an hour or so she was going to have to sit up on that impromptu stage built down there on the beach and sing before all those people. It was the most exciting and the most frightening thing that had ever come into her life. She was frightened because she could not believe that she would be any good, and she was excited because, if, by some miracle, she were really as good as Poston tried to persuade her she would be, she would, in singing down there, take a long, irrevocable stride from one world into another. She would leave the safe, secure, and narrow world of Pelican Shores and Tom Chilton, and step into a wide, glittering, glamorous world of handsome men, and women who also could thrill you when they chose. A world of beautiful gowns and fire restaurants and plenty of money and ... and ... Her mind boggled at the thought.
"What's the matter, darling?" Frieda Friday asked her. "Got butterflies?"
"I've got something." Luisa put her hand on her stomach.
"They'll go away," said Frieda Friday. "As soon as you get up there and start singing. I know." She was a girl not much older than Luisa, slender, pale-faced and with huge, haunted eyes and long, straight hair. She wore a turtle-neck sweater and stretch pants, and had already made two abortive passes at Luisa; she seemed to hold no grudge against the other girl for their failure. They were sitting together in the bedroom that had been assigned to Frieda Friday. From the room next door, there came the wailing strum of banjo music as The Lonesome Five rehearsed. They all slept in the same bedroom; they had insisted upon it. The five of them occupied two large double beds-in what combinations no one knew. The Traveling Trio, in the other room, all slept in one bed. Their rehearsal music, too, was audible through the walls. Now Frieda Friday lit a cigarette. "T only hope," she said, blowing smoke, "that those hellions down there don't come up on the stage and try to rape us."
"Rape us?" Luisa said, her eyes wide.
"It could happen," said Frieda offhandedly. "I've sung at these things before. Those boys get all beered up-so do the girls. And the boys get ideas and the girls egg them on for the thrill of it ... It's not entirely the safest thing in the world to sing in front of a crowd like this. I hope they've got a good police force here to keep order."
"Police force? We've never had any police force in Pelican Shores."
Frieda Friday's face paled. "Oh, damn. Well, what about fire trucks? Fire hoses, or the threat of 'em, usually help to keep order."
"We've got one old pumper; I'm not sure whether it works or not."
Frieda Friday's lean face paled. "This isn't what I bargained for," she said tersely. "Poston can't expect a girl to get up there and sing in front of all those junior werewolves without some kind of protection."
"Oh, you'll be all right," said Luisa confidently. "Nothing ever happens at Pelican Shores."
The crowd started gathering early. Poston, watching them throng onto the beach, frowned. "Great Scott," he muttered, "I didn't know there were this many kids here."
Beside him June Gregg, fresh in a light summer dress, shook her head. "I think they're starting to come in again from outside. There must have been a lot who arrived today. I guess they were waiting until the festival began."
"What upsets me," Poston murmured, "is that most of the crowd that came today must be boys. I don't see nearly the proportion of girls there ought to be. I think-" Before he could finish, June gave a little gasp.
Poston turned to see two husky youths, beer cans in hand, clad in tight, scanty bathing trunks, leering at June. One of them had grasped her arm.
"Hello, baby doll," said the one who was holding on to her. His lips were slack, his eyes glazed with drinking. "Me and my buddy here are lonesome. Wouldn' you like to come along with us for a little fun? We're good guys-you come with us, you can have yourself a ball."
Poston's voice was a harsh rasp. "Take off."
The other boy took a step forward. "Who the hell you think you are, Dad? I didn't know they allowed old wrecks like you to come to things like this."
Poston clenched his fist, but he got a check on his temper. "Listen, fellows," he said evenly. "We want you to have fun here. But you've got to draw the line somewhere. This lady is with me. And she doesn't want to go with you. That clear?"
The one with his hand still on June shook his head. "Nah, it ain't. Things ain't like they were advertised. Place supposed to be crawlin' with chicks. Where are they all?"
"There'll be more here," Poston said evenly. "Don't worry."
"Better be," one of the boys mumbled. "I didn' come here just to swim...." There was a tense moment; then the boy released June's arm. The two of them turned and slouched away, tossing their empty beer cans on the beach.
June let out a long, shuddering sigh.
"Listen," said Poston, surveying the crowd once more. "Where are all the girls from Pelican Shores?"
"You heard the complaints the men made. I think they've got their women all locked up."
"We need 'em," Poston said. "This crowd is like a chemical mixture-it's overbalanced in one of its elements and it's getting explosive. We need to mix in more women. The only women we can mix are the ones who live here. It doesn't matter how old or how young they are or what they look like-their presence just might be enough to keep this thing from blowing up."
June shook her head. "I tell you, the townspeople have got 'em under lock and key."
"Then we've got to get 'em together. Can we arrange a quick meeting somewhere?"
"Larry, I don't think they counted on this."
"Neither did I. Listen, I think we'd better get busy. We need to get the Pelican Shores' women down here and we need to get some of the men, the cooler heads, on patrol. Let's call a meeting, quick."
June hesitated. "All right. But there's only one way it'll work. We need the women at the meeting too."
Three quarters of an hour later, the inhabitants of Pelican Shores were gathered on the lawn before the porch of the Gregg House. The only ones absent were those employed at the taverns or restaurants. Poston addressed the crowd.
"Folks, this is a big night for Pelican Shores. This is the night that's going to put this town on its feet. This is the night that's going to make you all well-off financially. After tonight, it'll all be downhill. You'll have money again for food and clothes and the luxuries of life. But if tonight's going to come off right, we need your cooperation. This crowd is not working out quite the way I planned it. There are too many boys and not enough girls. Unless we get some more women down there on the beach to ease the strain, there's likely to be trouble. Now what I'm asking for is volunteers among the girls to go down there and mingle with the boys and try to help keep 'em happy until the program is over. I'm not asking the girls to do anything that goes against their grain, but just their very presence down there might be the safety valve we need. The men can follow later, organized into patrols to help keep order." He paused. "Do you see the urgency of it? We've got hundreds, maybe thousands, of boys here. A lot of 'em are dateless. That makes them ... well, dangerous. Unless the women go down there and mingle with them, instead of getting rich, Pelican Shores could blow apart."
The crowd was silent for a moment, digesting this. Then Kenneth Friebleman stepped forward. "Mister Poston, what you're asking is impossible. We may have sunk pretty low in Pelican Shores, but we're not gonna-gonna sell our women just to make money."
"It's not a question of making money," Poston said. "It's a question of its being an emergency measure to keep this town from getting torn apart." He gestured. "It's just like a recipe. We've got to stir in a certain proportion of women to make it turn out right-we came up short on the ingredients. If the women from Pelican Shores will go down there tonight, I'll get on the phone and do everything I can to lure more outside girls in here by tomorrow night."
Friebleman shook his head. But before he could speak, June Gregg stepped forward.
"Whether you women go or not," she said, "my sisters and I are going. It may not be exactly what we'd like to do, but it's to help save Pelican Shores from disaster. So we'll do it. Who'll go with us?"
Again there was silence. Then a lanky, hatchet-faced woman in her late thirties, stepped forward. 'I ain't much to look at," she said, "but T guess it won't matter a lo( in the dark. Rather than see the town torn apart. I'll go." She paused. "So will my daughter."
Friebleman turned on her. "Now, look here, La-vinia...."
His wife stared him in the face. "You look here, Kenneth Friebleman. I've lived shut up here in this town with no excitement for years. This is the biggest thing that ever happened in Pelican Shores. You men have got no right to lock us women away from it-especially when we're needed."
Friebleman opened and closed his mouth, but no words came out. There was a stir in the crowd. Another woman said, "Me, too. I'll go."
"And me ... Let me go ... I'm willing...." There were perhaps a hundred and twenty-five girls and women assembled. Now they all surged forward eagerly.
"All right," Poston said. "Thank you very much. Those of you who need them, go to the general store, get cosmetics, bathing suits, whatever you need. It's got a good stock, in anticipation of all the people we've had coming in here. Charge what you need to The Pelican Shores Corporation. We'll foot the bill. And ... and we thank you very much. Now, please hurry. That crowd is getting uglier and uglier."
Friebleman's voice rang out. "All right, you men. If our women are going down there, we'd better go along to protect them. Let's organize into patrols..
Poston went down the steps. "One minute, Mr. Friebleman."
The man turned on him curiously. "Yes?"
"You realize ... well, you understand that these patrols should act only in case of real violence."
"I don't follow you," said Friebleman slowly.
"Well...." Poston tried to phrase it diplomatically. "I mean, maybe you'll see your women doing things you don't ... don't approve of. But unless it's being forced on them against their will, you shouldn't interfere."
Friebleman frowned. "Listen, you mean if I see some young punk slobbering over my wife, I'm supposed to stand by and let him?"
"You are unless your wife is resisting him." Poston gestured urgently. "Don't you see? If you aren't ... well, tolerant ... you'll start the very violence we're trying to avert. Your women-well, they can take care of themselves. Unless they ask for help, let them handle things the way they see fit and you men keep yourselves ready to break up fights and rowdiness."
"Listen, Mr. Poston, we never counted on this...."
June Gregg came down the steps and took his hand. "Listen, Ken, your women will come back to you after tonight with a greater appreciation of you than ever before. I promise you that. They ... they've had a hard life here. They need to blow off a little steam, too. Don't keep them from that, don't deny them that privilege. Just try to make sure they don't get physically hurt." She squeezed his hand. "Believe what I say.
Trust me. Have I ever let you down before?"
Friebleman looked away. He sighed. Then he muttered: "All right, Miss Gregg. If you say so." He turned to the others. "Come on. Let's get organized."
Poston and June went back up on the porch. "Listen," he said in a low tone, "you were just trying to sway them, weren't you? You aren't really going down there?"
She looked at him levelly and with her face expressionless. "Of course I am," she said quietly.
"But-but-" Poston spluttered. "I mean-"
"I know what you mean," June said. "You like to keep me wrapped up safely while these other women take the chances. But I'm not made that way. I can't ask them to go without going myself, and taking my sisters with me."
"It doesn't matter about April and May. It's right up their alley. But ... but you're different, June. And you're mine and I love you and...."
She nodded. "I love you, too. But maybe I'm not as different as you think." She turned away. "Now I've got to hurry and get ready to go down to the beach."
Poston stood there for several seconds, looking at the front door after it had closed behind her. He let out a gusty breath, finally, and turned to where the men were deep in conference.
If we can just get through this night, he thought. If we can just get through this night without any trouble....
By the time Poston got back to the beach, it was like a scene from Dante's Inferno. Fires blazed here and there, primitive music whanged loudly, and in the firelight, young men and young women danced ritual mating dances, their near-naked bodies shining in the yellow glow. Poston watched a couple frugging, the girl slender, full-breasted and yellow-haired, her bathing suit a laughable and futile attempt to shield her body. The boy was handsome, broad-shouldered, his own trunks a single layer of un-lined, tight-fitting cloth. As he watched, the couple gyrated closer and closer together, hips moving furiously, knees bending, bodies sinking, pelvises thrust out. They approached, almost touched, danced back tantalizingly, then approached again. The girl's hips ground, her buttocks shook, her head was thrown back, her teeth gleaming, her eyes glazed. Then they were touching fully, bodies rubbing together while they danced, and suddenly they each yelled and were no longer dancing; the boy had seized the girl; she had thrown herself into his arms, and now, despite the watching crowd, he was bearing her down onto a blanket, tearing at the lower part of her suit.
Poston turned and walked away. He could have seen the same tableau duplicated a dozen times over, but he was more concerned with the packs of beery young men who, womanless, prowled the beach. He could see frustration and lust written on their faces, and he knew that they were like so many fused bombs, waiting to explode. He hoped the women from Pelican Shores would hurry down. Even one woman to each group would ease the strain.
He made his circuit and turned back to the end of the beach closest to town. Then he heard a murmur of voices and he saw motion in the blackness, and then the townswomen, led by April, May and June Gregg were filing onto the beach.
They were a varied lot. June was stunning in a tight red two-piece cut low at her hips, high at the buttocks, and what April and May wore was almost nothing at all. June's face was set and white, but April's eyes were glittering, and May's wide mouth was curved in a greedy smile of anticipation. The other women behind them ranged from very young to middle-aged. Some of them were genuinely beautiful, some pretty, some plain, others homely. Poston saw sagging breasts swaying ludicrously on some of the older ones. They looked self-conscious in their scanty bathing suits, but they looked eager, too, and ready for anything-and when he heard the murmur from the crowd on the beach, he knew that looks counted for nothing tonight. They were women, and that was all that mattered.
Then the dateless boys were swarming forward in a great tide, pushing Poston aside, encircling the women, scooping them up. Poston saw June grabbed by two boys, one seizing each wrist. For a moment, it looked as if they would pull her apart-but she smiled at each of them, and then both had their arms about her and as something knotted and grew cold in Poston, the threesome disappeared into the darkness.
The same thing was happening with the others. With never less than two, sometimes as many as five boys per woman, the group of women was being fragmented, split up. Poston saw May and a string of six boys trotting laughingly off into the darkness; April had four. Even the hatchet-faced Mrs. Friebleman, scrawny in a bikini suit, had three with her and she was smiling brilliantly as they bore her away.
Behind the women, came the men. Their faces were darkly sullen, but they said nothing, ranging themselves out along the water's edge like a picket line.
A hand touched Poston. He turned to see Candy Carlyle smiling at him. He grinned at her in return. "Well, hello, stranger. Did you have a nice visit up there in the shack?"
"Couldn't have been nicer." Her voice was soft.
"I appreciate your keeping Tom Chilton off my neck while I was rehearsing his sister."
"It was my pleasure. But keep an eye on him, will you? He came down here to make sure his sister was all right. If anybody lays a hand on her, there's no telling what-"
"I'll watch," Poston said.
"How're things going?"
He told her.
She was silent for a moment. Then she smiled slightly. "Well, I guess I'd better do my bit for Pelican Shores, too." She began to unfasten her dress. "I don't have a bathing suit with me, but I guess nobody will notice that my bra and panties weren't made for swimming." She stepped out of her dress and folded it neatly and handed it to Poston. Before she could say anything else, three boys converged on her. Poston stepped back, saw her smiling, saw her borne away by them.
He looked at his watch It would soon be time to start the program. But, he decided, better postpone it for about a half hour. Give the women from Pelican Shores a chance to drain off some of the built up tensions....
He continued his patrol of the beach, wondering rather sickly where June had gone.
June Gregg was a woman in a dilemma at that moment. In a pool of shadow at the edge of the bluff, the two boys who had carried her off were arguing about her. They had taken it as a foregone conclusion that she was there to be made love to. Their argument was about who would be first.
"Listen," one of them snapped. "I saw her before you did."
"Yeah, but I grabbed her before you did."
"How'd you like me to clobber you one?"
"You try it. I'll smear you all over this beach."
Calmly, June unfastened her bra. She peeled down her panties and lay down on the blanket spread in the shadow. "Boys," she said, determined to resolve the dilemma before it flared into violence and spread like wildfire. "Boys, stop arguing. I'm getting anxious. Come on."
They turned to her, saw her lying there smiling at them, saw the gleam of her white body in the darkness, the ripe roundness of her breasts. They saw her arch herself invitingly, rubbing her hands down her flanks.
"Yeah, all right, so I go first," one of them said and stepped forward.
The other caught his arm. "Hell you do...."
June raised her hand. Her voice was soft, inviting, and insinuating. "There's no need to argue," she murmured. "Just come over here on the blanket with me. I know how to do it so you can both be first...."
April Gregg was in her glory. She lay naked on a blanket in the firelight. As a boy lowered himself to the blanket, she raised her body to meet him. She held him tightly, and there was, perhaps, three minutes of deft and furious action. Then, sighing, his face gone lax, he got to his feet.
April giggled. She looked at the line of perhaps ten boys making a circle around the fire. She did not get up off the blanket. She just raised her arms beckoningly.
"Next," she said.
May Gregg was the center of even more furious activity. She was lost in a knot of tangled flesh, while a cheering, whooping, drunken group clustered about her.
She had always wanted her chance to try to satisfy three men at a time. She found now, that she could do it admirably. And, increasing her pleasure, was the knowledge that the more she could handle, the better it would be for Pelican Shores. She was very proud of herself..
So was Louise Friebleman. She had only one boy with her just now-not boy, really, but man. Young man, a great deal of young man. He was better than Kenneth, lustier, massive, a stallion. She felt all the tensions of years of dull, drab living in Pelican Shores flowing out of her as he made love to her. Her body moved with a strong rhythm she had almost forgotten it was capable of. Her mouth did things with his that it had not done with a man's mouth in years. It was like suddenly being young again and....
She moaned as, suddenly, the young man went hurtling away into darkness. She opened her eyes, at first unfocused with unconsummated passion, and then she saw the twisted, angry face of her husband staring down at her. "Louise!" he grated. "Get up off that blanket!"
She sat up, not ashamed, not contrite, just angry and frustrated. "Go away, Kenneth Friebleman!"
"I will not go away. My wife behaving like a common tramp-"
She screamed it then. "Will you go away? I'm doing what I like to do! Get out of here, old man, get out!"
He stared at her incredulously. His face contorted. Then he let out a long, rasping breath. Without a word, he turned and walked into the darkness.
Louise Friebleman dropped back to the blanket. She arched her lean and ribby body desperately. "Please...." she whimpered. "Please, come back...."
A boy went to her. It was not the same boy. But she did not even know that. If she had, it would not have made any difference.
A strong hand grabbed Poston and whirled him around. He found himself looking into the dark face of Tom Chilton. "I've been hunting for you," Chilton snapped. "Where's my sister?" He flung an arm toward the twisted mass of flesh on the beach. "She's not out there, is she?"
Poston pushed his hand away. "Of course not. She's up at the Gregg House. She's going to perform on the program tonight. I'm just going to bring the performers down now."
Chilton's face was close to his. "Listen, you'd better not let anything happen to her. If one of those punks lays a hand on her, I'll-" He tapped his belt. Looking down, Poston saw the glittering blade of the long knife, slipped behind the leather.
Poston swallowed hard. "Tom, throw that thing away. It'll only get you into trouble. Nothing's going to happen to Luisa. I promise you that."
"Nothing had better," Chilton grated. "Or I'll slice somebody into ribbons...." He turned away into the crowd.
Poston mopped sweat from his brow. He walked toward the cannery building where his car was parked. Every pool of shadow held its knot of flesh. Not only the townswomen, but the visiting girls seemed to have gone crazy. It was as if a wave of lustful insanity had swept the beach. It was like, he thought, one of those ancient, pagan festivals where all wraps were off, where anything went. His heart sank as he thought about June out there in the middle of it, caught up in its madness. He felt no desire himself, there was no physical response to the sight of a dozen individual and nearly-incredible orgies transpiring all about him; he just wanted, now, to get this night over and done with and have everyone safely back where he belonged. Tomorrow night, he thought, I'll have the state police in. I don't know of any other way....
Before he could get in his car, voices said, "Are you about ready for us?" A knot of men and women approached him, and he saw that they were the folk-singers, who had apparently become impatient for the show and had come down on their own. Mary Middle-ton, spokesmen for the Lonesome Five, looked at the beach beyond. "It looks like a real ball," she said. "After our act's over, can we join the party?"
"I don't care what you do," Poston said wearily. "Just be sure to give them a good show. I don't want anything to irritate this crowd tonight. It's like a powder keg." There were still some prowling boys roaming the beach, and he did not like the looks of them.
"I've sung at lots of festivals," Mary Middleton said, her eyes glittering but this one is a real gas. I've never seen one like this before."
"I hope you never see one like this again, either," Poston grunted. "It's got completely out of hand. Where's Luisa Chilton?"
She stepped forward out of darkness, her guitar around her neck. "Here I am."
"Good. You stay with me. I don't want anything to happen to you. Where's Frieda Friday?"
"She's not here," Luisa said.
"What?" Poston gaped at her, stunned.
"She got scared and went back to the city. She said she wasn't going to risk her neck singing before a crowd like this with no police protection."
"But-but-" Poston knew he was sputtering ineffectually. He forced the words out. "But she can't do that!"
"She's done it," said Roger Markovich, leader of The Traveling Trio. "She's split, man."
"But ... but my God, we promised these kids Frieda Friday would sing. If she's not here, there'll be hell to pay. All my efforts will have gone for nothing-!"
"She left nearly two hours ago. I don't think you'd have a chance of catching her," Markovich said.
"Well, of all the-" Poston rubbed his face. "She was supposed to start the program. Now ... Well, I guess I've got to reshuffle things. Luisa, you'll sing first."
She nodded. "All right." Her voice was a bit shaky.
"Come on, everybody. Let's get up there on the stage and I'll introduce you."
He led them through a beach that had turned into one vast mating area. He caught a glimpse of June Gregg's blonde head bobbing above a man's shoulder; then it disappeared. He halted, stared. When he saw what she was doing to one man and what another was doing to her simultaneously, he turned away sickly, wearily.
Numbly, he mounted the stage with the performers with him. From where he stood, he could look out over an incredible scene. He saw June once more. She had changed partners now. He bowed his head for a moment, then he picked up the mike and blew into it.
Nobody seemed to pay any attention except a group of dateless, or at least womanless young men clustered about the platform. There were perhaps fifty or seventy-five of them, their faces slack with drinking, their eyes glittering with desire. They were not looking at him. They were looking at the women up there on stage with him-the girls in the two groups and Luisa Chilton, standing a little apart in the bra and low-slung stretch pants June had given her to wear as a costume.
"Ladies and Gentlemen," Poston began. His words rumbled, amplified, out over the beach, but he saw only a few heads turned to pay attention.
"Hey, cut out the yapping," somebody in the group of young men around the stage bellowed.
"All right," Poston said. "We'll get immediately to the musical part of the program...."
Somebody else yelled: "We ain't interested in the music. What we want are those girls up there."
"Please," Poston said. "These ladies are performers."
"Well, let 'em perform down here on a blanket-!"
Poston ignored that. "The first artist on our program is one new to you-a real discovery, a natural, a girl with a great deal of talent...."
"She's got nice boobies, too!" somebody howled as Luisa stepped forward...." A great deal of talent," Poston went on. "Miss Luisa Chilton is a native of Pelican Shores and...."...." and just what I'm looking for! Come on, gang!" Suddenly a husky, drunken young man leaped up to the stage. He seized Luisa's arm, dragged her to him. She screamed. He ripped the bra away with a quick, savage motion of his hand. As Poston stepped forward, fists clenched, more boys piled onto the stage. "Let's get those women!" they whooped.
Poston was caught in a sea of sweaty muscle. Now the stage was filled with boys. Some of the girls of the singing groups screamed as they were seized-some of them just laughed. Poston had a blurred glimpse of Mary Middleton being carried away-she was smiling happily. But he did not care about her. He was trying to fight through to Luisa Chilton. They had her pants off now; she was naked, being passed from hand to hand for fondling as if she were some sort of inanimate object.
"Let her go!" Poston yelled; then somebody hit him and he went flying off the stage to land on his back in the sand. He was dazed for an instant, but as he sat up, his numbness vanished as he saw a lean, muscular figure in blue shirt and faded jeans, knife gleaming, leap to the stage.
"Tom!" Poston yelled. "No, Tom, wait-"
There was a cry of pain from the stage. A boy fell onto the sand, blood streaming from a wound in his upper arm. Suddenly the crowd parted, swirling away from Luisa Chilton. She huddled naked against her brother, who faced the crowd knife in his hand.
"Anybody else touches her," he snarled, "I'll rip him open."
The uproar on the stage had attracted attention, now. Heads were turned. The wounded boy let out a yell. "Hey, you guys. We need some help. Come on, let's get this girl." He staggered to his feet, his hand clasped over the wound. "Come on, you guys. Come on, let's get her. Let's show these town jerks they can't-"
As if he had sounded a battle cry, other boys were surging toward the stage. Tom Chilton faced them unafraid. Poston heard Candy Carlyle's despairing cry. "Tom...."
Then there were hundreds of boys gathered around the stage. They put their shoulders to the wooden framework. Luisa clung to Tom as all that muscle rocked the stage loose from its foundation, sent it tilting. "We'll snow him under!" somebody hollered. Beer cans were flying through the air at Tom and Luisa now. Poston fought desperately to get through the mob. Women were screaming. Some of them had joined the boys. Poston saw girls naked and half naked pushing on the stage too. "Get her! Get her!" they chanted.
Candy Carlyle, naked except for a pair of panties, seized Poston's arm. "I'm going to call the state police." Then she whirled and ran across the beach toward town.
Before Poston could move, he heard another battle cry: "All right," the voice of Kenneth Friebleman bawled. "This has gone far enough! Let's move in!"
A hundred and fifty Pelican Shores men, armed with clubs, surged forward. "Wait!" Poston screamed despairingly. Now he was certain someone would be killed. It would mean the end of his career, the end of his prestige. To have promoted a deal like this and have let it get so far out of hand ... He tried to block them. "Wait!" They pushed him down and thundered over him, almost trampling him.
Then it was a full-scale riot. Men and women joined in, the college girls fighting alongside the boys. Poston saw nearly-naked girls clawing at the men of Pelican Shores, saw the Pelican Shores women come to pull them away-a dozen hair-pulling, breast-gouging fights breaking out among the women. The Pelican Shores men were laying about them with their clubs now. They were seamen all, grown hard and tough and fearless over the years of daring the ocean and handling fishnets in all sorts of weather. The boys could not stand against them. Slowly, they began to draw back toward the foot of the bluff.
Poston saw Tom Chilton dragging Luisa free of the melee, out into the water. He saw June Gregg being attacked by two of the visiting girls. One sat on her and clawed viciously at her naked breasts, while another seized her hair and was pulling at it savagely. Poston ran toward her, scooped the girl astride June free with a quick motion, pushed the other one away. "Come on," he rasped and picked her up. Sobbing, she clung to him, and he dragged her toward the water.
When he had gained the surf, he waded out in it until they were up to their waists. June clung to him desperately. From this vantage point, the sight on shore was horrifying. The men of Pelican Shores were herding the visitors back against the bluff like sheepdogs penning sheep. The fires flamed high and cast a weird glow over it all. Naked women lurched around dazedly. A few couples, on the outer edges, paying no attention to the melee, were still making love with single-minded fervor.
"Oh, it's all finished," June gasped. "It's all done for now, it's all over. Pelican Shores is finished. We've failed, Poston."
Poston sucked in a great breath. "Maybe not," he whispered. "Maybe not. I'm Larry Poston. I'll think of something. I've got to think of something...."
CHAPTER TWELVE
Morning came to Pelican Shores from landward, the sun's rays slanting across the beach and out over the ocean. It gilded the sand and gilded the water, and gilded, too, the thickly piled bodies on the sloping strand. The air was full of drunken snoring, as well as the morning songs of birds. The beach was scattered with empty beer cans as well as sunlight.
Poston and June Gregg looked at it thoughtfully.
"Look at them," Poston said. "Sleeping like babies."
It was the second morning after the riot.
June held his arm. "I don't understand it," she said. "They've been so peaceful, so quiet, so happy since the riot. I expected them all to leave, mad at us. But not even the ones who got hit on the head seem to hold any grudge."
"No," Poston said. "We don't think the way they do. To us, the riot was something terrible. To them it was all good clean fun, and a headache from being conked with a club was a cheap price to pay for it. Once they had it out of their system, they were happy. That was what they really came here for, I can see it now. To have a riot like this, to blow off steam. And now they've done it, and they're happy. They don't hold any grudge at all."
"It's just incredible," June murmured. "I would have sworn, night before last, that Pelican Shores was finished."
"It would have been," Poston said, "if the newspapers hadn't spread the word about the riot all over the country yesterday and today. But instead of being finished, we got a million dollars worth of publicity. Girls have been flocking in like pigeons ever since the story broke. Now there are more than enough to go around...." He broke off, thoughtfully. "It doesn't hurt, either, that these kids have gotten a taste of what the men of Pelican Shores can do if they get out of line. Kids don't resent discipline once it's applied, they don't even seem to bear any grudge for it."
"So we can keep on operating," June said.
"At least for this year. And maybe next. Make the money while you can. This year it's Pelican Shores. Next year it'll be some other beach. Then maybe the following year it'll be Pelican Shores again."
"No," June said, "I don't think it's going to matter whether they come every year from now on or not.
We've had our publicity, the world knows about us now, and we ought to make enough money from the kids this summer to set up as a real resort, with a hotel and cabins and everything. I don't want to see the town become a permanent, seaside brothel."
"Maybe you're right," Poston said. "Maybe for the long haul, you're right. But this is the only way we could have gotten started. I'm just glad nobody was killed or seriously hurt. That would have cooked our goose."
They turned and strolled back up the beach together. "Luisa certainly got a lot of applause last night, didn't she?" June asked.
"I told you, she's got what it takes. That girl's going to be a star. She can not only sing folk music, she's got a voice that can sing anything. They didn't even miss Frieda Friday. Don't worry about Luisa. She's on her way."
"I'm glad the townspeople don't bear any grudge, either," June said. "For a while. I thought that would kill everything."
"Why should they bear a grudge? The women have had their excitement and the men have had their chance to redeem their honor. And money's flowing in like crazy. The men will no longer be so sure of their wives, and they'll be more attentive and considerate of them. And there will be a certain air of mystery about their women, now, too, that, no matter what they say, the men will find exciting. Everything's worked out very well."
As they walked along, they saw two figures strolling toward them from the opposite direction. Even from a distance of a hundred yards, Poston recognized Tom Chilton and Candy Carlyle. They walked hand in hand.
"That's another combination I never would have figured," June murmured.
"Even if this whole affair served no other purpose," Poston said, "it wrenched Luisa away from that ... old unwholesome relationship. It brought the Chiltons out into the real world. And I think Candy may even tame Tom Chilton. I've promised her that she'll be left here as my representative. She can work with April and May and Kenneth Friebleman to keep things going."
"But what about you?" June Gregg asked.
He looked down at her. "Don't you mean us?"
"All right," she said. "Us."
"Well, I've got to get back to the city. There's a business waiting there for me. And without Candy, it's going to take hard work to keep it going."
"Maybe I can learn to help you," June Gregg said, and she tightened her grip on his arm.
"Maybe you can," Poston said. "You have a natural talent too. After all, you thought up this proposition. And you understand the great truth of selling and promotion-sex lies at the bottom of it all."
They stopped and looked at the sprawled bodies on the beach.
"It's not all pretty, by any means," Poston said thoughtfully. "But the world is no longer a pretty place, either. Everyone has to live from one moment to the next. These young people have grown up living like that, in fear and under shadow. So who can blame them if they seize moments in their lives for pure pleasure? And who can blame them if, sometimes, that gets out of hand? They didn't make the world they live in; we made it. Until we change it, we can't expect them to change."
He put his arm around June.
"Someday, Pelican Shores will be a quiet, prosperous place with fat old men and women in mink coats and bikinis rocking in the sun; it'll be orderly and prosperous and profitable-and there'll be no public lovemaking and nobody will get wildly drunk and nobody will really be having very much fun. And these kids, with explosion out of their system and their tensions gone, will be about their business, and they'll remember their summer at Pelican Shores and they'll sigh and think: those were the days. And then, when their own children cut loose, they'll shake their heads and forget it all and say, what is the world coming to?"
June laughed. "Well, let them have their fun at Pelican Shores now. It'll be orderly, at least within reason, and we'll see that nobody gets hurt-at least physically, and that's all we can do for them."
"It'll be enough; they'll have to do the rest for themselves. People always have to," Poston said. Then he took her arm and they started across the beach toward the big house on the bluff.
