His name was Lasswell and he had more money than a man should have and a craving for sin that was bigger than the devil whose dark powers he followed. He was also a man with a hypo and needle, ready to plunge it into the arm of any pretty young girl and thereby make her his slave for as long as his evil hungers demanded ... Her name was Brenda and she was pretty and she was also naive. She was the slave who would follow Lasswell to his sin-shrouded hell and beg him to do anything to her, anything his twisted mind could imagine. And following Brenda came Elaine, her sister, a girl who teamed up with the wanton Lola to find kicks and along the way perhaps to salvage what was left of Brenda. And there were the men along the way, other sin monsters, eager to take their fill at the fountain of shamed female beauty.
CHAPTER ONE
She awoke at daybreak in a shabby room in the Garlic Belt with a man sleeping beside her on the cotton stuffed mattress. The mattress lay on the splintered floor at an angle to the wall, another of Martin Dietrich's rebellions against conformity. If the squares all lived in box houses and slept in symmetrical rooms with beds parallel to the wall, then it had to be wrong. Martin had even pulled away the plaster to form a niche in one corner-knocking the edges off the square of the room.
Elaine still could not observe these minor insurrections of Martin's without a smile of amusement. For Martin life was so serious. Yet he was almost comical with his uncut hair and his barren room where his books were piled in the corner like a careless pyramid. To stack them would create symmetry.
Martin's poetry was so unorthodox that it sounded like nonsense to her. Though she didn't admit this to anyone but herself, for there was just the chance that it contained great abstract meanings which were beyond her ability to comprehend.
Some things that were supposed to be art she understood. Or she had a gut-feeling for them. Martin said we never think with our heads but with our guts. We only know if a thing is good or bad by the way it affects our digestion.
She smiled and shook her head as she stared up at the ceiling, which was not a square but a diamond because of the angle of her vision from the off-center mattress.
Maybe this gut-feel was a joke that Martin was playing on her and everyone he told it to. Or was there really something she lacked? Brenda seemed to comprehend. But Brenda had taken to everything with widened frenzy the moment they arrived in Sausalito.
They had decided to come here, she and Brenda and Lola, a year ago at the end of the spring semester. They had come only for the summer, but they had stayed on, unwilling to return to the grinding monotony of Newton College of Liberal Arts and an antiquated art department that was as stuffy as a hothouse.
As she lay with her back against the hard mattress, feeling the press of Martin's nude leg against her own, Elaine sensed the sudden return of excitement like a tingle at the base of her skull. She realized in that moment that she was in a cheap Sausalito room with her bearded lover and a jug of wine ... not in Laurel, North Dakota where the days slip away with the monotony of flies escaping a bottle and the nights echo like the sound of pebbles thrown into a well.
Nice images, she thought. She should tell them to Martin. But Martin was still asleep and he didn't write poems of imagery. Only poems of sound. Mad litanys that he mumbled and whined while he gazed into his crystal ball. The source of all gut-feeling. A round, sea-carved rock that he had picked up on the point below Fort Baker.
She looked at the dark drooping beard that circled his mouth, the cynical, drawn muscles of his lips that were forever spitting and rejecting.
It had been cool in the night and they had held fast beneath the scratchy wool blanket while he moved against her legs. The wine had made it crazy. The wine and the candlelight and the magic incantations in his whining voice as he kneeled near her, bending like a Muslim on his prayer rug.
She had liked him in the night while he crushed her in an hours-long marathon that grew more frantic as they mounted up to each scorching finish.
She was satisfied. She was lazy and content this morning. She felt no need for him. No affection. No fear of his going away from her. He was useful now and then as he had been last night. A dispensing machine. Instant ecstasy. Fast service for relieving an internal demand.
It wasn't love, but it was a hell of a kick.
She formed a cynical shape with her lips. But deep down somewhere inside she felt a faint quick stab of anxiety. The reflex of a prim indoctrination.
Would she ever escape the last clinging threads of her childhood? Clean starched dresses. Pigtails and cotton stockings. Antiseptic living in an antiseptic house. Mouthwash and laxatives every night before bed. Sunday school class. A gold star for attendance beside her name.
From a background like this it was a wonder she had ever allowed herself to give in to a man, let alone enjoy him. But there was no denying that there was a primitive wantonness deep inside her that made her respond lustfully to a man's caresses, that filled her with a delicious, uncontrollable warmth.
As fragments and details of last night's near-orgy came back to her she began to twist her hips involuntarily. Martin was still sleeping soundly, but she was wishing that he would waken and love her again.
She decided that if he didn't open his eyes in another five minutes, she would see to it that he did, despite the fact that he was often angry at being awakened rudely from a sound sleep.
There was a smoldering fire in her body that was ready to leap into flames, a craving that had to be soothed. And there was only one way-to have a man.
And it seemed as though Martin were the chosen one. At least he was the only man handy at the moment. She wasn't really particular who took care of her. She'd bad other lovers, and she'd have more after Martin.
Damn, she thought, I really have become a little tramp. But after all, wasn't that part of the Bohemian life? She remembered Lola's arguments in support of free love. There really were some very convincing ideas on the subject.
It was part of the artist's life, after all. A girl with a creative spirit was different, in many ways superior to the clods she had been raised among back home in North Dakota.
Just because the greater part of humanity led dull lives of monotony was no reason why she should. This was what she had told herself when the three of them came west to live in an honest-to-goodness artist colony.
It was obviously a different life from the one she had led in Laurel. One that appealed to her more. So, when in Sausalito do as the artists do....
Yet now and then this stab of conscience would hit her, leaving her gloomy and uncertain. The mood was descending upon her again. It was compounded of fear and remorse, and maybe even a touch of homesickness.
But she couldn't allow it to get the best of her. There was only one way to combat it, and that was by defiance.
Sliding her hand under the cover, along Martin's nude body, she reached for and found him.
Martin raised his head, blinking the sleep from his eyes. His hair and beard were tangled. His mouth was gaping with a half-yawn, a half-angry grimace.
"What the hell are you doing?"
Elaine slid up close to him and touched her bare middle to his leg.
"Wake up," she said. "I'm warm all over. I need you again."
Martin yawned. He sat up further on the mattress and the cover slid down below his waist, revealing her hand, the fingers clamped tight.
Slowly she began to move her hand while he watched with a numb expression on his face.
Even before he responded, Elaine felt a surge of desire seize her, leaving her head spinning, her body burning with desire.
Then Martin seemed to catch the same excitement. He turned his body toward her, twisting from her grasping fingers.
His arms slid around her back, pulled her toward him. His mouth covered hers, and she felt the faintly unpleasant prickle of his beard on her face.
Elaine clawed her nails sharply into his back as his hands began to search her body. They clamped tightly around her breasts.
"Do that," she gasped in an unnatural voice.
She felt the nipples harden against his palms, felt the molten stream of passion course through her veins.
Then Martin was pushing her back upon the mattress, moving his body until it was nearer her. She began to twist wantonly as his hands continued to caress her breasts.
Both of his hands were cupped around her heaving mounds. He pinched the nipples with his fingers. She felt them grow harder, almost burst with a wild sensation that was a mingling of pleasure and pain.
He caressed her breasts for a minute or more, all the while looking down at her with a wild light in his mad poet's eyes. His mouth was open in a thick, almost contemptuous leer. He mumbled unintelligible words in the depths of his throat. Then he bent his head.
She felt the tiny pinpricks of his beard upon her flesh as his lips caressed one breast.
"Oh, good-" she gasped.
She let her legs move as she reached up and held to him tightly. Her fingers twisted in the hair on top of his head as she shoved his lips harder against her.
His kiss flickered like a point of flame.
He kneeled above her and made love to first one breast and then the other. His teeth nibbled, shooting little stabs of pain to her. His lips gaped open, trying to engulf her.
She was wild with passion now, beyond the feeling of remorse and fear. She had managed to drive them away by the willing abandonment of her body to wanton craving.
Martin lifted his head and grinned down at her. His lips hung slack, liver-colored in the midst of his black beard. He snorted.
A bearded satyr.
She half expected to see the legs of a goat as she stared down at him.
Then she saw his readiness, and she ached for him in the depths of her being.
"Hurry," she gasped.
"Be calm, little dove," he murmured with his wild poet's eyes glaring down at her. "Little dove-"
He dropped down at her again and she felt the touch of his puckered lips on one nipple and then the other. In a moment he moved lower. His beard trickled across her middle, making her flinch.
Excitement was building in her. Her nerves were jangling like loose electric wires.
"Love me now!" she cried almost desperately.
"Patience," he mumbled with his lips pressed against the roundness of her middle.
She gasped as his caress touched her.
"Now, damn it," she cried, wild with impatience to have him possess her.
Then he was moving again, mumbling a mad litany of worship as his caress searched the crevice of her body. His beard touched her legs, tickling and pricking her at the same time.
Wild desire burned inside her.
She felt his lips and then his constantly-flickering tongue. Her hands clung frantically to his head, guiding him as she twisted her body.
"Love me, Martin," she screamed at him. "I'm burning up. You're driving me crazy...."
She pulled at his hair with her tangled fingers, trying to draw him up to her. But still he continued to attack her with his tormenting caress.
She was out of her head with the frenzy of what he was doing to her. She pulled again at his hair, then beat at his head with her knotted fists.
Finally he lifted his head and looked at her. His eyes were blinking and dazed as though he had been gazing too long at the sun.
"Hurry," she demanded. "Now. now ... Breathlessly she grasped his arm and drew him down to her. Her heavy breasts rose up and fell with the labor of her breathing.
He sank down and kissed her mouth. Her breasts came alive again with excitement at the touch of his bare, sweating chest.
She arched and twisted her body, moving her legs, searching for him.
On his knees, Martin reached down and drew her there to his waist. Then he dropped with a sudden urgency, and took her.
The breath caught in her throat, almost choking her. She gagged and then gave a long, husky sigh.
His body moved like magic, and she clung to his neck as his bearded face dropped down and he put his lips against her throat, kissing feverishly.
"Oh, lover," she cried, overwhelmed by a feeling of utter submission. "I've never been so ready...."
His body slanted and slanted. Stabbing pleasure-pain shot through her. Her breath was warm as he panted upon her face, ceaselessly possessing her.
She sighed from side to side upon the hard mattress, seeking to force him further. Her mouth gaped open, panting with desire. Tears of sheer ecstasy formed in her eyes and ran down her face.
"More-" she cried, spurring him on with her clawed fingertips. "Give me everythingl"
Martin was no longer the gloomy poet, but a rampant male attacking her. He was making love to her with his whole being, clamping her to his chest with his encircling arms, thrashing her violently with his legs.
Their bodies crashed again.
The sound of their wild breathing filled the room.
Her hair was wild about her face, fallen and disheveled. She climbed up Martin's back as a monkey climbing a stick.
She heard his breath quicken and sensed that he was near the peak. Her own fulfillment was near.
Martin quickened his motion, and then one last frantic effort sent her flying over the fiery top.
She screamed aloud at the top of her lungs.
"I'm there, lover!" she cried, tossing her head wildly from side to side. "I'm there ... now, lover. Now happening...."
Then she felt him reach it at the same moment and their bodies clung together for a frantic instant while the whole world seemed to dissolve about her head.
At last she lay back upon the mattress and released her tensed body, allowing Martin to move away from her. For more than a minute she could only lie exhausted and stare at the shabby ceiling.
When at last she found the strength to lift her head, she saw that Martin was asleep once more.
Almost every night the same thing happened over and over.
She would be stretched out there, fighting sleep, and he would be sleeping away, making his funny little guttural unconscious sounds, forcing her wider awake.
While the desire built higher and higher for her. Until she would start in action the exact, selfsame ritual they had just completed.
Only then, warm and relaxed and satiated, could she close her eyes and resign herself finally to sleep.
CHAPTER TWO
Elaine rolled away from Martin's slack body and sat up slowly, looking through her stringing hair for the rest of the wine they had drank last night.
The bottle lay open on its side with a dark puddle visible through the smoky green glass. She picked it up and discovered that there was a mouthful. Swallowing it, she felt the acid bite of Chianti on her tongue.
There was a hint of bright day upon the window, soft blue shadows of morning and the pale yellow filtered light of the sun through a hanging fog.
She felt the need to get out and breathe the early freshness of the air.
It was morning on Frisco Bay.
It represented a life of enchantment after the ordeal of years on the flat Dakota plains.
Martin didn't stir when she stood up from the mattress on the floor and went like a cat across the room to pick up her gray sweatshirt and paint-spattered Levis.
She pulled them on over her bare white skin. The coarse cloth of her sweatshirt rubbed her nipples, which were like a raw wound from the ceaseless attention Martin had given them last night and this morning.
She felt a sensuous pleasure as she pulled the tight Levis up her legs, buttoning them, feeling them clinging to her bare waist and legs.
She smiled at the remembered pleasure she had received from Martin, who was a fairly able lover despite the fact that he was probably a little psychotic.
He had taken care of her well enough, and now she felt calm and depleated. She gave a sigh of satisfaction and hooked her toes in a pair of clogs.
She was totally dressed. No underwear and no socks. In the eyes of the folks back home in Laurel, North Dakota she would be a hopeless degenerate. Yet she knew that deep in their conservative little hearts they were envious of her and the life she dared to lead.
There was a wicker-covered demijohn beside the door from which Elaine drained the last swallow of bitter wine dregs before she slipped out the door.
It was a beautiful morning.
There were birds flickering in the treetops. Looking back toward Hurricane Gulch she saw the glint of sun on brown earth where the fog had blown away.
Quickly she went down the hill, her legs running from the momentum of the steep descent.
The sun floated low across the bay behind the fog shroud. The water was calm, torn by a few tide ripples. A gull wheeled and cried overhead, went flapping through the blurred mist toward Angel Island.
Beyond Juanita's, the old ferry boat, a single fisherman drifted in a flat-bottomed skiff, trailing a taut fishing line in the water. As Elaine watched, the man stood up and moved a metallic thing in the bottom of the boat, sending a muted cry across the blue-gray morning.
Elaine crossed through the park and stepped around a mashed banana oozing from its skin. She walked by the stone elephant, down to the docks where the barge was tied in a nest of barges on the steaming surface of the bay.
An empty beer can rolled on the slanting deck. Elaine kicked it over the side and climbed through the door, stooping beneath the low frame.
Lola and her newest lover, a sculptor with pale eyes and a thin sandy beard, were rolled into one on the bottom bunk with a blanket tucked around their chins. It was often cool in the mornings on the bay, and blankets were almost a necessity if there was no heating stove. And a heating stove was a luxury they didn't possess.
At first Lola and her lover seemed to be asleep, but then Elaine noticed a languid twisting of their legs, the coiling of muscle against the taut olive-green army blanket.
A quiet meeting.
Lola began picking her nose and wiping her finger on the mattress of the bunk above. The red-haired sculptor, who's name was Stew, buried his face against Lola's pale throat and gave a low dog bark. Lola gasped and fluttered her eyes.
Elaine watched the movement of hands beneath the blanket and saw the dazed expression it created on both their faces. Both of them were breathing heavily.
They kissed for a moment, and then with a slithering motion Stew's head disappeared beneath the blanket.
It became a lump beneath the olive cloth, somewhere in the vicinity of Lola's breasts. Elaine knew what was happening to Lola because her eyes shut tight and her mouth came open in a pained oval.
She began to hiss and breathe through clenched teeth while Stew caressed her breasts.
The sight began to affect Elaine as well, and she felt a slow stirring of desire in her blood. It had been only a short while ago that the same thing had happened to her.
After a moment Elaine saw the shape which was Stew's head slide down lower on Lola's body until it rested on her legs. At the same time Stew's bare legs came out from beneath the edge of the blanket.
All at once the old disgust swept over Elaine, and she had a hard time convincing herself that Stew wasn't somehow depraved. To escape the anxiety that was building in her she went to the galley. She sloshed water from the bucket in the bottom of the coffee pot and tossed the brown dregs over the side. She knocked out the grounds from the strainer on the window sill, heard them chunk into the bay.
While the coffee boiled she sat on a box and watched Lola and Stew form shapes beneath the blanket. Now they were a community of snakes, and then a humpbacked beast. Lola's bare ankle burst beneath the blank-ket and rested on the wooden edge of the bunk.
Brenda had not come home last night. It was the second day now that she had been with Warren Lass-well. Elaine couldn't ignore it. Yet why should she be so concerned? Brenda was a big girl and knew her way around.
But Warren Lasswell had her worried. He wasn't like anybody else she had ever known. He was more like a toad than a man, and she had a feeling that his blood would be cold and inky.
He lived in a big old mansion in the Banana Belt where he dabbled with paint in a long, empty studio. Elaine had heard whispered stories about the man that frightened her, despite the fact that she tried very hard not to be shocked or amazed by anything.
She was still afraid for Brenda, who was only nineteen, two years younger than herself. It wasn't just her age though, because Brenda had always been the wild, crazy sister who seemed to have no caution about anything. As though life were too trivial to be worthy of concern.
A little rebellion was fine and healthy, but you had to keep your feet on the ground. Elaine still kept her hopes of being a good artist someday. She worked at it, much harder than Brenda or Lola would ever work.
But of course a talent couldn't flourish in the wastelands of North Dakota. Coming to California had been the first step toward an art career. And it had been exciting, full of new experiences.
They had tasted the fruit of Bohemian life as all the great painters had done in their youth, and now there was nothing to return to at home but dull respectability.
Elaine had always been a sceptic. She had found it easy to break with the middle class morals she'd been raised on, and substitute a philosophy that was sensual and lazy and sexually indiscreet.
Their mother had been unable to recapture them by flying out to the coast after she and Brenda had failed to return to college in the fall.
It had been a victory concluded when Brenda walked nude onto the barge deck before their mother and waved to a trio of passing boys. Her mother had gone away then after a wild scene of crying and pleading and final cursing rage. They were unable to believe for a day or two that they had actually carried it off.
Lola hadn't experienced the same opposition from her family because they were too busy at home taking care of four younger kids. Her father even mailed her money now and then and her mother sent boxes of food.
The three of them managed to pay the rent and eat enough to stay alive on the money they made occasionally from painting calendars and greeting cards and a few other odd jobs. It was commercialism, but it allowed them to live in the kind of surroundings that stimulated art.
The coffee was done, strong and black. Elaine searched the cups on the table and found one that was relatively clean. The holes punched in the milk can had hardened over. She poked them open with a matchstick.
There was one dried doughnut left in the sack on the table. Elaine went with it onto the deck and sat on a box facing the bay. The fog had begun to roll away and now she could see the faint outline of Alcatraz.
It was a beautiful morning. Sunshine floated above the blue haze overhead. By noon the sky would be crystal clear. Each hour of the day this same scene from the barge was new and different. She had hopes someday of painting a series as Monet had done at Rheims. She had already begun.
Finishing her coffee, she went to the studio, a cramped room with a north light of dirty glass panels. With three easels and a table for mixing paints, there was little room left for standing.
Elaine looked at the big rectangle of masonite on her easel, a pattern of gray and blue and white. The first view of the bay.
It was a morning scene in which she had tried to capture the essence of fog and water and jutting island rocks.
She stood for several minutes and then she squeezed some burnt umber on the window glass she used for a pallet. She spread in oil and turpentine. Then with the pallet knife she stroked it raw on a ledge of rock.
It was pretty horrible.
The reddish gash jumped at you and broke the painting's repose. She wiped it away and threw down the rag. A pang of doubt began to grow in her. Did she really have talent as she had been told by a few second-rate artists? Or was she fooling herself like so many of the dilettantes and psuedo-artists you could find in colonies like Sausalito?
She knew that there was only one way to prove to herself that she wasn't just another one of the clowns or beatniks, and that was by hard work. She knew she should work this morning, yet she couldn't seem to get in the mood because Brenda was on her mind. Brenda and Warren Lasswell. Maybe their mother had reason to fear after all....
Throwing down the pallet knife, she wandered aimlessly through the barge. This morning she should feel relaxed and carefree, and yet there was a great unrest building inside her. A feeling of approaching tragedy.
All at once she realized she was standing in the doorway watching Stew and Lola naked on the bunk. The blanket had slid to the floor, revealing them in an intimate embrace.
They were locked in each other's arms, their bodies entwined, their mouths crushed together.
Elaine felt her face redden with shock from the sudden confrontation. She felt a moment of embarrassment, a reflex that was the result of years of training in a rigid middle-class home.
For a moment she thought of turning away, and yet she was held by a kind of fascination that she couldn't explain. It wouldn't matter to either Stew or Lola if she watched. In fact they knew she was on the barge, and they might even have tossed away the blanket, inviting her to spy on them, adding a different kind of spice to their lovemaking.
In the end she stayed in the doorway in a kind of hypnotic trance, staring at the glazed look of excitement in Lola's eyes, the deep flush on her face, imagining that she was there in Lola's place and Stew was making love to her.
As Elaine watched, dry-mouthed and trembling with inner excitement, Stew moved out of Lola's embrace and raised his body above hers, supporting himself with his arms outspread and his palms against the mattress.
Then, raising one hand, he touched it upon Lola's seething breast. Elaine felt a wild shock at the contact, beginning in her own breasts and coursing through her body like molten fire through her veins.
Lola's eyes closed, her passionate mouth formed a carmine gash. Her pink-tipped breasts rose and fell rapidly from the excitement.
Stew began to squeeze Lola's breast, tightening his fingers in the soft, yielding flesh. He pushed the point of his index finger against the hardened nipple and teased it, moving it back and forth. , There was a sharp intake of air as Lola drew in her breath. She reached up in a kind of delirious movement and clamped her fingers in Stew's arms.
Then Lola laid her hand on her own breast, the one Stew was not toying with, and began to caress it vigorously.
They were each caressing a breast, and Lola was in such a frenzy of desire that she commenced to squirm and twist upon the bed.
Stew's fingers bit deeper into the softness as he held Lola's breast. He covered the whole mound with his hand, massaging it with his palm, and then he pinched and teased the nipple with his fingertips.
They had evidently been making love all night, so there was no haste now. This was a time when they could torment each other until they both reached a fever pitch.
And that was exactly what they were doing, for now Lola had reached down and grasped Stew. She began a rhythmic motion with her clamped fingers, making him twist excitedly.
They were holding each other, building their passion, and as they did so they began to kiss again. Their mouths came together. Their lips touched, very delicately at first, and then with crushing violence.
Their gasping and panting reached a high pitch, sounding loud in the small cabin.
Stew lowered his body, pulling his hand away from Lola's breast. He pressed to her and caressed slowly while she tossed beneath him.
Lola's arms went around Stew's neck and she clung with a fiery desperation, seeking him with her body.
But Stew had other plans, because he slid lower on the bunk, kissing Lola's pale flesh wherever his lips found contact.
His feverish kiss touched her neck and then moved lower. When he reached one jutting breast, a visible shudder went through Lola's body.
Elaine felt it too, and experienced a kind of electric shock up and down her spine.
Lola tossed her head on the pillow, and when she turned it toward the door she discovered Elaine standing there. She gave a kind of fierce animal grunt and hissed through her teeth. And then she smiled at Elaine, a wild abandoned grin of pure passion.
Lola's head lifted and she looked down at Stew, who had slid lower on her body. His lips moved caressingly over the underside of her breasts.
And then he moved lower, his lips moving continuously.
Lola closed her eyes once more and jutted her chin, baring the pale whiteness of her throat. She groaned harshly and made a gurgling noise.
Stew glanced upward with glazed eyes and ran his tongue along his feverish lips.
"How is it, love?" he rasped hoarsely. "Am I getting through to you?"
"Oh, baby-" Lola moaned.
"How's about a little more of the same?"
"Oh, yes, daddy," Lola said with a wicked, throaty growl.
Stew laughed and turned his face toward Elaine. A self-satisfied grin split his lips. "Join the party, gorgeous?"
Elaine stood motionless without replying. Yet she was seething inside, for his words had sent a sudden pulse of wild excitement into the depths of her insides.
When she said nothing, Stew turned back to Lola. He moved downward again, kissing the hollows and n raised contours of her middle.
On the tangled bunk Lola's body twisted and squirmed with increasing desire.
"Oh, baby. Oh, baby," she whimpered. "Go on, go on, baby...."
Stew moved lower, taking his time about it, touching his lips against Lola's white, shimmering flesh.
Lola began to moan loudly.
Stew's kiss reached her navel, and then trailed downward, leaving a caressed path toward the final goal.
"Oh, baby-you're good," Lola cried, a fierce scream that split the calm.
Stew kissed with devouring ardor, spurred on by the response he was receiving from Lola. He remained there for a long while as Lola clutched his head in her trembling hands.
Then he sat up with a quick movement, stared at Lola and gasped to catch his breath. But Lola didn't remain quiet. Instead she moved down the bed toward Stew and dropped her head to him. Her matted blonde hair covered his waist for a moment as her lips began to caress him.
"That's good, love," Stew cried in a tremulous voice, "Go, baby. Go. That's what I like...."
Lola looked up for a moment through her fallen hair.
"Do you really like me?"
"You're driving me crazy, love."
"I'll love you more...."
Lola dropped her head and continued what she had been doing while Stew tossed and rolled on the bed, too far gone to control himself.
"Oh, damn," he cried. "You're too much, love. Too much."
Elaine realized that she was breathing as heavily as the two people on the bed. She'd seen enough. She felt dirty inside. With a feeling of revulsion mixed with excitement, she forced herself to turn away.
She went back to the studio and once more tried to paint. But the feeling of vague unrest had made it impossible for her to work. After a futile ten minutes she gave it up.
When she went to the galley Lola and Stew were at the cluttered table with coffee cups and cigarettes. Stew had put on a pair of shorts and Lola was wearing a dirty shirt she had found in a box of paint rags they'd bought at a rummage sale. It was too large for her and the tails covered her legs to the kneecaps.
Elaine poured herself more coffee and sat down in a rickety chair that tilted beneath her weight.
"Has Brenda been back?"
Lola shrugged.
There was a jar of pig's knuckles on the table looking like bleached jelly with streaks of pink. Lola dug into the jar and licked her fingers.
"Brenda was here last night with Warren," Lola said.
"What was she doing?"
"She got out some old paintings of hers she wanted to show him, and then they left."
"Is she still with him?" Elaine said.
They both caught the note of concern in her voice.
"Don't sweat it," Lola said. "She's in good hands."
"I don't like him."
Lola turned the pig's knuckle jar over in the palm of her hand and shoved a blob of jelly into her mouth. She scratched the top of her head, which was matted with dirty yellow ringlets.
"He's a little creepy, but he's got a lot of connections. He says he's going to sponsor a show for Brenda."
"That chick's hung up on Lasswell," Stew said. "He'll straighten her out. She's got a few love problems, but he's an old veteran...."
"You're projecting now," Lola said with a mildly haughty sniff. "Lasswell isn't interested in her body. Only her sainted soul."
"How can you be so sure, love?" Stew said, scratching the red mat on his chin.
"Because he's on the stuff, and that's the real boss. He doesn't dig bodies any more."
"So he's shooting it up," Stew said. "He can get a yen for a sweet young body now and then. I would. That Brenda's a fine gone chick."
Lola shook her head knowingly.
"He's been hitting it too hard. He's got a twenty dollar habit."
"So-" Stew said. "He can afford it, with his money."
Elaine felt a chill moving up her legs and spine, raising gooseflesh.
"Do you think he's got Brenda on it?" '
"Who knows?" Lola shrugged inside the loose-hanging shirt. "Maybe she's goofing around. If that's what she wants. It's her lookout...."
"She's too young to know what she's doing," Elaine said, clutching her fingers together.
"Dig Mother Hubbard," Stew said. He peeled his lips away from his yellow teeth.
"My God, Elaine," Lola said. "Don't be a freak. The kid's got a right to live her own life."
"She's my little sister. I'm worried about her. Somebody has to watch out for her."
Stew sniffed disdainfully.
"Don't be so damn square."
"I don't care what you think," Elaine shouted at him. "I don't want Brenda to get the habit."
"Dig the vice squad," Stew said to Lola with a contemptuous movement of his head.
"Would you want to wreck your life that way?" Elaine said angrily.
"I tried the stuff, but it's not my dish. I go for chicks. The long gone crazy flesh. Those way-out honey-sweet legs. That's what hangs me up."
He reached beneath Lola's drooping shirt and squeezed her leg. She gave him a grin and wiped her fingers through her straw-colored hair.
"Why, you nasty man," she said with pretended shock.
Stew slid closer with his chair and put an arm around Lola's shoulder. She giggled when he bit her neck.
"Listen, love," he said. "I've got to set you straight. On that last round you were dead. That's not the way.
You see? This is one time in your life when you've got to move your lazy hips. When you're loving, really love. Understand? You've still got difficulties, but you'll learn."
"How could I miss?" Lola said sarcastically. "I've got a good teacher."
"The best...."
Elaine jumped up from the chair, almost tipping it over. The small, closed-in room had all at once become oppressive. She went out on the deck and filled her lungs with air.
She was disgusted with Lola, who had turned into one of the real unwashed since they'd come to Sausalito. They were all fighting conformity, but Lola was out too far. She hadn't taken a bath in over a month. And the way she talked and acted was becoming a joke.
This wasn't the Bohemian life Elaine had always imagined. The freedom of the left bank. This wasn't freedom, but the worst kind of conformity disguising itself as rebellion. The parrot talk and the costumes. Everyone accusing you of being a square if you deviated from the 'beat' pattern in any way.
And the casual acceptance of junk, which she had seen for herself could tear a person down in a matter of months.
She'd come here for freedom from the kind of restraint she'd been shackled with in North Dakota. She still wanted to paint, but in her own way. And she didn't want to close her eyes to what was happening to Brenda.
She was worried. There was a weakness in Brenda that could destroy her if a man like Warren Lasswell really got a firm hold on her.
The fog had rolled away, leaving the bay calm and blue beneath the sun. A tug pulled a long barge far out beyond Angel Island. It floated on the smooth surface with a double reflection like a too-precious Victorian seascape.
She went to the studio. One of Brenda's paintings lay against the wall. Elaine studied it solemnly. A sickly mess of muddy browns and blues. It was nothing. She had never spent enough time to develop her talent.
And Warren Lasswell had convinced her she was a genius. What was he after with his cynical flattery? Anybody could tell that he wasn't sincere. He was snowing Brenda. But why?
The old anxiety swept through her. She hurried onto the deck and looked up toward the Banana Belt where Warren Lasswell had kept Brenda for two days. What was he doing to her? She had to know.
She didn't tell Lola where she was going. She crossed the narrow plank to shore and walked quickly up the steep road away from the dock.
CHAPTER THREE
Warren Lasswell's house was on a narrow street that curved along the edge of a bluff. The house itself was a big nineteenth century mansion that had been remodeled. A new wing made of glass and redwood hung out over the bluff on stilts.
There was a low silver XKE Jaguar parked on the wooden ramp that was also built on stilts. It was a beautiful car which Warren often drove recklessly down Bridgeway with a bright red scarf blowing around his neck.
Warren had remodeled the house himself, which he bought with part of the fortune he inherited from his father, a Philadelphia shipbuilder. Much of the time the house was locked up while he was living at other art colonies. He was the rich arty type with no talent and a superior, patronizing manner.
He had only been in Sausalito a month, though they had heard of him long before his coming. Elaine and Brenda had met him at a party shortly after he arrived, and ever since then he had been giving Brenda a lot of attention.
Elaine stopped at the end of her climb to catch her breath and look out at the view of the bay from the hillside. Then she went up onto the long porch, which was still Victorian with carved wooden gingerbread on the posts and railings.
She knocked and waited. When nobody answered, she pushed open the door and went inside. The air was thick with wisteria smell of incense. There was a tomb-like silence. The echo of her footsteps was lost in the vastness of the rooms, which were sparsely furnished in modern style with a touch of oriental. There were Japanese screens and prints, and a few of Warren's nightmare distortions done in cadium red and yellow and black.
She went from room to room until she heard voices coming from the big studio upstairs. She climbed the winding staircase and went down the carpeted hall.
Brenda was sitting crosslegged on a pillow, wearing a pair of tight black toreadors. She was nude from the waist up, and her feet were bare. There was a youthful beauty in her round, placid face beneath the mass of golden hair.
Warren Lasswell stood beneath the north light like a neurasthenic willow, pondering a painting which he had placed upon the easel. It was a tremendous six-by-eight canvas with woven lines of blue and yellow like thin, tangled wires.
Brenda had been on this kick lately, swinging brushes on strings like Jackson Pollock, changing the length of the strings to vary the orbits.
There were more of Brenda's paintings in a stack against the wall. The ones Lola said they had picked up last night from the barge.
Warren stood with his chin on his hand, wearing a loose-sleeved oriental robe of black silk which was drawn by a sash at the waist, revealing the odd outline of his fleshy hips.
He was a squat little man with an oval tonsure of black hair on his head, and dark hypnotic eyes.
He turned at the sound of Elaine's step on the polished oak floor. His deepset eyes blinked. He gave her a condescending smile as she sat down beside Brenda. And then he turned back to the painting and began to nod his head knowlingly as he fingered his chin.
"Remarkable-" he said in a voice that reminded Elaine of a croaking frog. "The composition is simply polyphonic, my dear. See how the details blend together in an arabesque of line and color?"
He tugged at the wide sleeve of his gown and stepped back a pace, still gazing at the painting. Then with sluggish apathy he took it down and placed another of Brenda's paintings on the easel. A canvas of solid black with a small red design near one corner.
"I like this too," Warren said, arching his back, tilting his head. "Now, what do we see? A massive black space dominating the canvas with its terrifying monotony. And then the mind is shocked by this brilliant splash of red. Everything else is eliminated to achieve a perfect clarity. Not one unnecessary detail...."
Brenda leaned forward breathlessly, her hands on her knees. There was a rapt expression on her face.
"Do you really like it?" she said.
"I do-" Warren Lasswell replied, nodding his head. "Very much, Brenda."
"You make me see things I was only half-conscious of...."
"It's all there, my dear."
"I didn't realize it was so good."
"You have talent, dear. Much talent. There's no question about it. I'm amazed at how much talent you have. Such maturity for a girl so young."
He took down the painting and replaced it with another.
"Now, this one...." Warren said in the voice of the idle gentleman. "It is still a sketch, of course. But a remarkable idea. Still I'm not too sure about the placement of the eye."
"Should I have put it in the navel?"
"I wonder how it would be on the edge of the shoulder?"
"Maybe...."
Elaine almost laughed.
But Brenda was deadly serious, and she would have defended herself violently. She couldn't see through Warren Lasswell's syrupy insincerity. Elaine remembered overhearing Warren confiding to a friend "-I tell her what she wants to hear." Though she wasn't certain he had been speaking of Brenda.
Elaine looked at her sister sitting bare-waisted on the pillow with her arms looped beneath her legs. Her face was young and fresh beneath the uncombed mop of blonde hair, but her eyes seemed weak and watery.
Elaine felt a sudden chill when she noticed a scattering of small bruises on the inner side of Brenda's elbow. She had seen needle marks before.
She leaned over for a closer examination, but Brenda pulled her arms tight under her knees.
"Brenda," Elaine said, tryng to keep her voice under control. "Let me see your arm."
"Why?"
Brenda looked at her defiantly through eyes that were slightly glazed. "I want to see it."
"Is that why you came here-to snoop around?"
"I got worried when you didn't show up for two days. Why shouldn't I?"
"I can take care of myself."
"I'm not so sure about that," Elaine said.
"I don't dig you," Brenda replied haughtily.
"Have you been goofing with the needle?"
Brenda sniffed and looked away. She leaned her chin on her knees and wiggled her toes.
"Answer me," Elaine demanded.
"So, what if I have?"
Elaine was swept by a sudden desperation. She had to do something, and yet she didn't know what. She sat up on her haunches and took Brenda's wrist
"Come on home, Brenda...."
"I won't," Brenda cried angrily, jerking her arm away.
"Please," Elaine said. "I'm afraid for you. don't you know what you're playing with? Junk is so dangerous. You don't want to wreck your life...."
"Stop being old-fashioned," Brenda said scornfully. "You sound like Mother."
Elaine's body was hot with anger. She glared at Warren Lasswell, who was facing her benignly with his pale arms folded across his chest.
"What could you ever see in a creep like that?" she said to Brenda.
"Warren is going to sponsor a show for me." Brenda lifted her chin proudly. "Just as soon as I get enough material ready. He owns a house in San Miguel. We've going there so I can have a change of scenery. And then we're going to New York for the show."
"Are you out of your head?"
"It's true, isn't it, Warren?"
"Every word of it, my dear."
"He's feeding you a line," Elaine said. "Can't yon see what he's doing?"
"He isn't. He wants to help me with my career. Not just anybody can have a private show."
Elaine stood up impatiently and paced across the room. Her fingers opened and closed with frustration.
She rubbed her sweaty palms on the legs of her jeans. She paused before the painting on the easel and looked at it, shaking her head. Then she whirled around.
"Look, Brenda. You know your stuff isn't that good yet. It takes time....
Brenda stared at Elaine with her mouth open. Her eyes were watering. She inhaled deeply, arrogantly. And then she gave Elaine an accusing smile.
"I think you're jealous..
"Don't be stupid," Elaine said disgustedly.
"Your sister...." Warren said with a weary sigh, "has a remarkable talent."
He stood piously before the painting and studied it. His lingering fingers stroked the painted surface. Then he turned and moved toward them slowly like a Buddhist monk with the robe swinging about his legs.
"This is my big chance," Brenda said excitedly.
"Everything she told you is true," Warren said, smiling at Elaine with his dark eyes fixed on her face. "As soon as she has completed enough of her work, I'm going to sponsor a show for her in New York. I own an interest in a gallery there, you know."
Elaine shook her head sadly. Brenda had always been susceptable to flattery, and Warren had really been laying it on thick. She gave him a hard look.
"What are you trying to do to my little sister?"
"I only want to help her, dear girl."
"Do you call that helping her? Getting her hooked on horse. You're trying to kill her."
The smile wilted on Warren's lips. He heaved a world-weary sigh and blinked his drooping eyelids.
"You're so young, child. And you think you know about life. What do you really know? A stunted little flower from the cold Dakota plains. I could teach you many things, if you would listen to me. Why should you fear death? It's only when you look upon death and flirt with it that you come alive. The matador understands this when he exposes himself to the horns. Gamble with life. If you lose, you've missed nothing. Don't be afraid of death. It's only a long, peaceful sleep...."
"You're a devil," Elaine said. "What are you doing to Brenda?"
"So you think I'm immoral?" Warren replied with a faded smile. "Of course I'm immoral. Anybody is who wants to be true to himself. The real passions of the body are immoral, but the only way to realize your true self is to give in to them. Children are immoral little beasts, but they have a certain style that has been bred out of the rest of us. They can express themselves better and more truthfully than we. You want to be a great artist? I'm trying to show you the way...."
"I won't listen to your damned ideas."
"Dear Elaine-you're afraid of yourself. Don't be afraid. Stop denying yourself. We're only here to strut and fret our poor hour upon the stage. Get the most out of life that you can. What if you learned that you would die tomorrow? Wouldn't you regret the things you wanted to do and didn't have the courage? You have as much talent as Brenda, but you'll never release it until you release yourself from your niggardly righteous past. What does it matter if you live an hour or a hundred years? If you are really alive in that hour, you'll experience more than dull fools who live to be a hundred."
Elaine felt a cold horror crawling beneath her skin as she stared at Warren Lasswell's mad dark eyes and evil mouth. He sniffed his nose and blotted it with a red silk handkerchief. As he stuffed it into the sleeve of his robe, he seemed to stagger.
"I'm running down," he said with a feeble smile. "I need winding up again, I'm afraid. So if you'll excuse me, I'll indulge myself with a fix. Brenda?"
He turned his watery dark eyes in her direction and she nodded her head.
"No-" Elaine cried.
"It's none of your business," Brenda replied coldly. "I can't let you keep this up...."
"Leave me alone."
Brenda's voice was harsh and determined. Her eyes glittered hard at Elaine. Her mouth twisted with anger.
"Listen, Brenda," Elaine said desperately. "Come home with me. You've got to stop this before it's too late."
"Leave me alone!" Brenda screamed at her. "I'm not going to leave you alone. You don't know what you're doing."
"Damn you!"
Brenda jumped up and came at her, swinging wildly with her clawed fingers. Elaine pushed her away. Brenda stopped and stood breathing heavily. She brushed back her fallen hair. Her ripe young breasts rose and fell as she panted.
"All right," Elaine said, determined to stop her. "If you won't listen to reason, then I'll try something else."
"I suppose you'll write home to Mother," Brenda said disdainfully. "That's about what I'd expect from you."
"No," Elaine replied. "I'll go to the police and tell them about your shooting gallery."
Warren Lasswell came quickly across the room. His eyes were hard and bitter. He stood before Elaine and took a deep breath and let it out slowly. His face grew pale and wilted. His nose began to run.
"If I thought you meant it, I'd throttle you." He stared at her with hatred. And then he shook his head. "No. That would be stupid. The only way to deal with meddlers is to avoid them. We'll have to leave for Mexico sooner than we planned, Brenda. I couldn't last two days in jail, cut off from my nourishment. There's no time to pack. We'll buy what we need along the way."
He took Brenda by the arm and led her toward the door.
"Don't go with him, Brenda," Elaine called. "Please."
"You won't leave me alone."
"I'm just doing it for your own good."
"You're jealous because I'm going to have my own private showing," Brenda said contemptuously.
"It's not that...." Elaine went up to her. "Please don't go with him, Brenda. We should stay together ..
Brenda turned away.
Elaine grabbed her arm, but she jerked it out of her grasp. Brenda's eyes were furious.
"Leave me alone," she cried. "Why can't you mind your own business?"
Suddenly Brenda swung her hand. It struck Elaine's face with a loud slap. She felt tears stinging her eyes. Her lips trembled. Brenda walked away, letting Warren lead her through the door.
They went down the hall. Elaine ran after them. They went through a door and slammed it shut. Elaine tried to push it open, but it was locked.
She stood for several minutes staring at the door, listening to them running about on the other side. Finally she turned and went slowly toward the stairs. Tears began rolling down her face. Her chest was knotted with pain.
She walked down the hill slowly, dragging her wooden clogs. She was at the bottom of the hill near Bridgeway when the silver Jaguar rolled swiftly past and turned the corner with a screaming of tires.
Warren Lasswell was driving. He wore a gray sport coat and a blue cravat. Brenda had on some kind of embroidered oriental robe.
She didn't turn once to look back at Elaine as the car raced away toward Frisco.
CHAPTER FOUR
By the time Elaine arrived at the barge she had made up her mind. It was unthinkable to leave Brenda in Warren Lasswell's hands, so she had to follow them to Mexico and try to get Brenda away from him. That wasn't going to be easy because Brenda didn't want to get away. Warren had her hooked by his oily promises of fame and by the needle as well.
Elaine felt alone and lost as she walked along the plank, gazing into the dirty water. Brenda had slapped her. She had turned away from her and gone off with a sick beast like Warren Lasswell.
If she had known it would turn out like this, maybe she wouldn't have been so eager to come to California. She might have been more sympathetic of her mother's fears. This wasn't the way she had planned and dreamed about it. But how could she know that Brenda had this fatal weakness in her nature?
A wave caught the barge and shifted it beneath her feet, causing her to stumble. She steadied herself against the door and went through. Lola was sitting alone at the table smoking a cigarette and staring into an empty coffee cup.
"Where's Stew?" Elaine asked.
"He left. Wanted to comb the beach for wood."
Elaine sat down at the table and sighed.
"Brenda's gone to Mexico."
"Mexico?"
"She ran off with Warren to San Miguel," Elaine said with a trace of scorn. "She's going to paint masterpieces for her show in New York."
Lola gave her a wide-eyed stare with her smoky gray eyes. Her mouth was open until she closed it. She picked her nose and giggled.
"He's really got her hung up."
"In more ways than one," Elaine said sadly.
"She's shooting it up with the needle?"
"She's hooked bad."
"That's what comes from hanging around with creepy types," Lola said, shrugging her thin shoulders inside the big shirt she was still wearing like a tent.
"I can't let him do this to her," Elaine said. "I'm got to go after them."
"To Mexico?" Lola gave her a crazy stare. "Have you flipped your lid?"
"I have to go."
"Why, girl, that's way over the hill. What are yon going to use for money?"
"I've got a few dollars."
"Enough for a bus ticket?"
"I'll hitchhike."
Lola shrugged and pushed out her Up. "Sounds like a hangar."
"Why don't you come with me?" Elaine said. "I don't want to go alone."
"And leave Stew?"
"He's not the only man in the world."
"That's a happy fact." She puffed out her lips. "But what about our stuff? We can't carry it all."
"Stew will take care of it for us."
Lola shoved away a stack of dirty plates and put her elbows on the table and cupped her chin. She got a faraway look in her eyes. She thought for a while and made funny noises with her mouth.
"Man, what a kick," she said at last, snapping her fingers. "When do we leave?"
"Right now."
"I'll buy it."
"All right. Now we have to think about money," Elaine said, getting up impatiently. "How much do you have?"
"I'm busted. I gave Stew my last buck last night far a bottle of wine. How about the kitty?"
Elaine took a jar down from the shelf and dumped it on the table. There was one folded dollar bill and a handful of coins. She counted them as she slid them into her palm.
"Four dollars and a few pennies. I've got another five bucks in my kick."
"That's not much," Lola said, brushing back a straggle of yellow hair. "I hear it gets awful hungry down there in Mexico."
"Well have to get more."
"Yeah, but tell me where."
"Sell something."
"What we've got-nobody's buying."
"All right," Elaine said. "Then well go back to Warren's house. He should have plenty to sell."
"He might not take kindly to that"
"Who cares?"
"I don't...."
As fast as they pulled out, he didn't take time to lock up the house. If he did, then we'll find a way in."
"Let's go-"
Lola jumped up. The big shirt flapped about her bare knees. She pulled the shirt over her head and ran naked to the box where she kept her clothes. She climbed into a skin-tight pair of jeans and pulled on a heavy blue T-shirt.
Elaine drug two suitcases from under the bunk and threw them open on the mattress. She packed some clothes into one of the suitcases. Lola packed the other.
"Are we going to rug these things clear up the hill to Warren's place?"
"Well get them later," Elaine said.
"Don't forget-we've got to leave a note for Stew. He can store the rest of our stuff at his pad."
Elaine was impatient to be going. She lit a cigarette and went onto the deck while Lola finished packing. When Lola came out they headed up the hill at a fast walk.
It was almost noon. The sun was high overhead and it had burned through the last of the fog, and now it was pouring down on Elaine's bare head.
Lola ignored the sun and started a crazy dance in the street, whirling and throwing out her arms. Her hair fell down like dirty yellow strings on her grinning face.
"Whee-" she shouted at the sky. "I'm glad you got on this Mexico kick. I don't know why I didn't think of it before. Listen, I hear that San Miguel is a swinging place. Stew's buddy was there for a year. He said there's tequila running in the streets. Just like the promised land...."
She laughed and danced and tossed her head like a crazy rag doll.
All at once Elaine caught the fever from Lola and it really did sound like a kick. She had begun to get fed up with the negative, too-bookish, too-far out talk of her friends in Sausalito and she wanted to get out where the air was clear and there would be new sights and sounds. New things to paint. New kicks, and new boys.
She wanted a taste of virility after the sick, sad jaundice of the bearded ones like Martin Dietrich. She had always wanted to bum across the country. It had been an old and impossible dream. Now she was glad she had a reason.
They arrived at Warren Lasswell's big house, which already had the peculiar look of emptiness. The door was locked, but Lola found a window that slid up. They crawled through it into a bedroom. Elaine pulled the window down and started searching through the drawers of the big dresser, but they were all empty.
Lola was in the kitchen taking food from the refrigerator and stuffing it into a sack. She pulled out a carton of import beer and dug around the built-ins until she found an opener.
"Why, the man was crazy to leave all this stuff."
"He can afford it."
"Listen, gal," Lola said excitedly. "Let's stay here for a few days and do nothing but eat I've never seen so much food."
She was chewing on a ham she had found, holding it in both hands by the butt end like a huge drumstick. Elaine realized that she was hungry too. She made a sandwich from beef and cheese that she found in the refrigerator and opened a bottle of beer.
"I'm going to find something we can sell," Elaine said.
She carried the sandwich and beer with her. She went through the drawers of a desk and found a transistor radio. She tucked it under her arm and kept searching, going from room to room until she covered the house.
Lola had picked up nothing but food. She was munching an apple and carrying a big paper sack.
Elaine had found a pair of binoculars and a Bulova wrist watch and an electric razor. She found a sack in the kitchen to carry them in. They went out the door, not bothering to lock it.
"I'll tell Stew in the note to come up and help himself," Lola said.
When they got back to the barge they packed all the canned food in the suitcases among their clothes. Elaine packed the things she had stolen, which she planned to sell later. It should provide them with money when they ran low.
They snapped the suitcases shut, and there was nothing else to do but go. They went across the tilting plank and onto the dock.
The day was warm and beautiful, a perfect time for setting out into the fearless unknown. Elaine wasn't afraid. Life would treat them gently. Though there was the sad, sobering thought that at the other end of the journey was Brenda, sick and needing help. But that would be solved in time.
Right now she was glad to be moving. She felt the fire of adventure in her blood.
Hitchhiking was new to both of them, but they decided very quickly that the traffic problem was too much to tackle and they would have to get across the bay and into the country before they could expect to find a ride going in the direction of Mexico.
They stopped at a filling station and picked up a map, and after studying it over they decided to buy a bus ticket to San Leandro.
There was a thirty minute wait in the Greyhound bus station, and then they were riding high across the Golden Gate, up and down Frisco hills and across the curving eight mile bridge to Oakland.
It was early afternoon when they got out at San Leandro, and they found that they were still on city streets. They rode a city bus to the edge of town and began holding up their thumbs.
In less than a minute they had their first ride. A car full of high school boys who made brakes squeal coming to a stop. They had to sit on laps in back, but they rode almost to Hayward with hands timorously touching their bottoms.
Then two old ladies stopped for them and drove them to the turnoff at Castro Valley, sniffing down their noses and plying them with veiled questions about their homes and mothers and why they were on the road.
They had to walk a mile to SO Highway and the suitcases got heavy as lead. The sun was still high in the sky and it bore down on them with summer intensity. At last Elaine dug through the suitcase and found a half slip which she tied around her head for a scarf.
They waited for a break in the traffic and dodged across the highway. Heading east, they started waving their thumbs at passing cars, hoping to make it to Modesto by nightfall. Though they hadn't any idea where they would sleep.
They got a ride with a man driving a dump truck full of gravel who kept slipping his hand onto Lola's knee. She got tired of pushing it off and left it there.
He had a pimply grin and he chewed a pink wad of bubble gum which he blew up and popped through his lips.
He kept asking them to wait for him in a tavern he would take them to until he got off work and they'd 'have a ball'.
"But, darling," Lola teased. "I'm an unkissed virgin, and my mother would be horrified if she knew...."
He let them off at a country road just outside of Dublin. Then in another minute they caught a ride in a big transport truck. They went bucking and rolling down the highway in the high cab while the burly driver's face grew flushed and he glanced at them from the side of his eye.
At Manteca he turned north, so they climbed down out of the cab. The sun was lower now, just above the rim of the mountains to the west.
They had been standing there less than a minute when a car coming from the south began applying brakes a quarter of a mile away and pulled off on the shoulder across the road from them. It was a rattletrap Ford with a dent in the side and a loose tailpipe that chattered while the motor idled. Three men sat crowded together in the front seat.
"Where you headed, girls?" the grinning driver called across to them.
"Mexico-" Lola yelled.
"Ycu don't say." The driver gave a crazy laugh. "We're headed for El Paso."
"You're going in the wrong direction," Elaine said. "We got to run up to Sacramento and get our clothes. Then we're headed back. Come on ... Lola looked at Elaine and made a silly face. "Why not?"
Elaine nodded. They grabbed the suitcases and ran across the road. By that time one of the men was in the back seat and another one was holding the front door open.
"In here, doll," he said to Lola.
Elaine climbed into the back and Lola got sandwiched in front between the driver and the other man. They wrestled with the two suitcases until they got them arranged on the floor, and then they took off.
It was a wild ride. The three men had a half-full fifth of Schenley's and they were passing it around. Lola took a drink. She gasped and giggled and handed the bottle back to Elaine, who also tilted it to her lips. She never refused a drink, and this stuff was better than the wine she usually had to drink because it was all she could afford.
They rolled down the highway with the Ford swinging loosely from side to side and the wind leaking through the cracked windows. They all drank, and Elaine began to feel the tiny pinpricks in her skin and the tingle of excitement. The whiskey was stronger than wine, and it slipped up on her.
The man sitting in the back seat with her drained the last shot from the bottle and leaned out the window to toss it in a looping arc at a big billboard. Then he slid over against her and put his arm around her waist.
He wasn't so bad that she disliked smooching with him a little. If she was sober it might have been different, but the whiskey glow had changed that.
They smooched a while and she fought his hands with mild protest. He was breathing like a winded horse. She shoved him away when he tried to unzip her jeans.
It was dusk with the glow of electric lights winking on in the towns and farms, and then it was dark all at once. They pulled up in the dark at a roadhouse and she could see the glow of Sacramento not very far away.
All of them piled out of the car and went inside where there was a haze of smoke and red neon tubes and the fanfare of a clamorous juke box.
They sat at a table while the men pinched her legs and poured down the drinks that were in front of them. And then they danced on a narrow space surrounded by tables and lighted by the rainbow glow of the big squawking box.
Back at the table the talk turned to where they were going to spend the night, and Elaine shook her head to clear away the cobwebs. She let her drink sit before her untouched.
"When are we leaving for FJ Paso?" she said to the man sitting across the table.
"Why do you gals want to go to El Paso?"
"I got a yen to see Texas," Lola said, blowing a fringe of yellow hair off her forehead.
"Oh, you're going to El Paso, Texas"
"Where the hell did you think we were going?"
"El Paso, Oregon."
"There ain't no such animal."
"Is that a fact?"
"I think we've been had, Elaine," Lola said with a star, licking her dry cracked lips.
"Well, baby, make the most of it ... one of the men said.
Elaine reached for the drink in front of her, and then she pulled back her hand. She was beginning to sober up. The next time Lola looked at her she made a signal with her eyes. Then she stood up, holding her stomach.
"I think I'm sick."
"I'll help you, honey."
Lola followed her to the John. As soon as they locked the door Lola laughed and fell with her back against the wall.
"Live and learn, eh, kid? Whata we do now-let them maul us all night for a place to sleep?"
"They're sorta creepy," Elaine said.
"Then let's blow."
"O.K."
There was a small window in back. They unhooked the screen and pushed it out. Then, standing on the stool lid, they wormed their way through and dropped to the ground.
At the car they grabbed their suitcases and took off running along the highway.
"We've got to grab a ride fast," Elaine said. "Before they come looking for us."
"I'll take care of that."
Lola ran out onto the highway and stood waving her arms at a pair of approaching headlights. The cry of brakes split the night. The car hunched up and slide to a stop. They ran up and pulled open the door.
Two boys sat in the front seat. It was a better car. It had a new smell to it. The driver looked back at them before he started up. He was mad.
"What are you trying to do, kill yourself? You crazy nut."
"Don't sweat it, hon," Lola said coolly. "Drive on, and don't spare the horses."
The other boy in the front seat turned around and looked them over while they rolled down the highway. He was slickly handsome with too much hair that duck-tailed on the back of his neck.
"Where you girls headed?"
"Mexico."
"Funny way to get there."
"Why? What direction are we going?"
"East." The guy put his chin on his arm and continued to stare. "We're going to Tahoe, girls. Gonna stop at a motel. We'll put you up for the night."
Lola giggled. Elaine leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. What the hell, she thought, we've got to sleep sometime.
CHAPTER FIVE
It turned out that Elaine ended up in bed with the dark haired boy, although she liked the looks of the driver better. He had a clean-cut college boy face and wore his blond hair in a crew cut.
But the other boy wasn't so bad. She could have put up with a lot worse for a place to sleep, at least she could have until the drinks wore off.
After a coffee stop halfway between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe, the dark-haired boy climbed in the back seat with Elaine and Lola got in front with the driver.
They smooched a while, and then he told her his name. It was Chuck. She liked the way Chuck kissed, and she opened her lips to his prodding tongue.
In a moment his hands began to explore. She held him off for a while until she began feling like a prude. She wanted him to feel her breasts, she decided, so she let him. In the alcoholic haze it made little difference.
Chuck gave a gasp of surprise when he discovered that her breasts were bare beneath the loosely fitting sweatshirt she was wearing.
"Now that's what I call cool," he said, mashing her left breast with his cupping hand.
"Latest style," she murmured.
Chuck made free with her breasts, his hands were both soon under the loose sweatshirt.
She relaxed in the back of the car with a lazy glow from the liquor she had drunk and felt the blood within her heat up from the teasing contact of his fingers.
Lola had slid over in the front seat and she was kissing the boy's neck while he stared ahead at the dark road and the sweeping headlights. It was very nice in the car as they spun along the road in the night, now and then flashing past lighted houses and approaching lights from other cars.
Chuck seemed to be an expert lover, despite the fact that he was probably younger than Elaine was herself.
She enjoyed his kisses, the touch of his lips, the soft massaging of his hands on her breasts. Now and then he would take a nipple between his thumb and forefinger and roll it into hardness.
The prickling, delicate pain was exquisite, and very soon Elaine was panting heavily.
Chuck forced her lips open with the hard point of his tongue and began deep kissing her, nibbling with his lips, darting his tongue deep into her mouth.
She returned the kiss, savoring it. Their tongues met and became entwined. It grew into a battle of tongues, which made both of them gasp and pant for breath after only a few minutes of kissing.
She became a raging inferno inside. She began to feel the gutty, lowdown excitement building in her stomach. She wanted to be loved. She wanted Chuck to undress her right there in the back of the car and take her.
She was ready to give him anything he wanted for what she would receive in return. She had made up her mind to do anything for him.
The prudishness was gone. She no longer had to struggle against her conscience. It had dissolved with the alcohol that was still in her veins, and with the wild, carefree excitement she had begun to feel the moment they left Sausalito on their journey to Mexico.
It was a kick.
Now she began to understand the meaning of the word. There was a lot to be said for it. This was the easy way-take things as they come and to hell with tomorrow.
But tomorrow she knew that she would again be burdened with worry over Brenda. Tonight Brenda was far away, sleeping in some motel with that spider, Warren Lasswell. Probably Brenda was in a beatific trance from a fresh jolt of the needle.
Right now Elaine could forget that she had to look after Brenda and protect her from Warren Lasswell. Tomorrow would come, and with it the anxiety like a terrible hang-over from a three day drunk.
But tomorrow was tomorrow.
Right now she was in the back seat of a car with a strange boy named Chuck on her way to Lake Tahoe where it had already been decided they would stay the night together.
Chuck's hands were still caressing her breasts, the fingers digging gently into the soft flesh, sending flashes of electric shock into the extremities of her body.
She ached for him to crawl over her right then. She wanted to feel the touch of his nude body on hers, tighten her legs to him and ride.
When his mouth came away from hers for a gasp of air, she kissed his cheek, then buried her tongue in his ear.
"Oh, baby-" he panted. "That's wild."
"Chuck," she said in a hoarse whisper. "What?"
"Let's love now...."
"We'll soon be there," he said, giving her breast a hard squeeze that was more pain than pleasure.
"I want you now," she insisted. "Undress me. I want you right now. Love me...."
"Here in the back seat?"
"Yes," she murmured.
He laughed and kissed her cheek, "We'll be better in bed."
"But I can't wait..
"If I can wait, you can," he said. "When we get to bed we'll blow off the lid, baby. It will be a lot better than here. You'll see."
"All right," she said resignedly.
But the pulse of excitement was building in her, not dying down. She wanted him now, but she had to be content. Usually it took her longer to become aroused, but tonight it was different.
There was something in her blood. It must be more than the drinks, because she had been drunk before and yet she had never felt this almost unbearable fever in her limbs, this hunger to be taken violently.
Chuck was still at her breasts, and it was becoming almost maddening.
She turned her body to give him better access. His hands rubbed and lifted them both, his fingers pinched the hard cores.
Then he began rolling them around in circles, slowly at first, and then harder. The pressure of his hands increased. The things he was doing to her breasts seemed to stir her insides until they were a flaming cauldron.
She was a quivering mass of jelly in his hands, aching to be taken right there and then.
"Love now, Chuck," she pleaded.
"Not yet, baby," he said with a laugh. "Just let us wait. Enjoy me now and think what you've got to look forward to when we get to that motel."
"I can't wait," she gasped.
"It won't be long...."
He was still toying with her breasts, and now her hips had begun to move in a slow rotary motion, keeping in time with the gentle rhythm of his hands.
The torture was beautiful.
But it was too much to bear. He was carrying this too far, teasing her without giving her the final satisfaction she was craving.
Almost angrily she reached for him. She fumbled until she found what she was after.
He gave a gasp of pleasure and squirmed beneath her touch. All at once his breath began to gush from his lungs in wild, heated gasps.
"Oh, baby," he muttered thickly. "Damn, that's crazy. You don't know what you're doing to me."
His hands melted away from her breasts and he began to toss and squirm on the seat as her hand did many things to him without ceasing for a moment.
Now, she thought with some satisfaction, the shoe is on the other foot. She would have him pleading soon if she continued what she was doing to him-pleading for the same thing she had been begging him for only a moment ago.
She turned in the seat and with one hand she did one thing to him, and with the other she did something else.
"Oh, baby--that's too much," he gasped. "You'd better stop before you go too far...."
She gave a laugh, feeling a wild kind of satisfaction at the power she had over him at this moment.
Then she squeezed her fingers tighter.
She began a hard, rhythmic motion with one hand while she squeezed with the other.
Chuck gurgled in the depths of his throat and let out a startled cry. He was almost off the seat. His body was twisting and turning as though he were trying to escape the torment of her hands.
And yet she knew that he didn't want to escape.
She gave a sudden twist, then pinched hard with her fingernails. Chuck let out a cry of pain.
"Ouch-don't ruin me," he pleaded.
"Are you going to love me now?" Elaine panted.
"Sure-sure," Chuck replied. "Anything you want."
"All right then," she said triumphantly. "Take my clothes off and love me. Right now."
She felt Chuck's hand searching in the dark for the zipper of her jeans. His hands fumbled desperately until he found it. Then he gave it a quick pull.
She felt the sudden wash of cold air on her, and all at once she realized that they were driving through the mountains and the night air was cold.
Chuck had his hands inside her jeans. She felt his cold fingers searching the soft flesh of her legs. She moved eagerly to assist him.
The contact was startling when he found his goal.
She gave a panting sob. "I want you," she whimpered.
"Lift up," Chuck said excitedly. "Raise your hips so I can get the jeans off."
The boy in front with Lola turned around for an instant and shot a glance into the back seat.
"Hey, knock it off," he said. "We're coming into Tahoe now. Just keep your drawers on for another couple of minutes. Then you can give her hell."
Chuck heaved an exasperated sigh.
"O.K.," he said. "But hurry up and find a motel. I've got a live one back here, and she just can't wait."
"Shell wait...." the driver said.
"Don't be too sure, Dave," Chuck said from the back seat. "This gal is really on fire. I've had a wrestling match for the last fifty miles. It's like trying to stuff a wet noodle up a wildcat's nose."
Lola looked back and grinned.
"Me and Dave will race you to bed as soon as the car stops. Last one in is a sissy-"
Chuck had slid away from Elaine into the opposite corner. He was busy arranging his clothes. They were coming into the lights of town, so Elaine zipped up her jeans.
In another minute they pulled in at a brightly lighted motel. Dave went inside and came out in a minute with the key to a unit.
"Number thirty-two," he announced. "Two double beds in the same cabin."
Lola giggled.
"Sounds like a winner."
Dave wheeled the car around the drive until he found a door with the number thirty-two. They were all put of the car in an instant.
As soon as they were through the door, Chuck grabbed Elaine's hand and pulled her toward the nearest of the two beds which stood side by side.
Without a word he flung her down on the mattress and fell on top of her.
His mouth closed hungrily over her, his lips parted and his tongue drove deep into her mouth. She clung to his neck and returned the kiss.
She was alive again and ready for him. Her body squirmed involuntarily as his hands reached under the edge of her sweatshirt.
"Do that," she gasped against his cheek. "Play with them. Squeeze them with your fingers."
"You're going to get loved now, you little witch," Chuck panted. "You asked for love, and you're going to get loved."
"You know that's what I want," she replied.
His hands were playing with her breasts, caressing them. The palms rotated on the nipples, rousing them to hardness. His fingers dug into her soft flesh, painfully. She knew there would be bruises from the violence of his hands, and yet the pain was lovely.
She didn't want it ever to stop.
The torture increased as he pinched her hard nipples with his fingertips, twisting them around until she thought there were sharp little daggers cutting into her flesh.
The need was building in her until it was out of control. She had to be taken now, to reach fulfillment. It he stopped before he was finished with her she knew that she would go out of her mind and run screaming through the night, searching anywhere for satisfaction.
But Chuck had no intention of abandoning her now. He was panting and moaning as he lay above her. Then she realized that her hand had reached once more to him without her being aware of it.
Chuck began yanking at the bottom of her sweatshirt, trying to pull it over her head.
She sat up on the bed to help him, bracing herself with one arm. They both tugged at the shirt and it came away with a sudden release. It slid over her head, tossing her dark hair in a tangled mass.
With a sigh of pleasure, Chuck tossed it across the room. His eyes were instantly on her breasts, his lips slack with anticipation.
She looked down at her naked bosom with satisfaction. They were lovely, upright domes with delicate circles of pink topped with hard cores of a darker red. At least they were darker when they had been caressed as Chuck had been caressing them.
She was startled by a sudden shriek as Lola came running across the room. Dave was behind her, reaching for her waist, trying to pick her up.
They were both nude.
Lola laughed as Dave locked his arms around her from behind and lifted her off the floor. She giggled excitedly and kicked her legs, trying to escape.
"Help-help," she cried. "I'm being ravished. Don't you know this is a penitentiary offense, dearie?"
Chuck sat up beside Elaine with a confused look on his face.
"What's going on?"
"Give me a hand," Dave said. "I want to give her a shower...."
"You don't either," Lola giggled. "You want to take me. And I don't want to be taken-yet."
Dave flung his arms tighter around her waist and boosted her bottom with his legs. When he got her feet off the floor he carried her toward the bathroom.
"Rape-rape," Lola mocked.
There was a sound of water running in the shower and then Lola was sputtering. In a minute she came back into the room with her yellow hair matted and wet, dripping water everywhere she stepped.
Dave came behind her with a big white bath towel and wrapped it around her shoulders. He began to massage her with the towel until her white skin glowed pink. She giggled as he dried her breasts with a rotary motion of his hands.
"Oh, goodie," she laughed crazily. "I'm getting a rubdown. It feels so good."
Elaine had been watching with amusement, but she realized that Chuck had been busy doing something else. He was lying nude beside her, and his clothes were in a tangled heap on the floor.
With eager fingers he began fumbling with her jeans, and in a moment he was sliding them down her legs. They whispered over her feet and sailed away through the air.
"Say, you gals are way out," Chuck said with amazement. "Didn't you ever hear of underwear?" Elaine shrugged teasingly. "What's that?"
"You must be from way back in the sticks," Chuck said. "But I like the way you're put together."
With a quick movement he dropped his head down and laid his face against her trembling breasts.
She clutched his head and held him tight against her. His lips opened and closed around her left breast She dug her fingers into his scalp.
Her head was back, and she was staring at the ceiling, when her eyes went closed. She bit her lip, feeling the soft caress of Chuck's lips on the mound of her breast. When his teeth nibbled she gave a throaty gasp.
"Go, man-" she sobbed.
When she thought she was going to burst from the exquisite torture, he moved to the other breast and kissed the nipple.
He teased the nipple, stabbing it with his caresses until it ached with a thousand pinpricks.
His lips left for an instant, pressed into the valley between her breasts, and swept downward to her navel where he stopped for a moment.
She gasped and clung to his head.
Pushing downward, she tried to direct him further, but Chuck raised his head and stared at her with glazed, unblinking eyes.
"Didn't I tell you we would be better in bed?" he muttered. "How do you like me so far, baby?"
"You're wild-" she replied with a gasp.
"There's more to come."
"Yes-I know," she sighed. "I want you now. Don't make me wait any longer...."
"You'll be burned to a cinder before I'm through with you, baby," Chuck said confidently.
"That's what I want, daddy-o," she said, feeling wicked and utterly wanton. "Burn me up with what you've got"
Chuck gave a whimper and dropped down to tier, crushing his mouth to hers.
Elaine lay flat on her back with Chuck pressing against her, his body moving in anticipation. Her eyes were closed.
She was ready.
She had been ready for a long time, but Chuck still hadn't moved in. She pulled desperately with her arms around his neck. The need was so wild in her that she couldn't wait another moment. She had to have him with her.
Still he held off.
He continued to tease her and withhold what she wanted so desperately.
She sobbed. And then she was pleading to him in a hoarse, unnatural voice.
"Love me, damn you. Love me. Don't torture me this way. I don't think you're man enough. You're going to have to take me if you want to prove you're a man...."
"You'll find out, baby," he said confidently. "Before I'm finished with you, you'll be screaming far me to stop. But I won't stop because I'm going to love you all night long...."
"Please-" she cried, almost delirious now. "Please, Chuck. For the love of God, please take me."
He laughed.
Then he kissed her again, a long kiss with his mouth open and his tongue darting into the warmth of her mouth, touching her own tongue.
His hands roamed over her, starting little fires everywhere they touched.
His fingers pinched painfully, abusing her. Yet she kept her eyes squeezed shut and tossed her head from side to side in a frenzy of desire.
His hand touched the soft flesh of her legs. Then he ran it up across her waist and clamped it around her breast.
"Stop it," she cried. "Stop teasing me and finish me off, damn you!"
She reached down and took hold of him, pulling desperately, trying to guide him to her.
She felt the touch of him against her and gave a low, moaning sigh of passion. She pulled hard with her clutching fingers, wanting to hurt him, wanting to force him to give in to her.
Then at last Chuck moved his body down to her.
"Yes-" she cried. "Do that."
"Do what?" he said teasingly. "Tell me what you want and I'll do it"
She told him, screaming it at the top of her lungs. She heard Dave and Lola laughing, but it didn't matter. She was beyond caring about anything but the burning need that had turned her into a half-mad, lusting animal.
And then he plunged, all at once, and he was like the stab of a red-hot poker at her very entrails.
She cried out and dug her fingers into his back.
Chuck slipped his hands beneath her legs and drew her up to him. Then he began to move. Right from the start he drove against her with violence. But she didn't care. She had waited too long, and now she wanted to be mistreated, to be taken like a wanton tramp.
Like the tramp she knew she had become.
She knew it now, and yet she didn't care, because the madness of this moment was worth all the self-disgust and the flashes of conscience she might feel later.
Her body thrust up at him hungrily.
"Harder," she cried. "Rip me apart-"
"I will, baby," Chuck panted above her. "You're going to be sorry you ever said that!"
"I don't care-" Her voice was shrieking as though it was coming from somewhere outside her. It sounded unreal to her ears. "You're killing me-but I don't care. I want you that way...."
"Just hang on," Chuck muttered with his mouth open against her ear, pouring out his hot breath. "Hang on for all you're worth, baby. I'm going to give you a ride like you never had before in your life."
And it seemed that he would make good with his boast, for Elaine screamed and clung to him. Her fingernails tore gashed in his back. Chuck leaned over her, his face twisted, his eyes glaring wildly.
She held to him, making herself one with him, twisting and rising with each movement of his body, receiving each motion with a wild rapture.
They were both sweating from the fury of their emotion. Their bodies slick, the sound-of their gasps broke the sflence of the room.
And then, all at once they both tensed together. Her arms clamped tighter as she reached the summit and went hurtling over, her body trembling with violent spasms of the final completion.
After that she lay for a long time unable to move, feeling the press of his body on hers, the moist pressure of his lips against her neck.
CHAPTER SIX
Elaine dozed for a while with Chuck lying beside her, his arm looped over her waist. Then she came awake slowly, and she was conscious of the rattlings of bedsprings beside her. She looked at the next bed and saw Dave over Lola's figure.
They were moving at each other in a frenzy. As she watched, the end came for Lola and she began screaming for joy, her face a contorted mask of delirium.
Then it was Dave's time, almost immediately after, and a shudder shook his whole body.
Lola, sensing his emotion, locked herself around his waist and twisted with her body raised up high. Dave groaned and fell down upon her, collapsing finally on the bed as he rolled away from her.
The sight had renewed Elaine again; she had been hypnotized as she watched, just as she had been when she saw Stew and Lola making love back on the barge in Sausalito.
She needed more attention from Chuck, but he was sound asleep, despite his boast to her that he would make love to her all night until she begged him to stop.
When she looked back at the other bed she saw that Lola was sleeping too, her mouth open, emitting a snore that sounded like the purring of a cat.
But Dave hadn't fallen asleep. While Elaine watched, he stood up and padded barefoot across the floor. He dug into a suitcase which she hadn't remembered seeing him bring from the car. He came up with an unopened bottle of whiskey which he broke open.
Pouring a glass of ice water from the pitcher on the dresser, Dave took a stiff belt and chased it down.
When he turned around he noticed Elaine's eyes on him. He grinned, blushing a little at his nakedness, and came to her offering the bottle and glass of water.
The drinks she'd had earlier in the evening were wearing off, so she decided to renew the buzz. It was expensive whiskey and went down smoothly, much smoother than the cheap wine she had been drinking in Sausalito.
"Looks like we're the only ones left at the party," Dave said, sitting down beside her on the bed.
His bare leg touched hers, and he hem it there, keeping the contact which sent little shudders up and down her back. Her breathing quickened.
Dave drank again from the bottle and handed it to her. They sat for several minutes in silence, passing the bottle back and forth. In an amazingly short time, it was half empty and her head was beginning to spin.
Dave dropped his hand to her knee and left it there, moving the fingers gently, tensing and releasing them, creating a sudden excitement in her.
She liked Dave's young good looks, his lean muscular body. He had an easy smile. And his hand on her knee was doing things to her. Things which she liked.
Then his arm moved around her shoulder and she slid closer to him, laying her head upon his chest.
Dave leaned down and kissed her ear. She felt her pulse quicken. When she turned up her face, he pressed his trembling lips to hers and kissed her deeply.
Very naturally she took his hand and placed it on her breast, and he began to caress it, sending little shocks of pleasure through her.
"Do, that, Dave," she murmured. "I love the touch of your hand."
She was floating in a dreamy pleasure haze, compounded of alcohol and the physical moment, of the loving she'd just had from Chuck and of the loving she knew she would get from Dave.
But it didn't matter that she was free with her favors. It was all for kicks. And she was getting plenty of kicks tonight. It was better than the kicks you got from pot or the needle. The kind of kicks Brenda was most likely having right this moment in some other motel room in some other state.
The thought of Brenda and Warren Lasswell together made her sad, but she shook it out of her mind. Tomorrow she would worry about that problem. Tonight she was going to have fun and get her own kicks.
Dave was kissing her mouth hungrily, bending her over upon the bed. He leaned over her, their bodies touching, and kissed her throat.
Then he moved his lips downward and kissed the trembling softness of her breast. A flame of desire shot through her, tensing her body.
She loved what he was doing.
A gurgling sound of pleasure came from her throat. She slid her hands along the smooth surface of his back, up to his head and held it hard against her.
She lowered her right hand, moving it along his side and down under his body. She moved her hand, and he squirmed in response.
"Does that feel good, Dave?"
"Crazy," he muttered.
"If it's crazy, I'll stop," she said teasingly.
"Don't stop. Oh, man, don't stop."
"Want some more?"
"You know I do...."
"You want me, Dave?"
"You know I do, baby," he muttered thickly. "I want to make love with you, but good."
"Then, we'll make love, Dave."
"Double cool-"
She caressed him with her hand, the movement sending a violent shudder through Dave's body.
"Touch me too, Dave," she whispered against his cheek. "You know how...."
He worked his hand down her side, and began to caress gently, teasingly. Then his touch shot flames of frantic desire through her.
Her breath was coming very hard now. Her eyes were closed when she felt the bed move behind her.
"Hey-what's this with my gal?"
She turned her head and saw Chuck sitting up, blinking his eyes sleepily.
Dave laughed.
"You sacked out, buddy, so I had to take over."
"Well, back off," Chuck said. "I'm ready to start rolling again."
"There's another chick on the other bed," Dave said, still holding Elaine, his hand moving along her thighs.
Chuck shrugged.
"That might be a good thing at that..
"Help yourself," Dave said. "She's quite a doll. I recommend her highly."
Chuck climbed off the bed and went over to Lola. He sat down beside her on the bed and her eyes came open. She sat up grinning.
"Well, hello there. What are we playing, spin the milk bottle?"
"Looks like we're paired off for this one," Chuck said.
"I dig that," Lola laughed. "What kind of a game would you like to play? I'm open to any suggestions."
"You've got awful sweet lips," Chuck hinted. "That's what you'd like?" Lola said. "That's what I'd like...." Lola gave him a grin and pulled at his arm. "You lie down over here. I'll make you crawl the walls."
As Elaine and Dave watched curiously from the opposite bed, Lola pushed Chuck down and poised her plush little body above him, making good her promise.
Chuck moaned and moved on the bed, holding Lola's head locked in his hands, keeping her imprisoned in the position she had assumed, not allowing her to pull away or slack for an instant her sensual ministrations.
"Oh, damn," Chuck cried.
It was almost too much for Elaine to watch, especially with Dave sitting by her side, his own hands wandering frantically over her.
She was beginning to fear that things had gotten out of hand. It was an orgy, no holds barred. The first one Elaine had ever experienced.
But it was all for kicks, she tried to tell herself. Nobody would get hurt. Everybody would get their kicks. Yet there was a tiny voice of reproach whispering faintly in her ear. The anxious conscience imposed upon her by a prim, stilted middle-class childhood.
Still nothing could override the fact that she was burning with a clear bright flame of shameless desire.
She felt Dave sitting beside her, his hands touching her thighs and breasts. Dave's eyes were bugging out at the sight of Lola making love to Chuck on the bed.
All at once she felt an uncontrollable urge to do the same, and before she realized it, she had pushed Dave flat on his back.
She moved swiftly over him.
"You want that too, don't you, Dave?" she muttered thickly. "What Lola's doing?"
He nodded his head. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
She leaned down then, kissing his shivering body with her lips.
She felt his fingers clawing frantically at her head as he twisted beneath her.
He was making strange noises in his throat.
And then, with frenzied violence, he tore himself out of her grip flung her down upon the bed. His fingers clawed deeply and painfully into her breasts as he forced her legs with his knees.
She wanted him to force her now, so she struggled a little to hold him off. She wanted him to take her, but she put up a struggle to add to the frantic excitement.
Dave moved her legs with brute force, and finally she went limp, waiting for him, expecting him.
But he did nothing for a moment. Instead he leaned above her, staring at her, his eyes glistening, his mouth gaping open.
He looked at her, and she could see that he had been caught up in the fever that had infected them all.
"I've never done this before," he mumbled, almost apologetically. "But I want to ... I want to....
"Oh, yes," she gasped. "Please do, Dave. Anything you want to with me."
He fell forward then and in the next instant his lips were on her, and she gasped in the depths of her throat, thrashed her head upon the sheets.
"That's good, Dave," she cried. "Love me more ... more, baby. Yes ... yes ... that's what I want. Go, man, go....
She realized that she had been screaming. The sound of her voice and the coaxing of her hands on Dave's head seemed to spur him on until his caress was like a live thing on her, a clinging thing that was numbing her with ecstasy, driving her frantic with gutty, unbelievable emotion.
She arched her back, lifted her body off the bed to meet his attack, and still he continued to press his lips to her like a man gone mad.
Dave had already become an expert at this newfound thing which had infected him. He hovered over her, gripping her, while Elaine screamed at the incredible sensations Dave was producing in her body.
She was nearly insane with joy. The exquisite agony went on and on, scorching her in an engulfing flame that swept the length of her body.
And then it happened to her all at once, with blinding suddenness. She felt her body tense, felt the tremor of the first shock wave, and then more tremors as spasm after spasm swept through her.
"Don't stop, Dave," she cried as she trembled upon the bed. "Oh, please don't stop now...."
And he didn't stop until the last shudder rippled through her body and left her limp and gasping for breath, panting heavily, her fingers still clawing at the sheets.
"It was beautiful," she gasped. "Beautiful."
Dave moved up and stretched his body beside hers. And when he took her hand and guided it downward, she realized that he hadn't yet been satisfied.
"Do you want me now, Dave?" she asked thickly.
"Yes," he mumbled.
"Come on, baby. I want you to take your pleasure, now that you've given me mine."
Without a word Dave moved over her and dropped down until their bodies came together. And all at once her strength returned, and with it came a sudden resurgence of desire. She was wanting him now, loving the feel of him against her.
She raised up to receive him, reached for him and held on as he groaned and glued his mouth to hers, spread her lips apart with his searching tongue.
His hands were under her waist, sliding down to envelope her hips. She felt his fingers tense and dig into the soft flesh, raise her up against him as he moved.
"This is wild," she shrieked. "Oh, Dave. You're good."
All at once she sensed that his time was approaching. She wanted to deliver him as perfectly as he had delivered her a moment ago.
She moved her body rhythmically until she felt his arms tense, his legs shudder, his body tremble against her own.
And to her surprise she reached the peak at the same time and went crashing, rocketing through space while Dave quivered wildly and pressed to her with weaker and weaker movements until he collapsed and fell aside. , , , She lay exhausted, and slowly the light of the room faded away as sleep descended upon her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Elaine woke with a start and discovered the sun was shining brightly through the window. Beside her Dave was snoring heavily, his blond, close-cropped head nestled against her bare breasts.
She sat up yawning and saw Lola in the other bed with Chuck, their arms wrapped around each other in sleep.
Then she realized that her mouth and throat were as dry as if they had been wiped with cotton. There was also a throbbing in her head that sent shooting pains through her brain, made her eyes ache.
As she lay there naked with the sleeping boy beside her she felt the restlessness come over her, just as she knew it would in the morning.
She was sober now, and with sobriety came the return of worrying over Brenda and the way she was suddenly going downhill. She knew that Brenda would keep right on down the road she was going unless she managed to get her away from the evil influence of Warren Lasswell.
When they had started out yesterday, it had seemed like a simple enough thing to do. At least it hadn't appeared to be as impossible, as it did now.
It could turn into a wild goose chase, because after all, she couldn't be certain that Warren had taken Brenda to Mexico. He might have said it to throw her off the track. , It was probably true that Warren Lasswell owned a house in San Miguel, as he owned one in Sausalito, and as she had been told that he kept an apartment in Greenwich Village. But she couldn't be certain until they arrived in San Miguel and began to look for Warren and Brenda.
It could be much more difficult than she had expected. But one thing she knew, she wasn't going to find them by lying here in a motel bed in Lake Tahoe.
It was a hell of a place to end up on the first night. She had hoped to be much farther down the road, and in the right direction. They should be going south, not northeast. The whole thing was starting out in a mixed-up fashion.
Despite the regret and anxiety she felt this morning, she still had to admit that it had been fun last night. More than that, it had been thrilling.
Never before in her life had she felt so totally abandoned to the shame of her body. Despite the sordidness, there was also something refreshing, almost purifying, in the kind of orgy she and Lola had indulged in.
She began to remember now more of the details of the wild saturnalia that went on intermittently most of the night. They had finished the bottle of whiskey, and then another one had miraculously appeared.
In an alcoholic daze she had done things and permitted things done to her that she would never have considered if she had been sober.
But now it seemed more like a dream than a reality. Perhaps it was a dream. In the cold light of day it was too degraded for her to care to remember.
It was best that she had been very drunk and couldn't be certain that the nightmare had really happened. And it also offered her an excuse for her actions.
But she wasn't getting any closer to Mexico by sitting idly on the bed. She got up and searched through the scattered clothing on the floor until she found her jeans and sweatshirt. She put them on and slipped her feet into the clogs.
Then she went to the bed where Lola was sleeping and shook her by the shoulder.
"What are you doing?" Lola grumbled.
Her eyes came half open and then closed again behind heavy lids. Elaine shook her once more.
"Get up, Lola. We've got to go...."
"Why?"
"It's late."
"I'm still sleepy," Lola yawned. "Come on," Elaine said impatiently, shaking her again.
"Go away and let me sleep."
While Elaine peered down at her with growing anger, Lola dropped off to sleep again. She snuggled her head against Chuck's chest, and soon she was snoring gently with a soft purring sound of her lips.
Elaine cursed and turned away. She stepped out side, and the blinding sun stabbed at her eyes. It was high, nearly overhead. From its position in the sky she judged that it was nearly eleven o'clock.
They had to be going.
She walked restlessly out to the car. When she tried the door she discovered that it wasn't locked. Evidently t he boys had been so anxious to hop into bed that they had neglected to lock the car.
She saw the two suitcases in back. If she could just get Lola on her feet, they could leave without having to bother the sleeping boys for their keys.
She went back into the cabin.
Lola was still sleeping, snoring loudly now. Elaine stood watching her for a moment, pondering what to do. And then she grabbed Lola by both ankles and, bending her back, tugged hard until she came sliding off the bed.
Lola's body hit the floor with a loud slap. She was instantly awake and scowling. For a while she sat on the floor, rubbing first her hips and then her head.
"What did you do that for?"
"I want you to get dressed."
"I don't want to get dressed," Lola pouted. "It's nice being naked. Especially with a roomful of boys."
"It's late," Elaine tried to explain to her. "We've got to get started...."
"Let's stay here."
"No."
"Just one more night," Lola pleaded. "It was so much fun, I want to do it again."
"It's a long way to Mexico," Elaine said with exasperation. "If we don't get started, we won't get a hundred miles before dark."
"There's no reason to be in such a hurry...."
"There is. I'm worried about Brenda."
"She can take care of herself."
Elaine gritted her teeth. She was losing patience with Lola. If Lola wanted to stay, she could. Elaine had made up her mind to go without her if need be. The only thing that mattered was getting to Mexico where Brenda was.
"I'm leaving in five minutes," Elaine said firmly. "If you want to go with me, you'd better get dressed."
"All right-all right," Lola grumbled. "But I still don't see why all the rush."
Slowly Lola stood up from the floor and rubbed the red welts that glowed on the pale white surface of her bottom. She went to the bathroom and drank water from the faucet. Then she stirred among the remaining clothes on the floor until she found her own.
Elaine waited impatiently at the door until she was dressed. Lola stood before the mirror and ran her fingers through her tangled hair.
"Do you want to borrow my comb?" Elaine offered.
"It looks all right-Lola clawed at her hair with her fingertips, and it looked just as tangled as before.
"Let's go-let's go," Elaine said heatedly. "Wait a minute. I want to kiss the boys good-bye. I'd think you would too. It's the least you can do to show your appreciation for such a lovely evening."
Lola went to Dave first and kissed his face and mumbled something in his ear. Dave opened his eyes for a moment, nodded his head wearily and went back to sleep.
Then Lola went to Chuck in the other bed and kissed him too. Chuck didn't wake up, even when Lola put her lips to his ear. She stood looking down, and then before she turned to go, she planted one last parting kissing on Chuck's nude body.
Chuck squirmed in his sleep, then mumbled something unintelligible. He was still squirming when they went out the door and walked up the drive with their suitcases.
At the first filling station Elaine went in and picked up a California road map. She decided that they should go south on Highway 395, since it ran the full length of the state.
It took three short rides with three different men who all suggested that they go to a motel rather than to Mexico. Finally they made it to Carson City, where they got on 395 and headed south at last
There was never any lack of rides, they soon found that out. There were thousands of men traveling the highways who were more than willing to pick up a couple of girls. And every one of them ended up by pawing them, making suggestions, or offering to pay them outright for their services. And most of the men weren't too particular where and in what manner the services were rendered.
One corset salesman wanted to pull off at the side of the road and make them both happy with an implement which he pulled out to show them.
He seemed to be very proud of his possession, and eager to put it on display.
He pleaded and begged for them to give in, even offered money, enough to get them all the way to Mexico by bus. But finally he gave up and let them out at the next town.
And then there were two soldiers on leave who took turns trying to attack them while the car sped along the highway at better than eighty miles an hour.
They arrived in Bishop in the late afternoon, and they stood by the highway for only a couple of minutes when they were picked up by two cowboys on their way to Las Vegas to spend their money.
They received a steak dinner at a roadside restaurant and submitted to a bruising, continuous pawing all the way into Vegas. There they slipped away when the cowboys stopped at a filling station.
It had been dark several hours and the lights of the strip were blazing as they made their way along it, lugging the two suitcases which were growing heavier with each step.
When a meek little man in his sixties stopped and offered them a ride in his expensive-looking Caddy, they decided that he was probably harmless enough.
He was willing to rent a motel for the rest of the night, and they were both so tired from the day's ride that they were willing to go with him. Elaine was convinced that the two of them could take care of themselves if he got unruly. And she wouldn't have been surprised if Lola, in her over-emotional state, didn't decide to sleep with the old codger and relieve her of the problem of fighting him off.
It was a sumptuous motel with big twin beds and a heavily carpeted floor. The first thing Elaine wanted was a nice warm shower. So she stripped out of her clothes and went to the bathroom, disregarding the man's hungry stare. It was probably all the thrill he was capable of anyhow.
She stayed ten minutes under the warm, refreshing water and then toweled off. When she went back into the room with the towel wrapped around her, Lola was sitting naked on the bed and the man was crying.
"What's wrong with him?" Elaine asked in surprise.
Lola giggled.
"He's bugged because neither one of us was wearing underwear."
"He must be off his nut."
She dropped into bed and fell asleep in an instant. She was surprised that the man hadn't attempted to molest her at all. Though she awoke once in the middle of the night and saw him sitting alone in the chair, twisting the fabric of Lola's jeans.
In the morning the man was very pleasant to them, he even bought them a big breakfast before he drove them to the edge of town and let them out on the road to Phoenix.
It took six different rides and a scorching from the sun before they reached Phoenix at nightfall. They were so tired that they climbed the stairs of the first flophouse hotel they came to and paid for a room out of the little bit of cash they had left.
In the morning they decided it was time to sell the stuff they had stolen from Warren Lasswell's house. So they checked their bags at a bus station and carried the binoculars, the Bulova watch and the electric razor to the nearest pawn shop.
The little man came up to them peering through steel-rimmed glasses. The minute he saw the things they had laid on the counter a suspicious look came over his face.
He squinted his eyes and smacked his lips, turning each item over several times. Then he looked at their clothes and gave their faces a hard appraisal.
"Where did you get these?"
"From my sainted grandmother," Lola said lightly. "Just before she passed away. Poor soul."
"What did your grandmother need with an electric razor?" the man said grimly.
"She had a problem...."
The old man chewed something in his mouth and then he squinted his eyes at them. "You girls wait here-"
"Gladly," Lola replied.
They watched him walk to the back of the shop and disappear through the door. Lola moved up to the counter and began gathering the things quickly.
"Let's dust out of here, girl," she whispered. "I got a nasty feelin' he's gone for the fuzz."
They were out of the door in an instant and running down the street. They ran four blocks before they stopped and leaned against a wall to catch their breath.
Then they walked on several blocks more before they found another pawn shop. This time the owner acted like a co-conspirator and brought their stuff eagerly. But he only paid them twenty dollars for all three items.
"At least it's money," Lola said. "It'll buy a lot of hamburgers."
"Just what I need right now," Elaine replied.
"Let's do get some chow before we light out."
They ate three hamburgers and a slab of pie apiece before they were full. And then they went back to the bus station for their suitcases. By ten o'clock they were riding the highway to Tucson, squeezed in the cab of a transport truck with two truck drivers and four roaming hands.
"If I get out of this without losing my sanity, itll be a miracle," Lola said laconically.
"You sure you ain't lost it already?" the man said, who was holding her on his lap.
Lola looked down at herself and giggled.
"Well, damned if I haven't-" she said.
She squirmed on the man's lap with a quick, rotary motion. His face grew flushed. His hands slid under
Lola's shirt and clamped around her bare breasts.
"Why you nasty man," she exclaimed in mock horror.
"Let's have some fun, doll," the man buzzed in her ear. "It's a long way to El Paso."
"Oh, are you going all the way to El Paso?"
"You'd better believe it," he said with a Texas drawl.
"Can we ride there with you, sweetie?"
"That all depends on you."
"I think I get your meaning," Lola said with a grin. "And you really are a nasty man."
Elaine was glad she was sitting next to the door. The driver was busy watching the road, and the other man was busy with Lola. So she was left all alone. At least for a while.
She dug the folded road map from her pocket and studied it as they rolled along. El Paso was a long way down the road. Two days travel time at the rate they had been going so far. Maybe it would be worth it to pay for the ride the way the man had suggested.
She glanced over at the driver and noticed that he was clean-cut, with a lean, almost handsome face. He wouldn't be bad at all.
"So, why not?"
She had to get to Mexico somehow. And it might even be a kick. She looked again at the driver. The more she looked at him the more appealing the idea became.
Lola was giggling beside her while the man's hands worked feverishly beneath her loose sweatshirt Lola twisted around in the seat and kissed him hard on the mouth. The man groaned in the depths of his throat and squirmed in the crowded cab, bumping Elaine with his hips.
Then they were both struggling with Lola's jeans, trying to slip them down to her knees. Lola stood up, bending over. With one quick yank, the man got them down, exposing her bare white hips.
The rocking motion of the cab was all they needed. Elaine felt a wild pulse beating inside her chest, warming her as she watched.
She was forced to watch. Sitting right beside them she was too close to ignore it.
The driver was watching ..oo, licking his dry lips nervously, glancing ahead at the road and then beside him in die seat. Now and then he swerved the steering wheel to keep the truck on the highway. Once the wheels dropped off onto the shoulder and they went a quarter of a mile, the driver breaking down carefully, until they got back onto the slab.
But Lola and the mar were oblivious of anything that was going on around them. They were both twisting in the shameful lever that had seized them.
The man had Lola's shirt raised up to her armpits, baring her breasts. He caressed the round white pillows, pinched at the nipples, and ail the while he squirmed against her.
"Oh, damn," Lola hissed through her clenched teeth. "This is the most ... absolutely...."
Elaine made a disdainful sound and turned her head away.
"If you don't dig it, don't knock it, girl," Lola said with a throaty gasp.
Lola's head was turning from side to side, her hair flying before her face like a shaggy yellow mop. Each movement brought a gasp from her gaping lips.
It was obvious that they both ended together, because the man beneath Lola clawed at her, sank his teeth in her back and lurched wildly.
In a moment they simmered down and sat clutching each other, gasping for breath in the hot, close air of the truck cab.
The driver pressed his foot on the brakes and slowed down. At a side road he brought the truck to a stop. He looked at the man who was still holding Lola.
"You take over while I get mine."
While the driver climbed down and the other man took his place behind the wheel, Lola pulled up her jeans and fastened them, a shameless grin of pleasure on her lips.
The driver came around and opened the door beside Elaine.
"Come on, doll," he said huskily. "Climb up in the bunk. It may be a little hot in there, but we'll have more privacy."
She looked behind her and saw that there was a bunk in the back of the cab with a thick mattress and curtains that could be drawn shut.
For an instant the old fear and regret swept through her, leaving her cold and uncertain.
"Hurry it up, doll," the man said almost gently. "Climb in the bunk. We've got to get this rig on down the road."
Still she hesitated. His arm went around her waist, his hand closed easily over her breast.
"You want a ride to El Paso, don't you?"
"Yes," she said with a nod, and stuck her head through the curtains while he pushed her gently up with his hands on her body.
CHAPTER EIGHT
For a moment she sat numbly while the man climbed into the cramped, stifling bunk beside her. She was bothered by anxious flutterings inside her. Once more things were going too far. She was becoming more and more like Lola, letting her body be used by any man who happened along in any way that pleased him.
She was taking Lola with her to Mexico in search of Brenda, yet Lola was taking her inexorably down another road that at this moment seemed endless and bleak. She wanted to rebel, to climb down out of this strange man's reach before he had a chance to seize her and force himself upon her.
The truck bounced into motion again as the other man, who had taken the wheel, pulled back onto the highway. Through the crack in the drawn curtains she could see Lola wantonly snuggling up to the man.
Then she realized that the man beside her, his neck bowed under the low roof, was removing his clothes. It was a slow process, but soon his shirt and then his trousers were loose in his hand.
He dropped them through the curtain into the seat below. And then he turned to her.
"Peel off, baby. Off with the duds. Let's get naked and get nice...."
Elaine hesitated for a moment, one hand on the bottom of her sweatshirt. The motion of the truck threw her off balance, making it difficult to sit up without holding onto something.
"Well, do you, or don't you?" he said harshly.
For a second she was shaken with revulsion, and then, just as suddenly she felt a stab of passion strike into her.
Each time it became easier to give in. Something in her nature was changing, something that made her behave more wantonly each time she was touched by a man.
His hand reached over, slid beneath the loose shirt and caressed her breast
She gasped aloud, unconsciously. And then she was trembling as his fingers touched her flesh. She was amazed at the suddenness of her response.
A moment ago she had been cold, despite the wild sensations Lola had started in her with her shameful display.
But now the man was caressing her breasts, pinching the nipples between his fingers. And she wanted to be with him, offer her body to him.
She had to have love again.
The need was growing more intense and demanding in her, like a disease she couldn't throw off. She had abandoned herself totally to the wildness of last night, and already she was feeling the same shivering excitement again.
The man slid closer to her and his hands raised her shirt, caressed her breasts expertly. She felt her nipples harden between his twirling fingers.
He kissed her face, opened his warm mouth upon her throat. And then his mouth was pressed to hers and he stabbed his tongue brutally through her lips. She clung to his neck and kissed him back, pushing with her tongue, feeling it touch the rim of his teeth.
She was panting heavily, her breasts rising against his clutching hand.
When he pulled back for a breath of air she showered his lean face with kisses. And then, to tease him, she dropped her hand to his body.
The struggle against her conscience was over before it had started. She was ready to surrender to him, to debase herself with this strange man in the same shameless manner Lola had done with the other.
In the closeness of the cramped cab she felt his body pressing against her. And still she hadn't removed her clothes. All at once they seemed to be binding her and she wanted out of them. She wanted to be with him.
With her free hand, while the other still held him firmly, she raised the edge of her sweatshirt and pulled it over her head. With his help it was off in a moment.
She watched it disappear through the split curtain as he dropped it down to the seat, and then she heard Lola's snickering laughter.
The man was fumbling with the zipper of her jeans. They split open and she raised her hips, squirming delightedly under the touch of his hands. He pulled the jeans down her legs and tossed them after the shirt.
"Come here," the man said huskily.
"Where?"
"Here beside me . .
She moved through the semi-dark, heated cab, feeling along his body as she searched for a place to lie down.
"It's awfully crowded," she said. "We'll make out."
His arm snaked around her bare waist. She let herself be pushed down onto her back. Her breathing was growing heavier, filling her lungs, thrusting her breasts upward.
His legs were tangled in hers, forcing her knees up. He leaned above her for a moment and turned once more to her breasts. She felt a shudder like an electric current, radiating outward from her breasts as he closed both hands around them with slow, deliberate motions.
"I love that," she gasped without meaning to speak.
"It's great-"
And it got better as he squeezed with his fingers, rolling the hard nipples as though they were two tiny balls, twisting them and releasing them. Then twisting them again. It was so good she had to roll her hips.
"Baby, you've got a pair of real boobs," he said in a hoarse, unnatural voice that rasped with his mounting lust. "Big and round. They really get me, the way they stick straight up, waiting to be kissed...."
She was pleased by his words. She knew that she had nice breasts, and she liked for a man to tell her.
"Do you like them?" she murmured.
"You'd better believe it."
"Don't you want to kiss them?"
"Give me time, baby."
"Go ahead," she sighed. "Kiss them now. Please do-"
His hands clung for a moment, squeezed tighter, and then he lowered his head and closed his lips over her jutting right breast.
She gasped, and her breathing stopped for a moment.
"Oh, yes-" she cried deliriously.
She lay on her back in the hot cab of the truck as it rolled down the highway, enjoying the delicious agony the man was inflicting on her breast with his hungry caress.
"Oh, damn, don't stop," she cried out, clutching his arms with her fingers clawed. "You're driving me wild. Don't stop ... man ... whoever you are...."
She didn't even know his name, but at the moment that didn't seem the least bit strange. He was a man, with a man's body and a man's touch. And she was a woman. She was responding as a woman could to this wild sensation he was creating in her with his hands and his caressing lips.
It wasn't strange at all that she didn't even know his name.
"Oh, damn," she moaned as a surge of passion shot through her, making her furious with desire.
His caress moved to her other breast and began the same slow, maddening torment.
She reached up and found his head, tangled her fingers in his hair and held him clasped to her.
It was a wanton gesture to express the wantonness she felt. The utterly abandoned feeling that was sweeping through her, pounding in her veins.
She was on fire.
She wanted to take the man, force him to her, though she didn't know his name. She sucked in her breath as he opened his lips wider against her breast, clamped down gently and then harder with his teeth.
Vaguely, as if in a dream, she heard the big diesel motor roaring with dull monotony, heard the wheels hum as they rolled over the smooth surface of the highway.
Carrying them to El Paso.
And she was earning her fare. But she enjoyed earning it in this manner, because she was getting her kicks.
And what kicks! Never in her life had she felt so wild and carefree, so wantonly bursting with excitement. She was trembling with it.
She was quivering with anticipation of the moment when he would pin her fiercely to the mattress that was pressing against her back.
Now. she understood the intoxication that had seized Lola and driven her to make love to the man, sitting on his lap in so wanton a manner.
It was the excitement of wickedness. She wanted to be wicked, and all at once she could stand it no longer. She sank her fingers into the flesh of his back and pulled at him frantically, trying to drag him onto her so he could finish the ravishment she was craving now.
"Love me-" she hissed through gritted teeth. "Do love me now."
He took his lips away from her breasts, turning his body in the cramped space.
Hot breath poured from his throat as he dropped down upon her. He searched for a moment, and then he found her.
"No, go-" she gasped.
He pressed to her, forcing a cry of pleasure mingled with pain from her parted lips.
She rolled her body, moved back at him. She locked around his waist and held on as he moved, while the motion of the rolling truck rocked them from side to side.
"You're good-" she cried.
And she heard Lola's bawdy laughter on the other side of the curtains.
"Save some for me!" Lola called gaily.
Spurred by the violence of his driving body, Elaine went completely primitive. She clung with a wild desperation to his neck while he pounded at her.
"Go, you sweet witch," he cried. "You like me, don't you?"
"Yes-" she gasped. '
"You like this? Is it good?"
"I love it!" she cried.
The words gushed from her throat in a high shrieking wail, a pagan cry of pure passion. "You want more?"
"More-more," she chanted. "Don't ever stop."
He pulled back to thrust into her, pulled back again. Her legs clung tightly, trapping him, refusing to let him escape for an instant.
He left for a moment and she let out a cry of sheer horror. Her fingers reached for him, clawing at his back, frantically bringing him to her again.
She clung to him with a fierce desperation, fearful that he might slip away again.
And then, when she realized that she could stand it no longer, she felt a sudden violent explosion within her body, shattering her completely, driving wave after wave of spasms along her spine, into her brain.
She screamed into his ear, and at the same instant felt his body tense and then shudder.
She screamed above the roar of the truck, screamed until she was hoarse, until there was no breath left in her. And still the spasms continued to flame through her like liquid fire.
And then at last it was over, and she fell back, releasing her hold on his neck. She lay for a long while, totally exhausted and totally satisfied, while the man fell away from her and collapsed at her side.
CHAPTER NINE
The truck continued to roll Over the scorching desert, and if it weren't for the rush of the wind through the open window they would have suffocated.
And yet the heat seemed to have affected them all, agitating them into a frenzy that they tried desperately to quench as one would quench a thirst.
Elaine dozed with the man at her side for perhaps a half hour, and then they returned again to their love play. Soon she admitted him as the caress of his hands and lips on her body drove her into a frenzy of desire.
And then they dressed and climbed down into the cab of the truck. The man she had been making love to took the wheel while Lola and the other driver climbed eagerly into the bunk in back.
It went on like that through the afternoon and into the night. Elaine returned to the bunk several times, always willing, always expectant.
The more she received, the more she wanted. It seemed that the fire could never be quenched. And yet it was wild and intoxicating, and she never really wanted it to stop.
Again and again the man worked her up with his caressing hands, his exploring mouth. And it seemed that he was tireless as well, for she was always able to ready him with the touch of her own caress.
But it had to end at last, and it did when they pulled into El Paso in the early light of dawn. The two men deposited them at a cheap motel, where they immediately rented a room and fell into bed.
They were exhausted. They slept until dark, and then they walked up the highway to a diner where they ate ravenously. And then they returned to the bed and slept again until the next morning.
The next couple of rides were tame compared to the wild journey in the truck. But then they caught a ride with two drugstore cowboys from a small Texas town. Even Lola wasn't interested in making love to them, so Elaine and Lola were put out on the blazing Texas plain somewhere between Kent and Pecos.
There wasn't a square inch of shade in any direction because the sun was directly overhead. There was m nothing but yellow rocks and dust and a few tufts of grass.
Finally they caught a ride into Pecos on a bread delivery truck, and there they found trees with welcome shade. They stayed in the shade at the edge of town until they were picked up by a young divinity student from a nearby college who kept quoting the Bible and casting side glances at their legs squeezed inside the tight-fitting jeans.
That night they slept in an abandoned shed near Sonora in order to save what little money they had left. The next day was another scorching journey through the hot Texas plains, under a blazing sun.
They crossed the Nueces River on a bridge and ran down the bank to jump in after they had stripped out of their clothes. It was muddy from a recent rain, but refreshing. And it washed off most of the dust they had picked up the last two days.
After a series of short rides, they arrived in Laredo after dark. They had enough money left for two bus tickets to Monterrey. They decided to go that far by bus and then worry about getting down to San Miguel.
But the next bus didn't leave until six in the morning. So they had the whole night to spend in Laredo and no place to spend it. They left their suitcases at the bus station.
At the first bar they passed, the sound of Latin music lured them to the door. They looked in. A half dozen drunk Texans led them to the bar and started buying them tequila. It was the first time Elaine had ever tasted tequila, and she found that it went down
Hi very easily with a little salt and a slice of lemon.
It went down too smoothly. Before they knew it, they were crocked, wearing ten gallon hats, singing barroom songs with twenty cowboys.
And then there was a blank space, a tequila blackout. The next thing Elaine remembered, she and Lola were staggering down a dark narrow street that smelled like a sewer. After that they sat at a crowded counter in a narrow cafe, drinking black coffee and eating some strange kind of pastry that looked like a giant doughnut, but tasted like cardboard.
Then there were three of them walking down a dark street once more. They turned in at an opening in a mud wall, found themselves in a sparsely furnished room with a bed, a mirror and a lightbulb hanging from the ceiling.
The third person was a girl who was probably still in her teens. A dark haired girl with black, glistening eyes. She wore a loose cotton dress, and there seemed to be nothing under it but the girl herself.
It appeared that the girl had offered them a place to sleep the rest of the night. The three of them were in the same bed, minus clothing.
Elaine slept and then awoke in a drunken daze, aroused by the gasping sounds Lola was making beside her. She sat up, and in the pale light that filtered through the single dusty window, she saw a cascade of black hair covering Lola's body.
The strange girl was on her hands and knees, writhing her haunches, her face buried against Lola. And Lola was rolling her head, making heavy, panting sounds in her throat.
Elaine watched for a moment, felt her insides grow weak, and then turned away with her eyes shut tightly.
She slept again while strange nightmares crowded her brain. And then she came awake in the dingy room with a hot flame licking at her.
Her hand went down, and she discovered a mound of coarse long hair at her middle. She resisted for a moment, tried to push the girl away.
And then she gave in and let it happen, sobbing and gasping as Lola had done at the fiery torment that was almost driving her out of her mind. Only when the agony ended in a brilliant, shattering flash that seemed to tear her apart, did she fall off to sleep again.
The next time she awoke it was daylight. Lola was sleeping beside her in the filthy bed, but the girl was gone.
Elaine had never felt her mouth so dry. She sat up and then gritted her teeth as a thousand nails were driven through her skull to her brain.
She rubbed her head carefully, stroking the temples with her fingers, but the pain wouldn't go away. She knew from experience that the only antidote would be a hair of the dog that had bit her.
But as low as they were on cash, they couldn't afford even one shot apiece at the filthy dive where they had spent last night drinking.
She wondered curiously where the girl had gone who had slept in the bed with them last night. Then, with sudden apprehension she jumped to the floor and grabbed her jeans. Her hands fumbled in the pockets. She gave a miserable sigh.
The pockets were empty. The money she had carried rolled up in a wad was gone. The money they were going to buy tickets with, to take them to Monterrey.
She shook Lola's arm.
"Wake up, Lola," she said grimly.
Lola blinked her eyes, then sat up rubbing her head. Her yellow hair was uncombed, hanging in her eyes.
"Oh, what a head," she said painfully. "Have you got one too, girl?"
"Worse than that," Elaine said. "I've got bad news."
"What?"
"We're busted."
Lola blinked her eyes sleepily. Then she stood up, holding her head. "Busted?"
"Our nice little friend rolled us," Elaine said, holding up her jeans.
"Oh, brother," Lola moaned. "What are we going to do? I've just got to have a swig of tequila before I come back to life. Even if it kills me."
"I wish that was our only problem...."
"Well, it's her room," Lola said, looking around. "She's got to come back...."
Elaine shook her head.
"That's probably more money than she's had all her life. She could stay away a week. Do you want to wait that long?"
"I guess you're right," Lola said. And then she shrugged. "Well, it won't do any good to cry about it.
Let's get on down the road. Maybe something will develop."
"We'll have to sell something if we want to eat. The trouble is, we don't have anything left to sell." Lola giggled.
"We might start selling what we've been giving away...."
Elaine ignored her. She started climbing into her clothes because the place was getting her down. The bed smelled like wet chicken feathers.
They dressed and went into the bright sun. They didn't know what way it was to town until they asked an old man. It was quite a walk, and they were dragging when they arrived at the bus station.
They picked up their suitcases and were standing on the curb, staring at the bridge which crossed into Mexico, when a bent, limping chevy pulled up beside them with a loud tearing of brakes.
There were three smiling boys in the front seat, all with close-cropped hair and freshly washed faces. There were suitcase in back.
"Tequila!" the nearest boy said, lifting his hand in a friendly greeting.
"Tequila!" Lola replied. And then she placed the flat of her hand on her forehead. "Oh, damn-"
"Where you gals headed?"
"We were headed for San Miguel until we ran out of cash all at once last night," Lola said.
"Take you as far as Monterrey."
"We're busted," Lola said sadly. "Can't even buy our way across the border now." ill
The three boys put their heads together, and then the nearest one grinned.
"We'll buy your tourist cards and keep you in tequila too. How's that for a deal?"
"Sold," Lola said.
She pulled the door open and squeezed into the back seat, crawling over the boys' backs with her battered suitcase. Elaine followed her. There was just enough room for the two of them to sit cramped together once they had stacked the suitcases in the corner.
The driver spun the wheels pulling away from the curb. In half an hour they were through Mexican customs and rolling down the highway through the dry flat country, surrounded by mesquite and cactus.
There just happened to be a bottle of tequila in the car which was passed around with another bottle of something red called sangrita. It tasted like tomato juice and tabasco, but it washed down the fiery tequila.
In no time at all Elaine's hang-over was gone. And by the time they reached Monterrey in the late afternoon, she was feeling no pain. Everybody was drunk. Lola had traded places with one of the boys in the front seat, and he held Elaine on his lap while they smooched.
He was pleased with himself when he discovered that Elaine had nothing on under her blouse. His hands on her bare breasts and the tequila kept her in a perpetual state of happy excitement.
They pulled into Monterrey and toured the dusty streets until they found a third-rate hotel that would rent them all a single room with no questions asked. The boys were from a college in Pennsylvania, and they had come down to spend a month of their vacation in Mexico.
As soon as they had moved into the room, one of the boys went out for food and more tequila. They ate tacos bought from a street vendor and washed them down with tequila and dark Mexican beer.
Then somehow they all ended up in bed-two beds actually, which they pulled together to make one.
And the party was on.
Lola and Elaine were the star attractions. Between them they kept the three boys happy. It went on a night and a day and another night. The tequila flowed and the bed was the scene of one continuous orgy.
It was like the night in Lake Tahoe, only wilder and more spectacular.
There were three boys instead of two, and at times there were five of them together on the combined beds giving each other mutual love in an unbelievable variety of ways.
Elaine found herself once with three boys, doing fantastic contortions with her body, giving and receiving the wildest sensations. And she was so numb and deadened by tequila that it seemed the most natural thing in the world. There was no sense of shame and no repulsion.
And all the while Lola tried to outdo her in wantonness. Elaine watched, and even then felt no revulsion because the tequila had carried her beyond the point where she cared about anything except the orgiastic thrills of the moment.
There was a kind of shameful high point when two boys caressed her breasts with their excited mouths and the other tormented her elsewhere on her quivering body.
She lay outspread upon the bed with her legs hanging over the side.
She whimpered and moaned in the depths of her throat.
She clawed the sheets.
She flung her head about in a wild fit of agony.
Three caresses upon her at once filled her with an exquisite madness that she never wanted to end.
Her body trembled.
The room went dim before her eyes.
And then the finish came, enveloping her in a sheet of flame. She cried to the sky at the top of her lungs. And still the torturing mouths clung to her, caressing her until every last ounce of strength was drained from her shivering body.
CHAPTER TEN
Elaine awoke in the early light of dawn and sat up painfully in the bed of tangled, sleeping bodies. She was cold sober.
And she had never felt so wretched in her life, never experienced such pangs of self-loathing. She looked about the dingy room, which was a wreck from the two nights of carousing, and she fought to keep from gagging.
How could she have permitted this to happen?
What was wrong with her?
Something was driving her in this search for wild sensation, this perverse lust for thrills. She was becoming nothing more than a wanton-making love to every man who took her fancy.
And yet each time she had wanted it.
And she had loved it when it was happening to her, been swept along by the pure excitement.
There must really be something wrong with her. She was behaving like a nympho. A love-crazed tramp. The lust kept building in her, and the regret and shame were dying, slowly but certainly.
Yet she knew the end of this kind of life was just as certain and just as fatal as the end of the road Brenda was taking with the needle.
Brenda!
She had forgotten her, lulled by the tequila and the two days of mad abandon in this room.
She had to get on to San Miguel and save Brenda. Time was running out each day as she became more terribly hooked with each fix Warren Lasswell shot into her arm.
Perhaps it was already too late. It would certainly be too late unless she could find a way to get Brenda away from the man who was destroying her.
Elaine had to get to her. She had to leave this room, which seemed to be closing in on her, or go completely out of her mind.
She dressed quickly and reached for Lola among the tangle of arms and legs. Lola stirred, blinked her eyes, and then shrugged away from Elaine's hand.
"Go away," she grumbled. "I want to sleep."
Elaine stared down at Lola's puffy face with the stringy yellow hair bunched around it. As she lay there with her mouth slack, breathing lazily, she had the look of a degenerate. The thing Elaine was becoming as well.
There was a mirror on the wall, but Elaine didn't have the courage to look into it for fear of what she might see. A face as haggard as Lola's.
Elaine shuddered. She was impatient to go. She couldn't stand it another minute in this foul room where she had allowed herself to be so degraded.
She shook Lola again.
"Come on," she said determinedly. "I want to go. We've got to find Brenda."
"Hell, I'm not leaving," Lola mumbled sleepily. "This is fun. I've never had it so good...."
Elaine took a deep breath.
"I'm going-if I have to go alone."
"Help yourself...."
"I'll see you," Elaine said.
"Adios."
Lola closed her eyes and snuggled her head up against the bare back of one of the boys who was lying diagonally across the bed.
They were all asleep. Elaine stopped at the table where there was a piled tangle of clothing. She needed money for a bus ticket.
There was money in the boys' trousers. The way they had used her, they owed her something. She found a wallet and took out two hundred peso notes and some smaller bills.
Then she took her suitcase and went out the door, not bothering to look back.
She caught a cab at the first corner and, despite the fact that she didn't know the language, managed to communicate to the driver that she wanted to ride to the bus station.
It was a big dusty, grimy place. She bought a ticket for San Miguel and waited only a few minutes until the bus began to load.
Soon they were rolling through narrow city streets until they reached open country. The bus labored up a winding mountain road, crossed a pass, and dropped down into a wide valley that ran between two mountain ranges.
It was a long, monotonous ride over vast, dry stretches of desert cluttered with patches of cactus, now and then a dusty little village of a few adobe huts.
The sun moved around to the west, finally sank from sight behind the high range of mountains that seemed to stretch interminably in the distance.
And then it was night, and the bus continued to roll across the dry, dusty land. Then at last they were winding up from the flat valley, into the foothills and the mountains to the west.
It was almost ten o'clock at night when they arrived in San Miguel and the bus let her out on the edge of the plaza which was surrounded by cobblestone streets.
She walked up the sidewalk under a roof supported by curving arches. Now that she had finally arrived, she didn't know what her next step should be. She realized that she should have given it more thought as she rode on the bus, rather than spend so much time sleeping.
Obviously, the thing to do was to find someone who could speak English and see if they had ever heard of Warren Lasswell or knew where he lived.
But she had the suitcase to dispose of. It was getting heavier by the minute. There hadn't been a bus station. The bus had just loaded up at the sidewalk and driven off. So there was no place to check her suitcase.
At the end of the plaza she wandered through an open door, into a bar called La Cucaracha and made her way back through the scattered tables of the front room to a little cubbyhole in back where there were four or five seats around a very small bar.
"Elaine-baby!"
A man's voice had shouted her name. She looked around and saw a man approaching her, his arms outspread. He had a thin beard that fringed the edge of his chin and a tangled mop of yellow hair.
She recognized him as someone she had known in Sausalito, but for a moment she couldn't remember his name.
"Remember me, baby-doll?"
And then she did. Art Langley, a crazy painter she had seen at a few parties in the Garlic Belt. She had even gone to bed with him once, though he had been completely tanked on Chianti and unable to raise even an eyebrow.
"Hello, Art," she said, dropping the heavy suitcase at her feet.
"What are you doing here, baby?"
"I've come to find my sister."
"That sweet, swinging chick. What's her name?"
"Brenda."
"That's it-Brenda. A real cool dish, though I never personally had the pleasure...."
"Have you seen her?"
"Not since the last time, doll."
"Where was that?"
"Back in Frisco."
"Do you know Warren Lasswell?"
"The most. He's a long-gone, crazy cat."
"She came here with him."
"He's making the scene. I dug him the other night, over at Los Dragones."
"Do you know where he lives?"
Art pointed with his chin.
"Thataway."
"Will you take me?"
"I'm your slave, doll."
"Can I leave my suitcase here?"
"Sure." Art picked it up and slid it into the corner behind a table. "But let me gas up before we leave."
She followed him through the door and up to the bar. He pounded a fist on the polished wood and the bartender poured a double shot of tequila without a word.
"What's yours?"
"Nothing," Elaine said.
Art shrugged and poured down the drink. He threw three silver pesos on the bar. And then he threw down three more and pounded his fist again.
The bartender filled the shot glass once more and Art poured it down. He gasped and turned to Elaine.
"All right, doll. Let's dust out."
She followed him out the door and down the street. He hurried ahead of her, and she found it difficult to keep up even by running now and then.
Art bounced dizzily off the walls as they wound in and out of narrow streets. They passed an open doorway where there was a loud blast of noise and the whine of a phonograph playing progressive jazz.
Art stopped suddenly and waited for her to catch up. He poked his head inside.
"Let's make it here, doll. This looks like a blast."
Reluctantly she followed him through the door. There was nothing else to do. He could lead her to Brenda, so she had to stick with him if it took all night.
It was a weird scene. If it weren't for two or three dusky faces and the bright colored serapes on the floor, she could be back in Sausalito at a typical blast. There was one other difference. The guests seemed to be drinking tequila and rum instead of wine.
There were a few way-out arty paintings on the walls. The usual black toreadors and baggy sweaters. A couple of perverts dancing together. A bearded prophet holding forth on some long-winded discussion with two Lesbians who were paying more attention to each other than to him.
Once she had thought this kind of thing was the greatest, but now the scene was starting to bug her. She didn't belong here any more. Once she had dug this kind of thing, when she had been starry-eyed and fresh from the steppes of North Dakota. But now it seemed phony to her.
Art Langley had gone among the milling crowd and disappeared through a door. She watched for him to come out, and when he didn't, she went through it. There was nothing except a pair of somnambulistic lovers on a mattress against the wall. And the distinctive smell of burning marijuana.
Art Langley wasn't in sight.
She went back to the room where most of the action was going on. She searched for him through the blue haze of smoke, but he wasn't there.
So he had gotten away from her. There was nothing to do but wait in hopes he would return.
"You seem to be alone."
She turned around and stared into the gently smiling face of a man in his early twenties who seemed to be out of place in such a scene. First of all, he didn't have a beard. And he was dressed in ordinary clothes, nothing way-out or exaggerated for effect.
She liked the way his pale gray eyes appraised her, the nice smile on his handsome face. He was tall, perhaps a little thin, but there was something honest and wholesome about the way he looked at her. And right now that meant a whole lot to her. Right now she needed someone to talk with who wasn't sick or freakish like most of the people in the room.
"I'm Kenny Ricketts-if that means anything."
She found herself smiling as she told him her name. He looked into her eyes for a moment, and then he took her arm and led her toward the door.
"What do you say we cut out? I don't think either one of us belongs here. To tell you the truth, these types bore me to death."
"I was thinking the same thing," Elaine said, following him out to the street.
"I haven't seen you around."
She laughed easily.
"I haven't been around very long. I just came in on the bus about an hour ago."
"Staying a while?"
"That depends-"
"On what?"
"On my sister, I guess."
"Something's bothering you," he said in a gentle voice. "I can always sense it. Want to tell me?"
That was exactly what she had been wanting to do for a long time. But there hadn't been anybody willing to listen. Lola was completely oblivious of her worries over Brenda. Now this man had sensed that she was in trouble, needing help.
All at once she found herself telling it all to him as though they had known each other for years, and not just met at a beatnik party.
"I know Lasswell," Kenny said when she was finished. "He made quite an entrance the day he arrived in town with your sister. Killed a burro with his Jaguar and injured the kid who was leading it. But he's got the money to buy his way out of trouble...."
"Do you know where he lives?"
"I think so."
"Would you mind taking me there?" Elaine said eagerly.
"Sure. If you want to go."
"I've got to get her away from that-monster," she said. "Before he destroys her completely."
"Let's go," Kenny said.
Taking her by the hand, he led her in the same direction Art Langley had been leading her before he discovered the party. They walked down narrow winding streets lit only by an occasional lantern or the gleam of a lamp from some window.
There seemed to be nothing but walls made of stone or adobe, and now and then a doorway or a barred window. Then they came to the end of the street where it opened into a large area.
There was a high stone wall behind which Elaine could see the tile roof of a large house.
"This is it," Kenny said.
There was a heavy brass knocker on the door that opened on two sides wide enough to permit a car to pass through. Kenny gave it a loud rap.
In the silence, Elaine heard the faint sound of music which seemed to be coming from the house. And then, as a door opened, it grew louder. There was also the dull rumble of voices, the noise of a party inside.
Metal grated as a small trapdoor slid open and a dark face peered out. The door slid shut again. Steps faded away on the pavement beyond the wall.
They waited five minutes and nothing happened. Then the small door slid open again and Warren Lass-well's face appeared. He glanced first at Kenny, and then his eyes glared at Elaine. For a full thirty seconds he stared at her, cold and unblinking. Then his mouth curled disdainfully.
"Go away," he muttered.
The door slid shut. The sound of his footsteps faded away in the night. The last thing they heard was the opening and closing of the door to the house.
"Well," Kenny said with a forced laugh. "At least you know where he lives."
"We're not going to get in," Elaine said numbly. "I've got to see Brenda...."
"It looks hopeless tonight," Kenny said sympathetically. "We can try again tomorrow."
"I suppose so," Elaine said.
"Do you have a place to stay tonight?"
"No," she sighed.
"Have any money?"
She shook her head.
"It's not much, but you can stay at my pad," he said softly.
She looked at him quickly, a frown of suspicion crossing her face. It sounded like the same come-on she'd heard from every man she'd ever met. And she was getting tired of it.
"I know how it sounds," he said apologetically. "Like a proposition. But I didn't mean it that way. I've got a couch. I'll sleep on it, if you want. You can have the bed."
She thought a minute and then she said, "Let's go."
"Do you have any luggage?"
"Up town at a bar."
"Let's go," he said, taking her hand and leading her up the dark street in the direction from which they had come.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
There were still cantinas open when they walked through the plaza. There was raucous laughter and the loud blare of Mexican music. They went into the bar where she had left her suitcase and Kenny carried it for her.
She had been lugging it around for days, and now it was nice to have Kenny do it for her. She felt protected with him, more than with most men she had been with. It was wonderful to have a shoulder to lean on, someone to share her troubles.
And from the reception she had received at Warren Lasswell's house tonight, she was going to have trouble even seeing Brenda, let alone getting her away from the man who was destroying her.
The sad part about it, Brenda didn't want her to interfere, resented it bitterly in fact. But she would have to help Brenda in spite of herself.
They had been walking through a crisscross of narrow alleyways. And then the street they were on opened up into a small plaza, one side of which was formed by the wall of a church.
"We're almost there," Kenny said.
"I'm glad," she replied with a sigh. "After that bus ride from Monterrey, I'm bushed."
"We'll have you to bed in no time."
Again a tremor of suspicion shot through her. Was he taking her to his place for just what he could get out of her? She had been too easy where men were concerned. Too willing. In fact she was the worst kind of sucker, for when they had gotten from her what they wanted, they were through with her.
But she was changing all that. She had made up her mind. If she continued the way she had been going, she would soon be wallowing in filth and utter degradation, just as Lola was most likely doing this very moment.
She wanted more than that out of life. She wanted the affection and respect of a man. Someone like Kenny. The whole idea of doing anything for kicks was just so much romantic rot. The kind of thinking that could be found only in the gray world of the beatniks.
It was worse than rot. It was disgusting and stupid and destructive. It was destroying Lola and Brenda, but she wasn't going to let it destroy her.
So she had made up her mind to sleep tonight in Kenny's pad, because there was nothing else she could do. But she was going to keep it on her own level. Not another man was going to touch her until he had proven that he wanted her for herself, and not just for the pleasure of her body.
That included Kenny Ricketts.
Most especially Kenny.
"This is it," he said, taking her arm and steering her to a solid door between a couple of storefronts.
He pulled a key from his pocket and clicked it in the lock. They went in, climbed a flight of narrow stairs. At the top was a small patio with a few flowers and a small fountain. The roof was open to the sky.
Around the patio were a half dozen doors. Kenny unlocked one of them and followed her in.
It was a nice little place, very clean. So much cleaner than the hotel room she had slept in at Monterrey, she thought with a shudder of remembrance.
There was a very small kitchenette, a larger room with both a bed and a couch, also a small dinner table. An open door led to the bathroom, which was decorated with blue and white tile.
"You like it?" Kenny asked.
"It's very nice." She looked up at him. "You haven't told me what you do...."
"I guess I haven't," he replied with a smile.
"Are you an artist?"
"Nothing so romantic as that," he grinned "In fact I'm sort of a bum. Right now, anyhow. I was on a plane that cracked up when I was stationed with the Air Force in Germany. Spent a year in the hospital, and got a disability discharge. I'm living down here on the pension checks. I like it. You learn to enjoy a lot of things after lying on your back for a year in a hospital bed."
"You seem healthy enough," Elaine said.
"I'm fine now, except for a slight limp and a few pains in my back when the weather gets cold. Another reason for my living in Mexico."
He put her suitcase down beside the bed and moved toward her. When he reached out his hand she backed away, suddenly seized by confusion and a vague, gnawing fear.
"I'm sorry, Elaine," he said quickly. "I won't touch you. You must have had a bad experience to react like that."
"I've made a damned fool of myself over men," she said grimly. "And I've promised myself it won't happen again."
"Were you mistreated?" be said softly.
"No. Just used-"
"I understand." He gave her a warm smile that was reassuring. "I won't use you, Elaine. Of course I'm attracted to you. You're a pretty girl. I'll bet you're a beauty when you get fixed up and shed those grimy clothes."
She felt herself blushing. All at once she was ashamed of her appearance. She wanted Kenny to see her in a dress, to see her with her hair combed and her face made up. A month ago she would have thought it sounded square. But now she wanted to fix up for a man and see the appreciation in his eyes.
"I'm not afraid of you, Kenny," she said with assurance. "You seem like a nice guy."
"I try to be. You can stay here as long as you want, and I promise you'll be as safe as if you were my sister. Unless...."
"Unless I make the first move?" she asked quickly.
He nodded, still smiling down at her. There was something about his friendly smiling face that did things to her, soft things inside that she hadn't experienced for a long time.
"Would you like to clean up?" he asked.
"Would I?"
He motioned toward the bathroom. "Help yourself."
"Would you mind carrying my suitcase for me," she asked. "I really am tired of lugging it."
"Sure-" He set it on the bathroom floor. "Meanwhile I'll brew up some coffee and scramble a few eggs."
"Sounds great," she said brightly. "I'm starved."
She closed the door and climbed out of her dirty clothes. She'd been wanting a bath for a long time. Maybe it would wash off some of the filth she had wallowed in along with the dust she had picked up on the road.
Sliding the suitcase into the far corner away from the shower, she opened it. There was a dress. She had almost forgotten that she'd packed it. She decided to put it on for Kenny.
She wanted to watch the sparks light up in his eyes when he saw her looking like a woman instead of a road bum.
Eagerly she climbed into the shower and scrubbed herself almost raw. Then she toweled off, combed out her hair, and pulled on the dress.
It was only printed cotton, and it was wrinkled from being folded so long in the suitcase, but it made her look a million times better.
When she was satisfied with her appearance, she opened the door and stepped out. He stared at her for a long moment in silence, not undressing her with his eyes, just looking at her with a kind of tender yearning.
He made her feel that she was not so utterly depraved after all, that there was something good inside her, despite all the wanton, foolish things she had done.
"You're lovely," he said at last in a voice that was very calm and gentle.
She didn't know what to say. She merely blushed without replying. And then she felt a warm tenderness at his touch as he took her arm and led her to the table that was already set for two.
She was famished. She hadn't realized that she was so hungry until she started eating. When the eggs and toast were all gone, they continued to sit at the table and drink coffee. They said very little, though they looked at each other with a silent communion.
There was no awkwardness and no embarrassment, just mutual understanding, and perhaps the beginning of something else.
"Still hungry?" he said at last, "No, thanks. It was delicious."
"But you're tired...."
"Not now. Really," she said. And it was true. All at once the tiredness had left her, and she dreaded the thought of climbing into the bed alone. She felt like talking some more with Kenny. Perhaps all night.
"You should sleep," he said tenderly. "Tomorrow we have to get up early and start trying to help your sister."
She sighed.
"I suppose you're right-"
"Do you have pajamas or a nightgown?"
"No," she said with a laugh. "I've been laboring under the delusion that such things are hopelessly square."
"I'll lend you a pair of mine...."
"I don't need them. Really. They'd probably only annoy me. I'm in the habit of sleeping in the raw."
"Whatever you say," he replied gently. "I'll wait in the bathroom while you peel off and climb into bed."
"I'm not really that modest. If you'll just turn your back, it'll only take a second."
He smiled and gathered the dishes from the table. While he was stacking them in the kitchen, she slipped the dress over her head and climbed between the sheets.
Then he went to the closet and took a blanket down from the shelf. He was making himself a bed on the couch when she felt a strange longing, a yearning sensation of tenderness and affection.
She wanted to give herself to Kenny out of appreciation for the kindness he had shown her. She wanted to lie in his arms and get to know him better.
She tried to speak, then she swallowed dryly, knowing that her voice would quaver.
"Kenny-" It was almost a whisper.
He turned around and looked at her with warmth and sympathy in his soft gray eyes.
"What?"
She swallowed and lowered her gaze. Her face was actually flushed with embarrassment.
"I don't want to sleep alone," she murmured. "And I don't want you to have to sleep alone either."
"It's not very pleasant," he replied gently. "I know. I've done a lot of it the last few years...."
She felt her body trembling beneath the sheets, throbbing from the wild pulse of excitement that had suddenly come over her. She wanted him, and there was no denying it. She wanted him more than she had ever wanted another man in her life. And she knew that this time it would be something different, not the wanton coupling of two bodies for pure, physical pleasure.
"Come to bed with me...."
His eyes looked softly at her.
"You're making the first move?"
"Yes," she murmured, nodding her head.
He didn't rush to her, but very deliberately refolded the blanket and put it back on the shelf. Then he turned out the lights and undressed silently beside the bed.
When he crawled beneath the sheets, she felt a shudder run the length of her spine. The warm contact of his body to hers caused her to gasp and cling to him.
He slipped his arm around her waist and the other beneath her back, moving very slowly and gently as though he were afraid of startling or frightening her.
She felt his hand move caressingly up her side until it found her bare breast. His fingers squeezed gently, sending waves of tingling pleasure along her back and into every part of her trembling body.
The room, which had appeared dark as a cave the moment the lights went out, was beginning to brighten. She could see Kenny's face now in the pale light that filtered through the lattice work of the wooden shutters.
There was tenderness written on his face, not the fierce grimace of lust. She reached up and stroked his cheek, then pulled his head down to her.
Their lips touched tentatively at first, and then his mouth closed over hers. It was a warm kiss, full of feeling. For a long time he caressed her lips gently, and then his tongue moved out and sought to enter her mouth.
She opened her lips to him. Their tongues touched delicately, then almost fiercely as a quick passion mounted in both of them.
His hands moved up and down her naked body as his lips clung to hers, warm and firm. She felt a shudder course through him when his hand found and closed over her breast.
His lips were moving against hers, nibbling as they would nibble at ripe fruit. His tongue slipped once more through her lips, joined her tongue in her mouth.
Finally he pulled away and looked down at her as she lay on her back beneath him, trembling in anticipaiion.
"I do want you, Kenny," she whispered.
"And I want you, Elaine. I wanted you the first moment I saw you. But only if you were willing...."
"I'm willing now," she murmured. "You made me willing by not trying to take advantage of me."
He stared down at her for a moment, lost in deep contemplation. Then he drew the covers down carefully until her breasts were exposed to his view.
For a fraction of a second Elaine moved to cover herself with her arms, feeling a shyness that she had never felt with other men. And then she knew that it was right that he should see her, and she lifted her arms above her head, breathing deeply to raise her breasts into two jutting peaks, proud of the adoration she saw in his eyes.
Kenny stared down at the fullness of her breasts, at the smooth white texture, the crowning nipples of delicate pink. He looked for a long time, getting his fill, while she reached up and stroked his cheek with tenderness.
"They're lovely," he murmured at last, "Do you really like them, Kenny?"
He nodded, swallowing hard. Then he reached down with his hand and took her right breast, cupping it in his palm, lifting it a little as he squeezed with his fingers. Then he rubbed and massaged it with a rotary motion of his hand, stroking the nipple to hardness.
"I love that," she gasped. "Please don't stop-"
"I won't, Elaine."
"Kiss them, darling."
He made a sound in his throat, a kind of suppressed sigh. And then he lowered his head.
She gasped at the first contact of his lips on the shivering, excited nipple of the breast he had been caressing with his hand.
She reached up quickly and clung to his neck, forcing his open mouth harder against her feverish flesh.
As he kissed first one breast and then the other, stabbing the nipples into greater hardness with the point of his tongue, he squeezed them at the same time with his fingers, shaping the soft mounds, forming them into peaks over which he closed his eager lips.
The sensation was almost more than she could stand. She had a desire to give him pleasure as well, to increase his passion to the extent of her own.
Pulling one arm from around his neck, she reached down across the bare skin of his middle. A low moan came from his lips as he continued to tease and caress her breasts.
Shifting his body, he twisted to give her hand better access as it caressed him with a slow, deliberate rhythm.
Kenny gasped in response to the things she was doing to him with her tormenting hand. He commenced to bite the nipple of her breast, slowly and deliberately, causing her to tighten the grip of her hand in response.
He bit her nipple harder, ran his tongue around it in quick circles that sent delicious waves of electric excitement into the very depths of her.
With both hands he took her breasts and caressed them as his lips continued the devouring kisses that made her ache with passion, set her body on fire.
"I love that," she gasped.
His only response was to open his mouth wider, engulf more.
Her hand still gripped him, causing his lust to twist in excited maneuvers. She squeezed tighter with her fingers, which caused his body to shudder.
"You're sweet," he gasped, pulling his lips away from her. "You're beautiful, Elaine. Everything about you is beautiful...."
"Oh, Kenny," she sighed, sliding her arms around his neck, holding him close to her.
"This is good," he whispered against her ear. "Just the two of us. There's nothing wrong with this, Elaine."
"It's heavenly, Kenny," she replied.
She felt his hands come alive, slip up and down her body, along her sides, pressing her legs. His fingers slid under and squeezed the soft plumpness of her hips.
She felt shudder after shudder of desire course through her in continuous rippling waves.
She clung to his head, covered his face with kisses. At the same time her hips churned and tossed against the weight of his body, seeking him, hungry for him to begin to consummate the lovely, flaming passion that she felt.
He flung his arms around her, covered her mouth with his, smothered her with kisses.
Their bodies were twisting and churning violently in the ageless rhythm of love. Still her legs were together. Soon!
Yet she wanted to give in to him, to loosen her hold and join with him. Never in her life had she wanted so much to surrender to a man.
Slowly, naturally, she began to move her legs, felt him drop.
"Now," she whispered against his ear. "Love me now, Kenny. Take me now...."
"Yes, darling," he breathed in reply.
He moved his questing hand above hers. For a moment they looked into each other's eyes, both of them trembling with passion and desire.
After what seemed to her an unbearable moment of time, he lowered his body, seeking hers. She felt the warm contact.
And then he took her.
Her arms encircled him, tightened around his neck. He began to move his body, gently at first, then gradually faster. Until at last he was furiously to her, budding her passion into a brilliant flame.
"Oh, darling," she panted.
And then she cried aloud. For a moment he paused, fearing that he had hurt her. But she pushed then to meet him, a smile of contentment on her face. He moved with her then with increasing frenzy.
"Darling-darling," she cried insanely. "All so good. I've never enjoyed love so much. Never...."
She felt the panting of his breath as he lowered his face against hers. She heard the thrum of the bedsprings beneath them as the bed rocked and shook in an age-old rhythm.
And then it happened in the most perfect way possible-for both of them at the same instant She felt a blazing flame scorching her innermost depths, and at the same time saw him shudder within her circling arms.
And then it was over and they were floating, falling, drifting into a bottomless pit of exhaustion and welcome sleep.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Elaine awoke in the morning in the strange bed, feeling the presence of a stranger beside her. And it was like a hundred other mornings in a hundred other beds. The same old feelings of remorse and self-disgust were welling up inside her, filling her with bitterness.
And then she turned her head to look at the sleeping man beside her. All at once she sensed that something was different this time, that for once there existed more between them than a one-night interlude in the eternal search for kicks.
They hadn't gone to bed together for kicks. There was a lot more than just physical attraction between them. This man was Kenny Ricketts, and though she had only known him one night, she knew him better, understood him more completely than any man she had ever given herself to.
She knew that this was true for herself, yet she had no way of knowing what last night had meant to him. She could only guess. She could only hope.
He seemed different, yet she had been fooled before. Maybe she was wrong once more. Maybe he had seen in her an easy mark and taken her to his room, certain of the outcome, despite the promise he had made that he wouldn't force her.
He hadn't needed to force her. She had been more than willing, once the need had seized her. She lay staring at the sleeping man while her mind seethed with doubts.
Then he awoke slowly, rolled over and smiled at her. Some of the doubts went away. There was something different about Kenny. A kindness, a tolerance born of wisdom. Probably the results of his near-fatal accident in the airplane and the long months spent in a hospital.
His hand reached over and gently stroked her cheek, then grasped her head and pulled her to him. It was a tender kiss, a mingling of mouths that went on for a long time.
Then he sat up.
"Hey, it's late. We'd better get up and go check on your sister."
For a moment she had forgotten. And then the old panic seized her again. From the fierce, dope-glazed expression in Warren Lasswell's eyes last night as he peered out at her, she wondered if she weren't already too late.
But they had to try. They had to see what could be done to save Brenda.
She threw back the covers and jumped quickly to the floor. Kenny rolled off the other side of the bed. They faced each other for a moment, both of them naked, and there was not the slightest embarrassment.
And then she pulled on the dress, quickly, slipped on a pair of shoes she had taken from the suitcase. While she combed her hair, Kenny fixed a pot of coffee.
They had toast and coffee, then quickly went down to the street and headed for Warren Lasswell's house. At the corner Kenny stopped and unlocked a car that was parked at the curb.
"Hop in, Elaine," he said. "We might as well take my heap and get there quicker."
It was a Plymouth sedan that rattled continuously as they bounded over the cobblestone streets. Elaine was soon lost in the tangled maze of winding streets as Kenny seemed to turn at almost every corner.
In the daytime the town looked much different than it had at night. It was a sleepy little town built on the side of a mountain. There were church bells ringing in the distance, sandle-clad peasants driving burros. At one corner she saw two painters with their easels erected in the street.
Kenny stopped beside a high wall, and Elaine recognized the door where she had seen Warren Lasswell last night. They both got out of the car.
The knocker sounded loud in the morning stillness as Kenny banged it several times. There was no response. He knocked again.
They stood for five minutes, and nobody came to the door. Elaine felt a chill of apprehension run up her spine. The place was too quiet.
"Somebody should show up after all that racket," Kenny said to her.
"Could we climb over the wall?"
"It wouldn't be easy. Did you notice the top?"
When she looked up she discovered that there was a continuous ledge of broken bottles stuck in cement. Sharp shards of glass that would cut anybody who tried to climb the wall.
"I guess that's out," she said numbly.
Kenny knocked again and they waited.
And then they heard the sound of footsteps behind them. They turned and saw a ragged, skinny man, who looked like a beachcomber with a blond beard, coming across the street toward them.
"Kenny-" he hissed, motioning to them. "Man, you'd better cut out from there fast. That place is poison...."
"What do you mean?" Kenny said curiously.
"Get in the car and roll, man. I'll fill you in later."
Elaine was impressed by the frantic seriousness of the man. She pulled open the car door. When the three of them were seated, Kenny pulled away from the curb and headed back toward town.
"This is John Weber," Kenny said to Elaine.
"Junkie John," the man said sadly. "I'm a two-bit dope freak with a sixty dollar habit. I ain't got many miles to go, so nothing much can happen to me. But I don't want to see you kids get in a jam for something you didn't have nothing to do with...."
"What's the scoop?" Kenny said impatiently.
"A guy cashed in there last night."
Elaine caught her breath. She felt her insides contract, her knees begin to tremble.
"At Warren Lasswell's?" she said.
"Check," the man said, looking up at her with watery eyes. "He's probably still there, and the fuzz hasn't found out yet. But they will. Everybody there last night cut out and left him lying on the floor."
"Were you there?" Elaine asked.
"All the way. Like man, it was a real blast. This Lasswell, he's richer than any man ought to be. He invited every junkie in town. I went because he was giving away goods, and I got a habit to feed...."
"Was a blonde girl there?" Elaine asked eagerly. "Her name is Brenda-"
"The crazy chick in black tights and nothing on top? She was walking around like a mummy with her boobs hanging out...."
"She's my sister," Elaine said with a catch in her voice.
"Too bad," the junkie said, blinking his eyes. "Was she shooting it up?"
"She wouldn't have been there if she wasn't Man, I never seen such a blast."
"How did the man die?"
"Man, it was crazy. The whole scene. This Lasswell is way-out. A real weirdo. He had this big wheel of fortune set up on the wall and there was a deck of the stuff on every number. I never seen so much goods in my life. If I had it I wouldn't be giving it away. I'd stash it good and live it up for twenty years. You don't know where I could get a fix? Man, I'm sick already. And when this trouble busts loose, this town will dry up like a cinder in hell...."
"What happened to the man?" Elaine said impatiently.
"What man?"
The unshaven junkie sitting between Kenny and Elaine began to twitch nervously. His eyes and nose were running. He clutched his middle as if he were in great pain.
"Yeah, the man-" he said, nodding his head. "Lasswell didn't tell us one of the decks was uncut. It was his own private little joke. Playing God, he was. Using us poor junkies for his sport...."
"And the man took a fix of uncut heroin?" Elaine said with a pained gasp.
Junkie John nodded his head sadly.
"That's the way it happened," he said with a shudder. "This poor guy, I don't even know his name, he took a geez and went out. Number twenty-three on the wheel. Oh, Lord, and I had twenty-two just before him. The wheel of fortune. Kinda makes you wonder about the meaning of life...."
"And everybody left?" Elaine said fearfully. "Warren Lasswell and my sister?'
"Everybody-" the junkie said with a ponderous nod. "And left that poor guy lying there on the floor. Didn't even try to bring him around. But if I was going to go, I'd just as soon it was from an over jolt. They say you don't feel a thing. Just go floating off like an angel...."
"Do you know where they went?" Elaine said.
"Who?"
"Warren Lasswell and my sister."
"They took off for New York in his Jag. Said he wasn't going to sweat it out in a Mexican pokey. But he's got the money to make it. The rest of us got to disappear into the woodwork and sweat it out cold turkey, cause this town will dry up now as sure as I'm sittin' here."
Elaine clenched her hands into frantic knots on her knees. She fought to hold back the tears as long as she could, and then they came out in a gush. She covered her face and tried to stifle her sobs.
"Where do you want to go, John?" she heard Kenny say.
"Like man, where can I go? I've had it. But I hope I've given you a hand."
"You have, John," Kenny said impatiently. "We appreciate it. Would you want to get out up town?"
"Any place will do. I'm just bumming around."
Elaine felt the car stop. She opened the door and let the junkie slide out. Then she sat down again, tears still streaming down her face.
She felt the touch of Kenny's hand as it rested gently on her knee.
"Don't worry, Elaine. Well find your sister."
"But how?" she sobbed. "She's on her way to New York with that monster."
"We'll follow them."
She looked over at him.
"You can't go all that way. I won't let you-"
"I'm ready to move on," he said with a smile. "This place was beginning to bug me. I'll be glad to get back to the big city for a while."
"I can't let you do it, Kenny," she said, gripping his arm. "I'll get there by myself...."
"How?"
"I'll hitchhike. That's the way I got here."
"And after you get there, how will you find Warren Lasswell and your sister?"
"I'll find them somehow," she said hesitantly.
"Have you ever been there before?"
"No," she admitted reluctantly.
"Then you'd never be able to find them alone. You'll need my help. I know my way around. I know where to make connections. I'm acquainted with a lot of the pushers. And they know me along 'the street'. They won't clam up if I start asking questions."
She stared at him wide-eyed
"How do you know so much about it?"
"Because," he said gently, laying his hand on her knee. "I had the habit once myself. Picked it up in the hospital when they gave me stuff to kill the pain. I stayed on it when I got out. I was really hooked, so I stayed in New York where I could get the stuff,"
"But you're not on it now?"
"No," he assured her. "And I never will be again. I broke the habit two years ago. I came down here to get away from the temptation. But they've got pushers here too. I managed to stay off it. But I know the problem, and if you want to save your sister you need someone like me."
"I do need you, Kenny," she said tiredly. "If you really want to help-"
He smiled at her then and pulled her closer to him with a gentle pressure of his arm around her waist. She leaned against his shoulder, ready to surrender herself to his firm, guiding protection.
She needed him more than she had ever realized. Without him she didn't think she could go on.
"You're wonderful, Kenny," she whispered.
"You're pretty great yourself, Elaine. I think we both need each other. What's say we hang together for a while and see how it works out?"
"Yes," she sighed, tilting her face, awaiting his kiss.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It took Kenny fifteen minutes to gather his belongings and move out of his pad. Then they climbed up out of San Miguel on the winding road up the mountain. Once above it they took the highway to Dolores Hidalgo and headed north for the border.
They took turns driving, day and night. One slept on a makeshift bed in back while the other stayed at the wheel. In this way they made good time. At the end of the second day they had arrived in Shreveport, Louisiana, both of them so beat that they had to spend their last dollars on a motel room so they could rest.
After sleeping a few hours, they both awoke in the night aware of each other in the bed. At first Elaine was not sure Kenny was awake, but she needed to be close to him, to feel his arms around her.
Tentatively she slid her body closer to his. They were both in the nude because they had both collapsed in the bed after a shower which they took together.
Neither one had been able to keep awake, but now, after the initial exhaustion had been somewhat relieved by a few hours sleep, she felt the stirring of a need deep within her relaxed body.
At the first contact, Kenny didn't seem to respond. So she burrowed her hips deeper against his warm legs.
She felt a molten glow suffuse her whole body as his arm slipped around her waist. His hands pressed firmly against her middle, pulling her tighter against him.
For a moment they lay like that, sensing the desire which they both felt. Then, when he moved one hand upward and held her shivering breasts, they felt more tender and sensitive than they ever had before.
It seemed almost like a dream to her, and yet, she was aware that it wasn't a dream, that it was truly happening to her. His strength was a reality pressing firmly, almost insistently against her legs.
Her body flinched and stirred.
He kissed the back of her neck very gently. They were two lovers in the night, lying naked together without fear or shame.
She moved her body again, welcoming him. And then he twisted his hips very slightly, pressed against her.
She trembled as he struck solidly at her. She pushed out her hips to receive him, squirming at the pressure of his hands on her breasts.
Slowly, almost dream-like, he stirred his lust, pressing harshly and then retreating. Pressing and retreating-a gentle, perfect lover.
His hand moved down to her middle, the fingertips came in contact with the smooth satiny skin, caressed tenderly.
"Oh, Kenny," she sobbed.
He kissed her neck, put his lips against her ear. His breath was warm and exciting.
"I love you, Elaine," he whispered.
"I love you too, Kenny," she sighed. "I love you, and I want to give myself to you this way."
She rolled her hips gently on the bed, squeezing him with the flexing of the body. Her breasts throbbed piquantly beneath his caressing hands.
The nipples rose to hardness, straining as he pinched them with his gentle touch.
He moved his straining body, forcing himself at her. She gasped and reached back with her frantic hands, pulling at his body. They worked together with increasing passion.
"Hold me, darling," she moaned. "Love me more. Don't ever stop making love to me-"
Slowly gliding down on the bed, Kenny moved lower, churned his body as he drove to her. And suddenly she welcomed him.
His arms encircled her as she gave a low sob of pleasure-pain.
They had awakened together in the night, found each other. And now he was mastering her completely, driving against her with frantic hunger, driving them both toward completion.
Then it was happening to her and she shrieked with joy as she saw his body shudder and arch as he drove away.
They mounted to the peak of passion, to the very top, and trembled there together in wild ecstasy. Yet this was more than mere release. This was the pleasure of a man and woman united by love, who needed each other, who belonged to each other forever.
And then it was over, and they sank slowly back into the deep shadows of sleep, still clinging one to the other....
The next morning she awoke with a feeling of utter peace and contentment. Kenny was already up and dressed, sitting in a chair by the bed, looking down at her with a soft, gentle expression in his eyes.
"Good morning, darling," he said with a smile.
"You should have wakened me," she replied. "It's time we were on the road again."
"You were sleeping so peacefully, I decided to wait."
Quickly she rolled out of bed and went up to him. She sat on his lap and kissed him for a moment before she hurried into her clothes.
They had coffee and doughnuts at a truck stop care at the edge of Shreveport before they rolled down the highway. It had been their last fifty cents. The gas tank was half empty. The situation was growing desperate.
"If we had a hose and a can we could siphon gas from somebody's tank," Kenny said. "But it's pretty hard to do in the daytime."
"And we don't have a hose and can," Elaine added with a smile.
"So we'll have to think of something else...."
"We might pick up a hitchhiker who'll share expenses," she suggested.
"Now there's a thought."
They drove for another thirty minutes before they saw a hitchhiker. Then there was a kid with a college sweater and a battered suitcase standing on the curb at the edge of a town they passed through.
Kenny slammed on the brakes and opened the back door for the kid to hop in.
"You got any money?"
"Why?" the kid said suspiciously.
"We've got a car, but no gas. You buy the gas and we can all get on down the road."
"All right," the kid said reluctantly.
He filled the gas tank, and it carried them as far as the next hitchhiker. In that manner they made it clear into Kentucky. And then they managed to find a hose and can in a junk yard beside the highway.
Driving all night and siphoning gas from parked cars in the smaller towns they passed through, they made it into eastern Pennsylvania by daylight the next day. And they had a full gas tank as well as a full can of gas in the back seat. Enough to get them into New York City.
Kenny decided that Warren Lasswell, being the arty type, would probably stay in Greenwich Village, so he headed there as soon as they came out of the Holland Tunnel.
Their first stop was a coffee house near Washington Square, where Kenny knew a couple of pushers who hung out in that vicinity. They were flat broke, so they had to stand on the sidewalk outside.
In about twenty minutes, a weedy-looking little man with a three-day growth of black beard shuffled by. Kenny reached out and grabbed his arm.
The little man cowered instinctively, and then he grinned when he recognized Kenny.
"Man, you liked to scare me out of my skin."
"How are you, Benny?"
"Like man, I'm sick, It's been two days since I've had a smak. I'm trying to wrangle the money now, and it ain't easy, I'll tell you."
"Wish I could donate," Kenny said sympathetically. "But right now I'm busted myself, until my pension check comes in...."
"Man, if you could just come through with a couple of bucks, I'd have enough for a ten-dollar bundle. It wouldn't help my habit much, but it's better than this slow death."
"I would if I could, Benny. Maybe you can help me out I'll pay you later...."
"What do you need, friend?"
"Ever heard of Warren Lasswell?" Benny squinted his watery eyes, rubbed his bearded chin. Then he shook his head slowly from side to side.
"It don't ring a bell."
"I've got to find him," Kenny said. "The sooner the better."
"Is he a tattoo?" Kenny nodded.
"And he's got money to burn."
"Then he won't be buying the 'brown stuff," Benny said thoughtfully. "I know just the pusher to ask. He deals in top grade stuff. You wait here until I come back."
They watched him shuffle up the sidewalk and disappear around the corner. Kenny slipped an arm around Elaine's waist and gave her a gentle squeeze.
"Benny's a nice guy. He'll help us out if he can. I've done him favors."
"I hope he can find Brenda," Elaine said sorrowfully.
"It might take time," Kenny said, smiling softly at her. "What we need is coffee while we wait. I know where I can borrow a couple of bucks. You stay here and watch for Benny. I'll be back...."
She watched him go with a sinking feeling in her chest. Already she depended on him, and it frightened her to be alone in the strange city without him for even a short while.
She stood with her back to a building and watched the parade of beatniks and oddballs passing by. There were the same type that could be seen m Sausalito and San Miguel and every art colony in the world. The cool, bored girls in black sweaters and toreadors, the bearded wonders with faraway looks in their eyes. Once they had impressed her as being profound, but they usually babbled like idiots when they opened up on art or life or the way to unplug the kitchen sink.
There were the perverts and the Lesbians walking hand in hand down the sidewalk. The little goateed men with canes who seemed to have stepped out of another era.
To them all, conformity was a dirty word. Yet they were conforming just as much in their own way and for just the same reasons as the flannel-suited Madison Avenue executives.
She wondered how she could ever have been impressed by such a bunch of phonies. There were true artists, but they didn't have to disguise themselves like this.
She had been a phony herself, but since she'd met Kenny that had all changed. Maybe she and Kenny would be together only a few weeks or months before he drifted off again, but she knew he was good for her.
He had made her realize many things. And now she knew what she wanted out of life. To work hard at becoming a good painter. And especially she knew what she didn't want-this crazy merry-go-round she had been riding on.
In five minutes Kenny returned smiling broadly. He took her hand and led her into the coffee house.
"It didn't take long," he said happily. "A bartender up the street is a good friend of mine. He loaned me ten until my check comes in."
They sat at a table near the window and drank espresso. They finished two cups before Benny returned with another man, a sallow-faced character with bags under his eyes.
"This is Moe," Benny said, pulling up a chair.
Moe borrowed a chair from the adjoining table and sat down on it with his arms draped over the back. He sniffed and stared at Kenny.
"What do you need, friend?"
"You know a Warren Lasswell?"
Moe nodded his head gravely.
"I know him," he said noncommittally.
"Is he in town?"
"He was this morning."
"How do you know?"
Moe blinked his eyes and then grimaced uncomfortably as he looked at Benny.
"I told you he's all right," Benny said impatiently. "He's a friend of mine."
"Well-" Moe sniffed and wiped his nose on his finger. "I just sold him some stuff, not thirty minutes ago.
"Where?" Elaine said eagerly.
"She on the level too?" Moe said uneasily, shifting his eyes to Benny's face.
"She's with him, ain't she?"
"O. K., if you say so." Moe swallowed, bobbing his Adam's apple. "I went up to his place. A customer with his kind of money, you gotta humor."
"Where does he live?" Kenny asked.
"Over by Sheridan Square. I don't know the number for sure, but his Jag's sittin' in front."
"Is he still there?"
"If he ain't dead already...." Elaine gripped the edge of the table and sat forward uneasily. She was filled with a terrible foreboding. Her heart seemed to leap up, threatening to choke her.
"What do you mean by that?" she said in a hoarse voice that was barely audible.
"Well," Moe said, blinking his eyes. "This guy's a real nut. I've known him a long time. He's a customer of mine when he's in town. He's always been pretty far-out, but today he really acts like he's flipped his lid."
"What's he doing?"
"Well, for one thing, he insisted on the uncut stuff. Wouldn't take nothing else. I had a bundle that hadn't been stamped on, so I sold it to him. Got a good price, because he can afford it."
Elaine felt her body grow cold. She sensed what was in Warren Lasswell's mind, and yet she tried to tell herself that it wasn't happening.
"Did he say what he wanted with uncut H?" she asked weakly.
Moe nodded his head dismally.
"He told me after I sold it to him. I wanted it back then, but he run me off. I got to protect myself. I can't get messed up with the trouble he's going to make...."
"What did he say?" Elaine said frantically, her throat tightening with despair.
"He had a long story to tell. I never seen him talk so much. He left Mexico in a hurry after a guy took an overjolt and went out...."
"I know about that," Elaine said impatiently, gripping the table. "What else?"
"Last night he run down a woman and killed her dead. You should see the front end of that Jag. He's pretty shook up because he knows the fuzz will track him down, and that's one rap his money won't buy him out of. So, he's playing this game. See? Russian roulette, he calls it. He's got two decks, and one of them's the straight stuff I sold him. Man, that guy is way out...."
"Go on," Kenny said.
Moe blinked his watery eyes and sniffed his nose. He shook his head in amazement.
"He's holding off-see? Just as long as he can. Him and this girl. He's got her crawling on the floor, begging for a fix. He's just laughing at her. Mean louse."
"Is she a blonde?" Elaine said, grasping at straws.
"That's the girl," Moe replied with a nod. "Young gal. Good looker too ... So he's got these two decks taped to tie phonograph table, going round and round, just like a roulette wheel. There's no way to tell which one is the overdose...."
Elaine jumped up from the table.
"Let's go, Kenny," she cried, holding back the sobs.
"Don't you know the house number?" Kenny said.
"Near Sheridan Square. You'll see the Jag in front," Moe said with a shrug.
"Let's go," Kenny said, grabbing Elaine's hand.
Kenny roared the motor, spun away from the curb and rolled up the street in second. He never shifted out of second, never slowed down at the corners. And then they were braking to a halt beside the silver Jaguar.
As Elaine burst out of Kenny's car she noticed the smashed front end of Warren Lasswell's Jaguar. The hood was dented and the headlight on the right side was broken.
Kenny was already running up a short flight of stairs. He stopped in the alcove and read the names on the boxes, then he ran on. Elaine followed, taking two steps at a time, keeping at Kenny's heels.
Then they were running down a long hallway. Kenny twisted the knob of a door and hit it with his shoulder. It was locked. He hit it again, cracking the wooden paneling.
As Kenny drew back to slam at the door again, it came open.
Warren Lasswell stood calmly smiling at them, a blunt automatic in his hand.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Welcome to the party," he said with a twisted smile. "I'm sorry you missed our little gathering in San Miguel. But of course you weren't invited."
"Where's Brenda?" Elaine said hoarsely.
"Your sister Brenda is in good hands, my dear," Warren Lasswell said.
He blinked his dark eyes, which more than ever reminded her of the eyes of a snake. And then he parted his lips and gave a cynical laugh.
Elaine looked beyond Warren's head into the room, but she couldn't see any sign of Brenda. There was a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.
What if they were too late?
"Brenda!" she called.
For a moment there was no sound in the room, and then footsteps shuffled slowly across the floor. Elaine waited for Brenda to appear in the door, but the sound of movement stopped.
The room remained empty behind Warren Lasswell.
"Are you all right, Brenda?" Elaine called, her heart pounding furiously within her chest.
"Go away-"
Brenda's voice came from somewhere in the room. There was a lifeless quality in it, a sound of utter dejection. Like a voice from the tomb.
Elaine knotted her hands in panic. Her mind was suddenly blank. She had to do something to save Brenda, but nothing came to her.
The gun in Warren Lasswell's hand looked deadly and menacing. He held it nervously, though his eyes were steady, glancing from her to Kenny. The barrel of the gun was pointed directly at Kenny's chest.
Elaine wanted to rush Warren Lasswell, but she didn't dare for fear Kenny would be killed.
"Do you really think you could use that thing on a man?" Kenny spoke up at last.
"I'd feel no regret whatsoever," Warren Lasswell replied coolly.
"I think you're bluffing," Kenny said, taking a step forward through the open door.
Warren Lasswell moved back, still holding the gun aimed at Kenny. His eyes glinted fiercely for an instant, and then he spread a bland smile on his lips.
"I hope you don't try me, young man. You're standing on a very valuable Persian rug, and I'd hate to discolor it with your blood."
For a moment they stood silently facing each other, Warren Lasswell and Kenny. Elaine move slowly up to Kenny and clutched his arm for fear he might foolishly try to jump Warren Laswell. Elaine knew him better than Kenny did, and she had no doubt that he would shoot at the slightest threatening movement Kenny might make.
"He's dangerous," Elaine murmured, clinging desperately to Kenny's arm.
Kenny stood motionless for a moment, the muscles in his body twitching with anger.
Warren Lasswell wove a little circle with the point of the gun, which was aimed at a spot near Kenny's heart. His other hand slithered with a serpentine movement into the loose sleeve of his Chinese robe.
Kenny edged a few inches closer.
Warren Lasswell stiffened and his hypnotic eyes followed the movement.
"Do you want to become a dead hero?"
"Let the girl go," Kenny muttered. "Haven't you done her enough harm already?"
"Brenda goes with me," Warren Lasswell said with a weary sigh. "Wherever I go, she will accompany me-in life or in death."
"You're a madman," Kenny gasped.
Warren Lasswell gave him a superior smile.
"On the contrary, I'm the sanest one among us. Only fools would struggle against death. Such a beautiful thing-a dream within a sleep. The closest thing to it on this earth is an injection in the veins...."
"Mainline," Kenny muttered. "To use a crude expression of the streets...."
"You're sick in the head," Kenny said contemptuously. "A two-bit junkie with delusions of grandeur."
A world-weary sigh came from Warren Lasswell's lips. As he eyed Kenny, he ran his hand delicately across the round black topknot of hair that rested in the center of his skull, giving him a strangely oriental appearance.
"Young man, I don't know you at all, except that you happen to be with Brenda's sister. But I want to warn you, I dislike insults of the type you have been making. And I just might decide to shoot you whether you make another move toward me or not."
Kenny knotted his fists at his sides in nervous frustration. Elaine clung to him, sorry now that she had brought him here. Brenda was almost beyond hope now. She didn't want Kenny to get hurt trying to help her.
"You let that girl go," Kenny muttered threateningly. "Or I'll bring the law on you...."
"Really?" Warren Lasswell replied, blinking his black, deepset eyes. "I'm sure the law will be here soon enough without your help. But on another matter entirely. You see, I killed a woman last night. Not intentionally, of course. The fool crossed in front of me, even after I blew my horn. It was very messy, and I dislike that sort of thing. She put an unsightly dent in my automobile..
"And it doesn't bother you that she's lying on a slab in the morgue?" Kenny said with amazement.
Warren Lasswell shrugged wearily and pulled with his pale white fingers at the knot tied in the black sash of his Chinese robe.
"Why should it?"
"You sick beast," Elaine said huskily, choking back tears of rage.
Warren Lasswell fixed her with his dark eyes like a snake hypnotizing a bird.
"Think what you like, my dear, with your stunted peasant's mind. I'm sorry for you. You had talent, and I could have done so much to help you realize something from it."
"The way you helped Brenda?" she screamed hysterically.
Something writhed within her stomach until she thought she was going to be sick with anger and disgust. She jerked her hands up, the fingers clawed, ready to spring on Warren Lasswell and tear out his maddening eyes. But Kenny caught her by the wrist and held her back.
"Easy, Elaine," he whispered.
"Let me go-" she cried, struggling to free herself. "The slimy beast. Can't you see what he's done to my sister?"
"We'll think of something," Kenny said soothingly. "But he'll only shoot you if you try to jump him...."
"Very wise counsel," Warren Lasswell said blandly. "I hope you can keep her under control. If there's one thing I abhor, it's a hysterical woman."
"You pig-you swine," Elaine screamed at him. "If you touch my sister once more, I'll kill you...."
Her heart was pounding inside her like a triphammer, driving a wild pulse into her brain. She gasped for breath and clenched her fingers convulsively.
"What are you going to do to her sister?" Kenny asked grimly.
Warren Lasswell gave him a bland smile with his small puckered mouth and took two quick steps backward into the room. Still holding the barrel of the gun pointed at Kenny's chest, he gave a low courtious bow.
"If you'll be so kind as to step inside, I'll permit you to watch...."
Elaine shot a quick, questioning glance at Kenny. He gave her a smile of reassurance and, taking her by the elbow, led her into the room.
She glanced around quickly and saw that the apartment was furnished much like the house in Sausalito, with oriental furnishings and prints on the wall, along with a few garish paintings in red and yellow that were the kind of nightmare things Warren Lasswell did.
Then she saw Brenda.
She was completely nude, sitting on the floor by a low black lacquered oriental table, her knees drawn up under her chin.
"Brenda-" Elaine gasped fearfully. "What has he done to you? Are you all right?"
Brenda stared at her for a moment without recognition, and then glanced coolly away. There was still a trace of her youthful beauty, her round lovely face beneath the golden blonde hair. And yet there was a haggard look about her eyes. They seemed like the eyes of someone much older, a dissolute woman twice her age.
The full impact of what Warren Lasswell had done to her sister hit Elaine suddenly like the blow of a fist in her middle. She caught her breath, and then she sobbed loudly, a deep coughing sob that shook her entire frame.
She was hardly aware of Kenny's arm as it slipped around her shoulder, comforting her.
Brenda sat alone, hugging her knees, looking blandly about the room as if she were in a dream. For a moment her eyes rested again on Elaine's face, and then they darted away nervously.
As Elaine stared more intently at Brenda, she saw a constant twitch that seemed to ripple over all her body. Brenda sniffed now and then at her runny nose. She clamped her arms tighter around her knees as a violent, convulsive pain seemed to stab at her insides.
"Brenda-" Elaine murmured hoarsely.
Brenda ignored her, showing no indication at all that she had heard her.
Elaine caught her breath, trying to hold back the sobs that were building up inside her, threatening to burst out and overwhelm her with uncontrollable grief.
"Brenda," she said again. "Don't you know what he's doing to you?"
"She knows, the dear child," Warren Lasswell said calmly, standing beside Brenda and facing them with the gun still level in his hand. "She's priceless. I've never had a better subject than your sweet sister."
Elaine moved forward across the room, struggling to free herself from Kenny's restraining hands. She twisted her shoulders, but he held her tighter.
"He's going to kill you, Brenda," Elaine sobbed frantically. "Just like he killed that man in Mexico."
Brenda turned her drooping eyes once more on Elaine, and a violent shudder ran through her body.
"Go away."
"I won't-" Elaine cried hysterically. "Can't you understand what I'm saying?"
"I don't care...."
"You've got to care. Don't you want to live? He's going to kill you with an overdose...."
Brenda's eyes flickered and began to water. She had seemed calm as she sat upon the floor, but now, without warning, she let out a wild, frenzied scream.
"I've got to have it now," she cried. "You've got to give me a fix! Now, damn you! Now! Can't you see I'm coming apart? I can't stand it...."
Brenda was on the floor, crawling on her hands and knees. Reaching up, she caught hold of Warren Lasswell's long robe and clung to it desperately as though it were a raft supporting her in a barren sea.
Elaine sobbed, clutched her hands to her mouth at the sight of what had happened to Brenda.
She sensed a movement beside her and glanced up at Kenny, who was breathing fiercely. His eyes were on Warren Lasswell, blazing with unconcealed anger and hatred.
Elaine sensed what he was going to do, but she was too late to stop him. She grabbed for his arm to hold him back, just as he leaped.
Warren Lasswell's arm straightened like a striking snake and the gun went off. Kenny stopped just a step from him, grabbed for his hip and fell as his legs went rubbery and refused to support him.
He dropped to his knees and continued to move toward the man who had shot him, his arms reaching out to encircle his legs.
Warren Lasswell raised the butt of the gun and brought it down in a wide arc. There was a sound of cracking bone. Elaine screamed. Kenny toppled over in a lifeless heap upon the floor.
Warren Lasswell stood above him with a smirking grin on his cold lips. With the point of his toe he gouged Kenny in the ribs. There was no response.
"I think that will hold him for a while. A rash young man. I expected him to try something sooner or later."
Brenda was still clutching at the robe, making hoarse sounds in her throat. A dribble of mucous ran out of her lips and across her chin.
"Please, Warren, please," she begged. "Give me a jolt now. I've got to have it. I'll do anything you say. Can't you see I'm dying?"
Elaine dropped to her knees and rolled Kenny over onto his back. A cold anguish tore at her insides. She leaned close to his face and detected a faint sound of breathing. His eyes fluttered weakly.
"Kenny-" she sobbed.
She felt his pulse. It was beating lightly. She looked down at his leg, where a large circle of blood was spreading, oozing through his pantsleg just below his hip.
She held his head in her lap and stared coldly at Brenda, who was groveling at Warren LasswelTs feet, kissing his shoes and clinging to his robe.
"Please ... please ... please...." Brenda cried desperately. "I can't stand it...."
Her voice was shrill and frantic. She tossed her head from side to side, flinging her tangled hair Her face was wan and distorted.
"Patience, my dear," Warren Lasswell said softly. "It's time now. You've waited long enough."
Slowly he walked across the room, deliberately turning his back on Elaine, though he still held the gun in his hand. He stopped at the still revolving phonograph and switched it off. Then he leaned over to remove the two decks of heroin from the round table.
"Hurry-hurry," Brenda pleaded, stretching her hand out to him like a beggar asking for alms.
"Patience, my dear," Warren cooed to her. "Can't you see how well I'm fighting it? And I haven't had a fix since the last shot we had together...."
Brenda crawled across the floor toward him, whimpering and clawing at the rug.
"Hurry ... before I go crazy."
"It won't be long now, my dear."
Brenda stood up weakly, clinging to his arm.
"Let me help-"
"You'll only get in the way, dear. Best to sit down and wait patiently while I prepare the hypos."
"Give me mine first," she cried desperately. "No, my dear. That's part of the game." He held
W the two small plastic bags in his hand. "They're so completely mixed up nobody could possibly know which one is the key to everlasting sleep."
There was a sinister hush in his voice as he peered down at the heroin. For the first time Elaine realized how really mad he was. A maniac who had taken advantage of Brenda's innocence and led her to this.
Warren Lasswell glanced down at Elaine on the floor and flourished the gun threateningly at her. Then he went across to the couch and sat down. He opened a lacquer box that stood on the low table in front of the couch and took out a candle in a brass holder.
Brenda hurried over and leaned close, her heavy breathing clearly audible throughout the room.
"Stand back, my dear," Warren Lasswell said. "I want to have a clear view of your sister, in case she gets ideas about trying to stop us."
Brenda moved around the table quickly and sat down on the couch beside him. Her eyes were fixed hungrily on his hands, watching every movement he made.
The gun was on the table now, close to his right hand. Too close for Elaine to consider making a dash for it.
As Elaine watched, numb with helpless dread, Warren Lasswell struck a match with deliberate calm and held it to the candle until it flickered with a steady yellow flame.
"Hurry," Brenda whined, wrapping her arms around her breast, clutching herself tightly.
"It won't be long now, my dear."
Warren Lasswell reached into the lacquer box and took out two hypos. He fitted them together and held the needles in the flames for a moment.
Then he took out two bent spoons and, moving with slow deliberation, emptied a packet into each of them. After that he held them one at a time over the flame until the white powder melted, dissolving with the water.
He filled one hypo from each spoon, adjusted the plungers until a dny bead appeared at the end of the needle. Then with a triumphant glance at Elaine, he held one of the hypos in each hand and turned to Brenda.
She had already taken a small rubber hose from the lacquer box and tied it around her arm above the elbow. She balled her fist, working it until the vein stood up hard and blue in the bend of her elbow.
"Hurry," she begged. "Hurry-"
Warren Lasswell presented Brenda with both hypos, holding them before her.
"Which do you prefer, my dear?"
"Either one-" she fairly screamed at him. "I don't care. Just give me a jolt...."
"I insist that you chose one, dear girl. WTe must play the game properly."
Quickly Brenda nodded her head to the hypo that Warren Lasswell held in his right hand. He laid the other one down on the table. Then, taking the hypo Brenda had chosen, he pushed the tip of the needle against the vein in her arm, calmly and expertly.
Elaine gasped. She felt utterly lost and defeated, sitting on the floor with Kenny's head in her lap. She couldn't have moved an inch at that moment. She was frozen with dread.
Brenda watched Warren Lasswell's hands as he shoved the plunger slowly and emptied the tube. She sighed as he removed the needle from her vein.
"Now, my dear," Warren Lasswell said with a twisted grin. "Pleasant dreams."
Brenda's eyes rolled up, then down again. There was a faraway look in them as her face suddenly took on a new color, an appearance of peaceful calm. She turned to Warren with her mouth slack.
"Thanks, darling," she whispered. "I needed that. Now I feel better...."
"Lie back, my dear," he said softly, taking the rubber hose from around her arm.
Expertly, using only one hand, he tied the hose around his own arm as though he had been doing it for years. He knotted his fist as Brenda had done, pumping up the vein until it was bulging enough to receive the needle.
Then, with a quick jab, he punctured the vein and emptied the hypo. Removing the needle and setting the tube carefully down on the table, he leaned his head upon the back of the couch with a deep sigh of relief.
Brenda's head was back too, and she rocked slowly from side to side, lazily, as though she were in a deep trance. Then her head fell back limply.
Elaine screamed.
Warren stirred drowsily and looked over at Brenda with fluttering eyelids. He smiled a vicious, animal smile and leaned back his head.
They both seemed to be sleeping. Elaine felt her whole body growing cold as she tried to remove Kenny's head from her lap and stand up.
Kenny's eyes came open as his head touched the hard floor. Elaine leaned over him.
"Kenny," she whispered. "Are you all right?"
He tried to sit up, rubbing the back of his head. She pushed him back to the floor.
"Lie still."
"I'm all right," he mumbled dizzily.
But when he tried to sit up he found that he was weaker than he had thought. Elaine grabbed a pillow from a chair and put it under his head.
Then she went over to the couch and looked down at Brenda. She seemed to be in a trance. There was no trace of breathing, no movement anywhere in her body.
Warren Lasswell's eyes fluttered open and then closed. All at once a serene, almost childish smile spread upon his lips, and he pitched forward, sliding across the table, banging heavily upon the floor.
Elaine caught her breath. She went quickly to Brenda and, grabbing her by the hair, began slapping her face.
Brenda's eyes came half open like the eyes of a doll.
"Leave me alone," she muttered thickly. "Can't you see I'm trying to sleep?"
A wild sob caught in Elaine's throat as she sank weakly to the couch beside Brenda.
"Thank God," she cried. "Oh, thank God-"
She had her little sister back; everything would have to be alright now that the monster was dead. She would take care of Brenda, she would bring her back to life, to health.
But what about Kenny?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Elaine sat nervously in the reception room of the big hospital until the nurse finally came and motioned to her with a nod of her head. "You may go in now-"
"Which room is he in?" Elaine said excitedly, jumping up from the hard wooden chair.
"It's just up the hall," the nurse said, smiling. "I'll take you there."
She followed the nurse down the hall, through the open doorway and into the room where Kenny lay smiling in the gleaming white bed.
"Hello, darling," he called gaily. "Kenny-"
She ran to him and felt a tender warmth spring alive inside her as his arms clung to her back, pulled her down close where his lips were waiting.
"Are you all right?" she gasped.
"Sure," he said with a grin. "This was nothing compared to that airplane I got scrambled up in. Just a little bullet they dug out of my leg."
"How's your head?" she asked anxiously, glancing at the bandage that nearly covered his scalp.
"I'll have a headache for a couple of days," Kenny said gaily. "Nothing else-"
Elaine sat down on a chair beside the bed and held his hand in hers.
"How soon will you be out?"
"Couple of days." He grinned and gave her hand a squeeze. "Meanwhile, I want you to stay with a friend. A girl. I've written her address on a piece of paper. It's there on the table."
"And then?" Elaine said hesitantly.
"Then we find a cold-water flat somewhere. It's about all I can afford until I get a steady job. That pension check isn't very big when it comes to supporting two of us."
Elaine caught her breath and blinked to hold the tears back. Kenny had said two of us. She didn't even know what he meant by it, exactly. Whether it was just to be temporary or for life. But right then she didn't care, so long as they would be together in a place of their own.
It was all she dared hope for right now. Good things just didn't come to anybody all at once. And she was content to wait, so long as she knew that he was all right. That he would soon be out of the hospital.
"Where's Brenda?" Kenny asked somberly.
"She's here in the hospital," Elaine replied with a forced smile. "Sleeping it off...."
"They can cure her," Kenny said sympathetically. "If she wants to be cured. And I'm sure she will once she's tapered off. Lucky for her she'd only been hooked a few weeks. That can mean a lot...."
"I know," Elaine said. "I talked to the doctor about her. He says there are several places she can go for a cure, if they can't get her into Lexington."
"We'll do everything we can," Kenny assured her.
The nurse appeared in the doorway carrying a tray piled with covered dishes.
"Dinner time," she said cheerily. "You'll have to leave now, miss."
Elaine squeezed Kenny's hand, kissed him quickly on the lips before she went to the door.
"Bye, darling," she called. "I'll be back as soon as they let me in-"
"Good-bye, Elaine," Kenny called.
And then she was walking lightly down the hallway to the elevators. When she got to the street below she looked at the address of the girl Kenny had given her. The address meant nothing to her, but with the help of a policeman she got on the right subway.
Three days later they moved into the cold-water flat Kenny had promised her. It wasn't the most sumptuous place in the world, but it seemed more like home than any place Elaine had lived in a long, long time.
They carried the suitcases three flights up from the car. Or rather Elaine carried them while Kenny struggled with the lighter items, still limping slightly from the wound in his leg.
It took them only a few minutes to move in, since they had both been traveling light.
Then they stood in the center of the tiny living room and Kenny took her in his arms. She felt a tender glow begin in her stomach and creep through her body.
"You're sweet, Elaine," Kenny whispered against her ear with his warm lips.
"So are you, darling," she murmured.
Her eyes were closed. She felt the caress of his mouth as it touched lightly to hers. Then he was kissing her warmly, with growing intensity.
Her passion leaped up as his hands moved along her back, pressed gently into the soft flesh of her buttocks.
She sighed and ground her hips against him, clinging with her arms around his neck. The kiss went on for nearly a minute, his tongue pushing through her lips, searching for her tongue, mingling with it.
Then his fingers began fumbling with the zipper at the back of her dress, caught hold and pulled. The cloth parted, the dress slid loosely down and circled her feet.
He smiled as he looked down at her.
"Dig the crazy underwear."
"Something new, darling," she murmured. "I put them on especially for you. So you could have the pleasure of taking them off."
"It will be a pleasure indeed," he said grinning.
His hands moved along her spine, stopped at the place where her bra fastened together. Quickly his fingers pulled at the catches, loosened them. The bra fell away, her breasts tumbled out and swung pendulously, awaiting the tender caress of his hands, his lips.
"They're lovely," he said with a deep sigh.
"I'm glad you like them, darling," she replied. "Would you like to kiss them?"
"More than anything else in the world...."
Slowly he lowered his head and pressed his lips against her right breast. She gave a sigh as her desire leaped within her.
Slowly, Elaine began to twist her body as his caress raised her to a peak of emotion. Her hands clung to his head, pressing him against her trembling breasts.
She arched her body. "Don't stop, darling," she sighed. "I love what you're doing. It feels so good-"
At last he pulled his lips away and looked up into her face, his eyes glowing with a warm tenderness.
Then he picked her up without a word and carried her to the bed, where he laid her down gently. She looked up at him, her head on the pillow.
"Quickly, darling," she murmured. "Take off your clothes and make love to me."
Pulling at his clothes, Kenny soon tossed them away. He dropped to the bed beside her and his nearness sent a thrill through her at the first contact, left her trembling with expectation. "Hurry," she breathed.
And for a moment she remembered Brenda's words as she begged Warren Lasswell to stick the needle into her arm. In a way it was the same kind of craving, yet this was natural and that was evil. This was right, so very right, and that was terribly wrong.
That was hell, but this was heaven.
She reached her arms up to Kenny and gathered him to her breast, feeling the warmth of his face upon her soft, heaving body.
"Love me, darling," she whispered feverishly.
"Yes, Elaine."
Together they lay on the bed, clinging to each other, murmuring unintelligible sounds of joy. In each other's arms they became one, climbed to the very peak of passion. And she held him to her with a smile of contentment on her lips.
Perhaps it wouldn't work out forever. Maybe it would. But at least at that moment they were together, and she had something finer than she had ever known before. Something good and wonderful and worth hanging onto. She would work to make it last, and somehow deep in her heart she knew that it would....
