"Joey, oh Joey, I don't want to be a lesbian!" cried Lori. "I hate it ... and yet I can't do without it! Oh, God, what is wrong with us? Queers! The Keller queers! It might have been better if we had gone all the way together!" Lori sobbed, her head on her brothers shoulder. "Mother would just die if she knew," she added.
Joe heard the click of the latch, turning his head he cursed his thoughtlessness in not having locked the door. He gasped as he saw their mother framed in the doorway.
"Mother would just die if she knew what?" Martha Keller asked her children as she entered the room. Crossing the room to place her bag on the table there was no way, no trick of magic that could possibly prevent her from seeing the dozens of obscene photos scattered there.
CHAPTER ONE
The shadow cast by the rear portico of the Grange Hall was safely black. Lori Keller stood vibrantly, arms relaxed at her sides while Paul kissed her furiously. His passion was prominent, his technique boyish. Over his shoulder, Lori could see the rows of parked cars and the moonlit trees around the parking lot. Her brother would be waiting eagerly by one of the two sheds to the right side of the log. Boldly she leaned into Paul's kiss and she let him feel the full length of her quivering body while she teased his lips with a sharp, darting tongue. She half stopped his curling, breast gripping fingers.
"Oh baby, baby!" she breathed. "But not here! Let's walk out there." , "My car?" he pleaded.
Lori slipped her arm around him and pulled toward the sheds. "The lot will be full of kids," she giggled. "Anyway, I like the breeze and trees."
Off the portico, she let his arms circle her shoulders and she made no protest when his fingers slid down the low neck of her gown. Behind them, the seven-piece band filled the Hall with a hot beat and spewed the sensuous music out into the balmy summer air. Lori matched Paul's long step and continued to aim him toward the path around the service sheds. When they were hidden from the Hall by the stucco building, she stopped and melted up to his kiss, her hands going around his shoulders with possessive power. When he let his own eager palms smooth down over her flaring hips, she moved her feet and pressed against him with an arched stance. She was five-feet-six in heels, and Paul Mulky wasn't much taller. She hit him with her hips and felt him surge in boyish response.
"A little further," she whispered, and they moved hip and hip to the break in the brush. The music was abruptly muted by the hedgerow. In a small clearing, Lori stopped again. She dropped her flowing blonde hair against his chest, feeling the button on his shirt with her forehead. Her hands were shaking with suddenly imperative desire as she fumbled at his clothes. It was her second time with Paul, and she knew what to expect. So did he, she thought, and she felt him quiver as her fingers found him with deft satisfaction. He moved when she tugged, turning him so the moonlight flooded his exposed groin.
A minute passed before her practiced fingers drove him to passionate desperation. His hands hauled at the skirt of her gown, dragged it high over her pantiless bottom. She moved close, resuming the mare-like stance, and they swayed together, each fondling the other with frantic passion.
Lori felt her soft flesh being invaded and caressed and the need for more made her move against Paul. She knew their bodies were gleaming, urging things in the bright moonlight, and Paul's breath was an audible, jerky hiss in the nearly soundless night. Lori's left arm clung to his bowed back as the wonderful weakness began to invade her body from the attack of his fingers. Then he became fluttery and Lori turned to evade what she knew he had to do.
"Oh dammit!" he gasped when it happened, and they nearly fell to the ground as his knees sagged.
"There, baby," Lori whispered. "That'll hold you till we leave. Was it okay?"
"I'm dead!" he laughed softly. "You?"
"Okay," she giggled. "Anyway, women can wait!"
"If I had a blanket-"
"I'll wait, honey," Lori laughed, shrugging her gown down again. "Button up, cookie. I need another drink, and anyway, if we're gone too long, someone will miss us!"
They stood close, rearranging their clothes and saying soft things. Lori didn't bother to look around the clearing. She knew her brother was there, somewhere in the shadows. For a moment her desire came back then she settled under the arm of the high school's choice half-back and they strolled back toward the Grange Hall.
"Lori, am I the only one?" he asked boyishly.
"Do you really care, Paul baby?"
He dropped his head in embarrassment. "Well, I think so."
"Cut it, baby. You've hung it in half the girls in school, and you know it. No, you're not the only one, but then I've only known you this well for a few weeks. No one else, I promise, unless you quit me. Okay?"
"We're steady, then?"
Lori stopped and kissed him hard, her full mouth open and moist. They were past the sheds and she no longer cared whether or not Joe could see them. Paul had regained his strength because at eighteen, he had reserves. Lori let him mash against her, then she pushed him away.
"Later. We can stop on the way back to town, baby," she promised. The sudden crash of the music as the band resumed its tempo drew them back to the Hall, arm in arm, eyes shining with the promise of later. Lori felt slightly ill, but it was the sickness of frustrated emotion, and a drink from one of the numerous pocket flasks at the dance would calm her down. Till later.
* * *
Main street ran at right angles to Keller Avenue, and the new Elementary School was called Keller Public, and to the east of town, the old Keller Mine was still a tourist attraction. For the past thirty years, either interests had supported the town of Mayfield. The Keller house on the small bald knob to the west of town represented tradition, if the mountain town needed tradition. Martha Keller lived there with her two teenage children, nursing the remainder of the Keller fortune her drunken husband had nearly devastated before he died. Over the mantle in the high, broad living room of the slightly sagged mansion, the portrait of old Mike Keller smiled down, unaware that his son had died a drunkard, and that his grandchildren were just waiting to come of age to desert the house and village he had made famous. To the west, a hundred and fifty miles, San Francisco sprawled like a giant jewel, brilliant, festive and sensual.
Joe Keller stood in the lightless front room, his eyes watching the street for sign of Paul Mulkey's hotrod Chev. It was two-thirty. The dance had been over for two hours. Joe waited, his body tense with emotion. She had no right to take so long. And he hated Mulkey, who represented most of the things Joe would never be. At seventeen, Joe could boast no athletic letters, no hotrod Chev and no book of telephone numbers. People took for granted that he was always a straight A student and led the debate team to consistent honors. There was some slight notoriety in that he had the hottest sister in school. He hated the distinction, even while he knew he could not live without it, or the ethnic personal attitude her sexuality provided for him.
Now Joe hurt, but no less than he had hurt since he had graduated from childhood to adolescence. Part of the hurt was because his beautiful sister who was only a year his senior, had seemed to have matured so long ago. She had never questioned their relationship, but unlike himself, she had been able to find some outside relief from the driving, consuming urges they had shared in past years. Like now, he thought. He had come home at midnight, alone and forlorn, with one high spot in an otherwise dull evening. Lori was still out, with Mulkey, and there was little doubt in Joe's mind what the pair were doing together on some side road, or in a brush-secluded spot off the beaten trails.
In a month, they would both graduate from high-school. Then it would be off to college and a new horizon. Together. Without their mother whom they thought they fooled with their clever play at brotherly and sisterly devotion.
Like now. If Martha Keller were to get out of her bed and find him staring out the window, he would pass it off as concern for Lori's lateness. She had accepted his protective attitude as right and proper, and when he excused himself from being without girlfriends, she believed it was his devotion to Lori's welfare. Anyway, Joe knew, his mother was still the most presentable widow under forty in Mayfield, and her social life kept her from close observation of her children. An air of mutual toleration existed between Martha and her children, and the security of being a Keller took the place of motherly concern. Which was fine with Joe. He backed away from the window as the headlights of Mulkey's hotrod knifed the darkness in front of the house.
On trembling legs, Joe went upstairs and down the long dark hall. His mother slept downstairs in the master bedroom as a concession to her departed husband. There were four bedrooms upstairs and two baths. Lori's room was just across the hallway from his. He went to her room, immediately excited by the smell of girl things. Ignoring the dark, he sat down on the edge of her four-poster and waited. She wouldn't be long because anything she and Mulkey had to do they had already done. This acknowledgement made new and frightfully wonderful pictures in his mind and he was in another world, totally his, and totally mastered by his desires.
It was a world in which he seemed to have no active part. It whirled and tumbled in endless masses of round flesh and secret places. These shapes were largely similar to those he knew from books and pictures and seventeen years of living across the hall from Lori. Things were bigger, deeper, redder and subject to violent displacement by intruding shapes equally huge and scarlet. There were patches of hair, and curling fingers and laughing red mouths suddenly drawn with passionate shock. The shapes were mostly feminine, but occasionally masculine, and many times, so horribly mixed Joe could only cringe in amazement at what his brain had formed. He never tried to stop the imagery, and he had never spoken about it, even to Lori. Like tonight, there were a few more minutes to be shared, but no confidences.
* * *
Climbing the stairs to the upper hall, Lori decided she was tired of being a girl and she was glad there was only a month more until she could become a woman. Paul was a gunk. By one o'clock, his neatness had vanished and with typical schoolboy certainty, his armpits had begun to smell and his suit was wrinkled and messed. He had become clumsy and rough; she had measured his sophisitcation by the moment when he had ceased to kiss her mouth. He would, she knew, talk about her two days after she and Joe took the bus to San Francisco. Maybe before.
At the top of the steps, she stopped and reached awkwardly back to unsnap her brassiere. A tiny gasp of relief escaped her bruised lips. The next ones would have to be thirty-six C-cups. Going down the hall, she liked the feel of the high melon shapes bouncing in the close-cut gown. She shook her head, letting her shoulder-length hair swirl in glowing waves. One more month.
She closed the door behind her and snapped on the light. With only a glance at her brother, she went to her dressing table, plucking off her earrings and peeling her watch from one slender wrist. Before she turned, she kicked off her high-heeled pumps.
"Hi kid," she murmured. "Mom asleep?"
"Sure. You were a long time getting home," he growled.
"You had yours. I was getting mine," she said.
"I hate his guts!" Joe snapped.
"He's square, that's all. Unzip me."
She turned and her feet spread, giving her back the arch that threw her bottom high and round. Joe reached up and picked the zipper tab, then ran it down until it ended at the low curve of her spine. Without moving her feet, Lori tipped the shoulder straps off of her smooth shoulders and the gown dropped to the floor. She stepped free of it and walked back to the dressing table. With her back still to Joe, she bent slightly and unsnapped her stocking tops. Then she turned the tops down around her knees, back still to him. Left foot, then right foot, she raised and stripped off the gunmetal hosiery. Then the garterbelt. Her body was nearly perfect and she knew it. Over-ripe, perhaps too mature, but curved and flared. There was no knobbiness to her knees and when she turned around to face her brother, her nudity was completely adult.
"Okay, kid," she said softly. "Beat it now."
"I want to talk to you!" he snapped petulantly.
Lori swiveled across the floor and jerked the covers back. When he shifted his seat, she slithered into bed and pulled the sheet up around her shoulders, leaving only her white-robed shape for his sad eyes.
"It's none of your darned business what Paul and I did!"
"I already know," he replied to her half-worded protest. "Lori, I'm not going to college!"
Lori sat up swiftly, the sheet falling unclaimed from her jouncing breasts. "What?"
"Oh, I'll go to San Francisco with you, but I'm not going to school. At least for awhile. I'm going to get a job."
"Doing what, and why?" Lori asked. "We have some money."
He shook his head. "I've got to get my feet on the ground first," he told her. "Once we get away from here."
"Oh." Lori settled back and dragged the sheet up again. "Mom will have a fit."
"I won't tell her. If you don't, she'll never know-until I've decided what I want to do. Oh Lori, it's different with you! I don't know what's the matter with me-or what I want. All I can think of is getting away and finding what I want. Sometimes I feel old, sometimes I feel like a baby. I'm not like the other guys. I can't get all hopped up over dances and cokes and hotrods. You're the only girl I can talk to, and none of the guys like me. I want to go somewhere and be on my own. Make my own friends."
"Tired of me, kid?" Lori asked.
Her brother covered his slim handsome face with both hands, and as he sobbed, his wavy blonde hair tumbled slightly, making him look like Peter O'Toole, Lori thought. She had seen him cry before and it hurt now, as always. In the hurt was both distaste and pity. Despite his straight A grades and sharp intelligence, he was both man and child. Mostly child to Lori, because their relationship had never changed since they were seven and eight. Intensified, perhaps, and grown beyond any anticipation, but not changed.
The few books and magazines she had been able to find surreptitiously had told her many things about sex and the ramifications of her strange behavior with Joe. But she had not the maturity nor the wisdom to rationalize either his or her true emotions. They had missed being basically incestual because of Joe's reluctance, not hers. From childhood, neither had been denied the sight and feel of the other, but in late years, especially since the fire in Lori's blood had burned higher than the stone walls of moral restriction, their visual intimacy had taken on new importance.
At first, he had sneaked around, spying upon her with other boys. Her temper had been short-lived. She had listened to his incoherent words of pleasure after watching her and a freshman boy, and her anger melted into some excitement, even while she berated Joe. Later, she almost sensed him spying, and even later, she had encouraged it. Like tonight. Lori had experienced almost as much pleasure out of knowing her brother was watching as she knew he had experienced as he watched. She was guilty of doing things she knew would be exciting to watch, and this was their secret.
"Go to bed, kid," she said. "We'll talk it over tomorrow. I'm dead tired. Hey, that was a hot band tonight, wasn't it?"
"Crazy," he admitted, over his tears. "See you. Lori."
"No more. Show's over. Be quiet now," she told him.
After he turned out the light and slipped out into the hall, Lori curled up in a warm, shapely ball. Her life was beginning to be a frightening thing, filled with strange urges and unresolved emotions. Perhaps, she thought, there would be some real men in San Francisco.
CHAPTER TWO
San Francisco was quite a shock. Joe had been there three or four times in his life, but always as a visitor, with his mother and sister leading him from hotel to cafe and to the Zoo. The second shock was his separation from Lori. She had gone directly to the boarding house adjacent to the University of San Francisco. Joe had checked in at a small residential hotel on Geary Street, barely three blocks from the center of the city.
During the times he was able to separate his emotions from his intelligence, Joe was cocky and self-confident. He had straightened out his things in the small clean room, gone down to the street, and let the exuberance of being on his own close in around him like a shield. Within an hour, he felt that the city belonged to him, and with this sense of belonging came the feeling that the world was as soft as a cake of wet soap.
Fortunately there was money in his pocket. Not unlimited, but enough to satisfy most of the tastes he had developed in almost eighteen years. He had skillfully avoided his mother's attempt to send him off to college with a full wardrobe. Two hours of watching the smartly dressed people in the city, and some more time spent peering into haberdashery stores convinced Joe of his wisdom. Tomorrow would be the day to spend his clothing allowance where it would do the best job for his slender, straight-backed figure. He let his tongue flick over his lips as he scrutinized finely lasted shoes at forty dollars a pair. When he saw the same shoes for twenty-eight dollars a block away, his brain functioned with boyish ego. His eyes narrowed slightly with determination not to be a country boy.
To prove he was not a boy, he went to the President Burlesque on McAllister Street and sat tall in the seat because the sign on the box office demanded everyone to be twenty-one or over. It was the first time in his life he had paid two dollars to get into a theater of any kind. And when he went back to his room, the show he had seen left him with an elation he could not control, and he fell asleep before he had time to miss Lori.
By noon of the following day, he had spent half of his year's clothing money. The two hundred dollars provided him with a high-styled mohair suit, one pair of shoes, several tinted broadcloth shirts, three ties and some accessories. The expenditure also provided him with the knowledge that Joseph Keller had to find some way of augmenting his limited funds. Without knowing what this decision really meant, he started to walk the streets of down-town San Francisco, eyes sharp for every shop, corner and alley. He found two more burlesque houses and three cheap theaters where only girly movies were shown. Friday evening came before he realized it, and when Lori called, he was able to ask her to dinner with all the aplomb of a cosmopolite.
"Take a cab to the Dominoe Club," he told her. "I don't know just where it is, but it is an alley joint downtown. And stack it high, sis. All you have to do in this town is to look twenty-one. I'll buy you a martini."
"What have you been doing?" her voice came anxiously.
"Growing up," was all he had to say.
* * *
They couldn't get past the hostess in the Dominoe Club.
Ears burning from the manner in which the sophisticated hostess had wagged her forefinger at him, Joe found another cab and left the destination up to the driver. On their way to Columbus Street, Joe regained his composure and surveyed his beautiful sister. Even the hometown dress was good. Her blonde hair had a new and attractive up-swirl to it, and she had done something exotic with her eye make-up. She got out of the cab just as gracefully as any other smartly dressed girl on the busy street. Men looked, and Joe took her arm with great pride. No one could know she was his sister, and he had the sales tickets to prove he was sartorially her equal.
They went into New Joe's, and there was no question about their age. He ordered two martinis, and there was no question about them, either.
"Think you're smart, don't you?" Lori laughed.
"Mayfield, drop dead," he replied. "Sis, this is a real town. I'm never going back home."
"My name is Lori," she told him.
"I missed you," he said soberly.
"I wish you'd change your mind and come to the U. Mother will be so disappointed, Joe. Anyway, what can you do that you couldn't do if you were going to school? And who is going to help me with math and science? Please, Joe!"
It was the first time in his life anyone had even suggested he was needed. He sipped the bitter martini and felt his backbone stiffen. Always, it had been he who had needed Lori. He had needed his mother, and he had needed the framework of high school to steady his brain and give him a path to follow. He shook his head and sipped deeply at the drink.
"No, Lori. I'm on my way. I know what I want, and this city is it." From his lips tumbled a running account of what he had seen and done since they had gotten off the bus from Mayfield. His fingers moved lovingly over his expensive suit as he talked. Only when he came to the first step into the future did he stop.
"Poor baby," Lori filled in the break. "Well, if that is what you want, that is what you want. I'll miss you, kid."
He knew what she meant and his eyes dropped. "I'll have to work it out myself," he told her.
The words were strange in his mouth. It seemed to Joe that in shedding the mantle of conventionality represented by Mayfield, he had also cut away the tentacles of his early years. He looked at his lovely sister, and she was like a stranger. The images her strange devotion to his sexuality had created seemed detached, impersonal. There were memories, and here was Lori. He hadn't even asked her if she'd met any young men. Either the hotel room or the new suit, or just the city, had clipped the strings he had always thought were invincible to the shears.
"Have you written to Mom?" she asked next
"No."
"Write to her, Joe. She's all alone, you know."
"Tomorrow," he agreed. "I'll figure out something."
"Lies," Lori said.
"I think my whole darned life has been a he," he said.
"Nobody's life is a lie," his sister told him. "You ought to hear some of the stories the girls in the boarding house tell."
"What did you tell them?" he asked, laughing lightly.
"You know I've never been much of a talker. Anyway, I like to keep some things for myself."
"Yeah."
* * *
The jelly-bellied stripper popped the pasties off of her over-sized breasts, did three bumps which threatened to dislodge the tiny triangle of spangles, and ground her way back into the fading lights. The audience clapped loudly, whistled its enthusiasm and yelled for more. The man beside Joe was heavily happy. His thick palms smacked loudly, his laughter was deep and hearty. At the end of his applause, he dropped one hand to Joe's slender thigh and gripped it with spasmodic fingers.
"What a dame!" he said, half turning his head. "Real hot. Give you the damned shakes, eh, man?"
"Plenty of meat and no potatoes," Joe replied, hoping it sounded grown-up. The man didn't remove his hand.
"Hey, that's good! You come here often? I make every show change."
"Sure," Joe replied. "I'm big for strippers."
"Take a good look and off to the cathouse, eh?"
"Why not?" Joe countered. The hand on his thigh was neither personal nor impersonal. Just there. He supposed the man didn't really realize what he was doing. Joe chanced a side glance. The man was big and about thirty-five or forty. His hair was thinning and he had a slightly paunchy look in a neat blue suit. His face was naturally a happy one and the upcoming lights showed a slight blueness to his clean shaven jaw. His left hand hung as limply over the opposite seat arm as did his right rest on Joe's knee. Then the hand on his thigh moved away as the next stripper came swiveling out on the theater stage. She was less chesty, less hippy, but she had some class to make up for the lack of bulk.
"Hey, now, this broad was here last week!" the man at Joe's side complained. "She's good though. Got the dirtiest wiggle I ever saw. You watch, kid."
Joe watched, momentarily mesmerized by the uninhibited display of movement and shape. Three turns, three tempos and down to the pasties and G-string. Then the last, curtain-whipping, hip-rolling finish.
"See! Look at that!" the man said, and the hand was there again. Higher, this time, working the muscles of Joe's thigh. It made him feel funny, embarrassed, but not left out. He applauded and laughed and his companion made appreciative clucking noises.
"What a twitcher," he said directly into Joe's ear. "You know, I had a broad like that I'd never let her off her back! Puts some life in the stem end of your clock, eh?"
Paralyzed, Joe let the laughter die out of his throat. The thick fingers had moved swiftly, surely and intimately. It was no accident. A million thoughts went through Joe's mind. If he made a scene, they'd throw him out when they discovered he was a minor. He couldn't punch the man and hope to win. And there was a certain feeling of strength in the way the big hand pressed across his thigh. The most horrible fact was the reaction. Already half-excited by the spectacle of rolling, tossing flesh, the stubby fingers did nothing to reduce the condition. Joe squirmed.
"Hey," he said in low protest.
"This stuff gets me," the man said with sudden gentleness. "You too, huh? Don't worry. I won't make trouble. I like you."
The lights came on for the last act. Joe looked around, his throat tight with apprehension. No one was looking at him. Up in one of the old box booths, the man with the flashlight was looking down at the lilt-legged girl on the stage. Joe was at once frightened and entranced. He looked at the man and his wide eyes were met with warm smiling response. It was the first time in his life that he had been touched by a man, and Lori was the only girl who had ever shown curiosity about his masculinity.
"Baby, you're sweet," the man said, and his fingers wreaked havoc with Joe. "Let go baby. You'll love it."
"Hey!" Joe repeated himself, but with haste, not volume.
"Just watch her and let go, baby," the man whispered.
The moment lengthened until there was no measure of time. Joe sat tense and scared. But he sat. And when the last girl whipped into her finish and the meagre, shabbily costumed chorus came out for the finale, Joe dreaded the end of the show. The lights flared up and with a smoothness that surprised Joe, the man stood up and lifted him to his feet with the dexterous hand under his arm.
"Come on, baby," he said, pushing Joe toward the aisle.
"I'll buy you a drink. Some show, huh?"
"Yes, but-"
"Come on, baby. You and I are going to be great buddies!"
The foyer was crowded with excited men and one or two women. None of them looked at Joe, and for a moment, the enchantment vanished. He looked around with a certain feeling of panic. The big man was right at his shoulder, smiling and relaxed. Joe went on out the door and the big man fell into stride beside him.
"How old are you, baby?"
"Eighteen," Joe replied.
"Hey, I'm sorry about what I did in there. I was just excited, I guess. But I can't buy you a drink in this town. Why don't we go up to my place? I have a bottle and some mix and we can drink in peace. That was a real good show, wasn't it?"
"Yeah," Joe admitted. "You kind of shook me up in there."
"I'm sorry. How long you been in town?"
"A week," Joe replied and some chagrin for this admission came to him. The man knew he was a country boy.
"Well, the big city is different than your town, baby. Say, my name is Jack Burnett. What's yours?"
"Joe Keller."
They stopped for a moment to shake hands, and the way the big fingers closed around Joe's slender palm was both warm and possessive. They resumed their stride, but Jack Burnett's hand under Joe's arm guided and supported. Two blocks up the hill, he turned Joe into the stairway of a small hotel.
"It isn't much. But I'm a salesman and am out of town a lot. Two rooms and a bath are all I need. I've had this room for years. They don't ask questions. Handy when I grab myself a quiff and make a night of it. You got a girl?"
"Not in San Francisco," Joe tempered his loneliness.
"Dames aren't everything, baby. Hope you like my bourbon."
The two rooms were neat and shabby and the bourbon was Jim Beam. Jack whipped off his coat and tossed it to the sofa. He was broad and thick, but not flabby. He waved Joe to a seat on the moth-eaten divan and went to the dresser where the bottle and two glasses were. Then he went into the bathroom and brought out a dripping bottle of soda.
"Keep it in the toilet tank," he laughed. "It's cool, anyway. Take off your coat and relax. That's a damned fine looking suit you're wearing. Your daddy rich, or something?"
"Dad's dead," Joe told him. "I'm looking for a job. I'll find one, too."
"Sure you will, baby. Here. And here's to love!"
He sat down beside Joe and they both tipped the drinks.
"You sore at me for what I did in the show?" Jack asked.
"I don't know. Should I be?" Joe said casually.
"I didn't mean to make you mad. It's just that I live alone and I go to the burleycue for kicks and it gets me sometimes. I guess I grabbed you before I thought. Got a good handful, too. You're a pretty good boy for the weight of you," Jack laughed appreciatively. "Say, I got something you'd like. Wait till I find 'em."
He found them immediately in the top drawer of the dresser. Casually, he tossed the handful of pictures into Joe's lap, and one look at the top one sent a flush of excitement through Joe. He tried not to let his amazement show, but half way through the dozen or so pictures, his fingers were shaking and his trousers tightened with telltale reaction. There were girls and men and men and men and they tumbled over the glossy prints in positions and actions he had never dreamed possible. And Jack's hand was back again.
"Got you too, eh?" he said huskily. "They sure get me, baby."
Once more the paralysis overcame Joe and he sat staring at the photos while the hand moved and massaged. Then he felt his zipper go, and as he turned to evade the intimacy, the feel of hot, claiming fingers was around him and he giggled like a schoolgirl.
"Hey, man," he managed to speak.
"Baby, you're beautiful!" Jack exclaimed.
Joe looked down and watched himself in the grasp of surprisingly gentle fingers. Time stood still as sensation mounted. He looked at the pictures. It all seemed to go together. Then Jack slid off the divan and Joe was suddenly in the photographs. He looked down at the bobbing head, the hunched shoulders. He felt sensations he had never felt, and he liked them. He liked putting his hand out on Jack's back, and the feel of working muscles and perspiration-damp cloth eradicated the last vestige of his resistance.
Toward the last, he began to feel ashamed of what he was going to do, but there was no way to stop. Nor did the quivering man on his knees falter. The excruciating ecstasy became suddenly right and wonderful to Joe. Through the pounding of blood in his ears, he heard wet, greedy sounds and then he thought only of himself and the pulsating surge of his youth. He fell back against the divan, eyes closed. When he was aware that Jack had let go of him, he opened his eyes. The big man was standing over him, trousers stripped down and his rampant groin exposed. The hypnotic eye stared at him from its throbbing scarlet mount.
Thinking nothing, Joe leaned forward and claimed the passion directed at him. At first, he didn't know quite what to do, but Jack helped him, the knowledge wasn't long in coming to Joe Keller.
"Baby, baby," the soft words came down to him. "I knew you were mine the minute I saw you."
CHAPTER THREE
Joe did not write to his mother the next morning, nor on any other Saturday morning for a month. He had been moved in with Jackie for two weeks before he called his nearly frantic sister to tell her where he was. By that time, his wonderful new life seemed settled, patterned with marvelous moments and filled with a love he neither questioned nor understood. Despite his sister's acute questioning, Joe managed to evade anything smattering of his real reason for the move. Jack Burnett he represented as a salesman for a machinery house who was going to teach him salesmanship.
Jackie sold advertising specialties and all he taught Joe was illicitly passionate love of a variety previously unknown to Joe. It was a no-contest love. It contained no past and no future, and during the periods when physical love was shelved, they shared a masculine psychology about other things in the world. Shirts went to the laundry and the refrigerator, midget size, always contained beer. They pooled expenses, though Jackie tried to take the greatest half. They talked together of everything from politics to sex, and Joe learned that brains were no match for brains and experience. But he learned. And his first startled impression of his friend faded until he could no longer recall he'd ever had a first impression.
Affection, gentility and consideration flowed from Jackie's being in a constant current. He was meticulously clean and hated confusion. He was also very patient with the adolescent mental gymnastics Joe produced. If he dominated Joe, it was only in matters pertaining to their continued association. In their sex life, there seemed to be no leader, except in the earliest days when Joe's ignorance needed mending.
At night they went to certain 'gay' bars Jackie knew about. Often they went to the girly shows, neither aware of the peculiar transformation they experienced between stimulus and satiation. It did not seem strange to either of them that they should go to a burlesque for excitement derived of seeing near-naked women, only to climax the evening with mutual acts of passion.
Joe soon learned to name himself and Jackie. By the time he became aware of the world of homosexuals existing in the big city, he was past caring about the name. As in any other world, not all of the inhabitants were approved of. Jackie carefully explained the myriad levels and cross-levels they encountered among the paired-off men they saw. Already used to the idea of men loving men, Joe ceased to weigh them against appearances or mode of speech and dress. In trying to understand their feelings, he automatically began to understand his own.
He didn't feel like a girl and he didn't wish he were one. Neither his walk nor his speech changed: the effeminacy cultivated by many of their bar friends was not attractive either to Joe or Jackie. They did not 'go' for silk underwear nor feminine items of jewelry. Rarely did either of them slip and use their private pet names in public. Despite the extent of their private moments, they maintained respect for each other. Even to Joe, buffeted by the newness of his life and still confused by his own willingness to succumb to the wonders of homosexuality, it became apparent that the key to mutual respect was in not questioning motives or feelings.
And he learned to drink. Not just one or two, but one after another, for a long evening. Through a connection in a printshop, Jackie obtained a false driver's license and a spurious I.D. card. He also learned to smoke. So intent upon becoming an adult was he that his eighteenth birthday came and passed without notice. Until the Friday night following when he took Lori to their usual weekly dinner. Her present was a beautifully engraved identification bracelet of solid silver.
Joe read the affectionate inscription and fingered the links with appreciation. "It's beautiful, Lori," he told her. "But I can't wear it."
"Why not?"
"I can't-I don't wear jewelry."
"Football players wear them," she snapped.
"If I played football, I'd wear it, too."
Lori dropped her eyes. She had given her blonde hair a new tone, darker with champagne highlights. Her make-up was sophisticated and precise. The deep blue dress was one he'd seen before, but some change in her undergarments made her breasts fill the smooth bodice with new roundness, and her jewelry was simple and smart. She looked twenty-two or three, but Joe was getting used to the city look of young girls. The young ones wanted to look mature and the old ones wanted to look young. Lori looked sad.
"It's none of my business, Joey," she said.
"Haven't we always done-what we wanted to do?"
She nodded. "All right, Joey. But at least make it seem honest. Write to Mom. I've run out of lies about how busy you've been. You know, if you worry her too much, she'll come sailing down and break into your lovenest, and then there'll be hell to pay! Joey, you're so smart and--different! Use your head!"
"I promise," he laughed with some of his newly acquired sophistication breaking the gloom. "How you doing, Lori? Got a boyfriend yet?"
"I'll say. With the biggest chest in the Freshman class, you know these guys have swamped me. Couple of nice ones, too."
"Don't get knocked up," he warned her seriously.
She wrinkled her nose at him and they finished their dinner, trading words about San Francisco, the University and all the many new facets to their life in the cosmopolitan city. Leaving the restaurant, Joe was aware that their evening had been pleasant but devoid of the intimate understanding they had shared for many years. Waiting for the cab, he held her arm possessively.
"Who unzips your dress, now?" he asked, liking her shoulder against his. "My roommate. She can't see a thing without her glasses."
"Lori," he murmured with painful undertones.
"No, Joey. There are just some things a brother and sister don't do," she said positively. "And you've changed. We wouldn't dare, now, and you know it. We're just lucky nothing ever happened before, the way we used to play around."
"We weren't the only brother and sister who ever played," he told her. "Here's your cab."
"Where are you going from here?"
"Back to my room and write to Mom," he promised.
"Call me Thursday, huh, kid?"
"Sure, Lori," he agreed and shut the cab door. As it pulled away, a feeling of loneliness came over him, so instead of going to his hotel, he walked a couple of blocks to a bar he knew. The sight of several pairs of men, drinking and talking together made his loneliness fade. He bought a drink and sat at the bar alone. Jackie wouldn't expect him back for an hour or two, at least.
* * *
Martha Keller stood beside the polished walnut desk and looked down at the brief letter from her son. The problem with kids, she thought, was that anyone past twenty-one seemed ancient. She was a little disappointed in her smart son. Joe should have been able to write lies a bit more convincing than these.
She swept her flowing black hair back over the velvet collar of her housecoat, her eyes looking darkly through the furniture and the wall.
She had let the kids go without an argument, hoping that once they were mixed with the other college students, Joe would let go of Lori, or vice-versa. She wasn't sure about them. But the philosophy with which she had watched her husband drink himself to death had made it a little easier. Just as she hadn't been able to watch her husband twenty-four hours a day, neither could she watch the children. For the past two years, she had suspected Joe of being a latent homosexual, if not an active one, and this was small relief from her worry that her two children were sleeping together.
She detested the false premise that acquiring the title of 'mother' should automatically make a woman the font of all wisdom. She had two smart and beautiful children. Plus all of the shrewd-fox characteristics of modern teenagers, they possessed a common bond of affection, (inadequate word,) which made them super-clever and completely evasive. Perhaps it would have been best to have sent them off to boarding schools when she had first discovered their childish sexuality. But this was like picking yesterday's horse race.
Going into her bath, Martha hated the way her thoughts of Lori and Joe made her react. After endless self-lectures on the horror of her children's relationship, her mind turned on the obscene film, and her body ached for love. Now she slipped off her housecoat and surveyed herself. Thirty-eight years had done only soft and ripening things to her. Her thick breasts hung slightly, but they were solid and pink tipped, and they were far more responsive than they had been at Lori's age. She was still flat across the belly, and her thighs were round, smooth and very white. Her bottom had never sagged nor spread. She was one of those women who could never develop thick blue veins, and she had always been grateful for the delicacy of her skin. She was dark-eyed and full-lipped: the kids had inherited their blonde complexions from their father.
A lovely, passionate widow in a town where the only eligible men were widowers with wrinkles and testy ways and no blood. It was a dull life, accented rarely by a quick romance with a visiting salesman or a tourist. These clandestine passions were few and fax between and never satisfying. They came as frantic moments of relief, and afterwards she could hardly remember what the man had looked like.
Perhaps there had been an ulterior motive in sending the children off so readily. There was money. She could take a trip. Reno and Las Vegas were only hours away. There were many places for a woman to go where men would be glad to see her. But before this unstated promise could be fulfilled, this unstated problem with her children had occurred. Lori's letters had been clever, but not convincing, and now this idiotic mumbo-jumbo from Joe clinched the matter.
Drying her voluptuous body with a thick coarse towel, the two unsolved contingencies suddenly solved themselves. Martha looked at herself again, turning, jiggling her breasts for test, and raising to her tiptoes to see how high-heels would tighten her buttocks and smooth out her calves. Suddenly excited, she deodorized and powdered her deep curves, then put on lipstick, heavy and not in the best tradition of Mayfield. Naked and glowing, she went into the hall phone and dialed the bus depot.
"This is Mrs. Keller," she said calmly. "I want an evening bus to San Francisco. Yes, Tom. I'm going to visit the children. What time will that get me into San Francisco?"
After that, she counted time. There were a few things to do before departure at six-ten. The first thing was a long distance call to the Sir Francis Drake Hotel for a reservation. After that, she went about shutting off the newspaper and certain other services, because Martha intended to stay in San Francisco longer than a day or two.
With each passing hour, she became more excited. She packed only her smartest clothes and daintiest underwear. Her mind spun with visions of herself flowing through the hotel lobby, drawing admiring glances, all of which, she decided, she would definitely acknowledge. She would go into the bar by herself. And stay there until someone escorted her out.
She ate a hurried lunch and disposed of all the perishable things in the big refrigerator. Only with a short trip to the outside garbage can did she realize she had never put on any clothes. Her girlish giggle was indicative of her mood. To the devil with Mayfield. The Keller widow was on her way.
She was dressed and ready by quarter to six. Sam Foster, the cab driver would look at her in the blue sheath and the spike heels, but let him look. She had known him all her life and she also knew his wife. Sam wasn't much, but he deserved a look at something more than he'd been married to for twenty years.
While she waited for her call to produce Sam, Martha gave a moment's thought to Lori and Joe. She didn't really have any idea what to expect, nor what to do about whatever she found. But because she planned to do something, her mind raced with possibilities. She was still slightly frowning when Sam came up the front steps.
"Hi, Marty," he said casually. "Goin' to the city?"
"Yes, Sam. How have you been?"
The chubby, slovenly man peered at her appreciatively. "Okay. You don't look a damned bit older than you did in school."
"Thank you, Sam."
"I never will ferget that time in Auburn, after the game," he said, licking his lips coarsely. "Bein' a widow ain't easy for you, I betcha."
"Is it easy for any woman?" she asked, trying not to remember the time in Auburn.
"What time's your bus leave? he asked, stepping closer to her. Martha had to step back into the hall to raise her arms so she could see her watch.
"It leaves in seventeen minutes," she told him significantly.
"Shucks," he muttered. As he passed her to get the three bags, his hand brushed her hip, ringers momentarily firm.
A sudden fright came over Martha. She had almost forgotten how crude and domineering some men could be. And there were some things not easy to do. Like call for help. If Sam had grabbed her and taken her down to the carpet, she would have been raped before she could have made up her mind to scream and bring Mayfield down on the scene. Police and publicity and problems.
"Take the bags out, Sam. I forgot something. I'll be right there."
Martha hurried back into her bedroom. In the bottorn dresser drawer, she found the heavy, short-barrelled forty-four revolver her grandfather had worn under his alpaca coat for twenty years. She dropped the monstrous weapon into the big handbag. It seemed to weigh a ton, but the weight and the pendulous thump against her thigh was comforting. Over Sam's dirty cap, she could see the small picture of a half-naked girl he had pasted to the soiled visor. The cab smelled of cigarettes and unwashed men.
CHAPTER FOUR
Joe lay on the rumpled bed, his nude body sprawled in complete debilitation. It was after noon, but Jackie had pulled the shades the night before and now the overhead light cast strange night shadows over the room. Joe watched Jackie pack the projector into the leather-bound case. On the floor in another case were the nine reels of wonderfully mad film. Jackie's nude body was thick, significantly powerful, pendulous with exhaustion. His crisp black hair was disheveled from the night and morning orgy.
Projector packed, Jackie collapsed the beaded screen and folded it into the tubular case. He looked at his watch.
"Hey, I've got to get going! I'm supposed to meet those guys at one-thirty. God, I'm shot down!"
"Those things could kill you," Joe said in agreement.
While Jackie went into the bathroom to bathe and shave, Joe stared at the three cases. They had been borrowed from a friend of Jackie's in San Jose. Nine, eight minute reels of sixteen millimeter film. Nine flights into a world of gut-wretching obscenity, each more amazing than the previous. Torn and bruised by hours of unrestrained lust, Joe had time now to consider the marvel of finding nine sets of people, black, white and Oriental, who would be willing to cast themselves in movies so perfectly perverted and completely uninhibited. He had lost track of the individual sequences, and now his mind bounced from scene to scene, savoring the parts of each film that had been his favorites.
Within the limitations of their physical accouritrements, he and Jackie had duplicated and enlarged upon every scene. They had run the films, loved and abused each other, and run the films again. They had stopped the projector and scanned certain individual frames, excitedly describing to each other what they saw. By midnight, they had both been nauseated and exhausted. Nauseated by fierce brutal intrusion and exhausted by furiously forced passion. They had awakened at eight-thirty and started all over again. The residual pain of the previous night's torment had only been an extra thrill.
It had been the happiest, wildest night he and Jackie had ever spent together, and Joe Keller basked in the afterglow of complete satiation. He heard Jackie finish shaving, and he dragged the sheet over his lower body. This was the insanity of a perfect undertaking. Jackie came out of the bathroom in clean shorts and a white tee-shirt, his hair brushed, his beard trimmed a half-way under the skin.
"I hope I sell Acme," he said. "It could be a real good contract. Did my gray suit come back from the cleaners?"
"It's in the closet. Do you have to take the film back today?"
"I promised Ted," Jackie replied. "I'll drop it off on my way back from the meeting. What are you going to do?"
"Sleep! And take a hot bath. I'm sore as a boil!"
"Yeah, baby," Jackie agreed with a slow smile. "We tore the lid off last night, all right. I'll ask Ted if we can get some more stuff-or borrow these again. I gotta hurry!"
After he was gone, Joe dozed, but did not sleep. Despite his weariness, each nerve and fibre of his body sang with latent excitement. That he and Jackie had leaped some hurdles in their uncontrolled sensuality was obvious. And though the film was gone, the adventures remained, to be relived and repeated. Between catnaps, Joe thought about himself, and what had colored his ecstasy during certain moments of their lovemaking. And it had been lovemaking, as opposed to mutual fondling and uninhibited kissing.
There had been a moment of revulsion, of refusal, then of submission, then there had been a period of strange subservience, delectably ecstatic, brutally possessive. The heat and weight and dominance of Jackie's urging, thrusting body had changed the feeling of understanding to one of permissiveness. The physical had been organically wonderful, the mental had assumed a new and significant softness. Like a woman might feel, Joe thought. He hadn't dared ask Jackie if in the negative role, his feelings had been the same. It didn't really matter. It was all wonderful. His life had become a marvelous thing, and Mayfield seemed a million miles away.
There had to be another turning point, he was certain of that. Eventually, his mother would find out he hadn't gone to college. He didn't think she would cut off his money, but there was still the problem of getting a foothold in the world of economics. It was not impossible to assume that she might even find out about Jackie and himself. It would shock and hurt her, he decided, because she couldn't possibly understand, but it would change nothing for him.
In a few weeks, he and Jackie would move out of this miserable hotel. It did not cater to homosexuals, but it paid no attention to them. And there were two or three other pairs of men riving in the old building who could bring the police vice squad snooping at any moment. There were some nice apartments down on Bush Street, within a few blocks of Jackie's office. To Joe the future seemed nothing but happiness and rosy promise.
He finally got up and showered. He was abruptly hungry, so he dressed in neat Continental slacks and a yellow sport shirt and went down to the street. He turned north on Polk Street, heading for a lunchroom where the food was good. He didn't look back, and if he had, the well-dressed woman across the street from his hotel entrance was discreet in the bakery doorway.
* * *
Martha ran out of doorways in two days and her feet hurt from hours of standing on the concrete. She rented a cheap room in an old hotel, specifying a street exposure. From there, she could look diagonally down Polk Street and see the entrance to Joe's hotel. In two days, the musty smell of the hotel room and the conclusions she drew made her half-ill. Her son was living with a man twice his age, and they both went to places filled with similarly paired men, obvious even to Martha Keller.
She had not gone to see Lori, either. Martha could not face her daughter, knowing that every question she'd ask about Joe would be answered with a lie. Lori would lie for Joe, too. Right up to the hilt. Lori made her own decisions and always had.
The four days in San Francisco had been heartbreaking, confusing and expensive. And most unfrivolous for Martha. Back in the elegance of her Drake Hotel room, she nipped at a brandy bottle and paced the floor. When no logical solution to the problem occurred, she began to think illogically. Joe had always been a good boy, really. A good student, a good son, and maybe only a little curious about his sister's mature body. Not in a dirty way, though after all, his father had been a reasonably curious boy in his high school years, too. And Martha knew how curious girls could be.
It was probably a matter of having fallen under the evil spell of the big man with the wavy black hair. He looked suave and persuasive, and he didn't dress like a bum. Martha didn't doubt that he was a fiendish pervert, waiting to prey on innocent boys fresh from the unsophisticated towns and villages. He might even be giving Joe dope, or at least, marijuana cigarettes or something. Boys were impressionable, and sex was mysterious to anyone of eighteen.
She didn't dare go to the police, or anything like that. If she confronted Joe, he would lie cleverly. And after she had vented her anger at his deceiving her about college, the most she could prove was that he was sharing a hotel suite with a man. And one more thing bothered Martha. Even from a distance, she had noted a new and disturbing sophistication in Joe's dress and walk and general mien. He walked the streets as if the city had always been his home, and twice she had passed the cafe where he ate most of his meals and he had been laughing and talking with the other customers whom he seemed to know.
She didn't mind Joe growing up so rapidly, but the manner of his growth nearly crushed Martha. Being completely female, there was no room in her world for half-men. For the first time in her life, she had found something more terrible than a drunken husband. A homosexual son was hideous beyond comparison. In her misery, Martha began to calculate. He had been in San Francisco only a few days over two months. Measured against the devastation a girl could suffer in such a short period of time, it seemed to her that if she could somehow snatch Joe out of this forming whirlpool now, it might not be too late. There was even a chance, she thought, that the big man had not yet accomplished his perverted will on her son. It seemed to her to be something a smart boy like Joe would have to be led to in gradual steps. By the time she had given this some thought, Martha was frantic with the passing of each wasted moment.
When she left the hotel, clad in somber black and a simple fox collar piece, her handbag again assumed the heavy pendulous movement. As a companion to the massive pistol, her blood raced with adrenalin, and when she arrived at the Polk Street hotel, her trim jaw was hard and the corners of her mouth were no longer pretty. She took her place in the window and watched her son's hotel entrance. And after she'd scared the big man away, she'd box Joe's ears till his nose bled.
* * *
When the door opened following her knock, Martha felt a frightening moment of confusion. It was difficult for her to fit this rather handsome, heavy set man into the nightmare she had conjured in her mind for five days. His gentle smile showed even white teeth, and his dark eyes were flecked with merry lights.
"I-is Mr. Keller home?" she asked.
"Joe? No." The man raised his right hand showing a half-sheet of paper. "I just got in. He left a note saying he'd gone to have dinner with his sister. He does it every Friday night. Can I help you?"
"May I come in?" Martha asked, regaining some of her composure.
"Of course. My name is Jack Burnett."
She waited until he had closed the door. The room was neat and clean. Cheap, but orderly. "I'm Joe's mother," she said.
"Oh-oh," he said softly. "Please sit down. That's the best chair. I'm glad to meet you, Mrs. Keller. Joe has told me many nice things about you."
"That's why I'm here," Martha said. "He has completely neglected to tell me, or anyone else, about you."
"What about me?" Jack Burnett asked. "Do I have to say it?"
"Why not?"
"You are a sexual pervert," she said positively.
"That's true, though there are nicer words. Care to call the police? The telephone is on the stand, there."
Martha gasped in rage. "You beast! To admit it that way! Oh, my god! If my husband were alive, he'd kill you!"
"I understand he never killed anything but bottles, Mrs. Keller. I suppose your menfolk have been very disappointing to you. I'm sorry. Would you care for a drink? Joe and I keep beer in that refrigerator which looks like a half-coffin."
"I ought to slap your face!" Martha spat.
"I could take it." He pulled a straight chair into the center of the room and sat down. When he looked back at her, his eyes were fathomless. "Mrs. Keller, I'm thirty-seven years old. I've lived with myself for a long time. Your disgust and fury isn't going to change anything-for me, or for Joe. I don't know how you found out about him and me, but it's pretty obvious you have known it longer than ten minutes. I assure you that Joe knows what he is doing. Past that, I don't know what to say."
"You could apologize for ruining my son!"
She squirmed under the acute appraisal of his eyes. She was still shocked by his apparent masculinity, his poise. It wasn't impossible for her to accept his charm as a major weapon against Joe's resistance to evil.
Now he smiled gently.
"I apologize," he said. "Now, what do you want from me?"
"My boy. I want my boy back!"
"He's never coming back. He grew up into a man."
"A sick man!" Martha nearly screamed. "Like you. Do you call yourself a man? You filthy animal!"
"Your boy was sick when I met him, Mrs. Keller. But if he wants to go back to Mayfield, he's free to do so. I'd never stop him. I couldn't. He's his own man now. You know, I don't think you understand what I'm talking about, Mrs. Keller. I've a hunch I'm the first dirty sex pervert, as you call it, you've ever been aware of seeing. You'd better take a better look, because I'm afraid you are stuck with a son with all of my filthy habits, as it were."
Martha was aghast. "Don't you think it is wrong-immoral?"
"Do you play bridge?" he countered.
"What's that got to do with it? Yes, I do!"
"Don't you always play the hand dealt to you?"
Martha snorted, hating the easy, quiet way he had taken her trump cards. "You cannot change anything with clever words," she said. "I've no doubt you can justify your miserable existence. I'm not here to argue the worth of your-sex life. I'm here to find a way to save my son from a life he can never relive. You must know what I mean. But it doesn't matter whether or not you understand. One way or another, I'm going to get my son out of your clutches! One way or another, do you hear me?"
He stood up, a sardonic smile playing about his mouth. "I suppose you have a dozen plans all figured out, Mrs. Keller. Sorry I can't help you with Joe. But I can give you some good advice about the next boy baby you have. Don't breast feed him until he is four years old and don't let him sleep with his older sister until he is six!"
Her sharp cry of pain was no swifter than her hands. He didn't move until the black ominous shape came up out of her handbag. Martha lunged back to evade his leap. Her thumb struggled the high hammer back and then came the explosion. She cried out again as the big, limp body crushed her back into the chair. Then the body slid slowly to one side and fell to the floor, a massive pile of ugly death. Martha put the revolver back in her handbag and stood up on shaky legs.
Dazed and in shock, she went to the door and opened it. Somehow, she found the stairs and went down, hearing footsteps in the building somewhere back of her. Out in the street, she turned south and walked with stiff steps, on and on. Once she gasped and giggled, considering the privilege of filing one more notch beside the two tiny notches her father had filed into the revolver butt, many years before. Then hysteria took control and she walked on through the night, crying silently without caring who saw her.
* * *
The homicide cop looked down at the body and snorted.
"Big Jack Burnett, eh? Finally got it. Put an APB out for Morrie Sedlitz. It's two to one the gunsel plugged this slob."
"Naw," said the other cop from the bedroom. "They busted up. These papers say Jack was shacked with a punk named Keller."
"Never heard of him. Pick him up, though. And pick up Morrie. In fact, this is a good excuse to rubberhose about twenty more stinking queers I know. Get'm all. Nothing I like better than a tank full of sick fruiters.
Keller, huh?"
"Joseph A. Keller," the second cop filled in. "I found his draft card. Country boy from Mayfield, out of Auburn."
Following the pop of a police flash camera, the first cop kicked the dead body on the bloodstained rug. "At least he picked one old enough to be drafted," he said. "He used to only like fourteen-year-olds."
CHAPTER FIVE
There was a table in the room but no chairs, so Joe sagged to the floor. He could hardly see, his eyes half closed from the hard palms and brutal forearm blows. His teeth ached, and the taste of blood from his bruised flesh was acrid in his mouth. He was sure he had several cracked ribs, and over the entire nightmare was the knowledge that he hadn't killed Jackie.
There was only one police officer now. The other had been called out through a dead-voiced telecom placed high beyond arm's reach on the grey wall. Joe wanted to relieve himself because a big swift knee had hurt him deeply. He felt the thin layer of grime on the floor, but he was too sick and tired to do more than rest on his palms. He had never been in a police station before, never even talked to a detective. Under his hurt was rage, but they were accusing him of murder, and he was scared. Completely.
"You might as well pop, punk," the officer snarled. "We know you killed your man. We find the blunderbuss you used and you're in the gas chamber! Come on, now, talk!"
Joe shook his head. The cop kicked him with the side of his big right foot. It hurt, but it would leave no sharp bruise. Joe turned his face to the corner and fought back tears. It had begun when he walked up the stairs and into the hard grasp of the plainsclothes officer at the room door. It had been going on for three hours. They hadn't believed his story of having spent the evening with his sister in New Joe's Restaurant. For a long time there had been two of them, bouncing him from elbow to stiff-arm, twisting his fingers, kicking his feet out from under him, then hauling him up and starting all over again. And the voices.
You killed him punk you shot him gunsel and you're going to get the gas chamber sure as hell and you better talk talk talk and maybe if you cooperate the judge will only give you life and you can spend the rest of your stinking years in a pen where there are nothing but men and they'll give you all the meat you want so it's up to you punk or do we give it to you again?
Joe twitched with new fright as the older, heavier officer came back into the interrogation room.
"Did they find the rod?" asked the lesser of the two.
The silence was more painful than the beating to Joe.
"He's clean. They picked up his sister and she told the same story. The waiter and the cashier at Joe's remember them."
"The hell," muttered the other policeman. "I thought we had it made."
"Punk, get on your goddamned feet!"
Joe used the strength their words confirming his innocence had given him. He struggled to his feet and leaned against the plaster wall. Both officers advanced on him and they weren't pleasant to look at. He tried to stare them down, but two pairs of glittering baleful eyes were too much. He dropped his head and made a half-hearted attempt to tuck his soiled pink shirt back into the waistband of his dusty trousers.
"We ain't through with you yet, gunsel, so don't get happy! The captain wants to talk to him, so let's roll him down the hall!"
The older cop spun him and in the stagger, a foot caught him hard and deep between the buttocks. As Joe collapsed, hands grabbed his arms and wrenched him erect. They pushed him through the door and into the hallway. It was like a nightmare, only he didn't wake up for two more days.
* * *
They told him not to leave town or do anything foolish. Joe Keller stood on the curb in front of the Hall of Justice and shivered, despite the warm fall air. The street was spotted with Chinese and derelicts and dirt. None of it was as terrifying as the holding tank he had just left. For two days, he had been hustled in and out of the clanking iron tank with thirty-five other stringless puppets, he was questioned, threatened and reviled, but with different intent.
He had learned many things very quickly, but nothing about the mystery of Jackie's murder. The piecemeal bits of Jack Burnett's past history with the police had come as a shock, as had the revelation that his dead friend was a gentle, thoroughly despised homosexual with undertones of bestiality and child-love. The single factor that had kept Joe from being totally repulsed, both by his affair with Jackie and the ugliness of his experience with the police was a defence mechanism born of youth and personal sense of destiny. It was necessary to be for them or against them, and the police had made it plain he could not be for them.
Joe glanced at his watch and a moment later, the cab containing Lori stopped at the curb. He opened the door and fell in, the sight of his beautiful but worried sister reacting like a last kick in the belly. He sagged against her shoulder, and her fingers petted his unshaven jaw.
"Poor kid," she murmured. "But it's all over now. My god, what did they do to you!"
"The treatment," he replied wearily. "Everybody gets it."
"What beasts! Joe, I picked up all your things-I rented us an apartment. We'll go there."
"Rented us-an apartment?"
Lori was silent for a moment. "The police," she said with mature bitterness. "I had to leave school. It was in the papers."
Joe sat up, ignoring his pain twinges in favor of a deeper, less apparent ache. "Those dirty bastards!" he snarled. "Aw, Lori, I'm sorry-so sorry! Did you call or write Mom? I mean, do you think she knows?"
"I called, but the phone was disconnected. I called Trudy yesterday and she said Mom had just packed up and gone on a trip. No. I don't think she could have seen it in an out of town paper. Oh Joe, we've got so much to work out; I'm down to my last hundred dollars."
"I've a little," he said. "Just let me rest for a day or so, then I'll find a job. What did you tell them?"
"Tell who?"
"The people at the apartment. I mean, about us?"
Lori was again silent. "I used a different name and said you were my husband."
He was more pleased by her cleverness than he was able to be alarmed by the connotations of her lie. He had already become used to the blase air of most city dwellers, and he didn't really care what anyone thought. But he had been told by the police to stay loose and handy.
"I can't leave town until they find the person who killed Jack," he said. "They'll need me for a material witness, or something equally as lousy. But if they find out we're living together it'll be rough. Did you have to leave school? I could have rented another room."
"I had to leave," she said positively. "I wanted to leave!"
Joe thought for a moment and a slow low-grade plan came to him. "I'll call the cops," he decided. "I'll tell them I'm staying with my sister until the murder is solved and I can leave town. That way, they won't look for me and they won't ask the landlord about us. I'll even tell them we are using a phony name to avoid publicity. They aren't so smart, sis. Just dumb bullies."
"Did they-beat you?"
"But good," he replied and he told her a little of what he had gone through. By the time the cab drew up in front of the apartment house on way-out Geary Street, Lori was nearly in tears. He paid the cab out of the ball of greenbacks the police had returned to him. Together, they walked to the first floor apartment.
It shocked Joe. He hadn't really thought about what the apartment would look like, but it was old and barren and dark. It had two bedrooms. His things were put away in the one Lori led him to. The rest of the apartment was nearly stripped of personality. It should have looked finished and feminine, like Lori. It looked desolate.
"We haven't anything," she apologized. "I bought a few things for the kitchen, and some linen for the beds. It's pretty terrible, isn't it?"
"No," he answered firmly. "It's great, sis. We'll make it fine. First, I need a bath and a change of clothes."
She had removed her bolero jacket and put away her bag and gloves. She looked older to Joe, just as he felt older than yesterday. He smiled at her reassuringly and went into his bedroom, unbuttoning his dirty shirt as he walked. When he discovered Lori had followed him, he hesitated about removing his shirt lest she see the bruises and scratches on his back. He kicked off his shoes and opened the top drawer where she had stacked his linen.
"Joey?" she spoke from the doorway.
"What, sis?"
"We have to be-careful."
"That's for sure," he laughed narrowly. "We're on the blotter now!"
"I don't mean that," Lori said. "I mean-you and me."
Sex had been a million miles from his mind for three days. Now he turned and looked at her and some of his boyish feelings came rushing back. Then immediately, his past weeks of adulthood drowned out the inner flush.
"It's okay, sis," he said. "I've changed a lot. I can hustle my own girls-if I want them. We'll make it okay."
"We'll be careful anyway, Joe," she said, leaving him alone.
* * *
It cost Martha Keller fifty dollars to fly to Los Angeles, write the gay and carefree letter on Hyatt House stationery, and fly back to San Francisco. Lori would get the letter the following day, she thought, and from the amount of scurrying and dodging her daughter had been doing while Joe was in jail, Martha was certain the Los Angeles postmark would take a load off of her children's minds.
With her son out of jail, Martha began to feel better. It had taken all of her will not to go to the police and confess her act of rage and fright. Then when the papers verified Joe's innocence to all, Martha was suddenly aware that she had committed a near-perfect crime. The police were sure Jack Burnett had been killed by another sex deviate, and the indications were that the killer had been one of the neo-western addicts who played at fast-draw and fancy shirts in the manner of Matt Dillon. The ancient forty-four she had dropped off the outer pier at Fisherman's wharf the day after the accident.
It had been an accident, Martha assured herself. She had only intended to frighten Jack Burnett, and he had grabbed for the gun. It was just too bad that her father had years ago filed the gun to a hair trigger. For that matter, it was just too bad Jack Burnett had corrupted her son in the first place. Anyway, it had all worked out fine.
Her children were back together again, and Lori was quite capable. The fears for her children Martha had once held seemed to disappear as she credited them with her own wisdom. After the terrible price Joe had paid for his off-color adventure, she was sure her smart children had learned their lesson. The cure had been drastic, but then, there were many diseases which seemed less serious than the cure. Martha was sorry her daughter had left the University, but there was always another year, and another school. Joe would probably go to college now, after all the trouble he had been through on his own.
Martha played with the drama of her two children being known as Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Klinman. Lori had been so clever. Jack Klinman had been postmaster in Mayfield for twenty years. Sometimes, Martha thought, precocious children were a problem, but hers had rallied to the challenge with perfect poise. Even their embroidered handkerchiefs and pajamas would carry the right initials. Martha relaxed, ordered another martini and smiled coyly at the handsome man sitting at the other end of the bar.
* * *
It hadn't been very romantic and he had wrecked her hairdo, but Martha lay on the bed, her eyes closed in total relaxation. She had needed love, and this man called Steve had been deliberately adequate. Even now, the touch of his hands on her tired breasts was good, and the warmth of his thick hairy body against her hip was intimately peaceful. In response to the pressure of his lips on her breast, Martha reached blindly for him.
"No more, baby," he chuckled. "Anyway, I'm out."
Martha opened her eyes, smiling up at his heavy handsome features. "What time is it, Steve?"
"Holy smoke!" he exclaimed, glancing at his big gold wristwatch. "It's four-thirty! I got to get going!"
She watched him get to his feet, and his movements were a thrill to her starved eyes. It had been years since she had loved a man in broad daylight, amid the luxury of an expensive hotel room. There was something wonderful about being naked and seeing nudity. The comfort and elegance made her feel like a woman, not an adolescent schoolgirl in the back seat of a car. She smiled again at the big man as he came out of the bathroom, his body glowing with the scrub of soap and water and the vigorous caress of a bath towel.
"Come here, Steve," she murmured, raising to one elbow so her heavy breasts sagged sideways. He came forward and stood by the bed. Martha leaned to him a little more and kissed him twice with tender, appreciative lips. Then she flopped back on the bed and writhed in satisfaction.
"You're the greatest," he laughed. "Wish I didn't have to go. I already know I've got a beaut of a parking ticket."
"Parking ticket?"
"Sure. In a one hour zone. I've been parked there three hours or better. I just dropped in the bar for a quick one."
"I'm sorry, Steve," Martha said.
"It was worth it, baby."
She watched him put on his underwear. Then his shirt. He was one of those men who tied their tie before they put on trousers. She savored the male bulges of his shorts and the way his kneecaps knobbed up as he turned and twisted into his trousers.
"Why do you have to go, Steve?" she asked petulantly.
"What? Hell, it's late, that's why!"
"Late for what?"
"Christ. I live down the peninsula thirty miles. By the time I fight the traffic down the Bayshore, it will be six-thirty at least."
"You're married," Martha said, as if the possibility had not occurred to her before.
"Isn't everybody? Sure I am. Got three kids, too."
Martha felt chill from her head to her toes. The coolness in her tired body turned to fire and she could hardly breathe. He was settling his suit coat now, attending to the result in the mirror. He picked up his hat from the dresser and turned to the bed. From his left trouser pocket, he took a roll of bills. Martha's eyes widened in terror as he peeled off two tens, then decided on a third.
"There, baby," he said, tossing the bills to the towel over her torso. "I know when I've had it good. And you're the best."
When he was gone, Martha glanced down at the money. It weighed tons, holding her quivering body mashed to the rumpled sheet, paining her in a way she had never known before. She tried to move, but only her hand would turn. Martha picked up the money.
Then she laughed out loud. If she looked at It right, the big moose had paid her the greatest compliment of her life. If she looked at it wrong, it was nothing a stiff drink wouldn't cure. But she couldn't help wondering what his wife looked like.
CHAPTER SIX
Within a week Joe developed a permanent wrinkle across his forehead. If jail had been brutal and cruel, San Francisco was frustratingly worse. There were no jobs for eighteen-year-old boys in pink shirts. Or creme colored shirts. Or tight pants. There were no jobs for boys who knew nothing. There also were no jobs available among the few gay friends he contacted after a day or two wore off his fear of the police.
"We'll eat here, this Friday, and save ten dollars," Lori said. "Don't worry, Joey. We've still got some money, and in a pinch, we can always wire T Tom."
"In southern California?" he reminded her.
"She'll be home by the time we really need money."
Joe slouched in the lumpy chair and sipped his second beer. Money, job, worry; these were words and had nothing to do with his unhappiness. Maybe something to do with it, because all of them brought home the realization that he had a decision to make. He'd only slipped once in five days, and then not seriously. He had shared a booth in the PAPER DOLL with another boy who had lost his lover to another. They had talked and whimpered about the way the town was hot since Jackie's death, and in the end, Joe and the other boy had fondled each other until the bartender broke it up.
But he was aware that he either had to cut clean and look for a new way of life or go back. It wasn't a moral decision because he had no scale of morality. Jack Burnett had schooled him psychologically for nearly anything. Joe recognized the fence he walked. He could leap to higher ground, or back into the world of night-people where emotional values were high and economic scales were low. And already he began to unconsciously depend upon the Keller reserves. And upon Lori's level head.
They had been careful for three days. Care amounted to being completely dressed before they left their respective rooms, avoiding careless buttons and with Lori, loose housecoats. A boiled over coffee pot had caused the first breach of conduct. Lori always got up first and started the coffee. On the fourth morning, she had turned the gas too high, and when the hiss and burble of the agitated pot brought her flying from the bathroom, Joe was in the hall instead of being in bed as she had surmised. He had gone back to his room before she returned, but the memory of Lori's loose, flying breasts and skimpily-clad hips went with him.
Later, the conversation had gotten around to the friends she had made in the few short weeks she had been a coed. This brought up boys and dates, and when she evaded his eyes, her evasiveness was more voluble than words. He had kidded her with newly acquired sophistication, but the rung was solidly in the ladder. Then Joe began to notice things his previous good intentions had made him ignore. Her long legs crossed while she read a magazine or talked to him. The way her clothes fitted her, revealing the lines of brief panties, or brassiere straps. The way her big ripe breasts billowed up when she leaned over the oven, or emptied an ashtray.
Yet it wasn't Lori he wanted. She only made him think of sex as he had learned it from Jackie. It wasn't even that he wanted the illicit caresses they had once shared. He simply wanted the adventure, the immersion in sensuality. He wanted to live in sex, not pussy-foot around it as if it were diseased. He yearned for the feel of flesh, and the buoyancy of sharing sensation. He had to do something with the sensual vitality surging in his veins. Sitting across the table from Lori, his appetite for her steak dinner waned. He was starved for emotion, not food. "Lori?"
"Steak okay, kid?"
"Lori, I'm going out tonight," he said.
"Why?"
It surprised him. "I'm going nuts, cooped up here."
"You've been out all day, nearly every day."
"It's not the same."
"Please, Joe, it's so dangerous for you. The police."
"I know where to go," he reminded her. "I'll be careful."
"That's what we said a week ago."
He knew then that it hadn't been easy for her, either. Not for the same reason, he thought. She just hadn't gone anywhere or done anything but mind the apartment and take care of him. For some reason, he thought that girls needed a man to even start thinking about sex. No girl had ever approached him in school, and barring a few barfly types, no woman had made overtures to him in the city. Men made passes at girls and they responded or they didn't. There was also the subconscious memory of his mother, who, to his knowledge, had never even mentioned a man as something to want.
He had heard a lot of talk about hot broads and nymphos with strange talents, but the talk had been from men like himself, and with obvious scorn for the 'bitches'.
"What'll you do while I'm out?" he asked.
Lori shrugged and pushed her half-finished steak away. "Go down and talk with Mrs. Harker, I guess. This is one of the nights her husband works. Please, Joe, be careful!"
* * *
Lori stood it a half an horn-, then she went out of the apartment and down the hall to Janet Harker's apartment. Janet wasn't much, nice but unsophisticated, friendly but not nosey. She had a good steady husband, two small children and a constant worry about money. But it would be better to spend an hour or two listening to Janet complain than it would be to sit in the apartment and worry about Joey. By now, the Harker kids would have been put to bed and Janet would be lonely. Lori applied her knuckle to the door in the peculiar little tat-a-tat-tat-tat Janet knew, then opened the door and walked in.
The television was on and the lights were low, just as she had expected. But the girl on the sofa was not plain Janet Harker, and she was not watching the television. Lori knew exactly what the girl was doing because she had done it to herself a thousand times. But not while she was baby-sitting. The girl dropped her smooth bare legs and jerked her skirt down, rolling to her feet with frantic haste.
"You-you've got a nerve, just barging in!" she gasped.
"I thought Janet was home alone. You're Marie, aren't you?"
"Oh!" Janet's sister-in-law gasped and dropped her face to her outspread hands. "I'm so ashamed!"
Lori giggled, suddenly feeling better than she had for a week. "It was kind of funny," she said. "But heck, everybody does it!"
Marie Harker raised her head, her chestnut hair hiding the full depths of her eyes. She was prettier than Janet's husband was handsome, by far. Her shape was only a little less mature than Lori's own, and it would get better when the last of the baby fat left her high, flaring hips.
"Do they?" she murmured. "Oh dear."
She sat down and tried a smile. "It was awful, wasn't it?" I don't-do it much. But I had a date tonight and Janet called for me to babysit and I was so mad! Then I got to thinking, and it kind of got me, I guess. I'm so embarrassed!"
"Forget it," Lori laughed, sitting down on the divan. "Was it going to be a big date? Oh, my name's Lori. I live down the hall. Lori Klinman."
"I'm glad to meet you," Marie replied. Then they both laughed at the implied courtesy. "It wasn't a real big date, but you know how weekends are. When you go to school all week, you kind of look forward to jiving it up a little."
"Jive kid, huh?" Lori suggested.
Marie shook her head. "Nothing like that. We go to a drive-in movie and neck a little bit and maybe have a hamburger after. This boy is a basketball player. Real groovy. I got him half nuts about me. I can tell, you know.
"Do you tease him?" Lori asked, remembering things.
"He says I do. Maybe I do. I guess every girl does. Did you ever, before you were married?"
"Did I ever what?"
"I mean, tease a boy a little. With your shape, I'll bet you gave them a bad time!"
The sudden elevation to wife and 'older' category did something to Lori. She leaned back on the sofa and smiled condescendingly at the friendly girl. Never much for having intimate girl friends when there were boys in Mayfield, Lori found this new confidence pleasant. Unaccountably, the image of her first sight of Marie Harker still hovered, in her inner eye.
"I ran around with older boys," Lori said. "You can't tease them much. Anyway, after the first time, you wonder why you wasted time teasing."
Marie looked away for a moment. "I was always afraid," she admitted. "I almost did, once, but he didn't know what to do, so I was saved. My family gets pregnant easy."
"I used to use Seven-up," Lori confided.
"Seven-up?"
"Sure. You buy a bottle out of the machine in a service station. Then, when you're through, you pop the cap and put your thumb over the bottle and shake heck out of it." Lori giggled at the brilliant memories. "It makes a real crazy douche and there is something in the Seven-up that helps kill the little bugs."
Lori suddenly noticed the way Marie's lips were drawn in bloodless strain. The pulse at the base of her throat was visible. Imperceptibly, her knees had parted and her body had assumed the tension Lori remembered from her own experience. Without understanding how she knew, Lori felt that if she leaned over and slipped her hand up under Marie's skirt, the girl would go into acute orgasm. That was exactly what happened, but Lori had not counted upon her own reaction.
The two girls huddled together, moaning and writhing, tugging at each other's clothes and kissing with excruciating fury. Less aggressive, Marie gave way under the pressure of Lori's squirming hips. Cradled between the suddenly relaxed thighs, Lori ground her panty-clad hips to the soft, naked velvet and the two girls locked in hard ecstatic passion.
* * *
By eleven-thirty, Joe was getting desperate. He had been to three bars and one gay club, and all around him were men laughing with unsubtle intent, drinking and kidding and talking. The town was hot, suspicious and afraid, and he symbolized the focal point of the trouble. He heard about two dozen or so pinkies who had been picked up, rousted through the Hall and turned loose. Certain bars had put on doormen to niter the crowd. Anyone who had ever been associated with Jack Burnett had been hauled in, and those most liable to be in the know were not welcome in the night spots.
Joe didn't know what he wanted, or what he should do. He had never been a 'hunter' and he had never been hunted, except once ih the burlesque by Jackie. He had only fifteen dollars in his pocket because Lori had taken charge of their dwindling funds. He finally spent two dollars on cab fare and went to a legitimate bar far out on Mission Street. It was legitimate in that it did not cater to gay ones even as ii did not question them. The talk was that the joint was 'loose' and needed looseness. Past dreaming of a pants-down ball, he was ready to settle for any kind of social contact.
By the time his eyes became used to the near-darkness, he decided there was life in the place but not for him. When the man at his elbow said, "Hi, kid," he was surprised, momentarily frightened by the possibility that the tall, hawk-nosed man was a cop.
"Hi."
"You waiting for something?"
"Just out for kicks, like everybody else. Why?"
"Want to make twenty bucks?"
"Hey, I'm no whore!" Joe snapped. "You got a nerve!"
"Twenty bucks for time. The kicks are up to you, kid."
"What's the pitch?"
"My gal and I need another man. You wanta go?"
Joe looked up with sharp eyes. The man was lean and lined and probably forty-five. His clothes were good and he had strong teeth. Desperation hacked away at caution and Joe Keller swung around on the barstool. "No frame?" he queried.
"On the level," the man said with a broad, eager smile. "You follow us out. My car is in the lot next door."
"Yeah!"
The woman weighed three hundred pounds. She was pretty as fat women are pretty, with jellied roundness badly confined in a flowered print dress. Her coat was light and insufficient. She automatically turned sideways to go out the door, despite its broad aperture. The thin man looked back at Joe, waiting to see if the size of his woman had changed Joe's mind. Joe slid off the barstool and followed them out. His curiosity was nearly as great as his excitment. As he climbed into the big Buick sedan, all the tribulations of the past weeks evaporated. He was swinging again.
"I'm Tom. This is Tessie," the man said over his shoulder.
"I'm Ted," Joe volunteered the lie. "Where are we going?"
The fat woman fumbled with the big handbag in her short lap, then thrust a twenty dollar bill over her shoulder. Joe took it with no reluctance.
"We are going to drive around a little bit and talk," Tom said over his shoulder. "You hot with the law in any way?"
"Law? Hell no," Joe snapped.
"Local boy? I mean, you got a family here in Frisco?"
"No."
"You got a man? I mean a steady man?" Tessie asked suddenly.
"That's none of your business, is it?" Joe countered, momentarily taken back by their apparent recognition of his taste in sex.
"Could be," Tom replied. "Don't get shook. All we want is twenty bucks worth of answers to our questions. We are looking for a nice-looking kid who isn't hot with the law and who isn't bashful about things. It's our money, so we got a right to ask questions. You don't want to answer, take the twenty and so long."
"No man," Joe said, his senses abruptly sharp and eager.
With great effort, Tessie turned in the front seat. Her eyes were shadowed black buttons as she peered at Joe. Each light they passed, each momentary flash of illumination caused Joe to flinch inwardly as he returned her inspection. Her prettiness had vanished and grimness showed through the fat cheeks and double chins. Joe grinned at her.
"What's funny, baby?" she asked unsmilingly.
"I'm scared," Joe replied without being able to stop the words. His brittle laugh didn't change what he had said.
"Honest kid, anyway," Tom said around his hard jaw.
"Yeah," Tessie agreed, her voice showing some hope. "Where do you work, kid? In the city?"
"I'm looking for a job," Joe admitted. "I need a job."
The Buick swerved suddenly and turned into a driveway beside a two-story house, exactly like a hundred more on the unidentified street. Tom turned off the ignition key. Tessie opened the door on her side and oozed out of the car. Tom turned around in the seat, his arm raised and Joe found himself looking into the muzzle of the biggest automatic he had ever seen.
"You never open your mouth about what you see and hear from now on, boy. Is that clear?"
"I'm no fink," Joe said, no longer afraid.
Tom grinned. "Okay. You work out and it can be a lot of fun as well as worth a buck or two. Come on in and Tess will pour us a beer."
CHAPTER SEVEN
Dirty pictures, hundreds of them. They were filed in a neat metal case, and indexed in some way Joe spent no time trying to decipher. There was a four by five glossy print and a negative in a glassine envelope. A white tag was pasted to each glassine container and a serial number was penned on the tag. It was a master file of some sort, but Joe was so stricken with sensual response he could only thrill to the crisp, uninhibited display.
Tessie popped him a fresh beer and Tom leaned back in the deep leather chair and smoked heavily. Joe went through the file, wanting to spend more time with each picture, but aware that his emotions were on stage. He looked, replaced the print and its envelope, then went on to the next.
Most of the pictures involved at least two sexually engaged people, and there were sets. When he came to the section where the two people were both men, he began to get an inkling of what Tom and Tessie were after. In the middle of the homosexual sets, he looked up.
Tom grinned. "We don't say you have to like it. We just want it done like we say it should be done. We lost one of our boys two days ago. We have orders to fill. We need a good looking replacement who is half smart. We make movies, so we have to have some brains along with the talent. You interested?"
"Why me?" Joe asked, aware that San Francisco was a fertile field for homosexuals.
"You looked good to me," Tom replied. "See, we can't use pairs. Too much emotional static. Our people have to work. And then there is the question of who is photogenic and who isn't, if you know what I mean. Midgets we can't use. This is a big business, with a lot of money at stake. You have to take orders and work hard. About eight hours a week and a hundred bucks. And kicks, if that's important. And all the beer you can drink."
Joe giggled briefly, ashamed that his youth showed through but unable to align his emotions with the cold, business-like terms Tom used to describe his setup. Tom said more, but it was largely about the process and impersonal attitudes of taking pictures. Joe thought about doing what he saw in the pictures with a strange man and before the eyes of a cameraman, or whomever. Then his frustrations overpowered his reluctance. And the thought of money and excitement and involvement with the exotic if nefarious business made him tingle with anticipation. The idea of being in the middle of such a business, with money to show for it, was too much for his wisdom. He was entirely through the file before he realized that neither Tom nor fat Tessie were in any of the pictures.
"What can I lose?" Joe laughed, setting the file on the end table beside his chair.
"You'll go the route without argument?" Tessie asked.
"All the way?" Tom warned him.
Joe looked at them both. Neither derision nor scorn showed in their returning glances. It did not occur to him that he could question their moral standard as easily as they could weigh his. He gained some confidence in the fact that there seemed to be a lot of men and women involved in the file case he had just looked through. And Tom seemed totally concerned with production, not emotions. Tessie he could not understand, but the aura of stern intelligence that flitted over her face made him feel she was a bigger part of the proposition than might be apparent.
"When do I start?" Joe asked. "And where?"
"Okay, boy," Tom agreed. "It isn't jumping off a cliff, anyway. You can quit if it gets you. Only never talk, because there are bullets in this." His hand patted the left side of his belly. "Where do you live?"
"In town."
Tom thought about the evasive answer a moment. "Okay, if that's the way you want it. Sunday. Be at that bar by eleven in the morning. It opens at ten."
"Won't they think something?" Joe asked, trying to be clever.
"Why should they? I own the place," Tom replied.
* * *
It was nearly four in the morning when the cab dropped Joe at the door of his apartment house. He was full of beer and plans and excitement and he wanted to talk to Lori in the flush of his enthusiasm. But he understood the remaining barrier of personal inclination that stood between them. Lori knew he was gay, but it wasn't something they talked about. And Torn had said no talk. Lori would be happy he'd found a job, and there were a hundred white lies he could tell her about what kind of a job it was. She would be pleased about the money. Joe was simply pleased with his first step into the world of independence, no matter the shape of that world. He fell asleep before he realized the loneliness he had set out to conquer earlier in the evening had not been properly eradicated.
He slept late and awakened with a headache. Lori was in the living room reading the morning paper. He returned her hesitant smile, and whacked his head like a swimmer with water in his ears.
"Whooey," he said. "I drank too much beer. Is there any coffee in the joint?"
"In the kitchen, dope. Have a big night?"
"Real big. Got a job, too."
"Honest, Joey?" Lori sat up, her lush body a rolling symphony under her housecoat. "Honest, Joey?"
"Sure," he replied in a hurt voice. "Think I'm a goof? A hundred bucks a week. I start Sunday morning. I work for a commerical photo outfit in the Mission district. We're fat, sis."
"How'd you get the job?"
Joe fumbled in his shirt pocket and tossed the twenty dollar bill to the cocktail table. "Met this guy in a bar. We got to talking. He's going to teach me the business. Gave me twenty in advance. Buy a house and lot, Sis."
He went into the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee. It was easy, he thought. The framework of his deception was sketched out, and it would be easy to fool his sister. And he fully intended to learn the 'business' from Tom. Back in the living room, he sat down on the sofa beside Lori and sipped his coffee. When he looked at her, she was almost radiant. More so, he decided, than his anouncement of employment should have created.
"Hear from Mom, or something?" he asked.
"No. I just feel wonderful-your job and all."
"Yeah," he agreed, once more absorbed by his new importance.
"Well, I did meet a friend, last night. Mrs. Harker's sister. Real nice girl. We got along great. I told her about us really being brother and sister, too."
"Hey!" he gasped cautiously.
"Oh, its' okay. She thought we were real smart. I didn't tell her-anything else, though. I just thought it would be better if she came here and we didn't have to act like husband and wife. She won't tell, Joey. I have to have someone to be friendly with if you're away at work all day."
"I may work nights some," Joe said hastily.
"That's all right. What will you be doing, Joe?"
He shrugged. "How do I know? Anyway, it's a job, and the guy made it sound real interesting. We'll make it okay, Sis."
He fell silent as the memory of the pictorial eroticism flooded up into his brain. Certain images and impressions were flagrantly clear, other details were obscure and unimportant. He tried to still his impatience but his hand shook as he raised the coffee to his dry lips. He tried to imagine himself in the melange, but mostly he thought about the pictures he had seen and the probable circumstances around their original taking. Without the slightest knowledge of photography, he began to build a production image, based upon his movie and television memories of theatrical staging as it was represented to the public.
Sometime later in the day, Joe began to think about himself. He had a mind full of half-understanding. With Jack Burnett, his step into the world of mid-sex had not seemed very great. It had occurred without warning, but because Jackie had been older and very confident Joe had spend little time questioning the right and wrong of it. And every step thereafter, up to the day of Jackie's death had been increasingly more delicious.
Despite the in-between days during which Joe had been introduced to gay bars and similarly inclined men, he had never quite got around to identifying himself with the prissy, fluttering deviates he met. It had not been until he was arrested that Joe made up his mind to his way of life. There was no turning back, even if he knew how to turn back, or to where, in his few years. Defiance at what he felt to be mistreatment by the law had only made him less unsure of himself. Since Jackie's death, there had been few opportunities to confide or discuss sexuality with anyone. He hadn't been very pleased with the similarly harried deviates in the city jail, but at eighteen, Joe was unable to identify himself with other people.
He had found nothing unpleasant or strange in his sexual relations with Jackie, and there would be no barriers to hurdle in front of a camera. In fact, he thought more about the cameras and the other naked subjects than he thought about himself. His ego was more impressed with his emotional committment. It was going to be wonderful and interesting and for money. After so many days of pain and frustration, he felt confident everything was going to work out just fine.
Several times, he found himself on the verge of telling Lori the whole amazing story of the previous night. Instead, he channeled his enthusiasm into words about a better apartment and a high standard of existence. The fact that his sister seemed to share his excitement only made Joe's spirits soar higher. In the manner of untethered adolescents, they talked late into the night, and their tempo was definitely upbeat.
* * *
Tom said they were going to Daly City, a matter of five miles from the Mission district. Joe tried not to show his excitement and Tom paid little attention to him, driving and talking with equal ease.
"There will be a couple of girls and a guy besides the two cameramen," he said. "Stay cool. Everyone knows what they are there for and no one will open their trap. But don't you make any mistakes, Ted. This is no party. This is business. Don't grab the girls and don't make smart remarks. Sure, we're chummy. Have to be. You can't just think sex and produce the equipment at the snap of the fingers. But today you're just going along for the ride. I want you to see the set-up and meet the people you'll be working with. I want them to meet you. Business or not, we have to get along, and so we start you out, gentle-like."
"Movies?" Joe asked eagerly.
"Not at this joint. No room to shoot. Stills today. Have to shoot on Sunday because the cameraman works downtown during the week. Stuff like you saw the other night. Two gals and the guy. Nervous?"
"Why not?" Joe countered.
Tom grinned. "You'll sweat, boy. I been running this show with Tessie for ten years and I still sweat, once in a while. If it doesn't make a man sweat, it isn't worth the film and paper!
"Jesus," Joe gasped, his imagination getting the best of him. "So I sweat."
Tom tipped his head back and laughed. "I like you, boy. One more thing. You strike me as a kid from the right side of the tracks. Some of the people you'll meet are pretty rough. Don't let them get your goat. They act tough and rough, and they are, but sometimes they pour it on in an effort to seem casual."
"They don't care if-I watch?"
"If they care, you'll never know about it."
The house was a medium sized nonentity amid a hundred others. Tom turned into the open door of the two car garage, nestling the Buick beside an old Ford. He got out and pulled down the overhead doors, turning the garage into a dusky, rubbish scarred cave. Joe stood in tense anticipation while Tom found the key to the entry. Inside, they were in a kitchen. Beer bottles and cans and some empty whisky bottles Uttered the drainboard. On the table were two half empty glasses of stale beer and an ashtray full of butts. From within the not-new interior of the house came shrill feminine laughter, and low voices.
Joe followed Tom into a dinette, equally littered with dead beer cans. In the double doorway leading into the living room was an expensive, plate-back camera screwed to a stout metal tripod. Rubber-covered cords ran from several outlets, supplying power to four stand lights, all aimed at the far end of the room where a sofa seemed the center of interest. All the windows had heavy drapes drawn tightly. The only light came from the overhead fixture, spreading yellow glazing over the cheap furniture. As the two men sidestepped the camera and stand lights, a stooped and slovenly man appeared at another door, leading into a short hall.
"Hi, Tom. That damned Daisy is late again."
"Sammy, this is Ted," Tom said easily. "He's going to work where Bobby left off."
"Hi," Sammy grunted, with hardly a second glance. "There's beer in the icebox."
"Doesn't anybody ever clean this craphouse up a little?" Tom snapped. "Come on, Ted."
There were two bedrooms and a bath opening off the hallway. At the door of one bedroom, Tom nodded Joe in. One step into the room froze Joe motionless. The big broad shouldered young man had on trousers. The girl slouched on the bed with a beer in her hand and a half-finished laugh on her over-red mouth. She was clad only in a garterbelt and long black stockings and a big patch of black hair. Despite Tom's warning, Joe could not help staring. She was pretty in a dark, hard way, and her breasts were high and thick. Her skin was tawny, smooth and slightly dark at armpit and close-pressed places. She swung around and sat up, dropping the hand holding the beer, down, less in modesty than in surprise.
"A new baby," she said pleasantly. "Where did you get him, Tommy? He's pretty."
"Take it easy," Tom told her. "This is Ted. Meet Carol and Mac. Ted. You three get acquainted while I talk to Sammy."
"Nice to know you," Mac said, thrusting out his hand. When Joe offered his the big fingers wrapping around his slender palm were gentle and possessive. Joe felt a peculiar tinge of fright, then he didn't care.
"I'll get you a beer, baby," Carol said and got up from her seat on the edge of the rumpled bed. She was a little over five feet, and looked less attractive when her broad hips showed pulpy flair above slightly bowed legs. She stepped into black high heeled pumps and went out of the room.
Joe just stood, petrified with the impact of actuality.
"Sit down, Teddy," Mac said. "Get loose, kid. We're all friends. A couple of beers will help."
As Joe moved to a straightbacked chair, Mac patted his buttocks on the way by. "That's a baby," he said. "What's your specialty?"
Joe throttled the screech of terror rising in his throat, and for a moment he contemplated running for the street. Then the lacy underwear piled on the foot of the bed caught his eye, and in another moment, Carol came swiveling back into the room, carrying his beer. She stopped with her knees apart, and only a few inches from his. Other than Lori, Carol was the first nude woman he had ever seen, and her raw, unabashed sensuality made him flush.
She shoved the beer into his hand and laughed when his fingers let it slip almost away. "Pabst now, Schlitz later, baby!"
"Get off his back" Mac told her. "You know goddamned well he's mine."
Carol shrugged and flopped back onto the bed. "So who needs him?" she grumbled. "Damn, I wish Daisy would get here!"
CHAPTER EIGHT
Joe learned to act like a homosexual in front of a camera. Cameras, really, because there had been three sixteen millimeter cameras placed in the bam-like room in the old farmhouse. Two were mounted on tripods at different levels, with different focal lengths for a long and a short shot. The third had been a hand-held Bolex with a zoom lens in the hands of a fat, sweating cameraman named Hal Goldberg.
Tom Gallagher had briefed the three 'actors' from a handwritten script Joe suspected to be Tessie's handiwork. The set had been half a bedroom, with the furniture grouped so Goldberg could work around from side to side. The script had been simple. Titles to be dubbed in later called the eight minute episode, "THE BROTHER-IN LAW". It opened with a real active session between Fred McDonald and the usually late Daisy. At the appropriate moment, Joe entered the set as the young brother-in-law with more than casual interest in his brother-in-law's sex life. From there it developed without limit, Joe becoming the star in a role so brutally obscene he hardly remembered the details.
Now he stood in the tepid shower, letting the water soothe his debilitated body. Nothing could soothe his mind. He had quit acting within seconds of the moment when Mac had laid firm, strong hands on his slender body. There had been something from Tom and curses from the cameraman when the film had to be changed, but Joe remembered nothing but the insane ecstasy and the delightful pain. The big house was empty now, except for Mac in the next room. He had a car of his own and had volunteered to take Joe back to the city.
Joe dried himself and checked his trouser pocket for the five twenty dollar bills Tom had given him while the cameras were being unloaded and packed. Buttoning his shirt, Joe stepped to the door and looked into the bedroom where Mac was brushing his hair in front of a stained mirror over a scarred dresser.
"How was I, Mac?" he asked in a tremulous voice.
The tall blonde youth turned, his smile revealing straight white teeth behind full, sensuous lips. "How do you mean that?"
"Did I goof? I heard Tom and the other guy raising hell about something."
Mac came forward and put one gentle hand on Joe's shoulder. "You were great, just great, baby. They were only cussing because they had to lose a minute or two of real wild action while they changed film. You were great, baby, and I mean it! I liked you, too. Know what I mean?"
Joe flushed, but he smiled up at the intense face. "I know. Well, I guess if I didn't like it I wouldn't do it, would I? Mac, when will we see the film?" Joe asked with fresh interest.
"A week or so. See, they shot a total of twelve minutes. That's thirty-six minutes of film from the three cameras. They'll edit and splice to make at least four eight minute runs, plus maybe a flock of four minute quickies. All of them will be different. From the original prints, they can have as many copies made as they can sell. You hurt any?"
Joe flushed, but it was not from embarrassment. "Of course. But it's all part of it. I'll get used to you, Mac."
"Did the girls being there bother you?" Mac asked gently.
"At first. Then-I forgot all about them! Do you like girls best, Mac?"
The tall youth with the eternal stamina took a long pull at his can of beer. "What is best?" he countered. "I just go along with the game. I do what I want to do with whoever wants to do it. If it fats up my pocket book, it's all the better. I don't look down my nose at you or anyone else, because in a pinch, I'm liable to do everything you do, and some more. Take it easy."
"But you don't feel-like I do," Joe said in a tremulous voice.
"A flip of the wrist, baby. Once, just before you made up your mind what you wanted, we both felt just exactly the same. I like beer, you like whiskey. Like I said, take it easy. You're just a kid, and everything changes. Hell, you start taking yourself too seriously at eighteen and you'll be in the bug house before you're twenty-five! Want another beer?"
"All right. Carol's a dirty bitch, isn't she?"
Mac opened the beer and handed it to Joe. "Some. She's thirty-two and on the downhill slope and she knows it. Some gals like that think they can make it being nasty after they've lost the looks and the shape, to be sweet. She'd ride a donkey if Torn could get one into the studio. But she needs the money for her two kids. They're about eight or nine and live with her mother."
"You know a lot about girls, don't you?"
Mac hoisted his trouserfront in a symbolic gesture. "It comes naturally, baby. I was about fifteen when I found out all my brains came in a tube. If I know about women, it's their fault for educating me. For the first five years, I thought they were doing me a favor. Then I found out who was doing favors for whom. Like that damned Daisy. She knows I got to save it for another forty minutes but she hangs onto me after the camera cuts out till I have to cuff her damned ears. Oh well, it's only for money."
"How much do they pay you?" Joe asked, letting his adoration show in the tone of his voice.
"A bill and a half a week. It beats checking groceries in a supermarket, which is about the extent of my brainpower."
Joe drank his beer, despite the fact that he'd already had too much. He was at loss to find a common ground of understanding with the careless Mac, but he wanted to find a level. The way Joe wanted sex was still too new to his youth to have established a pattern, and he was already thinking of Mac as someone more important than a hired stud in a dirty picture mill.
"Maybe I ought to learn more about this business," Joe said. "You think Tessie is the brains?"
"Oh, brother, but indeedy! She started out in this racket a hundred years ago as a cute chub with a muscular moustache. I saw some old stills of her taken right after the war. Then she got fat and she hooked up with Tom. He was a rough punk, too. Between them, they built this thing up big. They'll take the stuff we shot today and make a jillion with the big market. The more they shoot, the more they have to play with. I'm a gold mine with them by now. All they need is a lead in and trailer out, with me riding the tiger. Then they can hash up some cheapies by splicing in some footage from some of my other things. The people who buy the reprints don't care much about plot or continuity. All they want is action. And, baby, you really gave 'em some today!"
"Let's get out of here," Joe suggested. "You live alone, Mac? I mean, have you got a girl?"
"Nothing for keeps, baby. I get all the stuff I can use on this job, and a guy only has so much muscle, anyway. Like now. You didn't leave me enough muscle to kick a sick whore off a pot! Check that door to be sure the lock caught, baby."
"Okay," Joe replied obediently. "It's locked."
Sitting beside Mac as they drove from San Leandro to Oakland and then across the Bay Bridge to San Francisco, Joe felt a new inner feeling of contentment. Mac talked about the way in which the films were edited and spliced, and he kept the conversation completely away from personalities. It was obvious that Mac and Daisy had made many films together, and there were other names Joe could not identify. When they came to the corner a block from Joe's apartment, he was suddenly reluctant to leave Mac.
"Sunday?" he asked, turning to face the friendly youth.
"I'll pick you up here at ten, baby. Be good, huh?"
"Okay. Thanks, for everything, Mac."
For a moment, Joe stood alone on the comer, watching Mac drive away and savoring the soft, affectionate laugh still bubbling in his ears. Then he gripped the money in his pocket and headed for the apartment. Some things were not very clear to Joe.
* * *
Joe had been gone only a few minutes when Marie Harker's distinctive knock brought Lori running from her bedroom.
"Aren't I a fright?" Marie laughed, wagging her head crowned by fat rolls of plastic and chestnut hair. "I put it up early. Will you brush it out for me, honey?"
"Love to," Lori replied, stealing a quick open-lipped kiss from the laughing girl. "Joe just left. He won't be home till five or six."
"Thank gosh he works Sundays," Marie sighed.
"My folks don't let me out on weeknights. School is a pain in the what'sit!"
"What's a what'sit?" Lori asked in a soft husky voice.
Marie siezed Lori's left hand and placed it hard against her slack-clad front where smooth thighs met the slight out-curve of her belly. "That's a what'sit, honey, as if you didn't know!"
Instantly their girlishness vanished and they melted into a hot, close-pressed embrace. Lori's lounging pajamas let every swell and curve of her quivering body mesh with the firm contour of Marie's arched shape. This was only their third meeting, but their kisses were furious and knowing, as if they had made love since the beginning of time. To Lori, the taste of Marie's lips was like nectar from some exotic fruit, and the smell of the light perfume, the heat of Marie's flushed face was more intimate than her own heartbeat. For a moment, their tongues rested, then they both giggled, not because of amusement but because they both felt the promise of the other for hours to come.
They chose the dinette for the hair brushing because there was some sun coming through the windows. Lori brought her brush and comb from the bedroom, and once more they were girls, talking of shampoos, curlers and rinses. When the curlers and bobby-pins were all in a neat pile on the table, Marie shook her head to test the springiness of her lovely hair.
"Better get a towel before you brush, honey," she said. "I'll have hair all over this blouse."
Lori reached around from behind and began to unbutton the flowered jersey. Her hands spread the material, revealing the tight up-thrust of Marie's breasts, held stylishly in a brief brassiere. Marie pressed her head back against Lori's larger, less confined breasts. For a long moment, they quietly enjoyed the feel of each other. Then Lori finished removing the blouse. As if by mutual consent, they were both stripped to the waist in another minute.
Lori began to brush out the thick shining hair, and they were silent, Lori speaking only through the gentle caress of the brush, Marie answering with slight turns and tips of her head as the academic grooming was translated into love play between them.
* * *
By four in the afternoon, Joe was tired and nervous and embarrassed beyond any moment he had ever known. There was no sex involved in still pictures, no matter how they looked after processing. Still pictures, directed by the stooped and acrid Sammy Talbot were a matter of posing, not doing. It meant striking attitudes of extreme passion, always with the camera angle in mind, and with some semblance of pleasantry, per se, and waiting until Sammy fired the big four-by-five platebacks. Then regroup, resume embraces and wait again.
To Joe's surprise, there was a plan and pattern behind each set of pictures. This, Mac explained, was because the merchandising of the finished pictures was done illegally and thusly, to special customers. It was a bigger business than casual filth; it was deliberately calculated pornography paced to suit the individual sex tastes of the buying public. To satiate these tastes, sex acts of every description were demanded, running the gamut from pure figure exposure to multiple sex orgies.
The problem was that Joe had not yet come to see either himself or the posing as a purely commercial venture. His embarrassment came, not from what he let Mac do to him before the cameras and the two slack-mouthed women, but from his nearly uncontrollable urge to cling to each obscene moment beyond the needs of Sammy Talbot, the sour-eyed cameraman.
Flesh rolled, twisted, penetrated and thrust, and the beer flowed from the big refrigerator. There were many crude, nasty remarks, some complaints and more than one or two slight cries of pain. Sammy was a hard taskmaster, and he kept reminding them all that this was 'no picnic, so never mind the games'. The point of most marvel to Joe had been the unrelenting stamina of Mac's sex drives. There was some merriment about the manner of his maintaining his masoilinity while he drank beer between exposures.
Apparently Carol and Daisy were nerveless, with the insensibility of accomplished prostitutes. The manner in which Daisy spewed saliva on her fingers and gobbed herself to avoid abrasion was only a little less repulsive than the manner in which she used kleenex to repair the damage Mac or Joe did during a shot.
By the time Sammy had made sixty exposures, Joe began to wonder anew at the magnitude of Tom and Tessie Gallagher's enterprise. There had never been any discussion about the retail worth of the mountain of pornography produced at the two or three sessions Joe had witnessed. But by simply counting the principals and multiplying the number by his own weekly wages, then adding the costs involved in the cameras and the rental of the two studios, it was obvious that the monthly expenses ran into five figures, perhaps even six figures.
In an effort to cover his private frustration over the hard, sexless afternoon, Joe asked Mac about it on the way into the city.
"I figure the Gallaghers are cutting maybe a quarter of a million a year," Mac mused. "For a hundred thousand in costs. "I know this. The movies are subtitied in about five languages. A guy in L. A. runs the master film through a reprint machine. They never get less than fifty bucks for a four hundred foot reel. And they can print down to eight millimeter from the master, for people who run the eights on home projectors. You're famous baby!"
"The wild and wooly four of us, huh?" Joe laughed.
"Don't be a dope, baby. When you get the hang of this, Tom will send you to some other studios. Hell, this is routine junk we're making here! Those two broads are so beatup and sagged out they couldn't get in a Chicago peepshow. You wait, baby. There is some stuff in this racket that makes Liz Taylor look like left-over cornflakes."
"Will we go together?" Joe asked in a low voice.
Mac took one hand from the steering wheel and put it on Joe's left thigh, high up. "Maybe. I'll see what I can do-if that's what you want, baby."
Joe put his hand on top of Mac's. "That's what I want."
"Maybe I've got it too," Mac said. "Want to come up to my place and have a drink before you go home?"
Joe nodded, and his assent caused a deep curling sensation inside his belly. It was less passionate than compassionate. For the first time since Jackie had been killed, he no longer felt alone. Up in Mac's two-room apartment, Joe felt only curiosity about the casual manner of the furnishings. It did not seem odd that he was in another man's apartment, drinking his liquor and talking about ordinary things. And when Mac began to toy with him idly, it was not difficult for Joe to respond. Before his emotions overcame his mentality, he thought about Lori, waiting for him to come home. Then he let the fever of his sensuality take over and this time, there was no sour cameramen to break up the moments, nor were there jealous, jaded women around to say unkind things.
Later, drunk with contentment and tingling with satiation, he laughed softly. Mac ceased toweling his splendidly muscled body and looked askance.
"I was just thinking," Joe remarked. "Even with one electric camera, we could have run off about ten thousand bucks worth of our own film."
Mac little-fingered the water out of his ear. "Forget it, baby. If you had a warehouse full of it, where would you sell it? Anybody can make film. It's the distribution that counts. Unless you can talk fat-ass Tessie into leaving Tom!"
"Ugh," Joe decided.
CHAPTER NINE
Martha moved to an apartment within two blocks of where her son and daughter lived, partly because she didn't have enough money to live forever in the downtown hotel, and partly because the tight slacks and low necked blouses she wanted to wear, didn't match the hotel decor. She had her hair done in a fashionable upsweep, and she bought some net brassieres that merely lifted but did not confine her big breasts. Proof that her entire personality had altered in a few short weeks came one afternoon when despite her caution, she came face to face with Joe on the street.
He looked at her sleek hips and the jounce of her blouse, but his glance at her face was ephemeral. Her exotic sunglasses may have helped, but Martha let the credit for her obscurity fall around the new woman she felt herself to be. Briefly, she was grateful that her son was not overly interested in women, even while she nurtured a fuzzy campaign to protect him from himself.
The campaign was going badly. From one doorway or another, Martha had watched him spasmodically. He was working, she decided, because four or five days a week a young man picked him up on the same comer at about the same time. At first, Martha had been a little alarmed at the continuing appearance of the young man, but there seemed to be no great personal attraction between Joe and his friend, so she decided they both worked at the same place.
This seemed all to the good to Martha. The bad thing was Lori. The first thing Martha did in an effort to split up her son and daughter was to wire her attorney in Mayfield. If both children received their full allowance regularly, she thought they might not find it so advantagous to live in the same apartment. With this taken care of, Martha continued her little game of watch and wait. And she played.
Without realizing it, her life took on a day to day significance tied directly to her sense of guilt about having killed Jack Burnett. Superficially confident of her safety now, she still felt the undertow. It was as if having murdered a man, whatever came after was petty and unimportant. Without speaking the words, she had only two aims in life; one was to get her children on an even kneel and the other was to live her life while she had the looks and the feelings to be a desirable woman. If she had a problem, it was evading the hot eyes and grabbing hands. It thrilled her almost as much to be choosy as it did to select. Her bulwark against emotional involvement was a small pad of greenbacks folded into a lump and held with scotch tape. She carried it in her purse at all times to remind herself that everything was not what it seemed to be.
Eventually, this same philosophy penetrated her concern for Joe and Lori. No matter how often she watched the entrance to the old apartment, she never saw Lori. Watching the entrance to the supermarket down the street brought no results. If Lori shopped, it was at some ungodly hour, or in another market. Lori had to be the one because the only thing Joe ever carried into the apartment was beer or the laundry. Gradually Martha began to worry about her daughter. It was even possible she no longer lived with Joe, despite the presence of the mailbox tag which still read Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Klinman. There was another possibility that Lori was ill, and still one more that Martha didn't want to think about. But by the best possible count, Lori could only be two months pregnant, and this should not confine her to the grubby apartment house.
Finally Martha became desperate. In an effort to at least get closer to Lori, she made her way around the block to the alley leading up behind the brick apartment. She had been there once before, but other than a small parking lot, the adventure had shown her nothing. This day, she wore a wind veil over her hair and a short jacket with a turned up collar. Very little of her face showed below her dark glasses, and she had long ago decided neither Lori nor Joe could recognize her body in slacks and sport coat.
There were three cars in the small asphalted parking lot. Two were empty. Martha stopped short, her breath caught between edgy teeth. In the front seat of the third car, two girls were laughing and kissing. Suddenly one of them opened the door and slid out to the asphalt. It was Lori, blonde and gay. She lifted a huge sack of groceries from the floor of the car, then went around to the driver's side. After a quick glance around, Lori thrust her head through the car window and Martha's belly rolled at the lingering manner of the kiss her daughter bestowed upon the pretty girl behind the wheel. Then Lori hunched the sack of groceries and disappeared in the back door of the apartment.
Martha remained half hidden behind a thick telephone pole while the girl started the car and backed it out into the alley. For a long time, Martha stood contemplating her misery. A month in San Francisco had taught her many things, but she had always known that two women did not kiss that way merely as a postscript to a shopping tour.
* * *
At first it seemed inconceivable, but after two stout drinks and an hour of pacing the floor in her apartment, Martha decided it was reasonably logical. Jack Burnett had said, in the minute before he had died, that it was bad for a mother to breastfeed her boy-child until he was four and let him sleep with his sister until he was six or seven. If boys were susceptible to some form of traumatic response, it would seem idiotic not to credit girls with equal responsiveness. With something of the fatalistic attitude she had acquired in the past weeks, Martha told herself she had two children teetering on the brink of sex deviation, and the problem didn't seem to be any larger than before.
The initial difficulty was getting close enough to her children to exert influence without causing them to run like frightened rabbits. It would do no good to confront them with the mother they had already out-smarted: the free and easy sexbomb she had become might frighten or disgust them, but somewhere in between, she might find a mother-image they could respect but still understand. Martha had two more drinks, and gradually a plan began to form in her mind.
They thought she was on a trip. Were she to pop in on them wearing at least half of her new personality, talking about love, men and the good times she had had in Palm Springs or Hollywood, she might force a common ground of understanding before they realized she was gradually regaining control of their lives. Sex was the problem. She would make them understand that she not only understood sex, but knew what was worthwhile and what was not. It was not logical to claim some knowledge of male homosexuality, but it would be easy to casually mention some mystic love affair with a most unhappy and heartsick lesbian. May be not a love affair, but more than a nodding acquaintance. Once rapport was established, she could get down to serious, if gentle, emotional guidance.
Rage, disgust, a stepfather, or some other logical approach did not occur to her, at least as valid solutions to the equation. With the headiness of bourbon making her mind race, she forgot to question her own urge to get closer to her children rather than to bring them back to her. Her first shock and horror had hardly lasted through the second drink. She was already beginning to see herself walking about the apartment, sharing Lori's most personal thoughts and verbally tipping Joe into a stronger masculine role by gentle and wise influence.
She likened it all to her first words to them about smoking: if they chose to smoke, do it around the house. If they were going to delve into adult sex, then it should be calm and orderly and not surreptitious. In one agile mental gymnastic, Martha assumed her children were already committed to devious sexual promiscuity. She would neither condemn nor preach. She would move into their lives and lead them back to normalcy with understanding, not contempt. Then she thought about all the physical things she might have to witness, and the tumbling images filled her mind until she fell asleep, exhausted by the misnamed jubilance in her inner being.
* * *
Mac was adamant. "I wouldn't even know where to start, even if we had enough money to buy cameras and lights and supplies. And all the gals I know work for money, baby. Forget it, like I said."
Joe wiped his long hair back over his ears in a gesture he was not aware of having learned. "I think you're just silly, dear," he said in an equally new voice. "Together, we could make it work. It just galls me no end to think of that fat slob of a bitch making all that money while we do all the hard work!"
"Hard work?" Mac echoed, turning his head to smile at Joe. He was slouched on the worn settee in his front room, his magnificent body making poetry to Joe's eyes any way he looked at his friend. "Is all of it work, baby?"
Joe sniffed. "Well, it isn't their fault we have something in common. To them, we're just bodies. And I'm just darned sure we could sell the kind of film I've been thinking about. All it takes is a little imagination. And those horrible girls! My god, their filthy minds show in every reel, and both of them are built like a sack of wet mice! And if that Daisy doesn't stop trying to pop you in every scene, I'm going to kick her right in her dirty butt! Oh, Mac, we don't need them. We don't!"
Mac rolled to a sober seat, his head tipped forward on his shoulders in deep thought. He looked at Joe, and it was like a caress, even though Joe Keller knew this affair was not forever. He had found something new in Fred McDonald, something he had never felt with Jackie. Jackie had known everything. With Mac, every day brought some fresh adventure in companionship and passion. But he knew Mac was not hooked. He was too big an animal, too much of a man to let his heart go with the virility of his body. He liked and he enjoyed and he appreciated, but he did not love. Despite his genuine belief that he and Mac could get into the outlaw picture business for big profit and easy living, Joe felt that he could prolong this wonderful relationship if he could get the six-foot youth to enthuse about their own venture into business.
"Even if we did it cheap, it would take five hundred dollars." Mac said. "We'd have to find a processor to do the developing and editing. Then we'd have to run the stuff to L. A. to get as many duplicates as we could afford to buy. Then we'd have to find a market for the stuff. And Joey, you know the kind of stuff you and I could make can only go to a special market. We have to have a girl or two to hit the general market and you know it. Girls cost money. That brings us back to the original five hundred, which we sure as hell don't have!"
Almost instantly, the kittenish effeminacy left Joe, except for the uncontrollable tone of his voice. "Do you know a photographer, somewhere, Mac?"
"Maybe I could find one."
"Have you any idea at all who might buy our stuff, say in Los Angeles or Denver or somewhere?"
Mac's eyes narrowed at the positive steps Joe enumerated. "I know a buyer or two, sure. But I don't guarantee they'd buy our stuff."
"Mac, I can get the five hundred-and maybe the girl," Joe said coldly. "We could make a share deal with the processor if we furnish all the material. We don't have to have all the junk Goldberg uses. We'll only have one camera so we don't have to light up a barn. We can mish-mash our scripts so we can use the same close-ups in two or three different sequences. If we can get a dozen eight minute reels, you can take them to someone. If they want to buy, we can hustle enough money to get the reprints run off."
"This is big with you, isn't it, baby?" Mac asked softly.
"Well, of course! And we can buy a second hand two-and-a-quarter square and shoot stills till our eyes pop!"
"Where are you going to get five hundred dollars, baby?"
Joe smiled and reached into his back pocket where his allowance money from his mother was a thin fold of promise. With neat fingers, he removed the pad of one hundred dollar bills and waved it as if it were a tasty green cookie. "Okay?"
Mac took the six one hundred dollar bills apart and smoothed them on his knee. "You little stinker," he chuckled. "Holding out on me, huh?"
"I have some secrets," Joe reproached him prissily.
"Yes, you do! Okay. There's the dough. Where's the girl?"
Joe's eyes narrowed slightly. "I'll let you know in a day or so," he promised. "You take care of the money, dear."
Mac leaned forward and hooked one heavy hand behind Joe's blonde head. His eyes were soft and smiling as he hauled Joe toward him. "If you could only cook," he teased.
But cooking wasn't what Joe Keller had in mind.
* * *
Quivering inwardly with more fright than he cared to admit, Joe washed, then brushed his hair and sauntered into the dinette where Lori was setting out pot roast for dinner. She was bright and shining, having spent some of her allowance on new clothes and a swirling, soft-waved hairdo. Her full breasts pushed and shaped the lame blouse and her hips filled the tailored slacks in a way that made Joe see stars and dollar signs.
"Brought you something, Sis," he said casually. "We ran a flock of this stuff through the shop today, so I thought you might get a kick out of it."
Carelessly, he tossed the four-by-five manila envelope to the table. It made a heavy thud as it landed. Tessie had grumbled a little about furnishing twenty-four of the best singles in her file, but Joe had wanted just this particular set. The photos were all of one girl, naked, sprawled and agile, and if fortune had been, only a little less fickle, the subject could have been a Hollywood movie starlet. Joe waited as Lori's nimble fingers pulled the deliciously revealing photos from the envelope. He waited for her to gasp, and all she did was swing sideways into a chair, her eyes glued to the first broad exposure with all the strength that had left her knees.
"Crazy, huh?" he asked.
Lori didn't answer. One by one, she surveyed the prints. They became increasingly more revealing because he had arranged them that way. He could not detect any change on his sister's face, except that her lips seemed very dry, necessitating a constant wetting with the pink tip of her tongue.
"Is this-the kind of work you do, Joey?" she asked, not looking up from her second shuffle through the photos.
"Just sometimes. We process these for a big operator. He orders five hundred of each negative when he brings them in. Gets fifteen dollars a set of twenty-four when he peddles them. Some racket huh?"
"Who is the girl?" Lori husked.
"Who knows? Anyway, when people buy this material, they aren't looking at her face, you can bet! She could be somebody's wife who made a fifty dollar bill for a couple of hours skinned out in her own front room. Anyway, I thought you'd get a kick out of them. Guess I should have brought you a set of stuff we ran last week of a man," Joe chuckled with false apology.
"A man?" Lori breathed.
"Sure. Women like to look at nudes too, you know."
"Just look at her," Lori said.
"You look. I already did," he laughed.
"Do you have to take them back?"
"No. Why?" Then Joe warmed up to his task. "Be careful who you show them to, Sis!"
"She's sure built beautifully, isn't she?"
"Look who's talking! Anyway, no one will pay money for a set of pictures of a bag. Hey, I'm hungry!"
Lori got up and went into the kitchen. She put the pictures on the drainboard and did it roughly so fragments of several poses were exposed. Joe pretended not to watch, but he saw how she glanced down at the pornographic display every time she went from the kitchen to the dinette. When dinner was on the table, she brought the pictures in and turned them face down on the tablecloth.
"Is it against the law? It must be!"
"Slightly," Joe laughed. "But who'd snitch? Anyway, peddlers are careful who they sell to. And there's no way to tell who the gal is, unless the guy who takes them squeals. What's the matter, aren't you hungry, Lori?"
"I had a late lunch. Are you going out tonight?" Lori looked at her watch. "If you are, I think I'll call Marie."
"Yeah. I'm going to a show."
Lori got to her feet, stretched her magnificent shape as if some cramp had hurt her, then turned for the living room. Joe saw how the tips of her breasts made buttons under the taunt gold blouse. As she went out the apartment door headed for the telephone in the lobby, the look of grim purpose crossed his face once more. At least, he thought, she hadn't torn the pictures in two and hurled them in the garbage. In fact, whatever reaction he could have imagined was entirely different than the one she had produced. It suddenly occurred to Joe that the sister he had once known so intimately was almost a stranger to him now. He hadn't the slightest idea what she did as a replacement for the sex she had voyeuristically shared with him back in Mayfield.
CHAPTER TEN
During the two days Joe waited for some positive sign of Lori's reaction to her first introduction to pornography, he grew up. For the first time in his life, he began to see some justification for their life, some purpose in his existence. He was neither stupid nor lazy. If his private sex urges had confused him, they now seemed natural. There was going to be no separation between his emotional world and his economic future. He told himself he loved Fred McDonald, loved the things he could do for Mac, and loved the things Mac did to him. If that love was not returned in the same portion as it was given, Joe forgave the big handsome youth with the masochistic portion of his mind and reveled in the suffering.
When Mac announced that he had blown one of the hundred dollar bills on a bad horse tip, Joe merely shrugged. "Five hundred was all you said we needed in the first place, dear." he said.
"No more," Mac promised. "I just went kind of wild with the size of those bills. I'm sorry, baby."
"Don't be, Mac. Someday, we'll have enough money for you to blow a bill every week! You'll see. But I do thing we ought to buy our basic equipment now, just to keep you honest and to be ready when the time comes."
Mac put his arm around Joes' shoulders, feeling them relax as Joe melted into the comfort of the muscular arm. "Aren't you ready now, baby?" he asked with soft inference.
"Of course, but we are trying to make money, remember?" Joe replied. "I'm no dummy, Mac. No matter what we end up selling, we have to have a girl to start. When the girl is ready, we have to be ready."
Mac narrowed his eyes and swung back to his beer. "I get the feeling you've been holding out on me, baby. You keep talking about this mysterious girl. For your information, there are a dozen reasonably hot looking broads I can locate if we want to spend a few bucks. What are you cooking up behind my back?"
"I just didn't want to talk about it until I was sure she would work with us, that's all. Listen, Mac. I don't want just any girl. I want one that has a shape and a set of looks, and some brains. Our stuff has to be so good the distributors can't afford to pass it up!"
"Who's the girl, baby?"
Joe hesitated only a minute. "My sister," he said finally.
Mac made an out-going whistle noise. "I didn't know you had a sister! You sure you want your sister-in the racket?"
Joe grinned, and his face aged many years. "Every girl in the world is someone's sister, or daughter," he said coldly. "Plus the fact that I know my sister well enough to think she might like it. And she's the prettiest thing you ever saw, Mac. A real hot shape and a smart look. If she goes for my proposal, we'll have the best there is. Quit looking at me that way! I thought you were a sophisticated thinker."
"I am. But you're a sophisticated stinker, baby!"
"Cut it, dear," Joe said, letting his kittenish voice take over. "Your country brains are showing."
"I always thought any kind of a bastard ought to save something. All right. This is your idea and it is your money. When do I meet the broad?"
Joe winced at his friend's brutal classification of Lori. Then his brain went back in gear and his youthful ambitions took charge of his reason. "Pretty soon, I think. We ought to buy the cameras, Mac."
They had already figured out the nature of the equipment needed, and together, that afternoon, they went to a big dealer in used photographic equipment. By five o'clock, they had spent three hundred and twenty-four dollars for a used Japanese-made sixteen millimeter moving picture camera, a reflex roll film still camera, and a bevy of lights. And two thousand feet of cut-rate sixteen millimeter film. Plus forty rolls for the two-and-a-quarter square reflex. Neither Joe nor Mac were swayed by the salesman at SKINNER'S emporium of photographic seconds because they had only limited money, and they also had Hal Goldberg's example to follow.
"Store it at my place?" Mac suggested, looking back at the hardware in his car.
Joe thought about it for a minute. "All but the reflex and some film," he decided. "I'll take it with me."
"Lights?" Mac suggested.
"The portable bar and the four floods, too," Joe replied.
* * *
"Did you buy it, Joe?" Lori asked, her eyes wide on the impressive camera and the light-bar.
He nodded. "Guess I'm getting the camera bug, but good. It's sure better than that old Brownie Tom bought me. This thing will take pictures anywhere. Up close, in half light, the whole bit. And with the lights, it will work at night or indoors."
"You're so obvious, Joey," Lori laughed disdainfully. "You bought it to take pictures of me, didn't you? Like those you showed me. I thought you-didn't care about me anymore, Joey?"
Pure trickery had never been one of Joe's long suits. Finished with loading the camera, he set it on the table.
"Let your hair down so it falls over one eye and change the shape of your lipstick and nobody would know it was you, Sis."
"Why shouldn't you know it is me, Joey?" she pressed him.
"I wasn't thinking about me," he admitted.
Lori stood up, her body a perfect column of curved and tapered flesh in capris and blouse. Joe met her eyes, but he was unable to know whether or not she was angry. He remembered all the strange intimacies they had shared, but now he could only see their worth as represented by glossy prints and flickering images. Safe on the plateau of his own sexual desires, he assumed his sister was safe on a plateau of her own, whatever it might be. His eagerness to succeed at his newly chosen profession made him blind to reason. If she had exhibited herself in a dozen sexual acts for his benefit, there seemed no logical reason for her to refuse, or disdain, the opportunity to make money with the same exhibitionism. But he had to wait for her to speak, and she finally did.
"You're a dirty little snot," she said sharply and walked away, swiveling with a senuous grace she could never hide, straight to the door of her bedroom. Joe squirmed, but not for long. She came rolling back, a tucked and wrinkled bag of something in her hand. She set the bag on the table at his elbow.
"If that's all you think of me, take these," she said softly.
Puzzled, Joe picked up the bag and began unrolling the top, He looked down into the open sack and a peculiar lump swelled up in his throat. Then emotion retreated and greed, ambition, gleeful success, thrilled his being. In disorderly rolls, showing fragments of legs and arms and tumbling hair, nearly two dozen curled prints from a black and white Poloroid camera tumbled out on the table when he tipped the paper sack.
He already had absorbed enough knowledge of photography to understand that some of the pictures were over-exposed, and some were too thin, but there was no doubt about the model who posed and exhibited herself with an amateur's unabashed ignorance about how a camera recorded infinite detail. He looked at them all, and when he raised his eyes to Lori's, he almost failed to recognize her. She and the girl in the pictures had become another personality, a stranger to him. He ignored the fact that he did not understand his sister anymore. He was only greedy and curious.
"Wild," he said. "But who took them?"
"None of your business, smarty," she snapped.
"Your girlfriend-Marie Harker?" he asked, knowing the answer.
"What's the difference?"
Joe grinned, recovering some of his newfound sophistication.
"Because if she took these of you, you took some of her. Right? And if you'll quit being huffy, I'll tell you that if you both get into the same picture, and maybe get with it a little, I'll put you both in mink within a year. Jesus, Sis! You're a natural! You got it all over that professional model."
Lori suddenly giggled as if his words were some kind of a sweet caress. "The darn camera. It belonged to her dad. We used up about fifteen dollars worth of film just getting the hang of the lighting."
"Show me the stuff you took of Marie," he demanded.
He followed her shape with calculating eyes as she went back into the bedroom. She returned with an overly fat book and began to remove the prints from the pages. They were flat and glossy and grotesquely revealing. Joe felt a twinge of interest, one that the pictures of Lori had not evinced. The girl was dark and young, very young, at least to look at. Her breasts were medium-sized, and from the manner in which they did not flow in the upsidedown exposures, Joe knew they were hard as grapefruit. He stared at every intimate detail and his blood raced from double stimulus. Even her face was beautiful-and wistfully sweet.
"She's great too," he admitted. "All either of you need is a smart cameraman to set you up!"
"And that's you, Joey?" Lori asked, half in derision, half in pure curiosity.
"That's me," he agreed. Then, because he was young and anxious and very pleased with the outcome of his strategy, he blurted out to Lori the story of his 'job.' He skipped the details of his own participation and put all the emphasis upon the fabulous amounts of money and the kicks to be found in the dirty picture business. Then a second factor began to show itself in his enthusiasm. He had not missed the significance of Lori having let her own pictures curl and twist in a paper sack while the pictures of Marie Harker were carefully pressed and preserved in a book.
"It's a way for you and Marie to make a lot of money together," he said. "This isn't a carnival, Sis. This is just two guys and two gals. Even if we all work, the cameraman we hire won't care. Hell, he'll be too busy changing film and hustling the lights! Later, when the dough comes rolling in, we'll get another movie camera or two and then we'll make a million!"
"Marie is still going to school," Lori said, as if that ended it all.
Joe shrugged. "So what? On any Saturday or Sunday afternoon we can run a couple of thousand feet of film. If this was an eight hour a day job, it would be different. Think she'll go?"
"I'm not sure I will-yet," Lori warned him.
Joe fingered the pile of prin s on the table. "You're nuts if you don't!" After another minute of evaluating the very raw cheesecake, he looked up at her again. "You two swapping ends?"
"Joe!"
Joe stood up, retucking his tinted shirt into the top of his tight Continental slacks. Then he let his palms smooth down significantly over his firm behind.
"Come on, Sis," he said in his kittenish voice. "Let's not hoke up the act. Just how are you going to fool little Joey?"
Suddenly Lori threw her arms around his neck and pressed her face to his cheek. It took a moment for him to remember he was her brother, then his hands patted her back reassuringly. Lori raised her face and her eyes were wet with surging tears.
"Joey, oh Joey, I don't want to be a-a lesbian!" she cried. "I hate it-and I can't do without it! Oh god, what is wrong with you and me? Queers! The Keller queers! Mother would just die if she knew!"
Joe heard the click of the latch and he turned his head, cursing his thoughtlessness in not having locked the apartment door. Then he squeezed his sister so the pain made her jerk her head up.
Standing in the door was Martha Keller, a light, expensive bag in each hand. She was smartly dressed in a tailored blue suit and her makeup was subdued and stylish, yet sharp enough to make her mature features sparkle to match her frozen smile. She dropped her bags and came hesitantly across the room. Even a tornado could not have swept away the four dozen obscene photographs in time to prevent Martha from seeing them.
* * *
Facing it was a bit different than thinking about it, but Martha held on to her poise. She knew from the trickle of tears running down her daughter's face that they had not been kissing or making love. She looked down at the array of prints, catching her breath as the raw exposures filled her brain. Then she looked at the camera and several rolls of film beside the prints. It was very clear to Martha that Joe had been taking dirty pictures of his sister. All the things she had dreamed of were coming true. They were hideous things of course, but it would be up to her not to make the situation more hideous by showing her rage and disgust. But there was no sense in pretending she hadn't seen.
"For heaven's sake, Joey," she said, slapping his shoulder in mock disdain. "If you're going to take pictures, learn something about a camera! Anyway, they are disgusting!"
Lori whirled out of her brother's arms and threw herself weeping into a chair. Joe looked like he'd been caught stealing sheep. Or worse, Martha thought.
"For Christ's sake, mom! Why didn't you knock?" he cried.
Martha put her arm around his shoulders and pecked a gentle kiss to his cheek. "What would that have changed, Joey?" she asked softly. "I came here to help, not to pretend blindness. I know all about-your trouble, Joey, and maybe a little about Lori's too, so I'm here to help."
"I didn't take those pictures," he husked.
"Oh?" Martha didn't believe him, but she wasn't ready to argue the point. She walked across to where Lori was a sobbing, disheveled wreck in the old armchair. She knelt beside her weeping daughter and put one comforting arm over the smooth warm shoulders. Lori cringed, but it was from fright and embarrassment.
"Aren't you even a little glad to see me, honey?" Martha asked.
"I want to die!" Lori cried.
Martha jerked Lori erect and turned her around. Looking from her flushed son to her tearful daughter, she felt suddenly strong and definitely in charge.
"Now, the two of you listen to me," she snapped. "You aren't the first kids to make mistakes. I'm not the first mother in the world to raise kids with a blindfold over her eyes, either! But the world hasn't come to an end because of any of us, and we'll work it out together. Joe, go put on a pot of coffee while Lori helps me put my things in her bedroom. There are two bedrooms, aren't there?"
"Mom!" Lori wailed.
Martha smiled affectionately at her daughter. "If I start out at the bottom, there's no way to go but up, is there? Go on, Joe, make some coffee."
"Sure," he agreed, letting her see the tiniest kind of a smile. "Sure, Mom."
Martha dragged Lori to her feet and patted her plump, close-pressed bottom. "Come on, now, baby. Dry up those tears and show me where I'm going to sleep. Its been a rough day and I'm tired."
Lori's arms went swiftly around her mother. "I'm so glad you're here, mother! We-I needed you so!"
"I know. Take my bags in, Lori."
With a quick upsurge of emotion, Lori seized the two bags and almost ran toward the hallway. Martha stopped at the table and hastily gathered up the photos, stuffing them into the bag with quick eyes for the flashing details. Then she closed the paper bag and carried it into the bedroom. She set the bag on the dresser and then appeared to ignore it. Later, she promised herself, she'd have to look at them carefully, to see just how far her son and her daughter had gone with this business.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Joe sat in a dejected slump on Mac's sofa, his head bowed, his eyes seeing miles through the faded carpet. His beer was untouched, and across the room, Mac toyed with the movie camera. It was a fascinating instrument, but Joe was temporarily without interest. After two days, he had exhausted all of the milder ideas and he was contemplating matricide. Not really, he thought, but short of murder, he could think of no way to get his mother out of the way. It also infuriated him that Mac, having now heard the entire story, thought it was funny.
"Dammit, baby," Mac finally said, "come out of the dumps! So we postpone the big move. Maybe we give it up entirely. Hell, nobody's killed! It was a lousy idea in the first place-I told you that two weeks ago."
"I'll never give up," Joe said in a voice that made the grimness pathetic. "I've just got to do it like I've planned!"
Mac put down the camera and twisted in his chair, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. "You got a thing, huh?"
"You don't understand, do you, Mac?"
"Try telling me, baby."
Joe leaned back, tipping his head high to rest the back of his head on the sofa. He shoved his hands into his side pockets, and he looked pulled together, tight, and very alone. He felt alone, and he was depressed by many things which had become obvious since the night he had let Jack Burnett escort him out of the burlesque house.
"Just like you," Joe said. "Men will always treat me like some kind of a freak. Women hate me, despise me, in fact. Society looks on me like I was some kind of an animal, a sick animal, to be jailed or institutionalized, depending upon their individual convictions. The cops whale hell out of me any time they can find an excuse. Don't misunderstand me, Mac, I'm not complaining, much. I'm the way I am and there's enough man in me to take whatever they hand out. But I'm no bug and I'm not a thing. I'm a human being and I'm no dumbbell. Even if I weren't-queer, I'd want to make something out of my life. Being gay is just one more reason for me to be somebody on my own. And by somebody, I mean somebody I can be proud of. I guess I don't care about what the rest of the world thinks, Mac."
"There are other ways to make a name for yourself besides diving into a racket you don't understand, baby," Mac said then.
"I understand it as well as any other racket," Joe told him. "And anyway, it is what I want to do, so I've got to do it."
"I think you're balmy, I know that if I'd had your background, and your chance to go to college, I'd be so far out of this dirty picture business you couldn't find me with a ten-power telephoto lens! What's the future? And one slip brings down every cop in the country, including the Feds. You think Tom and Tessie have never hit the bucket, maybe?"
Joe shook his head. "I'll be smarter than both of them," he announced. "My damned mother!"
Mac popped another beer and sat down beside Joe. They didn't have to look at each other nor touch. This was the strange fascination Joe felt for men-the understanding which required no physical responsiveness, and the total sensuality of loving if they chose to touch each other. At the moment, neither man cared much about sex. Joe's problem absorbed them both, and even Mac's negative attitude was, in fact, a companionship of mind because it was offered in support of Joe Keller, if not in support of his ideas.
"Look, baby," Mac finally said. "Why does your mother have to enter into the picture at all? She doesn't know where you work, or what you do. Your sister will never tell, that's for sure. I'd just take it easy for awhile and we can find another girl. You don't have to use-your sister. Lori, is that her name?"
"Lori," Joe murmured. "I thought about that, Mac. What would you say if I told you I have to use her-have to work with her? Particularly since I've become sure she's-sleeping with a girl! She's the only person in the world who ever really understood me. Better than I understand her, because she never talks about her emotional problems, or what she does. But I know. We aren't like brother and sister, Mac. We're like two people from, well, Mars or Venus, or something. We belong to each other, and we depend upon each other for support-moral support, I'd guess it is called. Anyway, now she knows, and she'd be hurt way down inside if I did anything without her."
"You're dreaming!"
Joe smiled. "Am I? You know any other sister, any other woman who would have responded like she did when I showed her the skin shots I got from Tessie? And she's not a bitch, Mac. She is first class. If you'd have showed her the pictures and made the pitch she would have slapped you silly."
"I'd like to meet Lori," Mac said seriously.
"I'll figure a way," Joe promised him, without understanding the tone of his friend's soft voice.
* * *
Within a week, Martha felt she had been caught in a trap, without knowing the nature of the pitfall. Joe went to his mysterious job every day, Lori shopped and went to the matinees with her mother, and they all talked a great deal. But since the disappearance of the sack filled with pictures of Lori and the pretty dark haired Marie Harker, nothing even remotely sexual had appeared in the daily routine. Martha still had the pictures, and when Lori went shopping with Marie, or did some other casual thing that took her out of the apartment, Martha went through them with what was now a private ecstasy. She had gotten rid of the sack, and now kept the exciting photos in a big envelope, hidden in her luggage.
Long talks with Lori had ended in nothing satisfactory. Her explanation of the pictures seemed logical. She and the girl had simply been fooling around, and Martha had no way to prove this was not true. Certainly Marie was a nice girl to talk to, and not any part of a sex bomb, by modern teenage standards.
And the capris and blouse, with the low neck and tight crotch seam elicited no comment, nor very little notice from her children. Her talk about fancied romances at the various spas she claimed to have visited did nothing either. She latched on to the slightest reference to sex and romance, trying to get a discussion going that would lead to some committment from her kids. None of it worked. She began to feel that her children were again sparring with her, as they had always done from the time they had been old enough to care about each other. The only new thing she discovered was the nearly mystical manner in which Joe and Lori seemed to know what the other was going to say or do. And of course, the miserable apartment was far too crowded, with the advent of 'my mother-in-law' which was Lori's terminology to the landlord.
Obsessed with her problems, Martha nearly forgot she had murdered a man. Once in awhile, the memory bludgeoned her mind while she lay beside Lori in the deep of night. But for the most part, she managed to submerge the nightmare of Jack Burnett and his sudden demise, in the urgency of her desire to help her children. Help her children do what? They both consistently vetoed school, and what else was there to talk about? Even Martha could not find one valid, physical reason why Lori and Joe could not live together a hundred years. This continued frustration added to the other one that burned constantly in Martha's voluptuous belly. Her own sex life had degenerated into a wisp of fog, and her single release came during the moments when she helped herself physically while she surveyed the now dog-eared and much-handled photos.
Then one evening, Joe announced that he had a date for Lori, and that the following evening, they were going out for dinner and a show.
"Fred's a real nice guy," Joe remarked casually. "He's been a big help to me on the job. You'll have fun, Sis."
"Of course she will!" Martha enthused. "She needs a date and some laughter. The idea, the most popular girl in Mayfield without a boyfriend in a city the size of San Francisco! Have you got a girl, Joey?"
Joe looked up in partial surprise. "Me? I'm going to ask Marie. I've been thinking about it for a long time. I think she's keen. Suppose she'll go, Sis?"
"Why not?" Lori countered. "Want me to call her today?"
"Great. Tell her to do her hair up high like you used to, so if we want to buy a drink, the bartender won't throw us out."
"Joe, you kids don't have to drink, do you?" Martha asked.
He grinned. "No. But it helps. What are you going to do, Mom? Hate to leave you all alone."
Martha stretched her shoulders, raising her big breasts in the loose blouse so they made a high-rolling outline. She squirmed in her chair and let her thighs relax in a significant slouch. "Mama knows her way around," she promised. "Maybe I'll take myself out to dinner."
"Cripes," Joe laughed. "Some poor guy is going to get hooked for a dinner check!"
"Hooked, Joey?" Martha echoed, standing up so the arch of her back did lovely things to the flair of her hips.
Joe whistled in appreciation, and Lori smiled. Martha could not get another word out of them.
* * *
Sitting in the back seat of Mac's car while they drove to Marie Harker's house, Joe realized he'd made a mistake. It had taken a week of surreptitious planning to get this meeting to jell, and from the way in which Mac and Lori seemed to take to each other, the jelly was set too hard already. Marie was waiting at the curb in front of the apartment house where she lived with her mother and father. Joe helped her into the back seat, and they settled together, but not very close.
"I had a heck of a time getting out," Marie said. "I goofed Wednesday while Lori was telling me all about tonight, and it was eleven when I got home. My dad talked my ears off about staying out too late on a school night. I have to be home by midnight tonight."
"You aren't scared?" Joe asked, letting his eyes travel over her svelte shape in the white sheath gown. Her skirt was a little short, letting her tapered legs stretch down into the darkness with exciting fluidity. Other than casually, it was the first time Joe had ever really checked her out, and if she had a bad feature, he wasn't able to detect it.
"Lori said we were just going to talk tonight," Marie replied.
"That's right," Mac said over his shoulder. "Just talk."
A significant silence settled over them. Joe wondered just how much Lori had told Marie, other than having shown her the raw cheesecake, with the proper words about fun and money. Lori couldn't have told Marie much, because she didn't know much. The real purpose behind this evening was to start easy and see how far he and Mac could take the two girls with the varied collection of borrowed pornography now in Mac's apartment. Mac hadn't been in favor of any of it. He'd called the double date a 'rough hustle,' particularly with a school-age girl neither of them knew very much about.
Mac halted his car in front of the Chinese cafe. "Wait a shake, kids, and I'll get the food. It was supposed to be ready at seven. Be back in a moment."
As he disappeared into the take-out cafe, Lori turned in the seat and reached back to pat Marie's knee. "You're beautiful tonight," she said. "Isn't she, Joe?"
"Marvelous," Joe admitted.
"Mac's real nice," Lori went on. "I just wish-well, never mind. Has he got a nice apartment, Joey?"
"So-so. Better than ours, but smaller. You'll see."
* * *
The tension broke within two minutes of arrival at Mac's freshly cleaned and ordered apartment. Both girls went to work serving the steaming chop suey and the multitude of sweet and sour delicacies, probing the cartons with enthusiasm for each new odor and each new dish. Mac took their unkind words about cracked dishes and bent forks while he opened the very dry wine he had bought earlier in the day. Joe was given the job of setting the table in the tiny dinette. They were half-way through the meal before he managed to become as gay as the rest of them. Marie had started the hi-fi, and Mac kept pouring the wine. The second bottle didn't last very long.
"Here's to sin," Marie giggled, raising her glass. "This is my first teenage orgy and I love it!"
Joe leaned over and patted her thigh and was surprised that he liked doing it. "Orgy? Hell, I'm so full I couldn't orgy if I wanted to! How about you, Lori?"
She killed the last of the wine in her glass and went "Ugh!"
"One thing about Chink food," Mac laughed. "It doesn't stay with you. Well, let's chunk the junk in the sink and go get cozy. I'll open another-bottle."
Joe helped Marie to her feet, aware through the babble of all four of them talking at once that she was slightly drunk. His arm around her waist hugged her close, and she leaned on him, embossing the shape of her firm breast into his coat. After a step or two, she twisted and her arms went around his neck. She kissed him hard, and Joe conquered his embarrassment and returned the kiss. His hands worked over the softness of her back and he let the headiness of the wine and the hot open-lipped pressure of Marie's lips waft him into a world he was not very sure of.
He stumbled with Marie to the familiar sofa and looked lip at Mac with apology in his eyes. Mac merely grinned and passed out fresh wine. Then he sat down on the arm of the chair where Lori had plumped herself. One of her shoulder straps had slipped a little and the upbulge of her big left breast was white and sensuous. Then Joe was unable to avoid the suddenly amorous Marie. Half afraid, but not reluctant, he let her pull him down for furious, wet-lipped kisses, and the feel of her squirming body under his was insistent, strangely demanding. His hands went down to her hip and he heard his sister and Mac laughing at the way his response made Marie kick her shapely legs and hunch herself.
The hi-fi throbbed and Joe forgot to protest. Once, when he stole a quick glance, he saw how Mac and Lori were dancing in the little space in front of the hi-fi. Lori had her head on Mac's chest and his arms were wrapped around her, but high, with not the slightest bit of the license Joe was taking with the taut shape of Marie's bottom. Then he turned his mouth back to hers and her tongue pushed, flipped over his lips and little sounds of passion burbled through the wetness of her kisses.
Suddenly Joe wanted her with a strange, insane lust he had never known before. His slender body rolled down bard on her, and he felt the catch of her breath as she discovered his desire. Her hands fluttered from the back of his head to his cheeks and over his shoulders then back to his head, and her writhing body showed him how it could be. Her gown was already high on her hips, pushed there by the continuing effort she made to get under his straining body. Joe didn't know how to stop. His fingers tore at her panties, he raised to manage them down over her knees. Marie clung to his neck, her kisses stilled as the breath rushed in and out of her open, petulant mouth.
Somehow he managed to get his own trousers down, and for a moment he had one fleeting thought for Mac and Lori, but he didn't care. The moment his hips felt the warmth of Marie's thighs, the instant his belly pressed to the softness of hers, he let the new emotion run wild. The couch was awkward and Marie's arms nearly carcked his neck. He heard her little cry of pain, then they locked together, and it seemed to Joe that the most important thing in his life was to make the hot, demanding body under his cease its frenzied struggle to throw him high in the air.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Lori thought she was going to be sick. She lay back on Fred McDonald's bed, her right arm covering her eyes. The sounds her brother and Marie had been making in the front room were subdued now, nearly non-existent. Time had little meaning. Neither she nor Mac had moved since they'd gone to his bedroom when it became obvious what Joe and Marie were going to do. Now Lori sensed rather than saw the big serious youth sitting on the far side of the double bed. He had made no move to make love to her, said no words of suggestion. She remembered how quietly he had closed the door, and she had thought, stumbling for the comfort of the bed that he would probably be on her in a moment.
The quiet from the front room made her nervous. Lori took her arm from across her face and turned her head to look at Mac.
"She was a-virgin," Lori said irrelevently.
"Every girl is-once, Lori," Mac said gently. "It only takes one man."
"I've had mine," she said, without any tease in her voice.
"There's nothing wrong with Joe," he told her defensively.
Lori raised to one elbow, aware of what it did to her big breasts, aware of the way her skirt was wrinkled above her knees. "You're not like I thought you'd be," she said levelly.
"Better or worse?" he asked with a broad grin.
"How did you know I didn't want to-be fooled with?"
"I didn't. I just didn't want to fool with you, unless you acted like you wanted it. You didn't. So I didn't."
Lori looked at the door to the front room. "Sounds like they both had a heart attack," she commented on the silence.
He shook his head in disbelief of her blase attitude. "I thought your brother was the coldest fish I'd ever met, but you're no different! What goes with you two, anyhow?"
"Joe cold?"
"Listen, Lori. You don't have any idea what we had planned for you girls tonight! Remember, this is all Joey's idea, not mine! But I was in on it--ready to go along with it all. Joe was going to show you kids some stuff tonight I'd blush to show at a stag party. Up to thirty minutes ago, the only thought he had in his mind was to turn his sister and her girl friend out on film, no holds barred! Yeah, I think he's a cold fish!"
"What are you, then?"
"You aren't my sister, damn it all!"
"I see. Well, Joe and I don't happen to think about being brother and sister like you'd imagine. Oh hell, why should I try to explain it to you!"
Mac moved like a big cat, and he leaned on both arms over her, his body stretched out at an odd angle as if his legs were paralyzed. She could feel the bed quiver with the tautness of his muscles. His eyes bored down into hers and she was frightened.
"I'm not very smart," he told her deliberately. "But it seems to me we've come a million miles since seven o'clock this evening. That little bastard out there ever even thinks about aiming a camera at you and I'll break his neck. Understand?"
"Knight in shining armor, huh?"
"Don't laugh at me!" he almost yelled.
Lori raised one arm and curled her hand behind his neck. She turned her face away and made no effort to pull him down to her. She could feel the emotion coursing through his body but she couldn't identify his excitement
"I'm not laughing at you," she said, keeping her eyes away. "I'm just remembering. From the time I was old enough to wear a brassiere, boys have been pinching and goosing and pulling down my pants. I used to go out with the town's most prominent sons. Well bred, half rich and thoroughly educated little he-goats. Not one of them gave me a second's sentiment until it came time to wipe up and go home. Then the sentiment was a buildup for the next time around. Now comes you, big and pretty and, according to Joey, the greatest stud since Brigham Young! From you I get sentiment, nothing but sentiment!"
Mac let his elbows bend, dropping his face a few inches closer to the white arch of her neck.
"You can have it any way you want it, Lori," he whispered.
She turned and looked at him. "I like it this way, Mac," she said. "Anyway, I'm a lesbian!"
* * *
The arm of the sofa was hurting his back and his shoulder ached from holding Marie against his chest. Joe was trapped mentally as well as physically. He looked down at her disheveled hair and wrinkled gown. Most of her smooth legs were visible, lying in complete relaxation beside his. He had managed to get his trousers back in place, but she had been too exhausted, and too drunk to care about her panties. He caught an oblique look at his watch. It was eleven-fifteen. She had to be home by midnight.
She had been asleep in his arms for nearly an hour. An hour during which Joe only speculated lightly about what Lori and Mac were doing in the bedroom. It didn't matter to Joe. The avalanche of emotion, the incredible sensation of making love to Marie Harker had demolished him completely. While she slept, he had gone through all the words and all the arguments, and it still came up the same. He was sorry for what he had done, wine or no wine, and there was nothing he could do about it now.
"Marie?" he whispered down at the mass of brown silky hair.
Umm?" she murmured into his shirt.
"Wake up, honey. It's time to get going."
"I don't care, Joey. I don't want to go. I never want to go. Oh, my gosh!"
Her exclamation was the result of some little pain she generated by drawing her knees up. Joe helped her sit up, his hands pressing and lifting her body with gentle strength. "You okay?"
"Of course, Joey," she laughed, shaking her head to dispel sleep and the weight of too much wine. "Where's Lori and Mac?"
He nodded toward the bedroom door. She looked at the door for several moments, then fell against him, hugging his neck with childish strength, her face pressed hard to his. Then, over the graphic thought, she straightened up and tried to put her hair back into its original stylish swirl. Joe watched the way her body moved, the way her breasts lifted to the upraise of her arms. He looked down at her hips and the significant spread of her lithe thighs. He thought about Daisy and Carol and the things he had watched them do-helped them do, and none of it had any real relation to Marie and what they had done together. This bothered Joe. If she alone had wanted it, or if he had been singular in his desire, it would have been better. But they had both wanted each other, and the second time had been better than the first.
It was the second time he remembered most. The slow, orderly and completely wonderful passion of each other. The gentle explorations, the soft kisses, the feeling of really wanting each other above the need for relieving the virility of their youth. Now he stood up, straightening his clothes, stretching his back and breathing the curve out of his lungs. He looked toward the bedroom door. Without justification for his rudeness, he walked over and opened the blank portal.
Lori was lying on the bed, her head resting on one back-curled arm. She was fully clothed, neither bedraggled nor mussed. Mac was sitting in a long low slouch in the straight chair in the opposite corner. He was still fully dressed, and Joe felt instinctively that they had never been less orderly. The room was blue with cigarette smoke.
"Hey, let's get ready to roll," Joe said. "Marie has to be home by midnight."
"There's plenty of time," Mac said after a quick glance at his watch. "Everything okay?"
"Sure. But we didn't talk much, did we?" Joe reminded them of the real purpose of the spent evening.
"On the contrary," Mac snapped. "I think we talked quite a lot. Anyway, Lori and I talked."
"We snoozed," Marie said it behind Joe's shoulder. "You two look cozy. Gosh, I'm thirsty!"
"I'll get you a drink of water," Joe volunteered, and he could not restrain himself from kissing her temple as he slithered past on the way to the kitchen. Letting the water run for chill, he looked at the two nearly empty Seven-Up bottles on the table where Marie had put them after her trips to the bathroom. Something Lori had told her about, she had said. Joe was strangely jealous of Lori, of her wisdom. For all the help he had been, Marie could have been pregnant come morning.
* * *
There wasn't much to say during the drive to Marie's place. Joe let her go with one soft, lingering kiss. The way her fingers had trailed away from his cheek left him with a strange inner bitterness. She hadn't asked him for anything, hadn't said a word about seeing him again. Just those trailing fingers, leaving invisible scars across a conscience he had never known he had.
Again in the back seat, he stared at the two head-and-shoulder shapes in the front seat. Not very close together, he thought, so nothing had happened between them. He wondered how long they had watched him and Marie. He wondered if Mac, the insatiable satyr, had secretly laughed at his very first attempt at being a lover with a woman. He sat motionless, even when Mac pulled to a halt in front of the old apartment house. Joe remained in the car while Mac slid out and went around to help Lori out of the car. They didn't even look back at him. In the foyer, Mac said some little thing to Lori which made her laugh. Then Joe saw Mac lean down and kiss her lightly. In a moment, Mac was back by the car.
"What's with you, baby?" he asked, sliding in behind the wheel. "This is where you live, remember?"
"Screw it," Joe said snappily. "I'm going back with you."
"Oh? What for?"
Joe inhaled deeply. "The works, Mac. I've got to have the works! Everything, do you understand? I've got to have you!"
Mac laughed tightly. "Get out of the car before I come back there and throw you out! Beat it, Joe!"
"Please, Mac!"
Mac opened the car door and Joe beat him to the pavement. For a moment, he stood there shivering in the fog, his thin suit feeling wet and clammy, his skin even worse. Tears of rage and frustration swelled up in Joe's eyes. He was terrified of the night and unable to think about tomorrow. Then Mac stretched a long arm out of the window and patted his cheek affectionately.
"Go to bed, baby, and sleep it off," he said gently. "I swear to god you'll never be sorry it worked out this way!"
Joe stood alone, watching his friend drive off into the asphalt wilderness. Slowly, he walked toward the curb, then into the foyer. The warm stillness of the apartment hallway made him feel like a thief in the night. What the hell would he ever do with a girl, he wondered? There was no doubt in his mind that he had a girl, and she'd never believe a damned thing he ever told her about his love for Mac.
* * *
Martha stood in front of the mirror, her bare arms upraised to re-pin her thick hair which had been down over her naked shoulders for three wonderful hours. Her gleaming body was a white, curvaceous loveliness in reflection, and the tall man at her back showed as an equally white and gleaming back-drop. His hands around her, massaged and lifted her weary breasts, and she let the last of her vitality thrill to the bold, intimate caress. It had been one of the most exciting affairs she had ever had, and miraculously swift.
She had barely ordered her first drink when this handsome, prematurely gray stranger had taken the barstool at her side. From there to the motel room had been a heady hour-and-a-half: drinks, dinner, the subtle, gentlemanly approach and then the quiet agreement. A lovely man, considerate, amorous and wildly competent.
"I wish you didn't have to go," said Douglas Storme into her ear. "I wish you'd stay, Martha."
Martha pivoted and let her soft body rub around on him as she turned into his embrace. She kissed him affectionately.
"For what?" she laughed, teasing her flat belly up against his weary flesh. "For what, Stormy?"
"We could talk," he reminded her.
"About what?" she pressed him.
He kissed her again. "Well, maybe we could talk about Jack Burnett," he said lazily.
Because the spoken name was not familiar to her, she had a second to stifle the scream of terror rising in her throat. She didn't scream, but she stiffened in his arms, then arched her head back to focus her bulging eyes on his expressionless face. He let go of her and she spun away, falling in a half bend over the scarred dresser. Gradually her feminine pride pushed through the fear and she hated him for being able to trap her, being able to send her senses reeling while he plotted to destroy her. She moved away, snatching the bedspread over her body as she retreated. For the first time, she felt naked in front of him, and his nakedness was ugly to her.
"You-you're a policeman," she said.
He shook his head. "I said I was an attorney. I am. I'm a special investigator for the San Francisco District Attorney's office. I'm sorry, Martha, for being so crude."
"Crude? You're a beast!"
"Will you stay and talk, Martha?" he asked, stepping forward.
"Do I have a choice?" Martha's brain was functioning again. He didn't know or he would have arrested her-someone would have arrested her a long time ago. He couldn't know. But he knew who she was, and he had pretended to be a lover when he was actually a filthy police spy.
"Yes, you have a choice," he replied gently. "You can go, if you choose. I can find out about your son some other way."
"My-son?"
He nodded. Then he retrieved his shorts from the floor and stepped into them. She huddled behind the bedspread while he put on his trousers and shirt.
"What about my son?" she demanded.
"Would you like to get dressed? I'll go into the bathroom."
Her laughter was too shrill and too false and she knew it. "Aren't we considerate! The courteous cop, or how I trapped her!"
"Not that," he said. "I just wanted you to understand that to me you're two people. One of those persons I'm very fond of. I'm simply in a business where perfume and vinegar won't mix."
Martha collapsed on the bed and the tears bubbled up and spilled with uncontrolled agony. It was more than fear, more than shame. The past weeks had forced her to throttle back her fright and guilt, but in themselves, they had been painful weeks, filling her heart with new frustrations. Triggered now, the entire burden burst from her in furious crying. Then she felt herself being lifted and with totally feminine illogic, she lay against his chest, crying her hate into his shirt while she adored the comfort of his arms.
"Joey didn't kill him," she finally managed.
"I know that," Storme told her. "But somebody did.
Want to tell me about it?"
"What could I possibly tell you?" she asked, raising her head.
"First, tell me that you believe me when I say I am really your friend. Mild word. I'm more than a friend, Martha. You see, I've been following you for three weeks-ever since we found out you were in San Francisco when Burnett was killed. So I know you better than-just tonight. And of course, I know about your son, and a little about your daughter. What I didn't know was just how you and I were going to-wind up. Now, no matter what you're afraid of, no matter how you've planned it out, you've got to tell me the whole story. All of it, Martha!"
"Why-why should I tell you anything?"
"Because I've got to make sure that no matter how it was, you come out all right. I've got to make sure that when this is all over, you never have any trouble again in your whole life!"
Clinging to his shoulders, Martha had a childish memory of a framed picture on her grandmother's parlor wall. It was called Rock of Ages, and the girl at the foot of the stone cross looked just as forlorn as Martha felt.
"Oh Stormy, I killed him! I killed Jack Burnett!"
"Well, he was long overdue," he said in a stem voice. "I'm just sorry it had to be you who eventually did the job. Now, dry your tears and tell me about it, my dear."
As relief flooded her body with new life, she became aware of how his hands were petting her nakedness under the bedspread. Insanely, she giggled into his neck.
"For a cop, you're awful fresh," she said.
"Sure," he replied and went right on caressing her.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Total disaster descended upon Martha Keller and her children with swiftness beyond human contemplation. Within thirty minutes of the time Martha walked into the Hall of Justice, the police took Joe at the door of the apartment, sleepy-eyed and clad only in shorts. Within three minutes, they had Lori out of bed, and while the brother and sister sat in robes, side by side on the sofa, the officers ransacked the apartment. They did not find the massive pistol they sought, but they did find other things, and the moment the plainclothes officer came out of Lori's bedroom with one hand filled with the damning photos, Joe felt the crush of defeat. It was even more bitter because he still did not know what war he fought. With five thousand years of wisdom behind them, the police knew doubt was a suspect's worst enemy.
"Pretty cute," the policeman said. "Who is the other girl?"
"Girls," added a second officer, holding up the twenty-four professional photos he had found in Lori's dresser drawer. "Here's some more."
"Those are mine!" Joe snapped "I bought them."
The first cop sucked at his teeth. "Nuts," he said. "The whole family's nuts. Christ!"
"You guys got a warrant?" Joe bristled.
"Yes sir," the big cop said politely. "We have a warrant."
Joe turned to Lori who was sitting straight and defiant, her eyes focused on a non-existant spot on the opposite wall. "You don't have to say a word, Sis," he spoke fiercely. "Just sit tight. Mom will get us an attorney in the morning."
"She may," the policeman said, "but if I were her, I'd let you rot! Anyway, she's got all the trouble she can handle of her own."
Joe leaped to his feet and the officer made a half-motion toward the short barrelled thirty-eight belted under his coat.
"What do you mean by that?" Joe gasped.
"Mamma killed a man, character. Dead, dead, dead!"
"My God," Lori gasped. "Jack Burnett!"
The officer smiled grimly. "Now that we all have the picture, suppose you two go get dressed. Then we'll all go down and talk to the Chief. No tricks understand?"
"Are we under arrest?" Joe demanded.
"Well, now. We came out here looking for a gun and two material witnesses. We didn't find the gun, but with these-" the officer held up the pad of pictures, "we not only have our material witnesses but we have two young kids on a charge of suspicion of lewdness. Strikes me that with just a little luck, we may cook up a couple of more things before daylight. Get moving!"
* * *
Ten steps inside the Hall of Justice, a matron took Lori in one direction and the two officers marched Joe back into hell.
They fooled him at first by doing their interrogation in a general office, filled with desks and busy night sounds. The single thing he could tell them was that his mother had appeared at the apartment ten days previously, bag and baggage, fresh from a trip she had not bothered to detail. One of the officers kept leaving the room for short periods and Joe knew they were checking his story with Lori's, somewhere in another office. But he did learn about his mother and Jack Burnett. The extent of his mother's actions in his behalf gave some new courage, enough to bear up under what followed the gentle interrogation. Two fresh officers appeared at eight o'clock in the morning.
They were vice squad men, and they took Joe to one of the chairless square rooms with the ventilator high on the wall.
"Now, gunsel," one of them said. "We talk about Fat Tessie Gallagher's operation!"
Joe took it. He whimpered and moaned and crawled, but he didn't talk. He was surprised at how much they knew about his movements, but he was equally surprised as to how little they knew about why he moved. They asked him about Mac without knowing Mac's name and Joe took a terrible roughing for not divulging names and places. They knew he was 'in' with the Gallaghers because they had seen him with Tom whom they knew to be Tessie's husband and stooge. Eventually he gathered the impression that the information had been picked up by homicide detectives and relayed half-heartedly to the Vice Squad.
He got it all, including the final kick deep between his buttocks. It was their way of showing him their distaste for his way of life and sex. Once more he was pushed into a big steel tank with forty derelicts and the inevitable smell of a lion's den. Two things penetrated his hurts and his frights. One was the fact that he had not been formally booked and the other was the fact that no matter how terrible it had been, he had sensed some slight reticence in the muscle behind the police officer's fists and knees.
Joe flopped to the bunk indicated by the semi-trusty who 'ran' the tank and except for two or three trips to the toilet to seek relief from his bruised groin, he rested his body and fought the nightmares in his mind.
He was incapable of understanding his mother's motivations. He had to assume she was slightly crazy. The fact that she had never spoken about his affair with Jackie, nor in fact, any other phase of his sexual life made him certain she understood nothing. But she had never been on a trip, he was sure of that. She had been in San Francisco for months, sneaking around like a gumshoe. Lying on the jail bunk, surrounded by noise and men and the endless harangue of men caged, Joe took the longest look at his mother he had ever bothered to take. It ended with the last memory of her-standing in a sexy arch, her big breasts pushed out and up, seeking the admiration of her son and her daughter, both of whom she knew to be creatures of strange sexual desires.
At three o'clock, they called his name, and Joe drew a deep breath as he prepared to go through it all again. The tank officer turned him over to a walking deputy and the latter said there was a visitor. Down three floors, Joe was led to another room, and there was a chunky man with a briefcase sitting at a table. He got up when Joe entered the cubicle, thrust out his hand in a quasi-friendly gesture and waved Joe to a seat.
"My name is Sidney Porter. I am an attorney, retained to defend your mother's interests," he said in a deep voice.
"Better you should be a psychiatrist," Joe said without humor. "She flipped!"
"There will be at least two psychaitrists testifying in her behalf, Mr. Keller. We are pressing for an immediate hearing, at which time we will manage to get the charge of first degree murder reduced to a bailable charge, say, a form of manslaughter. With just a little cooperation, I hope to have both you and your sister out of here by ten o'clock tomorrow morning."
"Great," Joe grunted. "Who's footing the bill?"
"I didn't ask," Porter said flatly. "I understand your family is not without funds. That is incidental to the problem, however. What did you tell the interrogation officers?"
"To stop kicking me in the belly and lay off the back of my neck! They were very nice about it. They kicked me in the butt and whacked me only under the ribs from then on. I've been here before, you know."
The attorney nodded. "I know, Joseph. Just so we understand each other, I am not particularly interested in your personal tastes in sex. I am interested in getting your mother a just decision in the courts. If we discuss your sex life, and I ask questions, answer them honestly, if you please. Agreed?"
"Why should you ask me questions about my personal life?"
The attorney raised his eyebrows in surprise. "Why, because it is going to be necessary for you to get on the witness stand and admit to having had homosexual relations with Jack Burnett. Your mother has signed a confession to having shot Burnett. We can't have her admitting to an unjustified homicide, can we?"
* * *
Between seven-thirty and nine-thirty the following morning, the two Vice Squad officers took him over the hurdles again, less violently, but with considerable roughness. Then they let him clean up and he was turned loose at ten minutes after ten. Once more, he stood on the curb in front of the Hall of Justice, looking at the dirty street full of Chinese and spotty skidrow people. Only this time, Lori was not there with a cab. Attorney Porter was, brief and to the point.
"Go home and stay out of trouble, Keller. Your sister is being released to a court appointed custodian. Don't try to visit your mother and stay strictly away from Tom and Tess Gallagher. Here's my card. At the slightest sign of disturbance of any sort, call me. While I wasn't able to get the charge reduced so your mother could make bail, I will say we were lucky. We've a friend in the D.A.'s office. Don't you louse it up now!"
Bathed and shaved, Joe flopped out on his own bed in the tomb-like apartment and tried to think. In his youthful naivete, he had decided Sidney Porter would do exactly what he said was to be done-get Martha Keller the best possible deal. The law evidently was not going to make a thing out of the dirty pictures, Lori was being released to someone, ostensibly to keep her away from her horrible brother. Joe rolled his aching body over and buried his face in his arm.
He was hot again: he had always been hot. Today, the police were aware of the brand burning on his forehead. After the trial, the whole world would be able to see the damning label. Crazy or not, his mother rated as much devotion from him as she had shown for him. Once there had been some doubts about his furure. He had weighed his sexual life briefly when Jack Burnett was shot. He had weighed it again when it was obvious Mac could never love him except as a physical adventure in carnality. The third weighing was still fresh in Joe's memory. For a brief two hours, Marie Harker had demanded he be a man, and he had been a man and liked every minute of it. After the trial and his promised testimony, there could be no turning back.
The burden of loneliness made him think about Marie and Mac, and even fat Tessie. The law had taken his mother and his sister away from him and Porter had effectively chopped off all of his friends. Joe whimpered into his arm and let the pain turn to curses. The single promise in the future was that when it was all over, he would go somewhere, maybe Hollywood, and find a world where he could live his life without fear of interference. He didn't need Lori nor his mother nor anyone. He'd get the cameras and the film from Mac-it had been his money in the first place. Fascinated by this small hole through his misery, Joe dreamed of far-off places and what he would do, and the rosy clouds soothed him into a deep sleep.
Lori awakened him with her slim hand on his shoulder. "Joe? It's me," she said in quavering tones.
He snapped erect and they clasped in silent, mutual grief. Her sobbing was loud and uncontrolled and her tears soaked through his shirt. He almost hurt her in an effort to stop the convulsive shuddering of her body. He hadn't known it was possible for her to have hysterics and he was afraid to let go of her until weakness quieted the agony in her limp body.
"What are you doing here, honey?" he asked.
"I came to get my things. Oh, Joey, poor Mom!"
"She'll be okay, Sis. I know it's rough for her, but I guess she must have known it would come someday. Porter will take care of her, you'll see."
"But murder!"
"Manslaughter, Sis. Did the cops work you over any?"
Lori sat up, blinking her eyes free of tears. "Work me over? How do you mean? No, they treated me all right."
"Yeah," he decided. "I'm the only one they're after."
"Like before?"
"Like before. Where are you living? They told me the court had turned you over to a custodian."
Lori nodded. "A nice old lady," she said. "Her name is Mrs. Alice Storme. She's the mother of one of the district attorney's men. He's nice too."
"Who is?"
"Mr. Storme. He's the one who caught Mom. But he's trying to help, Joe, honest he is! Don't look that way. Mom has to have all the help she can get!"
"From cops you don't ever get any help," he told her.
"She confessed, Joey. After that, everything has to help her because she's as far down as she can get! What are you going to do? I mean, are you going to stay here?"
" Joe told her what Porter had instructed him to do, and what to expect from the preliminary hearing, and subsequently, the inevitable trial. Buoyed by his optimism, Lori set about packing her clothes. Joe sat on her bed, rambling through the past and projecting into the future. In a matter of minutes, he had convinced both Lori and himself it was going to work out all right. Then her decision to change her dress brought the conversation to a sudden halt. Lori, reverting to their former relationship, had peeled to her brassiere and panties. At Joe's sudden silence, she turned and looked at him, eyes wide with understanding.
"That's the cause of it all, isn't it, Joey? I mean, the way you and I-the police said so many dirty things to me!"
"We're clean," he reminded her.
"Are we, Joey? The other night. It was Mac who made me go into the bedroom when you started to take off Marie's clothes! And Mayfield. Even when we were little, Joey, the only thing we've never done is go to bed together! And I've thought about it a hundred times! Clean? We're dirty little snots and you know it! Dirty, dirty, dirty!"
Joe watched her snatch her clean dress and disappear into the bathroom. With no personal measuring stick, he could not discern the mystical point where the things they had done as curious children had become immoralities as adolescents. Because his own sex life was one of extremes, the things Lori had inferred seemed less than startling. He had been thumped and pummeled and cursed and reviled, and through it all, it had never occurred to him that there was anything wrong with his personal life. Now he sat disconsolate, Lori having cut off the last bit of understanding he could expect from the world. When she came in, fully dressed, he grinned at her with more humor than he felt.
"There wasn't much in the papers," he said. "I know. Poor Mom! I wish there was something we could do."
Joe rubbed his chin. "Seems to me she's got some explaining to do to us, too. She's been snooping around ever since a week or so after we got here! She knew all about Jack Burnett, and after those damned pictures you and Marie took, I'll bet she knew about you two. And how come she moved in just when we were getting ready to do some photo work of our own? Why didn't she jump us about a lot of things? Lying in that can, I had a lot of time to think, Sis. She got mad enough over Jackie and me to kill him, but she never opened her trap about you turning your butt up to a camera. It's screwy, I'd say."
Lori turned from a last check of her dresser and stared at him in pity. "Your trouble, Joey, is that you don't know a damned thing about women. And less about your own mother and sister! Mom's only forty, and there's nothing wrong with her, believe me! Some times a lot of things aren't very clear till they rise up and smack you in the face! Everybody thinks things, terrible things sometimes. Only most people know when to stop. You either learn where to stop or somebody will show you, the hard way!"
"I suppose," he said, unconvinced by her logic. "You want me to call you a cab?"
Lori looked at her watch. "No. Mac is going to pick me up at one-thirty."
"Mac."
"Sure. What's wrong with Mac?" she asked calmly.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The furnished room was small, but even then it was almost too expensive for the sudden dearth of money. Joe sat in a wobbly straightbacked chair and looked from Douglas Storme to Sidney Porter. The latter was cold and direct, the former was trying to be gentle.
"I've a check here for five hundred dollars," Porter said. "It is an advance against the sale of your mother's property in Mayfield. It is yours on one condition. To get it, you must get completely out of the Bay Area-out of California would be even better. Since your mother has changed her plea to guilty of manslaughter, we will not need your testimony in court. I have the court's permission to release you from jurisdiction. In simple terms, get out of town, Joe."
"Does my mother know you are trying to buy me off?"
"It was my idea," Douglas Storme put in. "She doesn't know, Joe. Just as there are other things about you she doesn't know for sure. Give her a chance, Joe."
"What's your pitch, Storme? You've had your puss in this from the very beginning. What's your angle?"
"Your mother has refused to marry me," Storme said. "But I did ask her, Joe. That's my pitch, son. Do you mind?"
"Don't call me son, and to hell with you!"
Porter leaned forward and thrust one manicured forefinger at Joe. "Your mother is going to get one to ten years in prison for ridding the world of a dirty homosexual just like yourself, Keller! I think we can get the judge to commute the sentence to time served in the county jail-if we can convince him you are not likely to cause her any further trouble. I'd hate to think she had to serve one to ten years on your behalf, without the satisfaction of killing you! What are you so proud of?"
"Please, Joe," Storme said. "You have to leave town anyway. The Hall of Justice will never let you alone in this town and you know it. All we are really asking is that you go now, before next Thursday when Martha, your mother, I mean, comes up for sentencing. What is there here for you but trouble?"
Defeated, Joe wanted one last word. He stood up and paced the short length of the dowdy room. Finally he stopped in front of the handsome man who had declared his love for Joe's mother.
"I don't get any of it," he said bitterly. "I haven't done a goddamned thing. My sex life, as you're always calling it, is my own business. I never killed anyone, I never even punched anybody in the nose. I didn't steal, I didn't cheat and I don't finger little boys! But all of a sudden, I'm the dirtiest bug in a filthy rug! Don't you guys ever read anything but law books? Don't you know I can't help being the way I am?"
He snatched the check from Porter's fingers, folded it and stuffed it into the pocket of his pink shirt. "What about Lori?"
"She's fine," Storme said. "I've found her a job in a downtown department store. She's another reason you should go."
Porter closed his briefcase and stood up. He looked at Storme who shook his head slightly. Porter picked up his homberg and settled it on his balding head.
"I'll go. Don't think it has been a pleasure, Keller, because it hasn't!" Then he was gone with the slam of the door.
"I'm not much good, huh?" Joe said to Storme, sensing the end of beligerancy. "A bad penny no one can spend."
"I'll get you a psychiatrist, a doctor, anything you want, Joe," Storme said slowly. "There's a private sanatorium just outside of San Diego where they treat-men like you. It isn't too late, Joe."
Laughter bubbled up in Joe's throat and he sat down on the edge of the chair, his body leaning forward so he could stare straight into Storme's gray eyes.
"You think," he said coldly. "Treat me how? Melt me down and pour me in a new mold? Explain to me that I may get piles if I don't keep my pants up? Tell me about hoof and mouth disease? Poke their fingers in my eyes so I can't see the shape of humanity? How can they cure me of the way I think when I don't know how I think in the first place? Storme, do I look like a queer?"
"With a haircut and without that pink shirt-"
"Exactly! Have I made a pass at you?"
"No," Storme replied warily.
"Quit worrying," Joe laughed. "Mr. Storme, except for my sister, Lori, the only human being I ever loved, with the feeling that I was completely understood, happened to be a man. The fact that later, he wanted to do certain sexual things with me was beside the point. You'd be surprised at how seldom we indulged in so-called homosexuality. Mostly it was just a friendship which had no high spots or any low spots. Pin a medal on my mother, she rid the world of Jack Burnett! I know exactly how the world thought about him, but to me, he was like my reflection in a mirror. I could be kitten or king with him, and I never had a doubt."
"What was your future with him?" Storme asked. "Future? What's yours? In love with a murderess. Plagued by me, and maybe Lori. Your hair is gray and you've got wrinkles, and if City Hall gets toppled in a political campaign, you are out on your ass. You may live long enough to see a man on the moon, but you'll never live long enough to forget you're the guy who hung a man-slaughter rap on Martha Keller! Future, phooey! Futures are a dime a dozen."
"Everyone has to try, Joe."
"Oh, I'll try. All I want is to be left alone."
Storme stood up. "I can manage that, all right, Joe," he said, offering his hand in goodbye. "If it's any consolation, I'll take care of your mother from here on."
"And Lori," Joe added, blinking rapidly.
* * *
The sailor in the back seat of the bus was on his way back to San Diego after a two weeks leave, and by the time they got to Los Angeles, both Joe and the sailor were glad. So was the bus driver, who had been sure he had known what was going on in the rear of his darkened bus, but not quite sure enough to call a cop. For Joe, the hours of surreptitious fondling and secretive horseplay was really a physical expression of defiance. It left him nervous and edgy because the sailor had refused to help him. It was a cheap disappointing 'oncer,' tolerable only because Joe knew he would never again see the husky gob. That the entire affair would be a loud and raucous joke among the sailor's shipmates the next day was not sufficient promise to worry Joe. He had done what he wanted to do, and that was enough.
From here on, he vowed, it was going to be different. He wasn't going through life leaving a trail of soiled handkerchiefs stuffed under bus seats or dropped in telephone booths. If he occasionally succumbed to the insanity of instantaneous passion, it would be because that was the way the world was shaped. The very heavy suitcase full of cameras and film made him walk onesided. It made him think of Mac, who had argued not at all about the possession of the equipment. Mac, who had become a stranger who was in love with Lori.
Joe couldn't help the dirty pictures his personal knowledge of Mac and Lori conjured. In deriding their lusty normalcy, he rid himself of a little bitterness. Then the complication of Los Angeles intruded itself, and with all the anticipation of a country boy, he hired a cab to take him to Hollywood and Vine. It was the most disappointing 'homecoming' he could imagine.
A shoe shine stand promised to store his two suitcases for an hour or two and Joe lightfooted it up and down the most fascinating street in the world. Not that Hollywood Boulevard was much different architecturaly than other streets, but the nature of the people seemed hysterical and yet blase. And he discovered that among the tight-pants girls and the overly made-up old ladies, there were enough obviously gay men and boys to wreck the entire Navy. They prissed and fluttered and swiveled and no one seemed to notice. It was a world in which Joe could move undetected, but he was justifiably concerned about the manner in-which their cute little boots were worn off at the heel and the tight pouch of their pants was shiny beyond hope.
A half block off the boulevard he found a cheap transient hotel and rented a room. Then he went back and got his bags. Exhausted, he fell asleep on the sagging, protesting bed. He awakened well after dark, scratching. He scratched with no mind for the cause. He wouldn't have known what a bedbug looked like, even if the small subtle beasts had remained where he could see them. He washed and went out to look at his new world under neon.
* * *
Seven beers, the dim light in the long hall and an inner excitement he did not understand, made Joe fumble the key into the lock. He had just about made the connection when the door across the hall opened and a very small, very cute Oriental girl popped out. She was clad in a skin tight Chinese split-skirt, and her raven hair was piled high atop her pert head. She was a perfectly painted doll, and the handbag she carried was half as big as she.
"Hawo," she said, smiling to show big, even teeth.
"Hi," Joe grunted. "The cotton-picking key won't fit."
She giggled and looked down where the key was stabbing at the old brass lock. "Why you lock it?" she asked. "A cat could kick it open. Jus' move in?"
"Yeah," he replied, and scratched despite the fact that he knew it was bad manners.
"You get spray," she advised him. T don't mind being chewed, but the bugs don't pay. You're drunk," she decided, taking the key out of his numb fingers. "There."
"You going out-at this time of night?"
"The bars don't close til two," she said.
Joe looked at her again. She was about the thickness of his thigh. There was barely any flair to her hips and if she had breasts, they were mice-sized. He would have thought she was thirteen except for the age of her big black eyes.
"My name's Joe. What's yours?" he asked, leaning toward her with feigned drunkeness.
"Lolly Chin. I'm Chinese."
"I'd have never guessed. Hustler?"
She pouted and the rose of her mouth stirred something in Joe. He had seen other cute little Chinese girls in San Francisco. They all looked thirteen until they reached thirty. Through his muddled mind, a sudden bright thought burst into blossom.
"How much?" he asked softly.
"Ten dollah?"
"I got ten dollars," he admitted.
She pushed him into his room and closed the door behind them. He was slightly shaken by the fact that she knew the light switch was on the wrong side of the door. In the brighter light of the room, she looked at him knowingingly.
"What you want with me, beby?" she queried.
Joe blushed, but only for an instant. "For ten bucks, what's the difference?"
She shrugged and tossed her handbag to the single chair in the room. Then she reached around with her spindly arms and dropped her zipper at the back. She grinned at him and shook the sleek, embroidered dress free of her thin shoulders, and that quickly, she was naked in the middle of the floor.
"Ten dollah," she said again, with a different inflection.
Joe pulled some bills from his side coat pocket. He found a ten and tossed it on the old dresser. Lolly Chin walked over and plucked the crumpled green with a swift hand. She stuffed the bill into the top of her black, very un-oriental stocking.
"Okey, beby," she cooed and came to him.
* * *
It was daylight when Joe awakened and he felt good. He raised up on one elbow and looked at the small thin ball of woman curled under the worn blanket at his side. Her hair was no longer a high coil of black, it was a thick shawl of ebony, half-hiding but thoroughly glamourizing the tiny rosebud face. He was real proud of himself. Discounting the fact that she had probably wearied three or four men before he'd met her in the hall, he had put her to sleep with his aborted masculinity. Long after he discovered she had fallen asleep, he lay awake thinking.
She was probably twenty-two or three, but in his arms, with the smallness of her in his hands and nearly covered by his slender body, she had seemed like a child. Her service had been anything but childish, but even in the light of morning, the illusion still existed. Joe looked across the shabby room at the suitcase full of cameras, lights and film.
Cut her hair to a juvenile bob, shave her small white-yellow tummy and it would be hard to guess she wasn't eleven or twelve. She was hipless, breastless and doll-like. Child-like. A hundred 'scripts' went through his mind. Even he could make a sensational bit of footage with her. A man like Mac could make fantastic material. A great brute of a man with what looked like a sub-teenage Oriental girl, he could make a million!
It had to be soon, too, because with what he had in his pocket, less his bus fare and sundries, he was just a bit below five hundred dollars. One evening in Hollywood had shown him what could happen to money. Lolly Chin was cheap, but even cheap could wear out money if it went on too long.
"Gung ho," he said, shaking the little shoulder.
One big eye opened, swiveled, then closed. "Too early," Lolly murmured.
"Wake up, we've got work to do," Joe said, shaking her.
She turned her head and opened both eyes. "You got your ten dollah worth. I pay you two bucks for the room rent." She closed her eyes. "Okey," she mumbled, opening them again.
"You got any coffee in your room?"
"Sure." She was suddenly wide awake, and when she turned over on her back and he didn't put a hand on her, she blinked. The two black buttons she used for breast tips were visible above the edge of the sheet. Joe looked and grinned, then rolled around to sit up on the edge of the bed. He bent down to put on his socks and a tiny rigid finger goosed him. Quick as lightning, he swung around and slapped her face. Not hard, but smartly.
"Don't ever do that again," he told her. "Now, get up and get the coffee. We got a lot of things to talk about."
"You think maybe Lolly Chin needs a pimp?" she asked in scathing tones. "You real funny boy!"
"Pimp? Hell, kid, I'm no pimp. I'm a businessman. You and I are going to get rich! You've got something and I've got something and when I get through putting them together, they'll be worth a lot of money. You'll see."
She had slept in her stockings so dressing was a ten second job. As she ran the zipper up on the slightly wrinkled dress, she grinned at Joe.
"You real good fairy to Lolly, huh?" she asked, winking at him lewdly. "I get the coffee, beby."
She took her key out of the big handbag and slipped out of his room. Joe looked at the colossal bag, feeling illogically proud of the fact that she already trusted him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Within a month, desperation clawed at Joe like a hungry vulture. He had solved every problem but one. He had two thousand feet of exposed film and no one to process it, let alone buy it.
The rest had been easy, once he'd convinced Lolly to cut her hair and shave her little belly. They had rented an apartment, neither fancy nor new, but with shooting room. He had bought Lolly a cheap black wig so she could appear on the street with him without alarming the police. And while he assumed that all his footage was not perfect, there was nothing about his cameras he didn't understand, within the bounds of mechanical manipulation. Lolly cooked and cleaned and waited. Their money dwindled, but their expenses weren't great.
With desperation, Joe discovered he was the victim of a terrible disease. Its name was transparency, and while Lolly was sometimes very comforting, she was also very disturbing in her ability to know just what he was thinking. When he was not overly nice to her, she sat and pouted. When he was optimistic and gay, she sat and smiled. Their sexlife was a complete bust. Having exhausted every conceivable physical attitude in front of the electrically driven movie camera, they became slightly embarrassed with each other when an occasional emotional equality huddled them together. If Joe didn't need a woman, Lolly also didn't need a man. But they needed each other, and so they remained together, suspended between hope and hopelessness.
"Maybe you ought to cut this and go back on your own," he said one evening after he had unsuccessfully struck up a useless conversation with the owner of a small processing lab.
"You don't want me anymore?" she asked, pushing fried potatoes onto his plate beside a thin porkchop.
"I didn't say that!" Joe snapped. "It's just that we're not getting anywhere, and I may have to go to work."
"And you got no use for Lolly if the camera business is bust, huh? You want to work and run around with the pinkie bebies and be a dingbat on the boulevard, huh? I go back to sleeping with winos and Greeks and mebbe a nigger boy or two. I can wear the little girl clothes you bought me for the pictures, and talk pidjin, huh. You commee me first time piecee? Big deal!"
"Don't put words in my mouth!"
She came around the table and put her slim little shapelessness against his chest. She put one thin arm around his head and pressed his cheek to her where every other girl in Hollywood had either real or foam rubber softness. She smelled soapy because bathing was a fetish with her. Joe put one hand on her hip, marveling anew at the littleness of her. He was very tired.
"You need a fix-up, beby," she said softly. "You go out."
"What's the matter with you?" he asked, patting her little bottom in an effort to pretend he didn't understand what she meant.
"No good, Joey. You go out."
"You don't care?" he asked, but not eagerly.
"Of course not! What can I lose?" she laughed.
"It would be like-cheating," he said.
"Don't be dumb! I cheat on you!"
He twisted and looked at her in disbelief. "You what?"
She laughed again and wiped two fingers across his mouth. "Daddy two-fingers!" she teased him. "Daddy two-fingers and think pink! You go out, Joe."
He tightened his arm and came to his feet, raising her ninety pounds effortlessly. She threw both arms around his back and laughed into his neck. Her thin legs spread and she hit his hip again and again with the curl of her thin torso. Joe carried her to the bedroom. In the darkness, she skinned his clothes off with unbelievable speed. When he reached for her again, she had slipped out of her capris.
The vague sense of guilt that had prompted him to try to do something nice for her faded with the first absorbing contact. What he tried to do for her she deftly altered into excruciating pleasure for him. Her fragile body turned to velvet covered steel. In a moment of blinding sensation, he thought she was tricking him with professional gymnastics, but her full red lips on his cheek were wet with saliva and the heat of her breath burned his skin. He made her cry out and swear, and when he eased his massive surging to give her a moment of respite, she kicked one leg down and nipped them over. All of the many things she did for him then were already on film in the closest hideaway, but in the end, she became real again and murmured his name over and over before she fell asleep.
* * *
"Now, we'll see," the fat man's voice came through the dark. Joe blinked as the weak darkroom light snapped on. The heavy photographer dipsied the roll of film in the hypo, ran it briefly through a pan of water, then dangled the twelve exposure roll high in front of the light. Details were not clear to Joe, but then, he was not a photographer.
"Holy Christ, she's just a baby!" the fat man exploded. "Where you get this kid, mister? Stuff this young will get you a hundred years in jail!"
"I swear to God she's twenty-two," Joe said excitedly. "That's why I picked her. I cut her hair and bought her some kid clothes and we shave her pasquachie twice a week. I told you I had a winner, Gordon. And I got two thousand feet of sixteen millimeter on her, too."
"With who?"
"Me and phony moustache. Can we make a deal?"
The man threw the film back into the hypo. "Give it a couple of minutes," he said. "I'll short wash it and give it an alcohol dry. I can tell you more after I see the prints. Twenty-two, huh? Doesn't look a day over ten, if my eyes ain't give out. I ain't seen stuff like her since Tijuana got religion."
"Think we can sell it?"
"Ho-ho-ho, man! She work with anybody besides you?"
"Anybody," Joe replied with a little sharp edge in his belly.
"I'll make you rich, son," the fat man said through dry lips.
* * *
Jubilant that the big step had been finally taken, Joe accepted Al Gordon's word that it would take at least two days to process the two thousand feet of sixteen millimeter film, and in smug victory, took the good news home to Lolly. With him he took a set of the still pictures that had fired Gordon's enthusiasm. They were bright and sharp and exceptionally obscene simp-ly because Lolly looked, as Gordon had said, barely ten years old.
Joe told her almost everything. He explained how he had spotted the photographer by his stained nails in a lunch joint and how the conversation had developed. He described the tiny, half-legitimate photo shop Gordon ran, adding his own belief that Gordon was a bigger operator than he appeared. He told Lolly the entire story, except for the words Gordon had spoken about her working with anybody. This, he thought, could wait until they received the seven-hundred and fifty dollars Gordon estimated he could get Joe for the film.
"No money now?" Lolly asked, eyeing the photos of herself with Oriental nonchalance.
"Gordon isn't the buyer," Joe said. "But he knows them all. We're in, Lolly. I told you I'd make it for us."
"Mebbe he don't know you anymore when you go Monday."
"What?" , "You going to call the cops, then?" Lolly asked wisely.
"Hey, kid, we got something he wants! He'd be a fool to give us the brush. Like killing the goose that lays the golden egg. You let me handle it, Lolly. I wish we had some more film. I got a lot of ideas for some real hot stuff."
"I look nasty," she said irrevelantly. "Nasty, Joe."
"What's nastier than winos and Greeks and nigger boys?"
Lolly shook her head. "But this makes it look like China girl is proud of it," she commented. "I wish you'd get the money."
"I will. Quit worrying. The business end of it is my affair. Hell, I thought you'd be happy about it!"
"I'm happy," she told him sadly. "Say cheese!" he laughed, pretending to snap a camera.
"Chiz," she obliged him patiently.
Burning with triumph, Joe took ten of their last forty dollars and went down to the Boulevard, sympathizing with Lolly about her stomach ache, but not really hearing her complaint. He was on his way, and the vistas he had dreamed of were opening to him at last. Within a few minutes, he was glad Lolly had stayed home. The urge to celebrate retired some half dead coals he had banked in his belly for many days. He didn't consciously say to himself he wanted a maw, but he went from bar to bar, looking at his own bread and searching for a hunter, simply because he felt this need for understanding deeper than he imagined Lolly capable of furnishing.
He was down to three dollars when a man offered to buy him a drink. It took Joe slightly unaware because the bar was not obviously a gay hangout.
"Go ahead, have one on me," the young man insisted. "I've been sitting here two hours with no one to talk to. I made up my mind to buy the next occupant of that stool a drink just to have someone to talk to!"
"Well, that's damned nice of you. I'll go for bourbon on the rocks," Joe replied. He looked at the man then, and liked the lean scholarly look behind the heavy horn-rimmed glasses. He was probably thirty, Joe decided, and well dressed. That he showed none of the usual signs of being either a hunter or a 'oncer' didn't bother Joe. After all, he thought, many men had things to talk about over a drink. On the verge of saying something introductory about his huge success of the day, Joe changed his mind and remarked about the piano player.
"Pretty good," the man agreed. "Say, my name's Griff Larkin. I didn't mean to be rude."
"I'm Joe Keller. You come here often?"
"I make all the bars often," Griff laughed. "I've a good job, a convertible with good pickup, and I'm the loneliest guy in Hollywood. I make all the bars. If you can't dance, drink, I say. What do you do for a living, Joe?"
Joe made it sound casual. "I promote short stuff for the film industry. Nothing big, but growing."
"Oh?"
Joe was grateful for the look of his San Francisco attire. That he needed a haircut was nothing singular in Hollywood. Even barbers needed a haircut in that hysterical town. He cursed himself for not taking the thirty dollars and leaving the ten. It wouldn't matter in a day or so. It mattered a great deal that he be able to buy Griff Larkin a return drink. After he bought the next round, the dollar and sixty cents in his picket was like a terror in the dark.
"Thanks," Griff said. "You like piano?"
"I sure do," Joe replied, looking toward the music bar. "So do I, really. What are you going to do tonight?"
"Now, you mean?"
"Yeah. I mean, you got a date or something?"
"No. Just killing time."
"Look. I got a six hundred dollar hi-fi and some of the world's best albums, piano and the works. I said I was looking for someone to talk to. How about cutting out of this stinky bar and going to my place? I also got a bottle. We'll listen to some really good piano and have a couple of Jim Beams, and get acquainted. Besides saving some dough. Sound okay?"
Joe turned his head and looked at the bland face. "You fooled me, baby," he admitted.
Griff Larkin's hand suddenly became shakey and his tongue flicked his dry lips with nervous agitation. "I try not to be a dingbat about it," he said in a tight voice. "I spotted you in a minute, but you don't act like the rest. You want to go?"
"I was running out of dough, anyway," Joe said in perfect candor as he slid off the stool.
Griff just nodded as if he knew and they went out to his car together. Not arm in arm, not shoulder to shoulder, but as if they were going somewhere to buy a dog or see a show. Griff had a late model Oldsmobile, sparkling and powerful. "I live a couple of blocks on the other side of Western," he said.
Joe sat silently as Griff drove east on Hollywood Boulevard. As they passed the up-street where Lolly was nursing a belly-ache, Joe glanced up to see if he could spot the front of their apartment house, knowing full well he couldn't see it, two blocks into the night. Then they passed Cherokee Avenue. Joe knew it because the place he had met Lolly was on Whitley, the next street.
They never got there. Griff swore and said, "Oh hell!" as if he'd forgotten how the Hollywood police staked out the Boulevard nearly every Saturday night. In the areaway between the east and west lanes, two motorcycle officers were filtering the passing traffic. They had sharp eyes for teenagers in hotrods, too-young girls, known junkies and obvious pinkies. One of them waved a red-lensed flashlight and Griff pulled to a halt just ahead of the two nose-to-rear-wheel motorcycles.
The big bikeman walked slowly around to Griff's side, his clip board carried loosely in one ham-like hand.
"Well," he said casually. "If it isn't Griffy boy! Who's your young friend, Griffy?"
"He's okay," Griff Larkin said in a heavy voice.
"I'm damned sure you think so, Griffy!" The cop waved to two more officers standing beside a police car fifty feet up the street. As they came forward on heavy, rhythmic feet, Joe died a hundred deaths.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Joe took two beatings. One he got for being found in the company of a known homosexual with a pink shirt on. The other he got for refusing to say who he was or where he lived. The net outcome was no charge of lewdness, but a thirty day jail sentence for vagrancy. This he served out in twenty-one days for good behavior, and he left the county jail with one dollar and sixty cents and forty-eight hours to leave town. A floater out, bud, the dispersing officer said, or lumps.
Worried, dirty and defiant, Joe made his weary way back to the apartment. The landlady wouldn't let him in. His suitcase half full of clothes was stored in the furnace room.
"Take it and get out," the buxom mammala snapped. "I threw your Chink whore out two weeks ago, and good riddance! I'd a got the rest of your stuff but two guys came a day or two before I got wise and they cleaned you out. They left your underwear and the fancy shirts. You beat it, buddy, and stay gone!"
"My cameras!" Joe gasped.
The Hebrew lady shook her head. "Such a business. And you looked such a nice kid. This town!"
Joe's eyes narrowed. "It looks a damned sight better now than it'll look when I get through with it!" he promised her.
"No trouble, now," she grunted. "I know your kind!"
Instinctively, Joe knew he would get nowhere with Al Gordon but he had to try. The little photo shop was locked, but a roughly penciled note explained that the proprietor was on a week's vacation. Call again.
On a hunch, he went back to the hotel where he had met Lolly, but the landlord hadn't seen her. Joe used half of his forty-eight hours haunting the streets, looking for the diminutive body with the spindly legs and the gradeschool bob. He ate up his dollar and sixty cents and slept in a car parked at the back of a public parking lot. Still in a state of numbness, he hocked his watch in a Western Avenue pawn shop and made a spitting sound at the Jew after he'd given Joe the three dollars. He ate two dollars worth of the watch at one sitting, left a quarter for the waitress and hit the streets again.
Two guys had taken his cameras and most of his clothes. It was even money, he thought, that they had taken Lolly, too. Al Gordon was the only man in Hollywood who knew where Joe lived, and he cursed himself for relinquishing this bit of information. Left to her own devices, Lolly might have hocked his cameras, or gone back on the streets, but she would have hung on until he came home. But he had visions of Al Gordon, and another unknown man, coming to the apartment with the 'deal.' Maybe they had known he was in jail, maybe not, but the end result was the same. Lolly and his cameras and his film and his pride were gone. And he had no doubt that the cops would toss him back in jail if they caught him one minute past the forty-eight hour deadline.
He was afraid to sit down and rest, except in a coffee shop. Places where legitimate citizens could loaf and relax were hot for Joe. Like Griff Larkin. A nice, quiet man with a scholarly look. Known to the Boulevard law as 'Griffy.' Like lightning, it struck without warning, but unlike lightning, it struck the same place, again and again.
The second cup of coffee soothed him some. They had his tools, his girl and his number, but he couldn't quit because he had only just begun. He weighed the end of his impending floater and decided it wouldn't be too hard to evade the law, now that he was watching them as closely as they could possibly watch him. A fat slob like Al Gordon wouldn't be hard to find, and if Lolly were anywhere in Los Angeles, he'd spot her sooner or later.
Come darkness, he'd sell his butt to a 'oncer' and make a ten dollar bill. A shave and a bath and some clean clothes would straighten him up, give him a new start. It might be slow, but he might get lucky. One break and he was off to the races. It just took one break.
* * *
Fred McDonald ate his dinner with no enthusiasm. Most of his mind was wrapped around his beautiful wife, sitting across the dinette table, her eyes sadder than the cheap steak should have made them.
"Lori, you've got to stop worrying about Joe," he said.
"I know. But I can't help it," she said, trying to smile.
"Look, your mother is happy in the apartment Stormy set up for her. We're happy. What makes you so sure Joe isn't happy, too? Good things can happen as well as bad."
"He's such a baby," she murmured. "A twisted baby!"
Mac shook his head. "Don't you think it, Lori. Joe is a grown man-a hundred years old the day he was born. He just happens to have been born in a different world than most men."
Mac fell silent as nearly obscured memories flooded back into his mind. A sore back and blistered hands had helped, but mostly it had been real happiness that had made him forget Fat Tessie and Tom and all the rest of it. The money wasn't as good any more, but there was enough money and he had Lori.
"Anyway," he said as an afterthought. "Joe is tough, plenty tough. He'll make it."
To himself he added that Joe had to be tough, playing on a team doomed to always be at the bottom of the league.
