When two lost souls find themselves awash amid the lush tropical islands, their combined sins threaten to wreck all the secluded beaches of Waikiki. One of them is Dan Kelly, a very tired soldier of fortune who wants nothing so much as to rest and relax, living quietly ... until he meets Margaret Waverly, his next door neighbor. Margaret wants only one thing ... to share all the degradation Dan can provide, again and again. The other lost soul is Virginia Morgan, who is recovering from a most shameful affair with a former lover that has almost totally ruined her emotional view of life ... until she acquires Bas, a large German Shepherd with peculiar habits. Dan and Virginia finally meet when they both join a little theater group ... then the curtain rises for all the delights in the world as sin follows shame for torturous sessions along the tropical, sun-washed beaches of lust...
CHAPTER ONE
Dan KEILEY FELT LIKE a narcotics addict get-ting a fix after being too long without. Ignoring the press of people behind him, he stopped at the top of the flight of aluminum stairs to fill his lungs with the fragrant air and to let his eyes drink in the colors and familiar shapes.
Down on the runway a band was playing. Half a dozen dark-skinned ladies in grass skirts were swaying gracefully. The smallest of them weighed at least two hundred pounds, yet their fluid movements and the delicate position of their fingers and hands negated any appearance of grossness.
At the foot of the steps was gathered a covey of younger women girls in their early twenties. They waited with arms full of leis and as each passenger stepped down he was greeted with a smile, a friendly, "Aloha," and a kiss on the cheek as the lei was dropped over his head.
Dan felt a slight nudge in the middle of his back and the flight hostess was reaching out to tug at his sleeves. He smiled at her and started down the steps. It seemed ironic that after having spent nearly three years here in the Islands this was the first time he would be going through the kiss-and-flower routine.
Despite the professional impersonality of the commercialized cultural custom there was a feeling of warmth and welcome when the pretty girl with the flower in her hair placed the lei around his neck and brushed her cool, firm lips against his cheek.
Then he was walking across the sun-soft tarmac and beginning to sweat in his summer weight suit. The boring and lengthy business of baggage checks and luggage dispelled his sense of anticipation but the light-heartedness, the feeling almost of returning home, was still there when he removed the lei and followed the porter out to the line of waiting taxis.
And he smiled again. That was something he'd forgotten. Honolulu was the only place he'd ever been where most of the taxis were Cadillacs and new models at that. The porter loaded the five suitcases which had resulted in a small fortune in overweight charges into the capacious trunk and accepted his two dollars as a matter of course.
Dan settled into the air-conditioned comfort of the Caddy and waited for the driver to move around the car and get in behind the wheel. Twenty-five cents a bag was considered adequate for a porter but Dan felt so good about being back in Hawaii he wanted to over tip the porter's lack of gratefulness or pleasure was a slightly sour note.
"Where to, chief?" the caddy asked.
"Waikiki," Dan told him. "The Hibiscus Court Apartments."
In a moment the big car was sliding smoothly away from the curb and pulling into the heavy flow of out-going traffic. This was an off hour but the traffic was heavier than Dan remembered. He sighed softly. He'd been away for nearly two years and there had probably been a lot of changes. Traffic jams were a minor inconvenience. Since he didn't own a car they mattered little to him. But he hoped many of the more pleasant aspects of life in Honolulu had not changed in his absence.
It was necessary to drive through a small industrial area several square blocks of brick and wood factories and warehouses. Dan leaned forward and rolled down the window. The warm air struck him in the face and he almost gagged on the sweet redolence of processing pineapple and sugar cane.
The cabby darted a quick puzzled look over his shoulder at Dan, then relaxed when the passenger closed the window again.
That was at least one thing that hadn't changed. The thick sweetness in the air was almost enough to dispel, hunger pangs. It was an accidental facet of life here that no one really cared for but no one would change. Every week during the three years Dan had been here before, he'd read letters in the two newspapers from residents and visitors alike protesting the shame of the odor in this part of town.
For two reasons nothing had ever been done. First: It required a considerable force to overcome the natural inertia of Hawaiian life. And second: The pineapple and sugar cane industries were the second largest source of income in this forty-ninth state.
The attracting of tourists and the business of separating them from their vacation dollars was not contrary to popular thought the biggest industry in the Islands. No, indeed. At the top of the list, and far enough ahead of anything else to remain unchallenged tor a long time to come, was the military. In one way or another the amount of military money that filtered into the Hawaiian economy was almost equal to the sum of the pineapple, cane and tourism industries.
Hawaii was Pacific headquarters for all three branches of service. The Army had its main post at Schofield Barracks in the highlands in the center of the main island of Oahu. Here was housed the Twenty-fifth Division, with its five infantry battle groups, its artillery battalions, its armored battalions.
Further south, closer to Honolulu, was Fort Shafter, which was administrative headquarters for the entire Pacific command. Tripler Army Hospital, one of the finest civilian or military hospitals in the world, was also located just north of the city. And spotted around the island were several smaller Army posts which fulfilled more obscure military functions.
The Navy, of course, was based mainly at Pearl Harbor, which was on the southern coast of the Island. Just west of Pearl Harbor was the big Air Force base, Hickman Field. The Air Force's smaller base was the Marine base, Kaneohe Marine Air Station, Schofield Barracks
On the east coast of Oahu, and isolated from the rest of the island by the Koolau Mountain Range, was the Marine base, Kaneoche Marine Air Station.
So vast was the military establishment that the civilians were outnumbered by the servicemen and their families. The military employed more civilians than any other industry and most of the servicemen's pay went into the civilian economy.
Despite this awesome power the state was not military oriented. Except for high ranking officers and their families, servicemen and their families were shunned by the civilians, ostracized. The unmarried G. I. had it toughest of all especially if he was an enlisted man. Social contacts between enlisted men and civilians were few and far between, except in the lowest economic class.
This situation was a far cry from the status quo during the war years. But then, fn time of war every country aggrandizes its fighting men. And during peacetime obscurates them.
When the great war was in progress nothing was too good for the soldier. But after the war was over the first move had been to clean up Honolulu. The prostitution which had flourished was stamped out
except, of course, for the high-priced call girls who catered to the rich tourists and the occasional woman who managed for a time, to operate discreetly enough to avoid detection.
Now, or at least when Dan had been here before and he could see no reason for a change there
the G. I. moved in social circles distinctly separate from the mainstream of Hawaiian life. They had their own section of town the Hotel Street area
in which to seek entertainment. There was a military recreation center on famed Waikiki Beach. The young, unmarried men roamed and yearned and the families whenever possible confined their lives to the military reservations.
Dan Kelly had been in Hawaii as a soldier, but he'd been one of the lucky few to break through the barriers. He had a couple of years of college behind him when he joined up and that helped. Then, too, he was an accomplished amateur jazz musician, and was possessed of certain technical skills which were of use to the community theater group.
He'd made civilian contacts, had even taken an evening course at the University of Hawaii. His stay in the Islands had been rich and pleasant. When his tour had been up he'd gone back to the States with only happy memories.
Dan was one of the restless ones. With few family ties and a small but steady income from an inheritance, he'd become a wanderer, itchy-footed, without roots. As far back as he could remember there were only two good places in the world for Dan. The place he'd been and the one to which he was going. The same was true for situations and relationships. The last job or the next one. The next school semester The next girl, or the one he used to go with.
He lived the idle life. And if it weren't for the little money and the education he would have been a ass. His rootlessness was what had made him enlist in the Army in the first place. And it was what drove him from city to town, from school to job and back to school again. He had no college degree and no profession But he was handsome, personable, quick-witted. Wherever he lighted for a period he managed to get by. He'd held a hundred and one different jobs. He'd worked in an office and with a pick and shovel. He'd operated heavy machinery. He'd worked for a newspaper, as a claim adjuster for an auto insurance firm, in a loan company office He'd been a lighting technician with a theatrical u touring company and had worked in a radio and television repair shop. And once, when he ran short of money while living in Mexico, he'd even played piano in a cocktail lounge.
He stayed with a job, or in a place, until he got bored. Then he moved on. Enlisting in the Army had been a bad mistake. By the end of the first month he'd been bored. But you just don't walk up to your sergeant and say, "I quit!" And he'd been lucky being sent to Hawaii. It was one of the few places where he would have been able to make the civilian contacts. The non-military aspects of his tour of duty had made the whole thing bearable.
Still when his enlistment came to an end he'd been eager to move on. He'd gone back to the States and resumed the way of life he'd known. The first half of the first civilian year he'd gone to the University of Southern California. When that life had palled he'd quit and spent the next six months living with the lunatic bohemian fringe both in Los Angeles and in San Francisco. In the second year after his discharge he'd held eight different jobs in four different cities across the nation.
The longer he was away from Hawaii the fonder grew his memories and the more attractive it became. Until finally, in New York, his job. his affair with a would-be actress, and his taste for living in the metropolis all went sour at the same time. That winter in New York was unusually severe, too. So Hawaii was the logical place to go.
It had taken most of his savings to pay for the plane tickets but he was there at last. He'd arranged for a small apartment and paid the first month's rent all by mail and he was down to his last two hundred dollars. But the check from the bank that handled the estate would be coming in a couple of weeks and he was confident he would find some kind of a job which would pay enough to make up the difference between that sum and his expenses. So he wasn't really worried.
As a matter-of-fact, Dan Kelly very rarely worried. Only in a situation of physical danger did be ever worry. In the normal circumstances of day-to-day living he always managed at least to get by if not succeed.
The cab was in the Waikiki district now and Dan sat forward in his seat, eager for familiar sights. They turned down Kalakaua Avenue, the main drag or strip of this tourist section, and headed east. Straight ahead was the world famous landmark of Hawaii Diamond Head. On the right, behind the line of expensive shops and hotels, were the beach and the sea To the left, behind another row of expensive stores and hotels, was an area of apartments and small private homes.
Curiously, here where land was most valuable, lived only tourists and middle class or upper-middle class Honoluluans. The wealthy residents of this forty-ninth state had their residences in the exclusive hills over looking the city, or, better still, on more exclusive neighbor islands which, together with Oahu, made up the state of Hawaii.
The driver slowed as they passed the International Marketplace the biggest single tourist trap on the island. In this grouping of shops and restaurants were some world-famous watering places which residents shunned like the plague.
These were the winter months, one of the two tourist season peaks the other being the summer when the island was invaded by college students attending the summer session at the University. Both sidewalks of Kalakaua Avenue were filled with mainlanders in shorts and loud shirts, their torsos crisscrossed with photographic paraphernalia, their exposed flesh turned ugly, lobster red from over-eager and too-intense exposure to the powerful semi tropical sun.
They were busy people, these tourists. Busy spending money, busy taking snapshots of one another posed before the gaudy and commercial trapping of the resort to send to the folks back home, eagerly over paying for souvenirs. Two blocks further on, the driver turned left, away from the ocean. Here the streets were quite, sedately lined with one and two story homes and apartment buildings, with clusters of six and seven unit garden apartments.
Dan was quite familiar with the area. It was this familiarity which had enabled him to reserve living quarters while still back in New York. He'd gotten hold of issues of both the daily papers at the out-of-town newspapers stand in Times Square. And with the aid of a street map of the city he'd been able to choose the place he wanted. After that it had been a matter of a telegram to find out if the particular apartment was still vacant, and a registered letter with a certified check to cover the first month's rent.
This small residential section was only four blocks deep at its widest point. It was bounded on the south by Kalakaua Avenue and on the north by the Ala Wai Canal which ran from the yacht basin on the ocean front, passed the Ala Wai Golf Course, and ended near Kapiolani Park.
The taxi stopped before a rambling, two story, frame structure. Dan looked at the meter and shuddered. Eight dollars and sixty-five cents! In any city on the mainland a taxi ride covered the same distance would have been less than four dollars. But this was Hawaii and someone had to pay for the Cadillac.
The driver unloaded Dan's luggage on the sidewalk and waited to see how large his tip was before deciding whether or not to carry the bags up to the front porch Dan gave him a ten dollar bill and waved a hand at the bags.
"Keep the change and help me with these," he said.
The driver hesitated. Dan, with his sun-starved skin, had looked like a tourist and he'd expected a larger tip
Dan wasn't about to let the man get away with anything. "All right then," he said. "Give me my change " He held out his hand, palm up.
The driver shrugged and leaned down to pick up two of the suitcases. He shoved one up beneath his arm, transferred the other bag to that hand, and picked up a third suitcase. Dan carried the other two. Up on the porch, Dan rang the bell as the driver put down the luggage and hurried back to his cab.
The Cadillac was gone and the street was empty before the door was answered. Everything moved at a slower pace here in the Islands
When the door was finally opened Dan found himself looking at a short dark-haired woman in her late thirties or early forties. She wore a shrieking muumuu of electric blue which covered her from throat to ankles and halfway down her arms. Her feet were bare and she wore no make-up. Her dark hair was pinned up off her neck.
She neither smiled nor frowned as she waited for him to speak, but her eyes took in every detail of his appearance His pale skin, his suit, his straw hat tne tive pieces of luggage beside him.
"I'm Dan Kelly," he said.
The name didn't seem to mean anything to her. "I'm the fellow who rented the apartment by mail."
Now she let herself smile at him a quick lifting of the corners of her mouth. "Oh yes," she said in a flat tone, seeming to lose interest in him now that he'd identified himself. "Mrs. Rogers asked me to look out for you if you arrived before she got back."
"Oh now I see. I thought you were the landlady."
The corners of her mouth jerked upward briefly again "No, I'm Margaret Waverly. I'm a tenant here, too."
Dan took off his hat. "Can I come in? Or do I have to wait out here on the porch?"
"Oh. Come in. And bring your things. Your place is all ready. I'll show it to you but you'll have to wait for Mrs. Rogers to get back to take care of the keys and things."
She held the door wide for him as he carried two of the suitcases into the cool, dim interior of the front hall. She closed the door after him and walked around his body to lead him to the staircase. He followed her to the second floor, around the stairwell, and up again to the, third floor.
From out front the place looked like there were only two stories and he was puzzled until she showed him into the apartment. At the top of the stairs was a small landing with only one door opening from it. The woman opened the door and flicked on a light. Dan set the bags down just inside the door and looked around.
Originally, probably back when the house had been a private residence, this had been an attic. A long dormer facing to the back of the house had been installed; which explained why the house made only a two story appearance from out in the street.
He walked through the apartment, nodding his head. The living room was large, neat, and comfortably furnished with a rattan sofa and two chairs, assorted tables and lamps, and a vase of freshly cut flowers The paint was not new, but it was clean except for one discolored spot on one wall.
The discolored place was low and square and when Dan looked more closely he could see that a television set had once stood there. The discoloration came from the heat generated by the set, and the bare ends of antenna leads lay flush against the baseboard.
The kitchen was small and antiseptically modern. The sink, stove, and refrigerator were all in one unit, with the refrigerator beneath the counter top. It was small but quite adequate for the needs of one person. There was just enough room in the kitchen for a small table and two chairs. And there were plenty of cupboards.
The kitchen was to the right of the living room and the bedroom and bathroom were to the left. The bathroom too, seemed brand-new. The fixtures were clean and the walls were tiled with aluminum squares. There was a stall shower in lieu of a bathtub.
The bedroom was small, too, just large enough for the three-quarter bed, one night table, the dresser, and the chest of drawers. There was also a huge closet. The bedroom suite, was not brand-new, but it was of good quality and in good condition.
The whole place was quite tastefully decorated and well worth the money he had agreed to pay. The bare wood floors in the living room and bedroom glowed from years of painstaking polishing, and the windows had Venetian blinds as well as drapes. In the kitchen, of course, there were curtains.
Dan went back into the living room where Margaret Waverly stood waiting for him. There was something peculiar about her attitude, a kind of sullenness, almost a resentment.
"The place is lovely," he told her "Perfect for my needs."
"I'm glad you like it." There was acid in her tone. She turned to leave. "Wait. Please."
She stopped and turned back.
"Have I offended you in any way? If I did, let me apologize now "
"No. no," she said distractedly. "You haven't done anything. Mrs. Rogers will be back shortly. You can settle all the details with her. I have to go now."
The woman spun on her bare heel and hurried down the stairs. She turned out of sight and Dan heard a door open and close. The solid clunk of a bolt being shot home was unmistakable.
A weirdo, Dan thought. A real weirdo.
He removed his jacket and tossed it over the back of one of the chairs. His tie and hat followed quickly. He opened the collar of his shirt and rolled the sleeves several turns up his muscular forearms. There was more luggage to bring upstairs.
On his way down to the porch again, Dan was able to take more notice of his surroundings. On the second floor there were three doors, indicating, Dan guessed three small apartments. On the first floor there were two large double doors on either side of the front hallway, and three to the right of, and behind, the staircase. He doubted that there were five separate apartments on the ground floor. More-likely, the two double doors, which had once led to dining and living rooms when the house had been a private residence, were now sealed, with the rooms forming parts of separate apartments.
Dan managed all three remaining suitcases in one trip. It was a little awkward, and he managed to scrape against the wall several times as he ascended. But he made it without doing serious or permanent damage to himself, his luggage, or the venerable building.
Once upstairs again he closed the apartment door and put on the chain lock, then stripped down to bare skin. He would have liked to get right into a shower, but with the landlady due any moment he thought it better to wait until the formalities had been settled.
He opened one of the suitcases and found a fresh set of underwear and a pair of walking shorts. In this informal garb he was adequately dressed for any but the most formal of occasions in this city of leisure.
He left his feet bare. If the shoe manufacturers of the world had to depend upon the people of Hawaii to buy their product they would soon be out of business. Here everyone, or nearly everyone, went barefoot as much of the time as possible. It took a while for the soles of the feet of an initiate to become toughened, and he wanted his to toughen as soon as possible.
Dressed once again, he took the chain lock off the door and carried the suitcases into the bedroom. He opened them all on the bed and began the dull and laboring process of unpacking. The chest and dresser provided adequate drawer space and there was more than enough room in the closet.
When he was finished unpacking, he repacked his heavy, winter clothing in the largest of the bags. There would be no need for woolen shirts and trousers, or overcoats here. Even the sweaters he repacked leaving out only one cardigan for that occasional cool evening. Some of the winter clothing might come in handy if he made a journey to one of the neighbor islands for any extended period. On The Big Island, Hawaii, there were a few places up in the mountains where it was possible to ski during the winter months. At those altitudes the nights could become quite frigid.
Dan finished the luggage chore and remembered, with surprise fondness, the thirty days he'd spent on Hawaii his last time in the Islands. The Army maintained a training base, Pohokuloa, ten thousand feet up the slope of the inactive volcano, Mauna Kea.
This barren, windswept area looked for all the world exactly like the surface of the moon as pictured by an imaginative artist. Almost the entire plateau was covered with Aa, the black, porous rock formed when erupting lava cooled. It was desolate, bleak, cold, and lonely up there. The unit had spent one entire month living under simulated combat conditions.
The lava rock, twisted into weird and bizarre shapes was treacherous and deadly stuff. The uneven edges were razor sharp. The company vehicles had used tires faster than gasoline. And woe to the unwary G. I. who tripped and fell on the filthy stuff. One unfortunate, who, during a simulated attack on a fortified position, had tripped and fallen forward, had been cut up so badly he nearly bled to death from a hundred places before they got him to a hospital. His entire body, from forehead to knees, had been a mass of lacerations, one-tenth of which had been serious enough to be fatal if medical attention hadn't been handy.
The nights up at Pohokuloa were so cold the company had been issued cold weather gear. Dan had been one of the lucky ones. As a member of the communications section he got to spend most of the time in the relative warmth and comfort of a van installation set in the bed of a two-and-one-half ton truck. The van had a heater and since it offered the only communications with headquarters back at
Schofield barracks the radios had to be manned twenty-four hours a day. The man on night watch usually had plenty of company. And on particularly cold nights it had been necessary to turn people away.
That had been one hell of a month. Besides the lava rock and the cold they'd had to put up with dust storms so severe the troops were issued surgical masks to protect their lungs. The wind blew twenty-four hours a day and the fine grit got into everything, the food, the water, even into the fuel supply where it ruined four truck engines which had to be replaced when they went back to Schofield.
And to top it all off there were an earthquake and an eruption while they were there. Mauna Kea's twin sister, Mauna Loa, the active volcano across the valley, decided to let go at three o'clock one morning. The troops were awakened by the rumbling and shaking of the ground beneath them and pandemonium had reigned for several hours.
They abandoned more than half of their equipment and were two-thirds of the way down the mountain before the radio operator finally got through to the volcano observatory and learned the truth.
Mauna Loa, not Mauna Kea, was erupting from one of the lower craters, Kilauea Icki, and spilling lava eastward toward the city of Hilo. The troops were ordered across the island to aid with evacuation and rescue. For the next three days they lived on coffee and no sleep as they rescued people from the advancing flow of molten rock.
For a time it was feared that the lava would reach all the way to Hilo and destroy the port city. They did everything they could think of to try to stop the advance of the lava. The Air Force even sent up bombers in an attempt to bomb the mouth of the crater shut. That didn't work. And in the end the volcano stopped by itself, the tremendous forces which had created it spent in a fantastic display of the power of nature in upheaval.
It was during that time that Dan first learned of the Hawaiian legend of the Fire Goddess, Madame Pele. Many of the people who had flocked to The Big Island to watch the eruption claimed to have seen her in the flames and glow of the lava. Old timers and fleeing refugees also swore to having seen her. Many of the reports coincided so exactly on details of the apparition that Dan had the chilling feeling this goddess did really exist. The details of her flame-red robes and white hair cropped up again and again. Some people even claimed she spoke to them before the eruption occurred and warned them of it.
Only after the excitement passed and it was all over did Dan realize the coincidence of detail could be attributed to the widely-known legend, that this goddess had appeared so often in Hawaiian folklore that it gave him room for greater doubt.
When the rubble had been cleared away and the reconstruction begun the troops who'd aided in rescue were honored at a tremendous rally, followed by a luau. There were speeches and cheers in the late afternoon Then came the drinking and eating. The woman danced the traditional hulas and sang the Hawaii songs. And the party lasted far into the morning.
Sometimes after midnight that night, Dan, half drunk, found himself in the company of a lithe young woman who was only too eager to give proof of her gratefulness. Together they stole away from the fires and torches to an isolated bit of beach.
Dan still remembered every detail of that wild and uninhibited session of love-making. That was one of those rare instances that a man never forgets and always tries to recreate.
CHAPTER TWO
Virginia Morgan wheeled the little Morris Minor sedan into the driveway and sighed with relief as she switched off the engine. Friday was over and she had the whole week end ahead, a Saturday and Sunday to spend as she pleased without the headaches thirty rambunctious teen-agers can give a teacher. There were times when she regretted having taken the graduate courses which qualified her to teach in the high school. The third and fourth graders she used to have had been much easier to handle. They were less of a behavior problem and there was far less preparation and grading in teaching at that level.
She grabbed the handles of the straw carryall she used for a purse and unfolded herself from the small automobile The car was economical enough which was very important here where gasoline was sc expensive because it had to be brought in by tank ship and it was more than adequate for her needs, but it certainly hadn't been built for either comfort or speed. The speed really wasn't that important. On an island only slightly more than a hundred miles in circumference there wasn't a straight stretch of road long enough to go very fast. But a more powerful engine would have helped in negotiating The Pal, or the cliffs between her house and the city of Honolulu.
With a sad shake of her head, Virginia slammed the small door closed and walked around to the rear of the house. There, on the shaded patio, she dropped into a chair, kicked off her shoes, and leaned back with a tired sigh. For twenty feet or so past the end of the patio there was grass on the back lot of her property. The grass ended abruptly and the earth turned to clean white sand stretching all the way down to the ocean shore, a distance of perhaps .-mother hundred yards.
She stared at the endless onrushing waves, whipped to foam crests two hundred yards offshore and building to eight foot combers as they sped blindly toward the beach. Yet the waves did not thunder down upon the sand with awesome fury. Their strength was harmlessly spent against the backwash and they made only a gentle hissing sound.
From her chair Virginia could see all the way to green water. The blue of the water close to shore gave way to green as the depth beneath the surface increased. She closed her eyes, leaned her head back against the top of the chair and fished in her purse for a pack of cigarettes.
She loved her little house on the beach. Its five airy, comfortable rooms were her island of peace in a sea of emotion. Here, at the end of a day, she could retreat from the world. The hiss of the ocean soothed her jangled nerves, calmed the unceasing panic in the pit of her stomach.
She sat and smoked and listened until she felt the last tension-tight muscle unwind, loosen. Then she rose from the chair and went into the house through the back door. It was unlocked, as it had been now for the last two months. She'd felt as though she'd been victorious over some fragment of the dark side of her soul when she was finally able to leave the house unlocked.
It had taken quite a while. The matter had come to her attention when she finally met the people who lived in the next house fifty yards down the beach. They were a mixed-blood Oriental family with the Japanese strain predominating.
Virginia had met the husband, George Hakiri, one Sunday morning two months after she'd moved into the house. She'd awakened early, dressed and breakfasted and gone for a walk along the beach in the early morning sun. It was before eight o'clock. The road was empty. The ocean was quiet. The tide was out.
She'd walked along, dividing her attention between her inner thoughts and the marvels of the tide pools where the sea creatures had been caught by the receding water and would remain trapped until the tide came in again. She walked for a while, then sat down on the sand to rest. The trade winds whipped the tops of the waves and the strands of her hair. The air was filled with the damp-warm smell of the sand, and with the fragrance of the growing things nearby.
Out of the corner of her eye, Virginia had seen a short lean man come strolling down the beach. Over his shoulder he carried a burlap sack and in his right hand was a long stick which he used to poke into the tide pools and at the hills of sand. She saw him bend over one of the pools of trapped water, squatting down on his heels and peering intently. After a moment or two he poked the stick into the pool. There was a splash and some creature came scuttling out of the water.
The man flicked at it with the point of the stick several times, rising to his feet and following it to the edge of the water. It was some kind of crab Virginia was not familiar enough with the sea life to identify it further and it disappeared back into the ocean.
The man stood with the water lapping around the soles of his bare feet for a few moments, staring out over the water. Then, suddenly and excitedly, he dropped his stick and sack, pulled his shirt off over his head, and wearing only a pair of faded swimming trunks, he waded out into the water until it was almost up over his chest.
Virginia saw him grab something floating there and wade back to shore. Water dripped from his body as he squatted down again on his haunches and washed the object. She was curious then, rose to her feet, and walked down beside the man.
He saw her shadow on the sand beside him and looked up, giving her a quick grin. In his hands he held a green glass ball perhaps six inches in diameter.
"Got another one," he said in a friendly manner. 'These little green ones are the hardest to get. Almost didn't see it at all."
The mere tone of his voice, the acceptance of her presence even though she was a stranger, made Virginia feel good somehow. In the months she'd been in Hawaii she'd made no social contacts and it felt good to be talking to another human being about something other than one of the necessities of life.
She knelt down beside him. "What is it?"
"It's a float from a fishing net."
"Is that all? You seemed so excited I thought it was something unusual."
"But it is," he said quickly. "Look here."
He pointed at the globe and she looked closer. Etched into the glass were markings of some kind in a language she couldn't identify.
"This one comes all the way from Japan. They break loose from the nets there and the current carries them thousands of miles to the shore here. Sometimes we get them from even further away. These Japanese floats are quite common. The ones with Chinese or Russian markings are more rare. And valuable, too. A friend of mine sold a Russian float for two hundred dollars a couple of months ago. But he lives on the other side of the island. They get more of the Russian ones over there."
Virginia was fascinated. The idea of glass globes floating thousands of miles had the romantic aura of desert islands and castaways and messages inside bottles.
"What do you do with these things?"
The man smiled. "Nothing, really. That's what's so nice about them. Unless you're a fisherman they're of no real use. I come out early every Saturday and Sunday morning to look for them though. At our house we use them for decorations."
"Oh, do you live close by?"
"Just up the beach a way."
"Then you must be my neighbor," she said. "I live in that brown house the first one you come to."
The man smiled even more warmly now and rose to his feet. Virginia stood up beside him. "I'm George Hakiri," he said. "You're the schoolteacher, right?"
She nodded and returned his smile.
"I have to apologize," he said, turning his eyes down and almost blushing with shame. "My wife and I have been meaning to come over and introduce ourselves. Really, we have. But it was just one of those things we never got around to."
"There's no apology necessary," she told him. "It was my place to come over to your house."
He laughed, heartily, infectiously. And Virginia suddenly felt happier than she had in months.
"You're very gracious," he told her. "And as long as we've finally met, and since you're interested in these things," he held up the glass sphere, "why don't you come back to the house with me now and meet my wife and family?"
Virginia found herself accepting immediately and this surprised her. She was not usually a very outgoing person and she had difficulty accepting strangers. But this man had a peculiar air about him that put her at ease and made her feel as though she'd known him a long time.
She introduced herself as they headed up the beach. Halfway back he spotted a couple more of the floats and waded out into the water to get them. He gave one to her.
"Oh, I couldn't take it," she protested. "Realty, this is your hobby. You found them. I didn't even see them. You went into the water to get them. No, I couldn't take one."
"Please," he said, pressing the small gift on her. "I'll have enough trouble getting Helen that's my wife to let me keep two of them. She keeps saying we have too many now. She'd always threatening to throw them out. 'Dust collectors,' she calls them. But there's something fascinating about them. I can't leave them alone. Please take this one."
Virginia could no longer refuse graciously. When they passed her house she ran in to put the gift on the coffee table in the living room, then joined her new friend again and went with him to his home.
She met the wife and the two small children. They were sitting down to breakfast and insisted that she have something with them. She protested, explaining that she'd already had breakfast, but they wouldn't let her leave. Finally she sat at the table with them and drank coffee while they ate.
They were a lively family. The boy was eight and the girl was ten. Virginia guessed both George and Helen to be in their early thirties. They seemed to have a zest and bounce which was contagious. And the warmth of their love for one another was evident in every word and gesture.
Ginny they were calling her that five minutes after she was inside the house learned that George worked in the accounting department of one of the bigger of the Island's corporations, and that the kids were the fourth generation of the family to be born in Hawaii. George's forbears had been with the original group of Japanese laborers imported to work the pineapple field.
His great-grandfather had sent back to the old country for a bride, but his grandfather had rebelled against the strictness of the existing order and he had married a Hawaiian girl, as had several of his brothers. This mixing of the two races seemed to bring out the best of both in the resulting offspring.
After breakfast they went into the living room and Ginny saw how the glass spheres had been used to decorate the place. George had set them around in multi-colored clusters of assorted sizes in places where they would catch and reflect the light of the sun streaming in through the windows.
They were easy people to talk to and to be with and she spent the entire day with them, talking more then than she had altogether in the preceding months. She had lunch with them, and dinner. And it was her first authentic non-American meal. The dishes were a mixture of Japanese, Hawaiian, Korean, and Phillipino foods. She had an anxious moment with the raw fish but forced herself to try it and was delighted to discover that it was delicious with the special sauce into which it was dipped.
She went home that night still glowing from their reflected warmth and enthusiasm. And for the first time she was able to go to sleep without thinking about the things that had driven her off the mainland.
The Hakiri's adopted her after that. The kids were in and out of her house at will and she had meals with them several times a week, especially on the weekends. Through the Hakiri's she came to know several of the other people in the neighborhood and learned much of the Hawaiian way of life so different from what the tourists saw.
One of the first things she'd noticed was that no one ever seemed to lock a door. If Helen Hakiri needed something for a recipe she marched over to her nearest neighbor. If the neighbor was home Helen would ask to borrow the ingredient. And if the neighbor wasn't home, Helen felt no compunction about walking right into the house and taking what she needed.
But it was a long time before Virginia could go away from her house and leave the doors unlocked.
Virginia realized, weeks after meeting the Hakiri's, how crucial was her relationship with them. In the months preceding that meeting she'd sunk lower and lower into the depths of neurotic depression. The change had been so gradual that she hadn't even realized it was happening. It was only when she began to be more like her old self that she could see the contract.
She owed them more than they could ever know probably, even, her life. She'd been very close to the edge and they'd set her back on the load to recovery from the deep wounds in her soul.
She was so much better now that she could think almost objectively about Burton Compton. That seemed a century ago and far away, yet it had actually been little more than two years since her first trip to the Islands.
She'd been teaching for two years then and assiduously saving her money for the summer vacation in the magic Islands of Hawaii. The two weeks had been frightfully expensive but worth every penny of the money. It had been a marvelous time and she'd been completely enchanted by the fabled wonders of this Pacific paradise; the moonlit beaches, the colors, the sights, the music. Every waking moment of those two weeks was filled with planned activities for the group with which she'd been touring.
She smiled ironically as she stripped off her clothes and went into the bathroom to shower. Only after having lived here as a resident could she see how little the tourists even came to know of real Hawaiian life.
The memories of those fourteen days had burned through boredom of the reminder of that summer. She met Burton Compton at a party two weeks before the start of school in the fall. It was one of those huge, amorphous affairs at which people drifted in and out all evening long.
Later she discovered that Burt had heard the noise of the party and simply wandered in off the street. It was one of those conversation parties where people stood around in small groups discussing a thousand and one subjects as they sipped at their drinks. The groups were continually breaking up and reforming to discuss other topics.
That was the way she'd met Burt. When their group had drifted apart he'd made some comment or other about the talk and had introduced himself. They had a couple of drinks together and he asked for her phone number.
A week later he called for a date and she went out with him. Within three weeks they were sleeping together and he was telling her how much he loved her. Virginia returned his love and was ecstatically happy. And she looked forward to the day when he would ask to marry her.
She finished with her shower and slipped a muumuu over her naked body. The tent-like garment covered her completely, yet was cool and comfortable At first glance it seemed to be one of the ugliest garments in the world. But a second look, and the honest statements of some of the men she knew, told another story.
It was almost impossible to tell the figure of a girl who wore a muumuu, and most men swore every girl wearing one seemed to be naked underneath. The mystery of the garment, together with this aura of hidden nudity, was quite attractive
She went back out onto the shaded lanai the patio and sat down to stare out to sea. It was only four in the afternoon. Too early to begin preparing her evening meal. There were papers to grade and lessons to prepare but the entire week end now stretched before her and she postponed those chores.
With the sound and sight of the sea to lull her, her mind drifted back to Burt Compton...
It was their fourth date and she knew that what she felt for him was more than mere casual friendship for an acquaintance. In a hundred silent ways, the tenderness with which he held her hand, the long silences between them when they stared into one another's eyes, the gentleness of his good night kiss, the feel of his arms around her when they danced, in all these ways he was telling her he felt something similar.
It seemed the most natural thing in the world to invite him in when he brought her home that night. She knew what was certain to happen and looked forward to that with an eagerness she'd never known before.
He mixed the drinks and put on the soft music while she changed out of her evening dress in the bathroom. Her whole apartment was one large room and a kitchenette. And she could hear him moving around as she unzipped the dress and pushed that down over her hips.
She'd taken with her into the bathroom a long-sleeved brocaded silk robe, intricately embroidered and delicately hued It was high-necked and full-length and would reach all the way to her ankles, she knew She wondered whether or not to remove all her under things.
The garter belt and stockings would naturally come off. When they were gone she hesitated for a moment, then made up her mind. An illicit thrill gripped her as she summoned the daring to remove the bra and panties and slip the robe over her naked body.
She checked her make-up in the medicine cabinet mirror and decided there was too much of it. Hurriedly she scrubbed her face clean and applied only a light coat of lipstick. She opened her robe once again and stepped back from the sink to rise on tiptoe to look at the reflection of her bare white bosom ... the tips already stirring with anticipation and the rush ot air across their sensitive surfaces.
He would like them, she knew. He would love them. And she loved to have them loved. She took a bottle of perfume from the shelf above the toilet and applied the glass rod sparingly to the inner surfaces of those two melon-spheres. One more dab behind her neck and she was ready. She belted the robe tightly, turned off the bathroom light, and then opened the door.
There was only one dim light on in the room, the one in the corner. The rest of the room was in shadow not quite dark, really, but not light either. Burt was sitting on the sofa and he looked up at the sound of the door. Their eyes met and locked and she felt herself drawn toward him as though by some kind of physical magnetism.
He'd removed his jacket and tie, had loosened the collar of his skirt, and had rolled his sleeves back from his wrists several turns.
"I feel much better now," she said lightly as she sat down beside him.
"Me too," he told her, his voice so low she almost didn't hear it above the whisper of the music from the FM. "It's always good to relax after a pleasant evening of dinner and a show in the company of a beautiful woman."
He had a drink in one hand and he picked up the one he'd prepared for her from the coffee table before the sofa. She took it and sipped.
"Hmmm, this is good," she said. "And the play was marvelous."
"It should have been. I had a terrible time getting those tickets."
"They must have cost a fortune, eighth row aisle seats in the orchestra at a hit show."
"Not really. I know a few people and I made a couple of promises of favors."
Virginia felt like two people, sitting there making light conversation with only a small portion of her mind while her body tingled with anticipation of the inevitable. She sipped nervously at her drink while she waited for him to take the initiative. Surely there could be no mistake. How could he misread her invitation?
She made whatever remarks came to mind whenever there was a lull in the conversation, speaking to cover her nervousness, not knowing if the words she uttered made any sense.
He waited until their glasses were empty, took hers from her hand, and rose to his feet. He towered over her and his smile was almost invisible in the dimness.
"Let's dance," he said softly.
She rose quickly into his arms, feeling him tense when the softness of her unclothed body flattened against him. His movements were stiff and awkward for the first few moments after he realized she as naked beneath the robe. She wondered if her boldness had put him off, made him change his mind. Perhaps he looked upon her near-nudity as aggressive. She tightened her arm around his shoulder and put her cheek flush against his, and after another few moments had passed everything was all right.
He pressed her more firmly against him and his dancing became more graceful. She moved her lips to his ear and murmured softly, letting her warmth breath caress the lobes, nibbling them gently with her lips.
Their legs brushed and she could feel the eager trembling of her muscles. The song ended and there was silence for a moment before the next one began. But they didn't stop dancing. After the third tune they stopped moving around the room and clung together, their bodies swaying rhythmically to the romantic tempo.
His left hand had been holding her right hand in the formal position of dancers. Now he let go and moved both his hands to her shoulders. She slid her arms around his neck and crushed herself against him, completely aware now of the urgency of his excitement.
Slowly he moved both his hands down from her shoulders, down along her back, down over her shoulder blades to the narrowness of her waist, lower still to the lush jut of her buttocks. His hands cupped those globes.
"Oh Burt!" she breathed passionately just before her mouth crushed to his.
As their lips met they caressed one another, and shuddering urgency gripped them both.
He pressed against her and she stumbled backward to the sofa It would take only a moment to open that narrow couch into a comfortable three-quarter size bed but neither of them wanted to take the time. He pushed her into a corner of the sofa and sat down beside her, half turned toward her, the upper halves of their torsos crushed together.
"I love you," he whispered, moving his lips from her mouth to the corner of her jaw.
"I love you," she answered softly, thrilling as he nibbled down the side of her neck and around to the hollow of her throat where a pulse beat furiously.
His hand moved from her back, up beneath her arm, and around to press against her bosom. Her heart raced, her blood pounded in her temples. She could feel the warmth of his hand right through the fabric of her robe and her breasts seemed to swell beneath his firm, but gentle caress.
"Oh darling, I do love you," she whispered as dizzying desire made her squeeze her eyes tightly shut.
His face was nuzzled against the hollow of her throat and her head was bent far back. His hand moved to the fold of her robe, hesitated there for a breathing moment, then slipped beneath. His hand was smooth and warm and he slid that down to cover her other breast and her tip hardened against his palm. He flicked at that bud of passion with his fingertip.
"Love me!" she groaned.
"Yes, darling. Yes."
He leaned away from her to open the top of the robe and push that back over her shoulders. Modesty made her look away from him as she let him draw the sleeves down off her arms. The robe was still belted firmly about her waist and covered her from her hips to her ankles.
She was naked to the waist and her face was averted while she waited for him to renew his caresses But nothing happened and she turned to look at him.
He was staring at her bared bosom in open wonder and adulation, caressing her only with the intensity of his eyes. "They're so beautiful," he breathed.
She arched her back with pride and slid her hands beneath her breasts to cup them in offering.
"They're beautiful for you. dearest. They're yours. You own them. You own me."
He covered them with his hands, squeezing and molding them, spreading them wide apart on her chest so his lips could caress their valley. She dropped her hands to his leg. Now his lips were making a torturous ascent up the gentle slope of one breast, then working closer and closer to the trembling, brown tip.
His lips touched. She locked her arms around his neck once again and buried her face in the hair on top of his head.
Without breaking the sweet agony of the contact between his lips and her breasts they shifted about until she was stretched out full length on the sofa and he was lying on his hip beside her. The belt of the robe was still tied, but now the bottom halves had come apart and her long, rounded legs were bared nearly to their tops.
He moved his lips to her other breast and whipped that tip to rigid attention while his hand caressed her legs. He touched her knees and all the muscles went limp His fingers left paths of fire on her skin as they journeyed above her knees and gently caressed the tender flesh.
His hand moved...
Moved...
And she held her breath waiting for that ecstatic moment
Then his caress was almost more than she could stand. Her limbs trembled and her lungs burned as she sucked in great, gasping mouthfuls of air. Her mind no longer controlled her body. She was now completely in his power. She could not make her muscles obey and he moved her around freely at his will.
Her hands clutched fiercely at him, the nails piercing the cloth of his garments and digging into flesh He rolled his legs off the couch, sat up and turned to face her. With both hands he reached for the belt of her robe and she held his wrists.
For a moment of eternity their eyes locked and their souls communicated in their gazes. With a shuddering sigh she relaxed and released his wrists. Slowly he opened the belt and pushed the halves of the robe to either side of her body.
His eyes explored her slowly, seeking and finding every fold of flesh. All her reticence was gone and she moved wantonly, her hands reaching again to him
"So beautiful ... so beautiful," he murmured softly, bending slowly forward and pressing his lips to the dimple of her navel.
That was a kiss of worship, of adulation, but when his lips blazed against her fevered flesh she could control herself no longer. Her scream of desire was shockingly loud in the darkened room and her hands reached down to twine in his hair and crush his head against her. For a moment he resisted the pressure, then let himself be smothered, his lips working her to a wild state.
Her nostrils flared, her mouth hung slack, and a helpless mewling sound bubbled from her lips. He raised his head and tugged at the robe. She raised from the sofa to let him draw the robe out from beneath her and cast the garment aside.
Now he caressed her only with his hands. They darted here and there over her body with breathtaking suddenness and she never knew which place he would touch next. Every new caress was an exquisite surprise And he missed not one square inch of her skin, now dampened by the sweat of her passion. His hands even slid beneath her buttocks to caress those globes.
She knew that five more minutes of this madness without release would drive her insane. Her hands found his belt, then fixed his clothes.
Somehow she was too completely engrossed by the fantastic sensations which rioted within her he managed to get out of all his clothes and stretch out beside her again. She pushed against him, thrilling to the touch of him against the length of her body.
They struggled together, seeking the magnificence of total pleasure. But the couch was far too narrow and short to permit them the joyous wonder of fulfillment.
With an anguished cry he rolled away from her and pulled her to the floor. There, with the shadow of the coffee tables making weird patterns against the whiteness of their skins, he began to ease the throes of her passion.
"Darling!" she screamed.
He stilled her cries with a kiss. His body began with a slow wonderful inexorable rhythm.
She worked eagerly with him and she could feel the thick nap of the carpet against her. Her back prickled and burned, but this only made her pleasure that much greater
Finally his rhythm doubled and trebled in tempo. They galloped together at full speed.
She was aware of the tremendous pressure building for her, building to frightening heights. She was sure her entire body would explode in a mighty blast, destroying her forever. Electric shocks ran up and down the pathways of her nervous system, setting her afire.
Then he bent his mouth once more to her lovely breasts.
That was all!
That was all she needed.
At that precise moment that his lips touched her breast the universe exploded in her brain. Every muscle of her body locked and knotted with the fulfillment.
And that was as though all her senses had been heightened. Nerve endings she'd never known she possessed sent messages to her brain as his passion crested and then ebbed slowly away.
Later, when normalcy returned, he opened the sofa and they loved again, more slowly this time, without the urgency of before, but reaching at the end an even greater peak.
The affair went on between them for more than a year. The following summer they went away together to one of the countries in the Caribbean. Their desire for one another seemed to be increased rather than diminished. The more they loved the more they wanted to love. And each time was better than the last.
During their vacation they divided their time between the gaming tables in the state-controlled casino, and the bed in their room. During all their time he showered her with gifts. Sometimes he brought her a piece of outrageously expensive jewelry. And other times it was only a ten-cent trinket. Whatever the gift, it was an expression of his love and she treasured it.
They'd discussed marriage only in the most general of terms. Somehow, every time that came up, something happened to distract them. But she was confident and secure in his love. There was not the slightest bit of doubt in her mind but that they would be married as soon as feasible.
She finally came to a decision one day that fall that there was no reason to delay any longer. They could be married during her Christmas vacation. She phoned him immediately, but told him only that she had a surprise for him. He promised to be there early in the evening to take her to dinner. She told him she would cook dinner for them both.
He arrived, an eager smile on his face as he kissed her at the door, and demanded to be told the surprise. But she made him wait until she put the steaks into the broiler. Everything else had been prepared. The salad was ready, the potatoes baked.
Then, while the steaks were broiling, she told him the joyous news.
That was sheer, unadulterated hell!
In those next ten minutes the world disintegrated and covered her with bitter, foul-smelling ashes. She tried to avoid those ashes. At first her numbed mind refused to accept his words.
It was only after he was gone that the terrible truth penetrated the dense wall of agony which surrounded her.
He was already married!
He'd never had any intention of marrying her. Sure, he loved her. But that had nothing to do with marriage. He also loved the wife and children she hadn't known about. They were both adults. She was old enough to take care of herself. They'd been good together and he was sorry this had to end this way between them.
There were probably other things he said. She didn't hear them. And when he left she didn't even realize he was gone. When her crying stopped she became aware of the odor of burning food. The steaks were charred beyond recognition and the potatoes had exploded in the oven.
It didn't matter.
She had no taste for food.
She turned off the gas, prepared her bed, turned off the lights, and crawled beneath the blankets. She passed the night and the following day in a semi-hysterical state, alternating between periods of wracking sobbing and foggy lucidity.
Her heart was broken, smashed beneath the cruel heel of his words. If she'd had the strength or the will to rise from her bed during that period she would surely have destroyed herself.
It took nearly three days for her to cry herself out. She called in to work sick and passed most of the time in blank staring and painful remembering.
When she had herself completely under control once again she called Burt. She wanted money. At least two thousand dollars. Enough to live on for several months.
At first he laughed at her demands. If she wanted money let her sell some of the gifts he'd given her. He washed his hands of the situation.
In a flat, crisp tone she repeated her demands and explained why he had to meet them. If he refused she would make trouble for him by talking to his wife. There was written record of their stay at the hotel in the Caribbean. Any number of people in her building had seen him coming and going at all hours. And the waiters and bartenders at their favorite haunts would back her story, if necessary.
He had no choice.
He brought her the money. She quit her job and fled.
With nc family and with no ties she fled to the last place of peace she'd known Hawaii. And there she lived like a recluse until her money was gone. The need for money to live forced her back out into the world. She went slowly at first, taking menial jobs while she made the necessary adjustments. Then she applied for a teaching job, got it, and moved to the house on the eastern shore of the island.
But if she existed more in the real world now she still lived dangerously close to the edge of psychotic withdrawal. Only the warmth of the friendship of the Japanese-Hawaiians had been able to effect more positive adjustments to the world and to her memories. There was still a long way to go, she knew. It would be a long time before she could ever really laugh or feel peace and joy.
But now, at least, the end was in sight. She saw herself on the road to recovery. And that was three-quarters of the battle. Some things, of course would be denied her forever. Some of the scars were permanent, though invisible. She would never be able again to experience full and complete love for another numan being. Or passion. Or desire for a member of the opposite sex.
Virginia Morgan realized suddenly that darkness had fallen, so deep had she been in her thoughts. With a sigh she rose from her chair, entered her empty house, and began to prepare her evening meal.
CHAPTER THREE
Dan Kelly came away with a start and sat up. In the darkness of the unfamiliar room it took him several seconds to orient himself. He relaxed, remembering where he was, and turned on the bedside lamp. He'd fallen asleep late in the afternoon, the rigors and excitement of the journey having sapped all his energy.
Mrs. Rogers had been a surprise. She's come up to the apartment twenty minutes after he finished unpacking. There'd been a knock at the door and he'd opened it to find a tall, dark-skinned, white-haired woman in a blue muumuu.
She was tremendous. Absolutely huge. Her eyes were almost on a level with Dan's, and he was six feet two inches tall. She was as lean as she was tall and despite the white hair her age was indeterminable. She could have been prematurely gray or as old as the hills, for all he could tell. And for all her leanness she wasn't thin. She was a big-boned woman, a woman of tremendous skeletal structure. Her features and physical proportions were almost pure Hawaiian.
He didn't have the slightest idea who she could be.
"Yes?" he said, with a puzzled frown.
When she smiled she used her whole face, mouth, lips, eyes, everything; vigorous, vibrant.
"You must be Mr. Kelly," she said. Her diction and enunciation were perfect, almost theatrical.
"Yes, I am," he said still puzzled.
"I'm Mrs. Rogers."
The Anglo-Saxon name had led him to expect a Caucasian and he felt like a fool. "Oh, I'm sorry. Please come in."
She entered. He closed the door and turned to see her standing in the center of the living room.
"Sit down please. I'm sorry about that business it the door. I couldn't imagine who you could be. I was expecting..." He stopped suddenly, embarrassed and feeling stupid for having said anything at all.
"It's quite all right," she assured him. "You don't have to explain. I wasn't insulted. People in the Islands for the first time are usually confused by the names and the faces that go with them."
He gave her a wry smile. "That's what makes it so bad. I feel twice as stupid because I spent three years in the Army here a couple of years ago. I just didn't think."
"Well, what do you think of the place?"
"It's perfect. Just what I was looking for."
"You took quite a chance renting the place by mail like that. What would have happened if you didn't like it?"
"Well, you see, I knew the area. So it couldn't have been too bad. At worst I would have been stuck for a month's rent And I would have used that time to find a more suitable place. But I won't have to look further."
"How long dc you plan to stay?"
He shrugged. "Who knows? A year. A month. I've never stayed anywhere very long."
"Then you won't be wanting to take a regular two-year lease."
"No. A month-to-month arrangement suits me fine. That is, if it's all right with you."
"Usually I like to have a lease," she told him. "It protects both the tenant and myself. And I prefer long-term tenants."
"Well, a lease is out of the question If you insist on one I'll have to make other arrangements, though I'd hate to have to do that But I can assure you that I won't be moving out within the next six months unless I'm going back to the mainland. I mean, f won't be looking for other quarters."
She smiled warmly then. "On that basis I think we can come to terms. But T would like to have an extra month's rent as security."
"That's agreeable," he told her. "But I'm afraid you'll have to wait a couple of weeks. I'm expecting a check then. Until it comes I'll be short of ready cash."
"That will be all right. Why don't we just say that on the next rent day you'll pay two months."
"Fine."
She reached into the pocket of the muumuu and came up with two keys. "Here. The larger one is for the front door downstairs. The other is for this door. You'll find your mail on the front hall table just inside the door."
He took the keys from her.
"Now." she said in a serious tone. "Let me be frank about one thing. This is your apartment What you do here is your own business. I don't have the right to tell you hew to live. All I ask is that you be considerate of my other tenants."
He smiled with understanding. "I'll be the soul of discretion."
She gave a hearty laugh. "Heavens, I wasn't talking about girls. I meant late, loud parties. Things like that. You could keep a harem up here for all I care, as long as you don't disturb any of my other tenants. I'm not a prude, Mr. Kelly. I've lived a long time and seen most of what there is to see. I don't shock easily."
Dan was almost embarrassed by her candor and changed the subject. "I wonder if it might be possible to make arrangements through you for some sort of cleaning service."
"I'm glad you mentioned that," she said. "I was wondering how to bring it up. I know how bachelors are, especially about cleaning a kitchen. Those appliances need regular attention or they get ruined. Bi-weekly maid service would run you fifteen dollars more a month."
"And on a weekly schedule?"
"Twenty-five dollars."
"Hmm ... Why don't we start with every two weeks? And if I find I need the place cleaned more often we can always change."
"Good," she said.
He excused himself for a moment and went into the bedroom to get his wallet. He gave her fifteen dollars to cover the maid service for this first month and she promised to send up his receipt.
"There's one more thing," she said. "There is no public telephone here in the building. I'll be willing to take messages for you if you don't abuse the privilege. Or, you can have a phone installed here. I'll g call the telephone company and put in the order, if you wish."
"I don't really need a phone right now," he told her. "And I don't know how many of the people I used to know are still around I won't be getting many calls at least for a while. So I guess I'll take you up on your offer."
"I think that's about all. You'll find fresh linens and towels every Monday afternoon."
"Fine. Oh, there is one thing. I'll have to stock up on some groceries. Where's the nearest place?"
"There are several stores along Kalakaua Avenue," she told him. "But their prices are outrageous. It's worth the time to take the bus downtown or out to Kaimuki. There is a big difference once you get away from the tourist areas."
At the door he shook her head, surprised at the strength of her grip. "Thank you," he told her. "I think I'm going to like it here very much."
When she was gone he went into the bedroom to transfer his pocket things to the pockets of his shorts. The only problem with the shorts was that there was no place to carry cigarettes without crushing them. One of his first purchases would have to be a hard-sided cigarette case of some kind. Maybe one of those plastic things that held a whole pack of cigarettes and a book of matches.
He slipped a pair of thonged sandals on his feet, and bareheaded and wearing only the shorts and T-shirt, he left the apartment. Halfway down the stairs he remembered his sun glasses and went back up for them. The walk along the quiet tree-lined street out to Kalakaua Avenue was pleasant. And on the main thoroughfare the nearest bus stop was one block away.
The afternoon sun was bright and hot and caused him some discomfort. The street was lined with tall stately palms, but a palm tree doesn't cast n.uch of a shadow. He waited in the doorway of a shop for the bus to come along.
It was a strange, almost eerie feeling. Everything was familiar, yet alien. Along the bus route he passed places he'd seen a hundred times before. He recognized them, the federal buildings left over from the time when the state was only a territory, the County Hall, the library, the statue of King Kamehameha. But he also felt as though he were seeing them for the first time.
He left the bus several blocks short of his destination to walk. This was the Hotel Street district so named after its main street. The sidewalks were lined with bars, cheap dives most of them, that catered to the G. I. trade. The windows displayed pictures of "hostesses" and entertainers. There were curio shops and tattoo parlors and massage parlors.
At this time of day the street was almost deserted. Sometime after dark it would stir slowly to life. The sidewalks would fill with men both young and old in uniform and in civilian attire. The neon signs would come on and the district would pulse with m the driving rhythm of rock and roll and jazz, and the gut-bucket blues accompaniment to a stripper's routine.
As the nights passed the activity would increase. The streets would be patrolled by both the civilian police and a group called HASP Hawaiian Armed Services Police which was made up of representatives of the Military Police of all four branches of service Any HASP man had jurisdiction over any serviceman, regardless of his branch.
Dan walked on and came, finally, to the area of supermarkets, department stores, and shops. He tried to keep his purchases to a minimum, buying only the things he thought he would need immediately. But by the time he pushed the cart to the checkout counter he had more than ten dollars worth and two large bags full.
He managed to make it to the bus stop only five minutes before the office workers began to spill out cf the surrounding buildings. He was standing at the head of a long line of people when the bus came along. He struggled to get the change out of his pocket with that armload of groceries and a pretty girl offered to hold one of the bags for him.
He gave her one of the paper bags, got out his money, took the bag back, and got on the bus. There were still several vacant seats and he took one. The girl got on right after him and sat down nearby. He thanked her and she smiled politely. Her gesture had been mere courtesy and she wasn't interested in being picked up.
Back at the apartment he put his purchases away, made himself a sandwich and went in to take a long hot shower. He dried himself off and flopped down on top of the bed, naked. The breeze through the opened window cooled his body and he was asleep within a few minutes.
And now it was evening. He picked up his watch and looked at it. Ten o'clock. He'd been asleep for more than four hours. And he was hungry again. He struck a light for his cigarette and stretched and yawned as he went into the darkened living room.
The blind in the big window was up and the window were open. Dan looked up at the wonderful display of stars in the night sky, and at the round ball of the white moon. That was another thing he remembered; how the moon seemed to be a different color on different nights. There were times when it was almost orange-red, other times yellow, or white.
His window afforded him a partial view of the Ala Wai Canal and the golf course on the other side of the waterway. Also he could see the backs of the houses on the next street and the yards between. Directly behind Hibiscus Court was a "U" of one story garden apartments which was open on the street side. From his high vantage point Dan could look across the roofs of the units at the back and see that the area between the two legs of the "U" was taken up by a small swimming pool in the California manner.
Except at the big hotels and the military bases, swimming pools were rather a rarity here in Hawaii. With the sea so close, and so excellent for swimming, there was really no need for pools.
A light came on in one of the windows and caught Dan's attention. He saw a figure step into view through that window. A second look told him it was a female figure. She was Caucasian and young. At this distance the closest he could come to telling her age was somewhere between fifteen and thirty.
The girl stepped to the window and closed the blind.
Dan sighed and started to turn away. For a moment there he'd thought he might see something interesting Then, out of the corner of his eye there was movement again and he turned back.
The girl was adjusting the blind, turning the slats up to block any view at ground level, but leaving them open enough to permit the free passage of air. With the slats of the blind slightly open like that, Dan, at the greater height, had the same unobstructed view of the room he'd had when the blind had been fully open and raised.
The girl was wearing Bermuda shorts and a sleeveless blouse. She was facing to one side and looking at something or someone out of Dan's range of vision. Her hands came up to the front of the blouse and she pulled the tails of the blouse out of the top of her shorts. Then she opened the buttons and slipped the blouse off her shoulders. Beneath that she was wearing a white cotton bra. She hunched tier shoulders and reached both hands up behind her back.
Dan could feel a curious kind of excitement. This wasn't quite the same as seeing a stripper go through a routine. That kind of excitement was part of this, of course. But there was something else, too. Something else that came from the knowledge that the girl believed herself to be alone. Some subtle change comes over a human being when he believes himself to be alone and unobserved a change in the way he moves, in the way he holds himself.
The girl didn't open her bra. Her hands came back to the front of her body and raised to her hair. Then Dan knew what she was looking at off to one side. It could only be a mirror. The girl patted her hair and twisted from one side to the other as she looked at her reflection.
She posed and pouted like an actress rehearsing for a role, affecting different postures, standing with her back arched to emphasize her bosom or with her rear stuck out. That was a feminine thing to do, but a young feminine thing.
She grew tired of the game presently and reached once again for the fastenings of her bra. The white cotton garment came off and her bare breasts were revealed. At this angle and distance it was almost impossible to judge the relative size of those startlingly white globes.
The bra dropped out of sight and the girl rubbed gently at the red lines left by the constricting foundation garment. She slid her hands up beneath the spheres and hefted them, massaging rhythmically.
Dan could feel himself staring and knew he was breathing with difficulty. His cigarette, forgotten between his fingers, had burned uncomfortably short. But there was no ash tray near the window and to crush out the cigarette he would have to move away, instead he slid up the window screen and ground out the cigarette on the outside of the sill.
Her Bermudas were tight. And even with the zipper open she had to shift her hips to get the pants off. The movement of her lower body caused her breasts to bounce and sway in a most delightful manner.
Beneath the Bermudas she was wearing only panties, which came off much more easily. The elastic and seams had left red lines around her waist, striped across each hemisphere of her buttocks, and around the tops of her legs. These too she massaged away with gentle fingertips.
She stepped out of sight for a moment, then came back into view wearing a loose robe. Dan watched for several more minutes as the girl moved about the room picking up her clothes, folding them, putting them away. She kept moving in and out of view, remaining out of sight for a longer period each time. When the window next to her bedroom lit up with the violet-white of fluorescent lighting, and when, for a moment, Dan could see only her silhouette behind the opaque glass he knew the performance was over for the evening. She was bathing, and afterward would either go out or go to bed. In her bedroom only one corner of the foot of her bed was in his field of view.
With a sigh he turned away from the window and went back into the bedroom. From a dresser he removed a fresh set of underclothing and slipped it on, smiling as he thought, There are extra benefits to this place that make it well worth the rental.
He opened his closet door and looked at the array of clothing. His choice would depend upon the kind of place he had in mind for dinner. In his wallet, he knew, there was less than a hundred and fifty dollars. This was all the money he had in the world until the check came. And most of that check would go toward the extra month's rent he'd agreed to pay Mrs. Rogers. The cash he had would have to last him then for six weeks, or until he found employment.
Still, this was his first night back in Honolulu, and he deserved some kind of celebration. He chose a black silk suit, enough to be comfortable in the seventy-degree evening air. He selected a gray and red striped tie to go with the suit. From another dresser drawer he removed a white dress shirt, and from a third drawer a pair of black silk socks.
He dressed quickly, transferred all his things to the proper pockets, checked the shine on his shoes, patted the outside of the suit coat to be sure he had a handkerchief and the keys to the house and apartment.
Kalakaua Avenue was alive with people dressed for an evening's entertainment. The husbands and wives strolled along together. There were groups of couples. There were also pairs and trios of single men and girls in the crowds, eyeing each other, exchanging flirtatious smiles, following one another in and out of the many night clubs and restaurants.
Dan moved with the crowd as far as the International Marketplace. There was a knot of people collected outside Don the Beachcomber's, peering in through the lattice work, listening to the guitarist who headlined the show. Dan stopped there for a few minutes and listened.
The guy was pretty good, very skillful with the instrument. But he wasn't playing with any originality, and depended instead upon a couple of gimmicks with his amplifier and lots of volume to impress his audience. And they seemed to be quite impressed. When the man came to the end of the number they applauded with wild enthusiasm. Dan frowned, and wondered if the performer had any real talent. All he'd displayed so far was a certain amount of technical skill and the virtuosity of the electronic genius who'd designed the amplifier.
The Waikiki Strip was only four or five blocks long. At the end of it furthest from Diamond Head was Fort Derussy. This was a strip of beach-front land worth millions of dollars to any hotel builder. Through the years, as the tourist business grew beyond all expectations, there had been many offers made to the federal government for that hunk of property. But the federal authorities refused to sell.
The Army maintained there beach facilities and quarters available to service personnel on pass or furlough. The available quarters were filled to capacity by three o'clock every Friday afternoon. A G. I. could get a bed there for a dollar and a half a day, while a hundred yards away civilians were renting hotel rooms for a minimum of twenty dollars per day. Eesides the quarter there were a bowling alley, a restaurant with meals at G. I. prices, and a non-commissioned officer's club for servicemen of the rank of corporal and above. There was also an enlisted men's club for the lower grades, an officer's club, a liquor store, and a PX.
A serviceman could spend a furlough there for one-tenth of what it would cost for the same period of time at one of the hotels. And he. would still be close to all the attractions of Waikiki. In his early days in the Islands Dan had often availed himself of those facilities. Right next door to Fort Derussy was a USO Club where eager but inexperienced servicemen could meet and dance with under strict supervision by chaperones, of course some of the young ladies of the city.
Dan found it pleasant to walk along and remember, but his hunger was growing. And he knew if he waited too long it would be too late to get dinner anywhere. He remembered a couple of restaurants which were not too expensive and turned down the street to head for the closest one.
It was still there a Chinese restaurant. But across the street was a new steak house and he went in there instead. The place was decorated in Hawaiian motif. The waitresses were dressed in costumes which looked Hawaiian but were really conglomerations of several Polynesian styles. They were bare-shouldered and the bodices of their uniforms all revealed a generous expense of cleavage.
A hostess showed Dan to a small table not too far into a corner, seated him, and gave him a menu Almost before he had the menu opened there was a pretty smiling, dark-haired waitress standing at his table.
He returned her smile. "Good evening, sir," she said. "Good evening."
The room was filled with smartly dressed diners at all stages of their dinners. Some were just being served while others were finishing dessert. The buzz of conversation was just loud enough to make it difficult to hear the waitress. She said something else to Dan and he shook his head and cupped an ear toward her.
She leaned down to him and repeated. "Would you like a cocktail before dinner?"
He heard her but made her repeat herself once again. For when she leaned down to talk to him he could peer right down the front of her costume. He could look right between her breasts, their coppery curves glistening in the light of the candle on the table. Even the edges of the darker circles surrounding her nipples were visible.
"Would you like a drink before dinner, sir?" she repeated for the third time.
"Yes, please. A sidecar, I think. And easy on the sugar."
She turned and moved away between the closely packed tables and he opened the menu, looking first at the prices. They were high. But, after all, this was Waikiki. He chose the New York cut steak, French fried onions rings, and baked potato. The waitress brought his drink over to him and he gave her the order.
When she was gone again he took a mouthful of the drink. It was good. Cold. Not too sweet. The liquor reacted quickly in his empty stomach and he felt the warm glow begin to spread.
The service was fast. Before he was quite finished with his drink the waitress was bending low over the table as she set the platter of sizzling meat before him. He threw back the last of the drink, set the empty glass on her tray, and reached for the knife and fork.
The food was excellent. Good quality meat had been cooked to perfection. The French fried onion rings were flaky and crisp without being greasy. There was a sour cream and chive sauce for the baked potato, and a bowl of crisp salad on which Dar used only a little lemon juice.
The quantity and quality of the meal, and the service, were well worth the price and he enjoyed himself immensely. He ate with gusto and finished the meal with brandy in lieu of some too-sweet concoction which might dull the after taste. After the brandy there was plenty of coffee; rich, black and hot.
The tab, including drinks, came to a little over eight dollars. Dan put a ten dollar bill on the plate and told the girl to keep the change. She was surprised and pleased, and rewarded him by leaning far over as she picked up the plate, giving him one more look at her generous bosom.
He left the restaurant feeling content and happy. His stomach was full of good food and he'd had just enough liquor to give him a slight edge. It was almost midnight when he stepped out onto the street again and the sidewalks were even more crowded than before.
Dan crossed the street to the ocean side and walked along in front of the hotels and shops. He came to a narrow passageway between two buildings. This was the public right-of-way to the beach. For, according to local law, all beach front was public property. Even the biggest hotels could not restrict the use of the beach behind them to only their guests. Anyone could walk along on the sand and sit or swim anywhere he pleased In fact, there was a few yards up from the high water mark, a well worn path running almost the entire length of Waikiki Beach, from the military beach at one end to the public beach at the other, passing all of the more expensive hotels between.
Dan hesitated for a moment, then turned down the passageway. The beach was empty and white in the moonlight. He found a clean, dry place to sit and lit his after-dinner cigarette. There were some decisions which had to be made and this seemed like the perfect place to make them.
Tomorrow, he would, of course, begin to look for a iob; which meant that he should go home and go to bed in order to get an early start. But there were other things to think about.
He wondered how many of the people he'd Known were still in Honolulu. And he wondered whether or not it would be particularly wise to try to contact them immediately. He was rather enjoying the feeling of isolation that came from not having any real contacts in the city. Relationships would, he was aware, engender certain responsibilities. There would be time for that when he began to feel lonely, as there was no doubt about it, he would feel lonely, in time.
It might be more fun to play the lone wolf for a while, to explore the city from one end to another and see what it had to offer, what it had acquired in the intervening years. Despite the glitter and polish of the Waikiki district there were areas of poverty in and around Honolulu. like any other city Honolulu has its slums and unemployment, its areas for low economic classes. There were thousands of pineapples pickers and cane workers who earned barely enough to subsist. There were colonies of hotel employees and office workers earning only modest sums. There was the middle-income group.
Each class, each ethnic group had its own area of the city with certain attractions to offer. Here, at Waikiki, there was the expensive brand of excitement and the ready availability of the single female vacationers. These girls seemed to consider Honolulu a kind of out-of-bounds place where whatever they did didn't really matter. Here girls who were very prim and proper at home really let themselves go. They wanted to devour as much of life as possible in the short time they had. Strictly brought up southern women would call the Hawaiians "blacks" and sleep with them at the earliest opportunity.
Despite the attractions of the tourist areas there was an illicitness about the slums which also drew him. It was as though poverty, with its sweat, with its peaks of hilarity and troughs of depression, had more of life to offer. There was no earthly reason why an unwashed woman picked up in some cheap bar in some cheap neighborhood should be better in bed than a deodorized, perfumed female who could afford twenty or thirty dollars a day for a hotel room in addition to the air or boat fare back and forth between the Islands and the mainland. There was no reason, yet some instinct told him it was so.
Then, for a while perhaps, he wouldn't try to look up his old acquaintances. The decision made, he flipped away the stub of his cigarette, got to his feet, and went straight home to bed.
CHAPTER FOUR
Virginia Morgan had been thinking about the purchase for weeks now. She couldn't seem to make up her mind. It wasn't the money. Her expenses were far exceeded by her salary. And it would be so nice The house was empty, lonely. But she held back because she wasn't sure she was ready for that kind of thing. It might create a tie she wasn't ready for. But then, too, it could fill the empty places in her life.
There was another empty, lonely week end stretching before her. No longer did the isolation she'd sought satisfy her. Oh, the frequent requests for dates from the men with whom she came in contact every day didn't tempt her in the slightest. That wasn't the kind of thing she was looking for. Now she would never again look for that.
The same forces which had brought her back into the world of reality also worked to make her restless. The dream, the frightening, recurring dream, with its dark and mysterious threats was something new. In the past four weeks she'd had the dream seven times; for times in the first three weeks, and three times last week alone.
Virginia was familiar enough with psychology to know that her subconscious was trying to relieve some of the pressure through that dream. But she couldn't figure out what the dream meant.
It always began several hours after she'd fallen asleep. She knew that because she always came awake at the end of the dream, came awake with her heart thudding in her chest and her stomach coiled in knots of fear.
At the beginning of the dream she saw herself standing alone, completely and totally alone, with only darkness, nothingness around her. There was light which seemed to have no source. She was illuminated but there was no shadow and nothing around her was lit.
It was as though everything else in her dream reality was invisible. Suddenly, she felt hands touching her, gripping her arms firmly, holding her prisoner. The hands were invisible, too. They pulled her along a corridor which she sensed but could not see; she screamed and struggled but could not free herself.
Then, again with startling suddenness, she stopped struggling as she became aware of a presence. She could see and hear nothing. But she could feel the hands holding her and had a kind of awareness of some being. A loud, echoing voice burst upon the mind of her dream-self. In the dream it wasn't something she heard with her ears, but rather something she heard with the individual cells of her cerebral cortex.
The voice spoke not at all to her, but to the hands holding her.
"Punish her!" the voice commanded them, and the words echoed and echoed repeating again and again with a terrifying finality.
The hands pushed her along again and still she could not see anything. She sensed another corridor, darker, narrower. The hands were strong, quiet. All her struggles were in vain. One of the most frightening aspects was being forced to walk rapidly along where she couldn't see. It was like being blind, like not being able to see even though your eyes were open. She could only sense movement and had the continuous fear that she would smash into some invisible object in her path.
Then the movement stopped.
The hands changed positions on her body, and, before she realized what was happening, they were stripping away her clothing. She fought them until she had no strength left. Then, her clothes were gone and the hands were holding her.
Her nudity seemed to have no physical connotation. The hands held her for an infinite time and nothing happened at all, and she didn't really feel naked, even though she knew she had no clothes on. A peculiar sensitive prickled the skin of her dream-body, as though dry water were cascading down upon her.
When the sensation stopped all the hair was gone from her body; the hair on her head, her eyebrows and eyelashes, the stubble from beneath her arms and on her legs, every strand of hair on her body had disappeared.
And now she felt naked, as though all the eyes m the world were out there somewhere staring at her. She squeezed her own eyes shut, threw back her head, and let loose maniacal screams of torment.
In a flash, the hands which had been holding her were gone. She sensed that she was alone again. Even the eyes were gone. Slowly, half afraid to see, she opened her eyes.
She was standing as she had been at the beginning of the dream, but now she was naked and hairless and surrounded by mirrors, hundreds of mirrors. Wherever she looked there was her own body before her eyes.
For a moment she felt nothing at all. Then, wildly, she turned round and round searching for escape, trying to get away from the hundreds of images of her hairless self. And it was worse than when all the eyes had been looking at her, worse than anything in the whole world.
There was no escape and she knew where she was. This was Hell and she was doomed for all eternity to look at herself. Her eyes seemed to be taped open. She couldn't close them. There was no place else to look except at the mirrors. They were above her, below her, all around.
And then she would wake up...
She would come awake with the bedclothes twisted around her body, with a scream of agony about to erupt from her lips. She always woke up the instant before she screamed. And she never screamed.
In her sleep the dream was fresh and new each time. Only when she'd awakened did she know it was the same thing again. And when she had the dream further sleep was impossible. There was a film of fear-sweat covering her body. And her heart seemed to take hours to return to a normal beat. She would lie in the dark, afraid to close her eyes again for fear the dream would come back.
The dream was a further argument for buying the dog. Of course, she'd thought of buying the dog before the dream had started. But the presence in the house of another living thing might help dispel the nameless terror she felt upon awakening from the dream.
Virginia knew the dog she wanted. The man who owned him was willing to let him go at a ridiculous price it she guaranteed that the dog would have a good home. He was a big, two-year-old German shepherd that the man had named Bas. He was quiet, well-trained, obedient.
She would be able to give the dog a good home. There were miles of beach for him to run on. And right across the road, on the inland side of the highway that circumnavigated the island, were the forests and mountains of the Koolau Mountains all wild, uninhabited forest land with only dirt roads and trails.
Back there the big dog could chase wild game. There were still a few boars, and the mongooses were abundant. The conservation people would be grateful for every mongoose the dog killed. Those little furry animals were not native to the Hawaiian archipelago, but they'd been imported years back when the Islands were infested with snakes. Now there wasn't a snake left anywhere and the Island were becoming infested with the mongooses
Look, Virginia told herself. You've got to make up your mind. Either decide against the dog and forget it, or decide for the dog and go get him. This is stupid, the way you're stalling around. You can't say yes, or no. Take some positive action, for God's sake.
After goading herself thusly she changed her clothes, took her purse and wallet and keys, and went out to the car. And she felt in a better frame of mind once the decision no longer loomed in the future. She'd made up her mind and it felt good.
She was glad, too, that she hadn't even thought too much about getting a puppy. A young animal would require more patience and attention than she could give it. And she would never have been able to train an animal herself. The man in the pet shop had assured her that in a relatively short time the animal would respond to her as its master.
That started right off as a beautiful relationship between them. The pet shop man greeted her at the door. He remembered her and the dog was still available. The owner had stipulated that the price should be one hundred dollars, fifty dollars of which would be returnable to the purchaser in six months if, at that time, the owner was sure that the dog was being well cared for.
The pet shop man went on to explain about feeding and grooming, and about the commands to which the dog was trained. Virginia listened to it all and when he ran out of words she wrote him a check.
The man took the check and went to bring the dog from the kennel out in back. He brought him in on the end of a short, thick lead. The dog walked slowly and proudly just behind the man's right foot. He didn't strain at the leash or hang back. The man walked him right up in front of Virginia, made a motion with the palm of his hand, and the dog sat down. m
"Put your hand out toward him ... very slowly," the man said. Virginia reached.
The dog leaned forward and sniffed at her hand for a moment, his cool wet nose pressing against her palm, between her fingers, brushing across the pulse spot on her wrist. Then he licked her fingers and the man relaxed.
"Go ahead, you can pet him now," the man said.
She squatted down before the dog and reached to scratch behind his ear. The dog leaned forward and turned his head to facilitate the caress.
"He liked me!" Virginia said, feeling an immediate warmth toward the animal.
"Animals make up their minds very quickly about people. Either they like them right away, or they never fully accept them."
"You called him Bas. What's his full name?"
"He's got a long name full of titles and German words on his pedigree papers. His former owner called him Bastion."
She made a sour face.
"Yes, I agree." the man continued. "I shortened it to Bas and the dog answers to it. Didn't want to start with something completely new."
The man spent another twenty minutes with Virginia and the dog. He had her use all the hand and voice commands to which the dog was trained. And the dog responded very well to her. Before she left she bought all the necessary bowls and food and vitamins and the man took the information for the license. She would receive that license in the mail within fourteen days.
It gave Virginia a peculiar feeling to walk out onto the street with the huge dog docile at her side He stayed at her right heel, stopping when she stopped, walking when she walked. She walked to the corner, crossed the street, and came back down the block to the car. The way the passersby made a cautious circle around the huge dog gave her a sense of power and she was immediately pleased that she'd made the purchase.
There was just a little bit of trouble with the big dog and the small car. When she opened the sidewalk side door the dog automatically squeezed into the back seat. She wanted him to ride up front and pulled him out again. When the dog sat down on the front seat the top of his head pressed against the roof of the car. The dog shifted his feet around and found a position in which his head didn't touch the roof and he could see out through the windshield.
Before she closed the door Virginia rolled down the side window three-quarters of the way. Then she went around the car and slipped behind the wheel. Immediately the dog rested his muzzle on her shoulder and pressed his snout into the hollow of her neck.
The gesture of affection this was the way she interpreted it made a lump come to her throat and tears roll down her cheeks from the corners of her yes. This living thing loved her and immediately she returned that love. And there was safety in this relationship which she could never find with a human being with a man.
Why hadn't she done this a long time ago? How much richer would have been the empty lonely months. She started the engine and pulled cautiously out into the stream of traffic. It took ten minutes to get through the stop and go of the city streets. Then she was out on the highway and rolling along at forty-five miles an hour. The dog moved over to the door and thrust his head and shoulders out the window, turning his face to the breeze.
For a moment she was afraid he'd fall, or jump out. But after a few miles had rolled under the wheels the dog was still in the car and she relaxed. Bas seemed to enjoy riding with the wind blowing in his face. He wagged his tail so hard his hindquarters swayed from side to side. And when they passed a couple of youngsters walking on the shoulder of the road he barked furiously, almost as though he were lording it over those small human because they were walking and he was riding.
Back at the house Virginia walked the dog around the property, letting him roam to his heart's content. Naturally the dog proceeded to lay claim to the house and grounds by investigating every clump of bushes, every tree trunk, every shrub and flower.
Inside the house she took him on an inspection tour. He investigated carefully, smelling everything twice.
When he'd seen everything, Virginia unsnapped the heavy leather lead from his collar. The dog took one more tour of the place on his own, with the girl following to watch what he did. When he finished he went back to the living room and laid claim to a corner.
This was to be his place and Virginia wondered if her scent on the easy chair and on the desk had had anything to do with the dog's choosing the spot between them. The chair was the one she sat in when she read or watched television and she spent just as many hours at the desk marking test papers and preparing lessons.
When she went back out to the car to get the rest of her purchases the dog scrambled to his feet and followed her.
"Stay!'" she commanded him.
And he stayed, standing in the open door and watching her walk to the car, get the packages, and walk back again. In the kitchen she spread a few sheets of newspaper and set out a bowl of water. Immediately Bas drank. If he was thirsty he might also be hungry. She prepared a bowl of food and put it beside the water. He ate a few mouthfuls, drank a little more water, and went back into the living room.
Virginia cleaned up the things in the kitchen, went into the bedroom to get out of her street clothes, and then went into the living room to do some of the work she'd brought home over the week end.
At first it was hard to work with the dog there.
His presence ruined her concentration. She would look up every few minutes just to see if he was still there. And she couldn't catch him by surprise. Every time she raised her eyes the dog was looking at her. For a few minutes she pushed the work to one side and stared at the dog. He whined, wagged his tail, and came over to put his head on her lap.
How beautiful he was; big, strong, sleekly coated. And the beauty that was there she felt, rather than saw. With a sigh she turned back to work and the dog went back to his place. Within minutes she was completely engrossed in her work, trying to fathom the meanings of the awkward phrase and sentences of the papers her teen-aged students had written.
Sometime late her concentration was shattered. The dog scrambled to his feet, his nails clicking against the wooden floor, his feet sliding as he headed for the back door. A deep warning growl rumbled in his wide chest.
Puzzled, Virginia rose and went to the back door, rhere, still ten yards away and approaching the house, was a figure in the rapidly falling darkness. Coming in the back way like that it could only be one of the Hakiris.
"Quiet, Bas!" she commanded and the rumbling stopped instantly.
She was still surprised at how quickly the dog had accepted her and at how completely he responded to every command. His training had been excellent, she knew. But his response was more indicative of his breeding and fine instincts.
The figure came close and she saw that it was George Hakiri.
"Hi," he said when he saw her inside the house.
"Hello, George."
He put his hand on the doorknob to come in. but stopped suddenly when the deep growling began. Virginia looked at the startled expression on his face and laughed.
"Come in, George. There's someone here I want you to meet."
He could see the dog now and he was wary. "Are you sure it will be all right?"
"Of course". Here, let me open the door. Down, Bas! Quiet!"
The dog sat down and the growling stopped but his amber eyes never left George's body as the neighbor came into the house.
"Go and sit down," Virginia said. "I'll bring him over and introduce you two."
"God! He's a monster!" George said as he sat down on the sofa.
"He isn't either any monster. He's beautiful. I bought him this afternoon. Isn't he beautiful?"
George gave a snort of derisive laughter. "Sure. If I wanted my throat torn out ... What on eafth possessed you to buy him?"
"A woman living alone needs protection," she said. "And besides, he'll be company for me."
"Sure, he will. If he doesn't turn on you."
"I think you're afraid of him."
"Damned right, I am."
"It will! be all right as soon as he smells you and once he's sure you're not going to hurt me. I'll bring him over now. Hold your hand out to him and don't make any sudden moves."
"If that dog tears out my throat I'll never speak to you again," George said with a nervous laugh.
Virginia hooked her fingers beneath the chain of the dog's collar and walked him over to the sofa. George was sitting very straight, leaning forward slightly his hand extended. The dog began to growl as they approached.
"Quiet, Bas!"
The dog was quiet.
"Sit!"
He sat a few inches from George's leg and leaned forward to sniff the hand.
"Now pat him," Virginia said softly. "I'm going to let him go."
George's eyes widened.
"It's all right " she reassured him. "The man in the pet shop said that once my guests were in the house for a few minutes the dog wouldn't bother them."
She let go of Bas's collar and walked back to her chair. The big dog turned his head to let George's finger dig behind his ears bent down to sniff at the man's shoes After a few moments the big dog picked himself up and went over to Virginia's chair. He dropped down to the floor right in front of her feet.
George relaxed considerably "I only came over because Helena wanted you to have dinner with us tonight."
"I'd love to," she said. "But I think I'd better spend all the time I can with Bas until he gets really used to everything. You know, I've only got tonight and tomorrow. Monday I'll have to leave him all alone while I go to work. But it'll just be for this week end."
"All right," George said. "And how about tomorrow morning? You going to come float hunting with me?"
"Of course! I'll bring Bas along."
George gave a wry grin. "If he goes, maybe I won't."
"Don't be silly," she said.
"Okay. The worst that can happen is I'll lose an arm or leg."
The man rose to his feet and immediately the dog was standing, too. George watched him warily as he walked to the back door. Bas accompanied him, but made no threatening sounds or moves. George was careful to move slowly and Virginia heard him sigh with relief when he was outside and the door was closed.
"I guess he must like me," he said from outside. "He didn't growl that time."
"I told you it would be all right."
"Yeah sure. Say, how about the kids? You think he'd hurt them?"
"Gee, I don't know. You'd better tell them not to run around here for the next few days. I'm sure it would be all right once he got to know them. I know he-likes kids. Why don't you bring them along tomorrow morning and they can play with him. They'd be fine after that."
"I'll see," George said. "And I'll tell my wife not to count on you for anything this week end."
"All right, George. Good night."
"Good night."
Virginia heard him walking away The dog stood at the door and watched for half a minute, then trotted over to Virginia and put his head on her lap.
"Good boy," she murmured as she scratched behind his ear.
This was something she hadn't foreseen. Possession of the large animal had a further advantage. It gave her a feeling of being independent of her neighbors. She realized now that in spite of how wonderful they'd been toward her she'd been harboring a faint feeling of being smothered by them.
She took the dog's face between her hands and kissed his furry snout. He licked at the line of her jaw and she laughed. He put his paws on her lap and rose, towering above her. She leaned back in the chair and roughhoused with him for a few minutes.
Then she called a halt to the proceedings. "All right, Bas That's enough, now. Down, boy!"
Obediently he dropped down to the floor and went to curl up in his corner. Virginia rose and went into the kitchen to prepare her supper. No sooner were the chops sizzling in the broiler beneath the oven than the dog was in the kitchen sniffing the air, his tongue lolling from the corner of his mouth.
"Oh ho! So you like pork chops. Well, if you're a good boy I'll let you have the bones and leftovers."
She moved about the kitchen, preparing the meal, with the dog remaining sitting in the doorway, never taking his eyes off her. She talked to him as though he were another person and he seemed perfectly content to sit there and listen to the sound of her voice.
She prepared the salad and mixed the frozen fruit juice drink and it was time to turn the chops over. She took the long-handled fork in one hand and the insulated pot holder in the other, and bent over to pull out the rack of the broiler. The chops sizzled and sputtered in their own grease and she turned them over.
But before she could close the broiler door and straighten up she felt the dog's cold nose pressed against the hollow behind her knee. She was wearing only a muumuu and when she was bent forward the hem at the back must have raised up quite high.
She was only startled for a second. That cold, wet nose, touching her bare and sensitive skin, tickled and she laughed.
"Bas! Stop that! That's naughty!"
She straightened quickly but the dog had not moved away The hem of her muumuu dropped over his head and his cold nose slid up the back of her leg and pressed against her naked buttock That was the weirdest sensation in the world, being touched there by a dog's nose.
"Oh!" She stepped away and whirled around. "Now you stop that, hear? Go over there and sit down. You can wait till I'm finished eating to get at those bones. And don't you ever do that again. That's naughty."
The dog dropped his tail down between his legs and slunk back to his place in the doorway. There he lay down and curled up, his jaw resting on his crossed forepaws to watch her with the biggest, saddest eyes she'd ever seen. She immediately felt sorry, knowing his feelings were hurt. He hadn't understood her words but he'd certainly understood her tone of voice. And he reacted to a scolding just like a small child.
"All right, all right." She patted the side of her leg and he rushed over to her, his tail wagging once again "I'm sorry I yelled at you."
When she turned to get a plate and silverware the dog drank from his water dish, then lay down under the table. Virginia put the salad bowl and glass of fruit drink on the table The chops were done. She forked them onto the plate, turned off the gas, and sat down at the kitchen table.
Before she even started eating the dog laid his head across the tops of her bare feet and licked at her toes.
"I know you're sorry, too," she said. "But you still don't get anything until I'm finished. It's not nice to beg at the table."
She moved her feet away from his tickling tongue and began to eat. The dog tried to sit up under the table, rapped his head, yelped, and came out to sit at her side. He laid his head across her hip and stared up at her with the most soulful eyes.
"I don't care how you look at me," she said to him. "You still don't get the scraps until I'm finished. You don't want to have bad manners, do you?"
But she could only hold out for another five minutes He was gentle and careful when he took the meaty bones from her hand. He didn't snap and his tail thumped against the floor in a thank you.
The next morning Bas only growled once when George Hakiri and the two kids came up to the door. George was much more at ease with the big dog when he realized that the animal recognized his smell and the sound of his voice and accepted him at least as a non-enemy.
It was a wonderful morning. Virginia started off with Bas on his leash. He sniffed at the kids only once, then let them pet him. The four humans and the dog set out for the early morning trek along the deserted beach. After a while Virginia loosed the dog. He scampered about like a puppy, running in circles on the sand, barking and yipping with excitement.
There was one moment of fear when he danced over to the two kids, wagging his tail furiously, his big jaws spread wide. But the kids weren't afraid and the dog meant no harm. The oldest, the boy, grabbed the dog by the loose fur around his neck and they wrestled and rolled in the sand. It was hard to say which of them the boy or the dog enjoyed it more.
The boy got tired first and when he called a halt to the fun by getting up and firmly pushing the dog away the big animal raced on ahead down the beach. A German shepherd going full speed is not the fastest animal in the world. But he is fast. And the sight of those magnificent shoulders and hindquarter muscles working furiously was wonderful.
It was only after the dog was out of sight that Virginia had her second moment of fear. She became afraid that the dog would not return. She called and whistled but Bas did not return.
The four people walked faster now, Virginia's worry communicating itself silently to the others. And when they'd gone another hundred yards they could hear Bas barking furiously.
They ran until they had him in sight, thinking perhaps he'd come upon some other people on the beach. But they needn't have had any fear. When they found Bas he was racing back and forth chasing sand crabs at the surging and receding edge of the water.
The kids tried him with a driftwood stick and found that he loved to fetch. He would chase the piece of wood with all the speed he could muster, then rush back to present it them to throw again.
George spied a net float a hundred yards out from shore and pulled off his T-shirt to swim out and retrieve it. The dog watched him, puzzled his shaggy head cocked to one side, his tongue lolling out of the corner of his mouth from the exertion. And when George dove into the surf the dog raced down to the water's edge, barking and whining.
Bas danced in the foam for a second, then plunged in after George. He was a strong swimmer, and seemed to love the water. He met George when the man was swimming back with the glass sphere and insisted on licking his face while they both fought against the waves.
It was a funny sight the man twisting his head from side to side and trying to keep afloat at the same time, while the dog tried to shove his muzzle at him. Virginia and the children were convulsed. They howled and rolled on the sand.
George started to laugh, too, when he was only a few yards from shore. He swallowed a mouthful of water and came out coughing and sputtering, the dog following close behind.
"I really think that dog came out to save me," George said when they'd all finally stopped laughing.
From that moment on Bas and the entire Hakiri family got along famously. George was no longer the least bit afraid of the large animal and even took part in some of the roughhouse. They spotted two more glass floats that morning and the dog swam out with George each time.
In the afternoon they all went swimming, George, Virginia, Helen Hakiri and the two children, and the dog. The dog was well behaved in the Hakiri house when he met Helen. He insisted on smelling everything in sight. But once he'd made his inspection and met Helen everything was all right.
Within a week Bas was the spoiled darling of the group. Helen saved choice tidbits for him. The children played with him and took him for walks. George taught him to retrieve the net floats by throwing a stick out to where the sphere floated. The dog would swim out after the stick, find it floating near the glass ball, and bring the ball back instead of the stick.
In Virginia's house he was undisputed lord and master. He guarded the place as though it were the federal mint, terrorizing the mailman and delivery boys and any strangers who came to the door. Although he'd chosen his special place in the living room he soon went to sleep in Virginia's bedroom.
She realized her nightmare sounds drew him. The first time she had the dream again she awakened to find the big dog with his forepaws on the bed, shoving her with his snout. The presence of the animal banished the after-terror. And when that was gone the dream was less frightening. When she awakened from the dream she would let the dog come up on the bed beside her, and it was even possible to go bark to sleep with the comfort of his bulk and warmth beside her.
The dog hed only one bad habit, which was more embarrassing than anything else, and sometimes startling. Ai odd moments when she least expected, he would push his snout against her leg, or, when the opportunity presented itself, under the back of her skirt or muumuu, He did that to everyone, occasionally embarrassing George. With the kids he did that only rarely. They kept him too busy playing. He loved the kids and they came to play with him almost every day. When, for one reason or another, they missed a day, he scratched at the door and whined until Virginia veiled at him. Then he would sulk in a corner.
But as each day passed Virginia was more and more pleased with her decision to purchase him. So pervasive was Bas's influence that she even began to have brief moments when she enjoyed teaching once again. And she was much more relaxed whenever she had to speak to an adult male stranger.
CHAPTER FIVE
Dan Kelly wasn't particularly happy with the results of nearly a week of job hunting. He'd begun with the want ads in the two Honolulu newspapers but after a morning of chasing down ads and making phone calls he'd discovered that the employment agency blight had also infested the Islands.
Employment agencies, he felt, were parasites. It seemed unfair to have to pay a fee to take employment through one of them. They charged at least a week's salary and if he got fired a month after he took a job he would be out a week's pay and would have to pay another fee to get another job. So, Dan always avoided those leeches.
The only other jobs available through the newspaper advertisements were for menials and field hands. He wasn't particularly averse to labor, but if possible he wanted a better job something that would pay more for less time and effort.
So, he forgot about using the newspapers and made the rounds of the big companies. The problem with the large corporations was his past employment record, which indicated an unstable nature. They weren't really interested in hiring and training a man who would only be with them for a short time.
Still, he saw most of the employment officers and filled out all the forms. None of them turned him down flat. His personality and intelligence were attractive to them. Several of them had promised to let him know one way or the other within ten days.
If worst came to worst he could always, he was sure, find a job in the electrical or electronics fields. Radio and television repairmen and electricians were always in demand. And there was a high rate of turnover in the hotel employee field.
One thing he had not as yet tried to get was some sort of job with one of the newspapers. He hesitated there because it was the area where he had the least to offer. He wasn't interested in anything down in the pressroom, but any job at all in the newsroom would have done. And the salary really didn't matter. All he needed was enough to supplement his regular monthly income. Fifty dollars a week would be more than sufficient.
So, for nearly a week now he'd spent his days looking for employment and his afternoons and evenings wandering about the city. He walked whenever possible; begrudging himself even the bus fare. And his dwindling funds confined his evening activities to those areas where beer was fifty cents a bottle. In that time he'd made a few contacts; a couple of professional beach boys, a Portuguese burglar, half a dozen men with whom he'd had a few beers and while away a few of the evening hours but whose names he didn't know. Then there was Pakani, who was an ex-hustler turned masseuse. She worked in one of the many massage parlors that catered almost entirely to the G. I. crowd. Her skilled hands did their work on several specific areas of her patron's bodies.
He wasn't a fully accepted member of any circle, as yet Several of the other women he'd met had told him they were models. Only later did he find out they were strippers at the clubs and burlesque houses. But they were more friendly each time he saw them and he was sure it was only a matter of time before he would become one of the crowd. Although, for the life of him, Dan didn't know what it was about them that attracted him. Or, for that matter, what it was about him that made them accept him.
It was early in the afternoon when he came home trom his last appointment. This one had been with the personnel director of a firm that imported merchandise from the Orient. Again, the man had not leaped to hire him; but had only said he would consider Dan for one or two positions which were opening up in the near future.
Dan was grateful to get back to the pleasant apartment. He literally ripped off his suit and shirt and tie. Then wearing his shoes and socks and shorts only, he punctured the top of a can of beer and drank deeply of the amber fluid.
It was wonderful. He finished the can before removing the rest of his clothing and getting into a lukewarm shower. When he was dry he slipped into a pair of faded bathing trunks and opened another can of beer.
He sipped more slowly at this second can and stood at the window in his living room. Across the roof of the garden apartment he could see a score of children howling in the swimming pool while their mothers lounged in the shade nearby and gossiped. Most of the women were completely forgettable. But one or two of them were damned attractive in their skimpy bathing suits.
Each night since his first evening in the apartment, Dan had watched for the girl in the bedroom. He'd caught brief glimpse of her but she had never again adjusted her blinds to afford him a peek at her bare body.
Now, as he watched the women near the pool and felt the stirring of excitement, he thought how long it had been since the last time he'd loved. It was the night that New York exploded for him.
That was nearly a month ago!
No wonder his nights had become so restless.
It was no great problem, however. The solution lay close at hand. An hour's stroll up and down the beach would supply him with the company of a ready and willing tourist, he was sure. There was only one thing wrong with that. He needed money to entertain the lady. You just don't pick them up on the beach at two o'clock and suggest going straight to their hotels or his apartment. No, you made a date for the evening. You wined and dined them. Then, you took them to bed.
There was another, less satisfactory solution. He could, if his stomach were strong enough, concentrate his attentions on the tourist ladies in the forty-five and above category. With women in that class there was no nonsense. They wanted loving and they wanted young lovers. They usual didn't care about a imagine dinner. They didn't have to be wooed and romanced. In fact, many of them were willing to pay for the attention
Dan wasn't quite ready for that. He wasn't interested yet in the money he could make that way And the loving would be totally unsatisfactory. Besides another nine or ten days of celibacy wouldn't kill him. When the check came or when he got a job whichever happened first, he would have ample funds to pursue his pleasure.
He forced all thoughts of love out of his mind and turned away from the window If he didn't look at them, he wouldn't want so badly. But the apartment seemed too small to hold him. He was too restless to sit and read One of his first major purchases would have to be a television set.
Dan finished the beer, crushed the can between his hands and discarded it. He looked down at himself, regarded his newly-acquired tan, and decided to spend the remainder of the afternoon swimming. His body had tanned quickly beneath the Hawaiian sun. He seemed to be one of those blessed people who tan right away, without the intermediary burning stage. And the soles of his feet were becoming hardened, too. A few more weeks and he'd be able to stand the hot pavement on his bare feet.
He put on his sandals, took his sun glasses, cigarettes, and keys, and left the apartment. In the downstairs hallway, he met Margaret Waverly. She was standing with an armload of packages and trying to pick up her mail. This was the first time he'd seen her since that day she'd greeted him and he was still puzzled by her coolness.
"Here, let me help you," he said, taking one of the packages from her.
"Thank you. I didn't want to have to come back downstairs for the mail."
She picked up three thick manila envelopes, square, ten-by-fourteen, plastered with postage stamps. She tucked them under her arm and reached for her package again.
"I'll carry it up for you," Dan offered.
She regarded him thoughtfully for a moment, then nodded and smiled quickly. He followed her up the stairs and down the corridor to a front apartment. Her place was smaller than his own ... and hotter. It was only two large rooms and a bathroom. And, since it faced the street, it got sunlight all day long. That explained the heat.
The door opened into the large living room-bedroom. Beyond that was another room almost as large. This was the kitchen. There was a day bed, neatly covered with a flower print material, against one wall of the living room. There were also a sofa, several odd chairs, and a couple of tables and lamps.
None of the pieces matched but they were all in good condition and clean. The only new piece of furniture in the living room was the big, gray, metal desk, upon which sat the covered typewriter and several piles of paper.
He took all that in with one sweeping glance as he followed her into the kitchen and set her package down on the table there. Here too the fixtures were not as new as the ones in his apartment. The porcelain in the sink was stained. The stove was chipped in several places. But she had a full-sized refrigerator instead of the tiny thing he had beneath his sink.
After he set the package down he stood awkwardly, waiting her thanks. She was mopping at the perspiration on her face with a dish towel and seemed startled when she turned around and found him still there.
"Oh!"
He smiled. "It's only me ... remember?"
She gave him a flash of teeth in answer and sighed as she sat down on one of the kitchen chairs, of which there were only three.
"You must have a terrible opinion of me," she said, avoiding his eyes.
"I don't have any opinion," he said frankly. "I can't figure you out. Before last week I never saw you in my life. And I'm almost certain I haven't insulted or offended you. Both times we've met you've acted as though I were trying to steal something from you-"
"Please ... sit down." He sat.
"I owe you an apology. My rudeness hasn't been intentional I assure you. I've had some things on my mind lately. And I've been very irritable. I am sorry."
"Rudeness might be a little strong," he said, trying to ease her discomfort. "You've just been sort of cool to me That's all."
She smiled fully then, and looked right at him "You're being very nice about it. Can I offer you a cold drink?"
"I'd love one"
"Let me see ... there's pineapple juice, of course. And beer. And I think there are still one or two bottles of Coke."
"Beer will be just fine. I had two just before I left my place, but another is always welcome."
"Would you mind getting it yourself?" she asked, rising to her feet. "If I don't get out of these clothes I'll expire on the spot. The opener is in the drawer under the sink and the glasses are in the cabinet over the refrigerator."
Dan got a can of beer and punctured the top. He didn't bother with a glass. The woman had already left the kitchen. He heard her move about in the living room for a couple of minutes, then saw her cross to the bathroom with a muumuu over her arm.
After the bathroom door was closed Dan stepped into the living room and called, "Can I open one of these for you?"
"Please. I'll be right out."
He got out another can of beer and had it poured when she came out of the bathroom. She took half the glass in two large swallows and sighed.
"That's so good."
"Nothing like it on a hot day," Dan said. "And that's something I could never understand. It doesn't really quench your thirst. And it makes you sweat even more. But the hotter the weather the better it tastes. And the taste ... that's funny too. It's bitter. It's thin. But it's delicious."
"I never question the good things in life, young wan. Just enjoy them."
"I suppose you're right. But it is funny ... And please call me Dan."
"Then you must call me Margaret. None of those abominable nicknames, please."
"Margaret it is, then. Have you been in the Islands long?"
"Nearly four years. I came here for a vacation when my husband passed away and I never went back. I love it here."
"I do. too. I was here for three years when I was in the Army. Then I went back to the States for two years. And now, here I am."
"What kind of work do you do, Mr. Ke ... uh, Dan?"
"That's better," he said lightly, having stopped her in mid-formality with a raised eyebrow. "I have no one field I have a small income from an inheritance and I take whatever work I can find to supplement that I guess I've had just about every kind of job there is."
They finished the beer and she brought out two fresh cans. This was Dan's fourth and her second. And while they sipped at the second round she told him a little about herself.
Her name, Margaret Waverly, he already knew. She'd been widowed nearly five years ago. That five year figure made him think a little. The woman appeared to be no more than forty-five at the outside and he guessed her age at closer to forty. That would have made her only around thirty-five when her husband died.
He had been killed in an automobile accident. With the proceeds from the sale of their house in Kansas and her husband's business, together with his insurance policies. Margaret had been able to establish herself in a situation similar to Dan's. But, he guessed, the income she received was not as large as his.
She was a lot less secure, and though her expenses were much less than his she lived a lot closer to the bare bones. She'd began writing short stories and short articles for magazines in order to bring in a little extra money. The first three she wrote had been rejected by the first publishers to whom she'd sent them.
When they came back she had put them to one side and started on fresh material. The fourth story sold wonder of wonders; and the same magazine then bought the first three stories which had been rejected at other houses. In the last four years she'd managed to make approximately a thousand dollars a year extra from her writing.
In the last few months, she explained, most of her manuscripts were being rejected by markets to which she'd already sold many pieces. No longer did she receive the printed rejection slips. Now, when the editors sent back a piece, there was always a polite and apologetic letter. "The material wasn't exactly what they were looking for at that time."
"They already had several pieces on the same general topic." Things like that.
It was her worry about the writing that had made her so irritable and distracted.
Dan listened quietly until she was finished. "I'm not a writer," he said. "But I lived in New York and I knew quite a few writers. Your problem is you don't have an agent. If your stuff is salable an agent can increase your sales by seventy or eighty per cent. When a manuscript comes into a magazine unsolicited it goes to a first reader, the lowest man on the totem pole. He decides which stuff should go on to the next level and which he can send back right away.
"But, when an agent sends a script to a magazine it usually bypasses the first reader. You work gets right to someone with more authority. Besides, editors regard most unagented writers as amateurs. With an agent you're a pro."
"All that may very well be," Margaret said. "But how do I go about getting an agent? I didn't know there were literary agents here in Honolulu."
"I didn't know it either," he said. "And if there were some you wouldn't want them."
"But I can't afford to go to New York on a possibility."
"Nothing like that is necessary," he told her. "All you have to do is find the name of an agent, make up a list of your sales, and write him a letter. You might also send along a manuscript. As long as no you've already sold a substantial number of pieces, and if he thinks the piece you send him is marketable, he'll jump at the chance to get you under contract."
She was silent for a long time and he watched a change slowly come over her face. It was as though there'd been a cloud hovering above her head, shielding her face from the sun. And now that cloud was gone. Her smile was full and warm and her eyes had more life to them
"You make it sound almost possible."
"Don't be silly," he told her. "It is possible. You're trouble is you've been thinking of yourself as an amateur. How many pieces have you actually sold?"
She thought a minute. "Thirty-four."
"Anybody who sells thirty-four magazines pieces is not an amateur "
"But how do I find an agent?"
"You'! ! find any number of them advertised in the writer's magazines."
"I didn't know there were magazines for writers "
"What! How in the world did you ever start writing? Where did you find the addresses to send your work?"
"From the magazines themselves."
"My God," he said with a laugh. "You are a babe in the woods Didn't you ever run across any writer's magazines on the newsstands?"
"I don't think so. I may have seen them but not
I'll thought about them. Where are they available?"
Dan thought for a moment. Now that the question had been raised he couldn't remember seeing any of those specialized magazines on any of the newsstands along Waikiki.
"There's one place down town that used to stock them."
He'd become a part of the plan to get Margaret an agent and he was as enthused as she was excited and grateful.
"Let's do it right now," he told her. "You start drafting that letter and I'll go out and get the magazines."
She was radiant. "Even if this doesn't work out I'll always be grateful to you. In a few short minutes you've succeeded in making me reappraise my opinion of myself and you've pulled me up out of the doldrums. How long will you be? I can hardly wait now."
"Should take about half an hour."
"I'll have the first draft of the letter finished by then. And you must allow me to cook dinner for you."
"You don't have to do that."
"No. I want to. I feel like I'm part of the world again. And it will be so nice not to eat alone for once."
"All right then, I'll go change my clothes and get going. T should be back in half an hour to forty-five minutes."
When he left she was already uncovering the typewriter and rolling in a sheet of paper. He changed from the swim trunks into Bermudas and a short-sleeved sport shirt and hurried out to Kalakaua Avenue. There was no bus in sight and he had time to check three or four of the drug stores that sold newspapers and magazines. The proprietors knew of the publications in which he was interested, but they didn't stock them. They all offered to get him copies in a few days.
He didn't want to wait that long. The bus came along and he got on, noticing the time. If he hurried he could make it back before the evening rush hour.
The store sold both hard-cover and paperback books and hundreds of magazines. The clerk was sorry but the current issues of the two monthly writer's magazines were not in yet The annual publication for writers which listed markets and payments and the needs of the particular publishers and editors, was not due to come out for another two months.
Dan explained that he didn't need current issues, that copies of any issues would do. The clerk went into the stockroom to see if there were any of last month's copies waiting to be returned. He came back with copies of two different magazines.
Dan paid for them and hurried back to the bus. There was still half an hour before the evening rush and he stopped on the way to pick up a bottle of wine to go with the dinner. On the bus ride back to WaiKiki he pored over the two magazines, noting the agent advertisements.
He could hear the typewriter clacking away when he came in the front door, and when he went into Margaret's apartment she was just finishing the first draft of the letter. She was so anxious she didn't even notice the bottle of wine.
He put the wine in the kitchen and the two of them sat down side by side on the sofa in the living room. Together they went over the advertisements. Only four agents advertised themselves, each making extravagant promises, listing markets to which they'd made sales, naming famous authors whom they represented.
One of the ads, however, made a point of the sales they'd made for unknown and beginners. The ad emphasized that these were part-time writers, men and women who had jobs and who wrote in their spare time. There were testimonials from many of them.
Dan and Margaret discussed the different ads. The one that emphasized beginners also had a small paragraph at the bottom which was directed toward professionals. The way they worked with beginners was to charge a fee for each manuscript, which would be read, evaluated, and, if salable, marketed. If the script was not salable it would be sent back with an analysis. If the script did sell the reading fee would be deducted from the agent's percentage. For people who had made legitimate sales, however, there was no reading fee
That was the one they decided upon. Margaret went back to the typewriter and wrote the final draft of the letter. She sealed it in an envelope, along with a manuscript she'd just completed a few days ago, and put on the required postage.
"I'm so excited," she said, breathlessly. "I don't think I'll sleep until I hear from these people."
Dan smiled. "You have nothing to worry about, I'm sure."
"You don't know what you've done for me," she said. "I could kiss you."
"Go right ahead," Dan said with a devilish smirk. "A gentleman never turned down a kiss from a lady."
For a second she was embarrassed She turned her eyes away, then looked back. In that brief time she'd regained her composure. With a broad grin and a wink she said, "We'll see about the kiss. Let me get dinner in the oven. Sit down and make yourself comfortable. Would you like another beer?"
"Only if you're having one."
"All right."
Dan sprawled himself comfortably in the chair and she went into the kitchen.
"Where did this come from?" she called. "What's that?"
"You know perfectly well what I'm talking about. This bottle of wine."
"I pick it up on my way back. It's my contribution toward the dinner ... a kind of celebration."
"It's a good thing you bought red wine," she said when she came back into the living room carrying his can of beer. "We're having meat for dinner."
She gave him the can and headed back for the kitchen, saying, over her shoulder, "You'll have to excuse me for a few minutes. The food doesn't put itself into the oven."
"Why don't I run your letter down to the mailbox? There's still time to make the evening pickup."
"Would you? You're a darling."
"I'll be right back," Dan told her.
He took another long swallow of beer, grabbed the envelope, and left the apartment. There was a mailbox two blocks down and one over. It was less than a ten minute walk.
She was a strange woman, he thought as he strode along. He still couldn't decide if she was in her late thirties or early middle age. And she had a personality like a chameleon. One moment she was excited as a teen-ager, the next almost blushingly shy, and a second later a woman of the world with a knowledgeable wink and grin.
Now that he'd broken through her icy reserve he found that he liked her as a person. And he wondered if she'd meant what she'd implied with that wink. He didn't know her well enough to hazard a guess on her talents in bed But she was an attractive and intelligent woman and he certainly wouldn't mind making love with her.
He decided, as he approached the house again, to let events run their natural course. He would not make a pass at her But if she made it plain that she wanted loving he would happily oblige.
When be got back to the apartment the dinner was started and she was sitting in the living room, sipping at s beet and waiting for him. The beer he'd started a few minutes ago was still cold and he took a long swallow.
"You must be stifling in that shirt," she said. "Make yourself comfortable. Take it off."
It was warm in the apartment and he was beginning to feel the effects of the beer. Gratefully, he stripped off his shirt, baring himself to the waist, clad now only in his Bermuda shorts and sandals. After a moment he removed the sandals too, and sat back in his chair with a contented sigh.
"Dinner will take about an hour," she told him.
He noticed the television set and pointed to it. "That's what I have to get for my place ... once I get the money to spare. It's an idiot box most of the time but I'm not one of those people who become addicted to it. And there are times when I feel like staying home but there's nothing to do."
"As a writer," she said with a smile, "I suggest that you read once in a while."
"That would present a problem," he told her. "I do get addicted to reading once I get started. The only way I keep it under control is to read three or four good books a year. If I once start with news stand paperback novels I sort of go on a binge. I'll buy a dozen at one crack and lock myself up until I've read them all Then, when I get finished, I can't look at a book for months."
"That's the strangest thing I ever heard of," she said.
"I suppose there are a lot more worse ways my little psyche could be twisted. Everybody has his own particular twitch. There are people who are continually depressed, people with neuroses. I'll settle for occasional reading binges."
"Well, I'd turn on the television set right now but it's getting on to supper time. All three channels are saturating the air waves with cartoons and other shows to keep the kiddies occupied while their mothers shove food down their throats. Television ... the electronic baby-sitter."
"I'd rather talk anyway."
"There are some good shows later on this evening. If you want to stay around after dinner we can watch. A couple of the dramatic anthologies are decent entertainment ... If you can ignore the incessant commercials."
They talked until supper was ready. Margaret talked about her twelve childless, but happy, years of marriage. About the relationship she'd had with her husband Sometimes her frankness was almost embarrassing. She talked in a flood, as though she'd been storing up the words for a long time.
During the meal it was Dan's turn. He told her a little about himself while they ate and drank the bottle of wine. The combination of the beer he'd consumed through the afternoon and the wine with the meal loosened his tongue and his brain. He told her about the restlessness, about the way he moved from place to place and relationship to relationship.
Once the personal details of their lives had been exchanged the conversation shifted subtly to broader topics. They finished the meal and he sat in the kitchen and talked with her as she washed and dried the dishes, vehemently refusing his offer to help.
There seemed no end of the subjects they could discuss: the ills of the world; the insidious increase of the power of the federal government; the political witch-hunting; the scapegoat of Communism; the dichotomy of the general loosening of public morality combined with more and more pressure for censorship; even the pros and cons of greater moral freedom for the individual as against a puritanical moral code for the society.
The conversation ranged far and wide and they kept it up when they moved from the kitchen into the living room. The sun had gone down now and it was cooler in the apartment. When they went into the living room Margaret offered him some after-dinner brandy; which he quickly accepted.
The flood of words stopped finally and they were both surprised to find that it was nearly ten o'clock. They'd been talking for four and a half hours and it t seemed like only ten minutes.
"There's a good show on now," Margaret said. "Would you like to watch."
"Sure."
She turned on the television set and turned off all the lights in the living room. The kitchen lights were already out and the only illumination was the ghostly blue-white emanating from the television screen.
Dan was sitting on a chair. Margaret patted a place beside her on the sofa. "You'll see better from here."
He moved over and sat down beside her. They weren't too close nor too far apart, and the mood was still casual. Both had had a bit to drink not enough to make them drunk, but just enough to loosen them up. They'd enjoyed a good dinner and pleasant, stimulating conversation. They were relaxed, contented, peaceful.
There were a couple of minutes left to the inane panel show, and then there would be the five minute jam of commercials.
"It's been such a pleasant evening," Margaret said, not looking at Dan. "I haven't enjoyed myself so much in ... I don't know how long."
"I've enjoyed it. too. And it's funny after the way we struck sparks that first time."
"Please ... I'd rather forget that. I behaved so poorly."
"Consider it forgotten."
She changed the subject. "You know, one of the odd little things about life I'm just beginning to learn that most of the old cliches and myths and old wives' tales are really the basic truths of one world. But because we hear them so often we disregard them, or worse, disbelieve them."
"What do you mean?"
"I must be a little drunk or I wouldn't be talking like this to a relative stranger, but I'll give you a concrete example from my own experience. You know what happens to a widow?"
He frowned. "I still don't understand."
"Right after my husband died ... and I mean within a week or ten days . . I began to receive sympathy calls from the men we'd known; husbands in our social circles, business associates, high school friends. It took me a while to notice that most of the calls were from men. And then I noticed something else. There were sly innuendos, leers. They were sniffing around.
"That was a phenomenon I'd heard about but never really believed. Men are attracted to widows, sometimes almost unconsciously. They believe a woman who's been having love steadily for several years of marriage and is suddenly deprived by the death of her spouse must be climbing the walls with need. They think shell be easy ... even grateful for their attentions.
"That was disgusting. I didn't feel anything of the sort But they didn't let up. Every time I turned around there was some man leering at me. They were the husbands of my women friends. Their wives knew what was going on, too. They began to resent me.
"I was confused and upset and more than a little hurt at the behavior of my friends. I couldn't help it if their husbands chased me. I struck back the only way I could. The next time one of the husbands showed up at my house I let him take me to bed. But I was so disgusted at myself and at him that the whole thing was a dismal failure for both of us.
"That was when I knew I had to leave that town. I sold the house, put all my cash into an investment fund, and came here to Hawaii. This was one of those places my husband and I had always planned to visit someday. Here things got even worse. Before one week had passed I was climbing the walls. There were plenty of men around and I'm not too unattractive . .
Dan started to say something but she stopped him with a raised hand.
"No, let me finish. If I stop now I won't get started again. I've never spoken to anyone about Ibis. You know how things are here on Waikiki. There are always men looking for women, and always women willing to be found. I became one of those women. I couldn't do without men. That was like I was on fire all the time.
"After a while the fat-and-forty tourist men no longer satisfied me. I wanted them younger and stronger. That was easy, too. All that took was a little money. Beach boys, bellhops, room service waiters; they were all willing to spend an hour or two in my room for a little money.
"Still I couldn't get enough. It got worse and worse. Two minutes after a man was finished I wanted him again ... I needed men ... I couldnt live without them One evening I had a whole group or them up to my room for a party. There were six of them and me and half a dozen bottles of liquor...
"That was the peak of the whole thing. I woke up the next afternoon only hazily remembering some of the more vile things I had done. I was sick hung over, probably and I finally sat down and took stock of myself. I found this apartment the next day and moved out of the hotel. I lived like a nun for a month, lived inside a shell. Then I got a letter from my investment counselor explaining that a bad turn in the market had reduced my monthly income. I wasn't wiped out or anything, but it was necessary to find a way to make a little extra money.
"I stopped feeling sorry for myself when I had a real problem to contend with. When I began to look around for some kind of a job it came as quite a shock to realize I had no training in anything. I'd always been a kind of amateur writer. For years I'd written short pieces, but I never could get up the courage to submit them anywhere. I had a whole trunk full. I pulled them all out, rewrote several and sent them out. Since then I've lived in a quiet, withdrawn manner..."
She ended with the story hanging in mid-air. "I don't know what you want me to say to you," Dan told her. "I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to tell me."
"I'm not sure, either," she said softly, looking into his eyes now, leaning closer to him.
Their eyes locked and an electric spark jumped the gap. They leaned closer, hesitated, then moved together. His arms went around her and his mouth closed over her lips. She sighed and tightened her arms around his shoulders. Her lips trembled beneath his own. She sighed and trembled in his arms, the soft front of her body flattened against his bare chest. She was wearing a bra beneath the muumuu but he could still feel the warmth of her soft breasts.
Tbe kiss ended, finally, but they maintained their embrace. He moved his lips to her ear.
"Is this what you want?" he asked in a whisper. "I don't know, I don't know." Her whisper was harsh and tortured. "Don't ask questions. Don't say anything at all. Just love me."
They moved from the sofa to the day bed and stretched out on top of the bed without removing the cover. Her arms squeezed very tightly around him. He lay on his hip beside her, his weight supported by one arm beneath the back of her neck.
They kissed again, longer this time, more passionately, the emotion building slowly between them. With his free hand he pressed down over her covered breast, letting his fingers sink into the softness he found there. She sighed. Both her arms were locked around his neck. She loosened her grip there and slid one hand down his back, driving her fingers beneath the waistband of his shorts, fluttering them there, sliding the hand further and further down until she could cup the heavy muscle of his hip.
There were no words to say. He didn't love her. There was no pretense. Both of them wanted only to enjoy the sensations they could bring to one another. He moved his hand from her breast to her ankle and slid the hand beneath the hem of her loose garment. Her legs were warm and smooth and soft. The muscles jumped beneath his feathery caress.
Her garment was trapped beneath the weight of her body and bunched at his moving wrist. She lifted herself and he pulled the muumuu all the way up, bunching that beneath her shoulders. She was wearing white cotton pants and a bra.
He lifted his weight from her breast and she hunched her shoulders and wriggled her arms out of the short sleeves of her garment, then pushed that off over her head and let the muumuu fall to the floor. They crushed together again; this time his lips nibbled at the lobe of her ear and traced the column of her throat to her bound breasts. Her body was covered with a fine film of perspiration. His flared nostrils drank in her heady aroma.
Her hand moved from his hips to his shorts, adding fuel to the flames of his passion. Her bra came off easily and he manipulated her breasts for a long time before he bent his lips to their swollen and aching tips
He grated his teeth against the nubs. He nuzzled his face to those fleshy mounds and traced their outline with his kisses.
When it was time for her panties to come off all four hands worked feverishly. She lifted her hips from the day bed and the panties slid down to her ankles. She kicked them away and was naked.
Now he was the only one still dressed. He wore his walking shorts and his undershorts. With hands and lips he explored her body while she worked to open the button and zipper. Both pairs of shorts came off at the same time and they were both naked.
Her warm softness was pressed against him. Her breasts were crushed by his, chest and he could feel the wild throbbing of her heart reverberate within his own chest.
For the moment they were content with their progress, each wanting to prolong the deliciousness, and taste the full delight of anticipation. They moved together, the soft masses of her body yielding to his muscularity.
Her cries were a continuous hoarse guttural sound now, grating from the back of her throat, and her breathing was short and rapid. He gloried in the wondrousness of her femininity, kissing and touching her everywhere. He used his whole body to caress her. When his hands and lips were busy one place, the line of his arm, the jut of his hip, the flatness of his chest were all caressing her elsewhere.
Then came that magnificent moment.
Her cries stopped and the darkened room was filled with the inane blare of the television set and the harsh sounds of their torture breathing. He barely touched against her.
The whole world stopped then.
Time itself stopped.
An eternity passed. Her eyes were opened wide and staring into his and they were transfixed. That was as though they were both afraid to give up the present pleasure in the gamble for final ecstasy. So far they'd been good together. But the art of love is a delicate thing. Any one of a hundred tiny factors gone wrong could destroy the thing they were building toward.
Something with no actual reality, a thing at one and the same time of no value and of tremendous value, was at stake here. Their bodies touched. He moved a little and sensed rather then felt the eagerness of her acceptance.
She broke the spell.
"Love me!" she screamed in a queer shrill tone.
He moved. Her arms locked around him and there was no further hesitation. They worked in tempo and in counterpoint, she working as feverishly as he.
She was good. Her skill and talent made the thing a work of art. In many subtle ways she was even more skilled than he. He was so totally lost with the wealth of sensation that he would have finished too soon had she not, by some silent and subtle means, communicated this to him.
Because of the nature of their relationship there was an obligation to his pleasure. Had she been some common pickup, he could have concentrated only on his own pleasure. But this was a thing to be shared, and was all the more magnificent for that.
He used all the little tricks he knew to prolong the inevitable. And when he ran out of tricks she showed him a few more But when she stopped her feverish movement, when every muscle in her body locked, when her body arched to a taut bow, then he didn't have to hold back any longer
He relaxed and knew the spark was burning along the fuse of his spine to the charge of explosive inside his skull. Every nerve ending in his body screamed with pleasure. At that fantastic moment he could feel each individual hair on his head where its root curled against his skull. His ears were like flickering tongues of flame and his eyeballs rolled back in their sockets.
Later much later, they lay quiet and content beside one another, the cooler night air washing across their bodies, drying their perspiration. They'd just lit cigarettes and he had the ash tray sitting on his flat hard stomach. They touched at hip and shoulder, and both stared at the ceiling.
"Thank you," she said softly.
"My God! I should do the thanking. I never believed that kind of pleasure was real. I thought that was only stuff you read about in books."
She held her cigarette in one hand and let the other hand rest lightly on his hip, as though she had to see if he were real.
"I didn't mean the love thing. I was thanking you for everything from the moment you took that package from me downstairs. For the encouragement. For the idea about the agent. For the wine. But most of all for letting me talk, for being with me.
"I'm a forty-two-year-old woman and I was feeling like eighty-two. In a few short hours you renewed my faith in myself as a writer and as a woman. I'd forgotten how good life can be. I'd forgotten how much fun love can be. That wasn't fun when I was living in the hotel. That wasn't really even pleasure. I think I was punishing myself . .
"I didn't really do anything."
"I guess I'm not explaining myself very well. You did everything. I was more dead than alive. I was a living vegetable ... There ... I ... There are no words. Just: Thank you."
He didn't say, "You're welcome."
He didn't say anything.
CHAPTER SIX
Virginia was NUMB with shock. She lay on her bed, on her side, her entire body curled tightly. The bedroom door was closed and the big German shepherd whined and scratched to get in.
"Why did that have to happen? Why had that happened?"
Those two questions echoed incessantly in her numbed brain. She made her body as small as possible and sobbed softly as she rocked on the springs of the bed.
She couldn't think clearly. Her mind raced out of control, like a machine gone crazy; her sense of time and presence was distorted and faulty. Brief chunks of her childhood came up on the screen of her memory and they seemed like yesterday. An image of the past would be there in her mind for a brief instant, then gone the next; replaced by a memory of her college days, or by something that had happened in class just the day before, or the week before. There was no sequence to the memories and she couldn't control them. They were there and they were gone, rising and going unbidden. She tried to stop the whole process and couldn't do that either.
And in another part of her brain she wasn't even aware of what was actually happening. She was teetering on the brink of total psychotic withdrawal. If she'd had a shock like this one several months ago there would have been no doubt about the outcome. She would have gone into the oblivion of catatonia. But in the last few months her scarred and battered psyche had healed considerably, grown stronger. Now her ego had the strength to fight and the battle raged in the infinity of her brain. So fierce was the struggle that her brain had no memory of the precipitating incident. She wasn't aware at the point at least, of what had just happened. If her ego lost the battle and she fell from the narrow shelf of sanity it was entirely probable that she would never remember the incident which had shoved her over the edge.
If, however, she defeated the awful compulsion to retreat from reality, if her ego was successful, it would he a giant stride forward. The fires of mental anguish can either destroy or heal. They could temper her emotional adjustment.
Perhaps this experience would provide the catharsis toward which she had been building in the preceding months. Her friendship with George and Helen Hakiri had begun the process. That had been the initial force. Then had come the purchase of the animal. His presence alone was a healing factor. And the affection he returned, limited as it was, further strengthening.
Also, the obligations of ownership of the dog had forced her into wider and wider contact with the rest of the world At first she'd lived within herself. Then her horizons had opened to include her pupils at school, the neighbors. She'd grown more and more alive with each passing day, and had eagerly sought bigger and bigger pieces of reality.
Most of these things had happened without her realization of their effects. But she'd recognized one of the major milestones. That had been when she'd decided to participate in the local community theater.
She'd seen the notice in the newspaper and had remembered it because of the list of plays the group planned to do. She made a mental note to watch for production dates and attend performances. It had been a long time since she'd seen a live play. The news article had ended with a notice that the organization needed participants. They needed production people as well as actors. And the whole thing was run on a volunteer basis.
At first she hadn't even considered offering her services at least not consciously. But a week later there had been another piece in the newspapers, this one just a single paragraph under the community news heading. The organization was holding a meeting that Friday evening.
She decided to attend.
It was that simple. She read the notice and decided to go. In high school and college she'd been active in the drama groups. She'd done supporting roles and had participated in several of the back-stages aspects of production. On the evening of the meeting she'd decided to limit herself to production work. There wasn't any force in the world strong enough to make her go out on a stage before an audience.
She chose her clothing carefully that night, not too casual or too formal. She used only a little lipstick for make-up, combed her hair back and tied it in a pony tail, and dressed in a simple, but attractive, skirt and blouse. She'd decided against slacks or a muumuu. The last thing in the world she wanted was to attract masculine attention.
When it was time to leave she turned off all the lights in the house but the one in the living room.
Bas was used to staying alone by then but this was the first time she would be leaving him at night.
She went out to the car, got behind the wheel, put the key in the ignition, and stopped. She was excited about the evening ahead and was a little unsure of herself. Her stomach was tied in knots. She would be among a roomful of strangers. They wouldn't like her. She would be embarrassed and fumbling.
No! She wouldn't go!
She couldn't bring herself to turn that key and start the car. She couldn't face the ordeal of meeting strangers. Yet, at the same time, she couldn't bring herself to go back into the house and forget it. Unconsciously, she knew it was important. The contact with new people would be good for her.
For ten full minutes she seesawed back and forth between going and staying. Finally, leaving the keys in the ignition, she went back into the house. A minute later she came out again with the dog beside her. His presence would give her the strength she needed. If she joined the group and went back a second time it wouldn't be so difficult and she would be able to go alone.
It was like summer theater back in the States, except, of course, that this was nonprofessional. This big frame building had been donated by one of the Island's big corporations. It was a two story building which had the appearance of having been at one time a warehouse. It was set on a large open lot, and when she arrived there were already quite a number of cars in the parking lot.
It was a typical Hawaiian evening. The temperature was perfect. The night air was filled with the fragrances of wild flowers. The clear sky twinkled with a million blue-white pinpoints of light and the crescent of a half moon. The constant trade winds were gentle zephyrs in the night.
She put Bas on the short lead and left the car unlocked. Inside, the building had been fitted out as a regular theater. There was a small lobby with a ticket window and another set of doors. The lobby was empty and she pushed through the second set of doors into the interior of the theater.
There were regular theater seats, about two hundred of them, with a center section, two aisles, and two side sections. All the lights were on and the stage curtains were drawn back to show the bare stage, the back wall, and assorted pipes and ropes and things.
The people were in one big cluster right down in front. There were perhaps twenty of them sitting in a group and talking quietly among themselves. From the back of the house Virginia could also see, spotted her" and there in the rest of the seats, several people sitting alone.
She guessed that the people sitting by themselves were the newcomers. The ones in the group were the old hands who'd worked together before, who knew one another.
She went halfway down one of the aisles and sat down in the first seat. Bas sat down in the aisle close to her seat, and, after a moment, lay down with his head up and alert and his forepaws extended before him. She kept the lead attached to his collar and firmly in her grasp, more for the feeling of security it gave her than from any thought of having to control the animal. He obeyed her completely now and was very well-behaved in public. She could keep him fully in check with only voice commands.
like all meetings of this sort, it started late. She had arrived ten minutes after the appointed time and she sat for another ten minutes before things got under way.
A short, balding man came out from the wings and moved down to the edge of the apron. The group in front quieted and gave him their attention.
"Can you people back there hear me?" His voice was deep and clear and filled the small theater without the aid of electronic amplification. It was a trained voice, and together with his bearing bespoke long experience in the theater.
"How about you all come down front so I don't have to shout to make myself heard?"
There was stirring and the seats banged. All the people in front twisted around in their seats to survey the newcomers. Someone came down the aisle and Virginia felt Bas stiffen and heard his low growl of warning.
"Quiet!" she whispered.
The dog quieted but remained tense and alert. The man passed, moved down front, and took a seat close to the stage. But he, and the others who'd been scattered around the theater, left a kind of buffer zone of empty seats between themselves, one another, and the main body of people.
As the last of them were sliding into their seats
Virginia rose and moved down a little closer. And when she sat down again she was still the furthest one from the edge of the stage.
"That's much better," the man said. "Before I go any further I'd like to welcome all you newcomers and greet all you returnees."
There was a remark Virginia didn't quite catch from one of the members of the large group, followed by a chorus of laughter. The man waited until the laughter died away.
"My name, as most of you already know, is Henry Champlain. For the benefit of you people here for the first time, and at the risk of boring my friends down front. I'll give you a rundown of the organization and how we operate. You can ask all your questions when I finish."
He paused to light a cigarette, then went on. "Essentially we're a non profit organization. Except for myself, the members of the group are all volunteers and work without pay. I'm the only salaried employee, a combination of producer, director, stagehand, and any other job we can't fill with a volunteer.
"The proceeds earned from the sale of tickets go to make up my salary and pay for sets and props and equipment. Some, a very few, of our members are ex-professionals. Others have had high school and college dramatic experience. And quite a few have had no experience at all. Our volunteers work and they work damned hard for the most part purely for the pleasure of it.
"We do between eight and a dozen plays a year and are in part subsidized by grants from business and community organizations. The money we take in at the box office supplies less than half of our operating expenses. We work on a yearly budget and do as many shows as possible with the funds available.
"There is only one other live theater group on the island. They're set up the same way we are and many of our people belong to both groups. The citizens of the community give us strong support. It isn't very often that we don't have a full house.
"The organization is run by a board of directors elected from the membership. There are no dues, or anything like that The board makes up a tentative list of productions for each season but we're always open to suggestions. Our first production of this new season will be Thunderbolt. It's a drama with four male and five female speaking roles and eight walk-ons. We'll have readings for casting tonight and every night next week.
"But before we start that I want you new people to fill out information sheets for me. I'll be back in a moment "
He walked off-stage and there was a buzz of conversation. Several people had noticed the dog and heads were turned to look at Virginia and Bass. The expressions were blank and non committal except for one friendly smile which she gratefully returned, realizing only after the face was turned away again that it had been a man who'd smiled.
Henry Champlain came back on stage with a handful of sheets of paper. One by one the newcomers rose from their seats, walked to the edge of the stage, took a sheet of paper, and returned to their seats.
Virginia leaned down close to Bas. "Stay!" she commanded.
The dog didn't move an inch when she left him to walk up and get her information sheet. She could feel the eyes watching her go to the stage and return to her seat. And she gripped the loop of the lead tightly in her fist when she sat down again.
"The sheets are self-explanatory," Champlain said. "I'll wait while you fill them out."
He sat down with his legs dangling over the edge of the stage and talked quietly with the people in the front row.
Virginia filled in her name, address, and phone number Next were required the extent and nature of her experience and the title and parts of any plays in which she'd appeared. Beneath that were blanks for an embarrassingly complete physical description, requiring the color of her hair and eyes, her height, weight, and clothing sizes
That information, she knew, would be required for costuming and casting. There was a blank requiring her age, and after it, in parenthesis, was the word OPTIONAL. She smiled when she saw that and filled it in.
At the bottom of the sheet were listed the various and sundry jobs and she was asked to check those jobs in which she was skilled or interested.
She left the box for performing blank, but checked scenery construction, props, wardrobe, lighting, even ticket selling and ushering.
When she finished she returned the form, placing it on a pile on the edge of the stage. She felt less uncomfortable under the watching eyes that second time. When the last form had been handed back Champlain got to his feet again.
"I'll look at those later," he said, pointing to the pile of forms "Anyone interested in reading for a part will please remain while I finish up the business at hard. I've already selected people to take charge of several of the production areas." He took a small sheet of paper from his pocket and read a list o names and jobs.
"And finally," he said after finishing with the list. "I'd like to welcome back to the fold a man we've sorely missed in the past two years. Dan Kelly tried the mainland life for a couple of years but finally gave up and came back to us. He'll be doing lighting for most of our productions. We've not yet been able to him out onto the stage."
There was general laughter and a series of catcalls from the group in front and Virginia was surprised to see them directed at the man who'd smiled at her.
When the laughter died away Champlain said, "That's ail I have except for those interested in the readings."
Virginia got up and left. There was a stirring behind her and at the door she turned to see that most c f the others were preparing to leave, too.
She was disappointed as she drove home. It hadn't been quite what she'd expected it to be. She hadn't spoken to anyone and she'd felt like an unwanted outsider. She was home before ten-thirty, did a little work grading some papers, and watched a late movie before going to bed.
The next afternoon, after the invigorating morning beach ritual with George and the kids she got a phone call It was from Henry Champlain.
"I've just been reading your information sheet," he explained after identifying himself. "And I see you've had a bit more experience than most of our members. I want to welcome you personally into our group. I noticed you didn't indicate any desire to perform though. Judging from the roles you've had there are several parts in Thunderbolt you'd be suited for. And I wondered if I could talk you into reading for us."
"I'm afraid not, Mr. Champlain. I would like to be active in your group. But not as a performer."
There was silence from the other end of the line for a moment. Then, "Let me assure you, we don't expect professional caliber."
"No. I'm sorry. If you can't use me backstage we'll just forget the whole thing."
"Hey! Wait a minute! I was just trying to talk you into it. We need all the production help we can get and there are openings in all the areas you've checked Don't let me scare you off. Right now they're still working out the designs for the sets and costumes. In about a week we'll be ready to get down to work. We go on the boards in six weeks, you know? I'm not sure yet where we'll need you most, but there'll be plenty of work for you How will it be if I call you when we're ready to go into production?"
"That will be fine, Mr. Champlain."
He called the following Thursday evening and she went to the theater that night, taking the dog with her this second time, too. There were fewer people at the theater and they were much more friendly. For the next two weeks she worked at constructing and painting scenery. She enjoyed it, but was slow at making friends with the others.
One evening Henry Champlain called her to one side and asked if she'd like to be his assistant director. She accepted. The job meant taking notes for him, at ranging rehearsal schedules, prompting the actors when they missed their lines during rehearsals. And after the first few days he began to call on her to help with the production end, too. This brought her into closer contact with the other members of the group.
Each night after rehearsal the entire crew went out for coffee and conversation to a nearby restaurant. But Virginia never went with them. It wasn't a formal kind of thing. They just went there as a group. Several times one or another of them asked her to come along but she always refused. She didn't feel enough at ease among them yet to do something like that. She knew she must seem frigidly formal to them but there was nothing she could do about it.
One man in particular seemed to be paying her extra attention. That was Dan Kelly. He was everybody's favorite individual. Mr. Nice Guy himself. But she mistrusted his charm and easy familiarity. Any time there was a break in the evening's work he showed up beside her.
He was an easy person to talk to and she enjoyed his conversation and stories but she turned him down cold every time he asked for a date or suggested she join the coffee group.
As opening night loomed closer the tensions and pressures grew stronger. Everyone was busier and Dan had less time to flirt with her; for she was sure that that was what he was doing. All he wanted, she was certain, was to get her onto a bed. What other reason could he have for paying any attention at all to her?
And then today . .
She'd been busy as a beaver for the past weeks.
But this Sunday there were no rehearsals and she had no school work to do. The theater group activities had made a marked change in her. She'd stopped having the dream altogether. She was much more at ease with strangers. The only thing wrong was that the busier she was the more restless she was.
She indulged herself by sleeping late that Sunday rooming. After a leisurely breakfast she took Bas for a walk down the beach, ending up at the Hakiri's. She got there just when they were finishing lunch.
The kids went out onto the beach to play with the dog and she sat at the kitchen table with George and Helen, drinking coffee and telling them about the theater group. Half an hour later the kids were back, pestering George to come swimming with them. It was a family rule that they could never go into the water unless one of the parents was with them.
George refused at first, then gave in. He went to change into a swimming suit. Virginia decided to join them. She and Bas went back on the house to get into her own swim suit, then back to the Hakiri's.
The kids were already splashing around. They were playing tag with their father and Helen was sitting on the beach smiling at the antics of her brood. When Virginia and her dog were still a hundred yards away the dog caught sight of the fun. He looked up at his mistress and whined and wagged his tail.
"Oh, all right," she told him. "Go ahead."
He yipped like a puppy as he raced ahead of her and joined the fun in the water. His favorite pleasure was to swim with the two children. They would use him to rest on when they grew tired. Or they would take fistfuls of his wet fur and let him tow, them around
It was a wonderful afternoon. When they were all completely exhausted Virginia and Bas went home. She hosed the dog down in the back yard to wash off the salt water, then left him drying in the sun while she went in to take her own shower. It wasn't necessary to open the back door to let the dog in. The door fit loosely in its frame and the clever animal had learned to get it open by himself by hitting against it until it bounced open wide enough for him to get a paw inside. And he wouldn't go off without her. When he was dry he would come in by himself
Virginia stripped off her wet swim suit and walked naked into the kitchen to rinse the suit in fresh water. She liked the feeling of freedom that walking about in the nude gave her. But she didn't dc that too often because Bas was always around to shove his cold nose against her.
That was one habit she couldn't break him of. And he always caught her by surprise. When she least expected, his nose would touch against some bare spot and she would jump clean out of her skin. Every time he did that she scolded him. And every time she scolded him he pouted and sulked and she ended up forgiving him.
She rinsed the suit, wrung it out, and draped it across the dishtowel rack to dry. The warm water and soap of the shower felt wonderful after the ocean swimming and she took her time with her bathing. She washed her hair, her face and neck, her arms, and shoulders, and legs, luxuriating in the scented lather. With a long-handled brush she scrubbed her back. That left only the front of her torso to be washed.
The feeling began slowly and she wasn't aware of that at first. She soaped her breasts first one, then the other and arched her back to hold them beneath the needle spray of hot water.
She was actually surprised when she felt her nipples begin to throb. They were already erect but that always happened when she bathed or swam or left them exposed to the air. But what she felt now was something she hadn't felt in so long she'd forgotten what that was like.
That began with a throbbing. Then her breasts began to ache and swell. She felt weak at the knees and there was a hollow in the pit of her stomach. She cupped her breasts against her body, covering them with her palms, and squeezed as hard as she could, seeking, through pain, to banish the vile and unwanted stirring of desire.
But the pain, and the touch of her hands against herself, only made things worse. With a vicious twist of her wrist she turned off the hot water, gritting her teeth against the shivering cold shower spray. The droplets felt like ice cubes hitting against her skin.
Hei nipples puckered and drew in and her breasts felt like lumps of rock. The masochistic urge was strong then. Her body deserved punishment for betraying her. She twisted and turned to offer every part to the punishing cold.
Only when her teeth were chattering and her lips were turning blue did she shut off the water and get out of the shower. She toweled herself off. rubbing hard, scrubbing away the remnants of the sensations, and went into her bedroom.
The fear of the things was still with her, overwhelming, numbing. She sat on the edge of the bed, her back curved, her shoulders slumped, her arms limp, and her eyes staring blankly.
Now, just when she'd been making some real progress, this had to happen. How could she trust herself with other people with that filthy lust lurking in the recess of her brain?
Time passed and the fear receded slowly. She could look at herself with a more objective eye. Actually, what was there to be so frightened of? She was a healthy human being and those were the most natural of desires. It had been unnatural that they'd been absent for so long. Perhaps that had been the cause of the terrible dream.
As she reasoned with herself she slowly became ware of something else. The trend of thought was logical. The dream had stopped when she'd brought the dog into her life. His company had perhaps supplied a reality that canceled the need for the dream.
And that would explain something else. That would explain why she tolerated the xlog's annoying habit of poking at her. With that thought disgust washed over her again. And again she rationalized. It was only natural that she felt affection for the creature who had helped her out of her loneliness.
What as happening in her subconscious, she decided then, was that she wanted the animal's attentions. And if she let the dog poke around occasionally that would be a kind of insurance against companionship with some terrible man, which could only lead to her being hurt again.
Having talked herself thus far, the next step was easy.
"Bas!" she called. "Here, Bas."
He answered with a short, excited bark, and she heard his toenails click against the floor as he walked to the bedroom. Her heart was thudding in her chest and all other thoughts were banished from her mind when the dog appeared in the doorway.
He came into the room and sat down directly in front of her, his tail wagging, his eyes alert, waiting for her command. She didn't have to say anything. The dog moved closer, and pushed his nose against her.
Her spine stiffened and an exquisite shudder ran through her body. His shaggy hide prickled against her sensitive flesh. There were two sharp, distinct, sensations, one after the other.
First the cold of his nose against her, then the warm roughness of his coat. The thrills were sheer ecstasy. Weakness pervaded her and she lay back across the width of the bed.
She sighed, the muscles of her body twitching. It had been such a long time. Far too long, she now knew, as her hands cupped and squeezed her own breasts.
Time after time site thought she would surely go mad with pleasure. Her body moved now of its own volition. She was only semiconscious, delirious with pleasure. With sharp-nailed index fingers she manipulated the hard thrusts of her nipples. The hands holding her breasts were no longer her own. In her mind they belonged to some phantom lover who could offer satisfaction while still not threatening her.
Her state of bliss didn't last long.
She never reached a peak.
At the moment that the self-loathing and excitement were equal the animal barked. She froze with growing horror. Only the feel of the dog's rough coat against her gave her the impetus to rise. She used the dregs of her fast-waning strength to hurl the dog from the room, close the door, and throw herself down on the bed.
For hours she wavered on the edge of sanity. She'd been able to rationalized at first but the ingrained attitudes of a lifetime were too strong.
The fires of her torment leaped and raged, lashing, punishing. Her mind turned in a hundred different directions seeking escape and finding none. It was after midnight when she finally rose from that bed and went back into the living room.
Her limbs trembled with exhaustion and her body felt hollow. The state of her mind, whether sane or insane which had yet to be determined was set. The flames had consumed her. The forces had done their work and expended themselves.
She refused to think at all as she finished her second shower, slipped on a robe, and went out to the kitchen to prepare food for herself and Bas. She was puzzled when she realized her attitude toward the animal had not changed. But, after all, he could bear no guilt.
After she washed and dried the dishes she went with the dog out into the moonlit night He ranged up and down the beach for a few hundred feet in either direction, snuffling against the sand. Finally she called him back into the house, turned off all the lights, and crawled into bed.
Sleep came quickly and she slept soundly until the alarm roused her in the morning. She washed, dressed, ate. set out food for the dog, and went to her job The day passed almost normally. The only difference she noticed was that it was a little more difficult for her to concentrate. Her mind kept wandering.
But not to thoughts of the events of yesterday afternoon and evening. Her thoughts wandered instead to the theater group and the play in production. At the end of the day she returned home, stripped, showered, donned a muumuu, and took Bas for a walk on the beach.
Back at the house once more she refilled his dish and made her own supper. She was functioning perfectly normally, yet she wasn't functioning at all. She did not think. She made no plans. There was only emptiness inside her skull. When one activity was completed she began another in what seemed a random sequence.
The sequence wasn't random at all. Some silence force within her was giving the orders. As soon as she finished supper she went to the phone, called the theater, and explained that she wouldn't be there for the rehearsal that night.
Then she went back into the kitchen and cleared away the supper dishes and utensils. When the work was done she went into the living room, turned on the television set, and settled back in her chair.
Bas seemed to sense something. From the moment she'd returned home that afternoon he'd been constantly at her side. He made no move or sound to attract her attention, but wherever she went he was there with her. When she'd stood at the stove he'd sat beside her And when she'd stood at the sink to wash the dishes he'd been there, too. Now he curled up at her feet, resting his snout on his crossed fore paws, relaxed but with all his senses alert.
Whenever she made the slightest move, reaching for a cigarette, pushing her hair back off her forehead, he tensed then relaxed when he saw she wasn't going anywhere.
Her eyes were directed at the television screen, but her mind was occupied elsewhere. Now, for the first time in twenty-four hours memory was permitting images of the events of the day before. Slowly, a little bit at a time, she was thinking about that.
Her mind pounced on each new factor, mulled it over, chewed it, swallowed it, digested it. The present anguish was only indirectly linked to the experience back in the States. The trouble was more directly caused by the antagonistics of herself as a human animal butting against the wall of the moral code of the society in which she lived.
She was torturing herself because all the rest of the people in the world said she should behave and react in certain ways, while her brain told her to react in other ways.
Once she reached that conclusion, the choices were obvious. She could go on being miserable, or she could damn the rest of the world and live as she pleased. And only one of the choices was at all acceptable. If she decided to go on being miserable, there was really no further point in living.
Taking the other course, striking out for herself, opened wide new vistas. It wasn't necessary to reject all of society. She could accept what pleased her and ignore the rest. From that point of view there was no guilt to be attached to her behavior.
She breathed deeply and exhaled with a great, rushing sigh of relief. For the first time in her life she felt total freedom. The fires had healed, not destroyed. They'd tempered her.
It was as though a veil had been lifted. She could see that the affair with Burton Compton had not been the beginning of her problem. The real causes were much further back in her life and lost there forever. They were unimportant now.
She was alive! That was all that mattered. She wanted to run and dance and sing. She wanted to snout her freedom to the world. She could feel the blood coursing in her veins and the electric impulses of sensation shooting along the pathways of her nerves. She could feel the pores in her skin and the individual cells of her body.
She was real!
Alive!
And she could prove that.
"Here, Bas," she said softly.
The dog raised his head, whined eagerly, and wagged his tail as he got to his feet and padded toward her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
That damned girl was driving him crazy. DAMN!
Kelly couldn't get her out of his mind. And he didn't understand her. She was pretty and possessed of a good figure, certainly, but nothing that spectacular. And why should the thought of her keep plaguing him, when, after all this time, she hadn't shown the slightest real interest in him?
They'd never had a date. Not even a lousy cup of coffee together away from the theater. That was the only place he saw her. There was a kind of impersonal friendship between them. They talked together during breaks. They worked together. But every time he thought she was warming up to him and he asked for a date, she turned him down cold.
She was a very unspecial girl. Everything about her appearance and personality was attractive, but only in a very average way. He didn't need her. There were thousands of prettier and more willing girls. There were thousands of more intelligent girls.
Why couldn't he get her out of his mind?
What was it about her that attracted him. so?
She was making an otherwise satisfactory life miserable He'd found a job, finally, as an assistant teller in a bank. It was routine and undemanding work. But it offered the fewest working hours for sufficient money for his needs. And it brought him into contact with any number of amorous young ladies.
The bank employed about twenty-five girls in various secretarial positions. After his second week there he'd begun working his way slowly through the personnel list and had yet to fail. They were almost disappointingly easy.
The other friends he'd made, in the poor section of the city, filled another part of his life. Now that he'd rejoined the community theater group he spent less time with them. But on occasion he found a free evening. He was a trusted member of the circle now. They borrowed money from him and lent it to him when he ran short. They unlocked many hidden and illegal doors for him.
Through those friends he could purchase, as he occasionally did, an ounce or two of marijuana. More potent and dangerous narcotics were also available but he had no interest in them. He'd slept with the women and gotten drunk with the men. And several times he'd even been offered a part in planned illegal activities.
The Portuguese thief wanted to use him for a lookout. One of the women had asked him to be her procurer. He politely declined all such invitations, managing to refuse without jeopardizing the friendships involved.
His life was actually in danger of becoming overloaded with women, yet he could not stop thinking about Ginny Morgan. He hadn't even made a serious dent in the secretarial pool at the bank. Then there were the strippers, hustlers, and masseuses. And finally there was Margaret Waverly.
Between himself and the older woman there had developed a kind of loosely amorous relationship with overtones of companionship. She cooked dinner for him several times a week and they made love together at irregular intervals. When need was great she unashamedly requested his attentions. And he complied willingly. And there were times when he was with her that the mood hit him and she was just as eager.
But they spent many more evenings together in simple companionship than in the throes of mutual passion For a reason he couldn't understand, he found far greater pleasure in her arms than in any others. There was more than just her skill at the time-old game. Each time she gave of herself completely, as though she secretly feared that to be the last one for her. That was part of his pleasure, at least.
His plan to get her an agent had been successful. And not only was she selling more of her work, but the quality had improved, too. He read each piece she did before she sent it off, sometimes making suggestions though fewer and fewer suggestions as time passed and sometimes only praising.
Probably the oddest aspect of his present circumstance was that as his preoccupation with Ginny Morgan increased, his outside interests decreased. It had already occurred to him that it was the challenge of her constant refusal which drew him. He'd gnawed at that idea for several days before discarding it. No, it was something far more profound, or mysterious, or anything. The other was too simple an explanation.
The bus ground slowly up the last hill before his stop. He was eagerly anticipating seeing Ginny in a few minutes and the snail's pace of the public transportation vehicle was frustrating. He was seriously considering buying a car. It would be the first car he'd owned since his high school days.
At last the theater was in sight. He pushed himself out of the too-small seat and moved toward the rear set of doors. The bus stopped. The doors opened.
He hopped off and turned his face away to avoid inhaling the noxious fumes which boiled from the exhaust at the back.
After the bus pulled away Dan crossed the road, almost running in his eagerness. He was one of the first ones to arrive. Only two or three people had arrived before him. He went inside and joined in pleasant but aimless conversation while waiting for the others to get there and the night's work to begin.
They came in groups, several cars swinging into the parking lot at one time, the passengers from each of the vehicles merging into larger knots of rapidly talking people as they walked into the building.
Henry Champlain was one of the last to arrive. He bustled in, slightly out of breath, and set the workers to their various and sundry tasks. Dan was looking for Ginny. He hadn't seen her come in yet, but there were a lot of people and he could have missed her.
When Champlain snapped out orders to the crew, Dan reluctantly left the house and climbed the rigging in the stage wings to work on the lights. They had to be aimed for the different scenes and the colored gels put in place. It was damned close to opening night and there was still a hell of a lot of work to be done.
It was hot high up near the roof, and he spent an hour sweating and struggling up there, while below him the actors went through their paces. Dan's work was all physical and he could listen to what was going on down below without interrupting his own work.
They were working on the scenes as units now The actors said their lines and moved back and forth as they'd been told And every few minutes Henry Champlain interrupted to make a change, or to correct an actor's error or to explain the effect he was attempting to create with particular lines and pieces of business He screamed and cajoled and instructed and Dan could see the thing taking form beneath him.
This was the miracle of the theater. It began with a thread of an idea in a man's mind It became a series of ideas hastily scribbled on a piece of paper. Soon it grew to typed words in groups and lines and paragraphs and pages.
But even at that point, except in the mind of one man, a play was still a lifeless, one-dimensional thing. Another man read the words, interpreting their semantics according to his unique individuality. He passed judgment on the words, decided their worth.
If the words met a certain standard, other people read them; director, actors, various technical people. The scene designer embellished upon the original ideas of the playwright and constructed the background, the setting. The director broke the great encompassing them of the play into its component ideas, saw how they were related, decided how best to present them. The actors developed within the limits set by the director, their individual roles.
Then all the people worked together, worked hard, and what had once been only the tenuous thread of an idea caught the spark of life. It swelled and grew, adding depth and thickness and color. The chrysalis became the beautiful butterfly or the drab moth dancing dangerously in the light of the flame.
Champlain called a break and Dan climbed down from the rigging. He lit a cigarette and waited for a chance to speak to the director. Now he was certain Ginny wasn't here. His chance came when the others crowding around the little man finished asking their questions. Dan walked over.
"Hey where's Ginny tonight?"
"She called a while ago," Champlain told him. "Said she wasn't feeling well and wouldn't be in tonight. You don't seem to be making much progress with that gal old buddy."
Dan grinned sheepishly. "I didn't think It was that obvious."
"You aren't really. But I've noticed the way you get next to her at every opportunity."
"The chick has me bugged," Dan confessed. "She's friendly enough in a polite sort of way. But that's the extent of it."
Champlain smiled. "Perhaps she sees right through your charm to the evil intentions lurking in your heart' The sarcasm was purposely heavy.
"That's the whole damned trouble. I have no evil intentions, as you put it. I have no intentions at all. I can't even get started."
"If you want the advice of an old warrior, stop knocking your brains out. It's hopeless."
"What do you mean?"
"She's a strange girl. Very withdrawn. There's something there beneath the surface that no one, least ot all she, is aware of. I almost think she's a man hater."
"I wish I knew," Dan said. "I can't tell. I don't know her well enough."
"There are plenty of others. Forget about her."
"I can't do that, either. I've tried."
Someone called Champlain's name and the conversation ended. The director moved off. Dan crushed out his cigarette and walked off into the wings. Back here were the dressing room; the four large ones for the greatest portion of the cast, the two smaller ones for the male and female leads, and the one Champlain had converted into an office.
Dan went into the office and glanced back out the door. No one had noticed him. He closed the door and went directly to the filing cabinet. The information form on all the members of the group were n the second drawer. They were in alphabetical order and he quickly found Virginia's. He knew there would be nothing of a personal nature there but still he read the form with intense interest.
From the form he got a general idea of her background There were dates and places listed which told him a little about her. Before he replaced the form he copied her present address and phone number, noting that she lived in a house about halfway between the theater and Honolulu He'd learned more about her in those few short minutes spent looking at her form than in all the conversation they'd ever had. But he was still no closer to the solution of his near-fatal attraction.
He thought about her for the rest of the night and during the lonely bus ride back to town, deciding, finally, to make one more attempt with her. All he wanted to do was date her, get to know her; anything beyond that would have to wait.
He spent a restless night and irritable day at work the following day and the moment he got back to his apartment he phoned her house. She answered after the third ring.
"Hello."
"Ginny? This is Dan Kelly."
"Oh, hello. How are you?"
He was struck dumb for a moment. She sounded genuinely glad to hear from him.
"I heard you were ill yesterday and called to find out how you felt."
"Oh, I'm fine now. It must have been one of those twenty-four hour viruses."
"Well, I'm glad you're okay. Coming to rehearsal tonight?"
"Yes, I'll be there."
"Are you going to run away right after again, or will you go for coffee with me this time."
"Is that a question or an offer."
"A little of both, I guess. You've turned me down so many times before I'm not quite sure any more."
She laughed. "In either case the answer's yes."
"What? Let me get this straight. I am talking to Virginia Morgan, am I not."
"Yes."
"You do know who I am do you not."
"Yes."
"And you actually accepted a request for a date, even a casual one like this?"
"I think that's what I just did."
"It must be a miracle. That's a wonderful bug you caught, if it made you change your mind about me."
"It was pretty wonderful. It changed my mind about a lot of things."
"Ten minutes ago ... hell, three minutes ago . . I wouldn't have bet a hundred to one you'd say yes."
She laughed again and it was a lovely, tinkling sound. "Your persistence finally wore down my resistance."
"I'll see you tonight at the theater. Right now I have to hang up and pinch myself to see if I'm awake. Good-bye."
"Good-bye."
He pinched himself and it hurt. He was awake. And he was excited. He opened a can of beer and began to make plans for the evening. He would go out and rent a car so he could drive her home after the coffee session. He would splurge, be a big spender on a car for the evening.
Then came the second thoughts. Hold on there, he told himself. Move too fast and you'll scare her off again.
Besides, she always drove her own car to the theater. It might work out better if he asked her to drive him back to town. She would feel more secure in her own car, doing the driving.
Keep this lie, lit, he thought. Play this loose ... real loose.
The hours until it was time to leave for the theater seemed to drag by, and the night's rehearsal went on endlessly Dan fidgeted around, keeping out of sight and not getting much work done. The change he'd noted in her voice over the phone, was even more evident in her appearance when she arrived that night.
It wasn't only the tight slacks and blouse she wore. It was in the smile on her face and the light in her eyes. She greeted him warmly, seeming much more at ease with him and with the others. And after seeing her in that outfit he revised his earlier opinion of her appearance. She was one hell of a lot above average the finest points of her figure being the jaunty thrust, of the twin mounds of her buttocks and in the tapering columns of her legs.
Once die rehearsal ended everything was fine. The coffee session, full of chatter, conversation, and shop talk, took an hour and a half and he thoroughly enjoyed being with her. When the last crumb of cake had been eaten and the brackish dregs of coffee gagged on the group broke up.
Dan walked with Ginny out to her car.
"Man," he said as he opened the door for her. "This has been a late night. What time is the next bus back to town?"
She looked at her watch. "Goodness! I had no idea it was so late. I was enjoying myself so much I didn't watch the time. At this hour the buses run about once every hour and a half."
"God! It'll be two-thirty or three before I get to my place."
"What time do you have to get up to go to work?"
"About eight."
"Me too," she said. "But I'll be home in five minutes."
"Maybe I'll call a cab. Getting home that late will ruin me for tomorrow."
"If you want me to drive you home, why don't you ask?"
If it hadn't been dark she would have seen him flush slightly. "Because I didn't think you'd drive me if I only asked."
"Come on," she said. "Hop in. It'll only be another twenty minutes for me and it'll save you a lot of sleeping time."
He grinned as he ran around to the other side of the little car and folded himself into the front seat.
She drove well, he noticed, and they talked as they rode along. Before he got out of the car in front of his apartment house he'd gotten a date with her that Friday night after rehearsal.
Dan half expected her to change her mind before Friday night, but she gave no indication of such a thing on the night between. Friday night she showed up for rehearsal wearing a low-cut cocktail dress with a tight skirt that came just to the bottom edges of her kneecaps. The square-cut bodice revealed a generous amount of cleavage and it was quite a show when she crossed her legs, her nylons whispering.
He couldn't take his eyes off her all night. Several times she looked up suddenly and caught him staring. But she only smiled and looked away again. During one of the breaks she was busy with some paper work and Henry Champlain walked over to talk to Dan.
"I take back all I said the other night. It looks like your defeat suddenly turned into a success. And I've revised my opinion concerning the lady who shall remain nameless in the interests of discretion."
"Be even more discreet," Dan told him shortly. "Keep your opinions, revised and otherwise, to yourself."
Champlain shrugged off the rudeness and walked away. And a couple of minutes later they were all back hard at work. Dan had brought a complete change of clothes with him. When the work was finished for the night he went into the biggest of the dressing rooms, showered, and changed into a suit, shirt and tie, and polished shoes.
When he came out again the others had all gone. Ginny and Champlain were in the office going over some notes. She made him wait until they finished, then they left the little man at his work and sat out to enjoy some of the Honolulu night life.
Ginny drove and he told her where to go. First it was a late supper at an intimate little restaurant, then on to one of the big night clubs for drinking and dancing and entertainment. For the first time since he'd met her he held her in his arms. And that was when they were dancing.
Dan was careful not to hold her too close nor too far away During some of the more intricate dance maneuvers their bodies brushed briefly and intimately. But, for the most part, they weren't particularly romantic. They were just having fun.
After the night club they went to a coffee house to listen to jazz, to talk some more, and to recover from the drinks they'd had. It was almost dawn when she braked the car to a halt at the curb in front of his apartment house.
It was the most intimate moment of the night. They told each other how much fun it had been and how much they'd enjoyed themselves. If she'd been any other girl he would have taken her in his arms and kissed her soundly. But with Ginny he settled for a gentle touch on the shoulder after she promised to go out with him again the following night
He was in high spirits when he went inside, after standing by the curb until the red taillights of her car had disappeared around the corner. He went up to his apartment, tore off his clothes, and threw himself down on the sofa to watch the sky lighten with the dawn.
He'd wanted to kiss her, wanted to very much. But this was only their first real date. In the two evenings they'd spent together he'd been amazed at the change in her. It was almost as though she were her own improved, twin sister. It just didn't seem tike the same girl.
With a start he realized he'd learned little more about her, despite the change. She was a good listener and he'd done most of the talking both times. He'd told her almost all there was to tell about himself.
When it was fully light out he went into the bedroom, closed the blinds and the door, and went to sleep.
It was a wonderful dream. In it he was on a beach with her and it was night. They went holding hands and walking along barefoot in the foamy edge of the surf, the moonlight making shadows in their footprints in the wet sand. There were never more than half a dozen footprints behind them, for each time a wavelet washed up onto the shore it erased the last yard or two.
They came to an area of dunes and sat down and he took her in his arms and kissed her. The most wonderful thing was that she kissed him back and allowed him to press his hands against her body.
The dream was like a silent movie. In the dream lie was both observer and player. He watched himself kissing and caressing her, then letting her slide out of his embrace. She stood up and slowly began to remove her clothes, her alabaster skin lustrous in the light of the moon.
He watched himself watching her undress and that was weird and wonderful. When she was naked she turned slowly around to let him see all of her, then ran down to the water and dived in.
Now he saw himself rising and stripping to follow her. In the water they frolicked, becoming slowly excited at the contact between their water-slick bodies. As they floated and swam and splashed, their bodies moved together and moved apart and there was delicious agony.
Then she was carrying her from the sea and putting her down on the sand. Her arms reached for him and he moved to her...
Suddenly, in the dream, it was broad daylight and there were people on the beach. He and she were still the same, but now there were other people and some nasty, leering little kid was beating steadily on a drum to draw a crowd.
When he opened his eyes the sound of the drum was still there and he realized someone was knocking at his door.
"Just a minute!" he called, his voice a sleepy croak.
He pushed himself out of bed, his eyes gritty and his mouth tasting as though it had been packed with cotton, and stumbled into the living room. Halfway to the door he realized he was naked and turned back to get a robe. But he stopped again and called out, "Who's there?"
"Margaret," came the reply, muffled by the door.
"Oh. Okay."
He turned back to go to the door. A robe wasn't necessary She'd seen him without his clothes too often in the past for there to be any modesty between them now. But he held himself to one side and peered around the door as he opened it just in case she wasn't alone.
She was alone.
She came in and he closed the door and her eyes widened when she saw he was naked.
"What a pleasant way to be greeted," she said with a slow smile.
He was still half asleep. "What time is it, anyway?"
"Nearly noon, you sleepyhead. You should have been up at the crack of dawn."
"I went to bed at the crack of dawn. And it feels like that was only ten minutes ago. Sit down. Let me go wash my face."
"I'm sorry I bothered you. I was sure you'd be up by this time. I just got bored and came up to visit. I'll leave and you can go back to sleep."
"No. Stay. I'm awake now. I couldn't get back to sleep again, anyhow."
He went into the bathroom and washed his face with cold water, then brushed his teeth. The cold water wakened him fully.
"How about pouring me a glass of juice and putting on a pot of coffee?" he shouted from the bathroom. "I'll be out in a minute."
"All right."
He finished, went into the bathroom to slip into a robe, then crossed the apartment to the kitchen. Now it was his turn to be surprised for she was standing beside the table pouring juice into a glass and she was naked as the day he first made love to her.
He looked shocked and puzzled and she looked disappointed.
"Oh," she said, pouting when she saw the robe. "I didn't think that was fair for one of us to be naked and the other dressed. So I took of my clothes. Now there's the same situation in reverse."
"We could remedy that easily enough." he said with a growing grin. "I could take the robe off again."
She looked eager. "Go ahead."
"But I'm afraid of what might happen if I did."
"That's nothing to be afraid of."
"That is ... before breakfast."
"Before, during, after, what's the difference? That's good any time."
"I've got to get my strength gathered, first."
"Don't worry about a little thing like that. I'll get your strength together."
He left the robe open, but on, and sat down at the table. With one hand he picked up the juice glass and raised that to his lips and with the other hand he cupped one of her full buttocks. She waited until he finished drinking, then sat down on his knees, her smooth warm undercurves resting on him and her breasts on a level with his lips.
He let her sit there but made no move to embrace her. Her nipples were scant inches from his face and he watched them stirring and hardening. But he didn't kiss them.
After several silent moments had passed he said, "The coffee's perking."
She looped an arm around the back of his neck. "That's not all. I'm just about at the boiling point, myself." Her arm slowly drew his face closer to the brown, berry-tipped hills of her bosom.
He slapped her on the hip, hard enough to sting. She jumped up from his legs and rubbed at the injured area. "Ow," she said, pouting. "That hurt."
"Serves you right, woman, for tempting me before breakfast. Now, pour my coffee and be quick about it."
He was playing the lord and master role and she ;he passionate-but-helpless slave girl. Obediently she turned and scurried to the stove.
He forgot his role as he watched the movement of her naked body, the shift of the masses of her flesh. Her buttocks were like twin basketballs. They bounced together as her legs strode. And when she turned to come back to the table he could see and hear her legs whispering together and see the jiggle of her soft breasts.
A glass of juice was more than sufficient breakfast in a situation like this, he decided. The coffee was forgotten. He stood up and let the robe fall away. Then, as naked as she, he stepped close and took her in his arms. The yielding softness of her sent electric sparks shooting through him as they warred on the battlefield of their joined mouths.
"Let's go to the bedroom," he whispered when the kiss had ended.
She answered by placing her hand flat against his chest and running the hand down over his arm to his wrist. Her hand gripped him and she led the way to the bedroom.
"Close your eyes," he told her, "and don't move."
She closed her eyes and sighed and he made her wait a long time before he touched her. He put his hand on her knee and moved the hand over her leg from the bottom of her torso to her knee joint. His hand moved slowly at first, then faster and faster. And he pressed harder.
The touch brought blood to the surface of her white skin, turning her flesh a reddish pink. And without stopping the movement of his hand he leaned over and touched his lips to the end of her right breast.
She'd been concentrating on the movement of his hand and the pleasurable shock of the touch of his mouth was like a fist. She grunted with sweet surprise at the moment of contact and her knees doubled up. He kissed gently, then firmly, then bit. She cried out softly at the pleasure-pain.
And that was as though the other breast was twice as sensitive. For, when he moved his lips to that one she gave twice the reaction. He was sitting on his heels beside her then, leaving both hands as well as his mouth free to caress tier.
He gripped her breasts, pressed his face against them, and squeezed their inner curves against his cheeks, trying to push her pointed nipple against his ears. For some reason that made her laugh and her breastbone bumped against his nose.
He released her breasts when he moved his lips down to the delicate structure of her ribs. His hands continued on down her sides while his lips were busy there, going all the way to the outer edges of her hips and sliding beneath to clutch her buttocks, one in each hand.
He molded those twin basketballs and his lips moved from her ribs to the dimple of her navel, a shadowed oasis in the white desert of her midriff.
She couldn't remain still.
Her legs moved independently of each other in uncontrollable anticipation and present pleasure. Her hands moved, too, one going to his shoulder and the other to the top of his head. Both exerted force.
But the moment he fell her hands touch him he stopped moving. "Don't touch me," he murmured against the fine softness of her body. "Just lie there."
The hands went away again.
He could move his head the way they both desired without any help from her.
And he did so...
But, disappointingly...
His lips skipped from her navel to the arches of her feet and his hands slid out from beneath her to hold her ankles. He traced the delicate contours of her feet, even exploring the spaces between her toes. Her foot flexed and curled and twisted when he lifted that and let his lips dance across the sole.
"Oh ... oh ... oh..."
The tickling sensation was so great she tried to pull her foot away, but he kept a firm grip on her ankle and continued with the gentle torture. And when he'd covered the foot completely he let his lips trace an invisible line from her heel along the back of her calf to the hollow behind her knee.
And he didn't stop there. Her entire body shifted on the bed and moved toward him as she attempted to press herself against his face.
But he was too quick for her. He jerked his head away and before she knew what was happening he had the other ankle trapped in a big hand and was starting all over at the spaces between her toes. This time she knew what to expect, which made her pleasure even greater. He traced the identical route on the second leg that he had on the first.
But this time he didn't move his head away. She made a funny kind of sound, not a passion sound at all.
"Aargh," she said.
He said nothing as he whipped her to the furious heights of ecstasy.
She was no less teasing and inventive when her turn came. She repaid him for every moment of the exquisite torture. He lay flat on his back on the exact center of the bed and she knelt beside him. And her torture was conducted under the same rule. He wasn't supposed to move, nor was he allowed to touch her with his hands.
Shocked surprise was mixed with his pleasure when she artfully applied her lips to his flat, hard, male chest. He hadn't known that the chest was a pleasure place for a male, too. But that was, and she proved that to him. Fully. His chest, his sides, his midriff and waist, all were wonderful.
Then she ordered him over onto his front and with gentle kisses she traced the ridges of his spine all the way down from the base of his neck to where the tip of the spinal chord disappeared. Then she did to his feet what he'd done to hers, with equal success. The muscles all along the backs of both his legs were painfully cramped and knotted before she allowed him to turn over again and brought him to a swift and dizzying finish.
When his pleasure was finished, she stretched out beside him. It was a long time before he could find the air or strength to talk. And she spoke first, anyway.
"that was delightful."
"Perfect," he told her when he could finally speak.
They didn't take a very long rest before trying another version. This was not the sort of thing which required any kind of pre-conditioning to be accomplished.
The experiment proved to them that that was even more delightful to have done to you exactly the same thing you were doing at exactly the same time. In fact, that was so much more delightful that they repeated the second half of the experiment several more times just to verify the results.
They verified the results so completely that it was evening before they got up from that pleasure-bed
CHAPTER EIGHT
Virginia was naked and comfortable, lying there on top of the bed with the big dog relaxed beside her. A sardonic smile had spread across Ginny's face. When she thought about that for a while she realized the smile was because she could trust Bas in a way she could never, nor had ever been able to, trust any man.
One of the things that had always held her back from the more exotic variations on the love theme was that she was afraid her partner would brag to his friends about those things.
This, Bas could never do. He could never betray her, nor would he ever shift his affections from her to someone else.
But she wasn't thinking about that as she lay with the big dog beside her. Her eyes were closed and her fingers were laced across her middle. A contented-cat smile replaced the sardonic one. And that had nothing to do with her pet.
She was thinking about the night three days before. That had finally happened that night, what she'd wanted to happen for weeks before. It was the night of the party for the cast and crew of the theater group. Her date was Dan Kelly.
Dan was the only man she dated. From that first week-end date with him they'd been together almost constantly. On nights when there'd been no rehearsal they'd gone to movies and night clubs and coffee house. On rehearsal nights they either came here to her house or went up to his apartment for an hour or so. And Saturday and Sunday afternoons they spent here at the house and surrounding beach, either alone or with the Hakiris, who undoubtedly liked Dan.
But in all that time he'd never so much as kissed her. It had taken the cast party and quite a few drinks to get him to do that. She laughed when she remembered her initial opinion of him. How wrong could a girl be? He wasn't trying to get her into bed. If that
ISO were his goal he was taking an extremely roundabout method
She'd begun to want the kiss after their third or fourth date. She gave him ample opportunity, always stalling when it came to saying good night. She did everything short of asking him straight out or throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him first.
The past party had been a riotous affair with free-flowing liquor, bawdy songs, off-color poetry. They were celebrating a successful play, perhaps the most successful in the history of the group. Certainly it had gotten the best reviews from the newspapers. Everyone who saw a performance claimed it was good enough for Broadway. In fact, so enthusiastic had been the response that two local businessmen were trying to organize a group to finance moving the show to that magical capital of live theater . . and doing the play in New York with the entire original cast and staff.
So, it had been quite a celebration. For a while there, just before the party broke up, Ginny had been afraid that it was going to turn into an honest-to-God orgy. The people were as drunk on success as they were on liquor. Women were kissing men just for the fun of kissing regardless of who the men happened to be. If the nearest man was the husband that was fine. And if the nearest man was someone else's husband, or nobody's husband at all that was just as good. That might even have been a little better. In the darker corners of the room in which the party was held there was a lot more than mere kissing going on. And with the same disregard for marital relationship or marital status.
Quite by accident. Ginny had for a time observed one couple in one corner. The woman was the wife of one of the supporting players who had not herself been active in the production. The man was an active member of the group who'd done production work.
The two of them were sitting on one chair, beginning by sharing the chair between them but quickly changing to the woman sitting upon the men's legs. And once she was established there she put her arms around the man's neck and began to kiss him furiously.
Ginny had first noticed them when they were sharing the seat. The next time she looked the position had changed and that was what had made her continue to watch There isn't a hell of a lot to look at when two people are only kissing. But they were doing more.
Ginny was watching the man's hands. They had pulled the back of the woman's blouse out from the top of her skirt and were fumbling around in the area of her shoulder blades.
He was opening her bra!
She saw the hands succeed and come out from under the back of the blouse. They moved around in front of the woman, out of Ginny's view because the woman's front was smack up against the man's front. But only a little imagination was needed to tell her just what those hands were doing to that front.
The couple became less and less cautious as time passed. Soon the whole of the blouse was out of the waistband of the skirt and the two halves of the front were dangling to the sides and she was pushing her shoulders against him.
The couple began to shift around on the chair and Ginny could see that the shifting was fucking the woman's skirt up around her hips, baring her long, stockinged legs and the garters leading to her garter belt. That looked unintentional at first, but a few moments later Ginny saw her panties get kicked deeper into the corner.
The man's hands were touching her everywhere. The woman's hands were fumbling about at the man's clothing.
It seemed impossible that no one else had noticed that couple. Granted, the light was dim in that corner of the room. But anyone sober enough to see that far would have known instantly just from the way the woman, was moving what they were doing. You wouldn't have had to see any of the other details to know the truth.
In the other dim places in the room there were other things going on. But nothing quite as strong. There were couples using their hands on one another, couples standing pressed tightly together. By looking hard and watching carefully you could catch an occasional glimpse of an accidentally exposed breast, or upper leg, or buttock...
And that was when Dan kissed Ginny. He'd been off somewhere talking to somebody about something. And he'd been drinking quite a bit all evening When he came back from his conference his face was flushed and his eyes looked as though they were having trouble focusing.
Dan came up to her, threw an arm across her shoulders, leaned most of his weight on her, and blew his whiskey-freighted breath in her face. He said something but she didn't understand even one syllable. Hanging on to her like that, he looked around the room and spotted the couple making love in the corner.
"Damn," he said thickly. "Wouldja lookit that."
Then he simply pulled her up against his hard chest and kissed her. She liked that. Despite the taste of whiskey on his mouth, and despite the noise and public location, despite everything she liked that very much.
And now, as she lay on her bed, she was remembering how good that kiss had been, how that had warmed her. suffusing her with a glow which lasted for a long time afterward.
By the time Dan was finished with that one kiss she couldn't even stand up by herself. Her weight sagged against him. But he didn't kiss her again. And she hadn't seen him since then to find out if he intended to repeat the delightful procedure.
The memory of that one kiss had set her afire. She rolled over and pressed the soft front of her naked body against the bed. The touch made her tingle from head to foot. But she shouldn't get started. She was expecting Dan to arrive at any moment.
She was walking out of the bedroom and pulling up the zipper at the hip of her slacks when she heard Dan's knock at the door. Bas knew Dan by then and he quieted when the man entered.
Dan came in holding a paper bag from which he drew a bottle of wine. After they'd said hello she told him, 'Dinner will be a little late, I'm afraid. I just couldn't seem to get myself organized today."
"That's all right. I'm in no rush."
"Good. You go into the living room, mix a couple of highballs for us and turn on the television set, or something I'll just take a few minutes to get everything started cooking."
He had a drink waiting for her when she came out of the kitchen fifteen minutes later. He was sitting on the sofa watching television.
"Is that still your first drink, or am I one behind?"
"No. This is still the first. Come sit down."
They drank and talking above the television audio until the meal was ready. After dinner they went back into the living room. But this time they turned on the phonograph instead of the television set.
She went easily into his arms as they began to dance and he held her quite close. Her nipples were beginning to harden from touching against his chest, even through the several layers of cloth.
She'd thought about this, too; about love with Dan Kelly. She had known this would have to be decided eventually.
Without warning he lifted her chin and kissed her and there was one shocked moment before she responded by kissing him back. They stopped dancing and stood locked together as their mouths began to work.
Her passion leaped too high much too quickly. Before the kiss was half over she was working her body against him and crying out softly from deep in her throat.
The next thing she knew they were sitting on the sofa. Her clothing was askew and his hands were caressing her everywhere, building the fires of her passion And she was responding so fully that her hands were working feverishly at the fastenings of his clothes.
Soon they were both naked, their clothes strewn all over the living room. Dan was standing up and pulling her to her feet to lead her into the bedroom. Stretched out on the bed together they abandoned themselves completely to the glorious pleasures.
Suddenly Dan stiffened, yelled, arched his back away from the edge of the bed, and jumped to his feet. Bas had come up behind him and poked at him with his cold nose, which startled him nearly half to death.
Angrily, he shooed the dog from the room, closed the door, and moved back to her side. They took up where "hey had left off. And perhaps she would have been all right if there hadn't been any interruption at all.
But there was something different when he returned. She fought the feelings as long as she could but that was too strong. Her cries of passion turned to mewling sounds of fear and pleading.
He didn't even hear her.
She began to fight then, to fight with all her strength. And her screams were loud and clear. She scratched Dan, and kicked and pummeled him until he realized she was fighting against him, not with him.
He stopped his demanding caresses. She rolled away, curled herself into a ball, and began to sob. He tried to soothe her but the sobbing ran its full course She sniffed back the last few tears. Then he began to speak.
"This wasn't the way I wanted this to happen," he said softly. "There were many things that were supposed to come first, all sorts of things I wanted to say."
"There's nothing for you to say," she said. "This is not your fault. I wanted to love, too. But something happened to me and I got frightened."
"But there are things to say."
He reached out and gently touched her shoulder. She cringed involuntarily and he quickly withdrew his hand.
"The most important thing of all," he continued, "is that I love you "
He paused but she made no reply.
"You know the kind of life I've led," he told her. "I didn't lie to you. I didn't hold anything back. I told you there had been other women, lots of them. But I never felt like this before in all my life. I've loved you for a long time but didn't know it. And when I realized that, I also knew how sick I was of being on the move all the time.
"I don't want that any more. I want to get some place and stay there. I want to marry you. Right now. Tomorrow, if possible. I've learned that one place is just as good as the next. We can stay right here in Honolulu. Money won't be a problem. And I can get a better-paying job even if it does mean putting in long hours."
"Oh Dan! Dan, Dan, Dan. I'm so sorry. That wasn't anything you did that made me start fighting a little while ago..."
She went on to tell him the entire story, beginning with Burton Compton. And she didn't leave out any of the details. When she came to the time she bought Bas she hesitated for a second, then plunged ahead, telling him everything.
She wanted to make him turn away from her, so she told him all, leaving out anything that might sound like an excuse or justification.
But when she finished he was still there, the expression on his face the same as when he'd told her he loved her
"That's not a pretty story, is that? You can see that I'm not at all the sort of girl a man wants to marry."
"Since I'm the man who wants to do the marrying you'd better let me decide. In the first place I think your story's a lot less ugly than you're trying to make that sound. And in the second place, I love you. Nothing can change that. I didn't think I was getting a nun."
"You don't understand," she said.
"That's just it, I do understand. You're the one who doesn't understand. I love you and I want to marry you. There's no guarantee that will work. But every couple in the world takes the same chance when they marry."
"But I don't love you."
"You don't? Who do you love-that big dog out there? Are you trying to scare me off because you don't love me, or because you do love me and you don't think yourself worthy? Think about that for a minute. If you didn't love me you wouldn't have had to tell me all the secrets of your life in an attempt to frighten me enough so I'll run. If you didn't love me you wouldn't have cried. All you'd have had to do was say 'No.' "
She stared at him for a long time, wide-eyed, slack-jawed while those truths sank in. And when she did finally believe him she went into his arms again, hid her face against the crook of his neck, and cried out all the tears she'd accumulated all the years of her life. the end
