I dug my fingers deep to the warm softness of her breasts, kneading and working, twisting and molding, squeezing and crushing the full, boobs. I grasped the super-sized trembling nipples, grasped at them and tugged at them, twirled them, twisted them, toyed with them. First with my fingers, then with my lips, touching and teasing, stroking the already over-stimulated knockers that jutted so eagerly.
She squealed and giggled and laughed and whimpered with lust pleasure.
She was a thrilling little piece, she knew every little pleasure-trick, every lust-variation, every passion-play....
Her arms whipped tight around me, holding me to her, pulling me closer to the churning maelstrom of female flesh, the whirlpool of desire, the hurricane of her body.
"A party at your place, Lee? Love it. Thanks for inviting me. Around eight. Be there with bells on."
Ricky Carter hung up and wondered why Lee Larren of all people invited him personally. He had been to Lee's sumptuous place, but never at a personal invitation. Lee was never on a close personal relationship with him, although Ricky wasn't sure whether it was just that they were never that close in personal relationship Or that it made any difference to the man that he, Ricky, was one of those.
One of those, being that Ricky had homosexual tendencies. Not completely inverted, he would now and then make some girl, but in general, Ricky preferred males to girls.
That night there were the usual free-swinging girls around Lee's pool. There always were starlets and hopefuls who, with little excuse would frolic and have a ball
As the drink flowed, the inhibitions fled and so did the clothes.
Lee's parties usually, if not business, ended up in orgies.
Ricky, after arriving at the party at the stipulated time, soon found out why he was invited to the bash in the first place. Simon Guthrie.
How can a name be a reason for an invitation? Simon Guthrie was a movie producer-B-pictures, but he was very successful because he flooded the screens with garbage-which seemed to be the preference of many movie viewers.
Ricky Carter was a designer of women's fashions. Now, how can a successful producer of B-movies get to meet a homo designer of women's fashions? There is no way. Guthrie couldn't very well ask his wife to arrange it. In fact, it was when he had accompanied her to Ricky's place of business that he had spotted Ricky-and sensed what he was.
So, hence, Lee's party. A perfect way to meet someone not in related fields.
Lee didn't care if Simon was smitten with a deviate. He'd had his pleasure with a few now and then himself. Hollywood is not exactly a paragon of high and pure morals by any means.
So, as a friend of Simon, he arranged it. A discreet friendship-and it would fool no one.
Simon's wife Rita, saw what her hubby was lusting after and she would put up with a short arrangement, and no more.
The reason why she did, was that she would get physical service from gigolos since her husband was losing his potency with age, and while she would get royally passioned by young, ultra virile needs, Simon would try to flag his jaded sexual appetites-with new variations.
He had already tried various women-including a girl just in her teens, and he'd tried everything a man could do with a girl-and she to him.
He was losing his passions. Then, one day, he recalled some of the fun-times he'd had with a few boyhood friends, the eager, new discovered thrills of three or four naked, recently pubertal boys, and the things they discovered. The pleasures of physicalities and masturbatory games they discovered as they fondled and stroked each other.
Simon's mind worked overtime, enlarging the sexual pleasures that he and his chums had indulged in when in adolescence, before dating young girls.
To his fading sensual appetite, he would turn back the erotic clock.
Ricky would give him back his boyhood thrills true, when they were naked and in bed, Simon lay there, to allow his body to be thrilled and Ricky's nakedness to be abused.
After all, Simon, was not a homo himself. He was only using Ricky's body to sate and glut his pleasures.
However, it didn't work out that way. Simon suddenly, found himself eagerly and mutually participating in the perverted love-play. He desired to bend over Ricky's naked body and return the thrill pleasure offered him-and he did-with avid willingness.
Simon found out why his erotic urges were fading. He discovered that all along, he didn't like normal sex as much as he liked this.
Simon Guthrie finally found out what he desired-and became a complete debauched devotee of the perverted.
Poor man. However, that was what he desired.
------
CHAPTER ONE
I've always been quite a stud. A well-built-where-it-counts guy, and I've had more than my share of pussy and there's a good chance lots of those babes who'd put out for me will find out about it.
If so, I'd like to say, "Ladies. Thanks for all."
To those of you who seriously believed I loved you or that I might marry you remember-I never mentioned those subjects; I've always been a follower of the "stay loose and play it cool" school.
I can't help it if I was born virile and attractive and all you chicks want to throw yourselves at me, and take me home to bed and open your legs for dreams about cottages and kids and owning me. I just can't help it, so be glad you had my loving for awhile and count yourselves lucky.
My name is Dane Hanlon. I'm an actor. And a star's stock in-trade is his looks.
So why do people smirk when an actor acknowledges he's handsome?
Old actors, character actors, they don't need good looks. A guy my age does.
It's like a natural law. Now the average movie fan is a teen-ager. And they don't go for ugly guys with "character" all over their ugly pans-they go for handsome guys.
Like me.
I cash in on the fact that I can make nine out of ten girls, even semi-frigid girls.
Maybe you're thinking that, if you had my looks, you'd be different. You'd make out with girls, sure, but you'd stick with the (probably) lousy job you have now. Spit at such un-masculine occupations as modeling or acting.
A guy can make as much as a hundred bucks an hour modeling. How much do you make an hour, man? And a movie star a big movie star can make-a bundle.
I would stop at nothing, absolutely nothing, to get what I wanted.
Maybe you think this means I'm a heel. I think it makes me just as average, success-oriented, boy-only more determined than most.
Like that summer morning on the beach near Malibu when I stood under the hot sun and jeered at a couple of pairs of naked girl's boobs.
It was a publicity job, of course: one my publicity agent, Lee Larren, had talked me into.
The basic purpose of the job was to boost a couple of no-talent chicks, a foreign actress named Doris Markey and a cutie called Mona Ellis. Both were broads in their early twenties, both clients of Lee.
And both, naturally, well-endowed, curvally.
The gimmick, as you've no doubt guessed, was centered around Doris and Mona wearing topless bathing suits. A real banal bit, as I told Lee. Or should have told him. As it was, as usual, I just kept quiet and went along with his ideas.
"Sure," I'd told him when he'd phoned me the night before. "I'll be there. Never let you down yet."
"Good boy," he enthused. "It's going to make magnificent publicity, magnificent."
Like fun. What the bit was, of course, was that another lousy photo-journalist had sold him a bill of goods.
Ever read any of the men's magazines? If you do, you've most likely noted that the men's magazines like to print pictures of naked babes tied in to some kind of photo story.
Silly, if you ask me. When I thumb through one of the men's magazines I do so for just the one reason to look at naked girls with big, beautiful bare breasts and billowing, bountiful bare buttocks and lush, luscious legs. Also pretty faces. Also a sexy, sultry leer. On account of I like to kind of day dream that I'm about to make love to-or am making love to-the chick in the picture.
And I have a hunch that most men thumb through the men's magazines for the same reason. So who needs a "photo story"? Who needs captions, in fact? When I look at a luscious babe with boobs the size of balloons-I don't care that "Joney Baloney of Putzenheimer, Indiana, is twenty-two years old and collects sea shells and thinks the Ear-Muffs are more nicer than the Mop-Heads." Or what ever.
However, as I said, the editors of men's magazines like to use arty photo stories to peddle meat.
Not for them the pristine simplicity of just printing makes (that's the trade term for pictures of nude or near nude girls, I understand) without any captions at all. Or else with simple, to-the-point captions like: "Joney Baloney's breasts, side view. Her breasts, front view. Her behind, close view." Etcetera.
No, editors have to trick up perfectly simple pictures of naked girls with purple prose poetry. "Spring is a perhaps splendor with sun-dappled imagining and fantasy-flecked conjurings that bemuse such poor mortal men as might encounter a woodland nymph such as the one shown-" and so on. For five hundred words. When a caption such as, "Joney Baloney, squatting in a muddy stream," would have served far better.
This particular deal was a photo story tentatively titled, "Topless Turvey's Beach Party," and was being shot by a no-talent photo-journalist named Sidny Gillian, a bug-eyed hack writer photographer with a soiled shirt.
He arrived late, naturally, shook hands with Lee, ogled the babes-whose boobs were currently veiled by shorty jackets, but whose hips and legs were evocatively visible-gave me a fat grin and pumped my hand.
"Glad to know you, Dane. Lee fill you in on this set-up? A natural. The theme is Doris and Mona, being young starlets, aren't familiar with the customs, get it ? The girls read that topless suits are in the news, wham, they each buy one and charge off to the beach-little suspecting they're going to shake up their dates-that's you and me, Dane-and court the attentions of the law. Get it? Sex and comedy. A natural."
"You have an assignment?" I asked.
"Well, no, I'm a free-lance, you understand-sell to the highest bidder, but any of the mags should snap up this feature. A natural. A-"
A trite idea. But I didn't waste time telling him that. If he wasn't aware of the fact that the men's magazines had already run plenty of "cute" photo stories about chicks in topless suits, then the heck with him.
Not that, eventually, one or two or six of the photos wouldn't sell to one of the bottom rung magazines. Pictures of bare-breasted chicks are always in demand, and at least Doris and Mona weren't unknowns: faced with a choice between a pic of a bare-boobed unknown and a bare-boobed starlet, editors will naturally choose the starlet.
Do you ever once remember seeing the names of the guys given in a photo spread in one of the men's magazines? No. Captions invariably read something like, "Fanny Fatrump frolics in the surf with a companion."
That's me-guys like me: a companion. Nameless.
And, for all intents and purposes, faceless. Who looks at the face of some guy hoisting a nude chick onto his shoulder? Nobody.
In a photo story such as Sydney Gillian was shooting I was just a background prop.
So why did I bother? Because my publicity agent, Lee Larre, had asked me to. And to Movieland you need a publicity agent, a good one. As you no doubt know, publicity agents get ten percent of an actor's income. Only trouble was, ten percent of what I'd made in the last couple of years hadn't amounted to enough to buy Lee a night out on the town.
He was carrying me, seeing that my name appeared in the gossip columns and the trades, seeing that-if I wasn't well known-I at least wasn't unknown. And all for free, all for friendship's sake-and the expectation that I'd be profitable property some day.
Meanwhile, I owed him plenty. So any time he needed a favor, I was his boy.
Not that I liked having to jump whenever he snapped his fingers. Most of the publicity jobs he called me on were boring, hard work or both. Including the one I was on.
Maybe you think it'd be exciting, posing with a pair of young, beautiful, bare-breasted girls.
No.
Posing for hour after hour in the hot sun is no fun. So okay I had four bare breasts to leer at if I felt like leering. I didn't feel like leereing. There's a difference, a big difference between gazing at a pair of breasts that have been bared for your own private benefit, and a pair bared for business purposes.
It's like-well, like the attitude bank tellers have about money. Bank tellers (so I've been told) don't regard bank money as real money-it gives them no kick to count out hundreds or thousands of dollars' worth of bank money-but when they go home and count their salary, then they get a kick, because that is their money. Well, in a funny way, that's how I felt about Doris and Mona's bared boobs. Interesting-but not all that interesting.
Also, I knew something that even Lee didn't know: namely, that both Mona and Doris were currently having an affair.
With each other. They were lesbians.
So, what with the heat and the frustration and the sand and the ogling crowd of bystanders we quickly acquired, it was a drag, a real drag. One that went on for hours.
Finally, Sydney decided he had enough shots and we called it a day. Lee clapped a hand on my shoulder.
"Dane, old buddy," he said, "I've just been talking with Sydney. He has a great idea for another photo spread-a Hollywood pool party at night."
"Lee, photo spreads about Hollywood pool parties-day or night-are almost as trite as beach parties. Are you going to let this no-talent photo-journalist make a fool of you? He's using you-using you to provide him with free models and-"
"and a free set," he finished. "I told him he could shoot the pool story at my place." He grinned at me. "Sure, I know Sydney's a creep with no talent-but he does manage to shoot a good photograph every now and then. He may have to take a hundred duds for every live shot, but he does sell. And my chicks need publicity, Dane-all the publicity they can get. Play along, huh pal?"
"Also, this pool story shouldn't be too dull. I'll call the chicks I have as clients. We'll have a real mob of girls. Those who like can strip naked-those who're too shy can wear swim suits. But either way, Dane, there'll be plenty of naked nooky to suit your taste. A good looking guy like you shouldn't have a bit of trouble scoring."
"Lee Larren!" I said in a shocked voice. "Are you implying that this pool party may develop into an orgy-a sex orgy?"
"Why whatever gave you such a mistaken idea?" he said with a horny look in his eyes.
CHAPTER TWO
Lee did have a terrific place if I may so. It was lavish and luxurious, in the hills. One of the real old time impressive villas, private too.
How did Lee, a reasonably un-rich publicity and public relations man, manage to afford a pad so huge and gaudy? The answer is simple-and ingenious. Perhaps you recall reading recently, in a national magazine, how one couple in Hollywood manage to maintain a huge white elephant of a mansion by letting eight college students live in one wing rent-free, in exchange for the students doing a few hours of maintenance a week.
He had worked out a similar scheme. The Shady Acres was and is owned by a bank anxious to sell the property. At their asking price, they'd had no takers. They'd also had the headache of maintaining the house and the grounds. Up had stepped Lee, with an offer to rent the place for a nominal sum-three hundred a month-and maintain it in top condition.
The bank accepted. He moved in. Only, instead of hiring two dozen servants and gardeners, he simply invited two dozen of his clients-female clients, of course-to move in with him. All they had to do was keep the place neat and tidy so the bank could show it with pride to prospective buyers.
It was a swell scheme, and his harem, as he liked to call his female retainers, was the envy of all.
And there I was, late after midnight, in the middle of the pool, having a ball. It was a long, luminous, enticing, exciting pool. And I was stark naked and rearing. And eager. And the pool was full of young nubile exciting and naked girls, their breasts bouncing like....
None of whom had any inhibitions.
And I was just the man to take advantage of their eagerness for the sensual thrills.
Like an octopus swimming among delights, I swam with strong strokes through a sea of sleek, soft, swaying, smooth, glistening girl flesh, and the sight of naked torsos and the dark vees of their exposure was inflaming and thrilling.
There was stroking, patting, poking, fondling, feeling of female nakedness We'd had a long tiring day, in fact, what with the photo session on the beach and more posing for Sydney in the evening. True to his word, Lee rounded up every available girl client he had on the premises, which made it easy-and Sydney , visibly drooling into his camera, had snapped enough pictures to make up fifty photo stories revolving around the rather wilted peg of "Movieland Pool Party".
After that, he had had another idea and decided to shoot pix around the theme "Beauties and Beats"-like he dashed out and bought a couple of dozen of those slip-on monster heads they're selling all over these days, and had a bunch of the girls put them on.
The effect was both exotic and grotesque-luscious nude girl's bodies surmounted by hideous monster heads.
So far as I knew, the gimmick hadn't been used by any of the men's magazines-but no doubt that was only because soft rubber monster heads were just coming into popularity. Undoubtedly, by the time Sidny submitted his nudie-monster pix, a hundred other freelance photo journalists would have mailed in photo stories using the same theme, pix, a hundred other freelance photo journalists would have mailed in photo stories using the same theme.
Still, the gimmick did have one beneficial side effect-plenty of the starlets at the party who'd been reluctant to strip to anything less than both parts of a two piece bathing suit shed their clothes and inhibitions as soon as they slipped a concealing mask over their faces.
Like Sheila.
Sheila was a lovely wide-hipped, narrow-waisted fantastically big-boobed girl who was relatively new to Lee's sin-stable. I'd been talking to her early in the evening and had made a private bet with myself that I'd score before midnight.
In fact, every time I observed the fluid harmony of her buttocks as she walked, and the buoyant bounce of her bare breasts that accompanied every step she took, I decided that I had to get into her.
As a step toward seducing her I'd struck up a friendly conversation. As a second step, I'd started to strip her.
"Hey!" she'd protested, whirling around. "What the devil do you think you're doing?"
"Unfastening-or trying to unfasten-your bra strap," I said. "Didn't you hear Sydney say he wanted the girls naked?"
"Who cares?"
"That's no way to talk," I said with mock severity. "After all, Sydney might get your picture into a national men's magazine."
"Bull," snapped Sheila. "He can photograph me in a bikini or he can go pee. Underwater."
"Tsk, tsk," I told her. "You've nothing to be ashamed of." I prodded her nearest breast lightly with the tip of my index finger. The boob trembled. Obviously she needed no padding.
She sneered.
"Why not compromise?" I suggested, fingering the knot in back of her bikini bra again, "strip only above the waist, leave your bikini bottoms on. Heck, all girls bare their breasts these days. Besides, Sydney needs an extra pair of baubles to photograph like an anthill needs ants. Look around."
Sydney's request for bare babe boobs had had a fantastically fast effect. Girls were disrobing as if their clothes were on fire-blouses, bras, bathing suits, skirts, stockings and garter belts were flying in all directions.
"Wow!" I muttered pensively.
"Bath mats," snorted Sheila. "Most girls are exhibitionists at heart. Eager to flaunt their nakedness before male eyes. Especially cameras."
"When a girl strips for a man she's just stripping to please for a pair of masculine eyes. When she strips at an orgy, she's stripping to please just ten or twenty masculine eyes. But when she strips for a camera she's exhibiting her nakedness before a potential audience of male eyes."
"I'd never thought of it just that way," I said, nodding thoughtfully. "But you're right."
"You're darn right I'm right," agreed Sheila. "Just think, for example, how many millions of young men must tear out the centerfold of a magazine and hang it on their bedroom wall. And lie on their bed and gaze at the picture and then begin to build waking dreams and lewd fantasies around the naked girl in the picture, whereupon they grab themselves and relieve themselves of their erotic frustrations."
"True," I murmured.
"So when a girl strips to pose for a picture like that, the lens leering at her becomes a big eye, for millions of male eyes all over the world. When a girl strips before a camera, she's willingly making herself the dream object of a million men's wet dreams."
"Right," I murmured, "unquestionably right. And if a girl has exhibitionist tendencies to begin with, why, the prospect would just about drive her crazy with exhibitionistic enthusiasm."
And as I looked around me, noted the way brazenly nude and preeningly naked girls were practically besieging Sydney and his camera, I realized that she had made a profound point.
"Uh, look at that girl," I said to Sheila. "If I'm not mistaken, she has bigger, more shapely breasts than any other girl present tonight."
Since the bare-breasted babe was pointing at-while fantastically well endowed-was not nearly as big-boobed or as esthetically sculptured as Sheila. I naturally expected that Sheila would, with jealous indignation rip her bikini bra loose to prove that hers were the fairest knocker-domes on the premises.
No such luck. She merely sniffed.
Could she be frigid. I wondered? Or a virgin? Or both? Or just fantastically prudish? Oh-ah, that was it.
"What's what?"
"I just," I told her, "realized why you're being fantastically stubborn about baring your body-or even just your breasts-for the camera."
"Why?"
"Because," I sneered, "you have aspirations to become a serious actress some day. And you think that prints of you in the nude will return to haunt you five or ten years from now, when you're a serious method actress."
She started to open her mouth.
"Don' t argue with me," I sneered, "you're an artistic snob, that's what. You think you're too good to strip for the general public. Most likely you secretly don't like movies at all-you probably really want to goon the stage."
"Why-" she then broke off, and let out a squeal and dashed off. Where she was dashing, I saw, was towards Sydney-who had just returned to the party with a box full of monster masks.
She grabbed a mask, and began pulling it down over her as she trotted towards me.
"Look at me!" she squealed happily. "I'm a monster."
"Yeah, monster," I said, "but-" I broke off.
Broke off to stare with surprise and delight as Sheila, her head now totally concealed in a monster headpiece, began to fumble lose her bra knot. She gt it loose and her gigantic, hugely jutting breasts bounded into naked view.
I leered at them . At their creamy bowled immensity, at the big bulls-eyes of her large red nipples and aureoles, at the sleek, smooth, luscious lushness of her heaving hillocks.
Then I dropped my gaze to leer at the smooth, gently convex field of creamy flesh that was her waist-at the sleek slopes of her hips, the lascivious curves of her lovely legs-and then back to her middle, which was, being rapidly bared before my leering eyes as she fumbled loose the wisp of cloth I -eyed, her bush now in view.
"Look at me!" squealed Sheila. "I'm naked!" She twirled gracefully and exotically for my benefit and her full buttocks quivered.
She was naked all right. All of her, every luscious rounded naked inch of her, was temptingly tremblingly displayed for my titillation-and I rose to the bait. My manhood did.
I reached. Reached for twin handfuls of yielding buttock flesh handholds with which to pull her tight against me. Her huge, blissfully bare breasts mashed like-well, like big bare breasts-against my willing chest.
I smiled down at the hideous monster head she was wearing and let my hands slide gropingly, searchingly, brazenly over warm, sleek highway, and between her legs. Her hands began to slide across my middle at the same time, catching my handle through the tight trunks. And then she began to squirm. A twisting, shoving, shameless squirm.
Only one thing, in fact, stood between me and the ultimate delight Sheila and I could experience. My tight swim trunks.
And already her shameless, hungry fingers were tugging that all the way down as she knelt beside the pool, before my nearly-and now totally-naked body. Kissing my freed excitement as she did. Teasing, hot, searching, sinful kisses as she cupped what she couldn't kiss.
Then she paused and smothered my body with kisses. With sweet lip caresses, torrid tongue teasings.
"Honey," I gasped, as I patted her encouragingly on top of the head. I wriggled my hips in ecstasy as her hot kisses resumed. "You do have aspirations to become a serious actress, eh?"
"No," she said, obviously annoyed at again having to interrupt her kissing of me. "No, I don't give a hoot about becoming a serious actress. All I want to do is have a ball. Frankly, I'm the worst kind of exhibitionist. Only, I won't be twenty-one for another ; year. And meanwhile my unsuspecting parents back home in the midwest, are supporting me with weekly checks. They-heh, heh,-think I'm attending nursing school."
"Ah," I said, "I see the light. You don't want your face to appear in the nude as it were for fear your parents will see you in one of the men's magazines."
"Check. But with a mask covering my features ? heck, I love to be naked. And be photographed. Hey, Sydney! Come and take a picture of me doing what I'm doing to the nice man."
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"This," she resumed doing what she had been doing.
I gasped, reeling with sensual delight.
"Wow!" gasped Sydney, fingering his camera. "I couldn't photograph that for publication. But for my private files...."
"Get lost," I snarled. And, reluctantly, he did so.
And then, save for a few idle spectators?-I was alone with the hot piece, with the two of us nude and eager and wild with lust. I gently pushed her from me-her kissing had already had more than the desired effect-and brutally flung myself toward her pruriently padded body as she sprawled on the soft grass opening her thighs wide.
I flew into her and flesh smacked against flesh, arms entwined, lips entangled.
She yelped, "Oh! Where's Sydney?"
Sheila, I decided was a bit drunk. But since I kind of enjoy making love to intoxicated women, I didn't slacken the tempo of my plunges. The tempo of my forceful rocking ... the tempo of my sliding, cupping, squeezing hands that were moving over the smooth hotness of her flesh, shaking and patting, probing and savoring, grasping the titanic, taut, trembling, towers of her jutting globes.
I dug my fingers deep to the warm softness of her breasts, kneading and working, twisting and molding, squeezing and crushing the full, boobs. I grasped the super-sized trembling nipples, grasped them and tugged at them, twirled them, twisted them, toyed with them. First with my fingers, then with my lips, touching and teasing, stroking the already over-stimulated knockers that jutted so eagerly.
She squealed and giggled and laughed and moaned and flailed at my back with her fists and dug her dainty white teeth at my shoulder and whimpered with lust pleasure and demonic delight.
While I was flipping her with my talented fingers and educated lips applied to her glee globes, she was giving me the full treatment with her arms busy around me.
She was a thrilling little piece, she knew every little pleasure-trick, every lust-variation, every passion-play....
I heard her muttering, urging me to begin again, to move fast, again and again ... and so I started again, started the rocking, rolling dance of desires, started the pumping race to rapture, let myself go, without control, answering every invitation her twisting, lust-tormented loins extended.
Her arms whipped tight around me, holding me to her, pulling me closer to the churning maelstrom of female flesh, the whirlpool of desire, the hurricane of her body.
Up, up off the grass she moved in a slow, lazy rocking motion that almost instantly speeded to a twisting, rolling, frenzied swirl of unleashed passion.
A fog of ecstasy seemed to envelop me, as rippling waves of pleasure radiated from the scorching storm center of my loins, rippling faster and faster until all of my nerves seemed to be a surging cauldron of rapture as I gushed my release.
I heard her gasp with delight-again and again.
Unaware of everything save our private sensations of pleasure, we moved in harmony toward a climax that grew.
When it was over, we rested in each other's arms.
We contented ourselves with resting briefly, and then went our separate ways, Sheila in quest of food, I in quest of booze. I found it. And got loaded.
Fell in the pond-and there became involved in a somewhat confused but physically stimulating aquatic orgy with several naked, nubile girls. And that led to-further detonations of sexual fulfillment and they took place under water.
And after that-I went home.
The orgy was still going on-in fact was really growing-when I left, but, as you may have surmised, business comes before pleasure with me. Too many orgies and too many late nights without sleep make a man, even a young man, look a bit haggard. And that's one thing I can't risk, seeing as how, literally, my face is my fortune.
The next morning found me cooling my heels outside my agent's office on the Strip. The office was supposed to open at nine and it was nearly that. Where the blazes was everybody?
At eight forty-nine, Daphne, the agency's receptionist-secretary-switchboard girl clacked up on her high heels, smiled at me, and k-eyed the door open for both of us. I followed her in with a casually accidental palm pressed against her ripe rear.
"Mr. Hanlon," she started to protest, "I wish you wouldn't-"
"Yeah, yeah. I forgot you have a fetish against being felt up," I told her. "Sorry. You expecting the boss in early today?"
She smoothed her skirt, slid into her chair, nodded her cut head. "Yes. And-Mr. Hanlon, I wish you wouldn't-well-"
"Yeah, yeah, baby," I told her. "Told you I was sorry for patting you on the pillows."
She looked at me with mingled frustration. "When you apologize you-you seem to make things sound worse. I mean, I don't like to be-clutched-but-"
"But?" I asked eagerly.
She blushed. "There you go again. I was going to say it isn't fair to imply that just because I don't like being mauled during office hours that I have a fetish or something. You make me sound abnormal."
"Well I'll be darned. I really and truly thought you had a fetish against being touched by men. And all the time you like that. Just don't like being touched during office hours, eh?"
Then she answered the phone which rang.
I should explain about Daphne. She's about eighteen or nineteen, a honey blonde with braids, big blue eyes, and peaches and cream complexion. She's a London girl with a thick English accent; English secretaries have a high snob value in Movieland these days.
Daphne, naturally, has aspirations to get in the movies, though she's always vehemently denied it, Why, I don't know. The trouble with her and her aspirations is she's too darn intellectual in her approach, instead of reading the yellow sheets and sensational mags, she puts her nose in arty critical magazines. Instead of boosting her film chances by bedding down with a few assistant producers, she attends film lectures at the university. A real cute chick though-the kind of ripe, nubile young girl I go for big. I'd never gone for Daphne big, though, despite the constant magnetic attraction of her nice-sized, orange-round breasts or her plump rear, because I believe the old adage about never spitting where you live. Young, ripe girls are plentiful around here-but good agents, agents that will work hard for an unknown are rare as real tears at a producer's funeral.
No, with Daphne I contented myself with giving her a bit of a hard time.
Like that Tuesday, when she was busy talking on the phone.
I slid out of the easy chair I'd been sprawled in and walked softly up behind her, bent forward and reached around her shoulders to lightly cup her breasts in my hands.
She gasped. Then, "Uh-no, sir, I was not speaking to you, I-excuse me a moment-" she cupped her hand over the mouthpiece. "Let go of me!" she hissed, wriggling around in her chair in a fashion that made her plump, shapely breasts squirm and wriggle delightfully within my cupping hands. "Let go!" she hissed, "I'm talking to Mr. Blottnick, the producer!"
Needless to say I didn't let go and, after a few more exasperated squawks and a lot of futile wriggling, she had to resume her phone conversation.
She was a riot. Her European reserve prevented her from allowing any trace of her-to her-alarming position to penetrate her speaking voice. Old Blottnick undoubtedly thought of the secretary he was talking to-if he thought of her at all-as sitting primly at her desk. Whereas in fact she was squirming and wriggling all over her chair in her efforts to avoid my exploring hands on her.
Inside of half a minute she had squirmed all the way off her chair onto the floor-without interruption to her phone conversation-and was more or less sprawled alongside of me at the limit of her phone cord while I began fumbling loose the buttons on her white ruffled blouse button by button. She was doing her best to push my unbuttoning hands away, but as she had only one free hand to my two, it was too easy.
I got six buttons open and exposed a delightful expanse of creamy chest flesh, plus a lace bra. Lace of all things! Somehow I had figured Daphne as the no-nonsense cotton bra type. I noted a couple of other things, too-namely that her breasts held the bra in shape, not vice versa, and also that the bra, happy day, was the kind that fastened-and hence unfastened-in front.
My left hand dived for the clasp. Daphne, her eyes rolling with rage and exasperation, grabbed my left hand with her right. I let her tug it away-and in shot my right hand. Inside of half a second I had the clasp open, and the lace bra sprang apart and out sprang two bounding, bouncing breasts; firm, smooth, creamy breasts tipped by bright pink aureoles from the delightful center of which rose tempting rose red nipples.
I craned my head forward to test one, just as I heard a click on the phone as Blottnick hung up. I flung myself back just in time, as she shrieked with rage and swung the phone at my head.
"You worm, you-"
"Stop that!" The voice that had spoken was technically feminine, but it had all the authority of a top sergeant and a traffic cop rolled into one.
I bounded to my feet to smile sheepishly at my agent.
My agent, I might as well explain right now-even at the risk of interrupting my narrative at a dramatic high point-is a dame. Not a girl, a dame. Wently Pedra is in her late fifties, and a sight to behold. Not a vision, a sight. Picture a two hundred pound sack of cement with a semblance of a waist-and you've got an idea of her torso. Prop the sack on two barrels, add ahead that wouldn't look out of place in the prize ring, top it with a mop of vividly dyed red hair, insert two eyes as hard as gimlets, and you have a picture of Wently.
What she most resembles, in point of fact, is the madame of a tough bawdy house. Which she once was. Now she's a pretty good agent.
Right then she looked like a pretty mad agent, too, so I gave her my best smile.
"It's not what you think, Wently baby," I assured her, speaking fast before Daphne could let out another shriek. "Daphne here was smoking and talking on the phone at the same time, and without noticing, she dropped a burning coal down her cleavage. I merely sprang to save her chest ornaments from damage."
"It's not true!" bleated Daphne, struggling to get up, and displaying a generous portion of creamy leg in the process. "Mr. Hanlon tried to-"
"Well obviously he didn't succeed," snapped Wently, "since you still have your panties on. Any calls?"
"Why, yes, Mr. Blottnick-but I'm trying to tell you, Mr. Hanlon deliberately ripped off my blouse and
"Stop bleating," snarled Wently. "And don't ever, ever let me catch you aiming a heavy object like a phone at the face of one of my clients. Acting clients, that is. I don't mind if you mark up some of the writers." She whirled, scowled at me from under heavy eyebrows. "And as for you-" She stepped forward with surprising speed and smacked me hard across the backside.
"But-"I protested.
"Shut up," she snarled, flipping open a wallet. No, not a wallet-my wallet. She scooped out my folding money, counted off two tens, handed them to Daphne. "Here. Mr. Hanlon wants you to buy yourself a few new blouses."
Daphne hesitated, then glared at me, snatched the money, thanked her boss, and turned back to finish buttoning her blouse. "Mr. Blottnick wanted-" she began turning her head to address Wently.
"Tell me later," snapped Wently. "Come on," she growled at me, and led the way into her private office. I winked at Daphne and followed, closing the soundproof door behind me.
Wently sprawled with a sigh into a huge leather chair and scowled at me.
I gave her a weak smile. "Uh, sorry to upset the office routine. Just a little fun and games you know. No harm intended-"
"Leave her alone," she growled. "You want a piece, I'll get you a bed partner. Daphne's a good secretary. Keep your mitts off her."
I opened my mouth to make a wisecrack, thought better of it after catching the grim look in her eyes.
I dropped to my knees, made a salaam like she was royalty. Then I got back in my chair and said, "That was a pretty good trick with my wallet. Can I have it back now?"
She tossed it to me. She cracked a smile, half fierce, half coy. "I was a dip once. Haven't lost my touch." She selected a cigar from a humidor, clipped off the end, lit it expertly, blew strong smelling smoke in my direction.
"Good boy," she said.
I waited. This woman liked to lead up to a subject indirectly, so I didn't ask what made me good.
"Most young men your age," she went on, "wouldn't have had the good sense to leave early-would have stayed at the party all night."
"Oh," I said. "You were there? I didn't see you."
"Got there just about the time you were leaving." She spat a fleck of cigar on the floor. "It was a good orgy. I stayed most of the night. But then, I don't have to worry about my looks. Oh, don't look so surprised-I may be an old hag, but I can still take on two or three men or women at once. And in the dark, while drunk, they don't mind who they make love to, just so she's female and hot."
I smiled. Privately I felt rather well, disgusted. Wently Pedra was a fat, old, big breasted slattern, and the idea of anybody having sex with her made me a little sick to my gut.
Aloud I said, "I know you have a lot of clients, Wently, and I know you've been knocking yourself out for me, but-"
"But why the blazes don't I have a job for you, is that it?" She chuckled a coarse sound reminiscent of gravel being shaken in a metal can. Then her eyes got cold again. "I like you, Dane. Like you like you were my lover-which you can be any time you get the urge. Yes, sir, Dane, I like you. Fortunately for you. Otherwise I'd have tossed you out of here long ago. You got a phone. I got a phone. I got a job for you, I call. You go out, the answering service gets the message. What the blazes you mean coming around here in person all the time?"
"To bug you."
She sighed. "And why," she asked gloomily, "do you want to bug me? "
"So you won't forget me, sweetheart," I told her honestly. "Like I said, you have a lot of clients." I grinned. "When the phone on your desk rings and a casting director tells you he needs a young, blond, good-looking virile stud for a big part-I want to be the guy you think of first."
"Hah!" said Wently, tilting back in her chair and blowing smoke at the ceiling. "You know how many guys your age, blond, good looking, I got in my files? "
"Uh, no," I said.
She counted to herself, her thick, heavily rouged lips moving. "Eight," she announced.
I blinked at her, managed a smile. "Any of them more talented than I am?"
She considered this soberly. "Five," she announced.
I felt a cold wave of anger sweep over my mind, drenching my brain like vinegar. Still I kept smiling. "Ha, ha. Sure, Wently. So I'm a no-talent guy, huh? Can't act?"
"You can act," she said, studying me as if I were a slab of beef she was about to sell. "But you can't act too good. On the other hand, your real pretty. Of all the guys I have on my books that look anything like you, you're top boy when it comes to being handsome. That makes you feel better?"
It did, of course, though I was still rankled over her crack about my acting capabilities ... meanwhile she had stubbed out her stogie and was pacing thoughtfully up and down her office. "It's the old law of supply and demand, Dane," she told me. "Eight guys I have on my payroll that could double for you in any role. Counting boys with brown, black and red hair, you're just one of about forty-five clients I have who could fill a call for a young, good-looking guy with acting ability. And I'm just one agent. Dane, this town's full of agents. And even fuller of guys without agents-but with push and drive."
She went on. I'd heard the same spiel before, so I didn't bother listening. Suure the acting field is over-crowded. Every worthwhile field is. Bu that doesn't mean that a lot of guys aren't going to get to the top. It isn't just looks and it isn't just talent-or even luck. Drive and persistence and a cold-blooded determination count for plenty. I can name you half a dozen top actors and actresses who first got their big break by twisting someone's arm-or knifing someone in the back. And I broke off thinking: Wently was snapping her fingers in front of my face.
"You're not listening to me, young man," she snapped. "Pay attention when Wently talks. I was saying that, even though the field's overcrowded, I'm right out there working hard for my clients. Wently's no NTA."
She had a point there. NTA-the initials stood for National Talent Association-had been a big talent agency, known affectionately as the Grasp on account of its many tentacles, that, in addition to gaining a reputation as the shrewdest bargainer in screenland, had perfected a technique sometimes known as the Long Term No Investment Parlay. How this worked was that NTA's bright boys hustled all over the Pacific signing up everybody in sight, making extravagant promises and even more extravagant hints as to what the organization would do for the guy's-or gal's-career.
Once signed, they were filed away and more or less forgotten. After waiting in vain for their new agent to line up jobs for them, the actors-singers-musicians finally got fed up and began making the rounds themselves-some even signed with another agent, which meant they were signing over twenty percent of their earnings.
And of course, as soon as they started making money, NTA stepped in and claimed their cut. It was a nice system-from their point of view. Instead of signing a few dozen clients and sweating hard for them, they signed thousands-and let the clients find their own jobs.
Surprisingly, or perhaps not surprisingly, they flourished greatly by using this system.
Wently, though, really worked for her clients, I had to admit that. The only thing I wouldn't admit was that she was working hard enough for me. Now. As the saying goes, this baxe, Wently had done plenty for me-but not recently.
Meanwhile she had resumed pacing.
"You dead broke?" she asked, spitting the words out of the side of her mouth without looking at me.
"Sure I am," I said automatically.
"Want to model sports clothes? Non-union job? Ten bucks an hour? Three hours? Santa Monica tomorrow morning? "
I said, "I'm not that broke."
"Hah. Didn't you pop out of a washer last year?"
I thought about this. "Yeah," I said. "First I stuck both fists out-then I stuck my head out and said something about-how did it go?-You housewives don't need an ogre in your washer-you just need me, Master Nicely. TV commercial for-heck, i forget which agency."
She swore. "That tears it. I could have gotten you a soap flake commercial. You've have had to climb out of a washer wearing full armor. They won't take you if you were Master Nicely last year, though. Soap flakes and detergents just don't mix."
I swore too. TV commercials can get gold mines not because the initial pay is good, but because the residuals mount up fantastically. Lots of guys have made twenty or thirty thousand a year for several years-just from one short commercial. The fellow who made that bus commercial, where he leans out the window and says "Leave the driving to us-," he's supposed to have averaged twenty grand a year from residuals for seven straight years. And the fellow who does the voice for a cartoon character has made over a hundred grand for just dubbing in six words-"That li'l old winemaker-me!" A bundle a word.
Yeah, commercials can put you in clover.
On the other hand I wasn't actually heartbroken over losing a job where I had to climb out of a washer in armor. Not because it would have been hard work, but because any commercial that elaborate would undoubtedly be showing a long time-and it wasn't always good for an actor, a serious actor, to get too identified with one product. Riding by fast on a horse, like that white rider in one commercial is okay-you can't see a guy's face with the visor down. But Dane Hanlon popping out of a washer with a tin hat on-no it'd be too easy to get tagged as the soap suds boy. Not just by the public but by producers and directors. They watch TV, too.
"Can you surf? In rough water-big waves? I can get you a three day job. Portal to portal pay, round trip flight to the islands. All you have to do is ride in a few big combers wearing a bunch of waterproof shock proof watches. And a smile. Then you take a bad spill-and when they pull you out, the watches are still going."
"Yeah, but would I still be going?" I said. "I hear tell quite a few guys get knocked off every year in the surf out there-and they're good."
She shrugged. "So you're chicken. Okay. I'll send Bruce Renzel, he's an athletic type and-no-I'll send 'em Dawn Olsen."
"You'd send a girl out on a high-risk job?"
"Sure. She needs the money bad-and I can use the commission. Anyway, she's a good swimmer. Can you ride a motorcycle through a row of fire hoops with one hand-the other hand holding an ale bottle to show that ale men are virile?"
"Knock it off," I told her. "That's a job for a stunt man and you know it."
"You're right. On the other hand I don't have any good-looking stunt men among my clients. I'll send Bruce. He's just dumb enough to risk his neck for a pile of residuals." She resumed pacing. "That's about it, Dane. The only other commercial slot I have to fill is a deodorant ad. About a thirty second bit-documentary style shots of you doing your stuff on a movie type set, energetic stuff, and over it they dub in your voice saying something like, "As an actor I sweat plenty, but I can't afford to stink, so I always use Pluffin deodorant ... " Like that idea?"
I thought about it. "Yeah," I said.
"Well, I don't. You aren't big enough. A big name actor can afford to endorse a deodorant-or bathroom stationary-or anything else considered a non-fit subject for parlor conversation. You aren't big enough, you'd be tagged as the smelly kid."
I thought more. "You're right," I agreed. Heck, she was righter that right. If I did a commercial like that, the first big break I got, some smart aleck-critic would make some crack about Dane Hanlon may use Pluffin deodorant but his acting still smells ... Yeah the boys who stockpile snide comments for that weekly newsmagazine that like to use catty puns in its movie reviews, those boys would have a giggling field day.
"So that's it, " said Wently, relighting her cigar and blasting a smoke screen my way. "You 're out of luck this week, Dane."
"Commercials. Don't you ever have any movie jobs?"
"Sure," said Wently amiably. "But not for you. Not this week. Unless-how'd you like to make a fast five hundred-I-Two days work. No taxes. Easy work. Film work, not TV You like?"
I opened my mouth to say yes-. Then hesitated.
"Doing what?" I asked.
She told me in simple sentences.
Which is how I got into the sex films racket. A lucrative and a way out one.
CHAPTER THREE
However, this is all in the future. When Wently suggested it to me in her office that time, I hit the ceiling.
She said, "Remember the party last night?" Of course I re-"
"Good. You were there. I was there. And so was Elliot Fondilla."
"You're kidding," I laughed.
"No, honest. I talked to him at some length."
"What I meant was nobody has a name like Elliot Fondilla."
Wently pursed her lips, grinned. "It's theoretically possible. But in this case you're right, Elliot Fondilla is an assumed name. Ellie, as I call him, has hopes of becoming a world famous director some day. Hence, he prefers to keep his real identity a secret while he's still in the stag film field.''
"Fondilla," I mused, "What a name. The name does sound vaguely familiar though...."
"It should, "she said. "If you keep up with the stag film scene at least. Elliot's largely responsible for the latest wave of stag films."
"Arty, huh?"
"Right. He's art-happy. That's why he didn't get anywhere in the legitimate movie field-too arty. The best classics were as unsubtle as a cartoon compared to the stuff Elliot shot.
"Is that a fact?" I said, just to be saying something.
"Right. You know that experimental movie-maker on the East Coast, the one who made a six hour movie called Tandom where the camera is focused on a horse and buggy for hours, and nothing happened. The same fellow who made the six hour film of a guy sleeping?"
I nodded impatiently. "I've read about his work somewhere."
"Well, compared to Elliot's first feature movie, that fellow's films are cram full of action. Subtle, that was Elliot. Naturally the studio that hired him fired him."
"So?"
"And to show his contempt for the film industry, he turned to making dirty films. Good ones I hear. Artistic-but entertaining as well. Perhaps he found the change of pace stimulating. Or perhaps-"
"Or perhaps he was just a born stag movie maker," I suggested. "What does this have to do with me, anyhow? I said I-"
"Masks, stupid. Remember those so soft rubber monster masks the chicks were wearing for kicks? Elliot flipped over them. Said it reminded him of the arty movie Beauty and the Beast that came out a bunch of years ago. The guy that played the Beast in the foreign film had an animal head and-"
"A light-light," I said, "is beginning to dawn. Elliot wants to make a stag film in which everybody wears monster heads."
"Not everybody-just the guys. Boobs and Beast, he's going to call it. Want to act in it? Five hundred bucks. Couple of day's work-couple of days' fun I should say."
"And my face won't show?"
"Nothing above the neck will show." She frowned. "You have any distinctive scars, marks on your body?"
"Nope."
"Well?"
I hesitated-but not for long. I needed five hundred bucks. Five hundred bucks would pay my rent for another month, keep the finance company from repossessing my battered convertible ... And there was another angle, too. Deep down, deep down-in my heart I began to feel a throbbing pulse of interest. What kind of forbidden games would I get to perform-on camera-with luscious naked female partners? Some pretty ingenious kinds, most likely. If Elliot Fondilla's reputation had been honestly earned. And, with my face shielded by a mask, I could let my inhibitions run riot-could indulge my most repressed exhibitionistic tendencies (and all actors are exhibitionists of one sort or another of course). Yes, acting in a stag film, while masked, ought to be a ball.
And it was just that.
At least, it was a ball right up to the moment it became a punishment orgy ... What's-blue and white and fuzzy and scares girls? A meating eating moth? No. Me.
Playing one of my roles in one of Elliot Fondilla's artistic stag movies. A challenging role in some respects, I played the part of a man-eating Venusian running wild among girls. Naked, ripe, luscious, tempting girls. All of whom looked great ... and all of whom But I'm getting ahead of myself.
No doubt most readers are chiefly curious about my being blue and fuzzy. Actually I wasn't so much fuzzy as furry. Nakedly furry. From the neck down, at least. From the neck up I was covered in as grotesque a looking monster head as the special effects boys have ever dreamed up-more grotesque, in fact: TV producers have to worry about what children might think-Elliot Fondilla, on the other hand, wasn't concerned about his films being shown to children.
Why was I colored blue?
In Elliot's words: "People expect an alien to be different. And rightly so, I believe. A Venusian, lust-crazed one at least, should be vaguely human but not literally human. Human flesh is either white, brown, black or yellow. Hence a Venusian's flesh should be another color. I could make you green or orange or what have you-but instinctively I feel a Venusian should be blue."
I said nothing.
Why was I furry-or hairy?
In his words: "Human beings, for the most part, have smooth, hairless bodies. Hence an extra-terrestrial I feel should have fur. Short, fuzzy, colorful."
How I became colorful and furry was simple. After my monster head had been carefully fitted, Elliot's assistant (I'll get to her later) tugged off my shorts and began to spray my nakedness with vivid blue dye. All over she sprayed me, smiling as she sprayed around my privates.
That was-oddly exciting and stimulating.
After the dye was dry, she sprayed me with a special solution Elliot claimed to have developed, but which I suspected was really just theatrical glue greatly diluted. This solution, colorless and clear, made me sticky for about a minute-a minute during which a sack full of short blue silk fibers was shaken over my naked blue body.
After the glue had dried, I was made to stand in front of a primitive wind machine-a battery of high powered fans-and the excess "fur" was blown off.
OFF
The result? I had a new body. A blue, silky, furry body-which didn't shed.
Unless you, too, have been transformed at some time into a naked, furry, hideously fanged lust-crazed alien, I don't expect you to understand how curiously stimulating I found the whole process.
I ceased to be Dane Hanlon, actor, and became, actually became a brutal, carnivorous beast from another planet-a beast to whom naked, cringing girls became tempting morsels I longed to assault and then devour, in that order.
Hence, when Elliot shouted "Action!" I found myself growling horribly as I flung myself at the naked, screaming girl, baring my hideously long white fangs as I pinned her squirming body to the ground and But once again, I'm getting ahead of myself. No doubt my readers are most interested in learning of my first meeting with Elliot Fondilla, the self-styled maestro of the blue movie field.
Our meeting took place, much to my surprise, late in the afternoon of the day I talked with Wently. Tuesday. I say to my surprise because I suppose I'd automatically assumed that Elliot ran his private movie studio the way TV and movie studios are run-starting very early in the morning. Not so. Elliot's working day began at sunset.
Not-he assured me with a velvety-like laugh-because there was any truth to the rumor that he had werewolf blood in him, and had to sleep in a coffin during daylight hours (I learned very early that Elliot liked to dramatize himself, often to a ridiculous extent) but because night shifts were more congenial to his own temperament and more convenient to his actors and actresses.
"You must understand, old man," he told me as he poured us a fresh round of drinks, "that my stars-and bit players-are very different from run-of-the-mill actors and actresses."
"How?" I said.
"A good question. To begin with, my dear Mr. Hanlon, you must understand that there are relatively few men and women who make a full-time career out of acting in sexy films."
"I didn't," I told him, "know that there were any men and women who made a full-time career out of acting insane."
"Oh, there area few, old boy, quite a few. But only a few. And, with some notable exceptions, they are mostly actors and actresses-or dancers or strippers or singers-on the skids. Lacking in talent and looks. On their way down. You can see why this must be so."
I could, too. What guy or chick with aspirations to make it big would ruin themselves by getting tagged as stag movie types? Even young strippers-by which I mean night club strippers who also do stag acts, real low down stag acts-even they were careful to do their most shocking acts for live audiences only, careful never to be photographed in action. Because many a small time stripper has made the jump to the big time. Bulging, sagging, aging strippers, on the other hand, would most likely do anything for a fast buck.
"All over the west coast," murmured Elliot Fondilla, "fat, sagging, aging strippers are performing before fat, bald-headed men with movie cameras, performing with other fat, bald-headed men-grinding out countless, tasteless, obnoxious sex films. Ghastly!"
I nodded my head. "True. Is there really such a huge market for stag movies that they can sell their cheap films?"
He nodded. "There is and they can. Though not, of course, to the better markets." He smiled. "Actually, I shouldn't bemoan the ugliness and tastelessness of the average stag movie-for my films shine all the brighter by comparison."
That was the first time I realized that hew was an egomaniac. I thought nothing of it at the time-heck, half the population of the Los Angeles film colony is egomania cal.
"You can readily see," he murmured, "why I don't employ many full-time stag movie actresses. Most of them in a word, resemble the products of that little old swine maker, Circe."
"Huh?" I said.
"They look and act like pigs," he said. "With some notable exceptions." .
"Tell me, " I urged him, "about the exceptions. You mean some really good-looking girls made a career out of stag films?"
He nodded. "Some of the most devastatingly beautiful girls I have ever encountered have flung themselves-that's the only word-flung themselves into stag movie acting. Some of them highly talented girls, girls with brains and talent as well as incredible beauty-girls who could easily have attained fame on the stage or in feature films."
He chuckled. "But who chose instead to debase themselves in stag movie after stag movie, who gloried in performing the most shocking sexual acts my-I mean their-twisted brains could devise. On camera."
"Girls like that," I gasped, "must be crazy!"
He nodded, smiling. "In a word, yes. Fortunately for me, this territory is full of crazy, unbalanced, neurotic and psychotic girls. Girls who, for some deep-seated psychological reason, despite themselves seek to destroy themselves."
I nodded. "You're right, come to think of it. Funny, isn't it, how often really beautiful and talented girls lack inner security, have a low opinion of their own worth."
"The suicide rate," he noted cheerfully, "is just as high for beautiful girls as it is for ugly ones. Even successful girls." He poured the two of us another round of drinks. "As a producer of artistic stag movies, I naturally want my girls to be fair of face, perfect of figure. I insist upon it, in fact. Who cares about watching some ugly-or even plain-girl having her clothes ripped from her voluptuous body, being flung naked to the ground, being ravished over and over? Nobody."
"Nobody," I agreed. "When I watch naked girls debase themselves, I want them to be beautiful, high class girls-not sleazy tramps."
"Exactly. Fortunately, as I say, the strip is full of beautiful aspiring actresses whose surface poise is but the mask for inner psychological insecurity. Once I find such a girl it is but a simple matter for me to first gain her confidence, the subtly play upon her inner doubts, undermine her self respect, intensify her fears. I call it destructive therapy-and I've become extremely proficient at it."
"Is that a fact?" I said, barely stiff ling a yawn Frankly, I wasn't too interested in how this guy recruited his full-time actresses. But he took my polite question to be an expression of doubt.
"Is that a fact? You ask? Of course it's a fact! Would I, Elliot Fondilla, lie? Here-" he rummaged in his desk drawer, pulled out a sheath of glossy pictures, selected one, tossed it to me. "There! You call her plain?"
I studied the picture-and gasped. The photograph was in full color, and the girl it portrayed was gloriously, naked. Long, sleek legs, a smooth, creamy complexion, full, ivory breasts tipped with arrogant crimson nipples, long, flowing red, hair that cascaded to her tiny waist. And the face-the face of a high-cheeked angel, an angel with wide blue eyes and a soft desirable mouth.
"Plain?" I gasped. "This girl is one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen in my life. She-she's gorgeous!"
"Yes," mused Elliot, "Therese was a fine-looking creature in her day. I used her in nine-no, ten-stag movies." He snickered. "You know what I made her do in the last movie?"
"What?" I asked.
He told me.
I'm pretty sophisticated, pretty experienced man if I say so myself. I've attended "entertainments" in the tourist traps, I've read plenty of banned books; I've heard a lot of far-out things in my time.
Nevertheless, I went white as a ghost as he told me what he'd had the girl he called Therese do. Not once, either-but half a dozen times!
"You must be joking," I gasped. "No sane man would ask-I mean, no self-respecting girl would permit-that is-she-she really did that?"
"Many times."
I shook my head. "How she must have loathed and despised herself the next day. It's a wonder she didn't commit suicide."
He permitted himself a drool smile. "She did, as a matter-of-fact. Fortunately, I'd exhausted her filmic possibilities as I saw them by that time. But I'm digressing from the point I was trying to make, this lovely girl, this girl who willingly debased and demeaned herself over and over before my cold, objective cameras-this girl needed, how shall I phrase it? Urging. Persuading. Brain washing, you might say. Listen!"
He lifted the lid of a tape recorder, selected a roll of tape from a row of many dozens on a shelf nearby, started the tape playing.
"This," he murmured "was taken during our first interview ... I think you'll find it rather droll."
I listened.
From the tape recorder came:
ELLIOT'S VOICE: Sit down, my dear girl. I-heh, heh,-won't bite you. I'm just a harmless photographer, old enough to be your, ah, uncle. As the people at the model agency no doubt told you, I take dean pictures for clean calendars. Did you bring your swim suit?"
"You were posing as a respectable still photographer, eh?" I said. "Did you get the girl from a respectable model agency?"
"An outwardly respectable agency," he said, frowning at the interruption. He pressed the tape play switch again. "Listen to her naive reply-"
SHE: Yes I did. Uh, where may I change? And, uh, where is the chaperone?"
HE: Chaperone? Why, I understood from the agency that you were bringing your mother. Didn't you?
SHE: Golly-I guess there was a mix-up or something. I-gee, I don't know what to do.
HE: If you don't trust me, child, perhaps you had better leave at once-and forget about the lucrative fee you might have earned. And the many subsequent clean modeling jobs this job might have led to.
SHE: Oh, I do trust you, Mr. Fondilla, I do. Uh, where may I change?
HE: Right here, child; I'll turn my back and promise not to peek.
He flicked off the tape recorder. "Wonderful dialogue, eh?"
"Yeah," I said. "And did you peek?"
"Of course, old boy, of course. What boobs that girl child had! What smooth, delectable buttocks! However, I refrained from molesting her body and let her change into the modest bathing suit she had brought. Then I went through the motions of posing her and taking snapshots of her. Naturally I didn't bother putting film in the camera. The whole session was really devoted to winning her confidence and trust-and I won it, old boy, I won it." He pressed the rapid wind button on the tape recorder and the speaker made frantic quacking sounds as half an hour's confidence-winning dialogue sped through the machine in moments. "We won't bother with the tedious details," he continued, "But will jump instead to the conversation that took place after the shooting session was ostensibly over. Listen!"
I listened, and heard THERESE: I can't tell you how nice you've been, Mr. Fondilla. I mean, you didn't once-that is, I mean ELLIOT: Yes, child?
SHE: Well, the fact is, Mr. Fondilla I half expected you to-to ask me to pose in the, well, in the nude. I mean lots of photographers do and-well, I want you to know I appreciate your understanding that I'm not that sort of girl, that is, the sort of girl who'd take off her clothes and HE: Yes, yes, child. Uh-just how old are you, child?
SHE: Hic. For the record-or really and truly?
HE: Really and-, heh, heh-truly.
SHE: Schlpp-(giggle, giggle)-nearly eighteen.
Elliot clicked off the tape again, grinned at me. "Fantastic, eh?"
"Yeah, sure," I said. "Uh, what was that slurping sound I heard-just after Therese admitted she was only a teenager-and before you turned off the machine?"
He threw back his head and laughed. "That slurping sound, as you put it, was simply me-licking my chops. To be frank, old man, there's nothing that appeals more to the beast in me than the prospect of despoiling, degrading and destroying a teen-aged virgin."
"They are kind of tempting," I admitted. "At least the despoiling part. As for degrading and defiling-"
"My dear boy," he said. "Do you think I like degrading and defiling young maidens?''
"Yes," I said.
He chuckled. "You're right. I do enjoy it. But I degrade and defile for business as well as pleasure. Now for the final act of this little tape recorded drama. As you know doubt noted from her hiccups, poor Therese was already half looped by this time-I had been feeding her hundred proof fruit punch all during the posing session." He pressed the rapid wind button. "Now listen to her half an hour later, as she confessed her-heh, heh-tragic past-her past that made her wonderfully vulnerable to my machinations." I listened. And heard HE: Tsk, tsk, child-so as soon as your poor mother passed on you father married agin-married a cruel, shrewish women who despised you, eh? Most-heh, heh-unfortunate.
SHE: I'll shay-I mean, say. But then things got even worse. Dad died and my stepmother married a real creep. So I had a stepmother and a stepfather-no real parents at all.
HE: Most unfortunate. But they kept you around the house, eh? Why?
SHE: To do the chores while they sat around and drank. Also my stepmother got a kick out of hitting me.
Elliot flicked off the tape recorder.
I let out my breath slowly. "What a poignant, dramatic document," I breathed. "That gorgeous girl, still haunted by the ridiculous fear that she was ugly."
"Poignant-slimoignant," he laughed, examining his fingernails. "The point is, at that moment Therese bared her vulnerable young innocence to me-and I thrust the rapier to her very core."
"Rapier?"
He made an impatient gesture. "I speak figuratively. It was a verbal rapier I thrust to her." He' turned the tape recorder back on. "Listen-"
SHE: Please, please tell me I'm not ugly, Mr. Fondilla? I looked in the mirror just this morning and I didn't look ugly to me, but-"
HE: But you are ugly, toots. Stupid, too. So stupid you didn't even realize your wise stepmother wasn't talking about your surface appearance-but your inner ugliness. Superficially, kid, you're just average.
But inside-Well, I hate to say it kid, but I think you're ugly-and rotten-all the way.
He shut off the machine, chuckled proudly. "That did it. In the highly vulnerable, highly suggestive state she was in then, she simply collapsed. Total moral and emotional collapse. With one deft stroke I had knocked away the flimsy props supporting her self respect. She groveled on the floor before me, a drunken, self-despising animal."
I stared at him. Was he serious?
"She made only token resistance when I took off her modest bathing suit, stretched her naked body on my casting couch. I told her I was going to despoil and degrade her. She shrugged her lovely shoulders. I opened her legs wide, I-did things to her then. Physical things. Exotic things. Things well calculated to destroy the last vestiges of her self respect. Throughout the night I played with her, toyed with her womanhood-bestially. In between, I force-fed her drinks. Slipped her pills. To keep her groggy, impressionable-as I relentlessly used her femininity-told her. that her inner ugliness had no doubt been responsible for her real father and mother's early death. Told her she was evil through and through."
I stared harder at him.
"I shattered her that night-shattered her completely. Had I not stopped her she would have committed suicide a dozen times. As it was she kept begging me to kill her. Kept telling me she didn't deserve to live. I-heh, heh-agreed with her. I more that agreed with her; I told her she didn't deserve a quick and easy death, told her she ought to suffer a lot first. She said I was so right. She asked me to help her suffer. I agreed, telling her that I'd permit her to degrade her body beyond all belief in my stag films. She kissed my body in gratitude."
No doubt about it, he was kidding. Just to show I could go along with the gag I said, "I suppose she was completely off by that time?"
"Oh, completely. Not beyond rescue at that point-five or six years of therapy might have saved her, but I-heh, heh,-naturally had no interest in rescuing her. All I wanted to do was guide her uses. And I did. In the morning, under heavy sedation, she appeared almost normal. And she was save for the fact that her normal sense and her ego had been totally destroyed. Droll, eh?"
"Yeah, droll," I said. "And let's get one thing straight, mister-I know you were telling me a shaggy girl story right from the start You didn't fool me at all."
He gaped at me. Then he threw back his head and guffawed. "Yes, of course, Hanlon. I made the whole story up completely. Pure fiction. Smart of you to realize that right off." He wiped a tear of mirth from his eyes. "Why, if a tale such as I just told were even half true-I'd be just about the most sadistic monster to ever exist!"
We both laughed over his story.
All the same, I didn't think much of his sense of humor.
CHAPTER FOUR
All this I'm relating about Elliot's weirdo story about perversion and degradation, had happened in the rather curious combination office, home and studio, Elliot had out in the Valley. An unused factory, the building was as big as most sound stages, and equally devoid of windows.
Elliot himself was a tall slender thin faced young man with a jutting style moustache and a goatee. He was dressed entirely in black-black slacks, black shoes and socks, black shirt, black silk scarf around his neck. To put it mildly, he reeked of affectation. I thought little of it, however. After all, in this town, not to be eccentric is considered eccentric-at least among directors and producers, and he was both.
He greeted me warmly enough and ushered me into a comfortable if somber (black leather furniture, black carpet, black-painted walls) study. He shook my hand, poured me a drink and waved me into one of the black leather comfortable chairs.
"We won't begin shooting for another hour or so," he told me, glancing at a black faced watch. "I asked you to come early so we might have a little discussion-and so you'll have time to relax, feel at ease."
"I'm quite at ease, thank you," I said coldly. "It's an actor's business to-"
"Nonsense," he snapped. "It's an actor's business to pretend to be at ease-or agitated or happy or sad or whatever the role he is playing calls for. But,-heh, heh-for the uh, climactic scenes in the kind of films I shoot, an actor can't pretend to make love to a girl-he has to actually do so. A male actor, at least, cannot simulate lust-not when he's nude from the neck down."
He was right, at that. Suddenly a spasm of stage fright shot through me. What if I became self-conscious on camera? What if I didn't have the guts? What if?
"A few drinks," he broke in, "will do wonders toward relaxing you. Then some friendly warm-up exercises, a couple of undress rehearsals-incomplete rehearsals, of course-and I'm sure you'll have no trouble. Let me give you another drink."
He did, and began to chat casually and informatively about the problems and techniques of stag movie making. (It was during this discussion that he related the far-fetched tale of his sexual abuse of Therese.)
"Yes," he continued, (after admitting that he hadn't actually driven her to suicide), "there are a few girls, lovely girls, who are so-kookie-that they make a full time career out of acting in stag movies. But very few, alas. For the most part I must rely upon-how shall I put it?-part time help. Girls who make a hobby-a profitable hobby-of acting in sex films now and then. Housewives bored with the routine of married loving, office girls anxious to make a few bucks on the side and a solid asset in between their legs."
"Office girls?" I asked. "I would have thought that call girls would be better fitted for occasional roles in stag films."
"Oh they are, they are," he assured me. "The trouble is, professional joy girls-the really top grade, breathtakingly beautiful ones-usually want too much money."
That made sense. After all, if a girl could make a hundred bucks an hour by putting out for just one guy, it wasn't likely she'd participate with a bunch of guys in front of a camera for change.
"Yes," he continued, "surprising though it may seem, housewives and office girls are my mainstays in posing."
Actually, once I thought about it, it didn't surprise me. Respectable upper middle class housewives, I recalled, had organized a vice ring not long ago back East, somewhere-selling their matronly bodies for kicks and cash. And as for office girls-well, offices in Los Angeles swarmed with choice, chesty breasty babes with over-active sin hormones. Small wonder plenty of them preferred to put out for big money before a camera in preference to being bedded in the back seat of some jalopy owned by the office boy for nothing. The very fact that most typists and stenographers and switchboard girls had aspirations no higher than a comfortable marriage, two and half kids and membership in the local PTA-this very fact made stag film acting safe for them, disclosure-wise.
An aspiring actress who performed in a stag film would be haunted by the knowledge that, once she became nationally famous, millions would see her nakedness and exposure on the screen. And among those millions, hundreds would recognize her as a stag film tootsie. And among those hundreds, more that a few would be eager to blab, blackmail, or both.
On the other hand, what were the chances that one of the small circle of friends of Flo Blow, stenographer and housewife, would ever see one of her lewd movies? A million to one.
"Yes," mused Elliot, "the psychology of this business is fascinating, simply fascinating. No doubt you've heard the aphorism that all-or almost all-women, even respectable women, especially respectable women-almost all women have the urge to play the role of prostitute at least once, to degrade their pure bodies?"
"I guess everybody's heard that," I agreed.
"Well, there's plenty to it, Dane. Plenty. The more cultured, poised, sophisticated and educated she is, the more a girl hankers to make like a scarlet woman. Now and then. Most cultured, poised girls have to content themselves with daydreams. But not-heh, heh,-the ones who apt to act in my movies."
"Remarkable," I said.
"Not at all," replied Elliot. "If you took a hundred young men-clean cut, decent young men-and gave each one of them the opportunity to attend a way-out, anything goes orgy, how many do you think would jump at the chance? At least ninety-nine, that's how many."
"True, undoubtedly true," I agreed.
"Right. Well, seeing as how medical science-and my personal researches-have confirmed that girls have every bit a much drive as men, what's so surprising about the fact that the bulk of 'nice' girls yearn to dabble in every kind of game in the book? In fact," he continued, obviously warming to his subject, "when one considers how repressed most girls are, by our society-how even in these enlightened times girls are forced into positions of passivity-why, it's no wonder that they really cut loose once they've been given the excuse."
"Excuse?" I said.
"Right. The well-bred matronly fleshed housewives and nubile working girls I use in my films kid themselves for the most part, that they're doing this just to earn needed cash. Actually, in my opinion, most of 'em would willingly act in my lewd movies for nothing-would even pay for the opportunity." He smiled. "Females. How delightfully depraved they are...."
I nodded. "Nothing I like better myself than a totally depraved young female."
"Somebody mention my name?" purred a sultry female voice directly behind me.
I spun around in my chair. A tall, raven-haired girl was standing behind me, hands on tilted hips, a sultry smile on her face. And what a face! And what a figure! Voluptuous!
"Oh," said Elliot casually, "meet my assistant and third cousin, Marjorie. Marge, this is Dane Hanlon."
"A-a pleasure," I stammered.
"The pleasure is all mine," she murmured. "At least, I hope it will be...."
I felt my loins quicken. Did she mean what I thought she meant? One look into her burning provocative eyes and I knew she did. This female wanted me-in her; if the come-hither-quick look in her eyes was any indication, just as much as I wanted her.
And I wanted her in the worst way.
And the best way-and every other way we could work out. And I had a feeling the two of us could work out plenty of ways....
Like her third cousin (if they really were related, that is), Marjorie was also dressed in black. After that all resemblance ended....
She was wearing very tight clinging black tights and a black leotard. With one wonderful difference. The kind of tights and leotard dancers wear are not transparent. The outfit she had on, on the other hand, was no more opaque than, say, a nylon stocking.
What I mean is, you could practically see the pores of her skin through her peek-a-boo outfit. Except her skin was too marvelously smooth to show pores. All that showed were her large aureoles and her huge, excitingly erect red nipples. That and everything else.
On the whole, the wonderful, wonderful, whole she was built kind of like a big bosomed foreign star. Only perhaps a shade more insolently wide in the hips, a trifle more full in the leg,-and two or three wonderful sizes larger up front. Way up front-Marjorie's big breasts were set unusually high on her lovely chest. And what knockers ... round and firm as exotic beach balls; soft looking as whipped cream, as inviting to the touch as a pair of breasts can be....
If you get the impression from this that I was sitting there almost drooling while my eyes moved brazenly over her incredible form-you've got the right impression. I had the impression, the correct impression, that she liked men's eyes exploring her body intimately. She smiled as I looked her over and around; smiled and arched her lovely shoulders and preened herself, her buttocks quivered palely through the taut black cloth.
She tossed her dark hair, half turned, an arch smile on her brazen face, half turned so that I could see how good she looked in profile. They don't look much gooder, I can tell you: her breasts jutted out, way, way out and up, up with saucy, utterly exotic abandon. Her waist was flat and smooth, in magnificent contrast to the ripe insolent out-flung ramparts of erogenously curved pillows that were her buttocks.
She moistened her full lips with a strangely exciting pink tongue, then winked-and bounced once, twice on her heels.
Almost I went into convulsions. What that gentle pair of bounces did for her exquisitely resilient unbraced breasts and buttocks would have to be seen to be believed. What shaking, trembling, quivering, vibrating ripples of exotic promise.
"Did you want something?" asked Elliot Fondilla impatiently to her.
"I'll say I do," she murmured-and with a rippling, cat-like movement she was beside my chair, then sitting on the arm of my chair-and then sprawled on my knees, hot thighed. That happened so fast I didn't have time to move-even if I'd wanted to move. One moment I was leering at a ripe-bodied beauty-the next, the babe's hot ripe body was all over me, her soft buttocks threatening to incinerate me, her lush legs nicely positioned for my hand to caress-while my other hand moved quickly to enclose one of those magnificent pouting pleasure lumps. Her face was scant inches from mine, her eyes-cat-like-half-closed, her crimson lips parted invitingly, her breath kindling fire for my loins.
I didn't have to bend my head to kiss her-she bent for me. Her shapely hand reached up, cupped the back of my head, pulled me passionately to her until our lips met and mashed. That was like kissing a high voltage line-but infinitely more pleasant.
Hardly had her ripe lips molded against mine but her tongue, darting, rapacious, eager, shameless, her tongue was going wild, teasingly, temptingly, provocatively. Her tongue was a sliding, scorching, sensuous, sensual symbol that gave me a scintillating sample of the delights that can be enjoyed when male and female meet for merry conjugation.
Eventually we parted mouths and I smiled at her lovely face at point blank range, savoring the wine-sweet warmth of her breath against my cheek, savoring the flickering promise in her eyes....
"What," snarled Elliot, "are you after, Marjorie?"
Without moving her burning gaze from mine, she murmured. "Sorry to disturb you, cuz-just wanted to let you know that the girls have arrived. Also, I repaired the number three camera."
"Thanks," snapped Elliot. "We'll be right there."
She continued to devour me with her look. "I like this one," she said huskily. "Can I play a scene or two or ten with Dane?"
"Possibly. Now get lost. I was trying to get Mr. Hanlon to relax somewhat."
She smiled; a veiled but lusty smile-if you know what I mean. Then she wriggled her lovely behind that was pressed firmly (but oh, so softly) against me.
"From where I sit," murmured Marjorie, "he doesn't seem relaxed at all." She squirmed again.
"Significantly, a certain part of him, if you know what I mean. He seems just the opposite," she continued, "he seems quite tense." Her hand grasped my straining tenseness through my pants.
"If you'll just keep on wriggling that way," I gasped, "I'm sure I'll be relaxed in no time-and create a mess to boot."
Suddenly she was off me, and sprawled on the floor. No wonder, Elliot had grabbed a handful of her long lustrous hair and jerked her right from my pulsating lap.
"Ow!" complained the lovely Marjorie, scrambling to her feet rubbing her thin-clad buttocks. "Why did...?"
Whap ... Whap!
Her long dark hair flew in both directions as her cousin slapped her first across one cheek, then across the other.
I waited for her to let out a howl of pain-or a scream of rage-and hurl herself at him, nails raking. Instead she opened her mouth to speak, thought better of it, turned and sauntered casually out of the room-winking lasciviously at me as she passed by.
The door closed behind her.
I swallowed hard. "That was your assistant?"
He nodded.
"You have-many assistants like that?"
"Hmmm? Oh, no. Marjorie's the only full time assistant I have. Fine camera worker."
"You keep a girl like that behind the camera?"
"Uh, huh. Most of the time. Every now and then I let her get into the act-or vice versa. Strange kid, sado-masochist, as you probably guessed. Chicks like that, you have to tear 'em rough, show 'em who's boss. If you fool around with her-and I surmise you will, on or off camera-remember that."
"She gets a charge out of being knocked around, huh?"
"Right. But being a sado-masochist-not just a plain one-she also gets a charge out of hurting other people. Thing to do id give her a rough time before she has time to give you a rough time. You have to establish clearly who's master and who's slave when you enter into a relationship with her."
"Slave? Master?" I queried. "Can't she just be a friend? Or a lover? I mean, does she-"
"Yes," said Elliot. "Like I said, she's sick. You have to either treat her roughly-which satisfies her masochistic impulses. Or else she'll start treating you sadistically-which satisfies her strange impulses. Either way she's happy. Marjorie is easy to please. She loves being spanked on her bare buttocks."
I considered this. Was this guy crazy? Possibly. On the other hand, Marjorie was probably kooky, too. I made a mental note to treat her that way.
"Be sure to make a mental note to treat her that way," he advised me-seemingly reading my thoughts. "Otherwise she'll assume you're a masochist and act accordingly. And,-heh, heh,-I understand she has sharp teeth."
I said nothing but wondered, not for the first time, if I hadn't made a mistake in agreeing to work for this organization.
On the other hand, like every human being, I had strong drives.
And like almost every male and most females, I had my share of punishing impulses.
Most men, whether they admit so or not, have an impulse, every now and then, to give some chick a whopping.
Unfortunately, punishment-mild or extreme-is a very common human affliction. Think you have no trace of it in your make-up? Think again.
Haven't you ever pinched a girl-or playfully smacked her across the buttocks?
Mild-very mild-punishment.
For those few creeps who haven't ever pinched or slapped a girl's rump, and therefore are feeling obnoxiously virtuous, I have but one question: have you ever wanted to pinch or slap a girl, a bull-buttocked, voluptuous girl?
Maybe you've never had conscious impulse to slap a gorgeous girl around-but, when you were sitting watching a movie in which the heel-hero slapped the heroine good, did you yawn and close your eyes-or did you watch open-mouthed and (secretly) fascinated?
Have your eyes never lingered over the covers of the cheaper men's magazines-covers where brutal Nazi after bully-boy is cheerfully whipping, bayoneting, knifing, kicking, stomping on or toasting over a slow fire a brace of more bulbous-breasted teen-age girls? (Small wonder they lost World War II-judging by the covers of the men's action magazines, they wasted most of their manpower toying sadistically with semi-naked teenage girls, instead of fighting on the front.)
Or-if you still doubt that most men have sadistic, impulses, why is that most true-crime magazines showed shapely girls being stabbed-shot-axed-bludgeoned-kicked or strangled? More men get murdered every year than women, but you'd never guess it from the covers of the crime magazines.
Or why do you suppose the rough guys became a best selling author: because of the prose style or because the hero had a penchant for stripping girls and then shooting them in the body.
Let's face it-sadism has been around a long time (all through history tribes sacrificed, not little old ladies-who would have seemed logically expendable-but voluptuous teen-age maidens.)
Punishment, deplorable though it is-and it is deplorable, of course-is not going to disappear from the human thoughts overnight.
Human beings were and still are savage, predatory animals. Only a few years ago, as geologists measure time, human beings were crafty hungers, killers; savage primates who fought so rough, so dirty that they overcame animals a heck of a lot bigger-'animals like saber-toothed tigers and mammoths.
Stop reading right now and take a look at yourself in the mirror.
Bare your teeth.
Growl.
Don't smile.
Snarl again, and half-close your eyes.
You look pretty fierce, don't you? You are. You-and I-and the rest of the human race-belong to the roughest, toughest animal species ever known.
Most animals eat only vegetation, or only meat. Humans eat anything and everything-including other humans. Most animals can live only in the tropics, or only in the temperate zones, or only in the arctic. Humans can and do live everywhere.
Human beings are tough, brutal, savage, blood-thirsty animals and have been, according to the most recent estimates, for at least a million years. Civilization is just a recent, novel veneer. Underneath we are all killer, predators.
So-why should it surprise us to find that we have savage instincts, such as sadism?
We no longer have to fight daily for our lives. We no longer have to kill our food before we can eat. We no longer have to capture our women and lay them whether they like you or not, fast, before they can escape.
We're civilized. Only. Only when you suppress so many animal instincts you're bound to cause a few-short circuits. We still have the urge to kill, hurt, maim-and we still have the urge to ravish females. And sometimes, lots of time, these urges get confused and merge-and the urge to beat up an enemy gets mixed up with the sex urge. And we feel sadistic.
No real harm done, usually. Most men-more men than publicly admit-vent their sadistic thoughts in day dreams. Or vicariously, by reading about rough heroes.
Others, like me, Dane Hanlon, get faced by that rarest of rarities-an opportunity, almost, to vent their sadistic impulses in a kindly fashion.
That is, by being mean to a masochist....
"Come on," said Elliot, "let's join the-heh, heh,-girls, and give 'em what they want most!"
I followed him eagerly.
Accustomed as I am to feminine adulation, I must admit that I was highly flattered by the small sensation I created among Elliot Fondilla's stag ponies. The Beatles couldn't have set off more squeals than I did, once I was recognized. .
"It-it's Dane Hanlon!" squealed a deep boobed, little chestnut filly named Rhoda.
"Dane Hanlon the handsome actor! "shrieked a curvaceous housewife named (she told me later) Claire.
"Oh, I just loved you in The Young Professor," gasped a lissome young blonde whose glossy globes were bubbling over the top of her bra. "Where you played the crooked teacher who got kicked out in the end."
I shrugged modestly. "It was just a small part; I was only on screen forty-four seconds."
But Outstanding Stars voged you among the fifteen young male stars most likely to achieve immortality by Winter, ," breathed the buxom little blonde.
"Elliot, is Mr. Hanlon going to dance with us tonight?" murmured yet another svelte siren-a platinum-haired lovely.
"How thrilling!" enthused a ripe young redhead, wriggling out of her skimpy lace panties.
"Hmm," noted Elliot Fondilla. "I didn't realize you had such a following, Dane. Since I apparently don't need to introduce you to the girls, I'll just introduce the girls to you. This little chick-" he jerked a thumb toward the plump little redhead who by now had wriggled free of her panties and was smiling at me stark lewdly naked, "-this little chick is Anne Edmonds, a History teacher from San Francisco."
Anne simpered and then waved her big loose breasts at me. How she managed that was kind of interesting-first she sort of chucked her breasts from beneath with the flat of her hands, then she bounced violently on her heels and the knockers jiggled.
Again I almost went into convulsions. There's something about the sight of a pair of ripe bare female breasts bouncing and jiggling that does something to me. Something tingling and warm that leads to an almost instant resolve to grab them.
"Nice to know you, Anne," I said.
"Likewise," she giggled, pouting her soft red lips and then waggling her soft hips at me.
Elliot continued the introductions. The tall platinum-haired cutie was named Pat something-or-other-a housewife from the suburbs. (Her husband was a traveling salesman, she told me later, away for weeks on end, and while hubby was away, Pat liked to play erotically-and make a few bucks, as she double entendred with a lewd wink.)
The bubble-boobed blonde whose bra seemed too small to cope with even a fraction of her frontal fun flesh, was Iris Adams (or something like that), a legal secretary from Oakland.
Rhoda, the chestnut-haired filly with the deliciously deep chest-and a pair of sublimely suggestive hips-was a switchboard operator from the Strip. All she did all day (she told me with a sly smile) was thrust plugs into sockets. Come nightfall she hankered for a change of pace, the reverse. I told her I looked forward to conversing with her.
Claire, a ripely rotund young housewife from the Valley simpered coyly when we were introduced, then asked me to unzip her. I obliged. That was like peeling a banana-all she had on beneath her summer dress was her well filled skin.
By the time I had her stripped to the buff most of the other chicks had de-braed and un-pantied themselves, and at Elliot's suggestion, I took off most of my own clothes. "Strip down to just your undershorts at first," he murmured. "You'll feel less self-conscious that way." I did.
"Heh, Dane," said Marjorie, undulating briskly up. "Wanna help me pour drinks for the gang or rub down the girls?"
I chose to rub down the girls. All of my readers who have helped pose girls in the nude understand what I'm talking about: a girl who's been wearing a bra and-or a garter belt gets temporary creases in her flesh which have to fade or be massaged away before she can pose to perfection.
So I industriously massaged ripe thigh after belly, chest after breast. Meanwhile, several more moonlighting housewives and office girls arrived-luscious babes all. I helped 'em strip and did what else I felt they wanted done.
Somewhat to my annoyance, several young guys arrived, too. College kids, I surmised. A couple rather flushed and ill at ease-the rest (old hands at the stag film field, obviously) fervently eager looking. Elliot, I think, introduced them to me but I didn't bother to remember their names. Somehow it irritated me to think that the girls weren't all going to be loved by me, physically, exhausting and time consuming though that might be.
Meanwhile, I should mention, we were all getting slightly high-all save Elliot and his assistant, that is. I could see his point-feeding his actors and actresses booze tended to remove what inhibitions they still might have. Certainly I began to feel much more at ease, much less conscious of the lights and cameras that stood a few yards away.
A little later, Elliot put down his drink and clapped his hands together and shouted, "Okay, kids, ready? Okay-let's get working then."
And we began posing for the camera, which consisted of, after a few more drinks, loving the girls, once two at a time, with body and kisses, and once, I hesitate to admit, to making it with one of the men, a young, smooth-buttocked guy, who, when he was bent over busy with a sex partner-(male), and his naked rear twitching before me, I plunged into that part of him so near to me, busily heaving up and down.
It's been a long time since I'd done that.
CHAPTER FIVE
Of course, I was quite used up the following morning, so I slept late, finally getting up around noon. Part of me, my head, ached painfully; the rest didn't exactly ache but felt, well, used. An aching head and limpid stomach are standard hangover symptoms with me.
I didn't get up right away but lay back in bed letting my mind rove over the events of the night before. What a night ... what events ... Some of the events I could only vaguely remember.
I felt a flash of panic. Not for fear that I might have done anything to be ashamed of-I'm ashamed of almost nothing I do connected with women-but for fear I might have gotten careless: had I acted in front of Elliot's camera without a mask or headpiece at any time?
No, I decided-with relief. No, all of my acting had been done with my soon to be famous features safely concealed. And what acting I'd done-how forcefully I'd projected myself into each part I'd been assigned.
Once I'd played the role of a vampire bat-my naked body sprayed with bat makeup, black velvet wings attached to my arms, a hideous bat-mask covering my head. Anne, the plump-breasted little redhead, had been my first victim. How hideously she'd screamed (while her left eye, hidden by her pert nose from the camera, had winked at me lewdly) how pitifully she'd screamed as I pretended to sink my bat fangs at her toothsome breasts.
What had happened then? Oh, yes-I'd driven a stake through her heart. Perhaps it hadn't been her heart ... It was somewhere in her body....
But I remember the way her succulent young body had twisted and wriggled when my arms had gone around her, when her flesh seemed to scorch against mine, when her plump young hands whipped the air in frenzy, then locked around my buttocks to pull, me closer to her squirming embrace....
And then ... then I couldn't recall what happened. Not exactly. I had a hazy memory of a chubby young blonde with incredibly soft hair and an incredibly soft-looking rear crawling away from me to feigned panic while I crawled in lusty pursuit of the soft buttocks.
I'd been playing the part of ... I couldn't remember. At any rate I'd had some sort of monster head covering my features. The chubby blonde hadn't crawled fast enough, I recalled. I'd caught up with her, had bumped her soft flesh with the soft rubber horns affixed to my monster head (what kind of a monster had I been then? A unicorn man? A triceratops man?).
The chubby blonde had squealed in mock dismay, while I proceeded to monster her-crawling right against and into her. I remembered her back against my belly, the sweet scent of her hair near my nostrils, the soft yielding of her breasts as I slid my hands around and found and cupped and squeezed and kneaded the feverish hemispheres of her swaying breasts-while her incredibly soft and resilient rear switched from side to side like the tail of a puppy.
Ah yes ... everything was coming back to me now ... Yes. Yes, indeed. How had that girl remained on her hands and knees? Ecstatically, that was how....
And then, more memories came back. And more. I counted memories-then sat bolt upright in bed. Nine memories? Had I played nine separate and distinct parts? I counted again. Not nine-ten! and that guy.
I sank back down in bed. "Dane," I muttered proudly, "I have to hand it to you. When it comes to stamina and drive-and acting ability and talent-you're the greatest."
And the best part of all had been the first, when I'd been a planetary monster with fur. And Marjorie (what was her real name? I wondered ... ) had been my willing sex victim.
Not since the big ape made a grab for the little lady had a monster reached so eagerly for a luscious female....
Funny how un-self-conscious I'd been, how thoroughly I'd thrown myself into that first monster role. Perhaps because of the drinks-loaded drinks?-Elliot had been feeding me. Perhaps because, hidden inside my monster head I felt less, well, shy about getting physically virile in front of a camera.
Marjorie had changed from her skin-tight outfit to a demure white summer dress for the scene. I, of course, was blue and furry. Or at least fuzzy.
"You understand the scene?" Elliot asked, after he had his light adjusted to suit him. "You're a horrible monster just out of a flying saucer. Marjorie here is an Earthling, paralyzed with fear at the sight of you. You lurch toward her-she's too terrified to run. She just lifts one frail hand and murmurs, "Friendship?"
"You leer and lurch closer toward her and-yes? A question?"
"How can I leer?" I queried, my voice muffled by my head, "when my face is concealed?"
He looked at me coldly. "A real actor," he said, "can leer with his body as well as his face. Leering, after all is a state of mind. Even though the audience can't see your face, they will sense that you are leering. Haven't you ever heard of method acting?"
I nodded, chastened.
"Very well. As I was saying, you lurch toward her like the lascivious monster you are. You lurch toward her, drooling, and-question?"
"Drooling?"
"Yes. Didn't Marjorie explain the built-in features of that monster head? Evidently not. Just to the left of your mouth, inside the monster head, is a small rubber bulb. When you bite down on it, your eyes glow horrible luminescent red. Try it. Here, I'll hold the mirror."
I tried it. My eyes-or the huge google eyes that went with the monster head-glowed just he said they would.
"Okay. Just to the right of your mouth, inside the monster head, is another small rubber bulb. When you bite down on that, green monster spittle-actually mineral oil dyed purple-will dribble from the hideous corners of your mouth. The monster's mouth, that is."
"That's kind of repulsive isn't it? ' I protested. "Of course-you're supposed to be a repulsive monster."
Inside my monster head I frowned. I wasn't used to playing repulsive roles. Then I shrugged. What the heck, a change of pace would be good for me. Too bad I'd never be able to list this on my resume.
"As I was saying," he continued, "you lurch up to her, leering and drooling. Marjorie cringes before you, trembling with horrified anticipation. You reach out a taloned furry hand-you get those fake talons attached to your fingers? Good. You reach out and grab the neckline of her white dress, tug. The dress peels to her waist. You tug again. The dress falls to the ground. You grab for her bra, tug, the bra tears free. Also, her panties. Then-well, you can adlib the rest. Just be sure," he added, lowering his voice, "to treat her rough."
I nodded.
"Good. Okay. Quiet everybody, quiet on the set. This is a take." And, on cue, I lurched toward Marjorie, cringing prettily in her demure white dress.
Hardly had I taken half a dozen steps before my self-consciousness slipped away; I was no longer aware of the glaring lights, the slowly panning camera; in those half dozen steps I ceased to be Dane Hanlon, actor, and became a rapacious monster from outer space, a rapacious horny monster lurching with flashing eyes and drooling lips towards its delectable prey. As I lurched I was aware of my growing desire, while Marjorie screamed and cringed....
Foolish Earthling, I sneered to myself-did she think that a monster such as myself would show her any mercy? Again and again she screamed as I tore the flimsy white dress from her body, ripped away her bra and panties to reveal her full breasts, her smooth waist, her defenselessness.
And then-I frowned recalling what had happened then. Had I really treated her that roughly? Had I really slapped and punched and mauled her in such a bestial fashion? Yes. Well, I consoled myself, Elliot had told me to treat her rough-and a good actor always does what his director tells him to do.
And, despite her horrific screams, she had seemed to et a kick out of being kicked. And slugged and slapped and roughed up. When I'd finally flung her to the ground and flung myself toward her, her eyes had been gleaming like burning coals.
And once the preliminary wrestling had ended and the serious business of making love had began-how enthusiastically she'd cooperated....
Lying back, her arms loose, her long, lush legs bare and parted, her huge breasts thrusting toward me like "welcome" beacons-tipped with vivid red nipples that promised not danger but excitement-sprawled before me with her raven black hair splayed out like some great exotic fan-sprawled before me with her great, luminous eyes gleaming, her passionate lips smiling-sprawled like that she'd looked mighty tempting.
And when I landed beside her with a deliciously fleshy smack (What wonderful shock absorbers her melon sized breasts were!) she was delicious.
A lot else, too-Sensuality, and Softness, and Femininity, and Gratification....
And I had been gratified all right, when my masochistic mistress made mad music with me, her masculine space monster-moaning music, merry music and mirthful melodies, lusty lyrics-all sighs and whimpers and whispered urgings. And I was the conductor of this sensual symphony.
As we moved in urgent unison, a million ecstatic nerve cells in my body making person-to-person contact with her nerve cells. Flesh communicating with flesh, desire kindling desire, passion igniting passion.
She was a crazy chick, all right, and strong-shaking, gripping me. As a playful puppy might shake a bone, she took me, shook my excitement to my very core. almost groaned in delight-remembering just in time to growl like a monster-and slid my hands, my fuzzy, furry hands down the sleek smoothness of her back to cup and caress and grip tight the great, quivering globes of her buttocks, pulling her tight, tight against my strained body, enjoying the forked lightning flickering of her passion-possessed muscles, enjoying the rocking, swaying, whip-lash-like snap and heave and twist of her wide hips.
As best I could (considering the cumbersome monster head I was wearing) I nuzzled her bare shoulders, her neck. I slid first one, then the other hand up to pounce upon her pectoral pleasure domes, to grasp and work and cares and knead the huge heaving hemispheres of boobs.
Her nipples were out-thrust, erect, passion swollen; and I toyed with them, tugged at them, twisted and tweaked them-now pulling playfully as if they were champagne corks I was trying to pull from the bottle of bliss-now twirling them with my green fingers as if they were combination locks that had the power to unlock and unleash all the passion in her body. That's what they must have been, all right, because she just about went out of her mind with delirious lascivious delight. Her body thrashed and shook me, bucked and reared trying to throw me.
She didn't throw me. That was just the way I liked her to react. But, oh, what a lively rippling, rolling trip she provided-oh, what a roller-coaster journey to joy, what a hot thrill.
She became a mad woman: as though she had imbibed a bubbling cauldron of delight.
Like a mad woman, she shrieked with delight each time we moved, matching my lust with her own almost insatiable need and desire, demanding more and more while her shrill voice rang near my ears.
Who was the monster? This woman was like no Earthling I had ever taken the rocket-ride with before. She tore at my fuzzy-green head with frenzied fingers, as we rocked to the silent rhythm of demonic desire.
We had forgotten cameras, lights, crowds-all we knew was our raging need and the blaze of ecstasy toward which we labored.
Her shrieks of pleasure echoed in my ears.
And all the while my hands were stroking, squeezing, savoring the satiny-soft pleasure pillows of her breasts, reveling in the resilient way her breast flesh yielded to my exploring fingers, brushing my fingertips across the diamond-hard tips of her nipples, exciting her to the utmost heights of ecstasy.
And still I worked, still her hips parried, still our bodies surged toward the promise of ecstasy as her legs opened wide for me.
And then all time seemed to stand still while as the two of us seemed to rocket into another dimension, a timeless, weightless universe of pure sensation-a world of perfect pleasure, incandescent desire, detonating ecstasy as I released my boiling pulsating pleasure.
And that ended the take.
Not, that I reflected as I lazed in bed the following morning, a bad way to make some easy money.
I broke off my thoughts as the phone beside my bed jangled. It was Wently, my agent.
"How's it going, lover boy?" She chuckled. "L'il old stud tired?"
I grunted.
"Two things, lover baby. First, in case Elliot hasn't called you already, don't bother going back to his studio tonight. He says he has all the monster footage he needs-my, but you must have worked hard-and often-last night."
"I did," I said. Then I swore. "This means I only get two-fifty-not five hundred?"
"Not at all, lover. Wently sees to details like that. You were working, you should excuse the expression, piece rates. You finished early is all. Drop by and pick up your earnings any time. Four hundred bucks, less fifty you borrowed from me last week."
"Four hundred? Ten percent of five C notes is fifty bucks."
"That kind of job, lover, Wently takes twenty percent. High risk and all that." I called her a name.
"Flatterer," she chuckled. "I haven't made my living on my bed in years. Think I should try a comeback."
How can you insult a dame like that? You can't. I said, "What was the other thing you called about?"
"A job, lover. A legit TV job I have for you. Short bit. Union rates. An emergency, like-the guy they hired for the part took sick. They want you right after lunch. Can do?"
"Sure," I said. My head ached, my stomach was still fully of giddy moths and a few queasy caterpillars and I wasn't at all sure I could stand up without swaying, let alone get ready for work inside of-I glanced at the timeless than an hour. But an actor doesn't turn down a part. Not twice he doesn't.
"Good. I'm counting on you. Make a good impression and maybe they'll use you again. Marcus Ross Productions, on River-know it?"
"As well as I know my hand. What series?"
"Paul Reed's network epic. Assault. Know it?"
I said I did.
"Good. Maybe you'll get to kill somebody on screen. Lucky boy. See you."
I hung up and, not withstanding that inside I felt like a pile of decomposing garbage, inside of an hour I was on the set.
Turned out I wasn't going to kill anybody, though-they were going to kill me.
Undoubtedly you've seen a network show called Assault? Sure you have. Well, the show was Paul Reed's idea of a competitive series.
Instead of explaining in my own words what the series is about, I might just as well quote the publicity blurb that appeared in the trade when Paul began the series.
ASSAULT (the blurb announced) is the story of Eric Readerson, a basically decent young man who in the mistaken belief that the Bennet family were responsible for his young wife's death, sets out to murder the entire Bennet family one by one or, if possible, all at once.
In each hour-Ions weekly episode he plots to kill one or more of the Bennet family-mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, four sons, five teen-age daughters, six grandchildren and two collies.
You get the idea. And each week, of course, had luck-or the diligent detective work of Sergeant Morton of the L.A. Police-thwarts Readerson of his revenge. But only by a narrow margin.
My personal opinion was (and is) that the whole idea reeked of turkey and would get yanked off the air fast. However, I'm an actor, not a writer. And plenty of other series I thought stunk have won handsome ratings.
Paul Reed, a chubby bald-headed man with rimless glasses and the warm smile of a snake met me when I walked on the set.
"Who the hell are you?" he asked without animosity. "Where's Harper?"
"Harper's sick," I said. "Wently Pedra sent me to sub for him."
He scowled at me. "You know the part?"
"I'm a quick study," I told him. "Got a script handy?"
"Go see the script girl," he snapped and, after glaring at me again, thrusting the end of a stick of candy into his mouth and chomping on it (evidently he was trying to quit smoking) he turned on his heel and walked off.
A bored sound technician directed me to a comfortably furnished dressing room wherein Mavis a tall, somewhat jaded-looking babe in her thirties was sprawled on a couch reading a magazine. Her pleated skirt had slid all the way up to her pink panties, but if she knew it, she gave no indication. Neither did she pull down her skirt.
"I'm Mavis," she agreed in answer to my query. "Sit down." She patted the couch next to her nice knees. "Here."
I sat down, close enough to her so that I was sure of the animal warmth of her body.
"What can I do for you?" she asked. "And when do you want me to? Also where? This place-" she waved a hand at the rest of the dressing room "-is much too public. Or do you like to live dangerously?"
Well. Well maybe nothing. Plenty of women in this town like to talk a fast line. Often that doesn't mean a thing. On the other hand, more often it does.
I dropped my hand, casually to her leg about two inches from the panty elastic at her crotch. And she was wearing pretty brief panties. I gave her a light squeeze and said, "I'm Dane Hanlon, subbing for Harper. Paul Reed said I should see you."
"Did he now?" she said, glancing blandly at my hand against her thighs-but making no move to push it off. "Don't tell me my husband is finding me substitute lovers these days. That would be too understanding, don't you think?"
I took my hand from her leg, fast.
"Look," I said, "I don't know anything about your, uh, friendship with Harper. I just came here to play a part."
Without taking her eyes-her eyes that suddenly seemed more sultry than bland-without taking her eyes off me, she reached out, took the hand I'd removed from her, placed it firmly below her belly. Through the thin fabric of her panties I could feel the crinkly bush of her womanhood.
"If you came for a part," she murmured, "a part you shall have." She smiled warmly at m . Then reached behind her, picked up a script, handed it to me. I took it with my left hand-it seemed impolite to move my right hand from where she'd placed it.
For that matter, it might be construed as impoliteness just to leave my hand lying there, doing nothing. After all, when a lady places a man's hand against her body, the way she had, well-the assumption is she expects him to do something. Like slide his hand under said panties. Or rip 'em right off. Or On the other hand, she wasn't just an amiable girl-she was the producer-director's wife. And Reed had a lot of influence in this town. I glanced nervously toward the door.
"It's all right," she assured me, patting and then pressing my hand-my hand which was resting on her torrid zone. "He always knocks first."
"Knocks and then walks in shooting?" I said, sliding my hand to her thigh again.
"Faint heart never won fair lady," quoted Mavis, folding one long leg over the other. "Subtle, aren't I?" she murmured. She frowned. "Now let me see-did I or didn't I?"
"?", I queried with my eyebrows.
"Take my pill today. Vitamin pill, that is. I take vitamin pills every single day, you know. One never knows when one may be called upon to-to burn excess energy."
"Look," I said, glancing again at the door. "I just met you and-"
"I don't," she assured me, squeezing my fingers on her thighs.
"You don't?" I said. "I sort of figured you-"
"Of course I do. What I meant when I said I don't was that I don't have any communicable diseases. Like the flu, or chicken pox or what have you. I mean you act as if you were scared of me."
"I am scared," I told her frankly. "Scared your husband will walk in, fire me and blacklist me." I tried to tug my hand loose. But she was not about to allow me to escape from such beautiful-but dangerous-bondage.
"Look," I said, "I'm supposed to be on the set in a little while-I don't even know who I am," I hefted the script, "much less what my lines are."
"Where do you live?" she asked, squeezing my hand with rhythmic insistence.
I told her. "That's just off the main boulevard near
"I know what it's near. It's near a bunch of crummy actor's boarding house that haven't changed in a long, long time. I lived near there once. Let's say my place. Paul's going to Las Vegas tonight. I'll be all alone. Just me and the butler. And the butler's ninety-five years old, if you follow me. I'll be so lonely." She squeezed my hand again with her soft yielding thighs.
What the heck. I squeezed her there. "Your husband trusts you, huh?"
Her eyes glazed suddenly. "Let's say I have more on him than he could ever hope to get on me." She laughed. "Besides, he'll be happy enough tonight-he keeps a little hot-box in Reno. Thinks I don't know about her. He goes his way and I go mine. And in between we jazz the blazes out of each other."
"Sounds like an ideal movie land marriage," I said-with sincerity. "Where do you live?"
She told me. "About seven?" She squeezed my hand again.
"I'll be there," I promised, fingering her back. Abruptly she unfolded her legs, smoothed down her skirt. I picked up the script which had fallen on the floor.
"If you're subbing for Harper," she said, all crisp and business-like now, "you're playing the filling station punk." She studied me. "Clothes you have on'll be okay, except we'll give you a black leather jacket." She smiled. "In addition to being assistant producer and associate director on this series, I'm also helper to the costume manager. Nepotism rampant. Oh, well. Keeps me off the streets, as my darling husband is always saying. You read the current script?"
I shook my head.
"Don't bother. What happens is Readerson is all set to kill Heidi and-"
"Heidi?"
She frowned. "One of the Bennet family. Don't you know the format? Each week he tries to bump off one or more of the Bennet family, on account he thinks they was responsible for his wife kicking the bucket in a collapsing house. Heidi's one of the Bennet daughters. She's an exotic dancer in a night club. Anyhow, Readerson has this flame thrower rigged up window and he's all set to jhar her up good-she's strutting around inside her apartment in her exotic dancer costume practicing, you see-only when he pulls the trigger or whatever it is that starts flame throwers he just gets a hiss-the flame thrower's run out of fuel. So off he goes to buy a can of fuel to refill his flame thrower so he can deep fry the girl. With me?"
I nodded. So far, at least, the plot seemed much more sensible and realistic than that of most television scripts. Perhaps I'd been wrong about predicting a low rating for the show once it got on the air.
"Only, on the way he gets caught in the flash flood," she continued. "And because of the way they befriended him, he agrees to help this group of little old nuns re-build their church and convent school. Police Officer Morton catches up with him about this time, but loses him in the holiday parade on the boulevard. Readerson joins the parade-or what he thinks is the parade-only it turns out he's joined a civil protest parade and gets tossed in the can-this is near the college-and of course he can't give his right name so he has to take the Fifth Amendment and get sent to the prison farm. Dig?"
I nodded.
"Well, after he escapes from the prison farm with Louis, the old farmer who's been unjustly accused of poisoning the sheep dip, he stays long enough with Ho Ho the gorgeous Oriental girl to clear her brother of the opium rap and then, with Rosalie, whom he's now talked out of suicide, he returns the three orphan girls to the asylum before they've been missed, and exacts a promise from Carol not to throw herself down stairs again but to have her baby, in or out of wedlock. You understand, I'm telescoping the plot quite a bit-just giving you the highlights."
"I understand," I said. "Then Readerson goes off to fill his flame thrower so he can knock off Heidi Bennet? And I'm the filling station jockey?"
"Yes and no. Yes he goes off to buy fuel, but you aren't the filling station attendant. You're a punk kid holding up the gas station. You've got the elderly gas station attendant tied up and gagged when Readerson walks in. Your scene starts on-" She took the script from me, thumbed through it. "Page eighty-five. Readerson says, "What's going on here? And you say, A hold-up, mister. Reach-or die! Readerson reaches. Then he says, What are you going to do with that blowtorch? Why do you have that old man's shoes and socks off? And you say, I'm going to toast the combination of the safe out of him, old man. And Readerson says, Why do you call me old man, you cheap punk? And you say, I called you old man on account of you and me did time together at the prison farm, remember? And Readerson gasps and says, That's right-and there's the police right behind you! And turn, snarling, and Readerson hits you on the jaw and you fall down. Then-"
"I'm not interested in the rest of the plot," I told her. "Just my part. Let me see the script, will you?"
She handed it to me and, instantly, I forget she was there-forgot everything except the lines I had to memorize. That's how it is with actors: the part is everything. It has to be, if you want to achieve fame and fortune as an actor.
Over and over I chanted to myself. A hold-up, buddy, reach-or else! I'm going to toast the combination of the safe out of him, old man. I called you old buddy on account of you and me did time together at the prison farm, remember? Then turn. No, not turn, whirl. Then react to punch on chin. Crumple.
I read the lines over a dozen times. Then I had her cue me, reading Readerson's lines. After that I tried mixing facial expressions with the lines.
Then I went out to the sound stage and, when my scene came, it went off just great-perfect. Except the swine who was playing Readerson hit ne on the mush harder than he needed to.
Fortunately Paul Reed liked the first take-so I was off and running with a fistful of paycheck. Off to the first phone booth. I dialed my horny agent.
"It went fine, Wently," I told her. "A small part, but memorable. It might lead to things-the way Eddy G. Robinson never looked back after he played the part of the heavy, in Tiger Shark."
"He," said Wently, irrelevantly, I felt, "had talent. So what else is new?"
"Mavis Reed-Paul Reed's wife. She-"
"Your place or hers?"
"Hers. What's her number?"
"I'll look it up. Here it is." She gave it to me. "That's near-"
"I know where she lives," I snarled, "I mean what's her number? Her bit? Her angle?"
"Men," said Wently succinctly. "I suppose what you mean is should you or shouldn't you. Why not? Even her hairdresser knows for sure. Why should you be the only man in the country never to have seen himself in the wall to wall mirror she has on her ceiling?"
"Promiscuous, huh?"
"Carnivorous, too. But don't worry. Four doctors are on her hot line list. And they say that practice makes perfect. Which ought to make her just about the most perfect bedmate in the state."
"Don't try to be funny," I growled. "You know what I want to know."
She sighed. "Knowing you, I'm afraid I do. Will your precious career be helped by sleeping with Mavis? The answer, Dane dear, is who knows? Maybe yes, maybe no. Maybe she'll get so bothered over you, you'll be able to twist the old knife a bit."
"What's that?"
"Don't be dense. I mean, maybe she'll be so keen for a repeat performance you'll be able to make her get you a good part in one of her hubby's TV epics. It's happened. She was so mad for Mark Ulrich she had Paul give him the lead in a series-he plays Readerson in The Assault as you of course know."
"I know," I said. "No wonder the swine hit me so hard. Jealous. Thanks for telling me."
"Don't mench. By the way Dane, dear, just how long has it been since you made love to a girl because you liked her?"
I laughed. "A long time. That didn't work out. Afterward she had to drop out of grade school."
I hung up on her.
So, I thought. Tonight's the night. Little Dane Hanlon living the rich life up in the heights.
Seven, she'd said. Did that mean dinner-or would she be stripped and waiting in bed? Better not take chances: better to tuck away some food first-for energy.
I splurged at a restaurant, after first making a quick telephone call.
I was halfway through the first steak when a waiter appeared carrying a telephone.
"Call for you, Mr. Hanlon," he said, plugging the phone into the table jack.
I nodded, slipped him a dollar bill, unfolded.
"Dane here," I said into the phone.
"Wently here, you knucklehead," she said. "You don't think anybody's impressed by phone-calls these days, do you Dane boy?"
"A hundred and fifty thousand?" I said loudly into the phone. "For how many days work? Four? What dates?" I pulled out an address book.
"Ten to one," said Wently, "that there isn't a producer in the joint. Only little ladies from Chicago who don't know Dane Hanlon from a hole-''
"No, sorry-no can do," I said loudly into the phone. "Like to help you out, but I'm due in the East Coast for a charity show on the fourth. Tough. Why don't you try Rock-or Charleton-or maybe Tab? Right-thanks for calling." I hung up.
I glanced around discreetly. Crap. There wasn't a producer or director in the place. Oh well-keep trying is my motto.
I continued eating to build up energy for the luscious Mavis. As I ate my steak, I figured meat for my meat. A swap.
CHAPTER SIX
Just before seven P.M. I stopped my car a distance from Mavis' sumptuous house. I hate people, influential people, to see the crummy car I drive. Cars are pretty important status symbols in this town, and status-wise my heap was nowhere.
Maybe I should use the money I'd made from Elliot Fondilla's stag movie plus the payment from playing in Assault, as down payment on a descent hunk of tin. Maybe. I'd toyed with the idea before, but it's always seemed more important to sink my money into a fancy wardrobe. That and put a little aside so that if I run into a long dry spell I could coast and not have to grab anything.
Maybe ,, I thought speculatively as I walked up the graveled drive leading to Mavis' house, I could get her to subsidize me in a new car. Plenty of pretty boys around town are driving cars women bought for them. Why not me?
Thus musing, I headed up to wide marble steps leading to Mavis' front door and thumbed the buzzer. I waited. A moment later a buzz sounded and the door unlatched. Evidently, she had given the servants the night off.
I pushed open the door closed it quietly behind me. The huge hall before me was only dimly lit. Other dim lights led up a gigantic winding staircase that undoubtedly led to the bedrooms-and Mavis. Subtle, that lovely sex pot. I started across the hall.
"Uh, uh, lover," whispered a soft feminine Ooice. "I'm in the library."
I turned in time to catch a flash of flesh, naked flesh in the nearest doorway. I walked in to the library-and the door was pushed shut behind me.
"Take me, stud," she whispered. "Slip it to me now."
I reached for her, though she was barely visible in the darkened room illuminated only by what moonlight penetrated the drapes. I could smell her perfume, though; and when my arms slid around her slender waist I was aware of the eager yielding nakedness of her body pressing tight against me. She made a soft murmuring sound and nuzzled my shoulder. Her hair was fragrant as new-mown hay, soft against my chin as Dang! Dang! went the warning bells in my head. The top of her head under my chin? Mavis was a tall drink of passion. I groped behind me with one hand-even as the armful of girl I was holding began to tug at my clothing-and turned on the lights.
The girl in my arms snarled like an angry dog, slipped back and spat four or five well chosen curses at me. Not Mavis. Definitely not Mavis.
But close.
The intonation of her voice, the tilt of her nose, the curve of her chin-very close. Only this chick was younger, quite a bit younger. Mid teens maybe.
Stacked too. Her sleek, voluptuous flesh was as smooth as a pearl, as ripely full as a bushel of tomatoes. Full, rounded young breasts tipped with arrogant pink nipples. A nice waist. Wide, yet youthful hips. Good legs. Magnificent legs, in fact.
And long, soft hair.
She stuck her thumb in her mouth, tilted her forward and gave me the business with her eyes. Big, wide, blue eyes over which long light eyelashes fluttered.
She took her thumb out of her mouth, inspected the tip, licked it, stuck it back in her ripe red little mouth.
"Hi," she said, deftly removing her thumb long enough to get out the one word.
So all right. So here I am downstairs with a simple naked blonde-and upstairs Mavis was waiting. What to do?
I smiled. "Your Mavis' kid sister?"
She shook her hand. "We're not that close," she said inspecting both her thumbs as if undecided which to try next.
I'm not stupid; I don't need to have things spelled out. This chick said she wasn't as closely related as a sister. Sisters are siblings, they taught me in school, and siblings are as close relatives as you can get on account of they have both parents in common. A daughter, consequently, isn't as closely related to either parent. Hence, this doll was Mavis' daughter.
"Your mother," I said politely, "is expecting me."
"She doesn't know you're here. I switched off the buzzer upstairs. I saw you, coming, out of the window." She smiled. A depraved kind of childish smile. "Want me instead?" She smirked, her yes fixed on-darn, I'd forgotten. I adjusted my clothing.
So, I. thought, as if things weren't complicated enough. I have to get mixed up with a hormonically over-charged child with a hobby of waylaying-if that was the term-her mother's lovers.
"How old are you?" I asked politely.
"Ah-seventeen. I was born when my mother was only fifteen."
"Your mother must have married your father very young."
She giggled. "She didn't. How can you marry the whole senior class of a high school?"
There must be many witty replies to a remark like that, but I couldn't think of one off hand. I just said, "Oh." Then I said, "How did you know I would be here?"
"I didn't know you were coming," she explained patiently, as if I were the child and she the adult. "But I knew some stud was. Every time Paul's away mother always gives the butler the night off and a man shows. You are nicer than most."
"Thank you," I said. I glanced at my wrist watch. Seven-fifteen. Mavis upstairs must be getting fretful. "My name is uh, Bill Bond, by the way."
She giggled. "That's nice. All right, you're Bill Bond. You look like Dane Hanlon, the actor, though. Your picture is in Magic Filmland this month."
"It is? I mean-what's your name, kid?" Even as I said it I felt silly. This chick could not honestly be categorized as a 'little girl.'
"Nancy. And I've had three hundred and fourteen men, starting when Mother and I were still living back east. I'd like you to be next. I really would."
"I'm flattered, Nancy," I said, mopping a couple of drops of sweat from my forehead. What to say next? Kid, you ought too see a head shrinker? Kid, you're sick in the head? Kid, you shouldn't have such old fashioned neuroses, like trying to compete sexually with your own mother?
I decided on a more honest approach. "Nancy," I said, letting my eyes slide over her youthful but fully ripe naked curves, "I have a hunch you'd be lots more fun in bed than Mavis-only, Nancy, I have to be nice to her because she might be able to help me with my career."
She nodded slowly and wisely. "Okay. Will you slip it to me after you get through with her? I'll wait right in my bedroom. It's at the end of the hall upstairs. I'll wait."
I was touched. Also interested. Nancy might be legally underage, but when you're number three hundred and fifteen in a line of men stretched all the way to an eastern farm somehow a little thing like age seems a mere technically.
"That's a deal," I said.
"I'll be waiting. And I am, you know."
"Am what?"
"A better piece. Even Daddy says so." I flinched. "Even-but you said you didn't have a father?"
"I don't. I just call Paul that sometimes to bug him." She giggled and inspected the tips of her fingers in quick succession. "He was my sugar-daddy for a while, though. That's how come mother married him, you know."
I had my hand on the door knob but I let go and lowered myself into a chair. That kind of gossip always comes in handy. Never turn down a chance to get blackmail evidence on a producer is one of the local laws.
"Tell me," I said.
She nodded, trotted over and plopped on my knees. And, while she tried her best to make me-and I tried to stay pure for her mother upstairs, she told me.
"It was last year, when Mavis-she hates me to call her Mother-Mavis got let out from her contract. What she did was rent this apartment right next to Paul Reed. Then she let him make her a few times. He's easy to seduce when he's loaded. Then she left him alone with me. I was supposed to be her cousin of nineteen.
"So he took off my clothes and made love to me. He was two hundred and eighty-four through two hundred and ninety-eight. Mavis had this infra-red camera set up to take pictures. Then she showed the pictures to Paul and asked him to marry her. Or she'd have the book thrown at him."
I shook my head slowly. It wasn't a pretty story, but many a local marriage has had a much less savory beginning.
She took my head shaking to mean doubt.
"That is so true," she said petulantly. "I still have a couple of the pictures-Mother doesn't know I have them, of course. They're wild. I was only fifteen at the time, but I look much older. In this one picture I'm lying on my bed with my legs opened-"
"Yes, yes," I said hastily. "I'm sure your story's true." I glanced again at my watch. Seven twenty-five. "Look, honey, I have to make, uh, tracks now. Let me go, huh?"
She obediently wriggled away, and I straightened my trousers. Then I had her reconnect the door buzzer. I buzzed it. Mavis, upstairs, released the catch, and I breezed up the stairs toward her bedroom.
"In here, stud," she called from a lighted doorway, and I turned and entered-but not before I'd caught a glimpse of her daughter at the foot of the stairs, grinning in a lewd manner.
"Well, lover," snapped Mavis. "And where have you been?"
"It's a long story," I said.
"Well, I still think if you'd really wanted you could have gotten here on time," she snapped angrily.
"But darling," I protested. "It was the worst accident I've ever seen on the freeway-five cars piled up. I had to stop and help out. I honestly think one old man would have died if I hadn't been there to put a tourniquet on his arm."
"Humph, think more of a little old fink than you do of me." She was petulant now.
"Baby, it's pretty hard to just drive off and leave a scene like that." I walked over, took her by the shoulders, turned her, slid my arms around her waist and pulled her to me.
"Mmmm," she said. "What were you saying?"
"Huh? Oh, I said it's-"
She put her hand over my mouth to stop me from talking. "Yes," she murmured, "yes, indeed. You are glad to see me, aren't you?" She wriggled against me, bumped me suggestively with her hips. "You're about as excited as you can get," she said happily. "I can tell. By the flush of your face and the gleam in your eye."
I grinned to myself. I was plenty lewdly excited all right-thanks to her daughter.
She pushed me away suddenly. "Go take a shower," she ordered. "You smell of car grease and gasoline. Hateful accidents."
There was an actress' imagination for you. The only thing I smelled of was after shave lotion-and her daughter's scent. I didn't argue with her, though, but went into her elaborately laid out bathroom and took a quick shower. I didn't bother dressing again, just toweled myself dry, then wrapped the towel around my middle.
She had a brace of drinks ready. She laughed when she saw me in my towel. "Darling, that towel may cover you-but it doesn't exactly conceal you."
I looked down. She was right, I was showing beneath. I grinned, tossed the towel aside.
"Mmm, you're for me," she said. "Grr. Wait a minute. Stop right there. Close your eyes."
I stopped, closed my eyes. As you've most likely gathered, she had been hitting the bottle during the twenty-five minutes I'd kept her waiting. Also since. And no doubt previously. Not that I minded. On the contrary, I like making love to drunken women. They're so much more uninhibited, so much more willing to try anything do anything. So-something soft hit me. I opened my eyes. "What the ... ?"
She giggled-sounding, the irrelevant thought struck me, remarkably like her crazy daughter.
"I just tossed one of my garters at you," she giggled. "You know, like ring-toss?"
"My nose," I said with dignity, "is not that long."
"That's what you think. Let me try the other garter." She threw her other garter, but at another longer extension of me. "Good for me!" she crowed. "Aren't I talented?" She giggled again. "Can I have my garters back, please?"
"Sure," I said, and walked over to her. She reached out and took her garters from me.
A warm thrilling tingle pulsed through me-the kind of warm, thrilling tingle I experience whenever an excited female touches any part of my body. Especially certain more sensitive areas. "Yes," I gasped, "yes, indeed. Why don't you-"
"Give you your drink," said Mavis whirling around and picking up the glasses. She handed me mine without spilling much. I drank thirstily. After my brush with Nancy I needed a drink. And Mavis was way ahead of me.
Except in the matter of clothes. I was wearing nothing but a smile. Mavis on the other hand, was wearing quite a bit. Not that I minded. The flimsy garments she was wearing were those women have traditionally worn in the expectation of having them removed.
A flimsy negligee buttoning-and unbuttoning-in front. A garter belt. Sheer stockings. A tantalizingly designed bra. And earrings. Dangly sexy earrings.
Funny thing about earrings. To any woman-and to any experienced man-it's a kind of a sensual bridge, removing a woman's earrings. Like you don't take them off unless you plan to take off everything else she has on. (Sure, sure-in a parked car a girl might take off her own earrings because space is cramped and her earrings are in the way. But we weren't in a parked car.)
I drank my drink down fast, put the glass down, reached out with both hands and, gently, removed her earrings.
She began to breath heavily, her lovely blonde head tilted back. She too, knew that this was the first step in the age old ritual dance of love.
One earring, two earrings. They tinkled on the bureau where I tossed them.
Her eyes were lidded; watchful yet inviting. I clasped her head between my hands, pulled her to me, let my lips brush against her lips. Sparks seemed to fly. Then our lips met and mashed softly together, and hormones tingled all over my body. Her tongue, shy as a maiden, touched my lips, then darted experimentally to my mouth. Our tongues fenced, played exotic games.
Meanwhile, our hips, as if by accident, bumped together, then swayed together-or rather, in counterpoint.
Our kiss lasted a long time, then we broke and she clung to me, her arms tight around my chest, her cheek nestled against my cheek (she was a good head taller than her daughter.)
For a while we clung together, let our bodies slowly sway and twist together. Then, as if we were both obedient to an age-old ritual-as we were-moved apart just far enough so that my fingers-helped now and then by her fingers-could unbutton each button of her negligee. I turned her, pulled the wispy silken garment down over her shoulders, helped it slide sibilantly to the carpet.
Naked now save for her bra and garter belt she again clung to me, clung to me while my hands stroked and explored the smooth, firm contour of her back, while my hands moved from her sleek shoulders to her softly yielding full buttocks.
Midway up her back my hand-I only needed one hand, of course-unleashed the clamps of her bra. I felt the exciting give of elasticized cloth and pushed her gently from me so that my eyes could feast on the bare beauty of her revealed breasts as the bra fell off of them.
I must admit she had nice boobs! Earlier at the studio, I hadn't realized just how full and firm and richly packed her chest lumps had been. Now I could see-and drool over. Far, far bigger than her daughter's breasts, her mighty mammaries swayed in proud erection that brought to mine some of the all time greats of the screen....
Full and firm and surgingly sag-free; gigantic and hemispherically delightful; uptilted and drum-taut; ripplingy resilient yet fantastically firm.
Boobs to think about, breasts to lathe one's fevered face, breasts to fool with and fondle, pat and prod, pinch and poke, clasp and cling to, nuzzle and nestle against, buffet and bounce....
Breasts such as she proudly revealed to me (her head proudly high, her shoulders proudly held back the better to display her swaying spheres), breasts like that are the stuff of legend-or at least of day dreams. Breasts such as she owned are the kind of breasts all adolescent males wistfully dream of-dreams of running over barefoot, having and holding, squeezing and stroking, playfully punching and pinching. And gently biting; and savoring with lascivious lips and torrid touch ...
I couldn't help myself. I meant to strip her slowly, with suave sophistication-but one long, long look at those boobs of hers, and I buried my face in the happy valley between them, began to nuzzle them, nibble them.
Against my demanding lips she shoved the creamy breast flesh, flesh that made my tongue tingle tracing the succulent curves, the turgid firmness of the terrific tip....
At last I pulled my face and lips away from the dual desire domes of her bliss balloons, and set about stripping her completely.
Not that I had much more to remove. Just shoes, stockings and garter belt.
I dropped to my knees in front of her, lifted first her left foot, then her right, easing off her high heeled shoes. Then I let my eager hands slide up, up the sleek column of her leg, baring exciting inch after inch of smooth sleek, resilient, utterly tempting flesh. Down, down her leg I slid her stocking-and each inch of fragrant flesh I uncovered I saluted with a dozen fervent kisses.
At last the stocking was completely free of her dainty foot, and I kissed each of her toes in turn and-began all over again with her other leg.
Soon, all too soon she was shoeless and without stockings. All she was wearing now was her garter belt.
I began to unclasp it, musing, as my fingers fumbled with the clasps, upon what a curious and exotically exciting garment a girl's garter belt was. Totally functional in some respects, it yet was the most sublimely revealing garment a girl could wear. I concealed nothing of interest-only accented with commendable economy of cloth.
I hardly needed to remove it, in fact, everything I felt like doing I could do just as well with the garment still on. Perhaps "Get that darn garter belt off me, will you, honey?" she said, panting. "It's kind of tight."
So I removed the garter belt too.
Now she was naked.
And eagerly available.
And all for me.
Still on my knees before her, I paused before rising to my feet and making love to her.
"Kiss me, you fool ... " she implored.
So I kissed her. I slid my hands around to cup and clasp the smooth, burnished joyousness of her firm, marvelously flexible buttocks, smooth as oiled ice, wild as sin itself, as tempting as a tree full of ripe apples. My fingers dug deliriously at the fresh, firm....
Smooth, soft, silken as a woman can be was the flesh of her warm waist to my lips. She squirmed swayed, twisted in utter ecstasy as I continued to kiss her, kissing her deeply, kissing her soft lips as every woman should be kissed, ought to be kissed.
I held her firm, held her tight with my hands clasped over happy handfuls of rapture-packed flesh, held her for my slow, studied, suggestive kisses. She jerked and twitched and gasped as if I were prodding a sensitive nerve.
Vaguely I was conscious of sensation on my shoulders. What was she doing? Ah, yes-her nails were raking frantic furrows across my shoulders. She must be beside herself with passion, overcome with delight.
Now was the time. The time to begin the end game, the good game, the greatest game of all.
I stopped kissing her warm, quivering waist and bending her roughly, carelessly, folded her over my shoulder, carried her to the bed, let her drop.
As I'd anticipated, she bounced excitingly-by which I mean her gigantic breasts gyrated wildly, exotically. Then she lay still, looking at me. Imploringly. Beseechingly. Her long lovely legs had opened wide, her arms were lifted in silent plea.
She was ready.
Ready nothing, she was wild-half out of her mind with longing for me.
So I put myself into her hot, ready tunnel.
That lasted a long, long time. Longer than I had any hopes for. Almost as long as the longest time I have ever experienced before. Not because she was so good-though she was good, supremely, superbly good-not because I was better. Because I achieved the calculating control over my actions that all men long to have and few do. Perhaps because, as they say, practice makes perfect. Perhaps because I'd had such a thorough workout the night before that I was, to an extent, de-sensitized; relaxed. Perhaps because I was a bit drunk-that often helps prolong the glorious journey-provided one doesn't get too drunk. More likely because I was just lucky that night; as all men know, some nights one does better than others. Some nights everything's over in a flash-other nights that engine keeps working away for hours on end-or so it seems. No matter.
No matter the cause-the finish was what counted and the fiery lust of pleasure was something.
I was perspiring from every pore and she-and the whole bed-were soaked in sweat when the game ended.
I felt like cheering, but hardly had the strength to gasp.
We lay, panting, side by side for a long while. Then she struggled to a sitting position, smiled at me drunkenly. Drunk in part from booze, in part from loving.
"Best darn stud I ever had in me," she gasped. I shrugged modestly. "Wanna try again?" I gaped at her.
"Later, I mean." She smiled at me, sweat dripping from her forehead, her cheeks, her chin. She really dug me, I had to admit that. Few partners I'd eve had had been able to match her stamina, her enthusiasm. And Mavis, I noted absently, had performed her epic performance while three-quarters loaded.
"Yeah," I gasped. "Soon."
"Good. Give a girl a drink, huh?"
"Sure," I said. I slid off the bed, fell on my face managed to climb unsteadily to my feet.
And as I climbed I thought.
Not nice thoughts, I must admit. I thought: I'm too bushed to do anything now, too bushed even to thin! about doing anything. But in a while I'll be ready to try again. And if this is what Mama can do-wha does Daughter have waiting?
Not a nice thought. Not at all. On the other hand, think every normal man that is to say, every cold blooded, self-centered erotically oriented man-would have had the same notion.
"Drink, coming right up," I said. I found the bottles of booze and mix-the ice cubes had long since liquidated themselves. I mixed myself a stiff drink-Mavis, after all, was way ahead of me-looked around. She was lying on the bed, eyes closed, still gasping, a naked gleaming, sweat-drenched lust firm. Ready for a rest, no doubt.
But she wouldn't rest all night, that was for sure. Unless I made sure she did.
On the table before me, behind the booze bottles, was the usual feminine mess that women plaster on their faces at night. Plus perfume. Plus lipstick. Plus make-up. Plus-pills.
Several kinds of pills. The first kind was what I expected to find. The second was a bottle of vitamin pills. The third, sleeping pills. Yes, indeed. Just what the doctor ordered.
I dumped a bunch into my hand.
"Drink coming right up," I said. I tilted the glass toward her lips. She drank eagerly.
"Here, "I said.
"What's that?"
"Vitamin pills. Gotta keep up your strength." I slipped a couple into her mouth, tilted the glass. She gulped, swallowed them. "Good girl. Try two more. That's it. Down the hatch."
"Don't need no vitamins," she muttered, "just a little rest. Then-you and me, baby. You and me."
"Sure." I said. "A couple more pep pills."
"You're the greatest, Joey."
"Dane," I corrected. "Dane Hanlon."
"Of course. Dane. You're the greatest of all. Dane-" A sly girlish grin. "You wanna go steady?"
"Well...."
"You know how to drive a Rolls?"
"I can learn," I said eagerly.
"Start learning." She smiled at me. Patted me. "We'll pick it out tomorrow. Any model you choose. You like that? Good. Now-now let me rest a while. Then we'll start again, huh?"
"Right," I said. "Just take these last vitamin pills..
She frowned. "Did-didn't I take some?"
I laughed at her. "You're dreaming darling. Drink that down. That's the girl." I kissed her full on the lips. "Now rest a while, doll-and when you wake up, we'll start again-when I can get up."
"Sweet," she murmured, and then closed her eyes. Her breathing almost at once became steady, regular.
I poured myself another quick drink, downed it, found her alarm clock and set it forward two hours. A couple hours of well needed rest ought to bring my studability to working par for this hot babe's hotter daughter.
What a family.
CHAPTER SEVEN
When I got to Nancy's room, like a bee to a flower, I softly tried to open it and almost fell into the room.
The lights were on. She was sleeping in the middle of a huge bed, a sheet covering her. Beside her was a big stuffed bear. I removed it. I don't mind ravishing child-women now and then-or more often-but I don't like being reminded of their childishness.
I pulled the sheet off the bed. Her nubile body gleamed exotically. A teen-aged love goddess sprawled in unconscious abandon. She was lying on her back, her plump young breasts staring up at the ceiling, her youthfully full legs parted, blatantly-and enticingly....
I reached out, shook one of her breasts. She woke instantly, looked at me and smiled. She stretched.
"You were a long time," she said petulantly. It might almost have been her mother's voice.
"I had to put your mother to bed," I said. "And then I had to rest a while."
She smiled at me and said, "You look rested. Too rested."
"Don't kid yourself," I told her. "I've had two hours sleep. I need no more."
She half sat up on her elbows. She stared at the door. Despite her studied arrogance, it was obvious she was more than a little frightened of her mother.
"What-what's she doing? Is she asleep?"
"Sound asleep. Breathing like a buffalo. Believe me, she's not about to wake up." I chuckled. "I slipped her plenty of sleeping pills."
The daughter let herself slide back to a prone-and wanton position on the bed.
I hadn't been kidding about Mavis posing no threat. When the alarm had jangled me into wakefulness I'd first given myself a quick wake-up shot of gin, and then tried, experimentally, to wake her up.
No soap. She'd slept with stertorous breathing through all my pinchings, slappings and pokings. I'd smacked her pretty hard, too, partly to make sure she was really out, partly because it gave me irrational pleasure to smack such huge and tender looking breasts hard. Nothing. She had slept right through it all. I'd even nipped, fairly hard-though not hard enough to draw bruises, of course-both her big, vulnerable looking nipples. No reaction.
I told her daughter, "There's no danger of her interrupting us. She's going to sleep soundly the whole night through. While we...."
She reached out for my masculinity. "Yes," she whispered. "Right now-quickly. I want you, Dane. I need you,-immediately!"
That was the way I felt, too. I'd spent long enough in the subtleties of preliminary love-making with Mavis. The daughter was going to get the end game-first. And that was just what she got.
I climbed up on the bed-and climbed right into Nancy. For a moment or two I had myself beside her gloriously youthful, exhilaratingly naked young charm-then I threw myself into her snug tunnel.
She was, in a number of ways a much smaller girl than her mother. Shorter, less heavy and-smaller, tighter.
"Oof!" she gasped. "You're so huge!"
"Too much?" I asked. "Uh, uh. Just the right size."
"That's what I think, Nancy." I told her. "Just right. Hold me baby." She giggled. "I don't have any alternative." I tried moving.
"Oh my!" she squealed. "You're just too much."
I didn't say anything-I was too busy babbling maniacally with pleasure. Oh, what I experienced-oh how squeezingly tight claspingly, her sweet, round young arms held me as another part of her clasped me squeezingly.
"Treat me just a bit more gently, if you can," she gasped.
"Okay," I grunted, "only I don't want to-"
"I don't care if you destroy me!" squealed Nancy suddenly, "Dane go-now-all the way." I slid in the limit.
I don't know which was louder-her squeal of rapture-or my own cry of lust.
The sensation-indescribable.
I moved more. And then again-harder.
"You are going to rip me in two!" screamed Nancy. '' You' re k illing me with j oy!"
"Sorry," I gasped.
"Don't waste time being sorry-do it again!" I did.
She was wild. Wild and knowledgeable. We were nitro and glycerine. Matches and gasoline. We were-we were the most....
"Don't stop," she gasped, "can you just go on forever! Oh! you lover-that's right! Oh my, yes! Faster!"
That's what the little tramp said. And more. Only I didn't hear anything else she said on account of I was out of my senses on account of there was a roaring, pounding rush of rapture flooding my brain, my whole body as the teasing torment of her became too wonderful to tolerate, too pleasurable to bear-and her body jolted as if she'd been hit by a heavy stick, and mine began to jerk in recoil as golden thrill after thrill blasted through my body to my brain, and again and again my body jolted, convulsively, ecstatically-while she behaved as if she had been blasted by boulders striking again and again-a machine-gun song of bliss, a blazing, blinding, battering, mind-bending sin-song of fleshly fulfillment.
As if my whole being had suddenly became a magnum of champagne that was being shaken and shaken-golden, foaming, bubbling, cascading. She caroled her joy in clarion cries of keening ecstasy; shriek after shriek of sin-sound lusting tune and love-mad melody with a staccato beat.
Jolt after jolt of love-gushing fire seared through me, was searing, burning, consuming, and into her body, everything was over. I fell instantly asleep.
She woke me less than an hour later, woke me with her kisses and her hands.
Usually I sleep pretty soundly, but no man, no normal man-not even an abnormal man-could sleep through the kind of kisses she was favoring me with, and where she was kissing me.
I arched and grinned at her. "What," I asked, "do you think you're doing?"
Which was actually a pretty foolish question. What was she doing was obvious. Wonderfully, glowingly obvious. What a cute, depraved little girl. Crouched the way she was, a naughty grin on her face, she looked as much like a school girl as a psychotic sinner. She ought to be clasping some candy, like adolescents, in the movies-instead of-well, why not? She seemed to get a kick out of doing what she was doing. And I sure liked it.
I lay back on the bed, folded my arms behind my head, closed my eyes.
"Keep up the good work, kid," I urged. "Excite me all the way."
She paused in her kissing. "All the way?"
"All the way," I urged.
"Okay. Only if I'm nice to you-will you be nice to me?"
"Sure," I said. And then I stopped saying words and started making sounds-earthy, grunting, lusty, animal sounds. And in my fevered imagination that was as if I were about to strike it rich, find the mother lode, hit the gusher well, the ultimate of lust release, the treasure at the end of the rainbow of sin and degradation.
Time passed....
A short time, in some respects; a long time, in other ways....
And then we were again lying side by side, our satiated bodies touching, her right side warming my left side.
"That was nice," she murmured. "I'll bet you were nicer to me than I was nice to you."
"Uh, uh," I said. "What you did for me-well, words can't describe how much I appreciate that."
"Thank you. Lots of men have told me that's one of the best things I do."
I sighed. "Nancy, honey-let me give you a priceless piece of advice. When you're in bed with one man, don't talk about other men. It's just-not right."
"Oh, thank you for telling me."
"Don't mention it."
We lay quietly side by side for a while. Then I said. "Tell me about what you did with Paul, and about the pictures your mother took."
"But you said not to talk about-"
"That's different. I mean, I'm different. I already know about-about the other men in your life."
She sighed. "The men in my life! That sounds so delire!"
"Delire?"
"Delirious. You know. I mean it sounds so grown up."
"Yeah, adult. Know what I bet? I bet you don't really have any pictures of you and, uh, your mother's husband in bed."
"He wasn't mother's husband then. And yes I do, too."
"No you don't."
"Yes I do."
"Then show me."
"All right-I will!" And she squirmed off the bed-that's the only word to describe the snake-hipped, wriggling way in which she got off-and trotted over to a bureau, bent over.
Wow, I thought-any human being with buttocks like that must be old enough to make love. I watched while she burrowed her way through a nest of filmy skimpy silky underwear in the bottom drawer, came up with a pair of photographic prints. She trotted back to the bed, held them up for me to see.
I saw.
Wo wee....
I reached for them-but Nancy was already trotting back to the bureau. She re-hid the prints, closed the drawer, trotted back to the bed, lay down beside me.
"Well?" she asked.
"You're right," I said. "Those are wild pictures all right."
"I'm a pretty wild girl," she said proudly.
I didn't argue wit her. I just lay there comfortably conscious of her young nakedness beside me, and let my thoughts wander.
What a witch her mother was. Or was she? In her early thirties, her career nowhere, let out from her contract-she must have been really desperate a year ago. A marriage to a producer even a minor producer like Paul Reed, must have seemed like her only salvation.
So she'd tricked him into it. So what? Plenty of girls blackmail men into marriage, one way or another. So she'd used her own underage daughter as the bait for the trap. So what? She must have figured her career came first. As an actor, I could understand an actress thinking that.
Heck, I'd help sell my own daughter. Though if I did she'd be too young. Too young for most tastes, at least. Though according to rumors, there was one producer who-but I didn't have a daughter.
Poor fat old Paul Reed. What a jolt he must have gotten when Mavis told him her daughter wasn't nineteen but fifteen; wasn't her cousin but her daughter. And when she waved those prints in his face....
Hit the fan.
Yeah, those prints could really ruin Paul. He'd do plenty to keep them under cover. Like maybe giving me a good part-maybe even the leading role-in one of his TV series. Great.
All I needed were those two photos Nancy had hidden under her panties in the bottom drawer. I slowly, very slowly turned my head. Was she asleep? Would she awaken if I Her eyes flicked open. She turned and smiled at me. A smile sweet enough to melt lead. "Ready, Dane? I am!" She reached for my business.
"No," I protested. "It's only been a few minutes since-keep your little hands off-don't-I said don't-well ... if you get a kick out of that ... only that won't do you any good I ... oh, yes ... oh, my yes ... yeah, that's right ... won't do you any good, but do that anyway ... that's right ... that's...."
And, miraculously, I did find the strength. The strength to make both her and the bed squeal with pleasure.
And then the finish was over like a summer storm, and again I lay panting by her side, lay waiting for her to sleep.
I goofed. I was the one who fell asleep.
And then-Then came the ugly bit.
I don't know what woke me. A sixth sense, maybe. Perhaps some sound, some cry or sob or moan in the house. All I know was that all at once I was awake. Alone on the bed.
I swung my feet off the sheet, stood up. No Nancy. I moved fast. I had the bureau drawer open and the two prints out in under three seconds.
Where to hide them? My clothes. Only my clothes were in her mother's room....
I was out the door and moving down the corridor like a wraith within seconds. I didn't know where Nancy was. I didn't care. The bathroom, maybe. Or maybe down in the kitchen having a snack. The heck with her.
The door to Mavis' room was still open, Mavis was still asleep.
I slipped the prints into my inside jacket pocket, breathed a sigh of relief-and triumph. I shot a glance at Mavis. Still sound asleep. A mighty Amazon of a woman lying naked there on the bed. I paused to. admire her over-size balloons. Too bad I had to hustle back to her daughter. Tired though I was, those breasts looked good enough to Panic choked my throat. Those breasts. Those huge, handsome, up-flung breasts-there was something horribly wrong with them.
They were still. Unmoving. Mavis had stopped breathing. No wonder the room was so quiet, no wonder-I fought down the panic, took a step toward the bed, reached out, touched her. Her flesh was cold. She was dead.
"You killed her!"
I spun around. Nancy was standing in the doorway-standing staring at me with hate-filled eyes that mirrored madness. And in her hand was a long a wickedly long knife, and from the look on her face, she wanted to use it on me, which she tried to do.
CHAPTER EIGHT
There I was, stark naked and vulnerable, while an equally naked young girl was trying to stab me in the naked body.
I turned to run-only there was no place to run. So I flung myself over the bed, rolling over Mavis' cold body, scrambling to my feet on the other side of the bed. Nancy paused-maybe she had some vestigial sentimental qualms about stomping on her mother's body-and ran around the bed. I flung a chair at her. I missed, but the idea of throwing something must have caught her crazed fancy. She hurled the knife at me. And missed.
She hissed like a scalded cat and charged me, fingernails set to rake my face. That kind of charge is old stuff with me-I can deal with any nude girl who has nothing more lethal than her pinkies to menace me.
I stepped briskly to one side, kicked her. She doubled up, retching. Iwas at her side in an instant, jabbing hard at her neck with the middle knuckle of my right hand.
I'm karate expert-but on a set once I got to talking with this guy who was coaching the star on karate tactics, and he showed me just where in the neck you can put a man-or girl-to sleep fast. I was lucky. I hit the right nerve first try. She went out like a snapped off light.
Dead? No-she was still breathing. Just unconscious.
I felt like retching, but poured myself a drink instead. What a spot to be in! Here I was, naked, in a house I had no legal business being in, looking at two naked women. One unconscious, the other dead.
What a lousy break! It was obvious what had happened. Nancy had wakened, begun to worry if her mother was still asleep, tip-toed down the hall-and found Mavis dead of-of what? A heart attack?
At any rate Nancy, being unstable, had blamed me, flashed down to the kitchen to get the biggest knife she could fine. It was just good luck I wasn't unmanned for nothing. I certainly hadn't killed her mother. All I'd done was give her a good time, then feed her a few I went cold inside. Those sleeping pills. How many had I fed her? I thought back, trying to recall just what had happened. Eight, I decided. I'd given her a pair of pills four times. Eight. Not a lethal dose, surely. Unless Another spasm of cold shot through me. Unless they'd been barbiturates. I swore. Why hadn't I stopped to think? There'd been that famous case, the guy who'd been a big star for years-and I'd read other reports, too. Barbiturates and alcohol combined, somehow, to form a lethal combination! There's been almost a score of deaths before the medics realized what was happening-that pills and booze in quantities that would be harmless taken separately, combined to kill.
So.
So maybe I had killed her. Not intentionally, though. And why hadn't the stupid witch warned me her sleeping pills were barbiturates? She hadn't known she was taking them, that was why. She'd been groggy, groggy from lust and booze. Groggy enough to swallow them without complaint.
I suppose I should have felt, well, remorse or something. I didn't. What the heck, it was an accident. I wasn't to blame. Only-
I glanced down at her daughter, still sprawled unconscious at my feet. Only little Miss Kook had me tagged as her mother's murderer. I groaned and clutched my head. A hammy gesture, maybe, but an actor gets in the habit of acting out his feelings.
A nightmare avenue seemed to be opening up before me. An avenue flooded with the kind of publicity I could never survive-not and still have a career in acting.
What had been that guy's name, back when-the one whose career had been smashed overnight, just because a girl died after one of his parties? They even acquitted him in court-but that didn't save his career. He was destroyed overnight.
The way I'd be destroyed. I couldn't survive the kind of trial I could see looming ahead of me.
I could just see-and hear-some assistant D.A.-no, it would be the D.A. himself-summing up for the jury: relishing the attention, the publicity; delighted to have such a juicy case, such a hideous villain to denounce in ringing tones....
This monster-this less than a man, this actor-has admitted that he gleefully agreed to commit adultery with a woman a mother, he had met only that day. Naked in bed with the woman he seduced, he forced a poisonous combination of pills and alcohol into her. Why? So he could spend the rest of the night undisturbed with her young, innocent teen aged daughter. Even as the body of the mother grew cold, this monster was despoiling her daughter. You have heard, in closed court, just what this monster forced this young girl to do-even as her mother was drawing her last breath. And what did this monster do once he learned his lethal potion had done its evil work, that this child's mother was no more? I will tell you what he did. He kicked the heartbroken child in the stomach, that's what....
Yeah, it'd be rough. They couldn't get me for murder, I didn't think just statutory rape. But I'd be a dead man. Career-wise I'd be finished.
And my career was my whole life.
It wasn't exaggerating a bit to say my very life was threatened by-by little Miss Kook. By a looney teenage tramp who didn't deserve to I glanced down at her, still unconscious at my feet. A couple of yards from her soft young body the knife gleamed on the carpet, looking as bright and cold as murder.
I knew then just what I had to do. When a man's career, his life, is at stake, he has no alternative but to take heroic measures.
I felt calm suddenly, assured, confident. I knew I couldn't afford to make one mistake, and I wasn't going to make any mistake. My mind began checking off the things I would have to do, checking them off as rapidly and dispassionately as a computer.
A few yards away was a phonograph-Mavis evidently liked to play records in her room. Popular records, too. Well, she was a woman of vulgar taste. I turned the machine on.
While it warmed up, I bent over Nancy, grasping one of her pink nipples, twisted. She didn't stir. She'd be out for a while yet. Good.
The phonograph began to hum. I flipped through the records, selected one by a rock group-the Cockroaches, or some name like that-a record I knew was on the juke boxes. I turned the control knob to base, turned the volume up.
Then I dialed Wently.
"Dane? What in blazes do you mean calling me this hour? Don't you-"
"Sorry ol' girl-though you'd be up and all that, I mean-"
"I can't hear you. Where are you?"
"Bar on Sunset. Wait. Shut the door of the booth. Juke box kind of loud."
I cupped my hand over the phone, turned the volume down a bit.
"Just feelin' lonely. Thought maybe you'd join me for nightcap."
Wently swore. "You're drunk. Anyhow, I thought you were making merry with Mrs. Reed tonight."
"She stood me up. Went to her house, rang and rang
-nobody there."
Wently laughed. "So your vanity was so hurt you went off and got plastered. Actors. Go home and sleep it off."
She hung up.
I turned off the phonograph, put the record away. So I was in a bar on Sunset-so I couldn't be here, could I? No. I had an alibi, albeit a thin one, for the time of
-I flinched mentally at the word-at the time of the murder.
What next? Yes. I got the two photos out of my jacket pocket, wiped them free of fingerprints, then crumpled them, slipped them between the fingers of Mavis' right hand. The murder motive.
I picked up the knife. No need to worry about fingerprints-the handle was knurled. I held the knife so that the tip was almost touching Nancy's chest beneath her breast. It would be very easy-physically easy, at least-to shove the point home.
But I couldn't do it that way. She wouldn't bleed right, the blade wouldn't enter right. The killing had to look like one done in anger, done to a standing person, not one prone on the floor.
So I waited. Waited patiently until she came to. I even helped her to her feet. She seemed dazed, fingered the spot on her neck where I'd knocked her unconscious. The bruise wouldn't show. I'd checked already. Neither would there be a bruise where I'd kicked her.
Nancy, looking and acting like a sleep walker, walked unsteadily to the bed, stared down at Mavis. Then she turned and walked slowly towards me, her lips working. She stopped when she saw the knife in my hand. Stopped but made no move to escape, to defend herself. I had the knife grasped for stabbing, not thrusting, because I figured a woman like Mavis wouldn't use a knife the right way. Mavis and I were about the same height, so I didn't have to crouch or anything.
She still hadn't raised her arms to protect herself. She just stood there smiling, her eyes not the eyes of a sane woman. She was still smiling when I stabbed her.
I did what had to be done-prints, drinking glasses, the rest. I'd acted in enough mystery movies to know what needed doing.
My car wasn't in front of the house, that was okay. Nobody saw me, nobody tried to stop me. The streets were deserted all the way home.
By the time I climbed into bed I was shaking all over. Nervous reaction. It was over an hour before I dropped off to sleep.
And I don't mind admitting that I shed a couple of tears before sleep came. Why not? I'm human after all-and I'd never before come so close to having such a good hold on a producer.
So ended Wednesday.
The phone woke me. It was Wently. She got right to the point.
"Dane, baby, you don't know how lucky you were you didn't make the Reed household last night. Real nasty scene."
"Huh?" I said. "What happened?"
"Murder and suicide. They got some of it on the news already-but I got the straight dope. Wently still has a few pals down at the D.A.'s office. Yes, a real nasty scene."
There was a bottle of whiskey by my bed. I uncorked it, took a pull. A long pull. "What happened?"
"Well, the way the cops see it, little Nancy Reed-Mavis' daughter-was playing bedtime games with Paul. Then she makes the mistake of telling Mama, even flaunting a couple of pix showing her and Paul playing stark naked. That or Mavis had 'em taken, they don't know which. Anyhow, the mother gets so mad she carves herself a hunk of Nancy's chest. Then she tosses down a fistful of pills and flops on the bed to suicide. And for once, Mavis does something right-she did kick off."
I took another pull of the whiskey bottle. "Like you say," I said, "a real nasty scene."
"Right. The cops are putting the hush on it as much as they cannot sense smearing the TV and movie industry more than necessary. Don't be surprised if the final version has it that Nancy stabbed herself on account of she found Mama dead from an accidental overdose. With no mention of the pix."
"Okay," I said. "I won't be surprised. The-the cops are satisfied, huh? I mean the case is about closed?"
"Far as I know, Dane boy, far as I know. I called you right up on account of I figured you'd be-concerned."
"Me?"
"Yeah, you. You had a date-a broken date-with Mavis last night, didn't you?"
"Oh. Yeah, sure."
Wently laughed. "You don't sound so good, Dane. Hangover?"
"Yeah." I said., trying to make my voice sound sheepish.
"Tsk, tsk. Trouble with you man is you're not a drinking man. If you were you wouldn't call a person up an hour after bar closing time and make like you were still drinking."
I felt sick. Too sick even to speak. Then I said, "Wently-Wently it didn't happen like that-"
"Of course it didn't happen, Dane boy. Nothing happened. Nothing that concerns me or one of my clients happened. So two chicks are dead. So I yawn. They weren't friends or clients. I'm on your side boy. You're a client."
"Wently," I said. "Wently, I got to tell you what really hap-"
"No you don't, Dane. I don't want to know. I'm just glad that phone call you made to me was the only slip you made. Just don't make a habit of it, huh? Call me back in an hour huh? I may have a job for you. You in shape to work? No hollow eyes-furtive glance-shaking hands?"
I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked okay. I looked at my hand. No tremor. "Sure, I'm ready to work."
"Right. See you." She hung up.
I got up, stared at myself in the full-length mirror I didn't look like a murderer. I didn't feel like one, either. I felt like-like a man who's just lived through a harrowing experience, an experience he managed to extricate himself from through his own initiative and exertions.
No, I told myself, I'm no killer. Mavis' was an accidental death. And Nancy? Self-defense. She'd attacked me with a knife in her hand, hadn't she?
Attacked me with intent to kill. So I'd killed her. Self-defense. True, there'd been a time lapse between her murderous attack and my defensive stroke-but not much of a time lapse. Self defense. I felt somewhat better.
By the time I'd showered and shaved and made coffee I felt just fine. I did do some thinking, some serious thinking about Wently though. A great woman, she and a hard-working agent. But cold-blooded. For all she knew I might be a ruthless killer, instead of just a nice guy who'd gotten caught in a tight spot. And it didn't make any difference to her. All that mattered to her was that I was a client who might one day bring her a fat, steady commission.
One thing was sure. If I ever got the chance to dump her for another agent, another agent who could do more for me, I wouldn't hesitate. Why should I be loyal to a woman so calculating.
I called her, in an hour, and as I might have guessed, the witch didn't have a job for me. Not a paying job, anyhow, but Lee was cooking up another publicity deal and would I go along?
I said a vulgar word.
"Now, now Dane boy-Lee's done a lot for you, promotion-wise. You're in the new Screen Scene this month, did you know?"
"Yeah, Nancy ... I mean, someone told me."
"Nancy told you, huh? Famous last words? Watch it, boy, watch it. You don't know any Nancy. You never met her. All you know is what you read in the papers-and you don't read the papers."
"Sure I read the papers." I snarled.
"You do? Where's Pretonia?"
"Where? Is-isn't he in Asia?"
"That's where. Joe Pretonia. Elected Prime Minister of Borneo last week. You do read the papers.
And all this time I've been thinking you were ignorant, like most actors. Help Lee out this afternoon, huh?"
I said I would, got the details, and hung up.
The woman was a ghoul, I decided. Famous last words. A clown. Didn't she have any respect for the dead?
I thought it most unkind of her. She was a tricky schemer from way back.
CHAPTER NINE
Not too much later, I was at Lee's palace, enjoying myself poolside with a tall, cool, drinky-poo, listening to another free lance photo journalist.
Only I had to admit this particular one was a vast improvement over Sydney Gillian, the creep who'd dreamed up the topless bathing suit photo story.
"Dane," said Lee, "Meet Judy Laker-the prettiest and smartest free lancer on the West Coast."
I shook hands. She might or might not be smart, but I had to admit she was nice. Not movie star type beauty-more the girl next door type. Tall, reddish brown hair, freckles, alert and friendly eyes, shapely boobs and nicely curved hips. She was wearing close but not tight slacks, a man's sport shirt.
"Hi, Dane," she said. "Nice to know you. That was a cute story about you in this month's Screen Scene."
"Thanks," I said. "I haven't seen it yet." I tried to think of a compliment. "Laker, Judy Laker. Aren't you kind of famous? Seems to me I've heard your name before."
She laughed, shook her head, sending her soft hair flying. "Uh uh. You must be thinking of someone else. When I first started writing I used a pseudonym."
"Judy has a great idea for a photo essay, Dane-just great. Tell him your great idea, honey."
She grinned. She looked good grinning, like Jean Parker or someone. Though with more freckles. And, I decided after glancing again at her cleavage with closer interest that she had big boobs.
"I don't know if it's great," she said. "I just think it might sell. I kind of stole the idea from an article in the New York Clarion. It was an article about how some sports are 'in' and others 'out'. For instance, squash is 'in'-bowling way 'out'; sailboating 'in'-but motorboating's 'out'; surfing's so far 'in' it's on it's way 'out'; skydiving.-"
"Yeah, yeah," I said. "I get the idea. What about it?"
"A photo story. Mostly photos, short captions. Gimmick is it's a guide for fashionable young men-what sports are okay, which to avoid. Paired pictures. You and a girl. Sophisticated humor-tongue in cheek. Like it?"
I thought about it. I liked it. What I liked about it was that for once, I wouldn't be just a hunk of beefcake acting as a background prop for some nude or near-nude girl. Or would I?
"This girl," I said, "will she be naked?"
She shook her head. "I want this photo story to be humorous, not sexy. A naked girl is too distracting. Or perhaps I should say stimulating. When you have seen one naked girl in a photograph-especially a color photograph-she becomes the center of attraction. And you lose any kind of humorous or satirical effect."
"Well, you're the-heh, heh-writer," said Lee.
"But I think you're wrong. Look at those photo stories
"I know, I know," she broke in, "but I still say that a really naked looking naked girl-"
"Aren't all naked girls naked-looking?" I interrupted.
She shook her head. "It depends upon how much emphasis the picture places upon her secondary characteristics. I mean, a photo of a girl naked from the rear isn't necessarily provocative, any way. Not unless she has enormous buttocks. A slender nude photographed from the rear can look more-more esthetic than suggestive. Even a partial side view can be kind of mild-provided you only see part of her breast. And-"
She stopped suddenly and-of all things-blushed. She looked cute with her flushed face. She managed a smile and said, "I feel kind of funny talking about nude girls this way. I mean, not being a man I don't really know how men react to a picture of a girl without any clothes on. I'm just theorizing."
Lee and I both nodded. Then I said, "I think you're right, Judy. When I see a really naked-looking naked girl in a photograph-a chick with big boobs and nipples like stoplights-that's about all I look at. I don't give a darn if she's supposed to be Charlemaine's wife or Cleopatra exchanging gags with Ceasar. Yes, you're absolutely right-strong sex and humor don't mix."
Actually I had no particular thoughts on the subject one way or another, except I didn't want to appear in any photographs with a naked girl. If I did, I'd be just a background prop again.
"On the other hand," said Lee, frowning. "Stone suggestion is kind of essential if you're aiming at the men's magazines."
"Right," she said. "Cheesecake is fine. Bare legs. Low cleavage. Bare shoulders. Breasts out-lined by a sweater. You know. I don't want the girl to be any more bare than an underwear ad."
"Ohh," said Lee. "What girl do I have who looks good with clothes on? I know-Gladys Clarvin. Lovely figure. Huge boobs, wide hips, tiny waist. She'll be great even in a muu-muu. She's smart-she can act. I mean, she's got facial expressions. You know, sad, happy, uh, very sad, very happy. A real actress. You'll see."
And an hour later, after Gladys had arrived, we saw.
Lee was right, this doll would look voluptuous wrapped in half a dozen quilts. Kind of a pocket-sized sex goddess from the neck down, clean cut type features. Scandinavian looking golden hair-you know what I mean-hair that's so blonde it looks pale.
Lee introduced us, then nodded toward Judy. "Miss Laker here is a photo journalist. She wants to take a lot of pictures of you. If, that is, she decides you're the right type."
Gladys nodded. Then she reached behind her, a zipper purred-and the next thing any of us knew, she was wriggling deftly out of her dress. She stepped daintily out of it, and not every big-breasted, wide-hipped girl can manage to be dainty. Then she turned slowly, gracefully.
Judy had a point-a really naked-looking naked girl dominates the scene like nothing else can. Fifty stand-up comedians could have been telling jokes five feet away and I would have ignored them, I'd have ignored anything short of a dive-bombing raid until I'd gotten a good eyeful of Gladys.
A real blonde, she had the smooth, milk-white skin of a healthy European. Fantastically full and firm breasts, the tips like crimson horns. A waist I might not be able to circle with my hands but would have a lot of fun trying. Blatantly provocative hips, as the saying goes, she was broad where broads should be broad. Smooth, sleek, supple legs. And beautiful, beautiful blonde hair....
Also a blank, almost bored expression. She was showing us the merchandise, but she wasn't going to push, if you know what I mean.
Lee and I were grinning broadly. Judy looked completely startled.
Lee sniggered. "I appreciate-and I'm sure Dane here appreciates seeing your, ah assets Gladys. But Miss Laker wants to photograph you with clothes on."
"Oh!" she said. "Oh." And then-believe it or not
-she blushed. All the way to her lovely breasts. Amazing. In years in screenland I'd never seen a girl blush-and begun to wonder if blushing was an art lost in the Victorian age. And here two girls, Judy and Gladys had blushed for me within an hour.
Gladys turned, stepped quickly into her dress, began to pull it back on. Judy shot out of her chair, gave Lee and me a withering look, as if we were horny old men at a stag film instead of innocent-if leering
-bystanders, and helped the girl back into her dress. "It's my fault," said Gladys. "In all the time I've been a client of Lee's, every single photographer-and most of the married ones-couldn't wait to get my clothes off. I got in the habit of stripping first, so they wouldn't tear my gowns."
Judy shot us a quick, indignant look, as if we were to blame for the idiosyncrasies of free lance photographers. Lee smirked. Me, I said nothing. I just licked my lips and watched the two girls, and Judy stuffed handfuls of creamy breast flesh back into Gladys' dress.
Finally the two goodies were under cover again, and we got down to business. By which I mean Judy explained what she had in mind to Gladys who caught on right off-much to my surprise. I don't know why, but I more or less take for granted that most blondes are dumb, and that the bigger the boobs, the fewer the brain cells. A blonde as blonde as this girl-and with breasts like oversize melons-just had to be dumb. Only she wasn't. Gladys was a pretty smart cookie, in fact, and a natural comedienne.
The way Judy wanted to handle the photo story, Gladys and I would be demonstrating both the chic, in sports and the vulgar, out sports.
"The only difference," she explained, "will be in your facial expressions. For instance, knife throwing is in, so we might have Dane throwing a knife at Gladys. Dane will be looking bored-half asleep. Dig?"
We both nodded. Gladys practiced a few blase yawns. And, like I say, she was funny. Then we practiced a few other possible bits, such as that vintage wine drinking is out.
With a few wine bottles as props, she managed to look marvelously smashed. Like a suburban housewife trying hard to be cultured and drunk out of her skull. She looked so far out it was hilarious. Like all the great comediennes and a few, a very few other famous ones she could look funny as hell with just a slight change of facial expression.
How-did I do? I'm an actor, a good actor. A good actor can perform any role.
We started shooting right away. Judy had all her cameras and plenty of film in her car and, thanks to the fact that half a thousand publicity photographs had been taken there, Lee's sumptuous mansion was busy with all kinds of usable props.
"I'll probably eliminate all but the best eight or ten paired shots," Judy explained, "but I'd like to have as many to choose from as possible."
Which was okay by Gladys and me. A photo series like this was the best kind of publicity. And-I hardly dared think it-if the shots turned out really great, and Judy sold them to a really big circulation magazine, like the top ones-it could lead to anything. Like a TV series, or a movie contract.
And of course, Judy Laker was happy, since she was getting us as free models, plus the use of all kinds of props for nothing.
We worked hard.
We found archery equipment and posed for that. Cross-bow shooting is in (Gladys and I, in evening clothes, languidly aiming our cross-bow at an apple on the head of our 'butler"-played by Lee), but longbow shooting is out (Gladys' eyes rolling, face contorted with the effort of pulling her long-bow).
(Where did we get the clothes and costumes? Lee. I borrowed his things-we're about the same size-and Gladys borrowed clothes from the "harem" of starlets who used his mansion as a boarding house.)
We did both an in and out version of croquet, of squash, of swimming-Gladys in a form fitting red bathing suit was a visual piece I must say.
We even did a sky-diving pose. Wearing regulation white jump suits and helmets, with knapsacks rigged to look like parachutes on our backs, we were photographed plunging through the sky together. Once with bored, blase expressions-and Gladys looking through a lorgnette while I pulled on a cigarette holder, and once clutched each other in sweaty panic. Judy would decide, after she developed the prints, whether sky-diving would be in or out.
How did she get the shots? You guessed it-Gladys and I did our dive off the diving board over the swimming pool, and Judy took her shots shooting up from the poolside. Sky, after all, is sky, and in the finished prints we might be ten thousand feet up.
And if you think an actor's work is all play, you should try doing a belly flop into a pool with a whole bunch of bulky clothes on-and then climbing out, climbing into dry clothes, and doing it all over again.
On the other hand, not all the work that afternoon was thankless.
She'd been a little cool-no, that's not the word-crisply professional at first. Polite and friendly, but businesslike. As the afternoon wore on, however, she let her hair down a bit. With me, it's kind of instinctive to get in a few quick touches when I'm working with a girl. Gladys deftly evaded my hands all afternoon, but as the afternoon progressed, she wasn't quite so quick to move away from my palm or fingers. Indicative, I decided.
Also, as we changed costume-bathing suits to evening clothes to tennis shorts to ski clothes-she got a little more relaxed about changing in front of me. And why not, after all? I'd already seen her naked. All the same, it was a good trend.
If you've ever done any acting, you know how it is when an actor and actress work together. A kind of intimacy of feeding and emotion gets set up. More often than not, I'd say love scenes that take place on camera get completed off camera. Gladys and I weren't exactly doing love scenes, of course-we weren't really acting in the strict sense. All the same. All the same, I figured I had her just about made, figured it was just a question of her place or mine.
And all this, you understand, without our having exchanged lingering looks or whispered in each other's ear or said a word. At a certain hazy point during the afternoon we'd reached a degree of being simpatico that one or the other of us would be honor bound to chill by becoming professional and businesslike again-if one of us didn't want to bed the other that night.
So there you have the situation, as it was late in the afternoon, we were both working hard, but also buoyed by the unspoken understanding that we were going to love the stuffing out of each other later.
Lee-who got bored in mid afternoon and took off-caught on that Gladys and I were beginning to percolate in harmony, and he gave me a dead-pan wink as he left.
Now Judy couldn't see the handwriting, and she fell for me, I'm sorry to say.
CHAPTER TEN
I didn't realize it right off. In fact I didn't realize it until Gladys pointed the fact out to me. We-Gladys and I-were mixing ourselves some quick drinks by the pool. Lee had taken off already, and Judy had gone off to her car to get a light meter or some kind of photographic equipment.
Gladys leaned back in her deck chair and squinted at me over her drink and chest. "Be nice to her, Dane," she said, a trace of a twinkle in her eye.
"Who?"
"The little girl taking the pictures. Judy. She's gone ape over you in a nice way, in case you haven't noticed."
"What?"
"Fact. I suppose you're used to it, you gorgeous hunk of ego. Do all the little girls swoon over you, Dane baby?"
Well, while not all girls flip over me it is true that the majority of girls find me-appealing. I didn't figure it would be tactful to say this to Gladys, though, so I just gave a kind of boyish smile and told her she must be kidding.
Gladys made a ladylike rude noise. She smiled at me, an amused smile. "Why don't you be nice to her, cutie pie?"
I had an itch to tell her that if she called me cute names one more time she could shop for some new front teeth, instead I just said. "Nice, How?"
"You know, make shy advances toward her-bold ones would scare her off. Ask her hesitantly if she'd care to go out with you tonight. Se will, don't worry about that. Take her to a drive-in for supper. That's what she's most likely accustomed to, the Jolly Derby would make her nervous. Then take her to a movie-a family type movie. Buy her a bag of popcorn. Drive her home. Walk her to her door. Ask if you can come in but don't persist when she says no. Kiss her on the cheek and then make an awkward peck at her mouth. Than leave, turning to wave shyly just as you climb into your car."
I stared at her. "You some kind of hut or something? Nobody adult acts that way on a date these days."
She smiled. A funny kind of smile-wistful and cynical both. "They do, Dane, they do. I did. Trouble with us, baby, is we've been too long in a rough tough fast crowd." She laughed. "Believe it or not, I was the kind of nice girl Judy is not all that long ago."
"What happened?" I asked, my voice sounding like more of a sneer than I intended to do.
"What happened? I sold out, that's what. Sold out and put out and-once or twice when I had to-rented myself out by the night. Oh. I'm very wise now, mister. When a producer tells me drop around to my place tonight, I'd like you to meet a few of my friends, I expect his friends to be men. Without their pants on. I don't ask myself should . just ask myself will that help my career?"
She sighed, smoothed the dress she was wearing down over her huge breasts. Her twin boobs trembled lightly, like tightly coiled springs. "I wouldn't be surprised if little Judy there is just my age. But brother, what a difference in experience and outlook."
I frowned. Frankly, I distrust women who get dramatic or melodramatic about their lost innocence.
Not because they aren't easy to take-the more maudlin a girl gets, the easier it is to get her pants off-but because they do nutty things sometimes, like trying to kill themselves or something.
On the other hand, Gladys looked like a basically level girl. And she had a sense of humor. Someone, a girl who was majoring in human behavior at college once told me that a sense of humor is what keeps plenty of people from going crazy. Still....
Then I looked again at those full, fun-packed boobs of hers and decided what the heck, maudlin or not, crazy or not, I'm going to get into this babe's good graces tonight.
"Don't be silly," I said. "Judy what-s-her-name isn't in love with me-doesn't even have a crush on me. Besides, I can't make a date with her tonight. I've got something a lot more important-and a lot more fun-to do." I gave her the old smoldering look: the I'm for you look.
She gave me back the old speculative look: the maybe you are but how good are you look.
High voltage, on a low level, crackled between us.
Then her gaze shifted and out of the corner of my eye I saw Judy coming toward us.
"My place or yours?" I said softly.
"Yours, I guess," she muttered. "I have a roommate."
"Lucky guy."
"A she roommate, you clugg."
"I found it," burbled Judy bustling up. "It had rolled back of my seat. Well, I guess we're all set for this shot. Now Dane, if you move back just a trifle and-" And she went on about business. As did we. Nevertheless, I couldn't help but regard Judy with a different eye. Was she or wasn't she? In love with me, that is.
She was all right. Funny I hadn't caught on before, but then, girls are quicker at sensing things like that than men. Now that Gladys had tipped me off, though, I began to notice the way Judy acted around me. Nervous like. Either she made a big point of not looking directly at me or else she stared at me when she didn't think I was noticing.
What a riot. Judy Laker might be in her twenties, but she was acting more like a love-sick teen-ager. I grinned inwardly. What was there about me that turned so many women into nothing.
The next time Judy started fiddling with her camera equipment I made a point of trying to be helpful, letting the side of my body press lightly against hers, accidentally brushing her hand with my fingers.
Instantly she got red in the face and was all fingers and thumbs. It was kind of hilarious. What I mean is, she was acting like some Boy Scout who's just been asked by a sex bomb to help her change her bikini.
It was a temptation to-well, to make a fool out of her, which would have been easy enough. I didn't, though; not because I have such tender feelings when it comes to young girls' susceptibilities, but because she could do me a lot of good, photo-journalism wise. If I got her mad she might scrap the whole idea we'd been working on, just for spite.
There was another reason, too. I was beginning to get ideas-bedroom ideas. Judy might not have the widest hips or the fullest breasts, and maybe she was a bit too liberally sprinkled with freckles for my taste-but she was a long, long way from being ugly.
And I had a feeling she'd be a lot more fun, different kind of fun, bedding her. You might, in a way, say I was kind of jaded with gorgeous girls who were easy to get. Maybe that sounds silly or conceited seeing as how I'm only twenty-two. But I'd been moving for a long time in a fast, hip bed-oriented circle. Among the girls I knew, the way you propositioned them was to just start undressing them. Very few stopped me-provided I did the unzipping in reasonable private surroundings.
Don't get me wrong. I think that kind of outlook is great-the greatest. I only hope that someday all America, all the world treats love as casually (but passionately) as West Coast models and starlets and actresses do.
But what Gladys had said about the girl being an old fashioned type, kind of intrigued me. Presented kind of a challenge. I could see that getting the panties off a chick like Judy wouldn't be just a matter of reaching and tugging. She'd have to be played skillfully, like a fish on a line. Yeah. A nice smile. A sleek shapely fish to be played-and then played with.
First get her to nibble on the bait. What bait? Marriage, of course-or at least the hint of marriage. 'Nice' girls took love to be just a preamble to orange blossoms and diapers. Once she was hooked on the bait, reel her in gently until-wham! I had her gaffed and wriggling.
Then? Then I'd toss her out a sadder but wiser girl. Or maybe a gladder and wiser girl....
Yeah ...
"I-I guess that's about all the .shots for today," said Judy, nervously dropping her camera bag and light meter. "Perhaps we can all three meet later this week-maybe Sunday?-to do some outdoor shots at the beach? Then we can drive down to Balboa so you can pose on boats."
"Okay by me," I said, helping her stuff her junk back into her camera tote bag. Our fingers kept touching, and at every touch she kind of flinched nervously.
"I'm free Sunday," Gladys agreed, a cynical smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. She hadn't missed the way I was accidentally giving Judy a few harmless sexy thrills. "Guess I'll change back into my own dress then. Back in a moment."
As it happened, the last shot we'd taken I'd been wearing the street clothes I'd come in, so I didn't need to change. I watched Gladys sway magnificently away, across the lawn her hips and buttocks rolling delightedly; she was wearing shorts, short-shorts, that had obviously belonged to one of Lee's female lodgers with a body size considerably less: the illial crest of Gladys' buttocks was blissfully visible. And more.
I hadn't realized my gaze had been so fixed and carnivorous until Judy by my side said, softly, "She is beautiful, isn't she?"
I turned and grinned at her. "You can call her something, Judy. She's a beautiful animal." I frowned. "Somehow," I said, blithely crossing my fingers as I spoke, "somehow I can't think of Gladys as a person-she's just magnificent creature."
"Why-that's an awful thing to say, Dane Hanlon. Shame on you." But her face was diffused with pleasure. There's nothing a woman likes more than to hear another, competitive woman described in unflattering terms. And Gladys was sure competitive with Judy. Like a Rolls is competitive with a foreign little tin can.
"Yeah," I said, scuffing my toe in the grass, playing the rustic rube, "Yeah, I reckon I shouldn't have said that. But shucks, ma'am-I mean, Judy, girls like Gladys are kinda too rich for my blood, you all know what I mean?"
She looked at me strangely. Perhaps, I reflected, I'd overdone the simple country boy bit. But no, she was just admiring my taste. "Really, Mr. Hanlon? I would have thought that an almost established actor such as yourself...." Her voice trailed off and waited. I sighed. "I don't know ma'am-I mean, Judy. Sometimes I think Hollywood itself is just too rich for my blood. You know, I may act-how do you say it
"Blase?"
"That's how you say it. Blase. But deep down, in fact, just beneath my surface I'm still the scared, shy, kind of simple guy I was when a talent scout more or less snatched me out of a high school acting class."
In point of fact, no talent scout had snatched me up, I'd more or less blackmailed my way into my first minor part. I'd been fourteen at the time and I'd-but all that's irrelevant.
The point was she bought it. Why not? I'm an actor, aren't I? It always beats me that people are startled to find that they've been conned by an actor, of either sex. Why? It's an actor's profession to lie convincingly, isn't it? What difference whether you lie to act out a part-or to bed a girl- I reached out a shy, tentative hand and touched Judy's wrist gently. "Judy," I said softly, "Miss Laker...."
"Call me Judy!" she urged, blushing softly. "Judy-I don't quite know how to say this but, well, you're just about the most real person I've meet since I've been in this crazy town. The most real and the most-"
That's an old acting trick. Give 'em half of a line the other half of which they think they know, and they'll be on the edge of their chairs for you to finish the line.
Only she wasn't sitting on a chair, just staring at me like I was the second coming of an electric guitar or something.
"Yes?" she urged. "The most real and the most.
I scuffed my toe in the grass again. Then I constricted the muscles of my throat and nostrils and exhaled without letting air out. That's how I induce blushing artificially; other actors have other techniques.
"The most real," I said, blushing, "and-the most beautiful."
Almost she did a back-flip she got such a charge out of my lie. "Me?" she said, trying to laugh it off and flushing and blushing all the way down her cleavage, and probably right down to her toes. "Me-beautiful? Don't be silly." She tossed her rather plain hair. "I'm just a-a photo journalist. I'm no glamour girl."
"Sorry ma'am," I said contritely. "I didn't mean to offend you. Only to me, you're a very beautiful woman."
Well-I had her then. Had her, heck, I could have stripped her and spit on her and she'd have rolled around in the grass loving me. I had her number.
"These-these films-I mean films," she stammered. "I do my own-I mean I do my own developing. We-I'll be able to see how they come out tonight. If you'd care to drop around-I mean if you happen to be in the neighborhood-"
I gave her a big smile. A my-cup-is-brimming-over-with-good-luck smile. Then I frowned.
"What's-what's the matter?" she asked.
"Nothing," I said. "I mean, I'd just love to drop by your house and look at the prints only-well, I guess it doesn't matter. She won't mind."
"She? Who?"
"My old Aunt Norma. Poor woman. She's got heart trouble you know. That and senile paralysis. Since they operated on her legs she just sits in her wheel chair most of the time kind of, well, crying to herself. She used to be able to watch TV a bit but now that she's almost blind, I visit her every Wednesday evening. Medics tell me that's about all that's keeping her alive, looking forward to my mid-week evening visits. But I guess poor old Aunt Norma will survive if I don't show up tonight. What time should I stop by your house, Judy?"
Needless to say, she wouldn't hear of my standing up poor old Aunt Norma. I protested. She insisted. I let her twist my arm, provided she gave me a rain check. She gave it to me.
And I'd use it real soon, too. I had a feeling was going to have a lot of fun stringing Judy along, both before and after I'd seduced her.
But she'd keep. If she'd stayed virginal twenty-plus years-and I had a pretty good hunch the little doll was till a virgin-she'd keep a few more days and nights. Keep for me, that is.
Not that I wouldn't have had a lot of fun in the dark room with her that evening, seeing what might develop. Only I had something better to do.
Something softer, riper, more pneumatically inflated up front and behind too.
This girl was sexy and she would be willing. Just what I wanted in a date.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
This must seem kind of cold natured and selfish of me, to enjoy my chase and live the good life at Lee's place, Shady Acres, which was in the same neighborhood so to speak. The same palatial canyon where, just the night before I'd been forced to take-drastic action. In self defense.
No doubt you're wondering how I could have managed to be so cool, so detached, so businesslike-and amorous-when just a few hundred yards away was the scene of the crime. Only I couldn't think of it as a crime, rather, it had been just a distasteful-incident.
The answer is, I'm a naturally cool, detached type. And, rightly or wrongly, I didn't feel the least bit responsible for anything I'd done. I'd been more or less forced into action against my will.
Like the time about a year ago when I'd been driving fast, anxious to keep a date and this stupid, careless little kid had run right in front of my car. At night it had been. Goodness knows what the stupid kid had been doing out after dark.
I'd stopped and backed up, got out. The kid was unconscious, bleeding quite a bit but still alive. I could see right off it was a poor kid, a slum kid-most likely from one of the dusty cabins that are scattered along the highway surprisingly close to high class residential areas. Some desert rat's kid most likely, or the like.
Well, right off I could smell trouble, a life-time of trouble. Let some poor white trash family get their hooks into you and they never let go. I'd be paying for operations for the kid and crutches for the kid and more operations-heck, I'd most likely be subsidizing the kid for the rest of my life.
If I reported the accident, that is. I started back to my car.
Right then a bad thing happened. The kid came to. It didn't scream-just made kind of strange sounds. I think maybe it's voice box had been bent. But the point was the brat was conscious. Most likely memorizing my face, my license number. Big round eyes the brat had. Probably could see in the dark like a cat.
Well, I could see too. Well enough to see a good sized rock by the side of the road. I used it.
The way I see it I did the brat a favor-as well as protecting my own interests. Spared the kid a lifetime of helplessness. All I did was put it out of its misery, the way I'd finish off a wounded bird or gopher.
And, because I'm naturally a soft-hearted guy, I'd done what few guys would have thought to have done, would have had the decency to have done. I took some money out of my wallet and after wiping it to make sure there were no prints on it, I tucked it under the kid's body. It ought to sweeten things quite a bit for the kid's folks when they found it.
The reason I'm mentioning this accident-incident, rather-is that when I got to my girl's house (I'd checked, some miles down the road of course, to make sure there were no blood stains on my car-) when I got to my girl's house I was just as calm, just as cool as if nothing had happened.
Cool, that's me. Cool in the head-but not with the sexual act.
Like that Thursday afternoon at Lee's place. Cool as can be. As the three of us were decamping, Judy kind of cut between us and said could she give Gladys a lift? And Gladys said that would be just fine, not looking even close to my direction. Judy could drop her anywhere near a cab stand, where she could get a cab to her destination. And cool as cool I picked up my cue and said I was headed that way myself-my Aunt Norma lived there. So I was the one who ended up with Gladys in the front seat next to me, and Judy didn't suspect a thing.
"Where to?" I asked, after I got my old convertible rolling. "You want to eat first?"
"Whaddya mean, first?-as if I didn't know," muttered Gladys good-naturedly. "You hungry right now?"
I took my eyes off the road long enough to take in the way her dress hugged the rounded outcropping of her big bosoms, the happy curves of her lap. "I'm always hungry," I told her.
"Promises, promises," said Gladys cryptically. "You got loot on you? You want to take me some place fancy?"
"A nice girl like you," I told her, "would probably feel more at home being taken to a drive-in."
"Touche, you swine. My place. I've got a few steaks in the freezer."
"What about your roommate?"
"She's a doll. You'll love her-but not if I can help it. Unfortunately for your harem-building instinct, she's out of town tonight. I just remembered. You know how to get there?"
I knew. Gladys' pad was the second floor of a flossy semi-detached wing of an apartment complex built around an Olympic-sized pool. I wondered who was helping her with her rent. Being a frank type, I wondered out loud.
"My roommate and my family, you swine," snarled Gladys. "Also a cute little producer with three chins and four stomachs. For which favor he gets ends on me four times a month. When his wife's card club meets."
I believed her. It sounded like a good arrangement.
I helped her with her key to the door. Then I helped her take a brace of steaks out of the freezer. Then I helped her out of her dress. She then helped me out of my clothes. We were helpful as all heck to each other that night.
We never got to the bedroom. That didn't matter. The rug in the living room was soft and thick-piled and we rolled like two lust-crazed animals-which was just what we were-and she chewed the blazes out of my shoulder and made animal sounds and everything was like a scene out of a jungle movie-the kind of scene every censor would cut.
Everything was over fast, like a tornado, leaving me exhausted and electrically discharged. But happy.
I nestled my head on her soft, young ample breasts and waited until the pounding in my heart had subsided to safe levels. Then I moved slowly, sliding my head across the sleekness of her body until her other uptilted breast was within biting distance. Then I bit.
"Ouch!" she yelped, wanting to struggle up off her back but not able to on account of I had a good grip on her port headlamp. "What the hell do you think you're doing-?"
I let loose her breast, laughed. "Just wanted to see what you were like. You're good."
She sat up, rubbed her bruised breast. "Well, you didn't have to wound me."
"I didn't," I told her. "I just nibbled you lightly. You did it." I hefted my right shoulder to her.
She reached out, touched my shoulder lightly. "Did I do that? Tsk, tsk. Didn't realize I had such sharp teeth. Did it hurt?"
"Not at the time. Why do women like to chew a man's shoulder in their excited moments?"
She shrugged. "Why do men like to caress girls' breasts at any old moment?"
She patted my shoulder. Obviously she was proud of the crimson tooth marks she'd left in my flesh. "My, but I'm a passionate animal when I'm excited," she mused. "Harry says I'm a tigress."
"Who's he?"
"You don't know him."
"I'm beginning to suspect you're promiscuous."
She reached out and slapped me on the face. Not hard or with malice; just hard enough to make it clear she didn't go for that kind of talk. Or something.
"Let's eat," I said.
"The steaks won't be unfrozen yet."
"Haven't you got anything else?"
"Uh huh." She showed me. I nibbled. She kind of half-laughed, half-giggled. Like that girl in the TV commercial who lets a guy kiss her just to prove her hair spray can take it. Take what? is what I want to know. But the camera never shows you.
Anyhow.
After a while she pushed my face away from the platinum bowl it was buried in. "That's no way to eat potato chips," she chided. "You eat like-like an animal."
"That's me," I admitted. "I got better things to do with my hands." I squeezed the huge, seductively flexible hemispheres of her breasts. She pushed me aside, set the metal bowl of potato chips on a low coffee table.
I looked at it again. It wasn't real platinum. But then, she wasn't a real platinum blonde, either. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered but the mood of warm, drunken sensuality I was wallowing in.
At any rate, I was happy. Drunk-on her body-satiated and happy.
"Shower," she suggested. "We ought to take a shower before we eat. This way."
I followed her obediently and pruriently. We showered together. It was the first time I'd ever shared a small shower stall with an incredibly ripe platinum blonde. That beat bathing alone.
We were too beat, both of us, to do more than fool around with each other-but even when you're just fooling, it's just fine to be fooled with by a soapy-handed sizzler in a stall shower-and to fool with her soapy, slippery rump and the suds-sleek sin-symphonies of her malleable boobs.
She giggled up a storm in the shower while the hot drops of water pelted her and my hands fondled her pelt. Her plush, passionate, palpable, pliant, pliable, pattable, proud pert, projecting and-to repeat myself-prurient pelt.
What foamy fun-flesh ... what slippery sensual skin ... what exotic ecstasy epidermis ... what a warm wet wonderland of womanhood....
My sliding fingers traced heaving hillocks of exotic promise, long subtle curves of feverish femininity.
In short, I explored her good. And she did the same for me. With nothing but soap bubbles between us.
What a way to take a shower.
Clean out of your mind with ecstatic, exotic excitement. With slippery sensuality, soapy, supple sin dreams.
"Stop," murmured Gladys after a long, water-drenched, soapy-slickened while. "Let's finish this horizontal and dry. On the bed.
I didn't bother to dry myself, or her. I didn't even think about drying either one of us. I just scooped her up and carried her, all hundred ten squirming, fleshy pounds of her into the bedroom and dumped her. Wet and wanton and willing.
I flung myself at her as she sprawled there, long arms and soft legs spread wide, I hit true and she rebounded like a sensual slingshot, and then I was sprawled all over, kissing her, caressing her, nuzzling her, nibbling her, testing her, teasing her, taunting her, titillating her, tormenting her.
I kissed her up and I kissed her down-her soft, platinum blonde down that fell over her shoulders, I kissed the creamy white inner surfaces of her breasts, the insolently crimson bullet heads of their tips, the rounded outer crescents of her arrogantly full breasts, her buoyant balls of bouncing bliss throbbing, thrilling, thirst-quenchers-the demonic desire domes-the lush, ripe, full, flesh globes of fervent fun flesh. I kissed each passion-packed hemisphere of warm resiliency.
I kissed the firm frail thinness of her waist-a sculptured column of compound-curved flesh.
I kissed the wide, wanton width of her rolling hips, the exciting dimple of her navel. kissed the long, languorous length of her legs, kissed the soft white succulence of her lovely, lissome, limber, licentious legs.
I kissed her all over, everywhere, caressed shamelessly and rewarding with my fingers, my lips..
I toyed with her, played with her-played her as a musician might play an instrument. And an instrument she became, an instrument of lust. My lust, her lust, our lust....
Against my lips and hands her body became a rippling river of desire, a surging sea of pent-up passion, a tossing ocean of feverish femininity, a foaming fulmination of fervent flesh.
Flesh to fool with, flesh to slide one's stroking hands over, then clutch and knead and squeeze exotically ... flesh to linger over with one's lips ... flesh to bite gently, flesh to slid against, rub against ... flesh designed for fervent attention.
I sat beside her and pressed the sweat-slippery balloons of her breasts together, then pressed my hand sensuously, slowly against them, savouring, the subtle but sensational sensual caress of her soft female flesh sliding against.
I rolled her lovely body over on the bed and kissed and stroked the thrilling curve of her back, the jaunty, jelly-like jumping joy of her bouncing buttocks.
I playfully prodded her jiggling, jouncing back ... prodded her first with this finger, then with that.
What wonderful warm flesh to prod and poke ... how soft, soft as a haystack; how firm, firm as a taut toy balloon; how wild, wild as a lonely bachelor's midnight dreams ... and crazy; totally, thoroughly, utterly crazy. What wondrous buttocks; soft yet firm, warm and wild. Softly firmly, warmly wild to my eager exploration, softly firmly warmly wild against me. I moved; she wriggled, I moved, she squirmed.
Wonderful.
Wild flaming thrill.
Pleasure almost wild enough to trigger-I moved back in time, moved back and rolled her over.
"Yes," she pleaded, "Yes, I'm ready-yes, now-I can't wait you hear?"
I heard.
I also saw. Saw her flip her long legs up in the air as if she were going to pedal an aerial bicycle.
What did she have in mind? Ah, yes ... Well, that way was a lot of fun. A riot of fun.
I reached for her breasts; her great, gleaming, wonderful breasts; I dug my fingers deep, deep to the delicious softness of them, kneading and working the warm tender flesh.
"Now ... " she gasped.
"Now-like this?" I murmured.
"Like this," she urged, her hands warm and insistent against my shoulders, her breasts seeming to ripple, to bounce and jounce and sway against my caressing palms, her warm and inviting red lips just scant inches from mine, begging a kiss at that same moment.
And so I moved, moved decisively and our bodies touched, touched ecstatically.
And again I moved, and again, moved like a mighty machine maved like the most powerful engine, slowly, forcefully, preparing her for the mad onslaught to which I was building.
And, her supple body bent almost double with delight, she responded; responded with a swaying of her hips and long legs, making throaty little sounds of gleeful lust, encouraging me with inarticulate phrases that were exclusively feminine.
That was good.
That was the most, the ultimate the dream beyond all dreams. Drowsy and frantic, drunken and fervent, delightful, delirious, urgent and soothing, exciting and satisfying, blissful and brutal.
And then the tempo speeded, speeded ... the room seemed to dim around me, spin around me as I moved-and she moved as I did-she twisted, she churned. And ricked and bounced, while the world detonated into glowing flaming, incadescent rapture-fire.
Again.
And again.
And yet once again.
The miracle that is beyond description, the searing experience that, for a brief moment out of eternity makes humans one in their combined sex pleasure.
I rolled away from her.
She stretched her lovely legs, then lay panting beside me. We smiled at each other. I spoke to her. "Yes?" she whispered.
"I said," I repeated, "I'm hungry. How about cooking those steaks now, huh?"
After a while she did. We needed them.
We didn't bother to dress for dinner. We ate nude, sitting across from each other at a tiny drop table in her kitchen. In a way it was kind of like that eating scene in the movie. Only nuder. We chewed on our steaks while our eyes devoured each other at point blank range. We smacked our lips and drank-the ideal drink for a long evening of love, ale, in my opinion; hard liquor hits you too hard too fast. We played footsie under the table. We let meat juice and grease dribble down our chins, drop on my chest, her breasts. We ate like drunken animals. Which was what we were.
We ate until we could hold no more. Then we rose unsteadily to our feet and, our eyes still locked in smoldering union, moved closer until my chest bumped against her breasts.
"We ought to shower first," she said. "We're both filthy greasy and sweaty."
"I can't wait that long," I told her, nuzzling my grease-smeared nose against hers.
"Me neither," she breathed, her breath a heavenly mixture of steak and ale.
I slid my hands down her back, cupped and squeezed her buttocks.
Then I let go of her and moved back, sat down on a hard backed kitchen chair. She stared down at me for a moment with a puzzled frown; then, when I leered and beckoned her, she understood and smiled-and sat on my knees. With my eager hands clasped around her buttocks to urge her, she wriggled closer to me, wriggled until her soft little forehead was nestled under my chin. My eager, bobbing chin. She raised herself carefully, then lowered herself to a sitting position, a wonderful sitting position.
"Mmmm," she whispered. "I feel so good. What now. lover?"
"Bounce," I suggested.
"How can I bounce after all that steak?" she complained. "Try," I gasped.
She tried. And succeeded. Succeeded brilliantly, delightfully, rapturously. Again and again she bounced again and again.
And my spirits rose up and up-and up even higher.
And then my spirits seemed to overflow, to effervesce, to cascade in a secret sultry fountain that made me gasp with sheer delight, and made Gladys moan with unleashed desire.
Then we showered again.
After the shower we staggered into the bedroom-and slept. A drowsy contented, sin-tired sleep.
Believe it or not, even in my sleep, I was sexually excited and turgidly aroused.
Of course, her hand doing things to me, had something to do with it.
CHAPTER TWELVE
After a few hours of what must have been a deep sleep, I became wide awake, for no particular reason. I tried to remember what I'd been dreaming about just before I woke, and couldn't.
Beside me on the sheet, Gladys deliciously naked breasts rose and fell in healthy, untroubled sleep. A healthy animal, Gladys; an uncomplicated bedroom machine. No; that wasn't fair; the girl had brains and talent. In a year or five she might be a big name in the entertainment field.
Would it pay to invest a little time with her-spend some money dating her, be seen around town with her? No. She wasn't a name yet. She didn't have any publicity value. Still, she might have in the near future. It might be well, I decided, to treat Gladys carefully. Maybe have an affair lasting some time, like a month, or so. Let her think I was in love with her-a bit, at least.
And then break off with her carefully, tactfully. That way I'd always be aces in her book. And who knows? She might one day be in a position to help me-help me plenty.
One fellow I knew, name of Greg, was given a terrific boost up the movie acting ladder by-well, I won't mention her name. She'd sue. Let's just say by a girl who made the upper brackets quickly and recently, in large part because she appeared in the nude in a minor part. Anyhow, this chick made her producer give Greg an important supporting role in one of her recent movies.
Why? Because two years before, when she'd been an unknown starlet, an assistant camera man had gotten her drunk at a wild party and tried to rape her. And he had dashed into the bushes, pulled the man away from her and knocked him flat. Thereby earning; believe it or not, the chick's gratitude. She thought he was the chivalrous type.
Which only goes to show.
Which only goes to show that it pays to have a big-time or even a medium-time movie star as a friend.
Not, of course, that I expected Gladys to make the grade before I did. Still....
I swung my feet off the bed, walked across the thick carpet to stare out the open window of Gladys' bedroom which is above the Strip, and from the vantage point of the window I could see quite a bit of the town spread out before me like a fantastic carpet of lights. I could hear it, too. This is the only town I know of that you can actually hear. Other towns you just hear nearby street sounds-honks and voices and stuff. But when you get a little above this burg up in the Hills or even, on a quiet night just above the Strip, you can hear the roar of the whole city. Like-like surf, or like the sound of a hundred thousand car motors ticking over. Kind of a whispered muted, throaty roar. Strange.
A shrill laugh and a splash distracted my thoughts. I looked down. The big pool that Glady's apartment complex almost enclosed was lighted brightly by a bright spot that made the grass look blue and unreal. The pool itself was lighted along the bottom, and I could see the interesting silhouette of a girl swimming lazily through the illumined water. By the pool I could just see and hear a couple of other people.
"Want to swim?" Gladys had awakened, come up softly behind me.
"I don't have a suit."
"Sy left one here, I think. If he didn't I know I have one of Harvey's around. Don't say it-I'm promiscuous."
So I didn't say it. I just changed into the suit she found for me. She herself changed into a jazzy one-piece knit suit that looked conservative until you noticed how many provocative slits and holes had been built into it.
She built me a quick drink, tossed one off with me, then took my hand-hand holding is in these days in Beverly Hills, of course; part of the girl-child and boy-child mystique-and we went down the outside stairs to the lawn and then across to the communal pool.
That's one thing-among others-that I like about the West Coast: the apartment houses-or complexes or courts or whatever you want to call them-are built around a big swimming pool. Maybe other towns have 'em too, but this area started 'em. And, as even the sociologists have gotten around to admitting, in L.A. the apartment-ringed pools are the basis of almost an entirely new way of living. Love living, that is. The nearest thing to institutionalized wife-swapping and free love our society has come up with.
There may be a fuddy-duddy exceptions, of course. But in most fancy apartment complexes of the kind Gladys lived in, everybody was one big happy bedtime family. Not all at once with everybody else, of course. But, usually sooner or later, once or twice or a hundred times with everyone else.
One sociologist's likened the phenomenon-his word-to the esprit de corps of a cruise ship-shifted along the spectrum (whatever he meant bv that). What he meant in general was that, just as all passengers on a cruise ship automatically let down the social barriers and have casual social and conversational intercourse with any and all the other passengers, so West Coasters; the unmarried or the swinging married types at least, think nothing of making love with their neighbors in the apartment complex. The ten or twenty or fifty individuals or pairs of individuals kind of coalesce (the sociologist's work, again) to form a permissive in-group.
Like every night's party night, and if anything goes awry (my word), the whole group, male and female, chip in to pay the doctor.
As a design for living I think it's the greatest. My only regret was that I didn't have the loot, as yet, to move into one of the more swinging apartment houses.
We hadn't bothered to put on anything save bathing suits-it was the kind of warm night when a towel isn't needed-it's more comfortable to drip dry. I followed Gladys across the lawn. The grass beneath my bare feet felt like a well-bred carpet. Real luxury.
Sprawled on the grass near the diving board was a big-chested, white-toothed, curly-haired gorgeous hunk of man-he thought. Lying on the grass alongside of him was a slender girl whose might have been red or brown or auburn-it was hard to tell under the artificial light. She had her eyes closed and seemed to be asleep. She was wearing a man's bathing trunks, nothing more, nothing above the waist. Her breasts looked, in the funny light, like frosted white light bulbs. Hundred-fifty watt size.
Another girl, a raven-haired cutie in a bikini, sat sprawled a few feet away smoking a cigarette.
"Hi, gang," said Gladys, letting go my hand and waving casually at nobody in particular. "This is Dane."
"What kind of Dane?" said the hunk with the white teeth. "Don't I know your name?" I told him my name.
"An actor. Yes. I read a big write-up on you this issue."
"So I hear," I told him. "I haven't seen it yet."
"A modest star," murmured the chick with raven black hair. "A contradiction in terms. But nice," she added when I frowned at her. "Very nice. I like him, Gladys." She settled herself on one elbow and one hip, a position that emphasized the disparity between her narrow waist and wide hips, held out the cigarette she was smoking.
I took it, took a long drag, handed it back to her.
"That establishes rapport," the dark -haired chick explained-whether to me or to Gladys I couldn't tell. She smiled at me. "Did I tell you I liked you on sight? Yes, I did. But I didn't tell you my apartment number. It's-"
"In the book," said Gladys. "In every little black book in town. Stay away from Lauretta, Dane. It's rumored she's a regular typhoid Mary."
Lauretta looked appealingly at the hunk of man. "Milton, you're a writer. Think of a witty but basically cruel and cutting rejoinder for me."
I looked at him. "You write?"
He nodded, smoothed his curly hair.
Hmm. He sure as heck didn't look like one. He looked like somebody's kept boy. Or an overripe actor.
"He used to be an actor in the East," said Gladys. "Now he writes plays. And screen plays. Argony Films is dickering with him right now, right, Milton?"
He shrugged modestly. I looked at him with sudden interest. He still looked like a nothing to me, but a nothing with an in at Argony would be worth cultivating.
"By the way," said Milton with a nod toward the sleeping with no bra, "this is Sallye. If you're a girl you have to spell your first name the wrong way if you hope to make good in the movies. That's an ordinance in Hollywood. Sallye is drunk, I fear. Also a bit-strange. Not psycho, just strange. You know."
I nodded, like I knew. She looked like a pretty lush chunk of chick to me. I wondered what she did that was strange. Or rather what a weirdo group such as the Sunset set would consider strange.
The raven -haired babe stuck two cigarettes in her mouth, made a lighter snapping gesture in my direction, "Light me lover," she urged.
Gladys made a rude noise. I fished a lighter off the grass near Lauretta, flicked a light to her cigarettes. Her eyes were green, ardent. She inhaled both cigarettes alight, handed me one. "That establishes more rapport," she explained, blowing smoke suggestively in my direction. "Do you read Morse code, lover? I'll wink out my last name-and apartment number. That way Gladys here will never suspect a thing. All set? Right eye for dashes, left for dots.
"Knock it off, darling," said Gladys. "You know what the sign in front says-No Soliciting. Besides, maybe Dane doesn't have two dollars to spare."
"Uh, why is Sallye strange?" I said, just to change the subject.
"Her habits," said Milton. "They're, well, unprintable."
"Tell me," I said genuinely curious. He told me. Unprintable was the word for them. "Why do you put up with her?" I asked.
"Money," said Lauretta. "Sallye's parents have millions, and she can always tap the vein. And, when she isn't drunk or indulging her, ugh, habits, she's a soft touch. I have her for hundreds."
"And I have her," said Milton, "several times a week. Despite her peculiarities, Dane, she is a virtuoso between the sheets." He chuckled. "Know what the little hot potato did last night?"
"We don't want to know, you dirty old man," said Gladys. "Do we darling?" This is to Lauretta.
"I'd like to know," I complained with a grin.
"Tell you later, in private," said Milton, slapping me on the shoulder.
"Dirty old men like Milton," Lauretta was agreeing with Gladys, "are always trying to blacken some poor girl's reputation."
"I'd like to see him blacken mine," said a husky voice from behind me. "Hi people. I heard voices so I tippy-toed out."
I turned. A tall, broad shouldered cannon breasted girl was standing grinning at us with her hands on her hips. Her tan body contrasted startlingly with the white of her abbreviated bikini, the gleam of her perfect teeth.
"Darling," said Milton, "You look magnificent tonight. Like a pagan goddess-an exotic statue carved from the depths of the jungle by heathen sorcerers."
"What's he been smoking?" said the exotic girl. She looked at me. "Mnnn. A guest. A he-guest." She frowned. "I know you, too. Yes. You're in that issue this month. Dane-don't tell me-Hanlon?"
I nodded, meanwhile trying to place her. Actress? No. A singer. I had it then. "You're Jill Johns," I said. "You're playing some place on the Strip, aren't you?"
"Closed two nights ago. I'm free now. That means I'm available." She waved at the pool. "Care to stage the pool with me?" She sauntered a few steps forward swinging her hips in an exaggerated manner. Close up she was kind of fantastic-a real Amazon. The body of a long distance swimmer; broad shoulders, long legs, deep chest. A really deep chest; as she walked, the white cloth of her bathing suit bra swayed and seemed to strain under the effort of keeping so much ripe breast pillow penned in. "Uh huh," she noted, appraising me thoughtfully and thoroughly, "you're even cuter than your pictures. What say we skip the preliminaries and move directly to the main event."
"Hands," said Gladys, "off."
"I could do with no hands," mused Jill moving her hips in a slow motion dance any stripper would envy. "That young jungle magic has you in her spell ... " she sang, her hips continuing slowly. And each motion made her full, feminine buttocks and her long ripe legs sway and tremble in a manner that made me tingle with new excitement. This was a woman all right. I wondered if she was just kidding with words or if she could be had. Had without too much trouble, that is. Any woman can be had if you spend enough time chasing her. Jill Johns was worth chasing, that was for sure. Prestige-wise, as well as bed-wise-she was beginning to make a name for herself as a singer. It wouldn't be long before she'd be right up there on top.
"I got your latest album a couple of days ago," I lied. "It's really great."
Jill flung herself at my feet-literally-and began kissing my toes. "Oh, you-wonderful darling-incredible boy," she gasped between kisses. "You bought my record? Oh, thank you, thank you...." She grabbed my right leg, like it was an ear of corn and began to kiss her way up. At the knee she turned and leered at Gladys. "How far can I go, honey?"
Gladys made a gun of her index finger and fist, cocked her thumb and said, "Wham!"
Jill leaped to her feet, clutched her middle, spun around, dropped dramatically to the grass, began to flop around in simulated death agonies.
"Is everybody," I said, "crazy around here?"
Jill stopped flopping and rose to her feet with an uncoiling cobra-like motion. "Crazy?" she crooned, "yaSSUH, this chile's crazy 'bout you, boss. This chile's done lost her cotton pickin' heart. Doan you worry yo head 'bout public opinion."
The girl Sallye, who had been snoring quietly since I arrived on the scene, sat up, cupped her hands over her bare breasts and said, severely. "I don't think it's in good taste to use dialect, Jill. You have no right to treat a serious subject lightly." She turned her head, saw me, smiled. Then her eyes rolled up in her head and she flopped back on the grass. Milton grasped one of her naked breasts, shook it. No reaction. "She's out cold again," he noted absently. "But she's quite right, Jill." He turned to me. "She once embarrassed a nice shy boy doing a horny belly dance at a meeting."
In one of the nearby apartments a radio or phonograph blared loud suddenly, a slow Latin beat. Jill John held out her hands toward me. "Dance?"
I glanced at Gladys. She laughed. "One dance," she said, then rose to her feet, sauntered toward the pool and dived in.
I took the exotic Jill in my arms and we danced barefoot on the grass. Her flesh had that incredibly soft, silky texture some girls have. She danced close to me, her breasts pressed firmly against my chest, her knees brushing against mine now and again as we moved slowly sensuously, to the music. Her cheek was soft and warm against mine and her hair, her flesh held an exotic perfume that inflamed my senses almost as much as the contact of her nearly bare body.
Once again I wondered if she could be had. Being a direct type, I asked her.
"Depends," she said, keeping her cheek pressed against mine, her body moving languidly with the music. "You and Gladys have a thing going? I talk a rough game but I don't cheat on friends."
The more fool you, I thought. I said, "I just met her this afternoon."
"Sure I can be had," she said, sliding her cheek against mine. Then she laughed. "Looks like little Jill grabbed the prize tonight. Gladys' wild about you. So's Lauretta. And Sallye, poor kid, is wild for everybody."
"Does Milton really have a script almost sold to Argosy?"
Uh huh. He writes kind of like crazy."
I said, "oh." Then I said, "Are things always so well, far out around here?"
She laughed. "Brother, you haven't seen anything. We're hardly a quorum present tonight. The Golden Tower is full of kooks. And swingers. Mostly people in the industry, or fringe. A few advertising types-but they swing more than anyone else, just to prove they aren't conformists."
She chuckled. "They ought to televise this dump. It could replace the hottest-and a while library of stag movies."
The music stopped abruptly and an apartment light went out. Jill leered obscenely up at the now dark window. "Go, man, go!" she chortled. Then she turned and raced toward the pool. I followed, cut the water a few feet behind her. I dived deep, then surfaced and swam lazily.
Everybody-save Sallye-seemed to be in the pool. Gladys and Milton were playing at dunking each other, acting like a couple of kids. Jill was floating on her back, singing softly to herself and paddling idly with her feet. Lauretta was doing some fancy strokes, showing off for my benefit, I figured. She could sure be made. Only I couldn't have all of them, seeing as how they practically lived together. Or could I? Maybe I could move into the joint, if there was a vacant apartment. What a swinging joint, to live in. All the women a man could ask for. And more important, the chance to make valuable contacts.
Like Jill. Tomorrow morning first thing I'd call Lee, ask him if it was a good thing, career-wise, to be seen with her in public. He'd okay her for sure. Heck, she would really boost my career. It'd really boost my stock to get photographed with Jill on my arm at the best places. No doubt Jill would be real grateful, too.
Lauretta? She was just a good-looking dame, so far as I knew. But she might have contacts....
And Sallye, the loony. She had loot. It wouldn't be hard for a good-looking guy like me to pry a little of it loose from her. Not hard at all.
And Milton. Yes, Milton. He was a nothing all right. But a nothing with a script almost sold to a big movie company. And maybe some influence in the casting. .
Yeah It would pay to be nice to him. Buy him a drink once in a while, fix him up with some chicks from Lee Larren's harem.
Never could tell when he might throw a fat part my way in return for some favor ... say a blonde, stacked eager little favor like Alice....
I turned and swam through the translucent water. Lauretta, her long black hair streaming out behind her, swam toward me. She'd managed to lose the top of her bikini and her breasts were naked.
"Hi Dane," she said, sliding alongside of me and rolling in the water so I got the full view of her naked goodies. "Is it true what they said about you in that story?"
"I don't know. What did they say?"
"Why-that you're not only a fine actor but a really great guy."
For once a fan magazine had printed the truth. "Yeah," I said, "I guess I am kind of a great guy, in my way." But I didn't say it aloud on account of I didn't want her to think I was immodest.
So I was on my way to the top. I was becoming famous and without my agent's help.
I did become a successful actor, and after I married Gladys, I would in time lose her because of circumstances not of my making. I was a handsome stud as is a well-known fact. I had any woman I desired, and men also. After all, the sensual pleasures can find new kicks.
Milton showed me some real homo-fun tricks in between our jazzing of assorted ladies and girls.
I don't know why Gladys dumped me. After all I was the greatest and the god-like are not corrupters.
Yes, I'm on the skids, and smashed-in career and out. Drink, drugs.
I just don't know why it's doing this to me, and worse of all, the cops found out about my doing in Mavis and her daughter. I must have blabbed it somewhere when under the influence of drug.
My trial will make a big splash. After all, they're trying the great Dane Hanlon for murder.
