HIT THE SIN ROAD! Skid Row may be dead end for some ... for Jim Barton, it was the beginning of a new life of uninhibited roaming and unfettered romantic adventure! The first stop was a railroad boarding house where a seductive schoolteacher gave him new lessons in love ... the second was a cheap Chicago hotel where a wanton waitress served him better things than breakfast in bed! But his motto was Go West, Young Man ... and west he went, heading for the land of gold and gambling with lots of desire-quenching stopovers along the route! But even California lost its charm when he hit Las Vegas and struck a different kind of gold-golden-haired Joni, a luscious hostess who introduced him to al' of the local off-limits delights ... and knew no limits in her ability and willingness to make him the most happy fella in the U. S. A.
CHAPTER ONE
An icy wind gusts along the empty stretch of super highway in the bleak grayness of an early winter dusk. The light, such as it is, is fading fast, and the wind, as though in gleeful preparation for some nighttime misadventure, playfully tugs at twigs and debris lying alongside the great wide stretch of pavement. The trees and shrubs have withdrawn themselves for their long winter's hibernation, the birds have already flown South, and the small furry animals; chipmunks and squirrels, are snug in their dens. There is no life along this stretch of super highway.
It is supper time, an off hour for interstate traffic. The long vans of the big trucks stand shoulder to shoulder at the truck stops and inside the small restaurants the drivers swap tall stories over steaming mugs of coffee while they wait for their thermos jugs to be filled. They talk with each other and joke with the waitresses, putting off the time when they must go back out into the cold night and the loneliness of their cabs.
The drivers and passengers in the automobiles have long since drawn off the endless concrete strip to check into the innumerable motels for the night. Or they have safely arrived at their destinations and are expansively regaling any takers with tales of the things they have seen on their journeys. Those who are at their destinations are warmed by the warmth of their own homes. Those who are in the motels are busily engaged in the loneliness of illicit passion, or they stare dully at the ceilings of their rented shelters while they wait for sleep to come to them to occupy them until they can once again venture out onto the road on the next leg of their journey.
The sound of a truck, its engine laboring against a grade, joins the howl of the winds on the empty stretch of highway. The flatulent popping of the exhaust becomes louder and the truck comes into view. It is a huge truck and it sits heavily on its springs. The pitch of the engine and the sound of the exhaust increases as the driver goes down through the gears to bring the heavily loaded truck to a stop.
Finally there is a screech of brakes and the long steel body shudders the last few feet. The right hand door of the cab, high off the ground, opens, and a suitcase bounces to the dirt shoulder of the road. A pair of long lean legs slide out of the open door and hesitate.
"You'll be better off here than trying to get a ride in the middle of town," the driver tells the young man. "In a little while the big cross country rigs will be on the road again. One of them is sure to give you a ride."
The young man smiles at the driver. "Yeah. Well, thanks for the ride." He hops down from the truck and reaches up to close the door.
"Take it easy, now," the driver says.
"Yeah. And thanks again."
The young man slams shut the door and steps away from the truck as the driver accelerates and shifts into gear. It is almost full dark now and the man pulls his leather jacket tighter around him as he watches the Christmas tree lights of the truck disappear around the next curve. The sound of the truck fades away and there is only the wind and the darkness and the empty concrete.
The young man, one James Winthrop Barton by name, hunches his body around a match for his cigarette, and when the cigarette is puffing well, he throws away the burned out match, hefts his bag, and starts out along the road. He will not walk far. He seeks only a light somewhere that will illuminate him as he waits for his next ride.
The whining sound of a fast moving car strikes his ears. He pauses, listens to ascertain the direction of the car, and turns back to face the direction from which he has come.
Twin swords of light slice through the night and splash across him as the car approaches. James Barton stands close to the edge of the road with his arm extended and his thumb sticking up from a closed fist in the age-old gesture of wayfarers.
From long experience on the road Jim has found the distance at which a car will begin to slow down if the driver intends to stop. The hurtling automobile comes closer and closer with no lessening of speed, and when it is still ten or fifteen yards in front of him Jim drops his arm and curses his disappointment under his breath. The car whistles by; unseeing, unknowing, the driver warm and secure in his three thousand dollars worth of steel and chrome.
Jim is alone again. He sucks hard on the cigarette and watches the tip glow to cherry red. Then he hefts his bag and continues to walk. The fleece-lined leather of his war surplus bombardier's jacket is good protection against the cutting cold. His feet are shod in sturdy work shoes, and his legs are covered with heavy denim cloth. In the pocket of his jacket is a warm pair of gloves but he has no need for them yet. He is bare headed, his long straight hair serving as ample protection from the elements.
Another car is coming and Jim again resumes his classic pose. This is a much older car and it is traveling at perhaps half the speed of the first one. When its weak yellow headlights splash across Jim the car slows and grinds to a stop a few feet beyond him. Jim grabs his bag and runs up to the door.
The door is locked and the window is rolled down only a couple of inches.
"Where you going?" The driver asks.
"I'm heading for Chicago," Jim tells the man. "And from there I'm going to try for California."
There is an awkward pause as the driver digests this information and evaluates Jim's appearance. Then he grins in the dim light from the instrument panel and unlocks the door.
"Hop in."
Jim throws his bag in the back seat and slams the door after him. The driver puts the car in gear, feeds gas to the engine, and they move off along the road.
"Wait long?" The driver asks, his voice loud over the noisy clatter, of the car.
"No. About ten minutes. I've been pretty lucky so far. Just got off a seventy mile ride with a trucker. He was only going as far as the next town and he said it would be easier to get a ride straight on through if I waited out here. How far are you going?"
"Elkhart, about twenty-five miles this side of South Bend."
"How far is that from Chicago?"
"Hundred, hundred and fifty miles. Something like that. Where you coming from?"
"New York." The question took Jim by surprise and he hesitated just a fraction of a second before answering. If he'd been hooked up to one of those lie detector machines the needle would have jumped clear off the paper; not because it was a lie, but because the mention of the town brought certain memories to mind, memories which Jim would much rather forget completely.
The driver looked at him out of the corner of his eye. "What's your name?"
"Jim, Jim Barton."
Jim extended his hand and the driver let go with one hand to reach across and grasp it "Mine's Scofield, Terry Scofield."
Jim knew the routine. Now would come twenty minutes of Smalltalk, meaningless questions and answers as the driver and his passenger probed into each other's lives.
"You live in Elkhart?" Jim asked.
"Nope. Going for a visit. My brother and his wife live there. I'm from back in Ohio. Wooster."
It was cold inside the car. "Say, Mr. Scofield...."
"Terry ... call me Terry," the driver interrupted. "Yeah. Well, Terry, how about turning on the heater. It's getting pretty cold."
"Can't. The old heater gave out last week and I didn't get around to fixing it. Guess we'll just have to rough it. You going to California to try and get in the movies?"
"No." The answer was purposely curt. Jim had had enough of prying questions. The giving of a ride didn't entitle Scofield to Jim's life history. And Jim didn't want to tell the man that he was going to California because it was about as far away from New York as he could get with almost no money.
"Say, I've been on the road about twenty hours," Jim said. "Do you mind if I grab forty winks?"
"No. Of course not. Reach over in the back seat. There's a blanket there to wrap around yourself."
Jim took the blanket and covered himself with it, feeling a little ashamed of the lie; but he didn't want to talk any more. He curled his legs up under him and leaned his cheek against the fuzzy seat cover. He closed his eyes and tried to close the wounds in his memory that Scofield's question had opened.
Those few short months since his life had been torn apart now seemed like years and this was a kind of blessing. The interval of time softened the pain of the memories.
It had been spring and he'd been on top of the world as he rode the subway home from work. Mr. Bristol had smiled and beamed when he told Jim about the raise. Fifteen dollars a week is a big jump in salary and it came just at the time when they had been about to bite into the savings account to pay for the new car. Jim had ridden home on the subway imagining Irene's pleasure when he told her of the raise. And the raise was important for reasons other than money. It meant that they were pleased with his work. It meant that he was moving up in the organization. It meant the long hours of study at the kitchen table in the tiny apartment hadn't been wasted. Since he'd been the first of the new employees to receive a raise, Jim felt sure that he was in line for the first promotion. Only a couple of more months of dunning people for unpaid loan installments, only a couple of more months of taking abuse from people over the phone because he had the nerve to request that they pay the installments on the money they'd borrowed from the Crystal Finance Company, Jim's employer.
The subway seemed to creep along its underground tunnel that evening. And the press of people leaving the station seemed to stroll aimlessly as Jim wormed his way through them. The whole world was running in slow motion as he waited impatiently for the bus.
And then he was in his building and waiting for the creaky old elevator to come down from the top floor and haul him back up. Why was it, he'd thought then, that when I'm down here the elevator is always on the top floor? And when I'm up there the damned thing is always down here?
At last he was upstairs and turning his key in the lock. Irene looked up and smiled from the kitchen table when he came into the apartment. He hung his coat in the closet and threw the newspaper down next to the chair in the living room. He was holding himself back, savoring the pleasure of telling her.
He walked into the kitchen and kissed her softly on the cheek. She finished with the macaroni and cheese and shoved the dish into the oven, wiping her hands on her apron as she turned back to him. Her mouth was spread in a huge smile and her eyes were sparkling.
"What are you so happy about?" he asked.
"It's a secret. First tell me what you're bubbling over with."
He paused, trying to think of the most exciting way to tell her. And then he just blurted it out. "Starting next week," he said, "there will be fifteen dollars more in every pay envelope."
Irene gasped and came off the chair to throw her arms around her husband. "Oh, Jimmy, that's wonderful." She kissed him, and he kissed her back, and what began as a married peck turned into a hot passionate kiss.
"Come on," Jimmy said when the kiss was ended, "Let's celebrate the raise." He tugged her toward the bedroom.
"Wait," she said. "You haven't heard my news yet."
"It can wait," he told her.
"No. No it can't."
"What could be so important that it can't wait until after we celebrate?"
"Oh, you! You're a lust fiend. I swear you are. You grab any excuse to get me into bed."
Jimmy grinned and slipped his hand behind her to grab a fold of flesh between his thumb and forefinger. He pinched lightly and said, "You love to make love and you know it."
"But wait," Irene protested. "I think you ought to hear my news before you drag me off to bed."
Jimmy let go of her arm and folded his arms across his chest to scowl at her. "All right, but it better be good or I'll give you a double dose of loving once we get inside."
Irene smiled. "Maybe you'd better sit down."
"Come on, come on. Give. The suspense is killing me.
"You sure you don't want to sit down?"
"Will you stop stalling?" He was beginning to get angry.
"All right, here it is. You, James Winthrop Barton, the husband of Irene Barton, are going to be a father in about six months." She smiled and waited for his reaction.
First his jaw dropped open. Then his eyes widened and his arms unfolded from across his chest.
"Are you sure?"
She nodded.
"How do you know?"
"Silly. Women know these things. I was pretty sure and today I went to a doctor. It's confirmed. We are going to have a baby."
"Yippee," he shouted and swung her up in his arms.
Her feet dangled a few inches off the floor and he covered her face with quick little kisses. She giggled and struggled in his arms.
"Jimmy. Put me down."
He danced around the room with her in his arms until he was out of breath. When he set her down he kissed her tenderly and whispered in her ear, "I love you."
Her lips found his again and her answer was a deep blood-throbbing kiss. She led him into the bedroom and took his hands and placed them on her breasts. They tumbled onto the bed and her hand crept between their bodies to touch the front of his chest.
"Wait," he said breathlessly, rolling away from her. "Maybe we shouldn't. The baby and everything."
Irene giggled. "And all this time I thought you were a lust fiend."
"Yeah, but...."
"Silly. We have a long time before we have to stop. The doctor told me we can make love at least until the eighth month, and maybe after that."
He took her in his arms again and his lips found her ear. "You're wonderful," he whispered.
"You're not so bad yourself."
Their lips met and mingled. Jimmy's hands roamed over his wife's body, pressing against her breasts, squeezing the mounds of her hips, and finally slipping under the hem of her skirt to touch the bare flesh of her leg. Irene moaned at the contact and her hand went to the front of his clothes to open the zipper.
Of all the qualities his wife possessed, the one Jimmy treasured most was the active part she took in the love-making. He had known a lot of women before he finally married Irene and he had encountered most of the variations of the feminine response to love-making. He'd had women who were frigid, who lay unmoving and allowed him the use of their bodies. He'd had women who enjoyed the love act, who reached fulfillment but refused to do more than move their hips. There had also been women who dominated the love bed, women who took the initiative away from him and became the aggressors.
Irene had been a virgin when they married, but their long courtship had not been completely sexless. They had begun with kissing and progressed to petting, and when the force of Jim's libido drove him further Irene refused to give herself to him, offering instead her hands and her lips for his release. She loved him and she wanted to give him pleasure, but she wanted to save something for their wedding night.
In the end, after the wedding, Jim had been glad she'd forced him to wait for the final act. It had made their wedding night something special in their minds, something which neither of them would ever forget. And in those long months of their engagement Irene had learned all she knew of physical love. She'd learned of the glory and joy of it, and of the pleasure of caressing as well as the pleasure of being caressed. She managed to take an active part in the process and yet remain in the feminine role. She took great pleasure in caressing and exciting her husband and lover and yet she never became the aggressor.
Now Jim thrilled to the touch of her hands as he slid his palms up along the smooth columns of her legs. His fingers slid under the elastic of her panties and his palms smoothed the mound of her middle.
"Feel how hard I am," she whispered. "That's your son inside me."
Jim drew her skirt up around her waist and pushed her panties down over her hips. The white flesh of her belly, with its dimpled navel in the center, was bared to his puckered lips. He kissed the depression to taste the sweetness of her flesh. Then he put his cheek flat against her flesh and said, "I love you so much it hurts. Sometimes I sit there at my desk in the office and I think about you here all alone in the apartment and my stomach tightens into knots."
Her fingers curled into his hair and she pressed his head tighter to her body. Her voice came from far away. "I love you, too."
He rolled away from her and moved up on the bed until his head was propped up by the pillow. "Take your clothes off," he whispered. "I want to watch."
Irene got up from the bed and moved a step or two away. When she stood up her skirt fell down over her thighs, concealing her. Her hands slowly unbuttoned her blouse and she pulled it out of the waistband of her skirt to take it off. Then her hands went behind her back and her shoulders hunched forward in that peculiar female gesture as she fumbled with the hooks of her bra. She sighed and straightened and the bra fell away from her body.
Her melon-like breasts with the uptilted nipples were naked now and he felt his excitement growing as he watched her massage away the red lines left by the bra. She saw his excitement and pleasure and she smiled.
Next her hands untied her apron from around her waist and let it flutter to the floor. When she bent forward to take off her shoes her breasts hung down like ripe fruit. Jim reached out quickly to grasp one of those melons, but she twisted teasingly away from his reaching hand.
The zipper and button at the side of the skirt opened under her hands and the skirt dropped to the floor. She stepped daintily away from the pile of clothing and her hand went to the tops of her legs to roll down her panties. She was completely naked now, her breasts and hips a starker white against the rest of her body.
Her arms went up in the air and her hands went behind her head as she posed for him. She turned slowly giving his eyes time to explore every inch of her bare body, while her fingers quickly pulled the pins from the mass of her dark hair. When all the pins were out her hair fell to her shoulders in a black luxuriant wave, shimmering in the dim light of the bedroom. She tossed her head and fanned her loose hair out.
He held his arms out to her and she came to the edge of the bed. He sat up and clasped his arms around her. hips, his clutching hands filling themselves. His head moved forward and his lips lashed at her breast. She groaned at the contact and her body writhed in his arms.
She held his head between her hands and moved his lips to the other breast. There he let her feel the warmth of his mouth against the flesh. Her legs were writhing and twisting, the muscles fighting against his clutching hands.
Her hands moved from his head to his shoulders and she pushed him away to lie flat on the bed. His head was swimming with the demands of his desire as he lay back. She opened his belt and the button of his trousers, and pushed his trousers and shorts down from his hips to his angles. Then she moved to the foot of the bed to take off his shoes and socks before pulling his trousers and shorts off his legs.
Now she moved up alongside the bed again and her fingers quickly slipped the buttons of his shirt through the buttonholes. He shifted his weight from one side to the other as she drew the shirt off his arms. Then his T-shirt came off over his head and he was nude.
She leaned over him and her breasts hung down to press softly against his chest. She bent farther forward and felt the delicate touch of her hair tickling against his body. She moved onto the bed to kneel beside him and she leaned down close to his body as she grasped the sheaf of her hair in her two hands and rubbed his body with it. The silky strands caressed him and waves of pleasure flowed upward over his body.
Her hands fluttered up and down his chest, and squeezed tightly. "I love you," she whispered. Her head darted forward to bestow a fleeting kiss and then she was stretched out beside him.
He took her in his arms and the whole hot length of her bare body was pressed tightly near him from knees to shoulders. Her breasts flattened against his chest, the hard mound of her middle pressed into him, her excited legs trembled against his own.
His hands went down along her back to pull her even tighter against him, and she rolled over and over, drawing him toward her.
He probed with his lips, found her.
"Aaaaah," she groaned. "That's wonderful. I love you."
He paused for a moment before beginning the rhythms of his passion and he felt the rhythmic fluttery movements of her hands stroking him. Her lips began to move in sensuous circles.
The quicker his own rhythm, the faster she moved, and each time she matched his pace her arms were against him spurring him on. She held him with her mouth and her arms were tight around his body. He was surrounded by her sweetness, and he lost all his awareness of the room around him. He knew only her body and the thrills it offered.
In order to prolong the approach of the fulfillment, Jim began to vary his rhythm, but every time he slowed down Irene drummed her heels against the bed and her nails raked his back.
"Don't stop," she would groan each time. "I'm almost there."
And suddenly she went stiff and rigid, her head arched back, and a high keening cry came from her passion-taut throat. At the same time Jim let himself go and felt a thousand sparks against his sweaty hide.
Well, that's the way it had been in early spring, joy unbounded and happiness bubbling up inside them like lava from an endless volcano. Twenty times an evening they would proclaim their love for each other, and their desire for each other was heightened by Irene's pregnancy. This was the delightful time, the time when they didn't have to worry about anything at all. Irene was pregnant and no care was needed nor could change that or make her more pregnant.
By early summer the picture had changed completely. Jim was gaunt-faced and hollowed-eyed from lack of sleep. Irene spent her nights tossing and moaning with pain. The worst part about the pain was that the doctor could prescribe no drugs to ease it because of the baby.
Jim remembered the day he stayed home from work to go to the doctor's office with her. The doctor had examined her and while she was still dressing he called Jim into the office.
"There's not much I can do, my boy," he'd said. "It is very rare, but there are some women who have pain during gestation. There is really nothing we can do. It will be a difficult pregnancy and I suggest that you two plan on no other children."
The fitful nights continued for another week. Then one night Irene awakened him with a scream of agony that was like nothing before. She screamed herself hoarse waiting for the doctor to arrive. He came almost an hour after Jim's frantic call, and after a quick look at Irene, ordered an ambulance.
She was hemorrhaging by the time the ambulance arrived. And she was dead by the time they got her to the hospital. Jim didn't find out she was dead until an hour later. He spent that hour pacing up and down in the corridor, chain-smoking cigarettes, not seeing the activity of the hospital as it moved around him.
The doctor didn't even have to say the words. Jim knew by the expression on his face, and shock numbed it's way through him. The doctor explained something about some kind of rupture, but Jim didn't hear.
He left the hospital in a daze and turned in at the first bar he came to. In an hour he was drunk; silent, brooding drunk. And he stayed drunk for over a week. When his sodden body collapsed they took him to Bellevue and he came awake screaming out his delirium tremens in the alcoholic ward. They fed him there against his will and fought his desire to destroy himself. Slowly, surely, the will to go on living grew in him and he made progress. It took them a month to rehabilitate the body it had only taken him a week to ruin. They fed him, and exercised him, and bathed him. They shaved him and cut his hair. And finally they let him go.
He had no job and he had no money, not even his savings. Sometime during that week he had withdrawn all his money from the bank, but his wallet had been empty when they found him and brought him to the hospital. The old car they had been going to trade in as a down payment on a new model brought him enough to pay his back rent and he spent an agony filled day going through the things in the apartment.
He packed a bag, taking only his own clothes, turned his key in to the superintendent, telling him to give the furniture away, and he left. His friends tried to find him but he had disappeared into the bottomless maw of the slums of the city. He took odd jobs to feed himself and he lived in one room in a rat-infested building on the west side.
But being in the same city where they had lived together, seeing the same buildings and places, was too much for him. He scraped and scrounged until he had a hundred dollars. Then he took his suitcase and his hundred dollars and he found the highway out of town, away from New York.
A hundred dollars isn't a hell of a lot of money, especially if you are going on a three thousand mile trip but with hitchhiking it would last longer. Most of the people who would pick him up would also buy him an occasional meal. And if he ran out of money he could always find an odd job or two.
CHAPTER TWO
It was inky dark. The weak yellow headlights of the old car struggled to pierce the darkness. One of the tires had a hard knot in it and as they rode along they were lulled by the steady thumping every time the knot struck the pavement. Inside the car the silence was filled with the echo of the clattery engine.
Terry Scofield yawned and took one hand away from the wheel to cover his opened mouth. The rearview mirror suddenly glared the reflection of headlights behind the old car and the driver glanced quickly back. It was a truck, monstrous, huge, a behemoth of the road.
The truck driver flicked his headlights from high to low beam once or twice to signal his intention to pass and Scofield pulled the car close to the right shoulder of the road.
The engine of the truck roared as it passed and left behind a cloud of noxious fumes. Scofield slowed down a little to give the truck plenty of room. And when the panel of lights from the rear end had almost disappeared into the darkness he resumed his cruising speed. He resented these trucks. They raced the highways insolent, sure that their tremendous size would secure the right of way. For what lowly automobile driver would challenge the awesomeness of ten tons of hurtling steel.
When the big truck had completely disappeared Scofield went back to his pleasant day dreaming. The hitchhiker beside him was asleep and the empty road required very little attention. He was driving by reflex. When he encountered another vehicle there would be plenty of time. The road was too empty to be very dangerous.
Far ahead by the side of the road Scofield saw a diffused glow of light and he hoped it would prove to be a gas station and restaurant. His car needed fuel, he needed fuel, and he needed restroom facilities. Unconsciously he speeded up as he drove toward the light.
Jim Barton came awake when the car stopped moving. In his sleep his body had become accustomed to the steady thumping of the bad tire and the steady rocking of the car. He blinked his eyes against the sudden brightness of the light and yawned and stretched. The car was parked on the edge of a strip of tarmac and the light came from big spotlights set on high stanchions. In the center of the tarmac were half a dozen gas pumps, white and glaring in the light, and near the car was a small building with a neon sign which said: "EATS." He shoved the car door open, stretched again as he straightened, and slammed the door shut behind him as he moved toward the small building. The windows of the building were frosted over with steam. When he opened the door and stepped inside a wave of warm air enveloped him and he automatically unzipped his jacket.
The only person in the place was Scofield, who sat hunched over a cup of coffee at the counter. Jim sat down beside him. Scofield looked up.
"I thought about waking you," he said. "But then you told me you were pretty tired."
"How long was I asleep?"
"Couple of hours, I guess. It's only nine o'clock now. Want some chow?"
Jim tested his hunger and decided he might do with a bite. So far on the journey it had been his practice to postpone his meals as long as possible. In that way he had managed to make do with only one or two meals a day. He supplemented his food intake with plenty of coffee between rides.
"I guess I could do with a couple of doughnuts and coffee."
Scofield banged the flat of his palm against the countertop and a gray-grizzled old man who needed a shave appeared from somewhere. Hs shuffled up to the counter and stared at Jim and Scofield waiting for one of them to speak. Around his waist he wore an apron which deserved to be condemned by the local board of health, and in his mouth was the unlit stub of a cigarette; its end yellowed by the old man's saliva.
"Give my friend here a hamburger and a bowl of chili," Scofield said.
"Hey, wait-"
The old man stopped in his tracks and waited. He was frozen in the act of walking away from the counter and he waited without even turning back.
"It's all right," Scofield said. "Don't worry about it. I'm buying."
Jim was embarrassed again when in the face of the man's kindness he remembered his own resentment of a few hours ago. "Thanks," he said huskily.
The old man twisted his neck around. "You want to change that order? It'll be too late once I get inside the kitchen." His voice was a hoarse croak which supported the evidence of his bulbous nose and veined cheeks. The old man was an alky. His blood probably ran a hundred fifty proof.
"A burger and chili," Jim told him.
The old man shuffled away.
"How much further is it to Elkhart?" Jim asked.
"We ought to be there by midnight."
"Is it a big town?"
"About thirty thousand. Why?"
"I was wondering how tough it would be to get to the outskirts from the middle of town. In a small town it really doesn't matter-the highway is the main street, but in a big town it gets to be a problem."
"The time of night we'll be getting there your best bet would be to find yourself a place to sleep. If you try to go right on through you'll spend most of the night standing alongside the road. Have you got any money at all?"
"A little, but it has to last me a long time. California's pretty far and I haven't gotten as far as Chicago yet."
"Well, I'll drop you wherever you want to go, but I still think you'd be best off finding a bed somewhere. They've got some pretty cheap hotels in the downtown section. You think about it and let me know when we hit town. If you want I'll drive you through to the outskirts."
"Yeah. Thanks."
Jim was surprised to discover that the food was excellent and the sloppiness of the old man only detracted slightly from the flavor. The chili was rich and spicy and the hamburger thick and juicy. The only bad thing about the meal was the coffee, but that was to be expected. So far he had traveled almost a quarter of the way across the country and he'd only had really good coffee in two or three places.
He had to let his belt out a notch when he finished. And the cigarette tasted better than it had in weeks. Scofield paid the tab and they were back on the road in a couple of minutes. When they had been riding for half an hour Jim offered to relieve Scofield at the wheel. They pulled to the side of the road and switched places.
The car had sounded like a rolling wreck when Jim was sitting in the passenger's seat. Now, behind the wheel, he knew it was a wreck. He could feel the sluggish response to the accelerator and the sponginess of the brakes. The mileage indicator in the center of the oval speedometer read seventy thousand miles. It wasn't a lie.
Jim adjusted himself to the rhythms of the road and the car and out of the corner of his eye he saw Scofield drop off to sleep. The other man had kept the old wreck at a steady forty-five and when Jim tried to push it faster he found out why. In order to increase the speed of the car to fifty it was necessary to use full throttle. With his foot pressing the accelerator hard against the floor Jim found that the speedometer needle wavered weakly at the fifty-mile-per-hour mark. But the front end of the car was so loose that it was impossible to maintain that speed. At fifty the front end shivered and bucked and the steering wheel quivered so badly from a front wheel shimmy that it took all Jim's strength to hold the car on a straight path.
After a couple of minutes he gave up and slowed back to forty-five. The wide concrete lanes with their glaring white separation lines unwound before him as the car crept through the night. Other vehicles, trucks and cars, would come up on the old wreck from behind and deliver a hooting horn blast of derision as they sped past at sixty or seventy miles per hour.
Jim tried the radio. He turned on the switch and the panel lit up. He could hear the hum of the receiver above the noise of the engine. Five minutes after he turned the thing on all he could get was same that lousy hum, nothing else. The only instrument on the dashboard which seemed to be working was the clock, and this made Jim smile wryly. The clock is usually the first thing to go wrong.
At least he knew the time of night at which he was being bored. It was ten-thirty. He drove through a couple of small towns; one street affairs with the one movie just about letting out and everything else except the local ice cream parlor locked up for the night. He passed through a batch of these small towns between ten-thirty and eleven o'clock, and by eleven-fifteen the road was empty and dark ahead of him.
The signs at the side of the road indicated a long steep grade and cautioned drivers to maintain their speed. For Jim in the old rattletrap this was quite a chore and by the time he got to the top of the hill the car had slowed down to thirty-five. Right at the top of the hill he passed a sign which read: "Welcome to Elkhart-A Friendly Town."
Jim reached out with his right hand and shook Scofield awake.
"Hey, wake up. We're there."
"Huh. Whuzzat? What happened?"
Scofield came awake slowly his lips and tongue dry from breathing through his mouth while he slept. "We're here," Jim repeated. "This is Elkhart." Scofield sat up in the seat and rubbed his eyes. "Guess I fell asleep." He yawned.
"I've been thinking about what you said," Jim said. "And I guess you're right. It would be stupid to try and go on through tonight. If you let me out downtown I'll find myself a bed for the night."
Scofield gave him directions to the center of town and Jim drove. First they passed through a residential section where only an occasional house showed lights. Next they drove through an industrial district; warehouses and factories with multi-paned windows which reflected the car's headlights. Finally they came to the business and entertainment district, which was where Jim wanted to go. Here every building was ablaze with lights.
There was one entire block of nightclubs with signs in front advertising the special charms of the feature stripper. The bars were running full tilt and the sidewalks were filled with people milling around.
Jim felt his blood quicken with the tempo of the place. For a town its size, Elkhart looked to be as wide open as any town anywhere. Music from a hundred different sources spilled out into the street and became a jumble of strident sound, but in all the music was present the heavy throb of the accentuating drum beat, the crash of cymbals, the fanfare.
Scofield wanted to drop him right at a hotel, but Jim felt himself being swept up into the pace of the town. He wasn't ready to go to sleep yet. There were too many things to see first. He pulled the car to the curb in the center of the gaudiest block and slid out from behind the wheel. Scofield moved over to take up the driver's position and Jim ran around to the other side to get his suitcase. The two men shook hands, Jim thanked the man, and then he stepped onto the curb to watch the car disappear around a corner.
The town was bubbling with excitement and activity, but it would be unfair to say that it was a den of iniquity. It just seemed that way to Jim coming upon this in a place he would least expect to have this kind of activity after midnight. The same amount and kind of activity back in New York probably wouldn't have raised his eyebrow, but out here in the midwest, in a comparatively small town, it looked like Hades come to life.
For a stranger in any town there are two quick sources of information and advice concerning things like lodgings and entertainment. The first source is, of course, the cab driver; for in any situation he is very likely to be a part-time pimp and a part-time bootlegger. Jim was in no position to hire a cab, even for a short ride around the block. So, he turned to the second good source of information-the bartender. He walked along until he came to a bar with no pictures of girls in the window. This would be the kind of place frequented by serious drinkers with no frills or B-girls.
Inside he found sawdust on the floor, a few scattered tables-half empty, and the bar lined solidly with the hunched shoulders of men who bent protectively over their drinks. There wasn't a suit or tie in the place, even the bartender had his collar opened.
Jim set his bag down just inside the door and wormed his way up to the bar. The bartender spied a new face and moved over to take Jim's order.
"Whiskey, neat, water back," Jim said.
The bartender set a shot glass in front of him which was about three-quarters glass and filled it with an amber liquid from a bottle with an unreadable label. Next to the shot glass he set another glass half full of water. Jim laid a dollar bill on the bar and the bartender scooped it up to replace it with sixty-five cents in change. Maybe they didn't give you much in a drink, but they didn't charge much either.
Jim knocked back the drink, swallowed it, and quickly sent a mouthful of cool water after the fiery liquid. The bartender waited for his impression.
"That was terrible," Jim said. "Give me another, and I guess you'd better make it a double. There wasn't enough in that last one for a flea to take a bath in."
The bartender smiled. He hadn't been sure of Jim's status in the world of drinkers. For all he knew Jim might well have been some young kid looking for kicks. Now that he knew Jim was a real serious drinker, his smile was all warmth and friendliness. He put another glass on the bar in front of Jim. This one had the same outside dimensions but it had three times as much room inside. And when he poured this second drink, he select-ed a different bottle .from the row on the back bar.
Jim tasted it. It was liquor and a legitimate-sized shot. He returned the bartender's smile and dug another bill out of his pocket. The man returned with the same amount of change as before. The other patrons along the bar all had their drinking supplies in front of them. None of them clamored for service. Jim selected two quarters and a dime from the change in front of him and pushed it across the bar.
"How about a drink for yourself?" he asked the bartender.
The man looked around quickly. Evidently he didn't see what he was looking for. He set up another shot glass and poured himself a belt. After a quick nod and a saluting lift of the glass the amber liquid disappeared down the man's throat. He smacked his lips and grinned.
"The boss don't like for us to take drinks, but a man has to be friendly."
"Yeah."
"You a stranger in town?"
"Just got here and I'm looking for a place to sleep."
The bartender paused and inspected Jim with his eyes. "There are plenty of hotels along the street," he said.
"Yeah. You can't tell the clip joints from the others. I don't want to take a room next door to a working girl-if you get what I mean."
"You ain't against a girl earning a living for herself, are you?"
"Not as long as she don't keep me up all night with squeaking bed springs. Is there a nice cheap quiet bed in town?"
"If it's cheap you want, we got a place down the street with beds a half a dollar the night. But a man ain't safe sleeping with all them nutty winos around. Last year one of them guys woke up in the middle of the night with the screaming meemies. By the time they calmed him down four guys went to the hospital and we had to bury another one. Had his head kicked in during the scuffle."
"I suppose I could always get myself locked up for the night," Jim said.
The bartender's face registered sheer horror. "You don't want to do that, mister. Sometimes they forget to let you go again. Had one feller here was missing four days. Even had a missing persons report on him. All that time he was locked up in the city jail. And if they don't like your looks they lock you up and throw the judge away."
"There's got to be someplace I can sleep."
The other man paused for a moment, his eyes squinting against the effort of his thinking. "Will you go a buck and a half for the night with breakfast thrown in?"
A dollar and a half with breakfast was ridiculously cheap. "How big are the bedbugs?"
"No, no. The place is clean. This is a rooming house where the railroad men stay. The old lady who owns the joint don't rent to guys on the move. But if I call her first she'll take care of you."
Jim thought for a minute. What the hell, for a buck and a half how far wrong could he go, especially with breakfast? "All right, set up another round and call the old dame."
The bartender poured another drink for Jim and answered his questioning glance. "One's enough for me. I've got a long night ahead of me." Then he turned and walked down the length of the bar to a wall phone. He was back a moment later.
"It's all set. I didn't know whether or not you wanted to head right over and the old dame's going to sleep, so she said to tell you your room is second floor rear. She'll collect in the morning."
"I've got to make my money stretch," said Jim. "I guess I'll head on over there now and get an early start in the morning."
"How about one on the house before you go?"
"I never turn down free booze."
Jim drank his free shot and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. "Okay, now how do I find this place."
"Out the door and turn right for three blocks. That'll be Sanford Avenue. Right again for one block to Broad Street. Then left to number fifty-eight. Got all that?"
"I think so. Right for three blocks, right for a block, left to number fifty-eight. Thanks a lot."
Jim found his suitcase still just inside the door, undisturbed. He smiled to himself when he thought that the same suitcase in a New York bar would have disappeared about thirty seconds after he walked away from it. Outside the streets were still alive with bubbling activity. Some of the strip clubs had doormen out in front whose job it was to inveigle the passersby inside. Even on such a cold night as this the hawking of the inveiglers and the conversation of the pedestrians mixed with the cacophony of multi-orchestrated music. Jim almost wished he could afford to spend a few hours touring the more torrid nightspots.
This reaction to the life around him was something Jim hadn't felt in a long time. Ever since Irene's death his only interest had been in feeding and sheltering himself, with an occasional struggle for a bottle of booze thrown in. Now he felt as though he were coming awake again after a long winter's hibernation. The pictures of the girls in the windows of the bars and clubs he passed attracted him, and on his three-block walk he stopped often to admire some beauty's lush charms. His love interest had been dormant so long that it felt like a brand new emotion.
Hell, he thought. Three or four drinks and a thousand miles from New York and I'm getting excited already. What the hell will it be like by the time I get to California?
When he reached the corner of Sanford Avenue and turned right he stepped from the gaudy light of the honky-tonk district into the quiet peacefulness of a small town residential street. The difference was as tremendous as between night and day, war and peace, storm and calm. Here he could hear crickets singing from the lawns. Each house stood sedately in the center of its plat, its windows blank, as the people inside slept.
Number fifty-eight was the only house on the block with a light showing. It was a bigger house than most of the rest; three stories high, and it stood on a larger plot of ground. A picket fence ran along the sidewalk which might have been straight out of Huckleberry Finn. The gate even squeaked when he pushed it open.
The front door was made of old weather-darkened wood with glass panels in the top half. Behind these panels were hung lace curtains and beside the door was an old fashioned bell-the kind you have to twist to ring. The door was open and Jim went inside.
He found himself in an entrance foyer. Directly in front of him was a flight of stairs and beside that a corridor to the back of the house. To his right and left were darkened rooms; the one on the right a living room and the one on the left a dining room. The carpets were Turkish style and the furniture straight from Grand Rapids or the Montgomery Ward catalogue.
Jim moved quietly up the stairs to the second floor and down the hall toward the rear of the house. There were two doors at the end of the corridor facing each other from opposite walls. Jim moved to the one on the left first and put his ear to the panel. There was no sound. Then he repeated the action with the door on the right. Still he heard nothing. He put his hand on the doorknob and turned slowly. The room was dark. He set his bag down on the floor and groped for the light switch.
When the light came on he was dazzled by the glare from the white porcelain fixtures. He'd walked into the bathroom. Disgusted with himself, he turned off the light and closed the door. The room on the left was only half filled with the big double bed and the dresser. It was a pleasant room, clean, airy, even though the furniture was old.
He closed the door behind him and set his suitcase down on the foot of the bed. When he slipped out of the heavy leather jacket he realized that this was the first time in almost thirty hours that he'd taken the thing off. His shoulders suddenly felt very tight. There were hangers in the closet and he hung up his clothes as he took them off. His soiled underwear he tucked into a plastic bag from his suitcase and he laid out fresh clothing for the next morning.
Then, still naked, he wrapped a towel around his hips, and stepped across the hall to the bathroom to take his shower. When he closed the bathroom door he discovered behind it a full length mirror and he looked at the reflection of his naked body as though for the first time. He was a half inch shy of six feet tall and from the top of his head to his slender feet his body was lean.
His high cheekbones gave his cheeks a hollow look and only a slight puffiness around the eyes told of his recent excesses. He was wide shouldered and smooth bodied and white fleshed. A bit too white-fleshed for his own tastes, but then he hadn't had much opportunity to get any sun the previous summer. His was a long torsoed body, being long from the hips to the shoulders, that is. And his legs were firm when he flexed the muscles. He'd always been glad that his smooth rippling body was unmarred by unsightly tufts of chest hair. His hands were large and strong and they hung from his bony wrists down to tapered well-articulated fingers. They were clever hands, well coordinated and skillful with tools, and the muscles of his body were like ropes instead of being bulging masses.
The water was plenty hot and he soaped away the road grime of a thousand miles. When he finished rinsing off the soap he ducked his head under the shower stream and washed his black hair. The towels were thick and absorbent and their roughness felt good against his skin. He rubbed until his skin glowed.
In the mirror over the sink he saw that his cheeks and jaw were stubbled by a two day growth of bear. He wrapped another towel around his hips and stepped back across the hall to his room to get his razor from his suitcase. In the bathroom once again he carefully applied the lather to his face and scraped against the stalks of his whiskers with the finely honed edge of the razorblade.
Suddenly the door was flung open and he jumped. He was so startled he nearly cut his throat. In the open doorway stood a woman dressed in a violently colored wrapper of some shiny material. Her hair was twisted and tortured into strange shapes around pieces of perforated steel. Her plucked eyebrows made her face look curiously naked and in her hand she carried a pile of stockings, two pairs of panties, and a bra.
"Well," she said. "Are you going to be in here all night?"
"I'll be out as soon as I finish shaving."
"I'm next door," she went on. "I heard you come in here so I waited. Then I heard you finish so I got everything together. All I want to do is wash out a few things and go to sleep. Just as I got to my door I hear you come back in here. I've been sitting up and waiting for almost an hour now."
Jim finished with one cheek and spoke as he rinsed the lather from his razor. "I'm sorry," he said dryly. "I didn't know I was keeping anyone awake. I'll be through in a couple of minutes."
The woman sat down on the closed lid of the commode. "I guess I'd better wait right here to make sure no one else sneaks in ahead of me."
"Lady, I did not sneak in here."
"No. I don't mean you. Somebody else might decide he wants to use the john and then I'll be up half the night. Say, did I startle you when I opened the door?"
"A little. Why?"
"You've cut yourself. There's blood under your chin."
Jim looked at his reflection and sure enough there was a small cut just behind the point of his jaw. He set the razor down on the sink and tore off a small piece of toilet paper which he applied to the cut. The oozing blood soaked into the porous pink paper and held it to the cut. He realized then that he was covered only by a towel around his hips and he retightened the thing to make sure it wouldn't slip.
He probably would have been better off to leave the towel alone, for no sooner did he bring both his hands back to his face than he felt the tuck of the towel begin to give.
It is impossible to shave with only one hand. Two hands are an absolute necessity; one hand to stretch the skin ahead of the razor, and the other hand to apply the razor's edge. But Jim needed three hands; two to shave and one to hold up the towel. He didn't have three hands so one hand was constantly moving from his face to his towel and back again. As a consequence he managed to slash himself four more times before he finished the other cheek. Every time he cut himself he muttered a curse.
"Does it make you nervous to have somebody watch while you shave?" the woman asked.
"Not at all. What makes you think so?"
"Well, you do look like you're having a tough time."
"Lady, I'm having a tough time because my towel is about to fall down. If that happens I'm sure you will run screaming from this bathroom and the police will accuse me of exhibitionism, indecent exposure, and attempted rape. But why should that make me nervous?"
"What makes you think I'd run out screaming?" It was exasperating. "Look, lady, I've only got my upper lip left to shave. I want to finish with my upper lip intact. Do me a favor, will you? Go back to your room and when I'm finished I'll knock on the wall or something. I can't hold up this damned towel and shave at the same time."
"Forget the towel," she said.
"What?" he cut himself again.
"I said, forget the towel." She smiled at him and her face looked like something out of a sideshow with only the faint line of her tweezed eyebrows between her hairline and her eyes. "You don't really think I came in here to wash out my underwear, do you? That was just an excuse."
He was almost afraid to ask the next question. "What kind of excuse?"
He set the razor down again and waited for an answer. He was surprised to see her cheeks suffuse with a bright pink blush. And then it was a good thing he'd set the razor down or he might have scarred himself for life. Her hand shot out, touched him for a fleeting second and then withdrew.
It all happened so fast he didn't have time to react. She touched him, then stood up and moved out of the bathroom. But before she left she said, "Come to my room when you finish here." Then she was gone.
He was held immobile by shock and he could still feel her hand on his body. The touch had been electrifying, perhaps as much by the surprise of it as by the place she touched him. He closed the bathroom door, making sure to lock it this time, and sat down on the seat she had vacated to try and make some sense out of this silly encounter.
He went over it in his mind. First she barged into the bathroom seeming to be impatient to use the sink to wash out some clothing. Then she talked to him about shaving. Then she stuck her hand onto his towel and invited him to her room, saying something about some kind of excuse.
The thrill of her touch had been magnified by his sensation-starved body. He stood in front of the sink again and looked at his razor. His hands were shaking too badly to try and finish. He washed off the rest of the lather, cleaned his razor, and went back to his room.
He was drawn toward the room next to the bathroom by the force of his curiosity. Was the crazy broad insane? Or was the nutty dame crazy? Or was he going out of his mind? He thought about her hand touching him again. She obviously had an itch, and she had obviously decided to try and get him to scratch it for her. But he wasn't that interested in love, especially not with a forty-year-old frump.
To hell with it, he thought, as he drew a pair of trousers on over his naked legs, I've got to find out what the hell she meant.
He slipped a pack of cigarettes into his pocket and padded barefoot across the corridor. He rapped twice on the door and heard her low-pitched voice from inside bidding him enter. He entered.
The room was larger than his and mostly in shadows. The only light came from a small lamp beside the bed. The red shade of the lamp cast a pale rosy glow over the bed. She lay in the middle of the bed with the covers drawn up to her shoulders. The curlers were out of her hair and it hung down past her shoulders. She now wore make-up.
"Close the door and come over here," she said, patting the edge of the bed beside her.
He closed the door and moved to the bed.
"Would you like a drink?" she asked.
"I think I'm going to need one."
Her arm disappeared over the edge of the far side of the bed and came back holding a bottle and a glass. She poured three ounces of liquor into the glass and handed it to him. He slugged it down in one gulp.
"Now, what's this all about?" he asked.
"You must know by now," she said softly.
"Yeah. But I mean how did you know I would be in the bathroom? And why me, out of a clear blue sky?"
One bare arm snaked across the blanket to come to rest gently on his trousered leg. "Do we have to talk about it? Isn't it enough that you're here?"
"Look, I don't know how you think, but I just don't fall into bed with a woman who barges into my bathroom."
"I was having a cup of tea with Mrs. Zimmer she owns this place-when the phone call came. She told me you were just passing through and would only spend the night. Right then I decided you would be the one. I didn't care what you looked like. I was only afraid you'd be about sixty years old."
"I still don't understand."
"Maybe it will help if I tell you I'm a school teacher. And I'm unmarried."
"So?"
"Just because I never married doesn't mean I don't need love, but this is a small town. If I ever started playing around I'd be ruined here. That's why I live in this rooming house. Once in a while I manage to find someone who's just passing through, someone like you." As she spoke her fingers crawled along his leg.
He grabbed her wrist and pushed her hand away from his body. "I'm not a horse, lady. I don't perform to order." He made as if to rise and she grabbed his wrist.
"Look at me," she said, throwing the blanket down from her shoulders. Her breasts were large and firm, with only the attractive sag of maturity. "Am I ugly? Does my body revolt you? What does it mean to you? You get your pleasure. Can't you close your eyes and pretend I'm some movie star? In the dark you won't be able to tell the difference."
She was ripe and well-fleshed. The white skin of her hips tapered to meaty legs and trim calves. Jim had to admit that she was not ugly, not repulsive. He let his eyes travel up and down her body and her skin suffused with blushing blood. She took his arm and moved it to her body. Her skin was soft and the warmth seemed to flow from her body, through his arm.
She moved his hand all over her body, from the ripe swells of her breasts to her legs. Her body writhed as she caressed herself with his hand. Her eyes slitted and her nostrils flared with her growing passion. She held his hand to her with one of her hands and moved the other one to his trousers.
"Come on," she pleaded. "Don't waste time. I need you."
Her hand was doing exciting things to him. He stood up and quickly stripped off his trousers. Now he was naked and he moved to climb up beside her on the bed. Her hand touched his chest and stopped him.
"Wait," she whispered. "Let me look at you."
He stood with his knees touching the edge of the bed and she inspected him with her eyes and fingers. "You're beautiful. Did you know that?" she whispered hoarsely. "You're like a Greek statue."
Her mouth moved closer to him and she kissed with pursed lips. "So lovely," she murmured, as though to herself. "I need you so."
Her hand tightened on him and she drew him down beside her on the bed. When she came into his arms, her soft ripeness enveloped him and the passion in his flesh flamed. She kissed him, and her hands fluttered up and down his body, seeking, touching, caressing. Her fingers probed, her palms smoothed the flesh of his thighs, her nails raked his back.
He rolled her over on her back and knelt. He sat back on his heels and her arms went behind his back to try to pull him to her. He resisted the force while his hands filled themselves with the softness of her breasts.
"Wait," he said. "Don't rush. It will be better this way."
He leaned over to put his lips against one of her thrusting breasts. Her hands came to his head and pressed him tighter to her bosom, smothering him in perfumed softness.
"Kiss me. Love me," she moaned.
She directed his head from one swollen breast to the other, and then he moved his lips lower on her body.
"Oh, damn," she groaned. "More, more."
Her eyes were squeezed tightly shut and her head tossed back and forth on the pillow. Her lips were slack with passion and a trickle of saliva ran down from the corner of her opened mouth. Her breathing sounded like the panting of a steam locomotive on a steep grade.
He was ready then, and his body surged nearer her. Her hands roved along their bodies, her fingers raking him.. Her passion was to him like a flower opening to the morning sun and he was bathed in heat as her embrace closed about him.
Her deep sigh of delight was like the hiss of escaping steam from the boiler of that locomotive. Then the engineer opened the throttle, the engine began to chug steadily, and the wheels began to drive the train higher and higher up the endless mountain.
His flesh grew warmer against hers and her breasts flattened under the pressure of his chest. The locomotive began to pick up speed. The faster it went the steeper became the grade, and he strained nearer her.
His own passion was rapidly approaching a peak, but he sensed that her need was too great to be slaked in such a short time. He fought down the rising peak until he felt her approaching her own fulfillment. Her movements became frantic as she clutched at him. She was like a drowning woman clinging desperately to a piece of floating wood.
Then her entire body went rigid and she arched up off the bed until only her shoulders and her heels were supporting her weight. It was impossible, but her bowed body stayed that way and she closed her throat against a scream of delight. Only a gurgling sound came out.
He felt the quick pulsing of her muscles and let his own body find its own happiness.
"Yessssssss." It was a whispered scream when she felt the warmth of his delight.
Her arched back relaxed, lowering her back to the bed, and he rolled away from her embrace. Her body was spread-eagled limply, her eyes were closed, and her lips were spread in a soft smile of satisfaction. Her breasts rose and fell rapidly with her breathing and then slowed down.
Jim waited to catch his own breath, and then he took his cigarettes and matches out of his trouser pocket. He lit one and held it out to her.
"Cigarette?"
She shook her head and continued to smile blindly at the ceiling. He put the butt in his own mouth and sucked the smoke deep into his lungs, to exhale it again with a sighing rush of breath. He stretched out beside her on his back and enjoyed the warm glow of the after pleasure. It was many minutes before she spoke.
She rolled over on her side to face him and her lips nuzzled the smooth skin of his chest. "Thank you," she said softly, her voice rich with her gratitude. "That was wonderful."
Jim said nothing.
Her hand came down to touch his leg and her voice was full of wonder. "It's so different now. I feel soft and tiny and helpless."
Jim grinned. "You won't stay that way if you're not careful."
She looked up at his face and returned his smile. "I hope I don't."
CHAPTER THREE
The LANDLADY WOKE HIM THE NEXT morning at ten. She rapped on his door until he came awake enough to yell to her to come in, and when she did come into the room he saw an ample-bosomed heavy-armed woman of indeterminate age. She wore a flowery print housedress and had steel-rimmed spectacles perched precariously on the tip of her nose. She peered over the top of the steel rims at him and smiled.
"Good morning. Did you sleep all right?"
Jim had been about to snap at her for awakening him but the cheerfulness of her tone penetrated his sleep-fogged brain and he choked back his retort. "What time is it?" he mumbled.
"Why, it's ten o'clock. And since you're traveling on through, I assumed you'd want to get an early start." Hell, ten o'clock. He should have been on the road hours ago. By now he might have been halfway to Chicago. He sat up and almost threw back the sheet when he remembered he had been sleeping in the nude. Mrs.
Zimmer saw him pull the sheet hurriedly back up and she smiled.
"Breakfast will be ready in fifteen minutes," she said, and turned and closed the bedroom door behind her. Jim scrambled out of bed and into a pair of trousers. He gathered up his towel, his underwear, and his shoes, and he hurried across the hall into the bathroom. He'd taken a shower last night, but after that he'd spent a couple of very active hours in the bedroom next door. As he stepped under the shower he smiled when he realized he didn't even know her name. There had been no time for the social amenities last night, and afterward she'd been too busy thanking him. Grateful little witch.
He showered and brushed his teeth. His bag was already packed-he'd done that last night when he took out his fresh clothes and all he had to do was put his toothbrush away. He carried the bag downstairs with him and left it near the door when he went to the kitchen.
Mr. Zimmer looked up when he came into the room. She was standing at the stove manipulating a frying pan full of scrambled eggs. "I hope you like eggs," she said. "Most of my other boarders have already eaten, so this is a fresh batch."
"I love eggs."
"Well then, sit down. What are you waiting for?" She must have used half a dozen eggs. They filled his plate, and while he was savoring the first delicious mouthful, she set down a steaming mug of coffee. Jim ate till he thought his stomach would burst, then he pushed himself away from the table with a sigh of contentment. Mrs. Zimmer had been hovering around him while he ate.
"Are you finished? Did you have enough?"
"If I eat any more I won't be able to walk."
"How about another cup of coffee to wash it all down?"
"Well, one more, but no toast, please."
She brought the coffee pot to the table and refilled his cup. "I have some home-made pie."
"No, really, if I eat any more I'll bust."
She poured a second cup for herself and sat down across the table from him.
"Where are you going when you leave here?" she asked.
"Chicago."
"Is that your home?"
"No, ma'am. From there I'm going to head for California."
"What's a young man like you doing running around the country? You ought to have a job and a pretty young wife."
It was a harmless enough question but it bit deep into him and his face clouded over with the return of the pain he was trying to forget. She understood the look in his face and spoke quickly.
"I'm sorry. Don't mind me. Pm just a nosy old lady "
Jim pushed his chair away from the table again and stood up. "I guess I'd better get going," he said. "How much do I owe you?"
"Dollar and a half, just like I said on the phone last night."
"But the breakfast alone was worth more than that."
"Dollar and a half," she said. "The room would have been empty anyway."
Jim paid her and she walked with him to the front door. She told him which bus to take to the outskirts of the town and she stood smiling on the front porch as he walked away. He went back to the main street, found the bus, and took it to the highway out of town. A good feeling warmed him. That feeling had nothing to do with the meal; It came instead from the kind friendliness which the old woman had shown to him, a complete stranger. If he'd been back in New York he wouldn't have gotten so much as a smile from a landlady.
He got off the bus at the last stop and walked another three blocks to avoid all the local drivers. Traffic was moderate and he set his suitcase down to wait for a ride. A state police car cruised by a couple of times and the beaver-hatted driver gave him the once over. Hitchhiking is illegal in most states but the law is rarely enforced. In most Instances it is cheaper to let the hitchhikers go on than it is to arrest them and feed them while they are in jail. The only time a cop will make an arrest is if he is suspicious for some reason.
Jim was waiting about fifteen minutes when the big truck lumbered onto the shoulder of the road and hissed to a stop. The driver was a tall slim cheery-faced young man about Jim's own age. He handled the complex controls of the multi-geared transmission with its two speed axle and separate trailer brake control with skilled ease, and once he had the truck rolling down the highway he relaxed behind the wheel.
"Waiting long?" He asked.
"Nope. Couple of minutes."
"How far you going?"
"Chicago. Are you going that far?"
"Yep. All the way. Right smack dab into the heart of town. This'll be the best service you ever had."
Jim settled back for the ride. The driver was a garrulous fellow and all Jim had to do was throw in an occasional affirmative grunt, or ask a question. The young driver talked about his experiences during the war, but they were not battle stories. Instead, he talked about his adventures in the bars and brothels of Korea and Japan.
Jim enjoyed the stories and was surprised when he saw a sign advising them that they were entering the city limits of Chicago. He looked at his watch and saw that they had been riding for over three hours. When the highway thickened with city traffic the driver stopped talking and drove carefully. In half an hour they were in the center of town.
Jim hopped out when the truck was stopped at a traffic light and he stepped quickly onto the curb to avoid a squealing-braked cab trying to make a turn. The light changed and Jim looked up in time to catch the truck driver's wave. He waved back and the truck was swallowed up in traffic.
Chicago. For all the difference, it could just have well been New York. The lamp posts and street signs were a little different, and somehow the light seemed to fall on the street from a different angle; but the taste of the place was the same. The people moved through the streets with the same walled-in look, the auto horns had the same shrill ferocity and the cabs two-wheeled it around corners with the same reckless abandon.
Here, Jim was sure, he would find no warm friendliness. The smiling young truck driver surely had not been a resident of the city, and there would be no friendly old landladies. But there were more important things to worry about than esoteric ambiguities.
He hefted his bag and started out down the street. Halfway down the block he found a fly-specked window and behind the window he found a cafeteria. In order to enter the cafeteria he had to pass through a lane formed by a chrome fence. At the end of that lane was a machine which spit out cardboard tickets with sums printed on them. Each time the machine regurgitated a ticket it rang a joyous bell at its accomplishment. A man sat on a high stool just behind the machine to make sure that it gave only one ticket to each customer. The man looked suspiciously at Jim until he was sure Jim had taken only a single ticket, then he transferred his suspicions to the next customer.
The tables were coated with a layer of sticky grease and prominently displayed along the walls were signs which proclaimed that the management was not responsible for lost articles. Jim set his bag down under a table and moved with a tray to the line in front of the steam table. As he waited to be served he was reminded of the experience of an old acquaintance who, when eating in just such an establishment as this in another city, had been so involved in watching his coat and hat, that some dirty thief stole his meal right out from in front of him. Alas, the management had disclaimed all responsibility for stolen meals as well.
The special for the day was the hot roast beef sandwich. The cook in the dirty white shirt and trousers slapped two pieces of bread on a plate. On top of the bread he dropped three paper-thin slices of roast beef so stale that they were stiff. Next to the bread and roast beef the cook slapped down half a scoop of watery mashed potatoes, and over the whole mess he squirted rancid-looking gravy.
Jim accepted the mess, put it on his tray and moved on down the line. At the beverage section he was given what had once been a cup of coffee and was now a swimming pool for flies. At the dessert section he chose a small dish of rubbery cubes of flavored gelatin. Throughout the whole procedure Jim had turned his head every few seconds to glance at his suitcase as it rested under a table. At the end of the line he handed his ticket across the counter to a man who rapidly evaluated the total cost of the meal and punched out the price on Jim's cardboard ticket.
When he was two steps away from the table he saw a thin dark man stoop quickly to grasp the suitcase by the handle. Jim put his hand on the man's shoulder just as the man was about to straighten up and walk away.
"I think you've made a mistake, friend," he said evenly.
The man whirled around and stared wide-eyed at him for an instant. His pinched cheeks were badly in need of the attentions of a razor, his eyes glowed with a febrile brightness, and his shirt collar was so dirty it reflected a black shadow onto his under jaw.
Jim tightened his grip until the man winced. "I think that's my bag you have there," Jim said.
"You're crazy," the strange thief said. "This is my bag."
Jim brought his other hand around to grasp the man's arm just above the elbow. He squeezed there, too. It was an effort for him to keep his voice low and even. "If you look again I think you'll find you're making a mistake. That's my bag."
"Prove it," the stranger sneered.
Jim squeezed with both hands as hard as he could and saw the stranger's face tighten with the pain. "Prove it hell. If you don't put it down I'm going to break your damned arm."
The stranger sighed and relaxed his grip on the suitcase. It fell to the floor with a thud. Jim let go of the man and picked up the suitcase. He set it down under the table and retrieved his tray of food which he'd hurriedly set down on a nearby table to intercept the stranger. He brought the food back to his own table and sat down to eat.
The food was flat and tasteless and he looked up while he chewed the first mouthful. The stranger was sitting across the table from him and smiling weakly. "Can't blame a guy for trying," he said.
Jim swallowed the rapidly cooling mouthful of food. "It's okay just as long as you don't try again. At least not with me."
"You'd be surprised how many times it works."
"How many times what works?" Jim asked as he filled his fork again.
"When you dare the guy to prove it's his suitcase. Usually gives me enough time to get out the door, and from there I'm home free."
"Uh, huh," Jim said filling his mouth again and not really understanding what the thief was talking about. The stranger was sitting across from him and talking with a kind of puppy-like friendship. Jim couldn't have cared less. He chewed silently and hoped the man would go away. It was uncomfortable to sit and eat with another man jealously watching every mouthful of food.
The stranger stopped talking and Jim continued to eat, but the man didn't go away. Finally Jim gave up. "Are you really that hungry?" he asked.
The man tried to moisten his cracked lips with a dry tongue. "I haven't had anything since yesterday. Otherwise I wouldn't have tried to lift your bag."
It was obviously a lie. The man had just finished telling Jim that he was an expert at the job. Jim handed him the punched check. "Go ahead," he said. "I'll blow you to a coffee and a roll."
The ticket disappeared so quickly from Jim's fingers that he didn't even see it go. The stranger was up and on the line in two seconds. He returned a couple of moments later with a cup of coffee and two rolls. He bore a sheepish expression. "I'm really very hungry," he explained, handing back the ticket.
Jim looked and saw that the new total was only thirty cents higher than the old one. The stranger crushed the outer surface of the roll so it flaked and crumbled and then dipped it into his coffee. He put the roll in his mouth and bit off a large chunk, making sucking sounds between his open lips as he swallowed. The first mouthful of food seemed to make him more talkative and Jim resigned himself to conversation.
"In or out?" the stranger asked.
"What?"
"Just getting in town, or on your way out?" The man asked around a mouthful of soggy roll.
"Getting in."
"From New York, ain't yah?"
Jim nodded.
"Thought so. The accent gives you away. Staying, or passing through?"
"I'll be here long enough to scrape some money together, then I'm on my way to the coast."
"Thought so. You got the look."
"What look?"
"You don't look like most of the scroungers around here."
"Look, what do you want with me?" Jim asked. "You already took me for a quick meal. That's all you're going to get."
"You're pretty sharp," the stranger continued. "What's your name?"
Jim told him.
"Mine's Sharkey Riley," he said reaching a crumb covered hand across the table. Jim returned the limp handshake. "When I was a kid," he went on, "we all used to go swimming off the pier in the Chicago River. I was the only one who'd swim under the pier and that's when they started calling me Sharkey. I guess the name stuck. It's funny how nicknames stick to a guy. Even today everybody around calls me Sharkey. None of them even know my real name."
Jim sopped up the last of the rancid gravy on the last bit of stale bread and popped it into his mouth. He washed it down with the dregs of the coffee and wiped his hands and mouth with the paper napkin.
"Hey, wait a minute. I better walk out with you or they'll think I dumped the check." Sharkey crammed the last of the second roll into his mouth and slurped up the last ounce of coffee.
Jim paid the check and Sharkey followed him out to the sidewalk. Jim looked up and down the street and tried to decide which direction to take to find a cheap hotel.
"Where you going now?" Sharkey asked.
Jim looked at the skinny little man with distaste. He wanted to be rid of the moocher, but he could be a source of useful information about the strange city.
"I need a flop," Jim told him.
"You mean a quarter a night or a private room?"
"I prefer to sleep by myself, but I don't want the Hilton."
"Down the street a couple blocks is a rat-trap called the Sea Isle. Two bucks a night; john at the end of the hall. It's cheaper by the week."
"Will the bedbugs walk away with my stuff?"
"Not if I bring you in."
"How much do they give you for every sucker you shove their way?"
Sharkey looked hurt, and then his face split in a wide grin. "I told you, you were pretty sharp. You could have yelled for the manager back inside, but you were square about the whole thing. And besides, a guy's got to grab every buck he can get. If you register for a week I get a fin."
Jim grinned at the little man's dishonest honesty. "All right, let's go."
The Sea Isle Hotel was situated over a pawn shop. A dark narrow staircase led up to the second floor lobby-a wide space in the hall with a desk. The space behind the desk was empty and Sharkey pounded on the rotting wood to attract attention.
"Just a damned minute," a blustery voice shouted from behind a closed door. "Keep your pants on."
"It's me Shirl-Sharkey. I got yah a guest."
"I'm coming, I'm coming."
The door behind the desk was flung back to reveal a mountainous woman. She was easily six feet tall and built like a wrestler-a male wrestler. Her hennaed hair hung in limp waves and her fleshy body jiggled and rolled under the thin covering of a powder blue housecoat.
The housecoat was evidently all she wore. Jim could see dark shadows at the ends of her breasts.
She came up behind the desk and sank onto a high stool with a sigh. "How long?" she asked, not even looking at him.
"How much?" Jim countered.
She looked up now with an expression of complete disgust. "Two bucks a day, twelve-fifty a week. Clean sheets once a week and fresh towels every three days. If you want more than that go somewhere else."
"I'll try it for a week," Jim said.
The huge woman removed a blank registry card from a stack at the corner of the desk and shoved it in front of him. Next to the card she put a worn stub of a pencil. Jim filled out the card and pushed it back toward her. "Twelve-fifty in advance," she said.
Jim counted the money and handed it to her.
"Room nine," she said. "One flight up, in front."
"I want a room in the rear," Jim said. "It's too noisy in front."
"That's all we got," she said.
Jim's hand flashed out and ripped the twelve dollars from her grip. She was so startled by the suddenness of his action that she jumped and her housecoat came open to reveal her naked body underneath. She grabbed the front of the housecoat in one large meaty hand and held it closed over her flesh.
"Hey, what's the idea?"
"I want a room in the back," said Jim. "And I'm getting a little tired of everybody trying to hustle me. I have no idea why you want me in that particular room, but I want a rear room. And in case Sharkey forgets to tell you I'm not a mark. If one sock disappears from my room I'm going to come down here and beat you black and blue."
"Okay, okay. Don't get so excited. I think we just might have an empty room in the back." Without even glancing at any sort of list she retrieved the key marked nine and replaced it with one marked six. "Upstairs, same floor, last room on the left."
Jim waited and the big woman turned to him again. "You have to carry your own bag," she said. "This ain't the Waldorf."
"I just want to make sure Sharkey gets his cut," Jim told her.
Her lips curled in a sneer of disgust and disapproval. "What are you, his brother or something?" She separated five singles from the twelve dollars and handed them to Sharkey. The money disappeared quickly into his tattered pocket, and he turned and clambered down the stairs.
The big woman shook her head as she watched him go. "Now that money'll just go to some sloppy pig in some dark alley. Most of the time I give him a roll for his money, but he'd rather pay one of those dirty tramps. He's a little afraid of me." She clucked her tongue and turned back to Jim. "I didn't rent you no lobby space," she snarled.
"That's good. This damned sure isn't a lobby."
"Ah, go on, get out of here." She turned and disappeared through the door again and Jim went up to his room.
The room's one window opened onto a tiny odorous airshaft. Directly across the small distance was the blank face of another window. Both windows looked like they had been washed when the cornerstone of the building had been laid and never since. The paint and plaster were chipped and peeling and the surfaces of the dresser and the nightstand beside the bed were scarred from a thousand forgotten cigarettes. One twisted wire coat hanger hung in the closet and a thick coat of dust covered everything.
Jim closed the window to cut out as much of the odor as he could and forced the warped frame of the transom open to give at least a little ventilation. He opened the drawers of the dresser and killed the cockroach he found in one of them. Then he unpacked his suitcase and put his clothes away.
The mattress of the big old double bed was hard and lumpy and the pillow too soft. He kicked off his shoes and squirmed around until he found a modicum of comfort and he dropped off to sleep. There would be plenty of time tomorrow to find a job.
When he woke up, it was freezing in the tiny room. His teeth chattered while he put on an extra pair of socks and a sweater. He checked his wallet, found his money still there, and prepared to go out for some supper. Just as he turned off the light in his room the window across the air shaft blazed into light. The light flicking on caught his attention and he looked through his window into the other room. What he could see of the furniture told him the room was decorated exactly like his own.
As he looked, a woman came into view. She was a flaming redhead and she wore a powder blue sweater and a darker blue skirt. She glanced at his window, and seeing no light, promptly forgot to pull down her own shade. She was about twenty-eight or so, and well formed. Her large breasts punched out against the wool of her sweater and her rounded hips swayed provocatively when she moved.
Jim stared as she crossed her arms across the front of her body and grabbed the bottom edge of her sweater. With one swift smooth move she whipped the sweater up and off over her head. Now she was wearing only a bra above her waist. Her hands moved to the button at her hip and the skirt dropped down out of sight. When she leaned forward to pick it up her heavy breasts swung away from her body.
Next she removed the bra, bending and twisting to get her hands at the hooks, and when the bra was gone she massaged away the red lines in her flesh with gentle strokes of her fingers. Her breasts were huge magnificent mounds of snowy flesh that swayed and bobbed when she moved. She raised her arms over her head to stretch and Jim saw shadowed stubble at her armpits.
Her fingers hooked under the waistband of her panties and pulled them down, then she bent forward again to step out of them. Her breasts hung down like ripe melons from the branch of a tree.
Around her waist now the woman wore only a black garter-belt with garters stretched taut to the tops of her stockings. She put one foot on the window sill and crushed her breasts against her knee when she leaned forward to open the garters and roll down the stocking. She repeated the action with the other leg, only this time one breast escaped the crushing and hung off to one side.
When the garter-belt was loosed from the stockings, and she stood with one foot raised to the window sill, Jim was treated to a most delightful view of her body. Completely naked now, the girl turned and unknowingly offered him a view of the rest of her body. Her back tapered from the fine bones of her shoulder blades to her waspish waist and then widened to flow into the divided spheres of her hips. Her hips were separated from the tops of her legs by a small fold of flesh. The quivering mounds were rounded sloping contours and they bunched and slid together when she walked.
She stepped out of sight and Jim moved closer to the window to see if he could follow her with his eyes. A moment later she stepped back into sight carrying in her hand a white bra and another pair of panties. She slid the panties on, and Jim groaned his disappointment. Next came the bra and she tortured her magnificent breasts into the constricting cups. From her closet she removed a hanger on which was hung a full slip and a white uniform. Was she a nurse?
She pulled the slip on over her head and stuck her arms into the uniform. Then she turned around to face the window again and Jim saw that it was a waitress's uniform. There was a name embroidered across one breast but he was too far away to read it.
The girl moved out of sight again and Jim held his breath for a long minute. She came back into sight to take a coat from the closet, then the lights went out in her room. There was a fading flash of light when she opened her door, and then it was dark again.
Jim closed and locked his door, and he made it downstairs just in time to see her flaming red hair disappear around a corner. He moved quickly after her. She walked two blocks and then turned into a door halfway down the third block. Jim followed and looked at the sign over the glass window.
FATTY DAN'S, the sign said in big bold letters across the top, and below, in slightly smaller print it said, The Eatin' Man.
The grammar may have been terrible but inside, the restaurant seemed all smooth professionalism. Everything that wasn't chrome was glass or formica, and the whole place seemed to sparkle. It was just a little past the supper hour and the place was about half full. Jim moved across the street and into a doorway where he could look directly into the restaurant.
The redhead appeared from somewhere in the back and Jim noted the tables to which she was assigned. When he went in, he wanted to be sure she served him. He waited in the doorway until one of her tables was vacated by a middle-aged gray-haired man who tried to look down the front of her uniform every time she bent over his table. The man left a dollar bill lying on the table when he walked out.
Jim moved across the street and stopped to look over the menu in the window before going inside. The prices rocked him back on his heels. The joint was little more than a glorified diner, and yet they charged as much for the special as most good restaurants. The cheapest dinner was two-fifty. He shook his head. He didn't think it was worth two-fifty to meet her. Specially since they were neighbors.
While Jim stood in front of the place he saw a monstrously fat man come out of the kitchen and take up a place behind the cash register. The man wore a broad smile across his sweat-shiny face and he nodded to one or two of the customers who seemed to know him. One of them made some kind of a remark and the big man's head went back in a silent laugh. Jim imagined if he had been inside his ears would have rung with that laughter. The fat man's entire body jiggled when he laughed and the ends of his apron strings bobbed and whipped. When the man stopped laughing those ripples died slowly away.
Jim pushed the front door open and walked to the cash register. The fat man looked up, still with the grin. "Are you Dan?" Jim asked.
"In the back," Fatso said, jerking his thumb toward a door near the phone booth.
Jim walked up to the door and knocked but could hear nothing over the clatter of dishes and the hiss of steam. He paused half a second and then pushed the door open. He found himself in a small office. Behind a desk, his face hidden by a newspaper, sat a small lean man. The man dropped the paper for long enough to send a sharp glance over Jim and then raised the paper again.
"Yeah, whatta yah want?"
"A job."
"What can yah do?"
"Anything."
"Ever been a pearl diver?"
"I pulled KP when I was in the Army."
"This ain't the same thing, but it'll do for experience. Want the job?"
"How much?"
"If you came here looking for me you must need a job pretty bad. What the hell is this `How much?' bull? You want the job?"
"Yes," said Jim, wondering why everybody in Chicago seemed to want to push him around.
"It's the night shift. Eight to four. Six nights, Mondays we're closed Pays a buck an hour and two meals. Them meals alone are worth five bucks a day."
"When do I start?" asked Jim.
The man lowered the paper and looked at Jim as though he pitied him for his stupidity. Jim saw a pinched-faced little man across the desk with black piercing eyes. "Are you Fatty Dan?" he asked.
"Yeah," the little man said. "I dreamed up the name to draw the suckers. They think if a fat mans owns a restaurant the food's got to be good. Stupid," he shook his head, "being fat ain't got nothing to do with eating. It's all in the glands."
"When do I start work?" Jim asked again.
"Right now, whatta yah think I hired yah for? The louse who had the job called in ten minutes ago to quit. Guess I should be thankful for the call, otherwise we'd be waiting for him an hour from now." Dan's voice was filled with venom for the stupidity of the rest of the human race. It was a shame no one else in the world was as smart as he.
"One more thing," Dan said. "You got to promise me two days notice when you quit."
"Fine, but what makes you think I'm going to quit?"
"They all do. They come in here and work long enough to put a few dollars back to back and then they go off to drink it all away. You a drinker?"
"Not that kind."
"Good," Dan said rising from his chair. He walked around the desk and came to the door. "Come on. I'll take you to the kitchen."
Surprisingly, the kitchen was as clean and shiny as the front of the place. Four white clothed men worked at a battery of stoves along one wall.
"Hey, Frank," Dan yelled over the noise. One of the men turned around. "This here's the new pearl diver. Show him how to run the machine." Dan turned and walked out of the kitchen.
The cook called Frank nudged one of the other men to watch the food he'd been preparing and came over to Jim. He introduced himself and the two men shook hands. Jim was shown where to hang his clothes and given a white apron to wear. Then Frank showed him how to operate the controls of the dish-washing machine and explained the procedure.
The waitresses brought their tray loads of dishes into the kitchen and set them down on a long galvanized iron table. Jim was to scrape the waste from each dish into a large garbage can and then stack the dishes in a rack. The racks were placed on conveyor belts which carried them through the monstrous machine. They came out the other end clean and so hot they were sterile. It was part of Jim's job to stack the clean dishes on the shelves to be used and soiled again so he could go through the same procedure. The trays were washed in the same manner.
Frank showed him how to control the hot water and where to put the soap and then went back to his cooking. The iron table was already overflowing with dirty trays and Jim set to work. It was hot and sweaty work and after an hour his hands were burned raw, his back ached, and the skin of his hands, where it wasn't burned, was soft and ridged from being continually in water.
He worked hard and he worked fast and he soon had the table cleared. Frank came over just as he was stacking the dishes from the last rack. "From eight o'clock on we're usually not that rushed, but those dishes were piling up. You eat yet?"
Jim wiped the sweat from his face with the sleeve of his tee-shirt and shook his head.
"Sit down over there," Frank said, pointing to a small table in the back of the kitchen. "I'll get you something."
Jim eased his aching back into the chair and Frank brought him a heaping platter of juicy roast beef and french fries. Jim got a knife and fork from the holders and fell to. The food was excellent and Jim could see the reason for the high prices. The meat was sliced thick and juicy and the potatoes were crisp on the outside and tender on the inside. Jim polished off the whole plateful and washed it all down with two cups of excellent coffee. Things were slow out front, and he had time to light a cigarette.
He'd seen the redhead half a dozen times when she brought in trays of food and another half dozen times when she came back to give an order or pick one up. Once he caught her eye and smiled, and she returned the smile.
At eleven o'clock fatigue was beginning to creep into Jim's bones and he was beginning to hate the rapidly growing pile of dishes. To him it seemed that the entire population of Chicago was coming to Fatty Dan's to eat just so he would have to wash all the dishes. It wasn't really the entire population of Chicago, it was only the movie crowd stopping on their way home for a hamburger and quick cup of coffee.
From twelve o'clock on, Jim knew that the bulk of dishes used would be coffee cups and saucers with an occasional pie plate thrown in. He wondered how it must be during the day or during the dinner hour and he was glad he didn't have to find out.
The cooks and waitresses worked staggered shifts. Some of them, like the redhead, coming on at eight and working through till closing. Others left at one a.m. At three-thirty, the one remaining cook told Jim to shut down the machine and clean it, and to leave the rest of the dishes for the morning crew.
By four o'clock Jim was dead on his feet. His hands were raw and blistered and his face stung from being in steam for most of the night. He sighed gratefully when he took off his apron and slipped into his sweater and jacket. The redhead was just going out the front door when he came out of the kitchen. Jim said good night to the cook and hurried after her.
Outside, the street was cold and dark and empty and he could see her shadow and hear the click of her heels as she hurried along. Jim came up behind her and she turned quickly to see who was following her.
"Oh," she said when she recognized him in the light from a store window.
"I didn't mean to frighten you," Jim said.
She smiled. "That's all right. A girl is always scared at this time of night." She slowed down her pace and Jim fell in beside her. "Do you live down this way?" she asked.
"I've got a room at the Sea Isle," he told her.
"Why that's a coincidence," she said. "That's where I live."
"No kidding," said Jim, feigning surprise.
They walked to the hotel together and Jim listened to the girl talk about the restaurant and some of her customers. She told him amusing stories about mixing up orders and he laughed appreciatively. They parted in the lobby and Jim was careful not to turn on his own light when he got to his room. He didn't want the girl to look across the air shaft and discover that she had a neighbor. As long as she assumed that the room was empty she would not pull down her shade.
She undressed in front of the window again, and Jim marveled at the beauty of her naked body. He was disappointed when her light winked out, but his tired body soon dragged him into deep sleep.
CHAPTER FOUR
IN THE WEEK THAT FOLLOWED, JIM BECAME acclimated to the back-breaking labor. His blisters hardened to calluses and he became quite good at his job. It was a decent job and he settled into a comfortable routine. He would awaken each day at noon and have breakfast. After eating he was free to spend the afternoon and early evening wandering around Chicago. At seven-thirty he would show up at the restaurant to have dinner before he started work, and at one-thirty he would have another meal.
On his second day he found out the girl's name, Martha Smathers, and each night when they finished working he would walk home with her. After he left her in the lobby he would hurry to his room to watch her undress and prepare for bed.
Once during the week, a customer waited for her outside when she finished work. The man came up to her in the street and asked her to go out with him, saying he knew of an after-hours club. She was shaking her head and backing away from the man when Jim came out of the restaurant. When the stranger saw Jim he gave up and walked away into the night. Martha clung to his arm all the way back to the hotel.
Two minutes after leaving her in the lobby he was ensconced in his darkened room peering across the airshaft and waiting for her light to come on. Her room lit up a moment later and he held his breath until she came into view. That night she came into view only once, and that time she was still fully clothed. For some reason known only to herself she chose, that night, to undress out of range of the window. All Jim could see was her enlarged shadow on one wall of her room, and somehow that shadow was more exciting than the sight of her nude body.
Sunday was payday and the restaurant closed at midnight. Jim just had time to grab a quick meal before he went to collect his pay envelope. Fatty Dan, that skinny sharp-faced little man, was sitting behind his desk when Jim went into the office.
"Well, how do you like the job?" Dan asked, holding out Jim's envelope toward him.
"It stinks," Jim told him, accepting the money. "If k wasn't for the money I wouldn't be working."
"I don't blame you," Dan said, sarcastically. "If it wasn't for the money I wouldn't be running a restaurant."
Outside the office Jim ripped open the stapled end of the manila envelope and poured the money into his hand. Since Dan was aware that the job was only temporary he hadn't withheld any of the pay for taxes and Jim was holding forty-four dollars. He crumpled the envelope and threw it into the garbage when he went into the kitchen to get rid of his apron and pick up his jacket.
Martha Smathers was waiting for him in front of the place. She smiled when he came outside. "After the other night," she said, "I feel safer walking with you. And after all, we do live in the same place, don't w So what could be wrong?"
"Yeah," said Jim.
"I suppose you got paid, too," she prattled.
"Yeah."
"On payday I suppose everybody gets paid," she said with a sigh. "You really ought to put some of your money into the bank."
Jim smiled as he reached out to take her hand. "Why don't you just shut up," he said gently. "And while you're quiet, think of someplace you'd like to spend the evening."
"But it's after twelve o'clock," she protested.
"There must be lots of places open after twelve o'clock."
Back at the Sea Isle he told her to hurry to her room and change out of her uniform and he would meet her back in the lobby in fifteen minutes. He was sitting comfortably before his window when the light in her room came on. When he saw by her movements that she again intended to undress out of his view he pulled down his own shade and turned on his lights. His one suit had been hanging in the closet long enough for the wrinkles to hang out and he whistled tunelessly as he dressed.
She was waiting for him when he got back downstairs and she was wearing a tight black skirt and a tighter black sweater. The skirt was so tight that he could see the ridges of her garter-belt, and the sweater was so tight that the weave gapped at the ends of her full breasts and showed white from underneath. He was pretty sure that the white was from her bra and not from her flesh, but the idea that she might be bare just beneath that one layer of wool excited him.
They found a bar with a juke-box and an open space for dancing, and they settled down to enjoy themselves. The waiter showed them to a table in a darkened corner and disappeared to bring their drinks. While he was gone Jim looked around the room. Most of the tables and booths were filled with laughing, talking couples. Some of the couples were white and some were Negro and at one table a colored man sat with a white woman. Jim began to wonder what kind of place he'd stumbled into, and he was more concerned what the girl's reaction would be. After all, how could a girl named Martha Smathers be open-minded about inter-racial dating? It was against all the traditions of America. If her name bespoke some racial strain other than good old Anglo-Saxon it would be perfectly all right to be tolerant, but a name like Smathers-never.
Up to that point Jim knew more about Martha's nubile body than he did about her mind and prejudices.
After all, he had spent much more time watching her dress and undress than he had listening to her talk. His first surprise of the night came when she made no mention of the mixed couple across the room.
His second surprise came when she polished off her first drink in one long smooth swallow, her adam's apple bobbing only twice while she held the glass to her lips with her head tilted back.
"Ah," she said licking her lips and sighing. "That was good. The first one is always the best, especially if it's the first one in a long time."
Jim made no comment. He signaled the waiter to bring her another and got up to drop a couple of quarters into the record machine. By the time he got back to the table her second drink was already half gone.
"You really pack them away, don't you?" he said. "Don't worry," she said. "I've got money with me."
"I'm not worried about paying for the damned drinks," Jim said, "I just don't want you getting sick on me."
She looked up at him and raised one eyebrow quizzically. "Oh, do you have any plans for me?"
Jim had plans all right, but it wouldn't be gentlemanly to admit them. "It's just that I hate dates who get sick all over the place."
"I never get that drunk," she told him.
The jazz record then playing on the jukebox ended and a slow tune came on. Jim stood up and gathered her into his arms to move onto the dance floor. For the first half of the record they danced with their bodies just barely brushing and he was teased by the gentle pressure of those twin cones of delight whispering against his chest. Then she relaxed and melted into his arms, her breasts crushing against him, rubbing. As he held her he wondered what had happened to the girl who had talked about opening a bank account while she nervously waited for him to ask her for a date. This was a completely different girl he now held in his arms; quick, sure, and confident of her femininity.
When the exciting pressure of her body against his had its inevitable reaction, he tried to move half a step back so she couldn't be annoyed by his pressing against her, but her body followed his like sticking plaster and when she became aware of his state she rubbed even harder.
Her face was buried in the crook of his neck and he breathed in the perfume of her dyed hair. And when the dance was over and they parted to go back to their table he saw that her face was flushed and her eyes slitted.
"I have a confession to make," she said when they were seated. "I wanted you to ask me out ever since that night we first met."
Jim wondered about making a confession of his own but held off until just before the bar closed and they were both pretty stoned. Then he said, "I think I ought to tell you that my room is just across the airshaft from yours."
"That's nice," she said.
"You don't understand," he said. "From my window I can look right into your room."
"That's nice." Maybe she was drunker than he thought.
"But every night I watch you undress."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. Do you hate me now?"
"Do you like to watch me take off my clothes?"
"Yeah, but the last couple of days you've been out of sight."
"Oh, I didn't know."
And then the bartender was flicking the lights and putting out the last call for alcohol. They ordered a last quick round, Jim paid the tab, and they stumbled out into the night.
The streets were misty and cold and empty and when Jim saw a taxi he hailed it. The cab driver pulled to a screeching halt and spun the taxi around to come to their curb. Jim opened the door, helped her in, and then followed, pulling the door shut behind him.
"Where to?" the cabby asked.
"Wait a minute," Jim said turning to Martha. "Do you want to go right back to the hotel?" he asked her. "I don't care," she said.
"Drive around a while," Jim told the driver. "Take us on the grand tour of the city."
"It's your money, buddy," the driver said as he put the meter flag down and pulled away from the curb.
As soon as they were rolling Jim turned and took Martha in his arms. She came to him quickly and their mouths met, lips crushing and tongues seeking. Jim brought his hand up her body to fill his palm with her sweatered breasts and she arched her back to offer herself more fully. He squeezed that delightful cone of flesh, thrust into his palm through the material of her sweater and the second layer of her bra.
His intoxicated senses drank in the aroma of her flesh and his other hand found her knee under the hem of her skirt. He moved his lips from her mouth to her ear and he heard the hoarseness of her rapid breathing. The smooth skin of her legs grew warm under his hand and her hands began to do some caressing of their own.
They fed the flames of their rising passion for about fifteen minutes and then the cab driver slammed on the brakes, jolting them apart. He turned in the front seat and looked back at them.
"Have a heart, will you buddy? You two are driving me nuts up here. It's your money and none of my business, but do me a favor, will you? The next diner we come to that's open I'll pull in and park in the back lot. Then I'll go in for coffee and you two can do whatever you please. Then when I come out, I'll take you wherever you want to go. I'll even shut off the meter while I'm inside. I'll do anything just so I don't have to sit up here and listen to the two of you go at it hot and heavy." Martha giggled. "Poor guy," she whispered to Jim, "His wife's probably frigid."
The cab driver heard her. "Lady, my wife is not frigid. In fact, I don't even have a wife and when I get one I'll make damned sure she isn't frigid before I marry her. I'm just a normal healthy American man and you two are driving me off my rocker."
"Maybe we ought to get him a girl," Martha said, still talking to Jim.
"Now that ain't a bad idea," the cabby said. "I think I'd go for that plan. Got anybody in mind?"
"No," Martha said.
"Oh," the driver said, disappointed. "Then I guess it'll have to be the next diner."
"If you two are finished with this insane conversation I'd like to get rolling." Jim said, finally finding room to slip into the conversation. "While we're sitting here that meter keeps clicking.
"Oh, don't be such a cheapskate," Martha said. "Yeah, don't be such a cheapskate," the driver added. "The lady and I was talking about love and such. Who asked you to stick your two cents in?"
"Whatta you mean, stick my two cents in?" Jim retorted angrily. "This is my date. You're only the driver of this vehicle."
"That's right," Martha shouted at the driver. "Who asked you to turn around and butt in? I'll bet you're a Peeping Tom."
The driver looked at her as if she had suddenly defected to the enemy. Then he threw up his hands in a gesture of disgust and turned back to the wheel. Jim and Martha turned back to each other. When the cab bounced over a curb and into a darkened parking lot they sat up and waited until the driver had turned off the meter and departed to spend half an hour over a lonely and unstimulating cup of lousy coffee.
"Why did you do that back there with the cabby?" Jim asked when they were alone.
"Do what?" she asked innocently.
"Never mind," Jim said, taking her in his arms once again.
The parking lot was empty except for the cab and its macadam surface was alternately darkened and then bathed in a rosy glow from the pink neon sign on the roof of the metal building. The glow from that flashing sign managed to permeate even the close confines of the back seat of the taxi and when Jim drew up Martha's sweater and unhooked her bra, her breasts seemed to glow in the colored light.
When the light flashed off her breasts were just white cones of flesh. When the pink flashed on those breasts became magic mountains out of some fairy tale. Jim stared, fascinated, as the breasts transformed themselves before his very eyes. When they were just plain breasts he wanted to kiss them and fondle them, but when they were fairly mountains he wanted to look at them. He became confused and settled the problem in the only logical way. He closed his eyes and put his lips against one of the magic mountains.
"Oh, Martha groaned, tangling her fingers in his hair and smothering him in the perfumed flesh of her bosom.
"Umph," muttered Jim as he transferred his mouth from one breast to the other.
"Oh, oh," Martha groaned, taking double delight in his attack on her second breast.
The cabby tried to be a good guy about the whole thing. He dawdled over that one lousy cup of stinking coffee for almost half an hour. But how long can a guy just sit around while a couple of kooks are making it in his cab? He finally slurped the last of the coffee and made his way back to the cab.
As luck would have it, he arrived in the nick of time. If he'd come thirty seconds later there would have been nothing to do but stand around and wait until Jim and Martha finished. As it was he had to cough and whistle and scuff his feet to attract their attention. Martha was stretched out on the back seat, her sweater up around her neck and her skirt around her hips. Jim was kneeling and his fingers were frantically working at his own clothing.
"Don't you people have any place to go where you can find some privacy?" the cabby asked when he was behind the wheel and Jim and Martha were fumbling with the fastenings of their clothing.
"Of course we do," Jim said. "We have hotel rooms."
"Then what the hell are you doing trying to make love in my cab?"
"It was your idea," Martha offered "What?"
"Well, you said you'd pull into a diner parking lot and go for a cup of coffee, and we could...."
"Oh, never mind. Every time I listen to you I get more confused. Where do you want to go?"
Jim gave him the name of the hotel and he and Martha only held hands during the ride. Once back at the hotel, Jim paid the driver and tipped him two dollars. The driver was happy, if befuddled, when he pulled away, and Jim and Martha were happy because they'd finally found a place where nobody would interrupt them.
They went up to her room, and the first thing she did was to pull down the shade.
"Don't do that," Jim said.
"Why not?"
"Well, if I was in my room I wouldn't want you to do it. With the shade down I wouldn't be able to see anything at all."
"But you're not over there, so you won't be able to see anything anyway."
"I suppose you're right. Leave the. damned thing down."
He threw himself on the bed and laced his fingers behind his head. Martha walked to the closet and opened it to take out a hanger. She took off her skirt and carefully hung it away. Then she removed her panties and shoes and stockings. She looked peculiar walking around the bedroom nude from the waist down and covered with a black sweater from the waist up.
Martha took hold of the bottom edge of her sweater with her arms crossed over her chest and lifted the black wool garment off over her head. The eager fruit of her breasts strained against the material of her bra when her arms were over her head. She flung the sweater away and hunched her shoulders forward and twisted her arms behind her back to get at the hooks of her bra. It was the classic female pose and Jim wondered why some bright bra manufacturer couldn't put the hooks in front right between the breasts where they'd be more accessible, both to the woman and to any man who happened to be trying to get her clothes off her.
She strained and grunted and then sighed when the straps of the bra came loose and hung from her body. The contraption was still supported by the thin shoulder straps, but with the back-straps released her nipples peeked saucily from beneath the edge of the cloth. She shrugged her shoulders and the bra fluttered to the floor.
Her breasts were like trembling mountains of ice cream. Her palms smoothed at the red lines left by the constricting underwear and she walked slowly toward the bed with a sensuous rolling of her hips. Those hips rolled and swayed as though joined to her body by well-oiled ball joints and Jim stared, fascinated. She stopped just out of reach of the bed and pouted.
"You've still got your clothes on," she accused.
Jim grinned. "You did such a nice job taking your! off I thought you might want to take mine off too.
She pounced, breasts bouncing and weaving little patterns in the air, onto the bed, and her fingers attacked the buttons and zippers and buckles of his clothing. She opened everything there was to open and then slid off the bed to pull the clothes off his body. First came the shoes and socks, then the trousers and shorts. It seemed backward to begin with the trousers and leave the shirt for last, but that's the way she seemed to prefer it, even with her own clothes.
Jim sat up to give her ready access to his shirt sleeves and a moment later he was completely nude. Martha dropped his shirt carelessly cm the floor and stepped back a pace to let her eyes run up and down his body. Her eyes flicked to his muscular body and the pink tip of her tongue came out to moisten her dried lips. Jim squirmed under her scrutiny, the passionate glaze of her eyes making him uncomfortable. She had the look of a hungry predator and he seemed to be fresh meat.
Martha stalked to the bed and stretched out beside him with maddening slowness, her long limbs moving with lascivious grace. She rolled on her hip to face him and moved closer to his body, slowly closer until he could feel the heat of her flesh radiating out to him. She moved still closer and he felt her breasts brush lightly against the muscles of his flat chest.
Her flesh was a hard point of flame which burned to the very core of his body. Then there was incredible softness as her breasts flattened against him. At his hips he felt the silky smoothness of her hips caressing. And below, his legs were brushed by the warm marble of her smooth columns of legs.
His breath quickened and he dropped his hand over her hip to cup the sumptuous spheres of her back. With that hand he pulled her crushingly nearer and abandoned himself to the delightful sensations of tactile stimulation. Her body was a smooth hot pillow for his aching passion, at once soothing his fever heat and yet making his desire soar.
Her hand slipped around their bodies. With a quick rolling movement he flipped her over and over and bent his head to her breasts. His mouth touched her at the warm fold between her heavy breasts. She twined her other hand behind his head and pressed him tighter to her until he was smothered in the warm perfumed flesh, his nostrils and mouth filled with the incredible softness.
His mouth climbed one vanilla ice cream mountain, and her breathing was hoarse in his ear.
"Love me I" she commanded, and his mouth pressed against her flesh while his hands caressed her.
"Damn! " she shouted, shuddering. "I love that. The other one. Now, the other one."
Obediently he moved his mouth to her other breast and found that one as delectable as the first. His chest was pressed against her, and he could fed her hips making involuntary eager movements. His hand slid out from beneath her to stroke the smooth warm flesh of her legs, and she reacted as though he'd pressed some secret button. His fingers began at the knee and traveled slowly upward, finding the higher flesh increasingly warmer.
Her body came off the bed and her flesh trembled as his hand moved. She became a heaving mass of trembling flesh and he allowed the pressure of her hand to force his head down along the beautiful length of her body.
Her breaths were quick gasps as her lungs sought air, and her head, eyes squeezed tightly shut, tossed from side to side on the pillow. His head moved lower and his mouth touched on a succulent navel.
Then his own passion overwhelmed him and he forgot all about artfully arousing her. His lips fluttered over her, and his hand rocked against her back. When her passion grew too strong for her to keep her muscles taut, her hips sagged back to the bed and her limbs flopped loosely, while with each ragged breath she let out a small whimper of pleading delight.
Jim knelt on the bed and slid his hands all over her back to lift her. A convulsive shudder ran through her when she felt him maneuver her body.
"Ooooh," she moaned.
"Yessssss," she hissed as her passion mounted. "More ... love me ... Oh, please make love to me."
Jim heard the sound of her voice but his blood thundering in his ears prevented his understanding her actual words. He only knew of the incredible warmth which seemed to surround his entire being.
"Love me ... love me," she groaned just before her fingers locked onto the flesh of his shoulder and her nails raked his back from hips to shoulderblades.
He didn't hear her words, but he knew that she was urging him to greater heights, and he responded with all the skill and passion at his command. The alcohol in his body helped his performance, prolonging the inevitable cataclysm for many long minutes and giving her a triple measure of joy. Twice her body went rigid, and after each of these times there were moments of complete limp unresponsiveness on her part. But after these unresponsive moments she rejoined the fray with doubled vigor.
They were like two storm clouds coming closer together in a dark night sky. The electrical charges in his male cloud built higher and higher as they came closer together and when they were too close, that electricity leaped from one cloud to the other with a flash of lightning. The resulting thunderclap of climactic joy drowned their bodies in a wash of sweat and exhaustion.
They fell asleep embracing each other and sometime during the night they fell away from each other. He awakened the next day to the delightful sensation of her caressing him and they made wonderful love while he was still in that delightful state of being only half awake.
They spent the whole day in bed, getting up only to feed their hungry bodies. The next morning Jim checked out of his room and moved in with her. Her double bed was far too big for their needs. And each evening when they went to work Jim felt more exhausted than the evening before. She, on the other hand, seemed to thrive on the diet of steady love, and was more eager each time they came back to the sleazy hotel room.
In one of his rare moments away from her that week Jim picked up a newspaper, suddenly realizing that he hadn't read one in months. Since Irene's death he had taken very little interest in the world around him. Now he was interested again and he devoured the paper from front page to the last, even reading the Personals column. And there, buried among the pleas for missing persons to return home and the notices of husbands who disclaimed responsibility for debts incurred by their wives as they waited for divorces, he found an interesting ad.
"Wanted," the ad began, "Young man to drive my car to California in exchange for transportation." The contractions made the thing almost unintelligible but Jim managed to decode the message. It looked like exactly what he wanted. With a car to drive there would be no more long hours spent beside the road, his thumb lifted pleadingly in the air.
He took quick stock of his financial situation. When he received his next pay envelope he would have added a little more than sixty dollars to his kick since he came to Chicago. And if the owner of the car would agree to pay for gas and oil he could easily complete the trip on what he had.
There was a telephone number at the bottom of the ad and Jim called. The owner of the car wanted to leave the following Monday. It was perfect. He took down the address and made an appointment for an interview. Saying good-bye to Martha would be sticky, but maybe be could avoid that.
CHAPTER FIVE
Jim Barton squinted against the setting sun and made a mental note to buy a pair of sunglasses the next time he stopped for gas. Beside him on the wide front seat of the big Cadillac was the sleeping form of Mrs. Doris Manders. Her head lolled back and pulled the loose flesh of her throat taut and her mouth was open. She snored softly. Her tightly girdled body was erect in the seat and her legs, flaccid in sleep, were sprawled limply. The rush of air through the no-draft wing window fluttered the hem of her loose skirt where it lay halfway up her legs.
Pushing the big car along famous Route 66 was no effort for Jim. The soft ride of the expensive machine was almost as comfortable as sitting in a big overstuffed club chair. Power steering, power brakes, automatic transmission, power windows and seats, and even a power controlled radio antenna changed the complex and coordinated act of driving into the simple act of aiming.
Jim turned the steering wheel a fraction of in inch to re-aim the hurtling tank-like automobile and let his mind drift over the last few days. His appointment at the big Lake Shore Drive residence had been for Friday afternoon. He'd dressed in his one suit and appeared precisely at two pan. to be admitted by a cute little maid in a short skirt and long stockings.
Mrs. Manders had kept him waiting for almost twenty minutes and then he was ushered into her august presence. At first impression she seemed to be one of those ultra-sophisticated society matrons whose name always appears on the first page of the second section of the daily newspaper. She looked like her only interests ought to be in charity balls, yacht clubs, and the coming out of debutantes.
It was only toward the end of the interview that be began to notice the small details about the woman which gave the lie to the initial impression. The lines around the puffy eyes and the trembling of the hands told a story of a life of excess. And the brightness of her eyes when she looked at him made him feel like a side of beef hanging in a butcher shop window. Jim was sure she was interested in things other than his ability to drive a Cadillac.
She kept him standing while she asked questions from her seat behind a wide bare desk and her eyes were continually running up and down his body from his shock of black hair to the scuffed leather of his shoes. After she announced that he was satisfactory for the job she went on to explain the purposes of the trip.
Mrs. Manders was going to California for an extended vacation and she felt that it would be nicer to have her own car there than to have to rely on rentals. Her husband, an executive with a mail order house, would be remaining in Chicago and would therefore require the services of the chauffeur and household staff. She, Mrs. Manders, had intended to send the car ahead and then fly out, but she'd changed her mind and now intended to go along for the ride. She would assume all expenses and there would be a bonus at the end of the trip if he functioned well.
That last statement ran uncomfortably in Jim's ears for the next two days. On Saturday night he paused on his way to the kitchen to knock on Fatty Dan's office door. The saturnine little man was sitting behind his desk and reading his newspaper when Jim walked in.
He received Jim's notice with a philosophical shrug of his shoulders and a raised eyebrow which seemed to say, "See, I told you so" That night the time seemed to fly by as Jim labored over the steaming monster of a dish washing machine. His mind struggled with the idea of telling Martha he was leaving and he was repelled by the thought of having to bathe in her maudlin tears. It was evidence of at least a small amount of conceit that he thought she would cry, but after his Herculean week with her he was entitled to some self-praise.
It wasn't until they were walking home that night that he decided not to tell her anything at all. It would be better for her just to discover that he was gone, no noes, no tearful good-byes. And he was at least half afraid that she might present a hundred good reasons for him to stay in Chicago.
But he had no ties then and he didn't want to have any. There was still two-thirds of a continent before him, unknown, promising adventure. Women would always be available. Even granting that there weren't too many who were as skilled and voracious as was Martha, still, there would always be another woman just over the crest of the next hill.
He'd packed his bag on Sunday afternoon while Martha was out of the room. That night, after work, he made love to her as he never had before. And then, while she slept her sated slumber, he crept quietly from the bed. He was dressed and gone in five minutes and there was only a small pang of regret when he thought of her reaction when she awoke.
Doris Manders was waiting impatiently for him when he arrived at her home fifteen minutes late. He carried her many suitcases to the car and stowed them in the large trunk, putting his own bag in last. They made one stop for gas and oil and a tire check and they were on the road by eight-thirty.
Now it was four o'clock in the afternoon and he was driving right into the setting sun. He'd had no sleep the previous night and his body sagged with fatigue. It was a good thing the big car almost drove itself. The car was less than a year old and in excellent shape. The only sounds to be heard were the whine of the tires and the rush of air and the noises of the other cars and trucks on the road.
Doris Manders stirred In her seat and sat up to stretch and rub her eyes. She yawned and one of her outstretched arms dipped down under the hem of her skirt to scratch at her meaty leg. It was quite in keeping with her character that she should perform such an unlady-like act without regard to Jim's presence. As far as Doris was concerned James Barton was a hired servant whose last name she had already forgotten. But there were other things about her temporary chauffeur which she hadn't forgotten; his breadth of shoulder and leanness of waist, the sensuous curve of his mouth, the fiery light which had flashed in his eye at the sight of the young maid-servant.
When the itching place had been scratched she sat back in the seat.
"Where are we, James?" she asked.
"Missouri, ma'am. Halfway between St. Louis and Springfield."
"How far is it to Springfield?"
"Another sixty-seventy miles. About an hour and a half unless we hit some bad traffic."
"We'll spend the night in Springfield."
"Yes, ma'am."
It was that simple, he thought. She woke up, asked a few questions, and then gave orders. That s the way it was when you had most of the money in the world. Money was power, but more than that, it was insulation from the nagging petty details of every day living. When you had enough money you didn't have to bother with the little things, and the big things were always pleasant. She decided to spend the night in Springfield. It wouldn't matter what the hotel rooms and meals cost, and it wouldn't matter how long they stayed. If she suddenly took it into her head to spend a whole week in Springfield, that was all right, too.
Jim glanced at the instrument dials on the dash board. The speedometer needle hovered around the seventy mark, the ammeter gauge showed a slight steady charging, and the temperature and oil pressure gauges were well within the safe limits. The needle on the fuel gauge showed white space on both sides between the empty and quarter full marks. He scanned the road ahead for a gas station.
There was one about a half mile ahead, on the left side of the road. Jim slowed the Caddy down as they approached and waited for a break in traffic to pull across the highway. He eased the car up to the row of pumps and smiled when he saw the flurry of activity. A caddy'll do it every time, he thought.
"Fill it up, all around," he said to the attendant who came to the window. "And you'd better give the tires a check, too."
"Yes, sir," the grease monkey said.
"James, get the key to the ladies' room. I never should have worn this girdle to ride in the car. It's killing me." Mrs. Manders had her hand under her skirt and she was tugging at something under there.
Jim slipped out of the car and went into the office. A tall-whip-lean man in mechanics' clothes gave him the key and he brought it out to the car. Mrs. Manders took the key and disappeared around the side of the white building. Jim went back into the office. There was a soda machine and a rack of candy bars against one wall. He dropped a dime in the machine and waited for it to spit out a cold bottle of soda.
"Quite a buggy," the whip-like man said. "Uh-hmm," Jim agreed, his mouth full of soda. He swallowed and added, "I wish it was mine. It belongs to the lady, I'm only her driver."
The gas pump jockey came into the office. "Took fourteen gallons and a quart of oil," he reported.
Jim drew Mrs. Manders' credit card out of his pocket and laid it down on the desk. The tall lean man began to make out a bill. Jim noticed a card of sunglasses hanging on the wall above the soda machine and he took down a pair. They weren't bad glasses, he thought after he'd examined them. He carried them back to the desk and dropped them down.
"Put these on the bill, too."
The attendant completed the form and slipped it, along with the embossed plastic credit card into a machine which impressed the information from the embossing onto the bill. Jim carried the completed bill out to Mrs. Manders for her signature.
"What's this item for three dollars and ninety-five cents?" she asked, her pencil poised to sign.
"I needed a pair of sunglasses," Jim explained. "We'll be driving right into the sun every afternoon and it's murder on the eyes."
"All right," she said, scribbling her name. "But hereafter, consult me before making any purchases."
"Yes, ma'am."
Two minutes later they were on the road again and Mrs. Manders was in a talkative mood. Jim had the speedometer needle up around the seventy-five mark.
"You drive very well, James," she said. "But you're lucky my husband isn't along on this trip. He never allows the driver to go over sixty miles and hour."
"I'll slow down if you want, ma'am. But it'll just take us that much longer."
"I said my husband doesn't allow it. I enjoy driving fast. You may drive as fast as you think is safe."
Jim kicked it up another five miles an hour and glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. She was completely relaxed. Evidently she'd taken off more than her girdle back at the service station, for her soft breasts bobbled loosely under her blouse when she moved. Jim wondered idly if she'd taken off her panties, too.
He didn't have long to wait to find out. Five miles further down the road she shifted in the seat so her back was against the corner made by the edge of the seat and the door. In his position she was facing directly toward him. As they rolled along she made comments about the things they drove past. When they were riding alongside the fence of a farm, she brought her left leg up and rested it on the seat. The air coming in through the window fluttered the hem of her skirt and with each puff of wind it crept higher on her legs.
Jim found his eyes drawn to the meaty white flesh of her exposed legs, and it became an effort to concentrate on his driving. Mrs. Manders might be a middle-aged woman, but she was a damned good-looking one. No man in his right mind would turn her down. Jim wasn't out of his mind and he knew that she was interested in him. He didn't intend to turn her down either. Only he wished she would wait until they were stopped for the night.
She sighed and shifted in her seat and he gasped at the sights so exposed to his quick glance. She wasn't wearing any panties! She caught his reaction and her lips spread in a slow smile.
"Is something wrong, James?" she asked.
"No, ma'am."
"I thought I heard you gasp."
"No, ma'am."
She was silent again.
She moved once more, and her naked flesh flashed at him. His eyes flicked to her and then back to the road. This time he managed to stifle his gasp. When he looked again he saw that her skirt had not fallen down again after her last movement. She sat, half leaning back, and all of her legs were exposed. She was looking at him, watching for his reaction, and the expression on her face denied the fact of her shamelessness.
If she can play that game, Jim thought, so can I. He was careful not to let his facial expression betray his thoughts and he seemed to be completely ignoring her. After all, he was only a servant, a sub-human, and not supposed to react to such sights.
They made it into downtown Springfield by six o'clock and Jim pulled the Caddy up to the most expensive looking hotel he could find. Doris Manders waited patiently in her seat for him to come around the car and open her door. An eager bellhop, awed by the Caddy, beat him to the door. Jim accompanied her into the lobby and sent out a troop of bellhops to carry the bags. She would require all her luggage even though it was only an overnight stop.
Jim almost broke out laughing at the stares they were receiving. Everyone in the lobby stared at the middle-aged woman whose breasts bobbled when she walked, and at her young escort. Doris was aware of the stares and walked with her head held proudly.
The desk clerk assigned them adjoining rooms and the bellhops smirked at each other on the way up in the elevator. Jim wanted to punch them all in the mouth but he just stood quietly, seething inside. What the hell was so funny about a guy his age making love to a woman as good-looking as she was, no matter what her age. But then, Springfield is a small town, and small towns are all the same. Even big towns are all the same. Bellhops in the biggest hotels in New York probably smirked in similar situations.
The hotel was really plush. Doris' room had two bathrooms, both private, and each bathroom had a telephone extension inside. Jim's room only had one bathroom and special phone, but then he wasn't paying the bills. One of the bellhops made sure the connecting door between the two rooms was unlocked and Doris rewarded him with a five dollar bill to split up among the other boys who'd carried the luggage.
(
"Will that be all?" Jim asked, standing in the doorway between the two rooms.
"I think so. I'll want to get an early start in the morning-I think about eight."
"Yes, ma'am."
Jim stepped into his own room and closed the door. He was so tired his bones ached with fatigue and he flopped down on the bed still clothed. It was ten o'clock when he awakened again hungry and rumpled from sleeping his clothes. He called room-service and had them send up a couple of sandwiches and a pot of coffee, and after the meal he stripped off his clothes and took a shower.
The stall shower in the bathroom was a little different from any Jim had ever seen before. The little stall was a room all in itself and its door fit very snugly. Along one tiled wall was a low bench and near the shower head there was an extra faucet marked STEAM. After rinsing the soap from his body Jim turned off the water and turned on the STEAM knob. He heard a hiss and saw streams of vapor come curling out from the corner formed by the walls and the tiled floor. So, the shower doubled as a private steam room. Well, since it's there, why not use it? Jim stretched out on the bench and let the hot steam soak into his fatigued body. When the little room was so full of hot steam it hurt his lungs every time he breathed, he turned off the faucet and stretched out again.
The steam bath worked wonders on his tired body. After an hour he stood up and turned on the cold water to rinse off the sweat. Then he stepped out of the shower feeling completely relaxed and tingling pleasantly. With his body relaxed and his stomach full he was ready to go back to sleep. The cool sheets caressed his naked skin as he closed his eyes and drifted off.
Something disturbed his sleep. He opened his eyes and groped for his watch. The luminous dial read two thirty. He listened hard in the dark quiet of his room. At first there was no sound, then, from the next room, her heard the rustle of bedclothes and pad of bare feet on the carpeted floor.
He slipped out of bed and moved quietly to the adjoining door. A thin sliver of light showed at the bottom of the door and a little spot came through the keyhole. Jim knelt and put his eye to the keyhole.
Doris Manders was naked. She stood with her feet spread wide apart on the floor and she held a half-full glass to her lips. Beside her was a three-quarters empty liquor bottle and before her, his face invisible to Jim, was the still-clothed figure of a bellhop.
Jim gasped at the sight and he stared harder.
Doris finished her drink and put the glass down next to the bottle. She curled her fingers into the hair of the bellhop and held his face to her, while her lips made eager motions. The bellhop's hands were holding her tight, and now one of them slipped away to move along her body to her slightly sagging breasts.
Now Doris groaned her emotion and her knees began to tremble. Slowly she sank to the floor, and Jim heard her whisper something to the bellhop. The man stood up, then he knelt on the floor and reached for her.
She moved quickly to her fulfillment, shuddered during her peak of pleasure, and then thrust the man away from her. The man rolled away and then stood up, his face mottled with rage. Jim could tell by the excited state of his face that he hadn't been satisfied himself. He moved back toward Doris and she pushed him away again. She was 'finished, she'd had her pleasure. She wasn't interested in anything else.
The man grabbed her and hurled her onto the bed. She screamed and lashed out at him with her legs as he threw himself toward her. Jim sympathized with the man and wanted to let him have his fill of Doris, but she was struggling and kicking, her face a mask of fear and rage. And after all, she was paying his bills.
Jim stood up and threw open the door. The man looked up, frozen by surprise.
"Get him away from me!" Doris screamed.
"Keep away from me," the man said, turning his attention back to Doris. "This witch has it coming to her. She's nothing but a damned tease. She started this thing, now let her finish it."
Jim moved quickly across the room, not thinking of his own nudity, and grabbed the man by the shoulder, pulling him away from Doris. The man came off the bed swinging his fist at Jim. Jim sidestepped, slipped under the arm, and planted a well-thrown punch in the man's soft middle.
The bellhop staggered back and Jim followed to deliver two crashing blows to the man's face. The second punch did the trick, and the man fell backward to writhe on the floor and hold his hands to his stomach. Jim grabbed him by the collar and his jacket and dragged him to the door. He opened the door and kicked the man into the hallway, then closed and locked the door again.
Doris was sprawled on her back on the bed, her chest heaving from her exertions.
"Thank you," she said.
"I don't know what happened," Jim lied. "But it didn't seem to be all his fault."
Her eyes traveled slowly over Jim's body and he became aware that he was as naked as she. Doris made no move to draw a sheet over her body so Jim made no move to cover himself. She sat up in bed and the tip of her tongue came out to moisten her lips.
"Come here," she ordered.
Jim moved to the side of the bed.
Her hand shot out to grasp his hip; a bolt of pure pleasure shot through his body. "Make love to me!" It was an order and she said it as her hands pulled him closer.
"Didn't you have enough?" he asked sarcastically.
"I had enough of him," she said. "Now I want you. I know you were looking at me in the car this afternoon. I wanted you to look. Did you like what you saw?" Her hand tightened and loosened on him as she spoke and his rising pleasure crowded all other thoughts from his mind.
"Yes," he whispered hoarsely.
Then make love to me!" The order was even stronger this time.
Jim moved onto the bed beside her and his hands filled themselves with her soft breasts.
Kiss them, she whispered, and he bent forward to touch them with his lips.
Her hand came away from his leg to touch his cheeks. She gripped his jaw from underneath so that her thumb was on one cheek and her fingers were pressing against the other. Her other hand came up to hold her breast out toward him.
When she was ready she moved his mouth to her other breast and then down her middle. When she tried to force his head harder he resisted and moved away from her.
"Not that," he said.
"Why?" she said, her voice pleading this time.
"No." Jim moved away from her body and she sat up to move closer to him.
"Please," she whispered. "I'll give you anything you want. Only do that for me." Her hands stroked at his body while she spoke.
"There's only one way," Jim said.
"What is it? Anything at all, just name it."
"I don't mean money. I'll do that only if you'll do me first."
She drew back from him. "Not that, anything but that."
Jim attached no particular feeling toward that action. Loving he had done many times before with many other women. He knew that most women became very aroused by it, and he'd done it often to bring a woman to fever pitch. In fact, with some women there was even a strange kind of pleasure in it.
But with Doris it was something else. He would have lover her gladly, but since she'd demanded it, he balked. He wanted to break through her imperious attitude. He wanted to make her take a subservient role in the proceedings. Her attitude made him want to make her plead and grovel. She might be a very rich woman, but she was still only a woman, and if she wanted something from him she would have to earn it. He wasn't going to let her use him the way she had the bellhop.
"I'll pay you," she said. "I'll give you a hundred dollars." Her hand captured his and held it tight.
He felt her hand, warm and moist and trembling. A vein lay somewhere under the skin near his fingertips, and he could feel her pulse racing and her muscles trembling.
"I don't want your money," he said, drawing his hand away. "I told you what I want."
"I can't," she said, her voice tearful. "I've never, never, before."
"Then it's about time you did. You want love for you, but you refuse to return the favor."
"Oh, damn," she groaned. "Then don't do that. Just make love to me. Hurry."
"Not even that," Jim told her. "Nothing until you do what I want."
"Who the hell do you think you are that I should beg you?" she screamed. "Get out! Get away from me!" Her chest heaved and her voice screeched.
Jim got up from the bed and moved to the door. "Wait," she said in a softer voice just as he was about to go into his own room. "Come back."
He exulted in her submissive tone and he strutted when he walked back to the bed. He stretched out on his back with his head propped up by a pillow, and his face split in a wide grin. She knelt beside him and her hands fondled his chest.
"Damn you," she muttered as her head descended. Then she couldn't speak any more.
Jim reveled under the magnificent caresses of her love. Waves of pleasure flowed through his body as his passion grew. At first her attitude toward her action was one of complete disgust, but soon as she felt his pleasure grow, she took a more active interest.
The muscles of his legs began to tremble and when she felt him approaching his peak she tried to draw her head away. But his hands, tangled in her hair, held her to its doting work. He reached his trembling peak, and she moaned and her hands tightened on his body.
He sank into the lethargic after-pleasure and she rolled away from him. Jim closed his eyes and sighed as the pleasure receded. He felt the mattress jiggle as she moved around on the bed, and then he felt the silken brush of skin against his cheek.
He opened his eyes to see that she was kneeling near him. Her body was a scant six inches nearer his face and he stared up along the length of it, past the mound of her middle to the double swelling of her sagging breasts.
He grinned and slid his hands up along her flanks to the outcropping of her hips and then around to the lush flesh of her back. She lowered closer to him.
At the last moment he heard her murmur,
"It's time to repay the favor." Then she was closer to him and his mouth arched up to her stomach.
Her muscles trembled and her hips writhed. Her upward path to her finish was swift and sure and he knew when the bolt of ultimate completion tore through her body.
Afterward she stretched out beside him and they slept.
Jim awoke the next morning refreshed and eager to be on the road again. Doris awakened with a start when she felt him moving around in the bed beside her, and for a moment he thought she was going to scream. Then she remembered the events of the night before and her face softened. After her subservience to his demands it was impossible for her to regain her former haughtiness. Now they were equals, partners in their bed of passion, and Jim liked the new relationship much better.
They had breakfast, checked out of the hotel, and were well on their way by eight-thirty. At ten they drove through Joplin and they stopped in a small town just outside of Oklahoma City for lunch and gas at noon.
Doris sat close to him but they talked very little as he drove.
By really pushing the big Caddy, Jim was able to make Amarillo by suppertime. Again they checked into a hotel, and again they had adjoining rooms. Only this time Doris ordered supper for two and after the dishes had been removed they settled down for an evening of love-making.
When the bellhop wheeled the cart of soiled dishes out of the room she locked the door and her fingers were already removing her clothes when she turned back to face him. Jim watched with interest as she stripped, and when she was naked she came into his arms for a long hungry kiss.
"Now take off my clothes," he told her.
And she hurried to comply.
When they were both naked, their warm bodies pressed together from shoulders to knees, Jim had an idea. He led her into the bathroom and turned on the shower. When he drew her into the shower stall and under the running water she hesitated. But his other hand, cupping her hip, overcame her hesitation.
The water streamed down over their bodies and Jim picked up the soap and the washcloth. Tenderly he soaped every inch of her body, not missing one fold of flesh or one inch of skin. When her pink skin was covered with a froth of soap bubbles he stood up and took her into his arms. Her body was slippery from the soap and when they moved apart again, he too was covered with soap.
He rinsed her off, washing the soap from her with his hands. And then it was her turn. She rubbed the cloth against his shoulders and broad chest, then his middle. She skipped to his legs and then up to his knees, holding him tenderly to apply the soap. Her touch thrilled him and the rubbing as she soaped him made the passion race through his veins.
She'd finished washing him, and after he stepped back to let the soap rinse off she leaned her head forward to bestow a long hot kiss of pursed lips.
Drying her off was even better than washing her. Jim patted her breasts dry with the thick, soft towel and then rubbed it hard across her back until the skin almost shone. He was careful to leave no part of her body undried, and he used the rough surface of the towel to good advantage. When he was finished she was a bundle of trembling, moaning flesh.
He swept her up in his arms and her body tensed when she felt his muscularity as he carried her to the bed. She was skilled and experienced, and minutes later, when he was holding her tight, she used all that skill to bring him within a hair's breadth of the peak and hold him there for long, agonizing, breathless moments.
When it was over they slept.
CHAPTER SIX
THE NEXT DAY THEY DROVE OUT OF THE cold country and into the places which rarely felt the teeth of a winter wind. From Amarillo, Route 66 led them due west into New Mexico. They passed through good-sized towns like Tucumcari. Albuquerque, and Gallup; and through innumerable small towns whose names they promptly forgot.
The further west they went the hotter it got, and the hotter it got the harder Jim pushed the Caddy. That day they made no unnecessary stops. They ate and used the restrooms only when they had to stop for gas.
And even with these necessary stops Jim was impatient.
A few miles past Gallup they crossed the border into Arizona. Jim was getting tired and he decided to stop at the next large town they came to, but when they stopped for gas at a small town called Holbrook, the attendant told them the next large town was Winslow, and that Flagstaff was only a few miles further.
Jim drove all the way through to Flagstaff. That night he slept alone and when he met. Doris the next morning she had a surprise for him. She waited until they were in the car and ready to pull away from in front of the hotel.
"When you come to a town called Kingman well stop for coffee," she told him.
"Why?"
"Because I say so, that's why," she snapped, sounding like the old Doris Manders.
Jim shrugged his shoulders and pulled away. The road between Flagstaff and Kingman was empty and he really pushed along. On the long flat stretches of straight road the speedometer needle hovered around the hundred mark, and he only slowed down for the hills and curves.
Twenty minutes out of Flagstaff they came up on a Corvette carrying two young men. The top was down on a small convertible and Jim noticed that the one driving had crew-cut blond hair, while the one in the passenger's seat had long black hair. They sat very straight in the little car and frowned seriously at the road before them.
Jim pulled out to pass them and the driver stepped down on the gas. The Corvette shot ahead and Jim pulled into the lane again behind it. Then it slowed down again and Jim pulled out to pass. When the blond driver of the Corvette speeded up this time Jim was prepared and he stepped all the way down on the gas pedal. The big car roared ahead, coming up even with the Corvette, and Jim edged closer, forcing the sports car driver toward the shoulder of the road.
The driver honked his horn and waved Jim away, but Jim paid no attention. The blond guy tried to slow down and Jim slowed down too, to stay alongside, forcing the smaller car closer and closer to the shoulder of the road. Now the other guy was waving and shouting too. Jim ignored him as well as the driver.
It was tricky but Jim gauged it just right. When the Corvette's wheel went off the road he stomped down on the gas and the big car shot ahead just in time to get out of the way of the wildly slewing sports car. The other driver spun the wheel back and forth, fighting the fishtailing little car, and brought it to a stop.
Jim stopped a few yards beyond them and got out of the car. He came up to them just as they were climbing out.
"What the hell's the idea?" the driver roared.
"You started it when you wouldn't let me pass,"
Jim told him.
"We were just having a little fun," the driver said.
"You almost killed us."
"Yeah, you almost killed us," the black-haired one chimed in, his accent telling of a background of city streets. "Tod, I think I ought to hit him."
The driver turned to him. "Will you stop with the hitting already? Every time we stop the car you start hitting somebody. I'm getting sick and tired of standing around watching you beat people up, Buzz."
"But I'm supposed to beat people up," Buzz said. "I'm the heavy and you're the nice guy. "I'm supposed to fight and you're supposed to watch."
"Knock it off already, will you?" Tod said. He turned back to Jim. "I guess it was our fault."
"Yeah. If there's nothing wrong with your car I'll be on my way," said Jim.
The one called Tod got behind the wheel and kicked over the engine. Everything seemed to be all right so Jim turned back to the Cadillac. His last view of the two young men was of them sitting in their car, their hands flashing in argument.
"What was that all about?" Doris asked when he was back in the car and they were on their way.
"Nothing. Just a couple of screwballs who seem to think they're movie heroes or something."
Ten minutes farther down the road they came to Kingman and pulled into a diner for coffee.
"Now, why did you want to stop here?" Jim asked. "Because here is where we turn off Route 66 and head north."
"North? But California is west of here."
"We're not going straight to California. I want to stop off in Las Vegas for a couple of days."
"And what if I don't "want to stop in Vegas?"
"Anytime you want you can get out and start walking," she told him sternly.
Jim was convinced. Doris had resumed control. Once again he was little more than a servant and she was the absolute mistress. He decided to go along with her and change her mind again that night in bed.
It was late afternoon when they pulled into Las Vegas. Jim didn't know what he expected, but he was a little disappointed. The whole town seemed to be made up on one main street lined with neoned hotel facades. It was still daylight and the neon signs were all off. The town gave the impression of a woman about to apply a veneer of make-up to hide the cracks and creases of her face.
"Which hotel do you want?" he asked as they drove down the main street.
She picked one and he turned the Caddy into the long curved drive. A corps of bellhops was waiting when he stopped in front of the arched portico. Jim gave up the keys to one of them and ordered that the car be serviced and washed. The front end and the windshield were covered with the crusty corpses of insects that had been in the way when they drove along the road. The rocker panels and fenders were coated with a film of road grime and dust.
He and Doris followed the bellhops into the lobby and they registered in two private cabins in the rear of the hotel rather than in rooms. The cabins were two room affairs, like small suites, one bedroom and one living room each. His cabin was right next to Doris'.
Jim closed the door of his own cabin behind him with a sigh of relief. The trip from the desk had led them right through the main gaming room and the tension in that room had been terrific. One curious thing that Jim had noted was the difference between the players of the different games. At the blackjack and roulette tables the players stared silently and intensely at the table and made bets or comments in clipped hushed monosyllables. At the crap tables, the players moaned and cried and exhorted Lady Luck. It seemed there were bubbles of excitement in a sea of general tension. At both entrances to the main gaming room were banks of slot machines with housewives in front of them. Some of the housewives were so expert at playing the slots that they had developed a routine for keeping two machines in constant operation. Some of these women even wore gloves on their right hands, which they used to pull the handles, to save them from blisters and calluses.
Jim had noticed Doris's pace lag as they moved through the gaming room. The pounding tension of the place seemed to envelop her and her eyes gleamed. He knew she would spend a lot of time and probably a lot of money in that room. As far as he was concerned, Jim knew he didn't have a spare quarter to risk. There were other things in this town to occupy his attention until Doris was ready to leave. He remembered the old joke about the five thousand dollar Cadillac and the fifteen thousand dollar bus and he wondered how much money Doris would leave at the tables. Perhaps if she lost a large amount in a short time she would become disgusted and decide to push on to California.
The sitting room of Jim's cabin was as plush as a movie star's bedroom. The carpet was a deep wine red, with pile so thick and soft he felt like he was walking on a foam rubber mattress. The sofa and chairs were Danish modern in design, and constructed of expensive cloths and woods. Across the room from the sofa was the fireplace, something which seemed extremely out of place in this land of hundred and twenty degree summers. And next to the fireplace was a large well-stocked bar with an ice-cube maker.
Jim walked around behind the bar and found a slip of paper with the prices of all the liquors. The guest was charged by the amount he used and if he ran out there was twenty-four hours service. Well, as long as it's free, Jim thought as he broke the seal on a bottle of ten-year-old bourbon, why not? The ice maker deposited two perfect, crystal-clear cubes into the glass he held before it and he poured from the bottle until the glass was about half full.
Carrying the glass, he moved on to inspect the rest of his cabin. The bedroom was, if such a thing were possible, even more sumptuous than the living room. It had been designed not so much as a place to sleep, as a room for pleasure and relaxation. One entire wall was mirror-ed to give an unobstructed reflection of the bed. And the bed itself was a masterpiece. It was as large as a small swimming pool and its headboard held a control panel with buttons which offered a most complete array of services. One button turned on the phone and connected it with the front desk of the hotel without the bother of having to hold the receiver. Another button brightened and dimmed the lights, or shut them off altogether. One whole section of the control panel operated both the TV and the stereo radio-phonograph combination. Yet another switch controlled the draperies across the picture window. Jim explored, astounded, and wondered if one of the buttons would bring him a beautiful, passionate, naked, willing female.
The bathroom was off the bedroom and here again Jim was amazed. This was the first bathroom he'd ever seen with wall-to-wall carpeting. In one corner of the room was a floor to ceiling strip of infra-red lights with instructions for its use as a tanning device. This was evidently for people who were too lazy to step outside into the bright Nevada sunshine. Perhaps some people preferred to spend the hot hours of daylight in the airconditioned gaming room and the cool hours of night standing before this suntan machine.
It was quite late in the afternoon but the temperature outside was still in the high nineties. Jim smiled when he thought that back in New York it would already be full dark and there would be a blustery wind and maybe a driving, cold rain. The rich luxury of his present surroundings enfolded him and he decided to go for a swim.
First it would be necessary to buy a swim suit. That was one of the things he'd forgotten to take with him. He picked up the phone and called the desk. They promised to send a boy with a selection of suits in his size. Less than two minutes later there was a discreet knock at the door and Jim opened it to find a bellhop holding half a dozen small boxes.
The least expensive suit was fourteen dollars. Jim picked that one, and sent back all the rest. He added a dollar to the check when he signed his name and the bellhop gave him a grateful smile.
The pool was almost empty. Only two or three people were actually in the water and there were only half a dozen clusters of poolside loungers. Jim braced himself for the shock of cool water and dove in. There was no shock of cold water! Instead he was enveloped in a bath of lukewarm water. At first it was uncomfortably warm but he soon grew used to it. He set out across the width of the pool in a slow steady crawl stroke. At the other side he ducked his head and spun around in a racing turn, using his feet to push himself off. He did five laps and then hauled himself out of the water. His arms and chest ached from the exertion and he vowed to spend a lot of time swimming. His body was in poor physical condition, at least compared to the way it had been when he was still a single man. In those days he'd been able to swim more than a mile and still grin when he came out of the water.
When his gasping slowed down he picked himself up and made his way back to his room. Just as he came out of the shower his phone rang. He dripped his way across the carpet to the phone and picked it up.
"Yes?"
"James?" It was Doris.
"Yes."
"We're going to dinner. I'm having the desk send up some evening clothes. Select something that fits and come to my cabin when you are dressed."
There was a loud click as she hung up, and Jim was left staring at the dead receiver. She was certainly in rare form. Her imperious tone had been at its most overbearing. She'd spoken as though it never occurred to her that he might have other plans or not wish to go to dinner with her. But then he was hers, bought and paid for. People didn't think about the desires of things they owned, they just used their possessions.
One of the suits fit well enough without alterations and twenty minutes later Jim was standing outside the door of Doris' cabin. He knocked and listened.
"Come in, James." Her voice was muffled through the door.
Her cabin was identical to his own. He closed the door behind him and looked around the empty living room.
"I'm in the bedroom," she called, and he walked through the doorway.
She was sitting in front of a mirrored vanity table and she was naked. Her back was toward him and she was leaning forward as she applied her cosmetics. The light from a lamp shone on the fine smooth skin of her back and he could see the soft spread of her hips on the seat.
She smiled at him in the mirror and said, "I'll be ready in a few minutes."
The mirror also gave him a reflection of her naked upper body. Her breasts were large and soft and they had that sag that comes only with gentle maturity. And in spite of the sag they were still beautiful. They hung away from her body as she leaned forward with a tube of lipstick.
Her hands moved quickly as she applied the latest scientific preparations to hide the signs of her aging. She applied lipstick, and powder, and mascara, and her face was finished. Then she picked up a bottle of perfume and removed the glass rod stopper. She applied die glass rod to the lobes of her ears and the deep canyon between her breasts. Then she grinned wickedly at him in the mirror and twirled the stopper around the tip of each breast.
The gesture had all the implied passion of a thousand years of femininity and Jim felt his passion leap in response. She pushed the chair away and stood up so that the mirror gave him a reflection of her body from shoulders to knees. She dipped the stopper into the perfume again and then touched its tip to the inner flesh of one leg, just above the knee. She drew that rod slowly up along the length of her fleshy leg.
Jim stepped quickly up behind her and wrapped his arms around her. She melted back against his body and he felt the heat of her flesh. His mouth found a warm smooth piece of shoulder and he kissed. Her own hands came up to guide his to her breasts and she sighed when he cupped the heavy fruit. Her naked back pressed back against him and he felt his excitement mounting.
The flames of his passion soared and one of his hands left her breast to slide down the front of her body. He moved his lips from her shoulder to her ear and looked at their reflection in the mirror. She was smiling at the sight of his hands upon her body and her eyes were glazed over. She was a warm armful of smooth skin, and perfume, and scented powder, and his blood thundered in his veins. He twisted her around in his arms and kissed her savagely.
She returned his kiss for a moment and then twisted her head away.
"Please, James, you're mussing me." There was a pleased crowing in her voice. Her only intention had been to arouse him and then deny him. His passion died as quickly as it had grown and he stepped away from her. There would be time later to re-conquer her on the battlefield of the mattress.
She turned her back on him and moved to the bed where her bra and panties lay in a froth of white silk and nylon. When she bent forward to slip her breasts into the cups of the bra, he had the urge to surprise the living hell out of her. He could imagine the expression on her face as he embraced her and shouted, "Surprise!"
Jim fought back the urge and watched as she donned the rest of her clothing. After the bra came the panties and garter-belt, then the stockings lovingly rolled up along each columnar leg. From the closet she removed a black evening dress cut daringly low in front, and he helped her zip it up. A few quick pats to her hair and a quick check of her lipstick and they were ready to go.
The food was excellent and the service even better. Jim supposed that Mrs. Manders' economic status had been investigated and found not to be lacking. Therefore, she was accorded the finest service. And in the gaming room she would have no trouble cashing checks or signing notes.
After brandy and coffee they adjourned to the gaming room. Doris walked directly to a roulette table and exchanged a fistful of money for a double stack of chips. She took the top half of one stack and handed them to Jim, saying, "Here, James, let's see how lucky you are."
Jim was totally unfamiliar with the finer points of the game. He knew that if your number came up they paid off at thirty-five or thirty-six to one, but that's all he knew. He looked at the chips in his hand and saw that they were all fifties. The betting cloth was spread out before him and he was almost blinded by the confusing welter of colors and numbers. The basic color of the cloth was green and all the separate dividing lines white. The wheel itself was of highly polished wood inlaid with colored ivory and the little bouncing ball was white.
The croupier's chant hummed in Jim's ears and he put down three fifty dollar chips at random. Then he waited breathlessly as the ball hopped into a slot and the wheel slowed down. Doris gripped his arm tightly, her nails digging into the muscles of his bicep.
Twenty-seven!
His eyes jumped back to his chips and he saw that not one of the three was covering the winning number. Beside him Doris groaned her disappointment and shouldered him out of the way. She pressed against the edge of the table and her eyes swung hotly back and forth over the betting cloth.
Jim stepped back to make more room for her and watched for a couple of minutes as she lost money. She was so swept up in the excitement of the thing that her new bets were placed almost before the croupier had swept away the losing money. After four bets she was so lost in the game that she was no longer aware of anything around her. Her whole world was concentrated on the table in front of her and the only human being she recognized was the croupier.
Jim came up tight behind her and filled his hand with the jut of her hip. She gave not the slightest indication that she even felt that hand upon her body. He looked down at his hand and saw that he still held seven fifty dollar chips.
Three hundred and fifty dollars! And she'd handed it to him as though it had been three dollars and fifty cents. He looked at the chips and then at the cashier's window. Why not? he thought to himself. She would never know the difference. The cashier gave him three hundred dollars in bills and fifty one-dollar chips. The money he slipped into his wallet and the chips he carried to the crap table.
A huge amazon of a blonde was shooting, and each time she leaned forward to hurl the dice down the table her breasts threatened to pop out of the top of her strapless gown. She looked curiously out of place at the crap table. Most of the other players were dressed in street clothes, some of them wearing dirty blue-jeans and scarred brown leather jackets.
Besides Jim, the only other man at the table wearing evening dress was the man beside the blonde; the one who handed her more chips every time she lost. He was tall with a florid face and silver hair, and his suit was obviously not rented. He maintained an air of cool collectedness while all the others around the table were hot with excitement.
When the blonde dropped a particularly large bet the man took her by the arm and led her away from the table. Jim watched them move to the side of the room where the man handed her some chips and then turned to walk out. The blonde took the chips immediately to the cashier and changed them for money, and Jim knew he'd found a kindred soul. He grinned as he saw her roll up the stack of bills and stick them down between her breasts.
He came up alongside her and grinned. "Does that bank pay interest?" he asked, nodding toward her voluminous bosom.
She returned the smile, "No, but the money's safer there than on one of these tables."
"I wonder," Jim said riffling the double stack of one dollar chips with the fingers of his right hand into the palm of his left hand. "I wonder if I could make a deposit in that bank."
"Sorry, honey," the blonde said. "This is a private vault."
"Maybe I could rent it for a short while."
Her hand flashed out and landed hard on his cheek. His head buzzed from her slap as he watched her rapidly disappearing back. He ran after her and caught her by the arm.
"Wait. Please wait," he said, holding her arm tightly. She stopped and turned to face him, her eyes hard and glaring.
"Evidently I made a mistake. At least let me apologize. I was watching you at the crap table and when I saw you cash in the chips from the old man I made a stupid assumption. I thought...."
"I know what you thought," the blonde interrupted icily. "And now that you know you were wrong will you please let go of my arm."
Jim dropped her arm.
"I work here," the blonde continued. "I get paid to circulate through the room and gamble with the men who like to have a pretty girl beside them. But that's all I get paid for. My duties don't extend beyond the four walls of this room. When a gentleman gives me a tip, that's mine to keep. I don't gamble with my own money."
As she explained to him her face and her tone softened and by the time she was finished she was speaking in a normal tone.
"What would happen if a guest were to ask you to accompany him to the bar for a drink?" Jim asked.
"The choice is mine. If I want to accept, it's perfectly all right with the management."
"How about having a drink with me?" Jim smiled at her.
"Are you a guest?" she asked, returning the grin.
"Naturally."
He took her arm and they moved to the cocktail lounge. In the gaming room drinks were free to those people who were gambling, but in the lounge everyone paid. Jim paid for the drinks with some of the chips and stuffed the remainder into the pocket of his jacket. He lifted his glass and clinked it against the blonde's glass.
"Here's to less stupid assumption," he toasted.
"I'll drink to that."
The blonde sipped at her drink and Jim knocked back about half of his.
"Do you have a name, or do I have to keep thinking of you as that tremendous blonde?"
"The name's Joni Gunther, but you can think as you please. And since we're doing a name bit, it's your turn."
"James Barton, but I only answer to Jim."
"Where are you from, Jim?" she asked, her voice assuming the smoothness of the professional hostess.
"New York."
"Here on a vacation?"
"Not exactly. I left New York a week or so ago to hitch-hike to California. In Chicago I answered an ad to drive a car. The woman who owned the car went along with the deal and she decided she wanted to stop off here for a while. Since she's paying all the bills I can't argue, and here I am."
Joni's eyes crinkled and her face split as she began to laugh. She laughed until tears came to her eyes. "And I thought you were one of the rich guests," she said, gasping, when her laughter had died away.
Jim grinned sheepishly. "Well, I am a guest at the hotel."
"I'm supposed to be mingling with the people who are paying money here," she said.
Jim looked around quickly and raised his finger to his lips in a mock cautioning gesture. "Shhhh, they'll never know the difference."
Joni raised her glass in a toast to silence and polish-ed off the drink. "Why are you buying me a drink?" she asked.
"Because I got tired of standing around watching my middle-aged boss lose her money at roulette."
"Oh. I thought maybe it was because you wanted to make a pass at me."
"That too," Jim said smiling. "Any healthy man would have to be crazy not to want to make love to you." He signaled the waiter for another round of drinks.
"Your honesty is refreshing," Joni told him when the waiter had brought the fresh drinks.
"You're a big girl," Jim said. "I can't see any point in pretending. I think you're a magnificent woman and I want to make love to you. Why should I be ashamed of that?"
The smile faded from Joni's face and she looked silently into his eyes for a long moment. "It takes a lot of loving to make me happy." Her voice was lower, huskier, when she spoke.
Jim caressed her naked shoulders and half-bared breasts with his eyes. "I'll do my best," he said. "That's the best I can promise." Tiny tendrils of expectation were already weaving outward through his body from his stomach.
Her hand came across the table to cover his and squeeze. "I'm going to tell the boss I have a headache. Get out of that monkey suit and meet me in front in ten minutes," she told him.
He watched her walk away from the table, her hips swinging smoothly from side to side, and then he hurried back to his cabin. As he stripped the tuxedo from his body he thought about Doris Manders. What would her reaction be when she couldn't find him? To hell with her, he thought He had three hundred dollars of her money in his pocket If she didn't like his wandering off she could just get someone else to drive her the rest of the way. There were probably plenty of losers who would jump at the chance. And the best thing of all was that his cabin was on her bill. Even if he skipped out on him she would have to pay his tab.
He pushed all thoughts of Doris and her demands out of his mind as he made his way through the hotel and out the front door. Under the covered portico Joni was waiting for him. In place of the strapless evening gown, she now wore skin tight slacks and an even tighter blouse. The slacks were stretched tightly over the ample curves of her hips, giving the rounded spheres the appearance of ripe fruit about to burst its skin. The blouse was so tight it flattened the points of her breasts. She had taken her blonde hair down from the complicated pile on top of her head, and now worn it in a simple ponytail.
Dressed like that, she looked younger, more vital, and the only make-up she wore was lipstick and a little eyeshadow. She smiled when she saw him and she skipped across the driveway to meet him. When she moved, all of her moved at the same time-most of it in different directions. Her breasts bobbed up and down, her hips swayed from side to side, and her middle seemed to pulse invitingly.
"You look like the princess who just woke up after the prince's kiss," he told her.
She grinned and took his hand to lead him to an old car in the parking lot. It was a rattling hulk of 1939 Plymouth with the seat stuffing spilling out through a couple of tears and the divided windshield cracked on the passenger's side.
"Are you sure this thing still runs?" he asked.
"Just get in, wise guy."
He got in and she slipped behind the wheel. The car started with a roar that signaled a defective muffler and it rocked back and forth as the engine idled. The body wheezed and groaned protestingly when she slipped it into gear and turned out of the parking lot.
"Where are we going?" he asked as they pulled away.
"You'll see when we get there," she told him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
WHEN SHE TURNED OFF THE MAIN STREET, it was like going from Times Square to the furthest reaches of Long Island in one fell swoop. From the avenue of garish, blinking, multi-hued neon they turned onto a dark quiet street. This was the part of town usually not seen by the tourist. Here is where the little people of Las Vegas live; the thousand and one men and women who work in the hotels and gambling halls. Here live the dealers, and the croupiers; the shills, and the chambermaids; the chefs, and the waiters, and the doormen.
They worked in rich luxury and lived in almost squalid surroundings. A great many of them had come to Las Vegas to strike it rich at the tables; and they stayed to become servants to those tables. Even those who had acquired the hardened veneer of the slick professional gambler, those who knew how foolish it was to try and beat the odds with the house; even they gambled away most of their weekly paychecks. Some men, after an eight hour shift behind the table, simply moved around in front of the tables to become customers instead of employees.
The buildings were mostly wood, and mostly two storied. Living room windows glowed warmly into the night from some of the homes. Others were completely dark. Jim watched as they drove and he thought he could see a certain similarity between this neighborhood and some of those back in New York., The streets were quiet and lit only by an occasional street-lamp. The cars along the curb were a year or so old, a rainbow of Detroit colors, most of them probably still owned by the finance companies and banks. Jim could see how easy it could be to become trapped in a place like this. Once addicted to the tables most people would jump at a chance of steady local employment. And then would come a marriage and children, or children and a marriage, and somehow there would never be quite enough money to pack up and leave.
He was lost in thought when Joni pulled the car to a halt in front of a square single-story building constructed of cinder blocks. There was a solid door in the center of the front wall of the building, and the door was flanked by windows set high in the walls. The windows were made of an opaque glass, and only glowed feebly from the light behind them. No sound came from the building and there were no signs of life of any kind.
"Do you live here?" asked Jim as he got out of the car.
"No, silly. This isn't a house. It's a kind of club for the locals. It's a regular bar and restaurant, but we don't advertise it because we don't want the tourists coming in and spoiling it for us. This is probably the only place in town where there are no slot machines; no gambling of any kind."
"Why not?"
"Most of the people who came here work in the industry, and they use this place to get away from it all for a while."
Jim smiled when she referred to gambling as an
"industry."
"So what kind of fun can you have if there's no gambling," he said.
"You'll see," she said, smiling.
The front door opened on a long corridor which seemed to run all the way through to the back of the building. At the other end of the corridor Jim could see another door just like the one he'd just come through. Along both corridor walls were rows of pictures of famous entertainers. Each picture bore a personal inscription and signature. Jim looked and saw many TV and movie stars, some fabulous today and some who had faded into the history of film-making. There were three doors on each side of the corridor. The doors were staggered so none was directly opposite another.
Joni led him to the first door on the right and they went inside. They were in a large dimly lit room. The place was furnished with a long mahogany bar, presided over by a truly huge man. He must have been almost seven feet tall and his shoulders looked like they wouldn't fit through the doorway. Around the four walls of the room there were booths with leather seats, and in the space between the booths and the bar there were tables. There was sitting room for approximately two hundred people and at this late hour the room was half full. Women in street clothes, waitresses probably, were carrying trays of drinks from the bar to the tables and booths. No one looked up when they came in.
Joni led him up to the bar and waited to get the big man's attention. "Harvey, this is Jim," she said, when the big man clumped over to them. "He's okay." The big man reached out a hand the size of a watermelon and Jim took it hesitantly. He was a little afraid of crushed fingers. The man had a firm but painless grip and he repeated Jim's name as they shook hands.
Then he turned and slammed his palm against the top of the bar. The resulting sound was like a thunderclap in the murmur of conversation. At the slap everyone in the room stopped talking and turned toward the bar.
"This is Jim," Harvey's monstrous voice boomed. "He's all right."
There was a moment of silence as they looked him over and then the conversations began again. Jim led the way to a table and held the chair for Joni.
"What was that all about?" he asked when they were seated.
"Now you're not a stranger," she told him "And what if I was a stranger?"
"Then you wouldn't get any service and no one would pay the slightest attention to you. No matter what you said or did they would look right through you as though you weren't even here. It's the way we get rid of tourists who wander in."
"Kind of like a private club," Jim said. "Something like that. And this is the only room with an unlocked door. If you want to go into any of the other rooms, Harvey has to send someone along with a key."
"What's in the other rooms?"
"It varies. Some nights all the other rooms are empty, and some nights some of them are in use."
"Yes, but in use for what?"
"That'll come later. What do you want to drink?" A waitress had come up behind Jim and she now stood quietly at his elbow. He looked up at her and then back to Joni. "Do I have to order some weird specialty or do they serve good old American type bourbon."
"Anything you want."
He turned back to the waitress. "Bourbon, and I guess I might as well have it on the rocks. The quicker I get stoned, the less surprised I'll be later on."
The waitress's lips pulled back in a half smile and she moved off to get his drink. "Aren't you drinking?" he asked.
"I've been here before," Joni said. "They know what I drink."
Sure enough the waitress came back a minute later with two drinks on her tray. She set them down, took a dollar from Jim, and moved away.
They had three drinks and they talked. That is, Joni talked, telling him about herself and how she came to be a hostess in a gambling house.
"I wanted to be an actress and I had two choices," she told him in a flat emotionless voice. "I could have taken the same route as the hundreds of other girls who come to Hollywood every day. And I could have paid the same price they all paid; sleeping with producers, sleeping with directors, finally sleeping with assistant directors, until it didn't matter who I slept with any more. I saw them, I saw them every day, all over town, in the drive-ins, and the drugstores. The ones who gave up joined a stable of call-girls or they became starlets; which is really the same thing. Call-girls get paid by the evening, starlets are on a weekly salary, but they do the same thing. Whenever a big wheel producer or director has a lonely evening to look forward to all he has to do is have the studio send him up a starlet or two. Or if the same man is throwing a party and he wants girls around who will be willing to entertain in any manner he wishes he calls for a bunch of starlets from the studio's list.
"And he doesn't have to be a producer or even a man. The starlets get just as many calls from big-wheel homosexuals who are looking for a little change of pace, or from some of the Lesbians of the entertainment world. If a girl has a strong stomach and no morals and can take that kind of thing for long enough she might eventually make it. But for every girl who comes off the starlet list, twenty get on. The girls even end up trying to outdo each other with variations."
"How do you know all this?" Jim asked.
"I grew up in Hollywood. My father was a cameraman and my mother worked in wardrobe. I knew about all that before I was sixteen and I found out more when producers' sons tried to seduce me with threats that their fathers would see to it that my father was barred from the lot if I didn't come across."
"Well, what did you do?"
"My father was the most out-of-work cameraman in the industry. But we always made out somehow. Even among all that filth there are some good men and women. When I was seventeen I told my parents that I'd decided to become an actress and they almost threw me out of the house. When everybody calmed down, my dad made a phone call and one of the top stars in the business came over to talk to me. She tried her best to talk me out of it, but I wouldn't give in. And when she was finished trying to dissuade me, she tried to talk me into going at it in another way. She told me that every top man in Hollywood came out to Vegas some time or other and she got me this job here. If I had any stuff at all, she said to me, then I'd get discovered by one of the wheels.
"That was four years ago. For the first year I was on pins and needles waiting for the big break. By the end of the second year, I'd begun to like it out here. And last year one of those pigs offered me a starlet's contract to spend the night with him. I spit in his eye and pushed him down a flight of stairs. Almost lost my job over that one. But ever since then I haven't been even interested in the movies, or stardom, or any of that bull."
"Then what do you have to look forward to?" Jim asked.
"I've got a good job. I even manage to save some money every week. There are plenty of friends around and I manage to get a few kicks now and then. I suppose one of these days I'll marry somebody and settle down to keep house and raise kids."
"What kind of man can you marry in a town like this? Some playboy who's drinking away his inheritance? Or some poor schnook who works as a dealer and gambles during his off hours?"
"Hey, wait a minute. How'd the conversation ever get so serious? I thought we came here to have a good time."
"I'm sorry," Jim said. "I don't know why I blew up."
It was strange, but the girl's story had touched him deeply. In a farfetched kind of way, she was in the same position he was, no direction, no purpose, just drifting. She was drifting in one place, while he was drifting across the continent. What difference was there?
"I think we better see what's happening around here tonight or we'll be crying into our drinks."
They got up and moved across the room to the bar. "Harvey," she said, "what's on tonight?"
Harvey looked at Jim again and then turned back to Joni. "Are you sure he's all right?"
"Yes, I'm sure. Don't worry about him."
"The smoking room is open."
"What else?"
"Just the movies. Everything else is shut down."
"We'll try the smoking room for a while," Joni told the big man.
Harvey snapped his fingers and a waitress appeared beside them. "The smoking room I" he ordered.
The girl nodded and took the key he was holding out toward her. When she moved away Jim and Joni followed. She led him out into the corridor and down to the last door on the right. Her key slipped into the lock. She turned the knob and held the door for them. When they had gone in, the door closed and locked behind them. They were in a small anteroom facing another door.
"How do we get out of here?" Jim asked.
"Don't worry-the door opens from the inside without a key."
The anteroom was little more than a double shoulder's width between the inner and outer doors. The inner doors were of the sliding type. Joni slid the right one back and stepped aside for Jim to precede her into the room.
Even before his eyes adjusted to the dimness he had certain information about the room. When Joni slid the door back and he moved forward his nostrils were assailed with a sickly sweet pungent aroma which he quickly identified as marijuana. And so his mind was at least a little prepared for what his eyes saw.
The room was filled with smoke, great gray-brown billows of smoke like a thick fog. The only piece of furniture in the room was a small table right in the center. On the polished top of the table was an open box containing brown paper cigarettes with their ends twisted to hold in the loose strands. Next to the box was a dish of wooden kitchen matches.
The floor of the room was covered with a thick soft matting and all around the floor were strewn pillows and cushions and ash trays. Fifteen or twenty people either sat or reclined at the pillows. Some of them lay with their eyes closed and their faces blank, others sat rigid, their eyes staring blindly. Some were completely dressed, some completely nude, some half dressed.
No one looked up when he came into the room, and Jim turned back to Joni when he heard the door slide dosed.
"This is fantastic," he whispered to her. "It's like something out of the Arabian Nights."
Joni smiled. "Wait until you get some of that stuff into you. Then it's really wild."
She led him to the table and picked up two cigarettes. She handed him one and then lit her own. Jim watched carefully and saw that she held the cigarette loosely between her lips to draw in a lot of air with the smoke. She sucked the mixture deep into her lungs and held it there for as long as she could. When she exhaled there was almost no smoke on her breath. Her greedy bloodstream had quickly absorbed the potent stuff.
Jim put his cigarette to his lips and struck a match. The first puff was harsh and bitter and it made him want to cough, but he fought the urge. The second puff was smoother, and the third was no trouble at all. His mind tested his nerve endings and perception to find the effect of the marijuana, but there seemed to be nothing at all.
"I don't feel a thing," he whispered to Joni as they sat down on the floor and leaned back on a pair of cushions.
"Wait," she told him. "Give it a chance."
He puffed again and looked around. Nearby, his body in a corpse-like repose, lay a completely naked man who was obviously aroused by some erotic dream. The sight made Jim think of an old joke. Jim giggled, then caught himself and looked around to see if anyone had heard him.
Joni was looking at him and her face was soft and smiling. "That's the first reaction," she said. "Wait. It gets better."
He looked around again and this time his eyes fastened on a girl sitting yoga style, her back braced against a wall. The girl's loose skirt was hiked above her knees to give her legs room to spread and bend and Jim could see the tender surfaces of her legs and the white edges of her panties. Above the skirt, the girl was naked. Her eyes were closed, her expression soft, and she breathed with the regularity and evenness of a machine. With each inhalation her breasts seemed to swell as though they were great sacks of air which filled every time she expanded her chest.
The sight of those swelling breasts was so startling that Jim stared harder. And then it seemed that at the height of each inhalation her flesh lighted up like neon signs. They didn't say anything, those electric breasts, at least not in words, but they seemed to advertise tremendous animality and Jim felt himself becoming aroused and more aroused.
He closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them he was looking down on the room from a position somewhere near the ceiling. And yet he could see himself sitting down there next to Joni as she removed her tight blouse and bra. It was a crazy fourth-dimensional kind of experience. At one and the same time he was sitting next to Joni and staring avidly at her great naked breasts; and he was floating somewhere up in the air watching himself watching Joni, and also looking at Joni from up there. He was seeing her twice at the same time from two different perspectives.
His pleasure-fogged mind groped for an explanation. The only one he could think of was that somehow the marijuana had freed his brain to float away to the ceiling while his body remained a slave to the forces of gravity. That part of him near the ceiling saw Joni and her naked breasts as an expression of sheer beauty and art, while that part of him sitting on the floor saw her as the epitome of fleshly pleasures.
From the ceiling he saw the body of Jim Barton reach out a hand to touch the incredible softness of her and he was aware of the stimulation to that body. While, at the same time, his mind was filled with an explosive piercing pleasure not at all related to corporeality.
Then the two Jim Bartons joined and became one again and his entire body was tingling with sensations he'd never felt before. He could feel each individual nerve of his back responding to the softness of the carpet and the cushion. The skin of his palm where it held Joni was a whole world of sensation in itself. His ears heard a piercing atonal music that somehow he knew no one else on earth could appreciate, and yet to him, was the most beautiful of music. Instead of the form and line of those things around him his eyes saw a fantastic, shifting, ever-changing miasma of colors and shapes.
He puffed again on the cigarette and his mind was a cool dim cave, a retreat from the demands of the physical world. His entire essence was condensed into a tiny all-powerful nucleus which sat at a desk in his mind, surrounded by filing cabinets and computers, and, like the captain of a ship, controlled all the bodily functions. In one corner of that cave sat another little man who did nothing but add long columns of figures on a tiny electric adding machine. Other little men scurried about among the filing cabinets, carefully filing away sensations and taking out dusty and long-forgotten memories.
One of those little men hurried to the commander with an old time-yellowed folder and set it before him. The nucleus blew away a cloud of dust and opened the folder and suddenly Jim was fourteen years old.
He was fourteen and he was squatting on his heels on a rusted fire escape. It was night, a warm summer night, and he was peering into a room through the space between a window shade and the frame of the window. He was watching a young girl undress. The girl was seventeen years old. She was the sister of a friend of Jim's and she lived in the same apartment building in lower Manhattan. Her name was Kathy and she had the biggest breasts Jim had ever seen. In fact she had the only breasts he'd ever seen, for this was his first sight of a living naked female. Of course he'd seen his share of those pictures the fellows passed around or clipped out of magazines, but this was different. This was warm living flesh and it belonged to someone he knew personally. Somehow, the fact that he knew the girl made the whole thing ten times as exciting as it would have been were she a stranger.
Kathy dropped her bra on the foot of her bed and stood before her mirror. Her hands came up to cup her breasts and hold them out toward her reflection. Young Jimmy, sitting on the fire escape and staring, realized he was holding his breath, and let it out in a long slow sigh.
Kathy moved her fingers to fondle her breasts between thumbs and forefingers. She pinched and pulled until the flesh had a rosy glow. Her palms flattened her big breasts against her chest and rolled the soft flesh from side to side. Her eyes closed and her mouth went slack from her self-induced pleasure.
Jim was more excited than he'd ever been before in his fourteen years and he was conscious of his growing passion.
Back inside the room Kathy's hands had left her breasts and gone to the waistband of her skirt. Her nimble fingers moved and the skirt dropped to the floor. Now she wore only panties and thick woolen socks about her ankles. She stepped away from the skirt and bent forward to pull the socks off. When she leaned over, her breasts hung away from her body and pointed toward the floor. And somehow, for that moment, they were separate from her body; a pair of breasts which drew his stare and made his mouth go dry.
She spread her feet wide apart on the floor and ran her fingers up along the columns of her legs. Her hands were stopped by her torso and he saw tremors run along the smooth muscles. She hooked her fingers under the elastic of her panties and jerked downward until the panties also lay in a crumpled heap at her feet.
Now she was completely naked and Jimmy's eyes were drawn to another place. Instead of breasts, he now looked at the pulsing flatness of her waist. His eyes burned as they stared at the dimple of her navel.
Her body shook as if with palsy when she brought her hands back to her naked body and she fell back upon her bed. Her knees moved apart and her feet reached for the ceiling and he stared, open-mouthed, at the new wonders and secrets of the female form. He watched intently as she stroked and caressed her own body, and his excitement made him dizzy. Her pleasure at her self-caresses was obvious and he wondered if she would feel the same pleasure if he did those same things to her.
The need for action flamed through his body. His limbs were full of pain, and the pain was full of pleasure. His legs and back ached and trembled both from the strain of his awkward position and from his excitement. He rose on pleasure-numbed feet and awkwardly made his way back up to the roof. He knew that the girl's brother and parents were away from the house. They'd all gone to a movie and would not return for at least two hours.
Jimmy raced across the roof to the door and clattered down the three flights of stairs, his heart racing faster than his feet. A moment's panic assailed him just before he knocked, but his excitement was too strong to be denied. His blood thundering in his ears almost drowned out the soft padding sound of bare feet moving toward the door inside the apartment.
Was she going to answer the door all naked?
"Who is it?" Kathy called through the closed door.
"Jimmy. Jimmy Barton."
"Carl's not here. He won't be home till late."
"I know. I want to come in anyway." He realized he was almost shouting and he looked quickly around at the other apartment doors in the corridor. Their blank scarred facades stared back at him.
He heard the rattle of a chain bolt and the door opened just a crack. Through the opening he could see her face, staring, questioning.
"Why do you want to come in if Carl's not here?" Her voice was a harsh whisper.
He moved closer to the door and all of a sudden his brain was awhirl and his face flamed. "I dunno. I got no place else to go. Please let me come in."
She stared at him for a long time, seeing his flushed face and his tense body. Her eyes seemed to glow with excitement and after a terrible moment of silence the door shut again and he heard the chain bolt being slipped off.
The door swung back and he stepped into the dark living room of the apartment. The door closed behind him and he spun around to stare at her. She was wearing a bathrobe over her nakedness and he almost cried out his disappointment. After she closed the door, Kathy moved through the darkened living room toward her bedroom door. Light spilled out of the open doorway, and when she walked through the light pierced the thin fabric of her robe and showed him the silhouette of her legs beneath.
He waited, breathless, and the door remained open. His legs trembled as he moved to the doorway and peered into the bedroom. Kathy was lying on the bed, her head and shoulders propped up by two pillows. Her fingers turned the pages of a movie magazine too rapidly for her to be really looking at it, and every few seconds she looked up from the magazine to the doorway. When her eyes met his Jim looked away. And when she looked back at her magazine his gaze returned to her body.
Her legs were stretched out before her and the robe had fallen away from one pink naked leg. It seemed as though he could see waves of heat rising from that expanse of flesh toward the ceiling and coming across the room to warm his body. He wanted to say something, but his tongue was thick in his mouth and his throat was taut with excitement.
Finally, Kathy broke the silence. "Why are you staring at me?"
"Because you're pretty." His voice sounded strange and far away when he spoke.
"Do you really think I'm pretty?"
He nodded again and swallowed hard.
"As pretty as the girls in this magazine?"
He nodded again and swallowed hard.
"Silly, how can you tell from over there. You can't even see the pictures."
She patted the bed beside her and turned the magazine toward him. He moved to the bed on leaden stumbling feet and looked at the pictures. His eyebrows shot up and he gasped when he saw them. It wasn't a movie magazine after all. It was a nudist magazine. The pictures were of completely naked people, men and women, and no parts of their body had been airbrushed out. Every intimate detail of their bodies stared up at him from the slick surface of the page.
"Am I prettier than those girls?" Kathy asked again.
He wanted to speak but all he could do was nod his head.
"Silly, how can you tell if I'm prettier? You've never seen me like that."
"Yes, I have," he croaked. "Just now I was on the fire escape. I watched you take off your clothes."
It was her turn to blush and she did a wonderful job of it. Her face turned bright orange and she looked away from him.
"Did you see ... everything?"
He nodded his head again but she was looking away and didn't see him. When she turned back to face him the blush was gone and her eyes gleamed with a hot brightness. She rolled from her back onto her side and her robe gaped away from her body, revealing her breasts to his avid gaze.
"Are you sure you saw enough to compare?" she whispered. Her voice held a curious pleading tone.
He got the idea then and he stepped away from the bed. "Maybe I'd better look again to make sure," he said, suddenly feeling strong and sure of himself.
Kathy rose from the bed and untied her robe. The open front hung down her body baring a strip of white flesh from throat to knees. The halves of the robe covered the outer curves of her breasts and the outsides of her legs, but bared the nipples and the inner curves of breasts and legs.
"More," he croaked.
She shrugged her shoulders and the robe slid from her body making a whispering sound as it rubbed against her smooth flesh. Her back arched proudly and her breasts seemed to thrust out toward him, the crests like two staring eyes. She reached for the magazine and flipped it across to him.
"Compare us," she said.
He looked at the magazine and then back at her and there was no comparison. How could the flat two-dimensional pictures ever compare to a live, breathing, warm and naked woman?
"You're beautiful," he told her.
She jerked the magazine from his hands and flipped through a couple of pages. "Now you," she said. "Let me compare you."
She meant of course that she wanted him to take his clothes off. That was something he hadn't considered and he hesitated.
"Come on," she urged. "It's only fair. I let you compare me."
His numb fingers made difficult work of the buttons and zippers and it took him a long time to take off his clothes. When he was naked he had the urge to crouch and hide his muscular nudity from her hungry eyes, but instead he stood proudly and felt her eyes flick over him like a forest fire.
"Well?" he asked.
"You too," Kathy said. "You're prettier, too." The air in the room was warm and thick as water and she seemed to swim toward him, her body moving in the exaggerated gestures of slow motion. Her breasts bobbled when she moved and her gesturing hands wove patterns in the air as they danced.
Then she was close and the warmth from her body penetrated to his bones.
Then she was touching him and his skin burned with a strange pleasant kind of fire. He felt her breasts drilling into his chest and he felt the softness of her middle rubbing against his. Her arms wrapped around his body and pulled him close. Her mouth touched his and her tongue sent electric shocks through him.
His excitement made him dizzy, and when her hand slipped along their bodies to touch him his knees turned to water and he almost fell down. Suddenly his whole body seemed boneless, made of jelly, and she supported his full weight as he sagged against her.
Then they were on the bed and he was touching her in the same way he'd seen her touch herself. He heard the sound of gasping breathing and realized it was his own sound. He also heard the muted cries of pleasure from her throat.
Her hand came up her breast and she held it out toward him. "Kiss me!" she commanded and he obediently bent his mouth to the unutterable softness.
She moaned and tried to pull him even closer. He felt her flesh against his lips and fondled it with his hand. "Yessssss," she hissed. "Do that again."
He obeyed and he moved her body so her other breast was presented for his ministrations. One hand held the breast to him and her other hand went behind his head to pull him tighter and smother him in the warm perfume of her body. His nostrils filled with her flesh and his lungs ached for air. Then her hand was applying a downward pressure and his lips and tongue were sliding from her breasts to her middle. He reached the pink dimple of her navel and he felt tiny shudders in the muscles under his lips.
"Oh, damn," she screamed softly. "That's wonderful ... sooo good."
The pressure of her hand forced his head still closer and his nostrils were filled with the musk of her femininity. The sharp heady odor seemed to paralyze his will and make him a slave to her demands.
"Kiss me!" she commanded.
He kissed.
"Ahhhh," she groaned. "Now ... more."
Again he obeyed and he felt the convulsive shudders run through her body.
Then he was rolled on his side and she was kneeling beside him. Her lips were fluttering downward along his body like some insane butterfly. She kissed him, and his excitement and pleasure grew tenfold.
But now the excitement had a direction. He could feel it inside him building toward some tremendous cataclysm. His lips surged, his body heaved, and his muscles trembled. He was being pushed closer and closer to the brink of a chasm a thousand feet deep, moving faster and faster as he came closer to the edge.
Suddenly he was afraid. If he fell over the edge of that cliff, he was sure he would be lost forever. He tried to hold back, to quell his excitement, but Kathy's warm hips drew him on inexorably.
He was there.
He was teetering on the brink. And then his whole body shook with an explosion which hurled him out into the air. He screamed when he felt himself falling, but then he stopped. He wasn't falling really, only floating gently downward, and a beautiful peaceful lethargy enveloped him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was just like they say in the television commercials. He came awake refreshed and relaxed with no drug hangover. There was an instantaneous change from sleep to wakefulness with no groggy period between. His body seemed completely relaxed and yet full of zest and vim and vigor.
They ought to bottle that stuff, he thought, and sell it to the Madison Avenue crowd in place of all the tranquilizers and pep pills. He remembered his dream, or memory, or trance, or whatever it had been, in the fullest detail. It had been more than a memory for he had re-experienced every emotion, every thrill, every sensation. And now his body was just as much at peace as if he'd actually made love to a woman.
But the effects of the marijuana went deeper than that. Somehow during the dream his mind had resolved a great number of the problems which had been plaguing him. Now he could think about Irene without feeling that fist slamming into his gut. He thought about her and there was tenderness and sorrow but no grief, no hair-pulling, chest-beating, heart-wrenching grief.
It was as though the marijuana had turned off part of his mind, the mourning part. He knew the old pain and heartache were still there in him somewhere, but now he was sure those emotions were safely buried. All he had to do now was make sure he didn't re-invoke them.
He looked around and saw Joni sitting beside him waiting for him to come around. She too looked clear-eyed and refreshed and she smiled when she saw his eyes open. Her blouse and bra still lay beside her and her magnificent breasts seemed to wave a greeting.
He sat up and returned her smile.
"Hi," she said softly. "You were a long way away."
"I went back to a better time," he told her.
"Yes. It happens that way sometimes. How do you feel?"
"Magnificent. I haven't felt this good in months. What did I do while I was out?"
"There was a lot of twisting and moaning and groaning, but you didn't say anything if that's what you're worried about. I was out for a lot of the time myself, but I caught the tail end of it You looked for all the world like you were making love to some beautiful fantasy woman."
Jim grinned sheepishly and Joni laughed. "It wasn't a fantasy woman. It was a memory of a real live chick. I went back to my first time."
"Was it better the second time around, like in the song?"
"The most amazing thing is it was exactly the same. You know, it's a shame you can't take this stuff all the time. I think if everybody took one puff a day the world would be a much nicer place."
Joni laughed. "You sound like the kid who just discovered ice cream. But seriously, there's no reason why you can't take pot as often as you want. You could light up another stick right now and it wouldn't make you sick or a dope addict."
"But, isn't it habit forming, like heroin?"
"Not a bit. In fact it's healthier for you than alcohol. Booze does more damage to the system than pot, any time. The only thing bad about pot is that it's illegal, and it's only illegal because most people are superstitious. They think that anything this good must be bad for you."
"And what about all that stuff about pot leading to heroin?"
"I won't lie to you. There are lots of people who graduate from pot to H, but they were losers before they ever took their first puffs. There are a lot more people who start with pot and stay with pot. There are even some people who try pot and don't like it. Marijuana puts you up there and then lets you down slow and easy. And when it leaves you it leaves you completely. It doesn't put any bugs into your bloodstream that make you crave anything else. Someday they're going to legalize it."
Jim snorted. "Yeah. I can see the sign in the supermarket now: Marijuana-two-fifty a carton, thirty cents a pack. Filter tips-ten cents a pack extra.' "
"It sounds funny, I know, but someday it'll happen just like that. Only there won't be any need for filter tips; you see tobacco causes cancer-marijuana is nothing like tobacco."
Jim stretched and stood up. "It sounds attractive enough. But right now I feel like doing something. There'll be time to think about all that later."
"What would you like to do?" Joni asked, slipping into her bra and blouse.
"Let's see what some of the other rooms have to offer."
They went out through the double set of doors and into the corridor.
"Where to now?" Jim asked.
"Well, you wanted to see the other rooms. The only other one in use this evening is the movie room."
"What kind of movies?"
"The kind you'll like. We have some reels made up solely of stuff from the cutting room floor and the censor's shears. We have some of the most torrid love scenes ever made in Hollywood. Bits where the star's clothes came off at the wrong time. Camera angles which wound up too revealing. Scenes made only for the European distribution of films. And then we have the standard good-old American stag film. How does it sound?"
"Great! What are we standing around here for?"
"Not so fast," Joni chided, laughing. "I have to get the key first."
She disappeared into the barroom and came back a moment later with another waitress. The waitress led them down the hall and opened the last door on the left wall. Joni went in first and her fingers groped along the wall for a light switch. When she turned it on Jim closed the door behind them.
This room was furnished almost exactly like the smoking room. The center of the room was bare of furniture and the floor was covered with some thick soft material. One wall of the room held the screen and in front of the opposite wall stood the projector on a low table. Next to the projector was a long floor-to-ceiling rack which held cans of film. Attached to the rack and hanging from it by a long cord was a booklet with typewritten pages. This was the catalogue of the films. There was a short description of each film and then a number. That number corresponded to a number painted on the edge of the cans of film.
Jim leafed through the booklet pausing here and there to read a synopsis. He was amazed by the big names he saw there and by some of the descriptions of the plots of the films.
"Well, what do you want to see?" Joni asked.
"I don't know. It all looks so interesting that I can't make up my mind. You've seen most of these before. Suppose you pick the ones you like best."
Joni went immediately to the rack and selected a film can without even referring to the catalogue. It was evident that she was very familiar with at least this particular film.
"This one hasn't any big stars in it," she told him and she threaded the film into the projector. "But I'm sure you'll enjoy it."
Jim put four cushions together on the floor in front of the projector and made himself comfortable. Joni flicked off the lights and turned on the projector. Then she sat down beside him.
There was no title or credits at the beginning of the film and Jim suspected there wouldn't be any at the end. He doubted that anyone would want his name connected with this particular art form. It might be dangerous if the film ever fell into the hands of the police.
The first shot was a long shot of a large mansion. A delivery wagon was just pulling into the driveway. The camera zoomed in for a close-up of the good-looking young driver. He was grinning and whistling to himself. He pulled the car around the rear of the house and took a carton of groceries from the back seat. The camera followed him up the back steps to the door.
The young man pressed the bell button and waited for someone to open the door. The door was opened suddenly by a young girl dressed in a maid's uniform. She smiled at the young man and stepped back to admit him.
The man carried the box of groceries into the kitchen and set them down on the table. From somewhere inside the carton he produced a bill and handed it to the maid.
The camera now cut to a shot of a bathroom. Someone was taking a shower. The camera panned around the bathroom to show the empty bathrobe hanging on a hook behind the door and then cut to a shot of the interior of the stall shower.
Jim gasped at the suddenness with which he was exposed to the woman's naked body.
The woman was standing just out of the shower steam and she was diligently applying a soapy washcloth to her body. She looked up and smiled as though the camera was an old and intimate friend. And then she returned to the business at hand. She was a woman of about thirty-five with a lush mature body.
Something about the way she carried herself made Jim think of Doris Manders.
The woman slipped her right hand under her right breast and held it away from her body. Her left hand, with the washcloth, moved to the right breast and she began to wash it tenderly and gently. At the beginning, her flesh was white and relaxed, but after a moment or two of rubbing with the soapy cloth it grew and reddened and thrust out from her body.
The woman dropped the washcloth and pinched her flesh between her thumb and forefinger of her hand. She pointed it directly at the camera lens and made a sensuous motion with it. Then she turned her attention to the other breast. The woman's eyes narrowed as though she was in the throes of ecstasy.
Then the camera panned back for a long shot of her playing with her breasts and then she bent forward to pick up the wash cloth so she could continue with her bath. She soaped her waist and her back and then began to apply the cloth to her legs. She did a thorough job of washing and then moved under the shower stream to rinse away the soapsuds.
The camera cut away from the woman in the shower and showed a pantomime scene between the girl and the delivery man. The scene is evidently a moment after he has handed her the bill and she is explaining with motions that she must take the bill upstairs to her mistress to get the money.
The young man nods, indicating that he understands and will wait for her to return, and the camera follows the girl out of the kitchen, through the hallway, and up the stairs. On the stairway the camera does a clever bit of investigative work. It waits until the girl is halfway up the stairs and then moves in for a low upward angle shot under her short maid's uniform skirt. Thus it, and the audience as well, discovers that the young girl is wearing no panties.
Now the camera moves in for a close-up of her small pear-shaped breasts. When considered along with the knowledge of the absence of panties, the motion of her breasts beneath the uniform blouse seems to indicate that she is not wearing a bra either.
After climbing what is probably the longest single flight of stairs in movie history, the maid reaches the second floor landing and walks into her mistress's room.
Surprise! The bedroom is empty.
But the wise young maid cocks an ear in the direction of the bathroom and hears the sound of running water. So, her mistress is taking a shower. Well, she can't keep the delivery boy waiting too long. She goes to the bathroom door, tests the knob, finds the door open and enters.
The camera cuts back to a shot of the woman in the shower. She has long since discarded the washcloth and now she is touching herself with her bare fingers. And she is lost in the throes of her passion.
The maid throws open the shower door and stands back aghast as she discovers her mistress The mistress look up, sees the delectable young maid and springs out of the shower. In sign language the maid tries to tell her mistress about the young man waiting downstairs to be paid for the groceries, but the older woman has other things in mind. She is so intent on removing the maid's clothes that she pays no attention to the younger girl's gestures.
Jim felt Joni's body tense beside him as the action built and he put his arm around her. So far the film had only presented mild excitement, but he was prepared for more intense pleasure. She cuddled against him in the protective circle of his arm and her breasts flattened against his side.
Back on the screen the mistress has succeeded in stripping the young maid who is still trying to explain that she needs money to pay the delivery boy. The mistress pays no attention. Instead she bends her mouth to the bud-like breasts of the young girl.
The camera cuts in for a close-up of the girl's face to capture her reaction to the caress. Her eyes widen and her mouth forms a shocked circle. Then her eyes close, her face softens, and she smiles in evident pleasure. It is obvious that she too has forgotten about the delivery boy patiently waiting in the kitchen below.
The girl returns her mistress's caress and the two women close in a passionate embrace. Their breasts touch and flatten, their bodies grind together, and their hands fill themselves with lush spheres of hips. After a long hot kiss the mistress breaks away and leads the girl into the bedroom. The two women fall onto the bed and the mistress's knee comes up.
The young girl clamps her legs tight and her hips roll and sway. The older woman, evidently enjoying the abandon of her young maid, smiles and bends her head forward to bestow another kiss on those small breasts.
The scene shifts suddenly to a shot of the young man in the kitchen. He is whistling soundlessly, looking at his watch, and bouncing impatiently on the balls of his feet.
After registering the young man's growing impatience the camera shifts back to the scene of the two women on the bed. Now the mistress in lying on her back and the young maid is kneeling beside her, her head bent to the older woman's breasts. The mistress's eyes are closed in a parody of passionate pleasure and her hands are guiding the younger woman's head back and forth over her breasts.
The breasts receive their fair share of attention and then, whether under pressure of the older woman's hands or of her own volition, the young girl's head moves slowly downward along her mistress' torso. The camera dollies in for an extreme close-up of the action of lips against the woman's body and the whole thing is magnified to the point of distortion.
The camera records every detail of the journey from breasts to legs, dollying in for another close-up when the navel is reached and then moving back for a medium shot when the girl moves onward. While the girl's avid lips kiss her mistress's flesh the camera pans upward along the older woman's body, up over the heaving breasts, for a shot of the closed-eye, slack-mouthed ecstasy.
While the young girl's lips did their work, Joni groaned her excitement. Jim turned away from the screen long enough to kiss her warm lips and move his hands to the front of her blouse. The buttons opened easily under his steady hands and she moved her shoulders to help him slip it off. After the blouse the bra followed quickly.
"You like that stuff?" whispered Jim, referring to the relationship between the two women on the screen.
"Oh, yesssss," Joni hissed. "It drives me wild."
"Maybe later," Jim half promised. "If you're a good girl."
He filled his hands with her soft naked breasts and turned back to the screen. Just before he became reabsorbed in the fictional action he was aware that Joni was shifting around as she sat next to him. He knew that she was pulling off her skin-tight slacks and panties. When she stopped wriggling around he let one of his hands drop to her and he knew he was right. All his hand encountered was hot naked skin.
Meanwhile, back on the screen the young man becomes too impatient to wait, and he is wandering through the house in search of the maid. The camera follows him on his fruitless exploration of the ground floor of the mansion and then cuts back to the two women on the bed.
The young girl still has her face buried in her mistress's stomach, but now her own body is arched nearer to her mistress.
When the scene shifts again, it is to a shot of the young man mounting the stairs. He has finished with his search of the ground floor and now he is looking further He gets to the top of the stairs and turns down the hallway, stopping to investigate each room. The camera diligently records his every move and each of the rooms is empty.
Finally he comes to the woman's bedroom. The door is opened slightly and the young man hears the sounds of revelry. He turns and smiles into the camera. At last he has found the young maid. Now maybe he can get his money and go on about his business.
The camera cuts to a shot from inside the room with the door swinging slowly open. The audience sees the young man as he first discovers the two women making love on the bed. His face is a classic of surprise and he does a double-take in the time-honored traditions of the great movie comedians of the silent screen era.
After the first reaction of shock passes, the young man's face changes to a leer of lust. His tongue flicks out of his mouth to moisten his lips and he looks at the two women on the bed with great expectations.
The women suddenly discover that they have been discovered and they fall away from each other. The older woman, seeing the young man, grins and the camera cuts away to a little card.
"Well, what are you waiting for? Get your clothes off and come over here." It is the woman speaking to the young man.
He quickly strips off his clothes, thus baring for the camera a truly splendid body. He is smooth and hairless and possessed of a more than ample amount of masculine muscles and is already prepared for anything.
The woman holds her arms out to the young man as he steps across the room and he falls into her embrace. The camera now cuts to a close-up of the face of the young girl. She is jealous of the attention her mistress is receiving and wants to partake of the pleasure. She lies close to the two bodies and her hands wander over and around and around them for some special caresses.
By that time Joni was a bundle of warm panting flesh in Jim's arms. He tore his attention away from the screen and bent his lips to her breasts. She moaned at the touch of his lips and arched her back so her breasts were thrust to his face.
His hand slipped to her naked legs and his fingers found her more than quivering with need. He moved his hands and she gasped with pleasure.
"I've had enough of the movie," he muttered in her ear. "Let's see how good it can be in real life."
Joni jiggled and quoted from the film. "What are you waiting for? Get your clothes off and come over here."
In the darkness her nimble fingers helped him with his buttons and clothes, and he was quickly as naked as she. She came into his arms and pressed the whole length of her body against his skin. He felt her breasts digging into his chest and her silky middle pressing against him, and his passion soared higher than any movie could sent it.
This was it!
This was the real stuff and it was infinitely better than watching some two-dimensional characters parody the thing.
Her hand found his stomach, touched him.
"Oh, this is lovely," she whispered. "This is what I want."
She threw herself down on her back and drew him over near her.
"Make love to me," she surged.
"Wait. Not yet. I promised you something first."
"Oh, yessss. Do that. Do that to me. Do that for me. I love you."
Jim traced the contour of her breasts with his mouth. The effect of these caresses on Joni was stupendous. Her wanton lips jerked and trembled and her wild legs waved in the air.
From her breasts his mouth traced a line of fire down the center of the front of her body. Down, down, down, he went. Down across her rib cage to her stomach, and then farther down to her navel. Here he paused in his journey to encircle the dimple of flesh with lips.
Beneath her fine silky skin he could feel her abdominal muscles twitching and trembling.
"Oh, damn," she groaned. "That's magnificent. More ... now ... please, now."
Her hands were pushing hard on the top of his head and he let them push him harder. Soon his lips were touching the damp flesh high up on her leg and he could feel the taut muscles beneath the skin. He moved his lips from one leg to the other as he pressed toward her knees.
She moaned in disappointment when she felt the direction in which his mouth was moving.
"Not that way," she cried.
Jim was too busy to tell her that he intended to come back and he had to wait until he'd kissed all the way down to her toes. His lips searched the contours of her feet, his tongue caressing each individual toe and then begun the long journey back.
Her hips jerked as she moved herself against his face. Contractive shudders ran through her body as he brought her to the peak and then she tried to relax.
But he wouldn't let her relax. His mouth continued with the caresses and her exhausted body once again picked up the terrific tension of the pleasure which he was giving to her. Her mouth went slack and a dribble of saliva ran down her cheek, but she continued to move and move....
After the second peak he let her rest for a few minutes and then prepared her for the final act. His hands spread her knees wide apart and he moved his own body.
Then her legs tightened spasmodically and he let himself explode-and they were done. He rested for a long time before he found the energy to roll away. And when he did roll away it was to flop over, exhausted, onto his back. Her hand found his and squeezed in silent gratitude for the pleasure which he had given her. She held his hand and brought the back of it to her tired body and they rested silent and quiet.
The film in the projector had long since run out and the projector had shut itself off. Now they lay in complete darkness.
"Joni," Jim's voice broke the stillness. "If you can find my trousers there are some cigarettes in the pocket."
"Yes, lover," she whispered. "Anything for you." She let go of his hands and he heard her groping around in the dark. There was a jingling sound as the change in his pocket moved when she found the trousers, and then there was the rasping sound of her striking a match.
In the flickering light of that match he saw her sweat-slick body and her wild and disheveled hair. Her face held a look of complete satisfaction as she lit two cigarettes and handed one to him. He took it, sucked a mouthful of smoke deep into his lungs, and his groping hand found a cushion to stuff under his head.
The tips of their cigarettes were like two pulsing fireflies in the darkness and the only sound was that of their exhalations. Joni became chilled when the sweat dried from her body and she pressed herself against Jim's hip. He put one arm over her shoulder to hold her close and she rested her head on his chest.
"Back at the hotel you said it would take an awful lot of man to make you happy," Jim said in a relaxed tone.
Joni was silent.
He prodded her again. "Well?"
"Couldn't you tell?" she asked. "Don't you know how great it was for me?"
"I wanted to hear you say it."
"Shhhh. Don't talk. Just hold me close."
They lay quietly until the coolness of the air made them uncomfortable. Then Joni turned on the lights and they dressed. It was only when they were dressing that Jim got his first look at her completely nude body. He watched her as she was walking back from the light switch to her clothes. Her shoulders were wide and her torso was deep, this width and depth being necessary to support her tremendous breasts. From the wide shoulders her torso tapered to a narrow waist and then flared out in the sweeping curves of her hips and legs. She was all pink and smoothly curved; huge jut of breasts, gentle swell of middle smooth spheres of back. And when she walked naked and barefoot; all of her body moved at once, flesh shifting and sliding as it rode on the bones beneath.
Watching her dress was like looking at a beautiful statue which had somehow come to life. First she covered her hips with the plain white panties. Then her bra hid the magnificence of her breasts. The tight slacks came on easily as far as her knees and then she had to do a curious little hopping dance as she hauled and tugged upward.
When she was finished she came over to help him. He had been so absorbed in watching her that he hadn't yet begun to dress himself. She came to him and bent before him to bestow a lingering caress. Then she helped him on with his shorts and trousers and shoes and socks. He managed the rest by himself while she rewound the film and replaced the can in the rack.
They left the movie room and went back to the bar. The big room was almost empty now and was presided over only by the giant, Harvey, and two waitresses. Jim and Joni found stools at the bar and Harvey brought them nightcaps. They toasted silently, looking deep into each other's eyes, and drank.
When they finished their drinks Jim got up and took Joni's arm.
"Leave a twenty on the bar," she whispered in his ear.
He looked at her, puzzled.
"That stuff back there isn't free. And they can't run this place just on what they make from the bar."
Jim dug a twenty-dollar bill out of his wallet and put it down on the bar. Harvey saw them from the other end of the bar and he waved. "Good night folks. Come back again," his deep voice thundered.
They returned his wave and went out into the night. It was after one o'clock and the residential area was completely dark. The '39 Plymouth rattled and roared its way back to the main drag and stopped for a light.
"I'll take you back to the hotel now," Joni said. "Then I'm going home to get some sleep. I'm exhausted."
"When I'm out with a girl I always see her home," Jim said. "You drive to your place and I'll grab a taxi from there."
The main drag was still pulsing with life. The neon flashed and glared, taxis honked, and the sidewalks were alive with people. When they turned off the main street again, Jim was careful to note the name of the street and when they pulled up in front of her house he memorized the number. At her door he kissed her softly and without passion.
"You're tired so I won't come in," he told her. "Will I see you tomorrow?"
"I'm a working girl. If you're around the casino you'll see me."
The night air was pleasantly warm and dry, and after he said good night, Jim decided to walk for a while before hailing a taxi. His mind was full of his evening's experiences-the marijuana, the lovemaking; but more than that his mind was full of the peculiar aura of this town. Every other city in the world is divided into districts. There are industrial sections, business sections, residential sections, and entertainment sections. But this town was one big play land. The entire place was devoted to the pursuit of pleasure and this dedication seemed to work a strange kind of magic on the inhabitants, With pleasure as the accepted mode of existence, the petty nagging problems of life seemed somehow inconsequential.
Jim ended up walking all the way back to his hotel. And he was asleep as soon as he hit his bed.
CHAPTER NINE
HE WAS STANDING IN FRONT OF A JEWELRY store. It was night and dark and the streets were empty. There was a brick in his hand. He looked around quickly and then hurled the brick through the glass window. The glass shattered soundlessly and somehow he didn't think this odd. Slowly he reached through the shattered window toward a diamond necklace. His hand closed over the necklace and he started to pull his hand out.
Suddenly there was a loud snapping sound and he felt the jaws of a trap close tightly about his wrist. He tried to jerk his hand out but the trap held him fast.
And now an alarm began to ring. Panic flooded through him! He knew that if he opened his fist and let go of the necklace the jaws of the trap would open and he would be free, but he couldn't open his fist. He couldn't let go of the necklace. It was as though something about the necklace itself was keeping his fist closed tightly.
The alarm rang out into the night and he heard the sound of shoes pounding against the sidewalk, coming toward him. He pulled and jerked and twisted with all the strength of his panic, but he could not get free.
Now he could see the policeman turning the corner and the alarm bell seemed to shriek even louder. The cop stopped and drew his revolver, shouting for him to halt. The alarm bell rang and the cop came closer. When he was about ten feet away the cop stopped and took careful aim with the pistol.
"Take your hand out of that window," the policeman ordered.
"I can't! I can't!" screamed Jim, tears running down his cheeks.
"Take it out or I'll shoot."
"Wait! Please wait. I can't get my arm out. It's stuck in there."
Jim could see the finger tightening on the trigger and he heard the bell shrieking loudly in his ear. If only that bell would stop ringing, he thought, the cop wouldn't shoot.
The finger tightened on the trigger and there was a deafening roar. And then Jim was awake to the jangling of the telephone beside his bed. It had all been a dream and now he wiped the bead of perspiration from his brow and upper lip. His tongue moistened his dried lips as he picked up the telephone receiver.
"Yes." His voice was a hoarse croak.
"James?" It was Doris.
"Yes."
"Where did you go last night? I turned around and you had disappeared. I looked all over the hotel for you."
"What time is it?" Jim asked.
"Almost eleven. Why?"
Eleven o'clock. That meant he'd had almost eight hours sleep. "Let me wake up. I'll see you in your room later."
"I'll expect you in twenty minutes," she said, and hung up.
Jim stumbled from the bed into the shower. The cold water revived him and the left-over panic from the dream washed away. After the shower he shaved and dressed in fresh clothes.
Doris was sitting up in bed with a breakfast tray astride her body. She'd finished the food and was just sipping the last of her coffee. Jim came into the bedroom and pulled a chair up close to the bed. He tested the coffee pot, found it empty, and set it down again with a bang.
Doris ignored his evident bad humor and lit a cigarette for herself before she began her lecture.
"I'm very displeased with you, James," she said when she had the cigarette going nicely. "I don't like it when you wander off as you did last night."
"I'm not chained to you," Jim said.
"As long as I'm paying your bills you'll do as I wish. I wanted you with me in the casino last night. And I wanted you with me later when T came back to my room."
Her tone of voice implied that she'd wanted him to make love to her when she had finished in the gaming room. Strangely Jim could see her point of view. As far as she was concerned he was a hired hand. She was paying for his services as a driver and as a lover. The idea he'd become a gigolo, and a poorly paid one to boot, filled him with revulsion. Only once in the long trip from Chicago had he managed to make her assume a subordinate role in their relationship. And that had only lasted a short time.
He was angry then; angry with himself for getting into such a situation and angry with her for making so easy for him. All he had to do now was apologize and promise to be a good boy. Then she would continue the trip and he would remain as driver and hired hand. He knew that when they arrived in California she would be very generous.
His anger flooded through his veins and he stood up from his chair. He picked up the breakfast tray and hurled it across the room where it fell with a crash against the wall.
"What are you doing?" Doris screamed.
"I'm going to give you the ration you missed last night," Jim growled as he pulled the blankets back from her body.
She was wearing a very thin nylon nightgown and her body was completely visible. The expression on her face changed from shocked fear to a mask of pure lust.
Jim grabbed a double handful of. nylon near the top of her gown and ripped back. The thin cloth parted, leaving her naked, and he hurled it away. Her body went rigid, muscles trembling, as emotion flooded through her. She half sat up on the bed and her eyes were glazed with expectations of passionate delights.
"Oh, yes," she groaned hoarsely. "Be brutal. Don't be afraid, you won't hurt me."
"I don't give a damn if I do," shouted Jim.
His hands moved to the zipper of his jacket and pulled down on the little metal tab. Her eyes followed his hands, staring.
"This is it," he shouted. "This is what you want. This is what you hired that day in Chicago when I came for the interview. I saw you looking at me and I knew what you were thinking, but I thought it would just be an added bonus for the trip. I didn't suspect that you would think you owned me just because you were paying my bills. I earn that for driving. Anything else has nothing to do with salary."
She didn't even hear him. Her eyes were locked on him and her hand reached slowly forward. She explored with a tentative touch, as though seeing him for the first time in her life.
Jim felt her fingers upon him and tried to fight the pleasurable sensations. He intended making love to her but he wanted to be motivated by hate and anger, not pleasure. He jerked himself away from her hands and stripped off his clothes. When he turned back to Doris she was staring fixedly at his naked body and her hands were clenched into tight fists. Her breasts heaved as she gasped for breath and her hips rolled against the mattress.
An unreasonable anger filled Jim then, hatred be couldn't have explained if his very life depended upon that explanation. He only knew that there was a naked woman before him on the bed and he hated her. He stepped up to the bed and slapped her hands away from her body.
"Filthy witch," he shouted. "What's the matter. Aren't I good enough for you?"
She was helpless before him, all smooth defenseless flesh. His hand whipped through the air and slapped against her breast. She groaned with pain. The groan seemed to incense him and he slapped her again. This time she screamed and he punched her, his fist almost disappearing into the soft flesh.
Her lust was gone now, replaced by terror and pain; while his own lust flamed through his body. He filled his hands with her breasts and squeezed hard.
"Oh, damn," she moaned. "Don't ... stop ... please, stop."
"You wanted me to be rough. You asked me yourself. And you can scream your lungs out. No one will hear you out here in this cabin." Even his own voice sounded strange in his ears.
It was almost as if he had smoked another marijuana cigarette. Only a tiny portion of his mind was cool and calm and collected. That part, was driven by some uncontrollable urge. His built-up resentment for her flooded through him, making him want to hurt her, to violate her, to make her feel the superiority of his masculinity. But, he suddenly realized, it would be no good if she felt nothing but terror.
He threw himself down on the bed beside her and took her in his arms. She twisted her head from side to side to avoid his lips. He grasped her head and held it still while his mouth descended upon hers. At first her mouth was closed against him and her body writhed as she tried to get free. But the rubbing of flesh on naked flesh soon worked its magic and her efforts to get away became efforts to get closer. He kissed her ear and her throat and his lips settled finally on the pink peak of one breast.
"Oh, yes," she moaned in pleasure. "This is so much nicer. Now let me feel your mouth."
She moved her shoulders, pulling one breast from his mouth and offering the other, it's twin. He accepted the unkissed flesh and covered it with fluttery lips.
His hand slid down her back to fill itself with meaty flesh. In the deep warmth of that flesh his fingers found and touched a particularly sensitive nerve and one of her legs began to jerk uncontrollably.
Her hand slipped along their bodies to find and hold him tight. She tried to pull him to her, but he held back.
"Wait," he whispered. "Not yet."
He rolled away from her and rose to his full height on the mattress.
"Turn over," he commanded, as his hands grasped her hips and rolled.
She flopped over and he lay against her. His hand went along their bodies and down to her legs. His fingers caressed and touched. Her skin fluttered at the touch of his fingers and she groaned when he touched her harder. But he held his hips back and searched further with his fingers.
"No," she breathed. "Not there."
"Shut up," he growled. "If you want it the other way you'll take it this way first."
She screamed with the pain as he forced himself against her resisting body.
"Oh, damn! It hurts!"
He ignored her pain and relentlessly continued. His rhythm quickened and her screams subsided to weak moaning sobs. His pleasure grew and he felt himself coming closer and closer to the culmination.
Then, in the midst of her sobs, she emitted a gasp of pleasure.
"What's happening to me?" she breathed. "It hurts, but it's good."
The thrill of success was added to his physical pleasure as she moved against him. Her sobbing became passionate panting as she gasped for breath and he felt himself coming closer and closer. And then he reached the peak and his body went rigid. She felt his throbbing muscles and a high keening cry of pleasure tore from her throat as paroxysms flooded through her body.
He remained there for long breathless minutes afterward, and then he rolled away. She turned over on her side and he saw that her cheeks were streaked with tears of pain which had been dried by the ultimate pleasure. Her hand gasped him and held him tenderly, worshipfully.
"I never knew it could be like that," she breathed, and her head bent forward to bestow a grateful kiss.
Jim felt at peace with himself again. The stigma of the gigolo had been removed and he was once more a man. Slowly his racing blood slowed down to normal and the sweat began to dry from his body.
Doris continued to hold him and her stroking fingers and caressing lips brought him renewed vigor. When she felt him stir against her lips she gasped with delight and redoubled her efforts to arouse him. Jim was amazed that he could come to life so soon again. And now his passion had a different quality. There was no need to prove himself this time, no need to subjugate her. He gave himself up completely to the sensations and his hands found her body to return her caresses.
Soon she too was ready and she rolled over nearer to him.
"Now," she said. "Now, now, now."
He went to her more gently this time. Her body moved against him. He wanted to stop but his desire drove him onward.
"Slower," she whispered.
He slowed his rhythm.
Then, a moment later, "Faster, faster," she urged in a high-pitched tone.
He realized that once again her domineering attitude was in control. He obeyed her every command and fought his growing desire. Their bodies moved and their lips came together and he felt the tension growing in her body as she neared the peak of her pleasure.
He gathered his strength and waited and when she was just short of her fulfillment he tore himself away from her.
"Wait," she pleaded. "Come back. Don't stop now. You can't stop now."
Her hands reached for him and he rolled away from her.
"You can't do this to me. You can't leave like this."
She was frantic. Her hands clamped her hips and she began to wail and moan.
"Find your own pleasure," Jim spat as he reached for his clothes. "I'm finished."
He dressed as quickly as he could and stopped at the door just before going out. "I'm through, do you hear? Finished. Done. Kaput. I've had it with you. You can take your bonus and your car and find yourself another boy."
His last picture of her was of her writhing helplessly on the bed as she tried fruitlessly to assuage her passion. He went to his own cabin and threw his things into his suitcase. He hesitated over the tuxedo, then took out a handful of chips from the side pocket of the jacket.
He left the tux hanging in the closet and made a final check of the room to make sure he hadn't left anything behind. On his way through to the front of the hotel he stopped in the casino and cashed in the chips. There was over forty dollars' worth in the pile.
It seemed strange to him that the casino should be running at full swing at that hour of the day. Some of the gamblers were still dressed in their evening clothes and one woman in an evening gown was so drunk that she didn't realize her strapless gown had fallen so low as to almost completely bare one soft white breast. The other people around her at the crap table were so intent upon the tumbling white cubes that they took no notice of her semi-nudity.
The cashier knew Joni and told Jim that she wasn't due at work until eight that evening. He thanked the girl, left her a dollar, and walked out of the hotel. The bright Las Vegas sun warmed him as he waited for a cab, and he felt clean and new. For the first time in all the months since Irene's death he thought he could see some direction for himself.
The cab dropped him in front of Joni's apartment and he set the bag down while he waited for her to answer the door. He heard the pad of bare feet from inside the apartment and then the peep-hole in the center of the door opened.
"What are you doing here?" Joni gasped, surprised. Jim grinned. "Lady, do you have some breakfast and a cup of coffee for a hungry traveler? I'll work for my meal. I can do odd jobs, and fix things. Please lady, I'm hungry."
The peep-hole closed and Jim heard the click of the lock. Then the door swung open and he picked up his bag and went into the apartment.
He'd awakened her, and she stood behind the door with her hair mussed and her eyes fogged. She wore a shorty nightgown, a transparent diaphanous thing which hung on her body from her shoulders to the tops of her legs. The garment concealed nothing from his eyes, but he had no interest in it just then.
She closed the door behind him. "What on earth are you doing here at this hour?" she asked.
"I can't talk until I get a cup of coffee, at least. And you'd better put some clothes on. How can I concentrate on what I'm saying if you're standing around naked?"
His voice was light and jolly.
She picked up the banter. "I am not naked.
I'm wearing something over my body."
"You call that piece of gauze 'something.' You're so naked I can almost count the joints in your backbone from right here in front."
"You mean the front's not good enough for you?"
"Come on, you know what I mean. But if we stand around here much longer I'm going to die of starvation." Joni giggled and led him into the kitchen. "You wait here," she told him. "I'll make you some breakfast as soon as I wash my face and put on some clothes."
"Okay. But hurry up," said Jim swinging playfully for her jaunty rump.
She skipped away and disappeared into the bedroom.
While he waited Jim put on water for the coffee and poured two large glasses of orange juice from a carton he found in the refrigerator. Joni came back to the kitchen just as the water was beginning to boil. Her face was scrubbed and shiny and her long blonde hair hung down her back in a ponytail. She wore tight shorts and a loose halter, and her outfit did little more to conceal her body than had the transparent nightgown.
"I see you've helped yourself," she said when she saw the boiling water and the two glasses of orange juice. "I figured I might as well get started."
She took a carton of eggs from the refrigerator and broke four of them into a glass. She whipped them with a fork, added a little milk, and poured the whole thing into a frying pan. After a moment the kitchen was filled with the delicious aroma of scrambling eggs. While the eggs fried, she put four slices of bread into the toaster and they popped up just when she was putting the eggs on two plates.
It had taken her less than five minutes to prepare the breakfast for both of them. She set two plates down on the table and sat down opposite him. It wasn't until he was sipping his second cup of coffee and puffing luxuriously on a cigarette that Jim felt able to talk to her.
"If you're still interested," he said, "I'll tell you all about it."
"Interested? I've been on pins and needles since you came in."
Jim had a quick mental picture of sharp pins and long shiny needles jabbing her in her nether region and he grinned. Then his face sobered.
"It's kind of a long story and I guess it begins back in New York early last spring," he began. "I was married then. I had a job and a wife and we had a baby on the way. I'd just been given a raise and I was on top of the world. Then Irene got sick, or the baby made her sick, whatever. Anyway, in a couple of months she was dead and I guess a part of me died with her. I went on a bender for a long time and I woke up in the alcoholic ward of the city hospital."
Joni listened quietly as he talked and she kept her face from registering any emotion. She realized instinctively that Jim's talking it out was good for him. He began in a flat emotionless voice, but as he got deeper into the story his voice changed and she could almost feel the confusion and pain.
He told her everything, skipping no detail from the time of Irene's death right up until he'd rung her bell and hour ago. He told her about the schoolteacher in the rooming house whose name he never found out. And he told her about Chicago, and Doris, and the trip to Vegas. When he recounted the happenings of that morning in Doris' cabin his voice was tight with rage and when he told her of how he'd left Doris moaning in frustration, she could almost taste his glee.
A little part of Jim's brain listened to himself telling Joni about his troubles. That part of him analyzed those things he'd done and seen and felt since leaving New York, and when he finished he felt that he had a better perspective than he'd had before.
When he finished and crushed his cigarette out Joni was silent for a long time. Then she spoke in a soft voice. "What are you going to do now?" she asked.
"I don't know. I was heading for California. Somehow that seemed like the ideal place to be. I didn't know what I was going to do once I got there, but I thought that that was the place to be."
"And what do you think now?"
"Now I'm not so sure any more. I've got a little money now, and if I want to go on I can do it without hitchhiking, but what can I find in California that I couldn't find here? Maybe I'd be better off finding a job here and sticking around."
Joni heard a change in his tone and she looked deep into his eyes. Suddenly Jim's real purpose in coming to her that morning was clear to him and a great wave of tenderness flooded through him. He moved around the table and took her in his arms. Her body molded against his and he buried his face in the hollow between the side of her neck and her shoulder.
After a long moment he felt that he could speak again. The words came awkwardly to his lips. "I know I want to stay here and I know why," he told her, his voice hushed and full of wonder at the discovery. "Talking to you just now I realized something about myself. I'm not the kind of guy who can be happy alone. All the time since I left New York I've been looking for something, for somebody."
He took her shoulders in his hands and held her away from him to look into her eyes.
"It's hard for me to say it because I don't know if it's true. I think ... I think I love you. I do know that you're different from all the others. When I was with you last night it made all the others seem like cheap imitations of women. I think if we're together I can make it. It's weird, but all of a sudden I want to hold you in my arms. I want you to be in some danger so I can protect you.
"I know I'm not making much sense, but what I'm trying to say is that I want you. I want to marry you." Joni came up against him with a rush and her mouth found his. Her lips were soft and tender and her arms hugged him tightly. After the kiss she laid her cheek against his shoulder and spoke with her mouth near his throat.
"Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy," she breathed. "I stayed awake all last night after you went away. I was afraid you wouldn't ever find out how I felt about you."
He kissed her and his heart was full of joy. Their lips burned together and their love became passion. His hands touched the strip of bare skin between her shorts and halter and she moaned into his mouth. Her body writhed against him and she felt his desire pressing against her. Her hand came along their bodies and he gasped at the touch.
She was a big girl, but she was like a feather in his arms as he carried her into the bedroom. He put her down on the bed and his hands found the buttons of her halter. Her breasts were naked then and they swelled toward his mouth. She groaned lasciviously at the touch of his lips and he traced every curve and fold of her bared chest, memorizing, learning, worshipping. He smothered himself between those rich globes as he drove her passion higher and higher.
She tore her shorts from her hips when he stood up to remove his own clothes, and then she held her arms out to him.
"Wait," he said. "I still have the stink of that witch on me. I want to join with you clean and fresh," he said, turning and going into the bathroom.
He turned on the shower and stepped under the stream of water. He could almost taste the pleasure of her body and he looked forward to the time right after he had cleansed himself.
A shadow appeared on the other side of the fogged glass door and then the door opened and she was in the shower with him, water streaming down over her head and falling in twin waterfalls from her thrusting breasts. She took the soapy washcloth from his hand and pressed it to his chest.
"Let me," she said to him. "You're mine now. Let me wash you."
She rubbed the soap into his hard flat chest and along his arms. Then she moved the cloth to his rippled stomach, and from there down, along each leg to his ankles.
"Now turn around," she ordered.
He turned around and she smoothed the soap against his back from his shoulders to the backs of his legs. Then she pushed him under the water and rinsed the soap from his body.
"Hey," he said, smiling. "You didn't finish."
"Silly," she returned. "I'm saving the best part for last."
He stepped out of the stream of water again and she knelt before him. Her skillful hands were gentle as she washed him thoroughly. Then more water to rinse again, then he took the cloth from her.
"Now it's my turn," he told her.
Her breasts were slippery mounds of water-slick flesh and they skidded out of his soapy hands. Joni giggled as he recaptured them and scrubbed them hard. He lingered with the cloth to her breasts until she moaned with pleasure, then he moved lower. Her middle was a pulsing convex bowl of pleasure and her legs were smooth columns of warm ivory. When she was clean he shut off the water and rubbed her with a thick rough towel until she gleamed.
She was more tender when she dried him and her hands lingered. "My," she said, smiling, "you certainly do get excited easily. All it takes is a little touch here ... or there," she touched him, "and you're ready to go."
He reached down to fill his hands with her breasts and she stood up. Her body dosed against him and her breasts flattened against his chest. He held her tight against him and leaned back so her feet came off the floor. In this manner he carried her into the bedroom.
He put her down on her back but she scrambled away. "Wait," she said. "You lie down and let me do everything."
He stretched out on his back and she knelt beside him. Her hands loved him to full readiness and her lips touched his in a fleeting kiss. Then she stood up on the mattress and moved so that she was standing above his prone body.
At the last minute she fell forward to crush her breasts upon his chest and they both went rigid with the ultimate delight.
It took him a week to find a job, but it was a good job was a good salary. They were married a week after that and his boss gave him a few days off for a short honeymoon. It was almost as if he'd gone full circle when Joni told him she was going to have a baby. You see he was working for a loan company.
