A honey blonde, hair arranged in a careful beehive style, her lipstick was just the right shade, and her clothes were tailored, and her body was quietly excellent. There was a great deal of sophistication in her overall appearance -- the look of calculated self-assurance in her brown eyes, the poise of her hands, the gently sexy movement of her hips and thighs when she walked.
She was not walking now. She was sitting. Sitting in a not especially comfortable chair, and she was watching her fish. Tropical fish are something of a minor status symbol in Manhattan offices. You cannot have an aquarium beside your desk, obviously, unless you have a private office. And, even with a private office, you cannot have the fish unless you are of sufficient importance to waste time watching the fish without arousing anyone's displeasure.
Sheila Markham was important.
She worked with the firm of Burnham, Seaton & Hamill. BS&H sounded like a law firm, or a brokerage house, or, possibly, an advertising agency. It was none of these. Burnham, Seaton & Hamill was, in truth, probably the most exclusive firm of interior decorators in New York, which is to say the world. When Mrs. Van Peyster-Thripps wanted to do over her North Shore estate she called in someone from BS&H. When General Motors (or General Mills, or General Dynamics, or General Foods, or somebody like that) wanted to redo a suite of executive offices, BS&H got the job. And if some poor young hausfrau in Levittown wanted someone to pick out living room drapes for her, and if she had , the unmitigated nerve to call in BS&H, they would kindly suggest that she take the job elsewhere.
Sheila didn't handle work for General Motors or General Mills or General Dynamics or any of the other generals. Her special area was home and apartment decoration. She had a private office and a private secretary, and she worked pretty much when she pleased, and she occasionally told an expensive client to go to hell for herself, and BS&H paid her seventeen thousand dollars a year for her services, in addition to paying the upkeep on her aquarium.
She was worth every penny.
She stood up now, turned away from the fish tank. She raised her arms and yawned, and her breasts strained against the front of her gray flannel suit jacket. She walked to her window, opened it, looked out at Manhattan. It was four-thirty in the afternoon. It was October, the sky was powder blue with streaks of cirrus clouds, and it was a fine day to be alive on.
Too nice a day to waste on the office.
Outside, it was still possible to get a cab. In a half hour, when the office buildings erupted and spilled wage slaves upon the pavement, cabs would be hard to come by. And half an hour earlier, around four, they would have been just as difficult to find, since the cabbies change shifts about then. Now it was fairly simple. She stood at the curb for a few moments, then hailed a cab, opened its door, got into the back seat. She gave the driver an address on East Sixty-Third Street, settled herself in the back, closed her eyes and relaxed.
On East Sixty-Third, not far from the East River, the cab pulled to a stop in front of a remodeled brown-stone. The meter read ninety cents. She gave the cabby a dollar and a quarter, got out, went into her building. She climbed a winding staircase to the second floor, put a key into a lock, went inside.
If you are a dentist, it's not 'de riguer' to walk around town with a mouthful of cavities. If you're a veterinarian, you don't keep a mongrel with rickets around the house. And if you're an interior decorator, you don't live in a hovel, don't hang calendars on the walls, and don't furnish your place in Nineteenth Century Ugly. There are two reasons for this. In the first place, an interior decorator is necessarily sensitive to interior decor, and an apartment that might suit an ordinary slob would turn her off completely. Furthermore, it's sometimes necessary to have clients over to your place, and clients have to be impressed. A good interior decorator has what is known in the trade as a 'Drop Dead' apartment.
Sheila Markham had a drop dead apartment. A full description would be a bit much, but a few words on the living room might not be amiss. The carpeting -- wall-to-wall, of course -- was the particular shade of orange which certain teen-age girls favor for lipstick. The walls were robin's egg blue. The furniture was all Danish, and all teakwood. The lighting was magnificently indirect, climaxed by hidden fixtures in the corners of the ceiling which simply glowed when a switch was thrown. These same components, chosen by an untalented person, might add up to an utterly unpleasant room, with everything clashing. Because Sheila had done the decorating, everything magically worked out. The room was perfect.
So was Sheila. She walked from her drop dead living room into her drop dead bedroom, and she got undressed. She hung up her suit, got out of her blouse, shed bra and garter belt and stockings and panties. She stood in the center of the room for a moment, magnificently nude and a few words might not be amiss here, either.
Creamy skin, first of all. An aristocratic face, a thin ivory neck, a pair of slightly sloping shoulders. Breasts too large to be fashionable; firm mounds of creamy white flesh tipped with firm, pink nipples. Lovely breasts; breasts that stood out proudly without the support of a bra; breasts which Sheila now cupped for a moment in her soft hands. She shivered luxuriously.
God, she thought, this is bad. This is very bad.
She had been married once. She was twenty-seven now, and when she had been twenty-two she had married a man named John Darvin. The marriage lasted seven months, and Darvin stayed drunk for about six of those months. For the past six years she had been unmarried, and this posed certain problems.
It was posing a problem now.
Sex, she thought. She said the word aloud, rolled it around on her tongue. Sex. She needed it, needed it quite badly. It was an itch that had to be scratched, a hunger that had to be fed. It wasn't as bad now as it could get, but it was on its way.
She let go of her breasts, ran her hands slowly down the front of her body. She touched her slightly rounded stomach, moved her fingers lightly downward. She touched herself, and she shivered again, and then her hands moved quickly to the swollen roundness of her strong thighs and squeezed quickly.
Sex.
The shower -helped a little. She wore a white rubber cap to protect her hair from the spray, and she stood under water as hot as she could stand it and lathered herself up and rinsed herself off until her skin was squeakily clean. Then she fiddled with the faucets and made the water as cold as she could stand it. Cold showers, as you may be aware, are supposed to be of value in cases of this nature. Boy Scouts take them all the time in order to avoid sowing an inadvertent wild oat. She spent as much time as she could under the spray, then stepped out of the tub and wrapped up in a towel.
She dried off, went into the bedroom. She uncovered the bed, curled up under the sheet, tucked her pillow under her head and closed her eyes. Just before she went to sleep she reached over and took the phone receiver off the cradle. Then she yawned and closed her eyes again and dozed off to sleep.
* * *
In a dark and quiet bar on Bank Street, in Greenwich Village, a man with iron-gray hair and steel-blue eyes stepped into a phone booth, closed the door, dropped a dime in the slot and dialed a number. He listened for a brief moment, said three unprintable words, hung up, retrieved his dime, left the booth and went back to his table.
"Still busy," he said.
He said it to himself, because he was sitting alone. He said it again, followed it with three more unprintable words, and picked up his Old Fashioned glass. It was empty He raised a hand and snapped his fingers. A waiter came over with a fresh drink and took away his empty glass. The drink was a double shot of Wolf-schmidt's vodka poured over a solitary ice cube. The man held the glass in one hand, swirled it around a little, then sipped it.
His name was Roy Archer. He was forty-three, broad-shouldered, trim-waisted, athletic in appearance, alcoholic in religion. He had a ruddy complexion, his eyes were often bloodshot, and a doctor had once told him that, at the rate he was going, his liver was going to give out on him sooner or later. But he was that special sort of alcoholic who, while never drawing a genuinely sober breath, is nonetheless able to function on his own terms.
Archer was a television producer. Every Wednesday night, from 8:30 to 9:30, some twenty million sets were tuned to his show, The Johnny Jingo Hour. As far as the owners of these twenty million sets were concerned, the show belonged to Johnny Jingo, a backslapping comic with sixty-four teeth and a horribly hearty laugh. Archer knew better. It was his show; he owned it, he packaged it, he ran it, and he made money from it. As far as Johnny Jingo went, all the comedian really did was deliver the lines that had been written for him, and act in a manner sufficiently anthropoid to amuse the great unwashed masses. But it wasn't Jingo's show. It was Archer's.
He wasn't particularly proud of it He liked the money it made for him, and he liked the turbulent pace of the business, and he liked some of the broads who offered their ripe bodies to him in return for an occasional spot on the Jingo show. But he hated the show. He went to the rehearsals some of the time, and he went to the show itself all of the time, because he had to.
He didn't have to like it, though.
"Damned broad," he thought aloud. Sheila Mark-ham, interior decorator, stacked, bright enough to talk to and hot enough to fry eggs on, at least according to washroom gossip He couldn't swear to that, not as yet. He'd been out with her twice, and he had bided his time and laid the groundwork for a pass, and now he wanted to get next to the broad in the worst way and her damned line was busy.
Hot enough to fry eggs on. He swallowed some more vodka, closed his eyes. A picture came to him -- Sheila Markham, naked, on a bed. Breasts pointing at the ceiling. Eyes closed, lips curved in a smile and slightly parted. And, below her navel, an egg frying sunnyside up.
His dinner.
Easy, he thought. Easy, Archer.
He finished his drink. The waiter came over and took Archer's credit card, performed some obsequies with it, gave Archer a check to sign, and went away. Archer left a few dollars on the table for a tip, then left the bar. It was getting darker now. The sun was gone, but the sky hadn't lost all of its brightness yet.
Sheila Markham.
Her line was busy, and seemed likely to stay busy forever. But that meant at least that she was home. He could hop in a hack and go over there and see what happened.
He thought it over. There was a bad side to it. Suppose she was with somebody. What then? Hell, he would look like a damn fool, and that wouldn't be any good at all Even it she was alone, it would look as though he was chasing her, and that didn't do you much good.
So, for the time being, the hell with her.
He had dinner around the corner at a dark, quiet and inexpensive Village restaurant. When you are a heavy drinker, you rarely spend very much time eating. Archer ran true to type in this respect. He had a hunk of rare roast beef, no potato, no vegetables, no dessert. He drank a pair of Gibsons with the piece of meat. He paid the check, left a tip, and went home.
Archer's apartment was a block away on Barrow Street, a penthouse apartment in one of the new overpriced apartment buildings which have been mushrooming in the Village in recent years. The tenants of these buildings have flocked to the Village in an attempt to escape the sterile atmosphere of Uptown Manhattan, and, by their choice of living quarters, have only succeeded in rendering the Village sterile. Archer didn't think about this. He just went home and poured himself a drink and drank it.
For the hell of it, he tried Sheila's number.
Still busy.
- He put the phone down, then picked it up again. He thought for a moment, trying to remember a number which he had not called in slightly over a month. He couldn't remember it, wound up checking in a small black leather address book. He dialed, waited.
"Hello?"
"Cindy? Roy Archer."
"Oh," she said. "Hi, Roy."
"Busy?"
"Nope."
"Why don't you come over, Cindy?"
"Your place?"
"Sure."
"Right away?"
"If you can."
"I'll be right over," she said. "See you, Roy."
He put the phone down and sipped his drink. Cindy Walsh would be right over, he thought. Cindy Walsh, red-haired, slim-hipped, accomplished as a machine but able to give the appearance of being far more inspired.
Cindy Walsh would cost him fifty dollars, and she would be worth it. She would be excellent in bed, fully willing to do whatever he wanted her to do. She would know when to talk and when to keep her mouth shut, and she would manage to forget his name when she left, carrying no unpleasant stories about him to her friends and associates. She would have the intelligence to avoid getting herself pregnant, and, if she did happen to find herself pregnant for one reason or another, she would visit a competent abortionist on her own and leave him out of the picture entirely.
There was just no substitute for professionalism, he thought. An inspired amateur was a source of great pleasure, but a professional could give her cards and spades and the good deuce and still walk away with top honors. It was the same, he told himself, in almost any field you could name. Entertainment? A polished pro could get by on half the talent and a third of the brainpower that an amateur needed to make a go of it. The business world? Same story. Sex? Just more of the same. Show me a broad who makes her living at it, he thought, and I'll show you a vastly superior piece.
Roy Archer did not have to employ prostitutes. When you have money, time, good looks and a generally pleasing personality, you can score without paying for it. He hired call girls because he quite frequently preferred them. The difference in cost, for example, was less than negligible. Say you took out a non-pro, a chorus broad or an actress or something along those lines. You took her to dinner at a minimum cost of twenty bucks, and you took in a show or a club act or both which came to another twenty at the very least, and you cabbed around and had drinks here and there, and if the evening didn't cost at least fifty clams you were being cheap about it. And then, with money all spent, there was no iron-clad guarantee you would score. You might very well have spent your money on nothing more satisfying than a grateful smile.
With a pro, there was no risk and no danger. You didn't waste time in restaurants or theaters or clubs. You got what you paid for, and that was all you got, and it was worth it Which Was ideal.
She was there in twenty-seven minutes, give or take an insignificant second or two. He stood up when the bell rang and walked to the door to let her in. She was very lovely, very attractive, very well-dressed, and her smile looked almost real. "Roy," she said.
He took her arm, led her inside. He asked her what she was drinking. She said a little Scotch would be fine, no ice and no mix. He poured a shot into an Old-Fashioned glass and she sipped it.
"It's been a long time," she said.
He sat on the couch. She went to him, sat down next to him. He put an arm around her shoulder and drew her close. She put her lips to his ear and kissed him.
"Mmmmmm," she said.
You got your money's worth, he thought. You sure as hell did. She could make you believe it, could fake you out until you could swear she was hot as a stove.
"Hard day, Roy?"
"Not too hard."
"You're looking good, Roy."
"So are you," he said. Which was true enough. He let his eyes travel over her body. She was wearing a gold lame sweater, and it wasn't hard to tell that there was no bra beneath it. He checked, dropping a hand to one of her chunky breasts. She purred, and his hand caressed, feeling the firm softness of her.
"Know what I want, Cindy?"
"Tell me."
"I want to boff the daylights out of you."
"That's good," she whispered. "That's what I'm here for, honey."
* * *
Sheila only slept for about an hour. She was in bed by a quarter after five and out of bed by a quarter after six, and if that doesn't come to an hour there's something wrong somewhere. And, if she had remembered that the phone was off the hook, she might have gotten Roy Archer's call. But she forgot all about the phone. She got up and got dressed and cooked herself a teevee dinner, a Dexter Frozen Dinner that tasted no better than it looked. Then, still without hanging up the phone, she left her apartment.
* * *
The coffee house was called Rameses. It was totally unlike the Village places. There were no men with beards, no card-carrying faggoteers, no butch dykes, no earnest young student types, no beat generation elements, nothing of the sort. Rameses was an uptown coffee house. You could sit there over a cup of something moderately exotic, could look at the good abstract oils on the walls, could get into a conversation or play a game of chess or listen to classical music or lapse off into sullen silence, and whatever you did, nobody bothered you. Sheila went there once or twice a week. She liked It.
The place was almost empty when she got there. A string quartet -- Mozart or Haydn, by the sound of it -- was playing softly. A middle-aged man with a walrus mustache was playing chess with a pallid young woman who wore heavy glasses with thick lenses. A gaunt, hatchet-faced man sat in a corner reading a book by Stekel. Three girls played pinochle at another table. Sheila sat down at a table by herself and lit a fresh cigarette.
A waiter came over, recognized her, smiled hello. She ordered a cup of cappuccino. He brought it and she smoked and listened to the music and waited for the coffee to cool. It did, and she sipped it slowly, savoring the taste and bouquet.
About twenty minutes later, the gaunt hatchet-faced man looked up from his Wilhelm Stekel and studied her. She looked away. Later she looked back, and he looked up at her and smiled, and she looked away again.
A few minutes later he closed his book, stood up, came over to her table. He asked if she minded if he joined her. She said she didn't. He sat down.
"David Eisen," he said.
"Sheila Markham."
"Do you come here often, Sheila?"
"Once or twice a week."
"I've never seen you before. It's a pleasant place, isn't it? I come here almost every evening."
"To read or to pick up girls?"
A shallow grin. "To read, mostly. I live in a furnished room and it gets rather like a cell. By the time night falls, the walls seem to come together around me. It becomes impossible to concentrate. So I come here, and read with music in the background and paintings on the walls and people around me. It's more effective that way."
"What do you do?"
"I read."
"I mean--"
"For a living? I don't do anything, Sheila." She looked at him.
"Nothing at all," he said. "I wake in the morning, I eat, I walk, I breathe the fresh air. I read, I study, I think about one thing or another. Night comes, and I come here. I read, I sip coffee, I listen to music. Sometimes, like tonight, I sit with someone. Then I return to my humble quarters and await the dawning of a new day."
"What do you do for money?"
"My needs are simple, Sheila."
She studied him. Good clothes, even expensive clothes, but clothes he had probably owned for years upon years. Still, one hardly lived on air. Rent, food -- he had to have some income.
She said: "But--"
"I get along," he said, "Sometimes I buy things. Sometimes I sell things. Two years ago I took a trip across the country, Sheila. I had five hundred dollars. I bought an old Chevrolet for a hundred dollars and headed west. I never went near the big cities. I went to small towns, tiny hamlets. I bought books and furniture and antiques and so on. I know these things, I understand them. I shipped everything back to New York, and I kept on until my money ran out. Then I sold the car to a junk dealer and took a bus home."
"A bus?"
"A Greyhound. An unpleasant way to travel, but inexpensive enough. I arrived here in New York, collected all my purchases, and resold them. Do you know how much money I made?"
She looked blank.
"Four thousand dollars," he said. "My purchases may have cost me two or three hundred. I sold them for four thousand. Oh, I would go to a second-hand store somewhere in the middle of Indiana and rummage through their used books. They sell every book for fifteen cents there because they don't know what's worth money, and can't find buyers anyway. Now and then I'd find a book I could resell for ten dollars. There was a first edition of Hemingway's first book. A man on Fifty-Seventh Street gave me seventy dollars for it, and I'm sure he got at least double that when he sold it."
"That's impressive," she said.
He smiled. "I can live for years on four thousand dollars," he said. "My needs are very simple. And I hate working for a living. I'm willing to go to great trouble and spend a great deal of time on a project, just so long as it isn't work. If it's work, I can't stand it."
"I work."
"Do you enjoy it?"
"Yes. Very much."
"Then you're very fortunate," he said. "What do you do?"
"I'm an interior decorator."
"Free-lance?"
"No. I'm with Burnham, Seaton and Hammill."
"Are you important?"
"Fairly important."
"Then you must make a great deal of money, Sheila."
"I do."
"That's very lucky," David Eisen said. "To enjoy your work and profit from it. Not many people have such luck."
She didn't say anything. He was a strange young man, she thought. She wondered how old he was. It was hard to say, because he was so different from most people. Old in some ways, young in others, and hard to categorize. With most people you could not only guess age on the spot, but you could also fit them neatly into pigeonholes of weight, income, political preference, and so on ad infinitum. He was not so easy to classify, though.
She looked him over. Attractive? It wasn't even hard to answer that question. He certainly wasn't attractive by Hollywood standards -- not in the least. He was very thin, and his features were irregular, with too thin a mouth and too long a nose and a pair of sunken, searching eyes. But at the same time there was something compelling about him, something inexplicably sexy.
Oh-oh, she thought. Watch out, Sheila girl. Keep thinking like that and you'll start getting hot, and you know what happens when you get hot. You get so damned hot they could fry an egg on you.
"You read a lot," she said. "Don't you?"
"Yes."
"What do you read?"
"A little of everything. Science, philosophy, fiction, potboilers, anything and everything. Books on antiques, books on books, history, theology, this and that."
"You're a scholar, then."
His smile broadened. "Oh, I couldn't call myself that," he said. "Scholars go to universities and get diplomas. They win fellowships from amiable foundations. They have titles after their names. They lecture and sit at the feet of famous men and feel quite important. I'm no scholar."
"What are you?"
"Just a bum who refuses to work."
The music had changed. They were playing a Bartok sonata now; crisp, daring, brutal in its' intensity. She looked at him and shivered deliciously. It was getting bad now, she thought. She was becoming much more strongly attracted to him than she would have thought possible. She wanted him.
"David--" His eyes were bright, appraising. "Would you like to... go for a walk?"
"It's a nice night," he said. "Would you like to?"
"Of course."
She paid her own check while he paid his. He did not take her arm as they left Rameses. They walked side by side out of the coffee house and into the night. It was cooler now. There was a wind blowing and the wind had an edge to it.
She wished she could figure him out. He wanted her -- at least he had wanted her at the beginning, wanted her enough to make an opening pass at her.
But he didn't act the way most men acted. He had this tremendous nonchalance, this phenomenal coolness, and if there was a great need for her within him he kept it magnificently concealed from her.
She said: "Where would you like to go, David?"
"It's up to you."
"Would you like a drink?"
"If you want."
She hesitated. Could she invite him up to her apartment? She could, of course, but she might look like a tramp if she did. And he might turn her down, and then would end things at once because they could hardly go on walking if he did.
"I have a good bottle at my apartment."
"Is it far?"
"A few blocks. We can walk."
"Good," he said.
This time he held out his arm for her, and she took it. He was taller than she had realized, she saw now. About four or five inches taller than she was. And he stood up straight and walked with his shoulders back.
Was this wrong? Picking a man up, knowing nothing about him, taking him home and having sex with him and never seeing him again -- was it wrong?
Sometimes -- most of the time -- she thought so. But there were times like this one, times when the attractions were deadly strong and the flesh was willing and the spirit was weak, and at such times the fire burned in her and her need was too strong to be denied. And, at those times, it didn't seem wrong at all. It was a cure for loneliness, and infinitely superior one to roommates or hamsters or dogs or parakeets.
She gripped his arm, squeezed it And walked faster.
CHAPTER TWO
There were two ways to go through life, David Eisen thought. You could work up a sweat, trying to guide your life toward certain predetermined goals, or you could float with the tide. Either way could be successful or not depending upon the sort of person involved and the set of unalterable circumstances surrounding him.
He himself had never been much on long-term goals. Short-term goals were something else. If he wanted to concentrate all his energies on a specific target, he generally did well enough. There was the time, for example, when he decided to spend the winter in Greece. He had less than two hundred dollars to his name then, lacked a passport, and couldn't speak Greek to save his soul. He had learned the language cold in less than two months with the aid of books and records and an obliging Greek belly dancer whom he met in Chelsea. And he had turned his capital into seven hundred dollars, which, given his undemanding standard of living, was more than enough to get him across the ocean, support him during his sojourn in Greece, and see him safely back. So he was all right on a brief project, but for something more extensive he simply could not stick to schedule. He floated.
If you were the right sort of person for it, you couldn't ask for a better life. As far as he could see, people with firm goals generally wound up being slaves to their ambitions, and people who led overly patterned lives turned in time into little more than robotic manifestations of humanity. He preferred it his way.
There was only one great pitfall. He could not afford to fall in love with anyone, because that would ruin things.
He smiled. The blonde girl at his side, well-packaged and quite lovely, was clutching his arm possessively and passionately. They were on their way to her apartment, were in fact almost there, and there he would make love to her. But at the same time he would be most careful not to fall in love with her. When freedom was one of your primary concerns, you were careful to keep to yourself. He travelled not only fastest but freeest who travelled alone. As soon as you committed yourself to another individual, you were fastening chains about your soul and ending your life of unfettered bliss.
"David--" He broke off his thoughts, looked at her. There was a gleam in her eyes and her face was flushed. A passionate woman, he told himself. A good choice for a cool evening.
They walked together up a flight of winding stairs. He stood, only slightly awkward, while she opened the door with her key. She showed him inside, then stepped out of his way and flicked on the corner lights to give him a view of her living room.
"Well?"
He didn't answer. His eyes took in the color combination, the pieces of furniture. He didn't like it at all, but then he had hardly expected to. His tastes were too old-fashioned to delight interior decorators. Still, for what it was, her place was marvellously done.
"Do you like it?"
"You're very good," he said.
"But you don't like it at all, do you?"
He laughed softly. "I must be more transparent than I realized," he said. "It's not that I don't like your arrangement. I'm just equipped with outdated tastes. I prefer El Greco to Picasso and Vivaldi to Bartok. And Victorian furniture to Danish. I like Oriental rugs and heavy chairs and massive sofas, with intricately tooled woods and all the other excesses of the baroque. I'm a throwback, I suppose."
"Well," she said. She walked over to a table, took a cigarette from an open dish, lighted it. "Can I fix you a drink?"
"Sure."
"What will you have?"
"Anything."
"Scotch all right?"
"It's fine."
"On the rocks?"
He nodded. She went to the liquor cabinet, got a bottle of Vat 69, carried it to the kitchen. She came out a few moments later carrying two small glasses of Scotch and ice. He took one, raised it in a mock toast. They drank.
She rose suddenly, crossed the room to the stereo rig. She selected three records and put them on. "See? I like Vivaldi, too. The orchestra is the Solisti di Zagreb, the Yugoslav group."
It took a record and a half. During the first half of the first record she came and sat next to him. During the first extended cello solo she came into his arms and found his mouth with her own.
When the first record ended, he had her breast in his hand. Large, firm as a ripe melon, yielding as grasses before the wind. His hand cupped, fondled, held. He felt the heat building within her fine young body, felt the passions mounting, heard her sharp intakes of breath and sensed the speed-up of her heartbeat.
Soon, he thought.
Very soon.
And, midway through the second record, her mouth moved from his and her eyes searched his eyes, and his eyes answered silently. She got to her feet and he rose to stand in front of her. She closed her eyes. Then, while she stood very still before him, eyes tightly shut, he began to undress her. He took off all her clothing, folded each garment in turn and set it down on the long low couch. He removed her bra, her panties. And then he stepped back to let his eyes take in the full perfection of her nude body, and she opened her eyes and looked at him.
"David--"
"Sheila," he said.
"Ohhh -- " He stripped, quickly, precisely. He took her by the hand -- her hand was very soft, very warm -- and let her lead him to her bedroom. She took off the spread and drew back the covers. She got onto the bed, lay back, closed her eyes once more. He joined her. It was slow, gentle. He kissed her, and her arms wound round his back and held him close. He felt the delicious pressure of her large breasts against his chest, felt the wonderful sensations when she squirmed and rubbed her breasts against him. He moved, kissed her on each breast in turn. She shivered with ecstasy, and he ran his lips over the undersides of her breasts. The skin was petal-soft there, and he ached to sink his teeth into her delicate flesh and make her scream out her passion into the night.
But he did not bite her. Instead, he teased her with his lips and tongue, kissing here, nibbling there, working her breasts into a frenzy. Her rosebud nipples stood out stiff and firm, suffused with passion, and each time he kissed them he felt her passion mounting higher and higher, straining toward impossible pleasure-peaks.
More.
More.
More --
And his hands moved down over her softness, joining the game, adding a thousand lustful caresses to the scene. His fingers played with her navel, moved downward. He gripped her thighs with his strong hands, feeling their fullness, squeezing them, pulling them gently apart and pressing them gently together.
More -- Until she was moaning, breasts heaving, her whole body in the tangled throes of passion. And then he hurled himself upon her, aching for her now, needing the desperate fulfillment she could bring him. He touched her, she opened, he entered, she surrounded, and it began.
While it went on, she moaned. Her moans started as little animal sounds coming from somewhere deep in her throat. Their bodies, locked in combat, sought one another with fury. And the moans built up, rose in volume, increased in animal intensity. Until at last she was screaming out her lust in the voice of a banshee, shrieking sounds of passion that filled his ears and filled the room and filled, for the time being, the world.
He drove at her, lost himself in her. Her thighs were locked around him, gripping him firmly, holding him in place, urging him on. Her nails raked his back, drawing blood, but he did not feel them. He had other things on his mind.
Faster.
Faster -- With the bed groaning, and the world turning all the colors of the rainbow, and the night as bright as an orange carpet. Faster and faster, deeper and deeper, harsher and harsher and warmer and warmer and more and more and more, until the end of the world was in sight, and the beginning of heaven was in sight, and they climbed together, faster and faster, to the very peak of pleasure.
Boom!
BOOM!
It was almost too much to bear, almost too good to be true, almost too wonderful to be endured. But slowly, the world came back to normal. He lay on his side, eyes closed, chest heaving as he gasped oxygen into his lungs. His heart slowed down to something approximating its normal rate, and his brain cooled off, and a little at a time the whole world came gradually back into focus.
She was looking at him. Her hand came out, touched the side of his face. Her eyes were shining What was in them? Contentment? Happiness? Joy? Love?
Not love, he hoped. Because with this fine-bodied woman it had been much better than it had had any reasonable right to be, and that could get to be dangerous.
There are those who place a high value upon love. David Eisen was not among them. He placed a far higher value upon freedom, and feared love as its enemy.
So he took a deep breath, and he reached out a hand and let it fall upon her breast. A fine breast, he thought.
He would spend the night with her. He would stay there all night long, and he and she would drown themselves in the physical pleasure each could give the other. In the morning, he would awaken and leave.
He would not see her again.
So don't love me, he thought. Don't, because it will hurt you just that much more when I leave, Sheila Markham.
He smiled then. And reached for her.
* * *
Cindy Walsh spent approximately an hour and a half with Roy Archer. An hour and a half is ninety minutes, which in turn is the approximate length of the average Hollywood motion picture. For those ninety minutes, Cindy turned in a performance which could have won her an Oscar, had she but done her work upon the screen. However, she did her work upon a bed instead, and thus all it earned her was fifty dollars. Which, anyhow, came to a little over fifty cents a minute, which wasn't really bad at all.
She had finished now. She had finished, and she had left Roy Archer's apartment some time ago, and was sitting in an uptown bar nursing an Orange Blossom and smoking a Black & Gold cigarette. An Orange Blossom is, properly, a summertime drink -- gin and orange juice, a little crushed ice, and whatever minor ingredients the barman happens to have warm feelings toward. Summer was long gone, but Cindy liked Orange Blossoms. She sipped one now and smoked her funny-looking cigarette and listened to a Frank Sinatra record on the jukebox.
Frank Sinatra, she thought. Now there was a man she wouldn't dream of charging, if it ever came to that. There was a man she would be glad to take on for free, by God, day or night or early morning. But the chance that she would meet him seemed slim at best. Well, she saw all of his movies, anyway. And listened to all his records. That was something, anyhow, wasn't it?
She sighed a long sigh and sipped a long sip and dragged a long drag and sighed a long sigh all over again. There were so very few men who she could enjoy going to bed with, so very very few. It had not always been that way. In the beginning, three or four years ago, she had enjoyed going to bed with almost anything in pants, and before that she had never dreamed of charging anyone for her favors. Why, boys were boys and girls were girls, a fact which she greatly favored, and boys liked to make it with girls and girls liked to make it with boys, and when you made it you got tingly from head to toe and it all felt so very wonderful, and what was the harm in it?
Now, sitting in the expensive uptown bar and drinking an Orange Blossom and smoking a Black & Gold cigarette, she thought just how far she had come (and how often) in those few years. She was a high-priced hooker, comfortably ensconced around the corner from Park Avenue, booking her appointments over a pink princess phone and turning her tricks with the aplomb of Pompadour and the healthy enthusiasm of Sally Slut. She dressed well and she spoke well and she performed at her chosen job magnificently.
There was one minor rub.
She didn't enjoy it as much as she used to.
Oh, it was still a gas some of the time. Once in a while, with a particularly groovy client, she would just let herself go like a bomb as she had done in the non-pro days. Once in a while, when she was not turning a trick, she would pick up a man off the street and give him her all, and that would oftentimes do it.
Still, it wasn't usually like that nowadays. When you start balling men not for fun but for money as well, bit by bit your sexual attitudes undergo a none-too-subtle change. Sooner or later you find yourself turning tricks for which you cannot work up the slightest degree of enthusiasm. When that happens you learn to turn off your motor, to cut the engine and let your body go through the motions without really and truly participating in the act.
So you build up an association. Sex is work and work is sex, and work is sometimes drudgery and never an utter picnic, and, as an inevitable result, you find yourself losing that old attitude of horizontal whee and turning into a mechanical hooker.
Which can be a shame.
When someone tapped her on the shoulder, she very nearly jumped out of her skin -- or out of her dress, anyway. She had managed to get very deep in thought, and the tap jarred her: She spun around, stared.
It was Myra Teale. Myra -- slender, dark-haired, slim-boned, flat-chested (well, almost) and soft-spoken. If Myra had been an actress, she would have played housewife roles, or schoolteacher roles, or sincere-young-nurse roles. Which goes to show how deceiving appearances can be, since Myra was. to state it simply a tramp.
"Hi," Myra said. "I didn't mean to startle you."
"Oh, it's all right," Cindy said.
"You should make it a point of creeping up behind people and clapping them on the shoulder when they're deep in thought. You can get to see some dandy heart attacks that way."
"I'm awfully--"
"Forget it," she said. "Sit down and I'll buy you a drink. What'll you have?"
"A little brandy," She hailed the barman, gave him the order. He smiled one of those I-know-you're-both-hookers but I'm broad-minded smiles and poured Courvoisier into a small snifter. Myra Teale warmed the drink in her hands, sipped it.
"Bad night," she said softly.
"What happened?"
"Oh, a man." Myra looked for a cigarette, couldn't find one. Cindy gave her a Black & Gold, lit it for her. Myra took a puff, held the cigarette up so that she could study it, then took another drag on it.
"An unpleasant man," she went on. "A sadist."
"Oh."
"I never take tricks like that, you know. I'm open-minded and anything goes, but no man beats Myra Teale. I don't need money that badly, Cindy."
"Who does?"
"Not I. But this was all arranged, you know. He's some sort of out-of-town client and Jimmy Ruston called me and set it up. You must know Jimmy; he's an account executive at Beamish and Bowen, and anyway he called to arrange this, so I accepted. But this man!"
Cindy took a dainty sip of her Orange Blossom. She stayed silent, letting Myra tell her story at her own pace. Myra never liked to be hurried. She set her glass down and waited for the girl to go on.
"Just a little man," Myra said. "Hardly taller than I am, dear, and very wiry and intense. Cold blue eyes, stringy arms and legs, a hairy chest, straight black hair on his head, and when he walked he strutted. And he had the smallest... uh --"
"I get it."
"Tiny. Positively miniscule. Maybe he became a sadist in self-defense, or something. Anyway, Jimmy Ruston set us up for a regular dinner-date, and we went all the way because, I mean, it was on Beamish and Bowen so to hell with the expense. We ate at the Chambord. I tried to talk to this little jerk but he just wanted to eat in silence, so I let him alone and played the still-waters-run-deep routine, and that was fine."
"And?"
"And we went to his place. He had a suite at the Summit, so his company must have money of its own to burn, as far as that goes. And I got undressed, and he took his belt out of his trousers--"
"Oh, Hell!"
"You said it. My thought exactly. I told him this wasn't part of the deal and he told me to try and do something about it. The louse beat the daylights out of me, darling. I've got welts on my boobs that will be days getting rid of, and I've got red stripes on my rear and pain all over the damn place. He knocked me around for a full ten minutes and then got his clothes off and told me to get to work."
"What did he want you to do?"
"Guess, honey. So I did it, and he had this puny little orgasm that couldn't have been much more of a kick for him than it was for me, and for me it was no fun at all, of course. And I got dressed and here I am, and tomorrow I'm calling my drear friend Jimmy Ruston and telling him that either he doubles the fee or he can forget to remember my phone number in the future."
"You poor kid."
"You said it. What's new with you?"
"Nothing much," Cindy said. "I've been lonesome lately."
"Lonesome?"
"Lonesome, and sick of men. Busy?"
"No."
"Interested?"
Cindy grinned. "Finish your brandy," she said. "And come home with me, Myra."
They cabbed to Cindy's apartment, sitting primly and properly in the rear seat and seeming more like a pair of demure Midwesterners on a Manhattan visit than a pair of high-priced hookers. They got out, and Cindy paid and tipped the cabby, and they elevated to the almost-top floor and went into Cindy's apartment.
"You've got a nice place here," Myra said.
"I hate it."
"You do?"
"U-huh. Can't stand it. You get used to a place for too long and it gets on your nerves."
"You're not moving?"
"No. Having it done over."
"Who's doing it?"
"I forget the girl's name," Cindy said. "She's with Burnham, Seaton and Hammill."
"Won't it cost you a fortune?"
"It costs the same no matter who does it," she said. "They get a standard commission from whoever the furnishings come from, a set percentage of what it costs me. So you might as well use the best, you know."
"Well," Myra said. "Watch out for the girl."
"Why?"
"You know."
"Don't be silly," Cindy said. "Lady decorators aren't gay. Only the men decorators are gay, silly."
"Everybody in New York is gay."
"Speaking of which," Cindy said.
Ten minutes later, they were in bed. That was one thing that happened all the time, Cindy thought. You got used to balling men on a commercial basis, so you got your kicks with another girl. If you were cool about it, you didn't go overboard -- just took a little Lesbian loving when it was convenient, like you took a sleeping pill when you were hung up and couldn't sleep. You didn't take a whole bottle of pills at a time because they would kill you, and you didn't ball girls on a steady basis or it turned you into a dyke. But now and then it was a legitimate fun-project.
Especially with a girl like Myra.
"You poor thing," Cindy said. "Look what that louse did to your breasts."
"Isn't it terrible?"
"Uh-huh. Does this hurt?"
"Nope. Feels good, sort of."
"And this?"
"Ummmmm."
"How about this? He didn't hurt you here, did he?"
"Nooooo --"
"And this?"
"Wheel"
"And this and this and this and this and oh, that feels nice, that feels very nice, that -- oh, oh, oh, oh.
When the phone rang, Archer wanted to turn it off and go back to sleep. You could do that with alarm clocks, but with telephones it was difficult. It kept on ringing. Archer sat up groggily, shook his head, switched on the bedside lamp. He found a pack of cigarettes and got one going. His head ached. He looked at the clock, saw that it was somewhere after two and before three in the ugly morning. He didn't pin the time down any more closely than that. He didn't want to.
And, by the time he was ready to answer the phone, it stopped ringing. He cursed quietly. It would ring again, of course, and now he had to sit there like an idiot and wait for it. There are few pastimes less geared to make the time pass pleasantly than waiting for a telephone to ring. It's a bore.
He sat there. It rang. He answered it, barked an unhappy hello into the mouthpiece.
"Roy," a voice said. "Baby, I'm hip it's an ugly hour. Believe me, I had to call."
Bunny Forrest. White, male, thirty-six years old. Assistant to the Producer of the Johnny Jingo Show. Trouble-shooter, Jack-of-all-trades, and general pest. "
"What's the matter?" Archer asked.
"Baby, everything is the matter. But everything."
"Let's have it."
"Our little sweetie-pie," Bunny said. "Our little Sugar Plum Fathead. Our comic delight, court jester for the masses, and all around headache."
"Jingo?"
"The same and no one else. Johnny Jingo, bless his baggy pants and pegboard brain. He did it, baby."
"Did what?"
"Balled himself into trouble, Roy. Tied a rock around himself and threw it off the Chrysler Building. God, that stupid jerk!"
Archer sighed, stubbed out his cigarette. "Slowly," he said. "And in English."
"I'm trying, baby."
"Try harder."
"Check," Bunny Forrest said. "T shall explain this to you as it was revealed to me. Approximately half an hour ago a girl came up to my apartment. A petite blonde, pale-faced and youngish. Girl's name is Sharon Storm."
"Sure it is."
"She says it is. She came in, accepted a drink of yours truly's private stock, and related to me a sad tale. Our hero Johnny Jingo befriended this girl, Dad. He took her to his pad and plied her with liquor. He boffed her eyes out. And now, Roy baby, she is carrying his cake in her cozy little oven."
"She's knocked up?"
"In English, she's knocked up."
Archer said a string of vulgarity.
"There's more, Dad."
"Go on," Archer said.
"This little Storm broad," Bunny Forrest said. "She showed me her birth certificate."
"Oh," Archer said. "You know it, Roy."
"Statutory?"
"Statutory and a half."
"How old?"
"Fifteen," Bunny Forrest said. Archer did not say anything, printable or unprintable. He stood up, holding the phone as if he would have loved to heave it through a window. He took a few steps forward and a few steps backward and told himself to calm down or he would have a coronary attack. "Roy?"
"I'm still here."
"What do we do, boy? I can't quite see casting our boy as Errol Flynn."
"Of course not," Archer said. "Flynn had style. Whereas Johnny Jingo--"
"Is a schmuck."
"Say it again, Bunny."
"Johnny Jingo is a schmuck."
"The saddest schmuck that ever lived," Archer said. "What does the broad want?"
"She wants to talk to you."
"She make any threats?"
"Uh-huh. She keeps talking about running to the columnists with the news."
"What's her bit? Money? A screen test? What?"
"She tells me not."
"She wants to see me?"
"That's what she said."
"Where is she now?"
"At my place, Roy."
"Sit on her," Archer said. "I'll be right over."
He would have liked to take a shower, but he decide not to bother. His skin still carried the slightly sexy smell of Cindy Walsh, and perhaps it would have been nothing but good manners to wash that smell away, but it wasn't worth the trouble. He had to go see some roundheeled adolescent who was pregnant with Johnny Jingo's silly seed, and he didn't have to smell like a rose for an encounter of that nature.
He got dressed. He put on a television-blue oxford doth shirt with a button-down collar, a gray sharkskin suit, a Countess Mara tie, a pair of pallbearer-black shoes. He grabbed up a topcoat, put a gray Borsalino on his head, scratched a match and lit a cigarette and hurried out the door and down to street level and into the first cab to come around.
Bunny Forrest lived uptown in a Broadway hotel. Archer gave the address to the cabby and settled back, reposed if not relaxed. His mind started working.
Silently, he cursed Johnny Jingo. It never failed to surprise him that such a boorish, stupid, generally untalented clown could turn out to be such a valuable commercial property. On camera, Jingo radiated warmth and good humor and the Great American Dream. Off camera, the same stupid oaf was a self-centered, brash, vain, unthinking hunk of walking garbage. With a monumental affinity for messes.
There had been the time, for instance, when Jingo had been caught in the hay with the sponsor's wife. That had only cost them a sponsor, and when your Trendex is way up there you can find another sponsor easily enough. But talk about headaches!
There had been the other time, when Jovial Johnny Jingo had gotten pig-drunk at Twenty-One, whereupon he had gone up to one of Hollywood's Finest Couples and had told the husband in gutter terminology just what kind of birthmark the wife had high on one thigh and just how she most preferred to make love. That had gotten Jingo two black eyes (he told his audience he had walked into two doors at once, and it even got laughs), and it had also gotten Jingo permanently barred from Twenty-One.
This time, it might be far worse.
The cab hurried. Archer's head ached and his hands trembled. One thing about Bunny -- he always had good liquor around his apartment. And thank God for that. Archer needed a drink in the worst way. Hell, it didn't have to be good stuff. The way he felt now, he'd drink spar varnish and like it.
But Hell he had to figure a way out of this one, and fast. Something like this, given the proper play in the press, could make Johnny Jingo the hottest property since real estate in Antarctica. Errol Flynn, swashbuckler extraordinaire, got through messes like this. Johnny Jingo, with his family audience and his on-camera bumbling good humor, would be dead as a doornail if the press built it up. And to a man the press loathed Johnny Jingo.
Damn, he thought, paying the cabby. Nuts he thought, rushing into the hotel lobby and heading for the elevator. Damnit, he thought, as the elevator lofted him to Bunny's floor. How do we get out of this one?
CHAPTER THREE
If the girl had at least looked eighteen, Archer thought, that would have been a point in Johnny Jingo's favor. A small point, though. When you were in Johnny Jingo's position, you didn't boff anything unless (1) it was a trustworthy professional hired for the occasion or (2) it had as much to lose by exposure as yon did or (3) you were married to it.
This one did not look eighteen. This one didn't even look sixteen. This one looked, and was, fifteen.
"I'm glad you could come, Mr. Archer," Sharon Storm was saying. "I wanted to see you. I just saw the doctor yesterday, and I went to his office tonight to get the report on the test he did, and then I felt I had to see you. I mean, golly!"
Golly, he thought. Man, she said words like golly, and she called him Mr. Archer, and she had a frightened little voice, and this, in Johnny Jingo's beady little eyes, was old enough to sleep with. Son of a gun.
"I never did it with anyone before Johnny," she said. "Honest, cross my heart," She crossed her heart. "He said he loved me and he would marry me. But then I found out that he's married."
"Yeah," Archer said.
"And I'm... I'm going to have a baby. I don't know what to do now, Mr. Archer. I tried to call Johnny but he must have made a mistake because the number he gave me wasn't his number at all."
"Mistake," Archer said.
"So I came to see Mr. Forrest," the girl said. "I got his number from the phone book. I looked for yours, but I couldn't find it. I guess it isn't listed or something."
"Something like that."
"I don't know what to do," Sharon Storm said.
Archer looked at his drink. He was sitting in a massive leather chair and he was holding the drink in his hand. The drink was vodka, and there was a lot of it, with an ice cube thrown in more for fun than anything else. Archer looked at his glass. Then he emptied it, and held it out so that Bunny Forrest could pour more vodka into it. Then he looked at it again, and emptied it again, and held it out again for another refill.
"Honey," he said, "let's have it."
"Have what, Mr. Archer?"
She was so damn wide-eyed, he thought. So innocent. She didn't have to have a shred of proof, not her. All she had to do was talk to any jury in the world, men or women, and they would vote unanimously to have Jumping Johnny Jingo drawn and quartered by return mail. If she had sworn that a eunuch had made her, she would be believed. It was terrifying.
"Honey, what's your angle?"
"I don't understand, Mr. Archer."
The hell you don't, he thought. But there was always the chance that the kid was level all the way. In which case he. might as well see which way the wind was blowing.
"Your angle," he said, patiently, paternally. "Now, you've come here to tell Bunny Forrest and me that Johnny Jingo made you pregnant. Now, you're not running a public information service, are you?"
"I "
"You've got a reason. You come to us for a reason."
"I just thought you ought to know, Mr. Archer."
"Nuts," he said, firmly. "You've got an angle, honey. Now what is it? You want to get rid of the baby? It can be done. You don't even have to prove to me that you got Johnny's baby in you. You just say the word, and we'll fix you up, send you to a nice expensive doctor who'll fix you up perfectly. Nobody ever has to know a thing, baby."
She was staring at him, and he found it slightly difficult to meet her eyes. He drank some more vodka, then looked away.
"Maybe you want money," he said. "If it's within reason, all right. But we aren't the Bank of America. We aren't an annuity program, either. If you want to be paid off you'll be paid off, but you'll also sign a few things my lawyers will draw up that'll keep you quiet for the rest of your life."
"Look, Mr. Archer--"
"Or say you want to make it in show business," he went on. "Say the word. I can arrange a screen test for you in ten seconds over the phone, and if you got a gram of talent you'll get a chance to show it off. Want to win a beauty contest? You can be Miss Rolled Oats of 1984 or any of half dozen other bits. Want some television work? I know people. I can get you walk-ons, a few bit parts. You won't win any Oscars unless you've got some ability to start with, but this can set you up."
"Mr. Archer--"
"Well? What is it?"
"I don't want anything, Mr. Archer."
He waited.
"You don't understand," Sharon Storm said. "I... I was never pregnant before. I'm all scared. If my mother found out she would kill me, Mr. Archer."
The girl was on the level, he thought. Girls who were putzing around didn't worry about their mothers finding out. They didn't even think about it.
"I just want everything to be all right," she said. "And I don't know what to do. I'm afraid to have the baby, but I don't want to have an abortion because it isn't right and besides it's dangerous, and I don't know what to do, and Johnny Jingo said he would marry me but I guess he was just talking because he wanted to make love to me, and I just don't know what to do, Mr. Archer!"
He finished his drink and set the glass down. "You just wait here, honey," he said, his voice surprisingly gentle now. "you just sit right here while I have a talk with Bunny Forrest."
He got to his feet, walked out of the room. Bunny followed him. He closed a door, turned to Bunny. "The kid's not coming on," he said. "I believe her."
"So do I, Roy."
"In the morning," Archer said, "the first thing you do is get Leventhal over here, fill him in, have him draw some papers for the kid to sign. Make sure we lock her up six ways and backward, make sure the papers fix her so she can't tie us up ever. Got that?"
"Check."
"That's just for protection. Then, you get Victor on the phone, you find out from him a good East Side rabbit snatcher who will take Johnny's cake out of this kid's oven. Nothing cheap, understand? No putzing around."
"Check."
"Next," Archer said, "you take this kid out and buy her clothes. Right now she doesn't want to be Miss Westchester Crabgrass. You sound her out, you talk to her. Anything that's fifteen years old and has boobs on it wants to be a movie star. You call up Herm and Bill, you set up a screen test. Merv Allen owes us a favor. Tell him we got a girl for a teen-age walk-on in Open City. Harry Goren owes us a good twenty favors, he packages a good six shows, you get him on the phone and tell him we've got a little piece of fluff who's going to get plenty of exposure over the next few months or he can go drop dead for himself. Got that?"
"Check," Bunny Forrest said.
"Then you spread some bread around. Get some columnists, plant some crud about Sharon Storm. In the meantime sign her up for personal management, because we might as well make a buck out of this if she ever gets big. Get her hair done, buy her clothes -- I already said that, the hell. Anything she wants, she gets. Got it?"
"Check."
"Money," Archer said. "The whole thing should come to ten grand, no less, not much more. Every penny comes out of Jingo. The bum makes that much on a good guest shot on the Como show, so don't worry about him. I want it big enough to hurt him a little. I'll see him tomorrow, and I'll scare the crap out of him. I'm getting the hell home and to bed, Bunny. I'm so beat I can't even see straight. I had some fifty-dollar meat over to the apartment tonight and I spent two hours banging its eyes out and I've got to get some sleep. Get rid of Little Miss Pregnant until tomorrow. And if you ball her--"
"You crazy, Dad?"
"If you do, you're dead. Don't forget it."
* * *
At approximately 6:04 a.m., the sun rose. At approximately 6:07 a.m., David Eisen opened his eyes and was awake. Most people tend to wake up gradually. First a certain amount of consciousness penetrates, until gradually they are more and more awake and less and less asleep, whereupon they, get up from bed and yawn.
David was an exception. When he slept, he slept soundlessly and dreamlessly. When he woke up, he did so completely and instantly, making a jarringly sudden transfer from sleep to consciousness. He did this now, opening both eyes, breathing deeply, then slipping quietly out of bed. He looked down at her. She was not so lovely asleep. Her body was twisted into an unlikely position, her head thrown back, her mouth open, her face clouded with sleep. He turned his back on her and went out of the room.
His clothes were in the living room where he had left them. He bundled them up, took them into the bathroom, showered quickly, dried off with one of Sheila's towels, washed up, brushed his teeth with her toothbrush, and got dressed. He stopped in the kitchen long enough to raid the refrigerator for breakfast. Then, without saying good-bye to her, he left the apartment and the building and began walking downtown.
His own room was on Forty-Ninth Street near First Avenue in a building that time had somehow forgotten. The neighborhood itself was a good one, but his particular building was a tenement -- old, uncared for, parceled up into airless cubicles as cheerless as an Arctic storm.
He climbed four flights of stairs, unlocked his door, went inside.
The room was bare. A bed -- just a cot, really. A cigarette-scarred chest of drawers. A straight-backed wooden chair. A gooseneck floor lamp, old and rusty, without its shade. Over his bed he had installed a simple board shelf that ran the length of the wall, and on it books were lined up haphazardly. He took a book from the shelf, sat down in the straight-backed wooden chair, adjusted the gooseneck lamp, turned it on, opened the book and began to read.
He didn't mind the room. It was funny, in a way, that Sheila Markham's compulsively modern layout annoyed him while he was content to live in such manifestly substandard quarters. But he didn't mind it all. His rent came to the minute sum of five dollars and fifty cents per week, which was extraordinarily reasonable. For that sum he was equipped with a place to sleep, a place to study, a place to cook meals on an illicit hotplate. From time to time, when the mood struck him, he brought a girl to the room. Sometimes the surroundings depressed the girls. They generally got over it.
The book took all his attention now. It was a rather involved work on General Semantics, a complex subject in itself, and one in which he had only recently begun to take an interest. He sat in the uncomfortable wooden chair, sat motionless, his eyes moving very rapidly down first one page and then another, his right hand moving to turn the page, his eyes continuing their movement.
* * *
The clock woke Sheila. The clock went off like a bomb -- it was that kind of a clock -- and its shriek dynamited her out of bed. She got up, silenced the clock, and went through the initial part of her morning routine like a robot. Into the bathroom, under the shower, out of the shower, dry off with a towel, brush the teeth, brush and comb the hair, make up the face, shave under the arms, shave the legs, back to the bedroom, step into panties, put on garter belt, put on stockings, pick out clothes.
She was almost entirely awake (and almost entirely dressed) before she realized that, in the first place, she had had company the night before. And that, in the second place, the company was gone now.
Thank God for that, she thought grimly. If there as one thing she hated to find in the morning, it was a man who had slept with her the night before. It was sort of like finding a roomful of empty bottles when you had a hangover. Once, she remembered, she had had the monumental misfortune to wake up, haggard and unhappy, in the same bed with one of those revolting healthy men who like to make love in the morning. There she had been, needing nothing but plenty of solitude, and here had been this clown, hot as plutonium, and what a vile experience that had been! But David Eisen was gone now, thank God. She finished dressing, stumbled into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator. Bacon and eggs? A bowl of cereal? Some toast? Ugh.
She made a cup of instant coffee and drank it black. Sheila, as you just may have pieced together by now, was not one of those souls who thinks morning is the greatest part of the day. Morning, as far as she was concerned, ought to be abolished. She rarely tried to accomplish much before noon. She just tried to live through each morning with the hopeful knowledge that it would in time give way to something better.
At quarter to nine she left her apartment and got into a cab, a mean trick at that hour. A cab did happen to cruise by, and she waved at it, and it stopped for her. She rode to her office building and went up to her office in the elevator. A few unthinking people had the gall to say hello to her. She did not answer them.
Her desk was all laid out for her, sharpened pencils in a pile, correspondence and memoranda in another pile. She sat down heavily, scratched a match, set fire to the end of a cigarette, and smoked industriously. She poked a buzzer and her secretary came in, wary of offending -- the poor girl knew what Sheila was like at that hour. Ordinarily she would have said 'Yes, Miss Markham?' or something along those lines. Not, however, at this hour. Instead she stood silently, waiting.
"Coffee," Sheila said. The girl nodded, withdrew. Sheila finished her cigarette, ground it out, turned around and switched on the light over the tank of tropicals. She watched them swimming around furiously and wondered where they got their energy, and how they managed to spend a lifetime in a silly tank without getting impossibly bored. She dropped in a pinch of food and watched them scramble for it. Steady, she thought. There's plenty for all of you, you damn fool fish. Don't kill each other.
The girl came back, set a cup of office-brewed coffee in front of Sheila, went away again. Sheila drank the coffee and smoked another cigarette. And, magically, she began to come to life.
Appointments. She checked her calendar, balanced it off against memos from the tray on her desk. At one, she was supposed to have lunch with a man named Garver. He had just sold a novel to the movies, and was celebrating by buying a pre-revolutionary home in upper Westchester. He was thinking of letting BS&H handle the decoration, and they would discuss this at lunch.
She buzzed her buzzer. The secretary appeared. "Check through the files," she said. "Let me have everything we've got on Sherwood Garver -- background, tastes, a synop of his new book, the works. Get him on the phone and set up a date for Keen's Chop House at one. Call Keen's and reserve a table for two in the tap room."
"Yes, Miss Markham."
Sheila glanced at her calendar again. "And there's someone named Cindy Walsh who I'm supposed to see around three. Call her and see if we can move it off to three-thirty, at her place."
"Yes, Miss Markham."
"And I'm sorry if I snapped at you before."
"You didn't, Miss Markham."
The girl went away again. Sheila ground out her cigarette, finished the last of her coffee, took a quick and perfunctory glance at the tank of fish. Then she picked up one of the sharpened pencils, slapped a sheet of yellow manila paper on the desk, and got to work.
Garver. Literary, old-house type He would want something consistent with the house, probably Early American. But not the Spinning-Wheel-In-The-Parlor junk. Simple pieces, well-chosen. He would probably prefer well-made reproductions to genuine junk.
He was a writer. That meant that his den would be the most important room in the house, in his eyes at least. The den first, and the bar second. If she could indicate a deep and abiding interest in those areas she ought to be able to sell him without too much trouble. A synop of his books would give her a better idea of what sort of notions to come up with. A little biographical material would keep the lunch table conversation moving. And Keen's, with its literary and theatrical motif and its traditional atmosphere, would be the logical setting. The excellence of the food wouldn't hurt, either.
Cindy Walsh. God alone knew who in hell she was. Show biz? Maybe, because she evidently didn't work afternoons. Somebody's private piece? Another possibility. That one she would have to play by ear.
Her pencil made quick notations on the sheet of yellow paper. She crossed off this, added that. The point wore down, and she dropped the pencil to one side and picked up a fresh one. She stopped, yanked open a desk drawer, hauled out a batch of furniture catalogues. She poured over them, studied this one and that one. She set a few aside to take along to the luncheon date. She threw the others back in the drawer and closed it.
This was the right way, she thought. This was working, really working, with your whole mind and body and every bit of you concentrated upon the goal of the moment. When you were working like this, when everything was going properly, then and only then could you be entirely alive.
* * *
Roy Archer woke up with a hangover.
Now, when the average damn fool wakes up with a hangover, you would think it was the end of the world. He moans, and he groans, and he swears he'll never take another drop, and he goes around the house picking up bottles and pouring perfectly fine hooch down the toilet, and he strains his kidneys by gulping far too much black coffee, and he takes Worcestershire sauce and pollutes perfectly good tomato juice with it and then drinks the result. He sits in a chair and stares at the world through bloodshot eyes. He keeps going to the bathroom and making like a pregnant woman in the morning. He takes aspirin and Bufferin and Alka-Seltzer and Bromo-Seltzer, and nothing helps. He behaves, in short, like the average damn fool he is.
Roy Archer was not an average damn fool. He woke up with a hangover. This was nothing extraordinary, because he invariably woke up with a hangover, and he had said from time to time that when the day came when he was not hungover, he would know that he had died and gone to Heaven. He woke up hung, as usual, but, card-carrying alcoholic that he was, he knew precisely what to do to guarantee his ability to function properly.
He did not take aspirin or Bufferin or Alka-Seltzer or Bromo-Seltzer. He did not gorge himself on black coffee or scourge himself with hopped-up tomato juice. He did not mope, or vomit, or throw away good liquor.
Instead, he went to the liquor cabinet and poured four ounces of vodka into a tumbler. He carried the tumbler into the bathroom, took four B-complex vitamin capsules from an amber bottle, and washed the pills down with the vodka.
This cured him.
By eleven in the morning he had Johnny Jingo at his apartment. He walked over to Jingo, doubled up a fist, and sank it into the pudgy comedian's gut Johnny Jingo put both hands to his gut and fell on the floor in a tired and unamusing heap.
"Sharon Storm," Archer said. Jingo looked blank.
"A fifteen-year-old kid," Archer went on. "You gave her a snow job and copped her, and she is knocked up now. You are the stupidest louse that ever walked the earth."
Jingo lowered his eyes. "Knocked up," he said. "Uh-huh."
"Damn," Jingo said. "I didn't--"
"Didn't what? Didn't plan it? I didn't figure you planned on getting her pregnant, Johnny."
"I didn't think," Jingo said. "You should have."
"What she want?"
Archer filled him in. He gave it to him from the top, watched it penetrate slowly but surely into what passed for Jingo's consciousness. The comic was genuinely stupid, Archer thought. A modern-day Neanderthal, all right. In any other business in the world he would have been an utter failure. But, of course he somehow managed to communicate something humorous to the unwashed masses, he was a howling success, a meal ticket for one Roy Archer. It did not seem fair, Archer thought. It did not seem fair at all.
"It's costing you ten gees," he wound up. "All out of your pocket. And you're getting off cheap."
"I guess so, Roy."
"Dirt cheap. One goddamn word in one goddamn column would cut your price to a third so fast you wouldn't know what happened. Bunny and I put the lid on this in a hurry."
"I hope to hell it stays on, Roy."
"It will. You can buy a lot of prime stuff for ten grand, Johnny. You don't have to knock over jailbait."
"She was kind of cute."
"So was Circe."
"She some kind of a tramp?"
"Forget it," Archer said. "And for Pete's sake don't knock anybody up. There's a drugstore on any corner, boy."
"Awww," Jingo said. He was in his element now. "Now I remember a time, I was in L.A., there was this doll--" Archer listened to the story without hearing it. He got rid of Johnny Jingo, then picked up a phone and called Bunny. The phone rang three times before Bunny picked it up.
Archer said: "Well?"
"We're cooking, baby."
"Tell me about it."
"The kid is getting her hair done now," Bunny said. "At first, trouble. She has no eyes to be a movie star, no eyes at all. And abortions are dirty and dangerous. That bit, you know?"
"Go on."
"Baby, it's good I am handy with sweet talk. I told her how this doctor would get rid of the package without touching her practically, and how it would be a kindness to do the kid in, and all that line of crud. She believed it because she wanted to believe it. At two o'clock we go see the rabbit snatcher and have her fixed."
"Good."
"The actress bit was harder. But you know, baby, you dangle the glamour bit in front of her eyes long enough and it gets to looking pretty as a picture, I've been on the phone all morning. We got lots of people cooperating. Leventhal drew up the papers, she signed. He also drew up a contract, the standard p.m. bit, and she inked that too." Bunny paused. "You know, baby, we might make a dollar or two on this kid. She's got something, this innocence, and a lot of poise. With the right puff job she might work out."
"I didn't figure to lose money on her," Archer said.
"No?"
"No. We own her now, right? Well see what happens."
"Check."
"Keep busy," Archer said. "Ill buzz you later today, around dinner. You take her out to dinner, incidentally, in case you didn't figure it. Some place big and brassy, some dump where she can look at movie stars. Fix it so some jerko comes over to the table and gives you a big hello and you introduce her. It might make a column. It'll give her a boot, anyway."
"Will do, Dad."
Archer rang off, looked at his watch. It was getting closer to noon now. He fixed himself a fresh drink, making it a little lighter. He got dressed, got out of the apartment.
It was a lazy day. The heavy work on the Jingo show didn't come until early in the week, and whatever was going on now his girl could take care of. He wandered around the Village, stopped in a bar or two, made a call to his office to see what, if anything, was up. Very little was. He gave a few instructions, jotted down a few relatively unimportant bits of information, made a few calls and set up a few minor deals. When you reach a certain stage of importance in the entertainment world, especially in a behind-the-scenes capacity, you arrive at that certain point where you are always very busy, but, at the same time, you never seem to be doing anything. Archer was this sort of person. There were times, at the end of the day, when he would sit in his apartment and try to figure out what he had done in the course of the past ten or twelve hours. Nothing at all, he would decide. And yet he had never had a moment to relax.
* * *
Cindy Walsh, on the other hand, did nothing.
She got up a little after noon. Earlier the phone had jingled nervously, and she had answered it and had agreed to some secretary's proposal that her appointment with Miss Sheila Markham be moved from three to three-thirty. This, however, did not constitute getting up. She went promptly back to sleep alongside of Myra Teale. Then, a little after noon, they both got up. They showered, they dressed, they went around the corner for ham and eggs. Myra went away somewhere and Cindy returned to her apartment.
On the television set, a cast of soap-opera characters went through hell for a half hour. Cindy watched them and sympathized with them, all the while reminding herself that their problems bore no relationship whatsoever to reality. She yawned and stretched, and when the program ended she lay down on the sofa and closed her eyes. Then lazily, she let a little private (and more realistic) soap opera wind its merry way through her brain. It was a soap opera she tuned in now and then on her mental teevee. It even came with a title. The title was My First Ajjair.
Scene: The Town of High Rise, which close followers of this epic may recall as being situated in Kansas. Time: Something like ten years ago, when she was fifteen. Characters: A girl named Cindy Walsh, and a boy named Andy Drake.
The had been going steady, she and Andy. They went to the movies on Saturday nights, and they went for rides in his father's car, and they doubled up at picnics or swim parties. And one night he drove far into the country and pulled the car off the road, and she was already keyed up with some foreign excitement even before he reached for her, and when he did reach for her she went to him with her heart pounding against her ribs and her blood racing in her veins.
He made love to her.
Never, in the course of it all, did she wonder whether they would go all the way or not. She did not think about this, did not care. Whether what they were doing was right or wrong had no importance to her. She didn't think about it. She merely participated, letting waves of pure pleasure wash over her, letting her body open up to his touch.
Now she lay on her couch and remembered it all -- the overwhelming sweetness of it, the delicious tickles, the taste of his mouth, the exquisite feel of his hand upon her breast. And his hand running hurriedly up the inside of her thigh, touching her, pushing her panties out of the way.
And, when she was lying down with her knees bent and her feet bare (because she had kicked off her shoes) and her bare feet hanging incongruously out of the car window like sides of beef in a slaughterhouse, and when he poised himself over her and stabbed blindly at her, missing until her clever hands showed him the way, there was no pain at all. They had always told her about the pain, but they were wrong. It didn't hurt.
It didn't hurt a bit.
It felt... dreamy.
The next day she had told herself that she loved Andy Drake. The day after that, when he did not call her but other boys did, she told herself that she hated Andy Drake. And finally, when she went with the other boys and did the same dreamy things with them, she told herself that she didn't hate or love Andy Drake, but that she certainly did love sex.
She sat up now, shutting off the mental television set, blinking herself back to the present. From the very beginning, she thought, she had been a born hooker. It was what she was cut out for, and she liked it, and no other life would suit her quite so completely. There were bad times, of course, but they were few and far between.
She was a very lucky girl, she told herself. Very, very lucky.
CHAPTER FOUR
Sherwood Garver was a cinch.
Six years ago, Garver had taken four nights a week for several months and had produced a short and serious novel on the emotional effects of war upon a serious young man. The book sold to a highly respected publisher for an advance of one thousand dollars against future royalties, none of which ever accrued. The book had a total sale of one thousand, four hundred fifty-seven copies, forty of them purchased by Sherwood Garver himself. An enterprising agent sold French language rights for another $350, and that was as much money as the book -- entitled-- Of Crimson Joy-- ever earned for its author.
A year after that, Garver quit his rather menial job and, in two months' time, batted out a Private Eye novel loaded to the gills with blood, lust, and liquor. The book sold instantly to a disreputable publisher who paid Garver a twenty-five hundred dollar advance. It was translated into eight foreign languages, accrued royalties over and above its advance, and earned for the author a grand total of $5400.
The die was cast.
Thereafter, Sherwood Garver wrote two mysteries annually, earning somewhere between ten and fifteen thousand dollars per year. He was unmarried, and he had lived well enough on this sum. Then, not long ago, he became somewhat more ambitious. He wrote -- in six months time -- a seven-hundred page novel set in Las Vegas, where he had never been in his life, chronicling the sexual behavior of gamblers, show girls, harlots, gangsters, and various other unsavory characters. The book received bad reviews from all sides. It sold one hundred twelve thousand copies hardcover and a quarter of a million paperbound, was picked up by a major book club, was translated into twenty-three languages, sold to MGM for a young fortune, and, still earning royalties, had thus far earned for Sherwood Garver the munificent sum of $375,489.85.
Thus, Sherwood Garver was a cinch. With the wisdom of a true professional, Sheila Markham spent the bulk of their hour-and-a-half lunch discussing not the best-seller (called The City of Silver Sin) nor the mysteries (called a variety of unpleasant things) but that serious and manifestly unsuccessful first novel, called, as you may recall, Of Crimson Joy.
She had never read the book, had never heard of it before that morning. But the mere fact that she knew its title was enough to hook Sherwood Garver through the gills and back again. Parents commonly love their first offspring best, even if it be a congenital idiot. And authors invariably love their first volume more than any other, even if it is currently priced at nineteen cents the copy in the second-hand bookstalls on Fourth Avenue.
"Of course I liked The City of Silver Sin," she told him, while they sat sipping Gibsons in the wood-panelled tap room at Keen's. "I thought you did an excellent job with it. But there was another book of yours which I've always been tremendously fond of."
Sherwood Garver stared.
"I mean Of Crimson Joy, of course," she said. "I read that... oh, ages ago. There was such tremendous conviction in that book, such raw power..
And that did it. They sat discussing Of Crimson Joy. He discussed, really, and she listened, coming in now and then with an ah or and oh when the situation called f( it. He talked about Of Crimson Joy all through the mutton chops and baked potatoes, through the glasses of mulled ale, right up to the deep dish apple pie. And finally, over dessert and coffee and brandy, they talked about his new-found mansion in Westchester.
By then, he was re-sold. She showed him some pictures of furniture and told him how well they would go in the den, or around the fireplace in what she persisted in referring to as the tap room. And, by the time she. signed for the check and added a tip, he was handing her a house key and signing an authorization that gave her carte blanche in decorating his house as she saw fit.
It was a triumph.
She got away from him as quickly as possible, hopped into a cab and hurried back to her office. She exploded briefly into the office of Geoffrey Burnham, the B in BS&H, waving the contract in one hand and patting herself on the back with the other. He congratulated her in his piping voice and she hurried back to her own desk to make some preliminary plans. In a day or so she would have to go up to Garver's house and look around, make some measurements, figure out how she would do it for him. But right now she was too pleased with herself to plan very elaborately.
She grinned tensely. David Eisen and people like him didn't know what it was like to set your sights on something and nail it cold. They didn't understand the God-almighty kick you could get out of pulling a deal off beautifully, of setting yourself up and working your way through to the end. And it wasn't just the smoothie aspects of it that appealed to her. She intended to do one blooming hell of a job on Sherwood Garver's home. She'd give him a home he could live in and enjoy, a home that fitted his personality more perfectly than anything he might work out by himself. And that, too, would be a source of immense satisfaction to her.
David Eisen. A funny type, all right. He had certainly made her contented as the Carnation cow the night before, but she was a little worried that he might tend to look upon their affair -- if you could call it that -- as a relationship with a future.
More men got that idea. After she had given up on both roommates and pets, there had been a brief period of wild promiscuity that had been as harrowing emotionally as it was delightful physically. And there had been one man in particular who had been so difficult that he had virtually shaken her out of the promiscuous routine.
She couldn't remember his name. She remembered that he was tall and dark and vaguely handsome, and that he drove a sports car. She met him at a party, and got moderately stoned, and he took her outside and began driving her around in his sports car They took the West Side Drive uptown, swung onto the Sawmill River Parkway, and wound up scurrying madly around winding roads in Westchester County And somewhere around Ossining or Chappaqua a tremendous wave of lust came over her She unfastened her seat belt and put her head in his lap, and before he knew what was happening, it was happening.
It had been kind of fun, now that she thought about it. There they had been, careening around hairpin turns at sixty-five miles per hour, and there she had been, looking around for him hungrily. And finding him, first with fingers and then with lips. Gobbling like a hungry turkey the day before Thanksgiving. Damn.
He got all tense, and he started to shiver, and he told her to stop, and then he told her not to stop, and then she couldn't stop, and then, when his pleasure hit the boiling point, they almost went off the road. The front wheel spun on gravel, and the little toy car made an involuntary U-turn, and she sat with her heart in her mouth and held her breath until he magically brought the car to a stop.
She hadn't expected him to fall in love with her. He did, though. It seemed that he had been going through life waiting to meet a girl who would speak French to him in a sports Car at sixty-five, and now that he had found one he did not intend to let her go. He kept calling her on the phone, kept sending her flowers, kept trying to see her, kept writing her plaintive little letters that she destroyed unopened. And, when he finally buzzed off and left her alone, she was so shaken up that she felt like entering a convent.
Would David Eisen be like that?
She hoped not. It seemed doubtful, in view of the pattern of his life, but you could never be sure of anything in that area. He just might decide that she represented an orderly solution to the chaotic pattern of his life, and that might be harrowing. He was a sort of determined guy -- she could tell that from his story of the trip he took on which he turned a few hundred dollars into a few thousand by buying items for resale. He might, given the motivation, turn into a genuine nuisance.
Resolutely, she pushed him out of her mind. It was almost three now. At three-thirty, she had an appointment with a girl named Cindy Walsh.
* * *
David Eisen closed the book on General Semantics. He set it down on his lap and spent several moments staring at its cover. The cover looked back at him, bland and unassuming. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, picked up the book, stood up, turned around, and placed it on the shelf. Then he switched off the gooseneck lamp, moved the straight-backed wooden chair aside, and lay on his narrow bed.
He couldn't get her out of his mind.
Sheila, Sheila Markham. Honey blonde hair, soft ivory skin, big boobs and a soft bottom and legs like a vise.
Sheila.
Damn her anyway, he thought. He was an independent individual. He intended to remain an independent individual. And, if he ever sacrificed his precious independence, he would do it in an intelligent manner He would not waste it on a feather-headed gold-plated witch with a cash register for a brain.
So what the hell was wrong?
He knew the answer to that one easily enough. It was sex, pure and simple. She had been great in the rack, great enough to make him want to go back for more.
But he couldn't afford to go back for more, had to make certain that he never saw her again.
Which constituted a problem. A problem of major proportions.
David Eisen was equipped with an analytical mind, and a properly analytical mind can see the solution to a good many problems which might confound the average man. Problem: He had this big sex thing for Sheila Markham. Complicating data: He couldn't afford to get involved with her.
Solution? Easy. Go out and bang someone else.
It was three o'clock when he left his room, wandered down a great many flights of stairs, and emerged on East 49th Street. He had not eaten all day, not since his quick breakfast at Sheila's apartment But he was not hungry now.
Not for food, anyway.
He stood on the street for a moment, long enough to get a cigarette going. He got his bearings, took a long drag on his cigarette, and tried to decide just where you came by an easy and gratis bit of fluff at three in the afternoon. The answer was as plain as the rather long nose on his thin face.
The Village.
He took a crosstown bus to Fifth Avenue, transferred to a southbound Fifth Avenue Bus and got off at Washington Square. He wandered through the park there, checked out the old Italians playing checkers at stone tables, the retired schoolteachers feeding pigeons, the Sullivan Street juvenile delinquents with their transistor radios, the queers and the Lesbians, the long-haired and unkempt types that he thought of as The Pseudo-Bohemians. He kept walking.
On MacDougal Street, he scored.
He found the girl in the Kettle, a bar where old degenerates go when they die. He spotted her from the doorway, decided she would do, and went to the bar to invest fifteen cents in a glass of beer. He took an exploratory sip of the beer, then turned and carried it over to her corner table. She looked up at him, eyes vacant. He sat down without being asked and set his beer in front of him.
He didn't say anything. He was interested solely in the delights of her body, and not in her personality or lack thereof, so he didn't want to open up until she set the tone of the conversation. How he would play things depended upon how she acted.
Instead, he studied her. Not bad, he decided. Not good either, but not bad. Very slender -- call it thin, even, or skinny. Brunette, with her hair looking sort of washed-out. Hollow, sunken eyes. Thin lips with white Kiss-O-Death lipstick on them.
She said: "Like, hello, man."
Which set the tone. She was a sort of kiddie-beat, an embryonic Pseudohemian if there ever was one, and all he had to do was snow her with the jargon and he had it made. He carried it one step further; he made up a few expressions, which insofar as he knew were meaningless, and he dropped them here and there in the conversation.
"I was making the scene at Leonard's," he said at one point. "When this carbuncle hit on me, you dig? I couldn't shake the mother. I finally laid twenty felts on him and told him to take off."
What's a carbuncle? What's a felt? Who knows?
Who cares?
Twenty minutes later he was in bed with her.
She had a grubby room in a grubby tenement on the Lower East Side. He had a grubby room himself, but it wasn't in a rotten neighborhood and it wasn't populated primarily by cockroaches. Hers was. Her bed was alive with fauna of one sort or another, and the whole area had a very distinctive smell to it, an odor compounded of more or less equal parts of garbage, stale marijuana smoke, sexual by-products, and vomit. The whole, in this case, was infinitely greater than the sum of all its parts. The room stank. But you could get used to the smell. He got used to it while she pulled her sweater over her head to expose bite-sized breasts, and he got used to it while she tugged her blue-jeans down to expose handful-sized buttocks, and he didn't mind it at all by the time he had her on the bed, writhing, squirming, kicking, struggling, and sizzling as a stove.
He kissed her. Just once, because it didn't really �work out. A kiss implied an emotional involvement of one degree or another, and since he couldn't have felt less for this girl if she had been made of plastic, kissing was a little on the irrational side. So he didn't kiss her any more. Instead he pretended she didn't have a face at all, just a body.
Which was enough.
More than enough.
He squeezed her breasts. This excited her, so for the hell of it he took a nipple between the thumb and forefinger of each hand and pulled. Hard.
She gasped.
He squeezed, then. And twisted, and yanked harder.
And she screamed.
He repeated this procedure. And then he caught a nipple between his teeth and bit her, while with his free hand he reached down below her little belly and caught hold of her.
And she screamed again.
"Hey," she said.
"What's the matter?"
"Stop it, will you?"
"Why?"
"It hurts."
"Don't you dig it?"
"Like, listen--" Like, listen was too ludicrous a phrase to comment on. "Little witch," he said. "You don't know who I really am, do you? I'm the reincarnation of Socrates, my dear. And you are not Xantippe at all, I fear. You're Plato."
This went a good five hundred feet over her head. Pity, he thought. But at least he could appreciate the humor of it.
"Plato," he said, slapping her face. "Plato," he repeated, flipping her onto her belly. "Plato," he said a third time, taking a fleshy globe of buttock in each hand. "Plato," he said a fourth time, caressing them teasingly.
"You sweet little Greek," he said. And then, cruelly and fiercely and deliciously, he ripped into her.
It damn near killed her. If you cross a bull with a chicken, you get a very sore chicken. This effect was an approximation of such an experiment. He was far too large, and the particular passage he had chosen was far too small, and the cumulative effect was a curious combination of pleasure and pain that would have brought tears to the eyes of De Sade. De Sade wasn't there, sad to say. But it brought tears by the score to the eyes of the girl.
Faster.
Faster and harsher.
Until he was riding her like a bucking bronc, riding her and flailing at her with his open hands, shouting sweet curses at her, powering into her, surging finally and desperately to the peak of pleasure.
When he was quite finished, he got up from her and moved away, groping for his clothes. He turned his back on the girl because he did not want to look at her, or to think of her. He had somehow managed to uncover a new capacity within himself. A capacity for sadism, for cruelty, for pleasure born from pain.
He didn't like it "Like, wow," the girl said.
He didn't turn around. He got his pants on and tucked his shirt into it. His socks were inside-out. He fixed them and put them on, then hunted for his shoes.
"You come on like Gangbusters," the girl said.
"I'm sorry if I hurt you--"
"Cool it, like. It was swinging, you know? Like I was fighting and fighting, and then I turned on to giving in gracefully, and I started digging it, and it turned out to be a gas. You got a fury, like. Fire and brimstone."
"Hell," he said.
"I'm hip. You splitting, man?"
"Yes," he said.
"Like I could go another round, man."
"I couldn't."
She got up from the bed, came toward him. He heard her footsteps behind him but did not turn around. His shoes were on now, their laces tied.
She put an arm around him and fondled him.
"I bet you could," she said. "Man, I bet you could ball for a month without getting tired."
He pushed her hand away.
"You dig pot, man? I got a few stick around. We can turn on and get all groovy and then we can like make it again, like. Anyway you want to ball, its solid with me.
"Forget it."
"Why?" She touched him again. "This is what I want. I don't care where you put it, either. Front door, back door, upstairs window, I don't care. Like I want it."
He turned around, slowly. The newly-discovered capacity for cruelty seemed to be building within him. He looked at her, naked, scrawny, sloppy, and something bubbled up and boiled over.
He curled one hand into a fist. He took hold of her jaw with the uncurled hand and held her there while he slammed his fist into her left breast. She gave a little cry and sank to her knees, clutching both hands to her breasts.
He brought up a knee, hard, and kissed her chin with it.
This knocked her out. He had to kneel beside her and check her pulse to make sure that he hadn't done more than put her out of commission for a few minutes. He straightened up, then, and walked out of the room. The odor of the place was getting to him again. It was strong in his nostrils, a stench in his lungs, an odor with overtones of hate and filth and decadence. He took the stairs at full speed, got out of the building as if someone was chasing him, and had to force himself to slow down once he was on the street Crippled, he thought.
Crippled.
Twisted.
Abnormal.
And, what was worst of all, it had done no good.
He had had a woman, in one way or another, and the girl had relieved whatever physical need had been gripping him, but the satisfaction had been only physical. It was the satisfaction of the adolescent, the satisfaction which does not fulfill and does not endure. He felt like hell.
Worse than that -- he felt empty, vacant, sick of himself. He had needed not a woman in general but a specific woman, Sheila Markham by name. He had taken a female being, had used her and had abused her, and it had done no appreciable good. All it did was make him aware of how base he could be, how terribly rotten he might behave if the opportunity were present.
And, strangest of all, the girl had enjoyed it. Perhaps he had realized this intuitively, had suited the pattern of his lovemaking to the personality of his partner. Perhaps he had been sadistic because of the girl's masochism, which he had instinctively sensed.
It would be pleasant to think so, he- told himself. But he couldn't make himself believe it. He had been cruel because of his own inner needs and the girl had not figured at all in his motivation. He had been cruel because, at the moment, cruelty had been a component of his own make-up.
There was no getting around it.
* * *
"There's no getting around it," Cindy Walsh was saying. "It's just not the way I want it. And I don't feel equal to the task of re-doing the place myself. I'd just make a botch of it, anyway. That's why I called you."
She paused then, her eyes on Sheila Markham. A pretty girl, she thought. If you looked at her through harlot's eyes, looked at the honey blonde hair and the perfect if slightly too busty figure, if you checked out the clothes and the bearing and the bone structure of the face, you might guess that she was on call herself. Maybe it was just that top-flight career women had a certain look about them, Cindy thought. Whether they were high-class decorators or high-class hookers, you got the same visual impact either way.
Sheila was saying: "You've never engaged a decorator before?"
"No. The apartment was empty when I moved in. Just a stove and a refrigerator. I went around shopping, and when I saw something I liked, if I could afford it, why, I bought it. I kept on like that until the place was full. That's all."
"You have good taste."
"Thank you," she said. She though: Don't hustle me, Miss Markham. You tell the customers they've got good taste and I tell the customers they're terrors in the rack, and we're both full of the same crud. So don't hustle me, honey.
"Let me see now," Sheila said. She crossed the living room, sat down on a love seat. Cindy joined her. "Do you spend much time around here?"
"Yes."
"Do much entertaining?"
Do I, she thought. Baby, I entertain half the world. She said: "Quite a bit."
Sheila nodded. "We'll want a warm atmosphere," she said. "Something modern, but without the sterility you might associate with some contemporary settings."
I don't know, Cindy thought. With the prices a good abortionist charges, a little sterility might not be a bad idea.
"Let me give you an idea of what I've got in mind," Sheila went on. She flipped through some brochures, handed a few of them to Cindy. "I think the dominant motif ought to be contemporary," she said breezily, "with a certain balance of traditional pieces. Now, there are some Spanish pieces that combine nicely with contemporary stylings while adding a strong note of individuality to an arrangement. This hutch, for example -- we might want to place it along that wall. The photograph doesn't do it justice, believe me. The woods are magnificent, all hand-rubbed and hand-tooled, and the--" Cindy wasn't listening too carefully. She looked at the pictures and nodded from time to time, but it was hard for her to follow what the blonde woman was saying. She was wondering whether or not Sheila Markham could guess what she did for a living. This was something she always wondered when she met someone outside of the province of her trade, someone who was in no position to know what she was.
Did it show? There were times when she stood looking at herself in her mirror, firmly convinced that anyone with at least one eye in his or her head could tell at a glance that she earned her living on a mattress. Let's just face it, she would tell herself then. You're a born tramp, Cindy Walsh, and it shows in your walk and your speech and your dress and your make-up, and everyone knows just what you are the minute they look at you.
But there were other times -- walking through a crowded room, dining alone at a fancy restaurant -- when she would be just as firmly convinced that no one could tell what she did for a living. Then she felt strongly that she looked just like everyone else, that her trampishness didn't come through at all on the surface.
But what did this Sheila think? Did she know? And if she did know, how did she feel about it?
Sheila was saying: "Of course, we have to determine just how much money you want to invest in decoration, just how important your decor is in financial terms."
Invest, Cindy thought. Not spend. It was an intriguing distinction. How much would you like to invest in a piece, Mr. McTavish? How important is your lechery in financial terms? Maybe she could use that line of patter in her own work.
"Well," she said. "Uh... I don't know. How much would I need to spend?"
"That's up to you."
"Well-- "
"Let me put it this way," Sheila said. "We could do your apartment nicely for a thousand dollars. We could do it lavishly for ten thousand. You probably want to spend some amount somewhere in the middle."
"Probably."
"And that, of course, is a decision you have to make."
Cindy thought for a moment. After all, she told herself, she could really spend whatever she wanted. With the kind of money she earned, all of it blissfully tax-free, she had managed to accumulate a staggering bankroll. Why not sink six or seven thousand dollars into the apartment? She lived there, didn't she? She brought men there, didn't she?
She did indeed.
"Suppose we went as high as seven thousand," she said carefully. "How would we be then?"
"We'd be very fine, Miss Walsh."
"Cindy."
"And call me Sheila, then. For seven thousand we'd be able to achieve genuine quality without stinting a single room, which is of course important. We could buy beautiful furniture at that price level, Cindy. Really fine pieces."
Sheila made out some forms, gave them to her to sign. She read through them quickly, decided she wouldn't understand the precise wording if she read them through and through until she was blue in the face. She uncapped the pen Sheila handed her and signed each form on the dotted line.
"There," she said.
Sheila took the forms, glanced at the signatures, folded the forms and tucked them away in her bag. She scooped up brochures and put them in the bag, too.
"Now if I can just get the dimensions of these rooms --"
"I have a floor plan somewhere. Will that help?"
"That would be perfect."
They had given her the floor plan when she rented the apartment. She had to look for a few minutes, but she finally located it and gave it to Sheila. It went into the handbag.
"Can I get you a drink, Sheila?"
"Well, I--"
"Stay long enough to have a drink with me."
"All right. I'd like that"
"Scotch?"
"Uh-huh. With ice."
She made the drink and tossed together a haphazard Orange Blossom for herself. She brought the drinks into the living room and sat next to Sheila on the love seat again. They touched glasses, sipped their drinks.
And Cindy thought of something Myra Teale had said. Watch out for the girl. Was Sheila gay? It didn't seem likely, but now she couldn't help wondering. She glanced at Sheila over the top of her drink, saw again how lovely she was, how attractive she was. Could she be a Lesbian?
Now stop it, she told herself sternly. You're a tramp who goes for girls now and then, not a card-carrying dyke. You don't have to start having daydreams about every pretty broad you meet. Girls like Myra, that's something else again. But for Christ's sake don't get the hots for your interior decorator.
"Well," Sheila was saying. "I've really got to get back to the office."
"I'm glad you came over. I feel better about the apartment already."
"I think it should work out well. I'm going to study the floor plan --" she tapped her handbag "-- and make the rounds of the showrooms, and try to get a little inspiration. Ill call you in a few days, just as soon as I've got some definite ideas. Then we can have a brainstorming session and work them out."
"Fine."
She showed the blonde to the door. After Sheila was gone and the door was closed she stood for a moment, thinking. Then, suddenly, she smiled. She was still smiling when the phone rang. It was an old customer ready for more, and she spoke softly and charmingly and set up a date with him.
CHAPTER FIVE
Archer was sort of sitting when the doorbell rang. He was in a massive leather chair, the kind you can literally lose yourself in. His eyes were half-lidded, and he was doing a good job of ignoring the glass of vodka on the table beside him. He was not exactly asleep, nor was he exactly awake. Sort of sitting is probably the best descriptive term in this context, you see.
Then the doorbell rang. He listened to it for a moment. His eyes widened, and as he got to his feet one hand reached out to take hold of the glass of vodka, raise it to his lips, and toss it down the hatch, all in a single movement. A neat trick, this. Should you ever see anyone do this, Dear Reader, you will know that he is either a television producer or an alcoholic, and probably both.
Archer got to the door, walking slowly and deliberately. There was a peephole in the door, installed so that tenants of the luxury apartment building could peep out cautiously before opening the door to admit a rapist or something of the sort. Archer liked the peephole, primarily because it carried echoes of Prohibition, a period of time which he had missed but which brought a nostalgic tear to his eye. He peeped through it now, noting for the hundredth time its chief disadvantage -- you couldn't see anything through it.
"Joe sent you," he muttered. And opened the door.
He hardly recognized the girl. She looked a few years older and a few hundred dollars more expensive. Her hair had been teased and patted and combed and fluffed into a modified Cleopatra styling, her eyebrows had been plucked and red shaped, her lips were colored with the right shade of lipstick and her eyes were buoyed up with just the right amount of mascara. She wore a very simple brown dress, with high neckline and contrasting tan leather belt.
"Mr. Archer," she said. "May I come in please?"
He took a step backward. She followed him inside, stepped aside so he could close the door.
"I just had to come up here and thank you," she said. "I mean, after all you've done for me, you and Mr. Forrest. The clothes and the hair appointment and, well, golly, and everything!"
"Don't mention it," he said. God, he thought, she still said golly. Well, in a way it was charming "I almost have to pinch myself," she said. "I have to stand in front of my mirror and say, Gee, it's you, it's Sharon Storm, and look what's happening to you. I can't believe it, hardly."
"Well," he said. He tried to think of something t" add to it, but nothing leaped to mind. "Have a seat," he suggested. "Can I get you anything to drink? A coke or something?"
"Maybe some orange juice," she said.
He headed for the kitchen.
'With maybe some vodka in it," she added He turned, looked at her. "Uh-uh," he said. "You're only fifteen, Sharon. Not old enough for vodka."
She arched one of her newly-plucked eyebrows at him. He studied her for a moment, then went into the kitchen and filled a highball glass with ice and orange juice. On the way back he stopped long enough to add a jigger of vodka to the orange juice and mix a fresh drink for himself. She accepted the screwdriver, smiled at him over the brim of the glass, and sipped.
"Wolfschmidt's," she said.
He stared at her.
"I guess I'm sort of depraved," she piped. "Golly, I started drinking two years ago, when I was just thirteen. My parents would have parties, you see, and I would sort of sneak around and finish the drinks that people forgot about. Gosh, I'm not a lush or anything. But I like a drink every once in a while."
Archer didn't say anything.
"Mr. Archer?"
He looked at her.
"Did I say something wrong?"
"Slightly," he said. "I guess I've been had, haven't I?"
"Oh, no," she said.
"I always thought I could tell," he said. "You seemed so damn young and innocent. I thought I could spot a phony a mile away. And you fooled me."
"That isn't true, Mr. Archer."
"No?"
"Honest, it isn't. Oh, I'll bet you think terrible things right now. You think I came to Mr. Forrest and told him about how Johnny Jingo got me pregnant just so I could get you to make me a star. That's what you think, isn't it?"
"You're a mind-reader," Archer said.
"But that's not true. I really was pregnant, Mr. Archer. I saw that doctor today, and it didn't even hurt or anything, so it's all taken care of, thanks to you and Mr. Forrest. But I really was pregnant, and it was Johnny who did it. I never had sex with anyone else.
I mean, I was depraved when it came to drinking and things, but I never had sex before."
"I must be crazy," Archer said.
"Why?"
"Because I believe you."
"But it's true!"
"Sure," he said. He picked up his glass and looked at it. I guess I'm sort of depraved, Mr. Archer. Sweet Christ on a malacca walking-stick! He drank his drink.
"I didn't expect all of this," she said. "I mean, being a star and everything. Not that I'm a star, of course, but the way you and Mr. Forrest are arranging things for me, you never can tell what might happen. My name was in Earl Wilson's column tonight. There was this joke I was supposed to have told him. I never even heard the joke before and it wasn't very funny and I never met Mr. Wilson, but Mr. Forrest said it was what they call a publicity fluff."
"Puff," Archer corrected.
"That's what I meant." She stood up, took a series of neat little steps around the room. Stacked, Archer observed. Stacked like a brick fallout shelter. Chesty, with breasts that twisted the high-necked "brown dress all out of shape. "A publicity puff," she went on. "And tomorrow Mr. Forrest is taking me to this photographer and we're having pictures taken, and we have appointments to see a whole bunch of people, and you never know what'll happen. Golly!"
She came across the room at Archer, carrying her breasts before her like beacons. She tossed herself down in Archer's lap and her eyes gleamed at him.
"I just wanted to thank you," she-said.
"You're welcome."
"I mean, really thank you."
Archer sighed heavily. "Listen," he said.
She was beaming at him. Her cheek was close to his, and he could feel the sweet animal warmth of her. Such a nice clean complexion, he thought. So sweet and so damned young.
"Listen," he said again. "I set you up to get Johnny Jingo out of a jam. He's out now. I'll continue setting you up because I think you might turn out to be a valuable piece of property. Get that -- property. Not a valuable piece."
She giggled.
"I don't want to make you," he went on. "Not now, not ever. I don't, spit where I eat. Business is business and tail is tail and I like to keep them separate if I can. Besides, you're fifteen. I don't care whether you can tell vodka by brand in a mixed drink and I don't care how many men you've been in the rack with--"
"Just Johnny. Honest."
"Honest," he echoed. "I don't care, get it? You're jailbait, you're a client, and I'm too old and too tired and in an hour or so I'll be too drunk. You don't have to get on your back to thank me. You can just concentrate on your work and do what Bunny tells you to do and you'll do fine. Got that?"
"Check," she said.
"Now take off. You go back to your own place, honey, and get a good night's sleep. A beauty sleep." He reached out a hand, stroked her cheek in what he hoped was a fatherly gesture. "You're a pretty kid, Sharon. You've got a tremendous quality of innocence that shines through even when you're telling me how depraved you are. That innocence can be your biggest commercial asset--"
"Bigger than these?"
"Yes, dammit, even bigger than your knobs. Behave, will you?"
"I'm sorry, Mr. Archer."
"Yeah," he said. "Innocence. It's a valuable quality. Hang onto it. Fake it up a little, if you want. But don't go to the other extreme and try to make yourself older than you are. Understand?"
She nodded soberly.
"Now scram," he said. "And be good. The buildup works quickly, as you noticed. It can work just as quickly in the opposite direction. If you don't behave yourself, you'll be nothing all over again inside of twenty-four hours."
"Just be a good sweet kid," he said. "That's all."
He showed her to the door. She took one step across the threshold, then turned around, grinning, and stood on tiptoes to plant a quick childish kiss on his cheek. Then she spun around and skipped down the hall to the elevator.
Nutty kid, he thought. Nutty crazy wonderful kid. He shook his head, closed the door, and walked to the telephone.
* * *
Cindy Walsh stretched, yawned, opened her eyes. She listened to the heavy breathing of the man beside her. He sounded satisfied, she thought. And with good reason -- she had just finished giving him a first-class ride for his money, and he had enjoyed every last minute of it- The man said: "Cindy, you ought be in show biz. I swear."
"Uh-huh. When you start packaging stag shows on Channel Four, just give me a ring."
He laughed. "Baby, I mean it. You got talent,"
"Sure. And I'm using it."
"I'm hip. Listen, I'll tell you something. You think you need a talent? You don't. Last night Roy Archer and I, we got this broad wrapped around our neck. Never mind why. This little broad, her name's Sharon Storm, we got her dumped on us. Today I took her all over town and spent a few gees getting people to take an interest in her. She's starting to make the columns already. We got tentative bookings on two teevee shows with a few more on the fire, and in a month everybody in the country is going to know this kid's name. Talented? Hell, I don't know if she can walk without a cane. Talented? Who the hell cares if she's talented? She's got a campaign behind her. That's all you ever need. This business isn't talent. This business is strictly people. And bread."
He sighed. "Say," he said, "you know Roy, don't you? Roy Archer?"
"I've never met him."
"Oh, baby. Listen, Roy gave me your number. I'm hip that you're discreet, but you don't have to be coy with me."
She smiled.
"Say," Bunny Forrest said, "what's Roy like in the hay? Skip it, I know you're not going to tell me. Your lips are sealed, right? Hell, it's better that way. A guy goes to a call girl, he doesn't want her to spread it to the four corners. Right?"
"Sure," she said.
"But things you have to do in this business. Listen, you think you're a tramp? Believe me, you're pure as the driven slush, baby. I'm the tramp. You know what I used to do before I got into this business? Hell, that's what everybody's supposed to ask girls, isn't it? Well, I used to play piano. Nothing special. I wasn't too good, but I was all hipped on it, you know, and I had dreams. Even my name comes from music. You remember Bunny Berrigan? He didn't even play piano or anything, but I look a little like him. From a certain angle.
"Then I got in this business. So I make money, and I know people, and it's a kick. But the goddamn trampish things you have to do!"
He talked some more, and she listened. And then he said Baby in a slightly husky tone, a tone she recognized. She turned, looked at him. He was lying still on his back with his eyes closed and the shadow of a smile on his face.
She turned to him, slowly, her taut body unwinding like a serpent. She moved over him, her weight supported on hands and knees, and she brushed his mouth fleetingly with hers. Her breasts, hanging like ripe fruit, moved to and fro across his chest, and her firm nipples brushed the hairs on his chest, then pressed against him when she lowered her body briefly and teasingly against him.
She kissed him. Her tongue flicked out, snake-like, to dip between his slightly-parted lips and investigate the warmth of his mouth. He did not move, did not return her kiss. His eyes were still closed, and he was as relaxed as a corpse before rigor mortis set in.
But he was warmer than a corpse.
She shifted her weight slightly, moved a little on the bed. Her lips brushed his cheek and moved down to his throat. She could feel the blood pulsing in the carotid artery. She kissed him, and her lips bathed the area.
She moved again.
Downward.
Her hands were on Bunny Forrest's shoulders now, kneading his flesh gently but persistently. Her face was buzzing over his chest, stopping here and there to kiss him, to nibble daintily with clean white teeth, teasing him with sharp little bites.
She could feel the excitement building within him. Her caresses were gently expert, and his passion was mounting just as she wanted it to mount, growing but steadily. He still lay motionless, but his muscles were firming, tensing, and she knew that she was getting through to him. This was the part she liked best, the part that gave her a good warm feeling deep down inside her. She was in command. She was doing everything, leading, exciting, guiding the course of passion. She was pleasing him the way she wanted to please him and the way he ached to be pleased.
She enjoyed this.
Slowly, very slowly, she moved further downward. She brushed her lips across the top of his stomach, then kissed him hard just over his navel, and burrowed around there like a prairie dog digging in the Kansas earth. Her hands joined the game, clever hands, practiced hands, hands that knew just what to do.
And did it.
His skin was on fire now. His breathing had increased, and when she moved to lay her head on his chest she could hear his heart pounding like a triphammer. Magically she felt a certain degree of response pitching itself higher and higher within her own body. Her breasts were warm, their nipples suffused with embryonic passion. A pit of warmth spread downward through her belly.
More.
More.
Still more -- He was trembling, rigid with passion. Her hands found him first, moving gently but insistently, firmly but tenderly, embracing and engulfing and surrounding. Her hands strayed down over his thighs, doing incredible things to him.
She kissed his belly.
She rubbed her cheek against his thigh.
And her lips, hungry, demanding, took over the work her clever hands had begun. She teased with little kisses, burned with longer kisses, touched and opened lips and sought and surrounded, searching, using every trick in her book to bring him to the heights of pleasure.
He grunted.
He moaned.
He writhed spasmodically.
More and more and more, higher and higher, faster and impossibly faster. Until, with a shivering shaking sobbing twisting spasm, his pleasure surged forth.
* * *
He left the apartment silently, without a word, and she took her time in the bathroom going through the little ritual that, for her, was the aftermath of professional passion. She finished up in the bathroom, came back to the bedroom and picked up the big bill which he had left on her dressing table. She smiled at it, folded it, and put it away. She got dressed, went into the living room and poured herself a short drink.
Seven thousand dollars. That was what it was going to cost her to redo her apartment, and maybe she was crazy to spend that kind of money. She didn't care. It wasn't really hard to earn money, not if you knew what you were doing. Why, it was easy.
She sipped her drink. So many of the girls she knew hated the men who bought them, and that was pretty silly, when you came right down to it. It was on the order of biting the hand that was feeding you and it didn't make any sense at all. Men, all in all, were nice-enough people. Some of them wanted you to do things that you might not be too keen on doing, but that was part of the game. They paid, didn't they? And there was no law saying you had to go wild over every aspect of your work. Some things were a little distasteful, but you had to take the bitter with the sweet, and the sweet certainly outweighed the bitter.
Take Bunny Forrest, she thought. Now there was a very decent sort of guy no matter how you looked at it. Some men had a tendency to treat a call girl like dirt, which was unpleasant. Others tried to pretend you weren't a call girl at all, which was sort of silly. But Bunny acted as though she was a call girl, and at the same time showed that he didn't feel there was anything wrong with her being a call girl, and that was ideal.
He paid her nicely, and she had treated him nicely, and they were both happy. It was an ideal business relationship, she told herself happily. Complete satisfaction for both parties. What more could anyone ask for?
* * *
What more could anyone ask for?
Sheila Markham was asking herself this particular question. She was not in her living room sipping a drink, however. Instead she was sitting in her bathtub and soaping her breasts. Still, the question was the same.
What more could anyone ask for? She had just sold two very different clients two very expensive redecorating projects in a single day, one for a house in Westchester and the other for an apartment off Park Avenue. Each would be an excellent exercise for her, ,the first an experiment in high-quality Early American and the second in contemporary with a sprinkling of Spanish. In each case the job would be challenging and the salesmanship had been commendable.
Few persons accomplish this much in a day. So what more, then, could anyone ask for?
No more, obviously. She had everything she needed to be completely happy, and she was soaking in a properly warm tub and feeling the slight effects of two after-dinner drinks, and she had eaten a good meal at a good restaurant, and thus she should very definitely be, at this time, one of the happiest women on earth.
She wasn't.
Not at all.
Not by any stretch of the imagination.
Men, she thought. Men could really mess you up if you weren't very careful. Men could ruin you, and men could turn potentially happy times into thoroughly unhappy times, and men, by and large, deserved to be shot.
Especially David Eisen.
Ever since she had shed herself of her worthless husband, Sheila's life had been gradually rebuilt in the direction of ever-increasing self-sufficiency. Since living with a man had turned out to be quite impossible, she had schooled herself to live without a man -- and without roommates, pets, and so forth. Sex reared its ugly head from time to time, and she had learned that the head of sex was rather like the head of a Hydra -- you couldn't cut it off abruptly or you would just have two others growing in its place. Instead you had to appease it -- give in to it now and then, toss it an occasional bone, and get along by yourself insofar as possible.
But last night she had thrown sex more than a bone. She had given sex an arm and a leg, and sex, far from being appeased, was raring back and hollering for more. The night with David Eisen had had distinctly bad effects upon her. Instead of sating a hunger, it had intensified the hunger. And she did not just want David Eisen physically, either. That she might have gotten over.
Instead she was captivated by his personality, intrigued by his mind and spirit. And this was bad.
Very bad.
Terrible, actually.
Maybe there was an answer. Maybe she could see the guy again and have a brief affair with him, or something. Not just an occasional piece, but an all-out affair that would burn itself out and leave her more independent than ever. She could even live with him -- cook his meals, darn his socks, wash out his underwear, the whole works.
The idea was not lacking in appeal. But it scared her. For one thing, he might not be interested. For another, he might get too fond of her and not want to break off later on, when things had run their course for her. For a third, she might be blind enough to think that the affair had long-run possibilities, might even be stupid enough to marry the poor slob. Which would be messy.
She thought this over, while she sat in her tub and soaped herself. She thought about getting dressed and going out and satisfying the desire for one man by using another. She thought about knocking herself out with a couple of sleeping pills, and even considered making the knockout a permanent affair by gobbling every pill within reach.
Her final solution, feeble at best, was something she had done only rarely since emerging from adolescence. It was an adolescent pursuit, to be sure, and while the fantasies that accompanied it "all of them involving David Eisen" were pleasurable, the aftermath was nothing but a shovelful of guilt.
It was something to do, something to do with one's fingers. She did it, but afterward she felt worse than ever.
* * *
If she could have seen David Eisen then, she would not have recognized him.
He was too well-dressed, too well-groomed. The closet of his room on East Forty-Ninth Street contained one suit which he rarely wore, and he was wearing it now. It was made of Italian silk, and it had cost two hundred forty-five dollars. He was also wearing shoes which complimented the suit, and cashmere socks, and a white shirt with an expensive silk tie. These clothes were David Eisen's work clothes. In the course of a year they commonly went in and out of a certain Third Avenue pawnshop with surprising regularity. Now, however, they were out of pawn. He was wearing them.
He was sitting at the bar in the Sherry Netherlands Hotel, drinking a pony of cognac and smoking a cigarette. He had lied to Sheila Markham, he thought. Not entirely a lie, but a lie of omission. He had told her how he earned his living, yet he had left out a certain area which brought him a sizable portion of his income.
David Eisen was a thief.
Now, that doesn't state it quite properly. When one considers the word thief, one thinks of a sneaky type of common crook who steals things constantly, and David Eisen was not this type of thief at all. In the first place, he was neither sneaky nor little, and he could hardly be called common. More important, he only stole on rare occasions. He stole not to grow rich but merely to supplement his income. And, when he stole, he dressed magnificently and moved solely in exclusive circles.
He lifted his brandy glass now, took a small sip, rolled the cognac around on his tongue, savored it, swallowed. He thought fleetingly of the episode of the afternoon -- the beatnik-type girl, the filthy room on the Lower East Side, the violence of his assault, the sickness of it all. No, he told himself, this was not the time or the place to consider that sort of experience. Not now, not here.
Instead he tried to decide just what it was that he would steal this evening. In a few moments it would be time for him to leave the bar and go to an adjoining room, where some gourmets were conducting a tasting of red and white burgandies. There would be ten or twelve tables of wines, and fifty to a hundred persons walking from table to table, having a glass here and a glass there, and getting themselves quietly but definitely stoned in the name of Epicureanism.
He had not been invited to the tasting. But, if you have the proper poise and the proper costume, lack of an invitation never keeps you from attending an affair of this nature. He had both, and he knew that no one would bother him.
But what would he steal? A wallet? It is rather an easy matter to lift a man's billfold from his pocket, especially in a crowd, more especially when the man in question has a certain amount of alcohol circulating freely in his bloodstream.
But wallets weren't all that profitable any more. The last one he had stolen contained fourteen credit cards, all of them useless, and a grand total of seven dollars in cash. Others, while never quite so cash-less, seemed to hold little plastic credit cards in lieu of anything instantly negotiable. That was the trouble with a credit economy, he thought briefly. It made theft a trying occupation.
He smiled. He wanted to steal three hundred dollars, no less, not much more. He wanted to do this quickly and imperceptibly, and in such a manner that he could be in a taxi on his way back to his room before the theft was even suspected.
How?
It didn't really matter, he thought confidently. He would, sooner or later, find a way.
When the time came, he finished his brandy, got to his feet, and walked with the crowd from the bar to the room where the tasting was to take place. A thin man, balding, tuxedoed, was standing at the door glancing at invitations. David timed his smile perfectly, mumbled a subdued but cheerful "good evening" at the thin man, and moved neatly past him. The man did not question him, of course. One doesn't demand an invitation from a well-dressed man who smiles at you and says good evening to you. David walked on through, stopped at one table to accept a glass of 1957 Beaujolais, then walked to his left and lost himself neatly in the crowd.
An overdressed woman, old enough to feel compelled to try looking young all over again -- and not managing it -- brushed by him. She was wearing a necklace. His eyes flickered over it and his lips curled in a smile. You had to know your trade, he thought. The old witch was wearing paste. Fake diamonds and fake emeralds, and the thief who stopped to steal them would wind up with twenty dollars worth of costume jewelry.
To hell with that.
If you knew your trade, you did fine. First of all, you took only items that could be resold quickly and easily and with a minimum of suspicion. You didn't dump your loot in pawnshops or sell it to fences, because they would murder you on the price. You knew just what your stuff was worth, and you took it to a top-grade jeweler on West 47th Street and got the right price for it.
That way you came out ahead.
He went to another table, took another glass of wine, sipped it. A slender homosexual turned and smiled amiably at him. "There's an excellent vintage at Table Four," the faggot said. "Magnificent color and bouquet."
David nodded, moved away. The faggot had wanted more than a moment's conversation, he thought. The faggot had wanted company. Too bad about that.
But the wine was good at Table Four, anyway. He had a glass of it, felt the warmth of the wine spreading through his body. A little alcohol didn't hurt at a time like this, not at all. It relaxed you, loosened your muscles and nerves, let your mind go its own way by itself. He felt fine now. And it was almost time.
Ahead of him, a college girl was leaning against a man's arm. Evidently she wasn't used to wine. She had a fine aristocratic face, Bryn Mawr, Vassar, something like that. But her eyes were vacant and her mouth was slack. The wine hadn't done anything to her body. Her breasts spilled out of the top of her low-cut gown, ripe, smooth.
Something boiled within him. He wanted to grab a breast in each hand, wanted to pull them and twist them, wanted to hear the witch scream her lungs out as he tore the flesh from her body. He had to struggle to control himself, and a spasm of fear shot through his system. What was happening to him? Was he going crazy?
He dragged himself away from the girl. No time for sadism, he told himself. No time for lechery, real or imaginary. He had come to the wine-tasting for a reason.
It was time to get busy.
A man with a walrus mustache stood at Table Nine. He wore a cutaway suit, and there was a watch on his wrist. The watch was the size and thickness of a twenty-dollar gold piece. It was an Omega, with a black suede band and a very fine movement.
In a way, it was sort of a shame to cut the band. A truly skilled thief might have removed the watch without doing so, but David wasn't quite that deft. He moved to the man's side, slipped into his own pocket, took out a very small and very keen pen-knife. He opened it with one hand, then slipped the small blade between the watch-strap and the man's wrist. The knife blade melted through the black suede and the watch dropped neatly and easily into the palm of David's hand.
Two seconds later it was in his pocket.
He could have taken more. He could have filched a few wallets, and handful of bracelets. But he did not like to do this. One item, taken easily and unobtrusively, was infinitely safer. If the man happened to notice that his watch was missing, and if he let the world know about it, there was still the possibility that he had lost it or left it home or had it taken elsewhere. But if, when the man started yelling about his missing watch, other people checked and discovered that items of theirs were missing, everyone would realize that there was a thief in the room.
Which could be dangerous.
One item, then, was enough. David melted away, stopped at a final table for one last glass of wine, then slipped out of the room and into the lobby of the hotel. He walked out onto Fifth Avenue, lit a cigarette, walked a few yards and let the doorman get a cab for him. He waited until the cab had pulled away from the curb before he gave the address to the cabby.
In his room, he changed his clothes and hung his thief's outfit in the closet. He stretched out on the bed and studied the watch, pried open the case, examined the movement carefully. He put it together again, then cut the band off completely so that he would not have to explain a slashed strap to a jeweler. He replaced it with an expansion band of his own.
The watch was worth between a thousand and twelve hundred dollars new. There's a big difference price-wise between new and secondhand watches, so it would be worth about five or six hundred dollars as it was. A jeweler could pay him three-fifty or four hundred without going overboard. A good night's work.
He hid the watch, taping it to the underside of a dresser drawer. He cut the suede strap into smaller pieces, walked down the hall to the bathroom and flushed the pieces down the toilet. Then he returned to his room and stretched out once again on the bed.
He didn't steal often. Two, three, four times a year. At first he had hated it, but this time he had gotten a tiny thrill out of the act. The moment when he dipped the knife between strap and wrist -- when any slip would have been dangerous -- that had been genuinely exciting.
He thought again about the drunken college girl. His mind filled with the image of his pen-knife moving beneath her gown, neatly slicing off one of her pink nipples. Desire flooded through his body, and he tremble terribly and wiped cold sweat from his forehead.
Hell!
CHAPTER SIX
In the morning, it was Saturday.
Sheila Markham did not go to the offices of Burn-ham, Seaton & Hammill Saturday morning, since those offices were closed for the weekend. But this did not mean that she spent Saturday at leisure. Instead she spent Saturday -- or at least a good part of it -- up in the wilds of Northern Westchester, where she began making preliminary efforts toward the problem of decorating the woodland mansion of Mr. Sherwood Garver, best-selling novelist.
Roy Archer did go to his office Saturday morning. His office was not closed. His office, as a matter of complete fact, was never closed, and Archer was liable to go to it at any hour of the day or night. The office was deserted when he got there. His secretary was a nine-to-five type, and she had Saturdays and Sundays to herself. But Archer's sort of work could not be regulated by the time-honored machinery of clocks and calendars. When there was work to be done, he did it. It didn't matter much what day it was.
Nor was Saturday anything special for Cindy Walsh. In a sense, every day was Saturday for Cindy, since, in a sense, she never did have to get out of bed and drag herself off to work. But she worked Saturdays as much as she worked any other time. In fact, Saturday night was one night of the week when she was almost certain to have a date of some sort. It is the same this way for a hooker as it is for a high school girl: if you haven't got something lined up for a Saturday night, you are a social failure.
David Eisen, scholar and thief, was similarly unimpressed by the fact that it was Saturday. He rose at daybreak, cooked a quiet and unexciting breakfast, and went out for a walk. A few hours later he returned to his room to pick up the Omega watch which, not too many hours ago, had been on the wrist of a man at a wine-tasting at the Sherry Netherlands hotel. He slipped the watch into his pocket and walked downstairs to the street, then headed west from 49th Street and First Avenue to 47th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. A good many of the jewelers on that block closed Saturdays for religious reasons; they were Hassidic Jews who lived in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, wore beards and hats and frock coats, and kept the Sabbath, well, religiously. But the man David Eisen had to see was not the type who closed Saturdays. Eisen found him, showed him the watch, and sold it after some minor haggling for four hundred and thirty-five dollars, which was a little more than he had figured on realizing from the sale. He put the money in his wallet and went home with it, walking slowly and easily through uncrowded streets.
* * *
Archer was at his desk. According to the watch on his wrist -- an Omega, and similar in several respects to the one David Eisen was at this moment selling on West Forty-Seventh Street -- it was now twelve minutes of ten. According to the electric wall clock, it was two minutes after ten. The discrepancy did not bother Roy Archer. He barely noticed it. He was busy.
There was a whole raft of letters in his OUT box, all of them neatly typed on impressive stationery. He went through them, gave them a brief reading, and signed each one in the proper space. He folded them, slipped them into the envelopes attached to them with paper clips, and stamped each envelope in the upper right-hand corner. He stood up, carried the letters to the mail chute in the hallway, and sent them along to their individual destinations.
He went back to the office, picked up the telephone. He thought for a moment, remembered the number he wanted to call, and dialed seven digits rapidly.
"Roy Archer," he said quickly to the man who answered. "Listen, I've got a spot for your gal Karen Eisley on the Jingo show. Not next week but the week after. She walks on and tosses a few lines back and forth with Jingo, he winks at her a little and the camera shows Mr. and Mrs. America what big knockers she's got Interested?"
"I don't know," the agent said. "You don't know?"
"Well, she's in demand."
"Go chase yourself," Archer said, approximately. "Ill find some other broad. Happy New Year, sweetie."
"Wait a minute," the agent said.
Archer smiled privately, didn't say anything. Take all the rope you want, he thought happily. And hang yourself, you son of a louse.
"You gotta understand," Karen Eisley's agent said. "This is an important property, Roy. This is not just an ordinary broad who walks on and wiggles her rear."
"No?"
"No. This is a girl who is in demand."
"Like a dose."
"You are hurting my feelings," Karen Eisley's agent said. "Now, please, Roy."
Archer took a breath. "We'll pay two and a half," he said.
"You got to be kidding."
"Two and a half. Hell, from what I heard, that's five times what she gets for putting out."
"I don't know where you heard that, Roy."
"She gets more than that?"
"Roy--" He smiled again. For what the Eisley broad would be doing, five hundred dollars was about right. The agent would like to get a thousand. Archer wanted to buy her for three hundred.
It was time to turn soft and sweet. "Listen," he said, "I'll go level with you, fellow. I'd like Eisley for this, I think it would be a big break for the girl, get her seen in an important showcase. I don't need her. I'd like her. But I can't go more than two and a half."
"Seven-fifty would be closer to the truth, Roy."
A heavy sigh. "I'm sorry we can't do business, fellow. It's a big-budget show, I'm not trying to jazz you. But we're over-priced already. We've got some high-money acts that are hurting us a little and the sponsor has cost-cutting notions. I'm sorry we couldn't work some thing out, keed. Maybe one of these days--"
"I'll take five, Roy."
They settled on three-fifty. Archer told the agency when Karen Eisley should report where, threw in another hunk of soft soap, then rang off. He made some notations on a scrap of yellow paper, picked up the phone again, called two more numbers and filled in two different people on the fact that Karen Eisley had a bit on the Johnny Jingo program. One man would plant the fact in a column or two. Another would set things up and get the writers to work on angling the script toward the girl.
When he finally hung up the phone, his wristwatch told him it was ten-thirty-two and the wall clock said it was fourteen minutes of eleven. He sat back, picked up his copy of Variety and started to go through it. He lit a cigarette, smoked, put his feet up on the desk and felt like an executive. It was almost noon before he opened the desk drawer and hauled out the bottle of Wolf-schmidt's.
* * *
When Sheila Markham pulled the Chevy convertible to a stop in front of Sherwood Garver's newly-purchased pre-Revolutionary estate, the first thing she did was cough. It was the air that caused the cough. When you live on the hunk of rock that goes by the name of Manhattan Island for a sufficiently long period of time, your lungs become accustomed to a constant intake of air that is eighty-five percent smoke and five percent gaseous crud, and real air, country air, is too much to take at first. It knocks you over, makes you dizzy, and otherwise saps your strength and destroys your equilibrium.
The effect is not a permanent one. Sooner or later, as you gulp lungfuls of the fresh Upper Westchester air, changes are worked in your system. Your lungs accustom themselves to the high oxygen content of the air, and your bloodstream learns to do without smoke and smog and other characteristics of big bold urban living at its best. Then, when you have the misfortune of returning to New York, you have another coughing fit as the noxiousness of Manhattan hits you in the head. One is better off, when you come right down to it, if one stays in one place forever.
Sheila coughed. Then she opened the door of the Chevy, rented for the occasion from Hertz and charged to BS&H. She got out, stood leaning against the front fender of the car and looking up at the house A big mother, she thought. Huge, massive, and situated on acreage with a nice rise to it. She lit a cigarette, smoked it down to the end, dropped it on the gravelly road and ground it out underfoot. Then she put up the top of the convertible, rolled up windows, and locked the car, wondering all the while why she was bothering. In the first place, it wasn't her car, and if someone wanted to steal it, they were welcome to it. In the second place, who would steal a car in the wilds of Westchester? In New York, people would steal anything from a skyscraper to a second-hand tricycle, but Westchester was safe, wasn't it?
Habits die hard. She finished locking the car, fished in her bag for the key to Garver's house. She found it, walked up the flagstone path to the huge oak front door, fitted key in lock, opened door, and stepped inside.
It was quite a house. It had all the features that hokey builders insert in split-level traps in an attempt to capture what they call a colonial effect, and it had other things you couldn't possibly find in a recently-built home. The living room -- huge -- had a cathedral ceiling with heavy oak beams. All of the woodwork was natural wood, and years of polishing had brought out the full flavor of the grain. The floors throughout the house were wide-board oak, so well made that now, over two hundred years later, not a single board squeaked underfoot. The house had ten-foot ceilings throughout, with loads of extra hallways and miles of closet space. There were four bedrooms on the second floor and three more on the third floor. The largest third-floor bedroom would be made over into a library, with bookshelves installed on all four walls and a pool table set up in the middle of the room. One of the second-floor bedrooms was to be a music room, with an elaborate stereo rig built in, a few easy chairs included, and a cabinet for tapes and records installed.
Sheila walked from room to room, climbed the elaborate spiral staircases from floor to floor. On the first trip she just felt her way around, getting her bearings, letting a general impression of the house sink in. Then she began a more detailed inspection. She took measurements, sketched rough floor plans in her spiral notebook, made some preliminary drawings of possible arrangements. She took notes on painting and papering possibilities, room-by-room motifs, possible pieces of furniture for various spots.
She went from room to room, measuring, planning. She curled up on the floor with pencil and spiral notebook and tried to put her notes into some sort of orderly arrangement, so that she would be able to figure them out later on. It had been around Noon when she arrived at Garver's house, and it was almost four when she left it. She was a little bit exhausted as she closed and locked the front door, but the exhaustion was a pleasant feeling. She was working, and working hard, and she was getting some solid ideas, and things would work out nicely.
She got in the car, put the top down, started the engine. It was nice to be able to rent a car whenever you needed it. There was never a parking problem, no gas to pay for, no insurance to carry, no problems at all. You picked the car up when you needed it and got rid of it when you didn't need it any more, and Burnham, Seaton & Hammill picked up all the tabs. It was a pleasure.
She coaxed the Chevy onto the road, drove a short distance, took a right turn. She picked up speed, liking the way the wind sang in her hair, drinking deep of the fresh country air. It was a beautiful fall day and the air was clear and she had done good work and, by hell, it was good to be alive!
She felt so good that she stopped for the hitch-biker. This was something she rarely did, but he was standing at the side of the road with a plaintive look on his face and his thumb in the air and she felt so happy, so at peace with herself, that she brought the Chevy to a firm stop and leaned over to open the door for him.
It was a mistake.
* * *
"It should be a wild party," Myra Teale said. "It's a television thing. There's a new show, you see, and they're getting a bunch of people together to help kick it off or kick it in or something. This fellow called me and invited me and told me to feel free to bring a few friends, if you're interested."
Cindy bit her lip, chewed it reflectively. "What time?"
"Nine or ten. It's this penthouse on Central Park West, not the greatest neighborhood in the world but a nice apartment, at least he said it was. It ought to be a real mob scene. Want to make it?"
"I don't know. Television people?"
"Uh-huh. Mostly."
"Ummmm," Cindy said. "That means I probably know a lot of them. Professionally."
"Johns?"
"Uh-huh. I get a lot of television tricks. I don't know why. You know how it goes, you go with one guy and he turns his friends onto you and you're off, and all of a sudden you figure you ought to join AFTRA or something because you're balling every television personality in the world."
"It's better than garment people."
"Maybe," Cindy said. "I like the teevee guys, mostly. But I don't know about the party."
"Why not?"
"I got expenses," Cindy said. "This redecorating schtick of mine, it's going to run seven gees."
"You out of your mind?"
"Probably," she said. "But what the hell, this Sheila Markham was a nice kid and she said the pad would really swing on seven gees, so what the hell. I mean, you only live once."
"And?"
"And?" She thought for a moment, confused. "Oh," she said. "And I thought I would wait and see if the phone rings and maybe earn a couple of bucks tonight. See?"
Myra laughed.
"Something funny?"
"Uh-huh. The party is a pay affair."
"You gotta pay to go?"
"No, dope. You get paid if you go. We do, anyway. We girls. There's two hundred bucks each in it for us."
"Two yards?"
"Uh-huh."
"You mean it's just a damn sexual jam session," Cindy said. "You mean we're there to ball whoever wants it, huh? Sort of a social gang bang?" Myra laughed aloud. "Not like that."
"Like what, then?"
"Like we're decorations," Myra said. "We say nice things to the men. We wear naked-type dresses and let our boobs show a little. We wiggle or rears, and if somebody slips us a pinch or a feel we don't get mad."
"For two hundred bucks? Come off it, Myra."
"All right. If somebody asks us will we,' and we want to, we do. But it's not like turning a trick. Nobody knows we're hookers, honey. They don't know and we don't have to wear signs, so we don't have to take everybody on and do dirty things."
"But they'll know I'm a hooker. They know me."
"Do they know you were hired? They'll just think you came along for the ride. It's an easy deuce, honey."
She thought it over. It was easy money, of course, and it would probably mean making a few good contacts with prospective Johns, some of whom might turn out to be regulars. And it meant a free party with plenty of free liquor and maybe even a couple of laughs, and all of this without the feeling that she was being a tramp.
She said: "Well--"
"You'll do it?"
"I guess so, Myra."
"Swell, honey. Be ready about eight-thirty or nine? I'll come by for you."
"Sure," she said.
She put the phone on the hook, went into the kitchen to grab some food. There was some corned beef and tongue left. She put the meat between slices of fresh rye, added a slice of swiss cheese and a few hunks of pickle, and ate. Then she drifted back to the living room and tossed herself down in a chair.
At six-fifteen (An unlikely hour, but you couldn't quarrel with masculine whims, could you?) she was supposed to go to a hotel on 48th Street and entertain a friend of a friend of a friend for thirty dollars. Then tonight she was going to this party, and that would be another two hundred. Which, really, was pretty good.
She put on the television and watched it, made a drink and sipped it, started a cigarette and finished it. Idly she wondered who would be at the party.
* * *
Bunny Forrest said: "Dad, we got to make this set. It should be a gasser."
"What's it all about, anyway?"
"It's David's blast," Bunny said. "He's launching Life With Lester, it's this new situation comedy series, he wants to get people Lester-conscious. You know how the clown talks. Lester-wise, everybody has to be Lester-conscious. Damn."
"And?"
"And it should swing, Roy. Broads, movies, the works for the people in the business. Column people, trade people, ad agency people, broads, liquor, broads, food, broads--"
"Lots of broads, huh?"
"A million of them. I'm squiring our little ingenue. The one who isn't pregnant any more."
"Sharon Storm?"
"The same, Dad."
"You banging her?"
"Dad!" He sounded hurt, Archer noticed. "The funny part, I think I could if I felt like it. What I mean is I think anyone could. I have this hunch, Dad."
"Go on."
"I have this hunch that maybe she raped Jingo and not the other way around. I have this hunch that she's the easiest piece of Trans-World Airlines tea that ever happened."
Archer nodded thoughtfully. "I believe it," he said. "Listen, don't make her."
"I won't, Dad. Be at the party?"
"I suppose so. Don't lay Sharon Storm."
"Damn," Bunny Forrest said. "I wouldn't take her with a ten-foot pole, baby. See you nineish, Dad."
Archer shrugged and reached for the bottle.
* * *
Sheila Markham looked at the hitch-hiker, then turned her eyes back to the road again. He wasn't saying anything. He was very quiet, and the road was very empty, and she was nervous.
Very nervous.
She glanced quickly at him again. He was older than she had thought. At first glance, when her foot had moved from accelerator pedal to brake pedal, she had thought he was seventeen or eighteen, no more than that, a college kid heading into town, something along those lines.
He was older. Twenty-five, twenty-six. And no college kid. His eyes were hard and ugly, his mouth tough and tense. And he sat so calmly, so motionless at her side.
Then his head turned, and he was looking at her. Damn, she thought, trying to concentrate on the road. Hell. But what could he do? They were in Westchester County, there was a certain amount of traffic on the road -- "Pull over," he said.
His voice was flat, hard. Her heart jumped. She turned to look at him and saw the knife in his hand, wicked and deadly, and she almost passed out.
"Just pull off the road," he said. His voice was level now, cold and clear, quiet and sure of itself. "Pull off and come to a nice gentle stop. Do what I tell you, cookie. Get fancy and I'll cut off your boobs and use 'em for bait."
She was all numb, all numb and frightened. She remembered the way they did it on television -- swerve the car, slam on the brakes, sent the louse flying through the windshield. But suppose it didn't work?
She eased the car off the road and pulled to a stop on the shoulder.
He said: "Get out."
She couldn't move. She sat in her seat, her hands frozen to the wheel, her foot glued to the brake pedal. He reached out lazily and put the tip of the knife against her hand. He poked, effortlessly, and she felt a pinprick and saw a bead of blood on the top of her hand. It was very red.
"Now get out of the car," he said.
She got out, shaking. He led her to the side of the car away from the road, then half-led and half-dragged her into the growth of scrubby bushes that flanked the road. Brambles tore at her clothing, scratched her skin. He gave her a rude shove and she stumbled forward for a few steps and sprawled face-down in tall grasses.
"Just what I needed," he said. "A broad to jump and a car to get lost in."
"You --"
"I killed a guy," he said. "Philly. I was hitting this liquor store and this stupid clerk gave me a hard time and I had to shoot him. I got him in the face and half his face disappeared. Last night they picked me up in Yonkers in a hot car and tossed me in the cooler until they could get a make on me. I'll be on the wire by now, with Philly looking for me for Murder One. So I knocked over this jail in Yonkers, I hit a guy and I got out. I figure I got six chances in fifteen to make Canada before they block the roads on me. It's a lot easier with a car under me."
"My car?"
"You catch on," he said.
"Take it," she breathed. "Take it. I've got money in my purse, it isn't much--"
"How much?"
"A hundred, two hundred, I don't know. Take it, you can have it, I don't care."
He laughed. The laughter was harsh, ugly. "Damn right I'll take it," he said. "I don't need your say-so, baby."
"I "
"When I want something," he said, "I take it. It don't make a difference what it is. Money, a car, a dame --" Her eyes widened. Before she had been afraid, guessing of the things he might do to her. Now she didn't have to guess any more. He wanted her and he was going to take her, and there didn't seem to be anything she could do about it.
She couldn't run. He was standing over her, loose and easy, weight balanced on the balls of his feet, and she was on her hands and knees beneath him. Run? She couldn't even stand up.
And she couldn't scream. He had a knife in his hand, and he had already killed one man in Philadelphia. She could guess what would happen if she tried screaming. The knife, moving like a striking cobra. The knife, ripping into flesh, cutting through blood vessels, hurting her -- She shivered.
And then he was kneeling beside her, reaching for her. One of his hands caught her long honey-blonde hair, jerked it back. The other hand gripped her breast and squeezed, hard. A jet of pain surged through her and brought tears to her eyes.
"You're gonna be good," he said. His breath was foul in her nostrils. His teeth were yellow and misshapen. They reminded her of the teeth of a caged panther she had seen in a zoo ages ago. She wondered hysterically if he would bite her, if he would tear her tender flesh with his teeth. She saw herself lying dead on the side of the highway, scratches on her body and horrid tooth-marks in her breasts and thighs. She shivered again, more violently than before, and he laughed his evil laughter all over again.
"Nice," he said. "Sweet and soft as chocolate cream."
She said: "Please--" She fought him, silently, desperately. She struggled when he ripped her sweater up over her head, fought with him when he tried to take her bra off. He laughed then, and he raised a hand and pounded her neatly on the point of the jaw, and when she sagged helplessly he put the point of his knife between her breasts and cut the strap of her bra. He pulled the two cups back to expose the ivory mounds of succulent flesh, and his eyes went wild when he saw them.
"Stacked like an outhouse," he said reverently.
And then he was pushing her skirt up over her hips, his hands cruel and vile on her body, and she was struggling and getting nowhere fast. He tore her panties down below her knees, planted a knee in her stomach and hurt her horribly. He pulled her legs apart, tugged at his own clothing, dropped his pants, and then -- Then she kneed him in the groin.
Later, when she thought about it, it seemed impossible to her. Impossible -- but undeniably true. She got a knee in somehow, got him in the most sensitive target-zone, and got him good.
He sagged like a flat tire.
Everything happened like lightning after that. He rolled away from her, moaning, clutching himself. He stumbled to his feet, still groaning, and she scrambled to her feet, and on the way she saw something shiny on the ground and made a grab for it. It was the knife and she held it in her hand and he was charging her, head down, like a wounded boar, and she brought up the knife automatically and he ran into it like a suicidal Roman running upon his sword, and -- And, in slow motion, he fell back holding his hands to the precise center of his chest. She stood rooted to the spot while he folded and fell. The knife was still in her hand. She looked at it, saw the blood on it. Her fingers opened slowly, very slowly, and the knife dropped to the ground.
She did not wait to see if he was alive or dead. She did not care. Quickly, like a machine, she got her clothing bundled around her and scurried frenetically to the car. She jumped behind the wheel, looked for the key, couldn't find it. It was in the ignition. She got the engine started and pulled back onto the road with a squeal of abused rubber. She drove at double the speed limit for almost a mile, then relaxed and drew a breath and dropped the car back to the proper speed. Safe.
Safe, thank God.
She pointed the car at Manhattan and drove home.
* * *
David Eisen was reading a book.
The book was Justine, Or Good Conduct Well-Chastised. It was by the Marquis De Sade, and it was banned in the United States of America. Three months ago, David had bought the book from a young student recently returned from Paris. He had paid eight dollars for the book, figuring that he could easily resell it for twenty at a later date. He had not yet gotten around to reading it, or selling it. Now, finally, he was reading it.
He read: "One never better irritates his senses than when the greatest possible impression has been produced in the employed object, by no matter what devices; therefore, he who will cause the most tumultuous impression to be born in a woman, he who will most thoroughly overwhelm this woman's entire organization, very decidedly will have managed to procure himself the heaviest possible dose of voluptuousness, because the shock resultant upon us by the impressions others experience, which shock in turn is necessitated by the impression we have of those others, will necessarily be more vigorous if the impression these others receive be painful, than if the impression they receive be sweet and soft. And it follows that the voluptuous egoist... will therefore impose the strongest possible dose of pain upon the employed object... " Nonsense, David Eisen told himself. Or were they?
He remembered the sick thrill he had gotten from the Bohemian girl in the Village, remembered how her pain had served to intensify his pleasures a hundredfold. He remembered the wine-tasting, and the drunken college girl, and how he had itched to cut her with his knife and make her scream out her agony into the night.
Pain.
Pain, and pleasure.
Put it out of your mind, he told himself. Forget it, before you do something you'll regret later.
The elements of sadism were already a part of him, he knew. He had those components in his personality, those drives in his blood. And, if he let himself go, there was no telling what sort of human being he might become.
No.
He set the book aside, stopped to light a cigarette. He blew clouds of smoke at the ceiling of his little room on East Forty-Ninth Street and tried to relax. But there was no need to force himself to relax; he was calm enough, it was just that his mind was going in weird circles.
Wild circles.
Pain, he thought. Pleasure and pain. It was a weird theory, the theory that one's enjoyment varied directly with the pain of one's partner. A theory that he might test easily enough. A theory that he could test with a certain amount of safety, easily and aseptically. in the darkness of the night.
Tonight, he thought.
Tonight.
CHAPTER SEVEN
She turned in the Chevy convertible at the Hertz garage just a few blocks from her apartment. When the attendant flashed her an innocent smile she felt her blood run cold, and she turned and hurried out of there. The sky was dark now, and the wind had a raw edge to it. She started to walk the few blocks to her door, but she began seeing menacing shapes in every doorway and the fear rose up within her. She wound up taking a cab. The fare came to thirty cents. She handed the driver a pair of quarters and dashed into her building and up the stairs to her door.
As she unlocked her door, she had the ugly fear that there was someone inside waiting for her, maybe the man she had stabbed in the chest and left at the side of the road. It was ridiculous, she told herself. You're behaving like an idiot.
But maybe she could use someone's phone and call the police. Maybe they would send a patrolman over to help her inside, to check and make sure that no one was lurking within. Oh, God, she thought. The police would think she was crazy, would regard her as a frightened old maid looking under the bed every night.
She opened the door, stepped inside, closed it behind her. There was no one in the apartment, of course. But she had to go from room to room, checking carefully before she could entirely relax. Then she poured herself a stiff shot of Scotch -- no ice, no chaser -- and tossed it straight down her throat. It spread through her, warmly, and it got to her. She calmed down.
Then, sitting in a chair and listening to Vivaldi chamber music, her mind filled once again with the memory of the incident in Westchester. The man, totally without pity or sympathy. The knife, gleaming in the half-light, menacing her, raising a tiny bead of blood on the back of her hand, cutting through her bra strap, and finally biting into the chest of the man and sending him down in a heap of aching flesh. The man on top of her, mauling her, readying himself for rape. Her knee rising, he staggering away, she groping for the knife -- The scene played over and over She wanted to get up and chase the memory with another drink, but she couldn't. She stayed where she was and she watched the memory tape play through her brain like a scared kid watching a Bela Lugosi movie on the late late late show, and she wondered why it had almost happened to her and wondered how she had escaped and prayed that nothing like that would ever happen to her again.
The man. Had she killed him? The knife had sunk deep into his chest, and though she knew little enough about anatomy it seemed as though she had gotten him in the approximate area of his heart. She had not wasted time checking his pulse. He could be alive or dead as far as she knew. Had she killed him?
Maybe she should have called the county police. He was a wanted man, a murderer. If he was still alive, the police should know about it. And if he was dead she should report it because maybe they would find her fingerprints on the knife and -- Silly, she thought. They wouldn't know whom the fingerprints belonged to. She had never been fingerprinted and her prints were not on file.
Silly.
Why had she stopped to pick the man up? She searched her mind, trying to remember. It came to her: she had been so happy, so at peace with the world, that she wanted to make someone else happy as well. Happy? When had she been happy? It seemed ages ago now, because she was still locked up in a monumental stage of shock.
All right, she thought. All right, everybody, I learned my lesson. Sheila Markham won't be that kind of a damn fool again. Sheila Markham won't pick up any hitchhikers. Thank you, God, for letting me be alive now and unraped. I won't forget it.
When the phone rang she jumped a mile.
It rang again. She told herself it was only the phone, and she wiped the salty dampness of cold sweat from her forehead, got up and answered the phone.
It was a young homosexual decorator at BS&H. "Sheila dear," it said. "I've been trying you all day, sweets."
"I was out."
"Gathered as much, sugar. At the estate d'Garver?"
"Uh-huh."
"Woooo," it said. "I wish I were the one doing that job. Did you read his book? The City of Silver Sin?"
"Not yet," Sheila said.
"You simply must, sugar. Hot? Lord, the scenes that man included. Passionate? Lustful? I wish I'd had the chance to meet him, to talk to him face-to-face. What's he like?"
"Authorish, sort of."
"As pretty as the dust-jacket picture?"
"About the same. Maybe a little tweedier."
"Yum," it said, indecently. "Listen, are you busy tonight?"
She laughed. "Why? You thinking of converting?"
It laughed back at her. "Not on your davenport," it said. "No, nothing of the sort, sugar, much as I dearly love you. There's this party, sweetie, and you are invited. I thought I would inform you on the fact."
"Party?"
"Party."
"What party?"
"The party," it said. "The party to celebrate the sparkling new experiment in video monotony, something called Life With Lester, a show which shows, I am told, promise of achieving the lowest Trendex rating since Walter Winchell last spoke with Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea. They're having this sortie before the premiere, you see, because after it all they can hold is a wake. And you are invited, sugarplum."
"Why?"
"I know not," it told her. "Darling, why look at the dentures of a gratis filly? Why peer down the throat of a free stallion? It's a party. It's the social event of the year for the audiovisual world. And, according to S, we ought to go."
"S as in BS&H?"
"The same. Herr Seaton, Lord preserve him from hostile forces. He says it may be valuable. 382 Central Park West, penthouse, 9:30 Eastern Standard Time. Or daylight time. I can never recall which is in force at any given moment. You'll be there?"
"I'll be there," Sheila said.
She put the phone down and wondered why she had promised to go. It would have been easy enough to beg out. When you're invited at the last minute, you can always plead a previous engagement with no fear of displeasing anyone. And what did she need with a party? A slew of clowns talking too loudly and drinking too much and making passes at everything in or out of skirts. A lot of liquor and a lot of laughter and a lot of desperately tedious conversation. Why in hell should she go?
Because it might be a break, she answered herself. Because the experience in Westchester had been traumatic with a capital Shiver, and if she stayed around her apartment she would spend the whole evening brooding about it and worrying about it. A party might let her loosen up, relax, get away from herself.
After all, what had happened? Nothing, really. A man whom she had been foolish enough to stop her car for had attempted to rape her, and she had gotten away from him. Nothing had actually occurred. All her brooding and worrying was just a matter of brooding and worrying over what might have happened.
Which was silly.
She stubbed out her cigarette, got to her feet. It was getting late. It was time to start moving, time to get under the shower and wash clean and get into fresh clothes and get pretty and get over to the place on Central Park West, where, no matter what happened, she was now quite thoroughly determined to enjoy herself.
* * *
Archer couldn't dredge up too much enthusiasm for the party. He got there earlier than he had planned, which is always a mistake. And he was only slightly stoned when he walked in, which is almost always a mistake. He came through the door and headed for the bar, and somebody with a tan like Tarzan cut him off and wanted to shake hands with him. The man with all the melanin then insisted upon introducing Archer to everyone in the room. Archer already knew about half of them and had no interest in getting to know the other half. He smiled stonily and shook a lot of moist hands and finally eluded the effusive man and went to the bar. He poured a lot of vodka over a little ice and looked for a corner to drink it in.
A woman swept down on him like the wolf on the fold. "Mr. Archer," she gushed. "Why, I've been simply dying to meet you I Of course you've probably never heard of me--" He hadn't.
"-- but my name is Roslyn Carson and I've so greatly admired your work. I think your Johnny Jingo program is marvelous, simply marvelous. Now where do you get your ideas?"
"I leave that to the writers," Archer said. It wasn't entirely true; he was a moderately creative producer and often tossed suggestions into the hopper. But anything designed to curtail the efforts of one Roslyn Carson was desirable. The woman was pushing fifty, and she had hair in her nostrils, and he did not like her at all.
"Writers," she said fondly. "You might not believe this, Mr. Archer--"
"You're a writer yourself," he guessed.
"Oh, how clever of you! I don't know whether you could call me that or not, in truth. I try, though. In my own small way. Why, I do some writing almost every day. I've never had anything published, sad to say, but-" They never did, he thought. The writers who got things published left you alone. The nuts who papered their walls with rejection slips, they were the ones who drove you crazy. Archer had commented on it to an editor once, and thereby made a friend on the basis of a mutual woe.
"I mostly write poetry," she said. "You know, Mr. Archer, I think the American public has a great appetite for poetry which the media have largely ignored. Now I know you've never used poetry on the Johnny Jingo program --" Oh, hell, Archer thought. The stupid old hen wanted him to have Johnny read her silly verse to Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea, or something. He could see it now -- fat, bumbling Johnny Jingo pinching some starlet's left boob and saying that, by Gee, girls like that could be made by anybody, but only God could make a tree. Hell on a plastic toothpick!
"Ill tell you," he said bravely. "I don't think the Jingo show is the right outlet for material of that nature, but I might be able to put you on the right track."
"Oh, Mr. Archer!"
The right track, he thought grimly, would be the one the New Haven used on its Westport run. He could see the old hen now, strapped to the ties while the 8:02 bore down on her. The image brought an ignoble tear to his eye.
"Monday morning," he said, "you drop in on Carter Dandridge at Dandridge Productions. You just tell his secretary that Roy Archer sent you and she'll shoo you right in. You lay it right on the line with Carter. He's a hard man to sell, he may give you a hard time, but you just stand there and read your poetry to him until he sees how well it'll fit in with his shows. You know, you've got a nice voice, Mrs. Carson. I wouldn't be surprised if Dandridge let you read your works yourself."
He got to his feet, trying not to hear her gush of thanks. "You'll excuse me," he said. "I'm expecting a very important drink."
He got away from her then, mingled with the crowd, drifted toward the bar again. His glass was empty. Nothing is quite so conducive to the rapid ingestion of vodka as the companionship of an impossible woman, and he had tossed off his vodka long ago in the presence of Mrs. Roslyn Carson, God bless her.
He smiled wickedly. Already he could imagine the scene in Cart Dandridge's office. Archer's name would get the woman admitted, and poor Dandridge would be up a tree. Dandridge, a mild-mannered man, would subtly try to ease Roslyn Carson from his office. The woman, fortified with Archer's admonition to avoid taking no for an answer, would stay where she was and would read her puny poems with full dramatic intensity. And Dandridge, bless his heart, would go quietly out of his mind.
Archer's smile spread. He reached for a vodka bottle, poured vodka over what remained of his ice cubes. He took a deep breath and let the conversations of the party move in on him.
Archer was sipping his drink when a hand landed on his shoulder. He turned, slowly.
"Roy," a moderately familiar face was saying. "Roy, here's a girl who's been asking to meet you. Roy Archer, this is Cindy Walsh."
"Well," he said, trying to keep his eyes on her face instead of her body. "Why, it's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Walsh."
* * *
Cindy let Archer fix her up with an Orange Blossom, then drifted across the room with him. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Walsh," she mimicked.
He laughed. "What was I supposed to say? You're a great piece, Miss Walsh?"
"I guess not," she said. She smiled at a man across the room, nodded at Myra Teale, then turned to Archer again. "This is quite a mob scene, isn't it?"
"Uh-huh," he said. "Who you with?"
"I'm with... oh, the hell with it, Roy I don't have to put on an act with you, do I?"
"Not standing up."
"Stinker. I'm hired for the occasion. The host wants to make sure everybody's happy."
"Oh?"
"Uh-huh. So if somebody pinches my fanny I'm supposed to giggle instead of slap. That's about all there is to it, I guess. Hey, ouch!"
"I thought you were supposed to giggle."
"Stinker," she said. "You're an old friend. You're not the fanny-pinching type, exactly."
"Well--"
"You're a nasty old alcoholic," she said. "And T love you very much. Excuse me, Roy. I've got to go mingle."
"If you're free afterward --"
"I'm never free," she told him. "But I'm quite reasonable. See you, Roy."
She left him, headed across the room. She drained her Orange Blossom and set it down on a tray that a tight-lipped Negro was carrying around. A man smiled at her. She gave him what was supposed to be a demure grin, then moved over to join Myra Teale.
"They're setting up a camera in the other room," Myra said. "Camera?"
"Projector," Myra said. "Or something. You know, to show movies with."
"You mean pilot films for the show?"
"Honey," Myra said, "what these are films of, you couldn't show on television."
"You mean--"
"Uh-huh. That's exactly what I mean."
"That's crazy," Cindy said. "You can't take a whole collection of people and herd them into a room and show them stag films. Some of them might not go for it."
Myra shook her head. "It's not for everyone," she said. "Just those people who are likely to appreciate it. Which includes us, incidentally. We're supposed to watch the film."
"And ball anybody who gets all hot and bothered?"
"I'm not sure."
"And maybe put on a live display afterward? If that's the idea, then they can stuff it They can stuff it, and they can stuff their two hundred dollars and they can stuff--"
"None of that, honey."
"Well," she said. "All right, I guess I can watch a stag film without turning green or anything. And... oh-oh."
"What's the matter?"
"Over there," she said, nodding. "The blonde who just came through the door."
"Somebody you know?"
"Somebody I just met yesterday," Cindy said. "Her name is Sheila Markham. She's my interior decorator."
David Eisen wasn't at the party. He was up in Yorkville, at the corner of 93rd Street and Second Avenue. He was leaning against a building and smoking a cigarette, and he was wearing an ancient brown tweed sport jacket and a pair of khaki chinos. He had tennis sneakers on his feet and, if you were close enough to observe it, a gleam in his eyes.
David Eisen was scheming.
Tonight would be a test, he thought. A test of some of De Sade's cardinal precepts, a proving ground for some of the fundamental tenets of sadistic philosophy. According to Sade (Which is not quite the same as According to Hoyle, unless you're playing some rather bizarre games, my friend), the pleasure to be derived from any sexual incident varied directly with the impact you made upon your partner. Now, this was demonstrable true in one sense. You certainly got more of a boot out of a bedroom bout if your girl was squirming and squealing than if she lay there like a corpse. But was it even more meaningful if she was writhing in agony?
He intended to find out.
He stepped to the curb, dropped his cigarette into the gutter. He walked to Second Avenue, headed north. In a sense, he thought, one could only reach sadistic heights with a virgin, and could have the least fun with a common tramp. But a tramp was easier to come by and there was less risk attached to her possession and maltreatment, since she could hardly go running for the police.
He could begin with a tramp. And some day, he thought, grinning, he might work his way up to a virgin.
So he walked north. After he had gone three blocks he came to Ninety-Sixth Street, and when he crossed it he left Yorkville behind him and entered into East Harlem. He walked a block to Ninety-Seventh Street, stopped to light another cigarette, then headed west toward Third Avenue.
Harlem scares most people. Most of them have fairly good grounds for their fear. If you do not know Harlem, are unacquainted with the varying characteristics of various sections of the general area, you may well go to a section where you stand a good chance of losing your wallet or your watch or, with unlovely luck, your life. If you go there drunk, as so many damned fools persist in doing, you are taking that much greater a chance. Not so great a chance as you would be taking by walking at night in Central Park, to be sure, but a very great chance nevertheless.
David Eisen wasn't taking chances. In the first place, he was cold sober; his mind as keen as the edge of a surgeon's scalpel. More than that, he knew Harlem, knew it inside and out. He knew it by day and by night. For a time he had lived there in a Negro tenement on 133rd Street off Lenox. For another time he lived -- unbeknownst to the owner -- in the basement of a sleazy building in the Italian section of Harlem. He knew the area, and he was sure of himself, and he felt as safe in Harlem as a high-class thief feels in City Hall.
He was looking for a prostitute. They are not all that hard to come by in Spanish Harlem, which is where he happened to be at the moment. They grow like flowers there -- or like Hydra's heads, depending on your point of view. He was looking for a prostitute, and he didn't feel he would have too much trouble finding one.
He didn't.
He found one in no time at all.
Maybe who found whom is a moot point. In point of fact, she saw him before he saw her. He was walking slowly along the street, a cigarette between the index and middle fingers of his right hand, and she was on the second-floor of a faded brick building across the street. She whistled shrilly, and he slowed down and turned, looking for the source of the whistle.
"Here," she stage-whispered. "Here, ba-bee."
He looked across the street, saw her. She was in the window, with dingy yellow light shining behind her. Light from the street lamps glinted off her white teeth. Her hair was black, her skin brown. That was all he could see; her features at that distance were indistinct. He saw her hand come forth from the window frame, saw her crook a finger to beckon him.
He crossed the street. He stood on the sidewalk in front of her window and looked up at her. She was smiling a professional smile and her eyes were very wide.
"We have good time," she said. "We have good time, sweet honey man. I show you all kind of tricks, I teach you things. I drive you nutty, sweet honey baby."
A stupid trollop, he thought. How could a man waste money on such a slut? Yet she wasn't unappealing, he noticed. Her peasant blouse, white as virtue, was cut low enough to expose the tops of her large brown breasts. And her face, though cheap and trampish in appearance, wasn't all that bad to look at.
He put his hand in his pocket and touched his knife.
"Ten dollar," she said. "Okay?"
What did the price matter? He would take his money back when he was finished with her. That was essential; it was the ultimate degradation, and would intensify her pain and thus, in Sade's terms, increase his own pleasure and sense of fulfillment. But why make it ten dollars? Let her lose more later. Let the price be higher than ten.
"That's not enough," he said. "I'll give you twenty, dear."
She stared at him for a moment, not understanding. Then her eyes sparkled. "Twenny? I make real good for twenny, Joe. I make you so happy --" She grinned, told him to wait a moment. She disappeared then, and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other and waited for her to come down the stairs. When she appeared in the doorway he turned and flipped his cigarette butt into the gutter, then turned again and walked over to her. She was a small girl, about six inches shorter than he was, and she looked a little younger now than she had looked in the window. Twenty-two, twenty-three, not much more than that.
She took his arm, wriggled up close to him. He could feel the heat of her big breasts through his shirt-front. That was one thing about the Spic sluts, he thought. They had the largest mammaries in town. When they got old, they turned into cows, fat and droopy and slovenly. But when they were blooming with youth their breasts were firm and plump and warm to the touch.
"You c'mon," she said.
She held his arm and headed into the building with him. He let her lead him. The hallway was piled high with garbage and the stairs were stained from small boys who did not bother to use plumbing facilities. Halfway up the stairs she turned automatically and came into his arms. She was a step or two ahead of him, and his face wound up between the full crowns of her breasts. She hugged his head close, ran her hands through his hair and down the back of his neck.
His nostrils were filled with the raw female odor of her breasts. She was a girl who made love frequently and bathed rarely, and the scent of her was overpowering. Lust rose up within him, powerful, demanding. He put his hands around her body and cupped her large, well-muscled buttocks, squeezed them. He rubbed his face against her big breasts and felt his blood stirring with vitality.
She sighed heavily, giving the appearance of being in the grip of passion far stronger than herself. Then she turned and headed up the stairs again. He climbed the steps behind her, his eyes fastened to her butt. He watched the way her rear swayed from side to side, slowly and languorously.
Pain.
Pleasure and pain.
Her room was at the head of the stairs. He followed her into it, stood aside when she moved to close and lock the door. There was a police lock, indispensable in slums -- a heavy bar of tooled iron set in a metal plate on the floor and locking into the center of the wooden door. She locked it, slid an auxiliary bolt, then crossed the room to pull down the window shade. The room was illuminated by a bare bulb in the center of the ceiling. She moved beneath it, gripped the dangling chain, and looked questioningly at him.
"No," he said. "Leave it on."
"Okay," she said. She let go of the chain, moved toward him. He stood still while she came closer and placed her hands in the center of his chest.
"Money," she said. "Twenny dollar?"
Evidently she didn't believe he would give her that much. He took out his wallet, peeled off a fresh twenty dollar bill. He handed it to her and she beamed reverently first at him and then at Andrew Jackson's portrait. Shyly she crossed the room again to put the bill away in the top drawer of the nightstand at the side of her shabby bed.
Then once again she turned to face him, and her hands caught the bottom of the peasant blouse and drew it slowly but firmly overhead. He had already learned that she was not wearing a bra, had found that out when the sight of her was still overwhelming. Her breast were ripe cones of tawny flesh, full and firm without a trace of sag. The nipples at their tips were almost scarlet. Her waist was slender, and the breasts stood out in perfect symmetry, and his mouth watered at the sight of all that naked beauty.
"You like, Joe?"
He took off his jacket and his shirt. She took small dainty steps toward him, put her hands behind her own back, and shook her body from side to side so that the tips of her big boobs brushed across his bare chest. She giggled, then stepped back again and got out of her skirt.
There was nothing under the skirt.
Nothing but naked flesh.
She did the slow and sensual bump-and-grand of the burlesque dancer, moving toward him like liquid fire in motion. She unbelted his pants, drew the zipper downward. His pants fell to the floor. He stepped out of them and kicked them aside. She reached for him, caught at the elastic waistband of his undershorts. She pulled them down and off, and she knelt before him and put her hands on his thighs. Slowly, she ran her hands up his legs.
Then, with a sexy throaty giggle, she sprang away from him and put her hands to her breasts, shaking them temptingly. She released them, took a deep breath, and stepped toward him.
He took a breath himself.
Then he drove his clenched fist into her mouth hard enough to smash her teeth.
* * *
"I tried to call you the other day," Roy Archer was saying. "Your line was busy."
Sheila looked at him, nodded mindlessly. "What did you want?"
"To see you. I was bored, nothing to do and no place to go. I felt like company."
"And I was elected?"
"Uh-huh. How come you're here, Sheila? You're not exactly part of the television crowd."
"You're telling me?" She grinned at Archer, thinking that he was a fairly decent sort of a guy. "Orders from on high. Orders I could safely ignore if I had anything better to do tonight. I didn't The boss got the idea that I might meet some important prospects here tonight. Are you an important prospect, Mr. Archer?"
"I'm an important alcoholic," he said. "Meet any of the other kind yet?"
"I saw a client of mine. A girl named Cindy Walsh. I think she's an actress of some sort."
"I know her."
"You do?"
"Uh-huh." He hesitated. "She does some commercials," he said evenly. "She's a real pro, that gir."
"I'm doing her apartment."
He nodded. "Don't look now," he said, "but the mass exodus is commencing. See all the folk heading for the other room?"
"What's the attraction?"
"Movies," he said. "Not the usual run, according to what I heard. Stag, but with a difference. One of the gals in the film made this picture a few years ago when she was struggling on the Coast. She made it in a big way. Top star now."
"Who?"
"Nobody but Karen Howard." She stared. "You're kidding," she said. "Karen Howard in a stag movie?"
"Uh-huh."
"You mean it?"
"I mean it," he said. "Unless somebody was lying to me. This film's a live one, not the junk they show to the American Legion in Yellow Springs, Ohio. The full treatment -- color, sound, the works. They filmed it oh the RPA lot in Hollywood. Sort of a spectacular."
"How come--"
"How come nobody burned it when she got big? The guy who owns this print hates Karen Howard. He was balling her, you should pardon the expression, and she broke it off, and there was some kind of ugly scene. This is his way of getting even." He paused, looked her over: "Want to see the film, Miss Markham?"
She grinned wickedly. "Lead the way, Mr. Archer," she said. "I wouldn't miss it for the world. After all, Karen Howard is one of my favorite actresses."
CHAPTER EIGHT
"Then you're an Assistant Director," Sharon Storm said. "Is that right?"
The young man nodded.
"It must be awfully exciting," Sharon Storm said. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other so that her hip rubbed against the young man's leg. "I mean, I'm just getting started as an actress. And that's awfully exciting."
"Well," the young man said.
"I just love television," Sharon Storm said. She yawned and stretched, drawing her big breasts into sharp relief against the thin fabric of her dress. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Bunny Forrest studying her with an unhappy glint in his eye. "I just love it," she went on dreamily. "I'd love to get some work with your show. I mean, golly, I'd just love it!"
"Would you?"
"Golly, yes."
"Well," the young man said. "Maybe... unn... maybe something could be done."
"Honest?"
"You never can tell," the young man said.
"Golly," Sharon Storm said. Bunny Forrest was still looking at her, and she wanted to go over to him and tell him to get that worried look out of his eyes. After all, this wasn't just anybody. This was an assistant director, whatever that meant.
"Listen," she said, "we have to discuss this."
"Well-- "
"You come with me," she said, leading him to a bedroom. "You come with me and we can talk this over."
On the way she put her hand on him and gave him a friendly squeeze.
In the movie room, everything was set and ready to roll. The house lights were turned down, the projector was about to project, and the audience was suitably silent.
On a love seat near the rear, Sheila Markham and Roy Archer sat side by side. They were not touching one another, did not feel especially sexy toward one another. They were simply two pleasant people waiting for the movie to begin.
Cindy Walsh sat on a pillow on the floor. On one side of her, a fat bald man sat on another pillow. On the other side of her, on still another pillow, was a tall thin man with very long black hair. Cindy sat looking at the darkened screen and wondering which of them would be the first to put his hands on her. She hoped she would at least get a chance to watch the movie.
"Okay," someone said. "Let 'er roll!" And the movie started.
------
TITLE CARD: BEN WHORE.
CREDITS: (Flashing one at a time across the screen.) Produced By Lezzi-Doo Productions. Directed by Elia Shazam, Screenplay by Sammy Glick. Etc., etc., etc.
LONG SHOT of a large, kidney-shaped swimming pool at night, illuminated by overhead lighting. Camera moves in for a medium shot of the water, rippling. A head emerges, a face smiles. It is Karen Howard. Her blonde hair is wet and her red lips glisten with beads of water. She swims slowly to the side of the pool and b. ins to climb out, moving very slowly.
Her body is naked. The camera studies her from the front as more and more of her flesh emerges above the water-line. First her very large breasts come into view. Then her flat stomach, then her opulent hips. She steps completely out of the pool and walks over to the diving board, with the camera following her from the rear. Her buttocks glide from side to side as she walks and the camera follows them.
She lies down on her back upon the diving board, arms at her sides, legs slightly parted. The camera slowly pans her body from head to toe, concentrating closely on her breasts and her loins. She yawns, raises one perfect leg, points her toe. She does the same with her other toe.
She sings: "I'm as itchy as a inchworm in the Summer; I'm as lusty as a brood mare in the Spring. I'm as hot to trot as a stallion, and it isn't even Spring."
Then, still lying on her back upon the diving board, she begins to run her hands over the perfect contours of her body. Her hands cup her breasts, give them a gentle squeeze. She fingers each nipple in turn, until the pink buds are stiff with incipient passion. Her hands sweep down over ivory flesh below her stomach, and her hands investigate.
EXTREME CLOSE-UP of the area under investigation, with the hands playing' freely.
LONG-SHOT of the girl on the diving board.
MEDIUM SHOT of the pool. The water is rippling again, and now a head emerges. A man, tall and rangy and bronzed by the sun, swims swiftly to the side of the pool, climbs the ladder. Like Karen Howard, he too is naked. The camera studies his body carefully and focuses upon his firm manhood. He walks slowly to Karen Howard, who does not seem to notice him.
The man moves to the foot of the diving board. He stoops in front of the girl, takes one of her feet in both hands and presses it to his lips. He kisses the other foot, then moves forward to kiss Karen's calves and knees. She still does not seem to be aware of his presence. He begins to kiss her thighs, running his lips over her sensitive skin.
Higher.
Now at last Karen Howard notices him. She raises the upper half of her body and her breasts lean forward temptingly.
"My," she says. "What a wonderful man you are."
His lips ease along her thigh.
"What are you doing, sugar?"
The man looks at her. "This is a diving board, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"Well," the man says, "I'm a diver."
And he suits his actions to his words. The camera studies the exercise from every angle, moves back from time to time for a shot of Karen's face, contorted with passion. Then, when the action reaches a powerful climax, the two spring off the diving board into the water below.
------
When David Eisen struck the Puerto Rican harlot m the mouth, she fell back in terror. It was quite a punch. Several of her front teeth splintered, and blood gushed from her wounded mouth. She put up her hands in front of her and her eyes went wide with pain and raw terror.
For a moment, the sight of her pain and fear was a shock to him. But then it became a spur, an exciting ingredient. He was in motion now, on fire, gripped by a passion that he could not pretend to understand. He sprang at her. She put up her hands to ward him off, but his body crashed headlong into her and forced her down on the bed.
Her lips parted for a scream.
And he hit her again.
"You sweet little whore," he said. "You sweet little tormented harlot."
She lay cowering in terror while he walked over to where his pants lay and went through his pockets. He took out the small knife that he had used a night ago to sever the suede strap of the man's Omega watch. He opened the knife and carried it back to the bed. When she saw the gleaming blade she turned white.
Pain and pleasure. The more it hurt her, the sweeter his pleasure would be. The more intense her agony, the more intense his enjoyment of the act Pain.
He put the palm of his hand over her bleeding mouth, pinched her nostrils shut with his thumb and forefinger. He leaned his weight upon her naked body and placed the keen tip of his knife on the pale skin between the ripe globes of her breasts.
He drew the knife straight downward. The cut he made was an eighth of an inch deep and four inches long, and blood welled from it in a narrow river.
She twisted in pain.
He lowered his head, took the nipple of one breast between his lips, sucked it. A thrill of lust surged through his body. His teeth parted, moved to surround the nipple.
He bit down as hard as he could.
She shrieked then, and part of the scream got past his hand. Her eyes were rolling in her head and her lips were parted for another cry into the night.
He slammed both fists into her face, stopping the scream. Then he lifted her head by the ears and slammed the back of her skull into the wall behind the bed. Her head made an awful sound when it crashed into the wall. She shuddered violently, closed her eyes, lay still as death.
For a horrible second he thought she was dead. Not that it mattered, really -- the life or death of one more Spic whore was a matter of indifference to David Eisen. But he did not want to kill her now, not until he had had the full measure of his fun with her. He reached for her wrists, felt for her pulse. It was there, weak but steady. He took a deep breath and relaxed.
She was unconscious for the time being. It wouldn't do to let her scream again; it was too risky, even in Spanish Harlem where screams in the night are generally taken for granted and ignored.
There was a pillow on the bed. It was covered with a pillow-case, filthy and spotted. He took the case from the pillow and tore it into strips. He spread her legs, bound each ankle to an opposite corner of the foot of the bed. He tied her wrists to the head of the bed, neatly spread-eagling her. Then he made a gag out of the remaining strips of cloth and fastened it in her mouth. She would be able to grunt a little through her nostrils, but she could not make a loud sound now.
He was trembling now, trembling in the grip of lust. He wanted to fall on her, to stab her with the sword that was part of him, to take his pleasure with her and empty his lust into the warm wet softness of her body. But he restrained himself. It could not be good unless she was awake, able to feel it, able to writhe in agony and moan with pain.
He could afford to wait.
* * *
Cindy sat watching the movie. It was not the first stag movie she had seen in her life, not by a long shot. When you earn your living -- and a good living at that -- as a high-priced call girl, there are blessed few varieties of sexual experience with which you do not sooner or later come into contact. More than once she had had clients who wanted her to watch a movie with them as a prelude to bedroom gymnastics. One time, in fact, a man and wife had hired her. The three of them had watched the movie together, and then she had done something oral to the wife, and then she had done something likewise to the husband, and then she had sat around watching while husband and wife knocked off a placid little drama together. So she had seen a great many stag films in her life. But never like this.
This one had Karen Howard in it. And Karen Howard was not only one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, but was also the girl she and Myra had privately voted the girl they would most like to play dykish games with. Why, Karen Howard was sort of a goddess.
And here was Karen Howard, getting banged all over the place in sound and technicolor and God-knew-what-else.
It was great Simply great.
She kept her eyes on the screen, and then it began. First the bald-headed man beside her put a moist hand on her knee and moved it along under her skirt to her thigh. He kneaded the flesh there absently, but insistently, and she watched the movie and felt the excitement of the film transferring itself to the warmth of his hand on her thigh.
I'm getting warm, she thought happily. I'm actually getting warm, and this nut next to me wants to make it, and if you have to make it at a party it certainly doesn't hurt if you're a little bit warm, does it?
It didn't.
She kept her eyes on the screen, and she covered the man's hand with her own hand and moved it up higher to the spot where it would do the most good. And then, while she was sort of wiggling her legs and enjoying things, the other man got into the act. He was the tall thin one with the long dark hair, and without any preliminaries at all he stuffed one hand down the front of her dress and grabbed onto her left breast.
It was sort of fun, too.
A lot of fun.
A hell of a lot of fun, as a matter of fact. The bald-headed man sat beside her on the right doing nice things with his stubby fingers, and the long-haired man sat beside her on the left tweaking her nipples, and she sat wiggling and squirming and getting warmer every lovely minute.
There was only one problem.
It wasn't much of a problem, she told herself It was like having two delicious desserts on the table and worrying because you couldn't eat them both at the same time.
Still, it was a problem.
The problem was this: How could she ball the two men sitting next to her and still manage to watch all the delightful things that Karen Howard was doing?
On the screen, Karen Howard was doing more delightful things. After she and the sun-bronzed young man had tumbled into the pool, they had cavorted for a few hundred feet of film, doing some things which around in the shallow end of the kidney-shaped affair might have been difficult to arrange on dry land. Then they got out of the water and did some more things, and then they stretched out on the concrete poolside and closed their eyes.
------
They are like that now. The camera moves back for a long shot of their bare bodies, then pans across the pool. Once again the water is rippling. A head emerges, the head of a very young girl. She swims around idly, apparently ignorant of the presence of Karen and her current lover. They, however, do not fail to see her. The camera moves back for a two-shot of them.
Karen: "Look at that, will you?"
Man: "What nice little boobs she has."
Karen: "Let's have some fun with her, huh?"
Man: "Let's teach her what its all about."
They get to their feet, dive gracefully into the pool. The girl sees them and tries to swim away. They are too swift for her, however, and they cut neatly through the water and catch her, one on either side of her. She struggles fiercely in the water, but the man holds her by the arms and Karen catches her around the waist and the two of them half-carry and half-drag her out of the pool. The girl, too, is naked. When they are at the side of the pool, Karen stands aside while the man continues to hold the girl from the rear. The camera pans her body slowly.
The girl is very young and very attractive. Her hair is dark brown, her skin clear and lightly tanned. Her breasts art very small and quite perfectly formed; her stomach flat as a flounder, her buttocks boyish and trim.
Karen reaches out a hand, grips one of the girl's breasts. She fingers it greedily.
Karen: "Look at this hunk of meat."
Man: "She's got lots of nice things."
Karen: "Yes. How about down here?"
The camera watches as they prod and poke at the various attractions of the girl. From time to time the camera moves for an extreme close-up of the girl's face, contorted in pain and humiliation.
Karen: "Get to your knees, you filthy slut."
The girl hesitates. The man grips her by the breasts and forces her down to her knees. Karen steps forward, takes the girl's head, forces it into position. Then, in graphically explicit language, she tells the girl what she must do.
The girl obeys.
And the man moves behind the girl, positions himself, and thrusts home. The camera investigates their exercise in troilism from every possible angle, revealing to the audience just what the man is doing to the girl and just what the girl is doing to Karen.
In the background, music builds to a crescendo. Karen Howard's whole magnificent body is churning as site thrusts her hips forward spasmodically in the timeless rhythms of love. The man thrusts, pivots, powers his fiery force into the girl. The girl, caught between two fires, does the best she can.
This goes on.
And on.
And on.
------
The young assistant director was lying on the bed. His eyes were closed and his body was covered with oily sweat.
Sharon Storm said, "Well?"
"Well what?"
"Are you happy?"
"Happy as all hell," the young assistant director said. "Talk about screen tests."
"Do you like me?"
"You're hell on wheels," the young assistant director said. "Son of a gun, you're such a young kid. Where in hell did you learn all those tricks?"
"I'm a born actress," Sharon said.
"I'll tell the world. You want a part on the show?"
"Golly, yes."
"Golly," the young assistant director said, reflectively. "Well, I'll see what I can do. I promise you that. Ill see just what I can do."
"I'd appreciate that."
"You would?"
"Uh-huh."
"What would you do to show your appreciation?"
"Nice things," Sharon said.
"You already did nice things," the young assistant director said. "You did some of the nicest things that have ever been done."
"Oh, that was nothing."
"It was?"
"Golly, yes. Nothing at all. If I get a part on the show, I'll teach you things you never even read about."
The young assistant director sighed. "One hell of a doll," he said. "I have a hunch you've got a great career ahead of you, kitten. A great career."
"You're sweet."
"Am I?"
"Uh-huh. Sweet enough to eat."
"Well?"
"You just get me the part," Sharon Storm said. "You just get me the part and then we'll see what happens."
* * *
David Eisen was smoking a cigarette when the prostitute regained consciousness. He watched her struggle against her bonds, watched as she opened her eyes.
Then he put out the cigarette in her navel.
She tried to scream, of course, but the gag stopped it. She churned in agony as the cigarette burned itself out in her navel, and while she was writhing he bent down to sink his teeth into the tender flesh on the underside of one breast. He bit her hard enough to draw blood, and he sucked on the blood and swallowed it like a vampire.
For half an hour, David Eisen tortured the girl. He burned her breasts and loins with lighted cigarettes. He made small incisions on her breasts and thighs with his pen-knife, and he sucked the blood that welled from the open cuts. He cut her heel tendons, and he broke her wrists, and he smashed more of her teeth.
It was brutal, vicious, vile. And everything he did only intensified his own passion, only excited him that much further. Until finally his passion was too much to bear, and with a snort of raw fury he hurled himself upon the girl and rammed into the tortured pit of her body. She moaned in pain, and he plunged again and again into her, beating at her face with his fists, biting her breasts with his angry teeth, going on and on and on and on and on -- Until, at the end, his passion was a belt of white hot lightning, a surging river of hot lava, and he hit the peak of pleasure and quivered with the intensity of fulfillment greater than anything he had ever known. She was crying, tears spilling from her eyes, and he shivered and shook and quivered and rocked and then, at last, lay blissfully still.
At last he stood up, groped for his clothes. He got dressed slowly and deliberately while she lay on the bed, aching and half-dead, her eyes on him. Then, as a finale, he walked to the side of the bed and opened the nightstand drawer. There was the twenty-dollar bill, still crisp and fresh.
He showed her the bill. Then he started to put it back in his wallet. He stopped suddenly. That was punishment, but not nearly as poetic as it might be.
How would Sade have done it?
It came to him in a flash, as ideas often come to men of genius. He took the bill out of his wallet, a wild light in his eyes, and he bent down to tuck the bill into that little sweet part of her where he had so recently taken his pleasure. He put the bill in there, leaving only a small corner of the bill exposed.
He scratched a match and set fire to the corner.
Then, smiling hugely, he strode out of the room and locked the door behind him.
He hurried through the streets of Harlem, calm, very sure of himself. Other men might be afraid when they were in Harlem, but he knew full well that he was not like other men. Other men were timid, frightened, victims rather than masters of their fate. He was the criminal genius, the master of pain, the king of torture, the God of depravity.
It had been good.
Incredibly good.
Impossibly good.
He wondered what would happen in the room. Would the bed catch fire? If it did, the whore would burn to a horrible death. If it didn't, her torture would still be complete. Either way the evening had served as a fitting initiation into the mysteries of passionate pain.
Not perfect, though. As he sat in a Third Avenue luncheonette, out of Harlem and back in Yorkville, he realized the flaws in the evening's program. It had not been perfect by any stretch of the imagination. The act had lacked form. It was all haphazard and unplanned, and the truly perfect crimes were not like that. They had a distinct pattern to them, an observable rhythm, a proper rise and fall. Each act was characterized by one specific torture which was complete in and of itself.
In Justine, for example, one of the heroic villains had devised a game which appealed to David's imagination. The female victim was made to sit upon a stool with a noose around her neck. She was given a knife. Then the villain kicked the stool away, and the girl had to cut the noose with the knife before she strangled to death. If she managed it, the whole process was repeated-- until, finally, she died horribly.
David Eisen smiled.
Next time he would do better.
* * *
Roy Archer sat close to Sheila Markham. The movie, he sensed, was almost over. He had had a full glass of vodka in his hand when the movie began, and now he had an empty glass, and normally he would have needed a drink at this point.
He didn't need a drink.
He needed a woman.
The movie was a spectacular, he thought. The inside gags, the show biz bright spots, were a lot of fun. But the simple strength of the sex-play was enough to send you into a tailspin, all puns intended. It would have been unbearable to watch a film like that alone. When you were sitting next to a woman like Sheila Markham, and when the two of you were sitting in stony silence and watching the film together, it became sheer torture.
He wanted to reach for her, to grab her. He glanced over the audience and saw that a great many people had already given way to the suggestive power of the film. Cindy Walsh was being used by two men at once, one from the front and the other from the rear, and the threesome on the floor was almost as interesting to watch as the threesome on the screen. A pair of flowery faggots were making a number on the other side of the room, and a pair of dykes were dyking around near the front, and the whole damn place was turning into an orgy.
Archer couldn't stand it.
Then, slowly, Shelia turned to him. There were bright beads of sweat on her upper lip and her eyes were wild. She reached out a hand and he caught it. She fell into his arms, trembling.
She said: "I need you."
-God--"
"I need you so bad I can't stand it. Roy, not here. Not like this, not a mob scene, not in front of all these people. That's not the way I want it."
"Neither do I."
"My apartment," she said. "All right?"
"Fine."
"Let's go. Do you have a car downstairs?"
"No."
"Then we'll get a cab. Roy, I think we might wind up doing it in the cab. Roy, I'm so excited I'm burning up. Roy, do you have any idea how ready I am?"
"I've got a good idea."
"Oh, don't"
"What?"
"Don't touch me there."
"Why not? Don't you like it?"
"Oh, hell. Oh, I don't think I can wait until we get in the cab, I really don't. I don't even think I have the strength to go to the nearest bedroom. Let me touch you, Roy. Let me."
"Who's stopping you?"
"I don't know. Oh, Christ. I just love it, I'm aching for it, I need it. Can we?"
"Uh-huh."
"Can we -- now?"
"I don't see why not."
"This damn love seat. Oh. God, it feels wonderful. Oh, it's great, it's divine, oh, do that some more, oh, don't stop, don't stop, oh, don't ever stop, oh, it feels so great, it's so great, oh."
* * *
Cindy had her eyes closed. She was lying face-down on the floor, and she had her eyes closed, and she couldn't move.
It was spectacular.
First the movie. Then the bald-headed guy and the long-haired guy, both of them giving it to her at once. I mean, what more could any girl ask for?
It was great.
And now she couldn't move. The motion picture, a sure Oscar-winner in any man's eyes, was still going on. But she just didn't have the strength to watch it.
What a party, she thought. What a film, what a pair of men, and what a party! For a while she had been under the impression that she was losing her taste for men. For a while, during which time she got fewer and fewer kicks from men and more and more excitement from girls like Myra Teale, she had been under the distinct impression that men were ceasing to turn her on.
Which did not seem to be true.
What a great life, she thought. What a terrific life. You slept until noon, and you had all the free time you wanted, and you earned a positive fortune, and you just worked a couple of hours a day, and your work consisted of doing the greatest thing in the world. What other line of work was that rewarding? Nothing that she could think of, nothing at all.
And tonight -- why, it was too much to think about. Tonight she came to this party, and she met a whole bunch of nice guys who didn't even know she was a tramp, and she got good liquor to drink and good food to eat, and she watched the sexiest epic in the history of Hollywood, and she balled a couple of real nice fellows, and for all of this some joker was paying her two hundred dollars. Now where else would you get benefits like that? Nowhere.
And to think that she had almost turned down the party. Why, it was just amazing, that was all there was to it. Amazing, and fun, and wheel She opened her eyes, scrambled to her hands and knees. A man was sitting on the floor a few feet away from her, watching the movie. She crawled over to him and threw her arms around him.
"C'mon," she said. "Let's have some action."
What a life, she thought, as his hand found her breasts. What a life, she told herself, as he fell on top of her. What a life, she sighed, as his body did delicious things to her body.
What a life!
* * *
On the screen, the action sort of played itself out. There are a great many things that two women and a man can do together, and Karen and the sun-bronzed man and the dainty little girl had done almost all of them. At first the girl fought the action, and then, perhaps for the sake of variety, she became a gleeful participant.
But now the picture was drawing to a close, not because it was moving inexorably to a dramatic climax but more because the threesome had exhausted their repertoire -- or their stamina.
------
Karen Howard stands up, walks slowly across camera to the diving board. She poises at the tip of the board, her toes curled over the edge, her arms out in front of her. She springs on the board, her breasts bobbing like ripe melons.
The young girl stands up now, walks after Karen. She too moves onto the diving board, stepping close behind Karen and tossing her arms around the tall blonde's magnificent body. Her body rubs up against Karen's plump buttocks and her breasts are flattened against Karen's back. Her hands, small and dainty, reach around to cup the fragrant fullness of Karen's breasts.
And the man, too, gets up and joins them. He steals up behind the young girl, cementing himself to her while his own hands reach past to grip Karen's thighs and sneak into the secret crevices of her lush body.
They bob up and down, together. They bounce on the board, going higher and higher.
Then, for a finale, the three of them leap high into the air and plummet into the pool.
TITLE CARD: THE LIVING END.
------
CHAPTER NINE
Saturday, in accordance with law, custom, and common knowledge, is followed by Sunday.
So Sunday came. Now, to be perfectly kind, we ought to forget all about Sunday. I mean, here was this party, you see, and it was quite a party, not to say orgy, and it happened on Saturday night, and if you think Sunday was a picnic you have alfalfa between your ears. Sunday, needless to report, was pure hell. Everybody had a hangover, and everybody had guilt feelings, and everybody had brains enough not to go to church or take a ride in the country or do anything comparably rash, but at the same time no one had brains enough to commit suicide, which would have been a thoroughly logical move, it being Sunday.
So let's forget Sunday.
Let's move on to Monday.
* * *
Monday.
As usual, Sheila Markham woke up at her desk. Her secretary put a cup of black coffee under her nose. Sheila inhaled it, felt her eyelids beginning to become unglued. She drank the coffee and smoked some cigarettes and dropped fish food into the tank and, gradually, came awake.
At first it was hard for her to get to work. She had a drafting board on her desk, complete with T-square and triangles and such, and she was busy constructing a larger floor-plan of Cindy Walsh's apartment. This was not difficult work. When it was finished, she would cut out scale models of various pieces of furniture and move them around on the floor plan like a young girl playing with a doll house until, ultimately, she managed to achieve just the right balance.
But it was hard for her to concentrate on what she was doing. Time after time the memory of the weekend would leap out at her, catching her with a left hook to the stomach and a right cross to the unprotected jaw, and she would sag in her seat and stare vacantly at the opposite wall.
Saturday night, she kept thinking. Saturday night, from the almost rape on the highway through the hot movie to the wow-boy-thank-you-Roy on the love-seat.
Saturday night.
You're depraved, she told herself solemnly. You are depraved.
She had never thought of herself as depraved before. There had been bad times, when she let her sexual desires carry her away and did things she would not otherwise have done, but she had never before slipped so completely into the pit of lust. It was getting bad, very bad. She was supposed to be a smoothly functioning mechanism, calm and cool and incredibly modern, and she wasn't behaving that way at all. She was acting like an animal, like a brood mare hopped up, like a nympho or something. And it was dirty, very dirty. Sex in a roomful of orgiastic people. Sex with a man she hardly knew.
Sex.
Life would be so much better if she could only teach herself to live without men. There, she thought, was the rub. Men got in your way, men ruined you. Some of them tried to ruin you directly, like the would-be rapist she had picked up on the highway. Others ruined you less openly, a little at a time. They preyed on your weaknesses and snuck inside you and caught at your guts and dragged you down bit by miserable bit to their own low level.
She let out a long sigh, then shook out a cigarette and lit it. Today, she thought, she ought to have a conference with one or the other of her current clients. She should get together with either Sherwood Garver or Cindy Walsh and talk over the ideas she had pieced together so far, with the aim of making some sort of progress. But which one?
It was an easy decision to make in view of her particular mood of the moment. Sherwood Garver was a man, and Cindy Walsh was a woman. That simplified things.
She picked up the phone, dialed a number. When Cindy Walsh answered, she set up an appointment for early in the afternoon.
If Sunday had been a bad day for Roy Archer, then Monday was a hundred times worse. Monday was inordinately bad because it was getting close to time for the weekly Johnny Jingo show to go on the air, and the closer they got to H-hour, the more of a sweat Archer was expected to work up.
That was bad enough. But, as it happened, there was a good deal more troubling Archer.
He was in love.
He was in his office now, talking to some clown on the phone and simultaneously snapping dictation at his secretary, a neat trick when you are devoting all your attention to the twin tasks at hand. It was doubly neat now, because Roy Archer was devoting little enough attention to the dictation and to the conversation.
He was concentrating on Sheila Markham.
Ridiculous, he told himself. Patently ridiculous. Young kids fell in love, young kids who made the mistake of confusing infatuation with a state of permanent devotion. Hardened old men like Roy Archer did not fall in love. They fell into bed, and they fell out of bed. At times it was free and at other times it was reasonable and at other times it was exorbitant It was never love.
He finished the phone call, spat some more words at his secretary and told her to go away and type it up. He reached for the bottle in his drawer, poured out a short shot of vodka and tossed it off. In another damned minute, he thought, the damned phone would ring again. There was only one way to escape the phone, only one place that offered solitude for the busy executive.
So he took the bottle with him and went to the John. He was mildly pleased that the John was empty. New York is an understanding town, surely, but even there people are inclined to stare and raise an eyebrow or two when a television producer waltzes into the can with a bottle of Wolfschmidt's in tow.
Hell with 'em, he thought.
He locked himself in a cubicle, sat down on the pot, uncapped the bottle. He took a short drink straight from the bottle, capped it again, sat back, sighed, lit a cigarette. Now, he thought. Now what's all this manure about love?
Then he thought about Sheila.
Just another broad, he told himself. A broad whom he'd had, and a broad whom a great many others had had, and a broad, from what he had heard, who could be had with a minimum of difficulty. A smart broad, a hip broad, a good-looking broad. But so what?
Another drink. Cap back on bottle.
Hell.
What was he supposed to do? Call her, take her out to dinner, wine her and dine her and sweet-talk her and romance her until, in time, she would be willing to wear his ring on her finger? And for what?
For nothing, he thought. If he married her, if he even let himself care much for her, he would just be cutting his own throat -- or, more accurately, tying an albatross around it. He didn't even believe in love, first of all. But if it did exist it was a temporary form of insanity at best. It would not least. And one fine morning he would wake up and find himself married to something he did not care for at all, and it would be another ride through the old divorce mill, and who ii hell needed it?
Not him.
Not Roy Archer.
He stood up, gave the toilet an unnecessary flush, strode back to his office. His secretary was in the other room, typing industriously. She came in to tell him who had called. He nodded and sent her back to her typewriter.
He picked up the phone, called Bunny Forrest. The hell with it, he told himself. The hell with the Jingo show, it could take care of itself, it would work out. And the hell with Sheila Markham, the hell with her, the hell with love.
"Bunny," he said.
"Yes, baby?"
"The girl," he said. "The Sharon Storm witch. The little underaged piece."
"What about her, Dad?"
"She around?"
"She's not here, Roy. She's over at her own place."
"Can you reach her?"
"I can get her. sure. Something up?"
"You could put it that way. Tell her I want to see her, and fast"
"Right away?"
"Right away."
"Check. Your office, Dad?"
"My apartment," Archer said.
He smiled to himself, noticing how Bunny Forrest tried his best not to gasp audibly over the phone. Then he hung up and leaned back in his chair.
He didn't have to worry about Sheila Markham any longer. He would exorcise her with the young body of Sharon Storm, would purge her with the little hunk of jailbait. He smiled, glad that it would be so easy to rid himself of his new-found obsession.
For a moment the smile died. He frowned briefly, vaguely aware of the loss of something, something that might have been precious. Then he shrugged heavily and got to his feet and left his office. By the time a cab rolled up in front of him he was smiling again.
The second girl was better. David Eisen got the second one Monday, around noon, and it was a little better this time than it had been Saturday night. All day Sunday he had sat around thinking about it, leafing through his copy of Justine, studying Sade's thoughts, formulating his own thoughts, sifting and planning and scheming. When he got the second one, it was better.
First of all, she was not a prostitute. There was a great deal of ease involved in obtaining a prostitute for his purposes, and there was certainly less chance of discovery and consequent punishment, but he had decided Sunday that a prostitute could not possibly be the ultimate source of sadistic pleasure. A virgin would have been ideal, but virgins in this day and age are hard to come by.
The girl he found was adequate.
He found her walking through Times Square at ten o'clock Monday morning. Times Square is home for the floaters who have floated to New York -- the runaways, the dreamers, the driven. They all wind up there, drifting from movie house to hot dog stand to pizza parlor, standing and talking out of the sides of their mouths, cadging cigarettes, picking one another up for joyless visits to West Side hotels, looking to cop marijuana or cocaine or heroin. David Eisen went to Times Square knowing what he might find there.
He found her.
A brunette, eighteen or nineteen, dull-eyed, cheerless. Washed out hair, sleepless eyes. A good body, though -- her skin-tight blue jeans told him everything he needed to know about her hips, and her skin-tight yellow sweater bulged with breast-flesh.
She was standing outside the Lyric, looking at the posters and stills that advertised a pair of unappealing Westerns. He saw her, decided on her, and went into the bit. He sauntered up like a Method actor, popped a cigarette into a corner of his mouth, reached around her to settle one hand on her shoulder.
"Hey," he said.
She turned, looked at him. "Oh," she said.
"Bad flics," he told her. "A pair of real beat-up dogs."
"You seen 'em?"
"Mmmmm," he said.
"I wouldn't go," she said. "But I seen every other movie on the street, you know. And I like movies. Nothing I like better'n to sit in a seat and just watch a movie and get all lost watching it. I can watch movies all day, can you believe it? I mean, it's not a thing for me to go to a movie and see two pictures and then walk out and go into another movie and see two more pictures. I mean all four of them like that in a row."
God, he thought. God, she was the stupidest girl in the world. But it didn't matter. Her head might be thick, but her skin was as thin as anyone else's. She would be able to feel pain, she would be able to provide pleasure, and nothing else mattered.
"You gonna see these movies?"
"Well-- "
"Somethin' else we could do," he said.
She took little persuading. All she wanted was someplace to go, something to do, someone to pay a little attention to her. He took her around the corner on Eighth Avenue and stopped long enough to buy a bottle of Old Mr. Boston. He hurried her up Eighth Avenue and west half a block to a hotel with a neon sign, ROOMS. The clerk on duty was sipping muscatel through a straw. The bottle was wrapped up in a brown paper bag but the clerk was fooling no one, and could not have cared less.
In the room -- old cracked mirror, worn-out bed, permanent smell of lust and liquor -- she was not passionate, not reluctant. She was simply permissive, yielding, acquiescent She knew they had come to the room to make love, but she did not expect any particular thrill from the activity. It was something to do, and she spent her whole life looking furiously for things to do. She did not expect to enjoy it. That would have been nice, but she did not expect it. She was not the type of person who took pleasure for granted.
For the hell of it, he heated her up first. He stretched out on the bed with her and necked and petted, rubbing her big firm breasts and sneaking his fingers under her blue jeans. She took off her sweater so that he could get to her breasts. He kissed them, teasing her with tiny nibbles, and gradually passion took possession of her body and she was squirming out of her blue jeans, wriggling on the bed, moaning for him to do it to her.
He did it to her.
He did it with a lamp. It was an unplanned inspiration -- there was a lamp at the side of the bed, unshaded, just a bare bulb screwed into a socket. The lamp had been on when they entered the room, had probably been burning for hours. The bulb was hotter than hell. He picked up the lamp by the base, turned it in his hand, and shoved it bulb-first between her rolling thighs.
She screamed.
God, how she screamed! The shriek tore out of her mouth, loud and long and shrill, and it didn't stop until he reversed the lamp in his hand and struck her savagely across the jaw with it. Then she slumped and her eyes turned glassy and she passed out It was strange, he thought, strange but true. The necking and the petting, the breast-kissing and the handling, all of these things had done nothing to him. They had excited the little slut no end but they had had no comparable effect upon him. But the scream made a man out of him, the scream wormed into the marrow of his bones and set him shivering with excitement.
He didn't tie her up as he had done with the prostitute Saturday night. Let her struggle, he thought. Let her fight a little. But he did use her underpants -- used them to make a rude gag that would effectively prevent her from screaming again. One scream could pass unnoticed in a Hell's Kitchen hotel; screams there were a common occurrence, and not worth noticing. But another similar shriek might be dangerous.
When she came to, he smiled at her. Her eyes were wide as dinner plates and she got to her feet and made a run for the door. He let her get almost to the door before he took three steps after her and hurled the lamp against the small of her back. She doubled up in agony and fell to her knees, and then he kicked her hard enough in the side to shatter three ribs.
It was hard for him to control himself now. He wanted to fall upon her, to hurt every bit of her tender young flesh at once, to make her bleed, to cut her, to bite her, to burn her flesh, everything, all of it at once. But that would be wrong. It would lack poetry, rhythm. He had to stick to his plan.
You couldn't torture a woman in a hit-or-miss fashion. You had to decide just what sort of pain you wanted to induce, and you had to determine just what area of the woman you wanted to apply this torture to. The Twentieth Century was the era of specialization, wasn't it? Even in pain, one could not permit one's self to be a general practitioner.
He dragged the girl to the feet, hurled her across the room. She landed on the bed. He walked over to her, his lips curled in a hideous smile.
"Behave," he told her levelly. "Do what I tell you. Otherwise I'll have to kill you."
She turned white, but she didn't move. He walked around the bed, studying the girl from every angle.
He decided on her breasts.
He decided to burn them.
* * *
When he left the room at noon the sun was high in the sky and his whole body was surging with the pure delight of tremendous desire completely gratified. In a way, he was sorry that he had killed the girl. He had not meant to kill her, and he didn't like to do things without planning them. But her death had come at the right time, and it precluded the possibility that she could go running to the police. In that sense, at least, it was worthwhile.
He got on a subway train and sank into a seat, his bright eyes shining. He had burned her bulky breasts until they were masses of pulpy roasted flesh. He had clipped off her nipples with his pen-knife; when he did that, she screamed through the gag and passed out. He brought her to, and he kneaded her aching breasts so that every movement of his strong hands sent jolts of pure agony through her body, and he hurled himself upon her and stabbed into her, letting all his passion spill over and boil off in the cauldron of her pain.
It was then that he had strangled her. He hadn't v meant to. But somehow his hands got around her throat, and somehow, as his body pounded into her body, his hands had tightened and tightened and tightened and, with a horrible and delicious sob and shudder, she had quite beautifully died.
He was sorry about it, but only because he had not planned it. From now on, he promised himself, he would always kill them. Every single time.
* * *
For lunch, Cindy Walsh pan-browned a can of corned beef hash, poached a pair of eggs on it, stirred chocolate syrup into a large cold glass of skimmed milk, topped a hunk of apple pie with a chunk of sharp cheddar, and drank a few cups of coffee. Then she relaxed in front of the television set with a cigarette and waited for her decorator to come.
Just like a woman of importance, she thought. A woman of leisure. What was it that one of the Johns used to call her? The Madame de Pompadour of the Twentieth Century, or something like that. She laughed, then sobered as one of the characters in the soap opera went through an abridged version of Hell.
Well, she thought, this was the way to live. Sleep all morning, take a luxurious bubble bath, eat a good lunch, and then confer with the decorator on the ideal decor of her apartment. It was funny, though, the way she had run into Sheila at that crazy party Saturday night. Had Sheila recognized her? She wasn't sure. And had Sheila guessed why she was there?
Don't be silly, she thought. You don't especially look like a whore.
She put out her cigarette, leaned back in her chair and thought about Sheila. The little three-way stretch at the party, during which two men had loved her up simultaneously, had convinced her for the time being to give up girls and stick to men, for pleasure as well as for business. No more of this confusing Lesbian stuff. No more meeting Myra Teale after the evening's tricks were turned and heading homeward for a few drinks and a lot of love.
Who needed it?
It had all seemed sensible enough at the time. If Sunday had been a day of rest instead of a day of toil, she might have stuck to her vow, at least for a little while. But Sunday was not a day of rest at all. Along with the hangovers -- two of them, one sexual and the other alcoholic -- she had had the unjoy of turning four tricks. Each of the tricks had been with a man, naturally enough, and each had been for a princely sum of money, and each had been an utter and complete bore, and by the time the fourth trick had been turned she decided that she had, last night, been quite out of her mind. Once in a great while, when luck broke for her, she could have some fun with a man. But that was no reason . to give up girls.
And she thought again of Sheila Markham.
Was the blonde gay? Not likely, judging from what the bio. had been doing with Roy on the love seat -- she's had a quick peek of that action, and it was wild. Still -- Well, you just never knew. Why, back in her own home town when she had been busy doing thigh-stretching exercises for every man or boy who was in the mood to help her stretch her thighs, it would have been a hard bet to pick a less likely prospect for lesbianism. You just could tell, and that was all there was to it.
So maybe Sheila had made the gay scene already. Or maybe she hadn't -- but she would if you hit her with the right approach.
What was the right approach?
Cindy got to her feet, started to pace the floor. It would certainly be worth it if it worked, she thought. Sheila was built magnificently, and she was beautiful, and she would probably be dynamite in the rack.
But how did she go about it?
Play it by ear, she thought. Sheila was coming over in a few hours. They would go over the blonde girl's ideas together, and Cindy would show a great interest in everything, and sit close to her on the couch, and sort of brush up against her now and then. And she would keep pouring Scotch for Shelia, and with a slight modicum of luck Sheila would get plowed, and from that point on it would not be tremendously difficult.
Fun.
Loads of fun. Oodles of fun.
It might work and it might not, and either way it would be fun finding out. She knew plenty of tricks and that was one big point in her favor. Men -- men didn't know a damned thing, ninety-nine times out of a hundred. Men got on and rode for awhile and then got off, and they just didn't know the first thing about getting a woman in the mood.
But she knew.
Her mouth watered in anticipation. In her mind's eye, Sheila Markham was already nude, already lying on a bed, already trembling with desire. She could imagine the feel of the girl's body in her own capable hands, could imagine how the girl would look and feel and sound and smell. And taste.
* * *
Bunny Forrest cut a piece of London Broil, chewed k reflectively, swallowed. He looked up over his plate and smiled hesitantly. He said: "Well."
"You know how it is, Bunny," the other man said. "I mean, I wouldn't say otherwise, Roy's a great guy, everybody knows that, it's a fact."
"I know it, Baby."
"Of course."
"He's done a lot for me," Bunny said. "Sure."
"Like everything I am today, I owe it all to one man."
"Sure."
"Roy Archer."
"I know that, Bunny."
Bunny nodded, drank some more water, cut another piece of meat. He paused with the fork halfway to his mouth, set it down, took another drink of water.
"Of course," he said, "Roy's got problems."
"That's the whole point."
"A drinking problem, I mean."
"You know it," the man said. "Everybody knows it, Bunny. The question is, how long can he hold up?"
"It's a question."
"And what if he falls all at once? Where are you?"
"That's also a question."
"There are people," the man said. "People who could... uh... well, hasten Roy's tumble. Listen, I don't have to mince words with you, Bunny. I've known you a long time."
"Years."
"Years. Roy could get dumped. He's very big and he's been blowing things to hell lately, he doesn't hold up his end of things, all sorts of bits, you know what I mean, don't you, Bunny?"
"I'm with you, Dad."
"Sure," the man said. He stopped, took a huge breath of air, acting as though it was due to be rationed any day. "Now the point is this," he said. "The point is, Bunny, where do you stand?"
Bunny said: "Well."
"You could stay with Roy. I mean, he did do a lot for you."
__, "This is true, Dad."
"And then again--"
"Then again," Bunny said, "T could cut his throat."
"That's strong language, Bunny."
"Well."
The man cleared his throat, gulped more air. "The point is this," he said. "Roy is like a big tree, Bunny. You and me, we're just a couple of seedlings."
"I like that. Seedlings."
"Well, Bunny. I mean, Roy's a big tree, he takes a lot of space. If he falls down, there's suddenly plenty of room in the forest"
"Well."
"I mean, you could be a producer, Bunny. Your own show."
Bunny held up a hand. "Hang on," he said. "No, none of that. None of that producer jazz. I don't want any of that action. I want a weekly check and I want other people to get big enough to get knifed. Me, I don't want to get that big. A lot of money, that's all. Money I like. The rest you can have."
"Well, Bunny."
"But otherwise I dig what you're saying," he went on quickly. "I truly do."
"Axe you with it?"
"Sure," he said slowly. "Sure, I'm with it. But you got to give me three dollars in the dimes, first." The man looked at him.
"That's thirty pieces of silver," Bunny Forrest said. "Oh, the hell with it. Where the hell's our waiter?" He shrugged. "I could use a damn drink."
The bell rang. Archer opened his apartment door, looked at the girl standing there. Sharon Storm, he thought. Sharon Storm, young and sweet and innocent and just plain aching to flop for a genuine teevee producer.
"Come in," he said.
She followed him inside, got rid of her coat while he closed the door and fixed a pair of drinks. He sat down on the couch and she sat down next to him. She sipped her drink and her eyes met his over the brim of the glass.
"I got here as quickly as I could," she said. "I'm glad you wanted to see me, Mr. Archer."
"You're a sweet kid," he said.
"And you're a very nice man. You've done some wonderful things for me, Mr. Archer."
He put his arm around her, felt the dainty softness of her flesh. How old was she? Fifteen? God.
She set her drink aside, cuddled closer to him He could feel the warmth of her body. "I'm just so very grateful," she said. "Just as grateful as can be, Mr. Archer. If there's anything I can possibly do to show how grateful I am --" His voice was hoarse. He said: "Take off your clothes."
She didn't waste time. She was sweet and innocent and about as embarrassed as a ten-cent whore in Cairo. She hopped to her feet and peeled to her skin and dropped into his lap like manna from Heaven.
He held her, caressed her. He pinched the tips of her bountiful breasts and he ran his hands up her thighs. She vibrated under his touch, soft as feathers and hot as a stove.
And then he gave a gentle push, his hands tenderly easing her off his lap and letting her drop to the floor in front of the couch. For the smallest moment she looked quite surprised, but then she got the message and the trace of a smile appeared on her very willing lips, and her little fifteen-year-old hand reached out for him.
He said: "You sweet little child, you little darling, you honey."
She did not say anything.
He stroked her hair, and he said: "You little lover, you sweet little dear."
She did not say anything.
He said: "Oh, don't stop, baby, sugar, don't ever stop."
She did not say anything. She couldn't.
CHAPTER TEN
The stage was set, Cindy thought. The stage was set and everything was building nicely. There they were, sitting side by lovely side upon her couch, drinks at hand, music on the record player. The music was jazz, good hard bop with Coltrane reaching out wildly and intensely on the tenor and a good group cooking behind him. The drinks were Scotch for Sheila and an Orange Blossom for Cindy. The Orange Blossom was light -- she didn't want to let alcohol slow her down. The Scotch was heavy -- the more liquor went to Sheila's head, the easier things would be.
They were working on their third round of drinks. Each of Sheila's drinks thus far had contained about two and a half ounces of liquor, and the cumulative effect of the liquor was beginning to sink in. The honey blonde--and how very blonde she was, and what a honey -- was slowly but surely beginning to get squiffed. It showed in the way she slurred some of her words, never getting sloppy but losing a certain amount of motor coordination in her tongue -- which, Cindy thought, could get catastrophic in view of the plans she had for the girl. It showed in the slightly glassy look in her eyes, showed when she stood up to go to the john and wobbled slightly before she got her feet back on the track. Soon.
"I'm so glad we can just sit and talk this way," Cindy was saying. "It's pleasant, you know. Just a couple of girls sitting and listening to music and relaxing together. I'm enjoying it"
"So am I."
"Are you? I'm glad, Sheila. You know, I like you."
"I like you, too."
Casually, she dropped a hand to Sheila's knee. The gesture was pure friendship, nothing more, nothing remotely sexual. But it could be a valuable prelude.
"Friends are hard to come by in this town," she said. "You're not from New York originally, are you?"
"No."
"Neither am I. Honestly, sometimes I think nobody was ever born here. Just the smelly little Spanish kids who play in the gutters. Everybody you ever meet came from someplace in the middle of the Corn Belt or something."
"Uh-huh."
She took a small sip of her drink. Was it time yet? Maybe.
"Sheila? You're very pretty, you know."
"Thank you."
"So very lovely. You've got character in your face, did you know that? And you've got such a wonderful body."
Sheila blushed. Now there was a good sign, Cindy thought. If this was just friendly girl-talk in Sheila's eyes, why, she would never dream of blushing. So she must be taking things on a sexual plane. She might not have any active wish for a little bedroom session, but she was starting to react in sexual terms.
Good.
Very good.
Excellent, in fact.
"Sheila--" Just the right inflection, the right amount of hesitation, the right sort of lustful pleading in her eyes. Then her hands, reaching out slowly, searchingly Her hands framing Sheila's face, drawing that lovely face in close, gently but insistently.
And then her lips.
Kissing.
There was bafflement in Sheila, and surprise, and wonder. But she kissed her tenderly, perfectly, and she felt the response shoot desperately through Sheila's perfect body, and Sheila shuddered once, violently, fiercely, and then Sheila was in her arms and she was kissing Sheila's wet red mouth, kissing her and holding her and stroking the fluffy softness of her long blonde hair, stroking and fondling and kissing and holding and thinking that oh, God, it was going to work, it was going to be all right, it was going to pan out, it was working, it was clicking, it was going to. be Heaven.
"Don't say a word," she breathed. "Don't talk, don't even think. Oh, my darling, my sweet baby, my wonderful girl."
Sheila would have said something, would have drawn away. But Cindy didn't let her. Her hands -- skilled hands, professionally deft hands, hands that made men cry out in paid-for pleasure-- her hands moved to Sheila's proud shoulders and swept slowly downward to still prouder breasts. She cupped the fullness of those breasts, firm and yet yielding through the twin layers of cashmere sweater and nonessential bra. She kissed that mouth again, and this time her warm pink tongue eased out to lick teasingly at Sheila's lips.
Then her tongue went between the lips and tasted the richness of Sheila's mouth, and Sheila gave a sigh and a shudder and drew herself tight against her, and they were kissing like urgent adolescents in the back seat of an old Ford, holding each other and kissing and touching and finding new ways to excite and be excited.
They did not go to the bedroom. Getting up, walking, all of this would have been too awkward, would have intruded irreparably into the perfect spontaneity of the mood. They stayed there, together, on the couch, and Cindy's hands removed a sweater and unfastened a bra and went at once to Sheila's breasts, finding them, holding them, make them swell with passion and burn with aching need.
And then Sheila was lying down on the couch, eyes closed, breasts heaving, and Cindy's clever fingers were removing the skirt, undoing buttons and unzipping zipper and drawing the skirt down and off. Sheila had kicked her shoes off earlier, in the general process of relaxing. Now Cindy removed garter belt, rolled stockings downward. Then a pause while her hands moved wonderingly over the golden luxury of perfect calves and thighs, touching sweet flesh and making Sheila moan and squirm with passion.
Then her fingers hooked themselves neatly under the elastic waistband of flimsy panties, pulled and tugged the panties down and off.
And Sheila was naked.
Gloriously naked.
Cindy stripped herself quickly and expediently. She didn't have to make a production of it, she thought. Just get the damned clothes off as quickly as possible, and get her naked body next to Sheila's naked body, and let two pairs of breasts touch and two pair of thighs rub together, and everything would take care of itself.
She did just that.
And everything took care of itself.
The initial contact -- breasts against breasts and belly against belly -- was purely and sheerly electric in its intensity. Sheila opened her eyes, and for a moment Cindy read fear and shame and worry in them, but then they were kissing and Sheila's eyes were closed and Shelia was tossing in abandon, no longer concerned with the rightness or wrongness of it, only concerned with the pure joy of it all.
"Lie still," Cindy whispered softly. "Lie still."
And she did everything. Kisses on the face and the throat and shoulders, kisses on the breasts, hands doing things and lips doing things and Sheila's glorious body tossing and turning in the movements of lesbian love, and the earth shaking and the sky falling and more and better -- and God!
* * *
It was funny, David Eisen thought. In one respect, his actions was as automatic as the functioning of an IBM machine. He moved, he reacted, he performed, and all without any conscious effort on his part. He was a mechanical man, primed for a certain complex of functions, and he seemed to have no control over any of these functions beyond their simple performance.
That was one thing. And yet, at the very same time, he had never been cooler or more competent. His mind had never functioned more perfectly, his body had never moved more gracefully, he had never ever been quite so sure of himself in every respect. He was quit thoroughly aware of everything he was doing, was cognizant of every aspect of his thoughts and desires and actions.
It was strange. Damned strange.
And he knew just what he was doing now. He was going to commit another monstrous crime, the logical successor to the crimes he had thus far committed. Again he would torture, but his tortures would be more sheerly brutal and powerful than what he had done to the Puerto Rican harlot or the lost and mindless Times Square teen-ager. He would kill, but this time he would murder not by accident but by design, not inadvertently but with full forethought and total planning.
His choice of victim would be far more refined than before. It would be an individual which he would be choosing, not a type. It would be a person whom he knew, a person to whom he had already made love.
It would be Sheila Markham.
The poetic perfection of his choice was not lost on him; in fact, that was what made things so indisputably excellent. It was Sheila Markham who had gotten into his blood, who had seeped like venom into his soul. It was Sheila Markham who had caused him to pick up that bohemian tramp in the Village, and with the tramp he had sired within himself the capacity for sadism, for the union of delicious pleasure and agonizing pain.
Sheila Markham.
He walked to her apartment. On the way he stopped to drop a dime in a pay telephone and call her. Her number did not answer. She was not home, then.
Fine.
Her lock presented him with no problem at all. He tried the door once, to assure himself that it was in fact locked. Then he took the omnipresent pen knife from his pocket and inserted its keen blade between the door and frame. It took less than a minute to pry the door lock and open the door. He stepped quickly inside and closed the door behind him. He checked the apartment -- she could have been sleeping, could have been unable to answer the phone. He checked, and he found that the apartment was quite empty, and he smiled a private smile and went into the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator, made himself a ham and swiss sandwich, ate it quickly and deliberately. Then he turned off the light in the kitchen and sat down in an easy chair in the cold and modern living room. He smiled.
There was one point which intrigued him. How long could he go on this way without getting killed or captured? It was a fascinating question with a myriad of possible answers. According to one way of thinking, he could go on indefinitely; as long as he left no clues and covered his traces properly, no one would ever suspect him of the crimes he was committing.
But in another sense it was only a matter of time before he was caught. In each crime there was an inevitable possibility of capture, and over a period of time those small possibilities would pile up mathematically until, sooner or later, something would go wrong and he would be captured. Besides, as he went on with torture and murder there would be greater and greater public knowledge of him, heavier and heavier pressure for the police to do something, and these forces would work to bring about his arrest.
He was not overly concerned. Naturally, he wanted to go on as long as he possibly could. But the length of one's career in any field was no measure of the importance of it. As far as what would happen to him when he was caught -- well, that was nothing to worry about. In all probability, he would be adjudged insane -- by their standards, damn them, he was insane, of course. Of course he might be killed resisting arrest, but everyone died in time, and an early death might be the fitting culmination to a genuinely significant life. Greater philosophers than David Eisen had suggested possibilities along those lines. Who was he to deny them?
At any rate, there was no need to worry. And he was not worrying. He ran his fingers over the sharp planes of his gaunt face, breathed deeply and fully, and let the trace of a smile remain on his thin lips. He sat, motionless and soundless, and he waited for Sheila Mark-ham to come home.
So that he could kill her.
Horribly.
* * *
There's always a tip-off. If you're fairly big in any field, and if someone is sharpening an axe and measuring your throat for a cut, somebody always tips you off. They aren't usually thoroughly altruistic about it. Sometimes they're betting on you to win and they want to be on your side when you do. Sometimes they're hedging their bets in case you surprise them and come out on top. Whatever the precise reasons, the fact remains that a man rarely has it come as a complete surprise when someone stabs him in the back. He's generally been tipped off, and he anticipates the cool horror of the knife.
Roy Archer got tipped off.
He had sent the girl away, and he was sitting in his armchair drinking vodka, when the phone rang. The tipster was someone not too important, someone Archer only knew vaguely. The tip was something that stunned him slightly, but something that, when he stopped to digest it, should not have been much of a shock at all.
They were going to dump him.
Job him.
Push him out.
Maybe they thought he drank too much, or got boffed too much, or talked too much, or anything. Maybe they just thought they could get away with it -- that was motivation enough in the jungle that called itself Televisionland. Their reasons didn't matter. What mattered was that they were primed and ready to go, and that Bunny Forrest -- his right-hand man all these many years -- had evidently decided to throw in with them.
This mattered.
What could they do to him? Plenty, he decided. Plenty. They could cut him up neatly and precisely, could destroy his, influence and take his good packages away from him. The right words to the right ad men, the right nods from the right network boys, and he'd have had it.
Oh, he wouldn't get ruined entirely. There would always be a slot' for him, a job that would pay well, a position of some importance, all of that. But he wouldn't be as big and he wouldn't be as powerful. And once they got you like that, you never made a comeback. You got along, you learned to live with it, but you never returned to the level you had occupied before.
He took a drink.
What could he do? He wasn't beaten yet, as it happened. He had contacts, good contacts, and armed with the tipster's information he could get some wheels in motion on his own. He could dump Bunny Forrest on his round little rump, thereby reducing Bunny's conspiratorial effectiveness considerably. He could get rolling on a counter-offensive that might make the enemy think twice about chucking him out.
There were plenty of things he could do.
He reached for the phone. His hand poised above the receiver, hovered there like a hummingbird in midair, then returned to rest in his lap.
Why?
Why bother?
Pride, maybe. The desire to be at or near the top, and the desire for power, and all the rest. But what did he want with power, and how much pride could you have when you were an alcoholic and a lecher?
Not all that much.
So suppose they won. Suppose they beat him. He'd have an easier life, and a quieter life, and he would make enough money to live the way he wanted to live. He wouldn't swim in dough, but then his expenses would be comparably lower and his entertainment budget would be halved or quartered or decimated, and his tax bracket would be a lower one, and the total loss in real money would be negligible. He would lose face, of course. He would lose status in the eyes of a whole host of puny little people whom he didn't give a damn about.
And if he won? If he won he would go on and on and on, always looking around for a fresh crew of back-stabbers, always on guard and never able to relax. And he would go on pushing himself and driving himself. And he would cover up for pigs like Johnny Jingo, and he would set up promotional jazz for tramps like Sharon Storm, and all he would get for his troubles was an eventual coronary that would put him under the same ground with the common people. Fight, he thought.
Hell, you had to fight, had to compete, had to keep trying. They drilled that into you from the time you were born, and when you got to Manhattan, that hunk of rock where everything important in the country was plotted out and planned and sold to the world, then you learned what exactly it was all about. Fight, compete, keep on plugging away. Lie if you had to, cheat if you had to, cut figurative throats with figurative knives if you had to, and step up that precious gold-plated ladder of success rung by bloody rung.
Fight.
Again he reached for the phone. Again his hand, a pink and pudgy and hairy sort of hummingbird, hovered about it for a moment before returning to his lap. He was sick of fighting, sick of competing, sick of climbing the bloody rungs of the success-ladder. His hand moved again. This time, however, he did not reach for the phone. This time he reached instead for the bottle of Wolfschmidt's. And this time his hand did not go through the hummingbird routine. His hand found the bottle, and he took a long and satisfying drink, and he smiled horribly to himself and thought how satisfying defeat could taste.
It would not be so bad. There would still be money, and there would still be work, and there would still be liquor and women, all he wanted of either. There would be paid-for women and hopeful starlets who wanted a hand up. There would be rewards for him, even in defeat.
He held up the bottle, looked at it. A perfect symbol of every man you met in his business, he thought suddenly. Your greatest friend and your greatest enemy, all at once. It would drag you down, and it would make the defeat tolerable. It would ruin you, but it would help you be unmindful of the ruin.
He took a drink, and another, and when the bottle was empty he walked to the liquor cabinet and broke the seal on a fresh bottle. There was always a fresh bottle and this fact alone somehow compensated for all that was wrong in life.
* * *
For a while, Sheila slept. They had made love, of course, first on the couch and then, later, in Cindy's bedroom. They made wild love, and she experienced unknown and wild sensations and she did unknown and wild things, and at the end her eyes closed by themselves and her body sagged against the mattress and her brain turned itself temporarily off and she slept.
Now she was awake. She yawned and she stretched, her body uncoiling with the grace of a large cat waking up from its nap beside a glowing fireplace. She rolled over and opened her eyes, and she saw Cindy, and her head swam.
She said: "I never did this before."
"I know, darling."
"It sounds so silly. Like a virgin, I mean like a girl who was just a virgin and got made for the first time, you know, and now she's trying to make herself sound pure as the driven snow. But I never did this before, Cindy."
"I know."
"Not that I'm pure as the driven anything. Not that I ever was. I've done a lot of things with a lot of men and not all of the things I did were especially nice. But I never... never did... anything with a girl --"
"I know, dear. Are you sorry?"
Was she? A good question.
She said: "I don't know."
"You enjoyed it, didn't you?"
"Couldn't you tell?"
"I could tell. You enjoyed the things I did to you, Sheila. You liked the way I made you feel." She didn't say anything.
"And you liked doing things to me. It got you excited when I wiggled and squirmed and moaned, didn't it?"
She said nothing. "Well? Didn't it?"
"It did."
"Then there's nothing to be sorry about, is there?" She sighed, sat up in bed. "Give me a cigarette," she said.
Cindy gave her a cigarette, scratched a match for her. She sucked smoke into her lungs, exhaled, took another longer drag. The smoke made her dizzy for a moment. Then she caught hold of herself and took a breath and let it out and relaxed a little.
"I guess I enjoyed it," she said slowly, levelly. "I guess I needed it, all of it, and I guess it was good."
"It was."
"And I'm not sorry. I'm really not. But I don't want to talk about it now, Cindy."
"What do you want to do?"
She drew on the cigarette again, leaned over to duck ashes in an ash tray. She straightened up, feeling very much conscious of her nakedness now. "I want to go home," she said. "And?"
"And I want to be alone. I don't mean to sound like Greta Garbo or anything. I just want to go home and be alone, that's all. I... I have to do some thinking."
"I understand."
"Do you?"
"I think so."
She nodded. "All right," she said. "I.. J want to get dressed, and then I want to go, and... well, maybe I'll call you soon. If I don't--"
"Yes."
She got dressed as quickly as she could, and she took a long last look at Cindy Walsh and told herself that she had actually made love to this girl, that this girl had kissed her and that she had kissed this girl. Then, without saying anything more, she hurried out the door and down to the street.
She walked aimlessly for a block or two before she caught a cab. She walked, thinking about who she was and what she had done and what it all meant. She let the last few days drift through her mind-- the time with David Eisen, the trip to Westchester and the almost-rape that had taken place there (or the rape that had almost taken place there, or whatever), and then the party that night, and the filthy movie and her own reaction to it, and making love on the couch with Roy Archer, and now, finally, Cindy.
Cindy.
Cindy Walsh.
Great God in Heaven.
You never knew, she thought. You drifted for years, and you sort of swam through life as if it were a river of mercury, and then, all at once, you found your own level. It could come as a complete surprise, and you could try fighting it, but you couldn't deny it, not with your eyes open. It had been good with Cindy, almost too good, and she knew that it would be good again, and again, and again.
And at the same time she knew that she would never again be able to enjoy sex with a man, not after what she had just learned -- or, more properly, what she had just been taught about herself. She was what she was, no more and no less.
And she happened to be a Lesbian.
What might have happened if she had never met Cindy? Now there was a question, she thought. But the answer, when you gave it a little concentration, was obvious enough. If someone like Cindy had not initiated her into the forbidden delights of Lesbianism, she would simply have gone on in the same fashion forever, sleeping with this man or that man, drifting with the tide, hitting moods of dreadful depression and feeling horribly alone. Maybe she would have killed herself sooner or later. Maybe she would merely have grown old and, in time, had died of loneliness and self-pity.
No more.
Now she had a life, a new life. It was a life somewhat different than anything she had ever visualized for herself and it still took a little getting used to, but the more she thought about it the more appealing it became for her. She would retain her independence, she would sacrifice not one whit of her individuality, she would never have to subordinate herself to a man. And at the same time all her needs would be fulfilled. This was better than pets, better than a husband, better than roommates.
This was ideal.
Of course, it meant living a secret. An interior decorator could better afford to be homosexual than, say, a bank president, and if you were a male interior decorator homosexuality was almost taken for granted in certain quarters, and with certain firms. But she would still have to keep her sex life a secret.
There were worse things than that in life. She could manage it. Some people would find out, and some of them might be shocked and might cease to be her friends, but that could not be helped. All in all, she would come out ahead.
She hailed a cab, got into the back seat. She sank , into the cushions and gave the cabby her address, and all the way home she thought how a new world had opened up to her in Cindy's arms, and how happy she would be in that world.
She left the cab, paid and tipped the cabby, walked into her own building and hurried to her own door. There was a smile on her face when she lifted her key into the lock, a song on her lips when she opened the door and stepped inside.
And then the song died. Her eyes widened, and she saw that there was a man standing in front of her, and she saw that the man was David Eisen, and she saw the gleam in his eyes and the evil grin on his thin lips, and she opened her mouth to scream.
Then he hit her.
* * *
He didn't even try to stop her screams.
It was better when you could hear them scream.
he thought. There were so many varieties of a scream. There was the shrill brittle yelp when he took her arms one at a time and snapped them over his knee. There was the wrenching groan when he placed his foot on one of her ripe breasts and leaned all his weight upon the tender flesh. There were the shrieks of horror when he popped her eyeballs from their sockets, the drawn-out agony when he raped her viciously and thoroughly.
And, at the end, there was the scream when he killed her by running a bread knife through her belly and twisting it in her vital organs. It was a long, hollow scream, and it trailed off musically at the end as she died.
But the screams did not go unheard.
At the end, when he arranged his clothes and bolted out the front door of her apartment and headed for the stairs, a patrolman was already on his way to answer the screams that had been the last sounds Sheila Markham uttered on earth. He charged down the staircase, the bloody bread knife still gripped in his hand, and the door opened and he caught sight of a blue uniform.
A cop.
And then the cop was hauling his gun from his holster, and David lowered his head and charged forward at full speed, and there was the piercing whine of a bullet overhead, and then he was on the cop, the bread knife seeking its mark, plunging between the policeman's ribs and into his heart.
The cop was dead.
David Eisen left the knife fn the cop's body. He yanked the gun from the man's lifeless hand, raced out the door with it. The shot had awakened still more policemen. He heard another cop shouting from a block away, beard the distant squeal of a police car on its way to the scene.
There was a cab a few doors down the street, stopped for a red light. He raced for the cab, yanked open the door, jumped in. A woman -- fiftyish, prim, proper, mink-coated -- looked at him in horror and shrank against the door on the opposite side.
He shot her in the throat and watched her die. Then he put the mouth of the pistol against the cab-driver's head.
"Drive," he said. "Fast."
The cabby drove. The ,cab bolted through the red light and raced down the street, and the siren of the police car opened up and the car was visible now through the rear window, hot on their tail and gaining on them.
"You lose those cops," he told the cab-driver. "Lose them or I'll kill you."
He did not snarl, did not snap the words out. He spoke quietly, levelly.
And the cabby put the accelerator pedal on the floor.
David Eisen looked at the woman he had killed. Her blood was soaking into the seat now and her jaw was slack with sudden death. He wanted to reach out to her, wanted to touch her dead flesh and dip the tips of his fingers into her fresh blood.
The cabby was whining about his wife and children. What did he care about the cabby's wife or children? He'd like to take care of the whole damned family, he thought. Tie up the cabby, make the slob watch while he raped the wife and cut the children's throats and hack off the wife's breasts and then, finally, he would put the pistol barrel in the cabby's mouth and blow his brains out. Damn the man, damn his wife, damn his children, and damn the damned police! Damn them all!
The cab took a corner on two wheels, raced like hell for a block, spun wildly around another corner. The police car was still gaining. The cab was hopeless, he thought. He couldn't make it this way.
He yanked open his door, readied himself. Then, before he jumped clear, he squeezed the trigger of the gun and listened to the roar. The bullet tore off half the cabby's head. And then he was jumping free, and the taxi was spinning wildly and piling into another car, and David Eisen was running down a darkened street and ducking into an alleyway and racing at top speed and swerving and dodging and running, running, running for his life.
In the mouth of an alleyway he stumbled over a bum who was busy sleeping off a drunk. It was hardly worth it, hardly worth the trouble, but he stopped long enough to shoot the sleeping bum in the back of the neck. And then, again, he was running.
It took them a while. It took them quite a while, long enough for him to gun down a twenty-seven year-old-housewife, long enough to commandeer another cab and kill the driver when he left it. But he knew they would catch him finally, and, finally, they did.
They cornered him, trapped him in an alley. They moved in on him and he squeezed the gun's trigger and heard the hammer click on an empty chamber. They were shouting at him to surrender, but he did not surrender, not at all. Instead he raced out of the alleyway at them, gun in hand, eyes wild.
He felt the first bullet. It took him in the center at the chest, and k hurt, and suddenly he wanted to cry. But there were other bullets that he did not feel, dozens of them, and he lay dead in the alley with hot lead poisoning into his body and nothing at all left of David Eisen.
