Mary had a little lamb that followed her to school, but Terry White was too big for little lambs; besides, he didn't want to go. He'd been all over the world--or at least the most sinful parts of it--and all he wanted from his rich father was to be left alone in a depraved and empty future. But when his rich father died there was a legacy of lust too much like the mother lode to be ignored. In fact, he had left a stepmother who would not let it be ignored. And in the will there was a condition that made it clear Terry had better get a scholarly degree in something besides passion if he wanted to collect and spend the greenbacks. So Terry--tough and worldly-wise-- went to school with all the students in their freshman beanies... and with Patricia Duncan, the refreshingly unchildish coed who didn't at all mind sharing an off-campus room with him. And there was the AC-DC landlady, Mrs. Walsh, who was perfectly willing to switch to him when she wasn't playing her own abnormal girl-games. Finally add the visiting of stepmother Laura to see how well Terry was doing--and how well he could do, and the courses became downright hectic--even for a shameless playboy like Terry White!
CHAPTER ONE
As the train rattled to a stop Terry White got out of the seat and took down his two suitcases from the overhead rack. He cast an unfond glance of relief at the prickly plush seat which had made him uncomfortable for over ten hours, and made his way down the aisle to the end of the car. The train was crowded with people, most of the students on their way back to college at the end of the summer recess, but he had no trouble. People automatically got out of the way when Terry White approached. The sight of his big square hard-looking body didn't exactly threaten, but it did make people edge out of the way.
Other passengers were making ready to leave the train and the area at the end of the car was crowded. The train had slowed to less than five miles an hour when the engineer, perhaps in a capricious mood, jammed on the brakes and the train lurched to a sudden stop. The screeching halt caught Terry unawares and he was thrown forward. He dropped his suitcase and put both hands out in front of him to stop his forward lunge.
Over the screech of metal wheels on metal tracks Terry heard two simultaneous sounds, a surprised gasp from in front of him and a yelp of pain from behind him. As he caught his balance he realized both his hands were filled with something soft. The softness was a wool sweater, but it was more than that.
The sweater was on a girl.
And Terry's hands on that sweater were covering the girl's chest.
He looked at his hands and then at the wool covered breasts. They were fine breasts, big and soft and unencumbered by a brassiere. His hands told him that much. His eyes told him the breasts were young and high, perfectly formed, symmetrical. Then he looked at the girl who owned the breasts. And he returned her gasp of surprise. She, like her breasts, was young, and big, and soft-looking, and perfectly formed.
She stared at him with an outraged look and she waited for him to remove his hands. Her eyes locked on his and he was caught like a deer in the headlights of a car, unable to move, frozen.
"Have you completed your inspection?" she said. Her voice was like the icy blast of an arctic wind.
"I'm sorry," he said, smiling, and trying to ease her embarrassment. "I was off balance."
The girl turned her back to him and prepared to leave the train. Terry reached out to stop her and add further apology when a small hand tapped his shoulder.
"If you're through playing back-seat games I wish you'd get your damned suitcase off my foot."
He turned and there behind him he saw another girl, this one hollow-cheeked, her face contorted with pain. He looked down and saw that his suitcase had landed right on her foot, trapping it, and her struggles to move the heavy leather case had proved fruitless.
He moved the suitcase and the girl sat back against the armrest of a seat to inspect her foot. The bottom edge of the case had struck her on the shin and then slid down to her foot bruising the whole front of her leg. She inspected the damage and then gingerly tested her weight on the leg, squinting her eyes in expected agony.
"Ooooh," she moaned.
"Can you walk?" he asked her.
"I don't think so. What in hell do you have in that bag, lead?"
He grinned and dropped to one knee before the girl. "Let me have a look at it."
The stocking was ripped beyond any hope of repair and blood had oozed to the surface of the scraped area. He removed the girl's shoe and gently worked her foot and toes. He looked up to speak, but stopped, startled. From his vantage point his eyes traveled up along the lean columns of her legs, above the rolled tops of her stockings, over an expanse of milk-white flesh, to the bare, uncovered apex of her thighs. The girl wore no under things and there, before him, was exposed the mysterious beauty of her womanhood.
He tore his eyes reluctantly away and looked at her face. "I don't think anything is broken. Try your weight on it again."
He stood up and the girl put her foot to the floor. "Uh, uh," she said. "No good. It still hurts like hell."
Passengers had backed up in the aisle behind them and now the crowd, impatient, began to jostle them. A shoulder rammed into Terry's back and a suitcase smacked into the back of his leg. He stood to his full height, an imposing six foot four inches and turned to look at the waiting passengers. He didn't have to speak. The sight of his imposing body almost blocking the aisle was enough to stop the pushing.
He turned back, picked up his suitcases one in each hand, and turned to the girl. "Put your arm around my neck. I'll carry you."
He leaned forward so she could put her arm around his neck and he wrapped his right arm around her waist, still holding the suitcase in his hand. When he stood to his full height the girl's feet dangled helplessly more than a foot from the floor of the car.
Carrying her thus he made his way off the train and into the station. Inside, he found a bench and put her down. "Do you have any luggage?" he asked.
"Just this," she said holding up an overnight case. The rest is in the baggage car."
He sat down beside her and pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket. When he held the pack out to her she shook her head and opened her purse to remove a pack of her own cigarettes. He held a light for her, then lit his own.
I "I'm sorry about the leg," he said.
"Isn't that what you told the other girl? Except it wasn't her leg you were talking about."
He grinned. "That was an accident too."
"You seem to be accident prone."
"I'm usually not that clumsy. But sitting in that small seat for ten hours kind of stiffened me up. And I was off balance."
"Excuses, excuses," she sighed. "I'll bet you loved every minute of it."
"I was too startled to enjoy feeling her... well, just feeling her "
"They were pretty big, weren't they."
He looked up at her and saw her smile and the twinkle in her eye.
"If I'd been prepared for it, it would have been a real pleasure."
"Now that the seductress has been disposed of what are you going to do about me? I'm the injured party, you know?"
"What reparation do you demand?"
"Oooh, the big words. You must be one of us."
"One of who?"
"Us. The college students. You are a student at Hapen College, aren't you?"
"I will be when I register. Are you a student, too?"
"I was. Now I'm a faculty member. Well, not really faculty, more like staff. I've got a job in the student administration office."
"In that case I'm glad I dropped my suitcase on you. It's always nice to have connections with the higher-ups."
"I'm afraid I couldn't do you much good," she said, grinning. "Besides, why should I help you after you've ruined a pair of stockings and my best leg?" she laughed.
"I'll replace the stockings. And as for the leg the other one is just as nice as the injured one." Talking about her legs reminded him that she wasn't wearing any panties. He felt a quick sense of excitement at the thought.
"Let me have another look at that foot," he said, kneeling in front of her again.
"Just looking at it won't do it any good," she said, smiling.
"If you were about ten years old I'd kiss it to make it better, but it would be an indecent proposal to a grown woman."
"I might like it anyway," she said. "But you can't sit around railroad stations kissing girl's legs."
"All right then," he said, getting to his feet. "Ill owe it to you. If I had pencil and paper I'd give you an I.O.U. Yes, I.O.U. one kiss on the leg."
They were both grinning now, keeping up the easy banter. Terry looked at his watch. "It's almost five o'clock. Have you had dinner yet?"
"How could I have had dinner? Wasn't I on the same train as you?"
"Fine. Let's have dinner together. Then I'll take you to wherever you're staying."
"I don't have a place yet. I was going to stay at the hotel until I found an apartment."
"I need a place for the night, too. Let's check into the hotel first and then have dinner."
"Before we do anything you'd better tell me your JO name. I don't check into hotels with strange men."
He laughed. "I'm glad. I wouldn't want to think you were a girl of loose morals."
"Not me," she said. "My mother was frightened by a novel about white slavers. And now I'm not even supposed to look at strange men."
"In that case I'd better introduce myself. Terrence W. White, ruiner of beautiful women's stockings." He clicked his heels together and snapped his head forward in a mock military bow. "Oh, yes, and the W stands for William."
"I'm very pleased to meet you, sir. My name is Patricia Duncan. Pat to my friends."
"Patricia what Duncan?"
"Patricia nothing Duncan. I don't have a middle name. My parents were too lazy to think of one."
"You poor child, having to go through life with only two names."
"Oh, I don't mind. Whenever I have to fill out applications I'm always finished before anyone else. It's quite an advantage really."
"All right then Miss Patricia Duncan, shall we adjourn to the local hostelry?"
"Let's go," she said. "And call me Pat."
He picked up the suitcases and swept her into his arms. This time he carried her with one arm around her shoulders and the other behind her knees. She giggled as she wound her arm around his neck. "Being carried this way makes me feel like a bride."
"Talking about brides and weddings is the quickest way to make me drop you and start running like hell," he said as he carried her out the door and into the late afternoon sun.
He walked up to a waiting taxi and set her down to lean against the rear fender while he got rid of the luggage. Just then a small ferret-faced young man ran up to the cab, opened the door, and hopped in, slamming the door after him.
"The Walker Hotel," ferret face said to the driver. The cab rolled forward a couple of feet and Patricia fell to the ground. "Hey, wait a minute," Terry yelled.
The driver jammed on the brakes and the cab lurched to a stop. Terry ran up and stuck his head in the window. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" he said.
"Come on, come on," ferret face said to the driver. "I was here first."
"You wait," Terry said to the driver, an ominous growl in his voice. Then he opened the door and reached his arms into the cab. His hands locked on the front of ferret face's jacket. Then he pulled back and stood up. Ferret face hung in the air at the ends of Terry's hands, his feet dangling off the ground.
Terry pulled him in close so his face was right in front of the ferret face. "You could have shared the cab with us, but now you'll have to walk or wait." He pushed his arms away from his body and opened his fists at the same time. Ferret face flew through the air and came down in a jumble of skinny arms and legs. Terry turned his back and helped Pat into the cab. The driver stowed the luggage in the trunk and they were off. "Are you all right?" Terry asked. "I landed on my bottom," Pat said. "Now I'm hurt in two places."
Terry laughed.
"I don't think it's that funny," Pat said, leaning over on one hip and rubbing her new injury.
"I was just thinking that now I guess I owe you two kisses," Terry said, still laughing.
The driver didn't understand the joke so he didn't laugh, but his passengers giggled and guffawed all the way to the hotel. He did smile though when Terry tipped him half a dollar. People in the hotel lobby stared at Terry carrying Pat in his arms. And the desk clerk was amazed when they asked for separate rooms. He wasn't used to people who didn't claim to be man and wife. He did the best he could however and gave them rooms with a connecting door.
Terry carried Pat, and the bellhop carried the luggage, grunting from the weight of Terry's two big suitcases. "What you got in these, bricks?" he complained.
Terry grinned.
"You think you've got it bad," Pat said. "He dropped one of them on my foot."
"God," the bellhop said. "I better get the doc. Probably broke every bone in your foot."
"No, I'll be all right," Pat told him.
Upstairs, in the room, Terry set her down on the bed and tipped the bellhop. Then he opened the connecting door and carried his own luggage into his room. He came back a moment later.
"I'm going to take a shower and get cleaned up. Will you be all right?"
"Oh, hell," Pat gasped. "We forgot about my stuff. It's still at the station."
"I'll send someone for it. Do you need it right away?"
"No. I've got my make-up and things in the overnight case. But I'll need fresh clothes in the morning."
Terry went into his own room and called the desk. The clerk promised to send someone for the luggage. Five minutes later he stood under the hot shower and felt the water begin to loosen his stiff muscles. He would have preferred a Japanese style bath with a quick washing of the body to clean it and then a long relaxing session in a lava-hot tub. He needed the time to think. The past few weeks had been filled with the funeral and sessions with the lawyers and he hadn't had time to think. Only the nagging doubt, the small voice in the back of his mind telling him he was making a mistake.
But there was all that money. A hundred and twenty-two thousand dollars. Besides, he owed the old man this much at least. He'd been working as a bulldozer on some military construction on Formosa when the news reached him that his father had died. Thirty-one hours later he was getting off a plane in New York. Old Charlie Griggs, his father's lawyer had met the plane personally. He closed his eyes and he could again see the white-haired old man hobbling up to him at the passenger gate.
"You must know how sorry we all are at your father's death," Griggs had squeaked.
"Yeah, I know. You lose a big account." Griggs was shocked. "I see you haven't changed much," the old man said nastily.
"Ease off, Griggs. We both know the old man never got along with anybody. There wasn't anybody he ever met who didn't hate his guts. He was hard and he was ruthless, but he was fair and honest, too. And I owe him this much. To come to his funeral, at least."
Griggs was annoyed with Terry's honesty, and his vanity was hurt that Terry could see through him so easily. "By the way," Griggs ancient throat hissed. "Your stepmother is very anxious to meet you."
"Stepmother?"
"Why yes, didn't you know? Your father married only last year. And a delectable young thing she is, too. But he always did have good taste in women. He only showed poor taste in sons."
"And ambulance chasing lawyers," Terry added getting even for the last remark.
The news that he had a stepmother was very unsettling. Almost more unsettling than the news of his father's demise. Griggs led him out of the airport building to a waiting limousine. It was his father's car. The car was the same as he remembered but the chauffeur was different. The old man had always gotten along worse with the help than even with his business associates and his friends.
The big car sped through the early evening darkness toward the jewel-like lights of the city. Terry looked out through the window and frowned. The city hadn't improved in his absence. Maybe it was a little more crowded and a little dirtier, but that was all. When they were crossing the bridge into Manhattan, Terry spoke again.
"When is the funeral?" he asked. "Tomorrow, at ten. We'll read the will after lunch."
"I'm not interested in the will. We both know the old man disinherited me and threw me out nine years If ago. He told me what he wanted and he gave me a choice. When I chose to ignore his wishes he disinherited me. I only came because, after all, he was my father. And I suppose he thought he knew what was best for me."
"And you're just as stubborn as he was. Neither one of you would give an inch. But you'll be interested in the will. Toward the end he relented. Perhaps it was his age, or perhaps his illness affected his mind. Whatever it was he changed his will four days before he died. I suggest you be present at the reading."
A few minutes later the car pulled up in front of the eighteen story building. Terry got out and Griggs hobbled out after him.
"I think I'll come upstairs with you," the lawyer said. "I'll introduce you to your new mother."
Terry said nothing. The doorman held the door open for them and the chauffeur followed them in with Terry's bag under his arm. The elevator operator nodded to Griggs and pressed the penthouse button. The elevator shot upward.
The elevator door opened directly into the apartment and everything was exactly as it had been nine years ago. Everything was the same except for the redhead sitting on the sofa in her low-cut black cocktail dress. The dress was low-cut because the woman had tremendous breasts. It was black because she was in mourning. And it was a cocktail dress because she had a drink in her hand.
Besides the drink in her hand, she probably had quite a few in her belly. Her head lolled on her slim white neck and her eyes were glazed. She looked up when they came into the room and her eyes ran up and down Terry's big body.
"Lo, the prodigal son returns," she said waving her arm in their general direction. "The vulture comes to feast at the corpse."
Terry crossed the room in three quick strides. His hand flashed out and there was a ringing slap as his open palm hit her face. Her body jerked from the blow and the glass flew out of her hand.
"Tramp," he said. "At least have the decency to wait until the body is in the ground before you guzzle my father's whiskey."
The woman struggled to her feet and swayed back and forth. "You louse. Who the hell do you think you are? Where have you been for the last nine years? Where were you for the last nine weeks while your father's body was rotting away in the hospital? Have you ever seem a man die of cancer? Well, I have. And it wasn't just any man, it was a man I loved. Yes, that's right, I loved your father. And when I wanted to send for you he refused. Oh, not that he didn't want to see you, not that. But he wanted you to come home of your own free will. He wanted you to be his son again for just one minute before he died."
She broke into tears and fled from the room. Her outburst left Terry standing there feeling like a penny looking for change. He stared after her for a moment, then crossed the room to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a drink. As he raised the glass to his lips he heard Griggs' dry raspy cackle.
"Hee, hee, hee. You two certainly make a fine pair. The corpse not yet buried and you two fighting already. Hee, hee."
Terry threw the glass at him but missed. The old man turned and left the apartment.
* * *
There weren't many people at the funeral. Grigg was there, naturally. And himself. And Laura, the stepmother. Stepmother! Hell, she wasn't more than five years older than Terry. But Griggs had been right. The old man certainly had good taste.
The burial was quick. Laura shed a few tears but nobody else showed any emotion at all. Terry felt strange watching them lower his father's casket into the hole in the ground. The best he could say for the old man was that he respected him. He respected him for his toughness and his honesty. Maybe that was a kind of love. It was all he could feel.
When it was all over they got into the car and drove back to the city. Griggs left them to go to his office and Terry and Laura went back to the penthouse. Terry wanted to speak to the woman, to apologize for his action last night, but he couldn't find the right words. Once in the apartment Laura went straight to her room and Terry had the cook prepare a light lunch.
After her outburst last night Terry had wondered about Laura's feeling toward his father. Maybe she wasn't just a gold-digger who'd married the old man for his money. When she came out this morning to go to the cemetery Terry was sure the outburst had been genuine. Her eyes were sunken and red rimmed and her skin was pasty white. Her honest grief was evident.
Leave it to the old man to escape the phonies, Terry thought. And he certainly hadn't missed much in his lifetime. He'd been rich enough to enjoy all the pleasures of the world and he'd left a son to continue the family name. What more could any man ask.
The cook came in and told him that lunch was ready. He had her put the food on a tray and he carried it to Laura's room. The door was closed. He knocked.
"Who's there?"
"It's me, Terry. I'd like to talk to you."
"I don't have anything to say to you. Go away."
"Please, open the door. I want to apologize for last night. I don't even have an excuse. I wasn't really upset. I thought you were just another gold-digger."
"All right. You've apologized. Now, go away."
"Please, open the door. I've got a tray of food and coffee."
There was movement inside the room and then the lock clicked and the door swung back. Her eyes were red from crying again.
"I don't want any food. I'm not hungry."
"You've got to eat something. You know, keep your strength up."
"What for? Everything is finished now."
"If you think the reading of the will is going to be easy then you don't really know Griggs. That sadistic louse will make it as rough on both of us as he can." As he spoke he carried the tray into the room and set it down. Then he poured two cups of coffee and held one out toward her. She came across the room and took one of the cups from him.
"I'll have a little coffee," she said. "But just coffee."
He sipped at his own cup and picked up half a sandwich. "I really am sorry about last night," he said.
"It's not all your fault. I was drunk. I sat there all day thinking about that man lying in the hospital bed torn half apart with the pain and talking about you. Did you know he knew every move you made in all the time you were gone? Every few months he would send out a private detective to give him the latest report on your doings. In a funny kind of way he was proud of you. He would sit there smiling to himself as he read the reports or talked about you. 'That stubborn jerk,' he would say. 'Doesn't want a thing from me. He's just like I was when I was his age. He's a real man.' And when you got into trouble, like that time the Mexican Police threw you in jail for smuggling... "
"That was all a mistake," Terry interrupted. "Yes, we found out later. But at the time he frowned 'Damned hellion,' he said. 'I don't want him to make the same mistakes I did. Why don't he listen to me..'
"I've been watching you all day and you are a lot like him, you know?"
"Yeah, well I had a good teacher in stubbornness. I learned it all from him."
"I don't mean that, I mean in a lot of little ways. Your walk is the same, the way you carry your shoulders. Even the look in your eyes."
She went on, telling him about his father in the last few years. And then it was his turn and he spoke about his travels and his work all over the world, but she knew all this already, from the detective's reports. Finally he talked about his leaving home.
He'd been eighteen then and just out of high school. His father wanted him to go on to college and he wanted to see the world. It was as simple as that. One night they'd had a big argument, and he'd walked out. He hadn't been home since. It gave him a hollow feeling to realize he'd been separated from this man who'd loved him, who'd sired him, simply because of a clash of wills. And now that man was dead and would never know that his son returned his love.
Eventually it was time to go to Griggs' office. Unlike the man, Griggs' office was in a modern building and the appointments showed the hand of a skilled interior decorator. The place was designed to give an air of quiet strength and dependability. The secretaries all wore business suits with the skirts modestly below knee level and the jackets buttoned to reveal only a froth of lace at the neckline. The men in the office all were dressed in conservative, natural-shoulder, Ivy suits, with vests of course. Pipes and horn-rimmed glasses, crew-cuts and chignons were in evidence everywhere in the office.
The reading was held in the law library with its oak-paneled walls and shelves of books. The funniest thing about the farce was that there were more people at the reading of the will than there were at the funeral. Griggs and Terry and Laura were present; Griggs with his cane, his harsh dry laugh, and the almost audible rattle of his ancient bones; Laura in her severely tailored black suit, her red hair completely hidden under a black silk scarf, no makeup, and her eyes red; Terry, uncomfortable in his suit and tie, on edge waiting for Griggs to begin his sneering comments, wondering about the changed will.
In the corner were three of Terry's father's business associates. The three men had been minor partners in the old man's businesses and they were waiting to see how they had fared at his dying hands. At least they had no hypocrisy. They bore no fondness for the dead man so they hadn't attended the funeral. They were only interested in the money.
And finally, sitting quietly at the end of the long conference table were two reporters. A will of this size was always news, and since the old man had been involved in so many big business the news would be of interest financially as well as topically.
With a dry cough Griggs commanded the attention of the room. He read all the legal mumbo-jumbo and moved quickly through the minor provisions as to place of burial. Next he disposed of the businessmen. They were each to receive a small bloc of stock in one of the corporations. It was a token gesture and they hadn't really expected more. Terry was surprised by even this small thing. In the old days his father wouldn't have given him a damned thing. The old man must have really mellowed in the last few years.
Attention in the room sharpened when Griggs came to the clauses dealing with the bulk of the estate. Old Mr. White had been short and to the point. His wife, whom he loved, was to receive the house in Florida, the house on Long Island, and one half of the remainder of the estate, along with all the real property joined to the estates: the land on which the houses were built, all the furnishings of the houses, and all the cars therein garaged, plus the yacht.
Griggs paused after reading that much and stared at Laura for a moment. "A very nice settlement, I must say," he said. "A good return on the investment of a few years of your life."
Terry leaned across the table. "Griggs," he said. "I wouldn't want to hurt an old man, but if you make another crack like that I'll break you in half and to hell with a lawsuit for assault."
The lawyer's eyes widened and the papers shook in his gnarled fingers. Terry couldn't tell if the reaction was from fear or rage. Whichever it was, Griggs turned his attention back to the will.
"To my son, Terrence William White," he read. "I leave the remainder of my estate in trust until such time as he shall have married and his spouse shall have borne him a child. A further stipulation being that my wife Laura, my son's stepmother, shall deem the spouse, the marriage, and the child suitable as heirs to my estate."
Laura gasped and Griggs wrinkled face broke into a wide grin. Terry wasn't sure how he felt. If Laura was the girl she seemed to be then the old man had made a pretty wise choice, but if she was an opportunist the will left her in a pretty strong position to take everything for herself.
Griggs cleared his throat and continued. "I conditionally bequeath to my son the sum of one hundred and twenty two thousand dollars. This sum being approximately eight per cent of his total inheritance. The conditions of the bequest are as follows: that my son accept the place set aside for him in the Freshman class at Hapen college, that he attend said college for at least two semesters and satisfy both the staff at the college and his stepmother that he is making an earnest effort to receive his degree, that he shall have full choice as to field of specialization, and finally, that he shall have all his expenses paid and shall receive an allowance of one hundred and fifty dollars a month so long as he is in attendance.
"If after two semesters at Hapen College he shall have failed in his studies, said failure resulting in spite of earnest effort, the aforementioned bequest shall be paid to him."
Terry was astounded. He hadn't really expected a dime and he hadn't wanted any money. But it seemed to him that in the last day and a half he had gotten to know more about his father than he had in the eighteen years they'd lived together.
The reading was over. The three business associates left and the reporters left. Only Terry, Laura, and Griggs remained. Terry wanted to find out some of the particulars concerning his bequest.
Griggs had all the information. Five months ago, when Terry's father discovered he had a terminal cancer he changed the will. The acceptance to Hapen college was secured by means of a large donation to the college building fund. Griggs assured Terry that the will was binding and no court in the world would set it aside. This information was afforded, not requested. Terry had no thought of contesting the will. Griggs told him he had two weeks to make up his mind about the college.
There wasn't much more to be said. Terry and Laura left the lawyer and went back to the apartment. Laura went to her room and Terry went into the library. He poured himself a stiff drink and settled into one of the leather-covered easy chairs near the window. The city spread itself before him in the daylight. Through the smoke and soot he could see the green tops of the trees in Central Park and all around was the grey stone of buildings and the glare of glass windows.
He contrasted the view with the wooden and stucco buildings of Taiwan. Down below him, on the hard pavement, were eight and a half million overfed, soft, neurotic Americans who were involved in a bitter struggle to reduce their working day from something under eight hours to something less than five hours.
Taiwan, on the other hand, was filled with people whose work day ran upward of twelve hours and they were so involved with making a living they didn't have time for the psychiatrist's couch. They were refugees from a country whose political system they didn't want. They were in constant danger of invasion and annihilation. Their lives were filled with intrigue, spying, black-marketeering, soldiers and secret police. Their every waking thought was concerned with supplying food for their bellies.
Who is better off? he wondered. The Americans or the free Chinese? The thoughts of poverty turned him to his own situation. A hundred and twenty two thousand dollars. And that was only eight per cent of half the estate. That made his father worth thirty and a half million dollars.
The sum was staggering, and yet, as with anything of that magnitude, it was little more than a number. It was like talking about the distance between stars. The distances were so huge that no man could really comprehend the vastness. For the first time in his life Terry began to think of himself as a rich man's son. He'd never thought about money that way before. Money, to him, had always been something you needed to put clothes on your back, food in your belly, and a woman somewhere near at hand.
When you needed it you went out and got it, worked for it. And when you had it you used it for the things you needed or wanted. But he saw now that money had another purpose, another value. Money was power. With enough money a man could control the lives and desires of others to his own will. What would he do with a hundred and twenty-two thousand dollars? There was nothing he wanted that he didn't have. He had a job, clothes, friends. What else was there?
If he took the money he wouldn't have to work for a long time -- maybe never. But work was part of a man's life. Without work a man was only half alive. There were other considerations. He knew the day would come when he would want or need more money than he had. And then, it had been his father's wish that he at last try college. Ah, there was no hurry for a decision.
Laura came into the library. "Pour one of those for me, will you?"
Terry got up to pour her drink and she threw herself into one of the chairs. She'd taken off the mourning clothes and now her red hair contrasted with a green brocaded silk housecoat. Her white face looked ill against the brilliant coloring of her hair and clothes.
"It's funny," she said when he handed her the drink. "I never thought about him dying. Oh, I knew he was older than me, a lot older, but it was something I knew, not something I felt. You know what I mean?"
Terry sipped at his drink and said nothing.
"What am I going to do with everything he gave me?" She continued. "Will I turn into one of those rich widows who throws parties? With him gone there is nothing left in my life. We didn't have many friends and we didn't go out much. We spent our time together, doing nothing really, just enjoying each other. We read and listened to music. We went to movies and once in a while a play. Once a month there was dinner and a night club, but that was kind of a ritual to maintain contact with the world. What am I going to do now?" Her voice broke and she began to sob quietly.
Terry looked at her, helpless in the face of her grief. "There isn't much I can say to you," he told her. "I wish now that I could cry for him. I want to but I can't."
He put his glass down and went out of the room, leaving her to her tears and the bottle. In his room he exchanged the suit and tie for slacks, a sport shirt, and a jacket. In the street he saw people hurrying by. The world went on without his father. And his own world, his life, had received no mortal blow at the old man's death. But Laura had built her life around his father and now there was nothing to hold her up.
Midtown Manhattan, Forty-second Street, just West of Times Square to be exact, is a strange sight in the afternoons. Both sides of the street are lined with second run movie houses with fifty cent admissions. Interspersed between the theaters are small bookstores which have barely legal pornography displayed in the window and on the racks and counters, and illegal pornography under the counters and in the back rooms. That's the way it runs, theater, pornography shop, theater. Once every two or three theaters the pattern is interrupted by a hot dog stand, a pizza parlor, an Army-Navy store selling effete men's clothes.
But the main attraction on that block of Forty-second street is the people, and there are two distinct classes of people who frequent the area. At night there are pimps and hustlers and con men out to bilk or service the tourist, the hick, the rube, the mark. These people crawl into holes somewhere during the day and give up possession of the street to the lonely, the sick, die disgusted, the out-of-work with nothing but time on their hands. These people frequent the street for the cheap food available and for the fifty cents worth of oblivion or escape in the darkness of the theaters. Kids playing hookey from school or with nothing better to do in the heat of the summer also come to the street. And they bring with them the dark silent men who prey on young boys in the men's rooms and in the seats of theaters. Middle-aged women follow the teen-agers, trying to find relief in youth from the flare-up of the dying flame.
These are the day inhabitants of Forty-second street, and it was here that Terry came. For this instant of time, perhaps for the first time in his life, he was confused and lonely. He wasn't attracted by the cheap prices. He came because he knew instinctively that here he would find kindred souls. He came to the block and stood under the shade of a movie marquee watching his brothers and sisters: and after a while he went into one of the movies.
Behind the candy counter a young woman sat on a high stool. Her skirt was up above her knees, her thighs and pink panties exposed. She ignored Terry's stare, knowing where he was looking and not giving a damn, and leaned over without getting off the stool to reach for the bag of popcorn he ordered. When she leaned over, the neck of her blouse gaped away from her body and exposed her breasts.
He looked there too. She still didn't give a damn. The theater had four balconies and Terry climbed to the highest one to take a seat. The fourth balcony was three quarters full and the rest of the theater was almost empty. Everybody climbed to the fourth balcony.
He found a seat and settled back to watch the war picture filmed in the Philippine jungle. The picture was in color, unreal overly vivid color. The color worked best in the shots of the semi-nude female characters. The unreal color aided the viewers in developing their private sexual fantasies. Half exposed breasts became naked breasts. Tight clothing disappeared to expose fleshy buttocks and naked thighs.
He lost himself in the movie until someone sat down beside him in the darkness. The someone was a man, but only defined as a man by the body with which he was equipped. For, no sooner did he sit down than he pressed his knee against Terry's.
Terry moved his knee away. The queer's knee followed. And a moment later Terry felt fingertips brush across his trouser leg. First the fingertips, then a whole hand grasping gently.
It was too much effort to raise a big stink. Terry just got up and changed his seat. That ought to give the guy his idea. It did. The queer got up and moved to the side of another figure in the darkness. Terry turned his attention back to the flickering screen and the technicolor breasts, all exposed except for the nipples. His imagination supplied them.
His imagination was doing a good job when he was jerked back to reality by another hand on his leg. He froze and stared straight ahead, not seeing the screen any more. It might be the same guy or another one. Whichever, this time the guy was going to get a bust in the mouth. And Terry was just the guy to administer a bust in the mouth. In Teheran, one time, he'd broken a man's jaw in two places with one solid punch.
Without turning his head he looked out of the corner of his eye. He was surprised. This time the hand belonged to a girl. In the reflected light from the movie screen he could see the girl was a Negro. A beautiful Negro.
Maybe he'd better forget about that punch in the mouth and see what developed.
CHAPTER TWO
"Hey."
The call brought him out of his memory and back to the shower in the room of the hotel in the small college town in upstate New York. The calling voice was feminine. It was Pat.
"Hey what?" Terry called back "Just hey, that's all. You've been in there so long I thought maybe you slipped and were drowning in the shower. If you hadn't answered me I was going to peek."
He laughed as he finished soaping his body and moved under the stream of water. "What did you expect to see when you peeked?"
"Your body, or you unconscious and drowning."
"Would it be a new sight?"
"The body wouldn't. You drowning would."
"If you'd really like to look go ahead and open the door. I'm not bashful."
"Time and place, time and place," she called, laughing gaily. "We've got plenty of time and I can think of better places than a shower stall."
"Is that a promise?" he called as the last of the soap curled down the drain.
"You'll have to wait and find out." He turned off the water. "Hey, are you coming out?"
"That's right."
"I'll be in my room. Call me when you're ready." When he opened the shower door and stepped out she was gone. He smiled to himself and hummed a little tune as he sawed the towel across his wet skin. It looked like it might turn out to be a pretty interesting evening. He shaved quickly, not bothering with lather and the safety razor, but using the electric job instead. He'd shaved that morning anyway.
What in hell did a guy wear to dinner in a small town? He selected slacks and a sports jacket for that air of informality, but kept the white shirt and tie. It made him look more respectable, less like an ex-wrestler.
Pat was waiting for him. She was sitting in a chair smoking a cigarette and reading a paperback novel. She looked up when he came into the room. "How's the foot?" he asked jauntily. "It's a little better."
"Better let me take another look at it," he said, dropping to one knee before her.
"You needn't bother," she said. "I've got panties on now."
He blushed a deep red and she laughed.
"How did you know?" he asked.
"How could I help but know? Your eyes almost bugged out of your head. It's my own fault though. I know I should wear them, but riding on that damned train, sitting for hours on end, the damned things bind against me. I took them off about two hours before we pulled into town and then in the excitement and the hustle of getting ready to get off I forgot all about them. What the hell, I expect you've seen women before."
"That I have, that I have," he said in a parody of the famous W. C. Fields intonation. She laughed. "But I'd sure like to get a closer look at you."
"Time... "
"And place. Yes, I know," he said, finishing for her. "Well, if sex is ruled out for now, how about some food?"
"An excellent idea. I can see right off you're college material."
The restaurant was on the ground floor of the hotel and it was done in the old fashioned style. The dining room was decorated with pine panelled walls, chintz curtains, and checkered tablecloths. The lighting fixtures were electrified gas lights and they cast a warm yellow light on the highly polished wood. The service was good and the food excellently prepared. There was nothing fancy on the menu, just plenty of beef dishes. Potatoes and vegetables came with the dinner.
Terry regretted there was no wine available. There's nothing better than wine to make a girl more agreeable, not that Pat seemed like she needed any help. Instead of wine they had cocktails before dinner and highballs after the coffee.
"If you're trying to get me drunk," Pat said as they sipped at their highballs. "You shouldn't have fed me so well. Everyone knows liquor works better on an empty stomach."
"Everyone is an idiot. Liquor works faster on an empty stomach, but it works better and longer on a full stomach. On an empty stomach it makes you dizzy and sick. On a full stomach it gives a pleasant feeling of lethargy. Besides, if I have to get you drunk let's not even bother."
"You don't have to, but a little liquor never hurt in helping to persuade a girl."
"I don't want to persuade you. I want to make you."
"I don't know where you come from," she said. "But where I come from a fellow holds a girl's hand, kisses her, and then tries to sneak his hand up under her skirt. He doesn't just come right out and ask for it."
"Why not?"
She paused for a minute, her brow furrowed. "I don't know why not. It just isn't done that way, I guess."
"But isn't it better my way, more honest?"
"No. Your way there's something missing, something destroyed."
He smiled. "Nothing's missing. My way I separate sex from romance. This way the two people involved can enjoy both sex and romance, or just one or the other, or neither, just as they choose without fooling themselves into something."
"The argument sounds good, but it goes against the grain. Let's talk about something else."
"If it's going to be just an evening's conversation let's adjourn to the bar. I enjoy talk more when it's combined with plenty of alcohol."
She arched one eyebrow at him and smiled. "You wouldn't be trying to get me just a little drunk, would you?"
He made a face of mock honesty. "Who me? Never."
The bar was small and comfortable and it followed the motif of the dining room with lots of highly polished wood and a minimum of chrome. The biggest blessing of all was the absence of a jukebox. In lieu of blaring rock and roll, the hotel management had installed an FM radio in the bar and the soft music was the perfect muted backdrop for conversation and liquor.
Terry and Pat took a booth in the corner. In a refreshingly informal way the bartender leaned across the bar and asked them for their order. They ordered. He poured. And then he walked around the bar to bring the drinks to their table. When a patron in a bar orders a drink without naming a brand he takes his chances. Nine times out of eleven he winds up with dishwater aged about fourteen seconds, the time it takes to pour the booze from the still into the bottle. Terry was pleasantly surprised to find that the bourbon was excellent. He tasted it, smiled, and took a long sip.
"Tell me about the school," he said.
"There's not much to tell. Hapen is a small liberal arts college. We have about eight hundred students and we're only ten years old. Don't let the age fool you. We're rated tenth best school of our kind in the country."
"You seem to have a proprietary interest."
"Everybody here feels that way. I guess it's because we don't have buildings and dormitories and a regular campus."
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"The school buildings are converted mansions with quonset hut extensions, the library is one big quonset, and the four dormitories are converted private homes. The new campus is under construction. That means they add one new brick a day. They've been building the damned thing for almost five years and they still haven't got one building completed. What else do you want to know?"
"Tell me about the courses and the profs. Is it a tough school?"
"It's not easy, but it's funny, too. They have minimum entrance requirements and an entrance exam and all that rigmarole, but sometimes they take people with terrible records and keep them on no matter what their grades. There have been students who spent three and four years here and never pulled a passing semester average."
"Why do they keep them?"
"The administration works on potential. If they feel a student has potential they'll keep him as long as possible. There aren't very many schools like this in the country."
"Now comes the big question. What about social life?"
"The student ratio is three men for every woman. We girls think that's great."
"I wonder how the men feel."
"No need to wonder. They don't like it. Dates are hard to come by. But don't worry. I don't think you'll have any trouble."
He grinned. "I'm already having trouble with you."
She laughed. "I said dates, not makes."
Terry ordered another round of drinks and when they came he paid for them.
"I think this is going to be enough for me," Pat told him.
"What? Drunk already? In that case hurry up and finish your drink and let's go up to your room." His tone was half joking, half serious. This way Pat could accept or reject his offer without feeling embarrassed.
She rejected. "Whoah there. You're jumping to conclusions again."
"You mean you're going to turn me down after all the sly remarks?"
"Sixty four silver dollars for the gentleman in the balcony," she said, laughing gaily. "Seriously though, right now I don't feel like doing anything but snoring. I'm tired, my foot hurts, and we have to get an early start in the morning."
"You're right. If you snore we better call the whole thing off. I can't stand snoring."
They both laughed as they finished their drinks. Terry took Pat up to her room. He followed her inside and locked the door behind him. She stopped when she heard the key in the lock and turned to look at him.
"Always lock your door," he told her. "You can't be too careful in a strange hotel."
"If the door is locked how are you going to get out?"
"But I don't have to get out. I just go through the other door."
She relaxed and laughed. "You had me worried for a minute."
"You better keep worrying. I'm not gone yet. The least you can do is give me a kiss."
She came into his arms and tilted her head back for his kiss. He bent forward, wrapped his arms around her and straightened. When he stood her feet dangled off the floor. Her lips were soft and hot against his. He let his tongue flick against her lips and felt the part. His tongue dove into her mouth and was met by her own tongue.
Her breasts crushed against his chest and the upper part of her thighs moved against him. He felt her chest swell with her sharp intake of breath. He held her against him with one hand and let 'his other hand find her breast. It was a good breast and he felt it pulse eagerly in his hand, her nipple probing through the bra and sweater. He closed his fingers over the nipple and she sighed.
Suddenly she was pushing herself away from him and turned her head from side to side to escape his lips. "Don't... stop," she said. "Please go now."
He let her go and she hopped across the room keeping her back to him. "What's wrong?" he asked.
"Nothing... everything... I just don't want to make love tonight. Please go now."
He went.
In his own room he undressed slowly and stretched out on the bed. She's a funny girl, he thought. First she talks like she knows what it's all about and then she panics when a guy touches her breast. He smiled and then realized with a start that he hadn't even thought about Laura since before dinner.
He asked himself where the thing with Laura began. How it got started. But he'd asked himself that question before. Maybe it started when Laura first met his father Maybe it began that afternoon in the movie theater when the Negress touched his leg.
He lit a cigarette and, turned out the lights and lay back on the bed. When he'd seen it was a girl touching him and not a queer he relaxed in the movie seat to give her access to what she was looking for. Her hand found him and squeezed. It was delightful. Her knowledgeable fingers caressed him for a moment and then moved to his clothing. In a second her hand was active again and the excitement was building in his belly.
He put his arm around her shoulder and drew her close. He let his hand slide from her shoulder and move down under her arm to come around and rest on her breast. It was a big breast and soft and warm. She wore no bra and he could feel the breast swell against the material of her blouse. His other hand went to her knee and then slid up under her skirt. Her thighs were smooth as silk and she began to tremble when he returned her caresses.
He moved his hand up her thighs and discovered to his delight that she wore no panties. He began to caress her and she gasped her response in his ear, her hot breath fanning the fire in his body. The more he caressed the more frantic became her own caresses. Her body trembled around his hand and her breath came in tiny gasps.
She bent forward and let her lips kiss him. The touch was like a million tiny charges of electricity and his body began to throb with need. His hand at her thighs moved faster and she imprisoned his hand, and began to twist her body around on the seat.
Her lips parted and the kiss caress became the most thrilling touch in the world. Her tongue was a cushion of flame as it touched him, brushed over him. When she closed her lips again she couldn't close them all the way. Suddenly he tore his hand from her body and pushed her head away. Someone was coming down the aisle.
The girl put her lips against his ear, kissed, then whispered. "Honey, let's go someplace and ball. I want you something terrible."
He couldn't speak. He nodded his head and took her by the hand and led her out of the theater. In the lobby he got his first good look at her. She was beautiful. Her white peasant blouse was cut low, revealing the upper halves of a pair of huge breasts. And if he looked hard he was sure he could see the ridges of her nipples against the cloth. She was tall and slim with only the bulges of her breasts and buttocks belying her leanness.
If her breasts had been good her buttocks were great. Two swells pushing out against the fabric of her skirt. When she walked he could see the twin globes pushing and sliding against one another. His need was so great he wanted to kiss her body right there in the lobby of the theater.
Outside, under the marquee, they stopped. He shook two cigarettes out of his pack and held a match for her. "Where can we go?" he asked when both cigarettes were lit.
"I got a place uptown, baby," she said. "But it's a real rat hole."
"I don't care," he said. "Let's take a cab."
He held on to her hand, afraid he might lose her, and they waited at the curb for an empty cab. It was almost rush hour and they had a long wait. Ten or twelve taxis went past but they were all occupied. Terry felt a hand tap him on the shoulder and he turned.
The man was a Negro, black shiny skin, a flat nose, and thick lips. He was probably the ugliest Negro in North America. He was nattily dressed and he appeared to be one of the hustlers who populated the Forty-Second Street area.
"Hey, man," the Negro said in a soft voice. "Why don't you leave this colored girl alone and go find yourself a nice white girl to ball."
Terry didn't say anything. He just looked at the man and a smile began to play about his lips.
The man's hand closed around Terry's jacket lapel. "I'm talking to you, you mother," the Negro said. "Now, let go this gal's hand and move along."
The girl was scared and Terry felt the hand on his lapel pulling him away from her. Lounging against the building were three more Negroes and they were watching the action with smiles of interest.
Terry let go of the girl's hand and grasped the man around the bicep of the hand holding his lapel. He smiled at the Negro and closed his hand in a crushing grip. The hard muscle under his fingers softened to jelly. Pain flickered in the Negro's eyes.
"Let go of me," Terry said quietly.
The hand let go of his lapel. His own hand still gripped the bicep and he exerted a little more pressure.
"Now, you turn around and walk away from here with your friends over there, or I'll rip your arm off and beat you to death with the bloody stump." He squeezed tighter for a moment and was rewarded with an agonized gas' Then he let go and disdainfully turned his back on the man. His ears told him the man was still behind him. He turned slowly back and looked into the man's eyes.
For a moment the Negro's gaze was belligerent. Then the eyes turned down to the ground and the man walked away. His friends followed and they began to jabber at him questioningly. He ignored them.
A cab came by and Terry and the girl got in. She gave the driver the address and settled back in her seat. Her hand crept under Terry's arm and she squeezed his muscle.
"Man," she said. "Ill bet you could have torn his arm off."
"I've got something better you can squeeze," he whispered.
She grinned, her teeth flashing against the darkness of her skin. "I'll do more than just squeeze," she said.
She reached for him but he pushed her hand away. "Not here. Let's wait till we get to your place. The waiting will make it better."
"Okay, honey. Whatever you say."
"What's your name?" he asked.
"Charlotte, but everybody calls me Charlie. Ain't that a kick in the slats? Do I look like a Charlie to you?" She thrust her chest out as she spoke.
He looked down at her bulging breasts and grinned. "If you're a Charlie, then I'm queer."
"I saw that fag in the movie give you the business. When you moved away I followed you."
"Why?"
"I saw you going into the movie and I thought if you're as nice as you look I, want some. So I went in after you. When I sat down beside you I found out what I wanted to know."
The cab pulled up in front of a four story tenement on the fringe of Harlem. Terry paid the driver and followed Charlie up the steps and into the hall. The hallway smelled from rotting garbage and sweat. Charlie climbed the steps and Terry followed behind her. Her buttocks swayed back and forth right in front of his face. They went up two flights and new smells were added to the garbage and sweat. The new odors were of stale cooking fats and sex.
Inside Charlie's apartment the smells weren't so bad. She lived on the top floor and her opened windows helped dissipate the odor. The apartment was as she'd said: a rat hole. The nine-by-twelve on the floor was held together by the worn spots. Stuffing was leaking from the bottom of the sofa, and the easy chair had only three legs and leaned to one side.
"It ain't much," Charlie said, closing the door behind them. "But home is where you get loved. And at least the bedsprings don't squeak."
The sun beating down on the tarred roof of the building all day turned the top floor apartment into an oven. The heat and the exertion of the four story climb sent rivers of perspiration coursing down Terry's body. He took off his jacket and shirt and dropped them on the sofa.
Charlie's eyes gleamed when she saw the naked flesh of his broad hard chest. She stood in front of him and let her fingers trace the ridges of muscle on his body.
"You in a hurry, or can we have a drink first?" she asked huskily.
He squeezed her buttock and grinned. "I've got all the time in the world. Let's have a drink."
Her hand went to his thighs and she touched gently. "I think you've got all the love in the world, too."
She squeezed and turned away, going into another room. She was back in about a minute and a half with two glasses filled with ice and a clear liquid. "All I've got's gin," she apologized, holding one glass out toward him.
"So long as it's got alcohol in it." He took the drink, sipped at it, and looked around for a place to sit down. "I don't think that sofa'll hold me," he said.
"No use to waste time in here anyway," Charlie said. "Follow me."
He followed her into the bedroom. The room had cross-ventilation and it was slightly cooler in there. Terry sat down on the edge of the bed and sipped at his drink. He'd never had straight gin before, but he found it wasn't a bad drink after the first few sips. It's like the driest Martini in the world, he thought.
Charlie stood before him and set her glass down on the night stand next to the bed. Then, very slowly, she removed her blouse, first pulling it out of her skirt, and then raising it until her breasts appeared. The breasts were magnificent cones of brown flesh with black circles and hard black tips at the ends.
While the blouse was over her head he reached out and grabbed one nipple. She squealed and jumped away from him, her breasts bobbing and swaying when she moved. She tossed the blouse away and pushed the skirt down over her silky hips. That was it Two swift movements and she was naked, her beautiful body exuding an air of animal health and vitality.
She posed for him with her hands in the air and he let his eyes travel over her body. He looked at the unseeing eyes of her breasts and the satiny skin covering her ribs. Her body was covered with a thin film of perspiration and it looked like her skin had a million tiny diamonds in it. His eyes traveled down from her ribs to her slender waist and from there to her gently mounded belly with the navel like a cup of passion.
Below her waist her hips flared to round full contours and she turned slowly around to give him a look at her buttocks. The two globes looked like twin black basketballs. She continued to turn until she was facing him again. Her thighs were straight and slim and lovely and he could see her muscles moving under her ebony skin as she moved her legs.
He set his glass down beside hers, slid to his knees on the floor before her, and pressed his face to her body. She groaned and curled her fingers in his hair. His lips touched her satiny, trembling flesh and she leaned against him, unable to stand by herself.
He supported her weight and she moved her feet to give him ready access. Her hands left his head and went to his broad shoulders and back. Her nails raked his skin while her body moved eagerly against his face.
He stood up quickly and swept her up in his arms. Her breasts crushed against his hard chest and he could feel the nipples thrusting into him. Her mouth was all over him in frantic nipping kisses; on his face, his throat, his shoulders and chest. She would take a fold of skin between her lips and squeeze hard, then her teeth would grate back and forth.
The passion was building in him too quickly now. He picked up the girl and threw her down on the bed on her back. No sooner did she touch the bed than her knees moved to receive him. She gave little anticipatory groans as his eyes searched out the beauty of her body.
He sat down on the edge of the bed beside her and caressed her with one hand, the other hand working at his clothing. She saw what he was doing and helped him.
He stood and removed his clothing. And naked now, as she was, he stretched out beside her. She rolled into his arms with the smacking sound of flesh on flesh and he became aware of the series of contrasts between their bodies. Her skin was shiny satiny black, his was tanned from working in the sun. His shoulders and arms were roped with muscle, hers were long, smooth, gently-curved limbs. His chest was hard and ridged, hers was soft and mounded with her breasts. His belly was flat and rippled, hers a convex bowl of trembling flesh. They contrasted; they were opposites and they attracted. They were male and female and it was all that mattered.
He moved away from her, wanting to make the excitement last as long as possible before the thunderclap of completion. Her hand followed him, but he pushed her away. His drink stood on the nightstand next to hers. He picked them both up, handed one to her, and they drank, draining the glasses. The raw gin exploded in his stomach and fanned the flames of his passion even higher.
With an awful groan of need he threw himself on her and she was waiting for him, ready, her face split with a tremendous smile as he joined her body. Her breath whistled in through her open lips and flared nostrils, and her legs locked behind the small of his back.
He was imprisoned in the passionate circle of her flesh. And he was a very willing prisoner. Her breasts were flattened under the weight of his chest and he raised himself up on his elbows. Now their bodies were joined at the hips and curved away from each other toward the shoulders.
He withdrew almost all the way from her, moving slowly and feeling her greedy body tighten around him to try and keep him. When he was almost at the point of leaving her completely, he smashed forward again and she groaned with pleasure. He did it again, a little faster this time. Then again, slower now. Over and over again he repeated this simple movement. He varied the speed, sometimes moving agonizingly slowly and sometimes very rapidly, five or six motions in quick succession.
He looked down at her face. Her eyes were half-closed, her facial muscles contorted with her pleasure, and she had her lower lip caught between her white teeth... she saw nothing from her heavy-lidded eyes, her attention concentrated on the sensations emanating from the nether portion of her body. Her hips rocked under him, sometimes moving with his rhythm, sometimes against him.
Her muted groans of pleasure became quiet screams of joy as the sensations in her body multiplied. His own passion followed hers and yet he felt no driving urgency, no need to complete. Instead he found a kind of vicarious joy in her very evident appreciation of his efforts and he sought to sustain himself as long as possible.
When the frantic trembling began in his body he tried desperately to think about something else so as not to hurry the thing. And he managed to sustain himself, and her, for quite a while. Eventually however, he could contain himself no longer. His pace doubled, trebled, his own voice groaned and whispered as he desperately sought fulfillment.
Her reactions under him increased now and their bodies smashed against each other frantically and eagerly. The bed, the room, the city, the world, disappeared and they became Adam and Eve in the very first act of love. There was a cataclysmic thunder, their bodies strained against one another, muscles frozen in the ultimate pleasure, and it was over.
He rolled away from her and lay on the damp sheets gasping for breath, rivers of sweat running along his body. There was a long moment suspended in time when their fluttering lungs gasped for air and then they slowly returned to the world of the present.
Her voice was a whisper of awe and gratitude when she spoke. "Ooooh, lover, you really did something to me. It hasn't been that good since my brother got me in the shower my first time."
A laugh rumbled in his chest and he said nothing. It had been good for him too, better than any other time in his life. The climax had always come as the result of the action. Never before had there been the agonized reaching for the end. And never before had his own throat emitted groans and muted breathy yells as he worked out his completion.
Where a few minutes ago he had been eager and rampant, he was now calm and relaxed. Her hand touched him and she placed a kiss of gratitude on him.
They looked long into each other's eyes and communicated their feelings without words. The aftermath, he found, was also good. And better than ever before.
When she got up from the bed his eyes followed her watching the smooth play of muscles under her black shiny hide. She was an experienced woman, maybe a harlot, and she knew there were certain things to be done after her recent exercise. She walked into the bathroom, not bothering to close the door, and he heard the clang of metal on porcelain and the sound of running water. She came back into view in the open doorway and placed the pan on the tiled floor.
He knew instinctively what was going to happen next. He'd never seen it done but he'd heard of it before. He knew what his reaction would be and he didn't want to watch, but a strange fascination held his gaze.
And at that moment the girl became Charlotte, a black tramp washing the stain of her sin from her body and preparing herself for her next customer.
She ruined it. She spoiled the whole thing. The revulsion he felt at what she was doing now spread itself to what they had just done. He rolled off the bed and slipped quickly into his clothes. She came out of the bathroom just as he was finishing dressing.
"Oh, honey," she said, disappointment in her tone. "I thought you'd hang around a while and we could do it again."
He tied the last shoelace and stood up. His hand went into his pocket and he drew out a roll of bills. There was a twenty on top and he threw the bill on the bed.
She stared, wide-eyed, uncomprehending.
"That's for you," he said and turned toward the door. "And thanks for the fun." He didn't see the look of disbelief and he didn't hear her screamed curses.
A cab took him back to the neighborhood of his father's -- no, his stepmother's -- penthouse, but instead of going up to the apartment he found a bar. It was almost supper time but Terry wasn't hungry. He needed something to wash the taste of the raw gin from his mouth.
He found the something. It was bourbon.
Drink after drink of bourbon washed the taste of the gin away. But Terry wanted more than that. He wanted to get good and stoned. And he was a big man so it took quite a lot of bourbon. It was after ten o'clock at night before he decided he was drunk enough to go home and go to bed. And those had been his only and honorable intentions: to go home and go to bed.
The doorman of his building had to walk halfway down the block to steer him through the front door and to the elevator. The elevator operator held him against the wall of the car with one hand and operated the controls with the other. When the car got to the penthouse the operator took the key from Terry's fumbling hand and opened the door for him.
From there on Terry was on his own. The operator pointed him into the apartment and then went back to the elevator, disappearing into the maw of the building. Most of the lights were out and Terry managed to knock over a table on his way toward his own room. The resulting crash brought Laura into the darkened living room. "Who's there?" she said, her own voice slurred with drink.
"Terr," he answered. "Who turned off the damn lights?"
"Oh, Christ you're drunk," she said into the darkness.
"Tha'ss right. I'm a lil drunk."
"Well, go to bed and leave me alone." Laura turned and left the room.
Terry followed her.
He followed her into the billiard room and his eyes smarted from the sudden light. The cover was off the billiard table and Terry could see the cue and the three balls against the green baize. As he watched, Laura picked up the cue in one hand and a glass in the other. While she surveyed the table she took a long swallow from the glass and set it down with a hard bang on the table. There was an ice bucket and a half empty bottle of Scotch next to the place she set the glass.
Terry wasn't sure what happened next. He'd been too drunk to remember everything with perfect clarity, but he did remember the high points. God, did he remember the high points.
Somehow, he'd ended up with another drink and a cue in his hand. His father had been teaching Laura to play billiards and now he was taking over. He tried to make two or three shots but he was too drunk. Laura had two more drinks and then she was in his arms and calling him Frank, his father's name.
He hadn't been drunk enough to forget kissing her and taking her in his arms. He hadn't been drunk enough to forget her whispered pleading.
"Take me, Frank. I need you. Make love to me."
SI And he hadn't been drunk enough to forget what followed. He wished to God he had gotten drunk enough to forget.
He remembered opening her housecoat and touching her naked body. He remembered kissing her naked breasts, and belly, and thighs. He remembered picking her up and laying her down on the top of the billiard table. And he remembered crawling up alongside her.
Her body had been hot and demanding and he had filled her need. The excitement sobered her somewhat and he remembered the shocked look of realization when he took her.
At first she was frozen immobile. Then her muscles tensed to force him from her. But he couldn't stop, he had to finish. His own thighs kept her legs spread and his hands held her wildly tossing head. He'd kissed her and his tongue slipped into her mouth. She screamed then, a scream of self-denouncement because she felt her body giving in to him, urging him on.
And he went on.
He went all the way.
In the end she joined him at the peak, shuddering to a climax beneath his surging body.
When he awoke the next morning his shame and guilt had blocked the incident from his memory. But his elbows and knees were sore. At first he didn't know why. And then slowly, horrifyingly, he remembered. And he remembered everything. He knew the soreness was from the friction of his knees and elbows with the felt of the billiard tabletop. But he knew something else, two things in fact.
He knew he'd taken his father's woman, known her in the biblical sense. And he knew that while this wasn't exactly incest it was probably the next best thing. The combination of the hangover and the guilt put him on the fine edge of hysteria and a little couplet remembered from his high school days began to run through his mind over and over again. Vice is nice, but incest is best.
Vice is nice, but incest is best.
The words ran through his mind again and again. He remembered the will and the insane thought ran through his mind that he might marry his stepmother. Then when the time came for her to approve or disapprove of his marriage she would disapprove and the money would revert back to her. But he'd get the money anyway because he would be married to Laura.
Isn't that funny, he thought.
Isn't that a scream, he thought.
He almost did scream.
Instead of screaming he dragged his body out of the bed and into the bathroom. First he puked his guts out, then he showered, rubbing his body almost raw in an effort to wash away the stain of his guilt. But it was no use and he knew it. He could scrub until he bled to death and that still wouldn't make atonement.
When he came out of the shower Laura was in his room waiting for him. He just stood there in the doorway, naked, vainly trying to think straight. Laura was smiling at him. He remembered his nakedness and slipped into a bathrobe. Laura just smiled. Then she spoke.
"I brought you some breakfast," she said, pointing to a tray at the foot of the bed.
He wondered at the normalness of her tone. Maybe she didn't remember anything. He moved to the bed and sat down. There was juice and toast and a pot of coffee on the tray. The juice was cold, the coffee hot when he poured it into the cup, and the toast was just right. Everything seemed so normal that he began to doubt his own sanity. Maybe he dreamed it, maybe nothing had happened, his mind grasped at straws. But the soreness was real. And if the soreness was real so was the memory.
He almost gagged on the coffee. "What's wrong?" Laura asked. "How can you sit there smiling after what happened last night?"
"Oh," she said. "I see."
"What do you mean, you see? Doesn't it bother you?"
"Why should it bother me? We made love and we both enjoyed it. I'm not really your mother, you know."
This time he did gag and he rushed into the bathroom to throw up again. When he came back Laura was still sitting there, waiting for him. She made him sit clown and she made him drink more coffee. Then she talked to him. She told him there was nothing wrong in what happened. They were both adults and they'd done something pleasurable together.
When he voiced his own feelings she rationalized his protests. And the more she talked, the less guilty he felt. Or so he thought, at least.
What followed came naturally. He spent the next two weeks in bed with Laura. And she'd been right. There was nothing wrong with what was between them. The fact that when she was in the throes of her passion she called him by his father's name meant absolutely nothing.
It meant nothing except she was trying through him to bring his father back to life. She dwelt continuously on the similarities between him and his father. She even taught him some of his father's bed mannerisms In those two weeks he sank deeper and deeper into the mire of degradation.
When he reached bottom he paused to think. He had two courses of action open to him. He could run, leave town and go back to his travels around the world. Or, he could stay. He could attempt to fulfill his father's last wish and go to college.
The second choice was best. He could attempt some small atonement this way.
CHAPTER THREE
Getting registered was murder. Hapen may only have some eight hundred odd students but it seemed as though all eight hundred of them were in the same lines at the same time. They were a loud laughing group, mostly a lot younger, than himself. Here and there in the crowd he spotted one or two older students. He could pick them out because they were the ones who weren't screaming at the tops of their lungs. Most of the older students he saw were men, probably veterans on the GI bill, but some of them were women, married, he guessed, and just taking courses to fill time. If he ever got tired of playing around with the co-eds he could always throw a pass at one of those gals. Married women were better than single girls anyway, especially the middle-aged ones. Or so he'd been told.
He managed to finish registering by noon and it left him drawn and tired. He hadn't gotten much sleep the night before. He's spent most of the hours of darkness tossing and turning and thinking about Laura. Damn it, he knew he shouldn't have anything to do with her. He knew she was just using him. And yet, whenever he thought about her he felt the pangs of desire, of need, of hunger. Well, he was here now, and she was far away in New York. He would make himself forget all about her. If his desire grew too demanding he could always slake it with one of the fresh young bodies surrounding him.
Lunch was a hamburger and coffee in the school cafeteria. When he finished he decided that that was the last time he would eat there. The coffee was worse than any he'd had anywhere in the world. And he'd had some pretty bad coffee. The cafeteria stuff tasted like it was made from mud.
On his way out he ran into Patricia Duncan. She flashed him a big smile and he detoured over to her table. "Hi," she said. "How'd you make out this morning?"
"Well, I'm registered. Now I'm officially a student at Hapen College, if that means anything special."
She laughed. "That and a dime will allow you to use the phone in the hall. Have you found a place to stay yet?"
"No. I'm on my way to start looking now."
"If you want to wait a few minutes until I finish eating I've got a list of places up in my office."
She was almost finished and five more minutes of sitting down appealed to Terry. So he got himself another cup of that miserable coffee and sat down with her.
His face screwed up when he took a sip of the thin bitter brew. "Whew. How do you people stand this stuff?"
"Bad coffee is a tradition here at the school. We're a young school and we don't have many traditions so we stick to all we have. If the cafeteria improved its coffee the students would probably riot."
"This stuff seems like a hell of a long way to go just for the sake of tradition. Personally, I'd prefer good coffee and no tradition."
"If you stay here long enough maybe you can institute a change. What kind of place are you looking for?" she asked, her mouth half full of sandwich.
"I want something in the neighborhood of three rooms, nicely furnished and not too far from the school."
"Students under twenty-three aren't allowed to live in apartments. They can have rooms in private homes or rooming houses, or they can live in the dormitory."
He laughed. "How old do you think I am?"
"Well, you look older than twenty-three, but it's sometimes hard to tell. So I thought I'd give you the rule. A place like you want will run pretty expensive."
"How much is pretty expensive?"
"Around ninety dollars a month Places like that are pretty hard to come by. And they come dear."
"That's all right. It will be worth it to find what I want."
She finished her lunch and they went up to her office. There was a housing list in her drawer and she took it out and handed it to him. He looked it over and picked out the ones that sounded like they might suit him. When he had a list of half a dozen he copied the addresses and gave the master list back to Pat.
"Now the fun begins," he said.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I've got a list of half a dozen places that sound pretty good, but I don't know anything about the town; where these places are, if the rents are right for the neighborhood."
She smiled knowing what he was trying to get at and wanting him to come right out and say it. "Yes," she said. "You certainly do have a problem."
"I sure could use some expert help," he said.
"You sure could."
She wasn't rising to the bait. He had to come right out and ask. "Can you get away this afternoon and come apartment hunting with me?"
She grinned. "I thought you'd never ask."
He smiled, relieved. "When can you go?"
"How about right now. We're through here for the day, anyway. The real work starts after classes begin, the next week."
She took her coat and they left. The early fall morning had become a grey threatening afternoon with dark thunderheads and a kind of muffled stillness in the thick air. Outside, they considered calling a taxi.
"You'll want to know how long a walk these places are anyhow," Pat said. So they walked.
The closest place was a block and a half from the main school building. The landlady, an incredibly old and shriveled woman, talked to them in the living room of her own apartment on the ground floor. Evidently she approved of her prospective tenant for she gave them the key and let them look at the place. She didn't accompany them, the stairs being too much for her.
The apartment was two small rooms in what had once been an attic. The stairway came up between the two rooms and a door directly opposite the top of the stairs opened on a small bathroom. The roof pitched so sharply that it was necessary to stoop down to see one's reflection in the bathroom mirror. The furnishings in the two rooms were rather poor. Old stuff gleaned from church rummage sales and the utilities in the kitchen part of the living room were antiques.
What finally decided Terry against the place was the view from the two windows. The window in the bedroom looked out on a street corner with a steadily winking traffic light, and the kitchen-living room window looked out on a blank garage wall. He didn't mind the dingy dreariness of the place but he at least wanted to be able to look out the window and see something besides a winking traffic light or a garage wall.
The second place was taken when they got there and the third place was a cellar apartment. As they moved down the list each of the apartments was farther and farther away from the school. Terry began to feel disappointment Even if they found something now it might be too far to walk to classes. He could, of course, have a car if he wished, but cars were generally more trouble than they were worth. There was little parking space available around the classroom buildings and there was some silly town ordinance banning overnight on-street parking.
When they exhausted the list, disappointed and discouraged, they went into a small diner for a cup of coffee. Compared to the boiled sweat in the school cafeteria the diner coffee was magnificent. The hot stuff helped raise Terry's spirits.
"If I don't find a place soon I may have to keep my room at the hotel for the rest of the term," Terry told Pat.
"I know you're not worried about money, but that could run into a small fortune," she said.
It started to rain then, a fine mist at first then becoming huge round drops of water and then tapering off to a fine rain. They sat in the diner and looked out onto the shiny black wet streets. Cars rolled slowly through the rain cascading water onto the sidewalks and it got Very dark. They sat in the cozy booth, warm and dry, and stared out the window into the falling rain. It was so dark outside now that the cars were using their headlights, even though it was only three o'clock in the afternoon.
They waited.
And while they waited Terry told Pat some of the circumstances leading to his arrival at Hapen College. He told her about himself and his father and about the conflict between them. And he told her about the will and its provisions. He didn't tell her about Laura.
It was a long story and when he was finished the rain had almost stopped. He stopped talking and drank the last of his coffee, waiting for Pat to make some comment. She looked at him for a moment, her face serious, and then her lips widened to a grin.
"That explains why money is no problem. Wait till the girls hear about you, they'll go wild. We don't get many rich people here."
"I'd just as soon they didn't hear about my father's money," Terry said. "I don't really know why I told you."
She said nothing. Instead she turned away from him and looked out the window again. "Look! It's stopped raining."
"Good. Let's get out of here."
The rain had cleansed the air. Odors of growing things making a final and fruitless struggle to keep on living filled the washed air and the thunderheads, having deposited their loads of water, moved away to make room for the late afternoon sun.
They walked side by side, parting to avoid puddles in the streets, and then coming together again after the puddle was behind them. "Where are you staying?" he asked.
"I found a place this morning," she told him.
"I guess I should have looked this morning and registered late. Oh, well, there's bound to be a place somewhere in this town. If I can't find what I want I'll buy a damned house." He gave a snort of derisive laughter. "That's one advantage of having money."
"Are you going to the dance tonight?" Pat asked.
"What dance?"
"Didn't you read the schedules they gave you?"
"Look, all morning people were shoving pieces of paper in my hand and asking me to sign other pieces of paper. It got so bad I misspelled my own name twice. When I finished I threw all that junk away."
"In that case I better tell you all about everything. There's a get-acquainted dance tonight in the student lounge. Everyone wears name tags and is expected to get to know his fellow students and the faculty."
"I don't know much about the faculty, but if the kiddies I've seen running around the school all day are going to be there, then I think I'll pass it up."
"I'll bet somewhere right this minute some of the people are talking about that old man they saw registering for school."
She made her point and he winced. "You're right, I guess. I was beginning to sound like the old man ruminating on the younger generation. Will you be at the dance?"
"Naturally. Why do you think I wanted you to come?"
"Then I guess I'll be there."
He left her and went back to his hotel room. He was tired and disappointed at not having found an apartment. And he was confused by Pat's reaction to him. It was evident that she liked him and wanted to see him. Okay, two points in his favor. Then there was her strange behavior yesterday, the high-powered sex talk and then the refusal of the last moment.
Terry wasn't used to the behavior of the American female. In the last few years he'd come in contact with Oriental women and there was a tremendous difference. The Japanese girls and their Korean and Chinese sisters approached the point of sex from a different direction. If they liked a man and wanted to go to bed with him they would. A Japanese girl wouldn't dream of saying no in hopes that the man would insist anyway. The American girl wanted to have the guiltless knowledge of her refusal and she wanted to enjoy the act of love. She wanted her cake and she wanted to eat it at the same time. Oh well, he'd get used to it, he supposed.
A quick shower refreshed him and he spent the rest of the time before dinner making out a program card. He listed his courses according to their day and hour. And next to each entry he put the number and location of the room. He had a pretty good schedule. His earliest class was ten o'clock and his latest was three. There were no Saturday classes so, all in all, it looked pretty good. He'd be able to sleep fairly late in the morning and he would be finished with school by a decent hour.
The courses themselves were pretty standard. All were requirements of the school, things he had to take to get his degree. There was English; social studies, which sounded dangerously like sociology; German -- all students had to take a foreign language; Science 1. Since he indicated he was interested in a Bachelor of Arts degree he was only required to take two semesters of generalized science; and, finally, Math 1, a review course for all students.
It didn't look difficult and it would keep him occupied. What mattered to him more than the courses themselves was his reaction to school. It would be difficult than if he'd gone directly out of high school. Just the simple business of learning needed to be practiced. And he was out of practice. But if he reacted well, if he could stand the phony isolated atmosphere, he just might stay the whole four years. When you come right down to it there wasn't anything better he had to do with his time. It all depended on how much of the crap he could take without blowing his stack.
He had supper at the hotel and went back to his room to change for the dance. He hesitated over the white dinner jacket and then hung it away in the closet. He doubted that anyone would be wearing formal clothes. He chose instead a black sharkskin suit he'd had made for him in Hong Kong. The suit was lined with white silk and when he left the jacket unbuttoned the white flashed in contrast with the black of the jacket itself. Under the suit he wore a white shirt and a plain black knit tie. He shoed himself with a pair of black pebble-grained English loafers.
He knew the dance had begun while he was still a block away. The lights and the noise blared out into the street. Inside, the room was a mass of jumping bodies and bouncing breasts and buttocks as the students danced to the music from the juke box. He was stopped at the door and was handed a plain white tag to pin to his lapel. The tag had his name on it The tag pinned on, he went into the room and looked around for Pat. At first all he could see were sweatered co-eds and tight pantsed men -- or boys, better. Everyone was smiling and talking at the same time and most were standing in the middle of the room rubbing their respective bodies against the bodies of members of the opposite sex. The rubbing was called dancing.
He moved through the crowd, his shoulders knocking people out of his way. Sometimes the shouldering was accidental and sometimes he did it on purpose when people standing in his way didn't move as he passed. He noticed he had caught the admiring attention of perhaps half a dozen good-looking young women and he decided if he couldn't find Pat he would begin getting acquainted. He saw quite a few pairs of breasts and jiggling bottoms he would like to get to know better.
Pat found him. He was standing, looking over the available girls, when he felt a hand on his arm. He turned and there she was smiling up at him.
"I've been looking all over for you," he shouted above the din.
"You're much easier to spot in a crowd than I am," she answered.
Talking above the noise was too much trouble. "Dance?" he asked, mouthing the word soundlessly at her.
She smiled and nodded her head and came into his arms. The music was uptempo, fast and raucous, but he wasn't interested in any dance floor calisthenics. He took Pat in his arms, pressed her body close to his and danced slowly, ignoring the music. She frowned, stumbled once, and then caught his timing, moving smoothly with him after that.
After the first few minutes she relaxed in his arms and leaned her head on his chest. If she were three or four inches taller she would have been able to lean her head on his shoulder, but, short as she was, or tall as he was, the best she could do was his broad hard chest.
Her best was pretty good indeed. As they danced he could feel her hard breasts pressing into his ribs and her abdomen rubbed back and forth across him. He was glad she didn't draw away when she felt his body automatically responding.
He was like a rock on the dance floor. The other dancers, moving wildly around them, bumped into him repeatedly. After the first few bumps into his hard body the other dancers began to avoid him as much as possible and pretty soon there was cleared space around him and Pat.
They danced long enough to work up a light film of perspiration and then they adjourned to the cafeteria for cokes. The cafeteria was full and noisy too, but far less noisy than had been the lounge. He found a table for them and left Pat to get the drinks. When he came back to the table a short lean intense-looking young man was deep in conversation with her.
Pat introduced them to each other. The man's name was James Arthurton. She said, "Terry, this is James Arthurton, one of Hapen's foremost thespians."
Arthurton smiled and held out his hand. Terry grasped the hand tightly and spoke in an affected truck driver's accent. "Chee, I'da neva bin able to tell. You don't look queer to me."
Pat broke into gales of laughter and Arthurton frowned, not sure if he was being kidded. What Terry didn't know when he made the little joke was that Arthurton held a warm spot in his heart for slim young boys. Terry didn't know it and neither did any one else in the world except for two unknown habitues of Greenwich Village.
When Pat stopped laughing she took one of the drinks from Terry's hand. "Art's just been telling me about the plans for the first college theater production. I was very active with them when I was a student and they want me to continue with them as long as I'm working here."
Arthurton pushed himself up from the chair. "You think about it," he said to Pat. And then he turned to Terry. "And it's been nice meeting you."
Terry nodded and Arthurton moved away. Terry took the vacated chair. "I don't think he's got much of a sense of humor."
"Art's serious about the matter. He intends to become an actor when he graduates at the end of this year. Theater people are notoriously sensitive about the homosexuals in their business. I guess he's beginning to take himself seriously."
They finished their drinks and went back to the lounge. At the door they stopped and Terry viewed the squirming mass of people distastefully. Just inside the door, leaning against the wall, he saw the girl from the train, the one he'd bumped into hands first. She was dressed in a sweater and skirt and had a name tag pinned to the front of the sweater. The tag was attached to a string, the string being attached to the pin, and the tag itself hung down so it covered the end of her left breast.
Terry almost burst out laughing when he saw the name printed on the tag. Melanie Andrews is a good name for a girl with a pair of huge melons, he thought. I wonder what flavor they are. Watermelon? Honeydew melon? Muskmelon?
He nudged Pat. "There's our friend from the train," he said pointing at Melanie with his elbow so as not to be conspicuous.
"I see she brought her bosom friend with her I just spotted another old friend, little rat face from the taxi altercation."
"Oh, where?"
Pat looked to the opposite side of the room. "He was over there near that one with the beard, but I guess he's gone now."
"That's a good idea. Let's be gone now, too. I've had just about as much of this as I can stand."
He took, her hand and led her to the coat room.
"What are we doing in here?" she asked. "I don't have a coat with me."
"I'm not interested in any coats right now," he said, and he took her in his arms.
Her lips were soft and they opened to admit his searching tongue. Her own tongue slipped past his and played little games of its own in his mouth. When she felt him press against her torso she moaned deep in her throat and rubbed herself against him. One of his hands slipped down from her shoulder to her hard little buttock. His big hand enclosed the whole sphere and he felt her tighten that muscle against the palm of his hand.
When he squeezed his palm he could feel the hard jutting of her bones beneath the thin pad of her flesh. It was amazing to him that a girl lean almost to the point of emaciation, could attract him the way this one did. Her body was a progressive jazz symphony of jutting bones, flat planes, and angular corners. Her breasts and buttocks were small oases of flesh in a sea of calcium bones and skin.
And yet she exuded sex. Her white skin looked as if it hadn't seen the sun in a year, and yet she didn't appear pale or wan. Her complexion was clear and healthy. Her hip bones jutted through the fabric in the front of her skirt and made two small lumps which outlined her flat abdomen. When she walked she moved with her hips thrust forward so she appeared to be leaning."
backward. It was the walk and the stance which gave her the attitude of sexuality. She looked like she was pointing her womanhood at the world and she came toward everything hips first. Her hair was black and worn long and swept back over her ears and it contrasted with the whiteness of her skin.
He dropped his other hand to her other buttock, his fingers digging into the crevice between the hemispheres. She was so small, so tiny, he was afraid any sudden movement he might make would break her in pieces. She was a woman who required gentleness and yet he wanted to hurl her down and throw himself down beside her.
She put her hands against his chest and pushed herself away, breaking the kiss. "What was that for?" she asked.
"It wasn't for anything. I suddenly wanted very badly to kiss you, so I did."
"Do you always do just as you please?"
"Generally. Sometimes I get hampered by policemen and preachers, but other than that I do pretty much as I please. Why? Didn't you enjoy it?"
"Oh, I thought it was great. I just wasn't prepared for it, that's all."
"Now that we've investigated the coat situation let's go to your place. You can give me a cup of coffee and I can kiss you some more."
They left the school building and went out into the warm night. He held her hand as they walked, then-twined palms swinging between them.
"You'll have to restrict yourself to kissing," she told him.
"I've been meaning to talk to you about that," he said. "I'm getting the impression you're a phony."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you talk like a woman of the world, but every time the action gets serious you seem to panic. And yet you respond to the kissing games like you know what it's all about."
There was sudden bitterness in her tone when she spoke. "Did it ever occur to you that... " she stopped. "Oh, never mind."
He didn't press her and they made the rest of the walk to her apartment in silence. Her place was small, two rooms, but very nicely furnished. Pat had added a few touches of her own, a brick and plank bookcase, two abstract paintings on the wall, and a violently colored horse blanket for a tablecloth.
He sat down in an easy chair while she went to put the coffee on. While she was gone he moved to the sofa so she could sit beside him. She came back into the room and sat down in the easy chair.
He patted the sofa cushion beside him. "Come over here."
"No. I want to talk to you."
He pulled out his cigarettes and leaned back. "Go ahead. Talk."
"Yesterday afternoon, about thirty hours ago to be more exact, you dropped a suitcase on my foot on the train. That's how and when we got to know each other. Ever since then you've been trying to get me into bed with you. I like that. It's a compliment when a girl is pursued. But just because I said no, you begin to get the idea that I'm frigid or something."
"Wait just a minute. I... "
"Let me finish. Did it ever occur to you that there might be other reasons besides sexual maladjustment for my refusal? For one thing, maybe I just don't want to go to bed with you. Not because I don't like you, but just because I don't want to make love."
"Is that the reason?"
"No, but it's a possibility you never considered."
"I didn't consider it because every time I kiss you you turn into a bowl of hot Jello. I can see the way the kisses affect you, and it's not the action of a girl who just doesn't want to make love."
"All right then," she said. "Assuming your observations are correct, what other reasons could I have? Here I am, a girl who melts in your arms, a girl who wants you so badly she hurts from it. And I still turn you down. Why?"
"I don't know."
She laughed then, a warm intimate laugh. "I thought you were such a man of the world. Don't you know that girls get out of commission once in a while?"
He felt foolish then, like a small boy being chastised by his mother. The water for coffee began to boil. He got to his feet and walked over to the stove.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"Never mind," he said, turning off the gas. "You just sit there and be quiet."
He moved the pot from the hot burner to a cold one and turned back to her. She watched him inquisitively as he walked across the room, stopped in front of her and took both her hands in his.
He pulled and she stood up. He took her in his arms and kissed her long and deep. "Why didn't you just tell me that a long time ago, like yesterday?" he said when the kiss was ended.
He sat down on the sofa again and she sat on his lap. "I don't know," she said. "I'm funny about it. I don't like to talk about my biology."
"It would have made things a lot simpler," he said.
She laced her fingers in his hair and kissed him, quick nipping kisses all over his face. She kissed his eyes, his nose, the corner of his mouth, his throat, his ears, his throat "I saw you when I got on the train," she murmured. "And I wanted you right then. I watched you for the whole trip and I prayed you'd get off here. I sat there watching you and thinking how it would be with you, and I almost went out of my mind."
He slipped both his hands around in front of her to cover her chest. Her hard breasts were lost in his big palms and she shuddered when he squeezed.
"I want to stop this," she moaned. "This is no good for either of us, this playing around. But I can't stop. I want to touch you, to see your body, to feel it against me. I know we can't, but I want to love you so bad I can't stop."
Her kisses and her touch and her words had inflamed him beyond the point of speech. His fingers found the buttons of her blouse and then the hooks of her bra. In a moment she was nude to the waist and pressing her naked breasts against his face.
He kissed with pursed lips and she moaned. He laved her flesh with his tongue and her hands turned to fists in his chair. He bit her nipples with his teeth and her body shuddered uncontrollably.
The passion moved over them with the' speed of a hurricane. One minute they were talking about her period, and the next she was naked to the waist and her fingers were working frantically at the fastenings of his clothes. His belt came open, then the button at the waistband. She pushed his clothes eagerly out of the way and at last he was bared to her caresses.
She kissed his lips while her hands touched him, her fingers stroking along the strength of him. "Oh, my God," she moaned. "I want you so bad I'm going out of my mind."
She continued to caress him with one hand and with the other she opened his shirt. He let go of her breasts long enough to help her with his clothing and soon his clothes were in a pile on the floor near the end of the sofa. He was naked and she was half-naked. Their bare chests touched and their mutual passion transmitted itself back and forth between them from her nipples to the skin of his chest and back again.
Her eyes were squeezed tightly shut and her feverish lips explored his body. She squirmed off his lap and stretched out on the couch. Her lips moved across the flat planes of his chest to the ridges of his taut stomach. She kissed, she bit, she caressed, and she moved endlessly.
She teased him this way as long as he could stand it. And then her lips closed over him and stars began to explode behind his tightly closed eye lids. The warm cave of her lips drew him closer and closer to the brink of fulfillment. She sensed his eager readiness and drew away from him. He moaned his disappointment and she hushed him with a hand to his mouth. He kissed her palm.
"Shhhh," she crooned, trembling in the throes of her own need. "We don't want to hurry this."
Her hair had come undone and he felt the silky strands brush across his bare skin. The sensation was almost too much to bear. His hand touched the calf of her leg and squeezed. He moved the hand up higher, above her knee, and felt the stringy muscles in her lean thigh.
Her mouth returned to him again, and she began to bring him back to the edge. He thought he might go crazy with the wonder of it. While she caressed him his hands went to the waistband of her skirt and opened the button and zipper at her hip. He pushed the cloth down over her writhing hips and off her legs.
She was almost as naked as he now, except for a pair of cotton panties, and he pushed them down, too. His fingertips traced across her flat heaving belly and her hips began to jerk and tremble uncontrollably. He let his fingers wander over the exposed surfaces of her skin and her hips began the motion of love.
But it was a meaningless motion because he wasn't there with her where he belonged. His muscles taut with desire, Terry felt himself again approaching fulfillment. The need was so strong in him now that it demanded he take some action rather than remain passive to Pat's thrilling caresses.
He moved down on the sofa and stretched out beside her, pulling the entire length of her body against him. She squirmed herself against his body, and her hips began to thrust eagerly toward him. But even as she urged him on with her body she denied him with her voice.
"No, no, no... We can't... I want to but we can't... " With a quick flip of one hand Terry turned her over so she was lying on her stomach. He put his hands under her hip bones and lifted until she was resting on her knees with her face pressed into the sofa cushion. Then he moved against her.
"There are two ways to approach every problem," he said, smiling and pleased with his solution.
He came against her and found his mark. When she felt him she relaxed her muscles to make it easier far him.
"Yessss, yesss... That's it... That feels wonderful."
But a moment later when he began to force his entry she cried out with pain.
"Arghh... Oh, stop, stop... It hurts.."
Terry was completely consumed with his need and didn't even hear her, though it was doubtful he would have stopped even if he had heard her protests. He was kneeling behind her and holding her with his hands around her hips. When she began to writhe and jerk her body he pulled back with his hands and held her to him.
Her cries were muffled by the sofa pillow and slowly and inexorably he advanced. For him the sensation was delightful, different, possibly better in an odd sort of way. For her there was nothing but pain, excruciating pain. She felt she was being split in two.
When his intentions were completed he leaned over her small body and rested his weight on her back. Then he began the long slow motions of love. Every time he moved the sensations were fantastic. For her the slightest movement brought more pain.
Finally, as he continued on his own pleasure, she felt her body responding to him. It wasn't that the pain stopped, or that it was joined with another feeling -- rather her response came because of the pain. The sharp horribleness became an old friend and she felt her breathing quicken and her nipples harden as he moved in steady rhythm.
He prolonged it until her passion caught up with ids. And as he stiffened with the final glory he felt her go wild under him.
And hold her he did, right down to the last trembling second of their mutual need.
It seemed like hours later that his breathing slowed down. He was lying on the sofa and she was next to him, her back toward him. He touched her shoulder and kissed her shoulder blade.
"That was wonderful," he said softly.
She turned to face him and he saw her cheeks reddened and streaked with tears. "You hurt me," she accused. "You almost tore me in half. I thought you were killing me."
"Oh baby," he said, taking her in his arms. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't know. Why didn't you yell, or something."
"I screamed, I yelled my damned head off. I tried to kick you, to get away from you."
"Oh, God," he said. "I swear I was so gone I didn't hear you yelling. And I guess I thought the struggling was pleasure."
In the end it had been good for her and she couldn't stay mad at him. She frowned and smiled and it turned into a kind of pout. "Pleasure?" she said. "How'd you like to have a thing like that happen to you?"
He knew She was half serious, but he couldn't help it. He laughed. And after a moment she joined him in his laughter.
CHAPTER FOUR
The week was filled with what Hapen College liked to call Orientations. These were lectures and discussions designed not so much to familiarize the student with the school and its workings as much as to give him determination and inspiration. In simpler, and more honest terms, the sessions were little more than good, old-fashioned pep talks.
There was some secondary benefit derived from these sessions by the senior students. The seniors were designated as temporary orientation week advisors to the incoming freshmen. This gave the senior men the chance to meet, impress, and lay claim to all the good-looking freshman girls.
Terry sat through as many of these things as he could stand. And when he was up to his neck in the posturing self-assuredness of the senior advisors he stopped attending the damned things. There was one other event that week which was of some interest to Terry. This was the Freshman Placement Exam, a fiendish thing designed by the school and required by the state, and for which a purpose could not be discerned. One would think from the title that the results of the battery of tests would have some affect on the student's position in the school, the courses he would be required to take, the courses he might be able to skip, things like that. What was puzzling however, was that the courses and classes were already assigned before the exams were taken.
Whatever the purpose, the exams had Terry sweating. It was one thing for the school to test him on something they had supposedly taught him, that was understandable, but just to give him a test on any subject under God's blue sky when he hadn't so much as held a pencil in more years than most people went to school altogether, that was another thing. And Terry worried abort it.
He worried about it until he finished the test and looked around him. The others were still working. He was finished ahead of most of them. And the test hadn't been difficult at all. He breathed a sigh of relief and turned in his paper. Maybe it wouldn't be so tough after all.
There were a few other items of interest that occurred that week, but these were more in the extracurricular line and of interest only to Terry and Pat.
Oh, the school would have liked to know, but if they did know they probably would have fired Pat and thrown Terry out of school.
There were seven items to be exact, or seven variations on the same item. Seven is the number of days in a week. Also the number of nights. And seven was the number of nights Terry spent in Pat's apartment. He began to spend so much time with her in her apartment that he thought it was silly to keep the hotel room.
The next logical step was to move his things in with her. He did. And from then on it was like being married. Even better, because he had all the fun without any of the legal obligations.
Classes started bright and early Monday morning and Terry began the term with a bang. He went to his ten o'clock class and on his way out of the building after class he was stopped by three upper classmen. Now Hapen was too small to support a football team, but if there had been a team these three men would certainly have been candidates. They were big men, with Ivy League trousers, collegiate sweaters, and crew cut heads. They weren't as big as Terry.
They came up to him walking three abreast and the middle one spoke. "Are you a freshman?" he asked politely.
Terry stopped, puzzled. "Yes, I guess I am."
"Where's your beanie, Freshman?" The polite one said, not so politely.
"Beanie? I don't understand."
The polite one was very patient. "All freshmen are required to wear beanies for the first two weeks of the term. It is the duty of the upperclassmen to enforce this rule. It's a custom."
Terry looked around him and saw that indeed many of the people passing were wearing small green caps on their head. It looked silly. "Yes, I see," Terry said. "I understand all the business about tradition and custom, but I'm sorry." He sighed, then he continued. "Those things look pretty silly. I guess you'll just have to count me out on this one and call me a bad sport."
He started to walk past but the one on the right stopped him with a hand to his chest. "You don't understand," the polite one said.
"I think I do," Terry said, just as politely.
"No, no you don't. All freshman are required to wear the beanies."
"You already said that." Terry was becoming impatient.
The one on the left, who'd been quiet and out of it all up until now, broke in. "Veterans aren't required to wear the beanies. Are you a veteran?" Lefty sounded like he was looking for a way out.
"No. I'm not a veteran. And I'm not going to wear one of those silly beanies." Terry turned away and started to walk around them. Rightly, the one who liked to put his hand on people's chests, also like to put his foot in people's way. He put his foot in Terry's way causing Terry to stumble and almost fall down.
Terry turned back to them. They were grinning at him now and lined up in front of him again three abreast., He looked at them. And he looked at their smiles. He smiled back at them. Their grins widened. Then, very quickly, he brought his hands up and placed them over the outside ears of the two outside men. This done, he moved his hands together as though to applaud.
Of course his hands never came together, there being three heads in the way, but there was sound. And to say this much for Terry, his hands came so close together with the three heads between them that it was a shame he didn't quite make it.
The three men dropped like stones, just crumpled where they stood, unconscious. People passing stopped, gasped, and gaped. Very purposefully, Terry leaned over the inert forms and stretched them out to their full length with their legs together. Then he crossed their hands over their chests and turned to hurry to his next class.
Eight hundred is a relative number. If you're talking about pennies, eight hundred makes a lot of them but not much money. As you talk about dollars, or ten dollar bills, or hundred dollar bills the number of units remains the same but the amount changes. Eight hundred people make a good sized crowd, but eight hundred students are a small group.
By the time Terry's eleven o'clock class was over the whole school was talking about what had happened outside one of the classroom buildings, about the freshman who'd cold-cocked three seniors because he didn't want to wear a beanie. Everybody was talking about it and everybody had an opinion. The rest of the freshman class, who averaged about eighteen years of age, were in gleeful support of the drastic action taken by one of them. They were all for the abandonment of the ridiculous and degrading tradition.
The upper-class men were shocked at this violation of the traditions of their hallowed halls of ivy. They grouped together and discussed this rebellion over bottles of beer, or cups of coffee. They talked in the dorms, in the student lounges and bars, they talked in the fraternity houses. Something had to be done. It was part of the college education to follow tradition set down by predecessors.
But the upper-classmen weren't the only ones who considered some course of action. The freshmen considered too. A delegation of three of them, wearing their little green caps found Terry at lunch in the hotel. They came up to his table and stood quietly until he looked up.
He saw them, the three of them, standing there waiting for him to say something. They too, wore the ivy league clothes, but somehow the clothes didn't quite fit yet. It was as though they would have to wear the style for a couple of years before they could wear it with the necessary air of forced casualness. He looked from one to the other, waiting a long time before he spoke. They shifted nervously on their feet, and then, in concert, they reached up and removed the green caps.
Terry smiled. "Yes? Did you want to talk to me?" It. was after he spoke that he realized he knew one of them. It was the skinny little man from the railroad station, the one who'd almost stolen his cab. That one returned his smile with a sickly grin.
Another one spoke, a short round young man with his baby fat still clinging to his jowls. "You are Terry White, aren't you?"
"Yes." He could have asked them to sit down, but he didn't. He had an idea as to their mission and he wanted to get it over with as soon as possible.
"We came to talk to you about those three seniors in front of Johnson Hall last period," the fat one continued. "We are making up a slate to run for class officers and we want you as the candidate for president. We feel that your actions earlier this morning show that your thinking is in line with ours and we want to back you for office."
"No."
"What?"
"I said 'No!'"
"But this is the presidency. Don't you want to be president of the class? Think how it will look in the yearbook."
"I don't want to be president of the United States. What happened this morning was between me and the three seniors, no one else."
"I don't think you know what you are letting yourself in for," Fatty said. "The seniors won't let you get away with it. It's an insult to the whole upper class. They have to get back at you. But if you're president of the class they won't dare do anything."
"Look, son," Terry said to the fat one and they all bristled. "I'm not interested in this whole business. All I want is to be left alone. And anyone who doesn't leave me alone will get the same thing those three got this morning. Understand?"
"Well, I guess that's it then."
"Yes, that's it then. Now, get out of here and let me finish my lunch. I've got a one o'clock class."
They left muttering to themselves and as they walked away Terry heard the voice of the rat-faced one. "I told you he was nuts."
The rest of the day was uneventful. People stared at him and whispered when he passed by, but no one spoke to him. He didn't see any of the three seniors. Terry wondered how long it would take the Dean to hear about the little set-to, and how long it would take the Dean to call him in to have a little chat.
Either none of the faculty heard about it, or they were letting the students settle this thing by themselves, because he didn't get the notice to report to the administration office.
Before they went to bed that night Terry and Pat talked about the mess.
"The whole school's talking about it," Pat said. "I really don't give a rat's tail what the whole school is talking about."
They were lying naked on the bed, smoking cigarettes in the dim light of the lamp on the nightstand. "You really shouldn't have done it, you know."
"One of them tried to trip me and I got mad. I'm not interested in any of their Mickey Mouse games." He ground his cigarette out and reached for her and they forgot all about it.
Her lean body responded to the caresses of his hands and lips. He kissed her mouth and her ears and he breathed in the clean smell of her long black hair. Her body was warm and damp from her shower and when he kissed her breasts he sensed the sweetness of her.
While he caressed her, her hands were busy. She raked her long nails lightly down the front of him from just under his throat across his chest and down. And then the sharpness of fingernails gave way to the softness of fingertips and palms. She touched him, caressed him, and when he took the nipple of her breast between his lips, she groaned and her hand gripped him very tightly. "Oh darling," she breathed. "I love that... Harder, bite harder... Yes... yes... Now the other one, darling."
She let go of him and curled both her hands in his hair to press his head tight against her breasts and guide it where she wanted him. She moved him from breast to breast, nipple to nipple, then down to the hollow bowl of her belly. He kissed the bones that framed her belly with its pearl-cup indentation that was her navel. He let his lips touch the edges of her hips and then float across her stomach. From one side to the other and then back to the middle his lips traveled.
She squirmed under him. "Oh, God, I love that. Bite me!" Her whispered words urged him on and her hands guided him.
She threw her feet high in the air, and she guided his head ever down. He let her guide him to the tender sides of her thighs and he nipped her there with his lips.
But when she sought to bring his lips elsewhere he balked and his neck muscles stiffened against the pressure of her hands.
"No," he said. "Not that."
She increased the pressure of her hands and gasped out her plea for that particular caress. "Please, please... I want that. Please do it."
He pulled himself away from her and sat up on the edge of the bed to light another cigarette. He didn't know why he refused her It wasn't that he hadn't done that thing before. He had, and he'd enjoyed it. All he knew was that right now, with this particular woman, he didn't want to do it.
There was a long silence as he smoked the cigarette with his back to her. Then she spoke. "Damn you. What's wrong? You like it when I do it to you. You enjoy it.
Now, when I want a little of the same thing, you say no.
Why?"
"I don't know."
He finished his cigarette and turned off the light. When he stretched out to go to sleep he could feel her edged all the way over on her side of the bed. He could sense the stiffness of her body and the resentment in her. He laced his fingers behind his head and closed his eyes.
They lay like that for perhaps fifteen minutes. And then he felt the shift of the mattress as she moved her body. Her hand touched him on the stomach and then her lips.
A few minutes of her caresses had Terry seeing rockets behind his eyelids. His passion was quick to swell to full tide, and he lost himself in it. He forgot about himself as an individual, a person with needs, desires, thoughts. He became concerned with only the sensations rocketing through his body.
Without breaking the contact of her caress she moved her body over his head. He obeyed her eager urging without restraint, unthinking. They were a circle of flesh joined at both ends as she forced her desire on him.
The world spun around.
The night sky was split asunder with tremendous bolts of lightning.
And she rolled away from him satisfied and exhausted.
He lay there while his boiling blood cooled, and he was angry. She had forced him into doing something he hadn't wanted to do. But his anger wasn't complete until he heard her get up and go into the bathroom to brush her teeth.
He made his decision, rolled over and went to sleep. Classes the next day were uneventful. Ten till twelve, then one till four, then he was finished. At four o'clock he picked up a copy of the local newspaper and looked through the classified ads. There were only half a dozen apartments listed which met his specifications and he circled these.
The third apartment was just fine. It was three and a half rooms with a view of the river. The windows were large and the place seemed light and airy. And the landlady, a Mrs. Walsh, looked like she might be interested in a little personal collection of the rent.
He wrote a check for the first month's rent and had all his things moved out of Pat's place before she came home from work. He didn't even leave her a note, just took his things and closed the door behind him. Back at his new apartment he unpacked and put his things away. It was pleasant to spend an hour putting his things in the closets and drawers.
The place came well stocked. It was completely furnished and the furnishings were all relatively new. They included pots and pans and dishes, linens, tableware, and even a toaster He sprawled in the big overstuffed chair in the living room and opened his class notebooks. There wasn't much in them for two days of classes. He knew he would have to set himself a regular study schedule if he was going to pass his courses.
At six-thirty hunger pangs began to tighten his stomach and he realized there wasn't any food in the place yet. He would have to do his shopping the next day. He could have at least one last meal in a restaurant before he sentenced himself to his own cooking. It wasn't that he was a bad cook. It was just that he was lazy. It was much easier to open cans than to spend a couple of hours making the whole meal from raw ingredients.
On his way back from supper he stopped by a neighborhood grocery store and bought orange juice, butter, coffee, sugar, milk, and bread. Now he would be able to have juice, toast and coffee in the morning before he went to class.
Back in the apartment he put his purchases away and settled down to write a couple of letters. One letter was to Griggs, the lawyer, to give him his address and an estimate of his monthly expenses. He listed the rent, tacked on another hundred-and-twenty-five dollars for food and expenses and sealed the letter.
The second letter was to Laura. He wanted to explain to her why their relationship must stop. He wanted to tell her how he felt about everything. But in the end he couldn't find the words and he just made it a short note telling her his address and throwing in some junk about his classes.
He sealed both letters, stamped them, and set them aside to be mailed the next day. Then he opened his books and began to go over the English assignment. It looked like a snap course. All he had to do was read a bunch of crap and they talked about it in class. Oh, well, he might as well keep up with the reading. The prof was liable to slip them a surprise quiz anytime. He'd warned them he might The assignment was to read a short novel by an unknown author. The short novel was part of the textbook which in turn was made up of nine such short novels. It wasn't a bad story, all about a boy and a bear. He was half way through the thing when he was interrupted by a knock on his door.
It was Mrs. Walsh, his landlady. And she had come up to see if he'd gotten settled all right. She knew how men were about things like unpacking. He let her in and let her look around to see that he hadn't already destroyed the place. When she asked if he'd bought any food yet he offered her a cup of coffee. , "I'm afraid it will be instant," he apologized when she accepted. "I can't be bothered with percolators and washing the pots and things."
"Oh, that's perfectly all right," she gushed. "Ill tell you a little secret, I use instant coffee myself. It's so much easier and most people can't tell the difference, anyway."
While they waited for the water to boil Mrs. Walsh chatted comfortable. She told him about the town and about the school. She was very interested in the college, thought it was good for the community. That was why she rented her apartments to students so cheaply.
You old bird, Terry thought to himself. You act like you're giving the students a real break, when all the time you're gouging them. This place was costing him a hundred-and-thirty-five a month, and it wasn't worth more than a hundred. But she had a good deal going here and she knew it. The place wasn't too far from the school and there were always students who would sacrifice a little money to escape the institutional living of the dormitories.
While she talked Terry let his mind form a full impression of her. Mrs. Ida Walsh was a forty-two year old widow. Her husband had been killed last year in an accident at the mill and she had used the insurance money to open this place. She was a very well-preserved forty-two, with only a few wrinkles and heavily hennaed hair to give away her age. She was a tall spare woman just beginning to run to flesh. Her arms and legs were lean and well curved and only her rounded belly and buttocks showed the signs of her too-good living.
The water boiled finally and he set out two cups. Into the cups he spooned the powder -- that was miraculously transformed into a good cup of coffee, or so the ads said -- and added the boiling water. He noticed an odd thing then. Mrs. Walsh drank her coffee black with no sugar. This surprised him for she seemed a flighty, gushy woman who would dote on sweets. But here she was drinking her coffee like a man.
"Black coffee is best," he commented. "It will put hair on your chest."
"Oh, my goodness," she said raising her hand to her full bosom. "I certainly don't want any. hair... " Then she saw his grin and she returned it. "You were just kidding me."
It took two cups of coffee and twenty minutes of insane chatter before she got around to the real purpose of her visit. When she finished the second cup of coffee she rose from the table and he accompanied her to the door.
"Oh, my," she said, stopping and turning back. "I almost forgot. I came up to tell you the rules we have here."
"Rules? You didn't say anything about rules."
"They're very simple, actually. The place is yours and I'll respect your privacy so long as you don't have any loud parties. I'm not like some of the landladies around here. I won't forbid you to have women visitors. That's your own business."
Terry was surprised. For all her phony talk before, she was giving it to him straight from the shoulder.
"But please, no late, noisy parties," she finished. "Agreed," Terry said. "Are there any other rules?"
"Only that you be nice to your landlady and stop in to say hello now and then." She smiled and turned and went out the door.
Terry chuckled to himself as he went back to his books. The old woman had possibilities. It was certainly unusual to find someone of her age who was as liberal minded as she seemed to be. He wondered why he thought of her as an old woman. She didn't look old -- her body was still in its prime -- and she didn't think like an old woman. Then he had it. It was her manner of speaking, her choice of idioms and her phrasing. She sounded like someone from thirty years ago. He wondered which was the true picture of her; young matron, or old woman?
CHAPTER FIVE
A week of classes went by and Terry settled into a routine. He got up a half hour before his first class and managed a shower and a quick breakfast before heading off to class. Lunch he had in a small diner not too far from his first afternoon class, and he ate his evening meal at home. The time between the end of his last class of the day and supper he spent in the school library, and after supper he spent an hour relaxing with a light novel or walking around the small town. Then he'd hit the books for a long session before going to bed.
He saw Pat two or three times during that week. They passed in the halls or in the student lounge. Neither of them seemed to want to speak to the other and they left it at that. Just a polite nod in passing. Terry made few other social contacts among the people at school. The upperclassmen gave him his wish to be left alone and avoided him like the plague. And the freshmen were either in awe of him or had heard of his refusal to stand for class officer and resented it.
A few of the girls in his classes swelled their sweatered breasts in his direction but he felt no need for sexual release and ignored them, returning their smiles with a curt nod or a quick flash of teeth. Something he hadn't expected was happening to him. As he worked at his studies, as he delved deeper and deeper into the course material, he found himself involved with an ever enlarging world of thought. He became engrossed in the work and found himself looking forward to the long hours in his apartment at night when he would work at the material.
His English class was assigned to write a paper comparing two of the short novels. He went home the night he received the assignment and started the paper. It was tough. He felt some doubt as to his ability to do any kind of a paper and his doubt was justified by the difficulty he encountered. He started it and then couldn't go on. He went on and found he couldn't finish it. And, at last, on the night before it was due, he finished it. Then he turned it in and waited.
The professor returned the papers during the following week. Terry had gotten a 'B' and that night he celebrated. On his way home from the library he picked up a bottle of bourbon and spent the entire evening with a novel, a bucket of ice, and the bottle of whiskey. He was hung over the next morning.
And so for two weeks Terry lived the life of a monk and he enjoyed it. All his life he had received a satisfaction from his body. Whatever demands he had made on that body it had responded. There were no physical feats of which it wasn't capable and this had always been a source of ego-feeding energy for him.
Now, he was discovering the possibilities of intellectual achievement. He found that his mind retained most of what he read and it delighted him to find his mind responding with instant answers to the queries of his teachers. In class a teacher or one of the other students would mention a point covered in the assignments and Terry's memory instantly supplied his brain with the material. This was even more satisfying to Terry than the physical achievements of his body.
But two weeks is a long time, and Terry had a finely trained, healthy body. On Sunday night at the end of his second week of classes he was trying to work. But the harder he tried to concentrate the more his mind seemed to wander. After about an hour of this he gave up and slammed his books closed. He lit a cigarette, poured himself a drink, and tried to think what was wrong.
It took him a few minutes, but he finally got the message. He realized he hadn't spoken more than twenty words to another human being all week long. He needed to get out and mix with people. It was a small town and it didn't take him long to spot the college hang-outs. These were the places where the beer was cheapest and the proprietor didn't care about the noise.
He settled on a place called The Pit. It was in an alley which ran off a street that intersected the main street of the town two blocks away. In other words it was off the beaten path. But the students beat their own path to the door of The Pit. It was a cavernous room with a bar along one wall and the rest of the place filled with tables and chairs. The juke box was filled with an odd conglomeration of jazz and rock and roll and beer was a dollar a pitcher or fifteen cents a glass. Sandwiches and pizza were available, but only for people with cast iron stomachs.
Terry went in.
The Pit was about three quarters full. And mixed with the collegians were perhaps half a dozen old-timers, townspeople, who clustered around one end of the bar and talked with the owner-bartender when he wasn't busy pouring beer. Terry found a place at the bar near the group of townspeople and ordered a glass of beer.
It was terrible beer. But he wasn't really interested in the quality. In the center of the room was a bowling machine and a pool game table. The pool game was similar to regular pocket billiards in that it required the use of a cue, but it differed in that it was played on a much smaller table and employed the use of stanchions set into the table with rubber bumpers around them. The object Was to shoot all your balls into a hole in your opponent's side of the table before he dropped his balls into your hole. The strategy included blocking and hitting your opponent's balls out of position.
Terry listened to the small talk by the old men for a while. And then, bored with talk of the mill, he turned his attention to the rest of the room. He turned around on his stool so his back was against the bar and he held his half-empty glass in one hand. Six men were playing the bowling machine. The three lowest scorers buying beer for the three winners. Two men were deeply involved in the pool game.
The juke box blared alternate rock and roll and jazz number., and a number of students were blatantly violating the No Dancing sign posted on one of the walls. At some of the tables were groups of couples. At other tables there were only men. And at still other tables there were groups of girls. There was a steady flow of traffic from one table to the other and from one group to the other. Everybody knew everybody else and everybody ignored Terry.
He ordered another beer.
At one of the tables Terry recognized one of the three seniors he'd met on his first day of classes. The senior saw him, too. And there was much shooting of daggered looks. Terry returned these looks with a broad smile and sipped at his beer.
After a while he forgot about the beanie-enforcers and his attention drifted to the pool game. He ordered a third beer and moved from the bar to an empty chair near the game. If he had nothing better to do he might as well watch what little live entertainment was offered.
The game ended. The winner beamed and the loser sulked away. Terry got up from his chair and approached the winner.
"Want to play a game?" he asked.
The fellow hesitated for a minute, frowning, and then he broke into a smile.
"Sure. Why not?"
"I'm Terry White," Terry said, holding out his hand.
"Yeah, I know," the other said, taking the hand. Tm Chuck Bolton."
They shook hands dropped their coins into the machine and started to play. They were pretty evenly matched and halfway through the game the score was tied. Terry had been ahead by a score of one ball. Chuck made a difficult carom shot to tie the score and stepped away from the table to light a cigarette before shooting again. He leaned on his cue stick and surveyed the table.
"You're on the black list around school, you know," he said.
"Yeah, I know."
"I think it's pretty stupid, myself. But that's because I'm prejudiced. I was on the list too, when I first got here."
Terry smiled. "The beanies?"
"No. I refused to join one of the fraternities and the boys put the word out on me."
"You don't look like you suffered very much."
"Aw, I just didn't let them ignore me. And after a while they came around. Now they talk to me, but it's still on the cool side."
"I'll settle for that," Terry said. "I didn't come here to play their silly games, anyhow."
"Yeah. Well, give them time. They'll get over it."
Chuck leaned over the table and tried another difficult shot. He missed, and it was Terry's turn. The record playing in the juke box ended and another one didn't come on. In the silence Terry realized the game had drawn quite a little audience. Just outside the circle of light thrown by the lamp hung over the table was a circle of students who were silently intent on the game.
Terry shot and missed and he heard the crowd exhale its communal breath. They were rooting for Chuck. Chuck missed his next shot and Terry could hear the crowd's disappointment. It went that way for quite a while. Terry would shoot and miss, then Chuck would shoot and miss. From behind the packed circle Terry could hear the low buzz of conversation. At least everyone in the place wasn't interested in seeing him beaten, or even in seeing him.
Finally Terry made a difficult shot on his fourth ball, leaving himself a simple shot for the fifth and last ball of the game. He sank the last one and put his cue in the rack.
"Well, you win," Chuck said. "It's the first time I've been beaten since the middle of last term."
"Come on," Terry said. "Ill buy you a beer."
They adjourned to the bar and Terry ordered two beers. "I hope I didn't ruin your reputation," he said.
"Naw. It's better this way. Now the suckers will think they can beat me and come around more often."
"What do you mean, suckers?"
Chuck grinned and looked around to see that no one could overhear them. "This is the way I pay my expenses here at school."
"How?"
"I play these guys for money. Usually about five bucks a game. When I got the freeze out from the crowd I got mad. I decided not to let them get away with ignoring me. One day I showed up at the pool table in the student lounge and challenged anyone to a game for cash. I won that one and I've been winning ever since. Most of it is pretty easy. It seems to be some kind of a point of honor to beat me. No student's done it yet. The only game I lost before this one was to a townie at the local pool parlor. And this guy was like seventy years old and he'd probably been shooting pool all his life."
Terry laughed. "So now they talk to you because they can't beat you at pool."
"Yeah, crazy isn't it? I suppose the first time one of them beats me they put me back on the list, but I don't care. Right now these stupid jerks keep coming. And as long as they keep coming they keep paying my expenses."
Terry sipped at his beer and looked at the man sitting next to him. Chuck was tall, a little over six feet, with a lean and wiry build. He scorned the college crew cut fad and wore his dark hair long over his ears. As he sat and talked he moved his hands and added emphasis to his words with quick movements of his head and shoulders. There was a certain coordinated grace in this motion, a swift smooth economy, which spoke of strength and agility.
Now that the game was over the juke box was blaring its raucous sound again and the screech of rapid intense conversation gave it background. Terry smiled when he realized he liked this man he'd known for about an hour. Perhaps it was the similarity of their attitudes toward the school that drew him. Perhaps it was just that he liked him.
He ordered another round of beer. "If they asked you to join a fraternity now, would you do it?"
"What, and kill my income?" Chuck grinned when he answered.
They talked some more and Terry was surprised to discover that Chuck was a small town boy. He came from a town about a hundred and twenty miles away from New York. Terry had automatically attributed Chuck's smoothness and polish to a big city upbringing, but now that he knew differently he saw that the veneer fit like a good suit of clothes rather than like a second skin. The hard polish was like a suit of armor with something softer underneath, rather than a totally hard personality.
A figure loomed up out of the darkness behind them and Terry and Chuck both turned. It was the senior, the polite one, and he was just a little drunk now. Drunk enough to be flushed of face and a little unsteady on his feet.
"Hey, Chuckie boy, somebody finally whipped your rear. Didn't they?"
Chuck looked at the man for a full minute and then spoke out of the corner of his mouth as he turned away. "Beat it, Dempster. You're smashed."
"Somebody proved you aren't so damn good. Didn't they? But of all the people around it had to be this jerk."
Chuck turned back.
"Or did you let him win? You missed a couple of easy shots there. You know, this was one time everybody wanted to see you win, wanted to see this guy lose."
Dempster's voice had risen to a yell and the bartender came along with a piece of sawed off baseball bat in his hand.
"Break it up, boys," the bartender said. "Don't want to see no trouble here."
The voice of authority had its effect on Dempster.
With a drunken mumble he turned and went back to the table full of his friends.
"Who is that?" asked Terry, when they turned back to the bar.
"He's one of the three guys..
"I know that," Terry interrupted. "But who is he? What's his name?"
"That's Harvey Dempster, senior, glad-hander, vice-president of Kappa Alpha Alpha, and man voted most likely to kiss his boss's rear. I've never seen him drunk before."
There was a loud scraping of chairs and Terry turned to see Dempster and his friends leaving the bar. He finished his beer, yawned, and turned to Chuck.
"Well, I guess I'll call it a night. Got a ten o'clock tomorrow morning."
"Which way you heading?" Chuck asked.
"Cross town, over to the north side."
"I'm going that way. I guess I'll walk a ways with you."
Outside the air was thin and cool. The night sky was clear and a million stars pinpricked the heavens with their winking light. Chuck and Terry walked down toward the mouth of the alley and the street. The alley was dark and ahead of them they could see the yellow light cast by the street lamps.
They were almost out of the alley when they heard the scuffing of shoes and a voice said, "That's him. Let's fix his snotty nose."
Darker shapes moved in the shadows and Terry tensed himself for what he knew was coming. There was a confusing jumble of sounds and shadows and he felt a fist glance off his shoulder. He lashed out with his fist and felt the satisfying smack of bone on flesh. Someone yelped with pain. Fists thudded into his body and grasping hands clawed at him. Wildly, he lashed out around him.
An arm wrapped around his windpipe and pairs of hands caught and held his arms. A shadow loomed up in front of him and he kicked out with his foot. The shadow groaned and dropped to the ground.
He heard Chuck's voice then in a tone of shocked surprise. "Hey, I don't like those odds."
His left arm was suddenly free and he reached down between his legs to catch the leg of the man behind him. He pulled up on the leg and the arm left his throat. He heard the sickening sound of a head smashing into concrete. He only had one man holding him now and he truck out at that man with all the strength and fury he could muster. His fist landed somewhere on the man's body and he was rewarded with a howl of pain.
The scuffle had disturbed someone in one of the houses backed onto the alley and a light came on. Now he could see what he was doing. Dempster and another man were flailing away at Chuck. Terry grabbed Dempster by the shoulder and whirled him around, hitting him in the face as he did so. He felt the sudden gush of warm sticky blood and Dempster dropped to the ground.
A woman's voice shrieked in the night. "Call the police, call the police," she howled like a dog baying at the moon.
Chuck dropped his man with a sharp blow to the solar plexus and spun around looking for more adversaries. There were none, only a half dozen inert shapes on the floor of the alley. "Louses," he said, and he wiped at the blood trickling from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand.
"Hey, somebody's calling the cops. Let's get out of here," Terry shouted.
They took off at a slow run and dropped it down to a walk four blocks away. Neither of them spoke until Terry pulled out a pack of cigarettes and held them out. Chuck took one.
"Thanks," Terry said. "You didn't have to help me."
"That's all right. You can owe me. Only next time you get two and I get four."
"What's going to happen now?" Terry asked. "I don't know. Maybe they'll decide they've had enough and maybe they won't. I sort of hope they won't. I haven't had this much excitement since I left home."
They parted two blocks further on, Chuck turning down a side street and Terry continuing on toward his own apartment. Ten minutes ago he'd been sleepy enough to yawn, but now his heart was thudding in his chest and his blood raced. He passed a diner and decided to stop for a cup of coffee and a sandwich.
The lights were on, a pot of coffee bubbled on the silex machine, and the place was empty. There was no one behind the cash register and no one behind the counter. For one fleeting instant Terry imagined that all the people in the world had been destroyed while he'd been busy with the fight. And then the waitress came out of the kitchen.
"Oh. I thought I heard the door open."
Terry sat on one of the stools at the counter. "Give me a fried egg sandwich, on toast, with mayonnaise, and coffee."
She didn't move, just looked at him with her eyes widened. He stared back. He saw a woman, that's all, just a woman. If he'd had to describe her he wouldn't have been able to do it. She was of average size, with an average face and average colored hair and eyes. That she was female was evidenced by the skirt of her uniform, her long hair, and the two bulges of her boobs.
"Well, what are you looking at?" he said sharply She jumped at the harsh sound of his voice. "You've been in a fight," she seemed astonished.
"Yes. So what?"
She seemed to come to herself and her voice was sugar when she spoke. "So the cops will be here in a couple of minutes -- they always stop for coffee around this time--and when they see you they'll start asking questions."
"All right, so they'll ask questions. So what?"
"So if you wash your face maybe they won't bother you. The wash room's back there." She pointed down along the counter, turned and went into the kitchen to get his order.
Terry grinned to himself and went to the wash room. When he saw himself in the mirror he knew why she'd been so astonished at the sight of him. There was blood all over his face. Quickly he washed the blood away and looked for a cut or scrape. He found none. Someone had bled all over his face. In the darkness of the alley he'd evidently drawn blood from one of his attackers. He realized now that the wetness of his face hadn't been sweat. No wonder the girl had gaped at him.
Back at the counter, his face clean, he smiled at the girl when she came form the kitchen. "I didn't know how bad it looked," he said. "I'm sorry I startled you."
"You look much better now," she told him, setting his sandwich in front of him.
He bit into the sandwich and picked up the coffee cup, almost spilling the hot liquid all over himself and the counter, his hands were shaking so badly.
"Say, is something wrong?" the waitress asked, looking at his shaking hands.
He realized his heart was still pounding in his chest and his blood was still racing. The excitement of the fight was still with him. "I don't know. Still got the shakes, I guess. It's from the fight."
"What happened?"
"I had some trouble with a bunch of kids," he said.
"College boys?"
"Yeah."
"Sometimes they give me a pain in the rear, those college boys. They come in here and make smart remarks and try to grab my legs. And when the place is full of people I can't say anything to them."
Terry nodded as he filled his mouth with the dry tasteless sandwich. He finished it as quickly as possible, washing it down with gulps of hot coffee. When he was finished he ordered another cup of coffee.
The door opened while she was pouring it for him and he turned to see a policeman come in. That guy must have been a policeman. Either that or he was a movie extra lost from the shooting of a comedy picture. He was dressed in gray twill, tightly fitted shirt and jodphurs. On his feet he wore highly polished riding no boots, black. And over the shirt he wore a black leather jacket. Of course he had a pistol strapped around his waist. But even there it was different. The pistol was handmade, with delicate leather carvings decorating it. And the pistol itself was a long-barreled colt with ivory grips.
The man was a caricature as he swaggered up to the counter. Terry looked for, and expected to see, a ten gallon Stetson. That was the only thing missing. The movie cop ordered two containers of coffee and when the girl turned to fill the order the cop leaned across the counter and pinched her buttocks.
She squealed and jumped, pouring coffee down the front of her uniform. She didn't like it. That much was evident from the suppressed anger in the lines of her face. And yet when she turned back her lips were curled in a horrible grimace of a smile.
The pinching nauseated Terry. The blatant unconcern at the possible consequences of the action were almost terrifying. The man was in a position of authority and he knew it. And Terry wanted to stand up and tear the man's head off his shoulders. He wanted to, but he didn't.
The cop took the two containers of coffee and walked to the squad car and got in. The car pulled away from the curb. When he turned back the girl was almost crying from suppressed rage.
"I'm glad you told me to wash my face," he said. "If that one had questioned me I'd killed him. Are they all like that around here?"
"The rest of them aren't that bad," she said, bitterly. "That one's called Carter, and he's mean. Used to be an MP in the army, but they threw him out. His brother-in-law's the chief of police and he likes to think this is a big city with a crime problem. Every once in a while he roughs up the Saturday night drunks. Then his brother clamps down on him for a while. He's just about due now. It's been about a month since he had any real fun beating anybody up with his nightstick."
"Does he ever bother you -- I mean, besides when he comes in here and sticks his arm across the counter?"
She had been wiping the counter as they talked and now she looked up and into his eyes. Her look asked him if he were asking the question for the reason she thought. Her eyes, he saw, were brown and listless, beaten, as though she had given up the good fight a long time ago.
Her voice was softer, hesitant, a little afraid when she spoke. "Sometimes he follows me home in the squad car. You know, he wants to make me. So far I've been lucky."
"What time do you get off?" he asked.
And then she knew why he was talking to her, but she didn't care any more. He was big and good-looking. He talked nice to her, not dirty. And he didn't try and feel her everytime her back was turned.
"In about an hour," she told him. "Why?"
"I thought I'd walk home with you so he wouldn't bother you."
It was at least partly true, he told himself. He hadn't liked the swaggering ex-MP. He had hated the way he'd reached across the counter and violated the girl's body. But there was more. There was the thudding of his heart in his chest, the stomach-knotting excitement that needed m slaking. He knew he had to have her, had to thrust himself to her foam-rubber body. The funniest thing was he didn't really want to. He just had to.
"All right," she said, her tired voice little more than a sigh.
The diner was open all night and a few minutes before the hour another girl came in to take over. Terry and the waitress left. They hadn't spoken since she agreed to his proposal and now they walked the streets in silence. The trees rustled their dying leaves and cast moving shadows on the sidewalks and the street lights were like lonely sentinels shaming them.
They walked four blocks and she stopped in the middle of the last one. They were in front of an old three story frame house. All the lights in the house were out.
"This is where I live," she said. And she waited for him to invite himself inside.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"Carol." She didn't even ask his name. "Do you want to come inside for a while?"
She didn't even wait to see his quick nod of assent. She just turned and started up the path, and he followed. They walked around to the back of the house and up an outside stairway. At the top floor she opened the door with a key and let him in.
The top floor of the building had once been an attic and now it was fixed over as an apartment with four rooms. All the rooms had sloping ceilings and five and dime wallpaper and he saw her finger at her lips motioning him to silence when she turned on the light "Shhhh," she said. "Don't wake the baby."
He almost left then, almost ran out of the place. But the excitement still gripped his body. He sat down in the living room and she disappeared into one of the other rooms, the bedroom, he guessed. A minute or two passed and he lit a cigarette. She came back into the room wearing a blue terry-cloth bathrobe and she'd taken all her make-up off. She looked much younger somehow, as if the removing of the make-up had washed away the stain of years.
She sat beside him on the sofa and he put his arm around her. When he kissed her it was only the rubbing together of two pairs of lips. His hand slipped into the front of her robe and she was naked underneath. Her flesh was warm against his hand.
He touched her nipple and felt it stir against his hand. Her arms tightened around his shoulders. He found the belt to the robe and untied it. The robe was open and her body revealed to his eyes and his hands.
Her breasts were just muscle and glands and flesh attached to her chest, but he touched them anyway. Beneath her breasts were the bones of her ribs and below the ribs was the softness of her belly. He touched it all, everything, and then he bent his lips to her nipples.
She responded of course. She sighed when his lips touched her and her hands pressed him tighter. While he kissed her breasts his hands caressed her thighs. She stiffened, caught her breath in her throat, and then relaxed with a sobbing sigh.
There, very near his hand, was the object of all man's desire. And it was only an aperture in the flesh of her body. Behind that aperture, were organs designed for the creating and bearing of children. Not a simple function, certainly, but it was something that deserved to be worshiped as a haven, as a seat of ecstasy. He went further with his caress and felt her muscles begin to tremble.
A man spends nine months getting out of the womb, and all his life trying to get back in, he thought disjointedly.
Up till now his caressing had been mechanical. The excitement was still with him, his heart still raced, but he hadn't been able to associate the excitement with the body of the girl in his arms. Now, her own passion aroused, she touched him and he sprang immediately to life against the pressure of her caress.
He raised his head from her body and removed his hand. He kissed her on the mouth and at the same time slid her robe down over her shoulders. Then he stood up and quickly stripped off his own clothes. When he was naked, standing in front of her, she reached out and touched him, then bent forward her lips, soft against him. While her lips caressed him her hands grasped his body and squeezed until he felt the sharp points of her nails digging into his flesh.
He pushed her back on the sofa until she was lying flat and she drew her knees up to receive him.
She groaned, tightened her arms and legs around him, and her body began to move under him. He began to move, too. They moved against one another for a long time and it was like he had been anesthetized from the waist down. He could feel nothing. Once, twice, she stiffened and trembled in quiet completion. But there was nothing for him. A couple of times he could feel his body beginning to respond and he welcomed the feeling, JUS but nothing happened.
When he left her she knew he hadn't reached fulfillment. He sat up and reached for a cigarette while she slipped into her robe. Then she sat beside him and he offered her a puff on his cigarette. She took it from his hand, puffed on it, and handed it back. When she gave it back to him their eyes met and locked.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"My fault," he answered.
And he dressed and went back to his own place.
CHAPTER SIX
It bothered him. It bothered him a lot. He'd never been incapable before. He thought about it all that night. He didn't fall asleep until well into the next morning and he slept through his classes. When he awoke it was after two o'clock in the afternoon. He rolled over in bed, stared at the clock for a minute while his eyes focused, then he reached for a cigarette.
His sleep had been fitful and restless and he was as tired now as he had been when he went to bed. He knew his impotence of the night before hadn't been a permanent thing. Still it was quite a shock, a blow to his manhood. He remembered his first job in the Orient. It had been an airbase being built in Japan and it wasn't so many years ago. He remembered the hot dusty days behind the controls of the cat and he remembered the nights filled with twangy atonal music and hot rice wine and the smooth yellow bodies of the Japanese girls.
In those days he'd been able to work all day and drink and make love most of the night. There hadn't been any problem with the women. They were there to be used and the other men of the construction crew had used them. The women were interested only in money. For money they would do anything, and the more you paid the better they were, the more they twisted their hips and ground their bodies against you.
In those days -- and they seemed a long time ago now -- there had been a pattern to his existence, and the pattern was followed by all the men he worked with. A man worked on his machine during the day and spent his nights drinking and loving. It was the thing to do. It made life in a strange country bearable. And it wasn't that he and his fellows came to a particular country and made tramps of the women they found there. Prostitution had been an established fact in these countries long before the American construction workers ever got there. Sex was a function, a part of life, a necessity. But here in the States, back home in the most advanced country in the world, sex was completely different. Here it was something they used to sell bread, or cars, or brassieres, or fertilizer. Here it was something everybody talked about but damned few people did anything about.
In the good old UJS. of A. everybody thought about sex all the time, but nobody ever spoke about it. If a fellow wanted to take a girl to bed he thought about it, but he talked about anything else in the world he could think of. He talked about love, about work, about art. And sometimes, if he had to talk about sex, it was always in the abstract. Always sex this, or sex that; never you and I this or that, or I'll do this to you and you'll do that to me. Sex had a different meaning here in the United States than it did anywhere else in the world.
And he had sensed the difference and acted accordingly without ever realizing it. He knew that when he thought about his reaction to the Negress, Charlie; and to Laura. Well, maybe not Laura, that would have been the same no matter where he'd been born. But it hadn't always been that way for him. In the beginning, his first time, and for the first few months or a year of his sex life, his attitude had been definite Asian.
He smiled to himself when he thought about that. An Asian attitude at fourteen -- it did sound a little ridiculous. Miss Dash had been her name and she'd been his teacher, or one of the teachers in his high school. His first day in her class she'd been very careful to learn all her student's names. And his name was common enough so that for half the term she never suspected who his father was.
Then, it had something to do with his address, she asked him if his father was the Frank White. That's the way she'd asked, "Is your father the Frank White?" And he'd said that was his father's name but he didn't know what she meant by THE... After that she was always smiling at him and when he fell behind in her class she was the one who suggested he come over to her place in the evenings for tutoring. Some of her questions had seemed silly then, but that was before he'd had any real concept of his father as a rich man. She'd asked why he didn't attend a private school, things like that.
One night he came to her place about twenty minutes early. He'd been getting private tutoring from her for over a month then and he felt enough at home in her apartment to walk in without knocking. He'd heard the shower going as soon as he was inside so he settled himself in the living room and leafed through a magazine to wait for her to finish.
He remembered it had been dark outside then and the only light in the apartment was the one on the table beside his chair. The shower had stopped and the hall light had come on. He looked up from his magazine to see her come out of the bathroom and walk toward her bedroom.
She'd been stark-naked. He'd stared.
She hadn't even noticed him, just walked by the doorway. When he got to her bedroom door he found it open and inside she was sitting in front of her vanity mirror combing her hair. She was still naked and he could see the brown tips of her boobs swaying and bobbing as she moved her arms.
She saw him in the mirror then and gasped, startled. He'd just stood there, with his teeth in his mouth, staring. She covered her breasts with her forearm and her other hand she placed over her thighs. While he stood and gaped at her she stood up and took a robe from the closet. When she had it belted around her she called him into the room and sat him down on the bed. He remembered thinking that the conversation which followed was crazy.
"Didn't you ever see a naked woman before?"
He'd seen pictures passed from the sweaty hands of classmates but he didn't want to tell her that. "No."
"Didn't your father tell you all about... well, all about things?"
"What things?"
"About women, and about animals and life and things."
Now he really didn't know what she was talking about. "No."
"Why did you stare at me when you saw me without any clothes?"
"I don't know. It made me feel funny... good, but funny, inside."
"Do you know what breasts are?"
"Oh sure," he said, more confident now. "They're things girls have and babies eat on them. I know that."
She kind of smiled then, but she wasn't really laughing at him. "Are girls different any other way?" she asked.
"Yeah, sure. I know about that too. Boys have things, and girls don't have anything."
"Well, that's not quite right. Girls have something. If I take my robe off and show you, will you take your clothes off and show me?"
It seemed like a pretty fair bargain and he nodded his agreement. She stood up and let her robe slip from her shoulders. Then she moved around and stretched out on the bed. He stood beside the bed and reached out to touch her but she stopped him.
"You have to keep your part of the bargain first," she said.
He took his clothes off and got up on the bed beside her and twenty minutes later he knew what it was all about.
One thing she never explained or demonstrated was the contraceptive device. And later he found out why. His father had called him into the study one evening after supper. The supper had been interrupted by a telephone call.
"Do you know someone named Dash?" his father had asked.
"Sure. She's my teacher, the one who's been helping me with my studies. I told you about that."
"Yes. Well it seems she's been helping you with other things, too."
Terry had blushed and stammered. "Well, I... I... "
"Damn it. Don't you know enough to use something?"
It was a long confusing conversation, but in the end he had all the information. It seemed that Miss Dash had called his father to say that she was in a family way, pregnant, and that he, now fifteen, was the father of her yet unborn child. She was a woman of the world and realized that marriage was out of the question but she felt that Terry's father should give her some money to defray the expenses she was about to incur.
His father had given her the money and him a lecture on contraception. His father had also put some private detectives on her trail. It had taken the detectives a month to get the evidence and then his father had had Miss Dash quietly arrested and sent to jail for fraud and extortion. It seems she wasn't really in a family way after all.
From then on Terry had confined his amorous adventures to girls his own age. And with his father supplying the necessary safety factor the problem had never reappeared in his life. When he left high school he also left a large coterie of knowledgeable young ladies whom it had been his pleasure to tutor in the ways and means of sexual love.
A knock at his door brought him back to the present He was lying in bed in a darkened room in an apartment in a small college town in upstate New York. And he'd been thinking about his temporary impotence.
"Who is it?" he yelled.
"Mrs. Walsh," came the muffled reply.
He rolled out of bed and slipped into a robe. He opened the door on her smiling face. "Yes, what do you want?"
"I noticed you didn't go to class today and I thought maybe you were ill. I came up to see if there was anything I could do."
Agreeing with her was easier than making a long-winded explanation as to why he hadn't gone to class. "Yes. I think I'm catching a cold or something."
She bustled by him into the apartment and he closed the door after her. She was chattering like a bird, an old parrot, he thought. "Dear boy, you just get right back into bed and let me make you something to eat. Ill bet you haven't eaten a thing all day."
She was a whirlwind of talking energy and he let himself be herded back into bed. He lay back, the sheet covering his nude body from the hips down, and listened to the sounds she made in the kitchen. In fifteen minutes she was back in the bedroom with a bowl of hot soup and some crackers. She sat beside the bed while he ate.
"You young people nowadays don't know how to take care of yourselves. That's why you catch colds and things. I haven't had a cold in over five years because I know how to take good care of myself."
He'd discovered the easiest way to talk with Mrs. Walsh was not to talk at all, but just to nod your head and smile. The soup was good though, and he had been hungry. When he finished the last of the soup he gave her the plate and she took it into the kitchen.
When she came back she had a bottle of rubbing alcohol in her hand.
"What's that for?" he asked.
"For you, dear boy. A good rubdown will break up a cold."
Without waiting for his approval she splashed the alcohol on his chest and began to knead it into his muscles. The stuff was cold at first but her hands soon warmed him up. She talked constantly as she rubbed and it was like a kind of crooning litany. When she'd finished with his chest she made him turn over and she began to rub his back. The motion of turning over had disturbed the sheet and his buttocks stuck up into the air.
It didn't seem to bother her though, because when she finished with his back she slapped him playfully with an alcohol-wet hand. "Now turn over again and I'll finish you up."
He reached down and clutched the sheet around himself when he turned over, but she pushed the sheet down around his legs. "That sheet isn't hiding anything I haven't seen before," she said. For an instant after she uncovered him she gawked at him, at the latent strength of him. Then she ignored the sight of him and happily began to rub the alcohol into his skin.
It was easy for her to ignore him, after all, as she'd just said, she'd seen it all before, but it was much harder for him to ignore the warm feeling in his belly from her ministrations. It was inevitable that his body should respond to the stimulation of her hands. She managed to ignore even this.
She finished and slipped the sheet up over him again. His face was flushed and when she saw it she laughed. "Dear boy, I do believe you're embarrassed. Don't be. After all I'm an old widow. Think of me as your mother." With that as a parting remark, she turned and left the apartment.
If I think of you as my step-mother, he thought as he listened to her go down the stairs, then the next time I see you you're in for the surprise of your life. Thinking of Mrs. Walsh as his mother inevitably led him to think about Laura, and he didn't want to think about her, not yet anyway. He got out of bed and slipped into some clothes and the telephone rang.
It was Chuck.
"Hey," he said. "I didn't see you around today and I thought the boys might have paid you a little visit later last night."
"No. I just overslept this morning so I cut the whole day," Terry told him.
"Yeah. Well, as long as you're okay. Hey, what do you say we go have a couple of beers?"
"I've got a better idea. Why don't you pick up some beer and come on over here. I don't feel like going out tonight. If I run into a couple more of the idiots I'm liable to kill one of them."
"Okay, sure, I'll be over in about fifteen minutes," Chuck said, and hung up.
He made it to the apartment in ten minutes and Terry opened the door to his knock to find him with a smile on his face and a grocery bag in his arms.
"I bought some pretzels and things too," he explained.
They went into the kitchen and opened two sweating cans of cold beer. The bitter liquid slid down Terry's throat and he sighed as he brought the can down from his mouth.
"Ahhh. That's great. I didn't know what I wanted until I tasted that. It hits you right where you live."
"Tap beer is better than canned," Chuck said. "But the surroundings here are nicer than most of the bars in town. This is quite a pad. It must set you back a young fortune."
"It's cheaper than it looks," Terry told him. "It runs a little more than a single room somewhere but I make up part of the difference in cooking my own meals."
"It must be easier to come back to, too. You ought to see my pad. My whole room is smaller than this kitchen. I could move into your refrigerator and have a bigger place. At least here you have a place to sit down if you want to study. My bed takes up so much room there's only enough space between it and the wall to get by if you move sideways. But I only sleep there. I study either in the library or in the lounge of one of the girls' dorms."
"Girls' dorms?"
"Yeah. You remember what girls are? Well, here at school they all live in dormitories so their parents don't have to worry about their virginity. And us fellows spend most weekday evenings in the lounges of those dormitories. Girls are nice to know. They type papers for you and let you copy their class notes."
Terry grinned. "Is that all they're good for?"
"That's all they're good for when they're in their dormitories. Us fellows aren't allowed past the hallway door. The school's afraid if we ever got up into the bedroom area we'd go berserk and rape everything in skirts."
"Speaking of girls -- how are these co-eds? Is it tough to get at their panties?"
"Naw. With most of them it's a breeze. All you have to do is spend a little dough on a Saturday evening and a nice long stop on the way home is completely in order. Of course there are a few who... "
"There are always a few," Terry said.
"Yeah." Chuck got up from the table and strolled around the kitchen opening cupboards doors and peering inside. "This place is really swell. Show me the rest of the joint."
Terry took him on a grand tour through the three and a half rooms. From the kitchen they moved to the living room. Chuck admired the furniture and was astounded when he found that the place came with a TV set. The half room, a dining area, didn't require much in the way of tour guide talk and they moved from there into the bedroom, stopping on the way to peer into the tiled bath with its stall shower.
In the bedroom Chuck bounced on the bed and gave the mattress his stamp of approval. "I wouldn't feel like a college student if I didn't have a mattress with lumps in it. My first year here I moved four times trying to find a comfortable bed. No luck, so I finally gave up. All I look for now is a place that has a door with a lock."
He got up from the bed and strolled to the window. The blind was down and drawn and he had to lift one of the slats to look out into the darkening streets. He did a perfect double take, just like the old movie comedians. He lifted the slat, looked out, dropped the slat, then started to turn away. Suddenly he stopped and spun back to the blind. He jerked the slat up and pressed his nose against the window.
"Hey," he shouted. "Have you got a pair of binoculars?"
"No," Terry said. "Why?"
"If I see what I think I see I want a closer look. Wowee, look at that."
"What?" Terry said, crossing the room to the blind. "What do you see?" He too peered out through the raised slat. "Where, where?"
"Over there, the next building," Chuck said. "Ground floor corner."
Terry looked.
Then he gasped.
He was looking into a bedroom.
A girl's bedroom. He could, tell it was a girl's bedroom because the girl was there. And she was all there, or there all together, or there in the all together. She was naked. And she was drying her body with a towel.
"Who is she?" Chuck whispered, as though the girl might hear him.
"How the hell do I know," Terry whispered back. "Shut up and let me look."
They watched and the girl finished drying her back. Then she moved out of sight and Chuck groaned his disappointment. Now only her legs were visible from the knees down. She opened a closet door, one with a mirror on it, and she took something out of the closet. Then even her legs disappeared from view.
"She's gone," Terry said, turning away from the window.
"Wait, wait. Look... in the mirror. Look in the mirror," Chuck's voice was breathless in his excitement, Terry looked and in the mirror he could see a reflection of a reflection. The mirror on the closet door was angled into the room so it reflected the image of the mirror on the girl's vanity table. And the girl, still nude, was sitting in front of that vanity mirror brushing her hair. She was only visible from the waist up, but that was enough. For she had the largest, firmest, highest, whitest breasts Terry had ever seen, with brown tipped nipples that looked the size of half dollars.
"Ooooheeee," Chuck said. "That's stuff. I wish I could see more."
As if in fulfillment of the wish the girl stood up and admired herself in her mirror. She looked at her body and then ran her hands up from her thighs to her breasts. She hefted those huge mounds of flesh, one in each hand, and held them out toward the mirror.
"Oh, God," Chuck said. "I haven't been this excited since I was fifteen and spent all my free time peeking in the local tramp's bedroom window when she was working."
"Shut up, damn it," Terry said peevishly. "Shut up and let me look."
They watched for a few moments more and then the girl slipped into a bra and panties and finally a skirt and sweater. She turned out her light when she went out of her room.
Chuck and Terry adjourned to the kitchen and the beer and spent a pleasant couple of hours telling each other about their sexual conquests. Terry recounted his adventures in the far-flung brothels of the world and Chuck answered with tales of the housewives he'd delivered groceries too, and the hustlers he'd known.
They ran out of beer and conversation about eleven o'clock and Chuck made ready to leave. He insisted on checking to see if the girl had returned before he went to his own place. He was disappointed. Her light was still out After Chuck left, Terry cleaned up the dead soldiers and threw them all into a paper bag. The empty cans clanked together when he set the bag down near the door so he would remember to take it out in the morning. Missing one full day of school this early in the term was pretty serious and he decided to get to sleep early. The conversation with Chuck had helped relieve his apprehension over the temporary impotence and he was in bed and in a deep sleep in fifteen minutes. The evening had left him at peace with himself and he slept deep and silent He dreamed of swimming in a tepid sea. He dreamed that he saw an octopus attacking a mermaid in that tepid sea. And in his sleep he battled with the eight-armed slimy monster and rescued the mermaid. The mermaid showed her gratitude in a manner common to females of all species.
But she was, after all, a mermaid and her body structure prohibited her from showing that gratitude in a human way. She was a woman from the waist up. There were other ways. And she knew them.
His dream was filled with the most delightful sensations; excitement boiling in his veins, the warm touch of her caress. Suddenly he was wide awake and staring into the darkness of his room, but the sensations lingered; were still present.
He was awake. He wasn't dreaming.
But the sensations increased.
He reached down along the sheets and his hand encountered warm flesh, a mound of flesh with a hard dot at its tip. A breast. He squeezed lightly and heard a throaty moan. He was awake and there was a woman in bed with him, a naked woman.
The excitement and the sensations in his body increased ten fold when he realized he wasn't dreaming. He let both his hands explore the wonders of the body of the woman in his bed. Her flesh was warm to his hands, then hot, and his own body was hotter still.
His hands searched and thighs welcomed his caress. He found flesh waiting for the conquering thrust of his body, flesh warm and open like a flower to the midday sun. He touched the plumpness of a buttock, the softness of a breast, the trembling tautness of belly and thigh muscles. And everywhere his fingers roamed he found flesh urging him to the ultimate act.
Of course he was shocked to wake up and find himself in bed with a naked woman, but he would have had to have been an utter and complete fool to hesitate or question the offering to that unknown woman in his bed. Terry may have been a lot of things, but a fool he wasn't. He didn't waste any time moving over on the female body and thrusting himself to her. The body beneath him was a wise one. It knew the ways of passion and the refinements of pleasure. It knew the subtle movements which doubled and trebled the pleasure, which prolonged the delicious agony. And as he climbed to the heights of delight he knew the woman beneath him climbed also. And when all the muscles in his body went rigid, when all the stars in the heavens exploded behind his tightly shut eyelids, when his soul soared from his room and his sweaty bed up into the cool dark heavens -- when all this happened to him he knew it also happened to his companion.
His pounding heart still thudded in his chest, but his muscles relaxed from their rigidity and he tried to roll away. The woman felt him slipping away from her and she tightened her arms around him.
"No," she said. "Don't move. Stay with me a while."
He stayed. His body, now limp, remained caught within the ferocious jaws of her carnivorous body. They lay locked together, motionless, for a long time in the darkness of his room. She sighed deeply, his body rising as her chest filled with air and then falling as she exhaled. It was a sigh of utter contentment, of complete peace. That sigh told him who she was, that sigh of a man near starvation who has just glutted himself on delicacies and now sees a food he cannot resist. He knew who she was and he thought to reach for the light and expose hex.
But then she moved. Her hands slid down from his shoulders. His breath caught in his throat and the fires banked in his belly began to grow again.
He felt himself begin to come to life at her body and he was astounded. It's impossible, he thought. It can't be happening to me. Not now. Not so soon. But it was happening and he thrilled to the new delight which flooded him.
Her thighs locked around him and her heels drummed against him and spurred him to action. He was a stallion, and he'd found a mare who was continually in need. It was ecstasy and he made the most of it.
This time it took longer and was better and at the end their lips mashed and they moaned their delight directly into each other's throats. And this time he rolled away from her when it was done.
The light. Terry had to turn on the light. He knew who it was beside him there in bed, but he had to turn on the light. His hand found the lamp on the nightstand beside the bed and he pushed the button. The lamp came on and cast its circle of light over the bed.
He looked and she smiled at him, her middle-aged body flaccid in the afterglow of her pleasure. He returned her smile and reached out with his hand to lay his open palm flat over her fleshy thighs.
"Why, Mrs. Walsh," he said in mock sophistication. "I'd have known you anywhere."
CHAPTER SEVEN
Her smile of sated pleasure disappeared from her face and he was sorry for the remark. He took two cigarettes out of the pack on the nightstand and held one out to her. She took it and accepted the light. Then she covered her eyes with the forearm of her left arm and held the cigarette between the index finger and middle fingers of her right hand.
He let his eyes travel over her body and he saw that at one time she must have been a magnificent beauty. As a young girl her beauty, in spite of cheap clothing and popularized hair-dos, must have set every man in town on his ear when she passed by.
Her waist was thickened now and once firm flesh had become rubbery and flaccid, but beneath the layer of fat he could see the outlines of her original figure. Her breast flattening against her rib cage had once been firm and high set with the nipples aiming outward from the center of her body. A layer of flab covered once lean thighs. But with all this change, all this deterioration she was still a beautiful woman. What her body had lost in sheer physical beauty it had gained in knowledge. And Terry realized he would rather make love with her than with almost any of the nineteen-year-old co-eds running around campus.
He knew he wouldn't have felt this way unless he'd made love to her. For, on outward appearance, she had little to offer. He envied the men who'd loved her in her prime. Then he didn't envy them. She was much better now than she could have ever been before.
Terry stretched out beside her in the circle of light and let his hand rest on her stomach. The skin was like hot silk, and while he had no physical desire for her now he still delighted in the tactile pleasure of the touch of her body.
Her voice was hollow and ashamed when she broke the silence. "I know what you're thinking," she said. "I can almost hear the words running through your brain."
He said nothing.
"Old pig! That's what you're thinking. I'm an old pig with an itchy body." Her voice was filled with a hopeless acceptance of her own condemnation. "Well, maybe you're right. Maybe I am an old pig. But if I was twenty-one again and I made love to you, you wouldn't think those words. But I'm not twenty-one. I'm twice that and I'm not supposed to think about love any more."
He wanted to say something. He wanted to ease her self-recriminations. But there were no words for him then.
"But I do think about love," she continued. "I think about how it used to be with my husband. He would come home from the mill with his blood boiling for me. And it was me he wanted, not just any woman. Thirty seconds after he came in the door we'd be locked together. Then afterward he'd lay there and hold me in his arms and we'd fall asleep.
"He was a man, my husband. He could make me shiver just by looking at me with that 'I want to love you' look in his eye... Where is the law that says I shouldn't want love because I'm forty-two and my husband is gone? Where is it? Show it to me and maybe I won't lay awake at night and think about it until I can't see straight. Show me the rule and maybe I won't need it any more."
She cried then. No sobs, no sharp intake of breath, just tears running down her cheeks.
"Are you finished?" he asked. "Are you through calling yourself names? Can I say something now?"
She took her forearm from over her eyes and looked at him.
"You're the best," he said. "You're better than all those college girls put together." He wanted to say more but there was no more.
She finished her cigarette and leaned across him to stub it out in the ash tray. Her soft breasts flattened against his chest and the center of her body was resting on his open and upturned palm. Her cheeks were streaked with the pathway of her tears but she wasn't crying anymore. She kissed his cheek with pursed lips and rolled away from his body to the edge of the bed.
"You're nice," she said. "But don't humor me just because you rolled me in the sack."
She got up from the bed and walked across the room to a chair where her bathrobe lay. Terry threw his legs over the side of the bed and followed her. He stood behind her when she bent to pick up her robe and he pressed himself against the soft fullness of her rump.
She gasped and straightened up and he wrapped his arms around her from behind, his hands filling themselves with her breasts. The weight of those twin globes of milk-white flesh filled his hands and he tightened his grip enough so she leaned back into him.
"If you'll stop feeling sorry for yourself for five minutes I'd like to tell you something."
The touch of his body against her worked its own magic and he felt her go limp against him. He let go of one breast and moved that hand down to her stomach. He pressed her back against him and she sighed.
He put his lips to her ear and whispered his words with hot breath. "Now I've got you where I want you. Now you'll listen to me."
He told her about the waitress, about being in bed with a willing young woman twenty years younger than her. And he told her how it hadn't been any good for him. Then he told her how good it had been with her.
She listened and she heard.
She felt, too.
The talking about it urged them both. After the first few minutes of the story she began to move her hips m against him. He responded and stopped talking midword and let his body complete the message. Her reception was good. He came in loud and clear. After he was at home with her he leaned over her forward bent back and let his fingers touch the hanging tips of her breasts. He took each tip between the thumb and forefinger of his hands and rolled them until they felt like the erasers on pencils and all the time she trembled around him.
Her chest swelled as it filled with gasping breath and he exploded his desire against her heaving flanks and it was over. A long minute of pleasant aftermath and he left her. The air in the room had become close with the scent of their bodies. His own body was wet with perspiration and he could see twin droplets of her sweat on the tips of her breasts. She sighed and straightened with a groan and a hand to the small of her back.
"I couldn't take too much of it that way," she said, with a wry grin.
He slapped her playfully on the flank. "I've got to get some sleep," he said. "Remember I'm only a young student. You must stop corrupting my morals."
With her bathrobe on she was once more a middle-aged flighty landlady. She reached out and laid her hand against his cheek. "Dear boy," she said, "with you there is no corruption."
When she left he dropped onto the bed and into a deep restful sleep. Morning came. The sun came up. His alarm clock shrieked its raucous scream. A cold shower woke him up and he hurried through his light breakfast. His first class of the day seemed pure gibberish and he resolved not to let himself get behind in the work again.
Between classes he met Chuck and they walked together.
"You look like you waited up all night for our girl friend to come home and undress in front of her window," Chuck said.
Terry grinned. "I did much better than that last night."
"Oh, you nasty fellow. Ill bet you went and got made. Terrible, terrible. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, a big boy like you. Who was she?"
"Nobody you know."
"Yeah, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't like to know her. Come on, buddy, give."
"I'm sorry, I never tell. But I will find out if she's interested in meeting you."
"I guess I'll have to settle for the crumbs," Chuck said.
"I guess you will."
Chuck turned off to one of the smaller buildings and Terry continued on to his next class. He felt good as he walked along, whole and at peace with himself and the world. He whistled as he went up the steps and into the classroom.
It was English and the class was held in a building that had once been a mansion. Instead of desks the classroom was furnished with tables and chairs. The tables were set in a circle with the space in the center open and the students sat around the outside of the tables. It was something new in education. Learning in the round.
There were no assigned seats and Terry dropped into the first open chair he came to. The bell rang and a moment later the professor walked in. He was a tall spare man, grey at the temples, with a bulbous nose and a distracted look. He called the class to order and started a discussion on the subject of the papers he'd just given back, the one that Terry got a B on.
It seemed strange to Terry that the students who had gotten the lowest marks were the ones who did most of the talking. He didn't have an opinion on the topic one way or the other and he listened silently. That is, he listened until his wandering eyes came to rest on the smooth white legs of the girl sitting across the table from him.
He looked from her legs to her face. She was blonde, of course -- weren't all co-eds blonde? --and she chewed distractedly on her pencil while she listened intently. Terry's eyes returned to her legs. The girl was slumped in her seat so that most of her weight was balanced precariously on the edge of her spine on the edge of the chair. Her short skirt had ridden up over her knees and her thighs were parted to maintain her perch. The window was behind Terry and the light glistened on her legs.
He could see a tracery of faint blue lines -- veins -- under the surface of the skin of her thighs and he saw the band of white cloth that ran between her legs. And by staring very hard he saw, or he thought he saw, right through the diaphanous material.
He wasn't sure, but he stared anyway. The voices in the room reduced to a murmuring drone and Terry looked as hard as he could. While he looked he saw the girl's hand come down from above the table and rest on her belly, on top of her skirt. He saw the hand press into her stomach as she kneaded the flesh.
Absently, while intent on the classroom discussion, the girl was caressing herself, manipulating her own body. Terry grinned as he thought to himself that she didn't have to resort to self stimulation. He would be glad to accommodate her. All she had to do was ask him. She was pretty, in a magazine advertisement sort of way, with a face and figure that were close to the average American ideal. Terry wondered how come a nice-looking girl like her had to resort to the manipulations of her own hands. There must be half a dozen men right in this room who would give their eye teeth to get her into bed.
The bell rang and the professor dismissed the class. Terry found himself walking behind the girl and watching the sway of her jutting buttocks. Most people are equipped with the requisite amount and type of limbs and appurtenances. And it is only the arrangement of these appurtenances which distinguishes one individual from another. The girl in front of Terry was normal in this respect. She had everything. And all put together it made a hell of a good-looking package.
Her most outstanding characteristic was her jaunty rump. It stood out about four feet from her body. The buttocks were high and rounded like two basketballs. And those basketballs bounced when she walked. She wore no girdle under her skirt. This much was obvious from the way the buttock muscles clenched and trembled at the end of her every step. It was such a pleasure to watch her walk that he almost cracked his head on the door jamb.
Outside the building the girl turned to the left and Terry stood to watch her walk out of sight before turning to the right and heading for his lunch. He had his next class' books with him and he tried to look over the assignment while he chewed his sandwich and swilled coffee. But the white paper with the tiny printing blurred before his eyes and he saw those buttocks again.
He gave up trying to study and let his mind linger on that sight. There was something about the girl that kept her in his mind, something that wouldn't let him stop thinking about her. It was more than the attractive sight she presented, but he couldn't think what it could be. He finished his lunch and hurried to his next class. Here too be found he couldn't concentrate. His German professor's voice droned on unintelligibly and he tried to get the girl out of his mind. Halfway through the class he managed to become interested in what was happening around him. And then, just before the end of the period he knew what had been bothering him. The girl was familiar. He'd seen her somewhere before, and it had been somewhere outside the classroom. She was the girl in the apartment outside his bedroom window. She was the one who undressed with her window shade up. She was the one he and Chuck had been staring at just the day before.
The problem resolved, he promptly forgot all about her. After his last class he went to the library and spent a couple of hours researching a paper for his social studies course, and then he went home. It was just beginning to get dark when he got to the apartment and he flicked on the light switch as he entered.
As soon as he closed the door behind him he knew something was wrong. Everything looked the same in the place but an uneasy feeling came over him. When he went into the bedroom he heard the shower running and the uneasy feeling left him. He smiled to himself. Mrs. Walsh must be preparing herself for another session in the sack, he thought. And as far as he was concerned it was a good idea.
Terry shucked out of his clothes and opened the bathroom door as quietly as he could. He'd give her a real surprise right in the shower. He closed the door behind him and stalked to the shower. Inside, he could see the outline of a female body. And then, with one swift sweep of his hand, he pulled back the shower curtain and grinned as lewdly as he could.
The grin faded. The woman in the shower whirled around, fear showing in her eyes for just an instant "Oh, Terry, you frightened me," she said.
"Laura," Terry said, completely surprised. "What are you doing here?"
She eyed his nude body and giggled. "Well, I'm not waiting for a bus and you don't look like a bus driver." She stepped back into the shower. "There's room for one more," she offered.
Terry was too astonished to speak. The last person in the world he expected to find in his shower was his stepmother. The astonishment became mixed with anger. Laura was a problem he thought he'd left behind him.
His voice was hard when he spoke. "Get out of that shower. You've got some explaining to do." He turned and left the bathroom, closing the door behind him. While he waited for her he got back into his clothes and poured himself a good stiff drink. Whatever the reason, this new turn in his life would be a problem. Of this he was sure.
She came out of the bedroom ten minutes later with a robe wrapped around her body. Droplets of water glistened in her hair and he felt the lurch of desire for her in his belly.
"Pour me one of those," she said, as she sprawled herself on the sofa careless of the way her robe gaped and revealed most of her desirable body.
He poured her a drink and waited while she sipped it. "What the hell is this all about?" he asked, when she had sipped some of her drink.
"Darling, I never expected this kind of a reception," she said. "I thought you'd be glad to see me after being stuck up here all alone for so long."
"Never mind the Zsa Zsa Gabor bit," he said caustically. "Just tell me why you're here."
She got up from the sofa and walked slowly toward his chair. Her robe had come open and she blatantly ignored the loose front flaps hanging at her sides and exposing the entire front of her body to his gaze. In fact she did more than ignore it. She walked with an extra side-sway to her hips and a bounce to her step. The motion of her torso set her pink breasts to bobbing and swaying, the brown tips winking at him as they disappeared and reappeared from behind the flaps of her robe.
He looked.
He didn't want to look, but he couldn't help himself. He had tasted the ambrosia of those breasts and now the sight of her seductive body held him spellbound.
She came to his chair and curled herself in his lap with one of her arms behind his head. His mouth was inches away from her right breast and he wanted to purse his lips and press them against her hot flesh.
He knew her flesh was hot. He could feel the heat radiating from her thighs and rump on his lap. Only three layers of cloth separated him from their desire and the thought was maddening.
He clenched his jaws tight until they ached as he fought the desire. "Damn it, Laura, cover yourself up and stop making love to me with your eyes." His voice was full of tortured huskiness. "How do you expect me to make any sense with you sitting in my lap naked."
She giggled again. "But, darling, I don't want you to make sense. I want you to make me." Her arm behind his head tightened and his face came even closer to her body.
There was only one thing for him to do. His arms tightened around her and he stood up from the chair. When he set her on her feet her back was toward him and he swatted her on one plump buttock. The crack of his hand against her body rang through the silent apartment.
"Owww," she cried and her hand went to sooth the injured area. He'd tried to dampen her desire with the slap. Two tiny tears of pain trickled down her cheeks. "You hit hard," she said through pouted lips.
He pulled the front of her robe closed and tied the belt. Then he stalked away from her but remained standing to prevent her sitting in his lap again. The Laura standing in front of him now was different from the one he'd left in New York a couple of weeks ago. The grief of mourning was gone, but there was something else, too. She seemed younger, for one thing, and more desirable. When they bad been together in New York her interest in him had been a desire to keep his father alive, but now she seemed honestly interested in Terry for himself.
He turned his back toward her and looked out the window as he spoke. "Why did you come here?"
Her voice was dull and flat. "I came to be with you. After you left I wanted you so badly I was sick with it, but I didn't want to come here. I could have tried booze -- there was plenty of that around. Or, a couple of your father's business associates hinted they would be available to console me. Or, I could have hired myself a nice tender young gigolo. But none of that would have been any good after the first ten minutes."
He turned back into the room and found her sitting on the sofa, her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands. Her robe had gaped away from her body again, but now the flesh that had seemed so vibrant a few minutes ago seemed dull and pasty. Her whole attitude, the rounded shoulders, the down-turned face, was one of hopelessness.
She looked up, her eyes blank and her mouth slack, and she said, "Don't you know why I'm here? Do I have to say it in so many words? I love you, damn it. I didn't ask to. I didn't come looking for you in the first place. It's too bad I should fall in love with the father and the son. But did I want to?" She buried her face in her hand again and began to sob.
His heart ached to take her in his arms and comfort her, but her words were double-edged swords. He wanted her as much as she wanted him. Maybe he even loved her. But, at the same time, she was his father's woman. It seemed strange to him that in death he should want to honor a father whom he'd never honored in life. He felt himself being torn apart by the ambivalence of his feeling for Laura.
He poured two drinks. Then two more. Then another two.
Then it was morning. He opened his eyes and closed them again when the light shattered his brain. His mouth tasted like a pony express rider's saddle blanket, his head throbbed and his stomach bubbled noxious lava. He was sitting in the chair in the living room and he had a blanket over him. He opened his eyes again and tried to ignore the new pain while he looked at the clock. He couldn't read it so he staggered to his feet and started across the room. Halfway there he changed direction and stumbled into the bathroom just in time to be sick all over the tiled floor. How could anything as nauseating as vomiting make a man feel so much better? It worked that way, but he didn't know why.
At least now he could stand up without feeling like the world was spinning sideways. He stood and the world spun backward, instead. Backward was easier than sideways. All he had to do was lean forward to counteract the spinning. He walked from the bathroom bent forward at the waist. Back in the living room he peered upward at the clock and groaned aloud. It was seven-thirty in the morning. A terrible time in a terrible day.
All of a sudden he wondered why he was hung over. He didn't remember anything about the previous evening. The last thing he could remember was walking away from class watching the sway of a pair of tight young buttocks.
Terry subscribed to the philosophy that the only cure for a hangover was the hair of the dog. Well, he certainly was hung over, and he damn sure needed a cure. So, with shaking hands, he poured the last ounce of liquor from the bottle into a glass and drank it down. His throat gagged and his stomach tried to refuse the liquid, but he was the master in his own body and he managed to get the stuff down and keep it down.
It helped. Oh, not right away, but in thirty seconds that seemed like thirty hours, while he stood bent over the table with his whole body trembling. He stopped shuddering and the world stopped spinning and he stood upright. It felt marvelous to stand upright. What he needed next was a good cold shower.
He went into the bedroom and saw the body under the blankets on his bed. Then he remembered everything and he felt sick again. Not hung over sick, just plain old sick. Getting drunk hadn't solved his problem. It had only postponed the thing. But there was no point in waking her up right then.
As quietly as he could, he gathered fresh clothes together and went into the bathroom. Terry was a big man, physically, but right then the shock of a cold shower would have killed him. He took a hot shower first and then slowly decreased the hot water and increased the cold water. When it was cold enough so he began to shiver he turned the hot all the way off and the cold all the way on. Fifteen seconds of icy water had his teeth chattering and between chatters he was breathing in huge gasping gulps of air. The lingering effects of the hangover made his hair hurt when he dried his head, and he had to pat himself dry instead of rubbing. But all in all the shower was almost as much help as the drink. And he knew some solid food in his stomach would eliminate most of the rest of the pain.
After the sweaty soiled clothes he'd slept in, fresh clothing felt wonderful against his body. The odor of frying eggs and bacon didn't do him any good, but the feel of solid food in his belly did. After two cups of black coffee he felt it was safe to give in to his desire for a cigarette. The first cigarette after a battle to the death with a hangover, and it tasted great. He rested one hand on his belly and sucked the smoke deep into his lungs, letting it out with a long sigh.
"For a man who drank as much as you did last night you look pretty good," Laura said from behind him.
He turned and saw her standing in the doorway. Her hair was snarled and scraggly and her mouth and eyes were still clogged with sleep. She was wearing a pale blue nylon nightgown as substantial as a fisherman's net, but he didn't even notice her body, she looked so terrible.
"I guess it's true for all women," he said.
"What's that?" She asked as she yawned and scratched herself under her right breast.
"That you all look terrible when you wake up."
She forced a grin from her sleepy mouth and said, "Give me five minutes, honey. You can't expect too much from a girl who spent the night all alone in her bed."
She turned and was gone and he heard the water running in the bathroom. It took her ten minutes, but when she got back the change was miraculous. Her hair was brushed and hung down over her shoulders. The sleep was gone from her mouth and eyes and her unmade-up face looked scrubbed and vibrant. She'd changed the wrinkled nightgown for a pair of silk brocade pajamas with oriental dragons embroidered on them.
"How now, brown cow?" she asked posing in the kitchen doorway again.
"There's a definite improvement," he said, suppressing a grin. "I guess you'll do now."
She came into the kitchen and sat down across the table from him. "Thanks a hell of a lot and pour me a cup of coffee."
With his long arm he could reach from his chair to the stove. He grabbed the coffee pot and set it down on the table in front of her. "Pour your own coffee. Who's the woman around here, anyway?"
She poured and sipped. "You make pretty good coffee. And after the way you ignored my lily-white body last night I'm beginning to think we're just a couple of girls sharing an apartment."
They'd been having fun bantering across the table, but the sting of her last remark took the fun out of it all. His grin faded and he looked away from her. The silence tightened and the kitchen was filled with it and the slurp of her sipping from the cup. His cigarette was only half smoked but he mashed it out. Then he was sorry he'd put it out so he lit another. She watched him over the rim of her cup.
"Look," she said, "you know how I feel and you know what I want. How about giving me your side of the case?"
"Just like that, huh, point blank?"
"It's no easier sitting around thinking about it than it is talking it over."
"I've been thinking about it ever since I left New York," he said, "and I still don't know what to do. It's like a big snarl in a fishing line. Every answer I pull at doesn't untangle the whole mess, it just makes it worse."
She could see the agony he was going through and she dropped her cynical tone. "Would it be all right if I sort of hung around and kept house for you while you made up your mind?"
"It wouldn't work. How do you expect me to see you every day and every night and not take you to bed?"
"Suppose we did go to bed together, so what? Let's separate the sex part of this from everything else. We make good love together. Let's just accept that and enjoy it. I love you, Terry, not just your body. And I think you love me, if you'd only admit it to yourself."
He shook his head. "It won't work this way."
"Why not? We'll pretend I'm a girl you picked up in a bar. Forget all about everything that happened before this morning. I'm a girl you met and moved in with. Try it. What have you got to lose, your virginity?"
"No -- my mind. Can you imagine what it's like every time I make love to you? We start and everything's wonderful. Then right in the middle I think that a few months ago my father was doing this to you, to the same girl. I think that maybe you're just using me because I'm so much like him. Don't shake your head no, you told me yourself how much I'm like him."
"Terry, Terry, I had to say those things. Don't you see? I had to justify my desire to myself and that was the easiest way. My husband was in his grave only a few hours and there I was making love with you."
"I don't know," he said. "I just don't know."
CHAPTER EIGHT
Going to classes that day was a terrible waste of time. At the beginning of each class period Terry vowed to concentrate on the lectures and discussions but five minutes after the starting bell rang he was lost in his own thoughts. Ten o'clock class, walk to eleven o'clock class. Lunch. One o'clock class, two o'clock class. When it was all over the only things he remembered were the ten minutes between classes and the lunch hour. He didn't even have the assignments.
Another day like this, he thought, and all I'll get at the end of the term are big fat F's. Hell, another couple of days like this and I won't last till the end of the term.
After the two o'clock class he headed back to u" apartment. He'd been thinking around the problem all day and he wasn't any closer to a solution than he had been yesterday evening or at seven-thirty this morning. He dreaded walking into the place and seeing her. He almost didn't do it. He almost turned around and headed for the nearest bar. But liquor wouldn't have been any more of a solution for him than it had been for her.
He turned the key in the lock and opened the door. When he closed it behind him he heard her call from the bedroom. "Terry? That you? I'll be out in a minute."
The place seemed warmer, more inviting somehow, and the sound of her voice melted into him. In the space of time it took her to walk from the bedroom to the living room he made the decision he'd been trying to make all day.
She stopped at the door of the living room and looked at him, questioningly. He stared back and his face split into a grin. He opened his arms and held them out to her.
With a glad little cry she rushed across to him and hurled her body into his arms. He held her close, his mouth near her ear, and said, "What was the name of that bar where we met?"
Her arms were wrapped around his neck and she squeezed him tight. He slipped one arm under her buttocks and lifted her high in the air. She turned her face down to him and kissed him with lips soft and pressed together. It was a passionless kiss that held more passion than he thought possible. She moved her thighs around his waist and he held her that way with her hands resting on his shoulders.
In that position her breasts were on a level with his face and he leaned his head forward to bury it in her house dress-covered flesh. She giggled and pulled him by the ears.
He set her down and swatted her adoringly on the rear. Then he noticed a smudge of dirt on her sweat-damp cheek and the rag tied around her hair. "Hey," he said. "What's with the get-up? "
"I've been doing housework," she said proudly. "And you know what? I like it."
"As long as you're being so domestic how about getting me some ice for a drink?"
"Yes, sir. Right away, sir."
She disappeared into the kitchen and he heard the crunch and smash of the ice cube tray as she hit it against the sink and then she was back with a bowl full of clear ice cubes and two glasses.
"Who's the other glass for?" he teased.
"Who do you think?"
"Where I come from the help doesn't drink the boss's liquor."
"At the salary I'm working for I better get booze included."
He laughed. "You drive a hard bargain. But all right -- if you don't drink too much, that is."
"Yes, sir. I'll be very careful, sir. Just one quart a day, sir."
He snorted as he poured the drinks. "Hell, you don't have to be that careful. One quart isn't hardly enough to get a person started."
He handed her one of the glasses and settled himself on the sofa. She snuggled into his lap and he promptly forgot all about booze.
He cupped her breast and the giggle turned to a gasp. "My, my," she said, shaking her head. "Aren't you getting a little too familiar with the hired help?"
"If you're a good girl and you play your cards right I'll give you a little present. I'm sure you'll like it."
"If my memory serves me right -- and I'm sure it does -- that little present ain't so little. And I'm not so sure I will like it. After all, it's been a long time."
He slipped his other hand up under her dress and squeezed her thigh; high up. "We'll remedy that right now," he said huskily.
She slipped one of her hands under her body and touched him. "Can you hold that for a while? I want to take a shower and make myself sweet for you."
"You're already as sweet as you can be." He slid the hand on her thigh up higher and touched her gently.
She pressed both her hands against his chest and pushed herself off his lap. "No -- wait," she gasped. "Please, ten minutes."
He nodded and she disappeared. He heard her go into the bedroom and from there to the bathroom. The door closed and locked and the shower began to run. He got up from the couch and took his drink with him into the bedroom. There he stripped off his clothes and sprawled on top of the bedspread to sip slowly at his drink and think about the shower water laving her body.
Her head would be covered with a clear plastic shower cap, just as it had been yesterday when he walked in and found her. And her body would be shiny slick. The water running down over her would fall from the nipples on the ends of her breasts like tiny Niagaras.
There would be wisps of white frothy soap foam in places on her body -- maybe under her arms, or on her breasts or thighs -- and she would be scrubbing industriously.
The picture in his mind made his already tense body tremble with his need and he took a long pull at his drink, his eyes closed and the picture grew before him. The doorbell was the last thing in the world he wanted to hear right then, but hear it he did. He didn't bother with underwear as he slipped into a pair of trousers and walked to the door. Whoever it was he'd get rid of them in a hurry. It was probably Chuck with beer and a pair of binoculars, ready to watch the girl in the apartment. Or it could be Mrs. Walsh and there was only one thing she could want from him.
He opened the door.
Surprise! It wasn't Chuck and it wasn't Mrs. Walsh panting her aging passion.
It was Pat and she blushed as he stared at her with his mouth open.
"Can I come in? I have to talk to you," she said.
He gave himself away when he turned to look toward the bathroom. She could hear the shower running and she didn't have to be too bright to put his bare chest, the sound of the shower, and his hesitancy together. Her face hardened.
"Oh," she said. "I see." She turned and walked away.
He didn't know what she wanted, but he had a pretty safe guess. Well, it was all over between them and it was better that way.
He closed the door behind her and double locked it.
If he'd been interrupted once he might be interrupted again. And he didn't want that. Not in the worst way he didn't. To exclude as many possibilities as he could, he took the phone off the hook before he returned to the bedroom. The shower was still running and he thought to himself that it was a hell of a long ten minutes.
Terry sat down on the edge of the bed and his hand went to the button on the waistband of his trousers. He had the button opened and the zipper halfway down when the door buzzer sounded again.
This time it was Chuck. And he proudly displayed six sweating cans of beer in a paper sack. "Hi, chum," he said.
Terry only opened the door far enough to stick his head into the hall. He looked at Chuck, frowned, and said. "Hi Chuck. Do me a favor and save the beer for tomorrow night, will you?"
Chuck frowned and he looked hurt. "If that's the way it is, all right."
"Don't get mad, Chuck. Look, I'm hung over and I need sleep so bad I can't keep my eyes open." And I'm a pretty good liar, he added, silently to himself.
Hangovers were something Chuck understood. He wasn't hurt at being refused admittance to Terry's apartment now. "Yeah, I feel for you," he said smiling, and looking like he enjoyed Terry's suffering. "Ill stop around some other time."
Terry breathed a sigh of relief as Chuck turned and went down the stairs. If anyone else shows up, he though, I'll buy the damned house and lock toe outside door.
Once more he went into the bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed. He stopped with his zipper halfway down and waited for the doorbell. It didn't ring and he smiled to himself as he took off his trousers and lay back on the bed. The ice in his drink had all melted and watered the liquor, but he finished it anyway.
When he put the empty glass down on the night-stand beside the bed he heard the shower stop running and a moment later the bathroom door opened. He was laying on his back with a pillow propping up his head and his legs stretched out in front of him. Laura came into the room beautifully nude, and he watched the way her naked flesh moved in all directions at once. Her breasts bobbed and swayed and her buttocks jiggled and the excitement returned to his body.
He frowned his disappointment when she didn't come to the bed. Instead she walked to the vanity and sat down before the mirror. He could see the reflection of the front of her body with her back turned toward him. When she sat down on the vanity bench her round firm buttocks didn't spread like twenty pounds of lard, and he was pleased.
While he watched she took the pins out of her hair and brushed it out until it shined in the light and crackled from the static electricity. When she stopped brushing it hung halfway down her back. Next she took the perfume bottle and removed the stopper. She applied the glass rod to the lobes of her ears, to her armpits, to the valley between her breasts and to her nipples. Then her hand and the glass rod disappeared below the level of the mirror which only reflected her from the waist up. He knew where the final touch of perfume was going and he smiled.
She saw the smile in the mirror and returned it. Next she pushed the perfume out of the way and picked up a round plastic rouge pot. She opened it and took out the applicator, but her hand didn't go to her cheeks. No indeed. It went to the ends of her breasts and he watched her nipples grow and swell as she applied the rouge to them.
He looked up from the reflection of her breasts and their eyes locked in the mirror. She had a half smile and one eyebrow raised asking him silently if he approved of her preparations. He looked down at himself and she had her answer. She capped the rouge pot and hurried to the bed.
When she sat on the edge of the bed their eyes locked again and he could see the pure passion burning in her. "I decided to save your present for another time," he said as he turned over on his stomach.
He was teasing her and she knew it. "Okay with me," she said. "I guess I'll just stretch out here and take a nap then."
She stretched out on the bed beside him, being careful not to touch his body. His face was turned away from her and she could see the tenseness in the muscles of his back. Trying to make it seem a careless gesture she dropped her hand on the hard muscle of his buttock and felt him tremble. Then she burlesqued a snore and moved closer until their sides were touching and she could feel the hardness of his hip and elbow pressing into her softness.
He lay there, rigid, trying to prolong the delicious agony. Her hand left him and her fingertips trailed up along his spine to the nape of his neck. He clenched his teeth and fought the desire to turn over and take her in his arms. She moved and the mattress shifted. An electric shock ran through him when he felt her lips touch him right at the base of his spine.
Her hands touched him again and then her lips pressed into the heavy muscle of his hip. The lips parted, her tongue touched him for just a second, and then her teeth found the flesh of his rump. She bit hard.
"Oww," he yelled, and he whirled over on his side to face her.
She was grinning broadly. "Now we're even for that slap you gave me last night."
He made a face and tried to look over his shoulder at the spot she'd bitten. He couldn't see and she giggled. His head spun around again when her hand touched him.
"Is this the present you had for me?" Her hand tightened around him.
"If I give you a present you have to give me one," he said.
"I have one for you, but it's bidden."
"I'll bet I can find it."
"Show me," she said.
He touched her thigh just above the knee and slid his hand upward until he found what he was looking for, and heard her gasp.
"Is that for me?" he asked.
She answered by giving him full access to her body. He continued to caress her and his mouth mashed down on hers. The game was over. The teasing and the child's play were done. Now was the time for serious business.
He heard her breath rasp in her throat as she pressed her breasts against his chest. He slid his free hand up between their bodies and pressed her back against the bed. His lips moved from her mouth to her ear and he let his kiss explore the pink shell.
She moaned and tightened her grip on him.
From her ear his mouth moved to her throat and then her breasts. He grazed on those twin globes like a bull in a field of clover. And then, as if by pure accident, he let his lips discover her nipples. She inhaled deeply and thrust her breasts against his face as his tongue flicked across the turgid buds. And when he closed his teeth around them and grated his jaws together gently she groaned her passionate delight.
Her fingers wound into his hair and she guided his head all over her body. From her knees to her head he kissed and touched and caressed with his lips and tongue. He made the pleasant journey half a dozen times, each time pausing to refresh himself at special points of interest.
Her body was heaving wildly when he decided she was ready. "Now?" he asked, his own voice hoarse.
"Oh yesss -- now -- now -- now." She couldn't manage more than a pleading whisper. She was ready for him and as he pressed forward she opened like a flower to the sun.
He joined her and felt his passion match hers. Even before he started the movement she was close to her first fulfillment and her body surged eagerly against him.
Her body gripped him with the strength of a hand and her muscles tightened rhythmically, as she cried her need.
In the long and silent minutes which followed, she gave herself to him as no other woman ever had before. In that short, gasping span of time she managed to sublimate her individuality and become a part of him. And in the total giving of herself she, in turn, received far greater pleasure. To Terry, it felt like he reached to the very depths of her soul. And he responded by opening himself to her. Their personalities became entwined. They gasped the same breath, reached for the same peaks of pleasure, enjoyed the same thrill from the same tiny motion. They had a mute communication between them which surpassed all speech. And when Terry felt himself approaching fulfillment he changed the rhythm to prolong the moment.
Laura experienced several minor climactic moments while Terry held her tightly. And each time Terry knew it by the rhythmic clenching of her internal muscles. Each of these moments wracked her with pleasure, but finally they stopped coming to her and there was a long period of building and growing within her. She felt as though the fulfillment she knew would come might tear her very heart in two. She could feel it inside her, dammed up and building higher and higher.
Terry could feel her tenseness increase and her passion became mixed with fear. She knew what was coming was something she had never experienced before and she was afraid. He brought her closer and closer and she lost control of her body. Her muscles went into a spasm and began to jerk and twitch. Her eyes stared blindly at the ceiling and her throat worked, but no sound came out.
Finally she found her voice. "Wait.. Stop," she screamed.
She might as well have asked a river to stop so she could cross. Terry couldn't have stopped if he wanted to. The height of his passion even exceeded hers and he couldn't hear her pleading over the roar in his ears.
Her face contorted with her pain. "No -- No! Stop, please stop!"
There was no stopping now.
Terry felt his own moment approaching and could control it no longer. With one brutal effort his desire exploded into a thousand pleasure-filled fragments and those fragments coursed through his body.
At the same time, the same precise instant, Laura voiced the magnitude of her emotion in a throat-scratching shriek of agonized delight.
And then she fainted.
He didn't know she'd passed out. He felt her arms and legs and body tighten around him with maniacal strength and then she went limp under him as he rolled away from her. Minutes later, when all his senses had calmed, he turned to her and saw she was unconscious. For an instant he panicked and his mind filled with wild thoughts of things like heart attacks. But in a moment the panic passed and he knew what had happened.
He soaked a cloth in cold water and brought it back to the bed. She was still unconscious. The cold cloth first swabbed the perspiration from her face, then the rest of her body. He soothed her burning breasts and belly with it, and she groaned as she returned to her senses.
She opened her eyes and looked straight into Terry's grinning face. "How do you feel?" he asked.
She pulled him down to her and laid her cheek next to his. "My God, Terry, that was... Well, there isn't even a word for how it was. What happened?"
"You fainted."
"No. I mean why?"
"All I know is that suddenly all the rest of the women in the world ceased to exist."
She kissed him softly on the cheek and her voice dropped to a whisper. "I love you, too."
CHAPTER NINE
When Chuck came around to the apartment on the next afternoon after class, Terry introduced Laura as his sister. To have said nothing would have made her seem like a cheap floozie and to tell the world she was his stepmother was ridiculous. It was difficult to tell if Chuck believed the sister bit. He raised an eyebrow when Terry told him, but that was all.
All three of them spent the evening talking and drinking beer. It was a nice evening and after Chuck left it got even better. Terry and Laura made love in a slow unhurried manner. Their passion lacked the urgency it had had previously and yet it seemed better.
To Terry, Laura's body was a continual source of amazement to him. Every time he caressed her or explored her he discovered another exciting facet, another sensitive place to kiss, another refinement in the eager thrust and roll of her hips under him.
Life became routine, wonderfully routine. In the weeks after Laura moved in Terry established a regimen which he followed faithfully. He would wake about eight in the morning and wake Laura with love-making. Then she would shower and he would wait lazily in bed. While he showered, she prepared breakfast, and after breakfast it was time to go to class.
On weekday evenings Terry studied, and on weekends they went to movies or went out dancing. A couple of times on Sunday afternoons they went on picnics down along the river. Terry discovered that strict adherence to his regimen helped him do well in school. With nothing bothering him he found it easy to concentrate on his studies in those hours he had set aside for studying.
Occasionally he would meet Pat in the school corridors. He always smiled and she always looked daggers at him. He was sure if looks could kill he would find himself lying on the corridor floor, stone dead. The attitude of the rest of the student body toward him remained unchanged. The only students who were at all friendly were girls who were attracted to him. He refused the obvious invitation of their gazes and smiles.
One afternoon, when Laura was out shopping, he rediscovered the girl in the apartment next door. He had forgotten all about her undressing in front of her open window and it was pure chance that he should look out of his own window at the same time she was in her room. From then on he watched her every chance he got. It was quite a trick to keep up with this peeping and not let Laura catch on, but he managed it. Usually he said he was tired and was going to take a nap. Then he would go into the bedroom and close the door. If she came to the bedroom door he was able to hear her footsteps and get away from the window. She never bothered him when he took his 'naps.' The strange pleasure he received from watching the girl undress and manipulate herself puzzled him at first, but he soon forgot all about it and concentrated on the pleasure alone. He found he was more passionate with Laura after a session of watching the girl.
One evening, about ten, Terry found he was out of cigarettes. He slipped into his jacket and went out to the drugstore on the corner. On the way back he saw the front door of his building open and Mrs. Walsh came out. He was on the sidewalk, halfway down the block, when he saw her and he didn't want to run into her. He had a feeling that if she saw him she might get the idea to repeat their little session in bed.
He stepped into the shadow of a tree and watched. A moment after Mrs. Walsh stepped out of the door another figure followed. He could see quite well in the porch light and he knew who the other person was. He wondered what business these two had together. They stepped off the porch and walked across the lawn to the building next door. Terry waited and when one of the darkened windows blazed into light he knew he had been right. He hurried back to his apartment and disappeared into the bedroom. Laura was engrossed in a paperback novel.
The bedroom door was closed and the lights were on. He stood at the window and looked straight into the girl's apartment. His angle of sight gave him an unobstructed view of the bed, but he could see little else in the room. If his assumptions were correct he wouldn't need to see much else besides the bed.
Mrs. Walsh and the girl were sitting on the bed and they seemed to be chatting. Then Mrs. Walsh's hand touched the girl's shoulder and slid behind her head. The two women kissed.
He'd been right.
The girl was a Lesbian.
And Mrs. Walsh could go either way.
Watching the two women kiss was even more exciting than watching the girl alone undress. They were fools not to turn off the light, or at least pull down the shade, but he was glad they were fools. Lesbians were creatures he'd only run across in fiction -- before now, that is. Oh, he'd known some women who seemed to be masculine, but he knew that Lesbianism didn't always require masculine traits.
Well, now he would be able to know for himself exactly what it was that those authors had been hinting at The two women separated from their kiss and began to take off each other's clothing. First they removed blouses, then bras. They crushed their naked breasts together and fell back on the bed.
Terry watched, his excitement increasing, as Mrs. Walsh bent her lips to the younger woman's breasts. He saw the girl clutch at the older woman's head and crush it to her chest They exchanged caresses. First Mrs. Walsh would caress the girl in some particular spot, and then the girl would return the favor in kind to the person of Mrs. Walsh.
When they had exhausted the pleasure to be received from the stimulation of their breasts they removed skirts, and half slips, panties, garter-belts, girdles, and stockings. The older woman had been wearing the girdle and the younger one the garter-belt.
Now, completely nude, there seemed an unlimited area for kissing and caressing. Terry watched them, one kneeling beside the other who was stretched out on her belly or her back. Then the switch and the kneeler would stretch out. They went through the whole ritual of their abnormal desire and completed the act by forming a circle of human flesh.
They finished and Terry was surprised to find himself trembling and covered with a film of perspiration. He went into the bathroom to splash his face with cold water and then into the living room. Laura looked up when he came in and sat down beside her. And she gasped with surprise when he took her roughly in his arms and kissed her, his hand gripping her breast hard.
She was even more surprised when he stood up, swung her up in his arms, and carried her into the bedroom.
And she was amazed when he stripped off first her clothes, then his own, and threw himself upon her.
In fact, she was so surprised then that she didn't have a chance to respond. Before she really knew what was happening he was on her, and finished. Just when her body was beginning to respond she felt him stiffen and then roll away from her. He slept fitfully through the night and every time he came vaguely to consciousness he could feel her lying beside him tense, awake, thoughtful.
Behavior like this was unusual for Terry, and Laura knew it. He ate his silent breakfast the next morning and left for school. In one stupid instant, his whole world had turned over. One minute everything was fine, and then the very next moment, when nothing at all had changed, everything was a rotting heap of garbage. The depression gnawed at him all through his class and he didn't notice the increased attention he was getting from the student body. And that's exactly what it was -- a body -- no head, just a body.
Chuck found him at the end of his class and he could see concern on the set of Chuck's jaw. "What's up?" Terry asked as Chuck approached.
"Beware the Ides of March. They're about to stick the knife into you."
"What do you mean?"
"Some louse made a formal complaint to the dean about your moral conduct. It seems they found out you've been living with a woman without the sanctity of marriage and they're going to use it to get back at you."
"Well, what happens now?" Terry asked.
"Right this very instant there is a note in your mailbox requesting your presence in the dean's office immediately. You go there and he'll decide what happens next."
"What can he do to me?"
"If you tell him Laura's your sister, the way you told me, he'll probably throw you out of school." Chuck noticed Terry's raised eyebrow and laughed. "I didn't believe it when you told me, but it's none of my business. If I were you I'd walk in there and tell him it was none of his damned business. Then I'd pack my bag and get out of town. You're in a hole, boy, and I wish I could help."
Chuck left and Terry headed for the main administration building and the office of the dean. The dean, the head of the school, a man awesome in his majesty. He was a small white-haired man behind a big desk, who looked like he hadn't raised his voice above a modulated whisper in twenty years.
The impression was destroyed the minute the man opened his mouth.
"I'm Dr. Spandel, the dean," he said.
The tone was arrogant and emphasized the 'Dr.' and 'dean' in the short introductory speech. In those five words Terry got an altogether new picture of the man on the other side of the desk. Spandel was a man of title, a small man in a small job impressed with his own authority.
"I'm Terry White, student," Terry answered. The little man bristled. "Facetiousness will not help you, Mr. White."
"I don't think anything will help me, Mr. Spandel."
"Dr. Spandel," the white-haired man corrected. "Yes... Dr."
"The charges levied against you are quite serious, Mr. White. I'm sure you are aware of the nature of these charges."
"Yes."
"You've been in conflict with authority since the first day you arrived, haven't you?"
Terry was sick of the whole mess by this time. He was sick of self-important little men, and he was sick of the ivy league attitude. It didn't look like he had much chance of staying in school and in a way it would be a relief to get away from the snob culture of college students who considered themselves above the level of the average man simply because of attendance at an institution of higher learning. He saw the great equalizer in the definition of a college not in the phrase higher learning, but rather in the word institution. And while students and professors could delude themselves as much as they liked, they were still inmates of an institution, and that was where they belonged.
Terry threw caution to the winds. If he was going to go down he could at least get some satisfaction from it. And who knows, he might be able to reach this pompous little man with a display of irate indignation. "I'm not quite sure what you mean by authority," Terry said evenly.
"It's all here in the record," Spandel said, tapping a manila folder on his desk. "You got into trouble with some upper-classmen over the beanie tradition. Then you got into trouble with some more upperclassmen in an alley."
"In the first place I think on closer inspection of the facts you'll find that I wasn't the one in trouble. In both cases my opponents fared far worse than I." Jesus, Terry thought to himself, now I'm beginning to sound like one of them.
Spandel frowned thoughtfully for a moment and then he said, "That's exactly the problem, White. You seem to regard everyone here as an opponent."
"Dr. Spandel, let me explain a few things to you. Tm a physical man. I earned my bread from the sweat of my brow for the last six or seven years. The only reason I came to your school was because it was a wish of my father's. Now, when three supposed adults approach me and attempt force to coerce me into complying with some silly custom, I think I'm entitled to defend myself."
"Hmmm," Spandel said in an appropriately authoritarian manner. "This file says you attacked three seniors."
Terry began to laugh. He knew he shouldn't and he could see Spandel getting angry, but he couldn't help it. After a moment he caught his breath. "That's stupid." Spandel bristled. "Why in the world would I attack three perfect strangers?"
"I'm sure I don't have any notion as to the working of the undergraduate mind," Spandel said sharply.
"And how about the bit in the alley? There were six of them that time."
Spandel found himself stalemated on that point and harrumphed to clear his throat.
"The point is," Terry went on, "who set these people up as authority? The police are a form of authority and I haven't been in trouble with them. And even the school administration are authority and I haven't been in trouble with them either. Before now, that is."
The dean decided it was time to get off the subject. "I didn't call you down here about those matters," he said. "I wanted to find out if these charges are true. Is there a female residing at your abode?"
"If you mean is there a woman living with me the answer is yes."
"You intend to brazen this thing through, don't you?" Spandel asked. "Let me explain that this matter, when added to our observations on your general attitude, leads me to believe that you are morally and emotionally unfit to associate with the students at this or any other school. I can, on these grounds, expel you and make entries in your record that will prevent you from being accepted at any other school."
Terry's anger flooded out of him. In that instant he knew exactly what he was going to do, and he knew that this action would keep him in school. He smiled at the dean.
"I don't see anything humorous in the situation," the dean said.
"Spandel," Terry said softly, dropping all pretense of respect. "If you throw me out I'll make such a big stink the school will never live down the scandal. I'll sue you. I'll haul you into court and no judge in the land will decide against a young man going to school and living with his mother."
"Your what?"
"You heard right, my mother. The woman you referred to before is my late father's wife and my stepmother. After she settled her affairs in New York she came up here to keep house for me while I'm a student" Terry spit out the words in a clipped flat tone and when he was through Spandel just stared.
"Of course the school will check this story," Spandel said doubtfully.
"Check and be damned. Just get off my back. And remember--if I don't get a square shake as far as my grades are concerned I can still make a pretty big stink. As a matter of fact on the basis of this conversation I can sue you and the school for slander. Next time you get a petty complaint from a petty individual you better check the facts."
Spandel was so mad he was boiling. His face reddened with apoplectic rage and he was speechless.
Terry spoke in an even, quiet tone. "If there's nothing else, sir" he said. "I'd better get back to class."
He didn't even wait for an answer. He just got up from his chair and walked out of the office. He'd missed his eleven o'clock class and it was time for lunch.
Laura had his lunch ready for him when he got back to the apartment and he told her about his session with the dean.
"Who would make such vicious charges against you?" she asked.
He told her about his run-ins with the upperclassmen and with the freshmen and he told her a little about his short affair with Pat. "It might be any of them," he told her. "I wondered if they were going to let me get away with staying out of their silly academic atmosphere. They tried force and that didn't work, so I guess now they're trying to smear me. They'll explode when they find out this didn't work either."
"What will happen now?" she asked.
"I don't know. I think I threw enough of a scare into the dean so he won't try anything else. And as for the students, I don't really give a damn what they do."
Terry finished his lunch and went to his first afternoon class. The word had traveled fast and he didn't get too many amazed stares from people who expected him to be leaving. Between classes he passed Chuck in the hallway and got a broad wink and a grin. Chuck was obviously pleased with Terry's success over the forces against him.
* * *
Laura was out when Terry got home after class. He went into the apartment and dropped into a chair in the living room. It seemed strange to him that at one time during the interview with the dean he had been ready to give up and leave, but the man's personality had gotten to him and made him want to force them to keep him. And he'd done it.
Now all he had to do was come out all right in the finals in three weeks and everything would be fine. It was strange that he should enjoy the learning aspect of college so much and despise all the folderol that went with it. The petty machinations of the students left him vaguely nauseated and the cloistered attitude of the professors and instructors had a way of angering him, but the acquisition of new approaches, new ways of thinking, this strange non-specific knowledge, gave him a good feeling.
The phone rang and Terry got up to answer it He picked up the receiver and said, "Hello." Silence.
"Hello" he said again-Still nothing. "Hello... hello."
In the receiver he heard the sound of breathing for an instant, then a click as the caller hung up. Terry hung up his receiver, mildly annoyed at the prank -- if that was what it was.
Laura came in loaded down with packages from her shopping and Terry promptly forgot all about the phone call.
CHAPTER TEN
The week of final examinations came and Terry realized his efforts during the term had done him in good instead. He found that a minor review was all that was necessary to bring the whole semester's work sharply into focus for him. There are no classes during finals week, the theory being that the lazy student, having loafed through the semester, needs all the time he can get to cram loose bits of unassociated knowledge into his brain. The theory is correct in most cases, and students do really need that week. They need it to pass exams, not gain knowledge, for they promptly forget all the crammed material right after the tests.
The week of no classes left Terry with a lot of time on his hands. And, the town being small, he spent most of that time sitting around the apartment. At first it was fun; he and Laura would spend half a day in bed glorying in their bodies, but the taste for flesh soon faded. Terry was at a loss for something to occupy himself. His only friend was busy stuffing his skull, the idea of love left him bored. What else was there to do?
Nothing.
He read his way through the paper-back book stand at the drugstore. He went to movies. He even lost a couple of hours at the local pool parlor. And all the time he felt a growing sense of unrest. His mind was wrestling with a problem and he could do nothing about it until the issues were clear enough to erupt from his subconscious.
All his exams were being held during the last two days of the week. He went through Thursday without a hitch, glad of the intellectual involvement of the examinations to occupy him. And on Friday, when he finished his last exam, he knew what had been bothering him.
He finished the last question on the paper and looked around. The other students were still laboring. He grinned to himself, proud that he was the first one finished. The test proctor took his examination paper and answer sheet and Terry went out of the test room. This was it, the final test was over. He should have some feeling of completion. The examinations hadn't been difficult and he was sure he had at least passed them. He should be happy, he should be elated, he wasn't.
The sense of finality that should come with finishing a semester wasn't there and he wondered why. The answer was simple enough and when it came to him he became so absorbed he didn't realize he was walking in the wrong direction, away from home, not toward it.
The sense of finality was missing because he had no plans for the future. Oh, sure, he knew he would be back at school the next semester, but that wasn't the kind of thing he needed. His plans with Laura were still unsettled. That was the problem. He'd accepted her and they'd been living in a kind of euphoric vacuum with no thought to a final resolvement of their relationship.
The obvious thing to do was to get married. The thought flashed across Terry's mind and he shuddered. The shudder surprised him as much as the thought and he knew his guilt concerning her and his father hadn't disappeared. It had simply been pushed to the back of his mind.
Now the issues were clear. Only the answer was hidden from him. There was nothing he could do. If he married Laura she would be happy, and he wanted her to be happy, but he would spend the rest of his life in guilt-ridden misery, or worse. The worse being that his mind would rebel at the constant strain and he could conceivably end up on a psychiatrist's couch. The symptoms were already there, taking shape in his changed attitude toward sex. First had come his strange interest in watching Mrs. Walsh and the Lesbian next door. He knew he wasn't a voyeur and yet he was repeatedly drawn to their nightly exhibition. Then there was his need to hide his voyeuristic desires from Laura. Add to that his quick excitement from witnessing the Lesbians in action, and the latest development, his lack of interest in sex. Put everything together and it presents a picture of the disintegration of a personality.
The other horn of the dilemma presented itself. If, in the interests of his own sanity, he rejected her, Laura would be broken. He could imagine the extent of her grief on losing the second man in her life. And he didn't want to hurt her. He did love her in a strange way and the knowledge that he had hurt her would stay with him for the rest of his life.
There it was, the dilemma was visible. He was damned if he did and damned if he didn't. It wasn't a matter of choice any more, either course of action would tear him apart.
He looked up and saw he was in the center of town. Across the street he spied a temporary respite from his problems. It was a bar. Even as he walked across the street he scorned himself for taking the easy way out. Liquor was a crutch for the weak. It never helped anything, it only postponed the problem until you sobered up.
The bar was empty. He found a stool, ordered a drink, and pushed all his thoughts out of his mind. It didn't take long and by the fourth drink he was telling himself if he got drunk enough maybe the whole problem would disappear.
The only thing that disappeared was his sense of reason. The more he drank the sharper the problem seemed to be. And the more intense the problem the faster he poured liquor into himself.
For one drunken minute he even considered giving up the whole mess and going back to Taiwan. He could always get his job back and out there a man had peace with himself. The sweat from the sun and the roaring machinery was a good clean thing. A man worked hard during the day, and at night there was always some slim-limbed, black-haired, small-breasted girl to warm his bed. Out there a man had no problems beyond his choice of feminine partners.
He was all set to go, and decided to have one more drink. It was his last drink. Vaguely he remembered, a small female hand pulling him by the arm and a female voice calling his name. He remembered the grinning face of the bartender and the voice saying, "Honest lady, I never seen a guy drink so much in such a short time."
Laura, he thought in his stupor, good old Laura. Good old Laura's come to take me home.
He woke up in bed.
The room was dark and his head felt like the Nevada Proving Grounds right after a big H bomb test. The liquor had dehydrated him and his throat and mouth were dry, his lips felt like they were cracked. His body was soaked with a thick alcoholic sweat and he was naked under the covers. From another room he heard Laura moving around.
"Help," he croaked. It was little more than a whisper. He moved his tongue in his mouth and wet his lips with saliva. "Help." It was louder this time.
The sound of footsteps, the door opened, and light flooded into the room. The light lanced into his eyeballs and the pain was excruciating. He closed his eyes and groaned, while his head buzzed.
A hand went behind his neck and lifted his head. He smelled fresh hot coffee and a cup was pressed to his lips. "Here, drink this."
He kept his eyes closed against the searing pain of the light and sipped at the coffee. Two sips and he twisted his head away. "Hot," he complained.
She let his head drop back to the pillow and went away. She returned in a moment and lifted him to the cup again. "Try it now," she said.
It was cooler now, better, and he managed to get it all down. "What time is it?" he asked.
"Two-thirty."
"Day or night?"
"Night." She giggled.
The giggle did it. He opened his eyes, winced against the pain and looked at her. It was Pat.
"Pat?" He didn't believe his eyes. "Guilty," she said.
He let himself fall back to die bed. "Oh God, what happened?"
"I found you in a bar."
"I know. But why did you bring me... never mind. I wouldn't be able to understand if you told me. Help me up! I've got to get into the shower."
She ducked under his arm and hauled him to his feet, her hands cool against his naked body. He was a big load for her but she managed to half drag him into the bathroom. He held himself up in the shower with both hands against the wall, and let the water beat on his back. A few minutes of that and he felt steady enough to turn around and expose the front of his body to the cold water.
Ten minutes and he stepped out of the shower shivering. He was so cold his lips had begun to turn blue, but he stepped out of the shower without stumbling.
Rubbing the towel across his body was sheer agony, but he clenched his teeth as hard as he could and rubbed himself dry.
His clothes were in the bedroom so he wrapped a towel around his waist and stepped out of the bathroom. Pat was sitting in the living room and she called out to him when she heard the bathroom door open.
"Your clothes are a mess," she said. "I left a bathrobe out for you on the bed."
He found it and slipped it on feeling rather foolish in the feminine styled garment. But at least it covered his body.
In the living room Pat was sitting on the sofa waiting for him. She held out a shot of whiskey to him as he came into the room. "Here," she said. "Here's the hair of the dog."
He took it gratefully and gulped it down. Then he sat down in the easy chair across from her and said, "Now, tell me what this is all about."
She looked at him, then away from him, then at him again. "I really don't know how to tell you this," she said.
"Let's start with why you dragged me out of that bar."
"I had to talk to you. When I came to see you a couple of weeks ago I knew you had a girl in the apartment. Then I found out who she was. I still had to talk to you but I couldn't see you there. I even called you once, but hung up right after you answered."
"All right. Why did you have to talk to me?"
She bit her Up and hesitated. "Why did you walk out on me?"
"My question is first."
"No, tell me. It's important."
There was something in the tone of her voice that registered in him and he dropped his flippant attitude. "I really don't know why I left," he said seriously. "I think I felt we were getting too involved."
"But why shouldn't we get involved? You aren't married and at that time there was no other girl in your life."
He thought about it for a minute and then he told her about Laura. Her face was blank throughout the story. He told her that one of the reasons he'd moved out was because he hadn't resolved the problem of Laura in his own mind and he went on to tell her of Laura's arrival in town, finishing with his own pre-drinking thoughts.
When he finished there was silence. Then Pat asked, "Do you love her?"
"Yes, I think I do, but... " he left the rest of ft up in the air.
"There's one more question, and this is very important to me so be very sure when you answer. I loved you from the minute you dropped your suitcase on my foot, and when we were together I'm pretty sure you loved me. Do you love me now?"
Terry wondered what she was getting at. It seemed strange to him to be talking so dispassionately about such matters and he realized with a start that he did love this girl. His feeling was different from his feeling for Laura, but it was love. He looked at her sitting across from him with her feet tucked up under her rump and he was sure.
His voice was filled with awe when he told her, "Yes, I love you."
When you tell someone you love them, they're supposed to be happy, but Pat turned her face away from him and began to sob, and the crying wasn't the feminine way of reacting to happiness. He moved across the space between them and knelt at the edge of the sofa. His hand stroked her back soothingly and he said, "What's wrong? Why are you crying?"
She managed to stifle the sobs and she turned toward him. "Poor Terry," she said. "You're right in the middle of a terrible problem and all I do is make things more difficult."
"What do you mean?"
"I'm pregnant."
He was stunned and his next words were the same as those spoken by a million young men since the beginning of time. "Are you sure?"
"Yes, I'm sure. I'm pregnant, damnit."
He never thought to ask her if he was the father of the child she was carrying. He was sure she wouldn't try to stick him with another man's child. The enormity of her statement enveloped him and he was torn with ambivalence to two emotions. First there was pride in his masculinity. He had made a child, another human being. Second there was the feeling of further entrapment.
She broke into his thoughts. "I wasn't going to tell you if you'd said you didn't love me. I was going to go away and have the baby."
"I'm glad you told me. When will it be... when will the baby be born?"
"In approximately seven months."
"You say it like you're proud."
"I am proud, damnit. And look who's talking, your chest is stuck out a mile."
"Never mind that now. The question is what are we going to do?"
"I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to have a baby. Your baby. The question is, what are you going to do?"
He frowned and then he smiled. He moved up beside her on the couch and took her in his arms. "You may not know it but you've solved my problem instead of making it worse."
"If getting pregnant helped solve the problem then you get half the credit. I couldn't have done it all alone."
"No, seriously, now there is no alternative. Now, my own feelings don't matter. Before I couldn't make up my mind what to do, didn't know what was right. But now there's no decision to make. No matter how much it hurts, we are going to be married."
They were the words she wanted to hear. She melted into his arms and pressed her mouth to his. The kiss exploded his desire for her and he picked her up and carried her into the bedroom.
Her body was the eighth wonder of the world, something to be explored anew as he undressed her. And when she was naked she took his hand and pressed it to her abdomen. "Feel," she said. "Feel how hard my belly is!"
Her belly was hard as a rock and he took his hand away to replace it with his lips. She groaned and pressed his head to her. "Oh, God," she murmured. "It's been so long. All those weeks I was alone and I wanted you so badly."
He let his lips travel down from her belly to the soft flesh of her thigh. His lips kissed and she moaned with desire. Her moans told him what she wanted and he heard her hoarse breath quicken as his lips found her. Then all he could hear was the rapid beating of her pulse.
He tasted the sweetness of her and felt her body trembling and twitching, and then he could wait no more. She helped him tear the robe from his body, she helped him find her, and she helped him ride the tail of the comet. He plunged himself at the warmth of her and felt her muscles tighten around him. He felt those muscles contract in wave-like motions and his heart thudded violently in his chest.
He moved slowly, he moved rapidly, and every time he moved she moaned her delight. The pleasure built in them as they went higher and higher into the night sky. They were up above the atmosphere and the earth was a white cloud beneath them. The cold of space prickled against their sweaty bodies, and still they rose higher and higher.
Suddenly all the stars exploded, a million nova occurring at the same time, showering them with hot fragments. With a convulsive heave her body arched under him, raising him off the bed and he felt himself dissolve within her.
Centuries later they were lying side by side on the sweat-soaked sheets, their limbs entwined. Pat hugged him tight and whispered, "I love you -- I love you so much. Don't ever let me go."
He stroked her head and kissed her delicate ear. "I love you, too. And now I wonder at my stupidity for not knowing it before. It's not going to be easy. Especially when we tell Laura she's going to have a step-grandchild."
"I'm sorry we have to hurt her."
"I am too, but it has to be done. It would have been wrong for her and me. In a few years we would have ruined each other. We... "
"Shhh," she interrupted. "Love me again. In a few months well have to stop, you ,know?"
He grinned. "Then I'd better get a lot of loving stored up for the dry spell."
That night he stored up ten year's worth. And the next night he started on the second ten years...
