Stepping inside, she threw the coats down to make the floor a little softer.
Following her, he slid the door shut. The closet became dim and confining and it smelled of damp wool and old rubber overshoes.
His frantic mind was telling him: This, in a way, is sacred. Your first intimacy with this adorable creature. It must not be the last. Make it good. Make her want you again and again. Make her love you.
There was no need, no time, to undress. Her skirt was up and his zipper was open. Their gaze devoured each other.
"I've been dying for a man all day," she breathed, shakily. "A real man." He saw surprise and admiration in her down-staring eyes.
The trembling bird was guided straight to the nest by the hot, pink fingers...
PROLOGUE
One grass-roots sage has put into words a truth which, with the passage of our individual years, becomes lost to us. It is: "The Good Old Days... when they were 'today'... were known by another label--'these troubled times'".
This eternal verity has become overgrown in the continual complication of adult existence. All too completely have we lost the true flavor of those years when, for those of us who are now adult, the wine of life surged in the veins in an irresistible flood. All too soon, if you will recall, the horizons narrowed and the weight of the burdens grew oppressively.
Were it possible for us to probe, voluntarily, the subconscious memory, then we might savor-- fleetingly -- the high excitement, the unbridled expectation, and the unremembered drive of appetites which constitute the condition of youth. Being young... or being old... are totally states of mind but they are created by a body chemistry either eager for life - or yearning for rest.
Thus, it is impossible for we older ones to re-live that state of mind which possessed us when we' were young. Too many convolutions have creased the brain; too much change has taken place in the body fluids. None may ever go back. Life, as we know it, is uni-directional and that direction is ever forward... the end inevitable.
This, then, is the impenetrable barrier. From that exaltation of a long-forgotten spring morning, has the change proceeded. Away from that wonderful sentience of being new; long apart from that time when the very air was too bittersweet with untasted life to breathe without convulsive, spring-muscled response, have we come. And we have left behind us a solidifying rubble of lost dreams and abandoned goals. The farther we go, the thicker and higher grows the barrier behind us.
We are not, today, the same people 'we were yesterday; nor will we be today's people, tomorrow.
When the young... in tears or despair or defiance say to us: "You just don't understand!" they are only speaking truth.
We do not understand because we have forgotten. We may not understand because we can never go back. Sadly, there are times when we look at our young, knowing they are right and we are wrong. Wrong because we are too old to understand the days of their youth since we have forgotten the days of ours. Desperately, we can only offer .them our affection, hoping the weight of it will not impede the fine elasticity of their impulses; darken the rainbow colors of their skies; thin the rich intoxication of the air they breathe.
What then, you ask, of youth which cannot look upon beauty without the urge to destroy nor survey happiness without the need to inflict pain? Such a crippling has happened between the helpless stage of infancy and today's lurid headlines. These halt sick, lame are someone's failures. Whose? . Their own? The other infants, children, adolescents with whom they were reared? Or the adults who were responsible for their guidance. Whose failure?
Many of youth's actions we deplore. Be they the compulsive response of youth fettered by too much restraint and too little counsel; the idiotic posing of the "beat" set in its furtive, elusive re-volt; or the outrage spawned by hate, we snarl at the annoyance their misunderstood urges generate. It is from the solid base of mature censure... or from the crumbling footing of forgetfulness and envy?
The story on the following pages is purely fictional, yet the atmosphere is authentically contemporary. Everything the narrative tells has happened - somewhere - sometime - before. Many of us are appalled because there seems to be much more of that which, in our young, offends and shocks us. Far more, we gloom, than in our day. Yet, why should there not be? How many more of us there are today -young and old - than there were in our youth? And there are fewer of us today than there will be tomorrow. So, it is true there is more youth today... and, further true, there will be even more tomorrow... and tomorrow... and tomorrow... more of these manifestations we have forgotten how to understand; of these responses to compulsions we, long since have ceased to know.
Our children, of necessity, must lead a double life. In a 'proper' family, they are subservient to their elders. When they pass the front door of home to mingle with friends of classmates, their status alters. What do we know of the second life... the position they hold with their contemporaries? What can any parent know when none may cross the barrier... go back... ever again? In all reason, we cannot expect our young to forfeit the responsibility to progress along their time-span in their own era and in their own way.
When they come back home, each day, we expect them to make the transition to our world, again, without problems... without difficulty... without complaint. Leading a double life is difficult for the most mature, yet we expect our young to accomplish it without hesitation nor reluctance.
If youth is wrong, it is through the influence of the elders. Transmitted directly by their own parents... or, indirectly, through their contemporaries from other parents... children know only what they are taught.
Too often, hiding things from the young in our attempts to protect them, is translated as an attempt to shut them out. This they detest and rebel against with their playmates. It is a hard blow to a tender ego to have friends combine against you. How much more serious a blow it must be when it is a child's own parents who conceal from a vigorous curiosity the answers to their questions. Secrecy begets furtiveness... the reaction if inevitable.
We cannot blame on the young the involuntary surges of compulsion and hunger which roil them. They are not responsible for these -- nature has invested the young with them for her own, complicated -- and often little-understood -- purposes. These surges are present, normally, in all normal young people; in their individual amplitudes and their distinctive expression. The young must live with them. If the elders deplore them, do they wish to divorce their existence from that of their young?
Man no one else - has established the rules under which he lives. The regulations vary so greatly from land to land, from people to people that none of us has any right to say "our way is right and yours is wrong." In our way, there is too much which is stigmatized as 'dirty', 'shameful' and/or 'degrading' and the suspicion is that this is so because it is easier to hide it than to deal with it, factually. To a child, nothing need be any of these opprobrious things... unless we make it so.
Any thinking person must conclude that today's generation of young is - always has been - and always will be - "The Tormented Generation." The miseries they suffer, they must bear individually as well as collectively. Their elders, actually, contribute most to their 'fever and pain'; it is an act of cowardice to place the blame for something for which we're responsible, on the shoulders of a child.
It isn't that the world should have better children.
It is sorely and desperately in need of better parents... better adults...
CHAPTER ONE
TORMENTED
Maureen Quinn cut across the boys' gym at Middletown High School to get to her classroom early. The usually brittle tap of her high heels was muffled on the cork flooring. Heading for the opposite door, she walked soundlessly on some of the tumbling mats. There were three boys talking excitedly in the locker room. Because of her silent approach, they weren't aware she was near. She would have gone on by unnoticing if she hadn't heard her name mentioned. She stopped by the wall and listened. She didn't have to see the three boys to know who they were. She recognized them by their voices. They were her senior English students.
"Miss Quinn'll make you do it," said Ronnie's thin voice.
"There's only one thing she can make me do." Stan's voice sounded heavy.
"Yeah," said Chuck's full tone. "Play with it."
"Let me copy your assignment, Ronnie," said Stan. "She won't know the difference."
"Like hell she won't," cut in Chuck. "That chick's hip. She's wise to you, Stan."
Ronnie was musing: "Maybe we can work something out."
Maureen visualized him. The other two called him Chicken, a small and slight boy with the delicate features of a girl.
"After school, Chicken," suggested Stan eagerly. Big and lumpy, Stan had played right tackle for the school football team last fall during his junior year.
"You cats are sick, man, sick," scoffed Chuck.
Maureen closed her eyes. She could see him. Born leader of the seniors, he bad the other youths looking up to him. Rather handsome face with smoothly-combed long, black hair. His precocious contours were difficult to conceal under his snugly fitting Levis.
"Have you got a book report?" demanded Stan.
"Sure," said Chuck. "Get a load of this. Obstetrics."
"A doctor book! Where'd you get it?"
"At the old book store," said Chuck. "It gives you the hots just looking at the pictures, it's better than any of the picture packs I can buy at old Cheesehead's newsstand."
"Let's see it."
There was a riffle of pages.
Maureen could have stormed in on them now .and stopped it cold. Or she could have gone to the principal and reported them. But she did nothing. She stood there motionless, curious, listening to them intently.
There were muffled exclamations from inside the locker room.
"Man," said Stan, "look at the way she's laid out on that delivery table. You can see everything!"
"Watch out!" said Chuck "The baby's coming!"
"She's sure got public hair!" said Ronnie. "That's not public, you jerk," said Chuck. "That's pubic."
""The way she's showing it, it's public!" They all laughed.
"What a book!" said Stan. "Lend it to me next."
Ronnie sounded skeptical "You think you can give that to Miss Quinn?"
"Sure. And I'll give all of this to her too."
There was a whistle of admiration and some low-pitched laughter.
Ronnie said in a falsetto: " I want a baby! Oh, Chuck honey, give me a baby!"
"Get away from me, you freak!" said Chuck in mock anger.
There were sounds of playful scuffle.
Maureen leaned .against the gym wall, shuddering with a strange excitement.
"Knock it off!" said Chuck. "We ain't got all day. I picked up the new picture pack this morning. The latest. It's the one with the full color shots of Fever Burns."
"Fever Burns!" groaned Stan in sudden agony. "Oh, man! I'd like to lay her out! Don't show it to me! I can't take it!"
"It cost five bucks. You want to split the business with me?"
"Sure, Chuck," said Ronnie.
"You with us, Stan?"
"Yeah. Only don't let me look at her big, naked tits. I'm ready to pop now."
"C'mon!" said Chuck. "Let's get into the toilet and cool it."
Maureen heard them start toward her. She wheeled away from the wall and retreated hurriedly through the nearest gym exit and into the wide corridor. It was full of students heading for their first classes. She walked with them, not seeing them, her body throbbing with an intensity that made her move quickly and impatiently.- She wondered about Chuck. Was he really that hardboiled? Or did he act like that to impress others and get attention?
What were they doing now in the men's room with the pictures of Fever Burns? If only she could have followed them and found out, if they'd really let go... ! She shivered, just imagining what they were doing. .
She tried to get control of herself and slow down. Her high heels clicking, she felt her body moving and shifting pleasantly under her clothes. She shopped for things that made her appear almost as youthful as her girl students. Yet nobody would have mistaken her for a student. She was twenty-four and no teenager was this well developed. Her sweater fitted smoothly over the admirably-filled bra. Her tight skirt tugged gratifyingly about her thighs and hips as she walked. She knew she was in stiff competition with all the other females and that critical comparisons were made by the males.
Her classroom was like a haven for her feverish mind when she unlocked the door and slipped inside, pausing to take a deep, shuddering breath. She glanced at the clock on the back wall. It was nearly time for first bell.
When it sounded and her students began to file in promptly, she was grateful that she had designated this as a study period. She didn't want to talk English literature or listen to it.
She wanted to sit and drift and dream.
While her class kept their heads bent over their books, she picked up a heavy dictionary and laid it open on her lap. She leaned back, aware of the erotic feelings aroused by the weight of the book. She shifted a little so that the thick spine of the volume made closer contact. The pleasurable feelings increased. She was getting all sorts of ideas.
The boys in the locker room - talking about the book on obstetrics had stirred up violent memories. Her mind was going a long way back, thinking about old Dr. Cooney and the day he changed her whole life when he turned from one kind of man into another kind of man...
If it weren't for him, she might never have become what she was now.
CHAPTER TWO
Dr. John Cooney wasn't an old man. He was only about forty-five, she thought, when she had gone through her experience with him.
She had known the doctor all her life. He had been there to deliver her that night in the tenement flat when she was born. When she was five, they moved away from the neighborhood, but her mom always took her back to see him whenever she had an illness of any kind. And her Mom went frequently to see him by herself. Only the reasons for those solitary visits were more mysterious.
Maureen couldn't remember much about her father. There was a rumor that her Mom was a born man-eater and she had just plain killed him with passion. Maureen couldn't believe that story. At least, she couldn't believe it then.
Mom was good-looking and very friendly, the right requirements for attracting male company. After father died, she made a sexy widow, if you like an amply-curved, busty armful, and plenty of men apparently did. In looks, Maureen took after her Mom in a more subtle, sexier fashion...
When she went to school everybody thought she was a dumb bunny. Only it wasn't stupidity, because she was a bright child. It was just ignorance. Outwardly, Maureen appeared to have no sex interest. There was nothing in her early life, it seemed, to stimulate desire. She had no boy friends; was completely ignorant of physical love.
Later, her schoolgirl attachments had no physical side. Girls, she was told, were supposed to be ladylike. Her few, equally-ignorant girl friends had been warned by their parents never to discuss sex subjects. That was absolutely taboo. Maureen was dense about the words bad boys wrote on alley fences. Up to the time she was seven, she thought the doctor brought babies in his little black bag. And when she finally learned that women gave birth, she thought that the process had something to do with the rectum.
All this time her blossoming body was painfully trying to send her messages. She had itches and strange sensations and felt frustrated much of the time. Her growth was constantly making her conscious of her tight little under-drawers, causing a pressure that was simultaneously uncomfortable and pleasant. The child was almost constantly tweaking and tugging at the tightness of her little panties.
Then she discovered the hand rail that went down the middle of the steps to the school basement. She would straddle it at the top and slide slowly down, the friction giving her shocks of delight. At the bottom she would remain, languidly, with the smooth pole gripped between her thighs', her legs dangling loosely, her body supported so that she could rest her full weight on one extremely sensitive spot. It made her feel good to kick and wriggle. Then when she tried to inch her way up the railing again to the top she would feel faint with excitement. She loved to play riding the rail for hours. Finally called home for supper, she would leave her game more inflamed than ever.
Her mother never hinted to her about the pleasures between men and women. Her own teenage girl friends started acquiring boys. She did make one blundering overture to get one for herself. His name was Johnny. How she remembered him! She succeeded in bringing Johnny to her house, but that only proved how green she was. Mom discouraged Johnny - and it was bitterly effective. Secretly she was going to bed with the boys and with that hot stuff mama at their disposal they paid no further attention to Maureen.
Maureen learned, finally, that her mother had wanted to save her from falling prey to her own abnormal cravings. That was the only way she knew how to do it. When Maureen did, at last, understand how her mother felt, she -had forgiven her.
Maureen was eighteen, she told her mother that she had a vague sort of cramp in her" tummy.
"Maybe it's your appendix," her mother said. "Stop whining and moaning about it and go and see Dr. Cooney."
She hadn't been to see the doctor since she'd had the measles a few years earlier. He lived some distance away now and her mother gave her bus fare.
It was summer and Maureen wore a light dress. She rode downtown, worriedly, hoping that the pains didn't indicate that there was-something seriously wrong. She left the bus, walked a block, and went up the old stoop. It was the way she had always remembered it. Nothing changed much in that neighborhood.
The waiting room inside was dark with the shades pulled down. An old man was the only patient ahead of her. Dr. Cooney didn't seem to have many patients now. She waited nervously on the shabby sofa for the old man to come out again.
Dr. Cooney didn't have an attending nurse either.
At last the old man patient left and Maureen was called in.
Dr. Cooney looked older. He wore a baggy tweed suit and had the sick-sweet smell of chloroform. His heavy eyebrows needed trimming and hairs were growing in tufts out of his ears.
He looked sharply at her. "Why, it's Maureen!" There was a little emotional catch in his breath. "Goodness, how you've grown! I would have passed right by you on the street! Let me have a good look at you!"
Maureen stood there, feeling funny, as she watched his eyes go all over her with a bright quick look. They didn't stay on her face very long. They traveled all over her breasts and waist and hips and tummy. Then they went below her short dress to linger on her legs. She had borrowed a pair of her mother's shiny, black, high-heeled pumps to wear and they showed off her legs beautifully.
She felt herself blushing all over.
"You look fine, Maureen," he said, taking a deep trembling breath. "Don't tell me there's something wrong with you!"
"Yes, Doctor, there is," she said shamefully.
"Now you sit down and tell me." He pulled up a chair for her close to his desk.
She sat down. "Mom told me to come and see you because I have a cramp."
"Where?" he asked.
She hesitated, "In my... my stomach."
"Show me where."
She put her hand in the middle of her tummy. "About here."
"Right there?" He glanced sharply at her. "You've got to tell me exactly where, Maureen, if you want me to do you any good."
She blushed again. "A little lower down." She put her hand close to her groin.
He nodded. "There." He reached out and took her hand away. He put one of his own hands in its place. His hand felt heavy and hot through her thin dress. He was touching her where nobody else had touched her before and she flinched.
"Does it hurt?" he asked.
She shook her head quickly. "No, it's just -just-"
"Sensitive?"
"Oh, yes, very."
He took his hand away and made a thoughtful frown. "I'll have to have a look at it, Maureen."
" Is it - is it serious?" she stammered.
"That's what I want to find out." He peered N around his dim and dusty office as if searching for something. "Have you been going out with boys?"
"No, Doctor, I never do."
"Are you sure a boy hasn't been playing with you there?"
"Ooooh, no, never."
"Well, if you're telling me the truth, it can't be that."
"I am telling you the truth. What do you mean, Doctor?"
"Oh, nothing." He seemed to find what his eyes were searching for. He went to some pill bottles on a shelf and opened one of them. He took out a tablet and dropped it into a glass. Then he filled the glass with water from a tap.
He reached the glass toward her. "Here, Maureen, drink this."
She looked into the glass. The tablet had started to dissolve. "What is it, Doctor?"
"It won't harm you. It'll relax you. Make it easier for me to examine you. Drink it down."
She was an obedient girl. She always did what she was told, by adults, and this was the man she could trust most, so she drank everything that was in the glass.
"Good girl." Smiling, he took the empty glass back. "That didn't hurt a bit, did it?"
"No, Doctor," she said, smiling back.
"In a few minutes you won't feel in the least bit nervous. You understand that I want to give you a thorough examination, Maureen, right here on the table. Go behind that screen and take off your clothes."
She got up and walked slowly toward the folding screen. He was the old family doctor and she had taken her clothes off for him for examinations lots of times before. But she hadn't done it for several years, and it did seem to be different now. She had a strange quivering feeling as she got behind the screen and started pulling-the dress off over her head, unfastening her bra, and slipping down her panties. She nudged off the high heels.
The house was quiet, surrounded by an atmosphere of summer noises.
She stared down at herself. She never wanted anybody to look at her like this. She refused even to take showers with the rest of the girls after gym class. To her "exaggerated eyes her lush figure looked like a sack of watermelons. She kept telling herself that he was the old family doctor. He wasn't the same as an ordinary man. She took a deep breath and stepped out from behind the screen.
He had been waiting for her re-appearance, anxious-eyed. She saw his jaw fall slack a little as he scrutinized her. He seemed most interested in her breasts and lower, where she had told him she had the cramp.
"My dear child," he said in a husky voice. He stepped toward her and took her arm. "How are you feeling?"
"All right," she said, a little silly. "Don't you feel more relaxed? Drowsy?"
"A little."
He led her to the table. The hard leather top of it felt cool against her bare back and buttocks. He kept staring down at her.
"We'll have you all fixed up very soon," he promised. "Very soon."
He put his hands on her abdomen and started kneading. Palpating was the medical term for it, she had since learned. His, probing fingers were stirring her up strangely inside.
She felt his long thick middle-finger touch her where only she had touched herself before and work inward.
She squirmed on the table and winced.
He said: "You sure no boy's done anything like that to you?"
She was finding it hard to breathe. "No, Doctor, no."
"I can believe that," he said.
She was relieved when he took his finger away.
He began looking into her eyes, talking in a low tone. She couldn't understand everything he said. She felt sleepy and didn't seem to care about anything. He examined her eyes again, pulling the lids apart She thought she heard a key turning in a lock. But that was the last thing she remembered Gradually her eyes opened. In a brief instant things had changed. There was a heavy weight on her body and groaning and grunting exhalations next to her face. The panting breath was laden with strong tobacco fumes.
The only thing she let move was her eyeballs.
She was still on her back on the examining table. Dr. Cooney, fully dressed, was completely on top of her, his body going through frantic thrusting motions, the table beneath them creaking with the assault.
It was like inching up and down on that smooth railing pole, round and hard, only this rendered a deeper and more shattering excitement.
He was just finishing. She heard his breath sob out at each frenzied lurch.
She didn't know what any other girl would have done in a situation like this. Some would have kicked or screamed or cried out for help. She didn't do anything. She was numb, petrified. She lay there terrified. She lay there as if dead until he took the next shuddering minute to finish completely, then she felt the weight slowly lifting as he raised his spent body from hers. She instantly closed her eyes again. She heard his feet hit the floor. She heard him shamble to his cabinet, heard the glass door rattle open, a moment of tinkering as he did something with a bottle, then his steps toward her again.
Her thighs had been spread apart. She felt him insert a hard nozzle and inject something. It burned deep into tissues, and she couldn't help uttering a grunt.
The nozzle remained in for a moment longer, then was hurriedly withdrawn. He gently placed her thighs together.
He was going back toward his cabinet when she pretended to be opening her eyes for the first time and started looking vaguely around.
He was putting a vaginal syringe back into the cabinet "Don't remember anything, do you?" he smirked.
She looked back at the beast Voicelessly she shook her head.
"I gave you a treatment," he said. "I think you'll feel better now."
She got off the table and ran behind the screen. She didn't know how she got dressed. She never really remembered dressing.
He had unlocked the door of his office by the time she was dressed. She didn't dare look at him, her accusation would be flaming in her eyes.
All she said to him was: "Send Mom the bill."
"Since it's you - " was all she heard him say as she dashed out into the street.
She was in a panic. There was no bus in sight on the next block, so she kept walking, very fast. She had a long way to go home. She wanted to tell Mom what he had done. She wanted to tell the police.
I'll fix you, you dirty old man, for what you did!
Block after block went by under her pounding high heels. The numbness gradually left her body. Sensations began to come back. The sun was hot She felt warmer. She desperately 'wanted someone strong to protect and .com-f or her.
Her mind began to get filled with strange mixed emotions. She slowed down her walking. Why was she hurrying? He hadn't hurt; her. She couldn't feel any hurt anywhere. Even that nagging cramp was gone now. She was relaxed.
It would be an awful thing, she thought, when she told Mom. She would cause a lot of trouble for Dr. Cooney. She might even cause a lot of trouble for Maureen. She had to think about that She realized she was standing on a street corner thinking about all of it. J list standing. This was a serious thing. She couldn't act hastily and be wrong.
She must have stood there for fifteen minutes, weighing the biggest problem she had ever had. Then she turned to look into the mirror of a chewing gum dispenser and examined her reflection. Her face had a starved look that didn't go at all with the rest of her well-fed body. Then she shook her long blonde hair back on her shoulders and smiled.
She wanted desperately to go back to Dr. Cooney's office. She wanted to go back into that examining room and face him squarely.
"Doctor! I know what you did when you had me stretched out on that table! You raped me!"
"Maureen!"
"Close that door!"
"What is it, Maureen?"
"You'd better lock it too!"
"What?"
"Then do it to me again, Dr. Cooney, oh, please do it to me again! Only this time don't make me go to sleep! I want to be awake every moment!"
Then she would convince him by tearing her own clothes off.
She wanted desperately to do that. She didn't have the nerve. She couldn't return to him. But he had opened up a new adventure for her, opened the floodgates of her desire. Everything that had been dammed up in her for years came tumbling out in a seething torrent Slowly she walked on toward home. There was no hurry now. She let her hips swing freely and the gang of boys outside the candy store had something to whistle at.
After that day, she had not seen Dr. Cooney again. She didn't need him any more.
Now she wanted boys.
And she had boys.
CHAPTER THREE
Inside the men's room, Chuck and his two buddies rented the packet of photographs to the trade at a dollar a look. They were cutting first period, but they thought it was worth it. Within the first hour they had got nine eager takers.
Each boy took his turn with the pictures, going into the privacy of a toilet cubicle .and bolting the door. What he did in there depended on his own inclinations. None of them stayed more than five minutes. Chuck, Stan, and Robbie waited outside by the washbowls, smoking cigarettes they had bummed from their customers. When each boy came out he looked considerably less enthusiastic than when he went in.
Ronnie dropped his cigarette butt on the tile floor and crushed it out with his small foot. He was glancing anxiously at his cheap wrist-watch. "We'll be late for second class."
Chuck wasn't hurried. He bobbed his head toward a bolted toilet door. "Give him a chance."
The last of the trade came out of the cubicle and handed Chuck the packet of pictures.
"Like 'em?" Chuck grinned.
"Okay," said the student sheepishly. He left, quickly.
Chuck thrust his right hand down into the slash front pocket of his Levis and rustled bills. "That was nine bucks. Four bucks more than the pix cost. I'll sell 'em later for half-price.
That'll make six-fifty. I'll get my original money back and we're six and a half ahead, to right now."
"Lunch money," said Stan.
Robbie grabbed up his books. "See you fellows in study hall." He darted out.
"What's he scared of?" said Chuck.
"Temptation, I guess." Stan's eyes were fixed on the glossy photographs.
Chuck held the pack out to him in his left hand. "Here, old buddy. Have one on the house."
Stan shook his shaggy head. "You know I save mine for Miss Quinn. How about you?"
Chuck stared hard at the top print Fever Burns was an impossibly shaped tawny female creature, her fantastic curves posed in a dozen flesh-colored postures, each designed to consume a male in his own body heat 'The glossy surfaces were all smudged with sweaty fingerprints.
Fever is right, he thought. She'd raise a man's temperature till his blood boiled. She exceeded Chuck's wettest dreams.
His right hand had stopped fingering the bills, It burrowed deeper in the pocket. His brain throbbed behind his staring eyes. His entire life seemed to be a massive turmoil of driving sex urges. He tried to clear them from his mind. Even in his sleep they were there. Fever, Fever. Just a tickle and all this agonizing tension would be gone. He felt the excited tingling that warned him of the closeness of an uncontrollable, total release.
Angrily he yanked his hand out of his pocket. "That's kid stuff! I'm going like a man tonight! With a girl!" he told himself. - He replaced the photos in an envelope and put it in with his school books; then he and Stan went down the corridor together to English. Classmates jostled them in the doorway to Miss Quinn's room.
Chuck paused for a moment outside. Grabbing the waistband of his Levis, he hitched them up higher. Maybe she'll get an eyefull, he said to himself.
They went in with the other students and sat down. Stan had a seat a little nearer to the front than Chuck. Girls sat on one side, boys on the other. Miss Quinn was moving around busily near her desk. Chuck tried to keep his eyes away from her, but he couldn't. When she was in sight he couldn't look away from her. He watched everything she did, every move she made, impressing it on his mind, memorizing it, so that he could recall her movements all over again when he was alone.
His eyes lunged at her, approving what she was wearing. He groaned inwardly. Dig those crazy D Cups! How did she cram so much of herself into so little clothes? And those maddening black patent leather pumps with the spike heels.
Brother, she was hot. She had to be hot. The way she would stand with her legs crossed over, thighs squeezed tight, rocking her hips slightly. The way she made use of that corner of her desk. She would ease forward on it, taking it just under her abdomen, rubbing herself, in seeming unawareness. Or she would turn around and sit on the corner, one beautiful leg swinging casually, the swells of her shapely thighs and buttocks boldly outlined. And her habit of smoothing her dress, unconsciously, against thighs, abdomen or hips made Chuck's hands itch...
Fever. He was burning up with fever.
Her back was turned now - the long, honey-blonde hair cascading to her shoulders, the nipped-in waist, the gorgeous flare of hips, the long straight legs going down into those glossy high heels - as she wrote out instructions on the blackboard. The energy with which she drove the chalk across the board made her fanny jiggle.
You know what you're doing to us, you big, beautiful blonde bitch!
I know what you need and plenty of it!
Oh, baby, baby, baby, baby!
She dropped the chalk on the floor and had to stoop to pick it up.
Oh, man, what an ass in that tight skirt. Please, baby, please, take it easy. Have a heart. I can't stand seeing you stoop over like that. You're killing me.. Oh. you sweet adorable doll. How much more can I take? Cripes! What's the matter with me? I must be going nuts!
She had turned away from the chalkboard, letting the class see what she had written. She slid her hips back on top of her desk, one foot on the floor. That was something else she did often on the boy's side of the desk. She had the sexiest game in the world and she knew it. Lounging, taught, easily, their total effect was devastating, letting her slim skirt slide back a little. His feasting eyes could see inches of smoky, nylon thigh.
Her intense, deep-blue gaze never missed what was going on. Her eyes roved around the room, looking for something. She stopped looking when she came to big Stan. Chuck could see the whole thing clearly from where he sat.
Stan was staring back at her intensely. He had a glazed expression in his eyes. His hand was deep in the pocket of his jeans. As Chuck watched with his own throbbing fascination, he saw Stan's face become animated. His mouth was opened slightly and his nostrils dilated. Chuck watched part of Stan's exposed arm. The little jerks of muscles along the forearm were increasing rapidly. Now there was a convulsive look in Stan's eyes. His eyelids lowered, his face paled, and his shaggy head moved slowly backward. The muscle jerking stopped. Stan lowered his head with a long sigh, inaudible in the murmur of the classroom. Stan remained motionless for a few moments, then he drew his hand out of his pocket to wipe sweat from his forehead. Then, after casting a quick glance at his nearby unaware classmates, he bent his head to his work.
Miss Quinn had quietly watched the whole thing.
Gritting his teeth, Chuck tried to make his own body behave. He couldn't control it. The more he forced his mind to fight it, the more his tormented flesh rebelled.
He had lowered his eyes under his desk. When he looked up again, she was staring right at him.
Next! she seemed to be saying. She swung her leg a little to give him further inducement.
She was waiting for him, a half smile on her luscious lips. "Charles Ashley."
That was him. He raised a little. "Yes, Miss Quinn?"
She was waiting for him to stand up. He wasn't going to stand up. His emotional response was so pronounced that it would be an embarrassment to her and the whole class. Well, perhaps not to her. But he wasn't going to make a jackass out of himself in front of the others.
When he didn't rise, she had to continue: "Have you brought in your book report, Charles?".
He had fully intended showing her that book on obstetrics. Now, face to face with her, he lost his nerve. He stumbled. "No, I - "
"What happened?" she said.
"I forgot it," he mumbled.
She looked at him as if she knew he was lying. "Make sure you bring it in tomorrow, Charles."
"Yes, Miss Quinn."
She gazed at him for a moment longer, hopefully.
He had himself in check now. Nothing was going to happen. She seemed to sense that. She slid her beautiful self off the desk and went on to devote herself to the rest of the lesson.
CHAPTER FOUR
"You must be saving it for something, Chuck," said Stan as they came down the high school steps. It was three-thirty. I told you I had a date tonight."
"Who with?"
"Marj."
"You can do better, Chuck."
"So what if I can?"
"What about -Judy?" asked Stan.
"I don't know. What about her?"
"Have you seen her lately?"
"No. And there's nothing wrong with Marj. You see that cute little butt?"
"Take the skirt off it. You'll find it covered with pimples."
"So what? I'll take it pimples and all."
"Okay, Chuck. Have fun."
"That I will."
They split at the schoolyard gate and Chuck walked home alone, lie could hardly wait for tonight. It seemed to be the only thing worthwhile doing in the entire world.
At home he immediately did part of the book report, his mind racing ahead to Miss Quinn. He could hardly concentrate on what he was writing. He gave it up and soaked himself for a long time in a warm soapy bath.
He stayed out of the way until Ma had supper ready and Dad came home from the store. When he sat down at the dinner table he was wearing a clean white shirt and clean chinos. He had his feet in brown loafers.
"Dad, can I borrow the wreck tonight?"
"What do you want it for, Chuck?"
"I'm taking Marj out."
Dad shrugged indifferently. "Okay, Chuck. Only you'll have to pay for the gas."
"I'll pay for it." The bills were still folded in his pocket.
Ma looked across the dinner table a little more concernedly.. "Try to get in before eleven, dear."
"Sure, Ma. There's nothing like trying to get . in early," he grinned.
Later he drove the old convertible up to Marj's house. She was ready, waiting for him on the porch. She jumped down the steps when he beeped the horn. He watched her come toward him.
The brownette was sixteen and already her lithe young body was definitely in bloom. From the tight pink angora sweater, hugging her tiny waist and newly budding breasts, to the tight red skirt outlining her slender hips, her garb was chosen to please the boy in the driver's seat. She was a little wobbly on the high heels as she swivel-hipped across the sidewalk, her breasts bouncing.
He had opened the car door and she slid in, close to him.
"Whereto, Chuck?"
"Let's a go-go!"
"Suits me fine."
He gunned the convertible and it left the curbing in a flying- spurt Marj let out a squeal of delight The discotheque was jumping. It was crowded with perspiring young bodies. Chuck and Marj faced each other on the floor, the jerking, primitive rhythm making them fling their bodies with reckless abandon. He liked it. It was freedom, in a way, release. As if you were throwing off all the bonds of narrow thinking. All the kids must have fell the same way. He looked at Marj, languorously swaying her upper spine and arms, rhythmically punctuating these undulations with savage, pelvic thrusts.
When his head was spinning and he was damp with sweat, he'd had it. lie grabbed Marj by the arm and led her away. "I need beer."
He bought a refrigerated six-pack and put it in the back seat. He drove Marj away from all the noise and down into the dark of lovers' lane by the golf course. He figured it was about time he got some dividends from this evening.
The car radio pulsed softly on the night air. The beer cans popped.
Marj had a cold can in her hand. " I can't drink all this," she said.
"Three for you and three for me," he insisted. "C'mon, Marj."
"No, two's plenty."
"Okay, if you want me to put away four."
Beer was swallowed and some of Marj's restraint vanished. Her full red lips pouted at him in the moonlight. His arm surrounded her small back and he squirmed closer. He smelled the strong perfume of her hair. He nibbled at her ear. His hand accidentally touched her freshly blossoming breast. The sound of her girlish laughter set him throbbing.
"Hey," he said, his voice queer.
" Hum?"
"You got anything on under that skirt?"
"Of course I have, Fop, panties."
"Let me see them."
"Silly!" - "Who's silly?"
' She let him slide the red skirt back up her thighs till he finally got a peek at white briefs.
He was fevering for her. "You don't need them,, Marj."
"I do so, Chuck. I'm not taking them off."
"Cheez, you're not going to leave me like this!"
"Not that, Chuck. I'll do anything else you like."
"I don't want anything else, Marj. What's the matter with you? Don't you love me enough?"
"I do, Chuck, but I have to be careful. Of you."
"Since when have you started being careful?"
"Have you heard from Judy?" she asked suddenly.
"No," he said a little huffily. "What's she got to do with it?"
"You know why you haven't seen her lately?"
"No, why?"
"She had a date with you about six weeks go. I know. She told me. She wasn't careful and now she's - you know!"
Chuck drew back a little. "Knocked up?"
"Well, if that's what you want to call it."
"Dumb dame!" Me swore at thoughts of -Judy. "I told her what to do!" He looked more concerned. "What's she going to do about it?"
"I don't know. Why don't you ask her?"
" It won't happen with us, Marj." He cuddled in closer again. "I'll see that it doesn't."
"And so will I," she said. "'I'm not taking any chances tonight. You're potent, boy."
"Well, if that's the way you feel about it," he said, growing cold, "I'll take you back home."
" I guess you'd better."
They didn't say anything more to each other until they were at her front gate. She got out and stood on the sidewalk, before closing the car door.
"I'm sorry, Chuck," she said.
"So am I, Marj. Sorrier than you think."
"See you again?"
"I suppose so."
She closed the car door and started in toward her house. The movement of her buttocks in the tight red skirt gave him the agonies. He got the old crate rolling and pushed it fast toward home.
Except for the hall lights, the house was dark. Ma and Dad were already in bed.
As he crept up the stairs to his bedroom, he muttered: "I hope old Dad got his tonight, 'cause junior is sure suffering."
It wasn't funny. His body ached for release. In his own room, he stripped down to undershorts, then went into the bathroom to hastily scrub Marj's lipstick off his face and brush his teeth.
In the dark he miserably crawled into bed. He covered himself with a blanket and lay on his belly with his face buried in the pillow. The whiff of that perfume, the lilting sound of Marj's voice, the sight of her slim legs as that skirt moved up to her hips - all these sensations were torturing him. Adult sexual pleasure that was so intense and exciting with a willing female, was missing. He was forced to supply what he lacked in fantasy.
He moved carefully against the mattress under him, the bedsprings making little squeaking sounds that continued for a long time. Did he really do that to Judy? If she were her now she'd get it again.
Memories of Marj and Judy faded. He panted into his pillow as he visioned himself dating Fever Burns. That was a woman. Not a damn careless kid. She wouldn't tease him crazy and then hold off. She would be all over him like a tawny tigress, her mouth, her clawing hands, every sizzling part of her demanding him. She would wear a man out. A dozen men. He could see her hungrily satisfying a whole line of men. . They all looked like him.
He was a man.
They didn't realize that. In. spite of his youth, he had the physical development of a man. More than most men. With all the blinding passions that sear a man.
His frenzied writhings against the mattress stopped. He lifted his head desperately from the pillow. It was damp from his sweat and saliva. "Fever, Fever, baby doll, it's got to be you!"
Now that he had his mind made up, he moved in haste. He threw off the hot blanket and rose to his knees. His whole body was damp. He lit the bedside lamp cautiously. This light wouldn't disturb anybody. Barefooted, clad only in shorts, he padded to his clothes closet and opened the door. He had a stock of 8x10 glossy photo prints hidden under a couple of old discarded school sweaters. He spent a few dollars occasionally, mail-ordering new ones. They were his to look at and daydream. He uncovered them and dug into the stack.
Many of the prints had tabs sticking up from their edges so that he would have quick reference to the hottest chicks. He knew that Fever Burns' torrid torso was featured in a purchase from a couple of months back. He found it in a hurry.
There it was. He tugged it and other tabbed shots from the pile and held them, face down, not daring to look, yet. Not yet, not yet, but soon, baby.
That was kid stuff? The hell it was. It was this or going screwy. This or not getting a wink of sleep all night. He had school tomorrow. Damn! Damn school!
He went into his adjoining bathroom, thankful for this privacy. He switched on the hard aright overhead light. He stood facing the washstand, propping the pictures around over it, then looking at them slowly and deliberately, savoring these last agonizing moments.
He caught his breath. There she was. Fever Burns. Her incredible shape provoking him from off the gleaming print, sending out invitations to the very depths of his being. Her green tigerish eyes stared back into his, wantonly watching him, witnessing his every act of passion.
He looked down. Below him the washbowl was a white porcelain oval. He braced his bare feet on the floor. The whole world was silent except for the thumping sound as his heart pounded. It beat loudly in the bathroom. Flesh almost too tender to touch.
He raised his eyes and glued them on her. You dreamboat. There's no one else like you. I don't know anyone else, honey baby. Except maybe Miss Quinn. Yeah, baby, yeah, Miss Quinn would give you a run for your money. Oh, brother, if this were only a pic of Miss Quinn. Posed like this.
His mind veered. His vivid imagination, saw Miss Quinn's face staring back. Her blue eyes watching every move he made. It was her. Maureen Quinn.
He gasped. Maureen, Maureen, Maureen.
It was all for her! All... All...
CHAPTER FIVE
Next morning, as Chuck entered English class, he felt it growing again. That thrilling quiver of erotic stimulation.
He shot Miss Quinn a glance. She was observing him with a half smile and she looked delicious.
Self-consciously he went to his seat and sat down. He was certain she was watching every move he made, could read his guilty thoughts, and was critical of him.
Stan leaned back from his seat to whisper: "I saw her going upstairs ahead of me this morning and it almost did me!"
Miss Quinn called the class to attention. "Yesterday we discussed propaganda and the way our language is perverted for political uses, both good and bad. Some of you volunteered to bring in sample posters illustrating different kinds of propaganda. You response has been gratifying." She indicated a stack of pasteboards that had been placed on her desk. "I'm going to have them tacked up on the walls for all of you to see." She smiled again. "I need services of a young man."
I'll do you! thought Chuck.
Her blue eyes swept the room, lingering for a moment on Chuck. He thought she was going to call on him. Then her gaze shifted.
"Stanislas," she said.
Stanislas! Some of the girls tittered. Poor old Stan. Stan got up.
"Rotsaruck!" said Chuck under his breath.
Miss Quinn and Stan went at the task with tack hammer, tacks, and bulky pasteboards. They milled about each other, getting in each other's way, bumping and touching, all the physical contact seemingly accidental.
Chuck watched them. Stan's jeans were almost splitting. He wouldn't be able- to take much more punishment.
Miss Quinn bent over her desk, using a magic marker to mock up a poster of her own, unconcerned about the way her behind was sticking out, firm and round. Stan stood behind her, crowding up. He leaned over her shoulder, pretending to be interested in her sketching, rubbing against her buttocks.
What's the big horse trying to do?
Startled by Stan's daring, Chuck almost jumped out of his seat. Cripes, he's not going to try that! Not in front of the whole class.
She did nothing to discourage it.
Stan's homely face was all scrunched up out of shape, grimacing, as if he were about to sneeze. Then he went relaxed all over as if he had sneezed.
Cripes!
A few moments later he staggered down the aisle and almost collapsed in his seat. He remained there quietly for the rest of the period.
Miss Quinn straightened up and went on with the lesson, acting as if nothing had happened.
At last the bell rang. Chuck got up with the others to leave.
As he passed her desk he heard her voice: "Charles!"
"Yes, Miss Quinn?"
"I'd like to see you after classes this afternoon."
"Er - yes - okay."
"That's all for now, Charles," she smiled at him.
He walked out, going automatically along the corridor to Math. What did she want to see him after classes for? You know what that meant. All the other kids would be gone. They would be alone. The thought of being alone with her both attracted and scared him. He was scared because he didn't know how long he could hold out against his overpowering hunger for her. Something was sure to blast.
He went on. He couldn't keep his mind on any of his studies. Academically the whole day was a big fat zero. He sweated it out until three-thirty.
His jaw knotting and his whole chest tight-swelled, he walked back to her room. He shifted nervously the load of books under his arm. The door was closed. He rapped on it.
She opened it immediately.
"Come in, Charles." She stood aside as he entered the deserted classroom. "Sit down in the front row. There. Fine."
He sat down and looked at her.
She turned the key in the door, locking it. "Nobody'll interrupt," she said lightly.
He watched her walk to her desk. Through her skirt, he could see the outline of her long shapely legs all the way up to the hips. She leaned back against the front of her desk, putting her hands down beside her, resting her palms on the desktop.
"Comfortable?" she asked.
"Huh? Okay," he said.
She lifted up on her arms and slid her hips back, sitting on the desk. Her high heels swung off the floor. She watched his reactions carefully as she deliberately crossed one perfectly-formed leg over the other. She made no attempt to tug her brief skirt over her exposed knees.
Crossed female legs always gave him instant excitation. Hers had the smothering lure of a thoroughbred sex-symbol. Concentrating on the edge of her skirt, he itched to see more.
Her tone was softly conventional. "You told me you'd bring in your book report."
"I," his mouth was dry and his voice thin,, "I'm having some trouble with it."
"May I call you Chuck? I notice that that's what the other boys call you."
"Sure. That's okay."
"You did select a book'" she prompted.
"Well, yes." He hadn't meant to tell her. Only now she didn't seem so much like a teacher. More like an intimate friend. "It was on obstetrics."
"Why didn't you bring it in, Chuck? Didn't you think I'd approve it?"
"No, not that exactly. After thinking it over, I thought that it wasn't the right thing to read before the class."
"Did you like it?"
"I sure did. I mean, it was really informative."
"If there's anything in it you don't understand, I'd be glad to explain it to you."
"Oh, I think I understood it, all right."
"Please bring it in, Chuck, and we can go over it together,"
"Sure thing," he said loudly, having difficulty making his mind and body behave.
She was making it hard for him.
She had placed the pink fingertips of her right hand lovingly on her topmost knee, easing them gently back and forth, like a massage of rose petals across the tight, gleaming hose.
Speculating on what havoc those fingertips could wreak, he squirmed uncomfortably on the hard seat.
Her fingers caressed the side of her knee, then slipped under it. Underneath the uplifted thigh, her hand gently trailed back, the edge of the skirt traveling with it, until he could see her nylons all the way up to the garter welt.
She wore no garters. The top of the stocking was stuck to the firm flesh of her thigh with strips of some sort of transparent tape. No wonder she had no unsightly garter bulges!
Yet the innocence of her facial expression implied that she acted unconsciously and was unaware of the effect she caused.
He couldn't take his eyes away. "Your play," she said quietly.
CHAPTER SIX
"My play?" She jolted him. Making a play for her was the only thing he had on his. mind.
"The one you were writing, Chuck," she reminded him.
"Oh, yes. Yes, that. They've got that Little Theatre all set up downstairs in the basement and we're ready for the dress rehearsal."
"I know you like to write," she said.
He flushed a little-. "Those things come easy, Miss Quinn. I keep dreaming up these way-out plots and then I can't wait to get them down on paper. I hope you'll be proud of my g - " He almost said gang. "My group," he amended.
"I'm sure I will be," she said. "Did you give it that odd name? The Booby Snatchers?" When he nodded, she went on: "What does that mean?"
"Well, you know what boobies are," he said boldly. "I don't have to tell you. You're a language teacher."
A smile kept hovering around her full red lips. " I think I know what you mean."
She ought to know what they were. She had a great pair herself, he thought.
"Well, we snatch them." It sounded silly and he snickered.
She swung her free leg rhythmically and he sobered at once.
"We have a kind of a problem, though," he said. "Ronnie plays the part of a girl."
"Ronnie Polk?"
' "Yeah."
"Why don't you use a real girl?"
"We want this to be strictly a group effort."
"I see. Won't Ronnie feel humiliated, appearing like that?"
"Oh, no. He won't mind. He wants to."
"What's the problem, Chuck?"
"We're stuck for costumes. Girl's dresses and makeup. Especially a wig. Ronnie can't wear any of his mother's things because she's too fat. I think realism means a lot. He should look real enough to fool the audience."
"I agree. Perhaps I can help. I'd like to donate to such a worthy cause as dramatics."
"Swell!"
"When's your dress rehearsal?"
"Tonight."
"I'll be there." She shifted position. She uncrossed the legs, sitting for a brief instant with her thighs apart, then she crossed the other leg over. Momentarily he had seen enough for him to be sure that she was bare all the way up.
Sexual shocks went pounding through him with every stimulated heartbeat. Sweat trickled down over his ribs under his shirt. She was murder. Pure, sweet murder!
She looked at him and he looked at her.
This conversation didn't mean anything.' It was the message she was sending. And he was getting the message. Loud and clear.
Her whole electric personality was imploring him: What are you waiting for? Get with it! Let yourself go and get your kicks! Do what Stan does! Do what dozens of others do! Do it! Do it! DO IT!
Her influence had the impact of an hypnotic drug. Gingerly he lowered his right hand and eased it deep into his tight pants pocket.
Once he had caught a robin and held it lightly in his hand. It was warm and trembling, afraid of suffering some nameless hurt, and it fluttered and throbbed in the cavity of his fingers and palm. Petting and stroking, he tried to calm it, ease it. Every few moments it would lurch against his gentle grasp so strongly it surprised him. He held a wild thing. His hand could not tame it. When he let it go it flew away at once straight for the nest.
A bird in the hand. Two in the nest.
His hand slipped back out of his pocket.
She was getting impatient "Come here, Chuck!" He got up, slowly and painfully. Her eyes kept hitting him below the belt. He walked to her and leaned back against the desk, close to her.
She smiled. "I think you need some help."
When she captured the swollen tautness of his Levis, he nearly had a fit. He fought against her compelling demands the way a starving man would try to resist the most delicious dessert. She could make a bull give milk. His throbbing loins wanted him to surrender so badly that he felt faint.
Her puzzled whisper was hoarse: "What's the matter with you, Chuck? By this time most men - He gripped her by the elbow and stopped her maddening hand.
She slid her buttocks sinuously off the desk and stood facing him. He was on his feet too, breathing her intoxicating perfume. She was full-bodied. She must have been five feet eight in her stocking feet, but her cute tootsies were shod in those swinging high heels that made her tower up almost as tall as he was.
"Is this your idea of fun?" he scoffed. "Is this how you get a charge? Watching a man come off?"
"Can you think of anything safer?"
"Maybe it's safer, but I can think of something a lot more fun."
He was crazy to begin, exploring those silken smooth legs.
"Stan - " she began.
"I'm not like Stan. He takes the easy way out."
She looked at him ruefully, her hand straying to her buttocks, "That last trick he pulled wasn't so easy."
" I mean like this," he said.
He reached for her breasts. The large mounds of succulent flesh were clad in a thin blouse and a peekaboo bra. He thought she was going to slap him or yell, but she didn't. Fondling her, he grew bolder and more excited. He locked his hands in the small of her back and pulled all those breath-taking charms in close. He knew she wanted action. Her abdomen was feverishly tight against his, pushing and weaving. He could feel the press of their hot bodies even through their clothes.
"I've thought about this," he said, his breath hissing. "Hundreds of times. With you on top of the desk."
"Not there. It's too risky," she whispered, huskily.
"Where? Where?" In another minute he wouldn't care where it happened.
She looked around. Then she grasped his hand. "Come with me."
She led the way down the aisle to the back of the classroom. There was a clothes closet with a sliding door. Inside some long forgotten overcoats hung on the hooks.
Stepping inside, she threw the coats down to make the floor a little softer.
Following her, he slid the door shut. The closet became dim and confining and it smelled of damp wool and old rubber overshoes.
His frantic mind was telling him: This, in a way, is sacred. Your first intimacy with this adorable creature. It must not be- the last. Make it good. Make her want you again and again. Make her love you.
There was no need, no time, to undress. Her skirt was up and his zipper was open. Their gaze devoured each other.
"I've been dying for a man all day," she -breathed, shakily. "A real man." He saw surprise and admiration in her down-staring eyes.
The trembling bird was guided straight to the nest, by the hot, pink fingers...
She writhed beneath him, trying to get into a comfortable position.
Her experience guided him, keeping him from squandering too recklessly these precious moments, delaying and retarding the final explosion of the white-hot male hunger that could no longer be denied. Yet bitter-sweet pleasure increased and increased with each frenetic thrust.
Even the creaking patent leather of her pumps, the long thin heels braced sharply against the floorboards, urged him on.
He rocked deliriously, blind,, like a man with sunstroke.
Every wet dream he had ever dreamed, every sexy story he had ever leered at, every pretty girl he had ever whistled at, every bulging inch of Fever Burns that had ever tickled him off, every thought he ever had about Miss Quinn, the flirting flicker of her long, shapely legs, the tight quiver of her big breasts, the tight seat of her skirt when she bent over, her hands stroking her clothing against her, all this was concentrated now at one time, in one place, in her, in Maureen, as he climbed toward the blinding paralyzing brink.
As through a blur, he saw her shadowy face below him, the gleaming red lips wide-parted, white teeth glistening, her white, rolled-back eyeballs blindly gleaming, long hair spilling gold strands as her head lashed furiously back and forth.
His ears rang to her deep gasp. - "Chuck! Chuck! Chuck!"
Her arms strained and locked across his back and shoulders. Her heels, with legs bent, ankles crossed, paced his loins. She thrust her body up to meet his, engulfing him, in fire and velvet.
He responded violently.
The narrow confines of the clothes closet seemed ready to explode with the boiling desires and the lunges of the two silently-screaming bodies, crushed suddenly in the pile-driving force of their release...
CHAPTER SEVEN
He no longer thought of her as Miss Quinn. Now, she was Maureen.
As he went down Central Street, he trod on air. He was invincible, He was the King of the universe. He had achieved every schoolboy's secret ambition, he had laid his teacher.
What an experience! His body was tingling like a wire overloaded with electricity; sensation had charged through every nerve in his body, until all the fuses blew out. At first his reaction to the abrupt physical and mental change had been surprise. Me had lain limp, petered out, his emotions completely drained.
Then he and Maureen had wanted to get out of that clothes closet as hastily as they had gone into it.' Scrambling around, they made themselves presentable before emerging.
He gathered up his books. "Til be seeing you tonight."
"Tonight?" Her mind seemed blank. No wonder she was still stunned. He had belted her with his Chuck Ashley special! it knocked 'em off their feet. It knocked "em up.
"At our dress rehearsal."' "Oh yes, I'll be there. I'll bring all the things you'll need for Ronnie." Her eyes were languorous, the wonderful bosom heaved.
"Thanks."
He stood uncertainly at the door, shifting from one foot to the other. How do you exit from a scene like that?
"Well, so long - for now."
She looked at him numbly. "So long." The red lips were swollen - parted softly. He left her there.
In the street he walked on air. Life wasn't all a dream. It was real. You had to make it come real. Today Maureen Quinn. Tomorrow - Fever Burns! Who knows?
Fever, oh baby, Fever!
He spied a girl walking briskly with a cute rumble. She was a whole block ahead. He could spot that a mile away.
He ran to close the distance.
"Hey, .Judy! Wait up!"
He liked to watch her behind. When she walked you'd think she was going to twist it off.
What a meat grinder, he thought. .At the sound of his voice she stopped in her tracks and turned.
Judy June, love slave, passion fruit, sex kitten. Long, shining, cornsilk hair. She had big round blue eyes and she had been bitten by the kissing bug. The promises her figure was making, it was a cinch that in a few years she'd turn into another Maureen. "Hi!" she said.
"Hi!" He put his arm possessively around her shoulders and they continued walking. Got any troubles, baby? He had the sure cure for everything.
"Are you okay?" he said.
"Yes. I'm okay."
"I haven't seen you in a couple of weeks."
"I've been busy. Studying. I stopped off at the library."
"You don't have to study, baby. You've already got it made."
He patted her affectionately on the waggling rump. She glanced shyly at some passersby.
"Daddy doesn't want me to flunk bookkeeping this term, Chuck."
"I heard you had a little accident."
She glanced quickly at him. "What kind of accident?"
"Oh, come on, kitten, it's between you and me. You know what I mean. I thought you were on pills."
"I wasn't taking them regularly. There's only one person I told about that. One single solitary person. Marj Baxter. She told you."
"So? I had a date with her. Because you were making yourself scarce, that's why. You're all honorary members of the Booby Snatchers. You know the rules."
"I know them, but I don't like them."
"On the level. Did you get caught?"
She lowered her head to look at the sidewalk, nodding a little. "I'll be all right."
"Sure," he said skeptically. "How? What do you mean be all right? What're we supposed to do? Is your old man shopping for a shotgun?"
"Of course not, silly. My parents don't know anything about it and I won't tell them."
"What're you going to do, Judy? Gel rid of it?"
"That's the only thing I can. do, isn't it?"
" I suppose so. Have you got someone who'll do it? A doctor?"
"No, I haven't found anyone yet."
"If you do, how'll you pay him? Those guys cost."
"I don't know how I'll pay him. I only know that my parents must never find out."
"They won't. We'll play it cool, Judy. I'm sorry it happened to you. You know that."
"What the heck are you sorry for? We were having fun. It was like New Year's Eve. Look, Chuck. It makes me feel all excited to know I'm full of baby. Yours. Only I know it's not good to hold it too long." She looked serious as she walked on. "It's no worse than getting a tooth pulled. That's what I heard."
He grinned at her and hugged her tighter. "I'll help you find a dentist, kitten."
He went home and took a warm contemplative bath. So she was excited about being preggy. It got him excited too. He wished he could get Maureen in the same shape. Sprawled out on the delivery table, Maureen would show even more than that chick in the medical book. What is it, doctor, a boy or a girl? Are you kidding? Are you kidding! It's four. Oooo, here comes another one. Five. Six. Alan, you hit the jackpot!
He dried himself off and got dressed, putting on a pullover sweater and a pair of jeans that had been repeatedly washed until they were a light blue, worn thin and shrunken tight. Heal strangle britches. He pulled engineer's boots on over them.
Then he examined his reflection in the dresser mirror. How would you describe that guy, officer? About seventeen and a half, kinda tall, well built, good-looking, with dark wavy hair. Careful how you handle him, officer. He's wanted. Yeah. Maureen wanted him. And Judy. And Marj. And Roz. And Carol. And Susan.
He rubbed his thigh. Careful how you handle him is right.
Quietly he ate dinner with Mom and Dad, thinking about the evening ahead. In the early dusk he walked back to the school. The door to the basement-was left open and he went down the steps.
The principal of Middletown High School, Mr. Shuttleworth, was particularly interested in dramatics. Downstairs he had provided a Little Theatre, complete with box office, a good-sized workshop for the building of scenery, and an excellent dressing room. The seating arrangement had been held down to a capacity of two hundred.
Stan and Ronnie were lounging around waiting for him. They were swapping smutty stories.
"You cats keep it clean tonight," he said to them. "We're having an important visitor."
"Who?" said Ronnie. "Maureen Quinn."
Stan drooled. "Miss Quinn is coming here?"
He noticed where Stan's hand had gone and he chided him: "Why don't you leave it alone for one night and see hot it feels?"
"Look who's talking! Your mother ought to call you Jack." He mocked a bow. "Grand Master..."
"I've got a good excuse. I've got a tiger in my tank and I have to let it out every night like a tomcat."
"You're a kook!" Stan danced with anticipation. "How'd you get her to make the scene?"
"I'm hip, old buddy, I'm loaded with know-how. When I say Jump! she says How high?"
"Knock it off, you jerks," warned Ronnie, annoyance on his baby face. "I hear her coming."
There was a smart click of heels on the metal stairs and they all turned to look.
She walked in with a large package under her arm. "Hi, boys!"
"Hi, Miss Quinn!" they all said.
Chuck looked her over avidly. She was in a little checkered suit, the skirt trimmed until there was not a fraction of an inch to spare anywhere. Even her slightly rounded tummy looked cleared in it. Man, that tummy!
She was opening the box. "I think I have everything here that Ronnie will need." She glanced up. "What's the play about, Chuck?"
Chuck cleared his throat. "Well, it's about this chick - that's Ronnie - who goes to this employment office to apply for a job. Stan is playing the part of the guy in the office. He's got a false mustache he can wear. It turns out that this guy is a white slaver."
Maureen's eyes widened. "What? You've got that in a school sketch!"
Chuck felt grieved by her reaction. "There's nothing wrong with that," he defended himself. "It's supposed to be a horrible example."
"That it is," heckled Stan.
Chuck went on staunchly: " It's supposed to let girls know that they should be careful when they go out to apply for jobs."
"I see," she said. "A morality lesson."
He was sure one of her eyes flicked a wink at him.
She was' taking a pair of shoes out of the box. " I've only worn these on a few special occasions."
His insides quivered at the sight of her shoes. Black and shiny all over, with heels that were at least four inches. He was eager to touch them. More eager for them to touch him.
Stan objected. "He can't walk in those."
"Sure I can," piped up Ronnie. His own. eyes were fascinated.
"It takes practice," said Maureen.
"I've had plenty of practice," said Ronnie. "Wearing my mother's. Only she doesn't have heels like that."
"Let him wear them," said Chuck impatiently.
She held up a green jersey sheath. "I haven't worn this in a few years. It's too small for me now. I hope you're going to supply the padding, Ronnie."
Ronnie smiled happily. " I've got it."
"Yeah," said Chuck. "A bra stuffed with foam rubber and one of those girdles with the padded hips and fanny falsies."
Ronnie hefted two small bags of buckshot.
"I'm using these too."
"What's that for?" asked Stan.
"To add weight to the bra, stupid," said Ronnie. "Then they'll jiggle like a real pair."
"Wow!" howled Stan. "This I gotta see!"
"And last," said Maureen, "a wig. A red wig with very real hair. You boys ought to see me in it."
"I'd like to," said Chuck in a low voice.
Ronnie gathered up everything and started for the dressing room.
"Want me to help you with the makeup?" she asked.
"No, J can handle it," said Ronnie and he disappeared.
Stan smirked. "He dressed up in his mother's clothes as soon as he learned to walk."
"J see," murmured Maureen. "We'll have to wait."
Anxiously Chuck turned to Stan. "Check out the lights or props or something. I want to talk to Maureen. Private."
Stan showed his displeasure. "Okay, okay."
Chuck led Maureen up the aisle to the back row of seats and they sat down together.
"What is it, Chuck?"
"I need some advice. I don't know who else to ask about this."
"I'll try to help you all I can. What is it?"
"You know -Judy -June, don't you?"
"Of course. She's in my third period. What about her?"
"Well, she's a member of this club. We have girls too, if they can pass the initiation. Sort of like a harem. I like .Judy. I like her a whole lot. We've been having dates. Making out. Now I just found out that she's having a baby."
She stared back at him. Her hand gently massaged her own tummy. "J can easily see why."
"She wants to find a doctor."
"How far has it gone?"
"Close to two months."
"It's about time she did something about it, Chuck."
"She doesn't know anybody like that."
"What do you want me to do. Chuck?"
"You must know all about that. You must know somebody who can help her."
She turned her eyes away toward the stage where Stan was puttering around and she held them there so long that he thought she wasn't going to answer.
"I did know a doctor," she said finally.
"Then he'll do it?"
"I haven't seen him in years. If he's still in business, I'm sure he'll do it. I'll have to find out."
"Thanks, Maureen. That's a load off my mind."
"Everything will be all right, Chuck. I'm sure."
He thought that she might pat his hand or do something further to reassure him. But she didn't make any familiar moves.
They say there talking a little while longer, mostly about school.
There was a shout from Stan on stage.
"Hey! Look at this!"
Ronnie was ready. Ronnie had found his place in the world. Ronnie came to center stage with mincing steps and posed there. Ronnie amazed them.
Chuck was up on his feet, trying to hide his surge of emotions. "Why, you little camper you!"
They had always called him Chicken, because he had a sweet girlish face. But to Chuck he had been a short, skinny runt. He had heard of worms turning into beautiful butterflies. Ronnie, with an assist from Maureen, had turned into a work of erotic art.
Ronnie had finally come into his own. Ronnie was a beautiful girl.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The flaming red wig framed a face artfully made up with black eyebrow pencil, green eye shade, fake sable eyelashes, gleaming crimson lipstick. The body, etched in the skin-tight green jersey sheath, would have driven a movie sexpot mad with envy. The breasts stood out in exaggerated points and they had vibrated in that startling entrance. Ronnie turned slowly, like a model. The hips were curved and the fanny rounded. Even Ronnie's legs looked terrific, in sheer nylons and the wicked high heels.
"How you like?" asked Ronnie in a husky sexy voice.
Maureen was standing beside Chuck, smiling.
"He's perfect!"
"She's perfect," muttered Chuck. "The little bastard is a fairy."
Maureen moved out into the aisle. "You'll do fine. Ronnie will put it over for you. I'll have to say goodnight. I can't stay."
"You've got to see the act," insisted Chuck.
She shook her head. "I wish I could. I have some test papers to mark." She started away toward the doors. "See you tomorrow." She waved back at all of them.
Chuck had a strong urge to follow her. He held himself back and then slumped down in the seat again.
"Okay," he said to the two on the stage, "Let's see you take it from the beginning."
He watched Ronnie back off and then re-enter, fishing in her handbag as if to check an address. He watched Ronnie go through the motions of the plot with Stan. He kept watching Ronnie.
He couldn't help himself. Ronnie was prettier than any girl in high school. There, under the high-fashion red wig, a male mind was operating. It knew exactly what to do to intrigue another male. Every facial expression, every posture of the body, every whisper of the voice was driving Ronnie deeper and deeper into -- into Chuck.
He kept making Ronnie rehearse until the willowy body in the tight green sheet sagged with fatigue.
"Call it a night," said Chuck. "Get that stuff off, Ronnie."
He knew that he would be all right as soon as he saw the skinny little runt again.
"I think I'll leave it on," said Ronnie.
"What're you talking about?" cried Chuck. "How do you think you can get home in that drag?"
"My pop always wanted a girl," said Ronnie. "He sure brought you up right," chuckled Stan.
"I want him to see me like this," said Ronnie.
"See you like that!" echoed Stan. "You'll make Pop pop!" He guffawed.
Chuck shrugged. "So go on home like that."
"Walk me, will you, Chuck?" appealed Ronnie.
"Walk you?"
"That gang of toughs, the Green Dragons, always hang out on the next corner. If I'm alone, they might jump me."
"They'd jump you, all right," said Chuck. He stared at the weaving green hips. He said it had to look real and it did look real. This could pass for a girl anywhere. A highly provocative girl. What a test that would be to take this out on the street. "Okay," he said. "It's your funeral."
Ronnie gave a little squeal of delight. She blew a kiss at Stan. "Nighty night." Then she flounced off the stage and came wiggling up the aisle. She hooked her arm tightly in Chuck's. "Let's go, lover," she giggled.
Even up close Ronnie was hot stuff. The mouth was painted on large, red, and glistening; It was half open, invitingly. It exhaled between every other word, little breathless gasps, breathing like a soundtrack of Jayne Mansfield.
Stan had some parting advice: "Don't get your nose caught in his zipper!"
It was late. The streets were lonely. They crossed- at the corner, Ronnie's shoulder nudging into his at every few steps.
"Cut out the comedy," said Chuck. He felt strangely troubled.
"This's no comedy, honey. This's the way I feel."
"Behave yourself," he warned. "There they are."
A half dozen rowdies were engaging in jostling and horseplay on the next corner. These guys were rough and Chuck didn't want any part of them.
"If they catch on who you are," muttered Chuck, "they'll kick your prat off. And it'd serve you right for pulling this fool stunt."
"I don't know what stunt you're talking about, lover."
Ronnie's walk became even more outrageous, the hips gyrating and the buckshot-weighted breasts jiggling.
They caught sight of the cute queen.
Chuck kept his eyes front as he dragged Ronnie past the boisterous gang.
Their remarks, calling for every perversion, burned his ears. In one way he was relieved. From what they were saying, they believed Ronnie was a real girl. Fortunately none of them reached out to grab her.
Once along the block, Chuck breathed easier. "I ought to have my head examined."
"What's the matter, sweetheart? Why the hurry? It might've been fun if we'd been stopped. Maybe like gang rape."
"You'd better come off it, Ronnie. You're not what you think you are."
"What do you think I am, honey Chuck?"
The significance of this disturbing creature swinging beside him was biting in deeper and deeper. It looked and acted like the most desirable of girls. What the hell did it matter what was under the skirt. It was the girl act that counted. And how he needed a girl.
"All that rehearsing," Ronnie was saying, "repeating those lines over and over. I'm parched. Buy me a cherry coke, sweetie."
"Are you nuts?"
"There's an all-night drug store."
She led him into it. The clerk and some people in there looked at them. Looked at Ronnie lecherously, enviously, admiringly. But there was nothing suspicious in the way they looked.
"You're lucky you're playing it for real," said Chuck as they sat facing each other across a formica-topped table.
"I am for real. Don't you know that?"
The clerk brought the two cherry cokes that they ordered and Ronnie shot him a smouldering glance from under the long fake eyelashes.
The clerk grinned back and walked off.
Ronnie took a long drink and set the glass down. The red mouth yawned wide. "I'll be glad when I get home."
"What'll your folks think?"
"They'll welcome me like a long-lost daughter."
"Your whole family must be kooky. I'll be glad to get home myself."
"Why? What are you going to do?"
"What do you care?"
Ronnie's little nose wrinkled temptingly. "Maybe we can do it better together. Chuck pretended he didn't care. "Like what?"
"Like fun."
"I still don't read you."
"No?" Ronnie's small shoulders moved as she changed position on the seat Under the table, something firm touched Chuck's inner thigh and slid toward his crotch.
It was one of the spike heels Ronnie was wearing. Maureen's heels. Black patent leather pumps, slim, high heels. The mere thought of them rekindled in his mind the excitement and desire they triggered in him.
It wasn't necessary to ask or tell Ronnie anything. Ronnie knew what to do instinctively.
The gentle friction of the side of her shoe against him aroused him promptly.
Ronnie giggled across the table. "Down, boy, down!"
"You little bitch! Keep that up and I'll make you crawl under the table!"
"You want me to?" dared Ronnie, already sliding down in the seat.
"No, for cripes sake!" He gulped down what was left of the drink. "Let's get out of here!"
"Yes, lover, I suppose we've wasted enough time."
Ronnie got up and stood there, making a big production of smoothing the tight green sheath down over the hips and backside.
Chuck paid the tab and escorted Ronnie out. As they left, Ronnie sent a flirtatious glance over her shoulder at the soda clerk. "I'll be seeing you!"
"I hope so," said the clerk, looking hungrily at that busy tail.
On the street, Chuck said: "You know what you are, Ronnie?"
"What?"
"A little tramp. You want every guy you see."
" Uh-huh. Aren't you glad you've got me?"
"Is this the way you think a real chick acts?"
"I don't care. This's the way .Ronnie acts."
Ronnie lived in a walkup apartment house. They' went into the front hall. It was quiet in there under a dim light. Ronnie leaned back against the marble wall and pulled him up close to her.
"Golly," she whispered, "I hate to say goodnight to you."
He was believing it more and more. "Me too," he admitted.
"Just a few minutes more," breathed Ronnie. "Huh?"
One knee lifted in the tight green sheath as one high heel was braced against the wall behind. The crooked knee went in between Chuck's spread legs. He squeezed his legs together on the rounded thigh, easing his hips back and forth.
"Feel good, darling?" whispered Ronnie. "Great."
"Feel some more."
He let his hands roam over the body. It would have fooled anybody. "You know something, Chuck baby?" He groaned. "What?"
"You won't have to go home to feel glad."
"Oh, baby, baby!" He squeezed the redhead tight.
Under the stairs Ronnie showed him what "she" could do.
CHAPTER NINE
Maureen Quinn didn't do anything about Judy June until the next morning. She wanted to sleep on it After breakfast in her bachelor-girl flat she used the telephone director, checking the name of Dr. John Cooney in the listings. It was there, giving both his office and home phone numbers. He was still alive and kicking, still in business.
On her way to high school, she stopped off in a phone booth. She felt a nagging excitement as she dialed his home number. A woman never forgets that first man, the man who takes her virginity, no matter what he was like or what the circumstances were. She remembered how desperately she had wanted to go back to him that afternoon, but didn't have the nerve.
"Hello?' his voice asked "Dr. Cooney, this is Maureen Quinn."
"Well, Maureen!" he said, without an instant's delay. "It's been six years. Where have you been all this time?"
"In college, mostly." She thought his voice sounded older and thinner. He was in his fifties now.
"Doctor," she hurried on, "some time ago I learned that you specialized in - female disorders." She had to be careful what she said on the phone.
"Yes, I handle quite a few of those cases. Why?"
"I'd like to see you this afternoon."
"It's a wonder you haven't had need of ray services long before this," he said.
"It isn't ma I want to bring a young girl student of mine." k "Oh. Certainly. Any time after three. I don't start regular evening office hours till seven."
"There's something else, Doctor. What do you charge? Her parents don't know and there isn't much money."
"We can work out a satisfactory payment, I'm sure. I adjust to the circumstances."
"I'll be there after three-thirty, Doctor."
"Yes, Maureen. Nice hearing from you again. Bring your little friend."
She hung up and continued on to school.
She was behind her desk when Chuck Ashley came into the classroom with the other students. He glanced quickly at her as he went to his seat. He amused her. She knew that he was waiting for her to make the next move in this game She was debating whether she should make any more moves with him. After yesterday, she felt somewhat disapproving of herself. She told herself that she should never have relations with him again. But she knew that her driving hunger for love could not be so easily harnessed.
It thrilled her to see them get excited and then give in to their excitement She couldn't stop using these mannerisms. They were part of her outgoing personality.
Today she wanted to relax and do as little teaching as possible. She announced to the class that they were going to view some audiovisual aids and she appointed a boy to fix up the motion picture screen in the front of the room while another ran the film projector in back.
"We're continuing our study of propaganda," she said. "Today we will watch a film that shows methods used in World War IL Turn out the lights, please."
The lights in the classroom went out, the window shades had been drawn, and she was gratified to sink down into the flickering darkness and let her own thoughts roam On the screen moved images of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin.
She heard someone say in a bored tone: "Aw those ancient creeps!"
As the movie unwound, she could hear some of the girls giggling and hear occasional grunts and groans from the boys. Anything could be going on in this darkness, and it probably was.
The movie killed most of the period. The lights came on again, just before the bell, and everybody blinked eyes.
"For your assignment students, write me a report on what you've seen today."
They all got up and shuffled out again, going to their next class. She saw Chuck give her a longing look, but she only gave him a brief smile in return.
Judy June entered for the third period. Maureen waited until the session was over before she touched the girl on the arm.
"Judy!"
"Yes, Miss Quinn?"
This was a pretty girl and she didn't blame Chuck.
"Please see me in the faculty lounge at 11:30, Judy."
Fear leaped into the girl's blue eyes. "Is there anything wrong?"
"No, nothing wrong," smiled Maureen. "I only want to talk to you personally."
"I'll be there, Miss Quinn." Judy walked quickly out After the last period in the morning, Maureen went into the faculty lounge. A few of the other teachers were there, reading newspapers or discussing outside events among themselves.
Judy came in promptly, shooting her eyes around for Maureen.
There was a corner where they could talk privately.
"Sit down, Judy."
Judy, hugging her armload of books, sat down questioningly.
Maureen sat close enough so that their knees almost touched. "I don't want you to become alarmed in any way from what I have to say to you. This comes under the heading of pupil-teacher counseling."
Judy nodded, waiting.
"Judy, I know you're going to have a baby."
"Oh no!" Judy's face turned white and she dropped her head, ashamed to meet Maureen's eyes. "How did you guess?"
"I didn't guess. Chuck Ashley told me. It's nothing to get unduly upset about. It happens all the time."
"It never happened to me - before."
"You want to do something about it" Judy lifted her head again, her big blue eyes beseeching help. "I've got to do something about it"
"I know. I can help you. I know a doctor who does those things. I want you to agree to go with me to see him his afternoon."
"This afternoon?" She looked apprehensive. "Couldn't we wait till maybe -?"
"We can't wait, Judy. Every day counts."
"Yes, I know," she admitted.
"Do you ever stay away from home overnight, with girl friends?"
"Every so often I spend the night with Roz Evans. Why?"
"Tell your parents that you're going to visit her tonight That will cover up your being away from home."
"Yes," said Judy slowly, "I'll tell them."
"I want you to leave with me right after school."
"Yes, Miss Quinn."
"And don't talk about this to anyone."
"Oh, you can be sure I won't do that."
"See you later, Judy."
Judy nodded and got up, still hugging her books. She walked out to go to lunch.
CHAPTER TEN
Maureen and Judy got off the bus. Dr. Cooney's old neighborhood was more rundown than ever. Maureen recalled the apprehension she experienced when she mounted that creaking stoop six years ago and she was sure that Judy felt much the same way now.
The front door was locked and Maureen rang the bell. In a moment the door opened, as if he were waiting just inside for them.
She looked at him. Dr. Cooney's face had aged into ruts, the heavy eyebrows had grown white, and the tweed suit he was wearing looked like the same old one with the same old wrinkles. His breath still reeked of tobacco.
He was staring back at them too, mostly at Maureen. "You're the spitting image of your mother, bless her. And she was the greatest beauty of my life."
"Thank you,' Doctor. This is Judy June."
"Ah, yes, we'll have everything all taken care of in a jiffy." He put his arm in a fatherly way about Judy's shoulders and eased her toward the examining room. "Nothing to be afraid of, my dear child, nothing at all."
Maureen started to follow.
He stopped her. "You'd better wait out here, Maureen."
Maureen glanced around the shabby waiting room. "How long?"
"About twenty minutes," he said. "That's all."
"I'll wait."
Dr. Cooney led Judy inside and closed the sliding doors. Maureen tried to sit on the battered leather couch and interest herself in the out-of-date magazines. But she couldn't sit still. She got up and paced back and forth on the threadbare carpet, glancing at her wrist-watch anxiously every few minutes. At first there had been some indistinct murmurs from behind the closed doors. After that, silence.
When a half hour, had gone by, Maureen became worried. Several times she was tempted to rap on the doors and ask how Judy was.
Then the doors opened and Dr. Cooney came out. Sweat streamed from his forehead and his shirt was damp.
'Maureen stared at him. "What happened? Is she all right?" She looked past him and could see the examining table. Nothing was on it.
"Oh, she's fine," said Cooney. "She's in the back room sleeping it off. She'll have to remain for a couple of hours."
Maureen was relieved for Judy's sake. Dr. Cooney mopped sweat off his face with a hand towel. "It's a strain on you, Doctor."
"A strain indeed," he said. "That lovely thing stretched out before me. Helpless. It was an effort to keep my mind - "
"I'll wait and take her home with me."
"Yes, Maureen. And while you're waiting -why not leave a specimen with me."
"Specimen?"
"Urine. For the Ascheim Zondek test. It's always best to be sure."
She smiled. "I think I'm all right."
"Why not be certain?' He reached back inside for a urinal. "It'll only take a moment." He handed it to her.
She took it He kept watching her greedily. The old lecher, she thought, he wants me to do it right in front of him All right, then, take a good look at this!
As she hitched her tight skirt up and get her legs spread, he kept babbling about how he would use immature white mice for an injection of the urine. In four days they would be killed and a report would be made.
Her legs wide, she held the receptacle between them. He watched her until she was finished. She let her skirt drop and handed him the urinal. He placed it on his desk.
"There's the payment to be settled up, Doctor. What are you going to charge?"
"I told you that I would adjust to the circumstances." He eyed her all over.
His hankering gloat was giving her a queer thrilling sensation.
He said: "I'm not asking for money, Maureen. You must understand, in your womanly wisdom, that my needs are as strong as they ever were, but now it's becoming increasingly more difficult to find a willing young girl."
She watched the lechery shifting on his old face. She had wanted to come back to him, long ago. Now she was back.
"I see," she said. She was thinking, weighing what was expected of her against what she wanted to give.
She didn't relish spending an entire afternoon trying to inflate an old man's ego. He thought he was better than he really was. The sooner it was begun, she figured, the sooner it would end. And she firmly believed that if she was going to do anything at all, it should be done well.
She surveyed the office behind him. Text books, skeleton charts, a cranium on his desk, vials, instruments, a porcelain basin on the floor with a six weeks' old embryo in it.
Chuck should see that, she thought a little wildly. It's his.
"On the table," she asked him, "again?"
A ghost of yesterday looked out of his eyes. "You knew."
"And I wanted more."
"Why didn't you come back? Oh, lord, why didn't you come back?"
"I am back," she said. She was in no mood for reminiscing.
"Not on the table," he said. "The couch will be more comfortable." He turned away from her for an instant to lock the door to the waiting room. "Don't undress, Maureen. Just take off your skirt."
No longer hesitating, she unfastened her belt and zipped down. She wriggled the skirt off the classic legs. She had stopped wearing panties. They were too uncomfortable against her highly sensitive flesh.
Below her waist she wore only high nylons, taped to her thighs, and tall heels.
His eyes gloated at her. "Better, much better, than I expected."
He dropped his own baggy tweed pants and kicked them off. Underneath he wore white cotton long Johns, stretched on his skinny shanks, making him look like a decrepit ballet dancer. He didn't take these off. He only unbuttoned the fly.
She lay on the bulging couch, looking up at him.
In a moment of bitter truth, he muttered: "Maureen, I'm not too old for you, am I?"
She found her own breath getting rapid with anticipation. "I don't care how old you are. If you had a beard, I'd singe it off."
She reached up and touched him. A rind that was hot and dry. Life pulsed. On her back, she squirmed around. Tickling him to keep his excitement high, she flung her legs out, spread-eagling herself.
He was guttural with desire. Yet he let her guide him. There was no youthful impetuousness, no hurry, about older men. He wanted to last a very long time.
Gratefully her body clasped him. Her heels blocked behind his bent knees, her hands sought his backside, guiding its slow downward progress.
"I never thought I'd do this again with you," he breathed in her ear.
"Keep going," she whispered back. "You're doing wonderfully."
His dry lips brushed against her face. "You're wonderful too, Maureen, wonderful."
She wanted him to conserve his energy. "Shhh, don't talk."
He moved, slow and steady. - The rusty springs of the old couch picked up the rhythm. The creaking was loud in the waiting room.
She felt herself caught up in this cataract of lust, tumbling over and over with it. She let herself go. His incessant agitation brought her to the verge of her own finely tuned passions and she went sweeping over it with a muffled scream.
Age made him more durable. He had not caught up with her.
She began begging him. "Oh, please, please. Finish, finish."
He mumbled something, his body of bone and gristle rocking ceaselessly.
Urgently she flung herself at him, meeting him with a vicious pelvic grind.
His grunts got shorter, his assault more savage. His snorting caught in his throat Life hammered out of him.
He slowly collapsed on top of her.
She thought he had passed out "Doctor, Doctor, are you all right?"
His head lay with great fatigue against her white neck. "Maureen," he husked, "I'll never be the same - after this. Let me rest, let me rest" Thrusting her hands at him, she had to squirm to get from, underneath this deadweight. She got to her feet, struggled into her skirt, and looked down at him.
He had rolled over, lying on his back, panting as if he had just finished running a marathon. He was all gone, all tuckered out. She bent over him, inspecting the now-shriveled man-thing clinically.
"Brandy," he whispered hoarsely. "In medicine cabinet."
She hurried into the examining room, stepping gingerly around the grisly object in the white basin, and found the bottle of brandy. She sloshed a liberal dose into a glass and sped back to him.
She held the glass to his lips. The taste and the bouquet aroused him sufficiently.
"I'm sorry, Doctor, I'm so sorry."
His labored breathing was subsiding. "No, Maureen. Eternally grateful. Never thought I'd experience anything like that again. Not after your dear mother passed on. Oh, you nearly killed me, you glorious engine of destruction."
"You sure you're all right?"
He groggily nodded his head, sitting on the edge of the sofa in his long drawers.
"Miss Quinn," said girlish treble.
Maureen jerked around to the doorway leading to the examining table. Standing looking into the waiting room was Judy. She was swaying on her feet and her skirt was on backwards and her sweater inside-out, as if she had dressed in a daze.
"Judy!"
"I want to leave, Miss Quinn." Maureen rushed to her and supported her with an arm. "You're too weak, Judy."
"Now, Miss Quinn, now!"
Indecisively Maureen bit her lip. Dr. Cooney lifted his head wearily, looking from one to the other of them, then he nodded weakly.
"I'll call a cab," said Maureen. "You're going to stay in my flat, Judy."
"Thank you, Miss. Quinn. Thank you very much."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
On Friday afternoon Maureen went back stage in the Little Theatre to praise the boys for their part in the dramatics. Ronnie, in the white slave skit, had drawn the loudest howls and the loudest applause. Ronnie had soaked up all the adulation like a born female.
Maureen had heard a woman behind her in the audience say: "That can't be a boy, though the program says it is."
Chuck had played the part of the undercover agent who rescued the damsel from a fate worse than death - it says. Maureen thought he looked handsome in his best Sunday suit and a white shirt with a very long button-down collar.
Ronnie, in a cluster of frantic admirers, sat on a high stool, putting on a leg display like a visiting movie queen.
As Maureen approached, Chuck was saying: "When are you going to climb out of that drag?"
"Maybe never," breathed Ronnie, batting long sable eyelashes. "Maybe I'll go to Denmark and make it permanent They adore me."
"Put me on your date list Chicken," said Stan.
Ronnie sniffed. "Why should you be the exception?"
"Well done, boys," said Maureen.
Chuck's face lighted up. "Hey, look who's here! We all know what you did for Judy. What do you say, cats? Let's make Maureen a member!" Stan's eyes gleamed gluttonously. "Initiation, man. And all that jazz."
Chuck's face fell. "In her case, we can skip that."
"Now you know we can't play favorites, Chuck," growled Stan.
Chuck's enthusiasm had waned. "It ain't such a good idea."
Maureen was curious. "What sort of initiation?"
"A chick's gotta make out with the leaders -all the way," said Stan.
"These are the rules," admitted Chuck, "and I guess we can't change them."
"Oh," she said, hoping she looked properly appalled. "Who are the leaders?"
"Stan and I - " began Chuck.
"And Al," added Stan.
"He's not - " Stan kicked him in the ankle to shut him. "And Bob and Dick and Ray and Phil. About seven, all told. You know how they all feel about you, Miss Quinn."
She had no reason to be shocked. .At one time or another in her classroom she had observed each of them involved in their preoccupation and surreptitious activity. Stan himself was incorrigible. She knew how they felt about her, all right.
"Willing to join?" simpered Stan.
"I'll have to think about it."
She turned and fled.
She almost ran up the metal stairs to the hallway. Her voice seemed to be shouting after her: "Get away from them! You don't need boys! You need men! A man! Find a man!"
She slowed the clamor of her heels as she went out into the late afternoon sunshine.
Most of the faculty had attended the show and a number of the men teachers were strolling toward their cars in the parking lot. She saw a tall figure in a dark suit. Gil Fisk, the chemistry teacher. He was in his thirties. He was a man. His wife had died only six months ago. It was about time he did some forgetting.
Gil had made several feeble attempts to get her attention in the past few months. She hadn't been particularly interested and aside from some police small talk they had never really said anything to each other. His manners were mild and he was not forward. The kind of a man a girl picks for a steady.
"Probably just what I need," she said to herself.
He was heading for his parked car. She cut across the square to meet him as if by pure chance.
"Hi, Gil!" she greeted warmly. His brown eyes expressed mild interest, "Hello!"
"Like the show, Gil?"
"That kid Ronnie was a riot"
"Wasn't he!"
"Here's my car." A moment of hesitation. "May I give you a lift?"
She winked. "You certainly may."
He waited till she was inside the car, holding the door open for her, then he went around and got in and backed out of the space. "I'm on my way home with a stop-off at the shopping center."
"Good. I have to get some groceries too." She waited till they reached the red light at the first intersection. "What are you doing tonight?"
"Nothing in particular."
"Home, a little TV, and in-bed by ten o' clock?"
"That's about the size of it," he admitted. "When was the last time you had a night out?"
He smiled sadly. "Not lately."
"I thought so! If you're going to be a hermit, how am I going to have my night out?"
"Are you asking me for a date? Why?"
"Because I want to."
"I'm flattered. I'll be happy to change my dreary plans for his evening. Have dinner with me."
"Thank you." Before they reached the next intersection, she said: "Gil, I have a better idea. Keep on going to the supermarket. I'll buy the groceries, you pay for them, and I'll cook them."
He took interest. "At your place?"
"At your place."
"It's a deal!"
He drove into the shopping center parking area. When they went into the supermarket, she led him to the various food counters. It was fun shopping for two.
"How long has it been since you've had a steak?"
"Weeks."
She couldn't go wrong with steak. It was a staple in a man's diet, along with potatoes, green beans, carrots, lettuce, tomatoes, and apple pie. She threw in cheese dips, salted nuts, and olives.
Storing their paper sacks in the back of the car, they drove on. She made him stop in front of a liquor store while she ran in to buy a fifth of bourbon. She had an idea it would take this much to loosen him up, thaw him out.
He had an apartment on Elm Hill. It overlooked the town. She liked it up here. He carried the sacks up the stairs, looking very domestic, and let her fumble in his jacket pocket for his keyring to open the apartment door.
She found the light switch. The woman's touch was gone from the rooms. They had a man-lives-here look, racks of tobacco pipes, scuffed off slippers, some papers and magazines strewn about But it was still neat He brought the groceries into the little white kitchen.. "It's all yours," he waved toward the range.
She stripped off her jacket. "Got an apron?"
"There's one hanging behind the door."
She pulled the door back and took it down. She wondered if it -had belonged to his wife. He didn't say. It was clean and crisp, a dinky little thing of linen and ruffles, the kind she called a tummy tickler. When she tied the bow at the back of her waist, she knew she looked positively nubile.
"While I pitch in, Gil, you make some cocktails. Have you got fixings?"
" Ready-mixed martinis."
"Good. Stir up a whole pitcher" full."
"Right" He left her to broil the steak.
"Olives or onions?" he called in from the other room.
"Onions," she answered.
He brought in the first of the martinis and they toasted each other's health in the kitchen.
"I didn't know you could sling such a mean skillet," he said.
She smiled. "I almost took home economics."
She felt warm. She was wearing a grey sharkskin skirt that fitted her with the intimacy of a casing on a baloney. Frequently her right hand wandered under the tiny apron, caressing the outlined curve of her belly, sensuous fingers pecking in underneath, touching the thrill button that turned on her own fire alarm. She didn't care if he did see her doing it. It would get the pilot light going under his own front burner.
He watched her uneasily, then made an excuse to leave her. "I'll set the dining table," he offered.
"Uh-huh," she said dreamily.
In a little while she shed the apron and came out. He was sitting in a big easy chair, studying her approach. She made sure her approach was worth studying. In a black turtle-neck sweater, she moved across the room with an energetic bounce. Everything under the sweater seemed to be made of jello.
"Is supper ready?" he asked.
"All I have to do is take it off the stove.
In a few minutes. We have time for another martini." She seized the pitcher and poured him a brimming glass. "One for yourself too. Bottoms up", Gil."
He swallowed his cocktail. "We're taking a chance with your reputation, Maureen," he said seriously. "A lady in a widower's apartment, him plying her with drinks."
"Who's plying who?" she dimpled. To heck with grammar. She wasn't in a classroom now.. And she was hoping he would forget about chemistry and algebra too. "I'm plying you."
"What would the faculty say?"
"Who cares, Gil?" She measured him under her long black eyelashes. "I'd better see to that steak before it burns." The floor titled a little. She was right about the alcohol. Those martinis were bombs.
She put the steaks on the table and they sat down to enjoy them. He finally sat back with a contented sigh and wiped his lips with his napkin.
"I'll help you clear away these supper things."
"Leave them," she said. "All that can be done-later."
She got up and walked to where she had left the liquor store package on the sideboard. She unwrapped the bottle of bourbon and broke the seals. The tumbled some ice cubes out of a silver bucket into two tall glasses and filled both of them generously.
He had settled again in his easy chair. The most natural thing in the world. She handed him one of the glasses. They drank steadily as they talked. There was a lights-out quality in her eyes. Her face was getting flushed. As she spoke some of her words got tangled and she giggled it off.
She weaved in front of him. "I want to offer a testimonial to this liquor."
"A booze commercial."
"A booze commercial." She tittered. "Liquor's quicker. I used to have the crookedest bow legs. Now look!"" She set down her glass, hiked her skirt halfway up her thighs, and pressed her legs together.
He goggled at them. "Straight!"
"That'll make anything straight - and stiff as a board. You're getting stiff!"
"Stiff!" He drank some more.
The skirt still up, she sat in a chair opposite his and carefully crossed the legs.
He feasted his eyes on them, his lips parched. With most of her thighs showing, she knew the effect this had on a male. It was hitting him deep inside like a depth charge.
He finished his glass in one gulp.
She kept watching him. "Have you ever posed for a sculptor?"
"Me? he chuckled. "No!"
"That's a hobby of mine. Sculpting in clay. Would you pose for me?"
She pictured him naked. Long and lean. Little delicious shudders raced up her back.
"Eight now?" He tried to laugh it off as ridiculous.
"No, silly. Sometime."
"If you can stand it, I guess I can."
"Soon," she said. "In the nude."
"You must be kidding!"
She eyed his facial reactions. "I'm not kidding, Gil. That doesn't offend you, does it?"
"No, Maureen," he said, realizing she meant it. "I think it's a compliment."
"I like the way you're built," she said. "I'm built funny."
"Funny? You?"
"I must be. When I walk wearing tight panties the friction keeps me all excited."
He flushed, but went on manfully: "Are you wearing -?"
"Uh-huh. As a man of science, you should know that there are two things that defy gravity."
"What two things?"
"Men's shirttails and my panties. They're forever crawling up!"
She squeezed her crossed thighs tighter together and winced a little. "Oooh! They're driving me wild!"
She detected his muscular twitch as his aspirations were stirred. His voice had a rasp in it. "You're quite a girl, Maureen."
Instinctively she knew that she had dangled him over the fire long enough and he was just about cooked.
"I'll fix some refills," she said.
She got up and had to grab the back of her chair to keep her balance. She went to the sideboard and kept her back to him, letting her pelvis shift from side to side restlessly. When she looked into the silver ice bucket she discovered it was empty.
"No more rocks," she said.
"In the refrigerator," he grinned.
She lurched into the kitchen. A moment later she poked her head out again. "The ice-cube tray is stuck, Gil. I need some help."
"Me?"
"C'mon, Gil. Some work for you." She looked enticing in the doorway. "What I need is muscle."
He set down his empty glass and got up and walked toward her. He seemed steady enough. She backed away and stood helplessly beside the open refrigerator.
He grabbed the ice tray, wrenched it loose, and it slid out.
"I shouldn't bother you now," he said, turning around toward her.
She was right behind him. "It wasn't that that was bothering me, Gil."
She moved closer. He suddenly grasped her and swung her around until she was pressed back against the refrigerator. The yielding pressure of her big, firm breasts under her black sweater were giving her hot waves. She felt as if she were going to burst out in blisters. She squirmed against him.
"Gil, please tell me something. It's very important."
"Yes?"
"Have you been out with many girls since..?"
"No. None." Oh lord, she thought, what he's been saving. Saving it all up for one poor girl. It will be heaven for both of us.
His dead weight was against her and he raked his fingers through her honey blonde hair.
She pulled his head over to meet her out-thrust face. She was making little hissing noises through her teeth as if she were in sudden pain. It was pain. A deep delicious turmoil of agony. Her lips were red, moist and hungry.
She felt his mouth hard on hers and she wanted him to keep it there. She was a nibbler. Her lips parted and her teeth began to nibble his lower lip. Then she moved her tongue and his met it, sensuously.
He pulled back. His hot, fast, alcoholic breath was in her face. Her whole face had a slack look and her eyes were wild with desire.
"Gil!" she whispered hoarsely.
"The bedroom!" He leaned heavily on her. "Quick!"
She helped him out of the kitchen and across the living room. The way he was now dragging his feet gave her much concern. It wasn't passion that was making him reel. He had too much to drink. He couldn't hold his liquor and was out on his feet.
They bumped into the bedroom and he toppled over onto the bed, lying there face up.
She bent over him and shook him roughly. He didn't stir.
She looked down at him disgustedly, "Dead! Dead all over!" She wrung her hands helplessly. "What good are you to me now? You - limp, limp man you! Where can I find a live one?"
CHAPTER TWELVE
Chuck watched Maureen run out of the Little Theatre. A hole of desire gnawed deeper into his gut. He needed her, man, like how he needed her! He'd had an itch all day that was becoming unbearable. Ever since that climactic moment on the floor of the clothes closet, he needed her to calm his twitching body as desperately as a junkie sought a fix.
His mind sneared at him.: She's got a dozen guys lined up for tonight!
What was left? Ronnie? Ronnie had just raffled herself off and Stan won. When Chuck thought of the enjoyable evening ahead for Stan he shivered all over.
Judy June was out of action, still recovering from that illegal operation. She was a good kid to go through all that and he'd have to try to make it up to her somehow. She had told him how Maureen had paid off the doctor, nearly killing the old guy. It didn't surprise him. What Maureen had was better than money in the bank.
He saw Marj Baxter, her brown hair tossing, in the crowd.
The last time he was out with her she was chicken, running scared. It was worth another try.
Near the exit he caught up with her and stopped her.
"Hi, Marj. Let's make the scene. I'm available tonight."
"So am I, Chuck."
"Then it's a tangle."
"Only if you'll use these." She opened her handbag and let him take a peek at what she carried inside. He saw a half-dozen koin packs nestled in the bottom of the bag.
"That'd be like washing my feet with sox on," he scoffed.
"Sorry. That's it, Chuck." She snapped her handbag closed and walked away.
"How do you like that?" he muttered. "She put me down." He glanced critically at himself. "It must be these Ivy League duds. I'm not projecting."
He went home and changed into a sweatshirt and skin-tight pants. Then he strolled down a quiet street to a private house and rang the doorbell. A black-haired girl answered the door. He knew that she would be baby sitting.
"Hi, Roz. I figured you were getting bored by now."
"Oh, Chuck," she said. Her face fell. , "I can't let anyone in. Not anyone."
"Bull! They didn't mean me. They meant some kook who wanted to come in and rob you or rape you or something. They know me."
"Well." She hesitated. "I suppose it's all right. For a while. Come on in. Would you like to see the baby?"
"Not particularly," he said.
She shut the front door and showed him into the nursery anyway.
"Isn't it cute?" She cooed at it "What is it?"
"It's a boy, silly."
"How'd you know?"
She made a face at him. "I didn't peek, if that's what you mean."
"Maybe you didn't. But I'm sure peeking." It wasn't the baby he was staring at.
She wore a thin powder-blue sweater and stretch tights of the same color. They clung to her ripe young body so snugly that no detail of it was a mystery.
What are you doing to me, baby, what are you doing?
He followed her back into the front room, where she had been sitting watching TV. His eyes were on the roll of her firm buttocks all the way.
"What time they coming home?" he asked.
"Eleven."
"Not before?"
"They never do," she said, sitting down on the divan with one leg curled under her.
She pushed him forcefully away. "No, you don't. None of that. You sit over there, Chuck. Go on, go on. If you try that I can't let you stay."
He looked at her like a banished man, then wearily flopped down in a chair a few feet away.
"I don't have to touch you. Or even come near you. I can get it all in here." He tapped his skull. "Imagination, Roz. I can have it with you in my imagination."
"Go ahead," she said.
"You want to know what it's like?"
"Sure. Why not?"
"Well." He frowned to get the picture into focus. " First of all, I drive up for you in the old man's car. What a set of wheels. It's a snazzy job with sharp paint and chrome frosting. Why not, huh? It don't cost anything to imagine the best." He laughed a little and she tittered along with him. "I sound off the horn. Beeep beeeep! And then you come out. Wow-wee! Are you something, Roz! Man! I can hardly take it, just looking at you!"
She leaned forward, curiosity getting the best of her. "What am I like? Are you going to tell me?"
"Of course I'll tell you. You're in this with me, aren't you? Baby, oh, baby! You're wearing a black leather dress, skin tight, and have you got the shape for it! Yummy! Cheez, baby, don't walk like that. You'll have me doing nip-ups. You get into the car and I can hardly keep my hands off you. It's tough trying to behave with a piece of pastry like you beside me. You tell me it's hands-off - just like you did now - until we get there."
"Where?" she said. "Where're we going?"
"The drive-in movie. Yeah. They're showing a flick that we'll always remember. It's loaded with sentiment. The Slimy Creature from the Sump."
She giggled. "You're crazy, Chuck."
"No, no. Listen. We sit there, you and I, snuggled close together, looking at it. It's one of those flicks where a filthy deformed monster grabs off a nearly naked beautiful blonde. The minute this brute puts his scaly arms around her she falls off into a faint. That makes it easier for him. Then he goes hippity-hippity-hop off to his lair with her. You know what for? Everybody knows what for. You know why they always have a foul-looking monster with a beautiful girl in his clutches?"
"Why?" she said.
"It's sexy, that's why. It's always sexy when some ugly, scummy monster gets hold of a beautiful girl. The audience eats it up. They want to see her get hers from him. it's even that way in the fairy tales. Remember Beauty and the Beast and Little Red Riding Hood?"
"Hey! yes, Chuck, you're right, at that. Tell me more!"
"Just think about King Kong getting his big hairy hands on you."
"Oooooh!" She shook deliciously. "I'd -I'd go ape!"
He proceeded to spin out of his engorged mind a whole mad plot.
"You're good. You ought to write them."
"I do."
"I mean, for TV and the movies."
"I could." He looked fixedly at her. "That monster on the screen wasn't the only one having fun at the drive-in. I've got you in the back seat, baby. Mmmm boy! That leather dress. I can't help myself. I slide my lips along your bared shoulder to your neck and then up to your ear. I nibble all around your ear. Then I stick my tongue into it. I know you like that. My right hand touches you just below the knee and moves up under your skirt, squeezing your thigh. I know you like that too. You get all squirmy. I run my mouth down your cheek to your lips. We really glue them together, baby. My other hand is moving around on that left booby. What a pair of bumpers you've got, Rox. Lord, you're beautiful. The dress is all open in front in a kinda V neck. I kiss you all the way down between your gorgeous tits. My hand underneath your skirt has reached high. Oh baby, you have nothing on underneath!"
His eyes were half closed as he superimposed his dream girl on the real one. His eyes touched the parts of her body that he said his hands touched. His imagination was glowing hot. A psychic love-up, he thought. Old Freud should get a load of this.
That throbbing itch was killing him.
She studied him, her eyes growing wider.
"Then," he managed to say, "we can't take anymore. Not that fooling around."
"What then?" she asked breathlessly.
"It's dreamsville, baby." He closed his eyes a moment, viewing the dream in all its vividness. "Aw, Roz Roz baby, don't make it end like this!"
She was quiet and he opened his eyes to take a look. Her hand was resting between her spread legs, the middle finger moving slightly. Hunger was in her face. Finally. She hurriedly glanced at the clock.
"We've got time, sugar doll," he urged." Plenty of time."
"I guess so," she said faintly.
She jumped to her feet, the light blue tights stuck to her curves. She walked Quickly out of the living room, letting him follow hex.
They were in the bedroom. He took her in his arms for a moment. There was no need for a loving up.
"I felt it, Chuck." Her whisper was all shuddery. "I felt everything you were doing to me." .
"Hurry, baby, hurry," he panted.
She hooked her thumbs in the elastic waistband of her tights and snapped them down. A sweet white belly and upper thighs were exposed. That was all the stripping she did. She leaned back on the bed.
Feverishly he zipped down. There was a moment of suspenseful agony as he crawled between her wide-spread legs. Then she gasped, winced, and muffled a cry as he fanthomed her.
He savored one glorious quiet moment of sheer intimacy, of sweet repose, while his body ached for activity.
His hips arched up.
Then they froze together.
A key was making sounds in the lock of the front door.
"Oh no!" Her eyes were staring glassily. "They've come back!"
It took a terrific effort of will power to regain command of his ridging muscles. With a sob he wrenched back.
"Get out!" she was saying hysterically. "Get out quick!"
The open bedroom window was only a few feet away. He scrambled toward it and went tumbling out across the sill.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
He was trembling in the bushes two backyards away before he could get zipped up.
The tremendous effort to regain his self-control and the fright of nearly being caught by irate parents left him drenched with sweat. He lay still until his throbbing subsided, then he brushed himself off and walked down a driveway toward the street. He couldn't quiet the tremor completely.
He was disgusted with the world. Wouldn't you know that would happen! Just when I was making out! Friday night, too, and I don't have to get home early. I don't have to get home at all if I don't want to. But where else can I go? Everything else is a bust! What have I got at home except that pile of pictures in the closet? Fever Burns again? I'll wear myself out just looking at Fever Burns. A man shouldn't have to use photographs! If I keep this up I'll go crazy! That's what they say. You can get simpleminded. There may be some truth in it. The way I'm feeling I'm sure heading for the nut house. Chuck's knuckles showed white with the force of his fisted hands. He took several deep breaths. No, damn it! I'm not going simple. Not yet, not yet!
Where's my girl? My nice soft sweet loving girl? Maureen!
What chance did he have for her tonight? But, for that matter, what chance did he have anywhere else?
He knew her address. He had looked that up in the phone directory a long time ago when his interest was first aroused. And that was the first time he laid eyes on her.
She lived in a block of flats in Willow Lane on the other side of Central Street. He slipped along in the shadows. Maybe she'd have the light on and he could get a peep at her nuzzling some John. It would help him. It would be better than nothing.
He found her house and looked up at the windows. Some were dark and some dimly lighted. Her flat number was over the doorbell. Third floor. He left the hallway and looked up again at the third floor. The lights were out.
What did he expect? She wouldn't be putting on a free show for the neighborhood. Probably getting the beating of her life, he thought with anguish.
He felt in his pocket and found three quarters, two dimes, and a nickel.
So it was home with a couple of those hot pix. Let's hope there was something new and hot in them he hadn't noticed before...
A bus stopped at the corner of Willow Lane, the automatic doors whooshing open. They always sounded to him like an excited woman crying out. He paused. Some sort of an angel was stepping down off the bus. She came toward him, tight skirted, her high heels rapping deliciously on the pavement in the quiet street, the sound sending his blood pressure up dangerously.
He stepped back into the darkened doorway, waiting for her to approach. When she was abreast of the entrance, he moved out. "Hi, there, Maureen!" He felt a great heave inside him.
She stopped in her tracks. "Chuck! What are you doing?"
"Passing by," he mumbled. "Thought I might see you."
His famished eyes weren't missing a thing about her. In the street light, her hair was like flowing honey. The face was rather narrow with cheekbones showing and shadowy hollows under them. The eyes were dark pools. He wanted to drown himself in them. She was wearing a little grey sharkskin suit. The jacket was unbuttoned and hanging open and he could see the black sweater underneath. It was no wonder she couldn't button the jacket. Too much was poking out in that black sweater. She looked as if she had been poured into that skirt.
"You shouldn't," she said in a low voice. "Shouldn't what?"
"See me."
"Why not?" He shrugged. "I just wanted to talk."
"Is that all?"
"Yeah."
"Oh. We can't talk out here in the street. Like to come up?" He hesitated. "I - I can't." Her voice had a way of creeping all over him and caressing him. "Have you got a date?"
"No," he said quickly.
"What's the matter?" She gave a short throaty laugh. "Are you afraid of me?"
"No," he answered. He didn't want to admit it. He was a little afraid of her. No, that wasn't entirely true. He was actually afraid of himself and the torrent of passions she could release in him. He had feelings for her that he never had for any other girl.
Her fingers found his hand. They were very hot inviting fingers. "Then there's nothing to keep you from coming up," she said.
His nerve faltered. "I can't stay long." He was afraid that no woman could take the violence that seethed in him. Not even this magnificent woman.
As they moved into the entranceway she said tauntingly: "Then why did you come?"
"I'm hopeless," he said.
Her heels sounded loud in the hallway and on the stairs. She went up ahead of him. He followed, admiring the full curve of her hips in the firmly packed grey skirt.
On the third floor she turned off to a doorway, opened it with a key, and switched on the light.
"Sit down," she said. She took her jacket off, slipped it onto a hanger, and hung it in a wardrobe.
He eased into a chair, watching her. She was just a bit unsteady on her feet. And he could smell the booze on her breath. She'd been out having a high old time, he knew.
He glanced around the room. It was tastefully furnished. On a side worktable was a large shapeless mass of modeling clay and beside it a few objects molded from it. One was the figurine of a naked male with a lot of phallus worked onto it.
She caught him looking at it. "That's my hobby," she explained. "Clay's so pleasing to work with. You knead it and squeeze it in your fingers. You can make anything you want out of it. Too bad you can't do that with most people."
"You're right," he agreed. "Who's he supposed to be?"
"You," she said.
It came as a bit of a shock. "Me?"
"I tried to do you from memory and imagination. I don't think I've done you justice."
"I think you expect too much of me," he said. The statuette looked like a pagan god of fertility.
"I saw you. Remember? I wasn't disappointed."
She sat on divan across from him, remaining in a provocative, lolling position. There was a visible weight to her big breasts under the sweater that excited him.
"Like a snack?" she asked.
"Well -"
"I had supper, but I'm still starved."
He was starved too. Not for food at this moment. He had to control an impulse to snatch her in his arms and take her right there. He suddenly savored the pleasure of exerting his control.
She got up from the divan with a lazy movement. With a little stagger she walked across the carpet to the refrigerator in the kitchenette. She bought out a thick wedge of cheese, a bowl of potato salad, a dish of assorted pickles. She placed them on a tray. She added a loaf of rye bread from the breadbox, and a sack of potato chips.
"I know what Chuck likes," she said with a smile. "Now we've got to have something to wash it down. Beer?"
"Okay," he said.
She returned from the refrigerator with two cans of beer and let him pop them open. She sat down opposite him and they began to eat and drink.
"I know what's on your mind, Chuck," she said. "We can go on as if nothing had ever happened."
"It has happened," he said, his mouth full of crumbling potato chips.
"I was thinking of what's good for you, Chuck."
"I appreciate that, Maureen. It doesn't seem proper to think about you. Not like that."
She bit the end off a sweet pickle. "Were you really serious about my joining your club?"
"Yes. But I've thought it over. I shouldn't have brought it up."
"What do you do in your club?"
"Harmonize, practice karate, drop ice-cubes into low-necked dresses, anything."
She took a sip from her beer can. "Where do you hold meetings?"
"In the old abandoned garage on Oak. Every Monday night."
"You don't want me to join?"
"No. Please don't."
"Honey," she said. "Why do you keep fighting it?" She had forgotten about the food in front of her. She leaned forward to impress him, her breasts full - heavy before him.
"Maureen," he said hoarsely, "you don't know what I'm fighting. I don't know what's the matter with me. I've got a dirty mind. I can tell you. You seem to understand. I have. A very dirty mind."
She smiled at him. "I'm glad," she said quietly.
"You don't know what I'm thinking. Right this minute. Sometimes I wonder if I'm going nuts."
"You're not," she said.
It was a terrible struggle trying to fight the undertow of her personality that was sucking him in. "I'd better exit."
"I know what you need, Chuck."
"You can't know this."
He suddenly stood up. This haggling could go on all night. He didn't dare stay any longer.
She sat bolt upright on the divan. "Chuck! You're not leaving!"
"At first I thought - No. I've got too much going for you, Maureen."
As he spoke she stood up. In those skyscraper heels her face was almost on a level with his. Adorable, angel face. She put her hands lightly on his shoulders and looked deep into his eyes. He could feel the electric charges leaping and spitting between them.
"If you do have so much going for me," she whispered, "you can't go. Oh, no, you can't. Chuck. Darling, we shouldn't be afraid of each other." She was bracing her feet. Her hands were tightening around his neck. She pulled him closer. She was breathing up against him, her breath all spicy from the combination of martinis, bourbon, beep, and sweet pickles. Her big bosoms were rising and falling against the front of his own damp sweatshirt. The action of her breasts set his pulses racing.
She murmured: "I'm going to make love to you, Chuck. I've got you where I want you. I know all your weaknesses. I'll - " He dug his fingers into her shoulders. "You were right. I do need you."
"You'll have to be careful of me," she giggled. "I'm loaded."
"So am I," he grunted. Not with booze, he thought.
His mouth found her misty coral lips and crushed them back against her strong white teeth. She winced at the pain, but fiercely thrust herself against him with all her strength. They swayed against the divan, locked together.
Her hands were on him as if she were molding clay, kneading, squeezing, shaping.
She jerked her head back up to face him and she whispered hoarsely and rapidly: "I want you to know the demands I'm going to make on you."
"You're asking for it," he panted.
What she had in mind could only be whispered in a lover's ear. "Won't that be fun? If that doesn't please you, let's try this." She whispered again. "Isn't my mind filthy?"
"No. No, it isn't. I didn't dare say it to you."
Their tongues met. His hand found an opening in her sweater at the waist and explored the skin under it. Her perspiration-damp flesh trembled under his touch. His hand crawled upward, inside, fingers gently squeezing their way over her jutting, bare-nippled French bra. She was purring all over.
"Take it off for me," she pleaded in an urgent whisper...
In a few frantic moments he had the black sweater worked off over her tossing blonde head. He dropped it on the divan. Her breasts stood straight out, the nipples like tight rosebuds in the open cradle of the bra. A lustful curiosity welled up within him as he fumbled behind her. Then the catch was undone and in another instant she was bared to the waist.
He stared in shivering disbelief at the two enticing mounds of white flesh that thrust out at him. He'd go goony looking at them. He remained behind her so that he could massage both at once.
"Please!" she almost sobbed. Her body jerked in spasmodic moves, driven by her desire. "I can't stand any more! Now, please, Chuck darling, give it to me now!" Her urgent, skillful fingers bared his throbbing, tortured body...
She pulled him down on top of her.
They made violent love on the divan, gasping, clutching and biting. Suddenly she was shaken by a racking spasm, struggled to cry out - then heaved a tremendous sigh and became limp and insensible. Chuck didn't try to get up until the first torrid storm abated in him. Then he roused Maureen with a cold washcloth, guiding the staggering, partially sentient girl into the bedroom...
Chuck, revelling in his dominance, his youth and his discovery of self-discipline, drove Maureen to the limits of her sexuality before she collapsed, crying uncontrollably in the pre-dawn darkness...
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Saturday morning.
He lay in the bed, fully relaxed, completely satiated. That was what he needed. Tender loving care.
On Saturday mornings, with the laxy sunshine on him, he would fantasy, even when he was small, a daydream of opening his eyes and seeing a beautiful female dressed in a clinging garment approaching him. And it would happen if he wished hard enough.
Now he lay there almost without the strength left to make a wish. Nevertheless he hoped it was about to come true.
Maureen came in. She was dressed in a filmy black negligee that was even more erotic that he had dreamed. The lovely vision smiled at him.
She sat on the edge of the bed. One white thigh became exposed through the opening of the negligee. He reached out and tenderly ran his hand up on the pale satin flesh.
"Stop it, Chuck," she murmured. "I'm your teacher."
"Not now. You're my girl. We're almost the same age."
"I'm seven years older."
"That doesn't make any difference," he said.
"I've fixed breakfast, Chuck."
"Okay. I'll get up." He moved and groaned. He had overtaxed himself. Muscles ached from the strenuous efforts of the night.
She went out again, leaving him to slip into pants and sweatshirt In a few minutes he joined her at the table.
"Sausages, hot cakes, and maple syrup," he said, his eyes shining.
"Best there is for a growing boy."
"Sounds juvenile," he said. He didn't like being referred to as a growing boy. He was a man glowering. Yet it didn't prevent him from attacking the stack of buckwheats with relish.
"Where's yours?" he asked, his mouth full.
"Toast and coffee for me."
"Hey! I hope you're not on a diet" His eyes roved down over the fullness of her big breasts under the sheer black garment. "Gripes! That'd be a catastrophe!"
She smiled. "I get plenty to eat Chuck, I was thinking about your parents. They'll be worried about you."
"Nah. I stay out at night lots of times. The whole weekend, sometimes."
"Just the same, I wish you'd call them and tell them you're all right."
"Okay, if you want me to, Maureen."
He took his time about finishing breakfast Maureen was swell to talk to. They had laughs. Then he went to the phone to call his house.
"Oh, hello, Ma. This's your pride and joy. Just calling to keep you posted. I slept overnight with - " Maureen, still at the table, was staring anxiously at him.
" - with a friend, Ma." He winked across the room at Maureen. "Oh, yes, sure, Ma. I'll be home. Before dark."
He hung up and spread his hands out at her. Nothing to it.
"I have to get dressed," she said, getting up and collecting the breakfast dishes.
"What's on the agenda today?"
"A lot of things. Shopping. Housecleaning. Studying."
"Let me help you." He was giving her a hand at the table.
She laughed a little. "Well, I'm not one to spurn any offers to wash dishes."
He grinned. "Is that what I was offering to do?"
"You got yourself hooked."
"I sure did. Go ahead and get dressed, Maureen. I'll swab them down."
"Thank you, Sir Galahad. There's the box of detergent."
"Pardon me while I go and get dishpan hands."
At home, his mother couldn't get him near a sink. Here, he felt happy cleaning plates into the waste disposal and sloshing boiling hot water all over sticky plates, silverware, cups, and saucers. He whistled a rock-roll tune as he juggled the dishes dry.
He heard her high heels stirring in the bedroom and his heart thumped faster. He put the dishes carefully away in the cupboard, fearful lest he break one.
"You're a dear, sweet boy," she said from the doorway.
He turned to look at her. She was wearing a blue-checked gingham dress that fitted her form. She had a shiny black belt cinched about impossibly small waist and sleek, black high heeled pumps. Her sunshine hair hung in heavy waves on her shoulders. She didn't look any more than eighteen. His heart nearly burst.
He walked to her. "I'm not a boy," he said gravely. "You want me to prove it again?"
He mashed the soft flesh of her upper arms in his grip and drew her to him. With the intense pressure of her body against his, he felt a spark of life stir in him again.
She was flustered. "Oh, now, Chuck, please! I've got to go to the store!"
Her hips wriggled back from him, breaking the potent contact.
He let go of her. "I'll help you carry your groceries."
"You don't really have to, Chuck."
"I want to, Maureen."
The supermarket was only four blocks away. Pride swelled in him as he walked along the street with her. He saw everybody looking. Mostly at her. Other women in envy. All the men with their faces reflecting jealousy, greed, lust.
She didn't seem to notice. She talked casually, about things they were both familiar with, her face glowing toward him every minute or so.
He felt dizzy. I'm in love with her. Maureen, I love you, I love you, I love you. Oh, lord, how I'm in love with you.
It hurt him. He felt sick in the stomach from it. The only remedy was to be with her.
At the supermarket he never knew it could be such fun shopping for a fried chicken, cans of string beans and corn niblets, jars of instant coffee and marmalade, cartons of homogenized milk. But he had never shopped with a doll he was in love with before. She laughingly loaded him down with shopping bags and steered him back to her flat.
He put the heavy bags on the kitchen table.
"Whew!" he breathed. This was work. Love's labor.
"For that you get a reward," she said.
She leaned forward and kissed him on the lips. A soft sweet kiss from her soft sweet pink lips. Not passionate. A lovers' tender kiss.
"Like hamburgers with slices of raw onion?" she asked. "Keen!"
- "That's what we're having for lunch."
While she was in the kitchen, he ran the vacuum over the living room rug and dusted the furniture.
She set out a feast of hamburgers on buns. They dawdled at the table for a long time, having a very serious discussion about literature.
"You know almost as much as I do about it," she said. He shrugged it off. "I'm hip to it, that's all."
"You have the talent to be a creative writer."
"Writing puts me in orbit," he said.
"Are you planning to pursue it when you leave high school?"
"My old man thinks I ought to help him run his hardware store."
"You're not going to college, Chuck?"
"It's not in the tea leaves."
"You should - " She was interrupted by a ring at the doorbell. She got up from the table and walked across the room and unsuspectingly opened the door.
A tall man pushed in with a silly grin on his face.
Chuck felt a jolt. It was Gil Fisk, the chemistry prof! What the hell was he doing here?
Gil was bumbling out with: "Maureen, I made a damn fool of myself last night - " He had a big ribbon-tied box of chocolates in his hand.
What a square!
He saw Chuck and his eyes jumped out of his head.
Maureen stepped back, an uneasy smile on her face. "Gil, you know Chuck Ashley."
"Who's he?" frowned Gil.
"One of our students."
"I don't take chem," said Chuck.
Gil remembered the box of chocolates and put them in her hands. "This's for you, Maureen. Peace offering."
"How nice of you," she said. "Will you stay?"
Gil looked blackly at Chuck. "Not if I'm intruding."
She was obviously trying to find an excuse for Chuck's presence. "He needed some extracurricular help and - " Gil scowled. "He looks like a dropout."
"He's really a bright student, Gil."
Gil faced her. "I was going to ask you to spend the afternoon with me."
"Yes?"
"But if you're spending it with him - "
"Gil!"
Chuck was burning. "I can fight my own battles, Maureen. Since our old chem prof is getting personal, let me ask him something. What action are you taking in this, dad? How long have yon been doing the two hearts in waltztime bit?"
"None of your business!" snapped Gil.
"It is my business, dad. I'll tell you what I'm doing. I'm making plans with my sweetie. You might as well know this before you cut out. We're going to get married."
"What?" cried Gil, astounded.
"So go back to your lab and raise a stink!"
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Marrying Maureen!
Gil laughed his head off while Chuck got angrier.
Maureen didn't look happy either. "What's so funny?"
"You and that kid!"
"Who're you calling a kid?" snarled Chuck.
"Suppose you leave," she said to Gil.
Gil stopped laughing. "A pleasure."
She still held the box of chocolates. "You want these back?"
"Of course not!" He slammed out the door.
Chuck and Maureen looked at each other. He tried to read her expression. She was busy hiding her feelings.
"Why did you say that, Chuck?"
"Sorry, Maureen. I guess I blew my top."
"You'd better go too, Chuck."
"I meant what I said to him, Maureen. - I do want to marry you. That's how I feel."
"You're in no position to marry me or any other girl. You haven't even got a job."
"I could work for my old man. What does that matter? As long as we're in love with each other."
"Oh, Chuck."
"I am in love with you, Maureen."
She searched his face. The truth of what he said was glowing there. "You'd better go too," she said in a low voice.
He chewed his lip. "Okay, Maureen. I .didn't want this to happen so soon. I. couldn't take him. He gouged it out of me."
"I understand," she said simply.
"I'll be seeing you, Maureen."
"Oh, yes, I'll be seeing you."
He went away, stumbling on the stairs, walking unseeingly in the street. The hurt was worse when he was away from her, the desire, the longing. He wanted to remain with her. He wanted to keep on seeing her and telling her what an adorable creature she was and how much he cared.
Love was awful.
Somehow the rest of the weekend passed. Stereo set endlessly playing tearful ballads. TV shows, books, talk, jokes, games, food, sleep.
He hefted up the Sunday newspaper and looked through it. He searched for pictures of attractive girls, comparing them to Maureen. None of them stacked up.
Wait! What was this in the amusement section? A face and figure and name that seared him like a blowtorch.
Fever Burns. Appearing for a limited engagement in the downtown Lyceum. Burlesque! Burlesque! The fabulous Fever Burns and her Sexhibitionists! Three shows nightly starting Monday.
He couldn't miss this. He had to alert the boys. They'd catch her tomorrow night Maureen knew that Monday was going to be a dreadful day. It started off by raining. . Her mind was so preoccupied over the problem of Chuck that she had never finished marking homework on the weekend. She still had papers in her attache case as she hurried to school early that morning. She thought that she could spend a quiet hour in the faculty lounge, when nobody was there, and get the work completed.
Her raincoat rustled about her as she walked quickly along the corridor to the closed doors. She reached down with her own key, fumbling nervously for the lock.
A man's hand came down on hers and they gripped the door handle together.
"Maureen," she heard him say.
Startled, she looked back over her shoulder. It was Gil. His penetrating eyes under the dripping brim of his hat were right behind her.
His hand felt strong and warm over hers and he didn't release it until the door was open. Then she slid her hand out from under his.
They both went inside. She didn't move any farther. She stood with her back against the paneled wall, wrapped in her raincoat, rubbing the calves of her legs together the way a woman does when she feels cold. She felt cold and gloomy.
She looked across at him. He seemed just as blue.
"You're not going to marry him, are you?" he asked. "Of course not, Gil."
"Then what's got into him?"
"Schoolboy infatuation."
"Is that all? He looked as if he'd go through with it."
"Oh, I'm sure he would."
"Then you'll have to discourage him."
"How can I discourage him? He thinks that everything I do is wonderful."
"You have to get rid of him."
"Any suggestions?" she mocked.
"No." He shook his head slowly. "You have to let him know he means nothing to you."
"Why are you early?"
"Restless. I couldn't sleep. No real reason."
"Will anybody be showing up?" He glanced at his wristwatch. "Not for a while."
She stared across at him. "On Friday night you wanted - "
"Before I passed out." She could see his eyes gleaming at her from under the hat brim.
"I have to hang up this wet raincoat," she said.
The locker room was at the far end of the hall. She pushed herself away from the wall and walked rapidly back to where the lockers were.
They smelled of shoe polish and cheap tobacco and musty clothes.
She turned around. Gil was right behind her.
"On Friday night," he said. "You meant that?"
"Yes. You know I did."
"Don't josh me," he said with a choke.
"Is this joshing?" she said. She began inching her tight skirt up over her thighs.
He stopped only long enough to throw off his hat and topcoat.
Her raincoat-clad shoulders bumped against the metal lockers. Oh, how she needed him on this cold, blue morning! As her legs moved apart, she felt, with excited delights, the solid proof of his hunger. The coat hangers inside the lockers swung in cadence, as he possessed her.
As she felt all the pent-up fire of his desire erupt in their ecstatic fulfillment, she lowered her head and bit into his padded shoulder. "Oh, Gil, Gil," she sobbed, "thank you, thank you."
He probably thought she was crazy, thanking him. She had to thank him. He had restored her. He had erased the boy and replaced him with a man. She couldn't let herself fall for Chuck. She couldn't she couldn't!
Gil had made her sure of herself once more.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The rain had stopped when they came running out of the schoolyard at 3:30.
Chuck shouted to his gang: "It's two-fifty a head! Beg, borrow, or steal, but get it up! See you at the Lyceum!"
They all crowded into the downtown theatre as soon as it opened at 6:30, roughhousing in the aisle as they raced for the best front seats. Chuck followed the others a little more slowly. Trepidation seized him. He feared that she might be a disappointment and yet, if she were not, he had to keep his arousal from mounting . all out of bounds.
Men filled the seats around him and the show started. There was an M.C. who told dirty jokes. There were a couple of seedy baggy-pants comics who told dirty jokes. There were some strippers who were just warm-ups for the main" event.
Anticipation kept building in him until he was suffocating.
The M.C. hollered exuberantly: "And now here she comes, men! The spectacle that made the Tower of Pizza lean over for a good look! They're both top-heavy! Five feet ten! 48-24-37! I know it's 48! I just made a trip around her with a tape measure - riding a bicycle! The bazoom that walks like a girl! Men, hang on tight! Cuz here it comes! Fevah!"
Fevah! Fevah!
She walked out on the stage before Chuck's dilating eyes.
Mamma mia!
She scorched upholstery in the first ten rows. She was dressed in a skin-tight black satin evening gown that was slit high up her left thigh to let her walk. A yard of lemon-colored hair hung down her back. The enormous breasts trembled before her as she minced to center stage.
She engaged the M. C. in conversation.
"I paid $500 for this gown. Isn't that a shocking price?"
The M.C. ogled. "It's a shocking gown!"
He leered and made dirty cracks about the protuberant parts of her shape. She made dirty cracks about what she could do with them. And what he could do with them.
She kept smoothing her hands over the black satin bulges, frankly feeling herself up. Her pinching fingers made little adjustments through the gown at her hips and the fingers worked themselves around to her groin. She remained in motion as she stood there, keeping her motor running, turning around several times so that the audience could get a good look at the expanse of fanny. Her fingers toyed with it Chuck stared rigidly, his eyes feasting on her.
The men shuffled their feet restlessly on the floor. "Take it off! Take it off!"
She pretended she was hard of hearing, smiling like sliced watermelon.
"C'mon!" muttered Chuck impatiently. "Get it off!"
She finally responded to the mounting chant. She artfully and erotically stripped the tight gown. Ravishingly she inched it away in places. Chuck's eyes were bugging at the corn-fed breasts. The gown fell away.
She was wearing only small adhesive stars on her nipples. A tiny G-string completed the costume. Some tinpan music struck up and she started ferocious bumps and grinds that turned her into a writhing, twisting tornado of fevered, quivering flesh. The gigantic breasts danced and joggled, driving the audience frantic.
Her male worshippers were groaning and squirming. Some of them had already given up.
Chuck fought it out with himself. Several times he reached his hand into his pocket for the reward and then snatched it out again. He was in love with Maureen. To do anything else would make him feel unfaithful. He gritted his teeth. Oh, Maureen, Maureen! Looking at Fever like this was only supposed to stimulate him. And how she was doing it Fever hit the high spot of her act She reached into the wings and drew out a life-size rubber mannequin, realistically colored and formed with bulging muscles like a living lifeguard. All the male doll wore were white Jamaica pants. She clasped the dummy lover in her feverish arms and they twirled about the stage to a calypso beat The pair became more amorous. Hands stroked, squeezed and caressed. Girlish squeals and giggles. At dead center stage, the pair became inseparable. The footlights blinked pink with blushing shame.
"She's taking it!" someone moaned.
Stan leaned over the back of Chuck's seat, panting: "That's the dummy I read about!"
Fever and her partner had fallen to the floor rolling over and over, locked together.
"Man, this is too much!" Chuck heard Stan gasping and writhing behind him.
The mix-up of flesh and rubber, arms and legs and bodies, was having a convulsion before their eyes.
Holy cripes!
The tangle lay still and the lights suddenly went off. The darkness was full of male anguish.
That was the finale. Nothing could top that.
Chuck had difficulty getting up as the curtains fell into place and the lights came on. Many of the men remained in their seats, some wild-eyed, some with all the fire extinguished.
"Let's go!" croaked Chuck.
Stan was stumbling at his elbow. "Where? Where?"
"We've got a meeting tonight!"
In the lobby a vender was selling glossy stills of Fever. "Twenty-five cents each, gentlemen!" he hawked.
Hands reached out for pictures, fevered, numerous, insistent, shoving quarters.
"I'm gonna need these pix tonight!" moaned Stan. The night air was cool after the torrid atmosphere of the burlesque theatre. Chuck shuffled along the street, letting the other Booby Snatchers follow him. They strung out along the sidewalk.
He looked back one. "How many we still got?"
"About seven or eight," said Stan dazedly.
"Enough to hold a meeting."
"Meeting? It'll be more like a mass - " Stan was right. At Chuck's heels was a pack of aroused young animals on the prowl. Their eyes, oily with desire, searched all the dark street corners for stray females.
Chuck hurried them on. "We should've had the kittens waiting for us."
"That's why they belong," said Stan.
"It's too late now," said Al.
"How about calling them?" said Dick.
They had turned into the long dark alley beside the abandoned garage on Oak Street. Chuck and Stan were in the lead, almost running for it "Forget about the kittens," said Stan. "Look! A big pussycat!"
He yanked Chuck's arm, bringing him to a halt, while the others piled up behind.
Near the padlocked back door to their secret clubroom a girl was sitting on a big packing case. When she saw then coming she uncrossed her long legs and got to her feet.
With a distinct shock, Chuck saw that it was Maureen.
"Hi, boys!" she said cheerfully. "Ronnie told me you'd all gone to a show. I waited for you to come back."
Chuck went forward slowly. "You shouldn't hang around here, Maureen. It's dangerous."
He eyed her. Even when wearing a loose fawn raincoat she looked sexy. Her hands were thrust deep in the pockets and her legs were in a wide stance.
"I've accepted the invitation," she said, smiling.
"What invitation?" said Chuck densely. "To the initiation."
He looked at her feet She was wearing the black shiny pumps with the four-inch heels that she had lent Ronnie. The heels she wore only on special occasions.
Chuck felt the gang's anxiety pawing at his back. "I was only kidding, Maureen. You can't join."
"Who the hell says she can't?" demanded Stan, his eyes greasily on her. "I do!"
"She can join if she wants to," said Stan. "How about that, you cats?"
"Yeah, yeah!" they all agreed.
"There, Chuck," she said easily, "you see? You're voted down."
He saw now that the raincoat wasn't fastened in front and when she moved her hands in the pockets the garment parted down the middle. She was naked underneath.
"Maureen," he beseeched her, "for the love of cripes, get outta here!"
"Speak for yourself, old buddy," said Stan.
"Chuck," she said, "you're the Grand Master. Do you want to be first - or last?"
"Maureen -!" he cried out Stan shoved him rudely -aside and shuffled forward. "We'll make the scene, pussycat!
A big scene!"
They stood facing each other in the dark end of the alley, a few feet apart. His thick body began to weave in the erotic motions of the latest dance craze. She raised her own arms and began to duplicate his movements. Her back arched and her pelvis snapped forward with a suggestive jerk, bowing her spine. Her shoulders, starting out at attention, hunched forward, practically meeting her pelvis. Her head jerked upward so that her body made a sensational S-curve. The violence of action flung the open raincoat wilder apart. Chuck saw underneath her big, shaking breasts, jiggling tightly.
Dino broke it up hoarsely. "Not out here! Let's get inside!"
A key was fitted into the rusty padlock and the door was kicked open. They ganged in around her like drones around their queen and manhandled her inside.
Someone turned on the lights. Chuck had furnished the place with electric fixtures and tapped a power line which fed his father's hardware store. There were a few rows of assorted chairs, several rickety tables, and a battered army cot. The walls were decorated with hundreds of pix of naked and near-naked girls clipped from magazines. There were some life-size posters of strippers that the members had filched from theatre lobbies. A bigger than life-size cut-out of Fever Burns dominated the others.
The gang crowded Maureen toward the army cot.
She twisted around, her eyes searching. "Chuck?" she called out.
"Skip it, pussycat," grunted Stan, his arms around her. "Chuck's chickened out."
"Then you're first, Stan," she promised.
There was a low cry in his thick, throat.
She stepped away from all of them, proudly on her skyscraper heels, and stood under the lights with her back to them. She shook her long blonde hair back down over the raincoat collar. Then she spread her arms out and slowly let the raincoat slide off her shoulders.
Horrified, Chuck saw her white, firm shoulders. The raincoat dropped to the floor and softly crumpled. She stood with her heels planted apart, her hands straying to her sweetly rounded pale buttocks, fondling them.
Stan was dribbling. "Turn around! Oh, baby, turn around!"
She turned slowly to face them, smiling broadly, one knee bent in a very provocative pose.
She wasn't quite as big as Fever, but nothing had been put together better. She had Fever beat for beauty. This was the most beautiful thing Chuck had ever seen.
The room exploded. It was as if somebody had dropped a lighted match into a pool of gasoline.
Initiation!
Stan lunged at her, pawing for the delectable white flesh. They locked together and wrestled toward the army cot.' They toppled on it. The joints of the cot creaked perilously.
The others prepared themselves impatiently for their turn.
Chuck looked for a moment, his eyes wide with the horror of it, then he couldn't stand to watch what was happening.. He blundered out through the doorway into the dark alley, sucking the cool night air into his lungs in irregular gasps.
He stumbled against the packing case and bent, sprawled face-down across it. He writhed in his frustrated desire, froglegging, against the hard wood. Maureen was the girl he loved. She was the girl he was going to marry. You don't share your bride with everybody else. Oh, Maureen, Maureen! it was my fault, I shouldn't have got you into this! Oh, baby, what have I done to you?
He lay sweating and squirming on top of the packing case. He was burning up for a woman. He had saved himself for one woman. She was in there. Where could he turn now? There was only one place he could go. He had to go to Maureen.
Where he lay he could hear the ceaseless creaking of the army cot. Man, she was taking a real initiation!
. Fascinated by desire and curiosity, he edged off the box and crept back inside.
He saw Tommy mounted up like a jockey on the wildly thrashing blonde. She was harder to hold down than a bucking bronc. Tommy was whipping himself into the homestretch. He gave his all and rolled weakly off.
Her legs wide, she half lifted and beckoned the others. "Come on, come on!"
Coco went for it manfully.
A blindfold was torn from Chuck's eyes. He saw everything clearly.
This was Maureen. She had never changed. He was the one who had deluded himself with all that romantic bull about being the only lover she craved. She was possessed by a secret hunger for the male - lots of him! It was an initiation, all right She was initiating them.
He felt sick.
Emotional discharges crackled from the young bodies pressed, naked, around her. It was like being caught in the midst of spreading wildfire. Their blaze ignited him.
The swelling, leaping urge to have her washed away his momentary revulsion.
"Next!" he warned the others. They fell back.
He looked down at her on the cot On her back, she had her eyes closed, not caring who or what came next Her unsatisfied body flopped on the spotted canvas, the lower part of her legs dangling over each side, the high heels erratically scraping the concrete floor.
In one motion he was up on her, surrounded by a ring of impassioned faces.
The sock of possessing her burning body made him gasp.
He looked down. Her eyes were staring wide open up at him.
"Chuck!"
"All the guys you teased-tormented-for so long - having their inning - " Stan's voice from the stands. "Bat it out, slugger!"
The ringside faces called encouragements, using baseball terms with double meanings.
His writhing body striving with all its strength, Chuck ground his teeth together in an effort to fend off the inevitable climax. Sensation mounted on sensation through his whole being. The creaking cot under them rose to a jittering crescendo.
Her high heels raked his backside, her fingernails pressed into his arms and shoulders, her teeth sank into his neck, as she panted against him. Their bodies flowed together like liquid fire.
He thought he heard her squeal above the clamor around them.
He stayed with her until all his desire was drained.
Heavy with fatigue, he pulled himself, shaking, to his feet.
"Take over," he said to the next impatient one waiting.
Finally Maureen put out the fire in all eight of them. It took three hours.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The next morning Maureen wanted nothing more than to stay in bed and skip going to school. After what happened last night how could they all face one another in the classroom? But it had to be done.
She gulped down hot black coffee and then caught the bus.
At her desk, she watched the boys when they came in. None of them looked at her. Not even Stan. And that big greedy pig had gone for her three times last night. They all kept their eyes down. They'd soon get over that Chuck never did show up. He had cut class. What was he feeling? Remorse? Or disgust?
That was her objective, wasn't it? To make him so disgusted with her that he never wanted to see her again. And she had a confession to make to herself. She had enjoyed every scalding athletic moment of it!
She shivered a little at her own guilt At noon recess she went into the faculty lounge and tried to have a few quiet moments to herself. One of the girl students approached her.
"Miss Quinn, you're wanted on the phone."
"Oh? Thank you."
"Yes?" she asked.
"Maureen?" The man's voice vibrated over the wire. "This's Dr. Cooney."
"Oh, yes, Doctor. How are you?"
"How are you? I just got the result of your test" The test? She had forgotten about the test, "It wasn't necessary - "
"You got caught," he said. "What?"
"Positive," he said. "Oh no!"
"It could've happened within the last three weeks."
How could that be? She had always taken every precaution. But then nothing can be 100% safe.
She pressed her hand to her tummy. It was bigger. Or was it just her imagination?
She tried to think back. Three weeks. There was that tall, good-looking basketball player. That was the only one she could think of.
"You'd better drop in to see me," he was saying. "Don't put it off too long."
"Oh, I won't, Doctor. Will you be in this afternoon?"
"That'll be fine," he said. "I'll see you then."
She went through the afternoon in a fog. As soon as school let out, she grabbed a cab and was taken to Dr. Cooney's office.
"Come in," he said with his musty charm. "Have you ever had this done before?"
"No," she answered.
"I'm glad you came to me, Maureen."
"Oh, I wouldn't dare go to another doctor."
"This won't take long," he said, mouthing routine phrases. "Nothing to worry about. Go behind the screen and change into this gown." He handed her a white robe.
She took it and went behind the screen. She came out in the long white gown. It flowed about her curves. He told her to get on the examining table.
She lay there on her back, looking up at him. Kindly old Dr. Cooney. He saved all the girls. Now he was going to save her. She had gone the full circle. Back on the table.
He drew the gown up from her legs. "Lithotomy position," he said. "Bring your knees up. Higher. Spread your thighs well apart. Bring them well back on your abdomen. Ah."
The probing of his lubricated finger made her excitement flower. She twitched a little. She didn't want to be too obvious about the pleasure he was giving her.
"Your fee," she said. "I'll pay you."
"Afterwards. Don't give it a thought I'll give you something to numb you."
"You won't put me to sleep?"
"No. It won't last long enough for that" He picked up a hypodermic syringe and expertly gave her a shot. He turned to a side table on which lay instruments. Gradually she felt her lower abdomen become anesthetized.
He bent down over her, his head low, his fingers prying, his bougie searching inward, dilating her.
He reached for his curette.
There was a loud hammering on the waiting room door. The knob twisted. He had locked the door and whoever was outside couldn't get through.
He lifted his head. "What the hell?"
She raised partly on the table. "Keep them out, Doctor."
"Go away!" he yelled. "I've got a patient in here?"
"We know!" said a loud man's voice. "Open up!"
"Go away or I'll call the police!"
"We are the police!"
Cooney turned pale. She froze in position, her eyes on the door. It shattered inward when something powerful struck it and the hinges were torn away from the frame.
"What do you think you're doing?" trembled Cooney. "This is an invasion of privacy!"
"We know what this is," said one of the three burly men who had broken in. "You're under arrest, Doctor."
"Arrest? What for? He was staggered.
"Illegal operation. And it's not the first. You okay, young lady? Better get your clothes on and come with us."
Cooney had fallen back, blubbering: "Don't do this to me! Don't do this to me!"
"Come on, Doctor. Tell it to the judge."
Maureen, fighting to control her tears, was brought to the courthouse. On the way she learned that the parents of some of the girls that Dr. Cooney had treated had become suspicious. They had got enough out of their daughters to bring it to the attention of the police. Last week that co-operative woman patient that the Doctor had treated for a spastic colon was really a lady cop and when she left the office it was expertly bugged. The police had listened in on pregnant conversations for a week and today they had swooped down to catch the abortionist in the act.
Cooney was led away and lodged in a detention cell. It disturbed her to see a man cry.
The Justice of the Peace said to her : "We're not holding you, Miss Quinn. You're free to go. You'll be called as a witness."
"Will this get into the newspapers?"
"It can't be helped."
"I'm a teacher. This notoriety could get me fired."
"You should have thought of that."
She left the courthouse with one thought uppermost. The police would be watching her. Cooney hadn't finished the operation. They knew where she wanted to go. Now it was impossible to find another Dr. Cooney.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Chuck came zapping up to the front door of Judy's frame house on a motorcycle. He kicked down the metal stand and got off. He was wearing a black sweater, tight khaki riding breeches, and black boots that covered his calves.
Judy had heard the racket the exhaust made and she came out on the porch. " Where'd you get it, Chuck?"
"Ted lent it to me." He looked at her as he approached the porch. She was dressed in a frock with a lot of flounces and frills. "What, no dungarees? I was going to take you for a spin."
"On the back of that?" She wrinkled up her cute nose. "Sit here with me."
She dropped. back on the swing seat and it swayed gently. They had had a lot of fun on that seat. As he sat down beside her she picked up the evening newspaper.
"Look at that, Chuck!" TEACHER IN HIGH SCHOOL SCANDAL.
"Gosh," she said in a low voice, "I'm glad that wasn't me."
"I'm glad too," he said. "The doc's out on ban." He whistled. "$5000!"
"What'll they do to him?"
"He'll lose his license to practice. Maybe get a few years in the pen." He squinted at the front page. "What about Maureen?"
"It says she has to appear before the school board. They're going to ask her about other student activities."
"Clandestine," Chuck read a word. "I hope she doesn't crack up and spill everything about the Bobby Snatchers."
Judy looked at him wonderingly. "How would she know?"
"She's a member. We initiated her last night."
"You did? How many of you?"
"Eight, I think. Yeah. Eight."
"Wow! With me it was only two or three. But you were the only one I ever cared about. Just you, Chuck."
"Well, she got the special treatment."
"Do you think she'll tell?"
"She might. If she's afraid of losing her job."
"How will that help her?"
"Who knows? She might do it just to drag us all in with her."
"I don't think she's that kind of a woman, Chuck.
"Maybe she's okay," he said in a low voice. "I know she is. Did you know she was preggy?"
"No. I always thought she was a chick who could handle herself."
Judy smiled a little in the darkness of the porch. "Not like me, huh?"
"You can handle yourself too. Don't kid yourself. Baby, can you handle yourself!"
"What are you going to do about the club?"
He shrugged. "I could break it up. Suddenly it all seems childish."
"All clubs aren't childish. It's good to be long."
"I know. But look what we were doing."
"Kinda silly," she said, "when you think about it."
"I ought to break it up."
She reached up her hand and brushed it over his thick hair. "We can't stop this."
"No. We can't." He put his arm around her shoulders and they both slid down, closer together. "Only from now on you've got to be careful. Very careful."
"I will, Chuck," she promised in a hushed voice.
"I never want you to go through that again."
"I won't, Chuck."
"I've been thinking about you and a lot of other girls, Judy." She snuggled. "You've got a lot of them."
"A whole harem. Even -- his voice choked "Fever Burns."
"You're the president of her fan club."
"But no more," he said earnestly. "I'm quitting Fever and all the rest of them. I want you as my steady, sugar."
"Chuck, you're sweet."
"You're my love bug."
She giggled. "Wanna bite?"
There was muffled laughter.
"Chuck, I love you."
"I love you too, Judy."
They lingered in the gently moving swing for a long time.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Nervously, Maureen waited outside the room where the high school principal and the members of the school board were meeting. She was too jittery to sit in one of the leather chairs. She paced back and forth. The door from the corridor opened and Gil Fisk came in.
The look in his eyes was pure sympathy. That's what she needed a lot of right now. And Gil was being wonderful. He was the only one who hadn't let her down.
She gave him a sad smile.
He went to her. "I told you it was worth the trouble to check with another doctor, Maureen. I just got Spector's report. You're not pregnant."
He held out a slip of paper.
Her face brightened. It fell again. "But why did Dr. Cooney say I was?"
"He wanted to get you in his office again. You know why. He is dirty old man. He'll get what's coming to him." He looked seriously at her. " How do you feel?"
"I feel great." She took the report of the Aschheim-Zondek test and crammed it into her handbag. "Now I've got the courage to go in and face them."
He glanced down at her. "If I'd been earlier I'd have advised - You should wear a looser dress. A lot looser. And shoes with flat heels. You should have left off some of that makeup, pulled your hair back tighter, and maybe worn a pair of specs."
"What? - Look like a frump? If they don't like me the way I am, to hell with them."
"Maureen, I was only - " The door to the meeting room opened and Miss Chillum, the old acid-faced dean of girls, stuck her sharp beak out. Old Chilly, they called her. "Miss Quinn, you may come in now."
"Thank you," said Maureen crisply. She glanced at Gil. "Thank you too - for everything."
"I'll be waiting for you to come out Right here."
She struggled with a smile. "If I come out."
She walked in, her high heels clicking on the bare hardwood floor, and Old Chilly closed the door firmly.
Watching her enter were four people at a long table. Mr. Shuttleworth, the principal, was in the middle, flanked on one side by fat Mrs. Olsen and Mr. Whipple, and on the other side by Mr. Perry. Old Chilly joined this stern-faced board.
In the center of the room, facing the inquisition, was a very lonesome looking chair.
"Please sit there, Miss Quinn," said Shuttle-worth.
She went toward it. Witness chair or electric chair?
She was sure that they were merely going through the formality of a hearing. They had already tried her in absentia. All that was left to be heard was the verdict.
And with those sour-pusses on the board there could be only one verdict.
She sat down and crossed her long legs. She saw three males lean forward a little.
Shuttleworth cleared his throat. "Miss Quinn, you went to Dr. Cooney's office for the purpose of having an abortion."
She smiled faintly. "No, I can prove to you that I was never pregnant."
"How?"
"I have a report from a Dr. Spector. Would you care to see it?"
Shuttleworth. started to say: "We'll take your - " Old Chilly snapped: "I'd like to see it!"
Whipple, one of the men at the end of the table, got up and apologetically approached Maureen. She handed the medical report to him. Old Chilly snatched it from Whipple's hand and studied it.
Shuttleworth went on: "Why did you go to Dr. Cooney's office?"
"For a routine examination."
Old Chilly waved the report. "Do you think that this will help Dr. Cooney get free of the charges against him?"
"I don't know," said Maureen.
"It won't," said Shuttleworth. "The fact that you weren't pregnant will have no bearing on Dr. Cooney's case. Several girls have come forward to testify that in the past few months Dr. Cooney has performed illegal operations on them."
"I'm not here to defend Dr. Cooney," said Maureen.
"No," said Old Chilly. "Just yourself."
Mrs. Olsen spoke up. " That costume you're wearing - is that your usual manner of dress in the classroom?"
Maureen glanced back at her. Mrs. Olsen had five kids. "Of course. I make an effort to stay fashionable."
Mrs. Olsen scowled. The stout lady outfits she wore were the butt of jokes.
"We have heard," said Shuttleworth gravely, "that you have had a corrupting influence on some of the young male students."
"How do you mean?"
"For instance," he said, "how do you deport yourself in class?"
"I devote myself to teaching."
Perry's eyes were fixed on her. "When you sit facing the class, Miss Quinn, how do you arrange yourself?"
"Arrange myself?" She looked puzzled.
"What do you do - ahem - with your legs?"
"The same thing I'm doing now."
Her legs were crossed over at the thighs, the skirt slipping back a little. She knew that her legs could demolish a man. It wasn't only the schoolboys who goggled. She saw Whipple squirm restlessly in his chair.
"Shameless," mumbled Old Chilly.
"Miss Quinn," said Shuttleworth, "young men of high school age are very susceptible."
The faint smile played on her lips. "And older men aren't?"
"A boy is prone to give way to his emotions. Have you noticed any emotional displays among your boy students?"
"What sort of displays?"
"Come, come, Miss Quinn. You know what I mean. Any evidences of a sexual nature."
"Well, naturally, when you observe boys, you see them doing a lot of things. Some of their acts might be construed as sexual. But I don't think I should reprimand every boy I see tugging at the crotch of his tight jeans. Would you?"
Old Chilly snapped: "Did you encourage such behavior?"
"I don't think that sort of behavior needs any encouraging," replied Maureen.
"You seem to have a very broadminded way of looking at things, Miss Quinn," said Shuttleworth.
"Immoral," breathed Old Chilly.
"Realistic," smiled Maureen back at her.
"Have you ever had any physical contacts with the male students?" asked Shuttleworth.
Maureen's face sobered. "I refuse to answer that."
Old Chilly sneered. "That's as good as admitting it."
"Have you heard of anyone in this high school taking drugs?"
"No."
"Have you ever participated in a sexual orgy?"
"No!"
"I won't ask you any more questions, Miss Quinn," said Shuttleworth. "I've heard quite enough. Is everybody else satisfied?"
The others nodded.
Shuttleworth shuffled some papers in front of him. "We've reviewed your case, Miss Quinn. We asked you in so that you might offer some sort of explanation for yourself. You know that this sort of conduct simply cannot be condoned in any teaching system. You do have excellent records as a teacher, per se. But other proponents have to be weighed as well. You have been put in the balance and found wanting."
I've been found wanton, you mean, she thought.
She said: "You're telling me that my services as a teacher are no longer required."
"That's about the size of it, Miss Quinn. I'm sorry to say that it could not be worked out any other way."
"Is that all?"
"We would like you to turn in your resignation. We have one all typed out. All you have to do is read it and sign it."
He slid a paper across the table, along with a pen.
As she rose and crossed the floor, there was a lump in her throat. After all the years of studying and examinations, after achieving the career she had wanted most, it was all swept away with the stroke of a pen.
She tried to swallow the lump as she blindly signed the paper. "Thank you," she said automatically as she handed back the pen.
The others at the table were looking up at her.
"May I go now?" she said. She was angry and blue and glad to get away from this Bunch of hypocrites.
"Good bye, Miss Quinn," Shuttleworth suddenly stood up and extended his hand across the table. "And good luck," he added heartily.
The others were muttering farewells that weren't quite as enthusiastic.
Maureen walked out, feeling all eyes on her back. It was a relief to get through that' door and outside.
Gil was waiting expectantly, a worried strain on his face.
"They didn't chop off my head," she smiled. "I'm still in one piece."
"What'd they say?"
"They kicked me out." She tried to keep smiling.
He was a tall masculine bulwark of sympathy. She dashed herself against it to hide her sudden tears. She sobbed against the rough shoulder of his jacket. His arms about her were comforting.
His hand stroked her soft hair. "Sweetheart, sweetheart, don't cry."
"Gil, what am I going to do?"
"You don't have to stay here. You can go somewhere else."
"To teach?"
"Why not?"
"I don't want to go anywhere else. Not without you, darling."
"You can have me if you want me. I've been trying to get up enough nerve to ask you to marry me."
"Marry you?" She lifted her head to look through her tears. "If you marry me, they'll kick you out of school too."
"No, they won't," he said bravely. "And even if they do, I'll go to another school."
"Oh, darling, you'd do this for me?"
"I'd do anything for you, you adorable angel."
"I feel better."
"Then let's go. I'll help you collect the books from your desk."
"Oh, no, not yet. I have to fix my face."
CHAPTER TWENTY
As they were driving out past the park, she saw Chuck standing by the stone gatepost.
"Gil! Stop and let me out!"
Obediently he pulled over to the cub. "What is it?"
"There's Chuck." She started to get out. "Don't wait for me."
"Oh?" he said. "Running off with my rival?"
"No, Gil. He's not. I'm sure he knows that too."
"Okay," he grinned. I'll drop the books off at your flat."
She tossed him her house keys. "See you later."
He drove away into the traffic and she headed toward the park entranceway. "Hi, Chuck!"
He was absorbed in a bestseller. At the mention of his name he snapped his eyes up from the page. She saw him search her all over as he drawled: "Hi!"
"Walk me across the park, Chuck."
He glanced quickly around as if to make sure nobody saw them together.
"You don't mind, do you?" she said.
"Oh, no. Of course not. Why should I mind?" They walked in through the gateway and along one of the quiet paths. "You belong to the Booby Snatchers now."
"Are you going to continue those initiations?"
"I don't know," he mumbled. "It's tough to break away. Some of the guys belong just for that. I might try to change things, but I don't know for sure."
They idled along the path.
"I suppose you heard that I'm leaving, Chuck."
"The whole school knows about it."
"I may not see you again."
"I'm sorry you have to go, Maureen."
"I am too. We meet only to part again. That's destiny."
"You've been reading fortune cookies.'" She saw a bench ahead. "Care to sit down a minute?"
"I don't mind."
They sat on the bench.
"When I leave," she said, "I want to feel that I've done at least one student some good."
"Oh, you've done a lot of good, Maureen. You have. Only most of us weren't noticing that part."
She smiled. "Thanks, Chuck. It was you I was thinking about. June graduation is only a few weeks off and I know you've made your grades."
"I'm cracking out with honors."
"I know you want to be a writer. But to be successful, you'll have to exert yourself more."
"Exert myself?" He looked surprised. "I exert myself so much now that I'm all worn out."
"In the right direction, Chuck."
"Well, I'll try."
"Chuck, you once told me that you were going to work in your father's hardware store."
"What else is there?"
"You can continue your education."
"You mean go to junior college? I've thought about that. It takes money."
"You can work your way through," she said. "That's what I want you to do."
"Man, that's not easy."
"Nothing worth having comes easy, Chuck." He looked at her. "You're a regular slave-driver."
"It's the only way you'll get your name on a book." She tapped the paper cover of the bestseller. "Like this."
"Yeah, yeah. That's what I want, all right."
"Just think. Everybody will be reading your book."
His eyes were shining. "Some day you'll be passing a bookrack and you'll see copies of my latest novel all over it."
"I don't want to wait till they're on the book-racks. I want you to send me one."
"I will, Maureen. Autographed. No matter where you are, I'll find you."
"I won't be too hard to find, Chuck."
"What'll you be doing?"
"I'll be washing diapers," she .laughed, "there'll be a houseful of kids."
"Oh, yeah. The chem prof, I suppose." He looked a trifle glum. "He's a bit square, but I guess he's not all bad."
"No, he's not all bad, Chuck. Before we leave this bench, I want you to promise me."
"I'll write it," he said.
"First, you're going to college."
He riffled the leaves of the paper covered book under the ball of his thumb. "It'll be a tough go, but I'll try."
"It's a promise, Chuck?"
"Yeah. Sure, Maureen. It's a promise. I'll work hard on my Lit."
"And everything else. No more wasting leisure time."
"There's only one thing I hope."
"What's that, Chuck?"
"That I get an old battleaxe for a teacher."
"Why?"
"I couldn't stand another one like you, Maureen."
Smiling, she got up. "Thanks, Chuck. Thanks for everything."
He stood up too, puzzling. "Everything?"
"You've been a sweet friend."
He groped his right hand toward her. She took hold of it and drew him in close to her and kissed him warmly on the lips.
She backed away from him, waving her arm as she turned. "Happy times, Chuck!"
As she walked out of the park by herself she heard him call softly after her: "Goodbye - Dreamboat!"