She still had her ankles locked behind him and now joined her hands behind his neck, her fingernails clawing at his back. She climaxed, her small tanned body racked by shudders, her pointed insolent breasts fastened against Pollack's damp skin.
Pollack began to crawl toward the door of the bathroom, dragging Nancy with him across the tiles. The voices down the hall built to a roar as the orgy swept the couples with its excitement.
CHAPTER ONE
Pollock waited inside the terminal of Reno International Airport, smoking and swinging his zipped flight bag and staring through the big plate-glass windows into the parking lot across the busy drive. The early sun beat down hard on the ranks of parked cars, zinged off the chrome and enamel and glass and made him squint through his Foster-Grants.
He was a tall young man with a sun-lamp tan and pale hair styled into an easy-looking shag, and he dressed well. His shoes gleamed, his slacks flared gracefully above them, his belt was a splendor of expensive leather, the shirt was knit, form-fitting, huge-collared.
The watch on his wrist was 14-karat gold with diamonds on the dial. The ring on his right pinky was heavy beaten gold, and the diamonds winking from it totaled a full carat in weight. He moved easily, looked confident, smoked, watched the parking lot to pick out a car the same way he'd picked out the clothes and the watch and the ring and the Foster-Grants.
This year's Charger raced up the curving drive, turned into the parking lot with hardly a slowdown, aced out a Gremlin turning in from opposite, roared down the center row and hit the brakes as a car in a stall ahead of it started backing out.
Pollock watched that Charger closely as it parked. A man and woman emerged, balancing luggage, letting the doors slam behind them. The man stopped and turned, with Afterthought written all over him, and went back and locked the car. The woman hurried to the booth at the lot's entrance and bought a ticket, and beat it back to the car. As Pollock watched, the PA burst forth with: "United flight 91 for Seattle-Tacoma now loading on the south concourse.
All aboard, please."
The couple came jostling into the terminal as the PA repeated its message. As they passed Pollock, the man snarled, "Goddamn it, I told you we were gonna-"
"Oh, be quiet," she hissed, and her
whisper stirred her husband's waxed hair and caused passers-by to turn and stare, "you make a scene everywhere we-"
They fumbled their luggage onto the scales, produced their tickets and fidgeted while their reservations were confirmed. Then the man snatched the tickets and seized his wife's arm and jerked her along behind him. She hissed at him again, but Pollock couldn't make out what she said, because the PA said: "Last call for passengers on United flight 91 for Seattle-Tacoma, now loading on the south concourse. All aboard, please."
Pollock followed the couple toward the south concourse and stayed behind them long enough to see them break into matching clumsy runs when they came within sight of the gate and the Boeing 727 waiting out on the apron. Pollock stood still then, watching, waiting for one of them to hastily kiss the other and stand behind the gate and get ready to wave a handkerchief. If that happened, Pollock was prepared to go back to watching the parking lot, but they both stopped, produced their tickets again, hopped up and down while the gateman checked the tickets, submitted with bad grace to walking slowly through the metal-detection gear, and, free at last, they jiggled, arm in arm, across the apron toward the plane.
Pollock didn't stay to watch the takeoff. He turned and walked back through the terminal and through the big glass doors in the front and across the drive and into the parking lot, moving easily and looking confident. He strolled up to the Charger, unzipping his bag and glancing through the windows. He couldn't tell for sure, but it looked like the ignition hadn't been turned to the position Which locked the steering wheel.
He opened the bag, pawed through the cigarettes and loose change and cans of gourmet foods, came up with a length of thin, strong, flexible wire. He held the wire up to the window, adjusted it for the correct length, made his hook in the end, and carefully worked it through the comer of the window on the driver's side. After several tries he got the hook around the release, pulled gently, and the door opened smoothly for him. Pollock disengaged his wire, tossed it and the bag inside, and slid into the seat and closed the door, leaving the window up.
He checked the parking lot carefully then, to see if anyone was watching, and rummaged through the bag for more goodies. Then he hunkered down under the dash, being careful not to soil his clothes, tested the wheel-it spun freely-the guy had been in too big a hurry to lock it; tough luck, buddy-and proceeded to locate and cut and strip toe ignition wires. When he crossed them, the starter responded quickly, he gave it a little gas, the engine shouted, and Pollock had himself a Charger. He came up for air and checked the gas gauge, saw it swing over past three-quarters. He nodded and grinned to himself. He was making out just fine.
He carefully replaced his tools in the bag and zipped it shut, started the windshield wipers long enough to watch the ticket, flutter off, stuck a cigarette in his mouth and punched the cigarette lighter. 'As he was driving out he turned on the radio and adjusted the stereo. He left the windows up and found the controls for the air conditioning. First class. He grinned again, said the hell with it and laughed. He held up two fingers at the ticket man in the booth as he left the lot.
He headed west on Interstate 80 toward California. After a little more than a year, he was finally getting out of town. He laughed and smoked and sang along with the radio through Verdi and past Last Chance, and ascended into the mountains and kicked that Charger in the ass and started passing cars. He crossed the California line and passed the little town of Truckee, still climbing, got waved through the California inspection station, and roared up the grade and over Donner Pass. He was rocketing down the other side when he passed the blue Chevy van with the two girls in it.
They were Chicano girls, young and dusky and laughing with white teeth and brown eyes, and because they were laughing and because Pollock was already laughing and felt good, but mostly because he hadn't gotten close to a woman of any kind for a year, he laughed louder and honked the horn, and as they looked over at him, he wondered if they fucked, and then he said, "Shit. Everybody fucks," and started wondering about how and when. Wondering, he rode that Charger clear out of sight of the blue Chevy van.
They caught him a few miles further on, where life was locked in behind a PIE truck and three campers. The campers had finally gotten ahead of the big tractor-trailer and were pulling into the right lane, and Pollock was getting ready to make his move, when he checked the mirror and saw the blue van coming up fast on his left, too fast for him to cut in front, and all he could do was look over at the van as it slid past, and the two Mexican girls laughed and one stuck out her tongue and the other gave him the finger, and he grinned back because his luck was giving him some good breaks today.
The next time he passed them he let go of the wheel to give them the fist and forearm with his other hand on his bicep, and they shouted Fuck You and he read their lips through the glass and sped on, enjoying himself and the Charger and the mountains.
It was summer, the air was crystal, the trees were tall, and he switched off the air conditioning and rolled down his window and the smell was green from the pines and harsh from the wind, and he imagined how the two Mexican girls would smell, all hot and thick and hanging heavy in his nose, and his pants bulged from his great hominess, and he took out his penis, all eight inches of it (not exactly a radiator hose, a girl had once told him, but it'll do) and held it in his right hand like the joystick of a fighter plane, and he waggled the stiff length of it in tune with the Charger's passage through the mountains, pulling it back when he climbed grades, shoving it forward down the hills, from side to side around curves.
"AaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH," he roared hoarsely, in imitation of a screaming aircraft engine, as the Charger slid, wheels grabbing, around a curve designed for a speed of twenty miles less, "flak is making for rough air. Lots of turbulence. Fucking Jerries."
Up ahead, a Volkswagen. He closed upon it swiftly, thumb poised at the head of his throbbing cock. "Lousy stinking Hun," he snarled with ersatz British accent, "eat hot lead!" And he closed his thumb upon his tender head and felt the semen warm and slimy. "Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-t at-tat-I at-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-'tat-tat-tat-tat!" The Volkswagen, which was really a Messerschmidt, burst into flames and performed a graceful roll and slid toward the horizon.
A Pinto and an El Camino and an old Desoto fell before his blazing machine-guns, and his cock was getting come all over his hand when he approached the Mustang Mach One.
"Now we'll see," he roared, "which is master, Spitfire or Messerschmidt! Take that, you Nazi swine!"
The Mach One's driver didn't want to be passed. He jammed his foot to the floor near the end of Pollock's "rat-tat-tat" and gained speed. They sped around the curves neck and neck.
"Wanna dogfight, huh?" breathed Pollock. His dick had leaked all over his hand and was soaking down the taut stalk and getting his pubic hair sticky. It began now to pulse in a purposeful way.
"Whups," he grunted, "getting near the end of my ammo. Gotta hang on. Get rid of Fritz here and I'm an ace. Come on, baby."
The Mustang wasn't giving an inch. Pollock, with his stiff dick in his hand, almost didn't care, except that they came bombarding around another curve and there in the right lane was an old Cadillac, its trunk cut out and open to the air with a wooden fence built around it to make a truck, and it was all loaded up with a mattress and a chair and cardboard boxes and old bedspreads.
"Hah!" crowed Pollock, for he was in the left lane, and the Mach One driver sounded his horn but didn't let up on the gas, and Pollock looked over and grinned like a skull but didn't let go of his cock, and it was the Mach One that slammed on the brakes and fish-tailed, almost side-swiping the Charger, and Pollock raced ahead.
"Victory!" he shouted, and rocked the car from side to side as if he were waggling his wings, and he stroked the joystick in his hand, riding his slimy fist up and down the length of it, and as he flashed past the Cadillac he climaxed. He pointed it toward the passenger side so that the exploding pulsing gush of it wouldn't hit him in the face. Besides he didn't want to get pecker tracks all over his new clothes.
"Oh, oh, uh," he gritted between his teeth, heedless of the chartered bus he passed, which was full of Kiwanis on their way to a barbeque, and who beheld the sight of a man in a high-powered car, traveling at speed while he shot a full load into the empty bucket seat next to him.
"Wow!" Pollock murmured as he pulled ahead of the bus. "What a time for my machine-guns to jam. Whole squadron of Me-109s on my tail." Pollock had grown used to playing impromptu games during the past year. He'd had no one to talk to, no one to share his thoughts with, had heard no human voice addressing him. He had spent a part of the previous year improvising plays in which he was the actor in a one-man tour-de-force. He'd also been beating his meat quite a lot.
But he was neat and a good housekeeper. He broke off the game to find something to mop up the mess, pulling over into the right lane to open the glove box. There were gloves in it-"I'll be damned," breathed Pollock, amazed-and maps and sunglasses and a pair of pliers and a flashlight and-Pollock's heart leaped-a pile of gasoline credit card flimsies, but he couldn't find the card.
He switched his search to the console between the seats, and the bus passed him then, loaded with Kiwanis who opened their windows and stuck their heads out and cheered unsteadily. Pollock looked up, realized he was still sitting there with his pecker hanging out of his pants. He turned his attention back to the console. He found a little paper packet of Kleenex and was breaking it open when the Mach One roared around him, honking furiously, and Pollock looked up in time to see the driver give him the finger. "Sore loser," he muttered, and started sopping the wetness off himself.
And the El Camino passed him, and the Pinto and the Volkswagen, and even the old Desoto while he was cleaning up and putting himself away and zipping up his pants. Last came the Cadillac, who took a hell of a long time passing him, and by the time Pollock had mopped up the other bucket seat, along came that blue Chevy van.
He kept playing leapfrog with the van until they got into a network of interlocking freeways and cloverleaves at Sacramento, and then he lost the two dusky girls. He was ahead of them and saw them in the mirror as they pulled off the freeway and disappeared down a curving off-ramp. Pollock was sorry to see them go. He'd gotten to like them and their cheerful, innocent obscenity.
He ran out of gas a few miles beyond Sacramento. He was good-natured about it-he'd gotten a hundred fifty miles of free transportation and his rocks off besides-as he pulled the Charger off the road and onto the shoulder. He tried on the gloves, found they didn't fit, and left them on the seat. Then he was standing beside the Charger, his zipped flight bag hanging on the end of his arm, and staring at the Charger and shaking his head.
"Well, Blue," he murmured, "we done rode a lotta miles together 'fore them Comanche done you in with a gut shot Don't seem right to leave you here but I ain't goin' to let no animal o' mine suffer." And he pulled out his six-shooter and shot the Charger behind the ear and hoisted his saddle over his shoulder and started walking, limping slightly in his worn boots, his chaps flapping with each step.
He'd gotten maybe a hundred yards when he heard the sound of a car reducing its speed, and he turned to thumb it and saw it wasn't a car at all. It was the blue Chevy van, and it had slowed down to check out the Charger. Then the two girls saw him and gunned the van and pulled up next to him and matched his walking speed. The one on his side rolled down her window, and she was by God a pretty one, with a petal mouth and the huge brown eyes Chicanos develop. She opened her lush mouth and spoke to him in low, breathy tones.
"What'sa matter, man, didjer car bust?"
"Ma'am," said Pollock solemnly, "I shore 'predate your stoppin' th' stage to gimme a ride. See, them Comanche shot m' horse out from under me, an'-"
The pretty one looked at him curiously. "Ain't you got no sense? What'sa matter with you?"
"Tired a' walkin'?" hollered the driver. She was taller, slimmer, plainer, but with fine skin and a lusty mouth. "Try runnin'!" And she hooted with laughter and gunned the van.
Pollock kept walking. They stopped the van farther on and let him catch up.
"You talk funny," said the pretty one from the van as it moved slowly along beside him. "And you drive funny, and you act funny. You crazy, maybe?"
"It's possible," said Pollock, and took out a pack of cigarettes. They watched him light up, and the small pretty one watched his diamond ring. He offered them the pack and they kept it. That made him grin. And that puzzled them.
"Look at his diamond ring," said the driver, "and his watch. Look at his clothes. He don't care. He's got money. He don't care about nothin'."
"He oughta care," answered the small one. "Somebody might steal that car. It's brand new. I think he's crazy. Look at him."
Pollock was strolling on the gravel shoulder, smoking and swinging his flight bag. Now and then he looked over and smiled at them. They didn't notice any concern on his face.
"How about it, buster?" called the driver. "You crazy?"
"Probably not," said Pollock. "At most, I think I'm just neurotic. You hungry?"
"We was gonna have a hamburger."
"Ladies," said Pollock, and stopped to unzip his bag, and that caught the driver by surprise and she stopped the van abruptly and made it rock, "could I interest you in a gourmet lunch? I have," and he pawed through the bag, taking inventory, "Beluga caviar, pate, Camembert, and champagne. All unchilled, I'm sorry to say. I also have some loose change. We could stop somewhere and pick up some ice."
"I think he's crazy," said the pretty girl.
"Who cares?" said the driver.
"Not me," said the small girl.
"Let him in," said the driver.
"Now what you got in there again?" the small pretty one asked him as they were building up speed. She was sitting between the seats and he was next to the door.
"Champagne, caviar-"
"That's fish eggs, ain't it?" asked the driver, wrinkling her nose. They were both wearing light shirts, no bras, and cutoffs.
"That's right."
"What else you got?"
"Cigarettes, dried apricots, loose change-"
"That's pretty funny things to carry around on the freeway. You got any grass?"
"They don't sell grass in discount houses."
"So what?" asked the small pretty one, puzzled. She didn't understand. Pollock didn't blame her, but he didn't explain, either. He was looking at the two of them and getting himself up again.
"What's your name?" one of them asked. "Pollock."
"That's it?"
"Isn't that enough?"
"Huh. Well, I'm Maria." It was the small pretty one speaking. "And that's Linda driving."
"I'm pleased to make your acquaintance."
"And we need ice, huh?"
"We should have it. This stuff is best when it's chilled."
Maria said, "You wanna fuck me?"
"Jesus," said Pollock, and only stared for a second. Then he followed her into the rear of the van, and she was naked before he got his shoes off.
"You sure do come on quick," he remarked as he was peeling off his shirt.
"Don't hand me no shit," she came back, "I saw you getting a hard-on."
"So you did."
"And I don't like to play games, anyway. You either want to or-" her eyes got wide as he took off his pants. "That thing's pretty big to go around without no shorts."
Pollock was flattered. "Thank you very much."
"It ain't the biggest I've ever seen-"
"Oh." Almost everyone said that.
"-but it's bigger'n most." Almost everyone said that, too. Maria got close to him-they were both on their knees-and stroked it with her small brown hands. The van jostled them now and then and jiggled her fine big breasts. They were well-formed, curving outward, jutting, hanging, the aureoles a pleasing rose, the nipples spearing forth. Her dark hair fell past her face in disheveled waves, brushing against his chest as she bent her face to look at his cock.
It was a good cock, too. Wide at the base, it tapered gracefully like a tree to where the head throbbed, full of blood, making it bob gently up and down. The veins in it stood out sharply and seemed to fascinate Maria. She ran the ball of her forefinger along one of the veins, scratched it lightly and flicked it with her fingernail. She grasped the cock firmly below the head, set it against her pubic hair, rubbed gently,-tickling her pussy and making Pollock's blood mutter. He lifted his hands and touched her breasts with his fingertips, circling the aureoles, barely touching the nipples with the palms of his hands. They responded in a rubbery way, bending and springing back like pencil erasers.
"Oooh," she muttered. Pollock barely heard her. She kept her head down but he could see a flush beginning under the skin on her forehead. He squeezed her big breasts, very gently.
"They're lovely," he told her. "Round. Heavy. Perfect."
She bent her head lower, but the flush was definitely there. She moved her hands gently down the length of his prick and placed the palms of them on the soft skin of his abdomen, felt the muscles lying there like a tight bedsheet. Her hands moved down to his hips and across the front of his thighs, which were faintly hairy, and cupped his rather large balls, hefted them, and she said, giving him a compliment: "You got nice nuts, too."
He chuckled. Maria was a romantic little girl. He said, "Thank you," and was surprised to hear it come out of him in a hoarse, shaking voice. She put her head against his chest and cupped his cock in her left hand and reached under with her right and softly scratched the sensitive spot between his balls and his asshole, and this time it was his turn to say, "Ooh."
He slipped his hands from her breasts and they billowed out as she pressed against him, and he joined his fingertips behind her back at her spine, and from there ran his fingertips down the large muscles which bordered her backbone, and played lightly with the ticklish skin at the tops of her buttocks, and she quivered, squirming, and began breathing faster through her nose. Then she opened her mouth and breathed through it against his chest.
Pollock felt her sliding down his body. The lush cheeks of her ass moved downward out of reach as she sat on her ankles. Her warm wet mouth slid down his chest, past his solar plexus that was now working like a small bellows, down his stomach, between the ridges of muscle that pointed to his navel. "God damn...." he murmured as his chest went into the heaving stage. The mouth lingered momentarily in the cavity, and then her fingernails were in his thatch of pubic hair, digging, tickling, and his cock rose by itself and nuzzled her chin with its wetness. She rubbed her face with it, the purple head sliding and slapping over her cheeks and temples and eyes and nose, and then her mouth was on it for a moment in a brief kiss before her pointed tongue began to lap its juices.
"Oh, Maria ... ullunnnghhh...." he was having trouble with his sentences. What he wanted to say was, Goddammit, get it in there, meaning her mouth, but what came out was babble.
And her tongue left him suddenly and her face was before his own, and her eyes were closed and her mouth was opened with the tongue peeping from between the white teeth, and she moaned a drawn-out moan that turned into a grunt when he kissed her.
Pollock's kiss was jubilant and positive and fraught with purpose, savoring the resiliency of her full, firm lips that were sticky from his semen. First he licked them top and bottom and side to side and from the outside to the soft pink wetness on the inside that was so like the inside of a cunt. He licked the outsides of her teeth before he penetrated between them and felt them nip his tongue, and he extended his tongue and lapped her palate with the tip of it, laved the insides of her cheeks, engaged her own tongue and felt the both of them twisting slimily together inside her crowded mouth. "Hhhhmmmmpppphhhh," she said in her throat, and Pollock went, "Wwwwhhhhoooommmmpp," blowing into her.
Her fine breasts mashed against his chest, bulging like cushions as she breathed in, and her breathing came faster now, punctuated more often with a small catch from her vocal cords, and the breath he took into him smelled of heat and smoke and his own salty self. Her cheeks swelled as he blew into her again, and her lips unsealed themselves from his, and she wheezed upward into his nostrils a half-second before her tongue probed into them.
Pollock licked her face, all of it, lapping it like a dog, from her hairline to each facial feature to her neck and around to her ears, and after he treated each ear thoroughly he took it entirely into his mouth and sucked it noisily, and Maria moaned, "Oh, wow ... oh, wow...."
And his mouth was on her neck again like a suction cup, down to her collarbone where he clamped gently with his teeth and touched the tip of his tongue to the soft place between the bone and her neck. He moved along her shoulders, lingering over her firm young deltoid muscles, and her hands left his cock, which they'd been rubbing against the large distended lips of her cunt, and moved up to cup her breasts for him to suck.
He fooled her and went for the armpit. His mouth went into the soft prickly darkness of it, and she shuddered out a breath and grasped him by the hair and pulled him to the floor of the van.
She was panting now. So was Pollock. He worked over each of her armpits, which were only a little sour underneath the heavy overlay of her musk, and moved his darting tongue into the deep crease made by her heavy breast until his face emerged between the two of them.
She let go his head and placed a little hand on each of the wonderful bulbous things and squeezed his face between them. He shook his head furiously, his uncontrolled tongue bathing her with saliva, and pulled free and dived under the other one, licking so fiercely that his tongue felt close to rupture. He moved up the lovely curving slope of it, carefully circling the aureole and the nipple that were dry except for her own sweat, and she panted insistently, but he ignored her and gave her other breast the same treatment.
"Come on," she hissed, her eyes narrowed, "come on."
CHAPTER TWO
Pollock lowered his face to the tip of her right breast, slowly licked the bright pink rim of the aureole, using his entire tongue, taking his time, getting it all. She moaned and panted and demanded, and he stiffened his tongue and flicked her nipple, and she arched her back and gave one sharp pant He flicked the little hard thing again, and then again, and then began licking it in earnest, making it vibrate for him. She clasped his head in her hands and pulled it down, but he resisted with the big muscles of his neck. She threw her own head back and closed her eyes, and after he'd licked her nipple a minute longer he let his open mouth descend and took the pink tip of her tit into it.
He sucked gently, rolling and fondling the nipple with his tongue, getting his whole head into the action, sucking firmly the length of the nipple when he pulled back, taking more of her breast into his mouth each time he pushed down. "Oh, oh, oh, that's good," she breathed. "You like my tits? More, man, oh...."
Pollock's mouth was stretched as tight as it would go, his jaws felt they would crack, her breast was filling up his mouth and cramping his tongue. His hands stroked her belly and felt it heave and knead itself and fill with air for him, felt it hollow itself into a concavity. He was getting her into a fine heat.
Her own hands joined on her right breast and squeezed it, forcing more of it into his mouth.
"More," she panted, "more, take more, get it all in.
"Brglstx," said Pollock, which meant Jesus Christ! He closed his eyes and concentrated and managed to open his jaws a fraction further and push his tongue under the huge thing entering his mouth, and he sucked in another half-inch. His teeth were into it now, sinking into the soft skin and making her cry out. "Ah. Hhagh. Aaah." The cries got higher and thinner and she began entering pain, but she pulled his head down tight, until her breast had no more elasticity. Then she rolled from side to side and moaned, clutching him to her.
He broke loose at last before he choked on his own saliva, and the sharp pink point popped forth beneath his nose, and the sudden rush of his breath upon it caused her to shiver, and he drooled on it without warning. Her two hands clenched it and made it leap. He kissed it and moved down her body.
"Oh, the other one, get the-" and she broke off when his tongue traced her rib cage, and her belly hollowed out again and showed him the deepness of her navel. His face was wet and shining with spit and sweat by this time, and it slid naturally down the light brown valley and came to rest at that smooth dark hole. He entered it with his tongue, drank his own saliva from it like a thirsty man, poked in his nose and screwed it from side to side, and his busy tongue licked the swelling of her abdomen. Her legs flexed, her knees came up, her hands appeared again and shoved his head down. He saw her cunt, the large outer lips pushed out, swollen, dull red amid the dead blackness of her pubic hair. He deftly evaded it and attacked her groin and the insides of her thighs and the plump symmetry of the lower cheeks of her ass.
His mouth found the soft mound above the cunt where the black wiry hair flourished, and he bit into it and felt the, tiny hairs slide between his teeth, heard her breath hiss in and the following sharp squeak of pain. He nibbled his way down the lips of her pussy, pulling them in and out, kneading them. She went dead still, trying to control the shaking in her thighs. He slid his hands along her hips where the buttocks flattened on the carpeted floor of the van and gently parted her outer lips and took her long, moist, fragrant pussy's kiss.
"Ooooooohhhhh," she moaned, and he knew without looking she was smiling, "ooooooohhhhhhh."
He parted her inner lips with his tongue and went exploring until he found the passage, and extended his tongue until it reached the limit, which was considerable. He'd had a year to practice.
Maria yelped softly and chuckled. Her ass wriggled on the carpet. He withdrew his tongue and lunged with it like a swordsman, and the sound she made could only have come from a laughing mouth. Pollock thrust his tongue home like Cyrano de Bergerac, bringing warm and grateful responses from Maria. He moved his hands up her hips and curled them around her belly, which swelled and hardened and heightened his own excitement. He felt his cock leaking against his belly where he lay on it.
He searched for and found her clitoris, bless it. It came sliding to him like the lead of a mechanical pencil. He flicked it with his tongue as fast as he could, up and down and back and forth. Maria went into a frenzy, arching her back and squealing, hhhhh, aaaaaaiiiiiiiieeeeeeee," and his hands on her belly pushed her down so that he could keep his mouth inside her without straining his neck too much, and her abdominal muscles rounded and bulged, pushing the soft flesh around his hands and between his fingers. He had to see her.
He peeked over the top of the threshing thatch of hair at her writhing body, the pulsing navel, the undulating hips, those beautiful enormous breasts that swayed from side to side, and as he watched she dug her fingers into them and made all that lovely flesh quake and shiver.
Pollock couldn't stand the sight for too long without coming all over his torso. He closed his eyes and filled his mouth with her delicious young Chicano cunt and sucked it mightily. It was alive and warm and sweet and salty together, and pulsed inside his mouth and covered the lower part of his face with slime. Maria moved her hips wildly, shook her trembling ass, slid her feet back and forth on the carpet. She brought her knees up and pressed a warm brown thigh on either side of his face.
"Ha ... ha...." she panted, "damn you, gringo."
Pollock began slurping her with his tongue. "Hoo, hoo," she cried, "hoo, that's good, that's so good, you pretty gringo bastard, oh, I love it, don't stop, oh! Ho-ho-ho-ho-ho! Ah! Ah!" When he came slurping up, leaving his mouth open and trailing saliva up her stomach and between her huge sweet tits and up her throat, she shouted, "Yeah! Yeah! Shit! Sonnabitch, oh, fuck me good, goddamn, oooohhhhh-"
Pollock was busy sucking on her chin. Maria's fervent frantic hands found his cock and squeezed it, stroked it, thumbed the head, guided it to her hungry, distended cunt, moaned, "Oh, come up, come up farther, oooohhh, you goddamn gringo-" Pollock stopped sucking long enough to ask, "What's my name?"
"Huh? Aw, shit! Pollock, goddamn you! Pollock, you lousy bastard, fuck me now, Pollock, shit, piss, fuck, cunt-"
Pollock waited till she'd inserted the head into herself and them jammed himself all the way up to the balls. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" Maria screamed. He left it there. She squirmed under him, her face tight against his chest, and her sharp white teeth nipped him.
"Oh," she panted, "oh, oh, it hurts-"
"Does it?"
"Yes, damn it, don't go! you bastard, I'll slit your fucking throat, oh, Pollock-"
And Pollock pumped her, throwing his full weight on her small body and her billowing breasts. Maria whimpered and shook and moaned and writhed and cried and almost shook the van to pieces. When Pollock levered himself up on his arms to look down at her, he saw her face and it didn't matter what she said, what curses she threw at him, because her eyes were closed and her mouth was open and she was smiling with her teeth parted and her tongue quivering between them. The sight of her drove him on, and he lunged with every muscle and every shred of nerve, ramming himself deep within her with each thrust. He drove the breath from her in savage buffets of his body, and she opened her eyes and didn't see him. "Pollock. Pol-lock. Pol Lock."
She came, and her hips bucked beneath him, and she shook her shoulders and her breasts leaped. "Ah," she sang, "ah-ah! Oh, Pollock, Pollock...." The spasms ran their course. He slowed and rested.
She opened her eyes again and looked at him and the smile was still there, but it was meant for and directed at him, not the pleasures within her body, and she said, softly accusing, "You dint come. Pollock, I want you to come, now."
He smiled back, regaining his breath, and they grinned silly grins at each other for a minute or two. She said, "Pollock, honey, your cock feels so good in me-"
"You better believe it does. Feels better than it has in more than a year."
She reached up and touched his face. "Pollock, baby, can you come in me and still have some left for Linda?"
"Sure. But not now. I can't fuck you any more if I come now."
He began to move again, slowly, deliberately, delivering himself to her an inch at a time, and she replied with grinding rotations of her hips, and they hit the rhythm of it, with her pelvis moving in such a way as to make her clitoris receive his prick twice on each thrust.
"Oh. Oh. Ah."
"Maria. Baby."
"Oh, Pollock. Pollock, I love it. Ooohh, it's good, you fuck so good, Pollock-"
"Yeah. Oh. Maria. Mm."
"Pollock...?"
"Yeah. Mm. Oh."
"Pollock, I'm gonna come again, oh, oh, goddammit-"
"Lay it on, then-"
"Oh, god, oh god, oh god oh goddammit! Pol-lock-"
"Mmmrrph-"
"FasterPollockyoubastardohbabyfuckme-"
"Oof. Mmph. Ghntrbgn."
"Yiiiiii!" Oh! Shit-oh-shit. Fuck, you pretty bastard, Pollock, ah! Faster!"
Maria came again and the spasms were longer this time, and if Pollock's cock hadn't been eight inches she'd have shaken him out. He fucked her brutally, standing above her on his outstretched arms to whip himself into her dilated pussy, and she screamed and wept and pushed herself along the floor of the van until Pollock weighed her down with his hands on her shoulders. His gaze riveted on her fine big breasts shaking beneath him. He moved his hands to her breasts, the brown flesh spilling over his paler skin. Maria closed her eyes and peeled back her lips and wrenched her head from side to side, as if she were swinging a safe from her teeth. When she'd finished her climax, Pollock, by a supreme effort of will, hadn't yet shot his wad, and he left her suddenly.
"Oh!" Her eyes flashed open, her head shot up, she beheld Pollock bathed in sweat. "Oh-" she touched him, let her gaze and her hand travel down his heaving body to his large swollen organ. "Ooohh-" she sat up-"Pollock-" and pressed him gently down on his back-"Pollock, you great fuck, you-" and straddled his hips. Pollock looked down at her thighs and was pleased-"Pollock, poor bastard, let me-" and they exchanged grins and she lowered herself to him, her hands at her crotch, rubbing the head of his cock against her pouting cunt's lips-" Pollock, you let me fuck you now, you crazy gringo-"
She smiled at him then, her white teeth flashing with her eyes, and then bent her head to her task. Pollock watched: at how her muscles lay on her olive belly, at her great breasts, squeezed together between her arms, the dark hair whose tips lay on their curving swell, at the large muscles of her inner thighs, quivering as she manipulated the purple head of his prick, tickling her cunt and bringing forth the fluids there. She was on her knees, her ass well clear of him. Her mouth was open, her breath stirring a stray lock of dark hair that wandered across her face, and her tongue came out as he watched and touched her upper lip in concentration.
She positioned the head of the big thing and used her fingers to hold the outer lips of her cunt open while she wriggled her pelvis to admit him to her body. Pollock watched, fascinated, as the head slid into her cunt and stopped at the corona, so that she could reposition the large lips of her sweet box along the shaft. Watching, he saw his veined stalk become damp with the liquids she secreted. Maria drew in a deep breath and wriggled her hips and ass, performing a small series of bumps and grinds to guide the head of his tool to the channel. Her abdomen flexed and swelled below the hollow of her stomach and reminded him of a belly dancer. Her mouth, still open, bloomed like a flower, the full lips swelling. She mewed faintly like a kitten and moved downward in a series of little jerks as her channel devoured his cock.
Pollock's eyes were riveted to his great stalk disappearing into Maria's cunt, and at last her firm ass nestled on his balls, her abdomen distended from organs being pushed aside as she stretched to accommodate him. Her eyes were fixed, staring; her face was enraptured, full of wonder.
"Oooooo," she cooed, "Pollock, your big gringo cock ... I'm so full ... it's so tight in here, Pollock ... ah, god...."
Her legs were bent double at the knees, her hands lay flat upon his belly, as if she were afraid to let herself down any further. She pressed her thighs against him, pinning his body between them. She spoke with a queer hushed voice, as if she were about to choke, as if pressure lay upon her lungs. He didn't think she was that crowded in there.
Maria's breath began to wheeze, and Pollock, gazing at her olive body, saw that it was tight, the muscles flexed and straining. He felt her cunt squeezing and snapping his cock, and the blood hammered him as it left his head and rushed toward the stalk. Hollows appeared at regular intervals in the sides of her buttocks. The muscles crawled in her thighs. Her breasts trembled, shook. Her eyes saw nothing. Her mouth hung slack, the gleaming teeth were wet, the tongue curled and undulated behind them. A drop of sweat ran down her left breast and hung glittering on her nipple, and the swaying of the van broke it loose and it spattered on his skin.
Pollock gave an experimental flex of his own buttocks. It lifted him slightly and she hung impaled upon him for an instant and cried out. When he lay still again, she ran the flattened palms of her hands over his belly and ribs, and cooed and mewed, and bent forward and dangled her tits and the nipples danced upon his chest.
She was in the last stages before climax, and Pollock knew it would be good for a woman like Maria, whose every succeeding time was faster, harder, more vivid and exciting than the one before. He flexed his own ass again and surged upward, released his buttocks and tightened them again, and the eight-inch rod deep in her belly pushed and pulsed, lifting her.
Her neck tightened, her mouth stretched open wider, she grunted a series of low, terse, guttural sounds, and she was doing her best, he saw, to hold back her spasms until the last possible moment. Sweat popped out on her face and chest as Pollock watched, ran in rivulets down her hard belly, lay gleaming in droplets like pearls in her pubic hair. Maria strained her body, keeping it clamped tightly upon him, keeping the entire length of Mm inside her, and already she was beginning to babble, her dry lips forming unintelligible sounds. Her self-control fell apart as he watched.
She leaned forward suddenly, braced her claw-like hands on his chest. Some of her hair fell forward on either side of her face, and some remained stuck to her heavy breasts from the sweat. Her lips pushed away from her teeth, she hung her tongue from her open mouth and panted like a bitch.
Pollock's thrusts grew stronger, swifter, and at last she began to fuck him.
"Uhhhhoooohhhhhhhaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhiiiiiieeeeee," her voice mounted the scale into high-pitched whines that drained her lungs of air, and she lifted her ass a few inches, exposing half his slime-coated cock, her large pussy lips clinging wetly. When she plunged down at him and drove the hard thing into her, the grunt that was forced from her was a shuddering thing of the extremes of pain and pleasure mingled, and she leaped and bucked upon him, her ass lifting higher-each time, the downward plunge harder and more savage, the expression on her face becoming an odd one of torture and exaltation. She drooled upon him. Sweat galloped down her ribs and sprinkled his stomach, and more fell on his chest from her hanging breasts and her tight, incoherent face. Her upper body heaved, sucking air into her open mouth, and her exhalations went, "Huh. Huh. Huh. Huh. Huh." She came again, and Pollock was watching a wild woman.
She reared and shook, her breasts rippled, her sweat flew about the van, her ass lifted her cunt to the very end of his cock, and, stroking powerfully, drove it into her like a piston. She shook her head wildly from side to side and kept starting whimpers she couldn't finish because her wind was robbing her of breath and strength. Her cunt couldn't take his cock fast enough. The firm lower cheeks of her ass, soaked with sweat and pussy juice and his own saliva, struck his groin and his balls with a slap, slap, slap, slap, and when her strength was sapped she collapsed upon him and their sweat, mingling, made a film that cancelled friction and caused her to feel curiously light.
She lay atop him, panting, breathing words he couldn't hear at first, and as her voice grew stronger he heard, "Pollock, ah, Pollock, te amour-" and thus she cooed into the sweat-bathed skin of his chest, and he grinned and held her around him and said, "You great fuck, Maria, you beautiful cunt, you sweet girl...."
She sprang erect, as much as she was able, since she was still impaled upon him, and snapped, eyes flaring, "You dint come! You lousy bastard, it's stuck in me like a goddamn crowbar!"
"You complaining?"
Her eyes narrowed, her full mouth smiled at him, full of naughtiness, and she was truly a beautiful girl, her skin gleaming damply, her hair stuck to her breasts, her belly swollen and distended from his prick buried deep in her. "Why don't you come, Pollock? You scared you won't have enough left for Linda?"
"This is my first in more than a year. I'll be damned if I'm going to rush it."
Her eyes widened. "I'm your first? In a year? Pollock, honey, you musta been in jail, huh? Oh, I'm good for you, huh?" And her eagerness brought his laughter.
"You're better than good, Maria. How many times did you come?"
She stuck her little finger in the corner of her ripe mouth and counted. "Four big ones."
"You think I could keep a hard-on that long if you weren't, Maria?"
She leaned forward to kiss him and his cock slid almost out of her before she reached his lips. Her own lips seemed bruised because they were swollen, pouting, like the lips of her cunt. "Oooohhh," she breathed into his mouth, "I'm gonna make you come, baby; I bet you shoot so hard you rupture me.
"I hope not. Once is never enough. You're too good to ruin."
She kissed him once more and leaned back and took him into her again, and he slurped in the wetness of her box. She sat there a moment, staring at him, at the pale disheveled hair framing his face, at the wide, strong neck growing from the straight broad shoulders, at the muscle-banded chest and stomach, at hipbones jutting up from leanness. "How'd you get so tan in jail?"
"I didn't say I was in jail. You did."
"What you been doing for a year, then, you dint get laid? Where you been except jail?"
"Getting rehabilitated."
"Where?"
"You wouldn't believe me."
"Yes, I would."
"Maria-!"
The urgency in his voice reached past her bantering and brought the heat to her thighs, and she said, "Oh, Pollock, baby, I'll fuck you all day-"
And she tried. She fucked and fucked, lying down on his chest and quietly moving her ass, sitting up and plunging on him and letting him lay his hands on her moist belly and her quivering breasts. She fucked him while he stroked her thighs, and fucked him, moaning frantically, when he forced his finger into her cunt along with his cock and searched for her clitoris. She came again and shrieked, arched her spine, and lay her head back and shook her long dark hair behind her, and pleaded and begged for him to come.
When she was done, she rose from him and turned, sat on him facing his feet, took his raging tool into her again and laid her head between his legs and licked them, her wonderful ass spread before his eyes. She came again almost immediately, and the great violent shudders of her climax shook her buttocks and rippled her thighs. She took one of his legs and pressed it against her breast and sobbed, "Pollock, Pollock!"
And his own excitement heightened to a peak, and, wanting to preserve it, not wanting to descend, he heaved them over on their sides, she still facing away from him, and reached for her small waist and pulled her to him, dragging himself out of her, her pussy lips pulling away with wet slurps. He clasped her to him and kissed her shoulders, nipped her back where the skin was soft below the shoulder-blades, licked the small of her back at the waist. She wriggled and moaned, pushing her ass into his face. He licked it, all of it, now and then biting gently, and she squirmed on her side, her back to him, and convoluted her body for his great excitement. Once he bit her savagely, and she yelped in pain and then rooted her ass strongly at him, and he ran his tongue entirely up the crease of it, from her cunt to her spine, making her shudder. He did that again and again until the cries of pleasure throbbed steadily from her, and he set her on her knees with her face against the carpet and forced his own face into the crease of her ass and found her sweet puckered anus and speared it with his tongue and she settled into a series of grateful sighs.
Pollock stabbed his tongue in and out of her asshole and kept it up until he felt the strong young muscles relax and become elastic, and-Maria mewed, "Oh, Pollock, oh, Pollock, that's so good don't stop don't stop-" and he stopped then and placed his lips against her anus and began sucking it strongly and noisily, and her mews turned to cries of, "Oh, yes, yes, oh, that's it that's it that's it keep that up, suck out my ass suck it all out Pollock honey oh Pollock baby-"
He alternated then, sucking and spearing with his tongue, and her asshole was soaked with her sweat and his saliva and the sweet/sour fluid from her pussy and traces of his semen and they mingled deliciously on his tongue and formed a salty-slimy texture inside his mouth, and he felt her asshole stretch open for him, and he dragged his mouth from her, swiftly mounted her, and guided his big throbbing cock into position.
"Oh. Oh! ULLULLHHHH!" She grunted as he entered her asshole with a series of short, powerful thrusts and buried his prick three inches past the great blood-loaded head. Maria came up on her elbows and Pollock placed his hands on the floor on either side of her. "OH! Oh, Pollock, GOD! I'm too little for that great big thing, oh! It hurts!"
She scrambled to escape and he lunged, landing on top of her, flattening her and driving himself deep, deep into her, and she screamed.
Pollock blitzed her, brutal again, and felt his strokes soften, and Maria's cries lessened into curses.
"Pollock, you lousy sadistic sonofabitch, oh! You rotten gringo, ah! Oh! Goddamn you, Pollock...."
"It's better now, isn't it?"
"You fucking bastard, I love it. Oh-uh. Ah. Pollock. You're gonna come, now."
"Yeah."
"Ooooohhhh-"
She squirmed under him, flattening her breasts, bulging them out on either side, and he lay atop her and stroked them, pumping her easily, taking his time, feeling her sphincter muscles flex and contract, squeezing him like a strong little hand. He grasped her firmly and rolled over, and they were both on their backs, she on top, and her hair cascaded over his face. His arms crossed over her upper body, one hand directly over a breast that squeezed out on either side of it, the other kneading his fingers strongly into her belly. Her buttocks rested on his balls and his cock was now buried completely inside her, and still her sphincter muscles sucked his cock.
"Mmmmrrflbgndrpndrf," Pollock gritted.
"Come on," Maria panted, "come on, you crazy, man you, pretty, gringo, uh-oh, come oh, come Pol, lock honey, oh, yes do, it now, come in, me Pollock-"
Pollock reached down and curled his fingers into her cunt and she swiveled on top of him-"You, too," he growled-and she yelped excitedly as he finger-fucked her. Her asshole sucked his cock crazily, and he felt the heat, immense and unbearable, building in his loins. She shook and swiveled and undulated and swayed and wriggled and reared and rooted. He flipped her hair aside and saw her face, lusty, abandoned, open-mouthed, the tongue sliding around the lips and around and around "Maria, honey," he husked, barely able. The heat was filling him, sapping his strength, the sweat boiled from him, and his cock swelled inside Maria's asshole and she cried out: "Pollock! Pollock!"
He rolled her over again, both on their sides, and began fucking her with hard, vicious strokes, and she responded with quick surges of her sweet powerful ass, and he cried, "Oh-oh, Maria, I'm-"
"Do it! Do it!"
"-coming!"
"Ohhhhhh, rip me, whip me-"
"YAAAAAAAAAAAAA-"
The heat was unmerciful, fanning throughout his body. Her sphincter pumped him, sucked him, squeezed him, milked him, and he shot a huge upheaval of come into her that went on and on and on, and still she squirmed, her asshole working like a milking machine, and he screamed and begged and prayed for her to give him mercy, and she wouldn't, and a minute later they were both drained and close to passing out. It was another minute after that when they could talk.
"Pollock, sweetie, do you have to go?"
"No, but you should let all my come out."
"Well, shit, lemme get a rag ... there...."
She slid the rag under her and Pollock removed his dick, now docile and flaccid. She sat up, looked down, inspected herself. "My god."
Pollock looked at the come leaking out of her, and leaking and leaking and leaking. They both looked, and Maria leaned forward and kissed him. It was a good strong firm wet kiss that lasted a long time, and when she broke free, breathless, she told him, "That was the best I ever had it from one man."
CHAPTER THREE
"You think it's over?"
She looked at his limp tool and started to say something, but he stopped her with his mouth, and toe next thing Maria knew his face was between her thighs and he was eating her tender cunt.
Her pussy walls were red and swollen from his repeated attacks and hurt her in the most tantalizing way possible. Pollock opened his mouth wide and found her clitoris and sucked it hard, hard. It drove Maria from one end of the van to the other.
"Oh, shit, suck, suck it, oh, it hurts, it hurts, don't stop, Pollock, suck it! Suck it! Oh! Oh!"
Her heels dug in and shoved her aching body backward toward the driver's compartment. Her head shoved through the separating curtain and she wriggled and thrust herself through until she was jammed in between the seats and underneath the gear-shift lever. She was trapped. And trapped, she took the full onslaught of Pollock's driving tongue and sucking lips and nipping teeth, and taking it, she felt violated and abused. And abused, she felt visible and loved and fully known by this person, and feeling all that, the visibility and the familiarity and the love, she came again, and it was a sweet violence that caught her throat and glazed her nerves and filled her eyes with wetness.
Linda, driving, placed her hand on Maria's cheek, stroked her gently, glanced into her unseeing, weeping eyes, murmured, "Poor baby. Poor baby."
Pollock's arms thrust through the curtain and collected Maria's limp body, pulled it back into the van, gathered it to him, and his hands stroked her face and hair and body while his arms held her, and he said, "There. There. There." Softly and gently, soothing her and telling her about her great beauty and about what a wonderful fuck she was, and she clung to him like a child and rested and smiled and nodded her head in answer to small questions, and occasionally licked the sweat from his chest and shoulders and tasted the brininess of it on her tongue. They lay down on the carpeted floor of the van and kissed a lot, and she said, "Lemme get you a cigarette, Pollock," and she did, and they smoked and talked for a few more miles, and both of them were very happy.
"Where you been, Pollock?"
"You wouldn't believe me."
"Shit, why not? You been on the moon? Listen, how'd you get so much money and dint get laid? Don't you care about your car? You just left it back there, and lookit this-" she fingered his pinky and the diamond ring riding on it-"and your watch. Shit, Pollock, what are you?"
"Thief?"
"Well, yeah, I could buy that, I guess. But you dint get no tan like that in jail, and they don't let you have long hair in jail, either. Where you been, Pollock?"
Pollock sighed. "Okay. I've been living in a discount store in Reno."
Maria stared.
"See?" he told her. "I told you, you wouldn't believe me."
"A disa what?"
"Discount store. You know. Supermarket-department store-coffee shop-automotive-save-save-save-cause-it's-all-under-one-roof-discount store. You know."
"They don't let nobody live in no discount-"
"Not if they know about it, they don't."
"I'll be goddamned. You're shittin' me, ain't you, Pollock?"
He had to grin at her again. "See? I told you." He leaned down and kissed the swell of her breast. She shuddered. "Oooohh. That's good. But you're crazy, Pollock. I know you are."
"We lunatics live the most interesting lives." He nibbled gently at her nipple. "And we know the most interesting people."
She giggled. "I really like you, Pollock, you crazy sonofabitch. You know?"
"Why?" His voice was muffled in her heavy flesh.
"Cause you like me. I mean, really. Doncha." It was a demand, not a question.
He raised his head and stared into her huge Chicano eyes. "Yeah." And smiled into her face. She was pleased, and kissed him and wrapped her lush little body around him and nuzzled his skin and whispered, "Ohh, Pollock. Lemme have you. I wanna do something nice for you. I'm gonna give you a header."
"Oh?" He moved his legs to give her room. "Come on, Pollock, lemme blow you."
"You hear me complaining?"
"Maybe I better not. You got to have something left for Linda "
"Maybe you're right."
"Fuck you, you bastard," and she dropped her head and placed her lips on the sensitive head of his cock and began a wet sucking on the very end of it that lifted Pollock from the floor.
"Wow," he murmured.
"Huh," she snorted triumphantly from deep in her throat, and his organ began to regain its former character. She continued the long, steady suck, and sucked the head of it into her mouth. Pollock had fucked her in the pussy and the asshole and wondered how he tasted to her, with her mouth full of the substances and residues from her own body. Maria began to stroke herself, and Pollock, observing the pleasure her own body gave her, didn't worry about it much.
The head of his cock nestled in her hot mouth, crowding her cheeks, her busy tongue laving it, rolling it, rousing his blood and stirring his liquids. He swiveled on the carpet, getting his thighs positioned so Maria's neck would be comfortable, and she moaned gratefully and sucked another inch of his rapidly hardening stalk into her mouth. "Ohhhhhh," moaned Pollock, "Maria...."
She moved her head up and down, her lips stretching thin as they passed over the flaring corona, her cheeks hollowing and bulging in turn as she took his tool, and he felt the end of it slide between her strong, arching tongue and the roof of her mouth, saw her stomach leap convulsively when the head of his cock pushed into the beginning of her throat. She held her head still then, and let him fuck her in the mouth for a minute or two, her searching fingers finding his asshole and squeezing his balls.
"Ooooofff," he mumbled foggily, "Rlfmgn," and Maria held him still with light pressures of teeth and fingertips and began once more to suck the head. She sucked and sucked and sucked until the heat arose in him, and he braced his elbows on the floor of the van and closed his eyes and gritted his teeth.
Her lips came together with a final slurp, his cock slipped out and slapped his belly, his eyes popped open and he glanced swiftly down at her, surprised, and found her looking mischievously up at his face. "Now," she said, grinning wickedly, "you're all ready for Linda."
"Bitch," he muttered, "I loved it."
"Me, too. I sure would have liked for you to blow my head off, but you got to give some to Linda. She's been driving all this time, listening to me get fucked and ate and everything, and I bet she's horny by now."
"You're great friends, aren't you?"
"You'll never know." She raised her head and shouted over her shoulder. "Linda! Pull over!"
The van began slowing down. "It's okay?" Maria asked, her face concerned and serious. "You had enough rest? You ready?"
"Yeah," said Pollock regretfully, "but I wish it were you."
Maria smiled at him and put her arms around him and squeezed him, and murmured, "It'll be okay, Pollock. She's good. Really good. You'll like her. She'll prolly make you forget about me."
"Want to bet?"
She kissed him again and began to dress. It didn't take her long-slip into her cutoffs and shrug on her shirt, which clung damply to her in places. He lit a cigarette and enjoyed himself, watching Maria's nipples poking at the thin cloth, and then the van stopped and Linda came through the curtain.
"Sloppy seconds, huh?" She squatted just inside the curtain, hands on hips, and glanced at the two of them. Her glance lingered on Pollock's penis, still erect from Maria's teasing. "How is he?"
Maria smiled. "Enjoy him, Linda."
"Yeah, well, he's big enough," Linda told her and Maria disappeared through the curtain. Linda was still then, watching Pollock until Maria put the van into gear and they started moving.
"Just one thing, buster," she told him, then, "all I'm here for is to fuck. I ain't interested in you. All I want is cock and plenty of it, and you better be ready."
Pollock said nothing, but continued to smoke and watch Linda. She was olive-skinned like Maria, with the same kind of dark, cascading hair, but there the resemblance ended. Where Maria was small and rounded and lush, Linda was tall and lean and athletic. Her legs especially appealed to Pollock, being long and ripely curved, absolutely functional, the long muscles of them flowing smoothly into one another, creating highlights on the silky, hairless skin.
"Did you hear me, buster?" she asked Pollock. "What do you think a' that, huh?"
"You've got to have a beautiful ass," he told her.
She snorted. "Flattery won't get you no place, either." She slipped out of her clothes. Her rather small breasts had big brown aureoles. "Okay, man, you wanna see my ass?"
She stood and turned, stooping, and placed her knees together and thrust her ass in his face, and he'd been right: Linda's ass and legs were her best features. Her buttocks were classics, each of them muscular, gleaming, curving, swelling, and at the bottom of them was a small triangle of air where her inner thighs began. Pollock put out his cigarette and leaned forward and kissed her left cheek.
"Huh," Linda chuckled, and turned again and hung her small breasts in his face. "Suck 'em, okay? Get me ready."
He could smell her, hanging thick and musky a few inches from his face, and he knew she was ready, but he obliged her, stroking her little breasts with his hands and nuzzling her large brown aureoles, rolling her nipples between his lips.
"Lick 'em, now," breathed Linda, and Pollock flicked the nipples with his tongue-tip, hardening them into irregular little cubes. Linda enjoyed ordering him around; it excited her that he did as she told him, and Pollock didn't mind a bit. She was breathing faster now.
"That's it," she husked softly, and her voice thrilled him, "that's it. The other one, now." Pollock moved to the other breast and sucked it noisily, juicily, and she grasped his hair and pulled angrily. "I dint tell you to suck. Keep licking. There. Yeah." Her voice was low, husky, breathy. It went with her. Her mouth was wide and bad-looking. She'd be wild, Pollock knew.
"Now suck. Yeah. Yeah." Linda chuckled deep in her throat. The sound of it chilled Pollock. He opened wide and drew in as much of her breast as he could, stretching the skin of the little thing painfully. Oooooh! Easy, you bastard. Not so goddamn rough. You like it, huh?" He nodded. "Damn right you do. Suck those tits, man" She gave what Pollock thought was unnecessary emphasis on the last word.
Her breathing had quickened. Her fingers still lay in his hair, stroking and mussing and drawing his face into her tits. "Good. Good. Mm-hm. Yeah." After some minutes of steady sucking and licking, they were both breathing harder. Pollock's pecker had stiffened and was leaking, and the smell of Linda's pussy assailed his nose. He slid his hands down her body, felt the tautness of it under smooth skin, found her thighs and marveled at the touch of them. A blind man, he thought, would find Linda breathtakingly beautiful.
"Okay," she breathed, "okay," and she disengaged herself from his mouth and turned again, bent, placed her hands on her knees and braced herself, her gleaming, extraordinary ass in his face. "Now eat my ass," she told him, "eat it out. AD of it."
Pollock obediently pressed his face against the resilient, yielding muscles of her buttocks and placed his nose in the crease between them, smelled the heavy smell of her, licked tentatively.
"Eat, goddammit," she panted, "eat me."
Now Pollock chuckled. Who's in control, now, Linda? he thought to himself. His tongue darted into her like a snake's, in and out, wetting her anus, and she squirmed and snarled, "Eat me, I said. Eat that ass, you sonofabitch."
Pollock began slurping and sucking her tight little asshole, enjoying himself while Linda squirmed and grunted and pressed her buttocks harder into his face, making him fight for air. His hands stroked and petted her, caressed the satin thighs, crept around to her finely delineated groin and tickled her playfully. Her grunts became interspersed with deep-throated chuckles, and Pollock slurped on, sucking her ass with gusto, now and then dipping his head to thrust his nose into her rectum, and pulling out again to give her the full length of his long, strong, funneled tongue. He thrust it deep, plunged it into her anus, felt her tight sphincter clutching and sucking at it, and the heavy, full-bodied scent of her hung in his head and dizzied him. He sucked and ate her and had her moaning, "More, more, more, more...."
Maria took a turn a shade too fast and centrifugal force threw them toward the wall of the van. Linda's ass separated from Pollock's mouth with a wet sucking sound and they both gasped and tumbled. Linda, recovering, was spun about and held by her own firm hips, with Pollock's face pressed into her fragrant pussy hairs.
"Uh-uh," she growled, and took a double handful of his long pale hair, holding his head a fraction of an inch from her cunt, "not now. Later, yeah, but when I say so."
Pollock found himself staring at a superb cunt. It was long, full-lipped, pouting, bulging through the mat of tight black hair. "Jesus," he breathed, wanting it.
She saw the desire on his face. "Oho," she grinned, "you like my pussy, huh? Wanna get in it, dontcha? Huh?" She pulled him closer and rubbed his face in it, then held him away again. "You will, stud, you will. But I want to run things for a while before I relax and enjoy it I'm gonna make you beg and crawl. You watch."
She thrust her hips forward, squirming, and rubbed her fine big cunt in his face again, catching his eyes and nose and cheekbones and mouth and chin, leaning backward, watching with open, excited mouth, seeing the scented juices streak his face with shiny smears, observing with satisfaction toe way he closed his eyes and opened his mouth and groaned and clutched her wonderful ass and tried to pull her closer.
"You're a real muff diver, aintcha, champ?" she panted. "You'll have to ask, first Hold still, you bastard." And she spread her legs and bent her knees and crouched above him, getting her knees under his armpits and wriggled down his body dragging her inflamed cunt over his chest Pollock moaned and licked, pressed his mouth against her beautifully muscled belly, let his tongue ride up between her little tits.
Linda slid lower until she was face-to-face with him, her long-lipped pussy resting on his rampant pecker. She eased herself back and forth upon it, and breathed in his face and grinned and said, "Wanna eat my pussy, huh? Okay, but I'll tell you what you're going to have to do first. You're gonna have to come. Twice. Once in my mouth and once in my cunt. Then I'll let you eat me, and you'll hafta eat your come outa my box. I bet you're too squeamish for that, you goddamn gringo bastard. Huh?" But Pollock only grinned back at her. After all, it was only his come, nobody else's.
Linda didn't say another word. She placed her hands on his chest and pushed him backward, drew up his knees, hefted his balls, checked out his cock, bending close and breathing on it.
"It ain't the biggest prick I've ever seen-"
-Shit! thought Pollock "-but it's bigger than most. I got a surprise for you."
"You're going to quit talking, maybe? You're not the mouthiest broad I've ever fucked, but you're mouthier than most."
She squeezed his nuts and made him lurch. "Don't lip off to me, motherfucker. I'm gonna do something to you I bet's never been done to you before."
"You're going to blow me and talk at the same time," Pollock guessed. "Yipe!" he added when she squeezed his nuts again.
Linda held them tightly and changed position, lay down half-atop him in a modified sixty-nine posture, her gorgeous thighs against his face, her luscious cunt just out of reach. Her own face lay in his crotch, pressing one of his own thighs down to cushion her, and she squeezed his scrotum at the base of the sack, compressed his balls into the upper portion, and began to slowly, sensuously lick them.
Her tongue was fine-long and strong and obedient. She could funnel it into a stiff tube and thrust with it, and she could flatten it and do wonderful things with the edges, and she could lap and smear and dig and caress with it, and she did, over and over, now scraping the soft delicate skin of his scrotum with her teeth, then drawing the tip of her tongue around the edges of his nuts, into the darkness of his crotch. Pollock's breath came shivering out of him. Her forefinger found his asshole and ran around the rim of it, tickling him, occasionally dipping in to wiggle before emerging again. Her mouth opened and took in the slick smooth roundness of his left nut, held it gently while her tongue caressed it and her cheeks alternated bulges as her tongue shifted it from side to side. Then she began to suck it.
"Whhhooofff," Pollock said. "Mnglbdndr, sofmchn." Thus he betrayed his emotional state, and Linda chuckled in her mastery over him.
She released him, the shiny ball popping forth, and her wide hungry mouth went for the other one, licking it lavishly before engulfing it and sucking, sucking. Pollock's pelvis began to tremble. His buttocks were tight, strained. His hands feverishly stroked Linda's marvelous ass, he craned his neck to lick her thighs. Moans escaped from his taut throat. Awareness was heightened for Pollock to a frightening degree, and through his awareness and very much a part of it, he felt Linda's stomach as it swelled and eased against his chest. She was panting.
Linda stretched her wide mouth and Pollock, feeling her breath fanning his crotch, held his breath until her mouth descended and covered both his balls and sucked them in, and he could have seen her then, with both her cheeks bulging, her lips thinned by the exertion, her eyes squeezed shut as his large puffy nuts filled up her mouth and compressed her throat. But he couldn't, so he imagined instead, and all of his imaginings were accurate. Her saliva squirted, bathing his balls in warm wetness, and her belly convulsed against his chest as she forced herself not to gag from the pressure of her open jaws and full mouth. A low growling built from within her body and gurgled in her throat.
Linda's finger entered his asshole past the first joint. Pollock rotated his hips slowly, so as not to jar her head and make her bite him, and besides, he was feeling very affectionate toward Linda at that moment and didn't want her to be too uncomfortable. Her finger slid deeper into his rectum, bringing strange sensations. Her other hand petted his stiff cock, curled around it, swung it up and stroked her pulsing throat with it. Pollock felt like howling, but he didn't, because Linda released him then, letting his balls slide from her mouth in a flood of drool. She rested for a moment, swinging his cock up and rubbing it over her wet face. Then she licked it, from the wide base and up the tapering shaft to the flaring corona and tight, hard head.
She paused for a moment and smacked her lips. "You fucked Maria in the asshole," she observed coarsely.
"You can taste it," he observed back. "You mind?"
"Hell, no. She tastes good. Always has." She kissed the long hard shaft, wrapping her lips around it, sliding her mouth up and down its length, holding it this way and that with light strong fingers, manipulating it like some huge popsicle, and Pollock lay back, contenting himself with stroking her fine thighs, enjoying the sensations of Linda's mouth on his swollen prick and her probing finger in his asshole.
Her mouth fell wetly up the shaft and came to the head, her tongue firmed. The tip of it traced its flaring outline, flicked the little dewlap of skin on its underside, and her head raised slightly to encounter the very tip of his penis, from which the liquids oozed. She licked and lapped and tasted him and smacked her lips. "Good," she grunted, "salty." She continued to lick, and Pollock, watching, saw her throat pulse and contract as she swallowed. His gaze was riveted to her throat. It was long, shapely, firm, well-muscled, sensuous, throbbing. He wanted to press his lips against it. He wanted to bite it, to squeeze it. At the moment, however, he did nothing, since the throat was occupied at swallowing the traces of the pre-coital fluid that were leaking out of him.
Suddenly Linda popped the head into her mouth, and she sucked it swiftly, vigorously, as he'd known she would. She moved her body slightly, curved herself and moved her arm so that he could easily see what she was doing-she even moved one of her thighs beneath his head to cushion it, to keep him from craning his neck.
Pollock watched, fascinated, as Linda closed her eyes and became lost in her task, opening her jaws so that her cheeks, hollowing, would stroke and snap and suck at the head of his cock while her teeth scraped the loose skin along the shaft and her lips caressed the stalk warmly.
She opened her mouth wider, rolled the cock around like a man rolling a cigar, her tongue, teeth, cheeks, lips, all working, and she panted, her breath spurting warm and fragrant on him, and her belly panted and kneaded itself against his skin, and Pollock could stand it no longer and had to feel her, and his fingers found the long lips of her splendid cunt and wriggled inside, two of them fitting easily into her, and the tepid sliminess of her pussy greeted his fingers as they curled and rubbed and tickled and excited her, and, as Pollock watched, she moaned, the low growling fluttering her sensuous throat.
She slipped her thigh from under his head and shifted her long body to lay directly atop him, her cunt still inches out of reach of his face, and began to go down on him, slowly, dipping her head lower each time, his long cock slipping farther into her mouth with each stroke of her head. Pollock wished frantically and uselessly for a large mirror, the better to see himself disappearing into her mouth, inch by slippery inch. She couldn't keep it up much longer, he knew. She must have at least four inches of him into her by this time, he thought.
She didn't stop. The growling went on, deep in her throat, and Pollock himself was growling, the sound tearing from him in primal, incoherent snarls. His fingers curled savagely into her pussy, occasionally grinding her clitoris, plunging deep within the softly oozing box. All he could see were toe backs of her thighs and her damp, quivering buttocks and her sweet pink puckering asshole, and his fingers as they dived hungrily into her snatch. His cock kept sliding into her mouth, endlessly, without effort, and Linda's growls grew thicker, more muffled. He could definitely feel the strong muscles of her throat as she swallowed convulsively, and they squeezed the head of his cock.
CHAPTER FOUR
My god, he thought, she's swallowing me-Jesus-she's taking it all-and as he thought that, her chin landed on the fleshy mound of hair above his root, and her upper lip met his balls. Her hands, busy, busy, squeezed him, harder and harder, and as he made ready to climax, his testicles moved up under the excited contracting of his scrotum, and Linda's lips-my god, he thought again-began to suck them, the upper lip, actually, because her lower lip was buried in the wiry thatch of pubic hair, and-goddamn, god damn, thought Pollock-she slowly, slowly, sucked his balls into her mouth.
This is impossible, thought Pollock, and then yipped in pain as her teeth nipped him in the balls.
They couldn't possibly fit, her head wasn't made that way, they couldn't get past her teeth.
He was right.
He was howling for release in three seconds. Her lip slurped, his balls popped out, he subsided, weakly, and her hands curled around his buttocks and began moving them firmly up and down, up and down, and her desires were plain enough for Pollock, and he obliged her, flexing and releasing his buttocks and fucking her gently in the mouth while the heat built within him.
He sweated wildly, felt obscure pains and couldn't identify the sources, and knew a weird, exotic sort of terror and it thrilled him. He'd never fucked a throat before. He wondered how she did it. Probably got the idea from that dirty movie. He'd missed it because he'd been living in the discount store during its runs, but he'd read the papers at night while the janitors moved lazily along the aisles with their mops, and he'd known about it.
She sucked him while he fucked her in the throat with his steaming, swelling cock, and fucked her in the cunt with his long, shaking fingers, and the heat fell upon him in spasms, each spasm like a huge chunk of quarried stone that crushed the breath from him, and these crushing spasms came in layers, like a pyramid, each layer smaller than the one below, each new addition heavier, more shocking, more unbearable than the last, and they came faster, more dramatically, and at the top, at the apex of the structure of spasms and heat and breathlessness and pain, there awaited his climax, and it pounced upon him and tore the last of his breath from him in a great cry, and by god he came, came like he'd never come before, Linda's magic throat sucking and squeezing the semen from his incredibly swollen cock in fountains of flame. The come gushed from him in powerful scalding squirts, hurtling down her pulsing throat, inundating her innards with its hot sticky surges, and still her head rose and fell in time with the powerful plunges of his pelvis and he fucked her in a panic-stricken fever, toe breath squeaking from him, his face contorted, his fingers, claw-like, gripping her cunt like talons. He came. And came. And came. Dumping his essence down her throat, rioting his throbbing shaft into her recklessly.
He lost his sense of time. Space was a totally strange concept to him. There was only a place to Pollock's world, consisting entirely of his spuming cock, sending his semen coursing down the throat of the strong, satiny girl lying on top of him and taking it all with guttural animal noises, her fingernails sunk deep into the skin of his buttocks.
His climax went on for longer than Pollock would have believed possible, had he been paying attention. It ended gradually, winding down, tapering off, the spasms no longer sputtering like a machine gun, but booming off frighteningly, like a ship's cannon, sending reverberations down the length of Linda's lithe body and convulsing Pollock's belly like a medicine ball. The last one arrived and passed, and somewhere in Linda's body, Pollock's come lay like a pool of sticky white lava, heating her.
They lay silently for a moment, breathing, Linda's breath wheezing through her nose, Pollock's breath roaring like a bellows. Finally, she raised her head and let him come sliding from her mouth like a vast pink snake.
"Pppphhhheeewww!" she blew out her breath and collapsed on his crotch. "There! You ever had anything like that happen to you?"
"No."
"See? See, smart-ass, I told-"
That was as far as she got. Pollock seized her and rolled, ended up on top, his weight holding her motionless beneath him. He spread her legs, bent them at the knees, held them with his upper arms and threw his weight on them and Linda was pinned, spreadeagled, helpless.
"What the fuck are you doing? Goddamn it, I told you that you couldn't eat me before you-"
"Been a change of plan." Pollock's mouth descended on her warm and oozing cunt, already descended and ready from before, when he'd finger-fucked her.
She cried, "Goddamn you, I'll bite your lousy pecker off, you son of a bitch-"
He plunged his face into her crotch and her pelvis erupted into a series of savage bucks. One of them caught him in the nose and stung him painfully. At the same time, her head flailed wildly at his flaccid tool, her teeth snapping at him. Pollock hastily threw his hips into a swift collection of wiggles and bumps and grinds, in order to take evasive action from her teeth while he ate her. His slimy organs, heavy and reeking from her throat, coated with her saliva, flapped about in the air over her face, and she strained to reach him, but his thighs lay atop her shoulders and pinned her. Now and then he felt his prick slap her across the face. But he had his own face in her box, now. His tongue swept joyously inside her.
"You ... rotten ... bastard...." she gritted, between snaps, still trying for him.
"MMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmrrrrrrrrrrrppppppppppppphhhhhhhhhh," he answered from deep in her cunt, and the breath of it dried his tongue and made it slightly rougher, and the touch of it inside her pussy thrilled her, and she moaned a little before trying to reach his balls with her teeth again.
And she'd been right, Pollock was a real muff diver. He buried his face in her crotch, forced his mouth past her large outer lips, sucked her inner lips delicately, thrust with his disciplined tongue deeper, deeper still, found her clitoris and flicked it furiously, and Linda endured this treatment for a full eighteen seconds before giving up her attempts-o snare his organs in her strong white teeth and ying back and allowing herself to pant and groan and enjoy it.
And Pollock ceased his bumps and grinds and ass-wiggling, the better to concentrate on eating Linda. He soon had her clitoris vibrating madly, and he felt her belly against his chest as it heaved and squirmed, bearing grunts upward to be given voice in her throat and escape from her full, twisting lips.
Look who's talking, thought Pollock. He resented that, a little, because he'd never sucked a cock, ever, but he understood that Linda's vocabulary was as limited as his own had been a year ago. He'd done a lot of reading in the discount store, as well as learning to like foods like caviar and Camembert and pate. Besides, she was excited and couldn't really be blamed for her choice of words. Remembering the extraordinary job she'd done in sucking his own cock, he felt warm and grateful and full of well-being and good cheer, and he even felt the excitement of it returning to him, a little, and he continued his task with verve and great zeal.
He began sucking her clitoris, gently at first, using only his lips, and he was aware of her body, like satin-covered stainless-steel, shuddering beneath him. He increased the suction steadily, feeling the hard little thing growing beneath his tongue, seeking and needing the sweet pressure, and at last he was sucking her with loud rasping noises and slurping the fragrant juices of her as they bubbled around the corners of his mouth and out the edges of her cunt.
And Linda's vocabulary grew less extensive, being confined to short, simple words, unconnected, falling short of the most basic phrasing (" Uh ... uh ... oh ... ah ... oh ... uhhhhh ... oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!") as she twisted and writhed beneath him, dilating freely not only in her marvelous pussy, but in her entire body and mind as well. Linda felt open, completely undefended, all gates down, all walls breached, all levees swept aside beneath the irresistible flood. She felt beautiful. And, of course, she was.
Pollock stopped sucking her clitoris and filled his mouth with the luscious, sweet-smelling, slimy tissue that formed the inside of her box, tasted its erotic deliciousness, rolled it about within his mouth and attempted to suck it absolutely dry of her heady juices. The slurping went on, unabated, and Linda began to laugh. Softly at the outset, building gently from low chuckles, her mouth open and shaking in her rapturous face, the laughter grew and swelled, deepened and strengthened, rolled from her in a primitive manifestation of pleasure. The laughter filled the interior of the van and ignited Pollock, having much the same effect on him as he'd had upon the Charger when he'd hot-wired it.
Linda's laughter shouted him to life and brought the warmth back to his loins. His prick stiffened and nudged her forehead, dragged over one closed eye, traced her nose, wiped itself across her laughing mouth before springing upward and bobbing gently in mid-air between his belly and her throat. He lowered his pelvis to her face and let her lick his swinging balls. She let her laughter continue and simply lolled out her tongue and allowed his nuts to make their free-swinging contact, and occasionally one of them entered her wide lusty mouth and increased her merriment.
Pollock raised himself to his knees, being careful not to remove his face from Linda's cunt, and rested upon his knees, drawing them gradually upward, releasing Linda's arms where they'd been pinned, allowing her more freedom. She curled one hand around his stiffening curving cock and rode the loose sheaf of skin up and down the shaft that grew steadily harder from the blood loading into it, and her other hand found his buttocks and the crease between them, dived into it, probed briefly into his rectum, tickled the sensitive area between his anus and his scrotum, the fingernails then scraping lightly over his scrotum and now and then shoving part of it into his mouth, there to be sucked to the accompaniment of her jubilant throat-throbbing chuckling.
Neither of them could let their bodies rest. Pollock, still sucking and slurping her pussy with abandon, began rocking himself from side to side while Linda squirmed and shook and twisted, and they rolled to the side, still eating, sucking, licking, nibbling, and then Pollock was on his back and Linda atop him, and from somewhere she found the strength and the concentration to raise herself to a sitting position on his face, hips settling herself firmly upon his mouth, buttocks and thighs billowing softly around his face and head, and there she swiveled while her dark hair shook about her features, her eyes focused unseeingly upon one of the portholes in the rear of the van, and she was dimly aware of the van slowing down and stopping.
The engine idled for a very little while, only Linda didn't notice, nor did she notice the startled face of a man in some sort of uniform appear for an instant in the porthole and gape at her just before the van started moving again. She didn't see the girders of steel flashing past, either, and so had no way of knowing that Maria was driving them across the Oakland Bay Bridge.
Pollock arose from underneath her quivering buttocks. "Can't breathe," he panted, and shoved her backward, one hand resting on her small breast, and the nipple shoved rigidly back at him. She ended up resting on her ass and her elbows while Pollock licked down her rubbery-muscled belly and into that dark area of shadows and tendons and heightened nerve-endings.
Her head felt too heavy for her neck, and it lolled from side to side before she gave up and let it hang helplessly behind her as Pollock once more attacked her cunt. He funneled his tongue into a tube and inserted it swiftly past both sets of lips and into the channel, poking it as deep as he could bear, feeling the roots of his tongue protest, and drawing it straight back out and shoving it straight in again. He was able to maintain the discipline for this maneuver for only a little while, and then was down on her again like an animal, clutching at her hips and thighs, digging his licking, slurping tongue into her box and lapping fluids indiscriminately.
Linda felt the heat of approaching climax and wriggled, perversely, backward to escape it. Her head, her back, her shoulders met the wall of the van and slid upward from the scooting of her elbows and ass and heels, and she was halfway erect, her pelvis off the carpeted floor, when the heat reached her head and threatened to blow the top of it off, and she yelped and squealed and surged her rocking, swiveling pelvis within the encirclement of his arms and the ruthless phalanx of his tongue, and shouted and screamed and the laughter throbbed out of her.
She slid further up the wall, Pollock following, on his knees now, and she spread her arms wide and stretched her upper body and wrapped her thighs about his head, her knees bent, her calves dipping under his armpits, her feet curling about and clutching his chest Linda came, wildly, as Pollock had known she would.
She came and kept coming, braced against the wall of the van, her body molding to it stretching and squirming and trying to writhe across the ceiling, and her voice became a series of high-pitched squeaks that squirted from her contorted mouth, and when the first spasm passed, Pollock was still eating her.
Pollock didn't stop. He curled his tongue into a tube again and breathed through his mouth along the length of it, drying the lubrication upon it somewhat, and the added dryness of it as he continued to lick fanned the heat in Linda's loins and she felt the onslaught of another climax, and she lunged forward, her outstretched arms and hands searching for purchase along the roof, bearing Pollock backward but not upsetting him from his purpose or shaking him from his position, and he went leaning over backwards and was saved from cracking the back of his head on the floor by Linda grasping the housing of the trap door that was the tiny observation hatch in the roof of the van, and they maintained that crazy position, balancing precariously, when Linda went into the throes of her second climax and bucked her hips furiously, fucking Pollock's mouth, distorting his lips and bruising them, bending his nose, robbing him of breath, but still he licked and sucked her while she fucked his face recklessly and held to the trap-door housing, and she began to scream.
"Oh! Oooohhhh, SHIT! OH! OH! HAAAAA-!"
And that climax passed, and still Pollock ate her, gobbled her more fervently than before, and she moaned frantically, still wildly seeking escape, and her fingers, acting on their own volition, released the catch of the trap door and her arms shoved it up and out, and then her head was out, her hands hooked over, and she babbled hysterically at the startled motorists behind the van, while the wind from the passage across the bridge whipped her hair about her face, and the sun gritted, impossibly bright, from the white facets of the tossing water on the bay in the afternoon.
Pollock, riding on his knees inside the van, his head locked into her crotch by her thighs wrapped about him, ate her greedily like a starving man, and Linda came again and again, the spasms and waves of heat shattering her mind and consuming her strength, and minute after minute went by and Linda laughed like a hopeless madwoman, babbled incoherently, the tears streaming from her sightless eyes as the girders ceased their flashing and they left the bay behind them and passed into San Francisco.
Pollock withdrew his tongue from her body, and it lay wearily inside his mouth, tasting of her interior, and he kept his mouth inside her, still open, and breathed her odors and expelled them with his breath into her warm dark oozing snatch, and at last he drew her quivering, shaking body down, the fine brown thighs still wrapped around his head, and lay her on her back on the carpeted floor of the van. He examined her face and saw it unfold from itself slowly, the eyes focusing, the muscles easing back into tone, the mouth losing slackness and assuming conscious shape, and Linda's face as he watched disconnected the closed circle of sensuous feedback and regained its identity with its surroundings. Linda became Linda again, worn and battered from an emotional storm, but Linda just the same.
"How was it?" he breathed.
Her mouth shivered into a smile. She half nodded, said, "Oh ... uh ... huh...."
"Good?" he asked.
She nodded and smiled.
"Want more?"
Her eyes widened, crinkled into a smile. Her mouth made a round silent O.
"Want my cock in you? Want me to fuck you, now?"
"Yeah," she whispered.
"Ask."
She understood almost immediately and a single, low, throaty syllable broke from her. It was the remnant of a chuckle, Pollock decided. Linda said, "I wanna be fucked. Will you fuck me? Now?"
"Say please."
Another syllable, longer. That one, Pollock thought, was a moan. Linda said: "Please. Please fuck me."
"Beg."
"Oh, god, I want it so bad, please, Pollock, gimme your cock, I gotta have it, I'll do anything-"
"Anything?"
"Yeah, oh-"
"CrawL"
Linda moved, writhed over on her belly, squirmed about on the floor of the van beneath Pollock.
"Hang your tongue out," Pollock told her. "Pant"
She did, her tongue dragged, and she lapped his thighs like a thirsty dog.
"Now." he said, "tell me exactly what you want."
"Spank me," she panted.
"Huh?" Pollock stared.
"Be shitty to me, be mean. Hurt me." She moaned, though he still hadn't touched her.
Then Pollock understood. He thought he really knew Linda now. "Okay," he muttered, and thought: but when this is over, you're gonna hate me. It's the way you are.
He settled on his knees with her body, still crawling, wrapped around him, her thighs along the doubled-under calf of his right leg, her upper body along his left, her head out of sight in the region of his left buttock. He reached down, got his left hand on her lower back, and pulled her toward him, digging her belly painfully around his knees. The breath went huffing out of her. Pollock curled the fingers of his right hand into the crease of her ass, clutching it too tight for a caress, and twisted her hips so that her buttocks faced the roof. Then he began to pet her.
Softly, at first. Slowly. Increasing the pressure, depressing the large rubbery muscles and creating highlights and shadows on the soft smooth skin. He began to pick his hand up and lay it down, gently the first time, then a little harder, then stinging her and making her jerk a little, involuntarily. The first real slap came after a period of mounting tension that found Linda's pants coming faster and more insistent. She uttered a little groan, broken in two from the breath forced out of her from the pressure of Pollock's knees in her belly.
The next slap was harder, Linda's answering groan sharper. The series of slaps turned into a spanking after another minute and Linda's groans became cries. She twisted her body, not away from him toward escape, but into him, wrapping herself about him, molding her body to his, reaching and clutching his buttocks and pulling herself more firmly to him, pressing his knees deep into her belly, twisting her own hips and exposing the cheeks of her ass fully to his assault, and all the while crying out from the blows. "Oh!" she sang. "Ah! God! No! No more! Ohhh-"
The spanking became a whipping. The whipping turned into a beating. Pollock's hand stung and throbbed, smarting on the end of his rising, falling arm that was getting heavier and heavier. Linda was crying now, whimpering, sniveling with pain against his ankle. Her tears bathed his foot. He administered a last, vicious slap, surprised at himself for what he was doing, at the positive reaction he was producing for Linda's request to be hurt, and examined her bottom. It was a furious red, the prints of his hand overlapping into a crisscross of welts, already rising.
"Had enough?" he growled.
"Hhnn-nn-n-no-"
"Jesus," he mumbled. He reached back, lifted her by the knees, and dropped her roughly on her back. She grunted coarsely. He moved over her face, leaned forward, facing her crotch with her face beneath his pelvis, and took a double handful of the soft skin at her waist. "Now eat my ass," he ordered her. "Eat it out. All of it."
She opened her mouth obediently and he felt her lips against his rectum. He felt her tongue lick him experimentally. He squeezed his hands into fists, hurting her, and her body jerked spasmodically.
"Eat, goddammit," he snarled, deliberately feeding her own words to him back at her, "eat me!"
Linda obeyed, whimpering. Her mouth sucked his anus, and Pollock felt it dilate. She slurped and sucked and gobbled noisily, her saliva escaping in oozing rivulets that bathed her face and ran down and soaked in her hair.
"Now get your tongue into it," Pollock panted. His own body was slick with sweat as the excitement mounted in him. He looked down at himself, at his great cock rising toward him. He'd seen Linda's tongue. She could lick her chin with it. "All the way, damn you."
The tip of her tongue entered his asshole. Pollock felt it contract and tried to will it open again, but the thing had a will of its own. Linda pushed her powerful tongue into him, ever deeper, thrusting upward. His sphincter muscles closed and he saw her belly leap. He laughed and pressed his ass down hard on her face, and she arched her back and struggled frantically, her moans coming muffled from his buttock's enveloping flesh. She couldn't breathe, but still she held her tongue in him, and his sphincter muscles released, and she pushed her tongue deep into his asshole as far as it would go, still fighting for her breath. Pollock raised himself slightly for an instant and let her inhale, then lowered himself upon her face again, felt the tongue sink into his asshole. He continued like this for a while, letting her fuck him in the ass with her tongue, and then he released her.
He turned about, sitting on her heedlessly, to see her face. It was smiling.
"I'll be damned." If someone had told him he wouldn't have believed them.
He assaulted her immediately, forcing his cock into her tender cunt, jamming himself in up to the balls. She was still wet and moist and her pussy smacked as he banged her.
"Hurt me," she murmured shakily through her bruised lips, "damn you, hurt me."
But Pollock had had enough of that. She irritated him with her weird demands. "Just one thing, bitch," he panted at her, "all I'm here for is to fuck. I'm not interested in you. All I want is cunt and plenty of it, and you'd better be ready." Incredibly, Linda smiled. Pollock's only conclusion was that he must have hurt her by saying that.
Suddenly her fingers became claws and leaped for his eyes. He ducked his head to escape. One of her nails scraped across his eyebrow and brought blood. He got a wrist in each hand and pinned her arms to the floor on either side of her head. She fastened her gaze on his face and Pollock felt the blood descending from above his eye, saw her smile turn barbaric, and began fucking her as hard and as roughly as he could. Her face twisted, her eyes screwed shut Drops of his blood spattered her. Pollock had grown to accept her aberrations, and so was not surprised when her tongue came forth to lap his blood beside her mouth.
After only a few minutes he was close to exhaustion. He'd been engaged in fucking in one form or other for more than a hundred miles. He stopped his savage pistoning plunges and lowered himself to her body to rest, and her eyes opened and regarded him sardonically.
"All fucked out, huh, champ?" she murmured through her puffy, curling, blood-lined lips.
Pollock didn't answer. Instead, he rolled on his side, his cock still firmly imbedded in her body, and forced her arms, still held by the wrists, behind her back. The position was uncomfortable and arched Linda's back. Her damp body crowded his torso; her face lay tightly against his throat. Pollock was fucking her quietly, his prick still eight inches inside her, when her teeth nipped the soft skin of his neck.
"You goddamn bloodthirsty cunt!" he gritted through his own clenched teeth, and twisted his neck, forced his face under her jaw, bending her head back so that her entire body was curved like a bow against him. "There's no way you're going to take an easy fuck from me-" and his lips sought her own taut throat and fastened there like a leech. His tongue and teeth came into play. After almost a minute she began to squirm feebly, her throat vibrating now and then from moans, and Pollock continued his slow, quiet fucking. His long, painful love-bite was hurting her, that and the long, forced arc of her body with which Pollock had imprisoned her while he screwed her. She was having her wish, he thought: she was being hurt.
The realization galvanized him again, and he increased the pressure of her position and stepped up the intensity of his pumping strokes. She moaned helplessly.
Strength began flowing back into Pollock. He felt it pounding in his blood, and he increased the power of his pelvis as it thumped against her, and soon was hammering his long tool into Linda while her strained body shuddered against him. He released her at last from the tortuous monkey-bite he was administering to her neck and examined it while he banged her: it was large, red, inflamed, angry, bulging at him. Her face came to rest wearily against him and she sighed gratefully and whimpered from the shock of his penetrating cock.
Excitement soared in Pollock. He rolled Linda over again and sank the stiff length pf himself into her and savaged her, and she arched her back and panted wildly, although there was no need for her to arch her back and she plainly needed relief from the position, and when Pollock let go her wrists and placed his hands hard on her little breasts and leaned his full weight on them, she kept her hands where they were, as if she were tied down, as if she were staked to the floor by some invisible form of bondage.
Pollock fucked her hard then, the offbeat passion of Linda reflecting from her face and searing his own excitement in bright, merciless waves. She planted her feet flat on the floor and used the strong muscles of her legs to surge upward at him, in time to his rhythms, increasing the tempo after a while and forcing him to follow her lead, and when he pulled himself forth and brought one of his hands down to guide the head of his cock to her asshole, she lifted her hips clear of the floor and accommodated him, taking him into her rectum and altering her gyrations to receive this new invasion.
Her facial muscles flowed with the pain of his cock in her asshole, which was really too small for him. Her moans became shivering, broken cries that mingled with his grunts as he pushed deeper and deeper into her, and when lubrication eased the passage of his tool he stroked her harder and faster, using the full length of his long dick, stifling her cries. Abruptly, her feet left the floor and she curled her legs around his back and locked the ankles together, pulled him deeper into her, adding her strength to his, and they grunted and snorted in unison as she aided him in his descent into her body.
And after he'd fucked her in the ass for a few minutes, he felt the heat approaching, and withdrew and slithered his pecker into her cunt again. Her lubrication was drying up, he could tell that by the increased friction, and she began to cry out in genuine pain. He stopped and lowered himself to lie on her, but her ass bucked savagely at him still, he fucked her without trying, and she pressed her face to his and licked at the blood that was clotting on his cheekbone, and he picked up the stroking again and fucked her brutally, reaching around underneath her and grasping the perfect half-globes of her buttocks, driving himself ruthlessly into her raw and aching pussy. "Jesus!" Linda snarled.
"Mmmmphhr! Hhaagh! Uuuunnngh!"
Coarse, primal outcries rang in his ears. Sweating naked flesh flexed and bounced beneath him. The heat arrived and ignited him, and he yelled and clutched and rammed and spewed his come into her tortured box, the milky, sticky stuff filling her cunt and backing up to ooze from the big distended lips, and still she strove beneath him, moaning rapturously in pained shock, her pussy clasping, finding new lubrication now, and she laughed in triumph and fucked him with quick nervous jerks and took his very essence to the final drop, and when it was over and she lay quietly trembling beneath him, Pollock lay atop her, close to unconsciousness, and perceived with the rare clarity peculiar to such times that she had gotten what she'd wanted, and wondered in that long quiet moment if he'd really bested her. Who, he thought, is really master of whom?
This time, no hugging and soothing and kissing and petting, no happy talk while sharing a cigarette. Pollock lay on her for a time, gaining his strength and breath and coherency of thought, mingling his sweat with hers and listening to her panting ease into deep breathing. When at last he arose, letting his cock slide from her body, and rolled over, he felt the coolness of air on his damp skin, was aware of the dryness of his throat and the irrational desire for a cigarette. He got one and offered the pack to Linda. She took it without a word and Pollock lit them up. They lay side by side, not touching, and watched the smoke curl into patterns and settle into blue-white layers that rocked gently inside the van.
After a while Pollock got up and peered curiously out one of the portholes, and saw from the signs whipping past that they were on Highway 101, which he knew traced the edge of San Francisco Bay, and approaching Palo Alto. He turned back to Linda (she lay flat on her back, her legs spread out and flat on the carpet, her muscles limp, her cigarette dangling from her mouth, watching the ceiling and said, "Let's go up front and see where we're going. Come on." He held out his arm to help her up. She said, "Fuck you," without moving.
Pollock shrugged and stepped over her and thrust his head through the curtain to Maria. He leaned over and kissed the lovely brown skin stretching over the bone that joined her cheek to her temple and framed her right eye. "Hi."
Maria glanced up at him and smiled. "Hi. Have a good time?"
"I sure did get my rocks off. By that definition, I guess I had a hell of a time."
"Linda's a little weird, huh?"
"And you think I'm crazy. Well!" He stooped, his head and shoulders and arms through the curtain, and watched the windshield gobble the freeway that unreeled ceaselessly before the van. He glanced at the instrument panel. "You're going to need gas pretty quick."
"We'll stop in San Jose. Then we'll get on 17 and go to Santa Cruz, and then we'll take Highway 1 down the coast to Big Sur. You wanna stop in Carmel and eat your fish eggs?"
"That sounds nice. We can pick up some ice in San Jose and let everything chill."
"You just wanna stand there with your dong hanging out? You're gonna cause some accidents." She reached up and tweaked it playfully.
He sat in the seat beside her for a few minutes, watching the traffic and talking to Maria and smoking and enjoying the sight of her sitting behind the wheel, and when she left the freeway and wheeled the van down an off ramp in San Jose he went back through the curtain and picked up his clothes. Linda had finished her cigarette and was already getting dressed.
"I'm curious," he asked her. "Did you enjoy yourself? Did you have it the way you wanted it?"
"What the hell do you care?" she blazed at him. "You got your nuts off, din't you? Ain't that all you care about? You big-peckered bastards are all alike."
"I was right," Pollock murmured.
"What?"
"When you were whining at me to hurt you, be mean to you, I knew you'd hate me afterwards. You sadomasochistic broads are all alike."
"Fuck you," she told him in an even tone. "You ain't always gonna get things your way. I'll see to that."
But Pollock was already putting on his pants and ignoring her. When Maria pulled the van into the gas station, Linda hopped out the back, leaving the door swinging. Pollock sat down and finished dressing before leaving the van and walking leisurely to the restroom, where he stripped again and carefully sponged himself with soap and water and patted himself dry with paper towels. He combed his hair back into place as much as he was able and cleaned up after himself, leaving the restroom a bit cleaner than it had been when he'd entered it. That was a relic of the months he'd spent in the discount store, when he'd had enough of his own filth and gone through a period of extreme fastidiousness in the store's restrooms, which he'd had to keep clean to prevent himself from leaving signs of his presence.
It had become a nightly ritual for Pollock: after exercising with the weights and gym equipment set up for display in the store's sporting goods department, he'd donned sweat clothes and tennis shoes and gone jogging through the giant, darkened building, over a course he'd previously measured, running lightly from department to department, zig-zagging through the office furniture, leaping over the displays in the shoe department, flitting through ladies wear and reaching the hairpin corners and straight-aways of the supermarket, emerging into house wares, doubling back through automotive to notions and appliances and stereo equipment, loping on to home improvement and floor coverings where he hurdled the obstacle course set up by rolls upon rolls of carpeting, kicking out when he reached men swear and putting on a spurt of speed through candy and prepared foods and coming once again to sporting goods after running through darkened greenness of the lawn and garden department and the nursery, which enveloped him in jungle smells of exotic and domestic flowers and gave him a second wind, and off he'd go on another circuit of the store, legs and lungs pumping furiously with a fierce joy, and his runs would take him past the window displays, past posturing manikins dolled up and neat, and an occasionally passing motorist might glance over and see, across the desert expanse of parking lot, his shadowy running form through the big plate glass windows, the darkened movement of his passage, and wonder if he were seeing things or if there really were some nut running around the discount house, and Pollock would run on, flitting like a bat, a phantom among the dummies.
Finishing (he usually ran between two and three miles after getting conditioned), he walked his course again, kicking out the cramps, exploring his domain, picking out places he'd return to later, and letting his lungs bellow and his sweat gallop, and when some of his oxygen debt was repaid and his sweat had dried somewhat, he'd peeled off his sweat clothes and switched on a sun lamp (which he'd had to move into a tent that was part of a camping display) and reclined underneath it and soaked up the rays. He'd increased the lamp time until he'd given himself an even, enviable tan.
Then the showering, the shampooing, the careful shaving, the drying and styling of his hair in the beauty shop, the donning of a caftan after cleaning up super-carefully (clean-up was in the nude, to avoid soiling store merchandise and giving himself away) and the picking out and preparing of a meal whose menu he'd planned over a cookbook during the daylight hours when he wasn't sleeping or studying.
And while the meal simmered (or seared or broiled or baked or braised) he'd lounged in the books sections or picked and chosen among the record albums. The store's restaurant had fine kitchen facilities, and after he'd gotten past the cheeseburger-French fries-steak stage he'd discovered the vastness of possibilities involved in such seemingly simple functions as eating and drinking. He'd learned, and tasted, and experienced, and passed judgments, and grown.
After a while he'd become an experimenter, and later, an innovator, and there were times when he knew pride, and with the pride loneliness, frustration from want of recognition, but there was still the pride to feed him, and it was a rare dish indeed to Pollock, who soon had grown to crave it.
While eating, he'd listened to music. Popular stuff at first, then selections more serious (for there were none of his former peers present to question or deride or sneer) and, listening, he'd learned to identify not only the instruments and various combinations of them, but his own emotions that were aroused by the masters of sound, and, identifying, he'd accepted and rejected and searched for more, and he'd found it and, finding, he'd known gratification and peace, exaltation and growth.
The books. For Pollock, they were perhaps the fountainhead of his joy while living in the discount store. The books fed Pollock's mind, raised his spirits past any previous experience, presented him with a series of pictures of the world and held up a mirror for him to examine long after the last leaf had turned and the boards had closed upon the words. The books gave Pollock reason to use his mind, furnished him with cause and let him observe the effects on himself. Books, to Pollock, stopped being things and became places to visit, and searching among them, he found the places of glory that (he admitted consciously to himself) he wanted to see, found those nations where honor dwelt, discovered regions of power and greatness that sometimes moved him to tears and forced him to bite the knuckle and bring the blood, and still he read on.
But, eventually, he'd known he'd have to go back.
He'd realized, Pollock had, that the world was a different kind of place than what he wanted to see, and that people were not infused with honor and greatness and power, but were afflicted with meanness and a wasting disease that shrank them in important places, and, realizing, he'd determined to adjust.
Not in any of the usual ways. There were, Pollock knew, ways and ways. He didn't want any part of a salaried job: you signed a W-4 and placed yourself at the disposal of people who held your livelihood in their hands and manipulated it by such standards as how copiously you kissed their asses or how frequently you opened your mouth and spoke your mind. But you stayed on, letting them cut inroads into your dignity and hiding the wounds from yourself so you could entrench yourself in dependence by acquiring possessions like credit cards and contracts and mortgages and responsibilities. You paid taxes as if you really had a choice, and the possessions clamped their hold on you because of the fear you'd lose them if you lost your precious salaried W-4 position, and because of the fear of losing the job you carefully watched your mouth and only opened it at the right times, and that only to say the right things. Sometimes you missed and said the right things in the wrong way, and people would exchange glances and bring on the fear they'd talk about you behind your back, and they would, and you'd find out later from talking about them behind their backs to others.
Eventually, all the fears knotted into something vast and Gordian and became the central power of your life, making your decisions for you, holding up cue cards like some grinning prompter, and there would come a time when you'd realize for the last time that you were not worth a shit, because you'd be afraid of that, too. You'd stuff that knowledge into the fear's big knot and hide it good, really good, because seeing it there in front of you was an open invitation to do something about it, and DOING SOMETHING had become one of the biggest fears of all.
Pollock had adjusted himself out of that. He wasn't going back and start all over again. But there were ways and ways.
It was in the discount store that Pollock first encountered the term pecking order, and after he realized what it meant he thought about it a long, long time.
Start when you're a kid, because that's when it first happens, the pecking, and when you can first begin to think in terms of concepts, and know what's happening to you and gnash your teeth in frustration, from the pecking administered by your parents and your friends and your teachers and your cliques that never really accept you with honor (only with the little punctures they've given you to wear like medals), and you wish desperately for the horror to be over with, as you know it will, because you won't always be a kid and at the mercy of others.
You'll be a man someday and be able to cope and shape your life yourself, with your own hands, and then after school is done and you're out there with those adults, you find that nothing has changed, there's all those groups and cliques, pecking away at each other and at yourself, and you think it's something simple, like you're not old enough yet, but if you're lucky you don't have to get much older before you learn the truth, and that's the simplest thing yet: Adults don't shape their own lives at all. Ha!
Well, why should they? They learned the pecking and the group existence when they were kids. Why should they change?
They did, he'd noticed, get nicer when they were by themselves. Away from their groups. So Pollock stayed away from groups. Whenever he could. For the last twelve months, he'd been successful.
He'd made the conscious decision to become a thief when he'd been living in the discount store for a few months. (The decision to live in the discount store had not been tied to any positive purpose: he'd felt it was something he had to do.) He chose his new vocation because he'd observed two kinds-and only two kinds-of people. The ones who did the pecking and the other ones, the majority, whose purpose was to endure the pecking and to huddle beneath their fear. Pollock would, after due consideration, become a pecker. The double meaning made him grin.
Most of the world's big peckers were tied to their own groups and had to take a certain amount of pecks themselves. Even the biggest ones, who ruled nations and empires and corporations, had their own knot of fears and their own set of punctures. A solitary thief, Pollock's opinion went, might enjoy the benefits of a top pecker and still be free of those other little beaks.
In fairness to Pollock, it should be pointed out that he'd argued with himself, there in the darkness of the discount store.
Is it right and proper, Pollock asked himself, to do all of the pecking and not get pecked yourself?
Is it right, then, Pollock shot back, to do none of the pecking and take it all yourself?
Aha! There you have the crux of the matter. You must give and take. There must be an equitable arrangement.
Aha yourself. What's equitable about a pecking order? What's noble about getting pecked? Besides, you know damn well that you never get to peck the ones who peck you. The people you can peck are at your mercy and can't peck you back. There's your goddamn phony equity for you.
Where's the justice of pecking people, then? If you don't want to be pecked, and if you want to do the right thing, then just stay here.
What the hell kind of dumb reasoning is that? If I stay in this discount store, then I'm pecking the people who own it. I'm still a pecker who isn't getting pecked.
You're wrong."
How?
I'm pecking you.
That's different. I can't get away from you. I'm even starting to like you, you know.
That's a good sign. Listen, there must be a way that you can live among people and not peck away at them, and still keep yourself from getting pecked.
When you come up with it, you let me know.
You haven't read all the books....
Just enough. Just enough to see what could be but isn't and never will be. If I'm going to have to go back out there, then I'll get along the same way I've been getting along in here. I don't hear you complaining about that?
Damn it! What if everybody thought like you?
Then I'd be stupid if I didn't think this way. Besides, I think everybody does think like this. Most of them are too scared to admit it. That's my advantage. Living in here, most of my fear has worn off and fallen away.
You know something, Pollock?
What?
I think I'm getting to like you, too. I shouldn't, you know.
I know.
I shouldn't like you at all....
But Pollock had always known that, and it was easy to shove the thought out of the way for matters more urgent, like getting the ice to chill the champagne. He left the restroom and found the ice machine on the other side of the station, and fed the coin slot and carried the bags of party ice back to the van, and ran into Maria and Linda on the way, and walked, grinning, with them back to the van and found a bucket inside and managed to jam the bottle of imported wine into it with most of the ice and the foods that needed chilling, and then they were on their way again.
They found Highway 17 and left San Jose, driving through Los Gatos and passing through the Santa Cruz Mountains and the little towns of Holy City and Laurel, and down the other side to Santa Cruz and the boardwalks and the roller coasters and the beaches and the Pacific Ocean that lay glittering all the way out past the edge of the world. It rumpled its skin at them like a huge old face that winked and smiled, and they got on Highway I and drove south into Big Sur country, while the sun sank lower and hovered over the sea and made it too bright to look at.
Maria was driving again, Linda sulking in the other seat, Pollock squatting between them and savoring the healthy smells from the two girls and the look of things in the world and the movement of which he was once again a part.
"You been grinning like a goddamn ape, Pollock. You're a pretty happy gringo, huh?"
"Yeah," Pollock grinned, and leaned to kiss Maria's shoulder. "I'm pretty and I'm happy and I'm a gringo."
"And a goddamn ape"-.Linda.
"That's what I am, all right. It's beautiful."
"What?"
"This." He indicated the world outside the van. "The cypresses and sand and seals, the swelling seas that surge and shatter."
"Huh?" Maria asked, her face bewildered but pleased.
"Oh, wow," Linda said, her body writhing with elegant disgust.
"Man!" snorted Maria. "I'm hungry. We was gonna have a hamburger. Why dint we eat?" And Pollock laughed, and after a moment so did Maria, and even Linda grinned a little.
They wound their way down the Seventeen-Mile Drive and entered Carmel, drove down the steeply sloping streets and managed to find a place to park near the Mediterranean Market, where Pollock insisted on going to pick up some hard-crusted bread and, at the girls' own insistence, a stick of salami
"I mean, we don't have nothing against the stuff you brought, Pollock," Maria explained, "but we never tried it before, and besides, it ain't very much."
"Fish eggs," 'mouthed Linda, wrinkling her nose. "Rotten cheese."
"Take your salami" Pollock said, handing the stick to Linda, "and fuck yourself with it."
They left the Mediterranean Market with its enchanting collection of smells and were swinging down the street on their way back to the van, Pollock between the girls. Maria, looking happy, called across to Linda, "Hey, you know where Pollock's been?"
"Shit," husked Linda in her low, sexy voice. "You oughta know where he's been lately. In your mouth and your pussy and your asshole, if he fucked you the way he did me." (They pushed through a collection of ladies at that moment, who were clustered around the leather shop, and who discussed the matter at length afterwards and decided that yes, they had really heard that, and they'd tell everybody back home about the incident, but of course omitting the words that gave it significance.)
"No, listen. He says he's been living in a discount store."
"Yeh? Hm."
"Yeah. Just living in there. Tell us about it, okay, Pollock?"
"What's to tell? I hid in the lofts during the day and slept and read, and came out at night and tried on clothes and listened to music and cooked and looked around."
"That's all?"
"No. I thought a lot. I talked to myself quite a bit. I got to acting out little fantasies on the spur of the moment."
"I bet you beat your meat a lot, too," offered Linda.
"You got that right," said Pollock. "I found those books, you know, those sexual handbooks, and I practiced touching my tongue to the bottoms of shot glasses, and sucking grapes without breaking the skins, everything, as much as I was able. It got me homier than I would have been otherwise, I think."
"And you were in there a year, Pollock?" Maria asked.
"Just about."
"Why, Pollock? What for?"
Pollock drew in a deep breath and looked around, searching for the words. Where the hell were they? Not among the waving tops of trees where the wind played twenty feet above ground, nor among the red Spanish tiles and gray slate and rich brown cedar shakes of the rooftops of the opulent homes that reclined in this place, nor in the old-world look of the shop-fronts that ex tended down the hill on both sides toward the cypress-shaded entrance to the beaches. The words were somewhere within himself. Should he reach in and pull them forth? Would the girls understand them? He was sure Maria would try. Part of him thought that sufficient reason to make the effort.
He let out the breath. "Okay," he said. "I went into the discount store because I had to call time out I had to have a breather to decide some things. If I'd stayed outside, I would have killed myself, maybe. Look. Have you ever felt that every body in the world was your enemy? Not in a vital, active sense, but only in the sense that they wouldn't lift a finger for you if you were dying. Not just that, either-see, if you were dying, and word got out, they'd all come to watch. And this in spite of everything that's said about self-determination and helping others and welfare and foreign aid and charities of all descriptions, in spite of marching and singing and carrying signs, and demonstrating for Indian rights and black rights and Chicano rights and Vietnamese rights and hungry peoples' rights; everybody seems to have some favorite thing they're pushing, like the greatest good for the greatest number, for instance (which usually means that someone somewhere is about to take the shaft), but it doesn't change the fact that they wouldn't give a damn if you stepped off the world during the next thirty seconds. It seems like the louder people scream about the deplorable conditions around them, the less they really care. Look-" he stopped, frustrated.
Maria said, "Well, yeah, Pollock, everybody knows that, it's a fact of life, Pollock, you know? So why'd it bother you?"
"Because I looked and I saw. I heard the sounds and I listened. I understood it. Listen, Maria, you think about all that stuff for a while, you'll see how crazy it all is. People talk one way and act another. They bitch about their money going for taxes and then say they couldn't get along without taxes. They say that all politicians are crooked and in the same breath tell you that the government has to have more power. They'll tell you how important it is to help the underprivileged and they'll put the cold fish eyes on you when you obviously need help. They'll say that executions are cruel things that disgust them but they'll chase fire trucks and form crowds at accidents, especially when there are bodies.
"It's scary, Maria. It's psychotic. I think that everybody in the world, with a few exceptions, might be schizoid."
"Yeah, but why'd you go into that place for a year, Pollock?"
"Because I felt like I was walking and living under liquid shit. It covered me. I breathed it in. I was sick at myself. I knew I wasn't worth a shit. I'd been told that for so many years I finally got the message and saw the light-right: I'm not worth a shit. So there I was, still playing their games by their rules, and all the time I was a loser and not worth a shit. So who says I have to keep playing the games? The people who tell me I'm not worth a shit, that's who. They should know, because I was just like them, but that still didn't give them the right.
"So I looked around and saw the ones who had pulled back and withdrawn. They'd gotten into drugs or had started to drink themselves to death or had cut off all the ties and were bumming, and they were the ones who didn't have the nerve to slice their wrists or put bullets in their brains. I wasn't ready to die yet (because I stilt wasn't worth a shit and I was too scared, anyway), and I didn't want to get into drugs or dipsomania. So I retreated another way. It was just as bad as the others, but at least it gave me another chance."
"Was it worth it?" Maria asked.
Pollock looked at her, and at the playful wind and tossing treetops and opulent houses and old-world stores and cypress-shaded sand and looked back at Maria again. "Well, yeah," he told her. "I see the good things, now. I pick and I choose. Before, all I did was wish."
They came to the van and climbed in and drove down the hill and parked under a gnarled old cypress and entered the beach and the light and the sun looming over the sea. The sand sucked at their feet as they walked and caused a pleasant pulling at their thighs and lungs. Pollock swung the ice bucket and laughed.
"You still think you ain't worth a shit?" Maria asked him. Her small face showed concern and Pollock was touched.
"Oh, sure," he said. "But not in every way."
"You can say that again," Maria grinned at him.
"Yeah, well, listen, stud," Linda called over to him as they were passing a family having a picnic, "how'd you like to fuck me with this salami before you eat it? Your integrity gonna get in the way?"
(Holy Christ, said the man of the family, as his wife's face became mottled with color and his children, all three of them, giggled uncontrollably from the words they weren't supposed to know.)
They found a small, horseshoe-shaped dune with ice plant covering it, and they spread their blankets between the arms facing the sea, and laid out their food and drink before sprawling themselves on the warm, sensuous sand. The two girls watched Pollock as he produced a corkscrew from his flight bag and opened the champagne.
And it was good there on the sand, and Maria decided she liked caviar ("It ain't bad; it tastes a little bit like cock.") and Linda reacted violently to the Camembert ("Phew," spitting it out, "shit!") and they sliced the bread and salami and munched it with dried apricots, and neither of the girls liked the pate but guzzled the French wine, and when they'd eaten and drunk, Pollock decided that he'd like to spend the next few minutes kissing Maria, who reflected briefly on the length of time Pollock had spent not kissing Maria, or anyone else for that matter (but her reflections on Pollock's deprivation were not very long, because she liked to kiss Pollock, and besides, by that time Pollock was already kissing her).
She was soon lying with him on the sand and twining her lush little body up with his long limbs and tasting Pollock's saliva and the traces of exotic foods suspended within it, and enjoying the warmth that built to tingles within the aforementioned lush body, and then Pollock's hands were doing their best to clasp all the lushness within them, and Maria's own fingers were at Pollock's fly, toying at first, then becoming quite earnest about getting the damn thing open.
"Hi," said Linda.
"Hi," said the biggest kid, who was nine.
"Hi," said the next kid, who was seven.
"Hi," said the third kid, who was three, and who had been a surprise to his parents. This one pointed.
"You like sunsets?" Linda asked in a bored voice.
"Yeah," said the first kid, who looked embarrassed but held his ground.
"Yeah," said the next kid, who looked hypnotized.
"Yeah," said the third kid, who was still pointing, and who looked ready to jump up and down.
"Sun's over there," Linda nodded, "behind you. If you can get the little one to move, you can see better without shadows gettin' in the way."
"Huh?" said the first kid, who wanted to bluff out his innocence, but didn't want to take his eyes away from Pollock and Maria.
"Yeah," said the second kid, who wasn't much of a conversationalist, and who didn't give a damn about bluffing anybody anyway.
"I'm FOUR!" said the third kid, who was three. He pointed at himself. Pointing was his thing right then.
"Look quick," Linda advised. "After the sun goes down, the light ain't gonna last long." She glanced back at Pollock and Maria, who were emitting faint moans and writhing slowly like Shakespeare's fabled two-backed beast. Maria was making progress.
"Uh, well," said the first kid, who was still trying to pretend he didn't notice anything.
"Gee," said the second kid, who was noticing everything.
"I'M-LOOK!" spoke the third kid, in that quiet way of three-year-olds. He was still pointing.
Linda looked. "Yeah," she said to the kid, "ain't that something? It ain't the biggest I've ever seen, but it's bigger than most." She spoke without enthusiasm because it really is not the most exciting thing in the world to talk to three little kids on the beach while your best friend is trying to get screwed two feet away.
The first kid got two things twisted in his head and couldn't make up his mind which to say and tried to say them both and said, "Glup."
"Yeah," said the second kid, trying to hold up his end of the talking.
"My daddy's got one bigger," said the third kid and held out his arms. "THAT big."
"I think I wanna meet that man," said Linda.
"He does not," said the first kid.
"Does TOO! Does TOO!" said the third kid, who seemed to think it important to add, "My name is Jimmy."
"It's only that big," said the first kid to Linda, holding up his thumb and forefinger.
"Well, tell him not to hurry," said Linda.
"My name is JIMMY. I'm FOUR," said Jimmy, who was still three.
"Shut up," said the second kid, and cuffed Jimmy-who-was-four in an absent-minded way without taking his eyes off Pollock and Maria.
"W-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A--" wailed Jimmy, who gave no sign of being hurt but gave every sign of wailing interminably.
"Shut up," said the first kid, and cuffed Jimmy on the other side.
"Eh-heh, eh-heh, eh-heh, eh-heh, eh-heh," said Jimmy, still trying to cry.
Pollock had opened Maria's thin blouse and the two older kids goggled. The first one muttered, "Sure don't look like Mom's."
"You don't know," sneered the second kid. He craned his neck forward, peering in the failing light (the sun had disappeared into the sea and the kids had missed the sunset).
"Do too," said the first kid. "She gave Jimmy his milk that way," and he nodded to indicate what Pollock was doing to Maria. "You were just a kid, then. I remember."
"Eh-heh," said Jimmy, "eh-heh. WAAAAAAHHHHHHHH! MOOOOOOOOOMM-EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
"Shut up," said the first kid, "she'll come over."
"Well, shit," said Linda, disgusted, "why not?" Jimmy started running, clumsily (because three-year-old kids are not trained athletes, even if they think they are, even if they say they're four), his cries becoming broken up by the small successive jars made by his stumbling feet and making his crying sound more authentic.
"Go stop him," said the first kid.
"What for?" said the second kid.
"He'll tell. Mom'll come."
"Far out," said Linda.
"Why me?"
"Cause I say so."
"How'll I stop him?"
"Chee. What a dummy. You know. Grab him. Beat him up."
"Not me."
"Come on. You like to beat him up."
"I'll get in trouble."
"We'll both get in trouble if Mom comes."
"Okay. You go beat him up."
"You just wanna stay here and watch."
"You like to beat him up, too."
"Take it from me," said Linda, "it ain't no big trip just to watch."
"WAAAAAAAAAAA AAAHHHHH HHHHHHH-HHHHHH-" came Jimmy's cries from down the beach.
"Tell you what," said Linda, "you guys stay here and watch, and I'll go beat him up."
"Jimmmiiiiiieeeeeeeeee," came a woman's voice from down the beach, which was swiftly shading into blues from brightness.
"I knew it," said the first kid.
"Yeah," said the second kid, who was squinting in the fading light. The writhing and the moans took on sharper definitions with the coming of the dark.
"Jimmmiiiieeeeeeee," came the woman's-voice, "Regggiiiieeeee," and the second kid nudged the first kid and said, "You gotta go. Ha, ha."
"Aaaaaaaaallllllllwiiiiiinnnnn," came the woman's voice, and the first kid shoved the second kid and said, "Ha, ha, yourself, smart-ass."
"Gee," said the second kid. He hated to go. Pollock and Maria had started to pant.
"You could just stay here," Linda suggested. "They'd probably come with flashlights. You could see, then."
"Yeah," said Alvin.
"You're crazy," said Reggie. "Come on."
"Gee," said Alvin, who was seven, who was the second kid, who was really trying very hard to see in the dark, because he thought that what he was almost seeing was quite important and that he should see it because he probably wouldn't get another chance for a long, long time.
"Come on," said Reggie, and pulled Alvin away, leaving Linda alone in the dark with the noise of pounding surf and rhythmic breathing and muted sounds of hands on skin and of certain slurping. She sighed, listening, and started brushing sand off her fine-muscled thighs, and the brushing became caressing, and the caressing became soft rubbing that gave way to opening of clothing and the dipping of fingers and full-blown masturbation, and then she joined them.
Hands touched and slid, groping, finding buttons and zippers and buckles, unfastening, peeling cloth from skin. Bodies twined. Sweat mingled. Sand flew from the wild mix of limbs. Actions of three individuals merged into a wordless panting fugue:
Pollock's mouth popped from Maria's naked breast with a slurp and the wet pointed thing bobbed gently for an instant before Linda's hot moist mouth found it, as Pollock's tongue emerged and entered Linda's ear, as Linda, squirming, found Maria's hand and guided it to her splendid long lipped cunt, as Pollock's hand positioned his cock at Maria's pussy and paused, rubbing the huge hard knob about on the entrance to her body.
Linda released Maria's hand, whose fingers wriggled and dug in the warm jelly-like box, and placed her own hands, smelling and dripping with her own liquids, on Maria's face, which was open-mouthed and enraptured and smiling, taking Linda's cunt-juice on her cheeks and eyelids and chin, finding Linda's warm wet fingers and sucking them into her mouth, moaning when Pollock's cock entered her snatch and drove upward into the channel.
Pollock's free hand slipped under Maria's lush buttocks and eased them up, and his middle finger, resting lightly on her anus, pushed gently, probing, and Linda's other hand slid softly down Maria's heaving torso and kneaded the skin of her belly, pushing her small tits forward meanwhile for Maria's free hand to discover, and Pollock released his cock and reached forward for Linda's box, discovered it already occupied by Maria's little fingers, and his thumb joined them, the large knuckle of the first joint grinding Linda's clitoris and making her surge and groan, while his finger slid smoothly into her asshole and felt it snap spasmodically at him.
Pollock shifted his knees for better leverage and drove himself further into Maria's body, which writhed on the velvet sand beneath himself and Linda, and together they sucked and fucked and pushed and probed and squeezed and kneaded and groaned and gobbled and panted and ground their fingers and extended their tongues and moved into the warm fragrant darknesses of each others' bodies, and when Maria came the first time her screams were muffled beneath the suffocating press of them, and Pollock increased his strokes and drilled himself into her, and then Linda wanted some of him.
She didn't bother trying to roll Pollock off Maria, but sat on the smaller girl and drove the breath from her body and bent her knees and placed her feet on Pollock's thighs and pushed him out of Maria's cunt and drove him backward into a legs-doubled sitting position, and wrapped her legs about his hips and caught the back of his neck with one hand while she clamped herself upon him with the other. Facing him, her long athletic body plastered to his, she snarled into his face and opened her wide lusty mouth and took his own mouth into it, her lips covering his and trying to envelope his nostrils. Pollock's hands clawed into her buttocks, digging deeply into the rubbery flesh and pulling her fully to him, his long stiff cock curving upward into her and nestling into her lower belly. He twisted and bore her to the sand.
Pollock's panting increased in tempo and formed a primitive counterpoint to Linda's deepening guttural exhalations, her body squirming her deeper into the sand, and still she covered his mouth with her own, her white upper teeth sinking into his nose, and Pollock had enough, desiring more freedom to fuck her, and pulled himself from her incredible mouth and braced himself on his hands and stiff arms, and settled himself to drive his long meat into the superb cunt of Linda.
It was then he felt Maria's small hands, feathery-feeling as the brushed sand from his buttocks and the backs of his thighs, and next he felt her petal mouth as she kissed the hairless skin of his butt, and then her tongue came forth and -rimmed the crease of his ass before descending into his rectum with a pointed wet assault that drove him half crazy and he passed his enjoyment on to Linda, who responded wildly. He arched his back and thrust his ass into Maria's sweet pretty face and cried out now and then and almost fucked the shit out of Linda, who by now was partially buried in the sand.
"Oh!" Linda cried, "Ha!" she sang. "Maria! Bring it up here, baby!"
Maria chose to crawl up Pollock's back, her small hands sliding over the muscles writhing beneath his skin, her mouth pausing now and then to kiss his shoulder blade and suck the hard trapezes muscles that flowed from his neck and connected with his shoulders, and her large billowy pointed breasts pushed along either side of his neck and rippled as his hair slid ruffling between them, giving her a shivery erotic quickening of breath and pulse, and then it was her soft fine belly moving up the back of his head, and her breasts dropped and loomed before his eyes as her hands found the sand on either side of Linda's face and excited, wet, waiting mouth.
Linda's hands reached up and touched Maria's swinging breasts and fondled them gently, rubbing softly and titillating the nipples, and Maria continued to move over Pollock, her inner thighs caressing his ears, and Pollock, still fucking Linda fiercely, wanted to lift his head and drag his nose through Maria's sweet box, and when he did she hissed and wriggled for him, and when his tongue followed his nose and tasted her, her soft, grateful "Oh, Pollock!" broke from her and she stiffened, holding herself atop him by the strength of her thighs, and allowed him time to lick her before Linda's urgent hands squeezed her breasts and forced her forward again.
Down came Maria, lowering her gorgeous torso over Linda's busy mouth, until her crotch rested on Linda's face and hid it from Pollock's view. Her breasts, still held by Linda's hands, flattened into the sand, and Linda bent back her head so that her tongue could enter Maria's body, and Pollock saw again the under side of the chin and the long, sensuous, throbbing throat of the strange, self-hating creature who could both despise him and give him so much pleasure, and he dug his hands and knees into the beach and fucked the long girl with powerful gusto.
Pollock considered Linda as he fucked her: with her outstretched arms hidden by Maria's body, her head and face tucked into Maria's crotch, her legs wrapped about Pollock's body, she was a limbless trunk who quivered beneath his plunges, her small breasts shaking, her belly heaving, her skin damp with perspiration and causing sand to cling as it spurted aloft and settled on her from the struggles of the three of them. Soon she would be covered with a fine layer of the stuff. Her throat vibrated from the deep noises she produced from within; she looked animalistic, as only a depraved human can.
Moved by a sudden impulse, Pollock moved his hands to her little shaking tits and let his weight ride down on them, the sand clinging to his palms grinding painfully into her, and she uttered, somehow a series of broken fluttering outcries that blew, muffled, into Maria's wondrous snatch. Linda's body moved, affirmatively, against Pollock's hands and her pelvis bucked savagely and forced him to fuck her faster. It's what she wants, Pollock thought, and buffeted her unmercifully, slamming his throbbing prick into her up to his wiry pubic thatch.
The meal had refreshed Pollock and given him strength; the wine had blunted his thirst and sharpened his sense of the erotic, had in fact acted as an aphrodisiac to his state of mind, and he felt charged, as if electric power snapped from him, and he thought he could fuck all night if he wanted to, and, of course, he definitely wanted to. Come, damn you, Linda, and his thought flickered like a raw electric arc and he could actually smell the ozone, and Linda responded at once, her climax genuine and violent, and her belly bulged as her legs tightened and bent her pelvis upward to meet him, and the shrieks began in her chest and hurtled up her throat and burst through her mouth and buzzed into Maria's cunt, and Maria began to babble.
The small girl bent her knees and doubled her legs and lowered her head so that her quickened breath puffed the sand beneath her face, and her body shook uncontrollably as, still babbling, she reached a climax of her own.
Pollock, moved almost to climax himself, lowered his head and bit Maria gently on the right hip, and felt gratified to hear her whimper briefly before the babbling took her again. Linda strove upward against him until her climax ran its course, then lay quietly, Pollock fucking her still, while she sucked and gobbled and licked Maria and brought responses from the lush girl that Pollock doubted he could have achieved. But then, Pollock reflected as he fucked Linda (lazily now), he didn't know anyone who had a mouth and tongue as good as Linda's. He watched Maria's sweet struggles and suddenly wanted to get himself into her. She must be wonderfully distended by now, he thought.
He removed his hands from Linda's tits and placed them under Maria's shivering buttocks and shoved her forward, bringing her ass into the air to be supported by her knees and her head in a tripod effect, at the same time pulling himself from Linda's cunt and swiftly mounting Maria. Outcries came from both girls, and then he'd guided his big cock into position and thrust it deep into Maria's box, which was indeed wonderfully distended. Thanks, Linda, thought Pollock, and got his hands on Maria's hips and began fucking her with short furious strokes. Maria came almost immediately, and she yelled Spanish words into the sand, and the yells turned to brief, sharp screams, and the screams changed to sobs, and the sobs mingled with the sound of the surf, whose waves pounded forlornly off to their right in the dark.
Linda lay between the legs of the two of them, running her hands up and down their thighs, indiscriminately, suddenly reaching up, grasping Pollock above the cheeks of his ass, pulling herself up until she could lick his big swinging balls, and Pollock began to mutter in a deep incoherent voice. Linda moved her head back, bending her neck painfully, but getting into the rhythm of Pollock and Maria, and she licked Pollock's balls when he extended fully into Maria, her tongue sliding up the gleaming slimy stalk when he pulled his cock forth, and his muttering grunted into moans.
Linda's fantastic tongue laved the puffy outer lips of Maria's cunt and made the small girl whimper, and when Pollock plunged again, she let her full wet mouth ride down the stalk again and close around his balls, and his moans turned to startled snorts of laughter. On the backstroke, Linda's tongue flattened and dipped into Maria's cunt, crowding in and sharing the savory moistness with the head of Pollock's prick, and Maria came a fourth time, squealing shrilly against the other sounds of the night.
Linda's mouth closed around his balls again, and Pollock's chuckles became quavering moans. Thus it continued, and Maria came a fifth time, shrieking broken prayers in Spanish that sounded odd to Pollock but increased his own fervor, and his strokes became more powerful, more positive, and his great cock swelled and pulsed with the advent of his climax, which he'd delayed for so long, and he was gripped with a sublime pleasure, for it was Maria with whom he wanted to share his climax.
The heat emerged from the core of him and bathed his loins and his belly, and with it the curious lightheadedness that presages the weakness the follows, and there came to him a frantic urgency he couldn't ignore, and he seized Maria's hips and plunged into her feverishly, crying, "Maria! Oh, god, Maria, honey-"
"Oh? Oooooohhhhhh?" Maria's excitement sang a rising song, and she moved toward her sixth peak-and Linda, Pollock's left nut held firmly in her mouth, curled her hands about his hips and set her heels and pulled him backward, off balance, and Pollock pulled Maria with him, and they collapsed into a splash of sand and surprise and waving arms and legs. Linda popped above it all, leaping atop Pollock and straddling him and placing his spuming cock into her long wet pussy and sinking down upon him, shoving the length of him into her, swaying and crying, "Now come, damn you! Come in me!"
Pollock's hand snapped across her face and the far horizon jarred her vision. She toppled sideways. "You crummy bitchy cunt!" Pollock gritted. "You goddamn weird broad!" For he was coming, explosively, the heat of it grinding his insides, and he seethed with a terrible rage, that Linda had thwarted the pleasure of himself and Maria, and he gripped the soft flesh at her waist in each fist and drew her to the sand beside him, still clamped upon him, and he shook her like a rag doll.
"H a-h a-h a-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-" she laughed, wildly, the laughter running on and on, past breath, and he rolled her over and fucked her and fucked her until he'd completely spent himself, and he sagged weakly above her while her laughter lessened into sobs, and he was aware of Maria's small arms about him as she pressed herself into his back and kissed the soft flesh beneath his ear and breathed her warm breath on his neck and spoke soothing cooing words into his rumpled hair. He turned then, withdrew himself from Linda, clasped Maria to him and lay down with her in the sand. She held him in her arms, still soothing him with her small soft voice, and began brushing the sand from his body. She brushed him until the night breeze from the sea dried him. She brushed him very clean.
She said, softly, "Pollock. Don't blame her. She's that way, Pollock, that's all. You really gave her a buzz when you slapped her, you know? She loves it rough like that. Pollock, honey, I came six times. I'm not hurtin', you sweet pretty gringo. Pollock. Pollock. Lemme do something nice for you, now."
And she blew him. Pollock didn't think he could come again, not right away, not after coming so hugely into Linda, not after being primed to come into Maria. But he came, and afterward he reflected that he'd come, probably because it was Maria's tongue that had licked him, Maria's warm breath that had caressed him, Maria's hot mouth that had taken him into her as much as she was able, Maria's sweet beauty that had caught the moonlight on her closed eyelids, Maria's long dark tumbled hair that had caught the night breeze from the sea and grazed his skin. Pollock was absolutely certain that he responded, not to being blown, but to Maria.
And, afterward, almost immediately, he slept, with her mouth still holding him, a fleck of his come on her lips. He was unaware that she moved up and held him in her arms while her tongue flicked the spot of semen from her petal mouth, or that he called her by name as he dozed, or that she smiled sadly and held him closer.
CHAPTER FIVE
When he awoke, he was still naked, it was still night, the surf still boomed, the night breeze still walked in from the sea. But the girls were gone, with his clothes, his flight bag, his watch with diamonds on the dial. And he cursed and shivered suddenly, and felt the loss of Maria before that of his possessions.
Pollock sat on the beach a minute or two, thinking, his feet drawn up slightly so that his knees could support his forearms. Possibly, and it was just barely possible, they'd taken all the stuff back to the blue Chevy van and let him sleep for a little longer, meaning to come back for him. He didn't know how long he'd slept; it could have been just a few minutes. He twisted his wrist as a reflex before he remembered his watch was gone, and he rubbed the naked wrist, irritated, with the fingers of his other hand, and thus he discovered that they'd left him with his diamond ring.
Well, maybe it's a joke, thought Pollock. Maybe they thought they'd get a buzz out of me waking up and finding myself naked on the beach and my watch gone. Maybe they're sitting up there now, in the blue Chevy van in the dark under the cypress trees, waiting for me to come running and yelling up the beach. Maybe.
Maybe not, thought Pollock. Probably they didn't want to take the chance of waking me up. Maybe they got the watch off and I stirred and moaned or something and they got nervous and took off. That's probably it. I can kiss my stuff goodbye.
But he wished suddenly that he'd kissed Maria goodbye. Shit, thought Pollock. But what the hell, I've still got my ring.
He twisted and stood, feeling a little weary. He was glad he'd spent those nights in the discount store running and exercising and working out, for he'd be close to exhaustion otherwise. It seemed hard for him to remember how he was before the discount house, when he'd blown into Reno, seedy, flabby, smoking too much and not being able to afford it, losing his slim bankroll on the tables and existing for a while on free drink tickets and complimentary rolls of nickels from the casinos, eating at one of the missions, wishing for relief, hoping for a break, having not the slightest idea where one would come from or even what it would look like, knowing only that he wasn't worth a shit.
He'd been almost to the point of trying to get himself arrested for vagrancy and spending some time in jail for the meals and the bunk, when he'd looked down the wide long straight boulevard with its double row of street lamps shortening to the vanishing point, and he'd seen the discount store like an island made of Christmas tree lights way, way down the line, shining there in the dark for other people, the ones with money, to come in and buy.
He'd started trudging for it, making the effort like a man in the desert walking toward the mirage, knowing it was a lie but making it a goal, anyway, just to keep moving, and he'd drawn near it and left the boulevard and entered the parking lot, which had been starting to thin out, and walked through the wide doors and into the brightly lit place, full of everything people could possibly need to make one-stop shopping a convenience, and walking through the place, the idea had come to him, wild, unbidden, and he'd laughed once, harshly, and caused a woman to stare, but he hadn't cared and that was the beauty of it, he hadn't given a damn anymore, and the idea'd suited him then, and impulse had seized him, and he'd gambled one last time, not thinking of consequences or possible future advantages or punishments, but doing it, acting, goddamn it, because he wasn't worth a shit and he'd known it and, knowing it, had finally taken the ever-present invitation to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
DOING SOMETHING, he hadn't given a damn about rightness or good judgment or any of that crap, and before he'd known it he'd passed through the door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY and sneaked past steep stairs leading to a mezzanine office and was threading his way past and through crates and cartons and stacked merchandise, and then he'd found the ladder and was up it in a breathless panting excitement, stifling his giggles like a kid out past curfew, finding a hidden place among the sheet-metal air ducts and air-conditioning units, arranging some old musty burlap into a nest of sorts, curling up and waiting for the lights that shone through an occasional crack in the bottom of his attic world to douse before breaking out his skinny pack of rumpled cigarettes, and he'd giggled, actually, and snorted through his nose, and the lights had doused, the people deserted, he'd been alone without getting caught, and that had been the beginning.
Is this the end result of it? Pollock wondered. Standing naked on the beach at Carmel-tanned, sure; lithe and supple and full of stamina, right; well-fed and standing taller and stronger, with confidence and well-defined muscles and a bare ass and a dangling dong and nothing to show but a one-carat diamond ring. Is this what the year was for?
"Shit," muttered Pollock to nobody in particular, I've been a thief less than twenty-four hours and I've already lost damn near everything." The muttered words were almost lost among the noise of breaking waves. "What kind of thief is that?"
Pollock had learned perseverance and most certainly patience while he'd been in the discount store. Make sure, he thought, make sure first they're not up there laughing in the dark.
So he started up the beach, the sand pulling at his legs and lungs, only not so pleasantly as in the afternoon, and once he passed a couple who sat on a huge old piece of gnarled driftwood and drank from a leather wineskin and noticed him and put their heads together and talked softly, but their words were lost in the boom of pounding water off to the left, and Pollock walked on, up the beach, under the deep shadows of the cypress trees, stepped among the ice plant, and he looked for and found the place where the van had been parked, and he saw that it was gone.
What had they said? he wondered. How had they discussed leaving him? Had Maria been his advocate and lost? Had Linda's stronger, distorted personality prevailed? How had they done it? Pollock thought he could guess.
Come on, Linda would have said softly, let's take his shit and split.
Come on, Maria would have said, though in a different way. He's being good to us.
Shit (snorted explosively but softly). What the hell is he but another fucking big-peckered man? We gave him a lift, didn't we? Now let him pay.
He paid, Linda. He bought us ice and salami and bread and cheese and gave us his wine and his-"Oh, piss on his fuckin' fish eggs.
-he shared his food with us, and he dint call us spies when we called him gringo, and he's nice, and he's fun, and he likes us He likes you, you mean. You stupid fucking cunt, he just likes to fuck you. He don't like you, and he damn sure don't like me. You know that.
He likes me.
Oh, horseshit. He got a huge hard-on for you, 'cause you got great bubbly tits and a nice ass and you just fell all over him. Well, fuck him. I'm taking his shit and splitting. We'll go to San Francisco and sell the watch and the ring and get some dope and I dowanna, Linda.
Well, piss on you, then. If our friendship don't mean no more than that to you, then stay here. See how long he keeps you before he dumps you for some other broad. I'll find somebody. I always will. I ain't no fucking big-peckered bastard that thinks with his crotch. I'm the best you ever had, and you know it, but you just stay here with him, dumb bird. Here, help me stuff his shoes into this little bag of his.
No, Linda, please. This ain't right.
Awright, shit, I'll do it myself. I always do everything, anyway. Hey, what do you suppose we could get for this watch? I bet the diamonds are real. I know a guy in the city Linda, come on Lemme alone! Oh, shit, you stupid cunt, he's waking up. I oughta Leave him alone, Linda. Please?
Awright, that does it. I'm walking. I got my van up there, and I'm walking up to it and tossing this shit inside and climbing in and heading north, and I ain't stopping till I get to 'Frisco, and if you wanna come, then shaddup and come, but I ain't waiting.
Long pause, dotted with diminishing footsteps.
Linda! Okay. Okay.
Running steps, fading into panting quiet born from shame.
If they were going to leave him, that was how Pollock would imagine it, knowing what he did of the two of them. He felt himself feeling sorry for Maria, for what she'd had to choose, for being weaker than she wanted to be, weaker than she should be, and he missed her, and he ached for her a little.
Then he thought again of his position, of the ridiculousness of it, of a naked thief with all his possessions stolen from him, and he laughed aloud.
Okay, he told himself, silently. Okay. Now let's see how good a thief you really are, buddy. This is some real nitty-gritty.
And the nitty-gritty came to meet him, swinging suddenly out of a nearby side street and turning toward him, headlights catching him momentarily and picking him out among the trees, and he froze, hoping lack of movement would hide him from the car.
Pollock didn't know what time it was, but he thought, if it's late enough, only cops will be out; but the car, driving parallel to the beach on the frontage road, passed under the light from a flood lamp lighting someone's yard, showing him a 1957 Chevy Nomad station wagon-kids, thought Pollock, kids like cars like that-that slowed to make the turn leading to the parking area under the cypresses that was the entrance to the beach, and as it made the turn and swung toward him again the driver hit the brights and Pollock, bathed in white glare, forgot about freezing and stepped quickly among the gnarled boles.
The car drove right up to within a few feet and swung to turn around and stopped midway through the maneuver, while the driver leaned over and rolled down the passenger window and spoke to Pollock in a hoarse stage whisper: "Hey, buddy. Hey."
The guy had a voice that scratched like beauty bark with an accent like Leo Gorcey and the Bowery Boys, and Pollock called out warily, "Whattya want?"
"Somebuddy take yez clo's, hey? Hanh?"
"What the hell do you care?" replied Pollock, irritated, wishing the bastard would go away so he could find something to steal.
"Shit, take it easy, buddy, I'm just tryna help, yez know? Lissen, youse wanna I should drop yez somewheres? Ain't no trouble. I mean, I don't mind helpin' out a guy what's inna spot like yez self is in. youse know what I mean?"
"Uh," said Pollock, adding it up, "yeah-" adding it all up, the old car that kids would like, the gravel-voiced thug-like man driving, alone, swinging into the entrance to the beach and offering him a ride-"yeah, thanks very much." And he stepped out of the deep shadows beneath the cypresses and walked gingerly, since he was barefoot, up to the car and opened the door and swung inside, saw that the light didn't go on when the door opened and had his suspicions reinforced, observed that the driver was a squat ugly fireplug of a man with heavy jowls and pig eyes and curly thick ears like a pig and rolls of skin around the back of his neck. He had a round, hard-looking pot belly and thick arms covered with black hair showing from his Hawaiian shirt. The dash lights showed Pollock a matching pair of thick legs, also covered with hair, sticking out of a pair of yellow Bermuda shorts. The fingers clutching the wheel were short and squat and clumsy-looking, like the rest of him. The guy had two chins, covered with a day's growth of beard, and in the middle of the dark stubble the two lips hung wet and sagging while the little mean eyes looked Pollock carefully up and down.
"What happened to yez clo's?" he asked while he was fiddling with the gears.
"I was asleep. Somebody stole them." Pollock shifted slightly in the seat and his cock slid over the top of his left thigh. The other's eyes goggled a bit, looking at it. Well, thought Pollock, okay. He examined the clothes the man was wearing, tried not to make a rueful face while he imagined how they'd look on himself. He turned his attention to the car. "You keep this thing in good shape," he remarked.
"Yeh," said the thug-like man. "Bought it bran' new. It's a antique, now. Youse jus' can't fin' em like dis here no more." He finished changing gears, still staring at Pollock's cock, and wheeled the old car around and gunned it out the entrance to the beach. "Still got lotsa suds, too. Lissen to duh engine."
Pollock was listening to the engine and found it smooth and responsive with no catches or flat places in the acceleration. He was sure that the old car would gobble up the miles with him behind the wheel.
"Yeah, it's pretty nice. Listen, I hate to put you to all this trouble."
"Oh, it ain't no trouble at all, pally. Like, I been on duh skids before, which it wasn't my fault or nuttin, an' I dint have no place to go or no buddy to turn to, see, an' a minnit ago I seen youse down dere nekkid, an' I sez, 'Shit, Max, youse owe it to yez-self to help out duh poor Joe, what ain't done nuttin to deserve no predicament like dis here, prolly,' an' here I am, buddy, and here youse is. See?"
Pollock saw. Max was ogling his pecker again. Watching him, Pollock wondered how Max would approach the subject. Max was short and solid and ugly and middle-aged. He was also probably as strong as a bull. Pollock, making comparisons, thought that, should he not be able to handle Max physically, he could almost certainly outrun him. Unless Max had a weapon of some sort. After that thought occurred to him, Pollock seriously wondered what he was doing alone in a car in the middle of the night, naked, with what was probably a full-blown deviate driving him to some unknown destination.
"You got the time, Max?" he asked. "They took my watch, too."
"Pleased tuh meet yez, Pollock. It's a quatter-of-eleven. How come youse was nekkid?"
"Well, there were a couple of girls-"
"Aha! Broads. Dey'll do it to yez, buddy. I bet dey tolya youse could have a little nooky after youse took 'em swimmin' in duh nood, an' dey slipped youse somethin' in duh booze, which it was prolly fixed up wit' a mickey, am I right, pally?"
"Well-"
"See? Fuckin' broads, anyways. Took yez clo's an' yez watch an' yez dough an' dint even give youse no nooky, Shit." Max shook his head with heavy disapproval. "Broads is all alike, buddy. Mug wants tuggit his rocks off, dat ain't nuttin' bad, which if it was I could see but it ain't, right?-an' dem fuckin' broads tink youse gotta give em duh moon, which it ain't worth it jus' so's youse kin git in dere snatch, am I right? But youse shunt tink I hate 'em, on account o' my mudder was a broad, but broads is differnt youse know what I mean?"
"Yeah," said Pollock, thinking of Maria, and the thoughts of the small lush girl set his blood to pounding, and his cock, rested and partially reloaded from his nap on the beach, obediently rose. Oh, shit, thought Pollock, knowing Max would see.
Max saw. "See dat?" He pointed. "Fuckin' broads took everyting youse got, an' dint give youse no nooky, which I tink it's ' fuckin' shame, buddy. Dey shunta left widdout gittin' youse rocks off foi yez anyways. Hah?"
Max had driven them through the darkened hilly streets and out on the beach road, leaving most of the residences behind them. Ahead of them the headlights showed empty road. To the left was darkness, broken only by the lights of a solitary house bulking large against the sky. As Pollock watched, the lights went out. Off to the right the surf fell unheard to the beach. Pollock could catch glimpses of it glowing against the ghost-pale sand between the dunes and the cypress trees.
Max slowed the car, pulled off to the side of the road, stopped, pulled the brake, switched off the lights, turned the ignition key. The silence was loud. Pollock could hear the surf now, very faint between Max's wheezing breaths.
"Say, lissen, pally," Max rasped, "bein's you dint git no nooky down on duh beach, how's about a blowjob?"
"No thanks," said Pollock, "I just had one." He tried the door handle. It didn't work. Probably Max had fixed the passenger door so that only the outside handle worked.
"It don't work but from duh outside, buddy. Lissen, I mean it. Ain't no trouble, youse know? I mean, youse might as well, cause dere ain't nuttin youse kin do about it anyways, which it ain't meant to be no t'rett, but it's duh straight dope, right? Youse is all nekkid, no shoes, no dough, youse ain't got nuttin else tuh do, right? How's about it, pally? Youse wanna I should suck yez cock?"
"Well," said Pollock, hesitating.
"Hey," said Max, "I bet youse is a little bit noivous, am I right? Youse never had no man go down on yez joint before, hanh? Youse shunt feel scared or nuttin, buddy. I know how. Youse will tink youse never had nuttin so good before, which it won't surprise me none if youse dint wanna go back to duh broads after I suck yez cock."
"Well, look," said Pollock in a reasonable tone, "why don't we get out and go back and let down the tailgate and get comfortable? I don't like it in front seats."
CHAPTER SIX
"Ohhhhhhhh, no, buddy," said Max with a crafty grin. "I had mugs pull dat shit on me before an' duh fuckers took off runnin'. I ain't dumb, which it don't prove nuttin cause I look a little stupid, mebbe."
"Look, Max, you're right about the spot I'm in. I've got no clothes, no money, no place to go. If I ran for help I'd be picked up and thrown in the can. I've got no job, either. I'm a stranger here. Nobody would go bail for me. I've got nothing to gain from running and nothing to lose by letting you blow me. You've got the keys so I can't steal your car. I'm at your mercy, Max, you know what I mean? It's your show, am I right?"
The last two sentences convinced Max and produced a warm friendly grin of comradeship on the thick, crude features. "Say, youse ain't a bad mug, pally. Youse is duh foist square john I met up with what was okay. I'll leave youse git out dis side here." But he plucked the keys from the ignition and stuffed them into a pocket in his yellow bermuda shorts before he opened the door and got out.
"How long have you been doing this?" Pollock asked as he slid across the seat.
"Well, I foist started suckin' cocks back in forty-t'ree, when I was inna Navy," Max exposited as he shut the door and led the way to the rear of the Nomad. "I was onna carrier, an' dey was a mug what usta take care o' some o' duh crew, youse know what I mean? Well, one time I was pullin' watch, up onna flight deck, an' it was nighttime an' we was blacked out, see, an' I was finkin' about duh broads. I hadda hard-on like dis here," and Max nudged Pollock and made a fist and held up a meaty, hairy forearm, "an' if youse ever been inna Navy youse know how horny mugs git at sea. Back den I had dis beeootiful body-" here Max stopped and assumed a muscle-builder's pose-"which it ain't dere no more, am I right? Well, he had duh huge hard-on tuh cop my joint, but I dint know on account o' I was a square-john, myself, an' dis mug come up an' sez: 'Hey, buddy. Youse wanna I should suck yez cock?' "
Max stopped to twist the handle on the tailgate to lower it. Pollock set himself. When Max raised the upper gate, he would be just right for a left to his bulging gut and a right to the jaw. Pollock shifted his feet and tightened himself and waited.
Max paused with his hand on the upper tail-gate while he went on with his story: "Well, I shoved duh mug back, see? I sez: 'Gedadayere, youse fuckin' fairy,' cause I was a square-john, hanh? an' I dint want no fruit coppin' my jemt. Well, he comes at me, on account o' he's big an' tough, an' he's gonna bust me good an' den cop my jernt, but what he dint know was-" Max paused in his tale to lift the tailgate, and when his arms had lifted it as high as it would go, Pollock stepped in.
He dug his left fist into Max's pot belly and the blow jarred his wrist. It was like striking a truck tire. Max grunted and dropped into a crouch, and when Pollock threw the right Max moved his head slightly and the fist slid off one of the thick curly ears. Max's shoulder drove into Pollock's chest with some force, sending him stumbling backward, off balance. By the time he'd recovered, Max had assumed a peculiar posture and-Pollock found it hard to believe-was resuming his story.
"-but what duh mug dint know was, before I come inna Navy I was a pug, fightin' outa N'Yawk an' Noo Joisy. Had t'oity-eight fights, all pro, won twenny-nine." Pollock recognized the posture. He'd seen it on television. Max was not dumpy and ungainly now. His bulk was perfectly balanced on the balls of his feet. When he shuffled toward Pollock, Max didn't shamble. He was almost graceful in a functional, deadly way. "Had nine teen kayoes, too, pally."
Oh, shit, thought Pollock. He moved warily to his right, trying to stay away from Max's cocked right fist. The road was rough on his bare feet and he moved clumsily.
"So I cold-cocked duh queer, but den I felt sorry for 'im, an' I was still hard-up, youse know what I mean? So I figgered it cunt hurt nuttin if I let 'im do it, long as he knew who was boss, see?" Max feinted with his right arm and shoulder, tricked Pollock into stepping quickly to his right, and while Pollock was in the middle of the step Max took a short sliding step of his own and drove a straight left into Pollock's chest. It was a short punch of eight to ten inches and struck Pollock over the heart Pollock stumbled backward, bruising and cutting his feet to stay upright. He regained his balance and continued to circle, his breath coming harder and a little painfully.
"I was still up inna air after I got muh nuts off, on account o' it felt so good, so I done it back tuh him. An' I liked it, youse know what I mean? So, after dat, I'd blow guys what looked good, even if dey dint wannit, an' den I'd make 'em blow me. Dat's how come I gotta Disonnable Discharge." Pollock rushed him, having decided Max would keep him circling till his feet gave out and he couldn't run. Pollock was younger, taller, perhaps equally strong, and a sure bet to have more stamina. If only, he thought, I can land a lucky punch, then maybe I can overwhelm him.
Max caught one punch on a shoulder that suddenly hunched and covered his chin. Another, punch bounced off the back of the gay Hawaiian shirt Then Max, head lowered, chin tucked into a shoulder, stepped in and-leisurely, it seemed to Pollock-drove a right and a left to Pollock's midsection, and the blows hurt more than they should have. Pollock's arms dropped, and Max's left hook exploded on the side of Pollock's face, and he went reeling backward again. The Nomad's tailgate prevented him from falling. Little flickering lights floated around his head like fireflies.
"Youse ain't never been in duh ring, buddy," Max's voice came to him across the Grand Canyon, "I kin tell dat. Guys today shunt grow up widdout dey know how to defend dereselves, on account o' bein' so many bad-asses in duh woild dat decent people is scared tuh go out at night."
Pollock shook his head to clear it, saw Max three feet away, still in the boxing stance. It occurred to Pollock that he should try to run, except the thought immediately followed that his eighty-year-old grandmother could catch him.
"See," Max explained, "duh t'ing tuh remember is, youse gotta kUl duh body foist, an' duh head dies." He shuffled forward to prove his point Pollock sat on the tailgate and kicked out with both feet with all his remaining strength, catching Max in the thighs and knocking him back into the road. Pollock slid off the taUgate and lunged for him.
Max recovered his stance, shot out a left jab and caught Pollock on the mouth, snapping his head back, followed up with a straight right from the shoulder that had all his weight behind it. The punch was hard and fast and professional, and it connected with Pollock's solar plexus and took his breath away like magic. Pollock was astonished to discover he was lying on the road, curling up, trying to breathe.
"One," Max counted. "Two. T'ree."
Pollock was the champion, arrogant, thoughtless, thoroughly rotten, hateful, played magnificently by Kirk Douglas. He rolled and got his knees under him, tried an experimental snarl that showed his bottom teeth, glared, teeth gnashing, through the ropes and across the ring apron to where the crowd howled in the darkness like some huge malignant beast, wanting his blood. He thought he could see the girl he'd stolen from another man and then spurned, and the other woman, the worthless one, smirking next to some well-dressed hotshot That was the way Pollock remembered the movie, anyway.
"Four. Five. Six."
In the ring with him stood the ex-champ, the man from whom he'd torn the title previously and to whom he'd given a rematch, the man from whom, tonight, he'd taken a brutal lacing, the man at whose hands he'd suffer defeat. But, even now, he was still the champion, on his knees under the lights, true; bleeding from dozens of leather-inflicted wounds, obviously; but now, at this moment and for the next few pitiful seconds, he was still the champion.
"Seven. Eight."
The champion fastened his terrible glare of rage upon one of the ringside announcers who was screaming madly into his microphone that the champion was finished, washed-up, a nothing! Pollock's glare became maniacal, homicidal, and he snarled like a damned spirit being shrieked and cursed to its doom from a pulpit. His lips pulled back and showed every tooth in his head. He was the reincarnation of that hardest of all iron men, the 1951 Kirk Douglas.
"Nine."
Muscles crackled with superhuman energy. Lungs expanded like bellows and filled the taut, feral chest. The hands shoved the body from the canvas and the champion advanced upon his tormentor, his face a mask of pure hate, his strength inhuman, his purpose not to be denied. The more perceptive of cognoscenti among the spectators suddenly knew that there was an excellent chance of the champion's adversary being bludgeoned to death by the merciless fists.
"Hey. Youse got some balls, pally. Beat duh count. Ain't many mugs what kin take it good like youse done."
Max slipped Pollock's furious punch, snapped out a left jab that stunned the younger man, feinted the right, hooked the left into the ribs below the armpit, causing Pollock's right arm to be senseless for an instant, used the instant to bring another left hook to Pollock's head, spinning him away, out on his feet, upright by nerve alone. Max measured him and dropped him with a perfect right to the jaw.
This time, Max counted to ten without more than perfunctory stirring from Pollock. Near the end of it, Pollock reflected blearily that fantasies do not reality make, nor a Pollock a Kirk Douglas. However "Ten. Yer out!"
However, it was possible that even Kirk Douglas could not have beaten Max in a street fight. The possibility was a moot one, Pollock thought as Max heaved him onto the tailgate. The fact was that Pollock could not beat Max, period.
Hitting the tailgate jarred some life back into Pollock. Pain came back into focus, along with his other senses. Slowly, he came from the fog and felt strength trickle back into him. Max was still talking, only slightly out of breath.
"Don't take dis here too hard, buddy. Youse dint do no worse den a lotta udder mugs what thought dey kin tangle wit me. Done better den some, too. Youse shunta got up. Youse shoulda stayed down an' went in duh tank. Ain't nobuddy gits up from a nine-count an' cold-cocks nobuddy else."
Max hefted Pollock's balls, scrutinized his cock. His breathing grew heavier. Pollock felt Max's hot, foul breath on his organs.
Then, at last, when Pollock could lift himself to his elbows, Max spoke:
"Well, it ain't duh biggest one I ever seen, but it's glap!"
The last word was when Pollock kneed Max in the throat.
Pollock couldn't really talk yet, but he thought as he lowered himself from the tailgate. He thought, you had it made, Max. All you had to do was blow me. I couldn't have stopped you. But you just had to say that, didn't you, Max?
Pollock crouched, tensed, brought his fist in an arc which began next to his foot and ended at Max's jaw. Max, who'd been standing spraddle-legged with his hands at his throat and an amazed expression on his face, described another arc which ended at the ground.
Pollock didn't bother counting. He walked rubber-legged over and slipped the keys from Max's bermuda shorts. As he walked back around to the driver's side, he heard Max begin to move around, and decided against taking his clothes.
"Man, oh, man," Max hoarsed out as Pollock opened the door and slid behind the wheel. "Man, oh, man."
Pollock's hands were shaking from the beating and loss of adrenalin. He couldn't locate the ignition key by touch out of all the keys on the ring and decided to find the overhead light.
"Whew," came from beyond the tailgate. He heard noises made by Max getting to his feet. Pollock found the overhead light switch and turned it on and found the key.
"Dat's how Arch Moore knocked me out. I got duh glass jaw. Youse don't never wanna git hit inna head, pally. Scrambles yez brains."
"No shit," muttered Pollock, and managed to get the right key into the ignition. He put the car in neutral and started it up. He tried to start it up. Unfortunately, the starter was weak. It ground and ground and ground, and Pollock cursed, and Max was coming for him.
Max entered the wagon through the back, crawling through the open tailgate, muttering: "Youse gotta know how, buddy. Ain't nobuddy but me kin start it. See, youse gotta flood it foist, den wait-" and Max was by then crawling over the back seat, and Pollock furiously pumped the accelerator and the smell of gasoline seeped into the car. Max said, behind Pollock's ear: "But youse ain't got no time, see?" The thick forearm closed around Pollock's throat. Stubby fingers moved over his face, got under his nose, forced his head back. Pollock smelled again Max's bad breath. "Dis time, I'm gonna do a good job on youse, Pollock."
Pollock managed to get the key out of the ignition and thrust blindly backward with it. "An' later, I'll make youse suck my-yowp!" The point of the key struck Max's face. Pollock gouged. Flesh tore. Max loosed his hold on Pollock and grabbed for the hand that held the key.
Pollock slipped sway and opened the door. Max was gripping the wrist of Pollock's right hand and had started to twist. Pollock twisted the wrist himself, exerted pressure in the direction of Max's thumbs, and broke the hold. Then he was out of the car. Max dove headfirst after him over the back of the front seat. Pollock held the door open for him until Max's head emerged, then slammed the door with all his strength. The door connected with Max's head, which in turn made contact with the jamb. Max's breath burst from him with a gushing painful sound.
Pollock let the door swing open again, grasped Max by the back of his yellow bermuda shorts, and somersaulted the squat man out onto the ground, where he lay on his back with his eyes squeezed shut and clasped his head in both hands and gritted his teeth and moaned, moaned. Pollock, still holding the ignition key, depressed the lock on the door and slammed it shut, then ran to the rear of the wagon and commenced to lower the upper, tailgate. It was a frustrating job for Pollock, because the gate had to be lifted slightly to release the catches on the telescoping arms that held it aloft, and the catches wouldn't release at the same time, the bastards. He'd release one and try to release the other and the first one would catch, and Max was coming around again, starting up on that, "Man, oh, man," stuff.
Pollock found the right combination at last and lowered the upper tailgate. He raised the lower portion and used the key to lock it. As he was testing it, Max progressed to more complex forms of speech: "Mudderfucker! Doity rotten goddamn cocksucker!"
How come, Pollock thought, when cocksuckers get pissed at me, they always call me a cocksucker? I've never sucked a cock, ever. Pollock frankly couldn't understand it. He ran to the right side of the wagon, opened the passenger side door, and slid inside, closing and locking the door behind him. The smell of gas was still quite strong. He slid around the inside of the Nomad, making sure all the windows were rolled up, then positioned himself behind the wheel and got the key into the ignition again.
Max made his feet, pulling himself up the door on the driver's side. His mean little eyes located Pollock behind the wheel. "Hanh!" he rasped. Pollock heard him plainly through the glass. "Duh cocksucker! I'm gonna bite yez fuckin' pecker off, youse doity-"
Well, Pollock thought, there it is again. For the second time that day, he'd been threatened with having his pecker bitten off. He honestly wondered what afflicted some people to want to take such extreme measures. He turned the key and tried to start the old car, but the starter still wouldn't respond.
Max was tugging at the door handle and roaring, "Lemme in! Lemme in! Youse rotten fuckin' cocksuckin'-"
"You nuts?" Pollock replied through the glass. "I don't want my pecker bitten off." Pollock thought that was a reasonable viewpoint, but Max howled in purple rage. "Oh, take it easy, Max," Pollock said, his voice sharp with irritation. "I'm just stealing your car. It's insured, isn't it?"
Max went into a paroxysm. The flesh on his face shook. He raised his fists, clenched so hard they were trembling. He looked like he might start to hop up and down. Pollock turned his attention back to the ignition problem. He depressed the accelerator slowly to the floor and held it there, then turned the key again. The starter was stronger this time, the engine almost caught.
Max was now at the tailgate, twisting the handle furiously. Nothing happened, of course. Max couldn't believe it. He was locked out of his own car.
"Goddamn yez!" he bellowed. "Youse ain't nuttin' but a fuckin' t'ief!"
"That's what I want" Pollock muttered. "Recognition." He took his foot entirely off the gas pedal and turned the key again. This time the starter made healthy noises. The engine was a fraction of an inch away from starting. Pollock gritted his teeth and gently pounded the steering wheel with his left hand.
Max appeared at the passenger door, and went through the same futile gestures. "Lemme in!" he cried hoarsely. "Lemme in! Lemme in or I'll kill yez! Ooooohhhhhhhh, when I git in dere, I'm gonna kill yez, youse rotten fuckin' bastid!"
What kind of a choice is that? Pollock wondered. The engine caught, turned over, sounding ragged from the over-rich mixture of fuel and air. Pollock applied his foot to the gas to bum up the excess and let the carburetor adjust itself.
Max's elbow hit the window on the passenger side. The glass cracked, dozens of little cracks radiating through the safety glass from the point of impact Max hit the window twice more, swiftly, and the glass gave, and here came Max's thick hairy arm through the window, opening the glove box, groping inside.
"Now I'm gonna kill yez!" he snarled.
"Fat chance," smirked Pollock, and put the car in gear and slipped the clutch, and Max's hand emerged from the glove compartment with the biggest, meanest-looking automatic pistol in the whole world. The car lurched forward. Pollock saw the automatic and almost strangled. His feet left the pedals. One of them came down hard on the brakes. Max, jerked off balance by the car's sudden start, took several quick steps to keep up. The sudden stop sent him off balance again, the arm with the gun at the end of it waving around the inside of the Nomad and getting cut by the jagged glass remaining in the shattered window. Pollock had stopped without the clutch being engaged and the engine died. Max recovered, took aim at Pollock's face, and squeezed the trigger from a distance of fourteen inches. Nothing happened.
"Shit," gritted Max, and reached forward to work the slide and jack a round into the chamber. Blood dripped from his arm to the seat. Time to go, Pollock thought, and opened the door and bailed out.
He hit the ground and rolled, and Max's first shot boomed over him, bounced off the road, and went yelling off into the dark. Pollock made his feet, darted toward the rear of the Nomad, stopped to peer through the windows. Max had also started to run toward the rear, to head Pollock off and kill him. Pollock reversed direction, ran doubled over past the open front door. He heard Max sliding around the rear of the wagon, his feet trying for purchase on the pavement, and he passed the front of the Nomad and cut right, trying to keep the Chevy between himself and Max for as long as possible.
His cut and bruised feet left the road and plunged into the sand, which gritted into the tender skin and mingled with the blood. Pollock didn't feel a thing. He ran for his life, taking long, leaping strides, trying for the cypresses and their comforting dark shadows a few yards ahead. Max's gun boomed again and the sand exploded with a harsh puff ahead and slightly to his left. A few grains of it stung his cheek. Pollock zig-zagged frantically, hoping the tricky moonlight and the motion of his flight would spoil Max's aim. A small eternity passed as he ran among cypresses.
Ran, till the pain and the debt of oxygen became intolerable, and he crouched, panting, amid a mass of bulky iceplant beneath a looming crooked cypress and fought his breath and managed to hear, finally, the thing he'd been hoping for: the slow grind of the starter on Max's Nomad. So long as he heard the starter, Max's hands were occupied and Pollock knew exactly where he was. He didn't think Max would give chase now; in fact, the squat man would be a little insane if he stuck around to see what reaction his two pistol shots would bring.
The engine caught. "Awwww, bullshit," panted Pollock. He'd almost had that car himself. He listened to the sounds of Max backing and filling on the narrow beach road, turning the wagon around to get the hell out of there, and reflected sourly on his success as a thief during his first twenty-four hours in the world: gained a nice set of clothes and lost them. Gained a watch and ring and lost the watch. Gained a little money, some gourmet food, and some basic burglar tools, and lost them all, except he'd gotten to eat the food. Gained the Charger and lost the Nomad. He supposed that he was ahead a bit because he still had the ring, but he also had some lumps, courtesy of Max, he hadn't had that morning. No, things were pretty well even at the present moment. Max's engine grew fainter. Pollock stopped worrying about Max and turned his attention to the problem at hand. It was the same old problem and Pollock was tired of it. Being naked on the beach gets very old.
Well, the advantage was with him that it was still dark. Pollock had some time. Thin advantage, but it was there to be used. Pollock thought hard. Back to the beach and break into a car and steal it? The girls had his burglar tools. What should he use to strip and cross the wires, his teeth? Find the wine-drinking couple and mug them and take the guy's clothes? Bad move-the girl would run screaming while he was overpowering her boy friend, and Pollock didn't really feel too confident of his physical prowess since Max. Besides, naked men were only too vulnerable. Besides again, Pollock didn't really approve of the initiation of violence, except when it couldn't be avoided, and Max had taught him a bitter lesson concerning the deception of appearances. Break into a house? Risky. Man could get killed. Pawn the ring? Heh!
In a pawnshop:
Naked man: I'd like to pawn this ring, please.
Pawnbroker: Call the cops, Marge.
Well, okay. It had to be a house. Pollock decided that he could always play it by ear: if there were people home, he could ask for a pair of pants and give them some story about being mugged on the beach. That would hurt his pride, though. Professional thieves had to have some kind of code to live by. He moved down on the beach and scanned the skyline to the south, saw a house bulking dark on a knoll, its gull roof cutting the night like the prow of a ship, and farther down, another, with the blocky outlines of a fortress on a crag. Pollock sighed and started walking, heading for the nearest house.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A high wboden fence enclosed it on all sides. Pollock made a slow careful circle, keeping silent, saw the dark windows, the empty double carport, smelled the sweet smell of cedar, from which the house was constructed. He tried the back gate. Locked with a padlock. He boosted himself astride the fence and peered toward the door, saw the small white flutter of a note on the doorknob. No one was home.
"Well, well," said Pollock, highly pleased.
"Grrrrrrrrrr," said the German Shepherd.
Well, actually, Pollock reminded himself as he trudged toward the second house, this one has more possibilities. Farther away from town.
It was a brute of a house, built of granite that matched the rocky promontory it sat on, looking like something carved from the living stone, like a natural extension of the crag. Large windows opened toward the sea. The windows were closed, covered with thick, lined drapes, from the comers of which light shone. Pollock moved closer and listened to faint music and sounds of many voices. He moved around and found a circular driveway full of cars (Cadillac, Lincoln, Mercedes, Porsche, and a beat-up Pontiac Gran Prix that sagged a little on one side), followed it to the double garage where a Lotus Europa squatted beside a Chrysler Imperial. Pollock hunkered down beside the Lotus, whose windows were lowered, and gazed inside, filled with lust. The unmistakable smell of a new car gave him olfactory thrills. He moved away from it with regret. He would have loved to have taken the Lotus, but it was too exotic to steal. The cops would have him in two hours.
There were probably tools in here, Pollock knew, enough to do the job on the Chrysler. The noise from inside the house would probably cover the small sounds he made and the muffled engine of the Chrysler would not be heard. He'd have to drive without lights until He'd padded silently around the front of the Imperial and was approaching the driver's side when he became aware of the man's head, resting on the sill. Pollock froze. Was the guy drunk, sleeping, on a trip? Pollock studied the head. The eyes were open. Dead? Pollock's heart paused, then ran to catch up with itself. A low, drawn-out, other-worldly moan escaped from the head and Pollock understood.
He moved silently closer and studied the face. The eyes were open but unseeing, the lips were dry and parted, the face was closed in on itself. Pollock refrained from bending down directly over the face. He glanced inside the Imperial and saw what he expected to see: the man's shirt, open down the front, exposing a skinny chest and stomach which continued unbroken to the abdomen, open to the air by the unzipped fly of his pants, and on the abdomen rested a head, a blonde head, the long yellow hair like a puddle and moving as the head moved, around and around, now and then pausing to move up and down, up and down, then around and around again, slowly, sensuously, with the leisure and lack of haste that is the hallmark of the first-class blow-job. Pollock studied the rest of the second figure, whose torso was tangled in the legs and loose trousers of the man, saw the position of the legs, thighs encased in tight, pale material, the smooth hairless swell of the exposed belly and the beckoning cavity of the navel, and decided that the chances were good that a woman or girl was administering the header, and he nodded in approval and backed away on tiptoe, leaving the garage as silently as he'd entered it.
He began checking the cars in the driveway for keys. The crummy old Gran Prix was unlocked and ready to go, the keys dangling from the ignition. Pollock decided to look further and was beside the Porsche when the door to the house opened, releasing a flood of yellow light and a woman in a long housecoat. She slammed the door behind her and came striding down the walk toward the driveway and the Porsche and Pollock. Her strides were long, fast, irritated, exposing almost a foot of each thigh as the deep-slit housecoat moved around her. It was deep-slit from the top, too, Pollock noticed; the tops of her breasts bounced prettily with each step, alternately gleaming and shadowing in the moonlight. Her hair was dark, just short of shoulderlength, impeccably coifed. She glanced at Pollock as she passed the Porsche, looked again, saw his nakedness, and turned the double-take into a disgusted look. She slowed down enough to throw over her shoulder, "What are you doing out here?"
"Stealing cars," Pollock answered.
"Help yourself to anything but my Lotus. Have you seen Nancy?"
"Check the garage." Pollock watched the woman, fascinated, as she did just that. He caught a scent of her as she swept past him, svelte, assured, totally in command. He'd liked her voice. It was the kind you listen to on the telephone and get a hard-on for, a low, resonant voice that filled Pollock with longing, and it went with the Lotus. The woman entered the garage and was swallowed by blackness.
"You look terrible with your mouth full, Nancy. Hello, Norman. Enjoying the party?"
Pollock, expecting Norman and Nancy to come boiling from the garage, leaned against the Porsche. He heard a door open, two sharp clicks, the sound of windows being raised, the slamming of the door. The woman reappeared, striding toward Pollock again and revealing half of each thigh, and they were good thighs indeed, thought Pollock, and then Norman announced from the garage that he had reached his climax. I'll be damned, thought Pollock, as Norman's shrieks split the night. All she did was lock up her Lotus.
The woman was cursing. "Dirty goddamn fucking little tramp. Wants to see how many cars she can get banged in. Well, she can-" she stopped in front of Pollock.
Pollock said, "You must be the lady of the house."
She stared an instant. "I don't know you, do I?"
"No."
"And you're out here naked to steal a car. Said in a light, bantering, kidding tone so I won't take you seriously. Well, I mean it about helping yourself. I mean it about the Lotus, too. Stay away from it. They're too rare. The police would have you in two hours."
"Who's Nancy?" Pollock asked.
"My daughter," said the woman. "Who are you?"
Pollock was leaning forward, peering at her. Not right, he thought, she can't be over thirty.
"You're right and you're wrong," the woman said. "I'm not really her mother, but I'm old enough to be. Stepdaughter, I should have said. If you don't stop standing and start stealing I'm going to have to ask you your name."
"You already have," said Pollock. "You think Norman could spare his pants?"
"They wouldn't fit. Norman has just used the only muscle in his possession. Give the party another hour and you can take your pick of pants."
"My name is Pollock."
She waited for another name, didn't get it, and said, "My name is Laura Grainge." Then she said, "Why are you naked?"
"My clothes were stolen from me."
"And you're here to steal a car. Why aren't you stealing pants?"
"I'll get around to it."
Norman had stopped squealing in the garage and Pollock could hear the rustle of Laura Grainge's housecoat as she leaned forward a little to study him in the pale light. "You're hurt, aren't you? I can see bruises and smell your blood."
And that, thought Pollock, had to be the strangest remark he'd heard that day. Which gave it the record for a full year. And he realized that he was very tired.
"Yes," he said.
"Do you want to use the phone?"
"No."
Laura Grainge did not hesitate. "All right, Pollock. Come inside and I'll see what I can do for you." And she turned and strode up the walk toward the door and never looked around. Pollock followed, thinking that probably it was Laura Grainge's thing to never hesitate. She didn't hesitate better than anyone Pollock knew. She didn't hesitate when she opened the door and strode through and turned, housecoat whirling around one excellent thigh, to let Pollock in. So what the hell, thought Pollock, I won't hesitate either, and he strode in after Laura Grainge and found himself in a darkly paneled foyer. Party sounds swelled from a lighted doorway.
Pollock studied Laura Grainge and found her studying him in return. No, corrected Pollock, not in return. This woman acts and lets others react. That's probably her thing, too.
She looked him up and down and asked, "How do you know I'm the lady of the house?"
Standing this close to her, Pollock could see that her statement was true about being old enough to be Nancy's mother. She was maybe forty, short of being beautiful but not short enough to matter, and her sexiness more than made up for any lack. She stood about five-eleven in-Pollock checked-three-inch heels. Big woman. Firm. Juicy. Pollock, searching for an all-inclusive word, came up with-"Prime."
"What?"
"You. Or don't you agree?"
"That's irrelevant at the moment. Or do you think you're a guest in evening clothes?"
"Because you own the house like you own the housecoat, and you wear the house like you wear the housecoat. That's how I knew you were the lady of the house."
She cocked a hip and placed a hand on it. "I think I see the pattern. You responded to a question with another question and let several other questions go by before you answer the first question. Are you trying to put me off my balance? Do you really think you can?"
"Your being in prime condition is one of the most relevant things of your life. It's my not being in evening clothes that's irrelevant." He smiled at her and said, "Yes."
Laura Grainge was right about the pattern. She smiled back and said, "You are trying to put me off balance."
"No."
"But you don't really think you can."
"Are you a psychiatrist?"
"Yes. Are you a thief?"
"I thought so this morning."
She was looking at Pollock's face then, not at Pollock, saying, "You really did get hurt, didn't you? You need some attention." She stopped looking at Pollock's face and looked at Pollock for an instant. "You need a lot of things." Then she didn't hesitate again, making a good job of it, as usual, and turned and swept through the doorway with the party sounds and said, "Well, come with me and I'll fix you up." So Pollock went.
Laura Grainge stopped just inside the doorway. Pollock stopped just beside her. The party stopped. Just for a second.
"Oh, my goodness."
"Son of a bitch."
"Oh-"
"I'll be goddamned."
"What the hell...?"
"Oh, is he hung!"
"Who's the honkey, man?"
The last remark drew Pollock's attention and he ignored the ones that followed. He looked at the black, languid and semi-supine on the carpet, at the half-naked black chest, the wooly Van Dyke beard, at the lush red-haired girl draped over one shoulder, one of her hands toying with his huge Afro. As Pollock watched, the black, staring insolently back, snapped his fingers, took the joint from the obedient redhead, and sipped it.
"Laura!" It was a black-haired, red-faced man wearing clothes twenty-five years too young for him, hurrying across the room. "Laura! What is this?"
Laura Grainge lifted a hand, palm up, and placed it against Pollock's solar plexus. "This is Pollock."
"Damn it, Laura, you know what I mean!" The man stopped in front of Pollock, threw him a look that had both outrage and fear in it, and fastened a frustrated glare on Laura Grainge.
"This gentleman," spoke Laura Grainge to Pollock, "is Emory Grainge."
"How do you do?" asked Pollock.
"I'll let you know that when I found out who you are," snapped Emory Grainge.
"Your husband?" Pollock asked Laura.
She nodded. "He owns the Chrysler Imperial in the garage."
"Your wife introduced me to you as Pollock," Pollock said to Emory Grainge. "That's who I am."
"Laura, what is he doing here? Like that? Do you-"
She ignored him and addressed the room at large. "Ladies and gentlemen, the person you are staring at is Pollock. For all I know, that is the only name he has. Common courtesy requires that I now introduce you to him."
"Laura," Emory Grainge gritted through his teeth, "have you ever seen this man before? Why does he have to know who we all are? Do you realize he could be anybody?"
"Not just anybody, Mr. Grainge," said Pollock. "Standing at the bar are William and Mary Ward, who drove here in the Mercedes. He owns a flourishing office supply business." William Ward was six feet, thirty-five, dark, thin, with heavy shadow on the jaws, heavy eyebrows that met each other above his nose, and lips that belonged to a 300-pound fat lady. Mary Ward was at least ten years younger, with brown hair, slanted eyes, a body like Raquel Welch, and the attitude of a second wife who's done quite well.
"Willie, he start out bein' a delivery boy," spoke up the black from the floor. "Just work your way right up, dint you, WUlie? I mean, the boss he a old man, no fambly, no friends, just little old Willie here, what he gon' do when he flip out, but leave the business to the boy that pleases him best? Ain't dat how it happen, Willie?"
William Ward opened his mouth and said to the black: "Listen, if you think-"
"No, Willie, no! You done good. Little Mary, she done good, too. Just work your way right up, dint you, honey?" Mary Ward smiled at the black, sipped her own joint, and passed it to her husband.
"Laura," said Emory Grainge, still trying, "you know perfectly well that the things that go on here are extremely private, and that-"
"-and the whooooole town know about 'em, don't they, man?" grinned the black.
"Standing next to the Wards is Harry Scranton, who doesn't do much of anything. The Porsche is his. His current girl's name is Meg." Harry Scranton was five-nine, chunky, sandy-haired, in his late twenties. He grinned and flipped two fingers at I Pollock in an off-hand, friendly way. Meg's hair was tan and long and straight, a little darker than her skin, and she wore rimless glasses and topped Harry Scranton by an inch. She pursed an interesting mouth and stared frankly at Pollock.
"Seated around the sectional are Walter and Hilary Danbury, who drive the Lincoln Continental, and Johnny and Pat Mohlhusker, who own the Eldorado. Norman is their son."
Both couples stared back at Pollock. The Dan-burys were in their forties and were the straightest-looking couple in the room. Walter was a i distinguished-looking executive type with thinning hair and a good physique, while Hilary wore her dark brown hair piled atop her head and was currently displaying an attractive set of crossed legs. Johnny Mohlhusker wore his hair wavy and long, and affected a waxed handlebar mustache. Sitting on the floor, his tight pants and bulging shirt gave away his extra forty-five pounds or so. Pat was a hard-looking artificial blonde with sharp features, skinny legs, enormous bosom. As Pollock stared back at them, their personal joint changed hands. Walter Danbury had dropped his joint into an ashtray and was looking uncomfortable.
"Walter, he a doctor," explained the black. "Can't take no chances some stranger gonna see him workin' on a joint. Listen here, Walter, this cat ain't from no AMA. Go on and snort some coke, baby," and so advising, the black collapsed into a cackling pile of toothy laughter and long gangly limbs. The redhead plucked the joint from his fingers and sipped it, her eyes gradually closing.
"And this," Laura indicated with a lazy hand-wave, "is Famous Mercenary Moses."
"Honest?" Pollock wanted to know.
"Honest," breathed the redhead in a whisper. "And now you know who drives that saggy Pontiac," Laura explained.
"Laura," her husband was persisting, "I still want to know what is going on."
"Emory," Laura told him patiently, "you will always wonder what is going on."
"Who's the girl?" Pollock asked, nodding at the redhead.
"Nobody really knows," said Laura.
"Nobody really care," said Famous Mercenary Moses from the floor. "She like to take a big black nigger cock." He nudged the redhead. "Right, mama?"
"Anywhere you'd care to stick it," breathed the redhead, and smiled.
"Laura," spat Emory Grainge, "I demand to know why you've brought this man in this house at this time."
"Emory," Laura explained in a gentle-but-still-unhesitating manner, "he is in my house because I invited him in. I invited him in because he needs help-obviously. I don't know what's happened to him to get him in this state, and at the moment I don't care. I am a doctor, you know."
"You're not that kind of doctor."
"Walter over there is a gynecologist. Want to examine Pollock's ovaries, Walter?"
"Your patient, Laura," Walter grinned. It didn't look bad on him. He was probably a pretty good doctor.
"This way, Pollock," and Laura led the way. Pollock followed, after a slight hesitation to hear Emory start a new protest. Famous Mercenary Moses said, "Man, you turnin' this whole project into a bummer. How come you takin' it so hard? You think this dude some kinda pig? You wanna ask him where he carry his badge, baby?"
The Grainge bathroom was like a marble palace. Laura Grainge instructed Pollock to stand in the sunken bathtub to avoid spattering blood and grime and water on the spotless floor. While Pollock admired the marble and tilework and gold-filled accessories and impeccable decoration, Laura Grainge admired his body.
"It's very nice," he said.
"It certainly is," she replied. "Hold still." She used a washcloth dampened with warm water to gently dab the dirt and dried blood from his facial wounds. She had to hold his head with one hand while she dabbed with the other, furnishing Pollock with an excellent view of the tops of her breasts. They moved slightly with the movement of her arms, and they smelled very, very good. Like the marble surrounding her, Laura Grainge had breasts of firm whiteness, the skin possessing an almost translucent clarity. She had not yet begun to have trouble with her pores enlarging, or the skin wrinkling or becoming parchment-like. Pollock took the time to examine her forearms and her wrists, and found no tell-tale signs of age there. He'd already seen her thighs. She was experiencing an Indian Summer as far as her youth was concerned. Pollock hoped-sincerely-that it would last a while longer, and that she would have opportunities to enjoy it. If I were Laura Grainge, thought Pollock, I would revel in it.
"Aren't you curious?" she asked him.
"About what?"
"About what we're doing here."
"Hell, no," and he produced a one-syllable laugh. "But I've never attended an orgy in the upper strata of society before. Do you send out invitations? "Mr. and Mrs. Laura Grainge request your presence at an orgy, to be held on the 29th June at-"
"Almost," she said, grinning faintly, "but not quite. Were you aware that you said Mr. and Mrs. Laura Grainge?"
"Yes."
She tilted his chin with two fingers to examine the bruise on his jaw. "Skin's not broken," she murmured, "but you really got walloped there."
"I got the shit kicked out of me," he admitted. "That one was the kayo. I was counted out."
"Turn-" and she lifted his right arm to examine the welt on his ribs. Pollock turned obediently and Laura glanced perfunctorily at his cock (which was loaded, erect, and ready for action) before she gave her attention to the bruises on his ribs. She touched the swelling gently and observed him wince. "Should I see the other guy?"
"I hope you never have to."
"Do you want to go to bed with me?"
"I'd like to fuck you, yeah."
She raised her eyes to his face. "You really call it the way you see it. I guess I didn't have to ask, did I?" She turned to drop the washcloth into the hamper. "I have to go get some ice. While I'm gone I want you to fill the tub with warm water."
"Will that help my bruises?"
"You need a bath," she told him. "You're dirty and you're sweaty and you smell like other women." And she swept unhesitatingly from the bathroom.
Pollock shrugged and turned on the water, ascended from the tub, and entered the shower stall. He was lathering himself for the second time when Laura Grainge returned.
She rapped on the door. Pollock shut off the water, cracked the door. "Why?" asked Laura Grainge.
"I don't like to sit in my own dirt," he told her. "Minute." He rinsed and came out. The sunken tub was filling nicely.
She'd brought a razor and a new toothbrush and a fresh bar of soap. "You can shave and brush your teeth when you get out. Get in the tub and I'll fix the icepacks for your face."
And he did, and she did, and while she held them to his face She asked him, "Are you uncomfortable?"
"No."
"I mean with me."
"No. Why?"
"Because I'm a psychiatrist. Lots of people are."
"Oh. No, I guess I like looking at you too much to be uncomfortable."
"Aren't you going to hit me up for some free psychiatric advice?"
"Aren't you going to try to psychoanalyze me? Try to find out why I'm a thief?"
"No. You already know that. Why should it interest me? Do you want to know why I'm a psychiatrist?"
"No, but I'd love to know which one of that crew out there you swap with."
She parted her lips slightly and got a quirk of a smile (which looked fine on her, just fine) and asked, "Which one do you think?"
"Walter Danbury. The other doctor."
"And why do you say that?"
"Because he's the most intelligent man out there, and probably the most imaginative. He would appreciate you more than any of the others."
"That's interesting." And Pollock glanced up and checked, and she did look interested.
"Do you sleep with your husband?" he asked her.
"You're taking liberties."
"What good's it to me to be a thief if I can't take anything I want?"
"You don't approve of the way I live, do you?"
"Answer my question."
"Only when I choose to sleep with him. Now you answer mine."
"I admire you."
"Why?"
"Because you're at the top of your pecking order."
Laura Grainge stared at Pollock for a long, long time. Then she placed his hands on the ice-packs, and said as she arose, "Hold them on until the ice melts. If the bathwater gets cold, just turn on the hot water." And she left without inviting Pollock to the orgy. But then, he mused, maybe she'd let him take his own liberties as a good thief should.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Sitting there in the hot sunken bathtub, holding the ice-packs on his face, Pollock listened to the sounds coming from the large room down the hall, and passed the time by imagining how the party would go, and who would end up sticking it to whom.
Probably, he thought, Famous Mercenary Moses would start the action by snorting coke, as he'd urged Doctor Danbury to do earlier. The others would follow suit, one by one. Or maybe they'd start dropping whites to complement the joints they'd been sipping on. Pollock knew that you could fuck for hours with the correct mixture of grass and pills. The others knew that, too, and soon the grass would do its job and remove whatever inhibitions there were out there. Pollock laid his money on the whites, to be taken by whoever needed them most.
Famous Mercenary Moses would start on his own girl. Visualizing it, Pollock chuckled. Emory Grainge would look over and choke out a "Good Lord," because Famous Mercenary Moses would be on his hands and knees, his pants at half-mast, the redhead's creamy white thighs wrapped around his trunk, his big black cock already descending into her, her head and shoulders flat on the carpet, her red hair spread out about her face, the face serene, smiling vacuously, the two of them trading sips on their joint, the joint becoming a roach, the black-muttering, "Gimme the clip, mama," and the redhead fishing in his shirt pocket and emerging with the clip and fastening it to the roach.
He, grunting, grinning, pumping her steadily, strongly, would prompt her to smile and wriggle under him and lock her ankles and aid him in the rhythm of it, and Famous Mercenary Moses would chuckle deep in his throat and really slam it to her for a half-minute or so. She, gasping, groaning, twisting her head from side to side, would present the room with a picture of voluptuous fantasy personified, or Beauty and the Beast acted out right here on our stage, folks, with the original cast, the big WASP no-no, with no admission fee except the dropping of pretense, lascivious voyeurism welcomed, active participation encouraged, dirty words spoken here, for which minority groups can thank the Anglo-Saxons.
The Wards and the Scranton kid and his girl Meg would then follow suit, with some important differences, since Mary Ward (who's already mostly undressed) would go for Scranton and Meg would simply wait for William Ward (and he's coming for her, all right). Emory Grainge, after casting a glance at his wife, heads for Pat Mohlhusker, his wet little hands twitching convulsively, itching to get around Pat's big boobs. Johnny Mohlhusker, being a man of some perception, seeing that Hilary Danbury is not quite ready yet, grins at her behind his handlebars, moves up to the couch with her, makes small talk, gets two whites into her and waits for his right time, which will be pretty soon, now. Laura Grainge takes Walter Danbury's hand and raises him from the sectional and leads him from the room, heads for the master bedroom, which should be, let's see....
There were soft footsteps in the hall. A door opened. More footsteps. The door closed. From the big room down the hall, the party sounds-that is, the talking, which is the main ingredient of parties-had ceased, except for a very faint murmuring which dwindled. Now and then a grunt. Some swishing. Well, well, thought Pollock, and began his plans.
It would take a while for the dope and the sex to do their work on the minds and bodies of the participants and leave them sleepy and sated and happy and unconscious. By that time Pollock would be rested, shaved, showered, shampooed, brushed, and fragrant His hair would be styled, his nails manicured, his cuts and bruises and aches and pains treated. His diamond ring polished. He would first raid Emory Grainge's bedroom for clean socks and underwear, and then go for William Ward's pants. He wasn't sure about the shirt, but Ward looked the same size as Pollock from the waist down. He'd have to pick and choose the shoes by trial and. error. Then he'd take all the wallets and purses, all the keys, tear out all the phones. The wallets, with their separate IDs and credit cards, especially appealed to Pollock. He could go a long way.
He considered the automobiles and settled on the Wards' vehicle, the Mercedes sedan. It was conservative, not flashy, and would be less noticeable than, say, the Eldorado or the Continental or the Chrysler. It was also a hell of a lot more automobile than any of the rest of them (with the exception of the Porsche) and that suited Pollock. He'd leave Laura Grainge with her Lotus keys. He liked her and admired her, and was grateful to her for the help she'd given him.
He knew that he'd have a long start, since the Grainge house would have to be cleaned of the sights and smells of dope before police could be invited to the scene. Also, the concern for privacy which most of the guests had could be counted on to be a delaying factor. Emory Grainge had been right all along, Pollock mused, and grinned to himself as he held the ice-packs to his face. And Emory Grainge would be one of the loudest voices raised in protest of the authorities being called immediately. Pollock would have a lot of time in which to get out of the area, dispose of the car, and use the IDs and credit cards of the Wards, Mohlhuskers, et al. And as the party progressed into the orgy stage, Pollock kept tabs on the sounds while figuring out his route.
"Lif' up you ass, mama," came plainly down the hall. Famous Mercenary Moses was going to take the redhead at her word and stick his big black cock anywhere he pleased, and the redhead did have some pleasing orifices. Pollock heard her small whimpers and occasional soft squeals sis the black entered her asshole, heard his coarse grunts as he jammed her.
Mary Ward would be naked by now, her gorgeous body twined about Scranton's, slipping herself up and down him while he grinned and alternated between copping feels and fumbling with his clothing. Pollock heard her whisper right on cue: "Eat me. Eat me first. Eat me now." He didn't hear Scranton complain. Who would?
Meg probably would not bother kissing William Ward, unless she wanted to feel especially depraved to kiss a pair of lips that should have been attached to a whorehouse madam. She would be half undressed, on her knees, pushed there by Ward's demanding hands, taking his (Pollock felt sure) rather small cock entirely into her interesting mouth and sucking it until his knees turned to water and he slipped to the floor.
Pat Mohlhusker would have opened the front of her garment to let Emory Grainge get at her vast bosom, and the both of them, being sufficiently under the influence of the pot and the pills, would be satisfied for the moment to, on his part, suck and fondle her heaving breasts, and, on her part, to heave the breasts and enjoy the aforementioned sucking and fondling.
Hilary Danbury's dress would be around her armpits and her panty hose dangling from her ankles, and Johnny Mohlhusker, his right time arrived, would be grinning smugly behind his handlebars and his own pants would be around his knees, as he and Hilary gripped, stroked, clutched, and probed each other's organs, Hilary leaning back, eyes closed, Johnny bearing her to the supine position on the couch.
In the master bedroom, Laura Grainge and Walter Danbury would have undressed and neatly folded their clothing, turned back the bed, and climbed in. They would begin their foreplay by kissing and would proceed in a leisurely fashion toward the climax and denouement of what would probably be better-than-average sex. Pollock tried to picture her in the soft light of the bedroom, the hills and valleys of her lovely body softened into shadows and highlights and suggestions of curves. As he imagined, Pollock's cock awoke and moved, its submarine passage to awareness rippling the bathwater. Laura Grainge would undoubtedly be the best sex-partner in the entire house. Pollock envied Danbury and was mildly resentful of the man, but he bore no real animosity and found no fault with Laura's choice.
Why the hell, he wondered, did she just leave him in the bathroom and go blithely off to get laid? Didn't she realize that Pollock, an admitted thief, would rob her guests and leave her in a bad position? Not that she couldn't get out of it, he amended. Laura Grainge was perfectly capable of handling any conceivable situation. But he seriously doubted that her home, her family, her guests or their possessions meant that much toTier.
Down the hall, the redhead was now squealing steadily as Famous Mercenary Moses plowed in and out of her asshole. The gurgling Pollock heard was Scranton eating Mary Ward, who was making those lovely sighs and chuckles. William Ward abruptly uttered a hoarse outcry and didn't stop, going on and on, letting the house know that he was coming into Meg's mouth, spraying the entrance to her throat with semen, sliming her throat with the stuff, and as his ululating cries mounted, Pollock saw him in mind's eye as he writhed on the carpet, his cock held fast, the girl's eyes closed, the man's body shaking convulsively, the white sticky essence of him snaking out of the corners of Meg's mouth, emerging abruptly from her nostrils, bulging her cheeks, and still he strove, and his yells became screams, as Meg sucked and sucked, not letting him go, sucking him dry.
Emory Grainge would lie tearing at Pat Mohl-husker's clothing, trying to get her naked without disturbing his position. Perhaps he would be trying by now to get both her nipples in his mouth.
Johnny Mohlhusker, having stripped and mounted Hilary Danbury, would now be pacing himself, slipping it to her steadily and easily, making it last, conserving his limited energy, and Hilary would be aiding him, undulating her hips, keeping the rhythm, her elegant coiffure disregarded, taking and needing the fuck, drawing excitement from the fact that a strange cock was plumbing her depths, that a strange body was slapping her again and again with a sagging pot belly, that at least one of her private fantasies was realized and that more would surely arrive.
"Open up you mouth, mama," and the redhead would obey, of course, panting open-mouthed, grinning, and Famous Mercenary Moses now moves up her and poises his black butt above her face-"Gimme a rimmer. Hey. Good."-as her tongue probes into his rectum, and he moves around and around, Anally slipping down and popping one of his puffy nuts into her mouth to be sucked by the redhead in a languid fashion while he grunts and brays his pleasure about the room: "Hey, hey. Hey, hey."
Pollock heard the front door open and remembered that Norman and Nancy had been outside all this time. The murmuring soft voices of the two of them entered and carried over the closing of the door.
"They started without us. I knew it. Now it's gonna be a while before I can get it up again."
"That's why I blew you early. To give you time. For a young guy, you're really a pussy, Norman.
Hey, look at the nigger. I want him, next."
"You're really a whore, you know that?"
"Fix us a joint I'll go brush my teeth."
Pollock waited while Nancy came bouncing down the hall and swaggered into the bathroom. She stopped when she saw him and a joyful smile lit her face. She was about sixteen years old, with straight blonde hair, hip-hugger pants, exposed abdomen, and prominent breasts showing through her shrink top.
"Hey," she said with childish glee, "a fresh cock. Far out I thought they were all being used."
Pollock sighed. She was making him feel like a dildo. "I liked you better when your mouth was full."
"Oh, was that you? Walking around out there before Laura came? How'd I do? Give you a buzz to watch?"
"I wasn't there to watch."
"How come you're here?"
"As soon as I get out of the bath I'm going to shave and brush my teeth."
"Oh, that's okay," the girl said. Her voice came muffled because she was in the middle of pulling off her shrink top. Her breasts came into view, and they were very fine breasts indeed, pointed and heedless and insolent, like Nancy herself. "I'll come in there with you and shave you myself. You want to share my toothbrush?"
"No, thanks," said Pollock, remembering why she had to brush her teeth. "If you're going to shave me, then bring a cup of hot water and a washrag."
Nancy peeled off her tight pants, slipped from her bikini panties, and snatched a cup from a ledge full of them. "Here I come!"
"Here I come, mama," said Famous Mercenary Moses from the orgy room down the hall, and the redhead's cooing sucking noises turned guttural as the black plunged his cock into her waiting mouth.
"Oh, I'm coming," cried Mary Ward, and the cries shortened and heightened up the scale and the sounds that followed told Pollock that Mary was now throwing her voluptuous body about in abandon as Scranton administered the final touches to her pussy with his tongue.
"Jesus," said Norman disgustedly, "I feel rejected and left out. This will have a bad effect on me psychologically, and I won't be able to get it up again. What a bummer."
"Pound your pud, Norman," Nancy hooted at him, and splashed merrily into the tub with Pollock. When her small hand found his cock, she hissed in a breath. "Wow! That's not the-"
"If you don't want to be held under," Pollock warned, "you won't say it. Hand me the shave cream."
Nancy did, and Pollock pressed the stud and spread the thick white cream over his beard and reached for the razor. Nancy Grainge, her small tanned body two-thirds submerged, was facing Pollock in the sunken bathtub and had both hands underwater, lovingly fondling his great hard pecker.
"Ooooohhh," she purred as she caressed him, "doesn't that feel good?"
Pollock stared stupidly at the razor, having forgotten which end to use. "Uh, yes," he said, and abruptly remembered that razors are traditionally sharp. "Don't jar me, okay?"
She couldn't hear him. She'd plunged her head beneath the surface of the now churning water and Pollock felt her lips and tongue on the head of his penis. Nancy worked quickly and very, very well. "Oh, man," said Pollock. "Oh, wow. Holy Christ." Nancy's head broke the water and her open, laughing mouth sprayed water as she exhaled. "Whew!" she sputtered, "that was nice. You taste pretty good. I always like to taste a cock first." She reached up and slicked her hair back and swiped at the water cascading down her face. "I'm gonna take every cock in here tonight."
"Including your father's?" asked Pollock as he started to shave.
"Probably. Depends if he gets high enough. I almost got to him two months ago."
Pollock shaved rapidly, wanting to seize the chance, not knowing what circumstances might start crowding in on him. He had to concentrate on what he was doing since Nancy had begun stroking him again with her hands.
Out in the party room Norman was still complaining. "I'll never climax again. Nobody makes room for me. Nobody cares. Orgies are cruel group activities by power-hungry cliques that traumatize the young and turn them against their elders. I'm gonna drop out and turn my back on society and act like the outcast I am."
"Don't just lay there," Meg was telling William Ward, "you fat-mouthed asshole. Eat me. Fuck me. Do something."
"Norman!" Pat Mohlhusker called in a plaintive soothing motherly manner, while Emory Grainge rooted and snorted on top of her, "Norman, honey! Momma loves you! Come to momma!"
"Aaaaaaiiiiiieeeee!" screamed Mary Ward.
"You shallow, self-centered son of a bitch," Meg cursed William Ward in a deadly voice.
"Jesus," said Ward, "wipe that stuff off your face."
"Come on, Meg honey," called Famous Mercenary Moses. "You bring that sweet little pussy over here. Big daddy take care of you."
"Ooooofff. Oooooffff," grunted the redhead as he steadily pumped her, still fucking her in the mouth.
Johnny Mohlhusker was still fucking Hilary Danbury, still grinning his tight fixed grin, still pacing himself so he wouldn't drop, exhausted, on top of her. She was taking a hell of a long time to climax, her eyes shut, her face moving serenely from side to side. Now and then Johnny Mohlhusker dripped sweat on her.
"What's the use," moaned Norman Mohlhusker as he crossed the room. "Nobody cares. Look at Dad. Think he cares? All he cares about is fucking Mrs. Danbury. Look at him sweat on her."
"Oh, Norman, honey," crooned Pat Mohlhusker, "please don't talk like that. You know Mama doesn't like you to talk dirty." On top of her, Emory Grainge had finally succeeded in stripping her naked from the waist down and was busily attempting to insert his cock into her without loosing his mouth from her right nipple.
Pollock finished shaving, washed off the razor in the cup of hot water, and splashed his face clean of shave cream with water from the bath. Nancy Grainge said, "Are you done? See how I waited for you so you wouldn't cut yourself?"
"How kind of you," said Pollock. He was breathing faster as he watched her. The change that came over her face was remarkable. She turned from a little girl into a cooing mewing woman seeking nothing but the violent release of a cock.
"Oh," she breathed, bending lower in the water and panting heavily, causing her breasts to float like fat flowers, "oh, I want it so bad...." and she squeezed Pollock's nuts with one small hand and squeezed his pecker with the other and lifted Pollock off the floor of the tub.
Down the hall, Meg had moved under Famous Mercenary Moses, so that each of her long tan thighs arched beside his big black Afro. He stared down at her and grinned. She still had her glasses on.
"Go on," she gritted at him through clenched teeth. "Go on, you big black motherfucker, do
"Open up you cunt and lif' up you ass."
Each girl thought that Famous Mercenary Moses was addressing her, and each one did his bidding. He lowered his head and commenced to lather his considerable tongue into the gleaming pink flesh of Meg's pussy. The redhead didn't seem to mind. She just held the position and took his cock as it bucked and swelled inside her mouth.
Meg began to move and shiver and moan. Unseeing, moving as if in a dream, she languidly wiped William Ward's still-warm semen from her lips and chin and sucked her fingers clean.
Harry Scranton lifted his head from the splendid snatch of Mary Ward, who writhed drunkenly on the carpet. His original thought was to bang her then and there, but, in the act of divesting himself of clothing, he spotted Meg being lavishly licked by Famous Mercenary Moses. Remembering the singularly vivid reaction her header had elicited from William Ward, he husked out: "Meg!"-so thrilled was he to find her mouth unoccupied.
"Harry!" she cried and held out her arms. He came roaring over like an express train and propped himself above her and began rubbing her face with the rubbery end of his blood-loaded tool, smearing her glasses. She chased it eagerly with seeking lips and lapping tongue.
Mary Ward sat up, looked around the room, found her husband lying crapped-out, fully clothed, except that his pants were open and pulled down to expose his small dick and hairy buttocks. "Willie," she said in a righteous tone, "I heard you neglecting that girl. You son of a bitch, you do the same thing to me all the time. Night after night, nothing but 'Blow me, blow me.' You just married me for a permanent head job. Well, I'm going to fix you right up, Willie." And she hurled her too-perfect body upon him and fastened her mouth to his flaccid, ultra-sensitive cock. William Ward jerked with surprise, cursed in consternation, howled from unsuppressed pain and fury. Mary's teeth caught and held him, and her exotic lips and tongue turned his pud into a fiercely-muscled monster.
Meg had caught Harry Scranton's cock and was sucking it lustily. She drew his body down and wrapped his thighs about her head, turned slightly to the side so that she was imprisoned, for the penetrating tongue of Famous Mercenary Moses was beginning to take its toll on her continuity of thought. Harry Scranton in his turn reached up, grasped the pin-up legs of Mary Ward behind the knees, and pulled her into position to once more be licked by him. She hummed deep in her throat (thereby almostmentally unbalancing her husband) and moved her marvelous thigh to cushion Harry's head.
"Norman," soothed Pat Mohlhusker in lilting baby tones, "Norman, honey."
Norman could do no more than mumble, since his face was pressed tightly into Pat's left breast.
Emory Grainge decided that he couldn't have his cake and eat it, too, and released Pat's right breast from his mouth to slide his prick into her accommodating snatch.
On the couch, Hilary Danbury was approaching climax, her cries beginning to come high and short, her arms waving vaguely. One of her hands came in contact with Pat Mohlhusker's heaving right breast, then departed. One of Hilary's secret fantasies loomed upon her inflamed psyche. The hand returned to the breast. The breast dutifully heaved.
Down the hall in the sunken bathtub, Nancy Grainge had mounted Pollock and clasped her small tight cunt upon his large organ and was swiveling wildly upon the resultant ball-and-socket joint.
"Oh," she muttered, her voice abstractly pain-filled, "oh, oh, oh, it's so tight, I can't, oh, it feels so good, god damn it, oh, help me, help me, please, uh ... what's your name, anyway?"
"Pollock."
"Pollock what?"
"You stupid cunt."
"Oh, I love to be abused! Do it, come on, abuse me again...."
"Shit."
"Oh, god, it's tight, help me, Pollock...."
Events progressed. On the couch, Johnny Mohlhusker, in order to make a good impression upon Hilary Danbury and avoid premature ejaculation, thought about garbage and Jerry Rubin and the World Series winners of 1948 (the Cleveland Indians, wasn't it?) and anything but sex and his growing certainty that he was about to suffer a massive seizure and die in a goddammit compromising situation.
--While Hilary Danbury, fantasies churning full steam ahead, left hand squeezing Pat Mohlhusker's enormous right breast, pelvis bucking, Johnny Mohlhusker's sweat gleaming on her body, held her eyes shut and visualized that some obscene pagan idol, all primitive angles of ugliness had fallen on her and was grinding its impossible belly into her, crushing the breath from her, while its cruel stone phallus, larger than life, of course, had violated the sacred temple of her body and was slowly, mindlessly, tearing her internal organs open, one by one, and Hilary, thrilled by the fabulous fantasy of being fucked to death by some savage symbol of fertility, moved surely, inevitably, toward a climax that would, among other things, convince Johnny Mohlhusker that he was one of the greatest acrobats active--
--as Pat Mohlhusker, excited beyond endurance by Hilary's hand squeezing her right breast, suffering without complaint Emory Grainge's clumsy exploits down in her box (well, goddammit, it had to be better than Johnny, who always sweated on her while he thought about garbage and Eleanor Roosevelt to keep from coming within ninety seconds) while she curled her hand about the back of Norman's head, felt poor beloved Norman (wouldn't the little bastard ever grow up? she found herself thinking with horror) open his poor, sallow, underprivileged mouth and just suck her left nipple into it, and the whole, shocking, incestuous fact of what was happening shoved disbelief from her mind, and she accepted it without a second thought, and, accepting, she felt herself dilate as she hadn't done in years, felt nerve endings maddeningly stroked, and she began to whimper in grateful passionate ecstasy--
--which spurred Emory Grainge to heights he rarely attained, for his eyes were also closed, focused inward upon his private thoughts, which at the moment involved his wife, who had such a lovely voluptuous young body, goddammit, no woman forty-four years old next month had a right to such a body, and who slept with him only when she chose to, and she had not chosen to in such an aching long time, and he plunged manfully in response to Pat's-to Laura's pelvis-lunging demands in the sure and certain hope of a glorious scalding climax--
--and Norman Mohlhusker, attached to Pat's left breast, reflected with some amazement that, although he was almost eighteen years old and had been screwing girls since he was fifteen and had played with them for a couple of years before that, he had never, ever, encountered on a lip-to-nipple basis such a full, ripe, big tit before, and he'd been a tit man since entering puberty, and the key word was big, and that's what this was, big, goddammit, it was big, and he wished he had a nice soft jelly-slick box to slip his cock into, because the huge pliant softness of this big fucking tit in his mouth made him want to come all over again, and he checked, and he'd got himself up again, and he unzipped and reached in and pulled it forth, abusing himself because it was dry and had only its own leakage for lubrication, but abusing himself with a dry jerkoff anyway because he felt he deserved it because it was his mother's tit he was going down on, but Jesus it was so goddamn big he knew he was going to come all over Laura Grainge's carpet--
--while William Ward, imprisoned in his wife's relentless sucking erotic mouth, struggled helplessly, saw her naked on the floor beneath him, that naked body that was the closest thing to perfection he'd ever seen, and the usual thought surfaced in his mind, bobbed about for a moment, and submerged again, unperceived, for he didn't want or need perception of that particular thought, for the thought was this: he didn't really know that woman whose name was Mary Ward and whose position in life at present was Mrs. William Ward, that he cared not a turd for the woman, only the naked fact of the body that belonged to him, that would do whatever he wanted it to because of the power his money had given him, power that wouldn't mean anything if the woman named Mary Ward had not attached such undue significance to it that she willingly gave herself to his whims, and that he wanted her body to abase itself for him, to take his private parts into the mouth of the body, to spread itself with oil and sweat and rub itself over him, to bring him to climax and take his semen into its mouth and nostrils and hair, to smear his semen over his own body and lick it off again, that was what he wanted of the body of the woman whose name was Mary Ward, but, unperceived or not, recognized or no, the thought left phosphorescent traces of itself on William Ward's mind, brought him to flame, and the only significant muscle in William Ward's body grew and swelled as he howled and kicked and cruelly abused the body of the woman whose name was Mary Ward--
--who sucked his cock ruthlessly, taking the punishment her husband meted out-he still had his shoes on, the incredible bastard-considering the price well worth it, considering that she was inflicting pain upon him, considering-no, goddammit, resolving that this was to be the last time she did this thing, at least to William Ward, who was definitely not worth the money that he let her spend, who was a shameless demagogue, a petty sadist, and a puling inadequate baby in bed, not at all like Harry Scranton, who lusted for her in an entirely different way, who was perfectly willing, apparently, to suck her and lick her and eat her and caress her and get her off and make her happy all night if she wanted that of him, and she did, and he was, and she was coming again, after such a long time, oh, Harry, god--
--and Harry Scranton, settling into the dizzying clasp of perfectly toned muscles of the thighs that belonged to that fantastic Mary Ward, observed as he burrowed his eager tongue into her warm young vibrant pussy that he had never elicited such a grateful response from a woman, and the fact that the woman was such a gorgeous creature as this one was something about which he could only consider himself fortunate, and the warmth of her response to his love-making produced hot joyful surges of affection and well-being in Harry Scranton for Mary Ward, and he wanted to see her again, he wanted to fuck her every way he knew how and engage in wild sex-play with her that would leave them both gasping, and he gasped in earnest, for Meg, good Meg, darling Meg, who'd blown that asshole Ward without getting anything in return, was fucking him with her mouth so well, and he'd do something nice for her as soon as that blackie Moses character got through with her, oh Jesus Christ, he thought, Mary's coming, and I'm sure that Meg is coming, and I damn sure feel like I'm going to--
--as Meg, who'd opened her eyes and was beholding the world through semen-smeared glasses, felt Harry Scranton's cock swell gallantly in her mouth and begin to pulse as a prelude to climax, and wondered if she were some kind of weirdo for always wanting to blow men, because she loved to do it, always had, loved it when they splashed their come all over the pink tender insides of her mouth and down her throat and overflowed out the comers of her lips, loved the salty taste and the slimy sticky texture of it, knew that most women did not like it as much, or even at all. During the few times she'd talked to other women about it they'd given her funny looks when she'd told them she thought it was delicious, but she was not a total weirdo (she didn't feel like one, certainly, and, goddammit, what was so wrong about a woman who liked to suck cocks?) and she liked to get off, herself, once in a while, and would have nothing to do with men who didn't understand that, like that horse's-ass Ward-that worm, she wished she'd bitten the head off for him-whom she could hear now, flopping around and screaming, and she wondered what was going on, but not for long, for that black dude was really doing a job on her, Christ but he had an educated tongue, he was driving her crazy and she couldn't take more of it without really letting go, and wouldn't it be beautiful if she could come at the same time that Harry was blowing her head off, and she grasped Scranton's buttocks and began pulling him into her, just absolutely jamming his stiffness into her mouth as far as it would go, and through her glasses smeared with Harry's essence the world seemed to swim in thick currents of come, come, come, and then the heat found her--
--and Famous Mercenary Moses, resting on his elbows with his forearms on either side of that Meg chick's hips, his long pink tongue deep into her snatch, felt her open up, saw her abdomen puff and grow hard, heard her grunt and whine, grunt and whine, and he knew that she was in the short rows and pretty soon she'd start bucking like one of them jack-rabbits, bouncing all over and slamming her pelvic bone into his nose. He grabbed her by her hipbones and held on, let his full lips extend, thus tickling her pussy walls with his beard and mustache and exciting her still more, found her hard little clitoris with his lips and closed them about it and sucked, hard, sucked like a motherfucker, and that was it, off she went, and he thought, Hee, hee, mama, Moses got you now, baby, now you gonna find out where it's at, all right, you gonna fuck like a nigger before this night over, honey, you gonna be like this other redhead nigger I got underneath me here, do what I want when I want where I want and it don't make a shit who around to watch cause I got the big nigger cock and that make her the slave and me the boss and that just the way I like it, too, I want her to suck, she suck, and sheeit! she suckin' it, too, baby, gonna get ol' Moses off before he ready, but what the fuck, I can get it on again pretty soon, so here it come, mama--
--as Annette Friend, flat on her back and dreamy in the grip of the grass, caught and held, uncaring for the discomfort, in the rhythm of her flexing jaws and cheeks that acted as miniature bellows, stroking the slithering dark meat of Famous Mercenary Moses as it slid up and down between the roof of her mouth and her tongue with her cheeks squeezing from either side, became aware that a thought was caught in her head, playing back over and over like a 45 RPM record: end of the line, end of the line, end of the line-and it was so, she was at the very beginning of this little daisy chain, or at the end, depending on your viewpoint. Her viewpoint was the end, the end of the line, where she'd been for quite some time, now, giving instead of receiving, as she'd been taught since she was a child (except they hadn't specified on what it was that she was to give, she'd had to find that out for herself) and taking nothing except Famous Mercenary Moses' thick dick wherever he wanted to stick it, and now and then giving him headers and she'd give his friends headers, too, when he wanted that of her. But her job, her purpose, was to be along for the ride, a convenience, to be there in case of need, to be used when wanted and put away after each use, like an ice chest, to be brought along on the picnic in the back of the car and set out of the way at the end of the table, at the end of the line and dipped into when hunger or thirst summoned those who used her. After prolonged use they would reach in with grubby hands and slosh around, and if Famous Mercenary Moses wanted her to lift up her ass so that he could comhole her, she lifted up her ass so that he could comhole her, she didn't mind, why-should she, and if he wanted a rimmer before he'd popped her nuts, well, there'd be other times. Besides, she could always get herself off while she was sucking his asshole, so what? Because when you're at the end of a daisy chain, at the end of the line, if you don' take care of yourself there'll be no one who'll do it for you, unless one of the others wants you after the chain is broken. But she didn't have to work too hard, and people let her alone at the end of the chain at the end of the line, and the grass helped, and getting fucked in the mouth was much less wear and tear than getting fucked in the asshole, except that when Famous Mercenary Moses came during a header, he always almost drowned her, until he reached the end of it, with her at the end of the line. But he was pumping faster now, throwing it into her face and he would come now and it was only the beginning--
--while in the sunken tub, Nancy Grainge, left hand braced against the edge where the tub met the tiled floor, right hand pressed against the gleaming wall, settled herself, a half-inch at a time, onto the huge hard thing that was sticking out of the good-looking dude who hadn't had any grass yet but whose cock was acting like he had, Jesus, she bet that he'd fuck her for hours, except she'd bring him off sooner than that, much sooner, and that made her grin, eyes closed, tongue curling forward against her lower teeth, oh fuck! But his cock was big, and she could hear his breathing falter for an instant before it picked up again with renewed strength. This was the best part, this was even better than the fuck, this realization of the power her body held over men, how she could get them tq pant and slobber and clutch at her and how if she wanted to she could tell them forget it and they'd have to go jerk off to get satisfaction. She'd done that, too, with the small-peckered ones, but this was a good one, this cock was nice and big and hard. She'd take it from him until he couldn't stand it any more. Then he'd come and jump and squeal, like Norman when she'd blown him, wasn't it something the way every one of them turned into a baby when she got their nuts off for them? This one was no different, she'd reduce him to a babble and use him up and bounce off and go for another one, oh, she was such a little doll. There wasn't a man anywhere she couldn't put into the hospital inside of a week, poor Laura, she was almost at the end of her tether, but little Nancy Grainge had so many years ahead of her. She'd-GOD-she'd taken this dude's cock all the way and it was huge, filling her up, pushing her organs aside. This will be one wild fuck and when he comes it's gonna be so far out-oh, he's really starting to fuck me, now, I hadn't noticed how quiet he's been, but now he's-GOD! GOD!--
--Pollock, staring into her self-engrossed face, saw Nancy Grainge's eyes, closed in smug well-practiced actor's-workshop emotion, suddenly open and stare, wide-eyed and amazed, at absolutely nothing at all, for the eyes were unfocussed and merely opened as a reflex from the shock, for he'd let the little punk slip him into her all the way before he opened up and fucked her, bucked like a bronc and did his best to throw her off. She screamed once, and bit her lower lip and tightened her upper body and tried to contain the solid smashing way he slugged her innards with his cock, bracing himself against the tub and surging upward beneath her. She wasn't helping, she was dead weight, totally engrossed by what was happening to her. He paused briefly while he lifted her knees and set her feet flat on the tub on either side of him, thus giving him maximum penetration. She rolled her eyes and shuddered in a breath, the breath catching and fluttering her diaphragm, and he gripped her hips and held her down while he imagined his cock a spike and she a rail and the rest of him a sledgehammer. The object of the game was to split the rail in as few blows as possible. He set his jaws and steeled his nerve and threw himself into the task and watched her breasts shake uncontrollably from the pounding she was taking. She bore it in silence, biting down harder on her lower lip until it seemed that she must draw the blood. As he watched, she did, a drop of it welling like pure essence of ruby, and as he set himself to split the rail, he heard--
CHAPTER NINE
The front door slammed open. Heavy feet pounded. The front door slammed shut. The heavy feet slogged into the living room down the hall. And that voice, that scratched like beauty bark with an accent like Leo Gorcey and the Bowery Boys, bawled out: "Stick 'em up, youse clucks!" Son of a bitch, thought Pollock. What the hell is Max doing in here?
Max was answered by a chorus of howls, grunts, squeals, yells, moans, yelps, screams, mutters, gasps, and gurgles. Pollock, straining to hear what was going on out there, tried to stare through Nancy, who was rigid before him, struggling like an insect in its last throes upon the mounting pin, her head thrown back, her mouth open, her eyes almost closed, her throat throbbing, her breath raging across the dry tissues of her mouth. Water splashed gently in the tub.
"Don't nobuddy try nuttin'! Dis here ain't no banana I got here, which if any one o' youse makes a peep, it'll blow yez head right off. Got me? Hey! Youse pay some attention, hanh? Whaddya, on dope? Fuckin' prevoits."
According to Pollock's reckoning, if he'd been keeping good close track, just about everybody in there would be at climax by now. It would be a little while before Max would have their attention. But what the hell was he doing? Pollock, imagining Max standing there and brandishing his big automatic, felt a surging wash of anger.
"Everybuddy gimme yez dough. Dis here is a stick-hey? Hey! Don't nobuddy know what's goin' on?" Pollock heard Max take a single step, then drop his voice to a hushed tone and begin a ponderous soliloquy. "It's one o' dem pot parties wit' wife-swappin' an' everyt'ing. Jesus. Fuckin' immortality is runnin' rampant. Ain't nobuddy got no respeck left no more for duh fambly, which it's been duh cradle of duh culture since time intoinal. Look at duh redhead suckin' off duh spade. Ain't no broads would do dat when I was a kid. Duh woild is in a sad state of mortal decay."
Pollock went into a silent white rage. Max, that dirty, rotten, deviated, ignorant, barbaric, illiterate, ugly, short-sighted, sloppy, badly dressed, holier-than-thou cocksucker was holding up the party.
The thick stupid rat-bastard was taking Pollock's wallets, Pollock's IDs and credit cards, Pollock's keys, Pollock's currency.
The yelps and groans and cries and gurgles continued unabated. Max went on at greater length: "Look at duh kid, joikin' off an' suckin' duh broad's tits, which she's old enough to be his mudder. He ain't got no vaseline or nuttin'. Lissen, kid, it ain't good tuh flog on duh meat wit'out youse got somet'in tuh grease it up wit'. Hey, buddy. Youse wanna I should suck youse cock?" Norman mumbled something Pollock couldn't hear.
"Ain't no trubble, youse know? Long as I'm here-"
Norman moaned again, and took his face away long enough to quaver, "Mother-"
"Norman," quavered Pat Mohlhusker in return. Max choked. "Sweet Jesus Christ! Dis here ain't nuttin' but a fuckin' den of inequity! I ain't never seen no mug what joiked off on his mudder before."
It was too much for Pollock. He had to get out there, had to stop Max. Unadulterated hatred possessed him with all its fury and blindness, and he forgot about Nancy who was still impaled upon him. He braced his hands and arms and began to pull himself from the tub, gritting through his teeth, "Max. You despicable. Vile. Slimy-"
"Oh," wheezed Nancy Grainge. "Yes. More. Abuse. Taunt. Degrade."
Pollock lifted from the water. Nancy shrieked in reverse, breath sliding sharply into her lungs, and fixed her hands to his shoulders and clung helplessly and pressed her open mouth to his chest and begged him wordlessly to finish fucking her.
"Hold still, buddy," came down the hall. "Lemme just slip dis here lump outa yez pocket-dere. Dat's a nice fat one. Hey, loo kit duh broad, which her han' is on duh udder broad's tit. What'sa matter, lady, youse a prevoit, too? Gimme dat poise, which it wouldn't s'prise me none if youse got duh minutes of duh PTA meetin' in dere."
And while Max went down the line of the daisy chain, relieving the participants of their wallets and purses, Pollock continued his slow, agonizing climb from the tub. Nancy curled her thighs about his trunk and locked her ankles and whimpered against his wet chest while he strove, never halting his fierce invective at Max: "Unthinking. Inconsiderate. Smelly. Hairy. Asshole."
"Hey," spoke Max from down the hall, "dis here spade's got a pretty good-lookin' asshole. Hold still, buddy, while I slip out yez wallet. Lissen, I ain't never cornholed no spade before-"
The yips and snorts rose to a crescendo. Under the influence of the drugs, all participants, except possibly the redhead, were experiencing long-drawn, loudly expressed climaxes. Pollock pulled himself from the sunken tub and sprawled upon the tiles, the weight of Nancy Grainge pulling him down. She still had her ankles locked behind him, and now joined her hands behind his neck, a couple of her fingernails digging into his back, and she came, then, her small tanned body racked by shudders, her pointed insolent breasts flattened against Pollock's damp skin. Pollock began to crawl toward the door of the bathroom, dragging Nancy with him across the tiles. The crescendo of voices down the hall had built to a roar, held an instant, and subsided, dwindling into weakly-delivered moans and mutters and panting.
"T'anks for duh donations, folks," came Max's cheery farewell. "Youse was duh easiest job I ever pulled. So long, suckers!" And the door slammed.
Pollock groaned. Nancy yelled. She wriggled furiously under him, his shaft still as long and hard as before. Pollock looked down at her, babbling on the flooded tiled floor of the bathroom, and began to disengage her hands from his neck.
"Oh, no," she managed to blurt out, "no, please, don't go, keep on fucking me, oh, please stay in me, god damn it, fuck me, oh!"
"Let go."
"Oh, no, ncr-"
"Go jerk off with a big pink vibrator."
Down the hall:
"Somebody just slipped my wallet out of my back pocket"
"My purse is gone and you're sweating all over me.
"Ugh! What's this all over my stomach?"
"I dunno. Taste it."
"I'll never get it up again. Never. I wasted it. Jerked it off dry."
"You fucking sadistic bitch."
"Oh, shut up and fix yourself a joint."
"Mary, honey."
"Oh, Harry."
"Meg-"
"Harry-"
"Some dude just fuck me in de ass!"
"Say, girls...."
"Yes?" (Two voices.)
"Somebody got my wallet, too, but I've still got my keys."
"Don't drive now, Harry. Bad move."
"Let's go down to the beach, Harry."
"You're not going anywhere, Mary."
"Fuck off, Willie, I'm with Harry, now."
"Mary, I want him to eat me, now."
"I'd love to, Meg."
"It's all right, Meg. I want to do something nice for him while he's eating you."
"Ladies, you gather up some hooters and lets make it down to the sand."
"You go with him, Mary, and you're cut off without a dime."
"I'll go home and stick my head in the oven."
"Which one of you tom-boys stick it to me in de ass?"
"Pretty good, huh, Hilary? How was that, baby?"
"Oh, it was sacrilege! It was profane!"
"I knew you liked it."
"Do it again."
"Oh, my god!"
"Norman, what-Norman! You're smearing that stuff all over my breast!"
"I didn't have anything to stick it into. I'm always the one who's left out. Nobody cares."
"I catch de dude stick it to me in de ass, I bite off his fuckin' fairy nose."
"Come on, Johnny. You're almost unconscious, and you're sweating all over me."
"Ohhhhhhhhhh-"
"Mama, what you smilin' at?"
"The dude that fucked you in the ass?"
"Right on."
"He socked it to me first. For lubrication."
"I catch de dude, I git 'im by de dick an' swing 'im aroun' de room."
"How was it?"
"It were pretty good, mama"
"Nancy? Where's Nancy?"
"Here, Daddy, here! Oh, boo-hh-h-hoo-"
"Oh, for Christ's sake," muttered Pollock, disgusted. He disengaged himself from Nancy and flopped back into the tub. Nancy dragged herself, sobbing, from the bathroom, and hurled herself down the hall to find Emory Grainge.
"We've got everything, Harry."
"Let's go, Harry."
"Far out, ladies."
"Nancy!"
"Daddy!"
"Mary, you walk out of here with him and we're through!"
But the door slammed and answered William Ward.
"Johnny!"
"Ohhhhhhhhhh-"
"Norman-"
"Mother-"
"Nancy, what happened, baby?"
"Oh, Daddy, that man in the bathroom, that b-b-b-beast!"
"Kid this is the first time I've ever seen a real motherfucker in action." But Norman had his mouth full again, and silence answered William Ward.
"What did he do to my little girl? Did he molest you?"
"Oh, y-y-y-yes, he fucked me and I d-d-d-didn't-"
"I'll kill him-"
"-and I d-d-d-didn't get enough-"
"-huh?"
"Dey's a dude in de bafroom? Dat mus' be de honkey came in his birfday suit. He mus' be de dude fuck me in de ass!"
"Johnny-"
"Moses-"
"Don't you women look at me. I'm fucked out" But frustrated moans answered William Ward.
"I gonna git de dude an' mess up his frame!"
"Come on, Nancy, sweetie, let's put my baby girl to bed."
"Oh, Daddy!"
Footsteps in the hall, Emory Grainge, clasping Nancy's damp nakedness to him, passed the bath room on the way to her bedroom. Emory found time, on the way, to throw a raging glance at Pollock, who sat in the bathtub and scrubbed himself off again.
Then Famous Mercenary Moses entered, jangling furiously, minus trousers, plus shirt, spied Pollock, crowed, "Honkey!" and leveled a long, multijointed black finger. "You a daaaaaaiiiiiid mutha-fucka!"
He took a step toward Pollock, arms out-thrust, fingers extended and working spasmodically, the better to grab and clutch and choke and bust, and his bare feet slipped on the wet marble, his feet shot from under him, he yelped out a startled "whup!" and came down flat on his back.
"Be careful," Pollock told him. The black didn't move. "The floor's wet." Pollock checked. Famous Mercenary Moses began to breathe. "You could hurt yourself."
Pollock levered himself from the tub and stepped carefully over the supine black, emerged into the hall and came face to face with William Ward, who had his jacket back on and who was just now buckling his pants.
"Don't bother," said Pollock.
"What are you talking about?" sneered William Ward.
Pollock's straight right caught him on the point of the chin, his head snapped back and collided with the wall, he slipped quietly to the floor, and unconsciousness answered William Ward.
"What do you know," said Pollock to no one in particular as he lifted the keys to the Mercedes from Ward's pocket. "Max missed 'em and I'm undefeated." He dropped the keys on the hall carpet and began to remove Ward's pants.
The door to the master bedroom opened and Laura Grainge stepped out in gorgeous nakedness. She looked at the scene in the hall and remarked, "You could have scared him into giving you anything you wanted. Why did you hit him?"
"General principles," answered Pollock. He removed Ward's pants and dropped them beside the keys. He got the shoes and found they didn't fit.
"Hilary," Laura raised her voice slightly but didn't turn her head. "You can have your husband back."
"Why not," Hilary grunted from the living room as she heaved Johnny Mohlhusker off her. "He's better than nothing."
"Considerably," spoke Laura Grainge. She came forward and took Pollock by the arm. "Incidentally, he's also considerably better than Johnny Mohlhusker. That woman has a problem. I need a shower. Will you join me?"
"No. I'll wait for you."
Laura entered the shower and Pollock dragged Famous Mercenary Moses from the bathroom, pulled on William Ward's pants, secured the keys, and put them in his pocket. He found an air blower and dried and styled his hair and was brushing his teeth when Laura emerged.
He finished up, applied shaving lotion and deodorant, and helped Laura Grainge dry her hair.
Then he stood back and frankly admired.
"Aren't you glad you're beautiful?" he asked her.
The smile she gave him was radiant. "Yes. Isn't it wonderful?"
And the smile was so radiant, so warm and genuine and spontaneous, that he had to smile back at her and mean it. "Yes. Yes, it is."
"Now let's go take a walk. I want to ask you something."
He followed her down the hall and through a door that led directly onto a patio which in turn overlooked the beach below them. Pollock found a pack of cigarettes on a table and picked them up. They left the patio and descended through the darkness and sand and iceplant, and Pollock lit them both up and they walked and smoked silently for a few minutes. The muttering of the surf grew louder and the smell of the sea cheered Pollock and lightened his steps. He tilted his head and examined the riot of stars overhead.
"Why did you say that you admired me?" she asked at last in a quiet voice. She walked beside him, swinging her arms, not touching him. He glanced at her, observed the manner in which she lowered her face. Her breasts moved, lovely and full, as she walked.
"I said I admired you because you're at the top of your pecking order."
"It is a pecking order, isn't it? You look down on that. You've gotten away from pecking orders. You see them for what they are and discard the euphemisms."
He looked at her, looked away from her, dragged on his cigarette, stared out over the dark sea with its glowing wave-tops. After some thought, he said, "I don't like them, no. I've been trying to escape them but so far I've done no more than break even. I do admire you, though."
"Tell me why?"
"You're the psychiatrist. You're supposed to be above concern for what others think of you."
"Where does it say in Freud that a psychiatrist doesn't have hang-ups? It's an old joke." She walked silently for a minute or two. "I think that most of us enter the profession because of our hang-ups. I did."
"Did it help?"
She paused. "I don't know. It didn't get rid of them. What happened was I learned what they are and found ways to live with them. Is that a help?"
"No."
"That's correct. No."
"Because you're competent, confident, cool, and are able to handle almost any situation that I can think of. Also, you are at no one's mercy. That's important."
"That's why you admire me?"
"That, and the fact that you're at the top of your pecking order. If you have to be in one, the only place to be is at the top."
"That's the situation I can't handle."
"I don't follow that. It's the situation you are handling."
"It leaves me nothing. I don't feel the affection for them that I'd feel for a pack of dogs."
"I like dogs," Pollock agreed. He smoked and walked.
"What about you?" asked Laura Grainge.
"What about me?"
"Don't you want help?"
"It's what I'm trying to get away from. Help. That's what it's all about, now. You don't help people you don't know, and you're an unfeeling monster. You care more about yourself than others, and you're less than an animal, a vanishing breed, an endangered species. You don't ask for help, demand, scream for it as if you deserve it, and you're a freak."
"And you don't want help?"
"I'm a freak."
"What else?"
"Less than an animal, a vanishing breed, an endangered species."
"You really believe that?"
"Why not? It's all I've heard since I've been alive. Everything that's happened to me has taught me that I'm not worth a shit."
"Because you're alone."
"Because I want to be left alone."
Laura smiled. "That's what Scrooge said."
"Bless him."
"Nobody loved Scrooge."
He heaved in a long breath of Pacific early-morning breeze. "No. Nobody loved Scrooge."
"You took my help."
He glanced at her again. Her face was lowered. She'd spoken the words in a small voice. Out here, under the stars with the ocean yawning under deep space, Laura Grainge was a girl, not a woman of forty-three.
"That's because I'm not worth a shit."
She stopped and faced him. "You know what your problem is?"
"I just told you."
"You're not even close." She stepped up to him as if to emphasize the point. Pollock could smell her heady female scent and she seemed suddenly vulnerable. But with a difference: she was vulnerable to him. No one else.
"Do you know what love is?"
The question startled Pollock. Laura's voice was low and perfectly steady, though emotion pushed behind it, driving it.
"I'm not sure."
"Love consists of a complete giving of yourself to another person with the full expectation of that person giving completely to you. It's a baring of oneself, an utter nakedness with no pretense, no act. It is not done out of pity, not out of any sense of obligation. It's shameless. Absolutely shameless."
They stood with the tide racing about their ankles. Pollock laid his hands on her remarkable body, traced its curves with his fingertips, stroked her gently, felt her respond in kind and awaken him fully. They touched and petted and stroked and caressed, kissed for many long minutes, breathed into each others' ears, pressed their mouths into each others' flesh, sucked and licked and devoured one another.
They rolled in the tide, one on top, then the other, each taking turns holding the other down, each holding the other's life, each trusting to the limit. Pollock entered her. She cried out, her rich fluting cries providing counterpoint for his basso moans.
They took each other: on her back, with Pollock above her, reared on his outstretched arms like a colossus while he pressed his attack into her body, her own body squirming beneath him, the surging salt ocean spuming and clasping her face in itself; on their sides, fucking quietly, holding faces, kissing mouths, eyes, foreheads, necks, ears, murmuring softly beneath the beating of the waves; she on her knees and elbows with Pollock behind her, mounted like a bull masquerading as a god, crying their passion and their pain into the darkness and the air and the water, into the elemental night enveloping them; Laura astride him, swiveling and pumping violently while the tips of waves washed over his face, receding in time for him to suck in air, open-mouthed, and see her frantic silhouette above him against the stars while she gutturalized her love like a cultureless savage; and finally rolling once more, joined, his organ deep, deep inside her, hosing her and bringing her to the top of climax like a thermomenter inside an oven, and as she cried and shook and clutched at him, through his own shouts and semi-delirium he stroked her and marveled at her beauty....
They lay on the sand and held each other while regaining their breath and composures. They soothed and kissed and did not let go. Laura wept. Pollock kept silent. When it was over she didn't wipe her eyes or dry her face. She kissed him again, a long one, and smiled into his face, and said, "Goodbye, Pollock."
He caught her arm as she was regaining her feet. She turned, her shining hair catching the breeze, and stared down into his face as he sat on the sand.
"You surely can't expect this to continue. I'm still me. Still hung up, Pollock. I'll be old soon. Do you want to smash my life, Pollock? Would you?"
"Would you let me?"
Unhesitatingly: "I'd let you."
He stood up. "Tell me."
It was an instant before she understood. Her face softened.
"Your problem, dearest, is not that you are not worth a shit. You don't even think that yourself. Your problem is that you think that you should think it. Your problem is that you believed the rest of the world. You let yourself be conned. That's your problem."
Pollock stared, at a total loss. "They can't be wrong."
"Can't they?"
"You're wrong."
"Am I?"
"You don't know me."
"Don't I?"
"I want to believe you."
"Just believe yourself. It's all that matters."
"Laura-"
"It's late, Pollock. It's much later than you think."
And she left him.
Pollock watched her until she disappeared. Then he walked, thinking, ignoring William Ward's pants where he'd dropped them. He found the cigarettes and lit himself a smoke, sucked it deep into his chest and let the dark breeze wisp it away when he exhaled. The sky lightened considerably before he noticed it, and he noted the way each day has of sneaking up on you. It's later than you think.
Fifteen minutes to sunup, he estimated. A quarter of dawn. He still had the same old situation to contend with.
The hell with that, he thought, and climbed a dune and sat on the top, in full view of anyone who happened to look from the road. Minutes passed. He flipped away his cigarette and drew up his knees and wrapped his arms around them and hugged them to his chest while he gazed out over the brightening sea and thought and thought.
"It would," he murmured at last, "explain some things. It would explain a lot of things."
It's late, Pollock.
He remembered that he hadn't told Laura goodbye. Nor had he had a chance to say goodbye to Maria. What kind of a person was he, to look back on his life and see nothing but a lot of unsaid goodbyes The hell with that.
"Pollock! Pollock!"
It came from the road. He turned his head and looked, was blinded by the sun as it lifted out of Nevada, where he'd been only yesterday, where he'd spent a year getting rehabilitated on his own, and not knowing it, really, until a quarter of dawn. The sun in his eyes turned objects to black photo-negatives, and he shaded his eye's and squinted.
"Pollock! You goddamn crazy gringo!"
He managed to see her, then, standing on the road beside the blue Chevy van, her wonderful legs set wide apart and holding her solidly to the earth while she waved his flight bag over her head, her dark tumbled hair luxuriating in the wind, her sweet unharnessed breasts moving in harmony with her glad, joyful waving.
"Come on, Pollock! I took off with the van while Linda was getting screwed in Frisco! I got your watch and your clothes and your cigarettes but I hadda spend your loose change for gas! Come on, Pollock! Don't you wanna go to Big Sur with me?"
He stood slowly, rising to full height on the top of the dune.
"Pollock? You really do like me, don't you?"
The sun cleared the east and blazed into the sky, touched the ocean at his back, switched it on and turned it into an enormous bed of faceted diamonds that shouted silently with light.
"Oh, goddammit, Pollock!"
Maria stamped her foot, and Pollock went leaping toward her down the dune, raising a plume of sand and whooping like a boy.
