That was the lovely red-haired Marsha as she entered Marc Ferris Enterprises, Inc., knowing full well that it was a school for call girls. And there is Marc Ferris himself, always ready to interview any new applicant ... all over his plush carpeted office floor. Finding her sin transcript more than satisfactory, Marsha is established in an apartment building that houses the wanton students. Here she meets Jerri, a co-worker, and watches as she caters to a Foxxy demand ... a client with a most perverted sense of ecstasy. While, back at the school, Cynthia interviews a prospective instructor ... calling all the shots as Jor goes through the degrading paces and Cynthia takes notes on a clipboard. The mirrored walls and ceiling of Cynthia's bedroom provide many a multi-viewed orgy setting ... but none to equal the graduation party ... as Marc and Marsha finish the year with honors to the devil himself. Until there is nothing left for Cynthia but Harry ... and all his millions....
CHAPTER ONE
The office building in the mid-forties of Manhattan, cornering Fifth Avenue and a crosstown street, was neither the oldest nor the newest of its type. A mere twenty-seven stories high, it fell somewhere between the extremes to be found in that section of the city, and its architecture could be roughly classified as a "Thirties Modern." It was a good building, well-maintained, with a fairly impressive scale of rents, but you would take no special note of it unless you happened to be a tourist taking special note of buildings in general. It was quite a bit less than, say, the green glass house that is the Lever building and quite a bit more than the worst of the stone monstrosities that hailed the skyscraper boom in the mid-twenties.
It was just an office building, but to the lovely red-headed young women who disembarked gracefully into the light rain from the rear seat of a cab drawn up in front of it, the building appeared more than a trifle awesome.
Everything is relative. Perhaps thousands of people had passed the address that day without even looking up or glancing into the windows of the fashionable bookstore, clothing shop, and lunchroom housed therein at street level.
To Marsha Kinsted, it represented a possible future.
To look at Marsha Kinsted you wouldn't think the matter of a future would concern her in the least. She was more than just a pretty girl in a city teeming with pretty girls; she was a beautiful woman, fashionable and tastefully dressed in a plum-colored two-piece suit, sheer nylons and high spike heels. Getting out of the cab, she presented another small spectacle in a city designed for the spectacular, and more than one male passer-by turned to take the spectacle in.
Naturally. The spectacle goes on all the time, but this one was a bit better than most. She had lovely legs with smoothly bunched legs, and in the tight skirt the outlines of them, at which the length gave a generous peek, were enough to make even the hardened cabbie lean across the seat with an appreciative smile on his face.
"Should have worn a coat, Miss," he said, just because he felt like saying something. "Looks like the weather's doing a quick change."
"Yes. Thank you," Marsha said distractedly, handing him his fare plus a fifty cent tip. She could hardly afford the fifty cent tip at the moment, but on the other hand you didn't dress like this and have your hair done like this and give out anything less than a fifty cent tip.
That was New York.
She hurried cross the sidewalk to the lobby entrance, fretting over the fact that the unexpected rain might spoil her hairdo or the freshness of her appearance. She was going for an interview-not the first one in her life, but a very important one to her. Looks, appearance, poise-these things were uppermost in her mind at the moment. The first impression counted, always. You had to be a bit more than just whistle-bait in this world. You had to have that extra something.
It was four-thirty; the express elevator to the fourteenth floor was not crowded. A handful of people already inside, made room for her deferentially. She got in, the doors slid shut, and the car shot upward like a cork released underwater, not stopping till the tenth floor.
She got off at the fourteenth. The building directory below had told her the number of the particular office she was looking for, but she was momentarily confused by the profusion of doors and the labyrinth of corridors that confronted her. There on the same floor was a diamond importing concern, a literary agency, a manufacturing outlet for women's clothing, a national detective agency-and lastly, around a corner near the end of the hallway, the door she was looking for. Frosted glass, with neat, efficient looking black lettering which said:
MARC FERRIS ENTERPRISES, Inc. She paused before it to straighten her already straight skirt, bending to run her hands quickly over her nylons, then patted her immaculate, brushed back upswirl coiffure-and then she opened the door and walked in.
She found herself in a moderately-sized, tastefully furnished outer office, a waiting room lined with deep, comfortably upholstered beige leather chairs against either wall. The cocoa-tan carpet between led up to a gate behind which sat a female receptionist at a metal desk and switchboard.
The receptionist, a pale, prim-looking woman in a high-collared plain black dress, looked over the rims of her spectacles at Marsha.
"I'm Miss Kinsted," Marsha said, walking up to the gate. "I've an appointment to see Mr. Ferris."
The receptionist frowned, examining her appointment book with a thin index finger, as if reading braille.
"Oh yes. Please have a seat, Miss Kinsted. I'll tell Mr. Ferris you're here."
Marsha seated herself in one of the chairs near the gate while the receptionist spoke briefly over the intercom with her employer.
"It will be about twenty minutes," she informed Marsha, and then turned her back, burying her face in the book she had been reading before Marsha walked in.
The waiting room was empty except for herself. Marsha picked up a copy of the Atlantic from a magazine rack and began to thumb through the pages to pass the time, but actually she was going over in her mind the things she would say during the interview; rehearsing, as it were. But she had no idea what kind of questions would be asked for an interview like this, and since it was impossible really to anticipate them, she gave the whole thing up and began to study the original modern abstracts hanging in expensive frames on the pastel walls of the room. She was feeling edgy and slightly sick from the pill she had taken that noon to stave off her appetite. But she charged this feeling to nerves more than anything.
At last there was a buzz over the intercom and the receptionist looked up and told her she could go in now.
Marsha got up and went through the gate, past the receptionist's desk to the door indicated. A plain, cherry-wood veneer door with the name Marc Ferris on it, in white plastic script letters this time.
"Go right in," the receptionist said, and Marsha went right in.
Marc Ferris sat behind a big kidney-shaped desk, his back to a spacious window that ran nearly the length of the far wall. The Venetian blinds were opened so that the slanting rays of the sun came through, setting fire to the silver streaks of his dark hair at each temple, and the effect was so startling that she paused midway in her considerable trip across the deep plushy rose carpet-it seemed for a minute as though he had no face at all.
But the effect was dispelled as he turned his head slightly and indicated with his hand the upholstered chair on the other side of the desk.
"Please sit down," he said in a strong baritone voice, a smile playing about his thinnish lips.
The smile quickly faded as she took the seat, replacing itself with a brow-furrowing frown as he brushed his temple distractedly and stared down at an open Manila folder on the desk in front of him.
Marsha leaned forward uneasily, perched on the edge of the chair, studying the man in the long minute of silence that followed. He was extremely handsome in a fortyish way. He could have been the head of an English department in a good women's college-or the president of a swank modeling agency. He was neither of these things, of course.
She was relieved when he finally looked up from the folder containing her resume. She was also totally unprepared for the question that followed:
"What makes you think you want to be a call girl, Miss Kinsted?"
Marsha opened her mouth before she had words for it to utter. How on earth did you answer a question like that? And yet, it was a normal kind of question when you thought about it-he was asking her what motives lay behind her choice of a career, a vocation.
She closed her mouth and then opened it again.
"The money," she said, her voice assured.
The trace of a smile reappeared. "Of course, the money. You've heard, no doubt, that graduates of the Ferris School command a better price and better working conditions than any of their free-lance competitors, and you wish to begin at the top."
"That's right," Marsha nodded. didn't come to the city to waste my time."
Mr. Ferris looked down at the folder again. "I see that you know of us through a Miss Leighton." A faraway look momentarily came to his keen gray eyes. "Yes; I remember her well-one of our quicker students." He cleared his throat, the faraway look disappearing immediately.
"Well, let's get down to basic things, Miss Kinsted. We don't wish to waste your time-or ours. Have you ever been a practicing professional?"
"No," Marsha admitted.
"There was no indication in your resume that you had, but it's always better to ask the client personally. Do you mind such personal questions, Miss Kinsted?
"No, of course not."
"I see that you're not married. Three years of college, withdrew under academic probation. A year and a half of part-time modeling, plus a brief stint at being a private secretary for a firm in Cleveland."
"Yes, that's right, after I left school."
"What about your parents?"
"Foster parents, Mr. Ferris. I stopped having anything to do with them the day I won my scholarship and left for college. They never wrote me a letter-for which I was quite thankful."
Marc Ferris snapped the folder shut suddenly and stood up, walking around the desk to her side.
"Are you sure you've never been a professional, Miss Kinsted?" he asked, facing her.
Marsha smiled this time, showing her beautifully-formed white teeth.
"Why would I try to hide that?" she said as pleasantly as she could.
"Women are funny, especially about their pasts. We retain a reputable detective agency to check on such things if we have cause for suspicion, but naturally we prefer not to be bothered with that. You see, Miss Kinsted, the Ferris School takes pride in its products. With a few exceptions, we never hire known pros. Our girls have poise, charm and taste-as well as absolute amorous knowledge-ability. If you have a record anywhere, we will find out about it, I assure you."
"I don't!" Marsha said defensively.
"Good," Mr. Ferris grinned. "Now stand up please, so I can take a good look at you."
Marsha stood up and moved several feet away from the desk, assuming a pose she had learned during her brief experience as a garment manufacturer's model.
She was very conscious of Marc Ferris's eyes roving over her as he walked slowly around the spot where she stood, taking in everything with a practiced eye. She was on the tallish side, a shade over five-ten, and this effect was accentuated by the cream-colored spike heels she wore. Her hair was a deep red, almost chestnut, and had a sheen to it like that of a well-groomed thoroughbred's coat. Her eyes were hazel-green and set in a face with lovely contours, slightly prominent cheekbones and slightly hollow cheeks, a full red swath of a mouth, a strongish but quite feminine chin. Her skin was exceptionally good for a redhead; very pale but flawless in texture.
Her figure was something else.
"Very nice," he said, sounding very much like an appraiser of fine jewelry. He stopped walking when he was in front of her again and stood facing her.
"Quite nice, in fact-exterior-wise. Now let's see what we have underneath?"
"I beg your pardon?
A small frown of annoyance crossed his brow. "In other words, please remove your clothing, Miss Kinsted."
"All right."
She began doing so. He made her feel extremely self-conscious, standing there and staring at her with that frank, faintly impatient look on his face, and she hurried, fearing to seem prim or square in front of him. This was part of the interview too, then. She unbuttoned the jacket and took it off, laying it over the back of the chair neatly, and then the heels and the skirt.
As she worked she saw him go over to his desk and take out a tape measure.
When she was down to her bra, panties and silk stockings, she hesitated.
"All the way please," he said.
It occurred to her that this was normal procedure then; the fact that she had made it this far was a good sign-only she found herself blushing slightly nevertheless, as she unhooked her bra and removed it, and then her garter studs, after which she bent forward to roll down her stockings.
When she straightened, she felt his hands reaching under her arms from behind and the tape measure going around her bust. It gave her skin an eerie, prickly sensation that was not altogether unpleasant. She quietly sucked in air to make her chest expand to the full, an almost automatic gesture. She had good breasts and she was proud of them-and an extra inch or so might couttt.
"You don't have to do that," he said from behind her. "They're fine, exceptional even. I just want to record your statistics for our records.
She relaxed, feeling a bit guilty and foolish. There was so much she didn't know, attitudes and information and things she had to absorb in a hurry ... She relaxed while he adjusted the tape, but the tips of her breasts stayed swollen nevertheless-only now she didn't care.
He slid his arms down then and measured her waist. It was a smoothly trim waist, slipping in from beneath the firm, heavy, big nippled breasts in a smooth in-sweep of flesh, then out again over her lovely hips. He jotted these statistics down on a pad atop the desk, and then he returned to her, behind her again.
"Move your feet apart a bit further, please."
She moved her feet apart a bit further. She had long, lovely legs, the kind of legs that seemed to be in motion even at rest, long gently supple curves of smooth flawless white flesh; tense curves that would excite the eye of anyone.
But he seemed to be perfectly controlled as he slid his hand over her leg to measure that, too.
The sensation electrified her. It was so perfectly still, so quiet in his office, not even sounds from the street reaching up here through the closed windows, that she seemed suspended for one electric moment in another world, a delicately sensuous world of hands and tape measures and soft carpets. The delicate scent of bright yellow jonquils from a vase on his desk reached out to caress her.
And then his hand moved a little and she started with another, quite localized sensation. "Oh!"
"Did that bother you? I'm sorry, but you have an amazingly beautiful posterior, Marsha."
"Thank you."
He rose, coming around and facing her. If she had excited him, that didn't show in his face-or perhaps just a bit in the eyes.
"You're a very lovely girl. You could probably be successful in a lot of other professions. Have you considered that fact carefully?"
"I want to be a call girl, Mr. Ferris."
The smile returned to his lips, faintly sarcastic this time. He put his hand inside his gray sharkskin jacket and withdrew a handsome black leather billfold.
From it he picked a fifty dollar bill, held it up for her to see-and then released it. It fluttered down to the carpet by her feet.
"Prove that," he said.
"I don't understand-"
"Your first trick," he smiled. "Now. You can do one of two things, Miss Kinsted. You can follow the fifty down-or you can get dressed and walk out the door. I have no intention of raping you."
He turned and began undressing, laying his jacket oat on the desk top and loosening his tie.
Marsha looked at him.
Then she looked down at the fifty dollar bill.
She was naturally angry. Her first reaction was that this was a crude advance-he could have made love to her without that. But an instant later she saw that it wasn't. In a sense, that was really quite tactful. He was simply being realistic-forcing her to see the reality of what she was doing.
A cold cash kind of reality-the realest reality there is, in some ways.
He could have raped her or he could have lied to her, sweet-talked her into making love with him on promises or just by using the masculine magnetism of which he seemed to have plenty in reserve. But now she suddenly felt that everything he had said so far had been quite on the level: the fact that he might appreciate her personally as a woman was secondary to the reasons she had come here and for which he was interviewing her. And this was his way of telling her so, of making things quite clear right at the start.
Well, I'm going to get loved, she thought, feeling a little bit giddy and like laughing. She had never been stimulated by such brief, casual and rather disinterested touches from a male before.
And she had to admit that she was rather stimulated now.
Quite a bit, in fact.
And she had to admit that she needed the fifty dollar bill.
A whole lot, in fact.
The carpet was as soft against her as it had looked while she was standing. Very soft.
There was a leather couch in the room, but he had said the floor, and a student follows directions.
Always, if she is to be a successful student. And Marsha Kinsted was not a girl without ambition.
He was neither hurried nor slow in his undressing. His clothes were expensively tailored and he seemed commensurately mindful of that. He had an almost feline grace about him. He was built on the lean side, with practically none of the paunchiness a lot of men his age would already be displaying. Certainly there was nothing disgusting about him as she watched from her position on the floor, his back turned to her. She grew very curious about him, about what kind of man he was, what he did when he wasn't directing this high-class school for call girls, his habits, his women, his outlook on life.
He came over to her, standing by her a minute and smiling as his eyes roved over the white expanse of her prone body.
Admiringly, she thought. And something in his studied glance made her feel very schoolgirlish indeed.
Like a college girl about to be had by one of her instructors. Like a panting, heaving freshman girl with her skirts over her head in the upstairs room of a fraternity house during a wild party, ready to give her everything to the handsome young assistant professor who was supposed to be the chaperone.
Actually, his manner was very business-like, and this should have put her off. He acted as though he were only allotting a certain anount of time for this, too; he was a busy man making room for her in his busy schedule. No lavish caresses or soul kisses; practically none of the expected foreplay at all.
And this only served to turn her on more.
It wasn't that he was without passion-he had plenty. But he was brisk, efficient, business-like. He ran his hand over the slopes and contours formed by her voluptuously spreading breasts; he kissed her briefly, cupping one gorgeous globe-
And then he took her.
"Ohhh!"
That was such a sure, strong action, so deft and quick and exact, that he overwhelmed her; she found her own briefly kindled passion coming to the fore.
She wondered if this was wrong, if she shouldn't respond like that.
She tried to control herself, to go over in her mind everything she had read about call girls, about the way they made love-professionally, with professionally feigned passion, withholding themselves while pretending to be excited over the advances of a John. And here she was acting like a hick, a pushover just out of the woods who got excited at the sight of a man undoing his belt.
"Ohhh!" she said again.
He was doing things to her, amazing things with that precise, scientific manner of his. And she was liking them.
He gained momentum, worked faster and faster, rocking her body with passion that felt like searing coals.
"Ohhh!"
He acted and lurched; he grabbed her by the boobs and squeezed the hell out of them; he sent her on a quick trip to somewhere else with his practiced lovemaking.
Faster and faster and faster.
She bit her lips to keep from crying out, from revealing how much she was enjoying that; she tried to move woodenly, mechanically-but her body caught fire and soon she was moving like a snake on a fiery pavement, struggling to let the expanding balloon of passion burst. She seemed to be swelling, expanding, getting bigger and bigger.
Bigger still.
"OH! Oh! Ohhh!"
And then the balloon burst. Shamelessly, completely, the balloon of passion burst, and then there was nothing but the long slow winding down of passion and the return to the silence of the soundproofed office.
She hardly knew when he got up.
That did it, she thought. Now he knows how inexperienced I am; that cuts the whole thing.
Sitting up, she felt like weeping. He was dressing, his back to her again, acting as though she weren't even in the room. Her fingers reached out for the fifty dollar bill.
Her first fee for her first trick. She got up then and went to get her clothes.
"Is there a ladies' room around here?" she said loudly, forcing his attention. She stood by the desk, holding her clothing in her hands, wearing only her high heels.
He turned. "Yes, through that door over there you'll find one."
"How was I?" she said stubbornly as he began to turn his attention to his shoelaces again.
Marc Ferris broke out into a superb grin this time.
"You were superb, baby. Go get your things on and I'll take you to dinner."
This sudden thaw was just as startling as his technique of lovemaking. It took a few minutes for words to reach her mind, and when he straightened, dressed now, she was still standing there with her clothes in her hand.
"Well?" he said, looking at her quizzically.
"You mean-I made the grade?"
His laughter was strong and deep, like his voice.
"I'm not going to flatter you, Miss Kinsted, but I'll say this--you're not frigid."
"Oh, fine! That's a compliment-I guess."
"That's a lot. Call girls are traditionally frigid, disturbed women who aren't really able to get much out of love. Our school doesn't operate under the the idea that that's a necessary concept. You'd be surprised-if a girl likes love, she can save herself a lot of expense that goes into a psychoanalyst's till." He came over to Marsha and caressed her warmly. "And you, my dear, are capable of having a beautiful time."
"I think I better get dressed," Marsha said weakly, feeling the magnetic spell of his eyes on her.
"Yes," he nodded, removing his hand and becoming business-like once again. "I'm taking you to dinner for a purpose, you know. There are a few more things I'd like to find out about you before you're officially enrolled-and then, of course, you'll want to ask me some questions, I suppose."
"I certainly will, Mr. Ferris."
She turned then and went through the side door into the wash room.
The pale rose ceramic tile, matching wall-to-wall carpeting, solid gold fixtures and spacious mirrors of that place made it look less like a washroom than a rather swank boudoir. There was a dressing table, a clothes closet, a tub and a shower, and the place smelled of women's perfume. She laid her things out on the vanity, and before dressing she looked at herself in the mirror.
It was a far different person she saw now, a different Marsha Kinsted than the one who had come from Cleveland to New York with a lot of vague notions and ideas about who she was and what she wanted to be.
She gave a smile to Marsha Kinsted, professional call girl.
Almost. She had turned a trick, and that made her a pro, technically at least. But she was still a novice, she had much yet to learn-but she was on the way. Enrolled. Enrolled in the fantastic school for high-class pros, or "female entertainers" if you wanted to call them by a nicer name.
She would make a lot of money as a call girl. Marc Ferris had said that, and so had her old school friend, Janice Leighton, who had started much earlier, at the age of eighteen instead of twenty-two, and was now nearly financially independent and thinking of marrying a guy who owned his own business out on the West Coast.
It was a funny world. Marsha had cause to wonder what had been the decisive factor in making this decision. There seemed to be a vast number of things and not any one thing, but she knew that somewhere alone the way there must have been the decisive factor which had tipped the scales.
Weil, she thought, time to think about that later. Now, she had to get ready to be taken to dinner by the director of this highly unusual school of charm. It was very flattering, and that was the way to take it.
She dressed quickly after using the sink to clean herself a bit, and then she examined herself in the mirror.
On the surface, she was the same Marsha Kinsted who had gotten out of the taxi about an hour earlier.
Beneath the surface, she was different.
Committed, she thought.
Then she noticed a toothbrush rack beside the sink, from which hung not one, but three different colored toothbrushes.
Very interesting, she thought. It brought her ego down a shade, as far as Mr. Ferris was concerned.. Obviously she wasn't the first and only girl to be honored by the director's personal attentions.
Obviously.
But it would have been silly to think otherwise, she realized. Could she actually be getting a crush on him? But that was too funny, if it were true! It simply wasn't the way you fell in love, either in story books, pictures, or anywhere else. He was simply one of the most fascinating men she had ever met, a completely unusual type-you felt like putty in his hands after a few minutes, with him. He was graceful, intelligent, poised, well-mannered, outrageously good looking-and one hell of a lover. And she was just another woman to him-just another piece of material which would soon have a price tag.
Two hundred dollars a night.
That was what Janice had said in her letter. The "Ivy League" call girl-that was the way she had jokingly put it, in her inimitably frank, straightforward manner.
Only that didn't seem like that much of a joke now, from what she had seen herself. There was certainly nothing cheap about this operation-they even retained a detective agency. Which could only mean that-they had a clientele consisting of very important people, men in high positions in the world who couldn't afford risky involvements in their extracurricular love lives.
Which was all very fine. A way to meet interesting people quickly and easily-and get paid for it.
She finished adjusting her hairdo, then picked up her leather purse and left the "washroom."
Marc Ferris was waiting for her in the outer office, giving his receptionist, who was about to leave, some instructions in the meantime. Marsha felt a trifle embarrassed in the presence of the receptionist, who looked so frightfully prim and antiseptic, so out-of-place in this situation-more like a dorm mother than a receptionist for a call girl school-and who certainly must have known everything that took place inside her employer's office.
But the woman soon left, and then there was just Marsha and Mr. Ferris.
"There's a place on Lexington which serves the best steaks in town," he smiled. "Go for one?"
"Oh, absolutely-I'm famished!"
He ushered her to the door, taking her by the elbow.
They took the elevator down to the lobby and then they were out in the street. It had stopped raining; the air seemed fresh and clean as a just-washed baby's face, and laden with adventure.
She watched him step to the curb and hail a cab, admiring his assured movements. Even the little things he did, like hailing a cab, seemed to command respect. An orange and green cab pulled up, and another couple who had been waiting for one deferentially held back while he stepped out and opened the door for her.
"Lexington and Thirty-fourth," he told the cabbie, and they lumbered off into the heavy midtown rush-hour traffic
CHAPTER TWO
That same evening, Marsha moved too the rather nondescript hotel she was staying in to a new address, a once-fashionable and still well-kept large brownstone in the West Forties, near Riverside Drive.
It was a rather abrupt switch. When things begin happening in the city, she thought, they really happen fast. She had been in the city for a little over a month and nothing at all had happened. She had the experience of being a beautiful face among the legion of beautiful faces clamoring for immediate room at the top. The city had come to mean to her an endless line of women with good legs and breasts and practiced smiles, applying for a job, trying to get to see the "right person," cutting each other cold with envious glances when one got as far as an agent's office or received a "please come back this afternoon, Mr. James will see you then," from a secretary or receptionist.
The lead, the "in"; that was what they were all looking for. Marsha had had hers, but they had all somehow petered out. The trouble was, every good looking girl from Bangor, Maine to Santiago flocked to the city to make her fortune, peddling a smile, a bust, a pair of legs for a chance to get near the money and the important people.
Without contacts, few of them, even the best-looking ones, stood a chance. Marsha was at least wise enough to know when a lead was really a blind alley leading to a one-night stand in a cheap hotel room or on an agent's studio couch. And from there, back to oblivion. She knew about the flesh-mills, the photographer's studios that churned out exotic pictures by the ream, using girls like herself. Girls without a friend or a contact, girls starving themselves, living in seedy hotels under assumed names.
Girls who went to bed with the wrong people and never got back on their feet. Girls who wrote notes and left them on their dressers before swallowing bottles of sleeping tablets. Girls who went back home in disgrace after winning a local beauty or talent contest, and fought the problem there, if they had the guts to face it.
Girls, girls, girls.
New York was the biggest girl-parade in the world. The only thing you get from marching in a constant parade is tired feet. Corns, bunions and calluses. Go to the city, girls, and keep the foot doctors rich!
But she had gone to the city with a lot of foreknowledge, thanks to Janice, and her experience had only confirmed all the things Janice had told her. She had this one ace-in-the-hole, the Ferris School for Call flirts, and she saved it as a last resort, the card to play when she was down to her last betting dollar-and she had no intention of going back to Ohio. There was nothing for her back there except a lot of things she wanted to forget.
Her apartment was on the third floor; an ageless old super brought her things up, few as they were, and gave her her key, and then left her there alone.
The apartment wasn't bad at all. The best feature of it was that the rent was paid by the school for as long as she lived there.
That, Mr. Ferris-Marc-had told her, would be little more than a month. The shcool owned the building and the building was part of the school, and she wasn't getting anything free. The rent money, like the tuition fee, would come out of the tricks she pulled. So that actully, the Johns were paying for this. Just what they were paying, she wouldn't know, because she would be given so much a week to live on, for food and clothing and spending money-a liberal sum by working-girl standards; a sum that would slowly allow her to bring her wardrobe up to par, to make it passable until the day when men started giving her "presents" of clothing, jewelry, etc. And of course, to eat on.
But at first the "Johns" wouldn't really be Johns at an.
They would be instructors. Teachers.
And then, two or three nights a week, she would attend a legitimate charm school which the Ferris people had connections with, to learn any of the graces her previous education might not have covered. She would be able to dance any step in the book, to mix drinks properly, to acquire impeccable standards of taste in clothing, jewelry, etc. All these things she might know already, but the school didn't take any chances. Actually, they would be her agent for the first year she worked in the profession, providing her with a "list" of preferred Johns and taking a commission on every date she made with one.
Marc had explained that and a lot more, and she had listened attentively, enjoying the steaks and his company. But then he had packed her into a taxi and sent her off to her hotel, and that was that.
"I won't be seeing you for awhile," he'd said. "You'll get to meet your instructors next, plus some of the girls going through the same thing when you move in tonight. A Mr. Rudin will call on you first thing tomorrow-listen to everything he says. And lots of luck, Marsha."
No good-bye kiss-just rotsaruck.
Oh well....
And here she was now, with an apartment of her own. Three rooms that were tastefully if somewhat sparsely furnished, a bedroom, a "receiving room," a small kitchenette and a bathroom adjoining the bedroom.
The walls were freshly painted and the furniture had come from a good department store. A couple of fairly good originals hung from the living room walls. The carpets were new and the pull-drapes over the high spacious windows didn't clash with the rest of the decor. If the place expressed little individuality, at least it was clean and pleasant.
A girl could like it here, maybe. It was not that tough an adjustment, after the hotel she had been staying in. It was not hard to take at all.
But she felt suddenly very lonely. Or very much alone-which is the same thing.
After she had stowed her meager but good clothes and things away in closets and drawers and explored the place thoroughly, making a few adjustments, moving an ash-stand from one place to another, a chair to an opposite corner, there was nothing for her to do. Her evening was free.
Free? It suddenly struck her as funny and she began to laugh. What did a call girl do with her free evenings? She sat down in a chair and lit a cigarette, thinking about it. There were other girls in the apartments around her-a few of them might be in this evening. But maybe they would be busy with clients-or, "instructors." She had a strong desire to see someone, to talk to someone. She had left all her attachments behind when she came to New York and she hadn't made any new ones. And now she was settled, practically; at least she knew where the next meal was coming from-and, well, it would simply be nice to have someone to talk to.
Any one.
She stubbed out the cigarette and got up. It was almost nine P.M.; someone might still be around in this place.
She removed the jacket of her suit and her spike heels and got into more comfortable slippers, and then she ventured out into the hall in search of company.
The door of the apartment across the hall from her brought no response upon knocking, but down the hallway she heard a radio playing, and at that one she had better luck.
A very pretty girl with her hair tied up in a kerchief and orange lipstick on her full mouth opened the door a few seconds after Marsha's tap. She wore a white silk dressing gown, white mules, and a cigarette dangled carelessly from her lips.
"Hi, honey-what can I do for you?"
Marsha was a trifle embarrassed. "Uh, I just moved in and-"
"Oh! You a new girl? Funny I didn't even hear Jake bring your things up. Well, come on in! My names's Jerri Thornton. I've got a date coming up later, but we can have some coffee and chew the fat awhile. Man, it's been a dead evening! Everybody's gone out somewhere, it seems."
Inside Jerri's apartment, which was substantially similar to her own, Marsha introduced herself, and soon the two women were sitting on the sofa sipping coffee.
"Well, I don't know what you've been doing, hon, but I guess you must feel pretty lost if this is your first night here."
"Yes, sort of."
"I know, I did too. I knew another girl but I felt lost anyway. You know, like when you start something new, when you first realize you're really entering the life, it sort of hits you."
"Yes. It's nice of you to talk to me."
"Hmm, it's nice to talk to anyone. You leave a lot of friends behind-but you make new ones, don't worry. Oh, all kinds! I've only been here three weeks and you've no idea the different types I've met and gone out with. A John can never really be a friend, I guess, but some of them are nice-treat you a lot better than some guy you're out trying to hook for a ring, if you know what I mean. Ever been married?"
"No."
"I was. Lasted almost a year, too. Like I thought I loved him but it was really a drag, he was a square and I couldn't stand the whole routine, but I kidded myself about it. Don't mind if I talk this way, it's from hanging around the Village so much. I come from a good family, Philadelphia people, really. Two years finishing school, dig! Enough to make you want to throw. I chucked the whole gig and ran away with a guitar-playing man, who turned out to be a one-night-stand in the Village. I stayed there and got hipped pretty fast. Pot, the whole bit. Only I have to remember not to speak the language around any of the instructors or square Johns who come up. The Ferris Girl has breeding, you know. What slush! I had breeding up to here, and let me tell you it stinks. I've met pushers I've liked better than some of the old man's business friends. How does my hair look, honey? I just set it, didn't have time to go to the beauty parlor today."
She loosened the kerchief and a tumble of silken honey blonde hair fell down about her soft white shoulders. Her face, with its deep blue eyes, actually did look quite patrician now, and Marsha had the feeling that her story, unusual as it seemed, was probably true. Her hip talk was no doubt part of a rebellion that had carried over as a habit-she seemed otherwise as poised and graceful in her movements as Marc Ferris had boasted of his proteges. Marsha found herself liking the girl very much.
"I'm a gabber,," she went on. "Why don't you tell me a few things about yourself, baby-and maybe later, after my date, if I can get rid of him early enough, we can go out and have a cocktail together or something. Unless you're too tired, that is."
"No, not at all. I'd love to."
"Swell. Sit here while I dress for this guy. He's coming up, and with luck he won't want to go out anywhere."
Marsha followed her into the bedroom and sat down as Jerri took off her dressing robe, revealing a body that was willowy and slimly superb, with ripe red-tipped conical breasts, good hips, and tightly curved buttocks. She was a bit thinner than Marsha and somewhat shorter, and a year or two younger-but somehow she seemed more experienced and self-confident.
"I suppose I ought to ask you what you're in this for," she said, bending to fasten her garter-belt. "That's the usual question. And the answer is usually the same, come to think of it-the money, a chance to meet different kinds of men, boredom and a bit of plain laziness, I guess."
Marsha laughed merrily. "You've answered it."
"Well, you do get some girls with kookie ideas. And then there are those who are simply out to find and marry a rich businessman from Iowa as quickly as possible."
"But not you."
Jerri made a face. "I'll say not! I love men, but I can't stand any one of them that long. How about you?"
"I never thought of that, I guess. Not since college anyway."
"You like men?"
"Oh, well enough, I suppose."
"You either like them or you don't, baby. If you don't, you better find out now. I mean if you like them, crazy; you're in the right field-but if you basically don't get that much of a kick out of them, you've got to learn to sort of separate yourself from what you're doing."
"Sounds schizoid."
"Well, you learn to pick and choose, if you know what I mean. Being with some Johns is like being alone, even when he's in bed with you. If I don't dig the John, I simply think about Kafka or something like-that. Something way out. Once this really foul stud was having me do crazy things on his patio, right out there in the open, in the mid-sixties, and I bet there was a battery of binoculars aimed at us from the apartment buildings across the street. But that was like his scene, you know-they were used to him acting up like that and maybe some of those cats across the street even got their kicks watching, I don't know. At least they never complained. The point is, I didn't dig him, he was like greasy, you know-a filthy rich foreign diplomat or something. So I simply turned off while he did his dance on the flagstones with me, and then I was all right-I made believe I was one of those Indian Yogis or whateveryoucallum, you know."
"Are a lot of the clients like that?"
"Huh-there's all kinds, baby-you learn that fast here. Some of the things they want you to do, you begin to think the world's full of nothing but flipped-out people, dig?"
"I think so. But-you seem to enjoy the life."
"Name me a better one. A couple of years and I'll be on the Riviera with some filthy rich old man or something, but a girl's got to have a bankroll first. I want to travel, and not just where some man wants to take me."
"I'd like to travel too some day."
"Do you read much?"
"Quite a bit."
"So do I. You know, I've got one John who likes to buy me books. Really. Like he'll bring me a book one time and the next time I have to talk about it while he's getting his kicks. He says I have an interesting mind. How about that?"
She laughed, and Marsha joined in, almost spilling her coffee. Jerri had put her so much at ease she had forgotten how lonely she had been feeling a few minutes ago, and though it was sometimes had for her to follow the way she talked, the meaning always came through. It was interesting to hear first-hand how a girl who had been in this for a while felt about the life, and Jerri liked to talk.
As she talked she dressed-in a strange black outfit, a dress that was almost schoolmarmishly prim, with a white collar that buttoned at the throat. It had long sleeves with white cuffs and a full skirt.
Jerri saw Marsha staring at it with a surprised expression on her face as she stood before the mirror, buttoning the collar.
"Some outfit, huh? Believe me, it's not my idea to wear a rig like this. The guy coming up to see me tonight has rather, uh, special tastes."
"Special tastes?"
"You know-Like a weirdo. Hey! I bet you could watch!"
"Oh, I don't think-"
"Well, if you don't want to."
"It's not that. It's just that I-I'm-"
Jerri came over and touched her cheek.
"I know-you're the quiet, shy type. Like I saw that right away-something about your face, I guess. I said to myself: 'Oh-oh. here's one in from the sticks. She's been around, but not for the whole trip.' That made me like you, hon. I'm shy too, down deep. Like way down deep, dig?"
Jerri's eyes smiled at her, and then her lips, and then both of them were laughing again.
"Tell you what," Jerri said when they stopped. "If you're bored, or if you have a good stomach, stay right here doll and see the show. That might give you a few laughs. And I mean like you've got to get over that shyness sometime."
"Well-"
"I'll see if he goes for that, and if he does it's an extra quarter for you. We'll go out and celebrate."
Jerri had a knack for making the whole thing sound like fun, a game-instead of business. And before she could make up her mind whether or not to accept the offer, the door buzzer was ringing.
The John had arrived.
His name was Ferdinand Foxx, with two x's. His suit was very black and so was his homburg, and so indeed were his forty dollar patent leather pumps, imported. By contrast, his silk dress shirt-imported-was very white, and so was his tie. White on white, framed by black, like the white carnation in his lapel buttonhole. In the center of the white tie, like a tiny droplet of blood, a ruby stickpin. On the hands, which were small and delicate, a pair of gray morocco gloves, and in one of them, a straight black walking cane with a gold knob for a handle.
Ferdinand Foxx just missed being a caricature of Bat Masterson. The small eccentricities of his dress were toned down by the expensive conservative cut of his clothing and by the fact that he was a small, almost demure man slipping unnoticed into his forties. His face was thin and pale with large dark watery eyes, a thin, slightly hooked nose, and a tight line of neatly clipped mustache adorning the surprisingly fullish upper lip.
"Good evening," he said, smiling thinly and bowing slightly to Jerri when she opened the door to let him in.
"Hello, Mr. Foxx. This is Miss Kinsted, a good friend of mine. Marsha, Mr. Foxx."
"Oh. How do you do, Miss Kinsted." He took Marsha's hand as she arose from the couch. "Are you, uh...."
"She's okay." Jerri put in quickly. "Just one of the girls. She was just leaving but I told her to stay, since she seemed interested in meeting you."
"A pleasure, I'm sure."
"Well, I better go now," Marsha said.
"Why not have a drink with us first?" Jerri said, giving Mr. Foxx a questioning glance.
Ferdinand Foxx was covertly eyeing Marsha up and down. "Yes, please do, my dear," he smiled, removing his hat and gloves and laying them neatly on a table. "There is absolutely no rush as far as I'm concerned."
He sat down next to Marsha on the couch while Jerri went off to the kitchen for some ice.
"You're new, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"Hmm. I detect from your accent that you're somewhat Midwestern. Are you not?"
"Yes, from Ohio."
"An interesting state. Have you known Jerri-Miss Thornton-very long?"
"No, we just met."
"How nice to make friends so easily. I'm rather shy myself."
"Well, I guess we all are really."
"Yes. Yes indeed."
"Are you in business?"
"Oh, I own a few theaters about town. Not the biggest ones, but I dare say they do modestly well. Do you like the theater?"
"Oh yes! But I haven't had much chance to see anything yet."
"A pity. I can get you tickets to any show in town. I will leave some with Jerri if you're interested."
"That's very kind of you."
"Nothing at all. You do have lovely hair, my dear-"
Jerri came back with a tray of highballs. Mr. Foxx got up.
"Would you, ah, excuse us just a second, Miss Kinsted?"
"Of course."
He motioned Jerri aside, and the two of them disappeared into the bedroom, leaving Marsha alone with her highball, wondering whether or not she was supposed to leave. She was curious about the whole thing now, but she didn't want to risk spoiling Jerri's deal-whatever it was.
But after a minute, Jerri came out, smiling.
"How'd you like to make twenty-five bucks, kid?" she said.
Marsha looked up. "For doing what?"
"For doing nothing but sitting there on your pretty little bottom."
"Really?"
"No lie. Ferdy digs you, hon-you made a good impresh. He'd like to have you watch the gig. I didn't know if he'd go for that, but he brought it up, which makes it nice. He's loaded and he'll be a good contact later."
"I don't want to-poach."
Jerri laughed pleasantly. "Don't worry, you won't be stealing. He's not a regular anyway, but he knows lots of people. It's okay by me, and like I said, you might as well get over that shyness right away."
"What-are you going to do?"
"He's weird. Nice, but weird, you know? You must sit there with your drink and watch, and you'll see."
"Well, all right."
"Good. Cool it while I go get him back here. Now he's being shy about this, believe it or not!"
Marsha suppressed a giggle by sipping her strong whiskey highball while Jerri went back into the bedroom. This was strange indeed and she realized she was getting a little high-her tolerance for alcohol never having been much in the first place. But, braced by the whiskey, she waited patiently and with growing excitement for the two of them to return.
After several minutes, they did.
Much to her surprise, Jerri was fully clothed. More so than before, because now she wore over her previous outfit a handsome fur coat, a hat and a veil which partially hid her face.
Mr. Foxx, on the other hand, was completely in the nude.
Naked as a jay.
Bald.
There was something almost hilarious in the picture presented by the two of them walking side by side, she looking like a fashion plate in full splendor and he looking like a fugitive from some kind of nudist club.
He was small but well built, with just the slightest paunch for his years, his body white and smooth and practically hairless. He ignored Marsha and went straight over to a straight-backed chair near the far wall of the room and primly sat down, fastening his eyes on the figure of Jerri.
Naturally. She presented quite a figure, standing posed in the middle of the room, hand on hip, in the classic fashion. She had fixed the lights so that most of the light fell on the center of the room where she stood, and as Marsha watched she began parading up and down in an exotic hip-swinging walk that said all kinds of things.
Nice things.
She walked slowly around like that, circling the room, strutting, and as she walked she gradually began to shed the fur coat. It fell from her shoulders to the floor as she walked, no break occurring in her aloofly exotic motion.
Marsha glanced across the room at Mr. Foxx. Although he wasn't moving, she could see that he was visibly stirred by the spectacle. His eyes were intent on Jerri, and he leaned forward ever so slightly in his chair. It looked like a rather uncomfortable position, but she could see that he was striving to control himself-his face was noticably flushed and his breathing faster.
She wondered what he got out of this, watching a woman walk around while taking her clothes off.
Something, evidently.
A lot.
Jerri, for her part, acted as though he weren't even there. Her face wore a frozen, almost bored expression, and she seemed to have become haughty and remote from everything in the room. She stopped her parading and stood in the middle of the floor, unbuttoning her dress with her gloved hands very slowly, thoughtfully, casting glances at herself in a mirror hanging from one wall. Marsha had to admit that there was something beautiful in her studied motions. She was making a thing out of the simple act of undressing. Only her mouth revealed her expression, below the dark veil-she still wore the hat.
That struck Marsha as odd, but it became even odder when the dress slipped down and Jerri stood there in dark lace bra and panties and dark nylons and spike heels.
Very odd.
She was beautiful, willowy and statuesque, like a carved model or a mannequin. She looked almost unreal in the indirect lighting of the room. The silence gave a fascination to the whole scene that was near hypnotic.
She began to walk around again dressed like that, the veil serving to make her face abstract, while the lovely white curves of her body, in motion, contrasted and showed through the black frothy lace with startling effect.
Marsha heard a sound of heavy breathing coming from the chair across the room now. She looked over to see him straining forward, his face red and excited now, his eyes shining brightly. And his hands were gripping-not the sides of the chair, but himself.
He was thoroughly excited, excited as a schoolboy peeking into a woman's boudoir. Marsha wondered what kept him rooted to the chair, in the condition he was in. It seemed as though he were torturing himself with this spectacle.
Finally Jerri removed the bra. Her white, conical, red-tipped breasts tumbled out in swaying loveliness-now she was dressed only in the hat, the gloves the skimpy panties, sheer stockings and high heels.
Mr. Foxx, shaking with uncontrollable excitement, slid off the chair to the floor, where he lay prone before her feet.
Little stifled squeals escaped his throat between the heavy panting of his breathing. He was like a child-
It seemed strange for a man to behave like this. Marsha leaned forward, wondering what would happen next, how he would get fulfillment from this bizzare situation.
She soon got her answer.
As she watched, Jerri slowly raised one foot from the floor and with the spike heel still on, she stepped lightly up on his prone body.
That must have hurt. That must have caused him real pain, agonizing pain-but he never uttered a cry.
Only the sound of his loud breathing filled the room as the muscles of his slim body bunched tensely.
While Jerri walked over him.
The heels left marks and drew blood in a couple of places. His whole body trembled from her weight. Marsha stared open-mouthed at the scene. This was at once revolting and vaguely disgusting-and yet exciting in a weird off-beat way.
Suddenly a series of loud animal cries filled the room:
"Oh I Ah-ah-ah-ah-ahh!"
The prone figure almost doubled up into a ball and Jerri stepped off him to the floor again.
Her job was over.
Her client had been satisfied.
She gathered up her clothes quickly and motioned to Marsha to follow her into the kitchen.
Marsha got up and followed her, and in the kitchen. the door closed now, Jerri reached into the pocket of the fur coat and handed her a fifty dollar bill.
"Here," she smiled. "Your first fee-sort of."
Marsha accepted the money, thinking it wasn't really, but not wanting to tell Jerri for some reason. That wasn't really necessary anyway.
"Thanks," she said. "That was really weird."
"Like I said, you get all types. He's not a bad John, really-some of them can get pretty damn demanding of a girl. He wants to be left alone now while he dresses-let's have another drink."
"I'm starting to feel mine already."
"Lucky you. I've got a hollow leg myself. As soon as I get dressed we'll leave and go down to the Village for a gay old time. How does that sound?"
"Wonderful-I mean crazy!"
Jerri laughed. "You catch on quick. I don't think you're going to have a bit of trouble in this game, hon."
Jerri poured her a drink and she sipped it while her new found friend got quickly into her things.
"There-all set. Let's split, man I"
They re-entered the living room just as Ferdinand Foxx was coming in from the bedroom. He was fully dressed now, appearing the same as when he had entered the apartment-neat, dapper, a trifle foppish, and somehow prim.
It was as though nothing at all had happened. He nodded courteously, again bowing slightly to both of them.
"It's been a pleasant evening ladies. Could I give either of you a lift somewhere?"
Marsha opened her mouth to say yes, but Jerri stopped her.
"No thanks, Mr. Foxx. Someone's picking us up."
"I see. Very well, then-good evening, ladies." Jerri showed him to the door and he left.
"Never go out with a John unless it's strictly on a business basis," Jerri said, returning. "That's just a bad habit to get into. Maybe he wanted to give us a ride or maybe he wanted to take us to his place. Whatever the case, you make it a rule to get things decided beforehand. Avoids a lot of trouble.
"I see."
"Okay baby-that's his car pulling away now I think. Let's make it."
Marsha stopped at her apartment first and got a light coat to wear for the evening, and then the two of them went down the stairs to the street.
They walked a couple of blocks over before they caught sight of a cab. Jerri stepped out from the curb and waved and the cab slid to a halt.
The girls got in.
"Where to?" the cabbie said, getting as much of an ogle as he could. "Downtown."
"Sure, sister. Like you mean the Battery or Penn Station?"
"Like I mean the Village, man," Jerri said. "The one called Greenwich."
The driver laughed and pulled away from the curb.
CHAPTER THREE
Marcus Jerome Ferris liked women. This one fact by itself would hardly distinguish him from about fifty million other males, or even a hundred million. Yet, all things considered, there was a distinguishing factor connected with this predilection. Unlike fifty or a hundred million other males, Marc Ferris had made women his life.
Of course there are other fortunate males who have managed to do likewise, in one way or another, but few could be said to have been as successful at it as he.
Very few.
To begin with, Marc Ferris had begun with nothing. No money, no family, no background-nothing, in a manner of speaking, except a very handsome face.
But a handsome face is not enough. He could just as well have turned out to be an actor, if you want to consider it from the standpoint of face alone. Looks.
Beauty is, as the saying has it, as beauty does.
Marc Ferris had done well. He had never turned a hand to any kind of serious labor since the age of fifteen. Unless you wanted to call women "serious labor"-which is a matter of point-of-view. For some they can be serious and for some they can be labor, and for some both. For Marcus Jerome Ferris they were both and not quite either at the same time. They had become, early in his life, when he started reflecting a bit on what he was doing, partly a way of life, partly an art, and somewhat of a religion.
But that statement, too, might be misleading. Marc Ferris did not worship women. On the contrary-women usually worshipped him.
Almost always.
But perhaps that is saying the same thing after all. You can be involved in a religion whether you worship or are worshiped.
A god is a religious being, to be sure.
At the age of fourteen he, Marcus Ferris, was a Bronx orphan scrounging for nickels and dimes on street corners, selling papers or shining shoes or simply scrounging nickels or dimes without selling anything. He was ambitious but he didn't like work. That much could be said of many people, fourteen or forty. At the age of fifteen he left school and decided to carve himself a career as a con man. He had read about confidence men in paper back novels, the biographies of the real ones, like the Yellow Kid and Sam the Trimmer, and he had a great admiration for them. They had brains and they had style. They dressed nicely-the way he tried to, spending whatever money he came by on the best articles of clothing within his limited price range. He had an aunt and a cousin he sometimes lived with who constantly scolded him for his wastrel ways and the fact that a "smart boy" like him had quit school. He was smart enough to avoid run-ins with the law by staying away from the local street gangs, at least. Getting busted, getting a record, didn't figure into his life plans. That was for dumb kids.
He practiced conning on his uncles and aunts and cousins. He found he could always talk them into giving him money. All you had to do was come on right, smile a little, look and dress as though you were on the verge of some big success and all you needed was a little something to tide you over until your deal came through.
A tall, well-dressed, good-looking kid, he spent his days shooting pool and studying racing forms and making a touch when he could.
Naturally this kind of life couldn't last indefinitely. For one thing, he was restless and bored, and for another, he was getting too well-known in the neighborhood. You couldn't con the same people over and over. He had a string of girls who would do anything for him, but they were just kids like him, albeit some of the best looking skirts in school-nickel and dime stuff. He never worried about having money for a date because the girl would always be glad to pay.
Naturally.
When he wasn't shooting pool or studying racing forms or tickling some high school cutie in the vestibule of her Bronx apartment house, he read. Whatever he read fired his imagination, stimulated his ambition, and increased his desire to get the hell out of the old neighborhood.
Which he did.
He moved to Manhattan, where the action was, to a hole-in-the-wall room on the West Side, midtown, practically on top of the West Side Highway. But Manhattan was a tough proposition, especially for a sixteen year old kid, and he damn near starved himself to death inside a month. He learned that the wolf may live by his wits, but starvation is poor food for thought.
That was when he discovered the existence of a magic ingredient in the world that had somehow previously escaped his attention:
Older Women.
He had had plenty of experience with girls. He had bedded harems of them, in boiler basements, on roofs, fire escapes, back seats of borrowed jalopies, floors, couches, tables and even beds. At the age of twelve he had de-virginized his ten year old cousin, who liked that so much she began to spread herself around the whole neighborhood, whereupon he became disgusted with her and lost all his romantic illusions about girls. From then on, they were just "stuff"-jailbait, grist for the mill, game to be stalked and shot down as quickly and surely as possible, and his hunting bag was never empty. It became a game for him, a game in which he selected only the most difficult prey, doe-like creatures who wouldn't remove their pants in front of a mirror, hotshot rich girls with convertibles who thought they were too good for anybody, candidates for nunneries and potential dykes or dried-up librarians. They always gave him what he wanted in the end, because he simply never assumed that they wanted to do otherwise. Every girl he met had been walking around, saving herself for him.
He simply collected. It was fun to break them down, watch them disintegrate, the most pure and virginal of them, and end up rolling around on a linoleum floor. After that you could ask them for a buck or two from their allowance to buy a new tie or a shirt with. A stud had expenses. They always understood.
But that was all behind him, in the Bronx-which as everyone knows has nothing in it but millions of big-breasted high school girls in sweaters and slacks and bermudas.
The idea of older women didn't hit him until he was broke and damn near dizzy from walking the streets without a crumb or a bite in his stomach. He could have bummed fifteen cents for a Nedick's hot dog along Forty-second, but he was older now and had pride-he had simply given up bumming even as a last expedient.
So, desperate one day, he wandered into a cocktail lounge and sat down, mostly to rest.
"Let's see your draft card, bud," the unfriendly bartender said.
"I don't have one," Marcus said, too tired to lie.
"That's all right-give the boy a drink; I know him and he's eighteen," someone else said. A well-dressed woman in her early forties, sitting by herself at the end of the bar in mid-afternoon, the remains of a martini in front of her.
Marcus looked up at her. She had hair kept black with the aid of dye, a rather large nose, a huge set of headlights and a soft white body. Her face wasn't at all bad looking despite the nose, with just a bit of sag and line to it, enough to make it look human. She came down and sat next to him and he noticed she weaved a bit as she made it.
"Hello Jim honey," she said loud enough for the bartender to hear. "I thought they took you in the army last month."
"I flunked the physical," he smiled. He was damn near unconscious from hunger-pains, but he smiled very nicely for her, and the bartender put a shot of Seagram's in front of him and left them alone.
"I'd like to give you another physical," she said, nudging him. "Up in my apartment."
She was drunk, but he wasn't being fastidious that day.
"Let's go," he said, slamming down the shot and gagging, but holding it down. They went.
They went in a cab to an address in the West Seventies, a good address near Riverside. She couldn't keep her hands off him in the cab, and when he reached to the top of her low vee-necked black dress, he found a big soft handful that temporarily made him forget the fact that he hadn't eaten since noon the day before. The shot of Seagram's had cut his hunger anyway. And it occurred to him suddenly that he had been chaste for over a week, which was something of a record.
A woman might change his luck.
Her name was Bernice Natali, Mrs., and she was a widow with one daughter and love-starved to the point of going out of her mind. Not that she should have been, because even at forty she was a handsome if somewhat portly woman. But she had had this religious thing all her life, which had simply increased at her husband's death six years before, and hadn't tapered off till now.
She was still religious as hell, but that had changed. Somewhat. Her husband had been a successful importer and he had left her well off enough to decorate her expensively furnished apartment with solid gold crucifixes and she gave money to the church and went regularly once a week to confession and insisted that her daughter, when she was home, do the same-but there was a difference.
She had thought a lot about sin lately.
Maybe she was thinking about sin then, that day when he ran into her-the woman who changed his luck. Whatever the case, when she got him up to her apartment she exclaimed: "My God! You look just like a picture of my dear sainted husband when he was sixteen," whereupon she took out an expensive gold rosary from an expensive carved end-table drawer in the living room and got down on her knees on the expensive Bigelow and began to run through the familiar ritual.
Marcus stood in front of her, wondering what the hell he was supposed to do about this in the light of the scene she had made in the taxi. He simply waited, lighting and smoking a cigarette, until she finished.
Whereupon he took off his pants.
It seemed the natural thing to do.
That was a strange scene and one he would never forget. Charge that to superstition, maybe. He had always believed in luck, at least to the extent that he felt he was lucky; he had a personal star that always managed to shine when the night grew darkest-as indeed it had that bright sunny afternoon when he walked into the cocktail lounge on lower Broadway-and it was shining now in full glory, as bright and twinkly as the concaved and convexed curves of the hundred dollar crucifix on the far wall. It was a strange scene and it seemed to hold for him something portentous, portentous for his future as well as his present. This fleshy woman in a black dress kneeling before him, launching into another chant that could have been Gregorian, for all he knew. Like the plainsong they used to chant in Latin during the Middle Ages he had read about in the Forty-second Street Public Library.
It was a very plain song at that, he thought.
She was soon singing like a bird.
Whatever it was, she enjoyed herself, and she chanted on, a littany of desire whose notes seemed to be formed somewhere in the warm denseness of her fleshy breasts which pressed tremblingly against him.
The song wasn't wasted on him, either. Something began to awaken in him-maybe just the first realization of how truly good an older woman, a warm fruit ripened on the vine, could be-and such easy pickings!
Yeah.
She was warm indeed, and not at all hard to look at-at least not from that position-and he began to get ideas as fast as she gave him the strange kind of love. The rugs, the furniture, the pictures on the wall-she looked to be loaded.
Why not?
"Why not stay for supper?" she said when she had finished. "I'm alone all day and my daughter won't be back this evening, she's with an aunt in Canarsie."
"I could use something to eat now," he said as politely as he could. "I haven't had a bit since yesterday, Mrs. Natali. Could you spare?"
She could and she did. "Call me Bernice," she said in the kitchen, pink-faced as she sliced a fine ham and made sandwiches for him. Her embarassment at what she had done in the living room was obvious, in the pinkness of her face and in the way her eyes avoided him as she busied herself in the gleaming stainless steel kitchen-but it somehow served to make him all the more attracted to her.
She looked almost like a peasant in her severe black dress, except for the gold rings. He was still fresh with the memory of how good she had been in the living room, and watching the round curve of her buttock as she bent over the table, he began wondering if she would be as good another way in the bedroom.
"Oh!" she exclaimed at the slither of his hand over that part of her dress. "You shouldn't do that!"
But she didn't move away. He ended up eating his sandwich with one and and occupying the other with Bernice.
She went crazy. She groaned and she wept and her face got red as a tomato-but she didn't move.
"God! God, no, this isn't right, this is sin, oh, oh! Forgive me, please forgive me-oh that's right, that's right! Oh! Oh!"
It was a damn good sandwich and Marcus forgave her easily, feeling in a well-fed, expansive mood now.
He got up and moved around behind her. She leaned forward and gripped the far end of the table for support, as though she were embracing it.
She was crazy, he figured. She was muttering religious things again and talking about sin and this and that, he couldn't really pay attention because he was too busy pulling the skirt of her dress over her and getting her panty girdle down where it belonged over her shapely white legs.
He pushed and the legs of the table moved screechingly over the vinyl tile.
"Oh God!" she screamed.
Later, in the bedroom, she screamed a lot of other crazy things. All afternoon she jabbered crazy stuff at him, but she left fingernail marks in his back.
Hell.
When he got up to go she was damn near hysterical.
"I got to go," he growled. "I'm broke and I have to find a job. God, let go of me Bernice!"
But she wouldn't. Instead she hauled him over to the ornate Renaissance style antique dresser, on top of which sat her black patent-leather handbag, and from it she hauled a bunch of bills and thrust them in his already outstretched hand.
He didn't bother to count them. He cornered at least one twenty in his eye, and with that he began to unbutton his shirt again.
They made an arrangement the afternoon. He would come up weekdays to visit her while her daughter was in school, and she would give him twenty bucks a throw. That figured out at a hundred bucks a week, which was doing pretty well for a sixteen-year-old kid, he figured.
Very well indeed.
He collected that amount from her for three weeks running. He was in the chips again, and laying by the bread and looking around for the next big opportunity, in case one day religion should get the best of his present meal ticket. One thing he knew now for sure: he would never have the taste of hunger in his mouth again.
Monday, the beginning of the fourth week of his life as a professional gigolo, he made a switch.
He came up to her place in the evening instead. His motive was very simple: he had seen a picture of the daughter on the same dresser whence came his first fee, and she was a beautiful, dark-haired and dark-eyed oval-faced beauty of thirteen. He saw that picture every day for three weeks running while satisfying the increasing demands of his mistress, and it finally got to him.
Naturally.
You might say it was bound to. Tactfully, he brought a bottle of wine and a present for the old lady, who was very angry over his switch in schedule.
Naturally.
But she had no control over him now and she knew it. His intimacies with her had covered the route, so to speak. He stayed late, and each time she opened her mouth to suggest he leave, he closed it with the kind of look that turned her face on.
The daughter didn't fail to notice this. She turned out to be fourteen instead of thirteen, the picture having been taken over a year ago-but the year had only done a lot to improve on the original photo. She was a sophomore in high school and had had no love experience whatsoever, but then young men didn't come visiting forty-four-year-old women and make themselves at home as a matter of course.
The three of them ended up sitting on the divan in front of the expensive TV console, whose blaring voices helped fill the gaping holes in the conversation. Marcus poured the wine and then slipped his arm around the mother, his face turned away while he distracted the daughter with idle conversation about school and movies and rock-and-roll music.
The skirt of the mother's dress had somehow slipped way up over her plump white knees in front, and quite a bit further in back. In a few minutes, she couldn't have gotten up if she had wanted to. All she could do was rivet her eyes on the TV screen and gulp wine like it was going out of fashion.
"I like jazz, too," the daughter, whose name he couldn't remember, was saying. "Do you, Jimmy?"
"Sure. Lots of soul stuff; that's the way I like it. You heard the group down at the Metronome?"
They went on that way for awhile, the daughter opening up to him as he talked, putting her more or less at ease by explaining that her mother's husband had given his old man a job once and now he was sick and dying but he wanted his son to visit the widow to remember the kindness. It was a quick lie and the first one that had occurred to him, but it worked well enough. As long as he was a friend of the family, it didn't seem too wrong to hold his hand.
The free one.
A couple of times Bernice made funny little noises, which she turned into a cough or an exclamation of surprises over something happening on the TV. She grew very excited over one soap commercial in particular.
"Mom, you're getting potted," the daughter laughed.
"So am I," Marcus laughed. "Why don't you have some, honey?
"I think it's time for her to go to bed," the mother said in a thick voice.
"Well, just one won't hurt her. Make her sleep better."
He poured, and the daughter drank.
She wasn't used to drinking and she had no resistance to alcohol. One tall glass of wine, drunk too fast, and she was getting giggly.
"I keep thinking I feel the couch moving," she said.
The couch was moving.
Really.
"For God's sake, go to bed!" the mother near-screamed.
"She's tired," Marcus said. He slipped his arm around the daughter and explored with satisfaction the small fine curve of her buttock.
"You better not do that!" she whispered urgently in his ear.
"Sorry," he whispered back. "Maybe she's right-you ought to go to bed, if you've got school tomorrow."
"I do feel sleepy," she said, leaning her head against her shoulder. "Verrry sssleeepy...."
He couldn't believe his luck. She fell asleep against his shoulder.
He carried her to the master bedroom and undressed her quickly on the large bed. She mumbled something and pushed his hands away, but the wine had made her too drunk to know what she was doing.
"I'm dying," the mother said when he returned to the living room. "God, I'm dying!"
"Come into the bedroom, Bernice."
"No, no you can't do this Jimmy; you can't do this!"
"My name's not Jimmy and I'm doing this." His hand reached into her dress and his fingers closed around a large, knob-like nipple.
"Ohhh!"
She came up from the divan. He took his fingers away and replaced them with his teeth.
"The bedroom, Bernice."
That was like leading a thirsty mare to water. She was out of control completely, a plastic thing in his hands. In the dark of the bedroom, brimming with desire, he impatiently ripped her dress from neckline to hem.
Shaking from head to foot, the backs of her fat knees against the edge of the bed, she announced:
"I'm going to scream for the police!"
He waited till she opened her mouth. That convinced him she was serious, completely serious about the screaming bit, so he quickly doubled his fist and planted one in her midriff so hard it knocked the wind and the voice right out of her and sent her collapsing backward over the bed.
He was at her before she could get her voice back, and by then it was too late-a soft foam rubber pillow pushed over her face made an excellent gag.
She made moans. She tried to fight him with her hands. She was the best she had ever been, which was damn fine, and he thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing.
Even when the bedlamp flashed on and the daughter sat up, looking at them and screaming.
The pillow wasn't necessary by then. The solid body quivered and moved and even against the daughter's cry he could hear her cry of fulfillment.
The daughter shut up quickly enough. One slap and she shut up, and then she lay back in a tremble and waited for him.
She didn't have to wait long.
Not long at all.
He was nice to her, warm and tender, kissing her dewy lips and caressing her hand-sized little breasts and touching her slim legs.
She began to move in a frenzy.
His hand covered her.
"I'm glad," she whispered suddenly. She laughed a little hysterically. "You're going to do that anyway, but I'm glad-hear me mom? Glad, glad, glad I"
The mother just lay there not saying a word, looking at the ceiling. But her hand slid over and closed around her daughter's and squeezed it.
"Mom!" her daugher shouted. "Mom, mom, oh mother, moth-er!"
Before he left, he found a hundred and some singles in the handbag on the dresser. Also a gold watch and some rings in the top drawer.
It had been a fun night, but he never went back.
That was merely a wild youthful fling. He never stole from women after that, for the simple reason he never had to. They gave him everything he needed, including furniture, clothes, jewelry, and often the rent on various apartments he rented about the island of Manhattan. At eighteen, he went on his first ocean liner voyage overseas, with a rich married woman he met at a bohemian East Side bar and restaurant, traveling of course, first class.
Of course.
They were not always that rich, but they always had something to give. Sometimes he played four or five of them at once, in rotation. Married women were always the best, wives of businessmen, advertising execs, whatnot. He set a standard fee of fifty bucks, but he soon found out that some of the "jealous" husbands were just as nutty as their wives, and would pay an extra twenty-five to come over and watch the show.
He traveled. Miami, California, Mexico, Europe. He spent the money as fast as he made it, because it was easy and it was tax free and there were a lot of things in the world he wanted to see and spend money on. There were a few bad times when he got stuck high and dry, but always there was something in skirts or a swim-suit to save him from disaster. Women in their thirties and forties were always the best. The younger ones gave you trouble. But he never limited himself to any one category at any one time.
At the age of twenty-six, he decided he was wasting his life.
That, of course, sounds silly. The world was full of frustrated males who would have given an arm and a leg to lead his life for just a while.
But he had a lot of energy and he wanted to channel some of it into doing something constructive. A woman could give you just so much, after all. She could give you plenty, but that didn't last, and the world was a huge feminine kingdom you could never conquer completely anyway.
So he decided to go into business.
He tried real estate in Florida, small-time at first, and then bigger and finally he made a wad in that game of wits. And lost every cent in the stock market.
He went into the importing business, remembering his first big experiences with an importer's widow, and, starting on a shoestring, almost hung himself with it.
Wholesale jobbing in dry goods turned out no better. He ran a small greasy spoon up to a chain of four restaurants before the market cleaned him once again.
It was all very annoying, to say the least. Highly annoying, in fact. He felt a lot of talent within himself, but he was never able to finish anything he had starter in the way of business. He became bored and careless about bookkeeping, let shyster lawyers drain off the profits, took unnecessary risks just to see what would happen, if he could run a few thou up into a million in a year-and always he ended up the same.
Broke.
A woman.
It injured his pride and made him disgusted with the world. Not that there wasn't a lot of pleasure in the art of satisfying a woman, but this was a business world and he wanted to prove he could make it that way too-a success as a businessman.
It was at the tail-end of his last big business flop that he met Cynthia Lockhart, a forty year old businesswoman. She was the second woman to cause a big change in his life.
Cynthia Lockhart was not quite like any other woman he had ever met. For one thing, she had never married. That fact, at the age of forty, might be enough to make anyone classify her as a spinster-but anyone who knew Cynthia Lockhart would definitely hesitate to classify her as a spinster. There was nothing dried-up and spinsterish about this ash blonde businesswoman, who could wear a mannishly-cut business suit and still draw whistle from an elevator boy or sidewalk voyeur.
But she was definitely different from most women. Her cold Nordic beauty was one thing-she was beautiful the way an iceberg can be beautiful; a naturalistic sort of beauty, a beauty as remote as nature.
A beauty you couldn't trust. Like the iceberg, three-quarters of Cynthia Lockhart was submerged. And, as with the iceberg, that was the dangerous part. The part that sank a thousand ships, to paraphrase a very old bit of poetry. She was not exactly a Helen of Troy.
But then Marc Ferris wasn't exactly the Paris type either. They met each other at a fashionable West Side cocktail party. He was between women and she was between business ventures. He had never met her before, but he had heard of the legend surrounding her name-how she had built a publishing business out of a fly-by-night little magazine; how she had sold that at an astounding profit and gone into advertising; how, bored with that, she had dumped the whole thing for a song and started a small cosmetics concern which was now doing very well. Stories of how she had outwitted the sharpest male competitors in the business world, wheeling and dealing with the finesse of a professional poker player.
There were other stories connected with the Lock-hart legend too. Naturally, the people she knew were curious about the fact that she had rejected offers from some of the world's most eligible bachelors from Houston to the Riviera. They were curious about her hidden three-quarters, that is. In short, her love life. And where curiosity goes unsatisfied, imagination will have a heyday.
She was suspected of being a dyke. Rumor also had it that she was a wildly oversexed nymphomaniac whom no one man could ever satisfy, which was why she didn't bother marrying any man. Others had it that she was completely frigid, a real iceburg in the flesh. Nobody seemed to really know much at all about her past, and even less about her present.
Marcus Jerome Ferris was intrigued.
Naturally.
He was intrigued by the fact that a woman had succeeded in all the areas in which he had failed. And he was curious about what kind of woman that could be. And the stories-he was very curious about them also.
Naturally.
He came to the party alone that day, and so did she. They met over a frozen daiquiri, her eyes almost the color and substance of the drink, a lemony green that met his own keen gray-eyed gaze unflinchingly. He smiled with all his charm as he introduced himself, but the ice never melted a bit.
"Ferris? Yes, I think I've heard of you. Aren't yon a professional stud or something?" The voice matched the eyes.
He was deeply stung by the remark; he thought of himself at this period, despite his repeated failures, as a business enterpriser. He almost hated her for that, and he came near to showing it in his face. But some sixth sense told him that this was a pregnant moment, a crossroads, and he kept the smile.
"Yes," he said smoothly, "I am indeed."
"How interesting," she purred. "Are you good at that?"
"So I've been told."
"Well, here's my card. Drop by some day and we might see."
She moved away into the crush, and his eyes followed the ample, neatly tailored figure with new interest. She had given him one on the chin and he had taken it, for the first time in his life from a female. It shook him somehow. But he tucked the card in his pocket, laughed silently at himself, and left the party, determined to give her a call the very next day.
It was only the first round after all.
CHAPTER FOUR
The young Negro jazz trumpeter looked bored. He was handsome and immaculately dressed and his horn shone like the bumper of a solid gold Cadillac, but his eyes wore a tired, droopy expression, hooded and heavy-lidded as he looked down from the small stage at the auience shoe-horned into the tiny Village club. He blew low mournful glottal notes with a careless, almost thoughtless slurr-dit-dit-dit-dit-da-da-ummm-lagging way behind the beat established by the rhythm section, but he seemed not to care, to be unaware of their presence even as he created phrases to suit the fancy of some remote inner ear of his own.
The audience loved it. He was cool, the epitome of coolness, unconcern, don't-give-a-damn. "Look at me," he was saying with his horn; "I'm suffering. But you don't give a damn. Well, neither do I, you squares." Or maybe he was just tired because it was three A.M., the last set of their gig in this stuffy, sweaty, cigarette-stale glorified water closet that called itself a jazz room. Or, more likely, he was holding a good head from marijuana smoked in the kitchen during intermissions. He was certainly in a world all his own. Which maybe was why the fans were digging him. A good portion of them were tuned-in; you could almost smell it through the cigarette smoke.
At a tiny table against one wall of the room, Jerri Thornton was saying: "Dig him honey; isn't he the most?"
Marsha had reached a stage of intoxication that had enabled her to lose herself in the music temporarily, and though she was far from being a jazz critic, she nodded.
"I never heard a trumpet sound like that."
"I don't mean him" Jerri frowned. "Like he's out of it. Dig the rhythm-that's my guy on drums."
Marsha peered through the cigarette smoke at the drummer, a thin scrawny young man sitting up against the wall, big droplets of sweat rolling down his slanted forehead under a dark thatch of hair as he metronomically patted cymbals and snare with his brushes, creating a hissing, rolling sound that you hardly noticed behind the soloist until you started picking it out.
"Oh," Marsha said, leaning close to make herself heard above the sounds, "I didn't know you went with a musician."
"That's Bernie," Jerri smiled, her eyes fastened on the stand. "I want you to meet him. He'll come over after the set's done and we'll have a drink together."
"I don't think I could stand another drink," Marsha groaned-but her protest was lost in a sudden rumbling growl as the Negro powered bluesy gut notes into the bowl of a brass mute. The bassist followed with a solo and then the two of them traded fours for awhile, and then the pianist took them out-the set was over. There was a mild scattering of applause and then a lot of the customers began to scrape chairs and signal for waitresses to bring their checks. The music was over for the night and it was almost closing time.
In a few minutes, Bernie, the drummer, came over and sat down at their table.
"Baby, this is Marsha Kinsted," Jerri said. "Marsha, Bernie Goldoni."
He took her hand and shook it and said hi.
"You're new."
"She just came to the city a while ago," Jerri explained. "From Cleveland."
Bernie had big dark eyes in a thin face. He gave her a friendly smile. "Nice. You like jazz, Marsha?"
"Yes, but I don't know much about it, I'm afraid. I liked that trumpeter but Jerri says he's no good."
"I didn't say that!" Jerri complained.
"Mm, yes you did," Marsha said, grinning a little drunkenly. "I distinctly remember."
"Don't fight over it," Bernie laughed. "Manz has some good things. All he has to do is listen to the group now and then."
"Why don't you invite him to sit down with us?" Jerri said. "He seems cool."
"She go for that?" Bernie said.
"I don't know. Do you object to Negroes, Marsha dear?"
"No", Marsha said, feeling that her liberalism was being put to test.
"Crazy," Bernie said, and waved to the Negro, who was still on the stand putting away his horn.
He came over and sat down next to Marsha. Bernie introduced him around as Phillip Manzilla. He was part Cuban. The place was in the process of closing but a waitress brought them a round of drinks before the deadline occurred. Jerri and her boy friend immediately got involved in the kind of personal conversation that excludes casual friends, and Marsha didn't know exactly what to say to the Negro, who studied her unblinkingly with those soft and liquid and remote eyes of his.
"That was pretty," she said finally. "That solo of yours, I mean."
"I'm glad you dug it. I was watching you from up there."
"Really? I didn't notice."
"Sure. This gig's been a drag, but it's nice to have something nice to look at. Takes your mind off."
"Off what?"
He shrugged lazily. "Things."
"I feel that way sometimes."
"You do?"
"Yes."
"Then you know what I mean. Like if you're not with what's going on, you can fasten your thoughts on something else, and that makes things a groove again."
"Did I distract you?"
"In a nice way, like-dig? I blew better when I saw you digging me. It's funny-a cat in the audience can turn me off when he gives me the eye, but you turned me on, baby."
Marsha was struggling hard to get this meaning, her brain feeling thick and slow, but she sensed the compliment behind his words.
"Thanks," she said.
"What's he conning you into?" Jerri said, turning to them. "Let's all go up to my place and split a bottle hey?"
Bernie frowned. "A bottle? Hell, I copped you a bag of stuff last week-don't tell me you smoked all that tea up already, baby!"
"You smoke, man?" the Negro said to Marsha.
Marsha looked at him helplessly, and then at Jerri.
"She's just a baby," Jerri said. "Give her time, huh? Besides, she's had too much already, maybe we better forget it."
"It was your idea," Bernie retorted. "What a drag!"
"Well leave it up to her," Jerri said, and turned to Marsha again. "What about it honey-think you could take a set tonight?"
"A set?"
"You know; a party. Up in my place-I've got some records and things. If you don't go for it, say so-I'll be the last person in the world to put you down for copping out."
Marsha's head was spinning a little, but the evening had been so pleasant she didn't want to spoil it.
"Okay," she said, "let's go. Only I need a few cups of coffee first."
"I'll make a pot," Jerri said, getting up, and for some reason Bernie laughed at that remark.
The four of them left the deserted club together. It was a warm delicate night outside. Cabs prowled the Village streets, picking up fares as the closed joints emptied out their straggling customers.
Marsha walked unsteadily and her date put his arm around her.
"Oh!"
It had given her a start for some reason, perhaps because he was a Negro. But then she remembered that she was a call girl, and she laughed.
"What's funny?" he said.
"Me," she said, and put her arm around him, and they walked that way down the street to find themselves a cab.
Cynthia Lockhart owned a ten-room cooperative apartment in a new luxury building in the sixties along Fifth Avenue, Central Park East. Ten rooms are a lot of rooms, especially for a single woman. Cynthia did not entertain often, but when she did she entertained lavishly. And she liked a lot of room to roam around in. It helped her to think, walking around from room to room, and through the years she had developed the habit of having a lot of private walking space to do her thinking in, mostly in the wee hours of the morning. Aside from her tendencies to claustrophobia, she was also an insomniac. She didn't worry about that much, however. Sleep was merely wasted time, an annoying biological necessity.
She was not walking up and down now. She was seated before a white baby grand piano, out on the rear garden terrace, enjoying the night air and the sensuous chords of a Liszt etude as she ran through them with her long, beautifully manicured fingers. She wore a white full-length robe, laced with delicate designs in gold thread, the high collar turned up in back, framing the exquisite upsweep of her ash blonde coiffure, the wings of the lapels turned aside and cut deep in front, framing the plush fullness of a pair of quite remarkable breasts. On her feet she wore a pair of silver sandal slippers, exposing toenails painted an irridescent green-the color she also wore on her full lips.
Inside in the living room, in a deep, high-backed leather chair facing the open sliding glass doors leading to the terrace, sat Marc Ferris. He was almost invisible in the shadows, dressed in a dark evening suit, but the live glow of a cigarette lighted his features as he puffed on it intermittently. In his other hand he held a cocktail glass containing the remnants of his third martini of the evening.
He was watching Cynthia, her white figure at the piano framed against the backdrop of a nighttime Manhattan skyline. Knowing her as he did, he wondered how it could be that, at certain times, like this one, she could fill him with a sense of mystery and wonder.
It was strange. The music and the martinis lulled him, the sight of her on the terrace vaguely excited him-he felt suspended between two opposite kinds of sensation. It was as though she were a witch in disguise, weaving some kind of spell around him.
The spell was broken when the music stopped rather abruptly and Cynthia rose from the piano. She put a cigarette in her handsome mouth, lit it and walked inside.
"That was beautiful," Marc said. "Why did you stop? I could have sat here all night listening."
"But I couldn't sit there playing all evening. Fix me a drink, Marc darling."
Marcus got up and went to the teakwood and silver serving bar built into a corner of the spacious room. Without saying anything he began to mix a martini according to the formula she required, knowing the exact amount of each ingredient from long experience. Even the number of stirs-twelve and a half. Cynthia did everything precisely-it was the secret of her success.
"Thank you darling," she said, accepting the drink when it was finished. "Mm-perfect. Shall we sit here on the sofa? You're so very quiet tonight."
"It's a quiet sort of night. And your beauty leaves me speechless."
"Thank you, Marc-even if it is nonsense."
"It's no lie, Cynthia dear."
"It's a lie of the worst sort. I'm forty-four, darling. See these lines? She leaned her face close to his, touching it with her fingertips. "I could have them removed in Switzerland, of course, but it's so futile. I'm getting old.
You won't look at me this way much longer."
"You'll never grow old, baby."
"That's more like it. If you're going to He to me, play the role. I like to be lied to if you do it rough."
He put his arm around her, caressing her low-slung breast through the material of the robe. They hadn't made love all evening, though he had been at her apartment for hours. He could tell she was in one of her moods, that that would have to be led up to-as he was doing now.
He thought: It's not completely a lie, but not completely true either. She was old chronologically, yet she had more than most women still in their early thirties. More than most women, period. There were lines, fine little etchings of lines, if you looked hard enough-about the eyes, the corners of the mouth. With most women her age, those would have been wrinkles. Her skin was near perfect from years of expensive pampering and from a natural inner vitality that defies age. Maybe she was riper now than she had ever been, in fact. A woman over forty either loses her sex completely or goes into a second bloom, deeper and more carnally exotic than the first.
He knew now that she had had lovers before he met her-a wide variety of them, ranging from boys to old men. But she was adroit in keeping her affairs secret. Even now, there were things he didn't know about her, couldn't fathom. But that was part of her charm also. The mystery.
"Any likely prospects show up today?" she said, breaking in on his thoughts.
"Oh yes. A girl named Marsha Kinsted, from Cleveland."
"Yes, I remember the brochure. The photo escapes me at the moment though. Is she blonde or brunette?"
"Neither. A redhead."
"Ah. She must be quite lovely then. If she's a natural redhead, that is."
"She's natural."
"Hmm-you investigated then." He chuckled, amused at the way she had drawn it out of him.
"Naturally. I was thinking of the business first, of course."
"You're supposed to let Mr. Rudin take care of that part of the interview, darling I"
He leaned forward, grinning. "I can't believe my ears! Cynthia Lockhart-jealous?"
Her lemony eyes narrowed. "Be careful, Marc. I'm not in a mood to be toyed with. I'm thinking of the business also-your third of it as well as my two-thirds. It's bad policy to give a candidate the wrong impression before she becomes a valuable asset to the school. You are supposed to be the embodiment of dignity; your job is to impress both candidates and clients with the respectability of our operation. The business is so often associated with shady types in the public mind-which is why I saw it as a challenge, I suppose. Carelessness could ruin the name we've built up."
"I'm doing my job the way I see fit, baby. That's the way it's got to be."
Her eyes blazed momentarily. "Do you see fit to try every girl who walks into your office, perhaps?"
"Easy now. Not every girl, baby-but there was something I had to find out about this one."
"Something Joe Rudin couldn't have found out?"
"I saved time, let's say. You wouldn't want her moved in if she was frigid or a pro, would you?"
"Of course not-that's one of the rules we established at the start. But still...."
"Oh, come off it. I wasn't thinking about anything except business at the time."
"You've got a good business head, Marc. But you're apt to let your other talents interfere. That's the only thing I'm afraid of."
"Well, there's nothing to be afraid of then."
"You know how important some of our clients are. Even when a girl's done with us, she represents the school."
"No lectures now. We've been in this together too long for that. I know the rules and I play by them."
"Good." She crossed one shapely leg over the other and the robe parted, revealing a beautifully turned calf. "Take me to bed now, Marc."
"Do I stay the night?"
"Is that a condition of your taking me to bed?"
"Well, the night's almost over. I don't fancy climbing out of the rack at four A.M. to catch a taxi."
"You must be getting bored with me. Perhaps I should find another lover, if you're going to talk to me that way."
He laughed, slipping his hand under the robe. "Go ahead. You won't find one as good."
"You're horribly conceited."
"And so are you. That's why we get along so well, isn't it?"
"There are limits, though."
He slid his hand further, and she slowly, reluctantly relaxed.
"What's the limit, Cynthia? Tell me the limit."
"The limit is-ohhh!"
The limit had been reached. The sky's the limit with her, Marc thought to himself. He could feel the tremble of her against his hand.
"Marc!"
The front of the robe slipped open with the flick of his other hand, exposing her big, low-slung breasts to his eyes, the deep valley of shadow between. Her exotic perfume excited him further.
She stiffened, pretending to resist, still miffed with him. But her resistance had no substance behind it. He knew she had decided earlier that day that she wanted a man to share her bed in the evening, and Cynthia Lockhart never went back on a decision. She might go without a man for a long time, letting the urge ripen and grow strong, until that interfered with other things-and then she would decide to have one, and she would have one.
That was Cynthia.
He caressed her for awhile, kissing her big drooping breasts and warming her with his hands, feeling the excitement grow gradually in intensity for her. Only the belt held the robe closed across her waist; somehow this partial vision of the perfection of her body excited him more than complete nudity and he left it that way.
"Marc, Marc-kiss me!"
He slipped to the floor, leaning forward.
She was agitating now, moving slowly on the couch. He made his love suspenseful as he could, making his way slowly.
Her long fingers wound themselves in his hair; her lips fell slack and she began murmuring softly. "Oh! Oh, ok, ok, oh!"
Muffled sounds to his ears, muffled by the silken softness against his cheeks.
He made her wild. She leaned forward, wrapping her arms around his head and damn near suffocating him.
"God!"
Suddenly he found himself locked in an embrace he couldn't break. He was surrounded by living, female flesh.
Instead of pulling away he gripped her tighter. There was a pleasure to be got in exciting a woman this way-a vast, primal kind of pleasure. Perverse or perverted, some might call this, but in the art of making love to a woman those words have no meaning, they belong to an entirely different vocabulary.
The vocabulary of desire is much, much simpler.
"Oh!"
"Ah!"
"Love me, love me, love me damn you-oh damn you, damn you!"
"Mmmmm."
"More, more!"
"Mmmuhhh!"
"I'm melting-don't you know I'm melting darling? Oh! Oh!"
He strained to bring her to fulfillment. "Ah, ah, ahhhhh!"
He could see her straining too, her muscles taut and hard as a board now-her entire being straining to release itself.
Her cry became a rising whine: "Ahhhh!"
She rushed at him in one great tumble and she seemed to explode-and then that was over.
For her. But not for him.
Breathless but still eager with desire, he gathered her and rose, lifting her from the sofa.
He carried her that way into the bedroom.
The bed was a round pale lavender pool in the middle of the spacious room. Round in shape and silk-sheeted, it looked like a stage set waiting for the actors to appear. And all around the room the audience waited-a glass audience, consisting of floor-to-ceiling mirrors.
The actors and the audience were the same.
He deposited her on this softly lighted stage, undid the belt of the robe and slipped it off her amply curved form. Everywhere around the room and even on the ceiling the startling white form with its full fleshy curves was repeated, over and over like a pattern, but each angle a bit different, each tableau of white against pale lavender depicting a new delight, a new wonder.
And then there were two bodies on the bed, in the center of the lavender circumference, and the mirrors sprang to animated life, repeated over and over, until the entire room looked as though it were moving.
"Darling," she rasped, locking her arms around him, "tell me: was she good?"
"Who?"
"That new girl-Marsha, the redhead." "Hell, Cynthia-"
"Tell me!"
"Okay. Sure, she was fine."
"She liked you?"
"Like a bunny."
"And you?"
"I always like that. Let me-"
"You must bring her here then!"
"Here? What-what about the rules?"
"Here, to this room-so I can watch!"
"I don't know-"
Her nails sank into the muscles of his shoulder blades, bringing a surprised cry of pain from him. "Here!" she repeated.
He had never seen her crazy like this before. He raised his hand to slap her, but she sank back against the soft sheet, her eyes closed and her mouth slack, like a portrait of passion.
"If you wish," he whispered, smiling.
And then the mirrors began their dance again, wilder than ever this time.
Four A.M. The streets were deserted and the building was quiet-except for Jerri Thornton's apartment, where an FM set played the cool intricate riffs of West Coast jazz from an all night station at a listenable volume.
Jerri had changed to an informal houserobe, but Marsha still wore the same outfit she had started the evening with. She was stretched out on the couch, her mind fuzzy but tuned in to the music and it's restrained, low-key excitement.
Somebody was stroking her leg. This fact registered gradually through the music, like a series of low notes rising higher and higher.
When the finger music reached the point of crescendo she opened her eyes.
"Hello there," Phil Manzilla said to her, a white-toothed smile on his face. He removed his hand from beneath her skirt. Somehow she felt the loss acutely, for the music had ended at the same moment
"You have a very nice leg."
"Which one?"
He laughed. "The one I was massaging, man. Hate me for that?"
"No. Only we better stop. I have to get some sleep before noon tomorrow."
"Yes, it is getting late. Sorry if I was being sneaky but you sort of nodded out on me and I couldn't resist, "The music put me away, I'm afraid."
"You really dig sounds, don't you? You're a real cool chick, honey."
She sat up groggily. "Thanks. But my head feels like Swiss cheese or something. I really have to go."
He looked disappointed, but he stood up and helped her to her feet. Jerri and her boy friend had slipped off into the bedroom, leaving them alone.
He touched her on the shoulder. "You wouldn't refuse a guy a cup of coffee, would you?"
"Well-just one."
"Your place?"
"All right."
Then she remembered she didn't have anything in her pantry at all as of yet. "I'll have to borrow some stuff of Jerri's," she said, and started for the kitchen seeing the light on and thinking Jerri and her friend might be in there.
She discovered they weren't quickly enough. She had to pass the bedroom on the way, and she saw the couple in there. They were on the bed, with nothing covering them except the soft yellow glow of a bedside table lamp.
She couldn't help stopping and looking. The tilted lampshade made a subdued spotlight effect-spotlighting the busy twosome.
They seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely. They were there for all the world to see, with the door wide open and the shade rolled up. Beyond the window was the rear of the apartment house across the way, and any one staying up there to watch the Late Late Show would be getting his money's worth. And not by looking at the television set, either.
TV would have been a waste of time.
The show on the bed was much better. It had the kind of vital interest, the true-life involment, the simple and straightforward realism that never gets past the Hollywood censors.
A touching tale.
Very touching.
And suddenly, all the Midwestern prudery that lay beneath Marsha's hardened layer of experience burst to the fore. Her face turned to flame as she watched.
The thing to do, of course, was tiptoe silently away and leave the apartment.
Of course.
But something made her stay-and perhaps it was the very prudery that had caused her to blush. She was suddenly seized by curiosity and a desire to observe something she had never seen before. At least, not this way.
But finally she drew away and went on into the kitchen, where she found a jar of instant, and returned with it to the living room.
"We'll have to have it black," she said. "And from the hot water tap."
He nodded and the left the apartment together.
In her kitchen, the coffee was quickly made and served in china cups which she found among other dishes the former inhabitant had left behind.
"I hope you like it black," she said.
He grinned. "Any way is fine, long's the company's right. You feeling straight now?
"Yes, much better. I'm not used to drinking much, I'm afraid."
"You're sort of a strange chick."
"How strange?"
"Like I don't know how to figure you."
"Well, you're strange too, you know. Sometimes yon seem so far away from what's going on around you."
"That's partly because I smoke pot, I guess."
"Is that it? I've never tried that."
"A lot of the girls smoke it"
"They do?"
"Sure. That's how Bernie and Jerri got together-he brings her her ounce once a week."
"But-isn't it habit-forming?"
He laughed. "Sure. Like love and cigarettes. Man, everything's habit forming-it's just a matter of picking up the right habits."
"But I mean, doesn't it hook you or something like that?"
"No, man-that's what the squares think. They don't know the difference between monkey food and plain good grass."
"Monkey food?"
"Hard stuff. Dope. Like heroin or morphine. don't ever get mixed with that stuff baby-you can't kick it."
"But marijuana-"
"It's less habit-forming than nicotine. Look it up in the library if you don't believe me. It's safe and it does less to your system than alcohol."
She laughed, sipping her coffee. "You'd make a good salesman."
"Baby, I'm not selling anything."
She colored. "But I am-is that it?"
He shook his head. "I didn't mean that. You're a nice chick. You're okay, Marsha. Whatever you do, that's your groove. Me, I'm just a part-time musician and full-time bum."
"And I'm just a call girl."
They looked at each other and then laughed. He held out his hand and she took it.
"Pleased to meet you," she said.
"And I hope we'll meet again," he said, rising from the table.
She walked him to the door.
"Thanks for the coffee," he said, turning.
"Thanks for the company. I'm exhausted, but it's been good. I've been alone in this city so long I was getting too much inside myself."
"Can I give you a ring sometime then? Or maybe you could call me, if you're lonely and bugged-maybe that would be better. My number's in the book."
"Thanks, Phil-it's been a nice evening."
She leaned up and kissed him and he returned the kiss warmly but briefly.
He left then. She went to her bedroom and undressed slowly. The bed felt good under her. It was nice to be tired like this, after having done something. Before falling asleep, she thought: it might be a pretty interesting kind of life at that. And then her heavy eyelids closed and her mind gave itself up to the deep dark womb of sleep.
CHAPTER FIVE
Joe Rudin was thin, full-lipped, good-looking young man in his middle twenties. Before he began working for Marc Ferris Enterprises, Inc., he had been a dance instructor in a studio that was part of a well known nationwide chain. As a dancer he had poise, grace, and an instinctive knowledge of the ways of women. He had personality-the kind needed to open them up, overcome their bashfulness and make them feel flattered, so that they came back for more lessons. It seldom took more than three lessons before they were ready to go to bed with him, but Joe was very selective and a lot of them he just flirted with, playing them along. When he found one he really liked, he would teach them everything that wasn't in the book of dancing instructions.
New steps. Old steps.
Vertical and horizontal motions. All kinds of things.
Joe Rudin knew the book so well, as far as women were concerned, that he had thrown it away long ago and written several of his own. He had been around, mostly around women, ranging from fourteen to forty. He had all the love techniques and lore of an Italian beach boy, a Hong Kong gigolo. He was having a lot of fun as a low-pay dance instructor, and it had never occurred to him to convert his store of knowledge to profit in the form of regular paychecks. Then he read this ad in the paper for dancing instructors in some new kind of charm school or something like that. The advertised starting pay was better than he was getting in the studio he was working for, and the qualifications seemed strict, so out of a desire to improve his lot a bit, personal pride, and curiosity, he went to the address given in the ad to be interviewed.
The address, of course, was that of Marc Ferris Enterprises, Inc.
There were six other guys waiting ahead of him in the office that day, but Joe wasn't worried. Talent will out, he thought-he had a lot of confidence in his ability as a dance instructor.
Naturally. He was a perfectionist.
He was also younger than any of the men anxiously waiting for interviews, but this didn't bother him either. Youth has an edge, he figured-an advantage. Youth is cool. You didn't have to wait till you were fifty to be President any more. All you needed was brains and a good smile. He had both.
To kill time while he waited, he went to the men's room down the hall and smoked part of a marijuana cigarette. He always carried a joint or two around with him for occasions like these, when you got hung-up waiting for somebody or something. And he knew how to pace a smoke, so that he would be detached and yet in full possession of his faculties. In other words, cool.
He was cool when his turn came and he walked into the office of Marc Ferris. He had on a neat gray sharkskin suit hand tailored, a shiny pair of black patent leather dancing pumps with pointed toes, an off-white Brooks Brothers shirt and a charcoal gray five dollar imported silk tie. A matching handkerchief hung at a carelessly correct angle of the jacket breast pocket. The pumps shone like the zircon on his ring finger. His hair was black and wavy. His teeth gleamed and his dark eyes sparkled with youthful animation, ready to please and impress.
He stopped about ten feet from the desk in the inner office, wondering if he had made a mistake. Marc Ferris couldn't have been a woman. Could she?
No-not a gorgeous blonde with a pair of headlights big enough to blind you, a face from a magazine cover.
"Please sit down, Mr. Rudin," the face said.
He walked the remaining ten feet and sat down.
The face put on a pair of glasses and in a very business-like manner went over item by item the application form he filled out a couple of hours ago, checking on his personal history and employment record. Her voice was brisk and efficient and no-fooling-around; he found himself answering the questions in like manner, and dropped the smile he had been wearing for a more studied, serious look Finally the glasses came off again and she looked at him, a long, coldly appraising look, as though she were trying to stare right through him. Her eyes were like ice, he thought. Or the eyes of a Persian cat. But since she was only a broad, he returned the stare without wavering.
"You're very young," she said at last.
He allowed a faint curt of the lips upward. "I consider that an advantage. And there was no age stipulation in the ad."
Her face relaxed just a bit; he felt he might be getting through to this strange female, whoever she was.
"No, there wasn't," she said. "But we're not looking for immature types either, whether they're eighteen or eighty."
He let that one go.
"Do you mind if I smoke?" he said.
"No. Have one of these." She pointed to a silver tray on the desk. He took one from it and lit it with a matching lighter.
"Well, do you want to see me execute a few steps, Miss-"
"My name isn't important to you. I'm merely doing the interviews; you'll be dealing with Mr. Ferris if we should decide to hire you. Since your application indicates three years experience as an instructor in a nationally known studio, it won't be necessary for a demonstration, Mr. Rudin."
Joe Rudin was surprised at that, but even more surprised by the next question.
"Have you ever been busted, Mr. Rudin?"
The familiar slang word for arrest sounded so strange coming from her lips that his jaw fell momentarily open.
"You mean arrested?" he said, just to make sure he had heard right.
"That is correct, Mr. Rudin. If you have any kind of a record, you'd better tell me right now."
He contemplated lying to her for only a brief moment-something in her voice made him certain that it would pay in the long run.
"I ran with a gang once when I was sixteen. Got picked up a couple of times on suspicion, that's all."
"No convictions?"
"None."
"You dress well. How do you afford such clothes on the sixty dollars a week you were making on your last job?"
He smiled. She wanted to get cute; okay, he'd get cute.
"Women like me," he said. "They often give me things."
To his surprise, she simply nodded at this fact without any expression at all.
"In other words, you're something of a small-time gigolo."
That got him angry, the way she said it. "Hey listen sister-"
"Sit down, if you wish this interview to continue."
"But-"
"Mr. Rudin!"
He sat down, both cowed and curious.
"Now then," she proceeded. "You say women like you-that's good. Precisely what types of women?"
"Oh, all kinds. Young, old, rich and poor. You get all kinds coming into a good studio. Not just dried-up high school teacher virgins, either. Rich broads looking for a quick easy affair, stuff like that. Say, what kind of an interview is this?"
She ignored the question and shot him another: "Why do women like you, Mr. Rudin?"
His eyes widened wonderingly, but the answer came easily enough: "They like the way I make love to them."
Again she nodded. "And they give you money?"
"Sometimes. Sometimes clothes, jewelry, a watch-sometimes just themselves." He thought she was crazy, but now he was interested.
"I see. You must be fairly good at satisfying them, then."
"I am."
"How good?"
His face slipped into an easy grin.
"Very good. What they don't know, I teach them." He gave her an insolent leer, which she ignored.
"You're not very modest," she commented.
He sat forward in his chair. "Look, sister, what kind of a deal is this? I can be modest as hell, but not when you ask questions like that."
"Questions like that," said the interviewer, "are precisely what I have to ask in order to determine your qualifications for this job."
"As a dance instructor?"
"That's what the ad said, Mr. Rudin. But there's more to it, as you may have guessed. Are you still interested?"
He sat back, the smile returning to his lips. "I certainly am," he said.
"Very well," she said, and pressed a button built into the top of the desk.
A door in the side of the room opened and another woman walked out. Joe turned to look at her. His jaw fell slack for the second time that afternoon. She had jet black hair, a pretty, red-lipped oval face, and a wild, wild little body.
She was absolutely naked.
"This," the blonde said, "is Miss Asher."
Joe Rudin swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat.
"How do you do," he said weakly.
Miss Asher just nodded, standing there in all her five-foot five naked glory. She had small, upturned breasts, a tiny waist, wide flaring hips and enticingly curved legs.
"Miss Asher is the second part of the interview," the blonde woman informed him. "So far you are the first candidate to have gotten this far, Mr. Rudin. If you should be successful with this portion of the interview, the job will be yours."
What job? he thought wildly-but it wasn't the time to ask the question.
"I'm ready," he said, convinced by now that he had gotten mixed up with a completely screwball operation. But the naked fact of Miss Asher was not to be met with any quibbling. He got to his feet. "Just tell me where."
"In that room. You will find the proper facilities with which to prove your eligibility for the position I have in mind in there. I can inform you now that the pay is slightly higher than that we advertised-approximately twice the amount, in fact, to start. Shall we proceed?"
The question was hardly necessary. He was already following the brunette into the room she had come from. And his future employer was bringing up the rear.
It was the jazziest washroom he had ever seen, complete with shower, sink, clothes closet, and, lastly but not leastly, a broad flat and backless leather couch with a pronounced convex curve to it. He had never seen one quite like it, but it was built for an obvious purpose.
A very obvious purpose.
And if there was any doubt at all about this purpose in his mind, it was dispelled when the lovely Miss Asher reclined on its handsome length, arranging herself in a relaxed but ready-for-anything position.
He stood there a minute, feeling his palms sweating. Making love was one thing, but making love on instant order to pass a job qualification test was something new to his experience.
"I, uh, guess I better get undressed," he said, feeling very foolish immediately after he said it.
"I would say that's rather necessary, wouldn't you Mr. Rudin?" the blonde said, twisting the needle a little. And to his amazement she took a clipboard hanging from a near wall and a pencil and sat down with them-in a chair placed not three feet away from the couch where the model reclined.
My God, Joe Rudin thought; the crazy dame's going to take notes.
In fact, that was precisely what she was preparing to do, the glasses back on her face now and the pencil poised over the clipboard.
Joe Rudin had a headful of questions. All kinds of questions concerning this unbelievable deal, as he carefully removed and hung on hangers in the closet his tie, jacket, short and pants. Shoes, socks and underwear came last, and though he worked quickly he made sure to arrange his things so as not to wrinkle them, not wanting to spoil a good first impression just in case this deal turned out to be for real. That, of course, was hard to believe-and he didn't really believe it, for that matter. But he was certainly going through with the second part of the interview, no matter what.
He wouldn't have missed that for the world.
Not by a long shot.
When he was finished undressing, he was ready. When he turned around he made sure his blonde critic took note of that.
She did.
She looked at him with an inscrutable expression, but the pencil trembled a little as it moved on the sheet of lined paper clipped to the clipboard. And then Joe moved to the foot of the couch.
Miss Asher looked up at him admiringly, a new shine to her eyes. Joe turned and looked at Cynthia Lockhart. His face was now absolutely deadpan.
"What would you like to see first, ma'am?" he said politely.
It was the first time he had managed to get any rise out of her at all-she turned definitely pink about the ears and throat. But the face still withheld any expression.
"Whatever you prefer, Mr. Rudin," she said coolly.
And that was when Joe Rudin decided to show her something he had learned from an immigrant Chinese girl who had worked in a Shanghai pleasure palace since the age of twelve.
To do so, he had to shove the couch against the wall. And then he grasped the model by the leg and waist and began to arrange her using the wall as a prop for her feet. The girl yelped with surprise, but when she saw what was going to happen she grew interested.
"I'm not an acrobat," she breathed.
"I'll make you one," he grinned, and, holding her, he began to caress and stimulate her.
She sighed and her heels began kicking in a staccato series of thumps.
"Oh, oh, oh! Oh please, please-"
He climbed up on the couch then, and took her.
Miss Asher turned into a thrasher. The wall became a sounding board for the intense rhythm of his practiced ardor, and the model's face began turning bright red, both from the peculiar manner in which he was stimulating her and from the fact that her blood was rushing to her face.
He made that last for a long time, and when he felt the mounting wave of her desire break over the retaining wall, he let go. She slid down the wall, sighing.
After that, he did other things. Just about everything you could do on a couch, in fact, and he was ready to demonstrate his athleticism in other places, such as on the floor or seated in a chair-but the interviewer finally called a halt.
"That will be quite enough, Mr. Rudin. You may use the shower and get dressed now. Can you be here at nine o'clock tomorrow morning?"
He told her he could.
When she closed the door he turned to Miss Asher and gave her a wink.
"You were great, baby! Want to go one more round?"
"You're out of your mind, man," she groaned. "I'm going home, and take me a nice warm bath to get the knots out of my arms and legs!"
"Mad?"
"God no, honey!"
"How about supper at your place then.-"Well ... If you promise to behave yourself."
"I will-till after supper."
She smiled, turning to him as she hooked her bra in front of the mirror. "We'll eat late, then. But come on-and my name's Lillie."
"Joe, Lillie. I'll buy the steaks on the way. You can tell me what this crazy deal's all about, then."
She laughed, breasts jiggling. "Man, I think you just got a job as a teacher in a very private school for call girls."
"You mean it's not all just a big put-on?"
"No, baby-it's strictly a top-level deal. Let's go; I'll tell you about it on the way."
"I'm all ears."
And that was how he got the job.
Marsha Kinsted awoke at eleven-thirty on the morning following her Village debauch with her friend and fellow call girl, Jerri Thornton.
She was alarmed at the lateness of the hour. Somebody or other named Mr. Rudin was supposed to drop in to see her some time before noon, and here she was with her head feeling as though it were full of wet sawdust.
She struggled out of bed, slipped into a bathrobe and went into the bathroom.
She yawned in the mirror, squirted paste half on her toothbrush and jammed it into her mouth, almost losing an incisor. Her head ached dully and even toothpaste couldn't remove all the fur from her tongue and mouth. She had to splash cold water in her face to get her eyes permanently open, whereupon she searched the medicine cabinet. Mercifully, someone had left a bottle with a few aspirins there. She grabbed it and swallowed three of them.
It was a hell of a way to begin the first day of school, no matter how you looked at it.
Damn, she thought. Why did I take those last ten drinks last night?
But that was only begging the fact of her hangover. She didn't have time, but she had to take a shower anyway; her body felt stale and sweaty, and she needed it to get the circulation going. Better to be caught in a shower than this way, she thought-and then laughed at the thought.
She wondered if it would matter.
A few minutes later she was in the tub, taking a piping hot shower and lathering herself with scented soap from head to toe, the plastic shower cap over her hair tightly to protect it from getting wet.
The warm water excited her breasts, particularly the nipples, which she lathered with her fingers, enjoying the pleasing sensation. Her breasts felt good in her hands-she squeezed them, teasing the nipples erect and examining them fondly. They were damn good breasts by any standard, she thought proudly. And so was 'he rest of her, she thought as she soaped her legs, massaging the muscles alive under the hot stream.
Thoroughly rinsed, she switched the water abruptly to cold. She yelped with the sensation, doing a little dance under the hard stream of cold water, which nearly took her breath away. After a minute of this, she shut off the tap and stepped out.
A few minutes later, she had toweled and powdered and was sitting in front of her vanity mirror wearing a pale green silk dressing robe, making up her face and brushing out her chestnut locks. She felt much better, and when her downstairs buzzer rang, it was with a more normal sort of panic that she jumped up to give an answering buzz.
That will be Mr. Rudin, she thought. He'll see me like this, in a dressing robe-but after all, isn't that a correct outfit to wear?
It seemed so to her, and since she had no time to squeeze into anything more formal anyway, she concentrated on shaping the outline of her lips with a lipstick brush, making sure they were perfect, a deep darkish red.
Then she was up and answering the tap on her door.
Joe Rudin was younger then she had expected and at first glance seemed just a shade out of character for a representative of the Ferris caliber of instructors. But he was handsomely dressed in a lightweight olive-colored Dacron summer suit, cream shirt and black slim tie, and he removed his matching short brim straw deferentially as he stood in the doorway.
"Miss Kinsted?"
"Yes-come in please, Mr. Rudin." Inside, she found herself nervously edgy, not knowing what to expect. But he soon put her at her ease. "Call me Joe, honey. Just get up?" She blushed a bit. "Yes-I know it's terrible, but I did a bit of celebrating last night. The name's Marsha."
"Marsha. Fine; don't feel guilty about it. In this profession you won't be getting up much before noon anyway." He tossed his hat on the sofa and sat down. "You're a lovely girl, Marsha. As your instructor I'm supposed to be more stiff and formal, but I thought I'd get that remark out of the way. Mind walking around a bit?"
"Like this?" She paced back and forth in front of the sofa where he sat, appraising her.
"That's beautiful. They said you'd been a model, but even some of them don't walk right-they put it on a little too much. How's your dancing?"
"Oh, fair."
"It's going to be perfect when I finish with you. I'm the dance pro, in case they didn't tell you. You've got to know everything from the black bottom to the latest teen-age craze."
Marsha found a smile, overcoming her nervousness. "They're really thorough, aren't they?"
"It pays-for you and for them. Social skill, you know-and you'd be surprised what they do at foreign embassy cocktail parties. They may hate Americans the world over, but they dig the dancing and the music the most. And after taking a good look at you, Baby, I'd say you're going to be entertaining at some of the best shindigs."
"You're very flattering."
"Don't get a swelled head. How's your bossa nova?"
"Primitive, I'm afraid. But I thought that went out."
"It did, for awhile. But it's a variation of the samba, and that's a basic step, been around a long time. The way I teach, you start with the toughest and work back to the simple stuff. That way you get to see where everything comes from."
"Are you my only instructor?"
"Oh, no. Would that I were, hon. There's three others who'll show you, um, other things. Older guys, you know. Ever handle a weirdo?"
Marsha thought quickly of the night before, and Mr. Foxx.
"I've seen the action," she said.
"But never handled it. Good. Hell, with your looks and movement there's going to be no sweat." He reached over and twisted the knob of a small radio on the end table. After a few moments he got some Latin dance music, and stood up.
"Can you do this?"
"I'll try."
He took her in his arms and they began moving to the rhythm. It was a fairly intricate step, and after a few moments of dancing with him she realized she was really outclassed.
"I didn't know I was so terrible," she laughed.
"You're not bad. You've got natural rhythm." He laughed too then. "You know, I used to have to say that to all my clients when I was just a dance instructor, but now I can level with a chick. Your sense of rhythm's good, honey-you just need a clearer idea of what the steps have to do with the music."
"Well teach me-I'm ready to learn."
"Not here. We go downtown for that."
"Then I'll have to change."
"Not right away."
"No?"
"No." He sat down again, smiling up at her. "You see, I sort of got ahead of myself when you opened the door and I got a look at you, Marsha. The first thing I was supposed to tell you is that you're supposed to treat all the instructors from the school exactly as though they were clients."
"Oh, I see," she said a little sarcastically.
He shrugged. k "It makes sense, honey. In the first place, you've got to know how to greet a John who calls on you in the morning, like I did."
"How interesting. And just how do I do that?"
"Depends on the John. When you get to know him, you'll know how to treat him. But I'm talking about the first time. First impression and all that, see?"
"Am I dressed wrong?"
"No-that was good. A guy calls on a girl in the morning and early afternoon. He finds her in a lovely green dressing robe, as though she might just have gotten out of bed-only her hair's combed and her face is made up and she looks beautiful-like you do. That excites him all to hell. If he's a young guy, he pictures himself getting next to a real woman of the world. An older guy simply finds it charming, and he's eager as hell already." He grinned widely. "Like me," he added.
"Well I seem to have done that right, then. What next?"
"Next you offer him a cup of coffee."
"I'm not set up for housekeeping yet."
"That's okay-I was just telling you. I had coffee-and before I fell up anyway. Now, if the John calls later than two in the afternoon, say, you offer him a drink instead. How's your mixology?"
"Even more primitive than my dancing."
"Okay, it's good you tell me these things-well have to work on that, too. You don't have to be a bartender, but you have to know how to make basic cocktails and things well. I won't show you that, but I'll leave word with Miss Ritter. She's the expert in that department."
"Miss Ritter?"
"Yeah-a female instructor. Surprised?"
"Not at anything any more."
"Good. Now, let's go into the bedroom." He got up and put his arm around her waist, tugging at the robe.
"Do I get rushed off like this by the real Johns?" she said.
"As far as you're concerned, I am a real John, honey-remember that. Now, let's go."
Since it wasn't her place to argue the matter, she let him lead her off into the bedroom. The sheets were pulled aside and there was still a little hollow where she had curled in sleep the night before.
Standing behind her by the bed, he pulled her robe down around her shoulders and began kissing her softly about the neck and back. The music still came faintly from the other room, and though she hadn't felt a bit excited since he had appeared, she now felt the small hairs on the nape of her neck rise with the delicately sensuous sensation his lips wrought.
He turned her around in his arms then and began kissing her almost bare breasts. She began to feel a tingle, a glow, as, holding her by the waist, he bent her backward, arching her over the bed and uncovering the nipples.
He kissed them each, very gently at first, and then more and more forcefully. "Ohhh!"
She was definitely excited now, and again she wondered if this should be. But she stopped thinking about that when he firmly pulled the robe the rest of the way off her body and lowered her to the bed.
"Some guys," he said, "get embarrassed at this point-the undressing. You've got to detect that and put them at their ease by making the right kind of conversation, or touching them-whatever comes to you. Take a kid, the son of an out-of-town businessman, ior example, who's doing this for the first time. He might become all flustered and excited. He's worrying about whether or not he can satisfy a swell looking babe like you. Now maybe you feel bored as hell with the whole thing, but you've got to see this and make him think you're getting the biggest charge in the world out of him. That's not so tough, once you get used to it. If the kid turns you off, think about something else-but talk and act like you were just thrilled with him, and unless he's impotent, things won't be too bad."
There was nothing bashful about her instructor, however. Stripped, he turned and walked to the bed, and Marsha saw that there wouldn't have to be any preliminary teasing on her part.
None whatsoever.
At least he was not a grabber, she thought to herself as he lay down on the soft mattress. He kissed and caressed her breasts, cupping their ripe circumferences in his nimble fingers and squeezing them and biting at the rosy red tips until they swelled into stones of desire.
"You certainly know what you're doing," she gasped.
"Mmm. You're peaches and cream, baby. This one's for me, and to hell with the school."
He placed his flat palm against her soft back then, and with his lips still on her breast began a firm supple rotating motion, gathering her flesh in his strong fingers, that started a pulse beating for her.
The love pulse.
His hand slipped then, and began massaging her in another place.
The hand felt as though it were spinning her around like a propellor.
Faster and faster.
"Ahhhh!" she sighed. He was good, really good. He knew his business, and took care of her with the expertise of a confident artist. He was the greatest advertisement for good old American know-how going. He was fine.
She hardly noticed the rush of his taking her. He was just all of a sudden, working, stronger and stronger. Faster and faster. Better and better.
Then he slowed down just as gradually, leaving her poised at the threshold of fulfillment.
"Oh," she sighed, "is the lesson-over?"
He chuckled softly in her ear. "Not hardly, baby-I'm just beginning."
"My God-you're fantastic."
"You behave like a bunny yourself."
"I love this."
"How about a lesson in rhythm?"
"Yes, yes-anything you say, Joe!"
The music was still coming in from the other room, a Spanish speaking local station.
It was perfectly suited for the kind of lesson he wanted to give her.
He began matching its rhythms. Just the basic beat at first, firm, quick.
Then he began embellishing. Alternating with short, off-beat excursions between, catching the intricacy of the music with his body actions.
He was a professional in every sense of the word.
He swayed, moved, rotated, changed positions without missing a beat, moved her all over the wide expanse of bed just as though the two of them were dancing.
They were.
They were doing a dance of pure desire. The dance became a marathon, damn near shaking the bed apart. She felt herself rising, higher and higher and higher. Higher.
He was like the live end of a high voltage wire. She cried out as the rhythm became impossible, faster and faster.
And then the whole damn room seemed to explode and go up in smoke.
She screamed once, and then that was over.
A few minutes later they were smoking cigarettes together, in the aftermath of their furious bout.
"That was quite a lesson," she said after awhile.
"Thanks," he answered. "But you turned out to be a star pupil. A teacher's pet." And he reached over and petted her affectionately.
"Now," he said, "I think we better get dressed and go have something to eat. We've got work to do this afternoon."
"Work?", she smiled. "You know, that's a strange word for that Joe."
He nodded, agreeing.
CHAPTER SIX
Marsha met the Ferris School instructress named Letitia Ritter just three days later.
Letty Ritter was a clothes-horse, but a clothes-horse of a different color. A tall, slim brunette, she had a wardrobe that would match that of the most chic Fifth Avenue matron, and quite a few of those along Park. She had a body that just missed being hard-missed by the grace of a few timely curves.
Any man would have struck out on those curves, however.
Letty Ritter was a confirmed Lesbian bachelorette. A she-male.
Of Lesbians there are all types, ranging from the white-faced, wolfish Village vampires to the tough Dutches in suede leather jackets with their hair cropped short, a good imitation of a truckdriver look on their faces, a pair of Levis and hard-soled boots. But these are merely the obvious types, the types you would spot instantly on the street and know they were dykes. Depending on who you were, you would give them a quick covert stare, smile and pass on.
You would stare much longer at Letitia. She had a thin, hollow-cheeked face, framed by a shoulder-length gentle swirl of coal black hair, a wide red swath of a mouth, rather thinnish but beautifully formed and not at all mannish; a matching pair of large dark eyes, a high clear white forehead. Her lashes were long and completely feminine, and her brows long and curved.
She might be wearing a small dark cloche on her head, a matching black or charcoal gray dress or outfit, with just a taste of sparkle from expensive earrings, an art-crafted brooch. They would be platinum, invariably, and the sparkle would not come from zircon.
Letty served an important function as an instructress in the Ferris School for Call Girls, as the official title was registered in the books, if not on the door of the office on Fifth.
She was a fashion and cosmetics expert. She had majored in fashion design in a good northeastern women's college, and there was not much concerning fashion she did not know. Her own person was a continual demonstration of this fact. When she walked her toy black poodle, it looked like a cover from Vogue come to life. She might have been a top fashion model, or simply the fashion-plate wife of a top corporation executive, and the longer you stared the more you would be convinced of this.
Her Lesbianism was almost physically undetectable. Only if you happened to be looking for it through foreknowledge might you see its outlines in her sleekly slim, willowly figure, her occasionally hard-eyed glance. But even then you wouldn't be sure whether or not it was merely your imagination suggesting these things. Letitia was a beautiful woman. Very.
A beautiful woman should be a thing of joy forever, according to the poet. And Letty Ritter was-but only for women, not for men. The men she went out with were merely part of her outfit, like the brooch or the earrings. Very handsome escorts-and very handsomely paid.
Letitia was well-off and didn't really need to work for the Ferris School. She had been left money by a well-to-do aunt and invested it comfortably in funds which drew a sizable yearly interest. She had a good education and had worked briefly with good future prospects on the staff of a prominent fashion magazine. She knew a lot of "right" people and could move easily in a variety of social circles.
She knew Cynthia Lockhart, for instance. That was how she had gotten wind of Cynthia's "recent amusement" and subsequently volunteered her services to the enterprise. For pay, of course. There was always an extra fur she needed, a new outfit fresh from Paris, an Italian handbag, a ruby, a diamond. Those little extras in life which require extra spending money. She drew a salary of three hundred dollars a week in the form of a certified check from Ferris Enterprises, Inc. She spent every cent of that on the extras. And it kept her toy poodle, Nefertiti, in good grade-A government-inspected prime roast beef.
But aside from the money, her job with the school was what could be called a labor of love.
She considered herself very fortunate indeed to have stumbled across such an opportunity in life-an opportunity to combine career with pleasure. As a fashion consultant, she was kept very busy indeed-but advising girls on the latest trends and tastes of the haut monde represented only half of her assignment with the school.
The other half was even more interesting an occupation.
Extremely interesting.
Owing to her unique position among the Ferris School personnel, Letty Ritter often had her students come to her by appointment at her penthouse Sutton Place address. Such was the case with Marsha, who visited her at three o'clock on a Thursday afternoon.
Marsha had gone out on a date the previous evening with another Ferris School instructor, a retired investment broker and ex-director of a male escort service named Blair Ewing-a handsome, silver-haired man in his early fifties who had no taste for women at all. The evening had been a dry run, in a manner of speaking. A party was being thrown by a mid-eastern shipping potentate touring the country on semi-official business, and Marsha was to attend as an extra girl, a decoration whose bedroom services would not be required. She had to buy a gown for the occasion, the tab for which was picked up by the school until it could be deducted from her earnings. Blair Ewing turned out to be gracious, cultured, extremely knowledgeable in matters of social protocol-an excellent instructor in all ways, attracting her attention to little things she would have missed, telling her which people were important and which not, and how to treat either category; what manners had to be observed at what times, and when to let the hair down completely.
It had been a thoroughly interesting event; Marsha paced her drinking and learned a lot. She met a well-known playwright, a businessman, a senator and a European duchess, among other notables. In the posh surroundings everything had looked glamorous, like something from a movie, and it had been near impossible to tell which of the women present were girls like herself and which not. There were plenty of girls around and they all were quite lovely. She made two hundred dollars for the evening without having to turn a trick. Half of that amount went into a newly opened bank account, in her name, and half of it, the half she never saw, went to Ferris Enterprises, Inc.-which seemed to her not at all unfair in the light of the education she was receiving.
Calling on Letitia Ritter was another kind of experience altogether. Aside from Jerri, she had made the acquaintance of three other girls going through the same course, and though they were not supposed to talk to new students about their instructors, she had heard enough to be slightly awed by the occasion. And slightly scared.
She had never been attracted to the idea of Lesbian love at all. And she gathered that something of that nature was involved, though the other girls seemed to treat it all pretty much matter-of-factly, not bothering to go into detail.
"She's not such a bad old gal," a girl named Pat had said. "You'll learn some useful things from her, baby-just watch out she doesn't develop too strong a yearn for you, that's all." Another girl named Phyllis had defended her by saying: "She's really a beautiful woman. And so graceful and intelligent! I didn't mind being with her at all, really." But the other girls, at least some of them, had laughed at Phyllis and dropped remarks like: "Watch yourself, honey; you sound like you want to go the same route."
So it was with a certain amount of fear and repulsion, curiosity and awe, that Marsha cabbed to the address on Sutton Place that Thursday afternoon of her first meeting with Letitia Ritter.
The building itself was sufficient to impress anyone, a recently built structure, fifteen stories tall, with garden apartments, spacious balconies staggered up its courtyard facade; it was built of white stone and brick and glass and luxuriously serviced and maintained. Marsha was not yet able to calculate the rents of such places, but she imagined a penthouse apartment in such a building would run well over five hundred a month-which indeed it did.
A silent self-service elevator whisked her up to the top floor and deposited her in a beautiful modern tile and marble corridor which gave entrance to the four penthouse apartments housed atop the tall new building. She walked down a deep soft maroon carpet running between beautiful potted ferns to the door marked 15-A, a plain stark-white door with the name Letitia A. Ritter emblazoned in neat gold script on a silver metal plaque beneath the one-way glass peep slot. She pressed the ivory button beside the frame and waited. In a few minutes, the door was opened by a handsome young Negro maid in a severe, tight-throated black uniform dress.
"I'm Miss Kinsted," Marsha said. "I think Miss Ritter is expecting me."
The maid nodded. "Yes-please come in," and stepped aside for Marsha to enter.
Letitia did not keep Marsha waiting long, once the maid had directed her to the living room and seated her on a spacious highbacked Empire style cobalt-blue couch. The room was breathtaking, and she barely had time to take in the white broadloom wall-to-wall carpeting, the peculiar combination of modern and antique styling of the decor, something far different from anything Marsha had ever seen, before her instructress made her appearance.
She was dressed in an elegant hostess outfit consisting of a short flare jacket of quilted gold and white cloth and tight white bolero pants, tied with laces around the calves. On her small feet were white Italian lounging slippers, open at the toes, showing her violently red nails which matched her fingernails and lips. The light outfit and the brilliant touches of color were in contrast to the dramatic black swirl of her hair which hung loosely over the corner of one eye. She held an ivory cigarette holder in her slim fingers, inserting it between her brilliant lips as Marsha rose from the sofa. She was about thirty years old, and her large dark eyes regarded the younger girl softly but with a faintly critical attitude at the same time.
"How do you do, Marsha," she said, smiling and ex-tendinc her hand. "I've been looking forward to meeting you. We can dispense with formalities. You may call me Letty."
Her surprisingly gentle voice had an undertone of firm command which put Marsha effortlessly into an inferior position while establishing a friendly note to their relationship-or at least the extension of future possibilities of intimacy beyond the point of teacher-pupil relationship. Her hand felt cool to Marsha's, yet she pressed the younger girl's with warmth.
"You have a lovely place," Marsha said with open admiration in her voice. "I've never seen anything quite like it."
"Thank you. But I must show you around then, after Linda brings us some wine. Tn the meantime, please sit down; we must get to know each other a bit I believe Mr. Ferris told me you come here from Cleveland?"
Marsha said she had, and soon they were both talking about Cleveland and then other subjects like old friends. The maid appeared with a silver tray holding two glasses of imported sherry, and then, after a few sips, with glasses in hand, they began touring the apartment.
It was the apartment of a taste-conscious intellectual. Everything had been designed by Letitia herself, from the floor to ceiling bookcases in her "private study" to the automatically revolving clothes racks in her amply stocked wardrobe closets. Even the landscaping of the outdoor rooftop garden had been altered according to her specifications. If her aim was to impress, she was thoroughly successful.
But that was not her aim, as Marsha gradually began to realize. In effect, Marsha was getting a course m taste and design, for the owner of the apartment was subtly delivering a lecture by example. Everything, down to the color of the ash trays, had a reason behind it; an aesthetic reason or a functional reason, and most often both. Letty encouraged questions, and Marsha, once she began to sense what was going on, began to ask them. Each question brought a smile to the instructor's glamorous face; she was enjoying herself thoroughly-
And so was Marsha. She quite forgot about the Other aspects of the visit as they discussed everything from clothes to the kind of paintings best suited to particular places. The conversation often drifted just as unnoticably into the areas of literature and art and music, and Marsha was amazed at the older woman's intimate knowledge of these subjects, too.
"It's important for you to read a lot, darling," Letty said when they were together in the bedroom. "Therapeutically and for business reasons. Polite people really don't prefer to go to bed with beautiful morons, despite what the movies say. You can run a discussion of Becket up into a nice tip beyond the fee, and that windfall is all yours. Besides, you'll have lots of times when you've nothing to do; you'll be bored as hell and all your friends will be busy-a good book is the best solution."
"What would you suggest I start on?"
She smiled coyly. "There are fashions in literature, too, you'll discover. But I'll tell you what to pick up in order to discuss almost anything at some of the parties you'll attend."
Then she handed Marsha a book from a shelf built into the wall over the head of the wide low bed. Marsha took it, noticing that the plain brown cover bore no title at all, not even a design.
"Take this with you when you go, darling. It's not exactly conversational stuff, but I think you'll find it quite interesting-and full of things you should know, I'll have to ask for it back; it's a privately printed and very rare volume, worth at least several thousand dollars on the market now, I think. What you don't find in there you won't need to know, if you know what I mean. It's illustrated."
"Thank you, Letty. I'll take good care of it."
"I'm sure you will, my dear. You're a very lovely gir!"
Somehow the remark caused Marsha's ears to flush with pleasure. From her bull session with the girls she had come away with an image of Letitia Ritter that was a shade frightening, and it had been said then that she almost never complimented anyone the way she had just complimented Marsha. In fact, despite the catty things that they had said, the whole impression Letty made was different. Her apartment, her clothes, her furniture were all things of eye-popping loveliness; she was a woman of exquisite taste and breeding, intelligent, beautiful, and graceful. But most of all, she seemed warm and human underneath the hard polish of her exterior-and this was the quality that captivated Marsha most of all.
"It's been so wonderful," she sighed, "I can hardly believe this is all real."
Letty was smoking another cigarette through the ivory mouthpiece. She gave a short laugh, plumping herself down on the bed and tossing her head back. "Maybe it isn't," she said.
Marsha was confused by the abrupt change in the woman's manner.
"Why, what do you mean by that?"
"All this," Letty replied, waving her hand in a sweeping gesture. "It looks beautiful doesn't it? Oh yes, and you're quite impressed-just as you should be, darling. You won't find many places to equal it even in this glamour capitol. But in fact at times this all seems quite hollow and empty."
A note of bitterness had crept into her voice. Marsha sat down on the edge of the bed, disturbed by the older girl's mood.
"I should think you'd be very happy here," she ventured timidly.
The remark brought another short laugh, more friendly than bitter this time. She was reclining back against the pillow, and her hand came down over Marsha's, pressing it warmly.
"An empty place is never a happy place, darling. But don't mind the way I'm talking; wine in the afternoon always brings out the maudlin in me."
"I feel it a bit too."
Letty suddenly stretched her arms toward Marsha. "Come here, precious!"
Marsha tensed at the unexpected invitation, not quite knowing how to take it. But suddenly she found herself in Letty's arms, being embraced in a very warm and tender manner. It could have been nothing, a hug, a gesture stemming from impulse-and it was that.
"You are precious, you know-so young and fresh. You've really picked me up today and I love you for it. Friends?"
Marsha couldn't help smiling at the almost child-like simplicity of the way she put it.
"Friends," she nodded. And they kissed.
Just like that. An innocent kiss, a kiss to seal a new-found friendship, a girl-to-girl kiss, two soft pairs of painted lips meeting in the soft light of late afternoon filtering through the pale yellow drapes.
Suffused in this warm gentle glow, they held the embrace. Tense at first, Marsha soon found herself relaxing against Letty's breast, letting her hair be stroked and petted, her cheeks and eyes and forehead kissed. It was such a strange and delicate sensation, entirely new to her, and altogether pleasant somehow-so pleasant she wondered at her own reaction to this, whether she should be repulsed and more on her guard against this woman. But it was impossible to think of her as an instructor the way Joe Ruden was an instructor-this seemed too unplanned, the result of some mutually recognized impulse following out its course....
"Precious," Letty whispered over and over, the same word: "Precious, precious little darling...."
And then their lips met again. Deeply, a surprise, a completely new sensation to Marsha.
"Ohh!" she said when they parted, a little sigh of alarm.
But Letitia merely smiled. "Did I frighten you?"
"N-no; not really, I-"
"You're so innocent. Really, none of the girls have been quite like you. Somehow I can think of you being involved in almost anything and yet still retaining that confounded innocence. Just don't hate me, Marsha-please?"
"Oh no; I couldn't!"
"But perhaps you could like me a wee bit?"
"But I do, I do!"
"And I want yon to, you know. More than anything, I want you to like me, darling."
"I'm sorry, it's just that I've never-" She halted, blushing.
"Made love with another woman?" Letty said, holding her gaze with the magnetism of her dark, deep eyes, and smiling.
Marsha said nothing.
"I know that," Letty whispered, pressing Marsha close again. "To me, you're a virgin, darling. Can you understand that feeling in me?"
Their voices were mere whispers now, unreal.
"I-I think so."
"Then let me love you. Let me kiss you, darling-it means so much to me, so very much if you'll only spare me this moment."
Marsha was entranced by the delicate tracing of the woman's fingernails over her ears, her cheeks and throat. The mood was almost irresistible, the warm, sensual, lazily exciting tenderness of it. She closed her eyes, shutting out all thought.
Their mouths met again, this time in a relaxed, prolonged embrace. But Marsha wasn't saying no by then, either, surprised over the soul-kisses or not. She felt a tingling in her breasts where they pressed flat against Letty's, who wore nothing under the hostess outfit. She felt a spreading glow of excitement, faint yet and delicate, but one part of her mind was pushing to see how far this route could take her. This was far from a road race, but she knew she was going somewhere at that.
"Let me take this off you," Letty whispered, fingering the buttons of her suit jacket.
Marsha let her. That, and the blouse. She balked at the brassiere, but Letty began kissing and caressing all around it, and her breasts felt the desire to be free and in the open.
They soon were.
Definitely in the open, and definitely free.
Letty knew a bargain when she saw one. If she had been shopping for ripe honeydews in a market she would have hesitated, and she didn't hesitate now. The flesh she took to her hands was soft and bruisable, but she was an excellent tester, well-experienced and respecting of the delicate art of nature.
"Ohh! " Marsha groaned.
It was all over then and she knew it. The pulsing ache at her steel-taut nipples wronght by Letty's fingers and then mouth had decided the issue.
She made no move to resist as Letty stripped her of her skirt and shoes and stockings. And finally, panties.
Confident of her victory, the older girl got up and undressed herself, turning her back to the bed.
Marsha watched, fascinated. A woman's body had never affected her quite this way-it was as though she were seeing one for the first time.
In the curtain-filtered sunlight, it looked beautiful, white and pure and statue-like.
But that was a very living statue. It was alive and it moved, turning slowly to reveal a high, firm, rosy-pointed set of breasts, a long torso beautifully proportioned, long slim legs.
The statue moved over to the bed, and then onto it. Marsha felt the woman's body come against her like a wave of soft warmth. They locked their arms around each other like two children caught in a storm, their breasts flattening back.
They pressed closer, tighter. With eyes closed and breasts heaving they sought the delicious contact of flesh against flesh.
Letty began stroking Marsha's legs. Her caresses became bolder and bolder. Marsha was both curious and excited. She thought, how far can something like this go? It seemed to her that they were unnecessarily exciting each other, that this would all have to end in the nothingness of unfulfilled passion. She knew how to kiss and caress and stimulate just like a man would-but how could she possibly satisfy the way a man did? And get satisfaction herself?
These questions were scarcely academic ones. Marsha's interest was as real as her delicately voluptuous excitement-the two elements controlling her like an alternating current running through her.
This wasn't exactly great. A man could excite her more-but that wouldn't be the same kind of excitement somehow; not like this, at least. Perhaps the two were simply not to be compared. But did it make a girl a true Lesbian if she let herself get excited this way? One by one these questions rose to the fore of her mind, between the waves of excitement Letty's lips were causing as they roamed carelessly over her body.
Her breasts and nipples.
Her legs.
And then-
And then she was being kissed in a way she had never been kissed before.
Not by a woman at least. "Ohh!"
That was such an eerie, surprising sensation. Almost like having a man-
She closed her eyes and lay back, giving herself up to the sensation.
"Oh! Oh, oh, ohhh...."
The sighs escaped her lips automatically, as Letty's mouth excited. More.
"Yes yes; that's right; oh!"
A flame had been lighted. A flSckeringly small flame at first, but one which grew stronger and stronger until it gave off an intensely burning fire. She moved around it, feeling the ache of passion in the tops of her breasts, the pit of her stomach, everywhere. More.
And then, helpless, she saw Letty move around on the bed.
She groaned, but the groan was smothered as Letty pressed against her mouth.
And then she knew. She knew that was possible, that could be done this way, that could go on and on and end up somewhere.
She began to return caress for caress, and then the two of them were moving in repeated surges of passion on the huge bed.
Faster and faster.
More and more and more, until there could be no more, until any more was physically impossible.
But that didn't matter. The rhythm sent them surging away and over the edge of the precipice, and then they were falling, falling into a deep dark warm wonderful world.
That had been so gradual, so slow and easy, Marsha had hardly noticed the passing of time. But she saw by the clock that they had been in bed almost two hours.
Letty kissed her on the mouth gently and then got up.
"You were wonderful,' she said, resuming a normal voice. "Now you better take a shower, honey. If you need anything just ring and Linda will bring it. Do you feel okay?"
"Yes-I think."
Letty smiled knowingly. "This's always curious the first time. I could have been ruthless, you know. You'll have to do that with another girl in front of a John sometime, and since you were inexperienced I didn't want to shock you. Even if you don't go for that much, you can see it has its points, and a little acting always helps."
Marsha was a little shocked at the woman's abruptly clinical attitude. It was as though she were giving a critique of some little play or exercise that had just been been performed.
"Oh, I enjoyed that well enough," she said, a little stung. She got up from the bed herself, to gather up her clothes and leave as quickly as possible, but something, some innate curiosity made her pause and turn to Letty again. Letty was putting on a loose terry cloth wrap, no doubt getting ready for an hour in the tub of one of her three bathrooms herself.
"What you said before we-"
"Before we made love to each other?"
"Yes, I mean, about emptiness...."
"Emptiness? I was getting a bit dramatic, I guess, but it seemed the thing to do at the time."
Marsh's face pinked.
"It sounded convincing. Aren't you really rather lonely?"
"Aren't you?"
"Yes, but-"
"So what's the difference? Do you think a man can make you any less lonely?"
"Have you ever had one, Letty?"
"I'm not a virgin, darling. I let a man make a fool of himself once, and I detested every minute of that. They're crude, stupid, inconsiderate beings-I despise them."
"They're not all that way."
Letty shrugged impatiently. "Maybe not. Perhaps you find them different. Do you have a boy friend?"
"No," Marsha had to admit. "I was engaged once, but it was a mistake."
"Ran out on you, huh?"
"It's a very personal experience."
"Well don't get huffy, dear. Perhaps I've had my personal experiences' also."
"But you must get lonely at times, living in this big place."
Letty's eyes narrowed, becoming hard again. "You're really very naive, darling-and perhaps a bit resentful because you think I conned you into going to bed with me. But if you stop to examine that, you'll discover that I never forced you to do a thing. I'm no more of a pervert or freak than you are, and maybe less. I know what I like and I get it."
"What do you like?" Marsha said as acidly as she could.
Letty ran her eyes over Marsha boldly and burst out laughing.
"God, you're unbelievable! Where did Marcus pick you up--in a hothouse somewhere?" She advanced toward Marsha, hands on hips, taking up a mannish stance a few feet away.
"I'll tell you what I like, darling. I like young girls with beautiful bodies and faces-like you. I don't give a damn if they've made love to battalions, legions. They're all just challenges to me. I give you more credit than most-you're simply naive, not stupid. Part of your mind must be somewhere else, really."
"I don't understand!" Marsha said, white-faced and trembling with anger at the harsh words being delivered to her.
"What I'm trying to tell you is," Letty said slowly, drawing out each word, "you're just another notch in my belt, darling. Another thrill, a good two-hour kick. You'll be working your rear off for all sorts of men pretty soon; you'll huff and you'll puff and you'll stand on your head when you're told to. For what? For money and nothing else. But you with your dumb hicksville Midwestern notions about morals, you think if a woman likes other women better than men there must be something wrong with her, something disgusting and filthy."
Marsha stood trembling, shocked to speechlessness by the cruel tongue-lashing Letitia was giving her.
"I never said that," she managed to gasp. "You're being unfair!"
"Am I?" Letitia mocked. "No, you never said that-but you thought it, didn't you? I know your kind, kiddo; you don't fool anyone except yourself. With that big innocent act, I mean! God, wake up, will you? Stop acting like a blushing bride every time somebody takes you, for God's sake!"
Tears stung Marsha's eyes as she whirled around and left the room, taking her clothes with her. She had never met anyone so hateful and cruel. Even with the male instructors of the school she had never been made to feel so cheap.
She dressed quickly, ignoring the offer of the shower. Her only desire was to leave, to get away from this place.
To be alone.
After Marsha had left her apartment, Letitia Ritter returned to her bedroom, still dressed in the terry cloth robe. She removed it and lay down naked on the bed. From the night stand beside it she picked up her ivory holder and inserted a fresh cigarette in the open end, then lit it with a tiny gold table lighter. After a few puffs she reached out and pressed a gold buzzer set into the wall, and within a few seconds the maid appeared.
"Bring me a drink, Linda," she said. "A strong one, Scotch over rocks or something."
The pretty, light-skinned maid nodded. "Will that be all, Miss Ritter?"
"No When you've done that-no, now in fact-get the hell out of your clothes and join me in bed."
The maid nodded again and left the room.
Alone, Letitia puffed on the cigarette and thought about Marsha. She remembered every detail of the girl's beautiful body, her face, her voice.
Her harsh little laugh sounded in the empty room.
"Well, Letitia, you haven't been hit by one like that in a long long time, have you? Sucker!"
And then she put down the cigarette and turned over and began crying softly into her hands. It was a barely audible sound. It had stopped by the time Linda returned with the drink.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Marsha had little time to smart under the stinging words of Letitia Ritter. She met Jerri upon returning to the brownstone near Riverside in the West Forties. Jerri saw at once that she was in a state, and, observing her customary tact, invited her out to dinner after Marsha had had herself a good cry in the privacy of her own apartment. It was the kind of catharsis she needed. Marsha was like someone who had been sleepwalking up to that point, going through the motions of life without really being involved in what she was doing.
Letty's words had been harsh, calculated to shock. But she had made a point, and, later that same evening, Marsha came to a realization concerning herself: she wasn't anywhere nearly as tough a person as she had thought herself to be.
Talking with Jerri helped. Jerri didn't pry or question her concerning what had actually happened up in Letitia's penthouse apartment-she had a pretty fair idea anyway. And she could see that her redheaded friend was going through a crisis and had neared the breaking point.
That happened with every girl sooner or later. The sooner the better, Jerri philosophized-to herself. She liked Marsha as a person, a woman who had been kicked a few times by life but retained somehow a way of looking at things that often blinded her to faults and weaknesses of people, including herself. Perhaps because Jerri often saw people too clearly, she felt attracted to these qualitites. But it is difficult to be a call girl and retain your innocence and/or sanity. Jerri was tough.
She managed to steer the conversation that evening around to generalities.
"You know, no matter how you look at this we're just tramps. Maybe that sounds like a big bring-down, but it's true. I never walked the streets or turned a trick for money myself before I came to this outfit, but I used to give plenty away free to guys I didn't give a fig about, for other reasons. Bad ones, invariably. And maybe that can be worse than selling yourself, I don't know. I mean, if you're having guys from emotional dishonesty because you're like all messed up inside and you're taking that out on yourself, or a guy, or the world. I've got to have my loving, and like I prefer that to be a transaction-until I meet the right guy."
"Is there a right guy, Jerri?"
"There has to be, baby. It's never the one you think it is the first time, either, if you know what I mean-and I think you do. But, man, you've got to go through a lot of heartache before you find the diamond in the trash pile." She laughed. "One thing Jerri's learned is to be particular. That's going to cost me a lot of time looking, and maybe I'll never find the diamond. In the meantime, I'm willing to settle for this. This's the fastest way to financial independence I know of, if a girl's careful. And I need that-my family's cut me off without a sou."
"What kind of man are you looking for?"
"Rich. That's his first quality, honey, and I'm not making any bones about it. I want to hook some filthy rich sucker who'll keep me in yachts and furs the rest of my life. Then, he's got to be intelligent-or at least understanding. You get old, you've got to be able to talk about something besides your bank accounts. Bored rich don't interest me in the least-I've seen too many of them. They're worse than bored poor; they have more time to be bored and they spend the time refining their boredom until they wear it around like an extra skin."
"I haven't met too many of that type," Marsha laughed.
"You will. We happen to be one of their refinements. But this guy I'm telling you about-he's got to be able to see me as a person,, dig? He'll know I've been a call girl for one or three or five years, but that won't mean a thing to him. He'll want what's me, not what I've been doing to stash away the bread. He'll be able to take care of me in the bedroom and he'll be able to talk to me at the breakfast table. He'll be kind and considerate and-"
Marsha broke in with a laugh. "Wow, you make him sound like something from another planet!"
"I don't care if he has green skin and three eyes, two in front and one in the back of his head-as long as he can see me with all three."
"Well, I hope you find him."
"So do I," Jerri sighed. "You know, III be moving out next week to a place of my own. I'm just about done with the school."
"I didn't know that," Marsha said, looking suddenly glum again. "I'll miss you, Jerri. You're the first real person I've met in the city."
"Hey, it's not like I was moving to the other end of the earth, baby! I'm getting me a pad near here; we'll still get together."
"Yes, we must. But we'll have to throw a graduation party. Do they give you a diploma?"
They laughed, and Marsha soon forgot her previous mood. But it returned to her that evening when she went back to her apartment and found herself alone again.
The blues returned in force. Few things are as empty as a bachelor or bachelorette apartment at night; she began wandering around, peering from the front room windows down into the street to observe passers-by, filing her nails several times over, deciding to go to a movie and then rejecting the idea.
Going to her handbag for a fresh pack of cigarettes, she found the book Letitia had lent her earlier that day. Since she hadn't put it there herself, she was annoyed on finding it, but she took it out and sat down and opened it up, deciding any book at all was better than the kind of thoughts nibbling around the edges of her mind.
The title of the volume was printed on the inside page: Love Through the Ages.
That took her by surprise, and she began leafing through the pages. The first thing that hit her eyes was a color plate five pages in.
It was a beautifully done photoplate. Exquisite. It said more than all the words in the preceding five pages could have, proving again the old Chinese proverb.
Love Through the Ages was evidently not muck different from Love In The Present, judging by the plate. In bright, clear color it showed a man making love to a woman. They might have been Adam and Eve or they might have been a British diplomat and a call girl. Their stance was classic, ageless. It was the first stance of love, love physical, love profane, in full clear-toned color, right down to the last detail. The photo was so stark and simple it managed to surprise. The girl had a good body and so did the man; their embrace was one of studied passion, their expressions were those of unadroned lust.
She hurried on to the next plate. That one was more interesting. It showed another position, one that looked very uncomfortable for the woman, who nevertheless was obviously enjoying herself. Marsha got a little excited looking at that and the ones following. Each successive plate contained something different; orientals, darks and browns and whites, and with each plate the process got more and more complicated. It was an illustrated handbook of fleshly love, the kind a child could follow. But toward the end of the book the pictures became really torrid.
Especially in the chapter titled: "Lesbian Love." The corner of the title page was folded back; obviously Letitia had meant her to read this one with special attentiveness.
She snapped the book shut in anger and tossed it on the couch. It brought back the whole afternoon's experience in lurid detail. It disgusted her with herself and the world. She wondered if she would ever be able to do that with a woman again. She knew she would probably have to, sometime. It struck her that she no longer owned her own body, in a sense. Her body wa up for grabs, to those who had the price. This thought depressed her. Yet she had gone into this thing knowingly, making her own decision about it.
Unable to bear her thoughts, she got up and began pacing the room. Back and forth.
The walls seemed to press in on her; the silence of the apartment magnified every little sound in the house and street-the sounds of loneliness, desperation.
Get a grip on yourself, she thought. Jerri said there would be bad times like this, and now you're in one.
But what to do? How to get out of it? The radio, a book-nothing could do the trick for her.
And then she remembered Phil Manzilla, the dark-skinned musician. She had scarcely given him a thought for days, but now she thought about him. He had been nice that night, not trying to make love to her, sensing she wasn't really in the mood. And she needed someone to talk to.
But there was also Marc Ferris. She had seen him once since the interview that day in the office, but she had thought about him a lot.
Too much, in fact. She saw his face too clearly at times, and thought of him intimately at odd, unexpected moments of the day. And he had just dropped in to ask her how everything was going and then buzzed off, the busy executive. Her heart had thumped too loudly during those few minutes he was in her apartment though, and she scolded herself for being a damn fool afterward. He had mentioned something about a future luncheon date, something very vague, that was all.
Forget Mr. Ferris, then. He was not the kind of person you could call up late in the evening just because you were lonely. What had Jerri said about a person seeing you? Marc Ferris looked right through her. As far as she could tell, he didn't see her at all. Not with his eyes, at least.
But Phil was nice, nice to talk to and listen to, once you understood his hip jargon, and maybe....
She got the phone book and looked up his number. He lived at an address in the West Twenties, just north of the Village. She picked up the receiver and dialed.
It rang seven times and she was about to hang up when his voice answered.
The inflection in his voice made her laugh. "Yes. I'm off tonight and-well, I was wondering if I could come down and watch you work. I forgot the name of the club and where it's located."
"Baby, that gig's blown for keeps. The fuzz closed it up last night, some kind of hassle about fire laws or something, I think they were really hip to the smoking going on in the back room though. But like forget that; come on down by my pad and we'll go out some place and dig somebody else's sounds. How does that hit you?"
"Great. I can't stand this place another second."
"I'm hip. You come on down, honey-I need someone to jaw with myself right now. Like I'm out of work and finding any gig at all in this town is a hassle, so I'm about to wig. But hell; if you make it down it'll pick me up, and maybe I can do the same for you!"
"I'll get a cab. In about an hour?"
"Crazy!"
"'Bye."
"Later, man!"
She hung up. His voice had really cheered her. She still felt funny about going out with him, but knew that that was her Midwesternism showing through again.
And what the hell.
She went to her bedroom to change into something for the evening, deciding on a black sheath she had Just purchased that morning. It was good to be going somewhere, at least. Anywhere.
Thin-faced and ferret-eyed, Bernie Goldoni walked along a narrow Village street, the beat black leatherette case of his snare drum dangling like a poor imitation of a woman's hat box from one sinewy-fingered hand.
He was on the lookout for The Man. The Man was many men, and they were all around the Village and streets like this particular one.
No street in the world was really clean-not if you happened to be peddling marijuana. Behind every door, every shaded window; standing casually on every street corner was the fuzz, the Man-the plainclothes cop looking to bust somebody. The darkness of night became thick with paranoia.
Bernie Goldoni's nerves were as taut and steely as the turned skins of his drums, and just as sensitive. He was paranoid and he knew it, and knowing, he knew how to deal with it. He had learned that long ago. Paranoia is a person inside you named Fear; a very sick cat who can see a threat to his existence even in a kid's innocent face. See it in the shape of a building, the passing of a casual stranger in the street, the darkness of a gangway opening between city buildings.
You learned to control the sick cat. The first thing was to recognize him, let him come out in the open and identify himself, and then you beat him down.
Not completely. Never completely. There were always bad times like this, when the cat just wouldn't stop bugging you, but eventually you got the upper hand and maintained your cool. Maintaining your cool was the first rule of living in the city.
Bernie always maintained his cool, but the street spooked him a bit. He grinned at nothing, at his fear, rounding a corner and coming upon a flight of stone steps leading up to an old five story apartment house. He stopped there to light himself a cigarette, setting the snare case on the pavement.
The street was empty, and you could see down the block either way. That was probably what was bugging him, he thought; the emptiness of it. You expect a few cats to be walking about. It's the natural thing, the scene.
He took a few drags on his weed and saw a busty young chick cross the street down the block and go into an apartment house. That somehow made him feel better. He had his cool back and things would swing. He picked up the case again, sticking the tailor-made in the corner of his thin mouth, and climbed the steps.
The case was a bit heavier than with the drum in it. It contained his jacket and a finely balanced instrument of another kind-a weighing scale.
Inside the apartment house foyer was a row of battered mailboxes and door buzzers beneath with name slots for each. Some were empty and some had paper slips with names and some had the names scrawled in pencil or ink on the metal backing. He pressed the button beneath the name Rudy Blau. In a few seconds he got an answering buzz which unlocked the inner door and he entered.
Inside, halfway up the first flight of creaking wooden stairs, a voice called down through the spiral of bannisters above: "Who is it?"
"Bernie."
He went on up the next two flights. Rudy, a short, swarthy and pock-faced young man, grinned with his fleshy lips.
"Hi, man-come on in!"
They went through the open apartment door together and Rudy closed it and turned the snap-lock after them. The room was dark, illuminated by a single bulb in a pole lamp which gave the outlines of a couch, several chairs, a scarred coffee table, an ancient fireplace with a stereo set, two bookshelf speakers, a changer and an amplifier atop the mantelpiece. Bernie recognized the tune, a thing called Low Flame, and the instrumentalist coming over the speakers.
"Nice sound," he said.
"Yeah, man; he's always nice," Rudy smiled.
"I don't dig the drummer though."
"No. Some day that cat's going to get a good group around him."
"Right-when he's made enough bread, maybe. I'd sure like to gig with him, man. You could fence around, dig."
"I'm hip. Hey, like it's good you fell by early this evening; a lot of squarish cats are coming down later for a set."
"Who's the party?"
"Uptown cats. They smoke and pick up nickels, but like I don't dig doing big business with them around."
"Well, I'm ready. Want to do the thing now or have a smoke first?"
"Let's go in the bedroom, man-we can do both."
The apartment consisted of two rooms, a living room plus kitchenette and a bedroom, not counting the bathroom. They went into the bedroom which was more brightly lit and closed the door after them.
Bernie put his snare case on the desk, opened it up and took the scales out.
"How much you going for, man?"
"A lot, maybe. How was the last batch of grass?"
"Boss. Listen, man; I blew my head with it when it got here the other night, so there's no sweat. How much?"
"Okay, man; I'll give you a taste, let you dig it yourself."
Rudy went to his dresser, opened a drawer and took out a plastic bag containing a couple of pounds of marijuana. He opened it and carefully packed some into the bole of a miniature pipe, then lit a corner of it with a match.
The two of them sat on the bed and smoked, saying nothing.
"Mmmm," Bernie said presently.
Rudy broke into a wide grin. "Am I trying to beat you down, man?"
"It's like beautiful. Let's put it out and smoke later. I want to take my load now."
"How much?" Rudy asked again, getting up.
"I'm going up to a resort next week. A very rich place, dig, and like I know the cook and the cat who does the hiring."
"Are they hip?"
"They're cool. The guests are all filthy with bread, and the same ones come back every summer. They'll lay out a good penny for some top grade stuff."
"Crazy! You ought to be able to really beat them down with this stuff. It's clean, too."
"I'm figuring at least fifty on an O-Z."
"Wow! But like, how much, man? I've got to have some bread myself."
"This stuff, a couple of pounds."
Rudy got a very respectful look on his face.
"Nice," he said, and went to get another plastic bag out of the drawer. "You can weigh it yourself. Do you have the bread?"
"Same price?"
"I'll knock off fifty on that amount."
"I can make the tariff then. I've been saving up for this. After this gig up in the mountains T don't plan on doing anything all winter except study my instrument."
Rudy was busy setting up the scales and shaking the weed out of the bag into the metal tray.
"How's your chick?" he said over his shoulder to Bernie.
"Jerri's okay. She's getting a new pad next week. I'm taking an ounce up for her and one for another girl."
"You were talking marriage the last time you were here."
Bernie made a face. "Yeah, I know. I'm still as Strong for that chick, but it's a hassle, you know. I mean, she knows what I am and I know her, and she can't see us. Not right now, anyway. She loves me, but who wants to get hooked to a small-time gangster?"
"Maybe she'll come around some day."
Bernie was now thinking out loud, his thoughts flowing free as a result of the blast of pot they had smoked. "And I can't change. The music's my only bit, the only thing I dig, and selling stuff's the only way I can stay loose, play what I want."
"I'm hip, man-you don't have to explain."
"A two-bit gangster, that's all I am, man. She knows it."
"At least you know what you are. How many do?"
"I'll make it one of these days. I'm not going to change and I know it, but give me a chance to play with a real group and I'll swing."
"You know it, baby."
"I got a lot to learn yet, though. To make it with a good group you've got to know everything. I could get a lot of gigs if I wanted, but like terrible stuff, you know? Dances, the sticks."
"Look; you're cool this way, so why bother, man?"
"Right The hell with that noise. I'll gig when I can play jazz and that's all. And when I can't do that, I'll sell. Jerri's looking for a rich cat to take care of her, I know that. But if she ever decides to quit, she's mine. Hell, I don't know if I could take the marriage bit at that!"
"It's scary, man! Dig, I've been living with Betty almost a year now. That's the longest stand with a chick I've ever had. You don't dig a chick that long and not think about taking out a license for it. But the way I figure, marriage is only for when you want kids."
"That right, man! It's a sin otherwise."
"Right. Don't get hung-up now. Here; want to check this count?"
Bernie got up and went to the dresser. The stuff looked green and very good in the silver tray. He jiggled the balance a bit and nodded his head.
"Two on the nose. You're a good man, Rudy."
"Have I ever tried to beat you down?"
"No, man-that's why I like you. You know who to beat down and who to lay it on straight with."
Rudy laughed merrily. "Hey, man; you should see the square cat I beat down last week. A kid from a rich fraternity. He got half grass and half trash, and he'll never know the difference. This stuff will knock holes in his skull and make him the most popular man on campus, even cut I don't like to cut, dig but this cat is really foul; he deserved it."
They both had a good laugh at that, and then Bernie packed his load away in the snare case while Rudy re-lit the pipe. They went back into the living room. Bernie flipped the record on the turntable, turned up the volume, and then they sat down together and smoked, surrounded in the dim room by waves of physical sound, the far-out and faraway glides and dips, the intricate lines of an alto saxophone solo. It took them on a trip to other places, and neither of them talked as they passed the pipe back and forth.
The mood lasted for a good ten minutes when the door buzzer sounded.
Rudy jumped up. "Wow, that shook me! That's probably Paul, coming down for a bag. Want to stick around and smoke with us?"
"No, I better go. Jerri should be done with her work, now I want to see her and give her an ounce."
Rudy pressed the upstairs button opening the front door, turning to Bernie and laughing.
"That all you going to give her, man?':
Bernie grinned. "Hell no. I feel like going all night tonight. Like I won't be seeing her for a couple of weeks, so I've got to get everything tonight, see?" He got up, remembering to take his snare case, now exactly two pounds heavier than when he had come up.
"Crazy, man," Bernie said. "She'll really groove on this stuff for you. Like drop me a card when you go upstate, huh?"
"Sure, man. Later."
"Later."
They shook hands and Bernie left, feeling very good. He passed the kid named Paul on the stairway, nodded, and then he was out in the street again, "feeling high with a good head and grooving. Three blocks away he found an empty cab cruising. He flagged it down and got in. The cab made a U-turn and headed uptown.
Within the half-hour, he and Jerri were sitting together on the couch in her living room.
He lit up a cigarette and passed it to her. "How did it go tonight, honey?" he said, slipping his arm around her.
"Bad. I drew a weirdo."
"A nut, huh? What did he make you do?"
"I don't want to talk about that now. My work day's over: I want to relax and listen to music"
"Solid, as long as you want to make some, too."
"I's getting there. Just don't push please, hon?"
"I never push," Bernie said grinning. "I just squeeze a little." And he slipped his hand under her robe and squeezed a little. She moved, getting closer to him. "I like the way you squeeze, man."
"I could squeeze you like that all the time if we got hitched. And you wouldn't have to sweat the weirdos, either."
She made a face. "Fine. And what are you going to support me on? Grass?"
"You could do worse."
"I won't. Come here, honey." She reached out with her hand and touched him. They moved closer together on the couch, getting entangled in a tight, grasping embrace.
"There," he said when they parted. "You're not that tired after all."
"You're sweet."
"Sweeter than sugar candy. Try me."
"That again?"
"You know I dig that."
"I do too. Something about you makes me want to." After a bit of wrestling around on the couch, they were ready.
Bernie leaned way back, his head against a cushion, smoking. Little sighs escaped his lips, and Jerri made sounds of her own.
"Mmm!"
"Uh?"
"Uh-huh! You got me!"
"Uhhh."
"Oh, wow! Easy; you're going to make me flip!"
He stroked her blonde hair and slipped his fingers to the top of her robe, caressing her breasts and feeling the nipples rise under his fingers. She was never too tired, he thought. God, she was almost a machine sometimes. "Easy, easy!" he gasped when she got a little wild. She stopped.
"Shall we go into the bedroom now?" He shook his head. "I dig the couch. Let's stay here."
"Okay, hon. Then I'm going to send you off and get me a good night's sleep for a change."
"Sure," he said, hurriedly getting out of his clothes, fully excited by her now. His garments fell to the floor beside the couch in a heap, one by one, as he removed them. They were wrinkled anyway.
She slipped the robe off, revealing her remarkable nude body. He reached for her breasts and began caressing them again, exciting them with his fingers and then with his mouth, kissing them to stiffness.
"Ohhhh!"
He made her shake with excitement. He cupped her buttocks and squeezed them, playing the softly pliant flesh like dough.
"Oh, God! You know how to excite me!"
"When you're ready, say so." He dipped his face into the valley of her breasts.
"Now, now!" she groaned.
But he made her wait. He made her wait until she became uncontrolled and uncontrollable, and then he slipped down onto the couch and took her.
"Oh!"
And then, very slowly, they made love together. Nothing fast or hurried about that at all, the soft music in the background lulling them into effortless pleasure.
They struck up a rhythm which seemed as though it could last forever.
But after an hour they became more frenzied, going through a change. She began to work differently, and he answered with a staccato series of moves.
Wild, frenzied, taking them up and out. Up, up, and up. And out.
That was like a shell bursting and setting off another, so close.
"That was dreamy," she said sleepily.
He slid off the couch, stroking her lovely white body.
"The next will be dreamier," he said. "Come on; let's go to bed."
She got up and started off with him before she remembered her resolve.
"You louse," she said; "you tricked me into this."
"Did I?" he said, his hand closing over her buttock as they lurched toward the bedroom. "Well now how about that!"
She giggled, and then the bed greeted them-but not for sleep.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It wasn't until the following week that Marsha met Cynthia Lockhart, the silent partner of the call girl school.
First Marc Ferris dropped in to invite her out to lunch. He was dressed in a gunmetal gray summerweight, cream tie against beige, and looked like an upper income bracket Madison Avenue type. Except for the face, which was a trifle too handsome.
"I'm taking you to lunch, Marsha. Get into something."
She was already into something, a rather plain gray dress she had donned for a visit to the dentist to have a slightly crooked incisor straightened, but she took the hint and went back into the bedroom to change.
She selected a clinging indigo sheath from her growing wardrobe, struggled into it and then a pair of black heels, finishing off the outfit with jade earrings and a matching brooch. She fluffed her recently created bouffant out with a brush and then returned to the living room.
Her efforts got her a low whistle, which, coming from him, was the equivalent of several cartwheels and a rousing school cheer.
"Lovely," he murmured appreciatingly. "Turn around once."
She did, slowly.
"Yes indeed! Letty Ritter's done a lot with you."
Marsha made a grimace. "Thanks a lot! I was just a lump of very crude material, I suppose!"
"I didn't mean that," he said, flustered for the first time. "I simply meant-"
"Oh, skip it. Where are you taking me to lunch-darling?"
A smile twitched his lips. "You've grown claws too, I see. Now I'll just have to impress the hell out of you-sweetheart. How about Sardi's East?"
"I'm impressed," she said, giving him her good smile this time. "And if you want me to call you Marc, I'll do that too."
He took her arm. "I should have watched you closer," he said as they went out the door. "A little wind blew in from the Middlewest, and now it's threatening to become a hurricane."
"But it's not raining outside," she laughed. "And it's very flattering for a girl to be invited to lunch by the boss."
"Don't get too conceited. He's already seen everything, remember?"
"That was before I knew it wasn't in the contract. And besides, I'm different now."
"That I'd like to find out about. I bet you still look splendid on a rose colored carpet."
They taxied down to the posh restaurant, a new kind of tension between them. Beneath their banter they were fencing, probing, sensing new things in each other, or perhaps trying to meet each other for the first time. But Marsha felt she really had him on the defensive for once; he had been impressed with her looks and appearance more than he wanted to admit, and now that he saw she wasn't merely clay in his hands, there might be an opportunity to extend that feeling into a semblance of respect.
But she also knew she could not push that too far. There was an unaccountably worried look in his glance at times; at other times it was piercing and superior, putting her in her place. He had some kind of weird pride that wouldn't allow for a woman getting past his armor.
Over spare ribs, broccoli au gratin, curried rice and candied sweet potatoes, they talked. Their conversation flitted about casually, but by the time coffee and dessert were served, he began to get to the point.
"Well, I hear you're doing very well, Marsha. How do you like this so far?"
"It's an experience, to say the least. And I haven't had a bank account in ages."
"Laying it by already, huh?"
She laughed. "By bank account, I mean any kind of bank account. Mine's a personal checking, and I think there may be a hundred or so in it, if I'm lucky. The clothes I've brought I've been charging-Ferris Enterprises gets a lot of respect as a reference for charge account applications."
"It's standard procedure. On the surfaces we're perfectly legitimate, and eminently solvent. It would take something like a Congressional investigation to even annoy us. But that, of course, is Cynthia's influence behind us."
"You mean Cynthia Lockhart?"
"Yes. You've met her?"
"No, she's just a mysterious name to me. The scuttlebutt is that she's the power behind the royal throne."
"She holds a major interest in the corporation; that's quite true."
"She must be some gal."
"She is indeed. Would you like to meet her?"
Marsha put her hand to her bosom in a gesture of mock astonishment. "Little old me, Why, I'm not even a graduate yet!"
Marc smiled across the table at her. "But you're a star pupil, sweetheart. And Cynthia's a woman who can do a lot for somone she happens to take a liking to. Have you ever thought of staying with the outfit?"
"Me? As what?"
"There are lots of angles. But, hell, I'm talking too much. Let Cynthia speak for herself, when she sees you."
Marsha wjas really curious now. "And when might that happen?"
Marc Ferris stroked his jaw reflectively. "Soon, perhaps. In fact, she's throwing a party for some of the girls about to leave the school. I could arrange it for you to be invited-especially if it were as my date."
"I'm dying of curiosity!"
He reached across the table and took her hand. And, under the table, she could feel the pressure of his knee against hers, subtly moving-a curiously exciting effect, there in public with crowds of diners around them.
"I'll do that then, baby. But-I think I ought to warn you about Cynthia first."
"I'm all ears," she said, returning the knee pressure.
"Cynthia's an odd person. A great person, when you get to know her-she's made money in everything, she's fabulously rich and cultured and can hobnob with the best of circles-but fiercely independent and, well ... a bit odd. She's never married, for one thing. To look at her you wouldn't believe she's almost fifty. And, well She-"
"You sound like you've made a study of her," Marsha broke in. "Are you in love with her?"
He gave a short laugh. "No, I don't think so. She's not the kind of woman who would accept love anyway. But she really likes people if she thinks they measure up, and I think she'll like you. But she'll seem cold to you at first, I'm afraid. And she may ask you to-do things."
"Things? You mean like I'm doing now?" she laughed.
"Perhaps."
"Like I say, she's funny."
"Is she a Lesbian?"
"Lord no. At least, not as a matter-of course."
"Well, that's a relief at least, after Letitia."
Marc grinned, moving his knee under the small table. "Did Letty give you a bad time?"
"She gave me a lovely time. Then she drew her pistol and shot me down, right between the eyes."
He laughed. "But you got up again. I bet she's been respectful to you since."
"Come to think of it, she has-in her own sweet way. At least she hasn't lured me to the rack again."
"She won't. But forget her. You're game for the party tonight then, right?"
"Game."
"Fine. I'll pick you up around ten." He signaled the waiter and signed the tab, and then they got up and left.
Cabbing across town back to her apartment, he held her close and slipped his hand under the hem of her sheath. The warm tingle left by his knee turned into a glow as he caressed her nyloned leg.
"You're really quite beautiful," he whispered. "I'd like to come up."
"I've got an appointment with Joe Rudin this afternoon. He's going to work on my bossa nova."
Marc Ferris was working on her leg.
"I'm going to cancel that," he said. "I want you fresh for tonight."
"Then you better not come up either, mister."
He laughed, closing his hand so hard she almost gasped.
"You're right, of course. We both should be fresh for tonight, shouldn't we?"
"If you get much fresher I'll scream."
"I was merely getting re-acquainted," he said, removing his hand. "But here we are. I'll drop you off and take the cab back to the office."
He leaned over and kissed her fully on the lips as the cab drew to a halt at the curb outside her brownstone. Then he opened the door for her and she got out.
"See you at ten, lovely."
"Yes."
The cab pulled away.
Cynthia Lockhart's apartment was a study in muted plush. If it fell below Letitia Ritter's in originality, it surpassed hers in expensive luxury.
Cynthia had surrounded herself with softness, with muted tones and with dark, deep tones. Her furniture was custom made according to her own specifications: wide, deep soft-cushioned sofas cornering two ends of a room, plush carpets of a dark navy color, muted blues and greens in the walls created by colored indirect lighting over neutral or basswood or bone-white walls. Even in the kitchen, the pale lemon and peach petal motif carried out the effect. Primary colors were practically nonexistent anywhere in most of the rooms of the sprawling apartment.
The guests began arriving at ten. They came in couples and foursomes and, as it turned out, Marsha knew some of them as acquaintances and some by sight. Jerri was there, with the athletic dancing instructor, Joe Rudin, at her shoulder. Letty Ritter gave her a coolly impersonal smile. And there was Betty and a few others whom she had met either in the apartment house where the girls stayed or in one of her clashes, accompanied either by male instructors or men who looked very well-off and very much at home.
Marsha herself wore a three-quarter length strapless of russet which showed to good advantage generous portions of her handsome frontage, as well as her smoothly contoured shoulders and back. Just a suggestion of red in it set off her hair, darkened a touch to the color of a ripe freshly opened chestnut, from which sparkled a gold comb matching the small gold pin between the cups of her bodice. Her slippers were golden also, completing the striking ensemble.
"You look like the glories of autumn, my dear," Letitia said, drawing her aside once drinks had been passed around by a British looking butler. "Very smart indeed. I hope you're not angry with me for the things I said the first time we met," she added, momentarily humbling herself, since no one was noticing them at the moment.
"Why thank you, Letitia," Marsha answered neutrally. "You look stunning yourself. But I'm afraid I can't remember which remark you're referring to at the moment."
Letitia Ritter gave her an icy glare, muttered something and moved on. Marsha refrained from breaking out in a smile over her little victory. And it was pretty obvious to her now that the woman still had a strong yen for her.
She was conscious also of another woman staring at her-one which could only have been Cynthia Lockhart, from the descriptions she had heard.
She was standing near the beautiful mahogany-and-leather bar at the opposite end of the room, greeting her guests as they filtered down her way. She had lightened her ash blonde hair almost to platinum, and in a clinging full-length strapless of electric blue shantung, slit Chinese styled from the hem at one side to enable her to walk in the choke skirt, reclining slightly against the cushioned bartop fender, she looked like a picture waiting for a good enough magazine to come along. Glancing at her, it was hard for Marsha to believe the rumors about her age. She had a big, bosomy, but graceful!, curved body, Nordic appearing, built along lines the lusty Vikings must have had in mind when they constructed their sailing ships. She dominate that end of the room, which happened to be full of lovely women.
"You cut class this afternoon, baby," Joe Rudin said, sidling up to her. "It ruined my day."
"We'll bossa nova later, darling. Right now I think I'm supposed to meet the Grand Lady Of upper-income gay ladies."
He put his fingers to his lips. "Shhh!" We don't discuss that around here, redhead. In Japan, they have a different feeling about it. And a highly respectable tradition behind the institution, too."
She laughed. "My, I didn't know you were such a learned person, Mr. Rudin," and then Marc Ferris was taking her by the elbow off to the bar to introduce her to the hostess.
At the bar, Marsha felt herself being observed very critically by the great lady.
"You're a lovely girl," she said matter-of-factly. "Couldn't drive a wedge into the modeling racket, eh?
"I'm afraid I was either not thin enough or not girl-next-door enough. I almost had something in swim suits once, but it fell through and I was broke."
"There's no future in swim suits anyway," Cynthia observed.
"There seems to be a lot more out of them."
The remark brought a faint smile to the older woman's face. Marc Ferris permitted himself a laugh.
"She's got a sense of humor," he said, handing Marsha a mixed drink.
Cynthia gave him a sharp glance. "Leave us, Marc. I want to talk to this girl."
He nodded and walked off with his drink. His prompt response caused Marsha to wonder about the relationship between the two owners of the school.
"Sit down, dear," Cynthia said, indicating a plush highbacked bar stool.
Marsha sat down.
"Marc seems very impressed with you. As for myself, I know nothing about you except what I see before me! I let Marc handle that end of the business, and generally speaking he seldom makes a mistake. Are you interested in him?"
The question took her by surprise. "I find him interesting, if that's what you mean," she said finally.
Cynthia's greenish almond-shaped eyes looked very steadily into Marsha's. "Forget him. He's not for you."
She was really astounded. "But I-"
"I mean you should become completely disinterested in him. I'm not even speaking of love. Or anything else you may have in mind."
"I'm afraid I don't understand. Are you in love with him?"
Cynthia snorted delicately. "Love doesn't even enter the picture. The fact is, I own Marc Ferris. It was my money that started this venture; I merely permitted him to take shares because he needs to own something to support his ego. He's never been a success in business and never could be. He's an illusion built on an illusion. But he's my investment, my property, and I never tolerate anyone putting their hands on my property."
"He's a very talented property," Marsha couldn't help saying.
But Cynthia merely smiled. "Of course. His talent is his biggest asset, as I believe you know. But I can't afford to have it all concentrated on one thing. You're an intelligent girl. I think you know exactly what I mean."
Marsha laughed. "I really don't understand this. He hasn't shown that much interest in me."
"He wouldn't. Marc thinks he's the complete master of women, but he's naive. They've been his downfall, too. I can always tell when he's thinking about one woman too much. It's happened before, you see. He's like a collector. His collection is vast, but there's always that one more jewel which sparkles a little brighter than the rest, the one that puts the gleam in his eye."
"You understand him pretty thoroughly, don't you?"
"I've gotten where I am by understanding people. Especially their weakness."
"Well, at least I'm warned."
"Advised. You'll go far if you heed good advice. And keep a good business head." She gave Marsha a half-smile. "How would you like to make three hundred dollars, for instance?"
"Tonight?"
"Yes, tonight."
Marsha knew that it was a baited hook-and that she had to bite.
"What do I have to do?" she said after a long pause.
Cynthia's face wore no expression at all as she delivered the answer to Marsha's question.
"What you've been trained to do," she said. "That's all you need to know for now. You'll received the details when it becomes time. And now," she smiled, getting up, "enjoy the party, my dear. We'll see each other later."
She moved off and Marsha was left alone for the moment. She finished her drink and ordered another from the white-coated barman. He fixed it and handed it to her and she began to work on that one. The party had soured for her suddenly. Marc was off in a corner near the piano, talking to Cynthia as she played. Some date, she thought. Some invitation.
Some party.
She had been invited not as a guest, but as part of the evening's entertainment, evidently.
She laughed to herself. In a way, this was to be her coming-out party then. She wondered who it was to be-some lecherous married executive who had gotten eyes for her, or an unescorted male playboy who had come to take his pick of Cynthia's fine choice crop-someone who was willing to drop three bills. And all for the glory of the old school tie....
Fun.
But then Joe Rudin came over and asked her to dance, and for the moment she forgot her troubles. They danced out on the terrace, where a small group played softly under the stars, casting an illusion that was something out of a Hollywood movie about New York. The palm fronds, box hedges, dwarf pine trees and exotic shrubbery giving off exotic odors helped considerably to cast everything in this light, but mostly it was the backdrop of the Manhattan and Brooklyn skylines. This was a world she had never made as an honest girl, and now she was making it as a call girl.
Something ironic in that.
Very ironic.
But at least she was making it. At least the surface dazzle was there, the gleam and polish and glamour, the gown she was wearing, the beautifully dressed beautiful people of her childhood dreams of the city. She had made it, and it had been so easy after all.
All you had to do was sell yourself a little.
To the right people, of course. That was the important part-to the right people. In another century, she would have been called a courtesan, and only nobility would have visited her doorstep, plying her with gifts and money to receive the beneficence of her practiced embraces. She would have a house in the country, gilded carriages and fine horses-all of them given to her by men, because she had a beautiful face and a beautiful body.
She would have the equivalent of those things now. Men would give her things in return for what she gave them.
A stranger cut in on them, a tall, white-haired gentleman with sparkling blue eyes dressed in semi-formal dinner attire.
"I couldn't help admiring you from afar," he said in a rich baritone voice. "But you're much better up closer. My name's Henry Jackson. I'm up from Texas on business. I wonder if I could give you a ring tomorrow?"
They glided effortlessly across the tile terrace to the music. He was a good dancer. "I'll give you my phone number," she said. "My name's Marsha Kinsted."
"I'd like to take you to dinner, Marsha. The Alhambra perhaps, or the Angel, if you prefer. Whatever's your pleasure."
Whatever's your pleasure. The phrase stuck in her mind after the dance was over and they had parted. So that was the way that worked, she thought. That was the way you added to the list, got to know people. The ring on his finger told you he had a wife and his eyes told you he would pay plenty for a chance to take you out on the town and then make love to you afterward in his or your apartment, or a posh hotel suite. And he would no doubt become a steady client, if he liked the the way you treated him. A well-heeled, regular John. He would know people who owned yachts, or perhaps he had one himself, up from Texas, docking at City Island.
Very nice. A little weekend cruise maybe, with plenty of champagne and plenty of things going on down in the staterooms. A free pleasure cruise, all expenses paid, plus.
Cynthia caught her by the arm as she was going to the bar to join Marc for another drink. She was already feeling the three she had had, carrying a nice little edge, and he saw no reason to stop now.
"You're doing well, my dear," Cynthia smiled.
"Am I?" Marsha said, returning the smile. "Oh, you mean Mr. Jackson."
"He's exceedingly wealthy. He came with another girl, but I could see it was you he was interested in right away."
"Yes, he asked me for a date."
"Take him up on it, by all means."
"I gave him my number."
"Fine. And now, I'd like you to come with me if you don't mind."
The "if you don't mind" were merely a formality. The request was on the level of a command. Marsha pictured the day when enough Henry Jacksons would get her out from under this woman's thumb, but right now she knew that Cynthia could crush her if she so wished.
She followed Cynthia through the spacious entertaining room, down a long hallway, and into what turned out to be an antechamber leading into the master bedroom.
Cynthia went over to a cherrywood lowboy and took out a sheaf of bills.
"Here's your fee in advance." She handed Marsha three hundred dollar bills. Marsha took them in her hand and looked at them. She had seen few hundred dollar bills in her life, and now three of them back-to-back was just a bit awesome.
"Fine," she said finally. "Who's my client though?"
"Me.'!
"You?"
"I'm paying you the money to turn a trick for someone. I want to see just how professional you are. Go in there. You'll find a closet to hang your clothes in and a bed to get onto when you're undressed. I'll be back with your John in five minutes."
Cynthia turned to leave, and Marsha was about to ask her who the recipient of her generosity was. but decided against it. She turned and walked the opposite way-into the bedroom.
In her slightly tipsy condition, she thought she was having an hallucination when she stepped into the big room. She gazed around her, owl-eyed-at several hundred beautifully dressed Marsha Kinsteds.
"God!" she breathed. "Well I'll be damned!"
It took her a while to find which mirror was actually a closet door. When she did, she began undressing and hanging up her things.
Then, completely nude, she walked over to the spacious circular bed and got onto it, a little dizzied by the sight of all those other naked Marsha's doing the same thing. She stared up at the ceiling and there she was again!
Amazing, she thought. This is how I look to a man. She touched her breasts and ran her hands over her body experimentally. The girl all around her did the same thing. She had never felt quite so naked, so exposed. The silk sheet beneath her was cool, deliriously smooth and cool; even that seemed calculated to excite. Her nipples rose slowly under her fingertips. Whoever it was would find this pose very alluring, she thought, smiling at herself. He was bound to-because she certainly felt alluring.
The door opened and two people walked in.
Cynthia Lockhart was one of them.
The other was Marc Ferris.
Marsha was suddenly a mixture of surprise, confusion, and embarrassment. For him to find her like this-
But suddenly the whole thing dawned on her. This was a put-up job. A put-up and shut-up job. Marc turned his back to her after a brief glance and began removing his clothes. Cynthia took a straight-backed chair and moved it close to the bed and sat down.
Marsha opened her mouth to say something and then promptly closed it.
The whole thing didn't make sense at first, after Cynthia's little speech to her out at the bar.
But then it did. Then this made perfect sense. Cynthia was going to watch while he made love to her-by courtesy of the three C's Cynthia had given her for the job.
The very professional job.
What kind of a kick Cynthia was going to get out of this was hard to figure. But the rest was easy.
Cynthia was putting her in her place once and for all.
When Marc was finished undressing he came over to the bed. He did not speak to her and she did not speak to him.
No one said a word.
Marsha felt as though she were blushing crimson.
This was demeaning, in a way. She was being used for sport by Cynthia-sport with the man she had real feelings for. God.
No; she thought; no, I can't do this. I can't let that woman do this to me, I won't.
But she didn't move. The absolute silence in the room, the mirrors, the bed beneath her, the tableau presented by the three of them, multiplied a hundred times, all combined to put her in a state of tense excitement that paralyzed her will to rebel against the demeaning situation.
And she was excited, despite everything.
Intensely excited, by the time he moved onto the bed and began touching her.
Touching her and caressing her. His face was a blank, his eyes veiled, without expression. But his hands, his body, his caresses were magnificent.
He touched her all over. He kneaded the flesh of her breasts, her hips, legs. He handled her like so much goods, professionally, disinterestedly.
And she responded-professionally.
She moved, returned caresses, loosed her lips when his mouth met hers.
She saw that all happen and she saw Cynthia watching, a keenly interested look of controlled excitement on her face. Leaning forward in the chair, taking in everything, every last little detail. She could see Cynthia's nostrils whiten and flare with excitement, her ripe bosom heave.
In an unearthly voice she said: "Fix her good, Marc. She's a pig. A filthy, disgusting pig. Treat her like one."
His caresses grew rougher, hurting her.
"Slap that face of hers, Marc."
A sudden stinging blow rocked her head.
"Oh I"
"Excite her, Marc!"
But she was already excited. He slapped and pinched and handled her carelessly-and even that was good. She felt her excitement grow, expand, her breath rush faster and faster as the bed jolted with his rough movements.
He grabbed her by the hair and yanked, arching her backward.
"Ahhh! Please, darling, please !"
"Fix her, Marc I" He moved. "Ahhh!"
Again and again and again. She became delirious with the insane motion, the images dancing all around her. She wanted to close her eyes and scream, but she couldn't. She was fascinated, hypnotized by the whole scene.
And suddenly she became aware that Cynthia was as excited as she was. She ripped off the gown she was wearing in a scurry and climbed naked onto the bed with them.
She was beside herself. Her face had changed completely to an expression of blazingly intense animal excitement; her marvelous body moved with supple swiftness.
"I'll show you what to do with a pig like this," she rasped.
And before Marsha realized what was happening, Cynthia was forcing her to cooperate. She barely had time to cry out.
Then there were the three of them, forming a trio of need, moving desire that shook and rocked the bed.
Faster and faster and faster.
Marsha was ablaze; she was caught in a maelstrom formed by their bodies, male and female; helpless before their crude manipulations. Faster and faster.
She felt that happening for her, the rumbling of desire about to erupt of its own will.
She screamed.
But the scream was lost as another's passion choked it off, her own releasing simultaneously, and his. A three-way race. That was fantastic. Unbelievable.
A three hundred dollar finish if there ever was one.
CHAPTER NINE
The first autumn rain fell softly, the wind blowing it against the window panes of the apartment.
It made Marsha Kinsted think of that other time it had been raining, softly like this-that first day she had gone for the interview with Marc Ferris Enterprises, Inc. It drew her back in time, back over several months to that day, and then, in brief film-clip flashes, the time intervening. There was something sad and wistful about it-but maybe it was just the day.
This rain was different anyway. Colder, gustier; starting up and then stopping as though the season hadn't made up its mind yet. The apartment was different too, for that matter-no longer the brownstone near Riverside. She had moved to a new address in the East Fifties, a small, modern, tastefully furnished renovated apartment in a good building.
The rain and the apartment were different. But then so, she reflected, was the person, Marsha Kinsted.
She knew the ropes now. That was one thing. That was a difference.
There were others. Subtle differences, perhaps; not quite detectable by the eye-but definitely there. Differences brought about by different habits, by slipping gradually into a routine-the routine of a call girl. A very successful, very upper-bracket call girl, to be sure-but still just a girl leading "the life."
A pay-for playgirl.
She talked a bit slower and less, waiting for whomever she was with to give the conversational cues. She read a lot and consequently was able to talk about a variety of subjects, when such talk was demanded. But conversation, like most other things, was now mostly a commodity. Unless a John really interested you, you talked mainly to please him, to make sure he wasn't bored when he had you on an on-the-town date. It paid to be good at banter as well as good in bed.
It wasn't such a bad life, but at times, times like this, you felt suddenly very empty, loose, unattached, vaguely at a loss as to who you really were and what you were doing and why.
Routine.
The phone was now part of her routine. She had two, one in the bedroom, an extension, and the main one in the living room, where she sat now looking out the window, dressed in a flame red silk robe, her lips painted a pale rose and her face made up for the day. It was one-thirty on a September afternoon; she was expecting a call, smoking and waiting.
The phone obliged her. It rang. She took the cigarette from her lips, blowing smoke over the gold-and-ivory colored instrument, letting it ring a few times, and then she picked up the receiver.
"Hello?" she said, her voice throaty, and very seductive.
"Marsha? How are you?"
"I'm fine-but with whom am I speaking, please?"
"Oh-I'm sorry; of course you don't remember me. Henry Jackson's the name-from Texas."
"Oh yes, now I remember. We danced that night at Cynthia's apartment. How are you?"
"Single, for one thing. I've just been divorced, you know. And for another, I'm apologetic as hell-I never did call you."
"No need for that."
"But I really wanted to, you see. It's just that I had to rush back to Texas the next morning, damned crisis in a board of directors meeting at one of my corporations-I never got the chance. But I've been thinking about you."
"You're in New York now, then?"
"I certainly am. And just dying to see you, honey. Can we get together this evening?"
"I'm not sure. Hold on a minute, will you please Mr. Jackson?"
"You bet. And the name's Henry."
Marsha flipped the pages of a small gold date book in front of her on the stand.
Her voice was apologetic when she spoke again. "I'm very sorry, Henry; I would like to see you but I've got something on tonight. Want to make it tomorrow night?"
"Damn tomorrow night! I never forget a face or a figure, and yours has been haunting me for over a month. Now just how serious is that date, honey-can you break it?"
"Well, that might be difficult." Marsha said slowly, not wanting to put him off. They didn't come much richer than Henry H. Jackson, from Texas.
He paused, and then he said in an embarrassed, confidential voice: "Listen, it's a client, isn't it?"
"Yes," Marsha admitted succinctly.
"Tell him to go to the blazes then. I'll triple the amount."
Marsha thought quickly. The date she had set up for this evening was with a new John, an out-of-town client who had been referred to her by someone else. It was a bad policy to break a date with one John in preference for another-almost not done.
But Henry Jackson was being insistent. And very generous, for that matter.
Generous to the tune of six hundred dollars. She wondered if he knew that, but decided he must have. No girl who had graduated from the Ferris School got less than two hundred for a date. It was a rule, enforced even after graduation. You could give yourself away if you wanted to do so-on your own-but they were still getting a commission on her take, and nothing less than two bills would do. It was a matter of great prestige. They had ways of enforcing that rule, too.
And if Mr. Jackson had that kind of change to throw away....
"Well," she said, a smile in voice now, "you sound like a very determined man, Henry. I just may have to get sick this evening and become suddenly unavailable." She could transfer the date to another girl, maybe Jerri or Betty, she thought quickly.
"That's fine! What time shall I pick you up?"
Marsha named a time, and then they said till-later's and hung up.
Marsha got up, stretching, and looked out the window again. It had stopped raining and the sun was making a valiant attempt to shine through the gray overcast. For no explainable reason, she felt less depressed. It wasn't the money, actually. The money was fine, but she wasn't hurting for it and she couldn't force herself even now to look at things in as mercenary a way as did, say, Jerri-or most of the girls leading the life, for that matter.
Maybe it was the fact that he really sounded glad to talk to her. It would make the date more interesting, at least.
Responding to her change in mood, she flipped on the FM tuner to get some music as she went into the bedroom to change into a street dress. An afternoon at the hairdresser's seemed in order for Mr. Jackson's generosity. Before beginning to change, she removed the bedroom phone receiver. If anyone wanted her this afternoon, they could go to hell. She wasn't out to make a thousand bucks today.
Jerri Thornton lay in bed in the bedroom of her apartment in the West Forties, not far from the building that was used as a dormitory for Ferris School girls.
She was puffing on a roach-the leftover butt of last night's marijuana cigarette, the last of the reefers she and Bernie had smoked together in the wee hours. It was the first she had seen of the wiry jazz drummer since his return from the summer resort gig. They had smoked and made love and talked and smoked and made love, following the familiar pattern of their previous relationship, both of them taking that up again automatically.
She wondered what she saw in him. He was good, quite capable in bed-but so were a million other guys. Their backgrounds were completely different; the only thing they had in common was that they were both, in effect, criminals. They shared the bond of living outside the realm of respectability by their existences they denied the values of the respectable, workaday world.
He was far from good looking and even less romantic. He loved his drums as much as he could love anything, even her maybe-though he talked about marriage every once in awhile. She had broken off with him several times, and in this instance, while he was away, had sworn to herself that that would be the end of it; the next time he phoned she would simply be "busy." But as always, he had called. In the wee lonely hours he had called and asked to come up, and her resolution had faded away with the sound of his familiar, Brooklyn-tough voice.
She thought of him as she took a hard drag on the roach and held the smoke deep in her lungs, getting the full benefit.
She hadn't even had breakfast yet, but she wanted to get high. It was a lousy day outside and she wanted to get high, but not so much because of Bernie. On a day like this, you simply didn't feel like doing a damn thing, but she had been awakened by a phone call an hour or so ago-a client calling her up, wanting to see her today, that afternoon, as soon as possible. She knew the client and she knew what he would want from her, and on a day like this she knew that would be a drag, a hassle.
I always get the weirdos, she thought glumly, exhaling the smoke.
Maybe there was something about her, she thought. Something in her eyes, her face, her build, the way she looked-something. Most girls got their share, but she seemed to get more than her share. They liked her and they came back.
So she was getting herself a good head to face an hour or two with this particular John, a Mr. Lupkin.
She had to get dressed for him, but she felt lazy, and instead just lay there, finishing the cigarette, wearing only the dark lace bra and panties she had donned that noon upon getting up and taking a quick and disappointing shower.
The door buzzer rang. Mr. Lupkin. She should get up to answer it, of course. Like this, in just her unmentionables?
She laughed. Of course in her unmentionables! Let the little so-and-so's eyes pop out of his bony head. He liked to perform in the dark, with her fully dressed, but let him get a load of her form this way, for once.
She got up slowly and walked on bare feet through the bedroom and living room to answer the insistent buzzing.
He was a short man, odd-shaped and spindly. His face was skull-like and it grinned lopsidedly at her as he stood in the doorway, dressed in black like an undertaker, turning the rim of his fedora nervously in his hands. He was a very nervous man, and almost bald. He was the unmentioned son of a very rich family, very well off in the world but very out of step with it.
He shifted from one foot to the other, his beady eyes licking over her partially nude form, wetting his lips before he spoke.
"Good-good afternoon, Miss Thornton. I-I hope I didn't get you out of bed-"
She gave him a wry weary smile.
"As a matter-of-fact, yes. But please come in before the neighbors see us."
He shuffled into the living room as she closed the door after him.
Inside, he seemed very nervous, his eyes avoiding her.
"It's very light in here," he commented. "Couldn't we, ah, close the blinds a bit?"
"Of course," she said, going over to the Venetian blinds and closing them. The room became bathed in a dim half-light in which everything was soft and blurry but quite discernible. He ventured to look at her then.
"Would you like a drink, Mr. Lupkin?" she said, moving woodenly toward the bar.
"A bit of wine perhaps. Yes, a bit of wine." He sat down on the wide modern sofa, still fingering his hat nervously.
"I hope you don't mind my appearance," she said as she poured the wine at the bar. "I was just dressing when you arrived and couldn't find my good robe to answer the door."
"Quite all right, quite all right," he twittered, casting his eyes down at the rug.
She brought two glasses of wine over to the couch, handed him one and sat down next to him. She knew that he had very little resistance to alcohol and that the wine would dispel most of his nervousness.
They talked idly about nothing as they drank. She crossed her luxurious white legs, and his eyes fell on them greedily. He was halfway through his wine by then.
"To tell you the truth I was a little shocked by your appearance," he said. "But now I think I rather like this, ah, innovation, Miss Thornton. Yes; quite nice, quite nice."
She uncrossed her legs and crossed them again the other way, leaning back so that her bra stretched tight over her well-shaped breasts. It might be a kick after all, exciting him, she decided. The poor slob.
He had begun to sweat. His forehead was damp, covered with fine droplets, and his tie looked as though it were choking him as he sat humped forward on the couch, looking at her legs and her breasts.
"Whenever you want to begin," she murmured softly.
"I think I'm ready now," he answered hoarsely, gulping down the rest of his wine.
She relaxed while he got up and shuffled to the middle of the floor, where he began taking off his clothes hurriedly, really sweating now, excited. Though he was dressed very expensively, his dwarfish figure made his clothing look baggy and unkempt. He tossed each item carelessly at a chair, trembling now with excitement.
This was part of the bit, she thought. The poor ugly slob is getting his kicks undressing in front of me. The poor louse has to pay a woman to look at him.
God.
His body was fish-white and hairless as a baby's. His legs were spindly and thin, his chest shrunken. He looked more than anything like a deformed infant, a misfit child.
His thickish lips were pendulous as he turned to look at her.
"Yes; yes; I'm ready!"
And that was the most grotesque part of this.
He wasn't ready.
Not ready to make love, at least-not in the normal way a man makes love to a woman. In that way, he was completely harmless.
But that was because Mr. Lupkin was impotent.
As she began to get up from the couch, he collapsed suddenly to the floor, making strange whining sobs in his throat. Sounds that would have startled and shocked anyone-but Jerri had heard them before, and was used to them.
Ignoring them, she went over to a desk, and from a drawer she took out a short soft leather lash.
He was whining now, begging to be whipped.
This's his kick, she thought, going over to the limp form naked and humped on the floor. This's his groove; he likes this, so what the hell.
She began to use the lash on his back.
Again and again.
Hard, sharp blows. The whip was cleverly made, designed to sting without doing injury to the flesh, and she poured it on, trying to shut her ears to the sound of his rising whine. It was a strange, unearthly sound, like a feline in action on a summer night, or the wail of a mournful banshee.
Mr. Lupkin was quite impotent-physically. But not psychologically. He had the emotions and desires of a man. All he lacked were the capabilities of such a man.
She continued to use the lash until his whine turned into a low moan and he slumped forward onto his stomach. Then she tossed the lash aside and began to slide her panties down her legs.
When they were off, she knelt down to the trembling form.
She began to move slowly to the floor.
And then faster.
She closed her eyes and thought of nothing as she worked, gripping his shoulders with her hands and leaning back.
She began to laugh. That was funny; that had never happened before, but she was getting a kick out of this!
Even the weird noises coming out of his throat didn't disturb her this time. With her eyes shut, the high from the roach she had smoked on an empty stom-ache put her in a dream world-she felt a mounting excitement as she worked.
Faster.
And faster.
His excited cries sounded higher, louder.
Faster.
He was slobbering at the mouth, drooling to the carpet, but she didn't notice this, or the fierce blazing of his eyes.
Faster still.
"God!" she screamed.
And then that happened. That happened quickly, a huge expanding and sudden bursting. "Oh! Ohhhh!"
She fell back, limp and exhausted. Only their booming breath filled the dim room as they both lay still, recovering from the experience. She wondered idly, her mind in a half-stupor, if he had gotten anything from that. She had felt him shudder convulsively at that moment, a movement timed precisely to hers.
Perhaps he wasn't completely impotent after all. Perhaps a lot of that might be just in his mind.
She dragged herself up and reached for her panties on the floor a few feet away from her.
She was surprised to see he had gotten up and was sitting on the couch in the nude, lighting a cigarette.
"Some fun," she said, getting up and smiling.
"Yes," he said shyly. "You-you were never that good before."
"Maybe you ought to try the right way sometime."
He shook his head quickly. "No! I could never do that!"
She shrugged and went onto her room to dress. To each his own, she thought. At least the poor slob would leave the place satisfied. And unless she missed her guess, there would be an extra fifty on the coffee table when she went to the living room again.
No doubt.
Marc Ferris was having a rather boring afternoon. Things were slack and there wasn't much to do around the office, now, with the rush of girls wanting to launch their careers and spend autumn in New York having swelled the enrollment in the school almost to capacity.
It was a very big office to have nothing to do in. He had read the office copy of the paper through three times over, and an old magazine twice. He had smoked half a pack of cigarettes and gone to the window and looked out at the rain precisely seven times in a couple of hours. On the seventh time he had noted that it had stopped raining, and decided to quit before he wore a path in the carpet.
He sat down at his desk again and lit up another cigarette. He was in the process of reaching for the phone and giving Cynthia a call when the office intercom lit up and buzzed. He switched open the circuit.
"A Miss Alston is here, Mr. Ferris. She's an interviewee."
"Fine. Send her in in ten minutes, Priscilla."
He closed the circuit again and checked his wrist-watch. It was twenty minutes to three.
By ten of he had checked his appearance in the washroom mirror and found it immaculate, smoked another cigarette, looked out of the window again, and then seated himself in the plush swivel chair behind his big desk.
Again he clicked open the intercom switch.
"You have a folder on Miss Alston? Send it in please-with her."
Miss Alston came first, followed by the secretary, carrying Miss Alston's application and resume in a Manila folder. They both came up to the desk. Priscilla, the secretary, stepped around Miss Alston, put the folder on the desk, and stepped back, awaiting further orders.
"You may go," he said, looking at Priscilla.
Priscilla turned and left. Then he looked at Miss Alston. It was a posed look, a practiced glance, the standard one he gave to every interviewee who stood before his desk. But this time he held it a little longer.
Patricia Alston, said the application in the folder, was a five-foot-six brunette, weighing one-twenty, hometown Boise, Idaho, winner of several small beauty contests, part-time model, receptionist, some typing ability-
Patricia Alston was a lot of things. A lot of things that weren't in the folder, for that, matter. But they were standing in front of him, all those things, all assembled neatly for his evaluation.
Most of them were inside a tight-skirted, loose-bodiced black dress. His brief glance had taken them all in: breasts that seemed to lean out at you, big enough to blind your eyes; a waist you could almost put your hands around; hips like well-rounded parentheses. A face surrounded by a cascade of curly brunette hair. Yes; an interesting face, with wide, honey-brown eyes that smiled, concealing disappointments, and an eager, cupid's bow mouth, brilliantly red.
A hell of a figure. Big boobs, legs, the works. And an interesting face.
He pretended to look down at the folder, letting her stand there and squirm awhile. Something about her had interested him immediately. This would not be the usual interview. He knew this without even thinking about it.
"Sit down please, Miss Alston. I see by your resume that you haven't had much experience."
She sat down, her facade crumbling a little. Without the smile, she looked like a nervous college kid from Idaho. He wondered what had happened to her, what kind of a mill she had gone through before arriving here.
Then he put that thought out of his mind and continued with the interview.
It was just words. Words and psychology. He was doing his job, asking the right questions, but in between the right questions he asked the ones he wanted to know the answers to. He allowed her only the faintest of smiles; he was polite and aloof and commanding of respect. She would be impressed. She was.
Then he shot her the critical question: "What makes you think you want to become a call girl, Miss Alston?"
That invariably threw them, after the formal, business-like procedure.
"Well, I ... I need the money, I guess. I'm broke and I can't go home."
"A good looking girl like you never has to be broke. Have you tried selling yourself?"
She blushed. "Yeh. Once I-I picked up a man."
"We don't take on professionals, Miss Alston."
"Look, he didn't even pay me!"
"No? What did he do?"
"He beat me up afterward. That was a couple of weeks ago."
"I see," he said without inflection. But he was picturing the whole thing and getting very exciting images. He looked at a lot of pretty girls; a pretty face and figure were nothing to him, but every once in awhile there was a girl....
"Stand up please. Move around a bit."
Every once in awhile there was one that excited his imagination. They were all lovely, but with this one there would be something, something really different....
"Take off the dress, please."
A smile, maybe. A look around the eyes. The way she walked, carried herself, or her voice....
The tape measure in the drawer. Her statistics were all down there in the folder, but one had to check, make sure they weren't in any way falsified....
"Oh!"
"Are you nervous?"
"No-that sort of tickles when you do that, Mr. Ferris."
You could tell that that one would be more sensitive, would get more out of a good loving than the others. You could tell she would go wild if you did the right things....
"Fifty dollars, Miss Alston. If you're serious about this, you can follow the bill down. Or, you can walk out of this office and forget the whole thing. I have no intention of raping you, Miss Alston."
She chose the floor.
They always chose the floor.
He undressed slowly, his back to her. He let her lay there, wondering what the hell was coming off, why she was doing this, going through with this. He was eager as hell for her himself, but he didn't show a bit of emotion in his face. This was business, just business. Of course.
Then he turned, and saw her looking at him wonderingly.
She was soft, she was peaches and cream. Twenty-three, with a pair of boobs that leaned out at you, headlights that could blind you on a dark night, or even now, in the light of day filtering through the partially open Venetian blinds.
She had a narrow waist, beautifully formed legs-the works.
Her flesh seemed to jump electrically when she was touched.
"Ohhh!"
Those breasts-fantastic. Too much. More than two handfuls they were, but you could try to squeeze them all in.
"Oh, oh!"
"Ahhh!"
Play with her a little, excite her. "Oh-Mr.-Ferris-please!" Firm, delicious buttocks. And then, take her. "Ahhh!"
Make that look mechanical, disinterested, as though you were a machine. Practiced moves, slow, teasing, then faster. This was good, fine, the thing he had been looking for all day, the thing that would set him right again. Not just another girl, but one that made him feel like a man, a real man capable of driving a woman out of her mind.
Again.
And again.
Faster.
And faster.
Make this last. Make this last forever; make her think he was never going to stop, that I'm going to go on forever and ever, make the witch moan and groan and ask for more.
Give her plenty, Marc, Give her everything.
The works.
Everything.
Once, twice, three times he knew she shuddered in me throes of completion. She was near delirious, out of her mind; she had never tangled with anything like this before; she thought she was dreaming.
Then, faster and faster and faster, hanging onto her for dear life.
Up. Up. Up-And over.
Ten minutes later, he was straightening his tie, waiting for her to return from the washroom.
She came out, looking a little strained, but smiling.
"There are a lot of things I'll have to fill you in on," he said, returning the smile. "How about early dinner?"
"That sounds fine to me. I'm starved."
"There's a place on Lex that has fantastic steaks. We can have a couple of cocktails first and then go there."
"Wonderful!"
"Where are you staying now, by the way?"
"With a friend. I really don't have a place of my own any more, this girl's been letting me stay with her for the past week, till I found something."
"Can you move out tonight?"
"You bet. The things I've got will fit into two suitcases with no trouble."
"Good. You'll be moving out tonight then."
"Where to?"
"An apartment of your own. But I'll explain all these things to you later. Right now I could use a drink, Patricia."
"I could too."
They left the office together.
The sun that had come out had disappeared again when they hit the street. Dark September clouds were closing in again; it looked like rain.
He flagged a cab and they got in.
In the back seat he put his arm around her and slipped his hand under the hem of her dress.
"You're a very lovely girl," he murmured "A very lovely girl." '
CHAPTER TEN
It was a fantastic evening. Much moss than Marsha had bargained for, even with all the oil in Texas.
There was a lot of oil in Texas, for that matter, but none of it clung to the hands of Mr. Henry Jackson, cotton, petroleum, and beef magnate. He was perfectly smooth without the aid of oil or pomatum, or anything much except his diamond-in-the-rough personality. She had met quite a few wealthy and/or successful men already, but none of them measured up to Mr. Jackson's style of doing things. Her first estimate of him was that he was a little bit crazy. A very rich eccentric.
In the first place, he hired a Rolls Royce for the evening-apologizing for not having one of his own in the city at the time. It came complete with chauffeur and deep plush velvety-leathered seats you could lose yourself in, and only the clock in the dashboard was loud enough to drown out the sound of its powerful engine.
"I'd like to go for a ride first," he explained. "Autumn in New York-despite all the trite things said about it, it gets me. Mind?"
"Of course not." He was paying for her time, wasn't he? But it was nice of him to ask, and already she was enjoying his company. He didn't act much like a recently divorced bachelor, though. He seemed to be enjoying himself immensely, almost like a kid out on his first fling. He was in his late forties but looked younger, ruddy-faced, and with distinguished prematurely silvered hair. In a white dinner jacket, plaid cummerbund, and dark trousers and patent leather pumps, a small neat mustache on his upper lip, a playful gleam in his sea-blue eyes, he looked like the man the whiskey advertisements were trying to promote as the image of civilzed luxury, the genteel yet robust successful businessman who appreciated the finest whiskey-and women.
Only the finest.
He had the chauffeur take them up the F.D.R. Drive rimming the eastern boundary of the island first. The rain had stopped again, for good this time, and the spicy autumn air was exhilarating. She was wearing a white strapless cocktail gown with a small cape, but she drew it off her bare white shoulders, enjoying the breeze.
He touched her shoulder gently. "This is perfect," he said, looking toward Brooklyn skyline. "It calls for a good drink, Marsha."
She nodded, not understanding his meaning until he pressed a button in the back of the front seat. A panel slid out-and there was a complete miniature cocktail bar, built into the seat. It swung out conveniently and, while rolling silently and slowly along, he made them both excellent martinis.
"I haven't done anything like this in ages," he said, clinking her glass with his. "To your beauty."
They drank, and Marsha was suddenly very curious.
"You said over the phone you were just divorced," she began.
"Yes. So I'm celebrating, in a way. You see, even a businessman makes a bad bargain, Marsha-but not every businessman can get himself out of a bad deaL"
"What was she like?"
"Rich, like me. And spoiled-like me."
"You don't strike me as being spoiled."
"But I am, you see. When I see something I like, I think it ought to be mine. Money does that-it spoils you."
She laughed. "Well, at least you're nicely spoiled, Henry."
He kissed her lightly on the lips. "Thanks. Somehow I knew you'd say things like that"
"We only met once."
"That's all it takes for me to size someone up."
"But your wife?"
"She's one of the things that taught me how to size people up. You learn from your mistakes. That was an old one; forget it."
She forgot it, letting him call the plays. He put his arm around her comfortably, and then they cut across the upper tip of Manhattan and began going down the West Side Highway. He mixed them fresh drinks and together they admired the breathtaking aspect of the illuminated Jersey shoreline.
"It's beautiful," she said.
"No, it's ugly," he said. "Next to you, that is."
And his kiss was warmer and longer this time.
They went down to the Battery, and to her surprise he insisted on taking a ride to Staten Island and back on the ferry.
"It's early," he said. "Well have time to do that and then take in a few good clubs."
The ride was wonderful, an experience that took her back to her first week in the city, when she had done things like this. They got out and stood at the rail on the upper deck, watching the magic island recede. She shivered, and he took off his jacket and put it over her shoulders, first kissing each of them.
It was a strange date, she thought. The fact that he was paying for her seemed to have nothing to do with the way he was acting. But that was fine with her.
After the ferry ride, they rode uptown again.
"Where would you like to go?" he said.
"Wherever you like."
"No; I've changed my mind about that. I want you to show me your New York, the places you would go to if you were just out on a casual date with a friend."
"Well, if you really want to-"
"I do. Where do you go, mostly?"
She thought. She had had a few dates like that, most of them with Phil, who she still called occasionally and went out with, though there was nothing between them. They talked and smoked or drank, but mostly she liked listening to him play.
She remembered that he had gotten a new job at a newly opened jazz cellar in the Village, and told Henry Jackson about it.
"Do you like jazz?"
"I could learn to. I really haven't listened to much of it."
"A friend of mine's playing trumpet at a place called Swingsville. If you'd like-"
"We'll go there."
They did. It was a good night for it, with a quiet, appreciative crowd, and the group really swung. They listened and enjoyed, and during the break between sets Henry invited Phil to come over and sit down with them, and the musician and the millionaire got into a conversation about, of all things, music. Mr. Jackson surprised her with a lot more knowledge of the subject than he had admitted to, and after ordering a round of drinks for the three of them, the conversation flowed, and then it was time for Phil to play again. They listened awhile and left toward the end of the set.
"Very nice," he said, bundling her into the car. "I liked that, and he really plays well. But I've starved you long enough; let's go over to the Angel."
It was probably the most expensive dining and entertainment place in town; she could hardly complain about the suggestion. And she was really famished after all the autumny air they had taken in. Her appetite, all her senses, felt sharp and keen. All this was an indirect route to the bedroom for her-but it happened to be a thoroughly enjoyable route at that.
No complaints at all.
He ordered pheasant under glass and she tried the lobster Newburg. A deferential waiter brought them a tall bottle of imported vintage champagne, and they drank before and during and after the sumptuous meal, on into the floor show, which featured a well-known female songstress who belted out a wide selection of show tunes to the accompaniment of a pocket-sized orchestra. Then a comedian came on and told a series of rather old jokes, so they decided to leave.
"Where to now?" he said.
She leaned her head back against his shoulder. "Yon know, I feel so good that I don't actually care. I mean, just any place will do."
"That's the way I feel," he smiled, stroking her arm. "And I can't think of a better place than my hotel suite."
That was where the Rolls took them. It was one of the three best hotels in town, a lavish suite of rooms giving out on a view of lower Manhattan. Room service brought them delicious piping hot coffee and a bottle of Courvoisier.
"Now I feel spoiled," she said, relaxing back on the comfortable sofa. "I haven't had an evening like this since I can remember."
He looked delighted. He took the half-finished brandy from her hand, turned her face to his and kissed it.
"Will you marry me then?" She sat up suddenly. "What?"
"I simply asked you if you'd care to marry me, Marsha. That's plain enough, isn't it?"
"I don't believe it!"
"Of course you don't. But you see, I do. I know when to buy and when to sell. I just sold something and now it's time to buy."
"I still don't get you. You're not talking business."
"No, I'm talking something else. I want you to marry me."
"But you don't know a thing about me, and I'm-"
"You're a call girl and I know all about you, thanks to Cynthia. Your background, everything. Are you willing to take a gamble on me?"
"But this is crazy!"
"Maybe so, T know what I want, though. Come into the bedroom with me now, and I'll ask you the same question again later. Maybe you'll believe me then, darling."
The route to the bedroom had ended-in the bedroom of Henry Jackson's luxurious hotel suite Naturally. He undressed her. Naturally.
He took her gown off, kissing her breasts and her body with visible excitement. He removed her bra cups and her panties, her shoes and stockings, rolling each one down carefully as she lay back on the bed, admiring every inch of her splendid physique.
"You're beautiful," he breathed, and began kissing and caressing her again.
"You better get undressed," she smiled, tugging at his jacket.
"Yes," he grinned, and got up and began to undress. He was well built, a tall, muscular man who hadn't let the years turn him to flab. He had broad shoulders and a narrow waist and hips, and strong, well-muscled legs.
And he was quite ready to make love to her.
Eminently ready.
She touched and stroked and kissed him first, showing her appreciation for the evening, putting all thoughts of his question out of her mind. She rubbed her breasts against him; she appreciated him with her hands and lips, and when his excitement became intense, she let him move her back on the bed again.
He was strong, and determined to satisfy her.
He was also tender and careful not to rush or hurt. There was nothing clumsy in his technique. He was skillful, practiced-and entirely convincing.
He took her quietly, strongly.
"Oh!"
Strong.
Stronger and stronger.
"Am I hurting you darling?"
"Yes-no, no! Don't stop!"
He worked faster, dipping his face to the golden splendor of her breasts, taking one and biting, stroking her with his strong hands, rhythmically, building a powerful excitement to an intense pitch. Faster and faster.
Faster and faster, till she felt every part of her strain toward him. All of her.
And then that happened. She had a moment of ecstasy that seemed to be timeless and timed to his, though that was only an instant.
Then they were floating back down to earth again, like feathers in a soft breeze.
He was whispering something in her ear: "Will you marry me, darling?"
When at last she understood, she laughed softly and said: "You are crazy, aren't you?"
"Very. I'm crazy for you." He laughed himself this time. "How do I know what it is? Maybe you remind me of my mother or something. That's for the psychologists to figure out-all I know is that I want you."
"Just as I am?"
"Just as you are."
"And you won't be sorry afterward?"
"That's not even worth talking about. I want you now, and that's all that counts."
"If I get married," she said, "I want( it to be for a long long time, Henry. I'm really old school that way."
"I know that. That's why it's going to work-I'm like that too. But I don't have time, Marsha-I want you right away. Say yes!"
She looked into his eyes a long time.
"Yes," she whispered.
And then they embraced, and they began all over again. Slower this time, and sweeter-but even more intense than before.
And when they were finished he gave her six hundred dollars-and a diamond ring.
"Will you spend the night?" he said.
"Silly-the night's practically over. No; I want to go back to my place, to be alone where I can think all this over, Henry. Do you mind?"
"Of course not. I'll go with you, darling."
"No; you stay here. Let the driver take me back alone."
"But I'll call you in the morning?"
"Yes. Oh yes; call me in the morning, as soon as you get up-or else I'll think this is all a dream."
"I won't sleep. But I'll call you, Marsha. I'll call you. You can be certain of that, darling."
She wasn't certain of anything as she rode in the plush Rolls back to her apartment building. Everything was turned topsy-turvy in her mind; the world turned upside-down.
In her apartment, she fell on the bed with her gown still on, and dead-tired, her thoughts all confused, she feel promptly asleep.
And that was the way she awoke-to the ringing of the telephone, and then his voice. They talked about nothing and everything and didn't manage to make much sense at all, but when they hung up it was agreed they would meet each other in an hour.
The next thing she did was to call up her friend Jerri and tell her the news.
The unbelievable news.
The good news.
Jerri Thorton was crying when she hung up the phone after Marsha's call.
She didn't know why. She was happy, glad for her friend; it was all so quick and so unbelievable and everything, so damned romantic it couldn't have happened to anyone she knew except Marsha.
Yes, to Marsha Kinsted. But not to Jerri Thornton.
Jerri Thornton was the girl who got the weirdos.
"That's a lot of self-pity!" she said aloud, getting up from the chair she had sat down in to talk to Marsha. "A good long shower and a slug of Scotch in your breakfast coffee will take care of that kind of emotion, Jerri darling!"
Of course it would, Jerri darling agreed. When she got to the bathroom she took off her robe and examined herself in the full-length bathroom mirror.
A lean, good-looking blonde with a rather hardened expression about the eyes confronted her.
And suddenly she burst into tears again. It came upon her like a great wave gushing over her emotional self, sweeping everything else away in its wake.
Pity for the girl in the mirror. It was like running into a stranger on the street, one who looks vaguely like yourself, enough like yourself to make you stop short and gape-and maybe shudder a little.
She sank down to the bath mat and with her back bowed she let the tears flow through her fingers. She hadn't cried like this in a long time, in ages. When was the last? So long ago she couldn't even remember. And why was she crying now? That too, was difficult to explain.
But it felt good, and she let it all come out. She had herself a good cry, and when it was over and there weren't any more tears left, she got up and got into the shower.
She took a long hot shower and then a short brisk cold one, soaping herself with expensive perfumed soap that sold for over a dollar a bar.
Then she got out and toweled herself dry, spending a lot of time powdering herself afterward, going through the familiar motions of habit that were somehow consoling at times like this. But her eyes still avoided the mirror. She was afraid it might start again if they didn't.
But the flow had stopped; her eyes were dry as she sat before her vanity making up her face. Only a slight trace of redness stLU showed in the eyes when she was done.
Just as she got up, the telephone rang-the signal of the start of her day. She got up in her dressing gown and went to the bed and sat down to answer it. But she paused. She had a sudden impusle to let it ring, to let all the lecherous Johns in the world go to hell with themselves.
But maybe, she thought wryly, it was her millionaire.
Of course it wasn't, couldn't be. She had become superstitious of late, and on the sly went to a fortune teller's to have her fortune read. This was something she would admit to no one, something she felt guilty about herself, being an educated girl. It was a silly thing to do and she told herself it was just an amusement, a way to pass a boring evening now and then.
But the man-he hadn't been in the cards.
The phone continued its muted ring, and finally, more out of indecision and boredom than anything else, she picked it up. She wanted company today-even a John would do today.
But it wasn't a John. It was Bernie.
"Good God!" she exclaimed. "What on earth are you doing up this early?"
"I'm at the race track, baby."
"I see. And you lost a wad and that made you think of calling poor little me. How much do you need this time?"
He laughed over the phone. "Plenty, sweets-but not cash. I hit the daily double, kiddo. How about that?"
"I don't believe it."
"Neither do L"
"What a day this is. Do you know that Marsha's getting married-to a rich Texan?"
"Crazy! Invite her down and we'll celebrate. I'm loaded with the green, baby-and I've got eyes for you."
"I'm afraid she's involved today. And I should work, I didn't do a thing hardly yesterday-" She paused, looking around the empty apartment, the silent walls and furniture. No; not another minute of this, she decided.
"Where can I meet you?" she said. "How about your place?"
She groaned. "I'm about to wig from this place. I'll come down to yours. We'll get stoned and then we'll do the town."
"My place? Okay-if you can take it."
"I can take it-believe me I can! Just give me a half hour to get into something, man!"
It took her fifteen minutes to get into an autumn-brown sheath and an almost-paid-for genuine leopard coat with matching accessories, and then she was cabbing downtown, to a corner bar on West Fifteenth where she waited in a booth for Bernie to show.
It took him three-quarters of an hour to get there after that, driving back from the track with a friend, and Jerri was working on her third whiskey sour.
Bernie was dressed in a sharp-looking muted plaid sports jacket, white shirt and tie and black pegged gabardines. They both looked at each other and whistled at the same time, and then laughed. He slid into the booth.
"You're too much," he said. "I've got to take you out somewhere and show you off, man."
"I hardly recognized you either, baby. Is this how you look in the light of day?"
He flashed a roll of bills. "See that? Almost two thou, baby. All green and a yard wide."
"Why don't you put it in a bank, Bernie?"
He laughed. "What, me? You're putting me on! When Bernie has, Bernie spends. How do you know there's going to be any tomorrow?"
"Yeah," she said glumly. "You've got a point."
"Hey man; cheer up! Where do you want to go, queenie?"
"Your place."
"You're serious then. Okay, we'll make love. But afterward-"
"We'll think about that afterward."
"Crazy."
They got up from the booth and he took her by the arm and led her out of the gin mill.
His pad was only a half a block away. Three flights up in a rundown walk-up apartment house, with unemployed Puerto Ricans sitting on doorsteps eyeing the well-dressed couple sullenly, or staring emptily at nothing.
Like most apartments of that type it was just two rooms, a bedroom and a living room, with a tiny alcove for a kitchen containing a greasy gas stove and refrigerator. The kitchen table was littered and the refuse piled in bags under the sink was overflowing. Part of the living room was taken up with his drums and a record player.
"Home sweet home," he said, putting an LP record on the player. "Take off your coat and sit a spell, man. I'll fix us both a little taste."
"You're turning me into a teahead, man."
"Some of the best cats I know are teaheads. You want me to roll one up or not?"
"Sure."
She took off her coat and her shoes and sat on the davenport while he took paper and some loose marijuana down from the pantry and sat at the kitchen table to roll, his long fingers working skillfully. The scratchy phonograph blared out a dynamically swining Konitz record.
Lighting the joint, Bernie removed his coat and tie and sat down next to her. They curled around each other and kissed, passing the stick back and forth between embraces.
"Mmm, you're ruining my dress, baby," she said.
"Take it off then."
"Help me. I can hardly move already."
Between the two of them she got out of the dress, and then her bra and panties and stockings. She finished the joint while Bernie got out of his things, watching him and thinking.
This is me, she thought. This is where I belong; this is all I know. He's a sweet guy and I'll never marry him, but he's a kick and he understands....
And then both of them were together on the couch again.
Embracing wildly, to the tune of fast jazz.
His hand slid over her graceful curves, her breasts and waist and legs, and she returned caress for caress. Time seemed to stop for them; time was the music and the record repeated itself on the automatic phonograph, over and over, so that it seemed the music had no beginning and no ending.
It just went on and on.
Like us, she thought. The same old tune, over and over and over.
But that's a kick.
They were both grooving now, feeling the music, the round notes hitting them and striking chords within. Their restless hands sought each other again and again, played melodies and riffs on each other's bodies.
And then she was back on the couch and he was leaning against her, kissing her excited breasts and caressing her; the foreplay was over and the main theme was about to begin.
That began with a long, sweet note that sent thrills all over her body.
"Oh, baby!"
And then a swift rhythmic attack, one two three, one two three-
"You're sending me, baby!" On and on.
Rising. The notes of passion rising for her in tune and in rhythm to the music, a kick, the kick, driving her wild, up and up and up and out, out, way out.
Out of her mind.
Then they were in orbit, whirling around in the outer reaches of space together. Faster and faster. "Ohhhh!"
The record stopped, the arm lifted and swung back, the record started again. And so did they.
Again and again. They were lost in a peculiar world known only to the way-out folk, the world where you could groove to pot and music and physical love at the same time.
"Ahhhh!"
They fell back, spent, floating down again, returning slowly to this world, the world of dirty apartments and cockroaches and a record that played over and over again on a scratchy beat-up phonograph, wailing out its agonized syncopation.
At last he got up and shut it off.
"Whew," he said. "We were gone that time, honey."
They sat down and smoked a cigarette in the darkness of drawn shades, neither of them saying anything for long minutes, listening to the sounds coming up from the street below. In another apartment a baby was crying, and somewhere a faucet was dripping with monotonous regularity.
"I'm hungry!" Bernie said finally. "Want to get dressed and go down to Chinatown for something?'
"Sure."
She got up and began dressing in the bathroom. He was already half-dressed, and he opened the door and watched her.
"You're nice," he said.
"Quit peeking."
"I mean it. Why don't we get hitched up?"
"That again?"
"Well, it's like something to say."
"If you didn't ask me that every now and then, I wouldn't think it was you."
"I dig you, baby."
"I dig you too." She stepped into her heels and turned toward him suddenly.
"You know what? I'll never marry you, Bernie."
He laughed. "I know that. Maybe that's why I ask you."
"You're a heel. You're a low life, a two-bit criminal."
"I'm hip."
"I'm going to marry a very rich man some day."
"Sure, baby."
"Marsha did it, so can I."
"Sure."
"It may take a year and it may take five. But that's the only kind of guy I'm marrying, see?"
"Yeah, right."
"You're nothing but a crumb. You and those drums!"
"Don't I know it?"
She came over to him and put her arms around him, and he put his arms around her. "You're nothing," she said. "I know it"
"And I'm looking for a meal ticket because I'm too lazy to do anything else and don't give a damn if the world blows up tomorrow."
"It might."
"Sure it might. But do we give a damn?"
"Hell no. You don't give a damn, and neither do I. We're sort of alike that way."
"Kiss me, baby." He did. "Again." He did again.
"No more-we're going down to Chinatown together, remember?"
"Hell, I almost forgot."
"So did I. But we better go now or we'll be too hungry later. Get me my coat, baby."
In the living room, he helped her into her leopard coat, and then he put on his jacket and they left the apartment.
"Cab or subway?" he said in the street.
"A cab. I want to dig things on the way down. I've still got a good head from smoking."
"Me too. Here comes one now."
They caught the cab and got in. The cab headed over toward Eighth and then down.
"I like this," she said, holding onto him in the back seat. "I was depressed when you called, baby, and now I'm not."
"We'll groove tonight, baby. We'll take in everything."
The cab rolled on downtown.
"Listen," she said, relaxing against his shoulder. "Save some of that two grand, will you?"
"What for?"
"I want to get out of this town. I'm going to take a vacation."
That's a groovy idea, baby."
"We'll go to Florida. As soon as it gets cold, well go to Florida together, spend a month or two. You can play the horses and the dogs all you want down there."
"And dig the chicks," he smiled, squeezing her breasts.
"Sure," she said. "Anything you want. I dig you, man."
"I dig you too, baby." The cab rolled on.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Cynthia Lockhart was in the process of having her apartment redecorated.
It certainly didn't need redecorating, for this had been done to it just a year ago-but that wasn't the point. The point was, you got bored with a place, no matter how great it looked. The same color walls, rugs, the same furniture-it got to you eventually if you lived there long enough, and especially if you lived there alone. The cure for this, if you have the money, is to have the place completely re-done, from floors to ceilings; furnishings, everything.
And Cynthia certainly had the money. Wherever she had lived for the past fifteen years, if she stayed there long enough she had it done over on an average of once a year. It generally ended up looking much the same, but to Cynthia it was the little differences that counted. In everything.
For instance, she had noticed a subtle difference in Marc Ferris lately, for the past couples of days. Differences in people, changes, the subtle ones, were interesting to her, and this one in Marc would have been too-if she weren't fairly certain of the cause behind the change.
Exactly certain, in fact She was never wrong in his case.
It was the usual cause.
"You're not paying attention to me, darling," she said. They were seated together on the Victorian styled couch of her private study, the antechamber to her glassed-in bedroom. It was evening; they were drinking cocktails.
"What did you say?" Marc said, coming back to the present.
"I was telling you about the color scheme I'm thinking about for this room."
"Oh. Yes; it's fine; fine!"
"Your mind must be somewhere else tonight."
"I was just thinking about business matters."
"Really? Anything good turn up lately?"
"Well...."
"A new girl, perhaps?"
"As a matter-of-fact, yes. She came in the day before yesterdav, a very stunning brunette."
"Ah."
"From Boise. Ran a check on her and she looked okay. Right background and everything."
"I thought the school was full to capacity, Marc."
"Well, I didn't want to let this one go. There's always room for one more, if she's a looker."
"This new girl-what's her name?"
"Alston. Patricia Alston."
"Hmm. And how was she?"
"What do you mean by that, Cynthia?" Marc said innocently, feeling uneasy. His mind had been on the girl all evening, as a matter-of-fact, but he hadn't thought that had shown in his actions.
"You made love to her didn't you?"
"Listen, Cynthia; it was just-"
"Just one of those things. Another ripe young thing from the corn belt and you couldn't keep your hands off her!"
"Come on, honey-"
"You're a greedy man, Marc. I bet when you were a child you couldn't walk past a fruit stand without swiping the biggest ripest apple."
"Now, baby-"
"Take me to bed, Marc."
"But I thought you wanted to see that new show."
"I want you to take me to bed, Marc." She was wearing a long white lame gown, open-throated, and when she turned on the couch and leaned toward him, most of her ample bosom was bared.
"Don't you want to take me to bed, Marc?"
He looked at her big breasts with unconcealed interest. They never failed to interest and excite him, with their huge red nipples and matronly heft.
He hadn't made love to her in over a week. First there had been a rush of business matters, and then they simply hadn't seen each other for several days.
He was seeing a lot of her at the moment. She had also crossed her legs, baring a lot of white shapeliness.
"Of course, darling," he breathed, and as if by a prearranged signal they both rose.
He followed her into the fantasy of a bedroom, her many-mirrored menagerie. She undid the robe and shrugged, and it fell to the floor. "Hurry, Marc!"
He hurried. He undressed as fast as he could, for now the sight of her tall stately body with its huge pendulous breasts, lovely round buttocks and smooth-muscled legs had him thoroughly excited. Especially the breasts. There was something about them....
She waited for him, her eyes fastened on his image in the mirrors. A strange feeling came over her, a feeling that was partially libidinal excitement and partially something else. Concern, maybe. He was a man who was bound to ruin himself over a woman some day. If there were no one around to stop him, to bring him back to his senses. She was incapable of loving any man in the usual sense of the word, but the emotion she felt toward him at least approached love.
In a sense, it was love.
When he moved to her she reached out and grasped him, clutching him to her big bosom, the snowy red-tipped comfort of her spreading breasts. She let him take them to his lips, one at a time, experiencing passion, but more from the excitement she was causing in him than from his skillful maneuverings.
The truth was, he didn't do that much for her. He could bring her to a finish and few men could do that, but it was something else that made her want him around something that at times she could almost define.
Times like this.
She touched and stroked and caressed him repeatedly, and when he became eager with passion and was ready to take her, she held him off.
"What is it?" he gasped.
"What's the matter?"
"That Alston girl. I want her here, Marc"
"Cynthia, baby; I don't know-"
"Here, Marc, so I can watch. Arrange that!" "God, all right, if you say so; only let me-"
She let him. She relaxed and felt the excitement of his passion. She folded her arms around him, crushing him to her big breasts as he began to work with increasing excitement.
He would do that, she knew. He would bring the girl here, and things would happen again, like before, and then he would be safe. Then he would need her again.
He would need her always, the poor fool-the way some men need a mother!
She sighed, feeling her own passion rise in response to his.
